The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
February 13, 2011
Vol. 14 no. 07
It is not easy becoming educated, and even more so, staying educated. Theological education is even harder because for many people inside and outside of the guild of academia education in “studying God” is an oxymoron. How do you study God? Or is it that God studies us?
Theology is best studied by people who already know a lot about the world. Virtually all theological schools require a baccalaureate degree for admission, so those who acquire a theological education build upon expertise in a secular discipline. Every Christian is a theologian and we should never stop learning about God since God is always too big to comprehend in one gulp. One can debate whether it is possible to learn all there is about a secular subject, but certainly you can never learn everything about God.
The church should insist upon theological education that takes its calling seriously, while humbly recognizing that we can never know it all. St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon is one of those places whose purpose is to become seriously educated in the study of God. Today we are going to hear from someone deeply compromised by such study. It probably has affected Taylor. Be kind to him.
It may be my prejudice, but I am not alone with it – the central act of theology is the sermon. We do lots of other things in the church responding to people’s needs, but we are a People of the Book who listen intently for the Word. The sermon is where the preacher unloads everything he/she has learned, yet so plainly and briefly that listeners now know the most important thing the preacher knows. Easy for Taylor.
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan