Theology Is Life

INTRODUCTION

Well, tonight we begin a new series, and I have the privilege of getting us going thinking about biblical doctrine. This isn’t really going to be a sermon tonight, as much as this is going to be an introduction answering the question, “Why would we want to study biblical doctrine together?”

There’s a concept that you may have heard of because it’s become more familiar to us thanks to Hollywood, but up until a few years ago it wasn’t something widely familiar. That concept is captured in phrases like, “the final theory,” or “the ultimate theory,” or “the master theory.” But perhaps the more familiar name for it would be “The Theory of Everything.”

Now, the roots of this go back deep, but it really began to take shape through the work of physicists such as Albert Einstein in the early 20th century and then later on contemporary figures such as Stephen Hawking.

The basic idea behind the “Theory of Everything” is that there is a hypothesized “single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe.”

In other words, it’s a theory that seeks to answer the basic question: “Why does anything happen in the universe?”

Now, as of yet, the idea of a “Theory of Everything” remains one of the great unsolved problems in the realm of physics, although some have suggested that the overlapping frameworks of general relativity and quantum mechanics come close to forming a “final theory” or a “Theory of Everything.”

But when we stop and consider the goal of this—of what it’s trying to accomplish—it’s pretty clear that the “Theory of Everything” is really just one example of a totalizing explanation for life and the world we live in.

And so it joins other theories attempting to answer the same questions in various other disciplines and from different angles. The theory of evolution, for instance, is nothing more than a theory of everything relegated specifically to the realm of biology, explaining in pure naturalistic terms the origins of life as we know it on this earth.

When we move out of the physical sciences and enter into sociology and history, we’re met with new theories, each aimed at answering the same fundamental questions.

Perhaps the most influential social and historical theory to come in the last two hundred years is Marxism. Now, Marxism started out as a way of explaining socioeconomic conflict within any given society. He explained class struggles based on the warfare between two groups, those who had power, and those who did not. The ones in power oppressed those without power and were thus responsible for evils of society. Thus, the only solution is for the overthrow of the oppressors.

But starting in the 1930s, Marxism was adapted as an underlying philosophy for other social phenomena, and this led to what we now know as Critical Theory. Critical Theory is to sociology and history what general relativity and quantum mechanics is to physics, and evolution is the biology: It is a way of explaining how everything works; it answers that fundamental question, “Why does anything happen…In physics, in life, or in society?”

What we’re seeing now is that Critical Theory is a vehicle—a very convenient and well-adapting vehicle—that can be operated by a number of different drivers. With Karl Marx, the driver was class warfare.

But today we’re seeing all sorts of drivers, from racial oppression to LGBTQ+ liberation to identity politics. In the end, they’re just different drivers behind the wheel of the vehicle of Critical Theory. Critical Theory is the Theory of Everything that’s driving all of the political ideologies of the day.

Here’s what you have to understand: Christianity is a monumental challenge to these radical, totalizing explanations for the world. Physicists are desperately grasping for a way of explaining how all of the physical universe is linked together. The Christian faith already has an answer:

Colossians 1:16-17 – For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Critical Theorists are desperately grasping for a way to explain the struggles we see in society and how history is leading the world in a Grand March toward the utopia of brotherhood, equality, justice, and happiness. The Christian faith already has an answer for where history is leading us:

Ephesians 1:7-10 – In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

The culture around us would have us believe that these theories of everything are the dominant explanations for life and the world, but according to Romans 1:18ff, we see they are really just divergent challenges to the first and only legitimate worldview—the Christian worldview.

DEFINING WORLDVIEW

Now, we hear that word discussed a lot around here—“worldview.”

Ronald Nash: “A worldview is a conceptual scheme by which we consciously or unconsciously place or fit everything we believe and by which we judge reality.”

Gary Phillips and William Brown: “A worldview is, first of all, an explanation and interpretation of the world and second, an application of this view to life.”

In other words, a worldview explains reality and it explains purpose within that reality.

Now, it should seem obvious that as Christians, we should be committed to a Christian worldview—a decidedly Christian understanding of reality. But that’s not necessarily a given. There are a host of completing worldviews circulating about, and too often Christians are easy prey to alternative ways of understanding the world. Just consider some of the warnings Scripture gives to us:

Ephesians 4:11-14 – And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Notice how Paul describes these worldviews. He likens them to waves tossing a small child around. It’s a picture of the helpless ignorance of a child who is powerless against these false ideologies. And like wind which drives a boat without oars, these ideas carry on the immature Christian into error. They are “doctrine”—teachings. They are “human cunning,” literally “trickery of man,” which may picture throwing loaded dice in order to trick people in a game. And finally, they are “craftiness of deceitful schemes.”

Now, look over in Colossians for a minute.

Colossians 2:8 – See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elementary spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

Here the picture is even more stark. “To take captive” is the idea of a conqueror taking someone captive as a prisoner of war. And they are carried off, Paul says, “by philosophy and empty deceit” which align with human thinking and worldly ideologies. But note the contrast at the end: “and not according to Christ.”

There is a danger—a constant danger, really—of being taken captive, or being tossed about by waves and carried off by winds, which flow out of deceptive, worldly ideology and represent alternatives to the Christian worldview.

God’s people have always been vulnerable to the seductive, alluring thinking of the unbelieving world.

1 John 2:15 – “Do not love the world or the things in the world.”

The word “world” is the Greek word cosmos, and at its core, it carries the idea of order. And in John in particular, the idea of the “world” speaks of an order or a system which is inherently hostile to God. It is a world arranged against God.

1 John 5:19 – “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.”

The world represents an evil system controlled by the evil one, and organized against God and his purposes.

So, when John tells us not to love “the world,” he’s not just saying, “Don’t desire what the world desires,” or “don’t do what the world does.” He’s saying those things, but he’s also saying, “Don’t adopt the presuppositions, the convictions, and the values of the world that justify those actions and desires.”

Before Eve ever took the first bite of the forbidden fruit—before she ever outwardly rebelled—there was already a fundamental shift in her thinking:

· God was no longer good in her mind, or else he wouldn’t withhold what was obviously good.

· God was no longer sovereign in her mind, or else she would obey him rather than her own desires.

· God was no longer honest, because she was not convinced that she wouldn’t die if she ate.

Her shift in thinking about the world and about God and her relationship to him became the foundation for justifying her rebellion against God, and that exactly how every illegitimate worldview operates. It is a system that is set up in the mind to justify treason against God.

Young people—young Christians—are particularly vulnerable to competing worldviews. Many are still forming their worldviews, and their mental and worldview development are stalled by the cultural priorities of the day. They aren’t expected to grow up as fast, to be adults and think as adults. Adulthood is delayed, and so they fall prey very easily to divergent worldviews.

High Education is perhaps the most influential vector for the infiltration of secular worldviews into young minds, and it’s been that way for some time.

Albert Mohler, in his book The Gathering Storm, discusses how teaching has morphed from the traditional idea of a stewardship of young minds toward developing critical thinking and analysis, to a new posture where teaching is now a mission of secular indoctrination into worldviews which are blatantly anti-Christian.

At one point, he quotes an English professor who wrote in an online column, “We need to encourage everyone to be in college for as many years as they possibly can in the hope that somewhere along the line they might get some exposure to the world outside their own, and to moral ideas not exclusively derived from their parents’ religion. If they don’t get this in college, they’re not going to get it anywhere else” (p. 159).

In an even more alarming example, another professor from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, responds to data which suggests that there is a higher birthrate in conservative “red” states as compared to liberal “blue” states, and thus, a potential threat of rising generation of young people raised with conservative values outnumbering their liberal counterparts. He contents in the article that educated urban liberals need not despair, for he writes,

“Blue America’s Urban Archipelago can grow larger, more contiguous, and more politically powerful even without my offspring…. The children of red states will seek a higher education and that education will very often happen in blue states or blue islands in red states. For the foreseeable future, loyal dittoheads will continue to drop off their children at the dorms. After a teary-eyed hug, Mom and Dad will drive their SUV off toward the nearest gas station, leaving their beloved progeny behind. And then they are all mine” (p. 160).

The newest vector for secular indoctrination is the public school system, where Critical Theory, evolution, and LGBTQ ideologies are taught to children as young as kindergarten.

And of course, I don’t need to mention that you don’t even have to be in school to be exposed and allured by secular worldviews. Now, the values and ideologies of the world flash across the screen whenever you scroll through Facebook or Instagram.

All of this is an introduction to this point: we all have a worldview. Even your 2-year-old has a worldview. It might not be as formed as yours is, but they have one.

As Christians, we need to ensure we’re operating according to a Christian worldview. So what does that look like?

Turn to 1 John 5, verse 19.

1 John 5:20 – And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ.

There is so much here we could talk about, but for our purposes here, I want to point out just a few things. First, notice the word “true.” John makes it clear that Jesus Christ is not only the source of what is true, but he is the definerof what is true because HE IS TRUE. In other words, if you want to know what is true, it starts with an orientation towards Jesus Christ.

Now, notice something else here. He says, “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.” What an amazing statement! Christ has come. He has given us “understanding”—he’s opened our mind to something. And the reason he’s done that is “so that we may know him who is true.” Not just know him in an intellectual sense. This isn’t an intellectual knowledge of truth as a subject. This is relational knowledge—intimacy—intimacy with truth as a person.

Jeremiah 9:23-24 – Thus says Yahweh: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am Yahweh who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight,” declares Yahweh.

No worldview is legitimate if it does not begin and end with Jesus Christ as he is revealed in his written revelation.

Carl F. H. Henry wrote, “Evangelical theology dares harbor one and only one presupposition: the living and personal God intelligibly known in his revelation.”

The foundational presupposition of the Christian worldview is this—God exists, and he can be known because he has graciously revealed himself.

In fact, it was Carl Henry who later on in that same work gave perhaps the best definition of divine revelation ever written:

“God’s gracious forfeiture of his personal privacy so that his creatures might know him.”

So when we talk about the Christian worldview, we’re talking about a worldview set apart from every other competing worldview by the conviction that the God of the Bible is the unique source of all truth, and that all truth relates back to God and his purposes for this life and the one to come.

All truth. Not just spiritual truth. Not just religious or ethical truth. All truth. R. C. Sproul writes that the Christian worldview “is committed to the premise that the ultimate truth is the truth of God, and that He is the foundation and source of all other truth. Everything we learn—economics, philosophy, biology, mathematics—has to be understood in light of the overarching reality of the character of God” (Sproul, Everyone’s a Theologian, 4).

From that core, all of life’s most fundamental questions and issues are answered—questions that every worldview attempts to answer but which no worldview can adequately address because they willfully and defiantly refuse to acknowledge and accept that God exists, and that he can be known through his word.

What are these questions? Questions like this:

· How did the world and all that is in it come into being?

· By what standard can I determine whether a knowledge claim is true or false?

· How does or how should the world function?

· What is the nature of a human being?

· What is one’s personal purpose of existence?

· How should one live?

· Is there any personal hope for a future?

· What happens to a person at and after death?

· Why is it possible to know anything at all?

· How does one determine what it right and wrong?

· What is the meaning of human history?

· What does the future hold?

These are the questions of life. These are the questions people have been asking since the beginning of time. These are the questions that every worldview attempts to answer. And these are the questions that continue to plague people because ultimately the answers their worldview offers do not satisfy. The house they’ve made for themselves to feel comfortable in this world without God, it has holes in the roof. And when the winds and the rain and the snow of the fallen world drives against their house, it can’t stand.

But the Christian worldview does. Only the Christian worldview does.

BIBLICAL DOCTRINE SERIES

This is a series on biblical doctrine. The reason why we want to do this study is because we need to, as individuals, and as a church, grow and mature around sound biblical theology. We need to, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:15, “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

Studying theology is not an academic exercise…or at least it doesn’t have to be. It’s not trivial. And it’s not just for eggheads and nerds who don’t like to go out in the sun. It’s a discipline that every believer needs to do.

Theology is life. It’s life because it’s the undergirding structure upon which we build our worldview. We inform our worldview with our theology, so if we have a faulty theology, we necessarily have a faulty worldview. So just like everyone has a worldview, everyone is a theologian.

Theology is life because it focuses our minds and our hearts upon the most noblest task any human being can engage in—to know our God.

John Murray wrote,

When we properly weigh the proposition that the Scriptures are the deposit of special revelation, that they are the oracles of God, that in them God encounters and addresses us, discloses to us his incomprehensible majesty, summons us to the knowledge and fulfillment of his will, unveils to us the mystery of his counsel, and unfolds the purposes of his grace, then systematic theology, of all sciences and disciplines, is seen to be the most noble, not one of cold, impassioned reflection, but one that stirs adoring wonder and claims the most consecrated exercise of all our powers. It is the most noble of all studies because its province is the whole counsel of God and seeks, as no other discipline, to set forth the riches of God’s revelation in the orderly and embracive manner which is its peculiar method and function.

We want to behold the comprehensive wonders of God, to see the unmatched beaty and grace of his being and his attributes. And systematic theology—biblical doctrine—does that for us because it connects all the dots of Scripture together into a magnificent tapestry of God and his works.

Ultimately, the goal of theology is to unite the mind with the affections so that we are so moved within our will to act in faith and obedience to him who has redeemed our soul. That is the goal of studying theology.

Because in the end, what you believe about God and how you understand the world around you is the most important thing about you.

And the most amazing thing is that our God has graciously forfeited his personal privacy so that we, his creatures, might know him. The holy, awesome, transcendent God, the omnipotent Creator of the universe, the God of unapproachable light—he wants us to know him.

And in the Bible he has revealed his mind to us. In the pages of this book, we have the very thoughts of God.

I want to close by reading 1 Corinthians 2. And as I do, listen and follow along keeping everything we’ve talked about tonight in your mind. Consider the clash of worldviews, the questions of truth between believers and the world, the questions of human wisdom versus spiritual wisdom.

And most of all, consider the gracious gift that Paul writes about—the Spirit of God—which is the factor that makes doing theology either a exercise in futility, or a life-giving endeavor.

1 Corinthians 2:1–16 “1 And when I came to you, brothers, I did not come with superiority of word or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the witness of God. 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, 4 and my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith would not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. 6 Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are being abolished. 7 But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom which has been hidden, which God predestined before the ages to our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But just as it is written, “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED …”