Theology, Relationship, and Donald Miller: A Rant

Donald Miller has become something of a phenomenon, especially with the publication of his massive best seller a few years back, Blue Like Jazz. Dont get me wrong I actually really like Donald Miller, I think he does and says a lot of good things and hes a very smart and genuine guy who I had the pleasure of meeting along with Brian Mclaren a few years ago. His writing is even pretty good in that post-modern stream of consciousness type way which adds to that mystique he produces of authentically living out ones faith. Thats why it irritates me when he gets sloppy. Hes so much better than that. In a recent article (available here: http://donmilleris.com/ entitled "Having right theology does not mean you know God") Miller makes the fairly standard case against "right theology" as opposed to "right relationship" with God. I can certainly resonate with many things that he says, and I think that messages such as this are always important to be reiterated because of the dangers present by anything which we can use to make into an idol. Like Luther said, the mind of man is a factory of idols, and it is one that constantly needs to be purged, and we are in constant need of repentance. That said though, several problems crop up in the article which I think hinder Miller's overall good message.

A minor quibble that I have with most all writing in this trendy Christian pomo genre, namely that they have this air about them of discovering something fundamental about Christianity that has lain long dormant and is only now being re-emerging through their work (a similar reason why I dislike the label "emergent church" despite the many good things that go along with the movement). Like that guy who shows up to a party really late and then claims all the awesome stuff that was happening in his absence was somehow due to him, the popularizers of pomo Christianity like Mclaren and Miller get a lot of the credit when others did a lot of the work. But aside from this small irritation, I would say my major complaint is how Miller simply begs the question in this article about what theology is, about how relationship is coordinate with theology, and about the major point about Christianity being a relationship with Christ. Right away we see his article is entitled "Having right theology does not mean you know God." Before getting into the substance of the article (of which the title is an apt summary) we need to immediately ask a very, very important question which bears on Miller's entire thesis: what is right theology? From the outset Miller seems to assume (given his title) that one can indeed have right theology without knowing God. But, subtle though this is, it sets up the premise of the entire article, namely that theology is something different than knowing God even if only slightly, or that fundamentally speaking theology can be right without such a true knowing of God. But this has simply perpetuated a dichotomy that Miller appears to want to overcome. And in another sense this appears to allow Miller to set up a straw man to beat the hell out of. Let me explain.

On the surface of course it seems to be correct that theology does not save: my theological leanings towards five-point Calvinism, neo-Orthodoxy, nouvelle theologie, Amyraldianism, or any other "obscure" codification of Christian beliefs isnt what saves me. God sending his Son to live, die, and be resurrected, to proclaim the kingdom of God, is what saves me. But can one really dichotomize this with theology? Or in other words can I have a saving relation with the Triune God through Christ and the Holy Spirit that is somehow non-theological? This is indeed what Miller appears to be saying, as according to his title one can have right theology without knowing God, which means that the theological task could in fact be complete ("right") and yet one still does not know God. But this sets up the split right away and defines the task of theology in such a way that even in its completeness it is not dealing with relation. This indicates that the task of theology is slightly different than a relation to God, it has a discrete area which Miller has cordoned it off into. To assert the difference between theology and God's action to save us or our relationship to him is to assert--however implicitly--that God's action to save us can be known of otherwise than in a theological manner. In this instance then theological knowledge, or what theology is, is somehow different from a "pure" relationship. To put my cards on the table right away, this is a profoundly odd way to treat the term "theology" which literally means knowing God, or having God's "logos." Why then does Miller start prying apart theology from relationship?

Miller for example says that knowing God is relational and here comes his key: "It is not theological or intellectual any more than marriage is theological or intellectual." But at this initial juncture is where he again becomes very sloppy. Did you catch what he did? He has equated theology with "intellectual." Suddenly knowing God, which is relational, is not "theological or intellectual any more than marriage is." This means in having a relation to God, there is an excess that is non-theological, meaning we might assume that this excess is coextensive with the excess of any relationship beyond intellectual relation. That is to say now Miller's argument hinges around this analogy: relation to God is in excess of theology as having a relation to your spouse is beyond merely knowing about your spouse. So certainly he is saying there are intellectual and theological aspects of marriage, but there is also a surplus to that, namely that which goes beyond theology or intellect. Here we see what is probably the inner logic of his title "Having Right Theology Doesnt Mean You Know God," because now knowing God is something beyond theology ("knowing God" here is of course something beyond mere intellectual knowing). It seems, however, that an excess can be located beyond theology only because Miller has now implicitly defined theology as a merely intellectual endeavor. This of course is exactly what I have a problem with which we will get to in a second.

"But surely," some who have read the article will reply, "Miller makes it very clear that he is not casting out theology, merely resituating its purpose." And in a certain sense I agree. It would help us here to quote Miller at length:

….and through a dark night of the soul, I came to realize salvation happens through a mysterious, indefinable, relational interaction with Jesus in which we become one with him. I realized Christian conversion worked more like falling in love than understanding a series of concepts or ideas. This is not to say there are no true ideas, it is only to say there is something else, something beyond(!). There are true ideas involved in marriage and sex, but marriage and sex also involve something else, and that something else is mysterious.

If we have a controlling personality, in which we like to check things off of lists, this is going to be extremely hard for us to understand and embrace. God give us no control, really, over this “system” of relationship. Introducing somebody to Jesus is not about presenting ideas, then, as much as it is introducing a person to a Deity who lives and interacts. Evangelism, then, looks like setting somebody up on a blind date: God does the work, we just tell them about him and where they can find him.

You might be getting upset by this. You might think I am saying truth should be thrown out, that theology doesn’t matter. But this is not what I’m saying at all. What I’m intending to illustrate is our drive to define God with a mathematical theology has become a false God rather than an arrow that points to the real God. Theology can become an idol, but it is more useful as guardrails on a road to the true God. Theology is very important, but it is not God, and knowing facts about God is not the same as knowing God.

Here again we see how Miller is implicitly defining theology over against relationship. Theology means "a system" a way to "control"; "understanding a series of concepts or ideas"; to "check things off lists"; it is "mathematical" etc (perhaps this is the perfunctory potshot at Descartes that all edgy pomo theologians need to take, Im not sure)... and can be summarized by the last statement of the paragraph quote again reiterating what I have been interpreting Miller to be saying: "knowing facts about God is not the same as knowing God." But if this contrast is the same as the title "Having right theology doesnt mean you know God," (and I would argue it is) then "right theology" to Miller is only "knowing facts about God." This is why Miller's resituation of theology as "guardrails on a road to the true God," is actually not at all moving beyond the "Modern" definition of theology as a series of factual statements about the divine. Because remember what Miller defined a true relation to God as: the excess beyond theology. But there is a beyond only because he has accepted the truncation of theology itself to mere intellectual facts. But why should we limit the realm of theology in this way? And in fact it is interesting that Miller appears to lump all of theology together as a whole, it is a homogenous enterprise apparently that admits of no gradation of importance. But surely the theological enterprise is not only different than Miller has represented it, but more internally varied than he allows. There are things within theology more or less immediately relevant. But once Miller has cordoned off theology as something that relationship is in excess to, all of theology, as matters of intellectual propositions, appear to be equally relevant as truth-telling propositional facts. Thus Millenialism becomes as important as Incarnation or Trinity, because they are all merely facts, and again all are, to Millers mind, something different than relation. Miller assumes the validity of this definition and thereby says the only way to get beyond it is to define an area of excess beyond theology in which we have a true relationship to God. And yet as I said above this is a completely flabbergasting definition of theology and of a proper relation to God, consider that the original definition of theology was in fact to have a right relation to God's "logos." (theo-logy). Miller is in fact NOT postmodern AT ALL in his definition (though of course he doesnt here claim to be), but rather assumes the Modernist definition and only tries to move beyond by simply moving farther down the spectrum set up by this definition in the first place, rather than truly moving beyond it.

So to summarize: I do not at all disagree with Miller that theology can become an idol, that we can use it to define who is in or out, or internalize our knowledge in such a way as to become arrogant. These are all excellent points that, however tired we may get of them, never lose their edge. Yet what is completely unacceptable is Miller's definition of theology itself, as somehow over and against relationship. If theology is merely the guardrails to our relationship to God, then our relationship to God is, ironically enough, to Miller not theological in the proper sense, since theology is merely at the periphery or the "edges" of the relation, like banks of a river guiding it towards its destination. But banks, of course, are not the river itself. But the definition of theology is SO much broader than this, and I would argue it covers ALL aspects of our lives. What Miller actually does is perpetuate the separation of theology from everyday life that is so prevalent these days. As in my last post, when people ask "how is theology relevant to my day to day life," the question assumes in advance that our day to day lives are self-evident, or the way they should be, and only then does theology relate to it. Similarly Miller assumes a relation to Christ is a self-evident principle that is only tangentially related to theology. I would argue however that this misses the entire point: relationship to Christ is in fact the entire point of theology, and to say that relationship is beyond, or theology is only a guardrail to it, is to simply beg the question of what a relationship to Christ is in the first place. Hes made us run in a giant circle. We need to completely overcome the notion that theology is merely a repository of factual statements about God and recover the idea that all areas of life, our relationship. There is in fact, I would argue NO non-theological area of life AT ALL. All activities, concepts, relations, emotions, to your spouse, your friends, your family, society, or whomever, are all caught up within complex webs of semiotics or sign-systems which give them meaning. As a Christian the proper reading and formation of these semiotic systems of meaning, or what is often called "discipleship," is not somehow nontheological or beyond theology. Miller's solution then would be completely different: we could not ever say that someone has a right theology but still does not know God. Even if they affirm 5 point Calvinism (or whatever) on the surface they have missed the point entirely of what theology is doing and so in fact do not at all have "right theology." Theological debates about truth have often limited truth to mere proposition, but performance based operation of themes and worldview have always been a necessary component of doctrine. All our actions are based on systems of ideas, and doctrine in this instance is a control concept for Christians, our relation to Christ. Having a relationship to Christ as a new believer and not knowing of the doctrine of the Trinity or that double predestination was condemned at the Council of Orange in 529, but that does not mean the young believers relation to Christ is non-theological. It is theological by definition because in the relation he is attaining a knowledge of God which is constantly being refined.

In other words everything in the entire universe is discursive in some way or another, and it is the claim of Christian theology that Christ is the key to reading the book of the universe, as He is the vehicle through which God the Father created it. People who take up their crosses and follow Christ are, in the words of John Howard Yoder, "working with the grain of the universe." The Modernist definition of theology as a series of facts about God to be memorized and employed as a litmus of orthodoxy has forgotten that the true action of theology is to understand and act to reform the entire world in the light of God's redemption in Christ. These means that understanding our physical lives, our relations to others, our emotions and affections, our relation to government, our proclamation of the gospel, our "authenticity" as people--all of these are always already and at all times theological concepts. This is why theology is so important: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ALREADY DOING IT WHETHER THEY ACKNOWLEDGE IT OR NOT. Hence it is fairly comical when at the end of the article Miller says "Would you do me a favor as you read this book? Would you be willing to grow and expand your understanding of God and how He works? If your understanding of Christianity is relatively conservative, it may surprise you that our theology is remarkably similar. It’s just that I am going to continue to pull power and beauty away from facts about God and give them to God himself." What else could we define "expand your understanding of who God is an how he works" but as theology? Yet the irony is precisely that Miller has shrunk this understanding because it has artificially isolated and bifurcated our lives into nice neat components: theological and otherwise. Moreover the act of "giving them to God himself" is still a theological act. The only way we could know that Miller was giving them "to God himself" as opposed to facts about God is an act of our knowledge of God. Of course God is the one who reveals and gives this knowledge and we are wholly reliant upon it. But thats what makes it theological. Certainly one can affirm with Miller that God Himself, and not our systems, are what is due glory and honor. But when Miller says he [Miller] is giving this glory to God, is Miller not himself setting up a system of understanding, a theology? Hence when Miller says that the fact is its God's glory rather than God's glory is in the facts, its really not so much an impressive revolution of authentic Christianity so much as it is a mere revision of syntax.

This is why Miller's solution is unfortunately entirely inadequate because it is simply ignoring reality. Theology itself is an act of relationship, of discipleship, and of purification. Certainly we can get carried away with theology in the sense that an Arminian will exclude a Calvinist, or vice versa, but this does not then mean authentic relationship with Christ is non-theological or "beyond theological" as Miller has it. This simply assumes that the term 'relation" or the concept of "your relation to your spouse" is somehow more basic and less theological than predestination or some other doctrine considered obscure. But again this is simply to limit the terms of theology. If we as Christians claim to know the one God through Christ and the Holy Spirit, theology, as I said at length in my last post, must be a foundational and universal discipline, controlling and influencing all other information, or it is a delusion. Doctrine is not merely a series of facts, but it is elaborating upon the structure of the universe, of man and our relation to God, of history, of politics, of ethics, and of the world.

Miller wants to reform us by the right intuition that we must repent of our intellectual idols and turn to a correct relationship to Christ, proclaiming Him to the world. I wholeheartedly sympathize with Miller's questions about "can a Christian have bad theology and still be saved?" but his question is asked within the context that theology is mere belief or intellectual assent to propositions. When asked in this way the question is set up in advance for someone to say "oh I guess your right, I dont know everything but am still saved." but at the same time quite frankly we also need to heed Paul's exhortations and warnings which are frequent in his epistles, against false doctrines. Why? Because Paul was adamant that doctrine produces action, that action intimates and reflects doctrine, that all action and relation are always already encoded in worldview. It is not so much that Doctrine must be made relevant to life, or how our relation to God exceeds doctrine, but how all of these things are already reflected in our understanding, where they are inadequate and in need of revision, and where when we think things are obvious, like Christianity being a relation to Christ, how this is already encoded into a wider system of beliefs which are constantly in need of reformation and repentance. To move forward is not to treat theology as merely guardrails at the periphery, so we are moving to a place beyond theology, but to understand our journey as theological itself, so that all areas of our lives are an act of discipleship to Christ.