Scholarship vs. Experience

Joe Stanley (jstanley@dialus.com)
Tue, 24 Feb 1998 19:23:43 -0800


Perhaps I should clarify my position by saying that I am not anti
anything except anti-anti-education.  It was not my intention to
discredit any Godly ministers that did not attend a Bible College.  It
was my sole intent to encourage my fellow Oneness Believers to strive
for a proper theological education so that we may express our faith
within a proper theological framework.

Someone compared a Bible College graduate to their pastor and said that
the graduate could not preach his way out of a paper bag.  I hope that
he was comparing two preachers with equal experience.  If the college
graduate had little or no preaching experience, and his pastor has 20 or
30 years, then it is an unfair comparison.  Experience does count, and
it was once said that it takes 20 years to make a preacher.  At this
rate, I still have 6 years to go.  Also, some people have natural
oratorical skills while some of us must struggle to aquire the skill. 
The idea that all you have to do is be annointed, and God takes over is
wrong.  God uses us as we are, our knowledge, skills, experience and
etc.

In order for our Movement to be properly understood and recognized we
must be able to express our faith theologically.  Do we, as a Movement,
accept the Aristotelian categories as a framework to express our faith? 
Or do we reject the approach of Systematics, and turn instead to
Biblical Theology?  Do we do our Heremeneutics (exegesis) the same way
that Evangelicals do?  If not, how do our methods differ, and what is
our justification for doing it differently?  Does our Theology of the
Church differ from that of the broader Evangelical Community, if so how?

These questions cannot be answered by one individual.  It requires the
community of believers to arrive at a consensus.  And yet, for these
questions to be properly discussed, the issues must be properly
understood.

A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of
understanding will acquire wise counsel, Proverbs 1:5 (NAS) 

Should I also quote Provbers 1:7?

Bro. Joe