Review Essay, Keeping the Balance
The theological scene The essay begins with a brief statement on the contemporary theological scene. To put it bluntly, it’s a mess! “Professors and lecturers seem to arrive at a dozen different conclusions about God”. But why? Cameron contends that this is because today’s theological thinkers are beginning from a “a dozen different premises” and allowing “different methods to determine the course and conclusions of their studies”. The critical flaw is their arbitrary and selective character; they are only man-made attempts to improve on biblical Christianity. However, finding God really pivots on performing the right theological method. It is through the God-revealed scriptures that we are provided with God’s own appointed means of coming to know Him. A proper use of this divine resource enables evangelicals to “do” theology in a way no-one else can; because if historic Christianity be true, they are doing it the way God intended”.
What does theological method mean? Cameron defines the phrase “theological method” as “the special procedure whereby the study of God is properly carried on”. Although “theology proper”, he reminds us, “isn’t the study of humanity’s thought about God; it is that only in so far as it enables the theologian to study God for Himself”. And God “can be studied only if he has made himself known”. Of course, “the foundation of Christian theology is that he has done so”, and the proper object of the theologian’s attention is that revelation.
Where do we start? At this point, there is a distinction to be drawn between God’s “general revelation” in nature and God’s “special revelation” in Scripture. For Christians, the “principle focus” of revelation is in the later. Cameron makes a brief excursus at this point to clear up any confusion about the position of Christ as the revelation of God and the function of Scripture as the means by which we are taught about God, arguing that we cannot know Christ apart from the Scriptures and there should be no epistemological split between them. The Bible, existing as a collection of prose and poetry, words and sentences, is the object of our study.
Category: In Depth, Spring 2006
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