Humble Reformed Protestantism

Since blogs provide a means by which one may vent a little, please indulge me this morning. Lately, the topic of fundamentalism has been on my brain, probably, since Brandon revisited it in his last post. But more than that, this last week I have recalled several conversations I have had with people over the years who have "come out" of fundamental groups and are plagued with an ongoing re-learning process. And I find that to be true, not so much that we need to re-learn the basic historical doctrines but we must re-learn how to learn them and how to hold to them and most importantly how to teach them.

I appreciate humble orthodoxy, if I can use the term orthodoxy here to refer to a basic agreement with the modern church; e.g., deity of Christ, The Trinity, Salvation by grace alone, etc. I know I am assuming a lot here but I think that the three people who might read this blog understand.

In my estimation, fundamentalism does not offer much in the way of humility even though many are orthodox in most areas, however, that may be relative. The way I learned systematic theology was in a very rote, hubristic sort of way; one might argue that it was much like the attitude of the Pharisees of Jesus' day. And for that I am ashamed.

This morning I read a great post over at Parchment and Pen, click here to read it. In this post Michael Patton describes many of his theological positions. He is clearly soteriologically reformed, but the doctrines of grace are not his pets or hobby horses. He makes it clear that this is not something that he normally does but he gets many questions along these lines. What I find compelling is that he ranks each segment of his brief points of theology, he ranks them according to how sure he is of that position. I must add that this sort of humility is rare amongst most fundamentalists and even evangelicals, that said, I greatly appreciate it. For someone to go on record as barely believing in a pre-trib rapture is very transparent, he writes the same for limited atonement.

Oh! I long for a humble approach to theology, one that does not smack of having a corner on the truth, one that teaches Christians rather than validating a doctrinal statement or "my position." Such a humble approach just might encourage Christians to be excited about learning the truth.