Why all the versions? Theologians need something to do other than writing commentaries.
Have you heard the saying “A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian?” The Eastern Orthodox recognize only three: John the Beloved Disciple, Gregory of Nazianzus, a fourth century bishop who played a vital role through his writings in preserving the doctrine of the Trinity, particularly the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, against the Arians, who denied Jesus was God incarnate, the Pneumatomacchians, who denied that the Holy Spirit was also God, a divine person of the Trinity coequal to God the Father and the only begotten Son and Word of God, Christ our savior, and against the Apollinarians, who denied that Jesus Christ had a human soul, but rather argued that he was animated by the Word, which is a grave error because the apostolic Christian faith declares Jesus Christ to be fully God and fully Man, without change, confusion or separation. And lastly, they recognize Symeon the New Theologian, a 12th century monk who focused on practicing and documenting the unceasing prayer of the heart which had previously been observed by the Desert Fathers, and later, the monks at St. Catharine’s Monastery in Sinai and Mar Sabbas Monastery in Judea. But they go on to say that anyone who has experiential knowledge of God is a theologian, not just the three they formally acknowledge, and argue that a small child or an intellectually disabled man could be a theologian.
I am really attracted to this concept, because the word theology means knowledge of God, and in the case of a great many theologians, one is left wondering how such people could know anything about God, no matter how well versed they are in the different aspects of theological study, which include pastoral care, preaching, church history, Patristics, the study of cults and heresies, the study of worship and of liturgical worship (my favorite area), dogmatic theology, systemic theology, and the study and interpretation of scripture. When ministers such as myself get our degree, it is usually an MDiv, a Masters in Divinity, and there is also a DDiv mainly used for people who want to teach in the seminary, and theologians get a DTh, but since Middle English gave way to Modern English in the 15th century, a period of time lasting through the 19th century or even the early 20th century when Theologians were called Divines, not to suggest they were deities, but rather that they had studied divine things. Even today, there is an important group of high church Anglican theologians from the early 17th century known as the Caroline Divines. Another good alternative to the word theologian would be scholar of divinity (or perhaps scholar of theology). I would feel more comfortable if we used some of that terminology, but to avoid confusion I still say theologian, even in regards to professors of religions other than Christianity who by definition have rejected knowledge of the true God.
Also, not wishing to be pedantic, but the scriptures are translated by scholars in the ancient languages they are being translated from; chiefly Hebrew, “Biblical Aramaic” and Koine Greek, but also other languages such as Syriac Aramaic, Coptic (the Christianized version of Demotic Egyptian, a distant descendant of the language of the Pharaohs, with important scriptural and historical texts existing in both the Bohairic and extinct Sahidic dialects), Ge’ez (the Semitic language of ancient Ethiopia, which has developed into Amharic, the vernacular language of most Ethiopians; several important scriptural texts were found intact only in Ge’ez, in the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Bible manuscripts containing the Broad Canon of Old Testament writings), Classical Armenian, and of course Latin, which is widely known and understood even today; a number of Syriac manuscripts from the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the Indian Orthodox Church, and the Church of the East, and the Maronites were translated into Latin and donated to the Vatican by members of the Assemani family of Maronite Catholics, over several generations, and given the relative lack of people knowledgeable in the Syriac language, and the fact that some of the original manuscripts have been ... misplaced, these Latin translations provide an easy way to access these texts.
I do apologize for this long and detailed reply to a simple joke on your part, but I sensed a frustration with some people who call themselves theologians, which I also share. As an evangelical, Ancient-Future, liturgical and traditional Congregationalist minister who once had the misfortune of being with the United Church of Christ (formerly the Congregational Church) as it departed more and more from the apostolic faith and the scriptural teachings of our Lord and His apostles regarding the sanctity of life and sexual morality, I am deeply frustrated by a number of so-called theologians who have enabled the decline of what was a great church, intimately involved in the history of the US and Britain, intimately involved in the abolition of slavery, the promotion of missionary campaigns around the world, and also, in Britain especially, at the largest Congregational church, The King’s Weigh House, beautiful liturgical worship, using a prayer book entitled Devotional Services composed by Rev. John Hunter in the late Victorian and Edwardian era, which is structurally similar to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, but features incredibly beautiful language, more poetic I think than the BCP, as prized as the Anglican liturgy is.
But what most Congregational parishes used to stand for, they now reject, due to the influence of liberation theology, womanist theology, liberal theology, and other modern movements which disregard both the Bible and the ancient traditions of Christianity. There are only a few traditional Congregational churches left, including one in Boston, the Park Street Church, the last of the 18th century churches in Boston that follows the traditional values of our denomination, and has not converted to the United Church of Christ (or to Unitarianism; in the 1780s there erupted a schism and many Congregational churches rejected Christianity and became Unitarian, including what was then our main seminary, the Harvard Divinity School, whose recent leaders have been at the forefront of promoting false Gnostic texts like the “Gospel of Judas” as somehow representing the Historical Jesus. Indeed, the president of Harvard Divinity School was so keen to acquire more texts of this sort, that she was defrauded by a conman who created a very good, but discernable, forgery, of a Secret Gospel of Mark.
The United Church of Christ is also the fastest shrinking denomination in the US, outpacing the Episcopal Church when it comes to losing members. People want traditional, scriptural, evangelical churches, and millenials increasingly favor traditional hymns, church music and liturgical worship, which suits me; I may be Gen X but I love liturgy and the study of it.
As evangelists, we do have one theologian to thank, I think, and that is Rev. John Wesley, the Anglican priest who with his brother Charles Wesley, who wrote some of the most beautiful Protestant hymns, such as Christ The Lord Is Risen Today, founded Methodism, without leaving the Anglican church, and the Methodist church in turn did a great deal to promote the idea of evangelical piety, particularly in the US and Canada. What a pity all the Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian churches in your country are now part of the United Church of Canada; Toronto, as you probably know, was at one time nicknamed Methodist Rome.
