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Can Faith Seeking Sanity Glorify God?

Why do Christians study God? Many answers have been proposed throughout history: beatific vision, faith seeking understanding, building up the church, etc. While these traditional views are edifying, they present an issue. They imply that theology must succeed in these specific functions to be valid.

How do we know if our theological efforts serve the end or detract from it? Looking at the messy reality of the church, where genuine believers disagree on just about everything, we struggle to see how contradictory theological efforts serve a single purpose.

I propose a solution by separating “point” into a single “end” and multiple “aims.” Then, I propose an often overlooked aim of theology: cognitive dissonance management, theology as the finite creature’s agonizing striving to speak the truth of the Infinite.

Trilemma from the Traditional Views

We encounter a trilemma when we measure the value of theological efforts according to the traditional views. Genuine Christians hold contradictory positions on everything from communion to the nature of God. For example, limited atonement and universal atonement cannot both be equally true. Even if one maintains the contradictions are only apparent and should be held in dialectical tension, we must admit a dialectical approach and fundamentalist approach cannot both be right. While differences don’t always imply contradiction, mutually exclusive positions do exist within Christ’s body of orthodox Nicene Christianity.

If theology is only valid when it achieves the specific function proposed by a traditional view, we are left with three options:

1. Relativism: Objective truth does not exist. Only sentiments matter. This shifts the focus of theology from God to humans, collapsing it into anthropology and rendering divine revelation irrelevant.
2. Futility: If objective truth matters for the function, the “wrong sides” of mutually exclusive positions are working in vain. Their theological efforts were not only useless but potentially obstructive to the point of theology.
3. Exclusivism: Wrong theological work is simply not Christian theology.

We need a view that can affirm objective truth without denying the church’s catholicity or the value of the diverse (and sometimes contradictory) theological work within her.

Solution: Decomposition of “Point”

Inspired by Abba Moses’ concept of telos and scopos, I propose a framework to decompose the “point” of theology into one “end” and many “aims.” The “end” is the final destination. “Aims” are the functions or immediate targets one looks at while working.

Following Paul’s exhortation to “do everything for the glory of God,”¹ the singular end of our study of God is glorifying God. However, Paul gave us many immediate aims: “welcome one another… for the glory of God,”² “thanksgiving, to the glory of God,”³ “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of [God],”⁴ and “[produce] the harvest of righteousness… for the glory and praise of God,”⁵ Thus, the “aim” of theology can be diverse. When Jenson aims at guiding the church’s mission, Webster aims at ordering his thought toward the gospel, or Aquinas aims at letting God perfect his will, they all glorify God.

This allows us to save catholicity and the value of contradictory theological works,⁶ not because all views are equally true, but because God works in different ways, often through our brokenness. Conflicting theological schools aren't necessarily competing truths; they can be different ways of glorifying God: some through logic, some through mission, and some through the submission of cognitive dissonance to God.

An Unconventional Aim of Theology

This framework not only encompasses different traditional views of theology, but even allows a “pointless theology” aiming at cognitive dissonance management.

Some people simply cannot help but ask questions when reality clashes with faith. Thinking about God amidst cognitive dissonance is like a drowning person kicking and screaming, not for some calculated purpose, but as a stress response. Can such struggles have meaning? Just as God accepts illogical, incoherent, or theologically wrong prayers because He is a good Father, God can also accept our frantic study of Him. When David praises God, he doesn’t always use carefully planned liturgy. Sometimes, he simply danced out of an overflow of emotion. Similarly, for the doubter, theology is an honest expression of cognitive dissonance directed toward God. For example, Luther’s theology was a desperate, OCD-fueled stress response to his tortured conscience and terror of sin before God’s righteousness.⁷ His immediate aim was survival, yet when God healed his struggle, it achieved the end of glorifying God’s grace. The glory stems not from our merit, effort, or achievement in theology, but God’s display of his love.

To do theology in this way is to make oneself vulnerable. It opens the risk of deconversion, losing one’s loving Father, identity, and anchor in life. Wrestling with the problem of evil or divine hiddenness forces us to admit our helplessness in our unbelief. It is praying, "I don’t understand, but I will direct my confusion toward You rather than away from You." It forces us to rely solely on God’s mercy, that after going through the dark tunnels of investigating one's belief, God will be there at the end. Paul teaches “[God’s] power is made perfect in [our] weakness.”⁸ God can be glorified in this honest, desperate cry of weakness as it drives us to confess we believe in God solely by His grace, and our faith utterly relies on Him.

This view also changes how we treat those suffering in doubt. Like Paul’s teaching "to the weak I became weak,"⁹ someone who has stared into the abyss of doubt can weep with those who weep. Those who have walked through the valley of deconstruction can accompany doubters in their intellectual anxiety rather than offering platitudes from a distance.

Conclusion

This paper expands the scope of theology while keeping it God-centered. By separating “aim” and “end,” we can affirm diverse theologies, unified under the singular end of glorifying God, while avoiding relativism. We affirm that truth is objective, but also recognize that our reasons for traversing it vary. God can be glorified when we make a brilliant argument, defend a doctrine, proclaim the gospel, or simply scream out in confusion and turn toward Him in reliance. In recognizing our brokenness and inability to achieve perfect truth, and God’s unfailing grace, we fully give glory to God.