Do you agree or disagree with the following quotes? Why? When you read them, what was your first impression? What did they get right? What (if anything) did they get wrong?

Theology Quote 1

Theology is supernatural. It is thinking the thoughts of God. It is fire in the bones. It is the breath of God upon your lips. The light of God in our very soul. It is the most challenging and the most rewarding task a person can ever undertake. It is an attempt to know the Unknowable; to understand the Incomprehensible. While no one can fully do these things, we can know and understand some small portion. And those who have tasted this heavenly gift, long for more.

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One of the tools I use to aid me in writing my blog posts is Google Insights for Search. Among other things, this tool helps me recognize trends in what people are searching for online.

Today, as I was using this tool to help me pick a good blog post title for a future post in my Theology Introduction, I wanted to see how the search term “theology” was trending.

Here is what I found:
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As I blog through my seminary class notes, I suppose it would be a good idea to record the reading lists for the classes I took. While there is some benefit in seminary to sitting in class, and participating in class lectures, I found that most of what you learn in seminary comes from the books which are assigned for you to read.

This was especially true when the class professor would often just rehash or review what we had read in preparation for the class. In some of the classes, I took my class notes right in the books that were assigned because the professor basically just summarized the book content, and threw in a few little extra tidbits here and there.

It always seemed a little odd that I had to pay $300 per credit hour to take a class when 95% of the content of that class came from a $20 book.

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The Bible College and Seminaries I attended used the traditional divisions or categories of Systematic Theology. Most often, these divisions are as follows:

1. Bibliology – Study of the Bible
2. Theology Proper – Study of God
3. Anthropology – Study of Mankind
4. Christology – Study of Christ
5. Soteriology – Study of Salvation
6. Pneumatology – Study of Holy Spirit
7. Ecclesiology – Study of the Church
8. Eschatology – Study of End Times

Yes, these are some of (but not nearly all) the big words of Theology.

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When discussing theology, we must be aware that there are different ways within Christianity of approaching and organizing theology. Here are the most common:

Natural Theology

Knowledge about God which is derived primarily from nature. Natural theology usually places a heavy emphasis on reason and philosophy.

Biblical Theology

Knowledge about God which is derived primarily from the Bible. The structure will often be arranged around major events of people of Scripture (e.g., Theology of Early Israel, Theology of the Prophets, Theology in Psalms, Theology of Paul, etc.).

Historical Theology

Knowledge about God which is derived from studying the development of ideas over time. The structure will often be arranged around the major periods of history which brought changes to theology (e.g., Theology of the Early Church, Theology of the Imperial Church, Theology of the Middle Ages, Theology of the Enlightenment and Reformation, etc.).

Systematic Theology

Knowledge about God which attempts to incorporate and combine all of the theological sources above. The structures is often arranged around major topics or categories of ideas which theologians have agreed upon over the centuries (e.g., Bibliology, Christology, Pneumatology, Ecclesialogy, Soteriology, etc.).
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