The Boy Scholastic spent the last five minutes trying to imagine infinity.

He nearly gave up, but then a pretty girl walked by humming a lovely song, and suddenly realized that imagining was the wrong way to go about it.

It's funny how much we can think about something just to know so little about it. I used to think myself impervious (or at least, well-guarded) against such uncomfortable revelations, as I take great pains not fall among the ranks of those Senators who advocate the posting of the 10 commandments but can't list them. But for the life of me, I can't write down what I believe to be a "good" definition of theology. I can provide the Greek roots, I can tell you what it is supposed to be, but I can't express it. And that bothers me.

I've so far refused to look at anyone else's definition, because it's important to know what I believe it to be. At the very least, it would grant me a measure of insight into who I am and what God means to me. The best thing to do, I think, would be to talk about what it isn't but even that is difficult to do. Theology isn't apologetics, but it should be apologetic: good theology should provide clarity about the relationship between man (men) and God. But the point of theology isn't to offer an apology, but something more. It's not about rhetoric, though it is rhetorical, and it isn't about convincing, though it does seek to be right as opposed to wrong. Theology isn't intellectual, but it should be rational and logical: it should apply to everyman, regardless of who his father was or how many sheepskins hang on his wall. Theology isn't history, but is should be historical; it isn't invented, but it should be constructed; it isn't of man, but it should be anthropological. Try to focus too much on the one, and you get criticized by the others.

I think of the great theologians that I admire, but why are they theologians? They created theologies, certainly, but what? Barth has his theology of crisis, Bultmann his theology of κήρυγμα, Gutiérrez his theology of liberation, but they all speak to different things, and while at times they do, it is not inherent that they overlap. An Augustinian view of sin neither affirms nor denies a Lutheran view of determinism. But these are theologies versus theology. I don't wish to confuse an object and its form.

I know what you're saying -- it's simple to see that the entomology is right -- but much of theology is what we don't know about God, or how we can't study God, or how even speaking about God with the belief that we assert knowledge of God is sinful. But even in that we're saying that we know something about God. But it's like saying that, if we preach tolerance, we should be tolerant of intolerance. It's both true and false at the same time, or rather, there is an element of falsity and an element of truth to the statement due to its simplicity.

In the end, answering this question is the same for me as speaking about God is for Bultmann -- when I say what theology is, what I am actually saying is what theology is to me. And that's the ticket. There is some fantastic link between theology and God other than what would appear at first glance. Theology is the study of the relationship between man and God, which gives insight both into the actions of God and into the being of man.

Now that I've said it, it seems very obvious.