When I was around 4 years old, I fell off some playground equipment and landed about 6 feet below right onto my head. As a result, I got a few nights in the infirmary, a serious concussion, and the opportunity to try hospital broccoli for the first time.
I fell because I was playing a spirited game of tug of war with one of my best friends who decided to just let go. Had we been on the ground over a mud pit, it would have been funny, but when you’re a toddler playing on top of a big platform over a slab of concrete, funny isn’t the best word.
The entire game of tug of war is premised on the unspoken condition that neither side will just suddenly let go of the rope.
Well, that picture of tug of war applies in the realm of Christian theology as well. When it comes to many areas of theological conviction, a Christian should keep in mind the image of maintaining tension on the line. In fact, as we’ll soon see, letting go might not result in a trip to the hospital, but to heresy.
What is Theological Tension?
This idea of tension has gone by many names. J.I. Packer called it antinomy, the seeming (but not real) contradiction of two ideas. Others might call it a paradox.
It is the result of when the Bible presents “truths in tension.” When rather than a simple lowest common denominator of doctrine, Scripture upholds something a bit more multifaceted, robust, or complex.
So to uphold the tension is to refuse to reduce the complexity of truths which God has revealed to be complex. To refuse to assume that simpler is always better or that theology should always be easy and monolithic.
Unfortunately, we all have a tendency to prefer simplicity to complexity. As Kevin Malone from The Office once quipped, “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?” Rather than relish the beautiful complexity of God’s word, we all prefer at times to smooth out the perceived rough edges. We like our doctrine short and sweet and easy to digest. We want our theology to be bite-sized and without the hassle of clarification and qualification. If you can’t fit it in a Tweet, its too hard.
But God’s word isn’t utilitarian. It isn’t always intended to be easy to grasp; which is why God commands us to think! We wouldn’t need to think if all truth was self-evident.
So preserving theological tension means maintaining the mystery of God’s word and embracing the beauty of nuance and clarification. It involves refusing to turn a both/and into an either/or. When we emphasize one truth in a way that negates or neglects another truth, that is to let go of the mystery and to dilute the doctrine in question.
To get a sense for just how important this principle is, consider how often it comes up, and how foundational many of these truths that contain such tension are to our faith.
Examples of Theological Tension
Here are 7 of the clearest instances of truths that demands theological tension.
- The Triune God
- The Godman
- The Inspiration of Scripture
- Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
- Gender Roles
- Christian Identity
- The Kingdom of God
That’s a pretty important list. If someone were to fundamentally misunderstand the trinity, the hypostatic union, the nature of Scripture, God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, our sexuality and identity, and the gospel itself, that’s a pretty big deal.
So how do each of these require the image of theological tension, a la a tug of war over theology?
Trinity
When it comes to the godhead, Christians confess that God is one and three. This is no contradiction given that He is three in a different sense than He is one. If Christians said that He is three and not three in the same way at the same time, that would be a contradiction, but that is not what trinitarianism upholds. Rather, we confess that He is one in essence or nature, but three in persons. One being, three divine persons, that’s the historic view of the trinity.
So is God one or three? Well, that’s not an either/or, it’s a both/and. So what happens if a Christian emphasizes one of those truths to the neglect of the other?
Well, to emphasize God’s unity to the neglect of His plurality is to tumble into the heresy of modalism. God’s unity has swallowed up and cancelled out the distinctions of the persons.
On the other hand, if one were to emphasize God’s threeness to the neglect of His oneness, that would lead to a form of polytheism (tritheism to be precise).
Which is more dangerous? Well, both! Both are more dangerous!
You see the tragic result? To let go of the tension is to tumble directly into serious heresy!
In order to maintain orthodox conviction on the trinity, we have to maintain the tension between the divine unity and the distinction of persons.
The Godman
One of the truths that trinitarianism teaches us to confess is the deity of the Son. But what of His humanity? Does He give up His deity in becoming man (the kenotic theory), does He merely appear to be a man (Docetism and Gnosticism)?
You see, yet again, we have to embrace the tension. Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. He isn’t God or man, He is God and man, two natures subsisting in the same person. He isn’t only godlike (Arianism) or mannish (doceticism, Apollinarianism); the two natures don’t merge into a third hybrid nature (Eutychianism); He doesn’t switch back and forth (Nestorianism). He is truly God and truly man. Is Jesus God or man? Yes! Again, not an either/or, but a both/and.
Once again, to minimize or neglect one is to stumble into deep and dangerous heterodoxy.
The Inspiration of Scripture
Who wrote Scripture? God or man? Yet again, that’s not an either/or, but a both/and. God is the divine author of Scripture, indeed all Scripture is theopneustos (“God-breathed,” 2 Timothy 3:16). Nevertheless, God inspired Scripture by superintending the entire process and utilizing human authors. As 2 Peter 1:21 says regarding Scripture, “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” This is called the doctrine of concursive inspiration, the idea that both God and man are properly thought of as authors.
If you neglect human authorship, you tend to make the authorship of Scripture something akin to the dictation theory of the Koran. On the other hand to reject divine authorship is the door to all kinds of liberal reinterpretation of the word.
A faithful view of Scripture holds tightly to and glories in the tension of dual-authorship.
Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
How does the sovereignty of God interact with the responsibility of man? Does God limit His sovereignty in order to accommodate man’s freedom (as in classical Arminianism)? Does the fact that God is utterly sovereign over all things imply that man is therefore nothing but a puppet or pawn (as in fatalism)?
Well according to classic Christian thought, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not at odds, not contradictory, but are rather compatible (this is called combatibilism). Again, the answer isn’t an either/or. Christian theology finds both truths to be evident in Scripture: that God is sovereign over all things (including the sinful acts of man) AND that man is nonetheless actually responsible for such sin. God’s sovereignty is no excuse or justification for man’s sin.
Interestingly, the idea of mystery is often used in an attempt to avoid embracing either Calvinism or Arminianism. That is interesting and ironic in that Calvinism is the historic attempt to embrace the mystery of theological tension. Arminianism sacrifices sovereignty for the sake of man’s freedom. Arminianism bends the will of God and makes it subservient to the will of man. It presumes that the issue of sovereignty and responsibility must be an either/or rather than a both/and. It says that those are incompatible (classic Arminianism rejects the compatiblistic view of human freedom).
Only in Calvinism do you get a robust vision of an absolutely sovereign God who nonetheless holds man responsible for his willingly preferred sin.
Gender Roles
What does it mean that a husband is head of his wife (Ephesians 5) or that women shouldn’t teach of exercise authority over men (1 Timothy 2)? How do we square that with Paul’s insistence that in Christ there is no male and female?
When it comes to gender roles, to embrace the tension means to cling wholeheartedly to the inherent equality of men and women (contra any sort of chauvinism or misogyny) while also grasping just as passionately the distinctive roles and responsibilities (contra feminism).
Interestingly, we can even relate this to the aforementioned trinitarian tension. Consider 1 Corinthians 11:3
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)
According to this passage, there is at least some analogy between the way that Christ relates to the Father and the way that a man relates to his wife. As Arianism denies the equality of Christ to the Father so misogyny denies the equality of man and woman. As modalism denies the distinction of persons, so egalitarianism repudiates the idea of distinct and complementary roles between the sexes.
Some churches might jettison equality and uphold a sexist picture of Christianity. Others discard the obvious role distinctions. Neither abandonment is good and proper. Both pervert the beautiful complexity of theological tension.
Christian Identity
As a believer are you a sinner or saint? Again, this is not an either/or. As Reformation theology has taught, we are simul justus et peccator (simultaneously saint and sinner). To forget that we are saints is to embrace a pessimistic condemnation, but to forget that we are sinners is to grasp a naïve and unrealistic optimism. We must embrace the tension, never allowing one truth to negate or nullify the other.
The Kingdom of God
The kingdom is “already, but not yet.” Clinging to the tension here demands that we not let go of either. Some church embrace the already at the expense of the not yet and posit some overrealized eschatology that leads to all kinds of excesses like the prosperity gospel. Others are so future minded that they have very little expectation for the effects of the kingdom here and now.
Again, the good news is that we don’t have to choose between already or not yet. Both are true. We should embrace the complexity. We should resist the impulse of reductionism.
A Caricature of the Word
Each of the above examples serve as a warning of the danger of attempting to just release the tension to make things a little easier. Rather than embracing the “full counsel of God” (Acts 20:17), they are what happens when we content ourselves to dilute and reduce and thus distort and twist.
This should come as no surprise, given that Peter warned as much. Speaking of Paul’s letters, he writes:
…There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Peter 3:16)
Notice that in the face of difficulty, the ignorant and unstable choose to twist.
And no wonder we are willing to do this with the word inscripturated when we are also so willing to caricature the incarnate Word, Christ Himself. It is common today to emphasize attributes of Christ that we find appealing while neglecting if not downright denying those with which we are less comfortable.
When Christ forgives sin or eats with sinners or welcomes the marginalized or heals the sick, we rejoice and celebrate. But when Christ rebukes sin and calls a woman a dog and calls His opponents names and makes a whip and turns over tables, we wince. After all, that doesn’t seem all that gentle and winsome. We are more comfortable with a water-down version of Christ than the one presented to us in Scripture; one who a bit more easily conforms to our presumptions and preferences.
But to embrace Christ as we should we have to embrace the whole Godman. And, likewise, to hold to Scripture means to hold to it in its fullness. As it is a sin to reduce Christ to a caricature, so it is a sin to hold to a cartoonish and unfaithful view of His Word. Rather than turning the Bible into a parody, we must appreciate the paradox.
Embrace the Tension
In the world of theology there is the need for epistemological humility. God’s thoughts and ways are higher than our own. There is always a certain ceiling of mystery higher than which we can’t rise. And yet, though we cannot know Him fully, we can nevertheless know Him rightly.
To do so demands that we be unwilling to compromise on His revelation and that we be willing to receive and believe whatever He has said. Much is sacrificed when we are unable to hold two ideas together simultaneously, when we take truths that are expected to be complementary and assume they are contradictory.
Students of Scripture would do well to remember the principle of theological tension. While it isn’t the panacea for all interpretive challenges, it is a key that unlocks quite a few doors as we’ve already seen. And the consequences of rejecting this interpretive presupposition are often much worse than a mere concussion.
When working out, you are strengthened by resisting in the moment of tension. When the weight presses down on you, that is the time to push harder and not just rack the weights. Likewise, by maintaining theological tension, we actually find our hermeneutical muscles growing stronger and our vision of God’s glory growing deeper. So study hard and embrace the tension.
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)