One of my great passions in life is studying theology. Life’s circumstances (under the guiding Hand of Providence of course) sometimes allow me to pursue this passion more than at other times but it is a constant and has been for nearly 15 years.

During the course of those years, I’ve come in contact with people who express an anti-theology sentiment. Sometimes it is said as explicitly as the man who looked me right in the eye and said “Don’t give me theology, just give me Jesus” (yes, people actually say that). At other times, it’s wrapped a bit more piously under the pretense of not wanting to influenced by the “opinions of men.” These people say that all they need is their Bible and the Holy Spirit, not all the clutter of sinful men. At still other times, it’s put as bluntly as someone saying that “theology is not practical.” Though expressed in different ways, the sentiment is often quite similar: theology is tainted by arrogant men and should be relegated to the classroom and dusty studies.

Though many people might not actually say this, they believe it in practice. When sermons are boiled down to nothing more than self-help nuggets, the preacher is really telling his people not to worry about “all that theology stuff.” Sadly, this is far too common. We’re told that if we get “too deep” we’ll scare people off (which begs the question of whether the Sunday morning gather is primarily to feed the sheep or win the lost but that’s a topic for another day). Many of these approaches carry the implicit charge that our experiences with God are “real” while the study of theology is not.

C.S. Lewis helps to show why these approaches to theology are misguided at best and arrogant at worst in his book Mere Christianity. Please forgive me for the heavy use of quotes that follow but I do believe Lewis says it better than I. Lewis reflects upon a friend telling him of an experience he had had with God in the desert and how theology was so unreal compared to this experience. Lewis comments:

if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he will also be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experiences of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God - experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion - all about feeling God in nature, and so on - is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go out to sea without a map.

In other words, Theology is practical: especially now. In the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simply ideas about God. But it is not so now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones - bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas.

When someone says that they only need their Bible and the Holy Spirit, they are saying that they are free from the faults that have perhaps clouded the vision of so many prior. They are saying that God will give them revelation He has not yet given to others. This is a very dangerous sentiment indeed for it immediately creates a chasm. Everyone else is wrong because they have not received this revelation from God, which put the person in a quite awkward position. While on one hand telling the church not to listen to men, that person is also imploring that we listen to him because he can show us where everyone else is wrong! His very argument is that we should not listen to him!

This also removes one from the community of faith. Though we are saved as individuals, we are saved into community and our ideas about God are worked out in community precisely because we are such gullible creatures. When left to ourselves, even with a Bible, we are quite prone to re-create God in our own image or redefine orthodoxy itself. This understanding automatically removes one from nearly any community of faith which is certainly at odds for the way the New Testament envisions living out the Christian life.

To say that theology is not practical is to proclaim one’s ignorance about theology. Granted, we have all heard teaching and preaching that is not “practical” but that is the fault of the communicator rather than the material.

• Read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• Read Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof
• Read A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Robert L. Reymond