Who Needs Theology?

An Invitation to the Study of God

Stanley J. Grenz, Roger E. Olson

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780830877720
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

To many Christians theology is something alien, overly intellectual and wholly unappealing. Even seminary students are known to balk at the prospect of a course on theology. Yet theology—most simply, the knowledge of God—is essential to the life and health of the church. In this short introduction, Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson, two theologians who care deeply about the witness of ordinary Christians and the ministry of the church, show what theology is, what tools theology uses, why every believer (advanced degrees or not) is a theologian, and how the theological enterprise can be productive and satisfying. Their clear, easily understood book is ideal for students, church study groups, and individual Christians who want to strengthen understanding, belief and commitment by coming to know God more fully.

1

Everyone Is a Theologian

An influential Christian Bible teacher and radio preacher once quipped, “Happy is the Christian who has never met a theologian!” What could he have meant? Misconceptions, stereotypes, myths and false impressions about theology abound—even within Christian communities. In fact, there seems to be a growing bias against theology and theologians in some Christian circles.

Every professional theologian knows and is frustrated by this prejudice against theology. One Sunday morning I (Roger) arrived to speak to an adult Sunday-school class on the topic “Twentieth-Century Theology” and was handed an anonymous letter addressed to me but sent to the church’s address. The writer had seen an advertisement for the series of talks on the church page of the city’s newspaper and had written out two pages of very intense objections to theology. Repeatedly the writer pitted prayer against theology and implied that theology is nothing but a poor substitute for a personal relationship with God!

Anonymous Theologians

The striking irony of the Bible teacher’s aphorism and the letter-writer’s diatribe is this: they are both theological in their own ways! Theology is any reflection on the ultimate questions of life that point toward God. Hence both the Bible teacher and the anonymous letter writer are theologians. We’ll call them “anonymous theologians,” because like most other people, they don’t realize that’s what they are.

No one who reflects on life’s ultimate questions can escape theology. And anyone who reflects on life’s ultimate questions—including questions about God and our relationship with God—is a theologian.

A young woman sat in my office sharing her dreams and aspirations. After taking a few courses in biblical and theological studies she had become intensely interested in exploring questions about God, salvation and Christian living. At a crucial turning point in the conversation she looked at me with some fear in her eyes and said, “You know, I think I’d like to be a theologian—if I can cut it!”

I detected that behind the fear was a misconception of theologian as an awesome creature who thinks deep and disturbing thoughts that very few people can understand. My response was meant to alleviate that anxiety. I said to her, “You already are a theologian!” I proceeded to explain that she might be called to make this aspect of her Christian existence—reflecting on life’s ultimate questions, including God—a career, but whether she did or not was irrelevant to her being a theologian.

A misconception is growing among Christians that a great gulf exists between “ordinary Christians” and “theologians.” For some that perceived gap creates fear; for others it creates suspicion and resentment. We want to close the gap by showing that everyone—especially every Christian—is a theologian and that every professional theologian is simply a Christian whose vocation is to do what all Christians do in some way: think and teach about God.

Throughout this book, then, we will be attempting to show two things: First, theology is inescapable for all thinking, reflecting Christians, and the difference between lay theologians and professional theologians is one of degree, not kind. Second, professional theologians and lay theologians (all reflective Christians of whatever profession) need one another. Professional theologians exist to serve the community of faith, not to dictate to it or lord over it intellectually. Lay theologians need professional theologians to give them the tools of biblical study, historical perspective and systematic articulation so that they can improve their own theologizing.

Theology comes from a combination of two Greek words: theos, which means “God,” and logos, which means “reason,” “wisdom” or “thought.” Literally, then, theology means “God-thought” or “reasoning about God.” Some dictionaries define it more formally and specifically as “the science of God,” but science in this sense simply means “reflection on something.” So at its most basic level theology is any thinking, reflecting or contemplating on the reality of God—even on the question of God.

The question of God is implied in all of life’s ultimate questions. Whenever and wherever a person reflects on the great “Why?” questions of life, at least indirect reflection on or toward God is involved. God is the horizon of all human wondering. This means that in amazing ways even popular authors, composers, playwrights, poets and creators of pop culture function as theologians.

One outstanding example is famous filmmaker and actor Woody Allen. Some of Allen’s films focus on psychology, but many of them deal with theology as well. In Crimes and Misdemeanors Allen explores the great question asked repeatedly by the Old Testament psalmist: “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?” While the explicit question of God may not arise often in this film, the theme of God is implicit within and beneath the agonizing question of “Why?” Why? Because, of course, if there is no God, then this is not an agonizing question at all! Why agonize over what may simply be a natural law—the so-called survival of the fittest? “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?” is an agonizing question only if God is the ultimate horizon of human existence. Then the question is ultimately a question about God: “Why does God allow such things to happen?” Woody Allen and other anonymous theologians of popular culture raise this question in surprising and often very helpful ways.

Worldviewish Theology

Every person must at some point in life face and wrestle with the questions that point to the ultimate question of God. Many people, admittedly, do not formulate the question of God explicitly. Nevertheless, even where God is ignored or denied, God remains the ultimate horizon—background and goal—against which all of life’s ultimate questions arise and to which they point. In this sense every thinking person is a theologian.

One way to begin grasping the universality of theology, then, is to see it as wondering and thinking about life’s ultimate questions. Wheaton College philosophy professor Arthur Holmes has labeled this most basic and universal kind of theologizing “worldviewish theology.” That is, from time immemorial ordinary people, men and women in the street and in the marketplace, as well as professional thinkers in their ivory towers, have pondered certain perennial questions of life.

In our less reflective moments perhaps many of us think some of these questions sound silly. For example, one modern philosopher has argued that the most basic question of all is “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Yet even this seemingly abstract and unanswerable question has a certain pull to it, for it is simply a larger expression of the more common question every thinking person asks once in a while: “Why am I here?” Other ultimate questions of life include “What am I to do with my existence?” “What is the truly ‘good life’?” and “Is there anything after death?”

The ultimate question of all life’s ultimate questions is the question of God, for this is the question to which all others point. If God—the “maker of heaven and earth”—exists, then all other questions take on new significance and receive possible answers where otherwise they seem only to lead into dead ends.

Worldviewish theology is common to every thinking person, for wondering about life’s ultimate questions constitutes part of our human existence. That in itself may be a significant pointer toward Someone beyond ourselves.

Christian Theology

But what about Christian theology? Doesn’t that go beyond theology in the vague, all-inclusive sense described above? Indeed it does. What might be a proper basic definition of Christian theology, then? One time-honored definition is “faith seeking understanding.” In spite of misconceptions to the contrary, Christian theology does not say “understand and then believe.” Rather, theology is seeking to understand with the intellect what the heart—a person’s central core of character—already believes and to which it is committed.

This definition of theology goes back at least to the great medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm was a monk, philosopher-theologian and archbishop of Canterbury during the twelfth century. He is famous for formulating what is supposed by many to be the perfect rational proof for the existence of God—the so-called ontological proof, in which he purported to demonstrate beyond any possible doubt that God must exist from the definition of God as “the being greater than which none can be conceived.”

Because of his writings, Anselm has gained the undeserved reputation of being a hard-core rationalist—one who refuses to believe anything that cannot be proved. In fact, however, Anselm wrote most of his great works, including his versions of the ontological argument for God’s existence, in the form of prayers! In one such prayer he made it absolutely clear that he was not attempting to prove God’s existence in order to believe but because he already believed. His motto was “Credo ut intelligam”—“I believe in order that I may understand.”

Faith seeking understanding, then, is another way of stating Anselm’s approach to theology. One begins with faith as ultimately a mysterious gift of grace, which, however, does not mean the person has no role in having it. But faith is more than simply choosing to believe something, and it is certainly more than a poor substitute for having good reasons. Faith is being grasped by someone—Someone!—who calls and claims one’s life.

This is how the Christian life begins—with grace and faith, not reason. Reason may play a role and be an instrument in God’s call, but one never becomes a Christian simply by reaching the end of a purely human chain of reasoning and concluding, “Well, I guess if I want to be reasonable I have to believe in God and Jesus Christ.” No, the genesis of authentic Christianity may include a process of reasoning, but it cannot be reduced to that. Faith is that mysterious element which involves personal conviction, an insight from somewhere else, a transformation of heart that inclines one toward God in a new way.

Connecting Worldviewish and Christian Theologies

How shall we connect these two types of theology—the one common to all thinking persons (worldviewish theology) and the other common to all Christians? It seems that life’s ultimate questions serve as signals or clues of transcendence; that is, they point upward to something or someone beyond finite, creaturely existence. We may call this process and practice of reflecting on life’s ultimate questions “humanity’s search for God.” It is a universal search that seems always to be frustrated unless the search turns around and becomes “God’s search for humankind.”

That is exactly what Christians believe happened in the history the Bible narrates. God began sending answers to the human search through historical events, through groups of people and their prophets, through inspired messages, and ultimately through God’s own coming in person to be with and among humans. Christians believe that this history and its narrative in the Bible provide the answers to life’s ultimate questions. But receiving them and recognizing them as God’s Word to humans is a work of God’s grace and a result of faith. In the end, acknowledging God is not merely a philosophical discovery, although a person may first become open to God and God’s Word through recognizing this connection between the answers found there and life’s ultimate and perennial questions.

So Christian theology goes beyond worldviewish theology by completing and fulfilling it. Every Christian, then, is not only a theologian in the Woody Allen sense of reflecting on life’s ultimate questions, but is also a Christian theologian in that he or she reflects on the meaning of God’s Word and how it illumines life, giving meaning and purpose to existence.

Authentic Christian faith always inclines one toward understanding the God who has claimed our lives. And to the extent that a Christian seeks to understand the meaning of faith for answering life’s ultimate questions or for simply answering basic questions about growing in relation to God, he or she is already a theologian.

You, then, are a Christian theologian. You may never have thought of yourself that way. And perhaps you have always thought of theology as something mysterious or even dangerous. Many Christians falsely equate theology with questioning God or questioning the authority of the Bible and then conclude that theology is a threat to faith. Perhaps you have labored under these misconceptions or know someone who has. Perhaps you have been warned by some well-meaning Christian to beware of the study of theology because it might destroy your faith.

We have experienced that discouraging warning from family and friends. Some of our spiritual mentors have tried to dissuade us from the study of theology because of the deeply ingrained bias that sees it as a substitute for faith. We are glad that we overcame those objections, because for us theology has been and is a liberating and enriching study that constantly brings us closer to God.

Levels of Theology in Practice

So far we have said that everyone is a theologian and that every Christian is or should be a Christian theologian. The ways in which we have defined theology, theologian and Christian theologian may seem to stack the cards in favor of our argument. We have not been playing word tricks; rather we have been trying to show that there are distinct levels of theology. All Christians may be theologians, but not all theologies are thereby made equal. We will explore the distinct types and levels of theology in the next chapter, but for now some anticipation of that discussion is in order.

To help elucidate the claim that everyone is a theologian, we will use some analogies. Would you buy it if we said that everyone is a chemist? a political scientist? a psychologist? a mathematician? Anyone who cooks using recipes is a chemist in some sense. Without a rudimentary—at least intuitive—knowledge of substances, measures, combinations and effects of temperatures, one could never cook anything.

Cooking, then, is perhaps the most basic form of lay chemistry. But suppose an amateur cook decides to improve his skills in order to please guests’ palates with culinary delights. The safest and surest path is to take a course and read a few books. A cook becomes a chef by developing his knowledge and skills of chemistry. Of course this is still a far cry from the science of chemistry as studied and practiced in university laboratories! Nevertheless, there is a certain continuity between the chefs practice of culinary arts and the chemist’s science.

Anyone who participates in a town meeting, school-board session or political party caucus is a political scientist. Suppose the untutored voter decides to become a school-board candidate. In the process she will necessarily sharpen and fine-tune her knowledge of and ability to practice political science. She may read a few good books on political theory and develop a philosophy of the “polis” (community) out of that. Of course this is a far cry from the highly theoretical and sometimes speculative discipline of political science itself as taught in universities. Nevertheless, there is a real continuity between the informed participant’s...