Last week I suggested that our theological formation should be something more than simply adopting the thinking of celebrity figures (or anyone, for that matter) in the church, and stated that instead we should understand theological formation as something that happens locally. I finally found some time yesterday to jot down a few thoughts in this vein.

The first thing to note is that doing theology is a communal task. This simply flows from the reality that the church is a community of believers united in Jesus Christ who together determine, by studying and indwelling the revelation of God in his Word, what they must believe and how they are to live. Throughout history, theology has always been done in the context of community. The early church councils were groups of leading churchmen gathered together to address certain points of theology (and other matters). The creeds and confessions of the Reformation were produced by a gathering of church leaders. Even when men like Calvin produced their theological works, the intention was that they serve the community they were a part of.

What's more, theology is always done in a specific context. Both place and time factor into the theology that emerges. This is not to say that theology is only relevant for a certain time and place, but merely that theology is not produced in a vacuum and is always to be understood within the context it emerged from. For instance, during the second and third centuries, the church was developing its theology regarding the person of Christ and how to understand the Trinity. The purpose was not just to construct these doctrines at random, but to answer the myriad of heresies that were emerging with orthodox formulations. The church needed to be able to say, 'Here are where the boundaries are; you cannot go beyond this.' Their Christological and Trinitarian formulations are no less valid today because they were produced centuries ago, of course, but without the historical framework we cannot understand why we speak certain ways about the person of Christ and the Trinity.

Theology is never a completed task. We have never said all there is to say. To be sure, we must take the formulations from history and from our traditions that are biblical and adopt them as our own. Sometimes this may require some reconfiguration so that a particular doctrine makes sense in our current context, and sometimes it means holding fast to the understanding that has prevailed for generations. But we have never said all their is to say about everything; God, for example, is an infinite being who can only be partially comprehended by those who he has created. The Bible is a treasure mine so vast that even if every person spent every day studying it, we could never uncover all it says to us. And so we must recognise that the act of doing theology is never complete.

Because of this ongoing task, we need to always be thinking and continuing our theological formation. In the previous post, I may have implied that every Christian must be an original thinker. One of the more regular commenters on the blog noted that perhaps not every Christian needs to be original, but they do need to be independent thinkers. He is right, and that is more or less what I was wanting to say, even if it didn't come across as clearly (see, this is why I am grateful for those of you who comment). The point I wanted to make was simply that Christians have a responsibility, as they grow in Christ, to cultivate some sort of theological framework that enables them to understand their faith and gives them a tool for looking at the world and learning how to live faithfully in it.

I do think, though, that among the leadership of our churches there must be minds that are theologically astute and able to think with a degree of originality. This does not mean that every leader in the crhurch should have a doctorate in theology, but that there should be people in the local church – pastors, academics, and so on – who are capable theologically, who can clearly articulate the doctrines of the Christian faith, and who can help the believers in their midst make sense of reality and of their calling in the world. It should be clear that theology, then, is not limited to how we talk about Christ or the church or salvation, but encompasses a great deal more.

Theologians are important to the local church because, first, the church needs guides. The people of God need others who will say to them, 'This is what you need to believe about X, and this is why.' It should be said that this is not some sort of heavy-handed imposition of a particular belief, but instead is instruction and guidance that is borne out of love. There must be those who will open up Scripture for the people of God to help them see what it says about Jesus or about the Spirit, and so on. And not only that, but believers must also be helped to see the whole unified story of the Bible, each act of creation, fall, and redemption, how God has been active in history and how they can understand their place in this great narrative.

Reading Scripture requires theological lenses in order to provide a framework for interpreting them. Though many claims to the contrary have been made throughout history, an individual cannot approach the Bible and read it without any sort of theological paradigm coming to bear on his interpretation. As strange as it may sound, there is a sense in which we can say to an individual, 'The Bible is not for you.' By this I certainly do not intend to abrogate an individual of the responsibility of reading and studying Scripture, but want to recognise that the Bible was given to the church. When a person approaches Scripture they are unwise to do so without first looking to the church as their guide. What was noted above about thinking independently is important here, because using the church as a guide always requires the believer to take this teaching and weigh it against Scripture.

Second, in order for the people of God to live faithfully in the world, they need to learn how to do so. We can best understand this by talking about worldview. Al Wolters, in his masterful book, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, says, 'Our worldview functions as a guide to our life. A worldview, even when it is half unconscious and unarticulated, functions like a compass or a road map. It orients us in the world at large, gives us a sense of what is up and what is down, what is right and what is wrong in the confusion of events and phenomena that confronts us' (4). This sort of roadmap requires us to think theologically about all kinds of things (indeed, perhaps everything), from business, to politics, to justice, to vocation, to art, to education, and so on. As we think about these things, all kinds of big questions will be raised that we need to deal with. And so we study the Scriptures together in our local communities, working together to answer our questions and formulate a worldview that is thoroughly biblical and that acknowledges the Lordship of Christ over all of life.

And this is where it really becomes important to do theology locally. All these big questions certainly have answers that have universal application, but there are also a lot of context-specific applications that need to be figured out. How do we do that? One thing I am sure of is that we do not simply take the answers from celebrity leaders or from those in different contexts without careful consideration of their conclusions. This is far too often the case and the very reason I raise the subject in the first place (as I noted last time). What we can do with the conclusions of others is to take their insights, weigh them against Scripture, evaluate them for our specific context, and determine what is good for us. To some degree, that may sound like some sort of relativism, but I am certainly not advocating that. At this point, I am just not sure how to state it differently. I hope you understand what I mean.

Further, here is where the idea originality comes into play. In some cases, some of the questions we are asking may not have any good answers so far. Perhaps others have reached unbiblical conclusions, or no one has even addressed the question yet. In this case, let's not wait for our celebrity leaders to give us the answers, but let us together think through these things and produce a theological response that will benefit not just our community, but maybe even the church as a whole.

Theology has so often been construed, especially in evangelical circles, as something that takes place far away in the halls of academia. But theology can and should be done in our local churches and communities. When we are confronted with big questions, we shouldn't ignore them or push them aside hoping that someone else will answer them for us, but we should embrace the opportunity to think together and read the Bible together as we seek to find an answer that will help us in our ongoing quest to bring our beliefs in line with Scripture and to live faithfully in this world. This is part of our life together as a local community of believers.

These conversations happen all over the place – in church fellowship halls, in classrooms, in coffee shops and pubs, on street corners, in living rooms and around dinner tables, in cars on long drives. There is no one place because these are conversations that we can be having all the time. Theology does not need to be a formal affair. If we believe that theology is not only about believing the right things but also about our ongoing formation as disciples of Christ, what better place to do it than in our local communities where we are together working out what it means to follow Jesus?