Latest / Clear Path Christianity / Why EVERY Christian NEEDS Theology (PART ONE) ||CPC Podcast Ep. 23
Transcript
- Cole Crone: Baptism. Children children being baptized. No, he's not. No, he's not. He's almost sixteen. Which is an interesting time for someone who's been in the Christian church for almost seven years, which is almost half his life. And for and for him to just now be but, you know, I mean that's that's autism. One of the many quirks of raising children on the autism spectrum is changing your expectations of how they're going to how if if and how they are going to choose Christianity for themselves and how best to foster that relationship non forcefully, right? Like non coercively. letting him come to his own conclusions about the Christian faith and making his commitment to the Christian faith official in baptism. Yeah, that's a lot. That mean, I don't know, that's probably an episode at some point. Huh? You don't you definitely don't w the thing about a cold open, Olive, th I know you don't know this because you're only thirteen, is you should never identify it as the cold open. Like when you sit and watch The Office, they don't they don't tell you before the dinner prior to that they don't tell you that you're watching the cold open. The cold open just cold open just sort of happens. So this episode of the podcast I've titled Why Every Christian Needs Theology. so I don't I don't think that I'm gonna have to twist the arm of of many of my viewers or listeners, particularly if you've spent any time within the Christian church. But I do think there is A growing population of people adjacent to Christianity, or in groups like the group that I came out of, who say something along the lines of I'm not a theologian, I'm just a simple Christian who loves Jesus, or I'm just trying to read the Bible and you know. Be a disciple of Christ, or I'm just these these very like simplistic statements about what Christianity is, apart from any kind of systematic or otherwise study of the Bible or the Christian faith. Now these sentiments are not only very popular, but they are seemingly pious Seemingly pious, I say seemingly pious, because I think more often than not there are other reasons other than just pure piety that someone might go, I don't need theology. It's just me and my Bible and the Holy Spirit. However, I want to encourage every Christian to consider themselves a theologian to some degree. And for for my purposes on this podcast and my kind of I guess you'd call it my slight bias towards the practice of theology is informed by my background and my having come from a place that had if there was if there was a way to quantify lower than zero, I would quantify the my church as that. But I guess if zero is as low as I can go, I'll go there. zero theology. people just took verses from scripture and made a God in their own likeness out of those texts, despite other texts that held to contrary truths. And so I I think that whether we like it or not, we're ev anyone who is trying to s seek after God is doing theology. The the moment that we attempt to answer questions like, Who or what is God? Who is Jesus? what is salvation? what is sin? What happens after death? These these kinds of questions you you are you're already doing theology by asking those questions. You don't get to choose whether or not you have a theology. You only get to choose whether or not your theology is good or bad. Because we're we're all doing theology. Anytime we take anything that we believe to be a revelation from God. We have to consider the the other things that are also revelations from God. And then we have to figure out how to put them together in a way that isn't contradictory. And that's all that theology is trying to do. And As someone who spent literally decades deeply committed to a particular view of God that was informed again by zero actual theology. It's it seems that dis despite that I had all the sincerity in the world, but that didn't guarantee that what I believed was true. Right? On on the one hand, I had zero actual theology. I wasn't seeking after any real truth, but What I did hold to, I held to very sincerely and and very deeply. But again, the the the sincerity with which we hold our truths doesn't necessarily make them truths. So in this episode I'm going to I'm not I'm not necessarily gonna try to sell you on any particular brand of theology because that is That is of secondary, if not tertiary, importance to me and to my content on this podcast or or anywhere that I put out my thoughts. I'm merely going to try to sell you on the idea that every Christian needs a theology. And the first step in that process is to define what theology actually is. What actually is theology? Now I like this simple, this very simple one sentence definition. I'm not even sure where I got this. It's just a very simple, straightforward definition. Theology is the study of God and what God has revealed about himself. Again, theology is the study of God and what God has revealed about himself. Now, while that that sounds relatively simple. What we believe about God informs our beliefs about virtually everything else within Christianity. Here are some examples. Our belief about God informs our beliefs about Jesus, our beliefs about the Holy Spirit, our beliefs about Scripture, our beliefs about creation, about humanity, about sin, salvation, the church, the future. On and on and on it goes. So Your belief about God, which is informed by your doing of theology, makes all the difference in the world as it touches virtually everything else that you believe to be a part of or an important part of Christianity. So we you take all of the raw data, what does scripture and tradition, Christian tradition teach about a particular subject, and you put it all together so that we can understand what the Bible teaches as a whole? So again, where where I came from. The vast majority of people were simply taking one verse and then creating a God in their own image based on that one verse, and then saying that they didn't need theology, they just needed their Bible. And so that that forces you to ignore the lion share of what has been revealed, you see. So you have to take all of the data points. And figure out how they fit together. a common objection, or at least a statement that I hear in contrast to having a properly developed, well thought out theology, is some people say, I don't need theology, I just read my Bible. Now, again, this seemingly pious statement may not actually be as pious as it seems on the surface. It may just be downright laziness, it could be ignorance, it could be a number of things, but irresponsible I would say is at the very least what this is. Because while Reading the Bible is certainly essential. I would even say, you know, for my Catholic and Orthodox friends, studying the church fathers is essential. Understanding what the earliest and then subsequently the most articulate and influential theologians throughout church history have said is essential to developing a view of God. Reading the Bible itself necessarily involves theology. In other words, you can't you can't even cohesively read the Bible without doing some kind of theology or another. Now, here is an example. Suppose someone asks you this question Who is Jesus? Say you have a a Co-worker who finds out that you're a Christian and the two of you are driving around or you're sitting across the table with from each other having lunch or whatever the case may be. And this person asks you, Who is Jesus? So you direct them to read the New Testament, and so they come to John 1, you know. in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, right? And you have that description of Jesus. And then they go to Colossians one and talks about in him dwelt the f whole fullness of the Godhead bodily or or that all things were created through him or what or you go to Philippians two or you go to Hebrews one or you go to all these places throughout the New Testament. Any attempt to try to see how those various passages actually work together to inform your answer to that question, that requires you to do theology. So again, the the question is is not whether or not you need theology or whether or not you already very likely have a theology. It it is whether your theology is any good. The qu the again, it's people like to parade around as if they don't have any particular theology. And and the vast majority of the time what they mean by that is they don't subscribe to a particular systematic theology. They they don't s they don't subscribe to reformed theology theology or Catholic theology or any particular type of theology. But they have a theology. it it might not be very good and they might be doing their very best to try to pretend as if they don't, but they still have one. They still have a theology. And I want to give four reasons why Christians need theology, and then we'll tackle one objection. Reason number one is that theology protects the gospel. Theology protects the gospel. So how do we know whether someone is preaching the gospel? if we believe that we believe the gospel, if I am someone who has who is self-conscious enough about my beliefs, to to the point where I believe myself to be someone who has heard and trusted in the gospel message. By what metric would I gauge whether or not the street preacher that I pass on my way to my coffee shop or the televangelist or the guy sitting in a striped chair here o on this podcast. Is actually preaching the gospel. But by what metric are you going to assess any gospel message that you hear? Is it merely a matter of that person using the name Jesus? Is that going to be sufficient for you to go, yeah, that's the gospel. He's talking about Jesus. is is there use of scripture? going to be sufficient for you to go, yeah, they're making they're referencing the Bible, so they're preaching the right gospel. Is it going to be strictly because they call themselves Christian that you believe they are preaching the gospel? Because by my estimation, and as I've spent the last well, probably fifteen years watching YouTube or being on social media or reading books on Christian apologetics, every everywhere you go, there are either cult leaders or wannabe cult leaders. who are doing all of those things, who are using the name Jesus, who are who are referencing the Bible, and who are calling themselves Christians. That are not preaching or teaching anything remotely resembling what has been preached throughout the two thousand years of church history. So you have to know what the gospel is, and that requires theology. So In Galatians 1, 6 through 9, Paul says, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you, Than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, and now I say again if anyone preaches another gospel, another gospel to you, than what you have received, let him be accursed. So this single passage does a few things for us. It it demonstrates that there is a gospel. That there is something that Paul references as another gospel, which isn't really a gospel. It isn't it isn't really good news. And that there it it it's extremely serious. Getting the gospel right is extremely serious. There is real severity in getting the gospel either right or wrong. To be to be accursed is to be cut off from God. It is is to be damned. So for Paul, there is a gospel, there are things claiming to be the gospel, and you better be able to tell which is which. So Paul Paul isn't saying believe whatever you want as long as you love Jesus. Right? This this one passage rules out that possibility. He's saying that there is a true gospel and there are distortions of that gospel and there are eternal consequences for getting that wrong. So we must answer the following questions correctly in order to have the gospel. One, who is Jesus? What did Jesus accomplish? What is sin? What is grace? What is faith? What is repentance? How are we justified? What does salvation actually mean? These are the kinds of things, again, and there are probably dozens more, but there there are countless groups out there that claim to be Christianity. They're calling themselves Christian, and they answer one or more of these questions totally differently. So just as an example, who is Jesus? I call myself a Christian and I believe that Jesus is the divine son, the second person of a triune God. I believe that he was born of a virgin, I believe that he lived a sinless life, I believe that he died on a cross, I believe he raised he was raised on the third day, I believe he ascended to heaven, I believe that he is the one mediator between God and man. Right. These are these are things that I believe about Jesus. I'm not allowed to believe that Jesus is the stay puff marshmallow man from Ghostbusters. Right? That that would be an unacceptable belief if for if I'm going to call myself a Christian. And the only way that I know whether my version or the guy who says Jesus is a stay puff marshmallow man is to do theology. We we have to we have to use theology in order to recognize the counterfeits, in order to be able to spot what is and isn't the gospel, and thereby what is or isn't Christianity. If if we can't recognize the counterfeits through the development of a theology, then we cannot know what the real deal looks like. You don't protect yourself from a counterfeit by by knowing every counterfeit, you protect yourself from a counterfeit by knowing the real deal, right? So and I don't even know if this is true, but the analogy that I've always been told, I should actually find out whether or not this is true or not. But supposedly, I'm gonna say supposedly, supposedly people who are trained to suss out counterfeit currency are never actually given any type of counterfeit currency. They're just they're just like relentlessly having these tactile experiences with the real thing. Right? It's like if you've lived somewhere for so long you can make your way around the place blindfolded. You do You don't have to go to every other house that isn't your house in order to know that you're home. You just you just know you're home, right? And so I think that's I that's I think that's a very pertinent analogy to use here. There's no pressure on us to understand all of the various ways the gospel is distorted. A good theology is just going to teach you exactly what the gospel is and make you extremely familiar with that. Hey everybody, future Cole here. And during the editing process we realized this episode was going on far too long. So we just actually decided to split this up into two. so the rest of my points will be discussed in the next episode. So tune in next week for the rest of why every Christian needs a theology.