Day 259 (Theological Norm)

I discovered recently what my theological norm is. A theological norm is what a person uses as a basis for everything that they believe when it comes to God, faith, the afterlife, spirituality, what-have-you. Many people use their personal experience as their theological norm. A lot of people use the figure of Jesus as revealed in the Scriptures.

I'm not exactly sure when my theological norm developed, because now that I have discovered what it is, I realize that I have been using the same theological norm for quite some time. I like to call my theological norm, "The Omni's"

The omni's are the traits that I believe that God has, and these are pretty standard when it comes to traditional Christian thought.

I believe that God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-benevolent and eternal. If these words look strange to you, let me break it down. I believe that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere, all good and has existed and will exist for all time. If any statement about God adheres to all of these categories, then I can accept it. If the statement does not, then I reject it. That is how a theological norm functions.

Considering the fact that we have spent so much of our theology class discussing the theological norms of different theologians that we have been looking at, it's surprising to me that I didn't stop to think about what my theological norm was. In fact, I discovered mine quite by accident while talking theology with one of my classmates.

So, have you thought about your theological norm???