My brain hurts

Tomas a Kempis has some sobering words for the reformed thinker in me:

"What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? " - (Imitation of Christ, Chapter 1)

"Every perfection in this life has some imperfection mixed with it and no learning of ours is without some darkness. Humble knowledge of self is a surer path to God than the ardent pursuit of learning. Not that learning is to be considered evil, or knowledge, which is good in itself and so ordained by God; but a clean conscience and virtuous life ought always to be preferred. Many often err and accomplish little or nothing because they try to become learned rather than to live well. " - (Imitation of Christ, Chapter 3)

Thomas was reacting to the scholastics and their increasing insistence on splitting theological hairs and making subtle and nuanced arguments about topics that, often, had little to do with a saving knowledge of God. In the reformed faith, we tend to have the same comfort with religious discourse and the same discomfort with dirty, messy, hard life. The Bible becomes a textbook where can be found correct chronologies and generations and doctrines. Conversely, it is robbed of it's power, ceases to convict, no longer challenges for change. It does not lose these things intrinsically, it simply is never considered in the mind that only reads the scripture as a history book. The text, rather than its author, becomes the desire of the reader.