C. Michael Patton and Rhome Dyke · The Theology Program · 72 minutes
Lecture by C. Michael Patton, Th.M., and Rhome Dyke, Th.M., from The Theology Program, published on their public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This session asks the simplest question in the course, what is theology, and gives the least expected answer: everyone already has one, the atheist and the three-year-old included. Watch for the chart of six arenas in which people do theology, from tabloid and folk at one end to academic at the other, and be warned, some cherished stories and long-held assumptions are about to be filed under folk theology.
Patton opens with a copy of a complete idiot's guide and explains why the program will never produce one: its assumption is the opposite, that every student is intelligent because every student bears the image of God, so the courses appeal to people's abilities rather than their ignorance. Dyke adds that a childlike faith does not mean minimal effort. We are finite people trying to understand an infinite God, and even the gospel itself is complex; twenty theologians asked to define it would not produce two identical definitions. The program will pursue hard things rather than shy from them, while faith remains childlike.
The class writes its own definitions, then weighs published ones: the dictionary's study of the nature of God and of religious ideas, Millard Erickson's study or science of God, Augustine's rational discussion respecting the deity, and Charles Ryrie's thinking about God and expressing those thoughts in some way. Each is good, but the course wants a definition broad enough for ground zero, one that includes even the atheist, whose settled conviction that there is no God is itself a theology, and the agnostic, whose claim that nothing can be known about God is a theology too, and one that must be defended like any other.
Patton recalls a preacher who announced from the pulpit that he did not know theology, and then preached a strongly theological sermon; the moment anyone says who Jesus is, they are giving a theological answer. He tells the story of the family rabbit, named Anselm after the medieval theologian, whose death drew from his three-year-old daughter a stream of questions: what happened to him, why do things die, where did he go. From our earliest days every one of us asks the ultimate questions, why am I here, what is life, what happens after death, what makes right and wrong differ, why is there something rather than nothing, and anyone who asks them is a theologian.
Since everyone is a theologian, the real question is what kind of theologian you will be. Not all theologies are equal, however impolite that sounds today; there is sloppy theology and there is thoughtful theology, and only the latter honors the character of God. Doing theology well is compared to an exercise program: it begins with a settled commitment of the mind, a way of thinking adopted for life, not good theology on Sunday mornings and sloppy theology the rest of the week.
The lecture cites R. C. Sproul's observation, made back in 1982, that ours may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization. The class traces how that happens: passive entertainment replaces thinking, a misunderstood tolerance becomes the highest virtue, and inside the church acceptance is prized so highly that questioning a spiritual-sounding story is treated as quenching the Spirit. The gospel and truth will sometimes be divisive, and the church must be willing to live with that.
When Christians tell how they came to Christ, the language is almost always experiential: I felt led, this is what happened to me. And the testimonies prized most are the dramatic ones, the rescue from a wild past, while the pastor's kid's story sounds bland. The teachers do not despise experience or emotion, which they call the most readily available sources for theology, but they insist the emphasis is misplaced: what makes a person Christian is not the experience but the belief, that Jesus is God and man, that his death and resurrection answer our sin. A testimony should above all tell what we believe.
The first arena is tabloid theology: constructing beliefs from naive hearsay, new and thrilling, with little or no evidence. Patton retells the classic friend-of-a-friend story he heard at twelve, the hitchhiker on the turnpike who announced that Gabriel's mouth is on the trumpet and vanished from the back seat, and the growing garden hose at the house fire, and the legs that lengthen when prayed for. The trouble is not belief in miracles, which the teachers affirm, but uncritical acceptance of everything with a spiritual glow. A life built on such stories looks for God to work in ways he never promised, and when the hose does not grow, despair, disillusionment, or departure follow.
The second arena is folk theology: beliefs constructed uncritically from tradition and religious folklore, old and ingrained rather than new and exciting, like the conviction that sit-ups shrink the stomach, disproven but hard to surrender because so much has been invested. The examples come fast: St. Peter meeting us at the pearly gates, angels as winged men, a personal guardian angel for each of us, halos, a red devil with horns and pitchfork when Scripture says he comes as an angel of light, the Sylvester-and-Tweety heaven of transparent ghosts on clouds with harps, salvation by good works, the basic goodness of everyone at heart, God helps those who help themselves, and the automatic damnation of those who die by suicide. The folk theologian is often the most dogmatic precisely where the evidence is thinnest, the raised voice substituting for the missing basis. And, crucially, folk theology can even be true and still be baseless in the mind that holds it: the fault is not always the content but the method.
Two case studies in folk thinking. On ghosts: the account of the rich man and Lazarus places the dead in comfort or torment with no crossing back, so the noises in the vent are not wandering souls, and if demons can impersonate the dead to build a whole false theology of fear, that is exactly what they would love to do. On demon possession: the class nominates Hitler and Manson, charismatic and monstrously evil, but the possessed of the Gospels are nothing like that, the man among the tombs crying out and cutting himself, the boy thrown into fire and water, the pigs that could not bear it; tormented and self-destructive, not brilliant masterminds. The Bible gives no warrant to blame human evil on possession, as if people were basically good unless a demon drove them; man can do all of that himself. About angels and demons Scripture says little, so little should be built there.
The lecture's picture for discernment: every person has gates to the heart and mind. Some keep them wide open, so that anything with the look of spirituality walks straight in; some lock them and throw away the key, letting nothing religious enter at all. The program's counsel is that the gates should be closed at all times, until compelled to open, because nothing in life is more powerful than what we let in as spiritual truth. Much of the course is learning when to open and when to keep shut.
The full chart runs from tabloid theology and folk theology, through the lay theologian, who is more reflective, distinguishes essential from non-essential, questions unfounded traditions, and uses study tools; to the ministerial theologian, educated in theological method, able to use resources well, to critique his own theology against competing models, and to integrate what he learns through reflection; to the professional theologian, who makes a living constructing theology, teaching, and doing original research; and finally to the academic theologian, whose overly speculative and critical spirit keeps the gates locked shut, the ivory tower whose presuppositions rule out the faith in advance. The acceptable range runs from lay to professional, and the course aims to equip its students to do theology in the ministerial arena. Neither label requires an office: a ministerial theologian need not be a minister.
Theology is not a compartment: it precedes us into the voting booth, shapes whom we marry, how we face sickness, how we raise and school our children, how we deal with sin, how we share the gospel. The session closes with the church's first great definition of theology, from Anselm of Canterbury: credo ut intelligam, I believe so that I may understand, faith seeking understanding. Most in the room already believe; the work now is to understand what has been believed.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Key TermsTap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all fifteen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. Why will the program never produce a complete idiot's guide to theology?
2. What does the lecture say about childlike faith?
3. Why must the course's opening definition of theology be broad enough to include the atheist?
4. What did Patton's three-year-old daughter demonstrate at the burial of Anselm the rabbit?
5. Since everyone is a theologian, what does the lecture say is the real question?
6. What observation of R. C. Sproul, from 1982, does the lecture cite?
7. What correction does the lecture make about Christian testimonies?
8. In the hitchhiker story, what does the lecture diagnose as tabloid theology?
9. What danger follows from building your life on tabloid stories of how God works?
10. Why is the sit-ups illustration a picture of folk theology?
11. What does the lecture mean by saying folk theology can be true and still be baseless?
12. How do the demon-possessed of the Gospels compare with the folk picture of charismatic, masterminded evil?
13. What is the lecture's counsel about the gates of the heart?
14. Which arena does the course aim to equip its students to do theology in?
15. With what definition of theology does the session close?
All fifteen correct. Lecture 2 is complete.
The lecture names folk beliefs many of us grew up with, from guardian angels to God helps those who help themselves. Which folk theology did you find in your own gates, and what would it cost you, honestly, to set it down until it can show its basis?
The teachers say what makes a testimony Christian is the belief it confesses, not the drama of the experience. If you told your testimony tomorrow with the emphasis on what you believe about Christ, what would you say?
Where do you see the anti-intellectual spirit the lecture describes at work around you, in the culture or in the church, and what would loving God with all your mind look like against it this week?
The account of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, as the lecture uses it: the dead are in comfort or in torment, a great gulf is fixed, and no one wanders back, so our theology of the unseen must come from Scripture and not from the stories we inherit.
The lecture's own direction for the week is the arena chart itself: notice, day by day, which arena your theology is being done in, and keep working the assigned reading in Olson and Grudem from the syllabus. The course turns next to the categories of theology, the vocabulary that organizes the whole discipline.