Theology is simply “what we believe about God” on any subject. Yes, there is a more complex answer, but that’s the simple one. Some will say that Christian theology is essentially “what the Bible teaches us about God on any subject” or rather, “What God wants to teach us on any given subject, as written in the Bible.” That helps us even more. The Bible, or Scripture, is the ultimate rule regarding the subject of theology, and it is interesting how many people either divorce theology from the Bible, or try to manipulate the words of the Bible to match their particular agenda.
The next step is to ask, “Well, how can we really understand what the Bible teaches us?” Isn’t it complicated? Or some will say that Bible-understanding and application of it to our lives is really up to the individual. That latter statement is dangerous, very dangerous. However, the scary part is, that approach to theology is practiced by many Christian churches every Sunday!
Here is where theology can help us. And I mean historical theology – what the greatest Christian thinkers have taught us about theology. Jude tells us the Christian faith was “. . . once for all delivered to the saints,” and that was written even before the New Testament was compiled!
The next step is to understand how to understand the whole of theology, from historical teachings to our present day reading of the Bible. That’s the subject of another post!
