Theology, Prayer, and Praise: A Personal Testimony
"Saint Athanasius", icon from Sozopol, Bulgaria, end of 17 century. (Source: WikiCommons)
As a long-time seminary professor, I have met my share of people who have negative views of theology. Sometimes, their negativity is due to a bad experience in a college or seminary theology class. Whatever the source, negative appraisals of theology often involve one of two false contrasts.
The first false contrast concerns theology and the Bible. For some people, theology and the Bible are about completely different things. And depending on the theologian you are reading, this may turn out to be true. For example, some things that claim to be about theology turn out to be primarily about contemporary politics or economics. Theology may have political and economic implications, but theology is not primarily about such things. Rather, the primary focus of theology is the nature, identity, and purposes of almighty God, and the realization of God’s purposes in our lives.
Now that we have clarified what theology is primarily about, there are at least two problems with drawing a sharp contrast between theology and the Bible. On the one hand, the Bible is a theological text. The Bible is not primarily about history or scientific theories. Nor is it primarily about politics or economics. The Bible contains historical material. It even has things to say about the origin of the universe. But the Bible’s main focus is quite clearly the nature, identity, and purposes of God, and the realization of God’s purposes in our lives. From beginning to end, the Bible makes assertions about God, such as “God created the heavens and the Earth,” or “God spoke to Moses,” or “the Word became incarnate and dwelled among us.” The Bible describes all that God has done in creation and for us and for our salvation, as well as all that God is doing to realize his good purposes for us both now and in the life of the world to come.
On the other hand, the most important works in the history of Christian theology—works such as Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, Augustines’s City of God, Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will, and John Wesley’s Sermons on Several Occasions—are steeped in Holy Scripture. The truly great works in theology immerse us in Scripture and help us to explicate and understand scripture. They also deepen our joy in the scriptures by helping us to see connections we might otherwise have missed (e.g., the connection between Eve and Mary and between the first and second Adam), and by focusing our attention on biblical themes that are of immense importance for thinking about God and salvation—themes like the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A second false contrast pits theology against spirituality or the spiritual life. Thus, some people will insist that God doesn’t care how much we know; he only cares that we worship and love him. If we really want to grow spiritually, they contend, then we should spend more time praying and fasting and less time reading theology.
Truly great works in theology do not distract us from the work of prayer any more than they distract us from Holy Scripture. In fact, they are calculated to do just the opposite. For example, Augustine’s On the Trinity takes us on a journey that begins with Scripture and culminates in prayer and praise to God. Along the way, Augustine works to purge our minds of false ideas about God—ideas that are sometimes based on bad interpretations of Scripture! And he does all of this in a way that deepens our awe over God’s mysterious nature and evokes humble gratitude in response to God’s glory, goodness, and grace.
The same can be said of John Wesley’s Sermons on Several Occasions. Wesley’s sermons are immersed in Scripture. They always begin with biblical texts and then proceed methodically to purge our minds of bad interpretations of those texts. In other words, they help us to understand what we should not think or say, so that we can better appreciate the truth about God’s nature, identity, and purposes. And they do all of this in a way that culminates in the praise and worship of God. Indeed, Wesley’s sermons, like his brother’s hymns, are carefully designed to evoke wonder, love, and praise.
Truly good theology doesn’t distract us from prayer and praise. It inspires us to pray ever more earnestly and to sing God’s praises ever more fervently each day. For instance, when we contemplate the necessity of God’s existence and the utter contingency of creation, we realize that creation only exists because of God’s goodness and grace. We come to see that God didn’t have to create the world. Nor did he create the world accidentally. Rather, God freely and purposefully creates the world out of the sheer abundance of his goodness and love. In creating the world, God freely chooses to grant life to us creatures and to share his life with us through the gift of communion. All of this is captured every time we confess our belief in the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and giver of life!” Contemplating the utter giftedness of life doesn’t distract us from praise and prayer. It causes our minds and hearts to erupt in humble gratitude to God. Good theology culminates in doxology!
Something similar happens when we contemplate the incarnation of the Word. In his great hymn, “Glory Be to God on High,” Charles Wesley exclaims,
Him the angels all adored,
Their Maker and their King;
Tidings of their humbled Lord
They now to mortals bring.
Emptied of his majesty,
Of his dazzling glories shorn,
Being’s source begins to be,
And God himself is born!
A few lines later, Wesley summons the heavens themselves to “stand amazed” at what has taken place in the incarnation. And we cannot help joining them! We shake our heads in utter disbelief over the lengths to which God has gone to save us sinners. Amazing love, indeed!
Reading Athanasius’ On the Incarnation can have a similar effect. At the outset, Athanasius tells us that it would not be befitting of God, who is wholly good and full of mercy and grace, to allow sin and evil permanently to disfigure and destroy God’s good and beautiful creation. Nor would it be befitting of God to allow us humans permanently to succumb to death. In other words, the God who freely granted us life because he desires to share his life with us will not stand by and allow death to have the final word. This is wondrous news! And then we learn of even more wondrous news: God’s solution to human sin—God’s answer to death—is to become incarnate, suffer, and die. And God does all this to “elevate” us to himself. He stoops down in order to lift us up from sin and death. Setting Athanasius’ text down, we cannot help but exclaim, “Hallelujah! Glory be to God on high!”
We could easily go on exploring other connections between theology, prayer, and praise. For instance, in On the Holy Spirit, Basil of Caesarea tells us that the Holy Spirit personally leads us to the contemplation and knowledge of God. We come to know God truly when the Holy Spirit illumines the eyes of our minds and hearts, leading us personally into communion with God. When we read such things, it is natural to pause and pray, “Even so, Come Holy Spirit!”
Still, a very important question remains. If all these great works in theology are so immersed in Holy Scripture, then why not just read the Bible itself?
We should be clear that reading theology is not a substitute for reading the Bible. Rather, it is an aid to reading the Bible well. But perhaps we might respond to this question by raising a different question, namely, given their obvious recognition of the authority of Scripture, why did people like Augustine or Wesley bother to write theology at all? Why not simply direct their followers to read Scripture alone?
The obvious answer to this question is that they wanted to focus our minds and hearts on very specific themes like God’s triune nature and identity (Augustine), or the incarnation (Athanasius), or the suffering and death of Christ (Anselm), or the person and work of the Holy Spirit (Basil the Great). The reality is that texts about these and other important themes are scattered throughout the Bible. For example, there are hundreds of biblical texts that discuss Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, and just as many about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Among other things, good theology helps us to gather, compare, and contemplate texts addressing a specific theme from various parts of the Bible. Along the way, it acknowledges and deals with bad or problematic interpretations of those texts or with seeming contradictions among the texts. For example, when Jesus says, “my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), we might conclude that Jesus is not fully God or that he is some sort of lesser deity. After all, this is exactly what Arius himself was arguing. But this text must be read in the light of Jesus’ earlier statement, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Again, good theology helps us to read Scripture well. It also helps us to read and contemplate biblical texts about specific theological topics in a way that deepens our gratitude to God and our joy in him.
I began this essay by mentioning that I have met a lot of people who have negative views of theology—views that are often based on false contrasts. Happily, I have also had, through twenty-three years of full-time teaching, the incredible privilege of seeing students discover the power of good theology to deepen their love for God. In fact, just a few days before I wrote this, a student from Costa Rica stopped me in the hall and exclaimed, “Wow! Dr. Vickers! Athanasius’ On the Incarnation is so powerful!” We spent the next ten minutes or so discussing some of Athanasius’ most crucial insights, and I must confess that, if there was a boundary between theology, prayer, and praise, I could not find it.
Jason E. Vickers is the William J. Abraham Professor of Theology and Wesleyan Studies at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, Waco, TX.