Tag: Theology Series

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Church Teaching

What is theology?

Father Harrison Ayre

November 26, 2023 7:40 am November 26, 2023

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This is the first in a seven-part “Introduction to Theology” series from Simply Catholic. Read the entire series here. Often people look at theology as an academic discipline in which…

This is the first in a seven-part “Introduction to Theology” series from Simply Catholic. Read the entire series here.

Often people look at theology as an academic discipline in which people talk about subtle nuances that have little to do with Christian living. Then there are those outside of Christianity who question it as a discipline at all because faith, in the eyes of many, is unreasonable.

But theology is a proper field of study, and one with an ancient tradition. Scripture itself is not only a source of revelation but is a type of theological work. And St. John Henry Newman, in his “The Idea of a University,” presents theology as the hub of all the sciences, because God is at the center of all creation.

What, then, is theology?

Theology is rooted in two Greek words: Theos, meaning God, and logos, meaning reason. Theology is using our reason to study and know more about God and how he has shown himself to the world. There is a discipline known as “natural theology,” whereby we are able to study certain truths about God, including the fact that he has created the world and the fact that God exists. As St. Paul makes clear that God’s existence is revealed through his creation, the truth of natural theology is knowable by reason alone. “Christian theology” is when we use our reason to study and know more about God and how he has shown himself to the world. The object of study is God and his revelation, including how he had revealed himself to Israel and in the definitive revelation in his Son, Jesus Christ, which is especially manifested in Scripture and Tradition. Theology often goes further than this by applying what we know about revelation to new topics and social phenomena. In short, because God touches every facet of our existence, theology deals with the whole of life.

Theology, then, is not a discipline reserved to academics, though the academic realm is absolutely vital to theological knowledge and development. Instead, Jesus redeemed the whole of man, including our brains. In return, he desires that we use them. More importantly, by growing in our knowledge about the Faith through theological study, we grow in love for Jesus Christ. If we love him, we want to know everything we can about him, because love wants to know. By studying and reflecting with our mind on the content of faith, we also fulfill St. Peter’s command: “Always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within you” (1 Pet 3:15).

As theology attempts to understand God, it must avoid two equally dangerous extremes: rationalism and fideism. Rationalism says we can know everything by reason alone and do not need revelation or faith to know about God. Fideism says that we do not need to learn and grow in our knowledge of God — rather, that it is just enough to believe. According to the Church’s tradition, both of these approaches are heresies.

Theology makes clear how we need the grace of faith in order to enlighten our minds so that we can come to know God more deeply. In fact, it is by the gift of faith, given through baptism, that we gain access to the very life of God. We can know some basic things about God: that he exists, that he is one, infinite, omnipotent, etc. But to know that God is Trinity is something reason cannot reach on its own. In order for reason to be open to this mystery, it needs the aid of faith and revelation.

Theology, then, is really an exercise of faith and reason at the same time. As such, we can see how we must be open to God and his revelation and receive what he has revealed in humility so that God can be heard. By hearing God speak, we then take time, like Mary, to ponder these things in our hearts so that we may be able to understand the meaning and substance of the words and events of salvation history, Scripture, Tradition and revelation. This is an act of theologizing. And this rational reflection — of asking questions, of wanting to probe the mysteries of faith — is by no means a worthless exercise. It is, in fact, the highest and most important thing we can do, because it is an act of contemplation that builds up our communion with God and with one other.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison.

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Church Teaching

Introduction to Ecclesiology

Father Harrison Ayre

August 11, 2023 12:00 pm August 11, 2023

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One of the more contemporary fields of theological study in the last century has been the discipline of ecclesiology, which studies the Church. This is a vital area of study…

One of the more contemporary fields of theological study in the last century has been the discipline of ecclesiology, which studies the Church. This is a vital area of study because if Jesus intended to found a Church, then we must look to revelation to understand what this Church looks like and what Christ intended.

Ecclesiology, therefore, begins with the basic question: Did Jesus intend to found a Church? The New Testament, as well as early Church history, makes this abundantly clear, and it is relatively well-accepted among both Protestants, Catholics (and other Christians, like the Orthodox, for that matter) that Jesus did, in fact, establish a Church as a body of believers called to gather around his teachings and live them out as a manifestation of the Kingdom of God.

That is where Protestants and Catholics agree. But what the Church looks like — i.e. her external features — is where major disagreement begins. For Catholics, there are essentially two aspects that are necessary for a Church to be a Church. First, it must have a hierarchical structure, centered upon the bishops and pope; second, it must have the sacraments. These are the two essential features for an ecclesial structure to be called a Church.

The hierarchical structure is vital to the Church because without the bishops, there is no Church. The bishop of each diocese is the symbol of unity in his local diocese. Communion among the bishops comes from unity with the pope, as the one who holds the Church’s unity together in communion. The pope is the guarantee that we are all part of the same Church that Christ instituted. The bishops, then, exist as ministers of the Church’s unity. Through them we have apostolic succession, which means that their office is traced back all the way back to Jesus’ apostles. As presiders over the Church’s unity, the bishops oversee things such as the sacraments, which are at the core of the Church’s life. Without the bishops, there are no sacraments, and without both, there is no Church.

The Church’s hierarchy exists to facilitate the unity of the Church, which exists as a communion.This is to say that each member exists and lives for all the other members of the Church. Each of us has a mission in the life of the Church, called to be in service to one another. Episcopal leadership being solely defined by power has no place, since the power attached to the bishop’s office is only given to achieve and guarantee the Church’s unity.

There are other aspects of ecclesiology equally vital: What does it mean to say the Church is “one, holy, catholic,” too? How do we understand, for example, that the Church is holy when sinful at the same time? The Church’s holiness is possible only because her head, Jesus Christ, our Lord, is holy, and we are the members of his body. As sinners, clergy and laity can become holy through Christ alone.

The Church is first and foremost a sacrament — that is, a visible sign that makes effective and visible the invisible reality she signifies. The mission of the whole Church is a mission for the life of the whole world. All those who are baptized into Christ are to make Christ’s salvation not only visible but effective to all the world. This is because the Church is inherently missionary by nature, an idea reiterated time and again by Pope St. Paul VI. It is the task of every single Catholic, then, to be cooperators with Christ’s saving mission, through word and deed. The whole of our lives are to be defined by Christ. That means Christianity cannot be simply a hobby — an addition to one’s life — but a whole way of being. Because the Church is a sacrament, her members – always and everywhere — have the opportunity to be a sign by which the saving actions of Jesus are made effective in the lives of others.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read more in the “Introduction to Theology” series here.

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6 min read

Church Teaching

The Theology of God

Father Harrison Ayre

April 10, 2023 7:23 am April 10, 2023

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At the heart of theology — which is the study of God — is the most proper object of study and understanding: God himself. Without it, theology literally becomes an…

At the heart of theology — which is the study of God — is the most proper object of study and understanding: God himself. Without it, theology literally becomes an impossibility. The doctrine of the Trinity, the most central aspect of our faith, while revealed in Christ and made known to us through Tradition and Scripture, was one of the most hard-fought doctrines in the early Church. The Christological heresies of the early Church were just as much heresies about who God is, as the Church wrestled with the issues: How can God be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit while also holding to the idea that God is one? Also considered is: How does God and humanity relate in the Person of Jesus Christ (this is something that becomes the field known as Christology, the study of Christ).

Talking about God in theology is an effort that requires great reverence on our part and a sober approach in our language. God is infinite, ever-greater than all of creation, and so we must recognize the limits of our language. So often, when discussing the question of God, we hear in popular understanding that God — or whatever people understand God to be — is so great a mystery that we can’t actually grasp it, that every religion is just a different way of approaching the great spiritual reality that the West calls “God.” Thus, as is often said, our language is insufficient to really say anything meaningful about God. So, according to this position, it doesn’t really matter what you believe about God, or what you say, just so long as you’re sincerely pursuing some spiritual reality.

This idea, as popular as it is, fails two tests: one of reason, the other of faith. The test of reason fails because it presumes that because God is so very other, that he cannot be known at all by human reason. Though it is true that God is greater than human reason can fully comprehend, it does not mean that man can’t know things about God: i.e., that he exists, that he creates, that we can know him through creation, etc. Furthermore, the idea fails the test of faith because it forgets the idea that though there is an ever-greater difference between God and his creation, there is also a similarity: the whole of creation bears the imprint of the creator, and that this creator desires to make himself known to the world by revelation. In the Catholic tradition, the response to this problem is known as doctrine of analogy. Just as we popularly understand that analogies have similarities and differences, so it is when it comes to us talking about God. We can say there is a real similarity between the words we use for each other and God. For example, we can say that however truthfully we understand the word “good,” it can be true of both us and God. But, because God is infinite and beyond comprehension, any similarity is always balanced out by an ever-greater difference. That is, the goodness of God is more different than it is similar to our understanding of goodness. This must always be held when talking about the Trinity: our limited categories can speak about God, but they can never fully grasp the reality either since God is ever-greater.

The heart of Trinitarian doctrine revolves around the relationship between the oneness of God and the threeness of Persons. For Christian theology, the Trinity is not three separate gods — a heresy known as tritheism — nor is it just one God who uses three different ways of appearing — a heresy known as Sebellianism or Modalism, after the idea that the Trinity has just three “modes” of appearing. Instead, the Church teaches that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each a real and distinct Persons, but each has the fullness of the one divine nature.

Trinitarian theology, along with the various aspects of Christology, help clarify the distinction between Person and nature so as to understand who God is and how we relate to him. Thus, in this distinction of nature and Person, the Church also reflected on how each Person relates to the others in the Trinity. Hence, in the Creed, we state that the Son is “eternally begotten,” that is, in all eternity he proceeds from the Father, while the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

These reflections are important because they help us understand how God works redemption. This is how the Church has wrestled with the facts of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost. In all this we see a God who is a communion of love whereby each Person fulfills one particular task of love in the work of redemption, thereby making our redemption itself an act of love. And if one still thinks this to be abstract, then from the level of faith, we can see its effects on the human person when we remember that man is made in God’s image and likeness. A Trinitarian God, who is a communion of love, impacts and affects how we understand ourselves as human beings. To an extent, Trinitarian Theology affects everything and, therefore, requires care and humility when approaching it.

There are other questions that are important to this discipline which can’t adequately be dealt with in detail here, such as: How does God relate with creation? Does God change when Jesus takes on flesh (this is a question surrounding God’s immutability)? What do we mean that God is pure spirit, that he is eternal, the first cause? And so on. These are important questions that all have an impact on how we live our faith and are worthy of our study. By understanding them more deeply, though, they not only prepare us to give an answer to the world about who God is, but they aid us in worshipping God the way that we should.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read the full series here.

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5 min read

Church Teaching

Introduction to Liturgical Theology

Father Harrison Ayre

February 7, 2023 12:51 pm February 7, 2023

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5 min read

From the Church’s earliest days, the way we worship God has been one of the most vital aspects of our common life. Given its centrality, then, even the way we…

From the Church’s earliest days, the way we worship God has been one of the most vital aspects of our common life. Given its centrality, then, even the way we celebrate liturgy is a topic of heated debate in the Church. And so the Church has grappled with such questions often throughout the centuries. It is, in fact, at the heart of the true meaning of the term orthodoxy. Ortho-doxa means “right praise” of God. How we praise God reflects what we believe about him.

The discipline known as “liturgical theology” deals with the importance of worship in the life of the Church. It can deal with seemingly mundane items such as the history of various liturgical items, such as a corporal (the cloth on which the paten and chalice are placed during the celebration of the Eucharist). But it also treats what is most essential in our worship, such as the meaning and importance of signs and symbols in liturgy, and the significance of liturgical participation of the laity and the related role of the clergy. Perhaps the most important question in liturgical theology is a rather simple one: What exactly constitutes liturgy?

Liturgy is a ritualistic act which, in some way, makes Christ present to his Church through signs and symbols, and which brings about the reality they symbolize. Thus the Church’s liturgy is often connected with the sacraments. But is not reducible to the sacraments alone. There are a variety of other types of liturgy: a separate, stand-alone Liturgy of the Word or the Liturgy of the Hours, for example. In all the Church’s liturgical forms, Christ is acting. His action comes through the whole Church, which is his body, gathered in his name.

As to how and why Christ is active in liturgy raises deeper theological questions treated within the discipline. For example, it has been argued by some that because bread isn’t important in some cultures, other elements might be presented as the Eucharistic species. Liturgical theology, in investigating such questions, will take into account the revelation of Christ and the tradition of the Church, and then apply it to the idea being considered. In the previous example, the discipline would say that bread is required because it is what Christ intended to be used in the Eucharist, since it is what he used when he instituted it, and what he asked be done in memory of him.

This helps us arrive at a very important aspect of the discipline. We often think of signs and symbols as given meaning only by us, as if we are the sole creators of the meaning of things. This thinking takes us to believe, then, that all signs and symbols are malleable and can change according to culture and what we think they mean. The problem with this idea is that it places the concepts of sign and symbol in a purely subjective approach without any real connection to history or tradition.

The task of liturgical theology, then, is to determine what is essential from the tradition and what is not, what is malleable and what isn’t. Even some things that are malleable — such as gestures in liturgy (as exemplified by different traditions according to different rites) — are not so easily changed because they express a deep meaning in the history of a particular ritual tradition and thereby need to be approached with care and reverence.

Words and gestures also are investigated by this discipline. They have a vital role to play not only in the liturgical life of the Church, but more specifically in her sacramental practice. Words matter, and following Jesus’ words are vital to ensuring that sacraments are validly and properly celebrated by the Church’s ministers.

If our starting point is truly that Christ is the main figure of the Church’s liturgy — the one who acts above all else — then we can begin to appreciate the need for unity in the use of words at the liturgy, especially the words Christ himself gave us. The words we use in liturgy matter because, in the end, it is Christ speaking them through the ministers of his Church. It is Christ who speaks the words of institution at each Mass, who baptizes, who confirms, who ordains, who absolves, who anoints, etc. This unity of the liturgical action becomes the unifying force for all Christian living. Our unified lived expression of faith feeds and grows from our unified liturgical life. As the ancient saying goes: lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). Thus liturgical theology really is an important linchpin for the Church’s unity.

In the end, our liturgical unity is expressive of the unity and universality of the Church, whereby it is Christ himself who speaks and acts through the ministers of the Church and all the members of his body gathered in his name. Our reverence toward the words, and our obedience to the Church’s instruction regarding liturgy, are rooted in respect and honor of Jesus Christ our Lord, the one who performs saving acts through ritual form.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read the full series here.

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5 min read

Church Teaching

Introduction to Eschatology

Father Harrison Ayre

November 11, 2022 10:43 am November 11, 2022

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Eschatology is the study of the eschaton, of the last things. It deals with God’s eternity and man’s final relationship with God. And so it pertains to questions concerning heaven,…

Eschatology is the study of the eschaton, of the last things. It deals with God’s eternity and man’s final relationship with God. And so it pertains to questions concerning heaven, hell, purgatory, the particular and final judgments, the resurrection of the body, and the new heavens and the new earth.

One of the most important questions surrounding this discipline is the nature, meaning and purpose of death. While we recognize, through faith, that death occurs because of sin’s reign in the world, certain questions arise. Our theological understanding of the human person tells us that man is an embodied soul. But we also know that, through death, the soul and body are separated. Eschatology considers how this works, such as what happens to the soul, or what is the dignity owed to the body as a preparation for the general resurrection.

Death also brings us to the question around the particular judgment. This is when, in death, we stand before God and our life is made transparent before God. Yet your understanding of the judgment often takes different perspectives. For example, some see the particular judgment as a time of self-awareness of one’s sins and virtues in the light of the truth of God and makes the choice they made with their life: either for God or against God. Others see it more like an impugning of a judgment by God himself. While we have no direct data from revelation to come to a definitive answer, the idea around judgment must always take into account the two aspects revealed in those examples: the objective judgment of God and our subjective acknowledgment of our own sin and virtue.

Our particular judgment leads us to one of three destinations. Two permanent, one is temporary. Concerning Hell, eschatology thinks about questions that come from the depths of our heart: how could a loving God allow people to go to Hell? How populated is Hell? Can one be in Hell temporarily? While this last question is one that arises often, the deposit of faith is clear: Hell is a permanent choice. What is the nature of the punishment? How is it that a loving God upholds a creature in existence who is in Hell? These questions lead to a variety of possible and legitimate answers that help us understand the mystery of the rejection of God’s love.

It is possible to be destined for heaven but still need purification. Catholics believe that sacraments such as baptism, confession and the Eucharist forgive sins to varying degrees. But that is only the forgiveness of the guilt due to sin, it is not the forgiveness of the effects of the sins. This is something we often try to atone for in life through penance, indulgences, fasting, acts of charity, etc. For those who still have not shared in Christ’s sufferings to atone for the effects of those sins, purgatory serves as their place of purifying love. One of the intriguing aspects around the doctrine of purgatory is the fact that we do not have foolproof, direct facts of its existence in revelation, just hints of it, such as the prayers for the dead in the Old Testament (2 Maccabees 12:38-46) or the early practice of praying for the dead in the Christian tradition. One of the most famous examples of this comes from St. Augustine’s Confessions, when Augustine’s mother, St. Monica, asks her son to remember to pray for her when she dies. This makes the study of purgatory all the more important because it helps us understand those vague hints in connection to the mystery of God’s love.

Those who complete their time of purgation, as well as those who do not need it, are admitted to heaven. Heaven is where we are immersed in the mystery of God’s very life, where, in the Son, we worship eternally the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. Many important questions are raised here: what is time like for the created soul? How does the soul exist apart from the body in heaven? What is the connection between heaven and earth?

Eschatology, when dealing with heaven, must also make us aware that heaven, in a manner of speaking, is not the final, total goal. Rather, and this is the most mysterious element of the discipline because it is the final end of creation, it moves us beyond everything to the coming together of the new heavens and the new earth (cf: Rev 21, 2 Pet 3:13), where man will live with God in the state of a resurrected body like Jesus had. We so often think of heaven as the final goal, and to an extent that is true. But heaven as it is right now is a sort of middle ground waiting for Christ to come again, to bring his general judgment against the whole of earth, and to establish the definitive and final kingdom where God and man dwell together.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read more in the “Introduction to Theology” series here.

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4 min read

Church Teaching

Introduction to Revelation

Father Harrison Ayre

October 3, 2022 7:39 am October 3, 2022

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4 min read

Revelation is the very soul of theology. Without it, theology would be at best an exercise of abstract philosophy, reflecting on a first principle of the created order and without…

Revelation is the very soul of theology. Without it, theology would be at best an exercise of abstract philosophy, reflecting on a first principle of the created order and without knowledge of whether it is personal or relational. In other words, without revelation, theology could only ask what God is but not who God is. It is in our study of who God is, by virtue of God’s self-disclosure to us his creatures, that we are able to have access to the very personal aspect of God and have a relationship with him.

When engaging in the theology of revelation, there are three principles that are at the heart of any effective study: man’s openness to God’s revelation, the objective character of God’s revelation, and the source of revelation.

Man’s Openness

In order for revelation to occur, it needs two actors: someone who reveals and someone to receive the revelation. If man has a heart that is absolutely closed to God’s breaking into our world, then the work of revelation becomes fruitless, since there is no one open to receiving the gift.

This is why revelation will always have a subjective character. By this we do not mean relativism, which is to say that truth is not absolute. But, rather, revelation’s subjectivity means that it is always addressing a subject — namely, all of humanity. God has created us with a desire to be with him because that is at the heart of his original purpose in creation. We are created for God, and that purpose has never left us, even with the fall of Adam and Eve. This means openness to God is built into our very nature. This also means, then, that God’s revelation has to address our humanity in a way we can understand. Thus he will not simply enlighten individual minds, but he will act and speak in history, in ways that can be perceived and understood by man.

The Objective Character

This need to address the human heart also has a flip side, since hearing God requires obedience on our part, necessary to respond to the Word of God in faith. If God is God, then God knows best about what is best for us. It means that God’s revelation — what he reveals about who he is, and what he teaches us about how to live — require an obedience on our part. This revelation is not to be fooled around with or treated flippantly, but rather something to which we humbly submit and pattern our lives around.

The Source of Revelation

The Second Vatican Council’s constitution Dei Verbum (On the Word of God) is perhaps one of the greatest magisterial treasures of the 20th century. It clearly and succinctly places the source of revelation in Jesus Christ, who, as the Word of God, is the one through whom all things are created. He is, therefore, the one in whom all creation finds its source and goal in this Word, which is made incarnate in Jesus Christ. As the fullness of revelation himself, Jesus is the revelation. He is the source — in secret — of God’s revelation to Israel, and he fulfills this covenant in his very person.

This helps us put Scripture and Tradition in their proper order. Tradition is the Word of God handed on in the life of the Church. Tradition hands on from one generation to the next everything that the Apostles first handed on to the Church in those earliest days of preaching and teaching. Tradition is protected by the grace of the Holy Spirit, yet, in order to be communicated as widely as possible, it also gets written down and becomes the inspired texts of the New Testament. The Old Testament is equally important, crucial and inspired because it prepares the way for and points to Jesus. Scripture and Tradition, then, are rooted in the person of Jesus because he is the true revelation to which Scripture and Tradition give witness.

Father Harrison Ayre is a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia. Follow him on Twitter at @FrHarrison. Read more in the “Introduction to Theology” series here.

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