Theology is as systematic and disciplined a study as geology or psychology. It is based on the observed facts of religious experience through the centuries. It has been worked out by some of the keenest minds that ever functioned. (One does not condescend to Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, or Reinhold Niebuhr.) On the intellectual level it can hold its own with any other mental discipline.
Theology also happens to be the most practical of all studies. [ Composition ] is useful for the person who wants to be a professional writer or prepare club reports; [Farm Management] is intended for the future farm manager. But theology is useful for everybody. It deals with problems that are life-and-death matters for everyone, every day. You can put it to work all the time, not just keep it on the reference shelf for special occasions.
To deny a student access to so essential a tool of thought and everyday living is as great a crime against him as to remove one lobe of his brain.
Modern man knows a great deal about the nature of the atom. But he knows almost nothing about the nature of God, almost never thinks about it, and is complacently unaware that there may be any reason to. Theology, the intellectual system whereby man sorts out his thoughts about faith and grace, enjoys much less popular appeal than astrology. With its "devolutionary theopantism" * and "axiological eschatology,"* theology is jaw-breakingly abstract. And its mood is widely felt to be about as bracing as an unaired vestry.
— "Faith for a Lenten Age" Time Magazine Cover Story (Monday, Mar. 08, 1948) [2]
In this book I want to do some things your college or university ought to be doing and probably isn't. First of all, I intend to put the rival campus gods on trial [e.g., Progress, Relativism, Scientism, Humanitarianism, and Materialism]. I can see some good in all of the gods and am not recommending capital punishment; but I also see some positive evil in all of them but One.
I do not pretend to be a neutral bystander. I have served most of the available gods at one time or another, and have to believe that only One of them can be completely depended upon.
Theology is as systematic and disciplined a study as geology or psychology. It is based on the observed facts of religious experience through the centuries. It has been worked out by some of the keenest minds that ever functioned. (One does not condescend to Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, or Reinhold Niebuhr.) On the intellectual level it can hold its own with any other mental discipline.
Theology also happens to be the most practical of all studies. [ Composition ] is useful for the person who wants to be a professional writer or prepare club reports; [Farm Management] is intended for the future farm manager. But theology is useful for everybody. It deals with problems that are life-and-death matters for everyone, every day. You can put it to work all the time, not just keep it on the reference shelf for special occasions.
To deny a student access to so essential a tool of thought and everyday living is as great a crime against him as to remove one lobe of his brain.
Modern man knows a great deal about the nature of the atom. But he knows almost nothing about the nature of God, almost never thinks about it, and is complacently unaware that there may be any reason to. Theology, the intellectual system whereby man sorts out his thoughts about faith and grace, enjoys much less popular appeal than astrology. With its "devolutionary theopantism" * and "axiological eschatology,"* theology is jaw-breakingly abstract. And its mood is widely felt to be about as bracing as an unaired vestry.
— "Faith for a Lenten Age" Time Magazine Cover Story (Monday, Mar. 08, 1948) [2]
In this book I want to do some things your college or university ought to be doing and probably isn't. First of all, I intend to put the rival campus gods on trial [e.g., Progress, Relativism, Scientism, Humanitarianism, and Materialism]. I can see some good in all of the gods and am not recommending capital punishment; but I also see some positive evil in all of them but One.
I do not pretend to be a neutral bystander. I have served most of the available gods at one time or another, and have to believe that only One of them can be completely depended upon.