Category Archives: Seminary

Sans Guilt: How I Learned I Was Not Called To Full-Time Ministry Work

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One of the things I expected to find when embarking on a study of divinity was a calling. Specifically, MY calling. Even more specifically, I expected to find that I was called to a life of full-time church work, perhaps as a minister. To me, signing up for divinity classes was going to confirm what I’d been guiltily ignoring much of my adult life – that I’d been holding out on a higher purpose by doing all this silly computer stuff. This was a foregone conclusion in my mind.

The odd thing is that in 16+ weeks of rather intense Bible study, library research, paper writing, and seminary peer interaction coupled with as deep of a church work involvement as I’ve ever had, that shining moment of “calling” did not come. Rather the opposite has happened, in fact.

  • I heard a number of sermons from a variety of unrelated sources teaching the idea that all Christians, no matter what professional occupation, are in full-time service. Service is part of being a Christian. You follow Christ’s example of being a servant to all, in whatever circumstance you find yourself in.
  • In the context of the point above, while being a full-time minister is indeed a unique, high, and special calling of God on the life of an individual, that does not render inferior those who are NOT called in such a way. While the pages of Scripture are penned by many who were uniquely and dramatically called by God to do great things in the context of faith, not all of us are expected to be ministers. Or prophets. Or kings. We are expected to do what God would have us do, whatever that might be.
  • It dawned on me that contemplation of full-time church work has been a notion I’d always conjured in my own head. I have never had any other person who knows me deeper than “hello” (there’s not many) suggest the ministry as a career track for me. Further, I can tell you where that notion in my own head came from – the pulpit browbeatings I endured as a child where those in church work were figuratively sainted, while secular occupations were implicitly (and occasionally explicitly) denigrated.
  • When I stepped away from some of the technical work that had occupied me pre-seminary, I found that I was actually missed, and unexpectedly so. I didn’t really think my presence was all that significant, and so walking away for a bit seemed like a triviality. I was wrong, and have paid for that misconception in good and bad ways – mostly good, though.

Bottom line? I’m done with seminary classes, at least for the short-term. I enjoyed them, but they were a means to an end I’m not moving towards anymore. At some point, I want to complete a second class in Systematic Theology, which I found heady and enriching. However, I have no immediate desire to continue training for ministry work as such.

All that said, I’m going back into what I believe my true calling to be. That is, to be the best at whatever task is before me. I’m a computer network engineer, so I’m going to continue pushing the envelope as best as I can with my learning, writing, certifying, and podcasting relating to that field. Additionally, I’m hoping to start technical instruction for a living, which is something I’m actively researching and talking to people about. I’ve done technical instruction in the past, and have also taught in junior high & high school, as well as a broad range of ages in church settings, generally to good reviews.

I don’t see my foray into seminary as a failure. I see it as an important part of a confluence of events that has made me comfortable in my own skin. It’s okay to do what I’ve been doing. In fact, it’s time to take it to the next level, and see what God might have for me there. This process has sort of given me permission to continue down the track I’ve been on for over two decades now, sans the guilty conscience.

What Do We Mean When We Say God Is Omniscient?

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Edge of the universe

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What follows is a portion of a research paper I am working on for a seminary class entitled Systematic Theology I. In this part of the paper, I needed to define what we mean when we attribute to God the characteristic of omniscience. It’s not quite enough to say that “God knows everything.” This is definitely more academic writing than blogging, but it’s the first follow up to the brainstorming post I did on this topic, as well as setting the stage for an answer to “Did God Make You Do It?“. Here we go…

To clarify what is meant by divine omniscience, a definition is appropriate. Since foreknowledge has already been mentioned, our definition should tell us both what omniscience consists of, and when God could be said to be omniscient. Wayne Grudem puts forth a definition of divine omniscience meeting these criteria: “God fully knows himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act.”[1]

That God knows Himself might seem apparent, or at least safe to assume. Scripture removes any potential doubt on this point in 1 Corinthians 2:10-11, where we learn that the Spirit of God knows the depths and thoughts of God.

Many Scriptures support the notion of “all things actual.” Job 26:6 tells us that Satan and his abode are not hidden from God; this is echoed in Hebrews 4:13, where the writer tells us that all creatures are nakedly exposed to Him. Job 34:21 underscores Psalm 139, asserting that God sees all the steps of men. Psalm 147:5 points out that God’s knowledge is infinite. Finally, I John 3:20 reminds us that God’s knows everything, even beyond what we think we know about ourselves.

That God knows all possibilities is a topic of debate unto itself, as the problem of future contingents has been discussed for centuries.[2] A reading of 1 Samuel 23:11-13 supports the notion of God knowing possibilities, however. God did know what would have happened in a hypothetical future posited by David. That future did not actually happen, as David took advantage of the prescient knowledge passed along to him by the Lord and left Keilah, making the actual future altogether different from the posited one. The idea is further supported in Matthew 11:21+23, where our Lord comments on what would have happened in Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom had events transpired differently.

Having corroborated Grudem’s definition of what God knows, we can further consider when God can be said to have known what He knows, which Grudem contends is “in one simple and eternal act.” This is suggested in the description God has of Himself in Isaiah 46:9-10, where we learn that God knew, right at the beginning, what the end would be. Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 also imply that God exists outside of time as humanity experiences it, using the analogy that a millennium in the experience of God would be like a day to us. Church father Augustine held to this timeless view as well. “As in the beginning thou knewest both the heaven and the earth without any change in thy knowledge, so thou didst make heaven and earth in their beginnings without any division in thy action.”[3] This describes the doctrine of simplicity – that God cannot be divided. Implicitly, God’s “thoughts are not sequential, but simultaneous. He does not know things inferentially, but intuitively.”[4]What He knows, he knows entirely and at once. His knowledge is perfectly, thoroughly complete, and has eternally been so.

[1] Wayne Grudem. Systematic Theology. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1994), 190.

[2] George W. Shields. “Some Recent Philosophers and the Problem of Future Contingents.” The Midwest Quarterly 34, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 308.

[3] Augustine. Confessions, Book XI, Chapter XXXI.

[4] Feinberg, Geisler, Reichenbach, and Pinnock, Predestination & Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, 67.

Brainstorming Questions Regarding God’s Timeless Omniscience + Human Free Will

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My current seminary class is Systematic Theology I, which focuses largely on the character and nature of God. As seems inevitable with theology classes, a research paper will compose a significant part of the grade. The hard part for me was figuring out what to write about. I started working with the topic of predestination (the idea that God fated certain humans for a specific end), but my professor directed me to rework that idea into one that focuses more on God specifically.

To that end, I sat with a piece of paper and wrote down a number of questions about God, free will, and related ideas to help me form a topic that met my professor’s guidelines. I’m not suggesting answers to all of these questions here, more just dumping out the questions that flooded my brain as I tried to come up with a topic focused enough on God to write about, while at the same time allowing me to wrestle with notions of man’s free will. Note that my questions are coming from an evangelical Christian perspective, as that might help with context.

    1. By forbidding man to eat of the tree, did God create sin?
    2. If God knows what you are going to do, do you truly have a free will?
    3. If God predestines you to some end, do you truly have a free will?
    4. Does predestination indicate a choice on God’s part, implying that some are chosen for hell?
    5. Is the phrase “elect according to foreknowledge” indicative of salvific cause?
    6. Does God really “know before” if He exists outside of time? What does foreknowledge mean in the context of a God that exists outside of time?
    7. Is there tension between the “whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” teaching of Scripture and the concept of limited atonement as held to by some?
    8. If God wills that all men should come to repentance, but then acknowledges that not all are saved, how is this conflict resolved, as it seems that God’s supreme will is being thwarted?
    9. Contextually, is predestination limited or universal? Assuming universal predestination, does that support universalism? If universal predestination does not support universalism, does it instead support the notion of free will? And if free will is supported, are humans free to frustrate His will (that all men are to be saved)? And if humans can frustrate the will of God, why would God allow this?
    10. Is a perspicuous answer to the train of thought in the questions above possible, since we understand that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts?
    11. How might prayer play a role in God’s omniscience, foreknowledge, and predestination? Is it even logical to pray for the salvation of another?
    12. Why would God command that the gospel be proclaimed to “every creature” and “all nations” if atonement is not universally accessible and election is not potentially everyone?
    13. God’s holiness and justice cause tension with His love in what way?
    14. Why would God *not* universally, unconditionally provide atonement for humanity’s sin?
    15. What can we infer about God, understanding that He, despite His great love, will send some to eternal damnation? Does that inference change if we believe that God predestines some for damnation?
    16. In the Calvinist construct, men are unable to respond to the gospel, as they are spiritually dead in sins; the Holy Spirit must be invoked to allow for a response. In this context, why then would the Spirit not be invoked for all men? Why a “selected elect”?
    17. Some will be instructed to “depart from me, I never knew you”, yet David’s Psalm 139 describes a God that knows Him even before birth. So in what ways does God “know” and “never know” us?
    18. If there are some people that God didn’t know, how do we harmonize that with His omniscience? What do we really mean by “know” in this context?
    19. Is God’s foreknowing causal of predestination in the context of the verse, “whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate”? Or are these related, yet independent, events?

After that brainstorming session, I settled on a new topic that my professor was content to let me go forward with. God’s Omniscience: Views on How Infinite, Timeless Knowledge Shapes Events. While I definitely won’t find answers to all of those questions in that one paper, I hope to get a better handle on what the theological minds of the ages, many of whom have wrestled with these questions, have come up with.

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Distance Learning: A Different Animal

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Halls of Learning

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Furthering my education has been a bursty undertaking since college graduation back in 1993. Mostly, it’s been lots of lots of IT stuff: intensive classroom work followed by self-study and an exam has been the typical formula. The exam worked towards a professional certification as governed by companies like Microsoft, Novell, and Cisco. Certs are fine, as far as they go. There’s generally a very narrow focus to them, as well as a limited shelf-life, but they’ve all helped me to be more employable. I’m awfully attached to this whole “providing for my family” idea, so employable is good.

Pursuit of a master’s degree is a rather different undertaking. While an IT certification tends to be deep but not wide, a master’s program purports to be both. Accordingly, there’s a lot more classes. There’s a lot more of a financial commitment. There’s a lot of reading and writing to be done. All of this takes time…and time is something I don’t have much of to spare. Work, church, and family all keep me plenty busy. So, the traditional classroom route is certainly not going to happen.

Therefore, distance learning it is, and it’s not quite what I expected. I was thinking I’d be watching online lectures, perhaps attending a virtual classroom, that sort of thing. The school I remember from growing up, just digitized. Not quite. It’s turned out to be more like guided self-study. The format has been to read, write, read some more, write some more. I wait for results from the teacher. Okay, they aren’t really teaching. Instructor? Um, not really that either. More like a proctor.

In the first class, I got almost no feedback on anything: just grades. My grades were fine, so I didn’t worry too much about the lack of commentary. At the same time, I’m putting so many hours into all the reading and writing, it would be nice to hear something. Pointers. Challenges. Something. In this second class, I’ve been stymied in my attempts to get ahead, in that there’s a great, whacking paper I need to do, so I turned in the topic two weeks early, hoping to get approval so that I could move on. Nothing. Also nothing on the first article critique I submitted over a week ago. Patience is a virtue, I guess.

Am I learning things? Yes. Is it structured? Yes. Will it lead to a meaningful degree if I stay with the program to the end? Absolutely. But man – I feel all but completely on my own. The method works, but I guess I don’t love it so far. You really miss out on the mentoring aspect you get with in-person instruction.

Will I stay on this track? Probably. I don’t know of another option unless I pack up my life and move to a campus somewhere – and that’s not a choice available to me.

Pretty Orthodox Stuff

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The fifth of Thomas Aquinas' proofs of God's e...

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I started my second seminary class this week, this course titled “Systematic Theology 1″. (Of 2.) Systematic theology is a core topic for seminarians, as it presents a way of thinking about the Bible and its doctrines, and organizing that information in a way that makes holistic sense.

This is more or less what I was expecting, but I’m finding that theology is not a straightforward topic when reviewed historically and philosophically. What’s God mean to you? What sort of a book do you think the Bible really is? How does the metaphysical fit into your worldview? No matter how you answer those questions, you’ll probably find a theological approach that matches your presuppositions.

My theological presuppositions include the self-evidence of God, and the authoritative inerrancy of the Bible: pretty orthodox stuff. The first seven chapters of my theology textbook for this course describe a host of philosophies and perspectives that have resulted in theologies based on anything other than God’s existence and/or the relevance of the Bible as holy writ. That’s been helpful to me, as I’ve started to grasp just where the plethora of Christian heterodoxies come from.

In short, if you want to make God fit your idea of what He should be, you can…but your opinion is about as good as anyone else’s. Feel free to argue amongst yourselves, in other words. If you take the tack of orthodoxy, the challenges are different. While the presuppositions about God and the Bible might be at least comparable amongst orthodox theologians, the conclusions tend to vary.

A more interesting business than I thought, this systematic theology.