Rupert’s Blog

For a bit of lighthearted fun, I came across this quiz at Paul’s blog, to test your theological worldview. So here are my results:

You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don’t think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

The description for my second place is:
You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God’s most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth.

Both descriptions are interesting - McLaren (yes that is him in the picture) is one of the authors I am reading and hugely enjoying at the moment, and Karl Barth has also been very influential from my theological study. Not sure the results totally accurate, but actually not a bad stab from a short quiz (and we all know what quizzes can be like …). All the categories are characterisations (I do have emerging sympathies, but don’t feel alienated from older forms of church), and the questions can be pretty ambiguous (I don’t think that “speaking in tongues is one of the most important parts of being saved”, but that doesn’t mean I am abandoning my charismatic roots).

I am surprised that classic liberal is so high as I don’t identify with the description at all (I guess there are some questions that I agree with that mark me high on this, but are ambiguous - “Jesus is a great moral teacher, whose example we should follow” - but that doesn’t mean he isn’t other things too …):

You are a classical liberal. You are sceptical about much of the historicity of the Bible, and the most important thing Jesus has done is to set us a good moral example that we are to follow. Doctrines like the trinity and the incarnation are speculative and not really important, and in the face of science and philosophy the surest way we can be certain about God is by our inner awareness of him. Discipleship is expressed by good moral behaviour, but inward religious feeling is most important.

So what is clear: I am not a fundamentalist, or in the way that this quiz is using the term, a reformed evangelical. Well it got that right!

Anyone else want to give this a go, and let us in on your results?