Some believe theology exists only for and is engaged only by those with a propensity to the intellectual life. To such individuals, theology amounts to no more than mental exercises engaged for the sake of gaining the upper hand in an argument, perhaps not much different than engaging in the strenuous mental work of playing a game of chess. “You claim that God is simple, but I move this biblical text that demands complexity. You move your piece about anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms, but I move my piece arguing that you basically make God unknowable.” (Lest there be any confusion, we at Baptist Dogmatics believe in divine simplicity and anthropomorphic/pathic analogical language). We know the danger of viewing theology this way impinges upon those who are drawn to focused theology and those who are skeptical about it. For those drawn toward focused theology, the danger becomes a disunity between knowledge and belief or polemics and piety. You can argue that the Bible claims God is holy and just, demonstrate the logic of such claims, and ensure that escape hatches are thoroughly clamped shut, while deciding, in the end, to live as an infidel. Like Hume, who chose to live like cause-and-effect existed while arguing against it intellectually, a theologian could choose to argue for biblical truth and then live contrary to his own claims. Likewise, those skeptical of formal theological inquiry may hold up the same example of the theological life to support their view of its relative unimportance or even danger. They might claim that God calls us to know the bare minimum, not get tangled up in controversy, and instead spend time living as a simple Christian.
Against both views, we hold forth our previous examples from Gregory of Nazianzus and Augustine of Hippo. The first told us to handle the theological task with reverence rather than throwing around wanton thoughts or in any way cheapening the enterprise. The second told us to concern ourselves with the value of truth itself, even if it meant someone else was read or we are disparaged. Both men taught us that theological inquiry wars against pride. Today, we bring forward one more thinker from the past to help us think about the disposition of the theologian/dogmatician: Anselm of Canterbury.
Among his many works, Anselm wrote three in particular that have come to influence theological and philosophical thought in the nearly thousand years since he wrote them. His Cur Deus Homo, or “Why God Became Man,” is a treatise seeking to answer that question that many today probably don’t ask themselves. The other two works are his Monologion and Prosologion. These two major works on the doctrine of God are worth every Christian’s time, though they certainly require some close and slow reading. And, just in case you thought they might require too much time, consider the fact that the latter (Proslogion) is only about twenty pages in length (see the citation at the end of this article for the translation used here). Over the course of those twenty pages, however, Anselm makes one of his most famous statements (maybe simply his most famous): God is that “than which nothing greater can be thought/conceived.” This is famously called the ontological argument for the existence of God, and from it Anselm engages in a theological inquiry into such things as God’s justice and mercy, and how mercy can be attributed to a God who doesn’t change.
However, for our purposes in this article, let’s consider the piety that Anselm displayed in his inquiry into the existence of God. We begin with his prologue to the Proslogion. He says he initially entitled both works by different names:
The first I called “A pattern for meditation on the rational basis of faith”; the second I called “Faith seeking understanding”…[based on a recommendation] I named the first Monologion, which means a speech made to oneself, and the second Proslogion, which means a speech made to another.
In the two original titles, we note the inherently religious, or pious, connotations Anselm intended to accompany his publications. Though these were certainly dense intellectual works, he viewed the first as a meditation and the second he famously saw as faith seeking understanding, meaning the basis and context in which he wrote was as a believer. In meditation, as Anselm sees it, the believer speaks theology to themselves. If he is right, and we think he is, one reason for the study of theology is to be able to properly meditate upon the things of God. How much time is spent worried about the state of our country, our family, our own lives, and not about the things of God? Theology, in one aspect of its task, is meditating on God, seeking to love him with all our minds.
Anselm tells us that the second title indicates “speech made to another.” And who is this “another” to whom Anselm speaks? It is God himself. The twenty pages of contemplation about the existence of God are written in the form of a prayer reminiscent of Augustine’s Confessions. Yes, Anselm speaks to his own soul as well, but only in a way similar to the psalmists (e.g. Psalm 43:5). Throughout the work, he says things like, “O Lord my God, you have fashioned and refashioned me, tell my longing soul what you are besides what it has seen, that it might see purely what it longs to see” (chap. 14). He desires to know God in the depth of his soul, to be all the more acquainted with the One he loves, and so engages in the dogmatic task as one pursuing God in prayer.
Anselm’s two works beautifully show the unity between piety and dogmatics. But you may respond to us, “Sure, but isn’t he one of those theologians of the Dark Ages?” Aside from the fact that such a caricature misses the continuity of the faith through the ages from the church fathers, through the scholastics to the Reformers and post-Reformation theologians and preachers, we can see examples in two other directions that resemble Anselm’s pairing of piety and dogma. First, consider the Scriptures. The beautiful prayers of the Psalms have consistently been viewed as abundant with dogmatic fruit. Where do we learn of the one after the order of Melchizedek who is David’s Lord? Where do we read “today I have begotten you”? Consider the great truths about God’s very nature in such Psalms as 90 and 145. The Lord and the Apostles saw the Psalms as dogmatically important. Further, consider even the apostles’ prayers, such as Ephesians 1:3–14, which abound with theology and are often viewed as theology apart from the context of prayer.
In the other chronological direction from Anselm, notice one of the great gifts of Banner of Truth: Valley of Vision. The prayers contained in that little book—taken from the Puritans and their successors—are full of dogma. They are theologically rich, saturated with dogmatic piety. Like those who wrote Scripture, Augustine, and Anselm, the Puritans were convinced that the things we confess about God should be prayed back to God even as they are proclaimed. Theological truths were not left in another room as they entered their prayer closets; they were not left on a bookshelf when they bowed their knees. Rather, doctrine was integrated into the prayer and mediation so that the truths of God were sought by prayer and further fueled prayer.
Those who give their lives to theological inquiry and those who dismiss it as unimportant for the Christian life alike stand in opposition to Christians of the past. While we may not always write our theology in the form of a prayer, we ought always to have theology inform our prayers and our prayers bathe our theologizing. At Baptist Dogmatics, we aim to do Christian theology, and Christians are those who have a living relationship with God through Christ by the Spirit. Like Anselm, we will strive by faith to seek understanding.
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Anselm, Monologion and Proslogion, with Repliees of Gaunilo and Anselm, trans. by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1996.