Theological Perspectives and Starting Points

Part One: New Perspectives

Now that you have read my first blog, in which I simply jump straight in, I want to back up for a moment and share why I am taking the approach I am. The reason I did not open with a sort of introduction of sorts is because I assume that you might not have understood what I was trying to say, but now that I have given an example, perhaps what I say now will ring more true.

I suspect that the contents of the previous post were not exactly what many of you were expecting when I announced that I would be giving practical advice on studying theology. I suspect that what many persons were assuming I was going to undertake was a project of telling you how to read and study the Bible, and, to a certain extent, I did and will continue to talk about such things. Again, how I talked about Bible study when I did indeed talk about it was probably not what many of you are used to hearing on such topics, but I hope it was helpful, nonetheless.

I am taking a bit of a different tact, not because I wish to be different for the sake of being different, but because I wish to perhaps fill in some gaps that are often left untouched. Since this is introductory, we won’t be filing them all, of course, but hopefully by tapping into areas less considered some of you might find a renewed interest by seeing it does not have to always be the same stuff.

I can remember thinking in seminary, “Why didn’t anyone every teach me this in church?” Unfortunately for us church goers, there is a general assumption amongst the leadership camps that lay people do not want to here in-depth ideas of “Christian education,” a phrase that, because of this assumption, has almost become almost oxymoronic, because, unless you attend a seminary, you might not have the opportunity to learn what these institutions would consider a proper “Christian education”, which is a downfall of the church. The church should be teaching most (if not all) these ideas too. Perhaps not at the same rate, but teaching them nonetheless. Unless I am reading the writing on the wall incorrectly, this assumption is what is leading the church into deeper and deeper malaise.

First of all, I do believe that, while there might exist many in the church that are just there to fill in their weekly checklist, to get their “gold star” for attendance, so to speak, there are others in the church that are there to be truly fed. I hope that you have been led to this blog site because you are such a person. Again, unfortunately for you, pastors often allow the malaise of others to ruin it for the whole group. Instead of real theological pursuit, many leaders assume that their duty is to do the work for you. It is hard to blame them. Pastors are often very mistreated and underappreciated for their attempts to make real eternal impacts in a community, and eventually just give the people what they assume they want, which is a heart-warming sermon on Sundays and otherwise to be left alone. Perhaps now it is the layman’s job to prove his or her want to study in order to renew the pastor’s first love. Perhaps we can minister to our ministers by asking them to share their sheer wealth of knowledge.

This is why I have chosen a bit of a different approach, an approach to teach things that are often unsaid. So, some of what you might assume I mean when I say “theological study,” might perhaps be challenged by this blog. I hope so. For example, as I think I made clear in the last post, and I will reiterate here and especially in my next post, “doing theology” and doing “bible study,” while intrinsically related—if you consider yourself an apostolic Christian—are not exactly one and the same.  This is true on various levels.

First, Bible Study, as done by some (and here I am talking about those who more than likely do not consider themselves Christian, not at least in the orthodox sense) does nothing to form their worldview. Some simply read for informational purposes. What these liberal scholars and students extract from their research they might call “Biblical Theology,” but what they mean by this terminology is that it is the beliefs of the ancient cultures or writers included in the text. It has no real bearing on the scholar’s own epistemology or way of living.

On another, more positive level, Bible study serves as a part, the most crucial and necessary part of theological study, and while we cannot do theology without reading the Bible, reading the Bible alone does not form a proper theology.  Theology is then, for many of us, asking the question, “What am I to do with all this meaningful information I have gathered from my Bible study.” “Doing theology” is sort of a next step, or, at least, continuing of the path that the Bible places us upon. This is not to say how we “do” theology is outside any biblical consideration. I believe the Bible, as we grow in our understanding of it, will form our approach to its material and how we organize said material (I plan to give a clear example of this in an upcoming post). What I am trying to say is this: Bible Study is our foundation; forming theology is our reaction to what we have studied as we apply it to our worldview and hopefully to our lives.

How we apply the revelation of Scripture to our lives is a lifelong process with many different facets and lenses by which we ask the crucial questions of life. What these lenses are, we will discuss in our next post. I am sure you want to get into it already. I haven’t given you much in the way of practical advice. So far in my last two posts I have simply said that we proper theology must be lived theology, and doing theology is a multilayered task that begins with reading the Bible.  Again, I am trying to give you ideas that you might not have considered at this point, unless you have been to seminary or read a lot about theology. In the end, we need proper perspective so that we can see clearly what we are trying to study.