| You scored as Anselm. Anselm is the outstanding theologian of the medieval period.He sees man's primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read 'Cur Deus Homo?'
Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
Hmmm...I have a harder time with this one. I never really thought of myself as agreeing with Anselm that much. The Calvin and Edwards is funny; me, the Wesleyan/Arminian. Oh well, they must not have considered classic Wesleyanism, but the modified free-will versus classic free-grace version.
Have fun finding out whom you agree with...
1 comment:
The core teachings of John Calvin and those of J. Arminius are more compatible than many of their ostensible followers would have it. Fundamentally, sovreignty and personal responsibility are both quite solidly Biblical. A lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding how these things can both be true, but for that matter a lot of people have difficulty understanding the trinity. Well, actually, I contend that it is not the trinity, the threeness, that people have trouble with so much as the unity, the essential oneness. Nonetheless, just because people have difficulty getting their minds wrapped around something does not mean it isn't true. People's preconceived ideas get in the way sometimes of perfect understanding.
We must accept what God's word clearly teaches. If our understanding has trouble accommodating that, then there is a flaw in our understanding.
I consider myself a Calvinist, yet I have no trouble agreeing that the cross work of Christ was sufficient for all people and is effective for those who believe, that God allows his grace to be refused by those who are unwilling to believe, and several other tenets of traditional Arminianism. (There is one major tenet of Arminianism that I consider unbiblical and cannot support, but having taken the quiz you reference I do not recall seeing it addressed, perhaps because not all who call themselves Arminians are in agreement with it either, or perhaps because Arminius himself didn't teach it, but his followers (I don't recall at the moment which specific points of Arminianism were authentic to Arminius himself) or perhaps because he simply wasn't one of the theologians the quiz was built around.)
Incidentally, I too came out most heavily Anselm: 87% Anselm, 73% Calvin, 73% Edwards, 67% Luther, 60% Barth (this is disturbing; I was previously not aware Barth taught *anything* that was right), 47% Finney, 47% Schleiermacher, 33% Augustine, 27% Moltmann, and only 13% Tillich.
No doubt the problem is that the quiz is based on such a small number of statements that it cannot really be very representative. Apparently even Barth taught some things that I don't fully disagree with, but that does not imply that I really agree with 60% of everything he taught. I am less familiar with Anselm, but perhaps the quiz happened to ask about some of the best and most Biblical of his teachings.
Just because his most famous teaching (the ontological argument for the existence of God) is bogus does not mean he never taught anything that was correct. Indeed, we remember theologians sometimes for the things they taught that were unique, and base our assessment of their value on such, but in a sense that is exactly wrong. In theology, "unique" and especially "creative" are not the same kind of praise that they would be in some other disciplines. In fact, God takes a rather dim view of creative theology. We might do better to consider a theologian's work more valuable if it contains nothing unique or original whatsoever but only repeats the same truth that was once for all delivered to us in the scriptures.
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