Following Jesus is not intellectually demanding, and Jesus places a straightforward and easy path for us (Matthew 11:28-30).
- Theology, however, is simply a branch of “applied philosophy” toward knowing God.
- The higher the theological thought, the closer the study compares to raw philosophy.
- Many theologians won’t agree that their views are philosophical in nature, but that’s a product of their indoctrination.
We all need some form of theology.
- Without the logical reasoning of philosophy, we’d have nothing but sentiment.
- Personality and culture will make each theology a little different, but God takes care of His people (Matthew 18:12-14).
- “Theology”, as a word, has two possible perspectives, which profoundly affects how far we’ll need it:
- Self-defined understanding, as we perceive and conclude it in our minds.
- God-given understanding, since we have at least a limited ability to come to understanding of God’s wisdom ourselves (2 Timothy 2:7).
- Often, without extra thought, we often believe theological ideals that sit within worship music:
Most Christians who go to college must read very dense books by intelligent people called “systematic theology”.
- These books are in the spirit of the ancient Greek tradition, memorialized by books such as Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”.
- Theology is a God-focused branch of philosophy, and a systematic theology will unpack absolutely every domain of Christian understanding possible on a subject.
Unless someone legitimately enjoys the deep exploration of thought, systematic theology is an utter waste of time.
- Within a few minutes of an illiterate person’s soul leaving their body, they’ll have vastly more accuracy about this life and the next than the wisest possible theologian could ever hope to discover.
There is also a more subtle risk to philosophical inquiry:
- Philosophy does have its uses, but philosophy is the exercise of the mind.
- Within the mind, logic is inherently exclusive (i.e., divides things out, separates for a purpose), while our emotions tend to unite unrelated elements.
- Emotions can definitely be exclusive, but they are the primary thing that makes connections across seemingly unrelated elements. For example, we use the language “cold-hearted” as an association with the temperature of cold, but that is a strictly patterned association across feelings.
- Logic can merge ideas across a larger domain, but it does it at the exclusion of other aspects. For example, saying, “the man is in a windowless room, so he is not outside, meaning he can’t see the sun right now” is also indicating “a man can only be in one place at a time”, “a room is not outside”, “the sun only shines through rooms with windows”, and so on. This can often omit edge cases (e.g., if the room had a gaping hole in it).
- Excessive use of a rational discipline like philosophy risks dividing something that shouldn’t be divided, or should have been divided in a different way.
- Philosophers often have to use many words to get their extremely in-depth thoughts across, and many of them aren’t aware of how much the conclusions they’re deriving are simply experimentation versus articulating facts. This risk becomes proportionally more likely as the words increase.
- Philosophers and theologians are seeking mysteries (and often finding them), but can’t prove whether those mysteries are precisely true, since there’s no real way to scientifically test spiritual beings or God Himself.
- The clear answer to find wisdom in all the talk requires the hybridization of both logic (which separates) and feelings (which unite), which requires living a well-lived life then trusting your “gut”. It takes decades, involves living a lifestyle that doesn’t involve sitting quietly for long periods, and will never generate full certainty.
- Therefore, the smartest people in the world have difficulties with holistically knowing things. Their quest for truth is often the quest for meaning through thorough understanding until they find certainty.
This page, therefore, is my essays constructed into a conventional systematic theology, but for normal people who understand that intellectual understanding doesn’t define the fullness of what we can understand:
- Bibliology (with addendum)
- The Bible is God’s word, which requires trusting that God has been faithful in preserving it.
- Christology
- Jesus is the Son, as part of a Holy Trinity. It requires trusting that the Bible was translated correctly.
- Jesus was fully God, and became fully man, then fully died, and was resurrected by the Father.
- Paterology – see Chapter 2
- We know the Father through the Son, though the Bible has more to say on who the Father is.
- Pneumatology – see Chapter 2
- The Holy Spirit works to fulfill the Father’s plans.
- Demonology
- The devil seeks to destroy and subvert God’s plans.
- Ecclesiology (with addendum)
- The Church is the group of people sent to fulfill God’s plan.
- Harmatiology
- We’ve all sinned more than we realize, and Christ’s blood is sufficient to save us.
- We are also, in response to that, responsible to strive to not sin again, assisted by the Holy Spirit.
- Mariology
- Jesus’ mother was a normal human, which shows God’s grace by using her to bear the Son.
- Angelology – see Chapter 5
- God has angels commissioned to do His work, similarly to how we have robotics to do factory work.
- Missiology
- We’re responsible to share the Gospel with the rest of the world.
- Soteriology
- Salvation comes only in accepting Jesus’ sacrifice as sufficient for our sins.
- Teleology
- God has a grand plan across all time and space, which we can’t fully comprehend until later.
- Theological Anthropology
- God made people for a relationship with Him.
- Eschatology (with addendum)
- Jesus is coming back, and will finish what He started.
- Orthopraxy
- We must practice a daily walk to be more like Jesus through discipline towards love.
It’s probably more than necessary, but it’s a good start (1 Corinthians 2:1-2).