My theological journey, so far

Theology has been something that I have had a natural inclination to pursue ever since I started actually reading the Bible. I am by nature a person who loves to figure out systems (I especially like to try to figure out what is going on inside the black box), so considering theology is often times a system (hence systematic theology), it was only natural for me to study theology.

My theological journey has been a long journey so far in the few years that I have pursued it. I didn't start actually reading Biblical passages with much habit until around the beginning of 2003. I was an intern with a youth group at the time and for the first 4 months of so I had neglected to reach much (that sure is a very reassuring thought...). However, eventually the conviction that I had not fulfilled my responsibility in studying the book that is the foundation of our faith led me to start reading. I started off with the Gospels and then I eventually read all my way through the letters of the New Testament, especially paying particular attention to the book of Hebrews. My first major theological crisis was at hand (and by major, I mean significant for the directions I will take down the road).

To give you a bit of context, I am from the state of Mississippi where the main denomination is Southern Baptist (United Methodist comes in second). My whole family came from the Southern Baptist tradition. A couple of my great uncles on my dad's side of the family were Southern Baptist preachers, and one of my ancestors helped found one of the first Baptist churches in the state of Kentucky. Both of my parents also as children went to a Southern Baptist church, and while they didn't attend much in my childhood, there was a natural inclination towards that direction. So when I started attending a youth group and later Sunday School and then the preaching service, I went to a Southern Baptist church. My church was not a typical ultra-conservative congregation, though by no means was it liberal.

One of the big tenets of Southern Baptist thinking is Eternal Security. It was something that I was taught to believe, although I never remember being taught much about the biblical passages in my time in youth group. And then one time I asked the youth minister I interned under if eternal security was true and he said yes but he didn't know what passages to refer to. So I was indoctrinated with the teaching but I was not taught how to read certain passages that seemed to be for or against the idea of Eternal Security. This proved especially important once I started reading the book of Hebrews.

Any person that has even skimmed through the book of Hebrews can not miss the numerous passages that warn believers from falling away or sinning. When I started reading through Hebrews, I made special note of Hebrews 6:4-6 and Hebrews 10:29. To any person that is not "trained" in how to read certain passages, these passages certainly seem to argue against an idea of Eternal Security. But having been taught it was true, I went through a time where I was trying to make sense of everything. On one hand, I had respect for the people who had taught me but on the other hand I was incapable of explaining those passages in my mind. The struggle was so great that one day I broke down in tears and asked a friend of mine what I was missing (she was Southern Baptist at the time also). In the end though after a few months, I ended up rejecting the idea of Eternal Security.

This rejection of Eternal Security (or as it is also termed by some "Once Saved, Always Saved") eventually led to my leaving the Southern Baptist denomination. In discussing the idea with a couple of my Southern Baptist friends, I was called corrupt because of my belief (although, looking back, I was not graceful at all in the discussion so I wasn't innocent). This led me to reconsider my "affiliation" with the Southern Baptist denomination. The nail on the coffin then came when I discussed the topic with the pastor of the church I interned at. In that time, he proceeded to fail to answer my questions about passages but claimed I was "proof-texting" (a favorite tactic of people who do not wish to discuss certain passages) and that there was no place in the south I could be a preacher at. This arrogance was the final straw with me. I felt I could not be a minister in the Southern Baptist church because of my belief, therefore I had to search for another denomination in which I could eventually serve.

This is especially a significant point in my theological journey because this rejection of Eternal Security is responsible for many other crises and theological reflections that I would have later on, hence I have spent so much time talking abut it. However, it is important to note that I was never really dogmatic in my belief at the time, but it was simply the one that seem to make a bit more sense than the alternative. I at times really wondered if I had been wrong and that Eternal Security was correct as I looked at some of the passages that seemed to favor it that I could not explain. Also, I had never really been exposed to the idea of Perseverance of the Saints in all this time, but I was fighting the idea that a Christian could stop believing but they are still saved. This crisis was especially significant also as I felt like my mom had believed at one time but still hadn't. However, at the time, I read Hebrews 6:4-6 to say a person could never regain their salvation. And had I been presented with Perseverance of the Saints, it might have been possible that I would have gone in that direction in my theological journey.

It was around this time of struggle regarding Eternal Security that I started to participate on a message board called Bible Forums, a growing conservative Christian forum. As I participated there I began to become solidified in my belief. However, I then came into contact with my first theological system, of which I had already rejected a tenet of it: Calvinism. The two Baptist churches I attended had not really talked much, if any, about it so I was relatively unexposed to the idea except in history classes when we discussed the formulation of predestination by John Calvin in the context of the Reformation (although in fact Augustine was the first major proponent of it). I had passed it off beforehand as being held to by lunatics and people who didn't actually read the Bible much. However, what I found were the people who held to the teachings of Calvinism were not as I had imagined them. They were relatively average people, though perhaps a bit extreme at times in my opinions. They also had passages that seemed to support their ideas, especially Romans 9 and Ephesians 1:3-14. So I began to debate the idea and had to reflect upon the Biblical passages for and against. This is my second major theological crisis.

In my time debating, in my own mind I was losing the war, so to speak, to Calvinism. I could not adequately respond to the passages presented to me at the time. My lack of acceptance of it was rooted in only three arguments. First off, philosophically I couldn't image how a God who loved the world would predestine only some to salvation but not allow it to be possible for the others to be saved. Secondly, 1 Timothy 2:4 seemed to speak against the idea of Calvinism. However, these two things where not very strong influences in my mind, even though they did guide me a little bit. My big objection of Calvinism was my rejection of Eternal Security. I rejected the P of the TULIP. Since P is the logical conclusion of TULI, by rejecting the conclusion I was rejecting the "beginnings" of the system.

Eventually though, I gradually began to be able to explain the passages used to support Calvinism and the philosophical arguments. However, the one doctrine that I didn't reject was the T, Total Depravity (because I was taking somewhat of a middle ground stance between free will and Calvinism and I thought there were passages that supported it). But I was left wondering how it could be possible to accept Total Depravity while rejecting the rest of the TULIP. This led to my discovery of prevenient grace and Wesleyan theology. I had finally come upon that first theological system that I believed. This would prove to be very important in my finding a denomination to work within.

But all the meanwhile, while I was battling the idea of Calvinism, I began to wrestle with another classical Protestant belief, justification by faith alone. It was something that I naturally believed since I had come from a Southern Baptist tradition. Also I was not a Catholic in the least bit and I was actually very wary of Catholicism at this time (no doubt during to my Baptist beginnings), so it was not something I influenced me. Instead, my questioning of the teaching was rooted in believing that a person could lose their salvation. Initially I had simply stated a person would lose their salvation by losing their belief. However, I began to focus on passages that seemed to state that by sin a person could lose their salvation, like Hebrews 10:29 (I had early on explained that passage by saying a person who stops believing would willfully practice sin). This caused me to question sola fide and then James 2:14-26 caused me to start down the path of possibly rejecting it (initially I had explained that passage in the typical "faith that saves is faith that works" fashion). This was my third major theological crisis.

I had one thing that held my belief in sola fide intact, the letter to the Romans (and my implication the letter to the Galatians). However, I couldn't at that time explain James 2:14-26 in light of a sola fide reading of Romans 3-4. Since I believed in Biblical inerrancy whole heartedly at the time, I was left trying to figure out which passage should be translated differently. And since the book of Romans is such a difficult read (2 Peter agrees with this assessment), I began to develop a love and passion for exegesis in order to understand the book of Romans. As a result, eventually I began to reject the standard Protestant reading of Romans 3-4 and I had finally rejected the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Now, at this point, I was in a weird place. I wasn't a classic Protestant. However, neither was I anywhere near Catholic even though I had rejected justification by faith alone (no doubt still due to my previous dislike for Catholicism. Around this point, I began to have a decent amount of discussions with a Greek Orthodox on the Bibleforums message board. While I was neither Protestant or Catholic, I was still very Western (Christianity) in my thought. I still saw theology with a very legal mindset. Additionally, by my acceptance of Total Depravity (though I had some questions about whether it was Biblical or not at this point) I held to a form of original sin similar to that in Western thought where we all inherited a sinful nature from Adam and Eve (though I never believed we were held guilty for their disobedience). Greek Orthodoxy, for the most part doesn't accept those two ideas because they are rooted in the theology of two Western theologians, Anselm and Augustine. While it wasn't really a struggle for me and nor was it one issue or issues that were related to each other, this could be termed as my fourth major theological crisis.

In the end as a result, I began to lose the legal mindset when looking at Christianity, especially salvation. As a result, I began to reject penal substitution as a valid atonement theory along with every other form of satisfaction theory. While I don't have an atonement theory per se, I have came to think Christ's death primarily set us free from sin (similar to redemption theory) and forgiveness was secondary and the result of being set free from sin. This aligns with the Orthodox view as salvation being a remedy for an illness. Additionally, I began to reject a sinful nature inherited from Adam or from our parents (though I would say there are genetics we inherit that predispose us to certain sinful things more). Instead I say that we inherited an environment of death and pain and suffering from Adam and these negative consequences make us choose between ourself to avoid pain or be selfish and face pain (and we mostly choose to serve ourselves without any guidance not to) and this process slowly develops a selfish and amoral center that is roughly equivalent to the Protestant view of a sinful nature. This also fits in well with Orthodoxy from what I know. However, I have many objections to Greek Orthodoxy that would not permit me to be Orthodox.

As a result of my changing of my way of viewing the Christian religion as a whole, I began to get suspicious (though not in a negative way) of other assumptions I might make in my theology. As a result, this places me in what will perhaps be another major theological crisis, the doctrine of inerrancy. I am still figuring things out, but as I stand now I am a little bit on the side of errancy, but closer to neutral than anything. It is hard to explain where I stand now in only a couple of paragraphs, but essentially I don't require inerrancy to read the Bible as I believe it is all faithful, nor am I prone to striking out certain passages as errant (especially none of a more theological nature) but instead give Scripture the benefit for the doubt. Practically speaking, with a couple exceptions here or there, I will work better with people who believe the Bible is perfectly inerrant instead of those who believe it is errant (because many are prone to striking out many passages based on whims or purely circumstantial evidence). Most people would probably not even be able to tell I reject the doctrine of inerrancy since I have only a mild rejection of it as of now.

While all of this has occured, I have certainly changed my stance on many other issues, though they do not have as tremendous of an effect. I view the nature of sacraments and rituals differently (I will perhaps explain my view on that). As a result I do not reject infant baptism, though nor do I demand it either as I have come to believe that it is neither mandated nor forbidden (something else I might expound upon). Also, a result of my crises, I have developed a philosophy on knowledge that influences how I develop my theological beliefs. Last to mention, this whole process got me to go from being a theologian only in my head to feeling my theology in my heart. I began to apply my theology and it slowly ceased to be a mere intellectual exercise.

As a result of my drastic change and essentially being on the fringes of Protestant theology (if not already out of it), I had a continuous search for where I could do ministry. It would require a place that was open theologically, but the problem is that I staunchly hold to my conservative moral values (if not become a bit more conservative with them). Most open denominations though are lukewarm, if not accepting, towards homosexuality. So that ruled out a good bit of denominations. However, one that is in the middle but it is for the most part in my experience conservative is the United Methodist church. And my earlier inclination towards Wesleyan theology (which I have since come to believe differently) led me to more Wesleyan denominations, which Methodism is. Initially though I attended a Nazarene church, but eventually I came to the point that I would join the United Methodist church.

So that explains my journey up to this point right now. I still have a lot of "traveling" to do, so to speak, but by God's grace hopefully I will continue to mature. I pray that I am following the right path as I do occasionally question whether I am merely compromising my beliefs or if I am turning more towards truth.