As we wrap up a week of reflections on the thoughts of Dr. Shirley Guthie, I want to end with our role as theologians (people who think and talk about God.)
In the early part of his book Christian Doctrine, (in a chapter entitled Who is a Theologian?) Guthrie offers an insight on the “Reformed” religious/theological family where he had been nurtured”
To say that this book is Christian theology from a Reformed point of view does not mean that our task is to try to master an already fixed system of theology that Reformed Christians believe has once and for all captured the truth about God, human beings, and the world. According to the Reformed faith, no system of theology can ever do that. The truth is the truth about God, human life, and the world in Jesus Christ as we know him in the Bible. All theology, whether that of an individual or of the whole church, is at best an inadequate, fallible, human attempt to understand that truth.
[As Reformed Christians] we must take seriously the superiority of the Word of God over ever human word…. We must ask the questions : What is the living God we know in Christ and in the Bible doing and saying in our time here and now, where we have to think and live as Christians? And that means that we will be faithful to the Reformed tradition when we continue the reformation begun in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and are willing when necessary to say things differently in the twentieth century. Reformed means always being reformed.” (Christian Doctrine chapter 1, Who is a Theologian?
I always loved the biblical, self-critical, humble, Christ-seeking attitude that I experienced in Dr. Shirley Guthrie. And as I hope to know more closely the God I worship and serve, I have tried to remain open to God’s revelation to me of who I am and how I am to live. God is always reforming me and the world.
Prayer
Thank you, God, for continuing creating in our world. And thank you for letting me live and learn of the new life you offer in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. Amen.
Amen!