The Goal of Good Theology

A good, humourous but yet serious reminder from Vanhoozer as to what good theology is all about... or rather, where good theology should lead us to. A good reminder for all aspiring theologians like myself!

"Success in theology is a matter of becoming right with God.

When one stands in right relation to God, all one's other relations are made right too. Knowing ourselves forgiven by God, we are empowered to forgive others. This too is part of our "lived knowledge" of Scripture. Indeed it may be no exaggeration to say that the ultimate purpose of biblical interpretation is to achieve right relationships: with God, with others and with oneself. After all, Christian truth is in the service of Christian love. If I speak with the tongues of Reformers and of professional theologians, and I have not personal faith in Christ, my theology is nothing but the noisy beating of a snare drum. And if I have analytic powers and the gift of creating coherent conceptual systems of theology, so as to remove liberal objections, and have not personal hope in God, I am nothing. And if I give myself to resolving the debate between supra and infralapsarianism, and to defending inerrancy, and to learning the Westminster Catechism, yea, even the larger one, so as to recite it by heart backwards and forwards, and have not love, I have gained nothing.

First philosophies eventually come and go. So do trends in theological method. I cannot predict what the next generation will decide is of first priority and importance.This one thing I do know: that there is no more vital task facing Christians today than responding faithfully to Scripture as God's authoritative speech acts-not because the book is holy but because the Lord is, and because the Bible is his Word, the chief means we have of coming to know Jesus Christ. Those who interpret the Bible rightly - those who look and live along the text, following the written words to the living Word - will have rightly ordered loves and rightly ordered lives. Indeed first theology matters precisely because it is tied up with our first love. The apostle Paul leaves us in no doubt as to either his first theology or his first love: "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil 3:8)"

Taken from First Theology (Nottingham: APOLLOS, 2002), 40-41