Quote
... how do you wrestle with the early church creeds, like Chalcedon and even Nicene?


I don't. Faced with questions and error, churchians in those days felt compelled to form a complete body of doctrine and did the best they could under their particular circumstances. But they paid too little attention to Scripture and let church tradition bring too much of its incorporated paganism into their beliefs and practices.

Quote
Don't you think that is edifying to study?


Not if it doesn't square with the heart and spine of the Scriptures. I don't need any more edification in error than what I've already had to unlearn, reject, renounce, and escape.

[/quote]... you need to know more or less what other Christians believe if you are to relate to them intelligently.[/quote]

No, I don't. I need to know what the Scriptures say, and to know how to share that knowledge clearly enough to make it easily understandable with those who want to know, not to argue or debate it.



Edification is literally building up, not knocking down. The positive and true, clearly presented, is enough to reveal error to those who'll receive it. I'm not interested in trying to knock anyone else's error in the head. If he's ever going to be free of it, that freedom will come only with his own acknowledgement and rejection of his erroneous beliefs and loyalties.

Quote
I got to studying theology hard and heavy night and day and after about a year I cried out with Melancthon- "Deliver me from the fury of the theologians!"


Oh, how well I know! I'd been teaching theology for years -- long after I'd learned the futility of getting "the straight of the goods" from post-Biblical writings and had turned to intense, intensive study of the Bible itself -- growing ever more uneasy with the graduate-school tone of it, when I cried-out in anguish for the Lord to take me back to the basic simplicities of what He and His disciples had discussed on those dusty roads and sunny hillsides. In a voice just a few decibels shy of audible to the neighborhood, He told me to get out of the epistles, to go upstream above Acts, and listen to Jesus and only Jesus for the basics.



It was soon obvious that Jesus was laying foundational word about what's necessary to be loved by the Father, to be included among the forgiven, to enter into and reside forever in the Kingdom of God. So I started over, with those key passages as my foundation.



That's the beginning of the study that led eventually to Who Shall Enter ... ? in written form (after years of sharing it piece by piece in letters and lectures).

"Good enough" isn't.

Always take your responsibilities seriously but never yourself.