Theology defined

Last week in my Missional Theology class, the discussion was about defining theology. What is theology? and from that definition, how does it affect our lives? Here are a couple definitions of theology from various scholars:

"Theology is a disciplined reflection upon the truth of Christian revelation" -Jaroslav Pelikan

"Systematic theology is a study that answers the question "what does the whole Bible teach us today?" about any given topic." -Wayne Grudem

"Theology is the discipline which strives to give a coherent statement of the doctrines of Christian faith, based primarily on Scripture, placed in context of culture in general, worded in contemporary idiom, and related to issues of life." -Millard Erikson

"Theology is a confession of Biblical truths, intellectual reflection on them, and assimilation of them by the people of God in the form of distinctively Christian wisdom." -David Wells

"Theology is an imperfect attempt to develop increasingly more accurate approximations of God's perfect truth, by exegeting, systematizing, defining, and explaining the facts and meanings of God's revelation of His nature, works, and purpose for all created beings." -Robert Dunzweiler

The definition of theology that we are using as our format for our class discussions is:

"Christian theology is an ongoing, second-order, contextual discipline that engages in the task of critical and constructive reflection on the beliefs and practices of the Christian church, for the purpose of assisting the community of Christ's followers in their missional vocation to live as the people of God in the particluar social, historical context in which they are situated."

Though this is a handful of language and idioms that I won't go into here, it has been real interesting as I have been wrestling and reflecting on these new concepts of approaching theology. One of the areas that I resonate with in my dialogue in class is the fact of how much humility plays a role in studying theology. We, as humans, are finite and fallen, and cannot come up with a perfect system of studying God or His attributes. I think the thing that helps me the most in studying theology is the fact of reminding myself that God is God and that I cannot comprehend to the fullest extent how He works or acts. He has given us the Bible as revelation and it is our mission to accurately (to the best of our ability, empowered by the Spirit), interpret the Scripture and the culture in order to relay His message of redeeming love to an ever-changing world.