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Know Your Theology
In order to be in dialogue with nonbelievers and other Christians it is important that we are able to identify the various aspects of our faith. The following pages have been developed to help you identify your personal theology.
Theology is "faith seeking understanding." -Anselm
What is faith?
My favorite definition of faith comes from the
classic film Miracle on 34th Street.
In the final minutes of the movie, young Natalie Wood,
who throughout the film wrestled with her disbelief in
Santa Claus, is told by Maureen O'Hara that she
should have "faith." O'Hara defines faith as: "believing
in something even when common sense tells you not to."
A prime example of faith comes from the more recent film
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
in which Harrison Ford is faced with three challenges
to reaching his prize: the Holy Grail (the cup of Christ).
The final challenge is a "Leap from the Lion's Head"
in which Ford is poised at the edge of a seemingly
bottomless abyss with no identifiable means to cross
over it. He quickly idenitifies it as a "leap of
faith" and hates that it has come to this.
Realizing his son's trivialization of matters of faith,
Sean Connery, portraying Ford's father, tells him,
"You must believe, boy." Ford acknowledges
what he must do and, in true Hollywood style,
lifts his leg high into the air, takes a deep breath,
closes his eyes, and takes a step...
Indiana Jones (left) takes his first steps across the "invisible bridge" to reach the Holy Grail.
Faith is the bridge that takes us from the
seen to the unseen.
What is theology?
For thousands of years humans haved looked into the
night sky and studied the moon. We've wondered how
it stays up there, where its light comes from, what
it is made of, and a number of other questions. From
earth we've tried to map it--but there's a whole half
of the moon that can't even be seen from earth! Some
speculated that the moon was made of green cheese,
others thought it was mud, and others said solid rock.
Science fiction stories like Jules Verne's From the
Earth to the Moon (1865) and H.G. Wells' The First Men
in the Moon (1901) used scientific reasoning and
a touch of imagination to create fictious journeys to
the moon. But it wasn't until 1969 when Neil Armstrong
walked on the moon that we knew anything for certain--but
despite the moon visits, there are still things we don't
know about our nearest celestial neighbor.
In a similar respect, theology can be considered
speculation about God. We try to map the divine
through observation, human reasoning, revelation,
and historical understanding. Theology then is our
earth-grounded attempt to understand the Divine
(Anselm's "Faith seeking understanding"). Though
humans could see the moon and could map its contours,
we really couldn't "know" it until we went there.
Theology likewise is an attempt to know the unknowable.
Your theological approach determines how you seek
your personal understanding about God.
For a more academic definition of theology see
"Theology"
on Britannica.com
Why is it important to know your theology?
Have you ever tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle
without looking at the picture on the box? It might
not be that hard with a 25 or 50 piece puzzle, but it
is near to impossible with 1000 and 2000 piece puzzles.
And there are many different strategies for putting a
puzzle together. Some people begin by sorting the pieces
into categories based on color (their probable location
in the puzzle). Others build the boarder first. Still
others just dive-in and attempt to randomly match pieces.
Knowing what theology or theologies you are opperating
from is like having a plan for putting a puzzle together.
The theology itself can offer starting points for deeper
understanding. You may have very clear feelings on some
things and are still undecided on others; theology may
help sort out your thoughts (like sorting out the like-colored
pieces of the puzzle) so that you can begin to put them
in order.
As the Anselm quote at the top of the page implies,
theology is the process (or processes) you choose to
better understand your faith. And theology gives us a
common language by which to describe our faith. We
will better understand the faith of others after we
first understand our own.
C.S. Lewis once wrote, "If you can't turn your faith
into the vernacular, than either you don't understand
it or you don't believe it."
Theology Quiz
- Discover your own theology by answering a series of simple faith questions.
Types of Theologies
- Quiz answers and explainations of the major theologies.
Denominational Beliefs
- Discover what other denominations believe.
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