Every time I enter a lecture hall at my university, I commence the class with the same two words: “Greetings, theologians!” In the chairs sit art, film, communications, psychology, business, computer science, engineering, and sociology majors among others, always outnumbering the Bible and theology majors. Yet I greet all of them as theologians. It’s not a gimmick or catchphrase. I want every student who comes through my classroom to walk out with a sense that, as R. C. Sproul loved to say, “everyone is a theologian.” From the Greek theos for “God” and logos for “study,” anyone who seeks to study and learn more about their Creator is a theologian. When my seven-year-old son asks, “Is Jesus God?” or “Why did God make broccoli?” he is a miniature theologian.
Of course, not everyone will sport a corduroy blazer with elbow patches, learn Greek and Hebrew, cite Augustine or Aquinas, or explain how Platonism inspired the docetic heresies in the first to fourth centuries. But regardless of your major, how you earn a paycheck, how much (or how little) you’ve read, or whether you can say hypostatic union ten times fast whilst puffing Captain Black through a briar pipe, if you seek to better understand your Maker, then you, too, are a theologian.
The Five Marks of a Theologian
Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther famously listed six requirements. In one of his famous Table Talks (number 3425, to be exact), delivered around his long wooden kitchen table (I’ve seen it at his Wittenberg home), flanked by young theologians in training, the stout German Reformer highlighted the following:
- The grace of the Spirit.
- Anfechtung, a German term for terrible dread or agonizing struggle as we realize our utter helplessness without God.[i]
- Experience—not just abstract pondering but real-life, transformative personal encounters with God in his Word and in a local flesh-and-blood community of fellow believers.
- Opportunity—spotting and taking daily moments to share gospel truths with others.
- Consistent reading and study of sacred Scripture.
- Broad engagement with other academic disciplines.
Two hundred years ago, former slave, Revolutionary War veteran, and theologian Lemuel Haynes, also the first black man ordained as a minister in the United States, offered five marks of a theologian:[ii]
- Love for Christ.
- Wisdom, including knowing “the deceit in his own heart” and “the intrigues of the enemy.”
- Patience to withstand “the storms of temptation” and “all the fatigues and sufferings to which his work exposes him.”
- Courage and fearlessness in the face of opposition.
- Vigilance not to fall asleep on the job but “to watch for the first motion of the enemy and give the alarm, lest souls perish through his drowsiness and inattention.”[iii]
Solid lists no doubt. Allow me to build on Luther and Haynes. A theologian should also be marked by these characteristics:
I. Idiocy
J. P. Moreland thinks I’m an idiot.
How do I know he thinks I’m an idiot? Because he regularly reminds me. His office door is just down the hall, and we cross paths often. Before you conclude anything negative about J.P., let me tell you what he means and why it’s a blessing I’d like to pass along. It has something to do with taking God so seriously we can take ourselves unseriously.
A biologist, chemist, cardiologist, and a host of others can achieve a certain level of expertise in their field to merit their titles. But there’s something unique about theology—the study of God—on account of the sheer magnitude and infinity of its subject. A good definition of a theologian, then, is one who realizes what a total idiot he or she is about the deepest things of God, yet seeks to mitigate his or her idiocy as much as possible by bringing it often to the sacred Scriptures. One of history’s seminal theologians, the apostle Paul, said, “Never be wise in your own sight” (Rom. 12:16).
II. Fanaticism
For our second mark, let us eavesdrop on the prayers of some of history’s great theological minds:
“Please show me your glory.”
—Moses (Ex. 33:18)
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you.
—David (Ps. 63:1)
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! . . . To him be glory forever. Amen.
—Paul (Rom. 11:33, 36)
Give me . . . the passion that will burn like fire, Let me not sink to be a clod; Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.
—Amy Carmichael[iv]
What is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee!
—Søren Kierkegaard[v]
Such are the prayers of fanatics (in the original sixteenth-century Latin sense of fanaticus).[vi] These are prayers from men and women who surveyed the universe and found that, of all things to spend our calories and willpower to seek, nothing compares to the one who made the universe. In a self-obsessed world, a world that champions creature worship over Creator worship, the theologian may very well come across as a madman.
III. Nerdiness
A good Lord of the Rings nerd spends so much time in Tolkien’s text they can name the five Maiar (or wizards) sent to Middle-earth by the Valar, pontificate for hours about Tom Bombadil, or lull you to sleep with facts about the origin and fate of all 20 Rings of Power. They love the story so dearly that they enjoy probing ever deeper into the text. So it is with those who love God’s story. They become holy nerds. In an age in which 12 percent of Americans think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife and 75 percent can’t name the four gospels,[vii] we need legions of holy nerds who love the inspired text. Good theologians immerse themselves in God’s words.
IV. Violence
I do not mean physical violence or any form of violence against others. I mean, rather, what Paul spoke of when he said, “By the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13, emphasis added), “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Col. 3:5, emphasis added), and “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24, emphasis added). Good theologians are not perfect, but they do engage in what the Puritans called “mortification,” the Holy Spirit-powered effort to kill whatever sins haunt and terrorize their hearts.
English puritan John Owen said it better: “Kill sin or sin will be killing you.”[viii]
V. Slavery
True theologians know both that they are servants and who it is they serve. They are mastered not by the zeitgeist—the spirit of the age—but Gottgeist—the Spirit of God. They can say with Paul, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10). Like Paul, they think of themselves as God’s slaves (Rom. 1:1; Titus 1:1), pouring themselves out for the church (Phil. 2:17), and servants to all (1 Cor. 9:19).
The New Testament makes a clear connection between being a theologian and being enslaved (the Greek word doulos, often translated “servant,” is often better rendered “slave,” though not in the American antebellum South’s sense of the word). “You will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed” (1 Tim. 4:6, emphasis added).
Revere God
What, then, is a theologian? A theologian should be an enslaved, violent, nerdy, fanatical idiot.[ix] When we serve our own egos and platforms, when we forget our moment-by-moment need for God’s grace, when we tolerate indwelling sin, when our Bibles get dusty, when we settle for knowing about God without knowing and enjoying him, when we become puffed up know-it-alls, we fail at the sacred task of theology.
We can sum it all up in a single word—reverence.
The theologian is one who reveres God. How much reverence is there in a man who loves his own mind rather than loving God with his mind? How much does a man revere God if he merely dabbles in God’s inspired words, if he allows his sin to go unmortified? Not much. He breaks one of the most repeated commands in Scripture, the command to yirah YHWH, that is, to fear / revere / be awestruck before the Lord. There is truly no more pride-crushing, joyous, and life-giving pursuit than the reverent study of your Maker.
[i] In Roland Bainton’s definition of Anfechtung, “It is all the doubt, turmoil, pang, tremor, panic, despair, desolation, and desperation which invade the spirit of man.” Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York: Abingdon, 1950), 42.
[ii] Haynes used the language of “spiritual watchmen” rather than theologian, which is, in itself, an illuminating title for those engaged in the sacred task of theology.
[iii] Lemuel Haynes, “The Character and Work of a Spiritual Watchman Described,” in Selected Sermons (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 34–36.
[iv] Amy Carmichael, “Make Me Thy Fuel,” in Mountain Breezes (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1999), 223.
[v] Søren Kierkegaard, The Prayers of Kierkegaard, ed. Perry LeFevre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 31.
[vi] Allen Frances, “Inside the Mind of a Fanatic,” Huffpost, November 13, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/inside-the-mind-of-fanaticism_b_5a072059e4b0ee8ec36941e1.
[vii] George Barna, Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators (Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 1997), 77–82.
[viii] John Owen, The Mortification of Sin (Rosshire, UK: Christian Focus, 2012), 50.
[ix] Some may bristle at my use of negative terminology to define the theologian. Since the theologians who wrote the Bible didn’t hesitate to identify themselves as “fools,” “wretches,” “slaves,” and “chiefs of sinners,” we’re in good company. If, however, we seek positive terms, we may describe the theologian as a humble, intensely God-focused, avid student of God’s Word, aware of their inadequacy, committed to personal holiness, a servant, who stands in awe of the Creator.