Theology: Why Bother With Theology?
Many people think that theology is complicated, confusing and even irrelevant. They wonder why they should bother with it at all. “The Bible isn’t difficult,” they say. “Why should we read books written by theologians who use long sentences and fancy terms?”
It is common to avoid things we don’t understand. But that won’t help us learn anything, and it won’t help us correct any errors in what we think we know. Every field of human knowledge has its own “fancy terms” that new people don’t understand. Auto mechanics have words unique to their field, cooks have a different set of terms, and carpenters yet another.
It is true that some theologians are hard to understand. It is unusual to find a scholar (in any field of study) who can put things in everyday language. University professors often discuss ideas that other people don’t talk about, and professors speak and write mainly with other scholars in mind. They leave it to someone else to bring those ideas down to earth. It’s similar to the difference between the practices of science and technology. The scientist in a laboratory discovers a new process or material, and often leaves it to others to turn the idea into something that ordinary people can use.
Theology has been called “faith seeking understanding.” People who believe in God want to know more about who he is and what he’s doing, just as a someone who “falls in love” wants to learn more about the person who is loved.
Christians trust God – that’s good, but it’s just one part of our relationship with him. We also to want to understand, as best we can, the God we trust and the promises he makes to us. God wants us to grow in our knowledge and trust in him, having our minds become more and more like he is. But knowledge about God is not something that we humans can come up with on our own. The only way we can know anything for sure about God is to listen to what he tells us about himself.
God reveals himself to us, and he has caused this revelation to be preserved for us in the Bible, a collection of inspired writings collected over many centuries as guided by the Holy Spirit. A simple reading of the Bible has led many people to believe in a good and powerful God, and to believe that he gives us eternal life through Jesus Christ, his Son.
However, not everyone gets the same faith out of reading the Bible. Some people get odd ideas, and a few people convince others to follow their odd ideas. There are hundreds of strange ideas about God and the Bible and salvation. How can we decide whether we are right?
Even if we study the Bible every day, there is no method that guarantees us a right or complete understanding of who God is. False religions and cults have wrong understandings of who God is, often promoted by one or a few people who come to odd conclusions about how God has revealed himself in Jesus and in the Bible. They don’t pay much attention to the biblically based teaching of the church down through the ages.
What do we need? First, we need the Holy Spirit to help us understand what God reveals, and to make us willing to be taught. The Spirit can use the Bible to bring humble readers to believe that Jesus is Lord and that he alone gives us eternal life. However, all sorts of people claim to be led by God’s Spirit. How can we decide whether those ideas are right?
We have two ways to see whether an idea is true.
- First, is it true to what the Bible says? We need to learn to read, based on the kind of literature the Bible is. As with any other book, we don’t take one sentence by itself and claim that everything else must fit our understanding of that one sentence. We need to know what the whole Bible says, especially what it tells us about Jesus Christ.
- Second, is it supported by tradition? Tradition isn’t always right, and it slowly changes, but we should at least consider why other people have come to the conclusions that they have. We should not reject their ideas without even trying to understand them. We should be humble enough to learn from other people.
Everyone brings some assumptions with them when they begin to read the Bible – ideas based on their culture, their experiences, their expectations about what the Bible will tell them. Their ideas are sometimes wrong, so it is helpful for us to learn what other people have seen in the Bible, and how they have explained what they learn from it.
That is what theology is – it’s an attempt to organize and explain what the Bible says. Even beginning readers try to organize what they are reading. Everyone develops a theology, some idea of who God is and whether this makes any difference in what we think or do. As we study theology, we discuss these ideas and think about whether they are true, and whether we can learn more from the Bible and from each other.
The word theology comes from a combination of two Greek words, theos, meaning God, and logia, meaning knowledge or study—study of God.
The best theologians are believers who are called by God to describe what the Bible says about the nature, character, mind, purposes and will of God. They read to see how other people in history tried to do that. They also think about our own world to see what questions are being asked and how to answer them. They consider the ideas that modern society has, and the way that people prefer to explain things now. They try to find the best words, ideas, stories, or illustrations that describe who God is.
Some theologies are better than others. We should use a theology that helps the church focus on Christ, because Christ shows us what God is like. Second, we should use the Bible to help us focus on Christ, because the Bible tells us what Jesus is like. The Bible tells us how God has been working with humanity from the beginning and where it all ends up in eternity.
The church as a whole has an ongoing responsibility to examine our beliefs and practices in the light of what God has revealed. We do not assume that we are perfect, and we keep studying to see if we have understood the Bible correctly, and we continue looking for better ways to explain what we see. Theology is part of the Christian community’s attempt to grow closer to God, and closer to what he wants us to be, as we seek his wisdom and follow the Holy Spirit’s lead.
Some members of the Body are specially gifted and called to help the church in this part of its mission. Until Christ returns in glory, the church cannot assume that it has reached its goal of having all truth. Sometimes we make mistakes, and we can find those and correct them only if we continue studying, thinking, and discussing what we read. Theology can serve the church by helping us find the most faithful ways we can speak and live.
Good theology is based in a constant respect for the biblical revelation. We need a good understanding of its original context, why it was written, and its significance for today. This is a vital ingredient for a growing Christian faith. Times change, but “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He remains the answer to humanity’s needs.
At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples,
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:12-15)
So let’s value the understanding that comes from good theology, even though it sometimes comes in difficult language. How can we learn, unless we are willing to think about things that aren’t already familiar? We need to do our best to understand what God tells us about himself, and help others understand him, too. Everyone has a theology – some idea of what God is like – and a good theology leads us to want to learn more. We love God with all our mind.
Author: Joseph Tkach, edited by Michael Morrison in 2026
