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. f 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.
