I.2.i. Theoretical or Practical?
1. Medieval Scholastics did not all agree on the question. Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus held that it was practical, not speculative. Remember that Thomas held that theology is a science. As such it is theoretical above all, but that does not mean that it is not practical. There are theoretical uses of the mind and practical uses of the mind. The difference is well summarized by Thomistic scholar Ralph McInerny:
The theoretical use of our mind aims at the perfection of the knowing process, of knowledge as such, and that perfection is, of course, truth. When our aim is truth, when what we are after is to bring into accord our thinking and the way things are, we are using our minds in a theoretical way. When, on the other hand, we make use of our minds not chiefly to attain the perfection of thinking as such but rather the perfection of some activity other than thinking, for example, choosing or making, we are then making use of our minds in a practical fashion.1
Theory and practice are not opposed to each other; but the order does matter. Perhaps the two objections that Thomas fielded might bring clarity:
Objection 1. It seems that sacred doctrine is a practical science; for a practical science is that which ends in action … But sacred doctrine is ordained to action; Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only (Jas. i. 22). Therefore sacred doctrine is a practical science.
Objection 2. Further, sacred doctrine is divided into the Old and the New Law. But law implies a moral science, which is a practical science. Therefore sacred doctrine is a practical science.2
We can recognize those today: one is concerned with our personal piety (that we not be hypocrites); and the other is concerned with the straightforward way that God speaks to us in his word - in the imperative. Really these are two sides to the same coin, but it can be summarized in this way: Head religion versus (not heart, but) hands religion. At the street level, you might hear, “Sometimes you have to put away the owner’s manual and just get behind the wheel.” Well, how does Thomas respond to these two objections?
Although among philosophical sciences one is speculative and another practical, nevertheless sacred doctrine includes both; as God, by one and the same science, knows both Himself and His works. Still it is speculative rather than practical, because it is more concerned with divine things than with human acts; though it does treat even of these latter, inasmuch as man is ordained by them to the perfect knowledge of God, in which consists eternal bliss.3
This definition is most practical because to see more of God is also to achieve one’s chief end (WSC.1), and to pursue eternal life: “This is eternal life, that they know you the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn. 17:3). Nothing is more practical than the motion of man’s soul that is moved by seeing and savoring more of who God is. Another of Thomas’ sub-definitions of theology is this: “Theology is taught by God, teaches God, and leads unto God.”4
2. Although Muller makes it sounds as if Turretin did not think that this distinction was crucial to true and false theology,5 he recognizes the line of reasoning that the Socinian, and even Remonstrant, definition of theology consisted only in precepts for obedience. This eliminated the necessity to believe any doctrines as true, and thus contains what we might call an atheizing tendency.6 Turretin also pointed out that heretics always insisted on theology being utterly practical, being only in the imperative. The motive was “to take away the necessity of the knowledge of the doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, etc. and thus more easily to pave the way to a common religion.”7 He continues that, “Although the knowledge of God and his attributes is not strictly practical … yet it is practical so far as practical means that which both excites and impels to action.”8
3. As a rule, the Reformed gave no unanimous answer, but often put it in the context of ultimate versus proximate ends.9 In the way used by orthodox, the words theoria and praxis were never meant to be set against each other, as in modern rationalism and pragmatism. Vermigli’s arguments that theory ought to precede practice are the standard classical breakdown: not two ways of knowing but two stages of development within one way.10 Keckerman was the earliest to address the question in a systematic way;11 but he argued that theology was entirely practical, following his definition of theology as prudentia rather than scientia or sapientia. Polanus argued that “insofar as theology embodies [its] goal,” it stays true. So if its goal is wisdom, or worship, or salvation, then its doctrine must, to a large extent, be measured by its fitness to this end. The federalists (Cocceius, Burman, and Heidanus) were more apt to define theology as praxis, but for reasons very similar to how Turretin distinguished himself from Aquinas: that is, knowing God in Christ as covenant Lord, and not merely in the creation.
4. Mastricht used the theoretical-practical order to “structure each locus in his system” (Muller, 351). He argued from 1 Timothy 4:16, that life and doctrine are to be watched and commended together, and then moves to 1 Timothy 6:2-3 to say that true doctrine is driven toward godliness (cf. Ti. 2:1ff). We certainly agree with this. He attempted a synthesis of Aquinas and the other Scholastics—that theology is both theory and practice—yet he gave more weight to the practice. He adds that “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) and “pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13) come to mean the sum of theology and such as is rooted in the text. We will talk more about theological order in its own section. However one thing is worth mentioning here.
In Mastricht we find a kind of holistic completion of order in method. If we take the whole century, from the 1590s to the 1690s as our trajectory, Reformed Orthodoxy witnessed a kind of evolution in prolegomena, and it is in the Theoretical-Practical Theology that this 1. exegesis, 2. dogmatics, 3. polemics, 4. practice order comes to full expression.
When Mastricht sets forth the importance of method, it strikes us as more a handbook to how to instruct in theology, rather than, primarily, how to investigate. He says, “what can be taught should also be applied.”12 There is a sense in which this is true; and yet not all application can be the same for every truth. So this should not be taken in the wrong way. For example, when it comes to the attributes of God we may apply a response, but not a replica. Consider the following passages:
As the Father sent me, so I send you (Jn. 20:23)
For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:45)
These two passages are what we might call “mission statements” of Christ. It should be plain that there is an aspect to be copied by the church, and another which we dare not think to imitate. Missional theology may have faded in the literature and conferences, but its assumptions in church methodology still train the mind to a definite practice-over-doctrine bent.
5. I will put forward five basic arguments for the constant priority of theory over practice:
(1) Theological: or, the nature of God as opposed to the nature of all other things. What we ought to do (ethics) and what we do in fact do (psychology, sociology) is utterly explained in terms of God and his decree of creation and redemption. All of practice is thus inside of theory; all of law is thus inside of doctrine. Remember Colossians 1:16-20. Do we imagine that personal action is the one thing exempt from those “all things”? If “theological mutualism”13 is any reduction of God to any aspect of the creature, so that God is defined in terms of any effect, then we might call the reduction of God to our practical activity “theological pragmatism.” In this conception, God is whatever “does it” for us. Thus, Shedd remarks that, “Theology must not be identified with ethics,”14 and Bavinck adds, “A ‘creature’ can never be an end in itself.”15
(2) Soteriological: the nature of the gospel as indicative over our response to the imperatives. The basic problem with all such “ethical theologies” that raise the imperative to the level of indicative was captured by J. Gresham Machen, in his classic, Christianity and Liberalism (1923).
Here is found the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity - liberalism is altogether in the imperative mood, while Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative; liberalism appeals to man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God … Liberalism regards [Jesus] as an Example and Guide; Christianity as a Savior: liberalism makes Him an example for faith; Christianity, the object of faith.16
So the way that classical theology views God transfers exactly to how it views Christ and salvation.
(3) Exegetical: First, note that the order of the Epistles ordinarily flows from doctrine to application. People will cite exceptions, but they are thinking too much of right-to-left structure alone, and not about basic antecedents and consequents in the whole flow of the Apostle's thought. Second, we might think of how the Catechism puts it about all of Scripture, What does the Scripture principally teach? (Q.3) “The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.” Note that this logic is also reflected in the order of the Greatest Commandment (Mk. 12:30-31), which is itself a reflection of the Two Tables of the Decalogue in Exodus 20. What is true determines what to do. And what is most true determines what is true in relation. That brings us nicely to the next argument.
(4) Practical: or, the common sense requirement that application can only ever follow right theory. Putting theory before practice is to put the nature of reality before the nature of our response to it. There is no application without some-thing to first apply; and there is no right application without proper understanding of how one ought to respond to that thing to be applied. Pragmatism reverses this common sense understanding. Pragmatism says “If it works, do it.” In fact it reduces truth to what works. But the Christian needs to ask, “Works for what? How exactly do we know if this thing is the right thing to be working on? Or, is this thing being done in the right order or being done in the right way?” To shun these questions is to betray that one does not really care about “practical life” at all. If you don’t care if it is the right practice, then what is all your talk of “practice” but cheap sloganeering to avoid the question of what is true and what is right?
(5) Doxological: in short, if practice is equal to theory, then that which is a further end in human action toward transitory things in this world is always equal, or superior, to that which is the final end of knowing. it takes abstract motions of the mind toward what is most real in order for the ends of our motion to be fixed on our proper chief end. At a similar level, let us say this: God must be known with the mind as a prerequisite of being loved with the whole heart. This follows the words of Jesus in John 4:23-24. God must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. So Bavinck says, “To know God in the face of Christ … not only results in blessedness but is such a blessedness and eternal life.”17 God cannot be the means to some greater end. Think back to John 17:3. If the objects of theory are not superior in any sense to the objects of practice, then the worship of God just is a means to a greater end.
6. The Kantian divorce between theoretical and practical completed the fracturing of life: first at the divide between the university and seminary. Beneath Kant’s divide, in the lower phenomenal, a further divide occurred between the scientific and the ethical. Scientific religion was freed from the authority of the church, and its spiritual concerns for the people, and the life of actual Christian faith was no longer allowed to be scientific. And so, both in the higher University and the lower Seminary, the assault began against theoria. Objections had already existed to the scientific character of theology. In America, the lower story of Kant took the shape of Pragmatism. Now the phenomenal was “the real world.” With no apparent sense of irony, the real way that things are became marginalized in favor of “the real world” of results.
Without downplaying the practical ends of theology, Bavinck nevertheless said, “All science has inherent value and purpose, apart from whether it has practical utility or yields benefits for life … [So] Voluntarism is as one-sided as the intellectualism that defines human beings exhaustively in terms of their intellect.”18 It is no coincidence at all that those those who are theological voluntarists (whether Muslim or nominalists) also reduce the whole of religion to the imperative.
(#theoretical #pragmatism #theology #ReformedClassicalism #Reformed #prolegomena #theological)
1. Ralph McInerny, St. Thomas Aquinas, 61.
2. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. Q.1. Art. 4
3. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. Q.1. Art. 4
4. Aquinas, quoted in Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 39.
5. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, I.348.
6. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, I.351.
7. Turretin, Institutes, I.20-21
8. Turretin, Institutes, I.23
9. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, I.340.
10. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, I.341-42.
11. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, I.344.
12. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I.73.
13. The term used by James Dolezal, All That is In God (2017).
14. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology,
15. Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics. I.53
16. Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 47, 96.
17. Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics. I.53
18. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I.53
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