RELS 160 A

Introduction to Theology

Todays Agenda
Self-introductions Introduction to the course and expectations Introduction to the course authors Theology and the new atheism

Introduction to Theology
An introduction to the field of theology. Discusses issues of theological
method and the historical development of some major Christian doctrines and relates them to theological issues today.

Underlying Questions
What distinguishes theological thinking from other kinds of thinking? When
and where does theology have an application in ordinary life?

How do theological claims relate to Biblical and other forms of revelation?

In what sense are theological claims supposed to be true? What does faith seeking understanding mean in a so-called secular age?

Should our theology determine our experience of reality, or the other way
around? How have others in the Christian tradition addressed these and other matters?

G. K. Chesterton
1874 1936 The Catholic C. S. Lewis An apologist of a different stripe

Augustine

354 430 Church Father

Claimed by all branches of Christianity

Integrates Greek and Biblical wisdom

Rowan Williams
1950 Retired Archbishop of Canterbury Academic and pastoral theologian

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1906 1945 German Lutheran pastor and theologian

Nazi resister, believer in costly grace

Executed in a concentration camp

William Cavanaugh
Theologian and ethicist at DePaul University Focus on human rights and social justice Critic of secular reason

 What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest

use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

 Religion drives otherwise sensible people into

celibate monasteries, or crashing into New York skyscrapers. Religion motivates people to whip their own backs, to set fire to themselves or their daughters, to denounce their own grandmothers as witches, or, in less extreme cases, simply to stand or kneel, week after week, through ceremonies of stupefying boredom.

 Of course Jesus was a theist, but that is the least

interesting thing about him. He was a theist because, in his time, everybody was. Atheism was not an option, even for so radical a thinker as Jesus. What was interesting and remarkable about Jesus was not the obvious fact that he believed in the God of his Jewish religion, but that he rebelled against many aspects of Yahweh's vengeful nastiness.

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to

evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Paranormal phenomena have a

habit of going away whenever they are tested under rigorous conditions.

 In what sense can the world ever be understood? Is human experience ultimately subject to a closed

circle of logic? Do Dawkins views fail to account for temporal uncertainty? Is the world like a logical argument, or more like a poem?

 Does the poetic nature of religious language make

it too otherwordly, or does this world, the world we actually live in, call for something more poetic than the new atheism allows? Terry Eagleton says Dawkins is rather like a person who thinks a novel is a botched piece of sociology. What is the significance of this claim?

Chesterton, Orthodoxy, chapters 1, 2, 4, and 8 What makes Christian theology realistic?

How might Chestertons view of the worlds

strangeness change how we think in other domains too?