A Brief Statement (Amicus Brief, that is...)

What is Theology?

Well, when in doubt, Google. According to Wikipedia, theology “has been defined as reasoned discourse about God or the gods, or more generally about religion or spirituality.” It was coined by Plato, a compound word from the Greek: theos (god) and logos (rational) .

According to wordnet at Princeton University, theology is “the rational and systematic study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truth.”

The nearest thing I could find on the PCUSA website was an amicus brief by the ACLU concerning litigation in Washington State. Theological education is legally defined as “instruction that resembles worship and manifests a devotion to religion and religious principles in thought, feeling, belief, and conduct, i.e., instruction that is devotional in nature and designed to induce faith and belief in the student.”

So theology is worship with a devotion to religion and religious principles in thought, feeling, belief, and conduct i.e. devotional in nature and designed to induce faith and belief.
Who’d have thunk it, the legalese version is the best one I have seen so far! That is what I hope to provoke, something devotional in nature that, by God’s sovereign will (check the tenets of the faith), will induce faith and belief through the power of the Holy Spirit.
- P. Hofstra, opiner