Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
A man had a question. “What does it mean that the Lord wishes that none should perish, but that all should be saved?” If God wants all people to be saved, won’t they be? Is not God sovereign. Does God not get what God wants?
What does “all” mean? To answer this question, the preacher looked to the his Bible. But the question came from reading the Bible. What to do? Maybe if he read it in Greek? Well he doesn’t know Greek. He does, however, know Pig Latin! Latin and Pig Latin must have a similar language structure, so it’s almost like knowing Latin, and since Catholics do something or other in Latin, this must be useful. And anyway, Latin and Greek must be pretty similar. So the man looked at his Pig Latin translation.
Ethay Ordlay isway otnay owslay otay ulfillfay ishay omisepray asway omesay ountcay ownessslay, utbay isway atientpay owardtay ouyay, otnay ishingway atthay anyway ouldshay erishpay, utbay atthay allway ouldshay eachray epentanceray.
Hmmm. “Allway.” That doesn’t ring a bell. The man thought you moved the last syllable to the front and added an “a” at the end, right? Shouldn’t it be “Lla-a?” To make it shorter, drop the dupliate letters and it becomes “la.” Now he’s getting somewhere. “La!” Besides, nothing starts with “lla” but llama, and he never saw llamas in the New Testament so the context tells him that consolidation was the right move. Besides, didn’t they drop vowels in Hebrew, too?
La. A note to follow so. Julie Andrews… who was in New Year’s Eve with Robert DeNiro who was in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon. #winning
Okay, that got out of hand. No really.
But the point I want to make is this, theology is dangerous, especially in small doses. Bible study is dangerous is small doses. What we don’t want to do is start by picking up some words or themes from the text, from scholars, from theologians, get a base definition of what this or that doctrine is and then run with it in any direction we choose, thinking we know what we’re talking about. But hear me, I don’t mean theology isn’t for everybody, or that study isn’t for everyone; it is.
The Christian creeds, the doctrines of the faith have a lot of work and though and labor put into refining them to specific understandings, and though reading scholars, in studying the creeds, etc., can lead us to a much fuller understanding of Scriptures by uniting themes and concepts and truths we might have misses, or misunderstood.
For example, trinity is not in the Bible, at least the word is not. But the concept is there. So when someone uses the word trinity to describe God, they are not using a “Bible word,” but they are using a biblical idea. But trinity means something specific. If left at face value, we get people, often well meaning, that come up with various analogies that attempt to explain it to others that oftendo a much better job of describing rejected Christian heresies and not orthodox Christian doctrine. (e.g. an egg: shell, yolk, and white; a man: husband ,father, and son, etc.) As a consequence we end up teaching falsely about God.
We ought not learn the spelling of a few big words and then think we’re capable of teaching difficult concepts. I’ll give an example of this in an upcoming post.
