The Drama of Doctrine, by Kevin Vanhoozer, is a heavy theological work. So heavy I realized after reading the [ample] introduction that I couldn't handle it- I don't have the background to fully comprehend or appreicate it. That said, I could glean enough from the beginning to understand just how amazing and important this topic is. Vanhoozer wrote another book (Faith Speaking Understanding) on the same theme but for the layman- I'll have to pick that up.
Any quotes below are from just the introduction of The Drama of Doctrine. I found it valuable enough to summarize here.
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Does doctrine/theology matter? Increasingly, some Christians seem to abandon it in favor of calls to simply love each other. Kevin Vanhoozer understands: "doctrine is thought to be a problem. It is divisive, an obstacle to love and unity, it can appear insipid and irrelevant . . . [but] the fault is that doctrine is mishandled, with a misunderstanding of its nature and purpose." Doctrine matters, because "theology involves a way of life, not merely a system of belief." Indeed, "Christianity is distorted when it is treated merely as a system of beliefs." You can't escape the connection between belief and action, "for the way one lives bodies forth one's beliefs about the true, the good, and the beautiful." So doctrine is important, because our doctrine ultimately dictates how we live our lives.
Since Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), "theology must deal with truth, with ways of living, and with the meaning of life . . . it must keep all three in mind at once. Christian doctrine, similarly, should serve the purpose of fostering truthful ways of living," "not by admiring it from afar but by following and embodying it." Theology has five basic tasks- celebrating (worshiping God), coping (with real-life crises), criticizing (demarcating true from false witness to God), communicating (explaining the meaning of God), and continuing (the way of truth and life).
"To be a Christian is to belong to Jesus' way, to be actively oriented and moving in the same direction as Jesus, toward the kingdom of God." Does this come naturally to us? No. And sadly, Christians throughout the ages have misused the Bible and God's name to justify all sorts of evil. Therefore, "Christian theology must distinguish between true and false knowledge of God." It follows that "theological competence is ultimately a matter of being able to make judgments that display the mind of Christ." Said another way, "the purpose of doctrine is to ensure that those who bear Christ's name walk in Christ's way." This enables us (the church) to faithfully carry out our unique responsibility "to proclaim and to practice the gospel."
How do Christians determine what is true? "Where is divine revelation now to be found? There are at least four possible candidates."
1. Biblical propositions (the Bible is coextensive with revelation)
2. The Person of Christ (the Bible is a witness to revelation)
3. Christian Piety (the Bible is an expression of one's experience of revelation)
4. Church Practices (the Bible is a product and condensation of the church's language and life)
Countering a postmodern cultural-linguistic theology, the point of Vanhoozer's book is to propose a canonical-linguistic approach to these four items. He states that "meaning and truth are crucially related to language use; however . . . the normative use is ultimately not that of ecclesial culture but of the biblical canon." To him, "Scripture is the norm for the Christian way, truth, and life, but only when Scripture is conceived as more than a handbook of propositional truths."
The author employs a theatrical metaphor throughout the book. "At the heart of Christianity lies a series of divine words and divine acts that culminate in Jesus Christ: the definitive divine Word/Act. The gospel . . . is intrinsically dramatic, a matter of signs and speeches, actions and sufferings." Therefore, doctrine has a dramatic nature, Vanhoozer argues that "canonical-linguistic theology gives scriptural direction for one's fitting participation in the drama of redemption today." And so the book "develop[s] the twin notions of doctrine as dramatic direction and the Christian life as performance interpretation."
Through this lens, the book presents "the Bible as a script that calls for faithful yet creative performance." From that perspective, "the main purpose of doctrine is to equip Christians to understand and participate in the action of the principal players (namely, Father, Son, and Spirit)." "Doctrine indicates the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus Christ and directs us to step on out. Doctrine thus resembles 'stage directions for the church's performance of the gospel.'"
Ultimately, "the drama of doctrine is about refining the dross of textual knowledge into the gold of Christian wisdom by putting one's understanding of the Scriptures into practice." "The proper end of the drama of doctrine is wisdom: lived knowledge, a performance of the truth."
To recap, "the ultimate goal of theology is to foster creative understanding- the ability to improvise what to say and do as disciples of Jesus Christ in ways that are at once faithful yet fitting to their subject matter and setting. The church continues to perform the same text in different contexts, despite the difference of centuries, cultures, and conceptual schemes, by "improvising" with a canonical script."
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This book matters because it discusses how we are to approach Scripture- and life. Sometimes, people treat the Bible as only "a handbook of propositional truths." There are certainly many truths in it, but that creates problems and paralysis when people encounter situations not explicitly covered in Scripture. I've experienced this. How do I react faithfully in situations? God commands me to love others, but that takes different forms depending on the person and situation. A right understanding of Scripture guides us but doesn't necessarily give us the answer. For example, the Bible doesn't tell me what job to take, who to marry, which way to go on a project, who to help with my finite resources . . . but it gives me guidance and requires that I humble myself, rely on the Lord, and "step on out." I thus appreciated Vanhoozer's theatrical metaphor, and how we often must 'improvise.' So this is a great book . . . I can't wait to read the more accessible version.
Rating: A
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