Things I Think…
1. Every week for the last few years , I’ve met over the phone or Zoom with two different friends who just happen to be very credentialed theologians. We have these amazing conversations about theological matters and other theologians. To my remembrance, over all these years, neither has tried to sway me in any particular direction to convert me to another way of thinking…but they share things that they have learned and point me to places where I can learn more if I choose to.
2. Both of my friends are smarter, more learned, and far more credentialed than I am…but that doesn’t make the conversation intimidating or less robust…it simply means that I have the opportunity to ask a lot of questions and each question I ask leads to me being less ignorant than when we started…and that’s a good thing…
3. My friends are also from very different traditions…which makes life all the more interesting…there is real depth in that diversity and it opens up miles of territory to be explored…
4. I say all that to say that most of what we post here is simply an invitation to a conversation…not an attempt to convert to a way of thinking…but to understand there are lots of ways to think about all manner of biblical and theological issues…
5. In my experience, evangelicals in particular have been trained to distrust information from outside their sects…especially anything labeled “liberal” or “critical”…which leaves them with a very truncated view of Scripture and scholarship that is often used to abuse them…
6. Knowing God is a life long pursuit and no sect or church has the last word or the whole truth…most of them have the first Word (the Gospel) but run it through a series of strainers to come up with something unique…
7. I read everyone from Packer to Moltmann to Enns…and a whole bunch of folks in between…and my faith in Jesus has never been stronger…but I hold a lot of the other stuff loosely, because i’m still learning…
8. Some folks don’t want to learn more or have their doctrines challenged by new information…that’s ok, but I’ll probably make you uncomfortable at times…being secure in Jesus means I’m free to roam and the indwelling Spirit will keep me safe…you too…
9. I’m far less interested in theological doctrines themselves than in how those doctrines conform us to the image of Christ in our daily living and thinking…
10. The older I get the more I wish I’d started this with five things I think…
Michael,
Great read! I’m quite conservatively evangelical in my theology (mostly), but I love to dialog and know what other people are thinking and doing with their theology. Often, it helps me understand my own position better, and other times, knowing other perspectives has adjusted my position. I also like knowing and understanding other perspectives on God/religion. If you live in a multicultural environment, it’s important to know how to present Christ in those worldviews.
Hi Michael,
I can think of 2 comments that had a great impact on me, both loosely paraphrased here (forgive me):
“The scholars I disagree with most are often the ones I have learned the most from” – F. F. Bruce
“Don’t read a commentary for the view it espouses, but for the data it contains” – D. A. Carson
I have observed that Evangelical scholarship will often, in its determination to be evangelical, completely overlook facts present in Scripture, or worse yet, deliberately conceal them, facts which can be found in the so-called “liberal academic commentaries. The “liberal” scholars may not believe a whit of what they are explaining, but they can accurately present the data, and they know what the data claims or points to. Sometimes that data, combined with a firm conviction that “The Word Is God”, will reveal with absolute clarity something that Evangelical Scholarship has debated endlessly about for centuries.
Often we deprive ourselves of truth precisely because we’ve picked the wrong teachers and the wrong material to read and listen to. Never judge a book by its cover, but by its contents. The same goes with lectures, speakers, etc. Okay, I’m done now. Thanks for mentioning this topic!
Terrie,
“I have observed that Evangelical scholarship will often, in its determination to be evangelical, completely overlook facts present in Scripture, or worse yet, deliberately conceal them, facts which can be found in the so-called “liberal academic commentaries.”
That is very true…and very jarring when you encounter it for the first time…
Linn,
” If you live in a multicultural environment, it’s important to know how to present Christ in those worldviews.”
Amazing how many simply don’t understand that!
Great post Michael. You wrote:
“9. I’m far less interested in theological doctrines themselves than in how those doctrines conform us to the image of Christ in our daily living and thinking.”
Exactly my focus as well. I tell my church that there will be no theological entrance exam to get into heaven.
What it means to be conformed into the image of Christ is a bit subjective, and will look a little different based on who we are and the level of spiritual maturity and experience we have. We have to learn to trust in the spirit work of that subjectivity and rest in it rather than trying to conform ourselves into someone else’s image of what that looks like.
Michael,
“As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another.”
I cam to this site a long time ago completely by accident and have mostly lurked ever since then. I was pretty staunchly evangelical in my theology (and still am in a lot of ways and in the church I attend) but I have had my eyes opened to the many other denominations and traditions by reading the commenters on this site. I have learned about the Reformed, the Lutherans, the Greek Orthodox and many others that I had almost no access to in my own life. I’ve come to realize that although there are significant differences in what we believe and how we interpret many things, it isn’t because one side is a bunch of heretics or because they don’t take the Scriptures seriously. While this has led me to have much less certainty in many of the things I believe, it has given me a much greater respect for the breadth of Christendom. All of those flavors have added dimensions of God and the Scriptures I otherwise would have been blind to.
Chris,
You made my day…thank you.
Chris,
That’s fantastic! Thanks for sharing.
You can switch this to 5 things…a few of these could be under the same point…
Not that you need me saying the latter.
if we are still here, Michael, we can handle it 😉
jtk,
Maybe in Michael’s thought process when he compiled the list, they are distinct. Either that or Michael ran out o material and needed to fill out his top 10. 😀