In this video, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson shows that humility is the starting point of all true learning, especially in theology, where the more we know about God, the more we see how little we understand.
Why is humility crucial in theological studies and how can we cultivate it? I think the first thing I would say is that humility is actually essential in the study of any discipline in the sense that we really have no basically creative disciplines. Even engineers who are making things and IT people who are creating things are actually employing what is already been given by God. So I would say in every single discipline, the Christian will learn humility in the sense that he realizes the first thing he or she needs to do is to listen to the subject that is being studied. And when it comes to theology, since the subject that's being studied is God Himself, there is no subject that would create greater humility because we are not God. We have no control over God. We are, according to Scripture, simply His miniature image bearers. And I think as soon as we realize that He is the subject of our study, that itself should produce humility.
Second thing that I think is probably important here is that when we are thinking about God and His revelation, both in creation and in Scripture in a way it doesn’t really matter which of these two modes of revelation we’re reflecting on. They are so vast that a person who doesn’t sense themselves humbled before that is never really going to get to stage one in understanding who God is either in creation or in the revelation that’s given to us in Scripture. So it seems to me to be a pretty obvious first principle, especially in theology, but in any discipline, to understand that as you get to know something, one of the things you’ll get to know is how little you actually know about it and that itself engenders humility.
I have a dear friend, he was an elder in church I served and a professor of neuroanatomy. He wrote a huge textbook on the brain. He very kindly gave me a copy. I didn’t understand a great deal of it, but I was very struck that in his introduction he said he hoped that this study of the brain hundreds of pages long would be of service to students, to professors, to practitioners, to medical practitioners, to help them to understand a little better the very little we know about the human brain. And I kind of admire that because his discipline is not theology, but he’s dealing with what in a sense a very small part of the human anatomy, that the human is a very small part physically of the cosmos. And he’s saying honestly, we really don’t understand all that much. And he’s got 350 pages about what we do understand.
And I’ve often thought that is a perfect model of the humility that characterizes the student in any discipline so that the discipline itself should engender the humility. And I think as I know for myself as I’m not sure I’m growing in humility, but I’m certainly growing in the sense that the more I know, the more I realize how little I actually know. And if that doesn't humble me, I don’t know what will.