This is an articles by Brother Armstrong, specifically on the issue of what true relationship with Christ (and thus our THEOLOGY) should look like…and moreover, how true knowledge of Christ does not come by merely KNOWING CORRECT THEOLOGY…..but in PRACTICING IT!!!!!
Specifically, it deals with the concept of how many tend to believe that ORTHODOXY is the solution to all of the theological problems of our day. If you know correct doctrine, then you’re cool with Christ. However, as the Word makes clear, CORRECT DOCTRINE apart from continually seeking the ONE WHOM DOCTRINE IS BASED OFF ON….as welll as being content in merely KNOWING is an issue:
God’s Word also says that merely hearing the Word of God but not seeking to live consistently with what you’ve read (i.e. merely having intellectual assent to it or a set of Christian teachings) is wrong…and from a different angle, acting as if saying all the right things but not doing them can also be considered a false doctrine…..AND dangerous as well
James 1:22-27
22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
Pray everyone enjoys:
http://theresurgence.com/john_armstrong_2007_true_evangelical_theology
I have been making an argument, over the past three weeks, that the place to begin our journey with Christ, and the place to go back to again and again in order to continue our journey, is humble faith in Christ. I have also argued that faith must always begin with a proper object. Only when faith is in Christ does it make a difference. I concluded the last article by noting that such faith is a living, active trust that should rightly be called “the obedience of faith.” In this final article, we shall see that a proper theological procedure will always lead us to a truly humble and modest evangelical theology, a theology that is solus Christus, centered in Christ alone.
A Great Danger for Theology
A significant danger for all orthodox theology is to claim too much. For sure, we can claim too little. Minimalism is hot with many young evangelicals today. I stand squarely against it, especially in the pluralistic context of much that falsely calls itself evangelical. This approach, which casts doubt on everything from the Trinity, to the centrality of the bodily resurrection of Christ, is “Christianity lite,” In the end it will lead to something that is not distinctly Christian at all. (We still need a J. Gresham Machen to remind us that such liberalism is not really Christianity!) I do believe that there are real dangers in some brands of evangelicalism that will lead people back to the existential dangers of the older liberalism. These dangers may be without the obvious social trappings of the triumphalistic era at the beginning of the twentieth century, dubbed by some as “The Christian Century.” But there will always be a real danger-the danger that we deny truths that are central to knowing Christ. But I am more interested, in these four articles, to show how orthodoxy can go to seed, a problem not recognized enough in modern evangelicalism.
