When Good Things Become Idols: On Theological Loyalty, Criticism, and the Human Heart

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None of the theologians who shaped how I read Scripture is above honest criticism. Neither is any ministry I have recommended, any position I have spent years teaching, or any book I keep within reach. I owe real debts to all of them: men and women who untangled questions that once looked hopeless, ministries whose work I have pointed others toward, convictions I have studied long enough to hold with some force. And then there are the books. Good grief, the books.

That list is also my list of what I am likeliest to defend badly. How I react when one of those things is criticized says more about my heart than the criticism says about the thing criticized, and I doubt I am alone in that.

When Appreciation Becomes Allegiance

Gratitude toward those who labor in the Word is commanded (1 Thess. 5:12–13; Heb. 13:7), and nothing here retracts it. The trouble starts when gratitude hardens into allegiance, and the moment to watch for the hardening is the moment someone criticizes a person I respect.

What do I do first? I can listen, weigh the evidence, and ask whether the objection has merit. Or I can start building a defense before I have understood the objection. I can answer what was actually said, or I can speculate about the critic's motives, character, and theological pedigree, which is a way of declining to answer at all.

One test sorts out most of this. Suppose the identical criticism, in the identical words, had been aimed at a theologian I already disliked. Would I weigh it the same way? Most of us know the answer, at least some of the time.

Holding convictions firmly is not the failure. We fail when we become so invested in particular people, ministries, or systems that criticism of them feels like an attack on us. At that point something has gone awry. A teacher who gave us years of faithful instruction is owed honest engagement with his work, and that includes its weakest arguments.

What Is Idolatry, Anyway?

We picture carved images and pagan temples, and Scripture starts there: the first two commandments forbid other gods and images made for worship (Exod. 20:3–6). The category is wider. Idolatry puts something created in the place of the trust and ultimate allegiance that belong to God alone. Paul says fallen humanity exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature instead of the Creator (Rom. 1:25), and he calls greed idolatry (Col. 3:5), which requires no statue and no ritual. Ezekiel's elders sat down before the prophet to consult Yahweh with idols already set up in their hearts (Ezek. 14:1–3). The outward business of consulting Yahweh was in order, and the heart was not.

Calvin said that man's heart, so to speak, is "a perpetual factory of idols."¹ The raw material need not be wood. Often it is something good that God has actually used for our benefit, which is why we trust it so readily and why the elevation can be so gradual.

A theologian goes from respected teacher to virtually untouchable. A ministry stops being a useful instrument of Christian service and becomes a reputation to be defended at almost any cost. A system that began as a carefully reasoned synthesis of biblical teaching becomes the standard by which every interpretation is judged, when it should remain a formulation continually accountable to Scripture. A cherished book can take the same place without anyone noticing, simply by being the one thing we have stopped examining.

None of these is idolatrous in itself. What matters is what happens in the heart, and one sign, though not the only one, is a shrinking tolerance for honest criticism of the thing we love.

Paul, Apollos, and the Problem of Theological Celebrity

The Corinthians had their own version of this. Believers there were sorting themselves by favorite teacher: some claimed Paul, others Apollos, others Cephas (1 Cor. 1:12). None of the three was a false teacher. Paul, Apollos, and Peter were servants of Christ, and the damage came from the allegiance forming around them.

Paul answers the slogans with three questions. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into Paul's name? (1 Cor. 1:13). The questions assume that only one name has a claim on that kind of loyalty. When he turns to what Apollos and Paul actually are, the answer deflates: servants through whom the Corinthians believed. One planted, another watered, and God gave the growth (1 Cor. 3:5–7). He closes by forbidding boasting in men, since all things belong to the Corinthians and the Corinthians belong to Christ (1 Cor. 3:21–23).

That reaches well past first-century Corinth. We can honor a teacher's considerable contributions without pretending he cannot err, and we can disagree with him on something that matters without discarding everything good he taught. The second discipline is increasingly hard for some Christians to keep.

No Human Teacher Is Beyond Correction

The Bereans examined the Scriptures daily to see whether what Paul preached was true, and Luke calls them more noble-minded than the Thessalonians for it (Acts 17:11). They were checking an apostle. In Galatians 2:11–14 Paul tells how he confronted Peter in public because Peter's conduct contradicted the truth of the gospel. Peter had walked with Jesus and seen the risen Lord, and he still needed correcting. He took it, too: years later he calls Paul "our beloved brother" (2 Pet. 3:15). If apostolic office did not put Peter's conduct beyond criticism, I see no reason to grant that immunity to a favorite theologian or ministry.

Not every criticism deserves equal weight. Some are poorly informed, some malicious, some simply false, and some mistake a real disagreement for a refutation. We owe no one automatic agreement, and defending a man against slander is right. We do owe a truthful and fair answer, which rules out trading substantive engagement for a verdict on the critic's character.

Conviction Without Uncritical Allegiance

None of this argues for doctrinal minimalism or a standing uncertainty that never settles anything. Scripture tells us to contend for the faith (Jude 3) and to hold fast to sound doctrine and guard what has been entrusted to us (Titus 1:9; 2 Tim. 1:13–14). Some truths deserve vigorous defense, and a few deserve a man's life.

The line that matters runs between defending biblical truth and defending every formulation of it that a favorite theologian or tradition has produced. The first is fidelity to revelation. The second can become a way of protecting our theological investments. A working test: can I give the exegetical case for this position without quoting the man who taught it to me?

In The Craft of Systematic Theology I call the temptation system-idolatry: treating the doctrinal structure as an end in itself instead of as a vehicle for the knowledge of God that issues in adoration.² It is an occupational hazard. Those of us who spend years on conceptual precision, careful arguments, and the elegance of our formulations can slowly lose sight of the living God they were built to describe.

The remedy is theology as serious as before, conducted with its end in view. Paul closes Romans 9–11, one of the most demanding stretches of argument in the New Testament, with no victory lap over his reasoning, only a doxology to the unsearchable wisdom of God (Rom. 11:33–36). Theology should end in worship. Part of worshiping God rightly is refusing to treat our understanding of Him as infallible.

The Humility to Be Corrected

Unity Without Uniformity keeps returning to one point: conviction and charity are not rivals, and the church needs both. Theological disagreement should produce mutual understanding, correction, and growth, and too often it becomes a contest in intellectual superiority.³

Gavin Ortlund names the obstacle. "The greatest impediment to theological triage," he writes, "is not a lack of theological skill or savvy but a lack of humility."⁴ A person can be enormously learned and unteachable at the same time. Ortlund adds that pursuing the church's unity does not mean we stop caring about theology, only that our love of theology should never exceed our love of real people.

Proverbs ties loving knowledge to loving correction (12:1) and says the wise man gains from rebuke (9:8–9). James tells us to be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger (1:19). Those texts describe a heart ready to receive truth even when it arrives as an unwelcome correction.

This bears hardest on those of us who teach. If I cannot admit a weakness in my own argument, reconsider a position I have defended, or concede that a theologian I admire got something wrong, I should ask why. Am I persuaded by the evidence, or invested in being right?

I have argued elsewhere that a theological system incapable of self-correction has mistaken rigidity for stability. Revising a conclusion because better exegesis compels it does not show that the method has failed. It shows the method working.⁵ The examples in the Craft run from John MacArthur's retraction of his incarnational-sonship view to Thomas Oden's departure from academic liberalism beginning in 1979, and each is a teacher revising in the open.

None of this makes every doctrine provisional. It keeps the infallibility of revelation distinct from the fallibility of our interpretations. And if we believe Scripture is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16–17), we can hardly refuse to be corrected by it.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Ourselves

The next time someone criticizes a theologian, ministry, book, or position I cherish, I want to check my first response against a handful of questions. Have I understood the criticism, or only recognized that it threatens something I love? Have I looked at the evidence? Am I answering the argument or the motive I suspect behind it? Have I mistaken disagreement for hostility? Could I grant a legitimate point without feeling that my whole appreciation for the person is on trial?

These are not comfortable questions, and self-examination rarely is. James describes the wisdom from above as pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, and full of mercy (James 3:17). Conviction does not excuse the absence of those qualities, and zeal for truth gives no license to treat people unfairly. We can be firm without being dismissive, and we can defend a man without pretending he cannot err.

Keeping Good Things in Their Proper Place

I have no intention of abandoning the theologians I admire, the ministries I appreciate, the books I cherish, or the convictions I have spent years forming, and I should not. They have enriched my Christian life and my understanding of Scripture. They have to stay where they belong. Theologians are servants. Ministries are instruments. Books are resources, and only one of them is God's Word. A theological system, however carefully built, remains a human attempt to understand and state what God has revealed. Christ alone is Lord of the church, and Scripture is the standard by which every theological claim is tested, including my favorite theologian's reading of it.

No tradition is immune to this: not the Calvinist or the Arminian, the Baptist or the Presbyterian, the Catholic or the Orthodox. Neither is the trained theologian or the enthusiastic layperson, and I am not.

The danger runs highest where our affections are strongest. When a good thing becomes untouchable, it is worth asking whether it has quietly become more than good, and whether, without quite realizing it, we have begun giving it something that belongs to God alone.

Endnotes

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 1.11.8.
J. Neil Daniels, The Craft of Systematic Theology: An Exegetical and Sequential Blueprint for Building a Doctrinal System (Arlington, VA: Sacra Doctrina, 2026), 66 (§2.5).
J. Neil Daniels, Unity Without Uniformity: Balancing Conviction and Charity (N.p.: Amazon Kindle Direct, 2024), 123–25. See chap. 15, "Arguing and Debating as a Christian."
Gavin Ortlund, Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 36–37, 147.
Daniels, Craft of Systematic Theology, 260–61 (§9.6, "When the Theologian Has Been Wrong: The Procedure of Doctrinal Revision").