Dear Fellow Theologians,

We are excited that you have joined us today as we continue on our theological journey through the pages of the Bible, and we encourage you to stick with us as we all strive daily to better understand the Word of God.

By virtue of your engagement on this platform, we are able to quickly acknowledge that you are  our fellow theologian, because a theologian to us is simply a person who is engaged in trying to better understand the existence and nature of God.

It matters not whether you are religious or secular, formally or self-educated, male or female, black, white, green or yellow, young or old, if you woke up this morning with a pulse, we welcome you. Whether you are sitting in a cell doing time for a crime – it’s okay – not okay that you are there but rather that you are here. Gay and hiding in a closet? or straight and singing from the top of the building? No problem – you are here! Let it be known that the only thing that matters to us in this theological space is our mutual interest in the Word of God. 

Religion

From a religious standpoint, our theology is based on the Holy Bible, and there are reasons for this.  The Word of God as it is written by the prophets and the apostles in the old and new testaments is the Word to which I’ve been called.  I am not here to judge you or your calling, as every man has differences in his path to God. It will be foolhardy of me to think that you should be called exactly I was, so even if you are a believer in a different religious book, you are more than welcome to participate in our portal. In fact, we are happy to have you.

For those who may also be agnostic, we hope that you will find a way to make this space your theological home. Our portal offers you a warm welcome, along with all who have been ostracized from formal religious groups for one reason or another. Indeed we urge you to engage fully with us and are hopeful that we will all benefit mutually from it.

Education

With respect to personal educational background, we know that theologians are normally thought of as biblical scholars or persons who hold theological degrees and/or studied at seminaries, but at theologians.com we beg to differ a bit. Indeed, we wholeheartedly welcome the views of scholars and experts to our portal, but at the same time we are quick to point out that strong academic credentials are in no way a requirement to explore the Bible.  It is our suspicion that Jesus Christ, our lord and savior, was probably not even college educated, and yet is acknowledged by many, even the most scholarly among us, to be the greatest theologian of all time.

For the record, I myself do not hold any accredited academic degree in theology, neither have I studied theology formally in any seminary.  Truthfully, I am just a guy, who has been sitting in spare time at home for just about 40 years, consuming the pages of the Bible. R C Sproul, the renowned theologian who unlike me, was a formally educated theologian, once explained in his book “Everyone’s a theologian”, that we are in fact all theologians, surmising that when we take time to think about God, we are unequivocally engaging in theology.

Race

As a black man, born in the Caribbean and the great grandson of a slave brought from the shores of Africa to the West Indies, removing the putrid chains of slavery even after its abolition almost 200 years ago in 1834,  still remains a daily struggle.  The pain of this human tragedy seems embedded in the DNA of the children of all those who were subjected to this unthinkable evil.  While the whips are no longer cracking on our backs as they once did on the backs of our fore parents when they rowed across the middle passage, the stench and the darkness of these ships of shame still stifles our ability to breathe fresh air in the Caribbean sun, but there is great solace in the thought that not even the pitfalls of the passage could  purge that theological thirst that was rooted in our veins, well before we began the dreaded journey across that ocean of hell. This thirst, contrary to popular belief, is not the product unconscionable bible-toting slave owners bullying us into submission. To my mind, it was stamped in our DNA long before the ships ever set sail from the African coast.

I firmly believe, fellow theologians, that we as human beings, despite our evil nature, were engineered from the beginning to look to a higher power, whether we were born as a slave or as a freeman.  Interestingly, the evidence now seems to point to this engineering starting since the beginning, maybe even in that Garden or at the Big Bang! And so, despite the trauma of the passage, I am still here, and you are still there, and together we are on a far better journey.  This time hopefully, not by force, or by greed or by hate, or by race, but by faith in our quest to find the answers to the mysteries of theology, we go forward daily.

Gender

For many years we were taught that woman was made from man.  Somehow this seemed like the only verse in the bible that mattered to many a chauvinist, and it was conveniently interpreted as a divine sign that man should rule the world while omen cleaned the house. Yet a closer look at the scripture paints a different picture, and shows God saying in 1 Cor 11:12 “For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.” Shots fired guys – we all came from our mothers’ wombs. Maybe women should now apply the same rationale and claim their superiority since we all came from them. Bless my mom, however, that she is not the retaliatory type, but perhaps it is because she has been a true theologian all her life, rooted in the Word of God, as best as she knows, and this I am sure predates even my gestation in her womb.

Age

The Bible tells us that from an early age, Jesus Christ himself was already a theologian, not only because He was the son of God but also because he was studying the scriptures diligently as a boy.  The clear evidence of this comes in In Luke 2:49 when he responded to a question from his parents with the answer “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Need we say more?

Theologians.com, therefore, is an all-inclusive network. There are over 8 billion of us on the planet and it would be great if every one of us was fully engaged in one way or another in better understanding the nature of God.  There are many voices of edification out there waiting to be heard and many open minds waiting to absorb, and we are hoping to be able to both serve and benefit in one way or another right here on this platform.  Our goal is to enlighten and to be enlightened.  We understand that the Bible can be overwhelming, and as someone once said, “God is bigger than big” so we have decided to try to break things down in multiple ways.  One of those ways is with our theological podcast “One Verse at a time” where we explore one of the 31,102 verses of the bible each day of the week and encourage our listeners to go to our website to read and share their thoughts with the world on the featured verse.

Our mission is exciting, and we are now locked, loaded and ready to go. May the grace of our lord Jesus Christ inspire the theology that we are sharing on theologians.com

Your fellow theologian in Christ,

Gary Pantin