This is part of a series in which I hash out my notes I have scribbled on my bulletin from the Sunday sermons. As such things may be messy and abruptly end.

Today’s sermon was about the importance of sound doctrine and about good theology. Here are some of my notes. The itemized material below are more paraphrase than the actual words that were said as the recording for it isn’t up yet. I also don’t want to unnecessarily name out my own church in such a public manner anyhow.

Item: What you’re theology is affects other parts of your life

This is true, although it is lacking the counterbalance that theology can be and often times is affected by many things in life. Not the least of which are, in no particular order:

  • Presuppositions/Assumptions
  • Capacity to shift perspectives
  • How and where you were raised
  • In-group preferences
  • Things you esteem highly but have a tendency to prematurely optimize for
  • External loci of authority
  • You defending your framework/doctrine ranks higher than seeking clarity/truth/wisdom

I’ll go into those in more detail in later posts.

Item: Sometimes people use “unimportant” Scripture as poor foundation for their theology

I suppose, but any sort of passage or verse can be used as a poor foundation if it’s ripped out of its context and not seeing Scripture holistically. If I remember correctly, the “unimportant” Scripture the pastor was referring to (an unfortunate choice of words) were things such as numbers like the ages of people, geneaologies, and such, and he did talk about assigning undue importance that befits the text.

Perhaps a better way to construe this item is to say that context is king, doing single-verse theology/exegesis is a terribly bad habit, and that we talk about a text being relevant (to which your friend ought to ask, “Relevant to or for what?”). Don’t mistake me, when I say “relevant” I mean it literally as, “What does this verse/passage/book pertain to”. A passage might have some relevance to a specific prophecy, or it might have some relevance to healing, or perhaps to marriage. Understanding what it pertains to is paramount in allowing one to “go with the grain” of the text rather than excising it and using it as a prooftext to bolster your doctrine.

Item: “New theology” makes about as much sense as “new math”

While mathematics is outside my own field of expertise, it strikes me as odd to hear someone say this. Simply because numbers exist doesn’t mean that new math isn’t being discovered/created (I speak in layman’s terms here, this post isn’t about the ontology of numbers and abstractions).

There was, after all, a time when calculus, matrix multiplication, imaginary numbers, quaternions, or the lambda calculus didn’t exist. Yes, I’m sure they didn’t come out of nothing, and we do know of ancient civilizations like Babylon or China having at the very least rudimentary or prototypical forms. However, to say that there’s no “new math” or imply that “new math” is a contradiction would certainly be news to the likes of Leibniz!

In the same way, to claim that there isn’t, nor should there be, “new theology” is similarly false. Much like math, could we not trace theological concepts and frameworks back to individuals or movements? I attend a Reformed church and it should be pretty obvious to anyone that such a theology is, relatively speaking, more modern than many Orthodox, Catholic, or Coptic ones.

The earliest one can get to with regards to Calvinism in its most embryonic form is with Augustine who, to my knowledge, capitulated back to his Manichean gnosticism for a bit during his heated debates with Pelagius, of which his interpretation of predestination and election was born out of and has been the assumed default interpretation for Christians even up to this very day. His views were formed ~300 or so years after the writing of the book of Revelation. The concept of Limited Atonement was created separate from both Augustine and Calvin by Gottschalk during the 800’s.

It’s very clear that top-down frameworks such as Calvinism/Arminianism have been at one point “new”. One could argue that it wasn’t in fact new, but rather simply “going back to the text, back to what the apostles actually meant”. But this is conceited. If you were to go back to the text, you would just quote the text verbatim. Paul did not talk out of the socio-political milieu of anyone else but the one he found himself in, so to say that anyone introducing his own views, Calvin especially, as “the very same ones of the apostles and prophets and of Christ Himself” is ridiculous. To his credit, he at least attributes his own views to the works of Augustine very explicitly.

Has Scripture ever changed? No. What changes is our understanding, and such is based on a variety of different things mentioned here and things not mentioned here. Even in the course of our lives, our “theology” changes, and how often do we ardently argue for a position on topic X when we switch positions in the later years of our lives? I know I have, and I have no doubt that my current positions and thoughts will change yet again, and that not based on whim or convenience, but on applying myself to the Word and growing in wisdom from the Lord.

Item: Don’t boast in your theology

I wholeheartedly agree on this! As I’ve stated in the last paragraph, you may/will change your mind about various things, so attempting to boast in it is not only foolish in the outset, but a waste of time. Besides, the command was to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” not “construe a framework that satisfies your value system and defend that as if you were defending Scripture/God’s glory/the supremacy of Christ itself”.

The pestilient fellow of a theological bent almost always claims his views are “God-exalting over and against the man-centered views of this dying world”. Of course he’d say that. As Christians we highly esteem humility and giving glory unto God. The Ideo-Pest uses those as a liability shield and as a way to “borrow power” from (or if you prefer, “riding on the coattails of”) entities like the Bible and God Himself to preserve and perpetuate his ideology.

Do not taste. Do not handle. Do not touch.

Aside from that, I think one better way of viewing the Christian walk is one primarily about cultivation rather than correctness–the cultivation of wisdom, virtue, your gifts, faith, hope, love, being conformed to the image the Son. There’s also the idea of knowing enough to talk about something versus knowing enough to be proficient at it. Ideo-pests (they are also called Bible-Lawyers) tend to be more of the former than the latter.