Using this in the local church

How does this play out in the local church? When we go to counsel someone, when we go to teach or preach, what are we to say? We could have a sermon that is 100 percent theologically correct, and yet totally ineffective. At one extreme, we might be using vocabulary that the audience cannot absorb. This would be like a medical doctor who uses scientific terms for physiology and epidemiology. We want our doctors to know such terms, and for medical schools to teach such terms, and doctors can use such terms with one another, but we also want them to be able to put the ideas into simpler language. And when they do that, doctors may have different ways of explaining the problem, based on whether they are speaking to retired farmers, college students, or 10-year old children.

Just as a medical school uses specialized terminology, theological training does, too. So we will have to learn some new terms. As leaders in the church, part of our role is to determine at what level we can speak. If we use the specialized vocabulary too much, we will fail to communicate. If we put everything at a child’s level, we may be short-changing people who are capable of much more. So we need to understand our audience, as well as understand the subject at several levels. We put it at their level, and we invite them to learn more. In one way God is so simple that children can understand, but if the children are then led into thinking that they fully understand God, then we have misled them.

Another danger of an overly theological sermon is that if we do not tell people how our beliefs about God are rooted in Scripture, then we seem to be saying, “I am the source of all truth. Believe it because I say it.” The things we are teaching may be true, but we are making the audience dependent on us, and our authority, instead of pointing them to a more objective basis for understanding – and that is the Bible.

At the opposite extreme, if our message to the church is nothing but Scripture, then we have not given them anything more than they already have. We can explain the historical background, the grammar, and how the original recipients were supposed to respond, but that would be only a lecture about history and literature. Scripture has a more important purpose, and that is to touch the lives of modern people. We need to explore and explain the significance of these words for today, and that unavoidably involves some theology. We try to find theological principles out of passages that were written for specific situations.

In order to understand a passage about salvation, for example, we need to start with an understanding of why humans even need salvation. It is not just a matter of citing a particular verse[1] (which may or may not be quoted out of context), but of seeing each passage in the light of an entire worldview that has been shaped by Scripture as a whole. We understand each tree not just in terms of the forest that surrounds it, but also with the geological history of the area, the climate, and the ecological relationships that affect the tree. We get the large theological overview in order to understand the specific text of Scripture, and in turn, the text contributes to our understanding of the larger view.


[1] Proof-texts are sometimes helpful as references to key scriptures. Certain verses and passages are indeed important biblical foundations for theological conclusions. But this can be established only with careful examination of the passages. Hopefully, this work has been done correctly. But sometimes it is not, and the mere reference to a biblical text does not necessarily prove a point. It’s just the author’s way of saying, “I think my conclusion is supported by this text.”