What is Faith? What is Theology?

What is Faith? What is Theology?

June 26, 2008

Theology is thoughtful faith. Faith and theology are inseparable. Theology is an inquiry into faith. The classical definition of theology is “faith seeking understanding”(St. Anselm: fides quaerns intellectum). Augustine also points to the integral relation of faith and theology, when he said: “I believe in order that I may understand.” Do you understand what you read? is a classical raised by an early evangelist to a pagan seeker (Acts 8:26ff). Prophet Isaiah laments over people who do not understand, who do not care to understand. Gospel writers say that Jesus also endorsed the prophet’s concern (Mark 4:12ff). The Deuteronomic Creed, Shema, exhorts people: Love your God with your whole heart, mind and spirit (Deut: 4:6). Understanding is the capacity of mind to comprehend. Theology is understanding what is believed. Without theology faith turns out to be fideism, an ideology without the possibility of correcting it. As Edward Schillebeeckx noted, Christian faith “causes us to think.” Faith keeps on seeking and asking, thus moves out of ideological blindness to responsible freedom. Human life ceases to be human when we no longer have the courage to ask questions that are necessary “to keep human life human” (Paul Lehmann in Ethics in a Christian Context). Without faith theology loses its cutting edge, its focus, its subject. The starting point of faith is not Cartesian self-consciousness (Des Cartes,” Cogito ergo sum,” I think, therefore, I am) but the awareness of the reality of God ( “God is, therefore, we are,” Daniel Migliore, Faith seeking Understang, 5). For Karl Barth: “Theology means taking rational trouble over the mystery…. If we are unwilling to take the trouble neither shall we know what we mean when we say that we are dealing with the mystery of God: (Church Dogmatics , 1/1:483, Cited by Migliore, p.8).