I.2.ii. Ontological or Lexical?
1. Ontology is the study of being (ontos). To consider something from an “ontological” perspective, then, is to think about that thing precisely in terms of its being, or existence as such. In introducing our other word, we might think of a lexicon. That is really only a synonym for a dictionary. A Greek noun’s “lexical form” is its nominative singular. For practical purposes, this is considered “the word itself.” Now our question is about what theology is: and not just the word, but the thing itself. By answering the question of its nature a certain way, we really are still doing definition work. Many conservative Evangelicals will balk at the idea that theology is the study of God. They would rather say that it is the study of the word of God, or perhaps a mediate position, the study of who God reveals himself to be in his word. What is going on here? One side of the spectrum tends to think of the study of theology as the study of objective realities in themselves. This is the classical definition already discussed. Theology is the science of God. In saying this, the classical thinkers are really maintaining that theology is ontological. It is about what is per se. The other side insists that we only know about God accurately through his word. Such thinkers may even grant that this kind of theology is a science. But it is wholly a study of the word of God. This is really saying that theology is lexical. It is about the meaning of those words in themselves.
2. Several contributions of Augustine are helpful here. The first and most foundational is his realism. Augustinian realism was not simply Platonic, but also Pauline. Although the word “universals” was not used until the modern era, nevertheless the essences, or forms, or ideas, were either (a) divine attributes or (b) divine ideas. This was not to baptize Plato in Christianese. If we remember the critique of Aristotle upon Plato’s forms, it was twofold. First, he had moved the problem of the one and the many “upstairs” into this immaterial realm. But his “Good” in Book VI of the Republic had not really explained their ontological oneness. Second, there was no indication of how these forms were causally related to the world. The creation by the Demiurgos in the Timaeus hardly counts. Not only was it a myth, but this “deity” of sorts had to look outside of himself to the forms, like a blueprint, to give shape to the world. All of that to say that Augustine did not simply carry these forms into the biblical heavenlies. He took Paul's “invisible things … in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20) quite seriously. By translating these forms into divine attributes and ideas, the two problems in Platonic realism were solved. Universals could be intellectual, unified, causal, and mind-independent reality.
3. Now what does realism have to do with theological method? Consider seven lines of logic together:
1) All particulars outside of God are effects.
2) All predicates and properties of particulars are also particulars.
3) All such particulars, being effects, exemplify and participate in the being of another.
4) The being that is a word-referent either exists necessarily or is contingent upon another.
5) All contingent word-referents must refer again to another.
6) But this process of sense leading to referent cannot go on to infinity.
∴ All ultimate referents are uncaused and have their being in God.
The sense in which the uncaused Referent is exemplified or participated in is what we mean by a universal. One church historian summarizes Augustine in this way:
Creation is ‘participation’ in being. This term implies derivation. It is characteristic of that which is derived, that what one has is then distinct from what one is. For creatures it is one thing to exist, another to be just and wise. But in God to exist and to be just, good, and wise are one and the same. Man can exist without being just, good, or wise; God cannot. God ‘is what he has’.1
The City of God thesis commends realism at its core.The City of God is the Form of forms: it is eternally what Plato’s Republic attempted to be but could not: the Idea of the Real and the Real itself. This flows from the nature of theism. God’s knowledge precedes our knowledge by virtue of the whole created medium proceeding from His knowledge: “But if He knew all that He made, He made only those things which He had known. Whence flows a very striking but true conclusion, that this world could not be known to us unless it existed, but could not have existed unless it had been known to God.”2
3. Augustine’s book On Christian Doctrine (426) is the next place to visit. Augustine distinguished between a thing (res), a word (verbum), and a sign (signa). All signs are also things; many things are also signs. “A sign is a thing which causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon the senses.”3 All words are both signs and things. Words are signs of things; and some things are signs of other things. So the words tell us. This is why we can speak of a literal sense (sensus literalis) versus a spiritual sense (sensus spiritualis) of the text. A tree is a tree (A = A), which is associated with the linguistic symbol “tree.”
Yet is it not also the case in the Bible that the cross is a “tree” (Gal. 3:13, 1 Pet. 2:24), and a very special one at that? Think also of the “milk” of the word or, even more abstract, the link between the “vine” that is Christ and the “branches” that are the church. Now the object of thought is one step removed from the ink patterns. But here is the lesson. Augustine adds that, “He is a slave to a sign who uses or worships a significant thing without knowing what it signifies.”4 We do theology with the mind, analyzing objects of the intellect.
Not by (the physical) does God speak, but by truth itself, if anyone is prepared to hear with the mind rather than with the body. For he speaks to that part of man which is better than all else that is in him, and that which God Himself alone is better. For since man is most properly understood…to be made in God’s image, no doubt it is that part of Him by which he rises above those lower parts he had in common with the beasts, which brings him nearer to the Supreme.5
The revelation of things (nature) and the authoritative use of words (Scripture) are mutually informative:
“In order, therefore, that the human mind might be purged from falsities of this kind, Holy Scripture, which suits itself to babes, has not avoided words drawn from any class of things really existing, through which, as by nourishment, our understanding might rise gradually to things divine and transcendent.”6
4. Augustine’s realist hermeneutic has been criticized by authors in the conservative Evangelical tradition. Where he makes the res that to which the biblical words point, they hear a kind of Gnostic “graduation” from the simple things of the Bible to the more enlightened meaning beyond. John Sailhammer’s The Meaning of the Pentateuch is a case in point.7 When the object of revelation was no longer immediately the words of the Bible, then “the new ‘biblical’ reality was located outside the text of Scripture and thus far out of reach of any control by the biblical words.”8 Any control? Is that really true? If the reality of things (and thus the meaning of their corresponding words) are according to the nature of those things, then the Bible cannot inform, and correct us, on them? This is special pleading.
We can already correct each other about the nature of there being six people in this room, with our eyes and by simply counting. And by the way, do we not also frequently butcher the meaning of clear biblical propositions? How do we make corrections if two people read exactly the same biblical words? Their disagreement is not over ink patterns. Both repeat the exact same syllables and sounds. The correct meaning is always more than those signals, even for the most entrenched biblicist. Understanding this is the “graduation” Augustine called for: not a graduation from study of the Bible to deeper philosophical contemplation, whatever that might mean to modern anti-intellectual authors.
5. Peter Lombard followed this Augustinian distinction in his Sentences (1158). Many view this work as nothing more than a division between the things of God and the things of the church: namely the sacraments. It is actually more like a way to state one’s whole theology in the order of the classical scale of being. Peter’s four volume work became the standard text for masters of theology in the late Middle Ages. How did his order of substance to signs order all other doctrines? A significant clue is given in the very first distinction. Peter is making a point about the proper ordering to all theology, from the most real thing to that which signifies it.9 Again, signs point beyond themselves, toward some being.
To give a few instances of things (ontological) as the proper end of their words (lexical): The essence of God precedes the relationships of God to his creation. The Word precedes flesh. The intention of the heart precedes the virtuous (or vicious) action. Christ and the church precede earthly marriage.
In each of these, the more essential thing precedes the thing that points back to it. Far from devaluing the signs on earth below, this ordering is what infuses the temporal appearances with all of their eternal significance. Peter was also reinforced by Bernard of Clairvaux, a century later, who spoke of the relationship between the sign and the thing signified.That relationship was the grace received. That relationship is itself a thing. We may illustrate the same by a syllogism:
1) All that the Father elects will believe in the Son.
2) All that believe in the Son have received the Spirit.
∴ All that have received the Spirit are elect of the Father.
Now how many truths are discerned in this syllogism? Or how many things are spoken of? Of truths we may start by saying there are three: namely the two premises and the conclusion which follows. Of things we may begin with the three divine Persons, and then add the acts associated with each to arrive at six things. But then we may ask whether the relation between the actions of the Persons are not also things. This may be done with any two or more truths derived from Scripture, so that the truth that is the case, or the thing which is, is always what the words are meant to serve, and not the words meaning simply themselves.
6. Thomas Aquinas built upon the Organon of Aristotle in several ways, one of which became the Thomistic doctrine of analogy. How can terms be used of both God and creatures? When we say that “God is wise” and “My professor is wise,” how can those two predicates mean the same thing, when God’s wisdom is infinite and that of the wisest man is finite? These terms can be used in one of three ways: univocally, equivocally, and analogically. In other words the predicate (e. g. “wise”) would be true of one subject as for the other in all the same ways (univocal), in none of the same ways (equivocal), or in some of the same ways (analogical). To mean the terms in a univocal way would make God and the creature identical; if they were equivocal then there would be no common meaning between the two senses. With analogy there is at least a partial similarity of meaning. The terms would apply perfectly to God but only imperfectly to the creature.
Now in Thomas’ method, God is ontologically prior to his creation, but he is epistemologically posterior to the creation. In other words, we come to know God first by knowing the world’s attributes and making inferences that are causal or by abstraction to superlative degrees. This can be confusing when moving from Thomas’ natural theology to his treatment of the nature of theology. On the one hand, theology is a science of God, and yet on the other he has analogy in mind here and so in his Commentary on the Sentences, he notes Peter’s denial that God is proper subject.
ON THE CONTRARY: Sciences differ from one another by the definitions of their subjects, since each science must have its proper subject. But other sciences too consider reality and sign. Therefore they are not the proper subject of this science.10
What he lands on, then, is that theology is the science of God insofar as it is “knowable through inspiration … either God or things which are from God or ordered to God as such … Thus to the degree that something more nearly approaches the true nature of divinity.”11
Note the implications of this for the words of Scripture. They are no different than other particulars in the world. Words mean things. And those things are like objects on the other side of a window: the arrangement of words in meaningful order forming that window. Words can only be analogically fitting for the things they represent if those words serve the sight of those things, such that the words may be arranged in different orders, different words may be used (whether synonymously or in a different language), and more of all of the above to derive a deeper look in the object, or a wider angle of that objects relation to other objects. All of this activity is that of reason and is stunted in its growth if the words are superstitiously treated as ends in themselves.
7. Calvin and Turretin made very insightful remarks about theology on the concept rather than word level. There is much at stake in this. In his defense of the Trinity, Calvin observed that “heretics may snarl and the excessively fastidious carp at the word person as inadmissible, in consequence of its human origin … If they call it a foreign term, because it cannot be pointed out by Scripture in so many syllables, they certainly impose an unjust law—a law which would condemn every interpretation of Scripture that is not composed of other words of Scripture.”12
Turretin added that, There are two senses of a ‘word’ being in Scripture: first, “as to sounds and syllables”; second, “as to sense and the thing signified”. Theology is only in the latter sense. Only in this sense can we say that theology is a science and so treats “objectively” of God.13 The Scriptures “do not, as such, formally support divine faith as to the words, but materially as to the substance of doctrine expressed in them.”14 Further, “All signs have “mutual connection and dependence … all of which ought to be taken together in order to gather the full sense.”15 So we not only have metaphysical substance, but also coherent substance. Each object is itself (A = A). Each state of affairs is also an object, and thus its constituent elements (each properly objects as well) must also be logically consistent with each other. Hence the logical relationship between real objects is itself an object of the mind: a truth, without which no other truths could be true.
8. Aristotelian language was also retained by the Reformed Orthodox in the form of causal analysis. There is a “prepositional metaphysics” in analyzing language, especially when our propositions are tracing back to ultimate realities. Words like by, for, of, above, under, and through become as loaded with meaning as is, or, because, and therefore. To miss their significance in a given statement is to miss only the whole world or mistake it for another. Aristotle’s four (or later five) causes were utilized in Reformed texts and arguments. Consider the five solas as well as the intricacies of the controversy over justification as cases in point.
Now consider that the text of Scripture does the same thing.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:8-10).
That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all (Rom. 4:16)
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen (Rom. 11:36)
Part of theological maturity—and that includes the maturity of the Christian layperson in their regular Bible study—is being able to see the precise meaning of those prepositions and logical connectives for what they are. Note that such a focus does not stop at the words, as if their “meaning” were purely syntactic. Rather a different reading of them is precisely a reshuffling of being and essence.
9. Hodge’s inductivism is a deviation of sorts. Some historians will root that specifically in Common Sense Realism.16 At first Hodge gives a good synopsis of the science of theology: “it must include something more than a mere knowledge of facts. It must embrace an exhibition of the internal relation of those facts, one to another, and each to all.”17 But then he turns to the source of these facts and relations. He draws an analogy between the scientist and theologian: the former has nature as his “storehouse of facts” whereas the theologian has the Bible as his storehouse of facts.18 Some of this can wait until we examine the divisions of theology: as in biblical versus systematic. But as one preview, he says,
“This constitutes the difference between biblical and systematic theology. The office of the former is to ascertain and state the facts of Scripture. The office of the latter is to take those facts, determine their relation to each other and to cognate truths, as well as to vindicate them and show their harmony and consistency.”19
Now if what Hodge means is that biblical is “Stage 1” and systematic is “Stage 2,” not so much chronologically, but as surface-level, complementary functions that are occurring simultaneously, well and good. But if he means to suggest that biblical theology is purely inductive: that is, the “word-gathering-stage” with no intermediating, intellectual categories, then we must protest. This is how Hodge has been read, as employing what I call a method of hyper-inductivism. On the street level it says, “Just give me what it says in the text! Only biblical words, please!” But those words are not “just biblical words.” They involved countless presuppositions, parallel synonyms and linguistic cognates, and logical consequents: not to mention other contexts within the Bible itself.
10. Bavinck insisted that “the restoration of departments of theology, to metaphysics in religion” is the only alternative to conceding to the truth of positivism. This lands him in one more clarifying definition of theology as “the knowledge that God has revealed in his Word to the church concerning himself and all creatures as they stand in relation to him.”20 We notice the form of Thomas’ classical definition retained, so that the knowledge transmitted in the Word remains formal so that God, or divine things, remains the content.
Dogmatics is not a kind of biblical theology that stops at the words of Scripture. Rather, according to Scripture itself, dogmatics has the right to rationally absorb its content and, guided by Scripture, to rationally process it and also to acknowledge as truth that which can be deduced from it by lawful inference … The task of dogmatics is precisely to rationally reproduce the content of revelation that relates to the knowledge of God.21
His contemporary, Abraham Kuyper, leaned heavily on the historical Reformed distinction between archetypal knowledge (which is the knowledge of God as God knows himself), as opposed to ectypal knowledge (which is knowledge of God appropriate to the creature). We will have much more to say about this division. The trouble comes when the scope of our knowledge of God (as compared with God’s) begins to be confused with the (a) soundness of our knowledge per se, or the (b) demonstrative character of knowledge per se. Kuyper’s meaning seems to be “that we cannot of ourselves attain to a scientific knowledge of God, but are bound to His Self-revelation.”22 There is much ambiguity here and thus much material for subsequent anti-intellectualism among the Reformed.
1. Henry Chadwick, Augustine: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 33.
2. Augustine, City of God, XI.10
3. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, II.1
4. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, III.9
5. Augustine, City of God, XI.2
6. Augustine, On the Trinity, I.1.2
7. John Sailhamer. The Meaning of the Pentateuch (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009)
8. Sailhamer. The Meaning of the Pentateuch. 82-83.
9. Lombard, Sentences, I.11
10. Aquinas, Commentary on Sentences I, Prologue, in Selected Writings (London: Penguin, 1998), 63.
11. Aquinas, Selected Writings, 64.
12. Calvin, Institutes, I.13.3.
13. Turretin, Institutes. I.1,2
14. Turretin, Institutes. I.13,126
15. Turretin, Institutes. I.19,152
16. cf. George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).
17. Hodge, Systematic Theology, I.1.1
18. Hodge, Systematic Theology, I.1.1
19. Hodge, Systematic Theology, I.1.1
20. Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics, I.38 - italics mine
21. Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics, I.45
22. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 43
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