Dorothy Sayers And A Problem With Theology
One complaint I have heard several times is that it is meaningless for Christians to talk about theology because it is outdated and irrelevant. What really matters is how we treat other people and our attitude toward them.
The late Dorothy L. Sayers said in a 1940 lecture:
"The one thing I am here to say to you is this: that it is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is virtually necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration or a simple aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism."
Jesus told us to love God and to love our neighbor. But what does this love entail, and, furthermore, why should we love God and our neighbor? Much of Christian theology arises out of this Great Commandment regarding love. When we answer the questions about why and how to love, we begin with the theology of being created in the image of God and we proceed to the theology of the incarnation that takes us to the theology of the cross . . . and we keep on going.
Theology is our way of answering good, tough questions, not with our emotions, but with our reason through what God has revealed to us in the Bible. Do we get our theology wrong at times? Yes we do. But that should only make us work harder on our theology as we love God and love neighbor.
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