Professional Documents
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Introduction to Theology
Todays Agenda
Self-introductions Introduction to the course and expectations Introduction to the course authors Theology and the new atheism
Introduction to Theology
An introduction to the field of theology. Discusses issues of theological
method and the historical development of some major Christian doctrines and relates them to theological issues today.
Underlying Questions
What distinguishes theological thinking from other kinds of thinking? When
and where does theology have an application in ordinary life?
Should our theology determine our experience of reality, or the other way
around? How have others in the Christian tradition addressed these and other matters?
G. K. Chesterton
1874 1936 The Catholic C. S. Lewis An apologist of a different stripe
Augustine
354 430 Church Father
Rowan Williams
1950 Retired Archbishop of Canterbury Academic and pastoral theologian
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
1906 1945 German Lutheran pastor and theologian
William Cavanaugh
Theologian and ethicist at DePaul University Focus on human rights and social justice Critic of secular reason
use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?
celibate monasteries, or crashing into New York skyscrapers. Religion motivates people to whip their own backs, to set fire to themselves or their daughters, to denounce their own grandmothers as witches, or, in less extreme cases, simply to stand or kneel, week after week, through ceremonies of stupefying boredom.
interesting thing about him. He was a theist because, in his time, everybody was. Atheism was not an option, even for so radical a thinker as Jesus. What was interesting and remarkable about Jesus was not the obvious fact that he believed in the God of his Jewish religion, but that he rebelled against many aspects of Yahweh's vengeful nastiness.
evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
habit of going away whenever they are tested under rigorous conditions.
In what sense can the world ever be understood? Is human experience ultimately subject to a closed
circle of logic? Do Dawkins views fail to account for temporal uncertainty? Is the world like a logical argument, or more like a poem?
it too otherwordly, or does this world, the world we actually live in, call for something more poetic than the new atheism allows? Terry Eagleton says Dawkins is rather like a person who thinks a novel is a botched piece of sociology. What is the significance of this claim?