When Does Your Interest in Theology Become an Infatuation?

To start off the first "official" post of this blog, I thought I would give some reflections on a topic that has bothered and challenged me for several years. This topic is the question, "When does my interest in theology become an unhealthy infatuation?" For some, this may be a question that has little interest since they have long since come to a healthy conclusion, but for others like myself who have one foot in the academic world and another in the church, it is important to consider.

Specifically, this question interests me because I have found from my personal experience that it is a relevant question. During my several years of formal theological education, I have found that one of the greatest challenges I have faced is to keep what I am learning about God and His word alive in my own heart and relevant to what I am doing in ministry. Why is this such a danger for us young theological students?

While there are many possible answers to this question, I want to particularly focus on the answer that the German theologian Helmut Thielicke offered in his series of lectures, “A Little Exercise for Young Theologians”. This series of lectures is available in a short paperback book I came across several years ago, and I would recommend it to anyone else who has found themselves wrestling with this question.

Although Thielicke offers many potential answers to the question I previously posed, he has some especially relevant insights into this problem in a section of his lectures called, “The Shock of Infatuation with Theological Concepts”. In this portion of his lectures, he states:

In college discussions, many of us have observed incidents which illustrate what we have just been saying. It makes no difference what university we are thinking of, whether it is Gottingen, Heidelberg, Erlangen, Tubingen, or Hamburg. For example, a young medical student has a question that he is eager to raise in the discussion period following the Bible-study hour. Under the pressure of putting it into words, because of his high excitement and embarrassment, his pulse beats high. But finally he takes this pounding heart of his into his hands, stands up, frames his question and lets himself speak out freely with a couple of critical objections.

Now you should see how the young theological “pro’s” feel summoned to the lists. With lances lowered and at a rattling gallop, with their lips painfully locked, hardly repressing a howl of triumph, they pounce upon him. Then the technical terms fly around the uninitiated ears of the unhappy layman. Then rattle upon him words like “synoptic tradition,” “hermeneutical principle,” “realized eschatology,” “prophetic foreshortening of the time perspective,” “here and now,” “ever and ever,” “legitimate and illegitimate,” “presupposition” and “toward what end,” so that he hastily runs for cover, with one hand held up to protect his face and the other raising the white flag.

And so they easily suppose that this truce, owing to helplessness, is victory and that they have convinced the other man. But in fact, instead of winning him over, they have merely applied a kind of shock therapy-only it was never “therapy.” They have smothered the first little flame of a man’s own spiritual life and a first shy question with the fire extinguisher of their erudition. By such performances a person can really be smothered and strangled!

The medical student was in bitter earnest. Whoever is in earnest instinctively reacts with unusual sensitivity. And this instinct makes him say quite rightly: “Although my fate and my life were at stake, those others came at me with their routine. I found in them no trace of life or truths learned by experience. I smelled only corpses of lifeless ideas. I would rather go back to the less rigid young heathen. Granted that they haven’t much to say to me, and that that little is probably wrong, at least it is genuine. I was looking for a Christian in whom I could detect a flame. I found only a burnt-out slag. Maybe there was a glow underneath, but I am just so unused to it that I wouldn’t see such hidden fire.”

I know, dear students, that it hurts when I speak in such harsh and perhaps exaggerated terms. But I had to show you rather dramatically how seriously I regard my advice that you above all restrain yourselves with your theological concepts. It is certainly something to think about that student religious meetings are often much livelier and less cramped at the colleges and universities which have no theological faculties. You know me well enough to know that I am not questioning the value of university faculties-I am convinced of quite the opposite-but only that I am dealing with the problem of “theological puberty.”

(Excerpt taken from Helmut Thielicke’s A Little Exercise for Young Theologians. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing Company,1962. Pages 13-15.)

So what does Thielicke say here that is actually relevant to answering the question I posed at the beginning of this blog? It seems to me that Thielicke is addressing exactly the same question, because he is giving a very poignant example of how theology can enter the mind of a person and seem like it has entered the heart, while it actually has not. I have seen this firsthand, and to my shame I have fallen into this category myself. It is possible for us as young theologians to become infatuated with things we are learning, and we seem to be passionate about these topics because we talk about them all the time. I don't actually believe that this is healthy, however, when it stays at this level, because then the temptation becomes for us to use these novel concepts as a "weapon" against others in theological discussions, debates, and arguments. The best way of stating the situation is this: when the truths we are learning about God and His word do not lead to an increased love for God and a greater desire to edify His people and reach the lost, we are running the risk of theological infatuation.

And isn't this an ironic situation? Many of us had a great passion to love God more and serve our neighbors better when we went into Bible college, but as the years of studying the Bible passed, it seems like that passion lessened, to the point where at times I myself wish I could have gone back to the days where I had the passion without the knowledge. Please do not misunderstand: I believe theological education of some sort is vitally important for those who want to serve God. If I didn't, I wouldn't be working on a Master's in theology. I do believe, however, that one of the often-overlooked pitfalls of training theology is an enlarging of the intellect without a corresponding enlarging of the heart.

So if you, like myself, have found yourself infatuated with theology without being truly changed by it, what can you do? I look forward to addressing this question in my next blog post.