Being a genuine Christian theologian starts at the point that we become Christians. The same confession made to become a Christian, is the same confession that remains as the ground of our theological witnesses as Christians. The fact of our sin never leaves us. We are constantly sinning, and the person who says otherwise “is a liar and the truth is not in 
them.” But the Good News, indeed, is that we have an Advocate with the Father; we have a Savior, and His name is Jesus Christ! This is the ground of all Christian theologizing; the only other ground is unbelief. And as Jesus chides the Pharisees of in the Gospel of John, it is seeking the praise of others, rather than God’s praise, that is the core of unbelief. And so, for the true Christian theologian they will always remember that they sin daily, and thus are in need, afresh anew, moment-by-moment, of the fresh in-breath of the Holy Spirit as He brings Christ’s power of resurrection into our lives as the reversal of what would intend to keep us in belief; of what would intend to makes us atheologians rather than genuine theologians (of the cross). Eberhard Jüngel says it this way:
8. Unbelief — inability to speak, and our cry for deliverance
One of the problems of being sinners turned in on ourselves is that we lose our ability to speak our faith. Our guilt makes us dumb. Instead of talking to God, we talk about him. Of course, we can hide our speechlessness behind vapid chattering. The fact remains that we have nothing to say about God. By refusing to utter the one thing we have to says as sinners, our confession of sin, we have nothing at all to say before God or about God. By remaining silent at the wrong time, we are forced to remain completely silent. We can find no words that are true. The sin of unbelief is matched by sinners’ inability to speak before God.
Such speechlessness is the passive dimension of that active urge to relationlessness of which we spoke. It comes home to roost when sinners find themselves unable to speak. And with that inability, sinners suffer the whole lack of substance and insecurity of their sin. They suffer it while alive in the form of a shadow constantly cast over them by death. And they suffer it in death because the silencing of sinners in death is final.
Sinners can only be released from this state of speechlessness by the power of the resurrection. They can only be saved by the vitalizing Spirit of Truth and the Word of Truth bringing forgiveness from guilt. For the Spirit of Truth testifies and the Word of Truth proclaims the encouraging news of forgiveness and blotting out of sins, so that where sin increases, the grace of God abounds all the more (Rom. 5:20b), so much so that it sets sinners free to confess their sin.
A confession of sin of this sort will, of course, not be satisfied with what Peter said: ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man’ (Luke 5:8). Sinners could not have a more foolish reaction. The abundance of divine grace towards the excess of our human need and guilt rather suggests that we pray: ‘Lord, come in to us, for we are sinners!’ Where such a prayer is prayed, in a world full of death and darkness the Christian church emerges, drawing its life from God’s compassion and sharing it with others.
Such a prayer is the only way. It is, in fact, the way which has been given to us to participate in the overcoming of sin, to work together with the grace of God as συνεργοί θεοῦ. Given this one, this unique way, we cannot be synergistic enough. By crying out for forgiveness of sins, for deliverance from evil, for that matchless fellowship with God the Redeemer, sinners are doing the only thing they can to become justified sinners. To cry out for forgiveness of sins and deliverance from evil, despite the apparent simplicity of such an action, is the one great thing that human beings can do to contribute to their justification by faith alone.[1]
Much to consider, but for our purposes I want to hone in on one aspect that Juengal touches upon: viz., the idea that if the base of our theologizing is not the crux of the Gospel itself, insofar that that crux is ‘He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him,’ then what other theologians speak of is indeed only idle chatter. When the theologian attempts to think God from a theological methodology rooted in speculation, as scholasticism does for example, all said theologian is doing is pretending to talk about God rather than with God. As Juengal rightly identifies, the genuine theologian is one who dialogues with God; the genuine theologian is the one who prays out loud for others to hear; the genuine theologian is the one who, as they speak to God, and as He speaks Himself in Christ back to them by the Spirit, proclaims this Good News con-versation with others. Speculative theologians, and theologies don’t, indeed, cannot do this.
You see, all of this comes back, really, to a theological anthropology; or lack thereof. If a person operates from a Thomist intellectualist anthropology, one wherein the intellect is understood as the definitive component of what it means to be human—indeed, after the notion that God is the Big Brain in the sky—all that the retainer of such anthropology can do is attempt to imagine God, as if God is corollary with their own creatednesss; albeit, by analogy (think, analogia entis). Juengal rightly notes, that such theologizing is only straw ready to be burned at the Bema judgment seat of Christ.
May we be theologians of the cross, rather than theologians of glory. May we do theology as we speak to theology proper in Jesus Christ by the breath of the Holy Spirit. May we repudiate vain speculations and imaginations about God, as if such speculations could be anything other than the self-projections, and thus self-impositions upon a cipher-god that we attempt to force into the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ. There is no power in speculative theology, only in the concrete theology pulsating through the veins and flesh of the risen Christ. It is here, at the Right Hand of the Father where genuine Christian theology is done; Christ, living to make intercession for those who have confessed their sin, and from this ground the theologian articulates a theology that is worth shouting from the rooftops!
[1] Eberhard Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (UK: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 145-46.