Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Theology in Tension?

I had to do it! I had to take the theological worldview test. I must say, I was fairly pleased with the result.



You scored as Reformed Evangelical. You are a Reformed Evangelical. You take the Bible very seriously because it is God's Word. You most likely hold to TULIP and are sceptical about the possibilities of universal atonement or resistible grace. The most important thing the Church can do is make sure people hear how they can go to heaven when they die.

Reformed Evangelical

93%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

71%

Fundamentalist

64%

Neo orthodox

54%

Emergent/Postmodern

46%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

43%

Classical Liberal

32%

Roman Catholic

25%

Modern Liberal

4%

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com


I thought that it was strange, though, that my two highest scores were "Reformed Evangelical" and "Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan." Those aren't two strains of thought that normally go together. I don't really know how to explain that. It could be that there were some questions that I misinterpreted or something. I have a feeling that there were some questions that used phrases I would be more familiar with had I been raised in a different denomination, but since I wasn't I interpreted them in my own way. Or it could have been the way I answered questions like the one about spirituality being more important than dogmatics. There wasn't a good way to answer that.

It's not surprising that I scored high in "Fundamentalist." I am very dogmatic about the truth of the Scriptures. I was also surprised by how highly "Neo-Orthodox" ranked. I did say that I thought Barth was an important theologian, but that was mainly because he was/is popular. He's someone you need to learn if you're going to study theology seriously. I don't agree with him on many issues, but he still qualifies as "important" or "influential." I don't consider myself particularly "Emergent" or "Postmodern." In fact, I actively shun the title "postmodern", but I do think the Emergent guys have some criticisms of the evangelical church that are spot on. With the Charismatic thing, I am not a cessationist, so that's probably why I scored so high in that.

I do believe in the importance of social action, so maybe that's why my "liberal" score was so high. I don't know why I even scored anything in "Roman Catholic". When you say the Pope is not the head of the Church that should automatically take you to zero, I think.

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