Making Ground

I used to believe that theology is static, that the great doctrines established by the early church and the Protestant Reformation is all that there was and ever would be and all that would ever be needed.  I would have been the first to admit that a few great men have arisen since the reformation to rearticulate the old doctrines for a new age, but I would have been absolutely adamant  that no new ground was ever actually gained or, at  the very least, only a little.  For someone to stand up and say that they have a new idea, a new doctrine, a new camp of theology, to say that they have found something new in the Bible that God wants us to understand, something that the great leaders of the past missed is to, I always believed, stand up and say that you are smarter and better than the Reformers and great theological giants of the past.  I believed this so strongly that I even threw out some original ideas of my own.

The Bible, however, is God's Word, truth itself.  Man is meant to pursue the truth, the meaning of God's Word, until Christ returns, but man is finite and so man's word is also finite, limited in its breadth and scope.    Due to our finite nature, we will never have arrived at completely understanding God's Word.  Therefore, it isn't that the Reformers were wrong.  The Reformers were spot on and may have laid some of the most significant pieces in the foundation.  But it is up to us to take that foundation and build on it.  Theology is meant to be built upon.  With the right foundation laid, with the correct presuppositions, this is possible.  Theology can grow.  Our current theology can deepen.  And new ground can be made.