A Professor's Advice

Being that my double major in college was history and religion it seemed right that two of my favorite classes were Church History I and II. The professor for these classes happened to be one of my favorite professors.  He used to say that if you want to be intentional about continuing to learn about the history of Christianity and dig deeper into your own belief system you should choose a well known figure in church history and then study them for the rest of your life.

There were a couple criteria to consider:

• Is this person well known enough that there are books written about both their lives and their theology?
• Are there a good amount of primary source materials (specifically ones written/spoken by the person) available? 
• Do I generally agree with the basics of this person's theology?
• Were they alive long enough ago that their ideas have been tested by time?

These are all pretty loose guidelines, but the idea is that you don't pick some obscure theologian and read the 3 books about them that exist and end it there. So you want someone well known, preferably someone who has written books or a lot of preserved letters or who's sermons/lectures we have written copies of today. While you don't have to agree with everything they ever said, and odds are you won't, you want to choose someone who can inform your personal beliefs, not someone who you know had drastically different foundational beliefs from your own. He suggested choosing someone who is no longer living just because they are more historical and their effects can be traced through more time. 

Once you have chosen someone, you study them. Really study, not just read about them, but research them, study their lives, get to know them, dig into their theological writings to see why they believed what they did. It shouldn't be a daunting task, you don't need to check out every library book you can find on them at once because you can go at whatever pace you want at any given moment. However, because you'll ideally keep it up, after 15-20 years you will have studied this person quite a bit even if you only tackle one new book a year. 

The primary benefit of doing this over making it a goal to study major historical theologians in general is that rather than getting a broad overview of many, you will really be able to get into all the details of one person's life and you will be able to see how all their beliefs fit together into a systematic theology.

My professor's theologian of choice is Jonathan Edwards. He wrote his dissertation on him and has since published it: The Voice of Faith. As a professor and church historian, he obviously studies many other major figures in church history in more detail than most people, however he intentionally studies Edwards outside of the fact that it's part of his job. 

I've thought about this whole idea often and read about some different people to see who is out there who might interest me. I think I've finally settled on someone. C.S. Lewis. Certainly well known enough to have scores of books about him and he was also an author. His writings have always intrigued me though I haven't actually read many of them yet. He's also British and an Inkling which, you know, can never hurt.

I look forward to starting off, and I hope it turns out well enough that I'll continue to recommend the idea to people. 

If anyone is reading this...do you have any particular people who you enjoy reading about or that you have intentionally studied over the course of years?