THE P RTAL
August 2014
Page 6
The A - Z of the Catholic Faith
T is for…
Theology
The word ‘theology’ comes from two Greek
words: theos (meaning ‘God’) and logos (meaning
‘word’ or ‘reason’). So theology literally means
‘thinking or speaking about God’.
St Anselm has given us the most widely quoted
definition of theology: it is ‘faith seeking understanding’.
Each word is important. Theology is that search to
understand more deeply the faith that we have already
received, the faith of the Church. It presupposes this
faith - as it is expressed in Holy Scripture and the
Christian Tradition. And it presupposes the faith of the
one seeking, who wants to understand more deeply a
gift that has already been embraced.
It is an ongoing search, driven by wonder and
curiosity and need, rather than just a restatement
of received truths. It recognises that each person
and each generation needs to break open anew the
unsurpassable gift of faith, and that each culture will
find new expressions of faith and will bring this faith
to bear on radically new situations.
And it is a search for understanding: to make sense of
what we believe; to see what it means for our life; to see
how it connects with other truths and other meanings.
At one level, theology is an academic discipline
done by specialists. At another level, it is the reflection
that all Christians do when they try to discover the
meaning and implications of faith for the concrete
circumstances of their lives.
Tradition
A tradition is something that is ‘handed over’
or ‘passed on’ within the life of a community. There
are obviously many different Christian traditions in
the history of the Church – some big, some small;
some fairly universal and constant, some more limited
and time-bound. In Catholic theology, however, when
the word Tradition is used in the singular (and with a
capital ‘T’) it refers to the way the faith entrusted by
Christ to the Apostles is handed on from one generation
to the next. The message of salvation is passed on not
just in written form in the Sacred Scripture, but also
through the whole life of the Church. So when the
Church desires to know what she believes and what
this faith means, she looks not on H