Ever since I started going to seminary, people have asked me, “What to
you plan to DO with your degree?’ And my only answer is, “I just want to
know stuff. I want to know God more and learn how that should play out in
my life.” But it seems that studying theology, becoming a theologically
informed Christian, just for the sake of knowing God better, is a foreign
concept for many Christians. Going to seminary is only for those who plan
to use it professionally full-time (And even then it is optional. I briefly
attended a church that was quite proud of the fact that their pastor had
never attended seminary. He was self-taught and, the implication was,
anyone who thought they needed to go to seminary was just putting on
airs or not trusting the Holy Spirit to show them the truth.) These
experiences support Vanhoozer and Strachan’s claim that, “the existence
of 'professional' theologians suggests that pastors and laypeople—those
who are not paid to do theology—either cannot do theology (because they
don’t have the 'smarts') or do not have the authority to do so (because
they do not have the right academic qualifications).”[1]
After I explain to people why I am in seminary, I then often have to justify
what I’m learning and establish that it actually is useful. “The perception
that academic scholarship is abstract and 'theoretical,' disconnected from
the issues of daily life, neither relevant nor necessary for 'practical'
ministry, is perhaps the single greatest prejudice against theological
education.”[2];I actually do not enjoy discussing the nature of truth or how
exactly predestination and free-will work together. What I love is teaching
how Jesus being fully human and fully God at the same time can impact
our daily relationship with Him. I love taking the theoretical concepts I am
learning and teaching them to people in ways they can apply in every-day
life. Being theologically informed allows me to help others deepen their
relationship with God in a practical and real way.
The Christian Ethics presentation emphasized that Ethics is living out our
faith in a way that shows the world and other believers who God is. It is a
moral way of living that is directly based on the teachings of the Bible. It is
almost impossible to know what those ethics are without becoming
theologically informed. If we do not study the Bible for ourselves, we are
limited to what others tell us the Bible says. And humanity’s
interpretations have a history of being more self-serving than God- and
other-serving. ;Like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, we must study the
scriptures and be theologically informed (know our theology, history, and
philosophy) to know if what we are being told is truth and if the ethics we
espouse are in line with the ethics of the Bible. If not, we run the risk of
believing a twisted version of the truth being sold by the world that does
not truly reflect the heart of God.
503 words
[1];Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan,;The Pastor as Public
Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker
Academic, 2015), 15.
