CONTENTS
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OVERVIEW
of my theology
Strictly speaking, Theology is the study of God. But...we are limited in what we can know about The Godhead by our own experiences. Consequently, theology usually becomes the study of ourselves as a species and how the Godhead relates to this species. This is the same as with any other pursuit of knowledge. Our ability to know about sound is limited by our auditory range, both in terms of pitch and volume. Consequently, there are animals that may and do experience a range of sound that we cannot know by experience, but must devise machines that can experience those sounds for us. In fact, every endeavor to know something usually includes a section on our limitations to know or experience. Every field of science will include a section on anthropology, specifically discussing how we are limited in knowing, as well as how our attempts to know more affect what it is we are trying to know. Theology is and can be no different.
Our usual process of finding out is to take the object of study and divide it into sections which are easier to study. In effect, we take the object of study and dissect it and put it under a microscope. Systematic Theologies are no different. The theologian divides human kind's experiences of god into several categories, studies them, and hopes that when he or she is concluded the entire process is congruent, that is without internal contradictions.
Assumptions also affect theology, as with any other endeavor of study. In the past the primary assumption was that the Bible was the express Word of God, complete and totally without error. Today that assumption is being replaced in many theological circles with the assumption that evolution is the means that The Godhead used and is using to create. I also make this assumption. This changes how we look at things, such as sin. Sin is no longer the result of a "fall" from perfection, but becomes a natural consequence of the fact that human kind is being evolved, that is taken from being purely animal to an eventual spiritual status. Sin occurs because we aren't there yet, not because we were once there. This assumption also calls into question the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden because evolution would allow us no single set of parents for our species.
For the sake of this presentation, I have used Sperry Lewis Chafer's divisions of theology, with a minor exception. (Chafer was the founder and president of Dallas Theological Seminary most of his adult life, a seminary which considers itself to be the defender of strict Fundamentalism, whose graduates usually pastor non-denominational or community Churches.) Chafer had a section on Angelology, or Angels including Satan and other "fallen" angels. Since my own experience is unable to verify the existence of angels, either good or bad, I have replaced that section with a section on Cosmology, or my thinking about the creation. Also instead of discussing salvation, (under Soteriology), I discuss the completion of the species. This completion is discussed both in terms of individuals, (which may be seen as including salvation), and in terms of the human race. My divisions are as follows:
- BIBLOLGY...or my thinking about the Bible,
- THEOLOGY PROPER...or my thinking about the Godhead,
- COSMOLOGY...or my thinking about the creation,
- ANTHROPOLOGY...or my thinking about human kind,
- HARMARITOLOGY...or my thinking about sin,
- SOTERIOLOGY...or my thinking about the Godhead's work to complete human kind,
- ECCLESIOLOGY...or my thinking about the church,
- ESCHATOLOGY...or my thinking about the end,
- CHRISTOLOGY...or my thinking about Christ, and
- PNEUMATOLOGY...or my thinking about the Spirit of the Godhead.
I should also point out that this is my thinking at the present time. It most likely will change in the future. The possibility even exists that my thinking may return to a Fundamentalist perspective, but I really doubt that.
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