Doctrine and Theology

I so appreciate this article by Michael McClymond (professor of modern Christianity at Saint Louis University and author of The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism). It’s theological and serious, but has great practical implications, because “Christian universalism” is spreading.

You should lose your faith…if it is in anyone other than Jesus. And you should forsake and reject any worldview, no matter how attractive and seductive and popular and affirming, that is not in concert with the worldview of God’s Word.

God is the Greatest Good and the source of all lesser goods: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father” (James 1:17). Wayne Grudem says in Systematic Theology, “The goodness of God means that God is the final standard of good, and that all that God is and does is worthy of approval.”

Imagining that God should let us run life our way sets us up to resent God and even “lose our faith” when our lives don’t go as we want. However, that’s a faith we should lose—to be replaced with faith in the God of sovereign grace who doesn’t keep us from all difficulties but promises to be with us in all difficulties.

If you were to be quizzed on your knowledge of God as Father, God as Son, and God as Holy Spirit, how would you do on your knowledge of the Person and the work of the Holy Spirit?

God put everything under Adam’s dominion and stewardship. Genesis 3 tells us God cursed the whole earth as a result of Adam’s sin. That Curse had an ongoing dramatic effect on both humankind and animals, as part of creation. 

I’ve heard people say, “We don’t need more head knowledge in the church today; we need heart knowledge.” But the problem is not that we know too much! The head and the heart should not be pitted against each other. We need both. Bruce Ware says, “If you don’t have it in your head, you can’t have it in your heart.”

Our theology tends to come from sources we trust. Some people, instead of trusting Scripture, believe a hodgepodge of pop psychology and pop religion, with a little New Age philosophy thrown in. And some people think they trust Scripture, but don’t bother to read and know it well enough to recognize truth (or heresy) when they see or hear it.

Yes, I’ve had the same issue with Job’s friends, especially since God condemns them for saying wrong things about both him and Job. He essentially says they were wrong, and Job was right. But that didn’t mean Job was right about everything (he recognizes in the end he wasn’t), and it doesn't mean that they were wrong about everything they said.