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. e 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.
[2] Vanhoozer, Pastor as Public Theologian, 5.
