Aug 24, 2010
Ed’s Christian Survival Guide: Can Theology Wreck Your Faith?
I can still remember laboring through the book Redemption Accomplished and Applied while in seminary. Maybe it’s a helpful book for some Christians out there, but for me it stood for a kind of mechanical, almost formulaic Christianity that failed to connect with real life.
As I moved through each carefully detailed step in redemption, I thought the process was too detailed and therefore easy to misunderstand. The language was technical and precise. If I missed one part of the redemption process, what would become of my faith?
I don’t want to sound overdramatic, but that theology book almost wrecked my faith. I thought to myself: If this really is Christianity and redemption, do I really want to be a part of something like this? Is God really this technical and complicated in his dealings with us? It made the Bible, a book alive with passion, poetry, and real life, feel like a scientific manual.
I have since realized that my struggle was not with the nature of Christianity, but rather a particular approach to Christianity—a specific theological approach among many. Jesus didn’t lay out the Kingdom of God in a technical step-by-step guide. He used stories, parables, and Spirit-filled action.
The truth is all in there, but the presentation is quite different.
In a sense, theology aims to take what’s in the Bible, understand it, and then present that interpretation so that we understand the Bible better. When theology becomes a kind of meat grinder that refashions the Bible to the point that we can’t recognize it, we have a problem.
Good theology can help us study the Bible and actually understand what it means. Good theology will lead us away from fear and sensationalism when we understand that the book of Revelation was Apocalyptic literature. Good theology will explain what the “Kingdom of God” could mean in the teachings of Jesus. Good theology will try to figure out how Jesus influenced the letters of Paul.
Good theology brings clarity to the Bible and helps us grow in our Christian faith, knowledge, and practice. Do we know God better at the end of the day? If our answer is no, then we need to take a look at the kind of theology we’re studying.
I’m sure that the author of Redemption Accomplished and Applied had every intention of making the work of Christ clear for readers. He paid great attention to detail, and I don’t want to say that he is in danger of ruining the faith of all who read this book. It’s not necessarily a dangerous book by any means.
However, in my own case, that book represented a kind of lifeless theology that did not push me closer to God. Even theology books that are technically correct, as that book was to a certain degree in its content, can have unintended effects on their readers. Isn’t it ironic that the study of God can sometimes turn us away from our subject?
I think approaches like the one you mention forget that theology is also an active thing. I don’t mean that we can make it whatever we want, but if theology is interacting with the Bible from and in our own culture, and if our culture is changing (while the Bible doesn’t), then in some ways, theology is flexible.
I was going to say, “Absolutely!” But then again, those were part of the problem in that case…
I have often heard it said that “theology” (and seminary for that matter) can do more to destroy faith than build it…but perhaps that’s just hearsay.
Seminary can do both, and it really depends on the seminary. Some friends from my seminary shared some comments on Facebook. One of them attended a very strictly reformed seminary for a year and he said that school almost did him in. He had to get out.
My experience was mixed. My school, Biblical Theological Seminary, was still in the old academic model when I entered and by the time I graduated they had made some significant changes to improve the spiritual life and community there.