Subject: must be theologians? |
Bible Note: Greetings, Aixen7z4, I'm curious about your distinction between "search" and "study". As I consulted my dictionaries, I found them to be quite similar. The only real difference seems to be that "search" has more of a sense of being oriented toward a particular goal - to find or discover a particular thing or answer. I assume you don't mean to say that we shouldn't read the Bible unless we are seeking the answer to a particular question. There may not be a specific command to "study" the Bible, but there's no command to breathe either. Some things are too obvious to be explicitly stated. Ezra studied the Law (Ezra 7:10). There are many references in the Psalms to meditating on God's Law or precepts (1:2, for example). It's hard to meditate on something you haven't studied. As you observed, the Bereans examined the Scriptures (Acts 17:11). Paul wrote that "from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Tim 3:15-17) How was Timothy to "know" the holy Scriptures if he just looked up answers to specific questions? Indeed, how would anyone know where to look for an answer without having studied the Bible? To tar all "professional" theologians with the same brush is to deny the value of teaching. What are those given the gift of teaching (Romans 12:7) supposed to teach if not the word of God? Good theologians work to organize and explain concepts found in the Bible; that's what a good teacher does. The Bible is a very disorganized book in some ways, hence Thompson's chain Bible, for example. A word doesn't have to be in the Bible to be a good and useful word; "sanctification" is an "invented" word that describes a very Biblical principle. You may find the concept of a single God in three persons - "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost" - not to your liking, but your beef isn't with the word "Trinity". Besides, if you limit the scope of the Bible's teaching to the words it contains, you're going to find a whole of host of 21st-century problems that the Bible doesn't specifically address. It requires theological thinking - identifying eternal principles and trying to understand how to apply them to the here and now - to deal with the world we live in today. Peace and grace, Steve aka Indiana Jones |