I titled this website “Words for Theologians,” not realizing at the time that such a title could be exclusive to certain readers. So I wanted to take a few moments to convey one of my biblical convictions: everyone is a theologian. I am. You are. Your cousin is, and your mother and father, and every other stranger walking the earth at this very moment. Everyone is a theologian.

Now, let me clarify what I mean. Of course, there are trained theologians all around the world: men and women who have studied Scripture and theology in more depth and are called to pass along what they’ve learned to non-specialists. So, I’m not saying that every one of you is a Saint Augustine, or a John Calvin, or a Thomas Aquinas, or a John Piper. We’re not all trained theologians.

However, we are theologians in the broader sense of being those who study God. Now, you may not feel as if you study God. But I argue that you can’t avoid doing so, since you are a creature made in God’s image and living in God’s world. In the New Testament, Paul quotes a Cretan philosopher and says that “In [God] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God, in other words, is our very atmosphere. Whatever you know about or “study” or experience in this life—your career, your family, your friends, your hobby—you know about and study and experience in the context of God’s existence and Lordship.   

Think of it this way: Everyone on this earth knows about or studies or experiences something that God has created (Gen. 1), governs by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3), and sustains through the person of his Son (Col. 1:17). That is, everyone experiences a life that reveals God, since all of creation reveals him (Rom. 1:20). And as you interpret your life, you “study” it, and therefore study God indirectly.

So in a way, you’re already a theologian, even if you don’t know it yet. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mother or father, a single parent, an engineer, a dentist, a high school student, a recovering addict—you’re a theologian, too. You are someone who studies God and his world simply by living and moving and having your being here. Granted, in this scenario, we’re all on a road to becoming more conscious of who we are as theologians, more intentional about how we study God. But that truth doesn’t eclipse who we are as “God-studiers.”   

So the words on this website are for you, if you want them. They represent my attempt to do theology, which one of my favorite trained theologians defines as “the application of Scripture, by persons, to every area of life” (Frame, 2013, p. 8). I invite you to read, reflect, and study God with me.

Sources

Frame, John M. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2013.