I am sincerely grateful for Christian theology; technical academic theology, historical theology, pastoral theology, theological interpretation, and all manner of theological endeavor. But theology surely did not save my life; Jesus Christ did. In this post I will briefly reflect upon why I am thankful for theology, but not ultimately thankful.

It was about two in the morning, I was three years old, and I woke up. I felt the call to come to Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and Lord. I went and woke my parents up and told them that I wanted to come to Christ. They reviewed a Gospel tract with me and made sure I understood what I was doing; by God’s grace I did. I came to Christ that early morning in Phoenix, AZ on the couch in our living room. That same person who awakened me from my childish slumber is the same person, the same voice I have known ever since. He has walked with me through some of the hardest things I could imagine; depression and anxiety, terminal cancer (that he made sure didn’t become terminal), my daughter having a freak accident at school and almost dying from a traumatic head injury, being underemployed and unemployed for years—and even more personal things that I won’t share. But that voice (in my heart) that woke me up that early morning has always been with me; He has never left or forsaken me, and I don’t ever expect Him to.

As I grew in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ over the years I always sensed God’s presence, that voice, to be ever near. As the Lord brought me close to His side later through doubting His existence, and the subsequent years of depression and anxiety associated with that, I began to seek the deeper things of God; this led me to the formal study of Christian theology. I was confronted with a variety of ways to think theology, but mostly in my evangelical context it was your typical sort of evangelical theologies. After awhile none of that was very satisfying to me; it didn’t really correlate with the voice and the presence of God that I had come to know from the first day that I encountered Him as a young child. So I was still searching for something deeper; for a theology that coalesced better with the person of God I had already known intimately for many years. I continued in my studies and was confronted with historical theology; this was the first time I began to see a way to think about God in terms that felt more resonant with my experience of God. I began to engage mostly with Martin Luther’s, John Calvin’s, and Richard Sibbes’ theologies. There was an affectionate depth, a confessional reality that fit better with my prior experience with the living voice of God. As I pushed further through the years I came across Thomas Torrance and Karl Barth; here I had found a way of theology that fit best with my experience of the living voice of Christ in years prior.

This might help explain my enthrallment with Barth’s and Torrance’s theology. They both offered a theology that emphasized the existential nature of modern theology without sacrificing the orthodox theology that had been developing for centuries in the church catholic. They offered the sort of minimalist theology with a maximalist emphasis upon encounter with the living voice of God in Jesus Christ that fit with my own development as a Christian from the very beginning of my life. They offered a theological trajectory that focused on the person I encountered in my bedroom when I was three years old, and allowed that reality to shape the sort of Trinitarian theology they developed therefrom.

I have certainly learned from other sorts of theologies over the years (and continue to), but the theology that will always captivate me the most will be of the type that is less school focused and more relational focused; a theology that is okay with being de-husked by the personal reality of the living God who continuously in-breaks over and again in His still small voice. I know that voice; I trust that voice; I yearn for that voice. I am thankful for theology, but I am more thankful for the voice that stands behind (and in) the theology and calls me to His side in His mercies that are new every morning.