My Theology
Here’s where I take a stab at answering those “What do you believe about ____?” questions. The short answer is that I’m a Bible guy. While we don’t know everything there is to know about God, the Bible speaks clearly to the things that are essential to our salvation and lives down here–things like sin, hell, depravity, grace, atonement, justification.
The Bible also has clear positions on some secondary-but-still-vital issues like homosexuality, church leadership, a Christian’s relation to culture, etc. These things are founded on a commitment to the authority and adequacy of the Bible–which will continue to be challenged by secular thinkers and by liberal theologians, both of whom will need to be lovingly smacked down.
If you’re looking for labels, I typically find myself in the Reformed theological camp. That’s because I’m convinced that God’s sovereignty should be paramount in our thoughts about him and given precedence over the way we happen to feel about his job performance at the moment. However, I don’t really get excited about waving TULIPs and taunting people who don’t like John Calvin.
I’m biblically conservative and culturally liberal, in the sense that I think Christians need to live within their cultures, enjoying the good stuff, dismissing the bad, and salvaging what they can, in order to know and love the people around them.
Finally, here’s a belief statement I wrote which will help to give a little formality to this “theology” post:
Cultures change, truth stays the same: I believe that Sin is real, that Christ defeats it, that the Bible relates it, and that faith in Jesus is the essence of life and the escape hatch from eternal Hell.
Unity on the propositional truths of God’s authoritative, infallible word makes it possible for us to enjoy a diversity of cultural perspectives and voices. In other words, belief in the Godhead (triune, co-eternal and co-equal), Christ (his substitutionary death and resurrection), and salvation (God’s grace-gift received by faith) makes it possible for hard-sweating jocks, wired hipsters and starving artists to hang out together.
The Bible says to have solid doctrine (1 Timothy 4:16), love other Christians (1 Peter 4:8) and avoid needless divisions (Romans 16:17). Apparently God thinks all these things can happen at the same time-and I do too.
