Doing Theology As If Your Life Depends on It

Moving from the modern academic conception of religious studies to the mystical "science of God and the blessed"

Henri Jules Ferdinand Bellery-Desfontaines, Thirst (source)

A habit every believer should acquire

It is easy enough to think that theology is only for a select few, an inner circle of the intellectually gifted — perhaps like astrophysics, except with a religious twist. But I agree with Frank Sheed, who says that theology is for everyone who seeks to understand what he believes, since that is just what it is: fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. In the opening chapters of his wonderful books Theology for Beginners and Theology and Sanity (the inspiration for the name of this Substack, by the way), Sheed says it would be as strange to not pursue knowledge of God as it would be to have a good friend but never try to get to know him any better.

Where the trouble arises is in the conception people have of what theology is. The modern research university model inherited from Prussia has made of it a specialized academic discipline, pursued more or less the way research on molluscs is pursued by zoologists: the object is dissected, put under a microscope, analyzed, and encyclopedically described.

I don’t deny, of course, that activities analogous to these take place in the discipline of theology. But they are not its essence, which is the application of the human mind, enlightened by the gift of faith, to God’s revelation of Himself in the three books with whose composition He is involved: the Book of Nature, of which He alone is the author; the Book of Scripture, of which He is the principal author and men are the secondary authors; and the Book of Liturgy, of which, for the most part, men are the authors, but working under the providential guidance of the Holy Spirit.¹ In short: theology is a fancy way of talking about making use of a believing mind to ponder divine revelation.

Taken in that way, everyone who believes is going to be a theologian, credentialed or not. The only question is whether one will do it well or poorly, deeply or superficially, habitually or haphazardly.

Then the question arises: What must I do in order to be a good theologian, to go deeply, and to make a habit of it?

Here is where a purely academic notion of theology would fall apart. In a typical academic discipline, you don’t have to believe in the existence of your subject, because you can see it or handle it; and you don’t have to surrender your life to your subject; you can keep aloof from it as an “objective observer.” With the word of God, however, it is quite otherwise. It only exists for faith; and it cannot be understood except by living it. One needs to be, like the recipient of Luke’s Gospel and Acts, a Theophilus or God-lover.