Theology is Not a Dirty Word!

Lots of people in the church are uncomfortable with the word “theology”. Perhaps that’s because theology has often been seen as something that the big names do: Karl Barth, Thomas Aquinas, Pope Benedict VI, John Calvin, John Wesley… But theology is actually how we as the people of God are called to think through who we are, what we are on about and where God is calling us.

The word “theology” can be very simply broken down into 2 Greek roots—theos meaning “God”; and logos meaning “study” or “words about”. In simple terms, theology is God-talk. But good theology is not just any talk about God. It is talk about God that understands the Christian story and thinks about the nature of God within what has already been discerned by the church over 2 millenia.

Did you notice that the Greek root logos meaning study or words about is also one of the key titles for Jesus in the Scriptures? In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we read: “In the beginning was the Word…” The Greek word here is logos. Now one of the significant features of the early Christian idea of logos and the Hebrew idea of words is that words are never just words, they are always active. In the first chapter of the book of Genesis, we read: “In the beginning, God said… and it was…” When God speaks, things happen. Words are not just words. They shape who we are and what we are becoming. Notice how the first chapter of John connects with the first chapter of Genesis and the idea of God’s creative action in the world continuing in Jesus.

Thinking about who we are as the people of God and working as the body of Christ is not simply about our emotional intuitions or even about our grand visions. It is about trying to understand who we are as the community of the Spirit, God’s called out, called forth, called together people in the light of a continuing understanding of the nature of God and God’s action in the world.

Yes, it means we need to use our brains as well as our bodies; but then aren’t our brains part of our bodies; and isn’t all that we have been created to be a gift from God.

Yes, it does mean that we need to listen to the tradition and learn from it as well as seeking to discover what the good news of Jesus Christ has to say in our time. Both are important!

Just like the connection between the first chapter of Genesis and the first chapter of John, we need to be looking for the continuity of God’s creative action in our world; and we can only do that by recognising where God has been at work in our past.
Theology is not a dirty word. It helps us understand who we are in God, who God calls us to be and how God is still working creatively in and through us and the world around us.