Module 1: Theology Podcast Series

Transcript

Part I: Thinking about Theology (podcast/audio)

What comes to mind when you think of theology? Do you think of young

people engaging questions of ultimate reality with relevance for today’s big

issues—from opioid crisis to global migration? Or do you think of old folks

disputing whether all are to be saved or only the chosen predestined and other

obscure topics? If the latter is your view, you’ve been influenced by modern

assumptions of theology that see it as preoccupied with empirically unverifiable

questions with no worldly relevance. In this view, there’s no point to studying

theology: You’d better stick to something useful—like science and business.

Do those assumptions accurately represent the study of theology?

Theo-humanism sees theology as the study of beliefs that emerge out of the

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crucible of human experience. Theology in this sense is grounded in lived realities,

which are both wholly human and productive of a religious

consciousness—awareness of our ultimate realities. However, circumstances

surrounding the rise of modern science made it seem theology is wholly

preoccupied with beliefs separate from—rather than in sync with—the workings

of our humanity. The upshot is that theology came to be viewed as alien to the

modern university and its pursuits of knowledge as grounded in empirical

realities. Some even saw theology as dehumanizing. In this view, theology, as the

study of the ways of God, requires us to apply our minds to things that are wholly

foreign to human experience.

Theo-humanism sees worth in discussing fine points of belief, even if

seemingly obscure at first. Very few of us give sufficient attention to what we

believe and why. Theology is a forum for growth in self-knowledge, and greater

awareness of our beliefs helps us to face our darker sides that make us quick to

anger and slow to kindness. However, for many, theology comes across as

obscure debate over doctrines removed from lived realities and from knowledge.

The history of theology is nothing if not a history of communities reflecting

on experiences in light of their deepest commitments. We see that in the Bible,

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which shows evolving understanding of a people’s covenant with God amidst

change. However, over the last centuries, religious scholars themselves, notably in

the wake of the sixteenth-century reformation in Europe, presented beliefs as a

set of fixed creeds that focused on the inner life alone as the mark of faith.

It’s a complex history with enduring consequences. Religiosity became a

function of belief—correct doctrine—even apart from realities beyond the inner

life that one experiences in the world. Religiosity became less about what we

experience as real and more about whether we believe that we’re saved. Such a

religiosity—and the corresponding theological focus on study of the correct creed

that’ll save you—created assumptions that faith and knowledge of lived realities

are separate and even mutually hostile. Modern developments in theology thus

made it seem right for the modern university to banish theology from its midst.