I’ve been spending some time with Wendy Widder’s commentary on Daniel and it looks like it’ll be one of the few books I finish reading this year. It’s been an educational experience for me and one thing that has changed for me theologically is that I can still appreciate apocalyptic literature even if it isn’t exactly specific.
I think we have to first off acknowledge that our peers and influential people form the theology that influences our lives. When we mature spiritually, we tend to expand our perspectives and see things differently. In my case, I felt that I was called to nursing and changed my profession at thirty-eight, which brought many new insights, especially because I was primarily in geriatric care, and we had at least ten deaths a year, sometimes more, and many patients that were very sick for a long time.
It meant that I had to incorporate these experiences into my faith, cope with the increase in empathy, and make ethical decisions with patients and family members, who often needed guidance. I was also working in a Catholic environment, which was different to the protestant church I came from, but my approach was welcomed by the priests, and our talks made sense. I widened my theological perspective and held devotional talks for staff together with a monk, who had a refreshing attitude.
I came to realise that there was a lot more going on in the New Testament texts I had been reading than I had appreciated, and even more in the Old Testament. The friendship with a philologist also shaped the way I looked at the Bible and probably of great importance, I started reading most of the books by Karen Armstrong but also people like Thomas Merton, Laurence Freeman, Thomas Moore, and Anthony de Mello – a large diversity, but with a monastic leaning. Of course, Karen Armstrong and Thomas Moore were no longer monastics, and held a critical light up to the idea of monasticism, but there were aspects that became important.
The historical importance of Constantine and his influence on the canon of the Bible, and the way the church dealt with dissenters, despite Jesus, strictly speaking, being a dissenter, made me “sober up” on the validity of what we had assumed about the Bible. A lecture by Pierre Grimes, showing that the Gospel of Mark followed the classical structure of a Greek tragedy was a new revelation. And if that were not enough, finding that the Old Testament had gone through several thorough phases of redaction, and collated many accounts to be found in surrounding cultures, gave me a new understanding of divine inspiration.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, a conviction finally grew in me, when together with a friend in Florida, we came to the conclusion, that Jesus was a non-dualist in the tradition of the prophets, many of the teachings of Jesus took on a new life, and the Oneness of God was revived in a way that we hadn’t expected. But this also has an effect on the exclusivity of Christianity, but not on the primacy of Jesus as the Christ in the occident. I propose that the orient has a related but different cultural heritage.
So you can see, an enormous amount changed theologically within the last forty years.
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I became a preterist. The “great tribulation” is past, not future. There are no modern “signs” that tell us that Jesus is coming back “any day now.”
I’m only a partial preterist, yet I would heartily agree. Personally, I think the best we can get to is saying “Jesus might come back in my lifetime.”
Would you say that a future return of Jesus is something we look for with hope, or would you consider this already fulfilled? Just curious 
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This is a great thread, with some great answers already. Here are three that were particularly impactful for me.
- Ardent Arminian → Confessionally Reformed
- Hardest of hardline YECs → Evolutionary Creationist
- disembodied heaven → embodied New Creation
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If the OP implies some sort of U-turn or dramatic change, I would have difficulty offering an example. However, I would say that my Theology is permanently adjusting and changing (I might even say evolving but that might be ironic)
Richard
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As we grow, we learn new information and that changes our understanding of the world. Growing as a believer, on the Way, is also a learning process. As we learn more, that changes our theological interpretations. The core of faith may stay the same but in less influential matters the interpretations change. That is at least my experience.
As a ‘baby’ in faith, I accepted anything told convincingly about the correct interpretation of the world and the Bible (or the interpretation that you should just believe what has been written, not interpret 
). When I got more information, I realized that everything told by honest believers was not the truth. That made me reject YEC teachings and some other interpretations. When I started to learn a bit more about the biblical sciptures and interpretations, that changed my theology even more. So, very many details in my theology has changed.
I guess a radical change happened when I surrendered to Lord Jesus (‘became a believer’, as some say). That changed my whole worldview and was the start of a new theology.
Being filled with the Holy Spirit was a second life-changing event. After that, the biblical scriptures became alive and I believe He has given me understanding of some, mostly minor open theological questions even directly, while studying the scriptures or praying.
A third major change happened after debating about matters related to baptism with some other believers. After lots of reading, thinking and prayer, I realized that they were more correct than me. It was a very difficult process for me but finally I was baptized and left the church where I had lived in from my birth (Lutheran).
I could list many details where my theology has changed or is under construction. Matters like ‘soul’, ‘hell’, events at the return of Jesus.
One of the latest changes in the way how I interpret biblical scriptures has come through understanding more of the depths related to the expression ‘in Christ’, used a lot by Paul. Even the view to how our salvation is related to the death and resurrection of Jesus changed.
One positive change has happened in my attitudes towards other believers. At the start, I saw all Catholic, Orthodox and members of many other denominations as not truly believers, people that needed to be evangelized, that needed to repent and be born again to be saved. Now I understand better that all believers in different denominations are brothers and sisters, and that believers may have rational reasons to interpret biblical scriptures in another way than I am used to interpret.
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These days the list keeps getting bigger and bigger…
The first big trigger was probably hearing Francis Collins on NPR and realizing that believing in evolution was actually okay for a Christian to do. After that, all bets were off! I stopped feeling scared about probing my long-held beliefs that I gained from growing up in fundamental Christianity. Previously, the biggest thing I changed my mind on was probably drinking alcohol but that was a vague issue with most people I knew in my age range. But it came crashing down when I met someone who was telling me about a powerful experience he had with Christ and the whole time he was drinking a 40 oz. These little moments of people just breaking my mind and me realizing that what the last generation had taught me wasn’t actually something I cared to hold onto.
These days I’m affirming gay people and questioning the existence of hell like it’s ain’t nothin’!
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The book “Torn” by Justin Lee is pretty good. It’s mostly a sort of autobiographical journey but towards the end a handful of verses are touched on for a theological argument.
For hell, I really enjoy the book “ the fire that consumes” by Edward Fudge and the podcast series with over 400 hours of debates and discussions on hell called “Rethinking Hell” hosted primarily by Chris Date.
Quite a journey!
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I’ve come to a much more informed understanding of Christian doctrine over the past 50 years, as a result of doing various courses and studying church history and the history of how various doctrines came about. One subject I’ve changed my mind on is Original Sin (on which I have previously contributed to biologos). Previously I accepted the traditional Augustinian idea that we “inherit” the sin of our first parents, held by the Western (but not Eastern) church for centuries. I now interpret “original sin” to mean the innate tendency of all people, and indeed all living things, to “look after number one” (as the saying goes) while being aware that this can cause harm to others.
There are various implications of this, for example the idea that baptism “washes away” our individual “original sin” goes out of the window (which doesn’t deny the importance of baptism).
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As regards the question of the authority of the Bible, it’s important to bear in mind that for a long time in the early church the New Testament did not exist, they relied on oral memory and the teaching of St. Paul and others. It was several centuries until the canon was finally determined in full. We also need to understand that the Bible is not simply a record of historical events like a modern history book. So biblical literalism, or fundamentalism, is not the right approach.
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This isn’t a sudden or dramatic change for me I don’t think - but more one that has grown on me over the years to where I hold it (and aspire to hold it) much more intensely now than I did:
and that is: the primacy of Love over everything else - and that being the key to knowing the God revealed by and in Christ. Not too many years ago I would have been much more shrill about my theologies, my understandings, so many other potentially good things on the list below - many of which are no doubt good and necessary in their proper place. And that place is always under the umbrella of and at the pleasure of Love. Never vice versa. Epistles and apostles situate all those things underneath Love. They rarely (never?) have love playing second fiddle to any of those other things. It’s the one of the few things I still tend to be shrill about. Or not … because shouting at others often isn’t a loving way to treat them! But when it is … then may I not hold back.
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That’s interesting about your changing view on original sin. I come from a Calvinist background and never had a reason to think twice about it. And then a few years ago I got interested in Tremper Longman’s Confronting OT Controversies, and saw that Augustine held the doctrine due to a misinterpreted Bible really through no fault of his own. Kind of ironic when it’s put that way.
However, there’s another irony in that Augustine may have been the first thinker to consider the problem of other minds, which is still a real problem in philosophy, even for the classical apologist. And I think that’s a real indicator of our fallen nature.
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You have to smile at the irony
Welcome
Richard
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Although I grew up a Christian, the epistles of John probably did more than anything else to convince me I had never been truly born again.
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The irony that he joined in May of ‘21? 
Lots has changed over the years, but no great big steps, just incremental changes. I had grown up in churches with dispensational rapture theology, but grew increasingly doubtful of it, eventually moving to a partial preterist belief, largely by reading N. T. Wright. I went from a fairly narrow view of Christianity, to enjoying worship with Christians in all sorts of denominations, as well as having the vague idea that Christianity itself is only an approximation of God and our relationship to him.
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