Mere Theology

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It has been about two years now since a man came to see me at the church to talk about his future. He had visited our church on a few occasions and heard me preach. As we spoke it was clear he wanted to follow through some comments I’d made about theology. I had been talking about how vital it is to understand theology if you are going to lead a church. For some time he had been wondering whether God was calling him to leave his current career (where he is doing very well) and train for the Christian ministry. He had been worshipping at another local church where the pastor had also advised him. That pastor’s counsel nearly made me fall off my chair.

“No!”, he’d said “you don’t need theological training for the ministry. You just need to have a passion for God, to read the Bible, and then to go for it.”

Thankfully my friend was suspicious and came to me to ask if would corroborate that view. I didn’t. My friend was particularly concerned about the wisdom of this advice as it relates to the place theology, and particularly theological study, in the Christian’s life. I wish I had known about Alister McGrath’s book “Mere Theology” on that day.

For so many Christians the very word ‘theology’ is something of a turn-off. It conjures up ideas of tedious sermons dealing at great length with minuscule details from the nether regions of Leviticus. It is to be found only in yellowing, fusty, close-printed books about abstruse doctrines that have no relevance to life. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Theology is one of the most enriching, stimulating and exciting fields it is possible to study. What McGrath will do for you when you read it (and I hope you will) is to open your eyes to the freshness of theological study. He will show you how theology helps Christians (all Christians, not just clever ones) make sense of the world around them. And that is particularly true when your world is a tough place, full of pain and anguish.

He is not concerned with presenting a new theology of his own but of defending the whole idea of theological reflection as a valid way of understanding and interpreting the world around us. As you read this book you will quickly notice that McGrath uses clear down-to-earth language to illustrate profound truth, and this makes the book highly accessible. He has the gift of being simple without being simplistic. But theology that only provides a framework to interpret life is only half of the story. I often find myself saying from our pulpit that theology is of no use ‘unless it’s got it’s boots on’. In other words theology is incomplete without corresponding action. McGrath expresses it like this:

… rightly understood, theology is about enabling informed Christian action. It makes us want to do things, and do them in a Christian way. It helps us make judgements about how best to act; it encourages us to engage with the real world. ¹

Theology is not there to check whether you are right or I am wrong. It exists for us both to grasp the sheer magnitude and wonder of the God whose cosmos we live in, and to change it as a result. Christian faith has the power to capture the imagination, not merely to persuade the mind, and the way it does this is by throwing open the depths of the human soul to the realities of the gospel.

One of my own favourite pictures is this one (which you can click to enlarge)

I can only leave you to imagine the wonder of standing at that spot with your toes in the water watching the sun go down and seeing the sky flame into such a kaleidoscope of colours. But I was there, I took the shot, I can still feel the awe it inspired in me. My problem is, I can’t adequately describe it to you, much as I would relish you sharing the experience. But I can do a little by showing you the image, for a start, and perhaps by describing the smell of the sea or the colours of the sky. McGrath illustrates faith like this. Faith is the wondrous experience of being there when the sun performs such magic, and theology is the map that describes how each element may relate to the others.

This book glows with a love for theology and a passion for the God whom it’s all about. We tend to shrink God down to what we can cope with – yet we ought to allow God to extend our minds to appreciate his reality and his glory more expansively.

There is plenty of application here too. As a church leader I find many Christians secretly hope that people like Richard Dawkins (about whom I’ve already had a rant here) will just go away. But the tide of the so-called ‘new atheism’ shows no signs of abating. So McGrath tackles the new atheists head on. He shows how, in spite of their claims to have evidence, their evidential base is a best thin and their interpretation of history is so heavily skewed to support their own viewpoint that any sense of historical objectivity has been abandoned. Having come out of an atheistic background himself, McGrath speaks with authority here.

It did not take me long to begin to appreciate the intellectual capaciousness of the Christian faith. Not merely was it rationally and evidentially well grounded; it was also enabling and enriching. Here was a lens which enabled reality to be brought into sharp focus; a source of intellectual illumination which allowed me to see, in the world of nature, details and interconnections that I would otherwise have missed altogether. The Christian faith both made sense in itself, and made sense of things as a whole. ²

So if you are at all serious about your faith and want to stretch your mind to appreciate more of its wonder, read this book. It will help you see the magnitude of God and inspire you to know him better through being more engaged with theology and with the world.

And what happened to my friend? He’s coming to see me very soon about his future and getting some training for ministry.

Result!