The Problem with Theology

The problem with Theology is simple. It is no longer the study of God [theos = god; logos = word]. What was once a study or examination of the Christian God, now looks increasingly like an exercise in anthropology.

Like the rest of philosophy and academia in the formerly Christian nations, Theology today reflects the anthropocentric [human centred] mindset which prevails in the western Intelligentsia. The idea that God is anything more than a human superstition is regarded as ridiculous. So, the study of manifest superstition must necessarily default to a matter of comparing religions, not learning about God. Theology now examines the various human interpretations of religion; it no longer focuses on who God is and the ramifications of that for us.

So, the discipline or study supposedly concerned with God is now obsessed with Man and the phenomenon of religion. Indeed, it is now wrong to talk of “man” or refer to God as male. Theological insights must instead be derived from today’s human oriented perspectives and priorities. Hence, for example,  Black Theology, Gender Theology  and Liberation Theology. None of this, however, figured in the Christian and Jewish scriptures.  Clearly, today’s intellectual priorities reject those of the past and impose their own perspectives.

It is now outmoded and intellectually inadequate to focus on concepts arising from the quintessential Truth of “I AM” – Creator, Sustainer, and moral Determiner.  Such focus would oblige us to acknowledge our dependance on God for life and for guidance how to live. To acknowledge we are God’s creatures would oblige us to obey God – we must belong to God, and God must have all rights over us. We are beholden; we are not free from being spiritual dependents !

But Enlightenment thinking grants us that freedom to censor our reality. We are set free from superstitious conceptions like God. We now place God under the microscope and investigate religious ideas and practices for the fables we wish them to be. God as a concept has become peripheral; if we bother to consider it, we consider it only in terms of human wants and desires. Man now plays at god with God.

This problem has existed from the early Christian era. Explaining the Christian God according to the paradigm of human centred philosophy goes back to the early years of the Christian church.  Tertullian [c.160 to c.225] was moved to defend faith and Scripture against the assumed superiority of Greek philosophy. Indeed we can chart the problem of subjecting theology to philosophy via 13th century Aquinas into modern times.

The 19th century produced serious attacks upon Christianity as a revealed religion.  In the world of natural science, Darwin promoted Evolution, while in the world of theology Feuerbach argued that essential ideas of heaven and eternal life were merely projections of human desire – ergo not actually real.

Today in the 21st century, the attack upon a traditional, orthodox Christian perspective and paradigm has reached extremes. For example, in the University of Oxford, one theological institute now treats Critical Race Theory as Truth. White Racism is now original sin and to purge Anti-racism has become a quasi religious crusade where every domain of life must be purged of The Ultimate Sin – racism.

This is not surprising.  When human beings become the final arbiters of morality,  they inevitably pervert the true psychology and conception of our spirituality into something man oriented and dangerous. It is patently obvious to any normal person that such ‘anti-racism’ is perverse. It digs up the past to provide evidence against the descendents of those deemed to be the oppressors. The sins of the fathers are to be visited on their children. The desperately needed free Pardon no longer comes from God; it comes from the priesthood of atheistical fanaticism and can only be purchased by submitting to their counterfeit conception of sin and their method of continual confession to earn forgiveness.

Having now marginalised the self declared, self revealing God called “I AM”, the modern anthropocentric philosophy imposes a wholly new and terrible morality in its place. That moral system rejects the self evident truth of sin in every heart to impose instead “whiteness” as sin [a variant of Marxism].

This new, man generated and counterfeit creed displaces the fundamental theistic truth that all humans are both good and bad. We are all made in our Makers image, yet tainted by sin. Evil can never therefore be reserved to any particular type. It is a human condition which every human being is individually responsible  to combat.