Importance of Theology (Why should Christians seek to know God more)

I absolutely love Theology.  Theology is more than just a five dollar word. It's more than a word that gets used by folks in an ivory tower.  The word has a meaning that should be made plain to anyone interested.

Theology comes from two greek words (Theos - Logos).  But I want to take the cookies and put them on the bottom shelf - I want everyone to see how simple this can be.  Theos is the greek word for "God".  Logos is the greek word for "Word/Statement"  So theology is a word about God.  

Now, you should realize that you probably do theology a lot more than you might have thought. When you say, "God is like..." or "God does...", at that point you are doing theology.  The question that "Theologians" are burdened by though, must be, "Is that statement about God accurate?" But before we can ask if it is accurate, we must first ask a few very important questions:

1. Is it important to know God?

2. If it is important, does it matter how well or how much I know God?

3. Does it matter if I'm completely accurate about those things I know about God?

4. Would God care if I was innacurate or wrong about any of the details that I attribute to him?

Is it important to know God? (Part 1)

(What evidence and motivation is there for studying theology?)

God wants us to know him

Let's start by answering the first question.  Why should we learn who God is?  God cares that we know who he is.  To argue this point I only need to point to the existence of the Bible.  The philosophical problem of knowledge that the Bible answers is a key evidence that we should study theology.

Coming to know something has been a problem of philosophy throughout the ages. Philosophers have pondered, "How can you come to know something for sure?" And "how can I know anything at all?"  There have been two main answers put forth.  We can know something Empircally - that is, we can know it by testing it with our five senses.  We smell things, taste things, touch things, hear things, and see things.  By doing this we come to learn about those things.  Namely we learn, "What it looks like, smells like, sounds like etc". 

What about the accuracy of your senses; have your senses ever been deceived? If you're sense of sight has ever been deceived (say by a magician or a mirage), then how can you be sure that it isn't always being deceived? You must say, you honestly cannot know 100% for sure that your sense of sight isn't always being deceived unless something other than your sight gives you that confirmation.  And so was birthed the age of skepticism.  Skeptics held to this kind of reasoning.  In fact, one of the fathers of graphing algebra, René Des Cartes (the Cartesian coordinate plane), was so radical that he said, "I can doubt everything. I can even doubt my own existence"... Then he stopped writing and thought to himself, 'I cannot doubt my own existence because if I didn't exist, I wouldn't be around to doubt my existence." And he coined the phrase, "I think therefore I am" Since he is able to think and to doubt then he must therefore exist.

We have the second kind of knowledge.  Which is called tautology. basically it states that we know things that we define.  Such as, "How do you know the 5280 feet are in 1 mile?"

Well, the answer is that we know it because we defined it that way.  There is nothing intrinsic about 5280 feet that somehow makes it a special number and therefore must be called 1 mile.  We just define it.  We say that there are 12 inches in one foot and therefore in one foot we can count out twelve inches.  All we do in tautology is define things in our minds.  It becomes impiracle knowledge when we say things like, "This stretch of road is 5280 feet".  Then we are taking our mental definitions and applying them to things we must experience through out senses.  So, we cannot be sure about those things.

Now, there is a third  way to come to know something.  And this third way is the most often overlooked because it is the least common.  To understand we must ask ourselves two questions:

1. Is there knowledge that is not inside my head such as tautology?

2. Is that same knowledge outside of the realm of experience such as touch, smell, taste...?

       a. such as outside of the known universe

If we answer yes to these questions, then a third question comes along:

3. How can we come to know such a knowledge?

The answer to question number three is "Revelation"

If something exists outside our realm of investigation, then the only way we could come to know about it is if someone or something that carries that knowledge reveals it to us. And we can trust in that revelation only to the extent that we can trust the revealer.

If the revealer is perfectly trusworthy and has never deceived us, then we can perfectly trust what is being revealed!

The very fact that God revealed himself in his word is ample proof that he wants us to know about him.  God cannot be investigated with our senses or defined with our minds (in a tautological sense). He can only be revealed to us. And he is the only one that can reveal himself.  So, sense he is revealed, he must want to be known.

I typically like to prove things with specific verses in the Bible.  However, the best proof of this particular point is the entire Bible as a whole. However, there are some key scriptures as well that indicate God's desire to be known.

Deuteronomy 29:29

"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong tous and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."

Daniel 2:22 

"[God] reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him."

Matthew 11:27 (cf. Luke 10:22)

"All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

Galatians 1:16 (very striking is that God takes pleasure in revelation to individuals)

"[God] was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles..."

Questions for further meditation:

1.Have you ever thought that God has given you the ability to know something through revelation that you would not be able to investigate with your five senses? How does that affect you?

2. What does God's revelation of himself tell you about the importance of knowing God?

3. Do you think that God would reveal himself if he didn't want to be known accurately?

4. Do you think God would reveal more detail than he wants us to know and appreciate?

Memory Verse:

Deuteronomy 29:29

"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever; that we may do all the words of this law."