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. h 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.
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