1. What is theology?

  1. "The Queen of the Sciences"

    1. The "Ivory Tower"
    2. Angels dancing in the heads of pins
    3. Where angels and philosophers dare not tread...
    4. Three orthodox theologians:
      1. St. John the Divine
      2. St. Gregory Nazianzus
      3. St. Symeon "the New"
    5. The class in seminary which reduces future clergy to tears and depression. But, contrary to all the rumors, does not cause them to lose their faith, that's biblical studies...

  2. God Talk

    3. Br. Scot's quick definition: "Any talk about God, how God relates to the world and/or how the world relates to God."

    1. Explicit, overt, reflective theology: the job of the professional theologian and every Christian
    2. Implicit, covert, ad-hoc theology: we all do it. Most of of do it quite badly. Our job is to move from the hidden theology buried in our subconscious and move to reflective, careful theology.

  3. So, why do theology?

    "Have no other gods before Me." - God

    "The mind is a factory for the creation of idols." - John Calvin

    We all have gods, we can either choose the gods we follow, or we can just take whatever is on offer or whatever we happen upon. We can (and usually do) create whatever we want to be our god (proving Freud and Feuerbach right), live in fear of someone else's god (proving Nietzsche and Ayn Rand right), or we can seek the true God.

  4. Finding theology "in the wild"

    Theology exists all around us, "hidden" may be the wrong term, just floating around. Some of it is good, some is bad, some neutral. But few of us take the time to think about what we are absorbing and if it might in fact not be God, but something else posing as God.

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