Opus 2025-368: Would You Like a Little Definition with That?

We throw words around and I am as guilty of that as anyone else.  The word being misused that’s on my mind right now is “theology.”  We use it, and we should, but we don’t use it properly.  We tend to lump all study of spiritual truth under the title of theology.  That is not accurate.

Theology, as the Greek word tells us is the study of God.  The first part of the word, theos, literally means “god.”  The second part, ology, comes from the word “logos” which has many implications but here means “study of.”  It is not the only type of “ology.”

Believe it or not, I have books that breakdown of the different categories of theology and one of them is anthropology, the study of man.  Then you have soteriology, which I believe is the study of salvation.  Eschatology is the study of the end times.  The same type of division applies to secular studies.

We should start with the basics, which means start with the most important.  That means we should start with our study of God, theology.  Everything else will be built upon our understanding of that foundational knowledge.

homo unius libri