As we talked about in the last post, "metatheology" is a second-order discourse investigation the meaning, grounds, and truth-conditions of the first-order discourse of theology. Clearly, in order to evaluate theological statements, one first must understand what is meant be them, i.e., one must assign to them a semantics or "intepretation." Furthermore, in order to make any meaningful progress in theology, one must first understand what conditions would have to obtain in order for one's theological assertions to be true.
But many would no doubt claim that agreement on first-order theological statements is difficult enough. Why even try to move to agreement upon second-order statements, when the first-order ones remain nonspecified? While metatheological inquiry into the truth and meaning of theological utterances is crucially important, merely holding to the assertions of the historical faith is difficult enough today. It is precisely because of this difficulty that there have been myriad and divers attempts over the last 150 years ago to state clearly the content of the Christian faith.
In the early 1900s, a trans-denominational Protestant movement, worried about the drift away from a specifiable normative content to Christian faith, produced a list purportedly displaying necessary conditions for the general content of the Christian faith. They asserted that authentic Christianity must believe in these:
◦The virgin birth and deity of Christ;
◦The substitutionary theory of atonement;
◦The bodily resurrection of Christ;
◦The physical return of Jesus Christ in the Second Coming;
◦The inerrancy of Scriptures.
Without these five assertions, they thought, the content of the Christian faith could not itself be defined as Christian faith. (I am not here advocating that belief in Scriptural inerrancy is a necessary condition for Christian belief, but merely reporting what was promulgated by this group.)
In addition to these assertions, Lutherans might add other content statements that specify authentic Lutheran expressions of the Christian faith. George Forell has provided the following list:
—Justification by grace through faith;
—The theology of the cross;
—Law and gospel proclamation;
—The simul iustus et peccator;
—The assertion of the Infinite being available in and through the finite (finitus capax infiniti).
This is a very good list, I believe, and those who advocate all five should probably be regarded as holding to a Lutheran theological position.
It is clear then that one could be concerned about the contour of the faith. Those so concerned about contour locate those assertions necessary and sufficient for Christian faith to be Christian faith. Speaking philosophically, they are concerned with discerning the “identity conditions” of the faith, that is, they are interested in ascertaining those properties of the Christian faith without which it ceases to be Christian faith.
To reiterate, however, the point I am making is not that the general contour of Lutheran confessional is in doubt. Lutheran theologians continue to hold to the specific language of the tradtion. The problem, however, is that that the contour of the tradtion is polyvalent, and Lutheran theology has failed here to pay enough attention to this polyvalency.
Clearly, he central assertions of theology can sustain multiple meanings depending upon what one believes actually obtains, i.e., the possibility of meaning is tied to one’s ontological commitments. If one believes that the universe is a kind of place where there can be a God that exists as a being over and against it, then 'God’ might be understood, as Ockham understood it, to refer to a supreme being having all positive predicates to the infinite degree. However, if one blieves that the universe is not the kind of place where it is either in principle possible, or likely, that there exist a being existing on its own that can in principle exist apart from it, then 'God' might be defined, as Schleiermacher defines it, as the “whence of the feeling of absolute dependence,” or much later, as Tillich understood it, as “the depth of being.”
One's ontological presuppositions deeply influence what can be meant by a true sentence. Standardly, we claim that sentences express propositions, and these propositions are a statement of how the world might be. To say that a proposition is possible is to say that there is a possible world in which the world is the way that the proposition states it. To say that a proposition is necessary is to say that in all possible worlds the world is the way the proposition states it. To say that a statement is true is to say that in the actual world the world is the way the proposition states it, and to say that a statement is false is to claim that in the actual world the world is not the way the proposition claims. Clearly, to know whether a theological sentence is true, false, possible or necessary requires that we know what proposition is stated by the sentence, it is to know how the world must be in order for the statement to be true. The meaning of the sentence consists simply in this grasp of how the world must be in order for the proposition expressed by the sentence to be true.
Luther claims in throughout his disputations that the res (the things denoted by language) are more important than the verba (the words of language themselves) in understanding the articles of faith (articuli fidei). In order to know what an article of faith really is, one must know what is claimed in the article, one must know how the world would have to be were the article of faith to be true. It is to this question of truth that we now must turn.
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