Many people these days say, "We need less theology and more discipleship." Here is why I think that their well-intentioned words are misguided. Good theology is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for discipleship. To say less theology will help us serve God better is like saying less mathematics will help us build safer bridges. Orthodoxy, in its original and proper sense, means to give the right glory to God. If Athanasius had joined Antony in the desert rather than sully himself with theological dispute, we might all be Arians now. In studying the Scriptures, nothing is tangential, though some teachings are more central. All must be understood in relationship to Christ, according to the classic Reformation principle: "Scripture interprets Scripture." Since at this time, God cannot be seen by human eyes, His written revelation is a principal means by which the Spirit reveals Him to us, and the objective...

(A response to a friend of mine whose comment got eaten by my blog. I will try to get this resolved soon.) I don't necessarily think that atheists in general are negative people, just because their belief system is based on a negative proposition. But in our world, the negative atheists are the vocal ones -- probably because the other ones have more important things to do. The "One Body of Christ" group would have its problems even if all the atheists decided to leave -- and some of the atheists and agnostics are actually great contributors to group discussion. That's why I ended my post by saying "Christians can always debate other Christians" - because having a belief system of positive propositions doesn't necessarily make you a positive person. It can just mean you're negative about more minor things. I certainly don't believe that the key thing is for...

I spent some time this evening on the "One Body of Christ" discussion board, of which I am an (erstwhile) admin. Once again, I was struck by the large number of atheists and agnostics who hang out on the board and set up logical traps for unsuspecting evangelicals. At first this puzzled me: Why would atheists join a group called the "One Body of Christ," which clearly targets Christians, when there were plenty of atheist groups out there? Then I realized: the atheists need theists, in a way that theists don't need atheists. Debate-loving atheists need theists to debate; otherwise, their (ostensibly) ontologically parsimonious worldview could simply be taken for granted. A brief look at the Facebook "Atheists, Agnostics, and Non-Religious" board bore this theory out. All the posts that weren't attacking or ridiculing theists were incredibly trivial, things like "Post your status messages here." The group defined itself strictly...