One of the points Struans makes in his interesting series on theology is that talking about God is something we all do here; I wondered how much talking about him we do elsewhere?  One of the dangers with academic theology (and by that I am not saying it should not be there, or criticising it) is that it can lead to the perception that you need a PhD in apologetics to get to Heaven. One of the reasons for the great attractiveness of Christianity to its original adherents was that the Good News could be understood by all, and so radical was it that it arrested your attention, especially if you were on the losing end of the lottery of fate.

It is easy to forget how hierarchical the Roman Empire was. It wasn’t just that women were second-class subjects, it was that most folk were. Society tapered to a pretty narrow pyramid of wealth, power and privilege. Those who were not Roman citizens were barbarians; even those who were, were unevenly divided between those with money and those with not enough. Jewish society was equally stratified, and again, most folk were outside the charmed circle of wealth and power. Christianity said none of this mattered – it didn’t matter if you were slave or free, male or female, Gentile or Jew. Christianity didn’t, of course, abolish these distinctions, it simply said that they did not matter in God’s eyes because we are all his children.

We get some idea from Acts and from the Pauline epistles as to the sort of talking about God that went on back then.  It seems to have been a dialogue of joy and amazement. The burden of sin had been lifted from these people, and they were happy. Whatever their lives brought them paled into second place to God’s love. That love formed them into a community bound by loyalty to Jesus and a common sense of being ‘saved’. But such God talk quickly required another sort of God talk.

We are saved, wonderful! In that case, if I am guaranteed everlasting life because I receive the Lord Jesus, I can do as I like. Paul of Tarsus was having none of that, and how right he was, because that sort of belief arises in every generation of Christians. Theologians did not begin a debate about ‘once saved. always saved’, ordinary Christians of the first generation did so, and that meant Paul had to write about it.

We are saved, wonderful!  In that case all I need to do is to say I have faith in the Lord Jesus. What’s that? You think I should be doing work with the poor and the dispossessed? You heretic you, you are saying I need to do works to be saved, when the tradition we receive says all I need is to believe in Jesus. Paul of Tarsus was having none of that. Theologians did not begin a debate about faith and works, ordinary Christians of the first generation did so.

We are saved, wonderful!  Jesus is the Son of God and died and rose to save me. He sits at the right hand of God. That’s clear enough, he is related to God by being his adopted son, as we shall be. What’s that?  You are saying that the Apostle John says He was with God in the beginning and is God? Well, that’s what John says, and if you take passages from elsewhere, it is clear that Jesus is God. How can that be when there is one God not three? Again, it was not theologians who started talking about what became known as the Trinity, it was ordinary Christians. Indeed we’re told that in Constantinople in the age of Nestorius and Alexandria in the age of Athanasius, folk talked about such things at the bakery and in the market.

Now that’s God talk, and here we are, after nearly two thousand years, still at it. Why? Because God is infinite and we are finite, and that message of hope still floods our hearts and leads us to want to know more – and being mankind, we want to discuss it. The Holy Spirit leads us on still.