Archive for the ‘Author’ Category

Guest post by Christopher Morgan, co-editor with Robert Peterson of Crossway’s Theology in Community Series

“As clowns yearn to play Hamlet, so I have wanted to write a treatise on God.”

Such are the opening words of the 1973 classic by J. I. Packer, Knowing God. What humility! And yet this humility does not keep Dr. Packer from writing a remarkable book about God, for just as he feels the burden of his finitude, he also knows that “God has spoken.”

Still the challenge is enormous. How can we clowns construct good theology? Though that massive question requires more time, space, and insight than I have, five contours of such an answer include:

1. By realizing that we do not create theology, but interpret, analyze, and synthesize God’s own gracious self-revelation, which is historical, progressive, personal, verbal, true, sufficient, and life-changing.
2. By accepting that while the depths of these truths about God and his truth will remain out of our reach, by God’s grace and through his self-revelation, we can and do know in part. Thus, formulating theology is like wading in a vast ocean: we may have some experience and knowledge of the sea, but we can make no pretense of plumbing its immense depths. So rather than seeking to develop some sort of definitive theology, we humbly work toward such theology.
3. By following a sound theological method, which centers on carefully examining the key passages, themes, and teachings of the Old and New Testaments, relating them to each other, and relating them to historical and philosophical concerns.
4. By developing our theology in community with others. Theology is not an individualistic enterprise, but is rightly done together—by the church and for the church.
5. By applying the subsequent truths to pressing pastoral, missiological, and personal concerns. Theology matters! It shapes our worship, evangelism, mission, preaching, leadership, and preaching. It fosters our faith, hope, love, unity, and holiness.

Theology that is biblical, humble, sound, church-centered, and applied—this is precisely what Robert Peterson and I are trying to foster in our series, Theology in Community.

The volumes in the series now include:

• Suffering and the Goodness of God (2008)
• The Glory of God (2010)
• The Deity of Christ (2011)

Upcoming volumes in the series include The Kingdom of God, Sin, Heaven, The Love of God, The Resurrection of Christ; and more.

It is our prayer that these volumes will assist pastors, teachers, students, and church leaders as God uses them to strengthen his church.