What's the Point of Theology?: Wisdom, Wellbeing and Wonder

Introduction

I had never heard of theology when I discovered Christianity as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford back in 1971. All that changed three years later as I was reading C. S. Lewis’s essay ‘Is theology poetry?’¹ Lewis (1898–1963) gave me a fleeting glimpse of something tantalizingly distant yet eminently desirable, like a shimmering Tuscan landscape. I experienced a sense of wonder as I pondered his elegant prose, feeling that I was being drawn into a world beyond any I knew.

Yet most of my Christian friends at Oxford at the time saw theology as pointless speculation irrelevant to the life of faith. Others, particularly those studying philosophy, argued that theology was simply meaningless. They’d read A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic (1936), and believed that it justified their secular common-sense rationalism. Ayer set out a ‘principle of verification’, which asserted that a statement is meaningful only if it can be verified. Since Ayer (1910–89) held the Wykeham Chair of Logic at the University of Oxford throughout my years as an undergraduate, it was no surprise that his ideas dominated student philosophical debate. Theology, it seemed, was doomed to an inevitable intellectual extinction.

My decision to switch from the natural sciences to theology in the mid-1970s thus seemed unwise, perhaps even mad, to most of my Oxford friends. But that was fifty years ago and things have moved on. Ayer’s ‘principle of verification’ is now seen as unworkable and self-contradictory. As the atheist philosopher Julian Baggini (b. 1968) points out, Ayers’s discredited views are now echoed mainly in the simplistic and superficial certainties of New Atheist writers such as Richard Dawkins (b. 1941), who urge us to forget about God, stop worrying and instead just enjoy life.²

Dawkins’s assurance that science can answer all of life’s questions has lost its initial credibility, now being seen as an exercise in intellectual circularity presupposing its own conclusions in order to confirm them. Most people now prefer to keep an open mind on the matter, having a vague sense that there might be ‘something there’ and wondering what more religious souls think.

I hope this short book will be helpful to those of you who are curious and puzzled about theology, perhaps struggling to understand the apparent confidence with which it speaks about things you consider to be tentative and uncertain. I hope it will also engage readers who attend church yet feel suspicious and sceptical about the subject. Let me be clear: many intelligent and reflective people, both religious and secular, have deep misgivings about theology! Is it pointless nonsense, like debating how many angels can dance on a pinhead? Is it a distraction from more important aspects of faith, such as the beauty of worship, the joy of praise and the satisfaction of serving our communities? Why is it expressed in such inaccessible technical vocabulary, so far from the simple yet rich language of the New Testament?

As I come to the end of my career as a professor of theology at the University of Oxford, I would like to share something of what I’ve learned. I may be wrong in some of my judgements! But the concerns expressed above (and others) will be taken seriously as I explore what theology is really all about – why it remains important for those inside and beyond the community of faith, the difference it can make to the ways in which Christians think and live, and how it fits into the wider human quest for wisdom, wellbeing and wonder.

Alister McGrath

Part 1

THEOLOGY: SOME OPENING REFLECTIONS

1

Discovering theology: seeing things in a new way

Theology is pointless. It doesn’t do anything useful. Practical ministry is what really matters. Why waste time teaching future Christian leaders about theology when they could instead feast on the latest theories of church growth, congregational management and counselling skills?

As I know from many conversations, these views are widespread in denominational bureaucracies. I think they are understandable, though I can’t help feeling that they’ve not been properly thought through. Nobody wants to devote time and resources to doing something pointless. But what if theology sustains the vision that lies at the heart of the Christian faith? What if theology has a unique and necessary role to play in keeping this vision alive and thus energizing and sustaining the life, worship and outreach of the Church?

Such questions are relevant not only to Christianity but also to any group, institution or organization with a strong sense of identity and mission. How can we maintain continuity with the past while making sure that we connect up with today’s issues? Some organizations die because what initially inspired them has become irrelevant. But more often, they fade away because they have lost sight of their founding vision and can’t work out how to recover and refresh it.

Churches that fail to take theology seriously risk turning their backs on a rich and invaluable heritage and diminishing their capacity to engage the hearts and captivate the imaginations of a new generation. I’ll be exploring these themes throughout this book, drawing on leading theologians from the past and present to argue that theology is essential to the life, ministry and witness of the Christian churches, and to their engagement with wider culture.

Let’s focus here on why theology matters for individuals and for churches. I’ve suggested that it sets out the vision which lies at the heart of the Christian faith and underlies the worship and life of Christian communities. Theology unpacks the core themes of faith. It tells us how these were developed, illustrates how they may be explained and preached and shows us the difference they make to real life. Above all, theology sets out the Christian understanding of how we can achieve wisdom, enjoy wellbeing and nurture a sense of wonder.

The Christian gospel is like a watering hole in the midst of a desert that attracts people because it offers something Christians believe is both liberating and essential. Christ’s words to the Samaritan woman when they met at Jacob’s well illustrate this point perfectly:

Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4.13–14)

Theology sustains and expresses this understanding of what a fulfilled life looks like and how it comes about through the person and work of Christ.

Theology thus captures and puts into words the moral, intellectual and spiritual vision that is the heartbeat of the Christian faith – a way of seeing things that delights and overwhelms us and leads to worship and adoration rather than mere understanding. It wrestles with the question of how Christians can hope to express this defining and compelling vision in words. It helps us to explain what Christianity is fundamentally about and enables us to convey the difference that such an understanding makes to the way in which we comprehend our world and live within it. Theology helps preachers to open up the riches of the Christian faith and apologists to explain and defend its leading themes to a wider culture.

It’s important that people outside the Christian community get a sense of theology’s driving and empowering vision even if they don’t share it. I used to be a Marxist. While I’ve left Marxism behind, I still have a good appreciation of its world view and implications. I no longer think that it’s right, but I can see why it’s important. You don’t need to agree with something to understand it, and understanding it will mean that you’re more clued up about how people try to make sense of our complicated world.

Institutions, including churches, must continually ask themselves these questions: why are we here? What sparked us into existence and empowers us today? In his important study of how institutional visions are developed, articulated and put into practice, Daniel Pekarsky emphasizes the importance of a ‘well-conceived vision’, which he defines as ‘an informing idea that is shared, clear and compelling.’¹ Such visions can easily go out of date due to social and cultural change. Christianity, however, rests on a theological vision statement focusing on God and humanity: on the one hand, we have a loving and personal God who journeys with us through life; on the other, a broken, wounded and damaged humanity in need of love, restoration and hope.

These themes must be articulated in a meaningful way for each new generation. We do not need to make Christianity relevant, but the task of both theologian and preacher is to unpack and unfold the riches of this vision of faith using language, images, stories and concepts that connect with our audience.

There is always a hermeneutical (interpretative) element to a vision statement, simply because its application will vary from one historical period and cultural location to another. We shall explore this long theological tradition of interpreting the gospel – without compromising its identity – to help us meet new challenges and situations. The Swiss Protestant theologian Emil Brunner (1889–1966) sums things up neatly: ‘The gospel remains the same, but our understanding of the gospel must ever be won anew.’² Theology both preserves an identity-giving and life-enhancing vision and provides a toolkit for ensuring that churches can engage with the new challenges they face.

For Christians, I would argue, theology is like a treasure chest: it holds the riches of our faith and invites us to reflect on faith’s value and purpose. Without theology, Christian churches are simply custodians of memories and habits that might once have been meaningful, but now seem outdated and pointless to outsiders – and to some insiders. Theology allows these memories and habits to be revitalized. It provides a bridge between past and present, allowing the riches of the past to connect with the present and transform it. The Christian gospel may be the same for all times and places but theology, while being rooted in the wisdom of the past, must free itself from the particularities of a bygone age and articulate the good news in new situations.

So where shall we start? Let’s begin by thinking about how Christianity enables us to see ourselves, Christ and the world as they truly are. Helpfully, we’ll leave behind deficient and inadequate understandings of reality as we embrace a rich, satisfying and transformative vision.

Theology as a new way of seeing things

When I was a teenager, I enjoyed reading the American writer Henry Miller (1891–1980), largely because many of his works explore how the process of travelling changes people by opening their eyes to new realities. A particular line from his colourful depiction of Big Sur on the Californian coastline caught my attention: ‘One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.’³

Miller’s neat one-liner came to mean a lot more to me as I began to study the New Testament closely in the original Greek in January 1972, beginning with the Gospel of Mark. I had only just discovered Christianity and wanted to immerse myself in a text that would help me to understand more about it. I was intrigued by the first words spoken by Christ in Mark’s narrative: ‘The time has come, he said. the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1.15). The Greek word metanoia (usually translated as ‘repentance’) actually has a much deeper range of meaning that includes, but is not limited to, this single idea. Metanoia concerns a change in our mindset leading to a transformed vision.

The world did not change when I moved from atheism to Christianity. Yet I changed. Christianity gave me a lens through which everything came into sharper focus and, as a result, I saw the world in a new and very different light. The way I viewed it altered. I then had to work out how I fitted into this new world and how I ought to live on the basis of my new insights. No longer did I see the world as ‘nature’; I saw it as God’s creation. No longer did I see people as socioeconomic units; I saw them as individuals bearing the image of God.

A good example of viewing things differently is