The Importance of Being Earnest: Approaching Theological Study

This is a long article. I am not done reading it yet. Has anyone already read this? I bolded a piece that can stand alone as a topic to be discussed by people that do not want to read the article.

The Importance of Being Earnest: Approaching Theological Study
Carl Trueman
Themelios 26.1 (Autumn 2000): 34-47.
[Reproduced by permission of the author]
Carl Trueman is Senior Lecturer in Church History at the University of Aberdeen. He is editor of Themelios.

BiblicalStudies.org.uk: The Importance of Being Earnest: Approaching Theological Study by Carl Trueman

There can be no more pressing question to be addressed by the theological student than that of how academic theological study proper is to be related to the everyday life of that same student as a Christian believer. Now this is a vast subject, and scarcely one that can be covered adequately in this paper. It is, after all, an issue with which some of the church's greatest minds have wrestled with for a lifetime and yet never come up with a fully satisfactory answer. It is important at the start, therefore, that I clarify precisely what specific issues I intend to address in this paper in order, as the advertisers would say, to prevent disappointment later on. My aims will be modest. I shall not deal with specifics, merely with the general framework within which your studies should be approached.
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In my experience as a university academic over the last eight years, I have known a number of evangelical students come unstuck during their studies. They have found the critical assaults on the Bible or the radical attacks from philosophy and theology, or the relativizing effects of historical and phenomenological studies, to be too much to bear and have ultimately found it easier to abandon their evangelicalism than to stand against the deluge of alternative arguments being hurled at them from all sides. This is without doubt a tragedy and has, on more than one occasion, called me to question my own position as a member of departments where such things take place; and yet, in every single case of which I have personal experience, the problem has never been purely, or even primarily, an intellectual one. In conversations with such students, the problem has always started in another sphere: church attendance has slipped; Bible reading has slipped; the life of principled obedience has slipped; and it is this practical decline in daily Christian walk which has provided the framework for the impending intellectual crisis.
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My first basic point, then, is this: don't imagine that you can successfully integrate your theological studies with your daily Christian walk unless you have first established the latter on a sound footing. Are you praying daily for spiritual help, not just for your work, but for your life in general? Are you reading God's word every day not simply to pass your examinations but to familiarize yourself with salvation history, with God's revelation of himself, so that you yourself can understand more fully the God who has redeemed you and your own identity as one of the redeemed? Are you attending a local church regularly (and I must stress at this point that CU is no substitute for church) where the word is faithfully preached and the Lord's Supper is duly administered? If not, then you might as well stop now, for I have nothing more of use to say to you here; if you have not laid such basic foundations for integrating your studies with your faith, then you are simply not ready to address the more specific issues which academic theology raises for the Christian.

 

Thanks!

I took the time to slowly read the article that I linked and I got a lot out of it. The one you posted is good, too. Thanks!

 

This video brings up a topic discussed in the above article: the importance of staying connected to a home church while in seminary.

 

The original article includes this quote:

"Are you attending a local church regularly (and I must stress at this point that CU is no substitute for church) where the word is faithfully preached and the Lord's Supper is duly administered?"

The video discusses this topic.

What are your opinions on the importance of staying connected to a home church while in seminary?