Once more on God, the Bible, and "being":
1. Theology happens as soon as one begins to give *reasons* for practices of religious devotion (i.e., reasons beyond the practices themselves), esp. when those reasons concern the identity and action of the *object* of devotion/worship.
1. Theology happens as soon as one begins to give *reasons* for practices of religious devotion (i.e., reasons beyond the practices themselves), esp. when those reasons concern the identity and action of the *object* of devotion/worship.
(Theology, thus understood, is the *ratio* of doxology.)
2. Both OT and NT are *full* of reasons for worshiping YHWH alone. Both OT and NT are thus full of specifically *theological* claims. (Read the Bible.)
3. The existence of myriad "heavenly hosts" flying around the OT and the NT cosmos does not detract from this point. They are in fact the *context* within which the OT and NT make specifically *theological* claims about YHWH, and ultimately about the Son of God/Word made flesh.
4. Scholarly labels such as "ethical monotheism," "soteriological monotheism," etc. thus fail to do justice to the phenomena of OT and NT discourse concerning God insofar as they fail to get beyond observing religious practices to addressing specifically theological claims.
5. In making theological claims, OT and NT discourse employs the language of being (Exod 3:14; Rev 4:8), causation (Rom 11:36; 1 Cor 8:6; Heb 2:10), divine invisibility (John 1:18; 1 Tim 6:16), the distinction between so-called gods and gods by nature (1 Cor 8:5; Gal 4:8), etc.
6. Scriptural theological discourse deploys the aforementioned language, which is common to Jewish and Greco-Roman theological discourse, in new and creative ways, ways necessitated by the coming of the Word made flesh.
7. Far from being merely "speculative," such language has a deeply *religious* import. Theology concerns the "truth" which accords with "piety" (Titus 1:1), the worship of a living and true God (1 Thess 1:9), as opposed to so-called but non-existent gods (1 Cor 8:5).
8. Classical trinitarian theism, far from being a philosophical perversion of the pure religion of the Bible, renders the *grammar* of scriptural discourse for the sake of deeply *religious* ends: that we too may call upon the name of the Lord *truly* and therefore *piously*.
9. What's the moral of this story? If one cares about piety, one must care about theology. If one cares about *biblical* theology, one must care about the question of divine *being*.
