Monday, December 10, 2007

Who Is A Theologian

I have heard many people when discussing beliefs use the cop out, "I am not theologian," usually in circumstances where they have been called to defend their beliefs. This is not true. I really like how Stanley Grenz and Roger Olsen defined a theologian in their book Who needs theology?. They defined a theologian as anybody who has sat back and contemplated on who God is. They then broke theologians down into three basic categories: lay, pastoral, academic. I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty but the short of it is, everybody is a theologian.

1 comment:

ghp said...

Theology is, as you say, the study of the relationship of God to His creation. We all do this. Thus, we are all theologians.

To say that one isn't is to engage in a bit of a cop-out --- minimizing one's importance in a bit of a faux way, so as to avoid having to properly engage & defend one's arguments. Or, as you gave an example in a previous post, to avoid having to either properly define or use terms/language.