Name Two Favorite Christian Theologians

More from AAR…

Brian, a friend of mine from this summer’s China travels, will interview today for a job at an apparently very Christian college somewhere in the heartland of America. In a time and place where every interview counts, he finds himself scrambling to be a bit more Christian in the last few hours. Another friend, who interviewed with this college a couple years ago, gave him a bit of advice:

Know of and be able to talk about your two favorite Christian theologians.

Now if we knew the exact church that runs the school, we might be able to be a bit sneaky and find a couple of their big names, look ’em up on wikipedia, and say something intelligent (hopefully) in the interview. But all we really know is that they’re not Catholic. In fact, on a funnier note, apparently they took the fact that they have some Catholic students as a sign of their diversity (welcome to the heartland of America).

Last night it came to me, my own two favorite Christian theologians (feel free to post yours in the comments):

Blaise Pascal: well known for his “wager” for the belief in God. Based on his sturdy logic, I cannot doubt that, were I a fan of gambling, I too would bet on God.
St. Thomas Aquinas: I’m actually not sure how big he is with Protestants, but I appreciate him for his via negativa or apophatic path to “knowing” God. His process is one of clearing away worldly concepts of God in order to approach a more direct, perhaps mystical, knowledge of the divine. Generally speaking, anything we could say about God in the affirmative is more a reflection of our own desires and ignorance than anything else.

So, with Pascal we find that perhaps we should believe in God, and with Aquinas we find that we should quit talking about him!

Next question.

(note: this is in jest. There are plenty of Christian theologians that I adore, from Justin Martyr to Bonhoeffer to St. Ignatius to Thomas Merton and more. Even those who found other reasons for God than Pascal and refused to stop talking about Him can be found amongst my long list of favorites.)