Theology

Haven't seen Pastor C and his wife for 3 years. They haven't changed much (he even wore the same deep purple shirt I've seen at least 3 years ago). But for the last 3 years, Pastor has spend much of his time and energy studying theology, and he gave me a glims of it last night.

It is hard to summarize theology in a few words, but basically it is, as he said, Bible plus logic. The more I think about it, theology is men's struggle to answer the inevitable questions in Christian faith. That is, trying to use human logic to rationalize our understanding of God.

There're Calvinism (the TULIP), Arminianism, the 5C, 3C, 2.5C, 5A, Openism, etc. All these are results of serious thinkings of the same scripture, but probably the only thing they can agree on is the inerrancy of it. Since the Bible itself is not a book of doctrins and theories, but rather a book of mostly events and letters, it's neither explicit nor strict on the defination of doctrines such as predestination vs. free will, trinity, or ??? (the three areas where theologists have been debating for ages).

Without theology faith can be criticized as irrational, but too much of it are proven dangerous (poisonous, as Pastor C described). Many difficult questions from a non-believer may be found in the theology books, but none of them provides the same answer, probably.

What's my take? Well, to be brief: the existance of tri-une God and inerrancy of the Bible. Perhaps there's a middle ground somewhere between 5C and 5A that I can accept. One thing is clear, theology is interesting. As Pastor C said, you need a starting point even though later on you might find it wrong.