There appears to be an increasing number of articles suggesting that Christians are turning the Bible into an idol.
For example, in a Huffpost blog, Brandan Robertson wrote, “While the Bible is an important and authoritative guide for Christian faith and practice, it isn’t the foundation or center of our faith—Jesus is…Studying Scripture is valuable, but nowhere near as valuable as cultivating a day to day relationship with the God incarnate.”
The crux of their argument is this question, “Why is theology important. Isn’t Jesus enough?” Since the Bible is how we learn about Jesus, the Bible and theology become linked in the question.
Their concerns are often voiced this way: “Many Christians are putting too much emphasis on the Bible instead of Christ and the Holy Spirit.” “The Trinity is not Father, Son, and Holy Scripture.” And “Beware of making the Bible an idol.”
Over the past several months The Gospel Coalition has produced several videos answering the question, “Why is theology important. Isn’t Jesus enough?”
One is from Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
In this video, Moore makes the case that without theology we can’t even define Jesus, let alone put our faith in him.
Moore contends, “We’re either doing theology well or we’re doing theology poorly, but there is no situation, ever, where we’re just not doing theology at all.”
For example, to say “Jesus is enough”, according to Moore, is a theological statement.
He goes further saying devotional and spiritual battles are also theological issues.
He lists several examples: “The reason why I am so often downcast and have difficulty really believing that God loves me and that God accepts me is because I don’t feel the weight of the doctrine of justification.”
“The reason why I become discouraged when I think I’m not making the progress in my Christian life that I thought I would is because I have too high of expectations of sanctification or maybe I’m not pursuing sanctification because I have too low of expectations of what God expects of me.”
Others include prayer, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the fatherhood of God, the kingdom of God, worship, community and even the Bible itself.
He says those and many other questions about the Christian life are ultimately theological questions.
