Kadaltheeram

The Understanding of Theology

We attempt at presenting the understanding of theology within a limited scope of using it as a necessary tool that will help understand well the symbolism of water in the field of sacraments and its theological application in the cultural context of Kerala especially among the Latin Christians. Having viewed it as a launching pad for our current study on the symbolism of water and sacraments we hereby delve into the scope of theology.

1. 1. Meaning

To understand the meaning of theology is not an easy task, it requires the inner light from divine- experience. The inner light leads one to engage redemptively for the totality of life. Though theology touches the other world, it is more than this world- here and now because “the totality of life is the raw material for theology. Theology deals with the concrete issues that affect life in its totality not with abstract concepts that engage theological brains. No human problem is too humble or too insignificant for theology. Theology has to wrestle with the earth, not with heaven”[1] so much. To understand the meaning of theology one needs to know not only God, but also, the world and the human life. In the process theology becomes the grammar of Life.

1. 1. 1. The Grammar of Life

Theology is the grammar of life, to use an analogy from the semantic and linguistic world. It is as much vital to life as fragrance and nectar are to flowers. To the extent we can not think of the Sun being without light, the Sea without its waves, language without grammar’, so too is life without theology. Minus theology life remains devoid of adequate answers to questions it itself rises in the historical specificities and contextual particularities. Life and theology are so intermingled, so interconnected. It is like cement in the mortar for constructing a building which gives stability. Theology in its very essence aims at strengthening relationships among humans, and between humans and nature and between themselves and the Divine. It gives a new tempo and texture to life and its varied processes in our planet, the only planet that houses human life.

In the process of theologization, which is but a concrete attempt to address the existential realities of life from the optic of God, we deal with the fundamental questions about life. In this sense one can firmly say that theology is a genuine search about the truth about us, the world and God. In this fundamental project, the central protagonist is God and our relation to Him reflected from the perspective of the history of salvation.

How profound and deeper then is the grammar of theology to the language of life. Even if seen from the utilitarian paradigm, without grammar the language would be merely empty words. If one needs to construct a semantically sound sentence, one needs to apply the grammar. Hence the understanding of grammar as that which gives meaning to the language; it gives form, texture and life itself. Theology is a meaning statement about life, which is nothing but a living story of a person created in the image and likeness of God with the faculty of freedom, designed and ordained to bring to fruition all those faculties, and to manifest the productive potential of goodness and love lying latent within, as a mark of divinity.

Theology is a reflection of faith in the context of life[2]. Thus scripted in the book of life, theology is prosaic* and poetic** response vis-à-vis the sinful history of man and the possible mastery of man over sin and evil, and the tremendous mystery of the offer of love of God since time immemorial and which continues to give hope to the strife torn world of today. Divorced from life, it is mere sham, devoid of essence and relevance. Well did Koonthanam say: “Theology is always a disservice when done outside its only authentic and genuine matrix”.[3] It is “to be found in people’s life and it is there and it must be sought rather than in learned treatise or well-argued propositions”.[4]

1. 1. 2. The Discourse on God-Question or God-Talk

No theology exits without reference to God because it is the logos of and about God. Hence we need to know about God. The great theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), at the start of his theological Summa gives a number of descriptions of what ‘all’ mean when they speak of God: God is the ultimate, ungrounded Ground of all reality that sustains and moves everything; God is supreme Good in which all finite good participate and which is the Ground of all these goods; God is the ultimate End that directs and orders things.[5] The father of medieval Scholasticism- Anslem of Canterbury defines God as id quo maius cogitari nequit, ‘that which nothing greater can be thought’ and that which is greater than any thing that be can be thought.[6]

Luther in his Grosser Katechismus says: ‘what does it mean to have God, or: what is God? A God is that from which we should expect every good and to whom we should have recourse in every distress.’ This statement is according to Walter Kasper utterly unphilosophical and the expression of existential importance of understanding.[7] Paul Tillich in his Systematic Theology would say that God is ‘what concerns us ultimately.’[8] According to Bultmann God is ‘the reality determining all else.’[9] We can not think and speak of God in isolation with human beings and nature. For, God is sole and unifying theme of theology, in a sense that God- who is the salvation of the world and the human race- is as it were the one word spoken in many words of theology. To this extent theology is accountable speech (logos) about God (theos), or the science of God, as the ancients called it.[10]

Being Omnipresent God is very much present in our life. We exist because God exists. As Rahner says that we exist at God’s complete disposal.[11] “At every time and at every place, God draws close to men. He calls men to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength”[12] It is as true as day light that “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching”[13] Hence God- talk is the dialogical interpretation of life in its entirety seen from the angle of the Economy of God. It brings to scrutiny all the empirical, moral, socio-political, socio-cultural and economical enterprises of man living in a particular context and ambience, either geo-political or otherwise. It is a discourse on life with God at its centre. It is the expression of a reality, as it is and as it should be, from the project God has for man, revealed and realized in and through Christ, the Fullness of Truth, by the power of the Holy Spirit. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.”[14]

It is a commentary on the individual and communitarian life of the human, from the paradigm of Christ seen in the light of the Sacred Scriptures and the great Tradition of the Church. It has a Trinitarian stand and a communitarian orientation. In this sense, it is the discourse on the relationality God shares with man and vice versa, it is a dialogical process between the two with God’s offer of love manifested totally in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the response that man needs to make to the same.

This relationality binds man to God and God to man. Thus theology is mainly concerned with God and religion.” [15](Religion in the sense of ‘that which binds someone to Someone). It deals with life and world; it totally includes God because we can not think of life and the world apart from God who is its author and who continues to sustain it and the world. Excluding God from this enterprise would be wanting. It is a many-pronged project to which other disciplines, humanities and sciences, supply tools and help make it truly humanising and essentially life-giving. Veritably then, Theos is the key that unlocks the life of the human. In this complexity of the discourse on God one needs to address the question whether or not God exists?

1. 1. 3. The Existence of God

An age old question is treated in this section of the thesis: Does God exist? Even if God exits, can we know anything about God? CCC proposes two ways of knowing God namely the world and the human person. First of all we can know the existence of God from the world. “The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to the knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.”[16] Secondly the human person: “With his openness to the truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material, can have its origin only in God”[17] If a human person exists in this world, “it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence”. Being the image of God, man’s existence clearly tells that God does exist.

Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by natural light of reason.[18] Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. St. Thomas once said, ‘without revelation man will be in the blackest darkness’. Christian faith does not reject the human reason. (Albert Einstein). On the existence of God, the book “An Introduction to Theology” by K. Pathil – D. Veliath proposes three general views: “Atheism, Agnosticism and Theism”, each of which has numerable schools of thought.

A brief comment on each would be well in place as we proceed in our project of unearthing the understanding of God which is as diverse as there are humans on the earth.

1. 1. 3. 1. Atheism

In general, ‘atheism’ is understood as “every form of negation of the existence of God”[19]. ‘God’ here is popularly understood as Omnipresent, Omnipotent and Omniscient, etc. Atheism is a stance that denies the existence of God. There are also different streams of atheism. There is Practical atheism which manifests an attitude of the human as if no Absolute Power or Person exists. Thus there can be no absolute moral norm or principle that can be based on the foundations of the existence of God. Theoretical atheism, on the other hand, provides proofs for the non existence of God on a rational plane.

Our age is characterized by “Death of God culture”. For, Nietzsche’s statement on death of God is widely regarded as a diagnostic key to modern culture. In like manner, M. Heidegger, following Holderlin, speaks of the absence of God, and M. Buber of the eclipse of God in our time. Whereas the protestant theologian D. Bonhoeffer and the Jesuit Catholic priest A. Delp saw the approach of religionless, godless age in which the old and religious values would be powerless and unintelligible. What is more important to consider for us not the atheism of others but atheism of our own hearts.[20]

Having understood the repercussions of atheism on society, the Second Vatican Council in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes enumerates the attitudes and notions of atheism in no 19-21. It is one of the most serious problem and sickening sign of our time. They are “classical atheism, or the outright denial of God; agnosticism, or the refusal to decide whether to believe in God or not ( a decision wherein one effectively decides not to believe in God ); positivism (which rejects all reality which can not be verified by scientific testing ); an excessive humanism ( which exaggerates human capacity to control the universe through technology and exercise of reason and will); the rejection of false notions of God which the atheists assumes to be official doctrine; the transfer of ultimate concern from God ( Transcendent) to material things (the totally immanent); and transfer of blame for social evil from individual, institutional, environmental forces to God as the One who thwarts the struggle for liberation by shifting our attention from this world to next world”[21] Taken together, in its broadest sense, atheism is an attitude and a trend of thought that militates against theism and theistic religions. “ Since it rejects or denies the existance of God, atheism is a sin against the virtue of religion.”[22]

The question a believer asks to him\herself when faced with people who don’t believe in God is ‘Why does one deny the existence of God?’ The answers one finds ranges from personal to theoretical, from inadequate information to absence of experience, from mere unwillingness to subscribe to a theistic faith to a cold attitude to anything stereotypically spiritual and religious. In this sense, one gathers a wide range of explanations and interpretations as to why one fails to believe in God. The reasons are many and many-sided, they are plural and multiple. They seem to vary from time to time, and from person to person. They also may come from a group which vehemently opposes any religious structure based on the former’s understanding of society and its relation to religion. One such example is Marxism which propagated atheism because it understood the function of religion merely as alienating the human from his\her true nature.

Religion being a vehicle of God, at its root is a grave danger affirmed by Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. “For them religion is not an object of mockery, but a danger. Religion is not silly; it is harmful. For Marx, it is a kind of “opiate.” For Freud, it is an illusion. For Nietzsche, it is a repression.”[23] Though religion deals with God, religion is not God. No religion can comprehend the reality: God. The anger against religious structure is often reflected on the reality of God. In reality no one can deny God as long as the eternal seed- the soul is within us.
In retrospect, we have some insights into the atheism of Socrates which was nothing but a rational and enlightened struggle against the set notions of religions as were preached and propagated in his days. His teaching to the world does not seem to question the existence of God at all but it aimed at unsettling the foundations of religion which seemed to act as a structure that did not help its followers in attaining true transcendence they were capable of . Again the so-called custodians of religion misled the people rather than led them to the desired end of any true religion.

Faced with such historically vital factors exerting great influences on the people from the so called religion, he as an enlightened man with a transforming knowledge oriented towards the well being of each and all, dared to speak a new language which apparently seemed to deny God, but in truth it only challenged the practise of religion based on a particular understanding of God. Hence in true sense of the term he was only accused of theism as the quote goes, “In the ancient Greece, Socrates was accused of atheism”[24] It was an accusation, partly justified by the misreading of his teaching by the religionists of his time and partly unjustified because his intention of instructing the youth was understood as misleading them which on the contrary was only its opposite.

However, he could not stand the test of trial with all his well-intentioned service to the people of his time. He was duly condemned to death which again was proof enough as to how much authority and power religion wielded on the lives of the people either positively or, sadder still, negatively. A great section of the opponents of Socrates knew too well that he was a prophet of their time calling everyone to reorient his\her life to the highest good he\she was capable of manifesting. Their judgement could be seen wanting but also many in all possibility knew in their hearts that they were commiting a murder of truth. Though he was perceived as an atheist, he was a firm believer as was evident from his teachings and life. He is often quoted as saying at the time of his final trial of the authority of Hellenistic city states,“ I shall obey God rather than you.” [25]

Another case in point is where a group was treated within the brackets of atheists due to politico-historical reasons. Treating atheism in the ancient world at length a quote from the Encylopedia Americana Vol II goes as follws, “In later centuries, Christians were commonly known in the Roman embpire as atheists, because they denied the gods of imperial cult. Arnold Toynbee, in A Study of History, cites a letter of emperor Julian in which the “atheists “ turn out to be the “Galileans”.[26]

The famous words of Gandhi after being refused entry to a church reserved exclusively for a particular community are worth the mention in this context. He continued to proclaim his inspiration coming from the beatitudes in the gospel of Matthew but expressed his perception of the believers in unequivocal terms. He said, “I like Christ, not Christians”. Again, situations of innocent suffering, injustice, evil and the like do make people question the power of God and His goodness. The famous justification of God vis-à-vis the problem of evil is often seen as incapable of an adequate explanation.

In the final analysis we find that more than ontological perception, it is the empirical exigencies that make people oriented to subscribing to views contrary to those that are theistic. “Many of the atheists argue that God is the projection of the human mind created by religions and powerful groups by which they subdue the powerless and poor. For psychologists like Freud, the God, who controls and provides everything, is created by the human psyche in response to its needs for love, safety and security.”[27] The above quote well expresses it.

1. 1. 3. 2. Agnosticism

Agnosticism is a view that never bothers to consider whether God exits or not. “The Agnostics simply say that they do not know whether God exists or not. After all, for them the question of God’s existence is not important one. With or without God, the world will go on as it is”.[28] For them, to be a believer is very risky and burdensome. Therefore they don’t want to make judgement about God’s existence, declaring it impossible to prove, or even to affirm or deny.[29]

The Encyclopaedia Americana defines agnosticism as: “It is a form of scepticism that maintains that human mind lacks the information or rational capacity to make judgements about ultimate reality, and in particular about the existence or nature of God”[30] Since the existence or nonexistence of God or gods is inherently unknowable, it is totally meaningless to believe in the existence or nonexistence of God or gods. To better the human condition such a belief is no necessity. The word ‘agnosticism’ was coined by Thoma Henry Huxley about 1869 from the Greek negative prefix a meaning ‘without’ and the verb gignoskein meaning ‘to know’.[31]
In line with Agnosticism we have Ignosticism which renders the question on the existence of God or gods meaningless pricisely on utililitarian grounds. Both the question and the answer are not worthy of great consideration and importance at all. It neither rejects the idea of the existence of God. It just avoids the subject matter as it is meaningless.*

1. 1. 3. 3. Theism

Theism is the doctrine of the existence of a God (monotheism) in Semitic religions or existence of Gods (polytheism) in other religions. It is generally equated with monotheism as the belief in one God who is personal and moral, who has created and sustains the universe, and who demands an unqualified response.[32] Though the term theism is etymologically derived from the Greek ‘Theos’ meaning god, was first employed by the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth in Intellectual System of the Universe (1678).[33]

Against atheism undoubtedly it affirms the existence of God and only one God. “As opposed to Polytheism and henotheism, the worship of one God among many, theism maintains the existences of only one God. In contrast to pantheism, which identifies the universe as god, theism insists on a God separate from the universe and utterly transcendent. Whereas deism imagines a distant God who caused the world to exist and then left it to develop according to its own inherent laws, theism postulates a personal God, ruling the world with his providence, whose imminence is as real as his transcendence”[34]

The Semitic religions Judaism and Islam believe in unmitigated monotheism and whereas charting a discontinuity from the Judaic tradition Christianity affirms God as Trinity, One God and Three Persons as revealed by Christ the fullness of Truth and Revelation. We have diverse images of God in the Bible, both anthropomorphic and as transcendent in the sense of Being totally different from the human. Some other religions and philosophical systems ( Bhakti sects as late movement of Hinduism and several Mahayana versions of Buddhism ) conceive God as an impersonal Entity, a Being with an Absolute power, a Supreme mind or super intelligence and will or spirit, a Pure act, the Divine, the Sacred, a Higher power than every other. Whatever be the differences, theism conceives God as an Ultimate reality, the Ultimate Ground of Being, and the Ultimate Horizon of Meaning.[35]

1. 1. 4. The Knowledge and Experience of God

No one teaches a newly born baby how to breath or cry, it comes naturally. The knowledge of God to a human person is in his intrinsic nature. Because man is created in the image and likeness of God, he finds an orientation, which is ontological in nature, towards God. His origin and end is God. He comes from God and he must go back to God. C C C affirms this reality telling that “Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. Coming from God, going toward God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God.”[36] That is why St. Augustine says: “O Lord, You have made us for yourself; our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[37] To find God one must look inside like Augustine. “God is truth itself. As sun is the source of light by which our eyes sees the visible world, so God is source of illumination of mind by it sees the eternal truths. Truth draws the mind itself, but the mind is distracted by the sinful will, which draws it down toward inferior things. Only when the will is healed by the grace of Christ can the mind attain the truth. It is the restlessness of human heart that points us in the direction of God.”[38]

Every man has a thirst for a union with the Ultimate because God creates man with His own Divine breath. For, “God is God because God is Love. God can not be other than Love. In another words God is the very definition of Love itself. Since God is love, God’s very breath is Love which He breathed into man’s nostrils- a Love of life and thus man became a living being (Gen 2:7) . The person who can listen to the voice of conscience can definitely know God.”[39]

We come to know God not only looking inward, but also looking from outward- the works of God. “The path of knowledge, and the path to the God, begins not from within but from without, from the sense experience. We infer from what is known in the visible, spiritual world. Thus, St.Thomas Aquinas, one of the leading theologians of the Church in the medieval times proposed “five ways”[40] to prove the existence of God, all based on observation of the way things are and work in the external world”[41] From the cosmos with all its richness and beauty, we come to understand the intelligence that has designed it. Creation is an expression of the love of God; it reflects the rays of God’s perfection and beauty.[42] With Luther’s ‘devil’s bride’ and ‘beautiful whore’ (human reason) we can come to the knowledge of God. With the natural light of human reason man can know God with certainty.

Blaise Pascal gives a new meaning in the whole exposition of knowledge of God. He talks about “the presence of a hidden God.” God is and is not? According to him if one gambles that God is not, that person has nothing to gain and everything to lose should God exists. If, on the other hand, one wagers that God exists, that person has everything to gain and noting to lose. It is only in our knowledge of Jesus Christ that we have access to God. Apart from Christ “all communication with God has been cut off”[43]

In line with Augustine, Cardinal John Henry Newman agrees that we will come to the knowledge of God from our “Conscience.” It is the right and the duty or the obligation of conscience to know God. “For Newman, what pointed toward God, from within the subject was the experience of being obliged by one’s conscience. This was not a naïve argument that God inscribed moral laws on the hearts. Rather it was Newman’s attempt to analyze why, having arrived at conclusion about what one ought to do, that one experienced one’s conclusion as an “ought,” i.e., as obliging one in some way. [44]

God has made himself visible: in Jesus we are able to see the Father (1 Jn.4: 9). “The love incarnate God is visible in a number of ways” is well explained and affirmed in the first encyclical of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est. It continues, “In the love-story recounted by the Bible, He comes towards us, he seeks to win our hearts, all the way to the Last supper, to the piercing of his heart on the cross, to His appearances after the resurrection and to the great deeds by which, through the activity of the apostles, he guided the nascent Church along its path. Nor has the Lord been absent from subsequent church history: he encounters us ever anew in the man and woman who reflect his presence, in his word, in the sacraments and especially in the Eucharist. In the Church’s liturgy, in her prayer, in the living community of believers we experience the love of God, we perceive his presence and we thus learn to recognise that presence in our daily lives.”[45]

God experience is self-evident. It is an encounter, a contact established between the human and God at the beginning of creation and through various stages of life grows into a beautiful experience nourished by various personal and communitarian spiritual exercises. In the Christian tradition it is generally understood as the constant encounter with the Triune God strengthened by the community and nurtured by sacraments. The experience of God is not alien to human history. Man being a product of history and culture and at the same time architect of history and culture, has interpreted this experience in diverse ways and forms. He has been using symbols to express the same, ancient and modern, oriental and occidental. “The fact that humankind has some kinds of God-experiences or religious experiences ( an intimate and immediate awareness of being touched or grasped by the Divine) is attested in human history in various religious traditions among people of all nations and cultures of all times and places.”[46] As Rudolf Otto says that it is the experience of an encounter with a tremendous and fascinating mystery, The Holy is mysterium tremendum et fascinosum (a mystery which at same time overwhelms and fascinates us). It is the experience of the “Wholly Other.”[47] It is an experience fascinating at the same time captivating the human with a great and indescribable sense of mystery. There is an element that evades the total comprehension of God. There is no total mastery over this tremendous Mystery. God remains as The Tremendous Mystery. Hence this experience is one of the affirmations of the creaturliness of the creature and the inexhaustible Creator.

There is knowability on the part of the human when he experiences God and at the same there is ineffefability in its entirety as regards expressing the same without any element of interpretation. The expressions are heavily interpretative in nature and laden heavily with semantic and cultural symbols of man. This experience can be something strange like the ‘burning bush’ (Ex.3:2-6). One may understand the expression well within the cultural context of a shepherd in the wilderness where one sees a burning bush without being turned to ashes. It is absolutely authoritative as far as the experience of Moses is concerned. However, one may interpret that Moses was given a glimpse of the power of YHWH who wanted to liberate the people of ISRAEL under slavery in Egypt. The powerful symbol of the burning bush manifested an encounter with God who was Powerful and Capable to shatter the ramparts of Pharaoh along with the latter’s umpteen number of army and legion of infantry.

The entire scripture is nothing but the written record (scrittura, that which is written down) of a community that encountered its God in its own history tossed by sin and fall and saved by promise and grace. It is commonly said, that the entire Bible can be summarised in three words. They are ‘God is Love’ and the rest is commentary. The diversity of expressions of the Love of God also expresses the diversity of the ages lived by the same community. Different ages had different expressions specific to their context and culture. Thus we affirm in the first place the existence of God, the possibility of experiencing God in and through the works of God guided by genuine reason, and the reality of diversity of expressions as the natural outcome of the attempt by the human to express his experience of God through symbols, semantic and cultural, specially the scriptures which gives a continuity to the foundational experience to the present community, which again acts as the base of a past memory helpful to live that memory in the present and orients the community to the future memory of the fullness of God realisation.

1. 1. 5. God-Talk in Religious Language

The experience of an encounter with a tremendous and fascinating mystery is not an ordinary experience. It may be personal or communitarian. The expression of such an experience is called faith-expression or faith-communication. The Emmaus experience is not an ordinary experience but an intense heart burning experience. Though it is expressed in an ordinary language, the intense experience makes the language extraordinary. I.T.Ramsey in his book Religious Language says that theology uses ordinary language in an extraordinary way. The extraordinariness makes the language religious and theological.

Using the ordinary language in an extraordinary way the language of theology becomes extraordinary. To say God is a Father in a very ordinary language, it simply means that God is loving, caring, compassionate, and forgiving etc. God is not a ‘father’ in the strict sense of the word, but God’s relationship to us is like that of the parent to children. There is infinite gulf between the human as a father and God as a father. It is worth recalling the statement of Lateran Council IV: DS 806 that “between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an ever greater dissimilitude” It is however “the language used for the created order cannot be predicated to God. Hence no theological language, or God-talk, in the univocal sense is possible”[48]

In theology we can neither use the univocal ( a particular word or language is used with a same meaning ) nor equivocal ( same word or language may be used for entirely different things with the consequence that they do not signify anything) but analogical. [49] The ‘analogy’*[50] is “literal speech rather than the figurative speech used in myth and symbol- without, however signifying univocally; it uses concepts rather than images. The analogical concept “designates” God without representing him, i.e., the objective contents of the concept are creaturely only, they are not transferred to God but simply supply a vector from which he can be named.”[51] In another words it is “a way of explaining the meaning of one reality by showing its similarity to another.”[52] For example, God is not a ‘rock’ in the strict sense of the word, but God’s firmness to continue His loving protection from the enemies to us is like that of a mighty rock.

In the modern world the use of the word ‘Father’ can be also misunderstood as androcentric language that leads to gender-exclusivism. We need to understand that God transcends gender. God is neither male nor female. It is the Godhood of the Father that counts, not the Fatherhood of God.[53] John Hick is right in saying that “the love of God may well be analogous rather than identical in nature to human love; the Word of God is not literally a word; and so on.”[54] Hence one can affirm that the religious and theological language is not an ordinary language. It is a language of its own. It can be also called a faith language or symbolic language. Therefore it points something beyond itself as explained above the word ‘Father’.[55]

Even though religious language talks about God falls short to grasp what God is because our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. As God is ineffable, infinite and inexhaustible St. Thomas in SCG I, 30 says that “concerning God, we can not grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him”[56] The classical Hindu tradition says that we can only say what God is not: neti, neti. It is interesting to note that the mystical traditions and the classical Negative Theology* [57]to deny the possibility of positively speaking about God. It is only biblical tradition and mainline Christian tradition affirms that we can speak about God and we can have a positive understanding of God, though our knowledge of God is very limited.[58]

1. 2. Definition

One may shock and wonder to note that the word theology does not occur in Sacred Scripture, although the idea and meaning is vey much present.[59] Theology is generally defined as reasoned discourse concerning God or faith in God because the word ‘theology’ comes from two Greek words: ‘θεος’( theos ) meaning “God”, and ‘λογος’ ( logos ) meaning “word,” “science”or “reason.” It is “of ancient provenance but bears a variety of differing but related meanings.”[60] It can also refer to the study of other religious topics. St. Augustine defines theology as “thought or speech about divinity” (de divinitate ratio sive sermo).[61] According to Lidell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon , the term theologia is the “discourse on the gods or cosmology .”[62] Encyclopedia Americana defines theology as “rational utterance, or discourse about God or gods.” [63]

1. 2. 1. The Word- Theologia and its development

In its etymological sense the word "theology" simply means “ science of God,” “study of God” or “knowledge of God.” The knowledge about God and things related to him can be acquired either by the light of reason alone, or by the aid of divine revelation; each type of knowledge can be either popular or scientific in nature. In this sense theology may be defined as a supernatural science* [64]which treats of God and of creatures in their relation to God. Many people, for example, mistake a purely rational treatise on the existence of God, or the mortality of soul, as “theology.” Others think that any scientific study of the Bible or any excursion into the field of comparative religion is “theology” [65]

And some mistake that theology is the deposit of divine truth that is timeless and unalterable. We can accept that the Sacred Scripture is inviolable, but we need fresh theological understanding and reformulation. Theology of early church was the theology of martyrdom for the sake of faith. In the second and third centuries it has changed into apologetical theology in the second and third century. The Apologists (e.g., Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Irenaeus) defended faith in opposition to Gnosticism and Pagan Atheism. After winning the favour of Emperor Constantine the spread of Church became the highest value, the character of theology has changed. With Scholastics theology becomes more of academic in nature. As circumstances change, theology should also change. It has change for two reasons: first, because as language and cultural forms change the body of Christian truth must be clad in contemporary dress to remain intelligible; and second, because new issues and problems continually arise to challenge church.[66]

The term first appears in Plato’s Republic with reference to poetry ( book ii, chap 18 ).[67] For the term theologia is used in Classical Greek literature for divine personalities. “ For pagan antiquity it meant a mythological explanation of the ultimate mysteries of the world ( Plato: Republic 379a).[68] If we closely read Plato’s Republic we can note that Plato and his master Socrates(5-4 B.C) used the term theologia to point out some of statements and discussions in the Greek poets on ‘gods’ in order to criticize them as unbefitting divine beings.[69] We could say the concept of theology began with the Greeks, even though it gained its content and method with Christianity.

According to Plato Theology is telling of stories about the gods (Plato had prescribed norms to which the poetry must conform in matters of theology).[70] Aristotle though uses the term for his metaphysics or ‘First Philosophy’, which explained the whole of reality in terms of the ‘Absolute Principle’ or ‘Supreme Mind’ (Meta. 1026a 19-22); he abandons it as he understands metaphysics is to deal with being as such rather than with the immaterial unmoved mover.[71] In Aristotle's Metaphysics (book vi, chap.1, sect. 19), it is one of the three speculative sciences: mathematice, phusike and theologike, with the latter corresponding roughly to metaphysics. The term has since been appropriated by a number of Eastern and Western religious traditions.[72]

Drawing on Greek sources, the Latin writer Marcus Terentius Varro probably following the Stoic philosopher Panaetius, distinguished theology into three concepts (forms): ‘mythical’ (concerning the myths about the Greek gods and the doctrine implied in them) ‘natural’(physical or rational)- (philosophical analysis of the gods and of cosmology or the science of divinity- the proper occupation of philosophers) and civil (concerning the rites and duties of public religious observance of various cities or states).[73] The Latin Fathers, such as Tertullian and Augustine followed Varro's threefold usage of thelogy.

In the beginning of Christianity the term-theologia was also applied to the civic cult of pagan gods of Greece and Rome. It is therefore the term was repungnant to early Christians. When the gnosis (biblical) had acquired more dangerous conotations, Origen turned to theologia to express the Christian understanding of God as distinguished from Christian faith.[74]No wonder the Christian writers used the term with several different ranges of meaning. In patristic Greek sources, the early Fathers used theologia in correlation to oikonomia; the former refering the inner mystries of Godhead, the later to God’s plan of salvation through Christ.[75] In the struggle with Arianism this “explanation of God” (theologia) came to be used for Christian knowledge about the Persons of Trinity. Pseudo-Dionysius used theologia for mysticism.[76] Gregory Nazianzus ( 4th century A. D ) in his treatise De Theologia ( Oratio 28) was concerned with the knowledge of God. The word was also used for the predication of divinity and in particular for the doctrine of Trinity and of divinity of Christ. [77]It is in this sense that Gregory Nazianzus was nicknamed "the theologian": he was a staunch defender of the divinity of Christ. According to Theodore of Cyrrus (5th century A. D ) it meant the Old and New testaments.[78]

Abelard after 1100 was the first to apply the term theology methodical (dialectical) investigation of the whole Christian teaching.[79]For him theology was as much the study of Christian doctrine of God displayed in Holy Scripture and the church fathers, as of doctrines of God found in writers outside the Bible and Church[80]( The term is explicitly used in sense of signifying an intellectual discipline, i.e., an ordered body of knowledge about God).[81] The classical definition that we have on theology is St. Anselm’s of Canterbury: fides quaerens intellectum ( faith seeking understanding). One can be very sure that without faith in God no theology can exist. Hence faith is fundemental and vital for theology. Perhaps drawing inspiration from Anselm, Proffessor J. Macquarrie has defined theology as “the study which, through participation in and reflection upon a religious faith, seeks to express the content of faith in clearest and most coherent language available.”[82]

Finally we can say that theology is as old as self-conscious faith in God. In this sense Adam and Eve were doing theology as they were thinking of the ultimate meaning of their life once they were out of the paradise. No doubt they must have reflected on their fidelity and faith in God and His revelations. Therefore theology precedes not only christianity but even Judaism as well.[83] The Christian theology, more specifically the Catholic theology begins with the Apostles. The theology of the Apostalic period was the theology of new testament whose theology is more catecatical than speculative. As Christian faith was seriously challenged, theology became deliberately systematic. The technical theological terms were formulated and the theological problems were defined especially against Gnosticism and Arianism.[84]

As time went on, the canon of Sacred Scripture was determined and the creed was formulated and accepted. As circumstances changed, so too did the character of Catholic theology. The theology was developing and changing according to the time and the environmemts. It was in the bishop’s houses, its concern was primarily pastoral(concerned with a defence of faith against non believers and heretics); in monasteries, it became more literary and ascetical(spiritual and devotional); in universities, more speculative(giving the whole body of Christian faith some coherent,logical unity and structure); in seminaries, more narrowly clerical (preparing the future priests for the service of the Church as preachers, teachers and confessors).[85] The Vatican II says that theology especially subjects of Catholic theology must be taught in the light of faith under the guidence of the magisterium of the church, in such a way that students will draw pure Catholic teaching from divine revelation, will enter deeply into its meaning, make it the nourishment of their spiritual life, and learn to proclaim, explain, and defend it in their priestly ministry.[86] It must be solodly anchored in the word of God, “which ought to be, as it were, the soul of all theology.” [87]

Theology can be diveded by content: doctrinal, spiritual, pastoral, liturgical etc

by method: historical, speculative and systematic

by perspective: liberationist, orthodox, radical, feminist, existential,

process etc [88]

In the end

Christian theology is more or less sytematic effort to cometo intellectual terms with, and then to express, our experience(knowledge) of God in Christ. In doing so, theology looks both to the human situation and to the Christian messege. It seeks to understand the one in the light of the other, and maintain the critical conversation/ diologuebetween them,reflecting on the human situation in the light of Christian messege,and on the Christian messege in the light of the human situation.[89]

1. 2. 2. The faith seeking understanding

The definition of theology given by St. Anselm: fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking undestanding) is self-explanatory. It says very clearly that Cristian faith understands itself in rational terms by theological activity. One can affirm with certainity that theology is not mere rational activity of human search or investigation on God,[90] but is more critical understanding of faith in God and in Christ, as that faith has become available to the inquirer in Bible, in the Church, or in some other sector of human experience.[91]

In the light of the above definition we can say that there can be no theology without faith. It is primarily an activity of faith. St. Augustine is very right in telling that Crede ut intelligas (Belive that you might understand). Taking Augustine’s words Ansalm would say: Credo ut intelligam (I believe in oder to understand). Human intellect must be annointed by faith before one engages in to the theological activity. St. Bonoventure adds that no one would understand the divine mysteries without the unction of Holy Spirit. Human intellect, left to itself, is unable to understand the mystery of God and his activity revealed in Sacred Scripture and Tradition.

The human reason illumined by Spirit understands the divine mystery. The one who does not allow the human intellect or reason to be illuminated by the Spirit is a non-believer who can not do theology. If he attempts to do so, he ends up into the philosophy of God or religion because they are not explicitly and formally guided by faith or God’s revealed Word.[92] Though Anselm’s definition gives more emphasis on faith, it doesn’t neglect the reason. The faith is critically examined and analized by reason helps to avoid fideism. Thus rational and critical activities save faith from falling into irrational superstition and dogmatism. It tries to strike a balance between fideism and rationalism. Fideism accepts everything revealed by God without any attempt to scrutinize it by reason. Rationalism rejects everything that is not clearly understood by reason.[93]

The faith seeking understanding is not a static in nature but continuous and dynamic. The very nature of Church is also pilgrim. Hence the task of theology is the continuous seeking for new understanding of faith and its application for faith. In the early church the highest expression of one’s faith is to let oneself for martydom. Today we are confronted with the reality of materialism and atheism where faith becomes meaningless. The task of theology is to make faith meaningful in our present time. It doesn’t make sense to hand over or to communicate now a particular understanding of faith which church held at a particular point of time. Every generation lives in a particular cultural context, has to make faith meaningful with continuous search as the Church is journeying towards to fuller understanding of faith and to the fullness of truth.[94]

1. 2. 3. Lex orandi, lex credendi

In the 4th century Diocletian divided the Roman Empire into East and West for the administration. With the sons of Theodosius I, East and West became two empires. In course of time the Church too became East and West because of the dispute of the dogmatic formulae of the council Ephesus and Chalcedon and also by dissolving of ecclesial communion between Eastern Patriarchates and the Roman See.[95] As there were two empires, there were also two churches with their own different customs, disciplines, liturgies and theologizing methods.[96] No wonder with regard to the revealed truths East and West used different methods and approaches in understanding and proclaiming divine things. As a result of these, various theological formulations emerged.

“These various theological formulations are often to be considered as complementary rather than conflicting. With regard to the authentic theological traditions of Orientals, we must recognize that they are admirably rooted in Holy Scripture, are fostered and given expression in liturgical life, are nourished by the living tradition of Apostles and by the works of Fathers and Spiritual writers of the East; they are directed toward a right ordering of life, indeed, toward a full contemplation of Christian truth.”[97]

From the above quote it is very clear that theology of East is Biblical, Liturgical and Patristic. In the East “Liturgy is the living source of theology. Christian faith is celebrated and actualized at its highest point in the liturgy of the Church. Hence faith-reflection has to be naturally liturgy centred. Liturgical experience will be unique source of theology, or liturgy, for the East, main locus theologicus.[98] The ancient axiom well expresses this reality: lex orandi, lex credendi. This Latin dictum literally means “the law of praying is the law of believing.” Although it is not the definition of theology as such, it aptly expresses the trust of theology. It means that all the Christian beliefs and doctrines have their origin in liturgy and prayers of Church, and from the liturgy that these doctrines were taken up by theology for discussions and clarifications.[99]

The ancient axiom indicates that “worship is the outcome of faith parallel with theology. The lex orandi is faith seeking ritual expression; the lex credendi is the faith seeking understanding.[100] Since the Christian faith is expressed in Christian worship in the East, the outcome of Christian faith is liturgical life (Sacramental life) and moral behaviour because a believer is basically a doer. The believer becomes a doer when he acts in accordance with the faith that has been proclaimed and received.[101] Undoubtedly a believer makes the reflections of his faith that he receives from the liturgy and prayers. Liturgy and prayers are primary sources or a unique source of faith experience. Hence we can say prayers and liturgy are the products of faith-experience.[102]

1. 2. 4. The faith-Reflection on Reality

It is St. Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor who brought every thing under the sun into theology. Therefore theology does not exclusively discuss God alone. It is worth recalling the words of Karl Rahner that whatever we say about God says something about us, and whatever we say about ourselves says something about God. For him ‘God and humanity are correlative terms.’ “As soon as man is understood as being who is absolutely transcendent, in respect to God, ‘anthropocentricity’ and ‘theocentricity’ in theology are not opposite but strictly one and the same thing, seen from two sides” (K. Rahner, Theological Investigation, Vol. 9, p28). According to him the object of theology is not God as such, but man as related to God. What theology discusses is God’s plan of human salvation as revealed by God. He called theology as theological anthropology.[103]

Since theology discusses every thing including God, humankind and world from the perspective of faith or under the light of faith. In this sense we can understand theology as faith reflection on reality.[104] This faith reflection emerges not from intellectual exercise, but from the day today life of struggles and sufferings, aspirations and endeavours, sighs and hopes (joy and hope, grief and anguish). The gospel themselves are fruits of faith experiences of early Christian communities. Pinto rightly points out, “the gospels themselves which were written much after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the fruits of theological reflection on the faith experience of the early communities.”[105]

It is very evident that every faith community has theology growing out of its context. It is important to note that the gospel of Jesus Christ is only one. The gospels are the faith reflections of communities. In the same way theology is only one which is the faith reflection of reality (God, world and human beings) revealed in Scripture and Tradition. In this sense “every people should have their own theology, growing out of their context, out of their own culture, taking root in their soil and soul”[106] to have life and life in abundance (this theology has the smell of life- sweet, tears and blood because he together with God constructs it ).

Hence theology is not something reserved only for clerics and religious or as rare preserve of academics only for intellectuals. It is for all, right from the creation. Every one is a theologian irrespective gender and class if he or she makes the reflection on his or her faith in the context of life. Gilbert D’ Lima says that “theology is the reflection of faith in the context of life and so every Christian is ought to be a theologian, as he/she seeks to understand his/her faith and its implications for his/her life today.”[107]

In the opinion of Segundo “Doing theology means taking seriously, both, Christian revelation and faith and the historical situation.” God is very active in our historical situation and present in our day today life. Gutierrez in His book A Liberation of Theology defines theology as “a critical reflection on Christian praxis in the light of the Word.” Michel Amaladass would say that “theological reflection arises out of encounter between the experiences of the life a reality and a living condition of faith.”[108] Whereas John H. Leith would define more precisely the Christian theology as a critical reflection about God, about human existence, about the nature of the universe and about faith itself in the light of the revelation of God recorded in Scripture and particularly embodied in Jesus Christ, who is for the Christian community the final revelation, that is, the definitive revelation which is the criteria of all other revelations.[109] It is worth to quote the working definition of Pathil and team:

“Christian theology is a systematic and critical interpretation on the meaning of human life and reality in general from the perspective of Revelation in Jesus Christ on the one hand, and a reinterpretation of Christian Faith on the other, in the light of the new experience and the context of changing realities of the world, in and by the believing community.”[110]

To conclude with Panicker: “Theology” is not just writing. It is foremost living: a conscious living the mystery of that which some traditions call the divine.” As a believer and as member of faith community we need to reflect our faith in our historical situations and evolve a theology which ought to be a grammar to life.

1. 3. The Foundations of Theology

Since theology is the understanding and interpretation of faith experience, we can say it is one of the foundations of theology. We can not think of faith without Revelation because it presupposes God’s revelation in Jesus Christ directed towards humankind in view of human salvation. Revelation is God’s self communication and self disclosure to us. The revelation can be really understood by a man of faith.[111] It can be understood by a believer as the discourse of divinity to man in acts, in deeds, and in the historical events. It is the primary source of faith because religion is, by and large, as much a man’s search for God as man’s response to God’s self-disclosure.[112] In
short we can say that though faith and revelation are distinct, they are inter-related and can not be separated. They are the foundations of theology.

1. 3. 1. Faith

“By faith man freely commits his entire self to God, making the “full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals” and willingly assenting to the Revelation given by him.”[113] No one is compelled to give his assent to God rather voluteerily. “With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer.”[114] Encyclopaedia Americana would term it “a commitment of the whole personality of man, including his reason, will, and emotions, to a reality outside himself upon which he believes he depends.[115] Whereas the ‘New Catholic Encyclopedia says that it is “belief in God and accepetance of His revelation as true.”[116] Thomas merton would say that “Faith is not merely acquiescence of mind in certain truths, it is the gift of our whole being to Truth itself, to the Word of God.”[117]

In the Old Testment faith is rooted in God’s fidelity to the divine promises and to the Covenent with Israel. God summons his people to obey absolutely, to listen his word, and to surrender to it totally. “O.T understanding of faith is far from intellectualistic; rather it involves the existential surrender of the whole person in obedience. It has to do with the totality of the person’s life. Faith is consequently not belief in something but someone. Only God is the person worthy of faith.”[118] Whereas in N.T. Faith is centred around Jesus and his messsage. How one comes to know Christ is certainly by the grace of Holy Spirit ( St. Paul). For early Christians and Church fathers faith is “saving knowledge given to all through revelation, as well as the assent to the revelation. Faith is a free gift, to be accepted or rejected.”[119]

For Augustine and many of the Fathers faith presented itself primarily as an illumination. With the influence of Neo-Platonic epistomology, Augustine looks God as Changeless truth that must shine on our minds inorder for us to understand (septuagiant version of Isaiah 7:9 – Unless you believe, you shall not understand).[120] St. Thomas in the treatise on the theological virtues in the Summa Theologiae, speaks of faith as “being essentially constituted by an inner light of the soul, intermediate between the light of natural reason and the light of glory, of which it is a participation and a earnest. Wherever this inner light is freely responded to, faith is present; and wherever this light does not shine or is rejected, faith is absent.”[121] For Aquinas “Faith is essentially and absolutely supernatural. Its source is God; its motive is God; its goal is God. If there are certain external signs of truth of faith (e.g., miracles and prophecies), they are without force in the absence of the internal cause of belief, which is the Holy Spirit (STh II-II, q.6). Unless the grace of the Spirit is present, elevating the intellect above its own limited natural capacities, we cannot truly believe in God.”[122]

Lonergan identifies faith with luman gratiae, luman fidei, or infused wisdom. Faith according to him, is the knowledge born of religious love. Faith is an eye of religious love.[123] Considering the illuministic interpretation of faith Avery Dulles comments “Faith is a light and it has a point of impact on the human spirit that is more basic and pervasive than assent to particular propositions. Faith arises out of dynamic presence of God to human spirit, and consequently gives a deep satisfaction that can not be offered or removed by any wordly agency.”[124]

For Calvin the doctine of faith (more or less similar to Luther’s*) is a firm and certain knowledge of God’s beneficence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon the hearts through the Holy Spirit.”[125] Avery Dalles beautifully comments on Calvin’s definition as “Like Luther, Calvin stresses not simply the truth of God’s word but even more the reliability of God’s promises in Christ. Yet the element of intellectual assent is not missing from Calvin’s definition. As compared with Luther, Calvin writes more systematically, less existentially.[126]

Before Vatican II “faith is essentially an act of intellect, “thinking with assent.” It is atonce supernatural, free, and necessary for salvation. Although it is never end product of reasoning, faith is always “consonant” with reason.”[127] Since God wishes salvation of all, faith is necessary., [128]Vatican II teaches us faith is not only found in catholic church but also outside of visible boudaries of Catholic Church (UR 3). It affirms the supernatural character of faith as full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals (DV 59). The council insisted that “faith must be always free coercion.”

Borrowing the words of Jon Sobrino we can say of faith like the following: To know the truth is to do the truth; to know Jesus is to follow Jesus; to know the faith is to live the faith.[129] To live the faith and to have a living faith, it is to be thought about (via theology) and acted upon (discipleship). It requires conscious and sustained effort.[130] Plato is right in telling that “unexamined mind is not worth living.” We can say that unexamined faith is not worth living faith. We all are in a way in Cultural Christianity.

Cultural Christianity is not only an European or urban phenomenon, it spreads everywhere, even in the villeges. Today many are Christians just because of their parents are christians. A person with a firm faith can change one self from the Cultural Christianity to Personal Christianity. In the same way one can change one’s conventional faith to real faith because faith is not only the assent of the intellect to to a set of truths but also, personal relationship and commitment to God.[131] In the midst of sin and death, failures and catastrophes, utter hopelesseness and brutal violence, the believer experienses the courage and confidence, hope and peace because of his or her personal relationship and commitment to God and his words. Mother Mary who is the model of unwavering faith even at the face of the death of her own son on the cross. Throughout her life and her last ordeal, she never ceased believe in the fulfillment of God’s word. And the church venerates in Mary the purest realization of faith.[132]

By faith Abraham lived as a stranger and pilgrim in the promised land and offered his only son in sacrifice.[133] One who experiences the real faith in God would happily die for it than reject it. We have innumerable examples in the history of Church- the Apostles, the early christians, saints and so on. It is true that faith in God never fails and differs from our faith in human person. The faith in God makes the beliver say the faith in God’s love is more than own mother’s love.[134] Faith is the free gift of God. Peter’s confession of Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God and the response of Jesus indicates very clearly that faith is the free gift of God by which God opens the eyes of the mind and makes it easy to accept and believe the truth.[135]
Richard P. McBrien in his book Catholicism says that “Faith has different “outcomes.” Theology is critical reflection on faith, or “faith seeking understanding.” Doctines (official teaching) are normative rules of faith that guides Church’s teaching, catechesis, and formal teaching. Dogmas are doctrines that are promulgated with the highest solemnity, that is, as definitive rules of faith. Discipleship is the principle outcome of faith, embracing the whole Christian life: worship and moral behaviour alike.[136] By his revelation the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company. The adaquate response is faith.[137] If faith is our response to God’s revelation, revelation is God’b self communion to us. We believe in God who revelas. We commit our whole self to God the revealer. Without faith we can not believe in revelation. Without revelation faith is impossible.Let us attempt to analyse the revelation.

1. 3. 2. Revelation

The term revelation comes from the Greek word apocalypsis, which means an unveiling (disclosure).[138] A related New Testament word is "mystery" (musterion). In Latin the word comes from revelare meaning to remove the veil.[139] The word was used in other contexts to describe the unveiling of a statute upon its completion. It has the idea of disclosing something that was previously hidden and unknown. To cite an example, it pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (cf. Eph. 1:9). His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become the sharers in the divine nature (cf. Eph. 2:18; 2 Pet. 1:4).[140] God’s hidden will was made known to us step by step. “God communicates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural revelation that is to culminate in person and mission of incarnate word, Jesus Christ.”[141] The divine revelation is a salvific dialogue between God and humanity, the offer of salvation made by God to man. This dialogue of salvation aims at the divinization of man and indeed of the entire creation.[142]

Edmund J. Dunn gives a comprehensive definition on revelation in What is Theology? “Revelation is God’s gracious self-disclosure reaching out humans as an invitation, as well as promise, to participate in God’s life of unfathomable love, mediated to us through persons, nature, history, everyday experience, and, in an ultimate way, in and through God’s very Word, Jesus Christ.”[143] We can say that if revelation is God’s self communication to us, faith is our response to God’s revelation because revelation is to be received, perceived, grasped and responded to. It becomes a concrete historical reality only when human persons receive it. Who can receive it? The people with faith can receive it. God’s self revelation becomes complete only when it is actualized and concretized by the human response. Any communication and self-gift presupposes two persons and two simultaneous actions, giving and receiving.[144] This giving and receiving we can see in the Bible.

Taking personal interest God intervenes in the history of Israel and ultimately of the whole of humankind.[145] It is the key or central to Israel’s faith. This intervention is done from the part of God, “an intervention due solely to God’s free choosing.”[146] In OT God’s self communication (revelation)takes many forms: “created objects, theophanies, oracles, dreams, prophesies, laws, wise sayings, historical events, and particularly the Covenant with Moses and the Exodus from Egyptian bondage. The Covenant /Exodus theme run throughout the Old Testament and shapes Israel’s fundamental understanding of God and of “word” of God.”[147]
In New Testament God expresses Himself totally. We can see the fullness of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. “All of the Old Testament themes are recapitulated in the New Testament but are now focussed in Jesus Christ through whom God has spoken the final word (Hebrews 1: 1-3).” understanding of God and of “word” of God.”[148] “In Jesus Christ, the inner word of God, in whom God expresses Himself totally and knows all things, was made flesh and became Gospel, word of salvation, to call man to salvation. In Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the Son is present in our midst and in human terms that we can understand and assimilate, He speaks, preaches, teaches, testifies to what He has seen and heard in the bosom of the Father. Christ is the summit and fullness of revelation.”[149]

Biblical revelation is not primarily a revelation of objects, not a revelation of truths, teaching commandments, and supernatural realities, but a personal self-revelation of God. What God primarily makes known to us in revelation is not various truths and realities but himself and his saving will for human beings.[150] In Jesus God fully revealed Himself and thereby Jesus is the fullness of God’s revelation which is closed with Jesus Christ. Therefore “no public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[151] It doesn’t mean that God is no more present and acting in history. God through Christ and His Spirit is more dynamically present in the created world and in human history leading the whole creation to its final fulfilment.[152]

For the Apostolic Fathers (Clement of Rome, d. c.96; Polycarp, d. c.155; Ignatius of Antioch, d. c.107), revelation is the “Good News” of salvation. Christ is its supreme herald and embodiment. The Apostles are its messengers, just as were the prophets before them, and the Church receives and transmits their teaching.[153] For Irenaeus, Revelation is the epiphany or manifestation of God in Christ. Augustine developed the theology of revelation in his commentary of fourth Gospel and in his De Gratia Christi where revelation is linked with doctrine illumination. Revelation is more as an inner light by which we are able to believe than as what is proposed for belief. Thomas Aquinas stresses on cognitive or intellectual side of revelation. Revelation is the truth that God communicates through the prophets, Christ, Apostles, and the Church. Revelation, therefore, is the highest form of knowledge.[154]

According to the first Vatican council, Revelation comes implicitly through natural order of created things, and explicitly through the teachings of Christ, the prophets, the Apostles, and the Church. What is revealed is God and the eternal decrees of the divine will. The content is accepted on the authority of God, with the help of divine grace, not on the basis of rational argument. As for Vatican Second, revelation is the divine “mystery” disclosed in Christ, rather than simply a cluster of “mysteries” to be believed on faith. It comprises both the word and deed, is not static but dynamic, communicates not conceptual truths but God the will of God, and continues even in the present.[155]

“Revelation is available in principle to everyone. All are called to salvation, but salvation is impossible without faith, and faith, in turn, is impossible without revelation.”[156] Faith and revelation are inseparably united even though they can be distinguished. As two sides of same coin one can not exist without the other. They point to the original and originating source of theology: there are three sources such as Scripture (OT & NT), Tradition* and the Church and its teaching authority. In teaching authority of Church or Magisterium can be further divided into three: i) Collegiality of the Bishops‡ ii) Papal Magisterium‡‡ iii) Sensus Fidei, Sensus Fidelium.‡‡‡ Thus we can say that the sources of theology are “the faith experience of the early Christian community, as attested in the Sacred Scripture and the entire Tradition embodied in the liturgy and sacraments and creeds and the teachings of the Church, especially of the Apostolic Fathers etc.”[157]

Foot Notes

[1] C. S. Song, Tell Us Our Names, Orbis Books, New York 1989, 6.

[2] G Lima., Evangelization in India through Basic Communities, St. Paul’s Publications, Bombay 1966, 88.

* Theology as prosaic response means a set of expressions that emerge in response in a faith community to a particular God-experience and which continue to give the community an orientation towards future. This is done by every faith-community-in mission in every age according to the exigencies of life and its varied processes. It is the faith-response to God’s offer of love to humans and the focal point is God. It scrutinizes life in all its aspects from the optic of God.

**As a response, theology is a love poem. With natural light of reason man composes the poem from his faith experiences about God’s self communicating love. This love is ever new and fresh as a new day.

[3] K. Koonthanam, “Responses,” in Jeevadhara 23 (1992), 225- 230.

[4]Ibidem.

[5] W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, SCM Press Limited, London 1983,4. See also, Thomas Aquinas, ST I, 2, 3.

[6] Ibidem., and see also Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion 2.

[7] Ibidem., 5.

[8] P.Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1951, 12.

[9] R. Bultmann, What does It Mean to Speak God? , in Faith and Understanding 1,ETL. P. Smith, London & New York
1969, 53.

[10] Cf. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, SCM Press Limited, London 1983,7. and see also in Cf. Thomas Aquinas, ST I, 1-7: ‘In sacred doctrine all subjects are treated in terms of God, either because they are God himself or because they are related to him as their origin and end. It follows from this that God is indeed the object of this science’; Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei VIII, 1 (CCL 47, 217), who defines theology as ‘thought of speech about the divinity’.

[11] K. Rahner, Foundations of Christian faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, Seabury Press, New York 1978, 65-66.

[12] Catechism of the Catholic Church, no 1, Theological Publications of India, Bangalore 1994, 6.

[13] Ibidem., 27.

[14]Ibidem., 1.

[15] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, Theological Publications of India, Bangalore 2003, 1.

[16] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 32.

[17] Ibidem., 33.

[18] Vatican I, Dei Filius, no.2; Vatican II, Dei Verbum, no.6.

[19] O. A. Mencacci, Dizionario biblico-teologico per studenti stranieri,Guerra Edizioni, Perugia 2004,21.

[20] Cf. W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, 7; and see also in M. Heidegger,
Erlaulterungen zu Holderlins Dichtung, Frankfurt 1951, 27; M. Buber, The Eclipse of God, ET M. Friedman et al., New York 1953, D. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ET Frank Clark et al., The Enlarged Edition, London and New York 1971. A. Delp, Im angesicht des Todes. Geschrieben zwischen Verhaftung und Hinrichtung 1944-45, Frankfurt 1963.

[21] R. McBrien, Catholicism, Harper Collins, New York 1994, 206

[22] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2125.

[23] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 209.

[24] Roger L. Shinn, “Atheism,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 2, 604.

[25] Ibidem.

[26] Ibidem.

[27] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 2.

[28] Ibidem.

[29] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2127.

[30] Roger L. Shinn, “Agnosticism,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 1, 337.

[31] Ibidem.
* For the Ignostics “Does God exist?” is as same as “Explaining the colours to a blind person or what color is Saturday.” Apatheism which is similar to and yet distinct from ignosticism, holds that even a hypothetical answer to the question of God’s existence is absolutely irrelevent.
[32] H. W. Wright, “Theism,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol 25, 506.

[33] John M. McDermott, “Theism,” in J. A. Komanchak, (ed.), The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 1007 -1009.

[34] Ibidem.

[35] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 2.

[36]Catechism of the Catholic Church, 44.

[37] Saint Augustine, Confessions, 1, 1, 1: PL 32, 659-661.

[38] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 209; St. Anselm’s Ontological argument is worth quoting here: God is “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived”esudas

[39] D. Yesudas, Jnayaralcha Prasangangal, vol. 1, St. Paul’s Publications, Ernakulam 2004, 74.

[40] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 210: The five ways, for precision, are given below from the point of argumentation to arrive at the conclusion of the existence of God. 1.Motion (there must be prime mover) 2. Causality (every effect must have a cause) 3. Necessity, or Contingency (all beings are possible, but one must be necessary if there are to be any beings) 4. Gradation or exemplarity (our ideas of more or less, of better or worse, presuppose some standard of perfection), 5. Design (the consistent and coherent operation of the whole universe demands some intelligent and purposeful designer).

[41] Ibidem., 209-210.

[42] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 4.

[43]Catechism of the Catholic Church, 211.

[44] Ibidem.

[45] Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 17.

[46] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 5.

[47]R. McBrien, Catholicism, 365.

[48] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 5.

[49] Ibidem. (When speaking about God we naturally have to use human language to do so. According Thomas Aquinas, when we speak about God we cannot use terms which are univocal (i.e. they have the same meaning) And we can’t use terms which are equivocal (i.e. they have a different meaning), What Aquinas claims is we can use the religious language analogically; that we use them in a similar or related sense to others. This would mean that if we were talking about the 'hand of God' we could make reference to human notions of giving someone a 'helping hand' (or other related ideas)

[50] The theory of analogy was developed by Aristotle and further refined by the scholastic theologians, especially Thomas Aquinas. Analogy is used to explain the ontological relationship between the Creator and created and for the possibility of knowing God by reason. (See K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 6).

[51] William J. Hill, “Theology,” in Komanchak, J.A (ed.), The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 1011 -1027.

[52] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 46.

[53] Ibidem., 356.

[54] John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Response to the Transcendent, Palgrave Macmillan, New York
2004, 176.

[55] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 6.

[56] St. Thomas in SCG I, 30.
[57] *Negative Theology is not the denial of God. Since we can not fully comprehend God, we attempt to describe God by negation, that is to say, it isn't this, but also, it isn't that either. Properly speaking we can say of God or divine only what is not: incorporeal, invisible, infinite and so on. But these negative statements have positive meaning. In dealing with the divine, negations (apophaseis) are true, affirmations (kataphaseis) inadequate. Hence negative theology is not a denial rather an assertion that we can not capture Divine in human words which inevitably fall short. Negative theology is also called as the Via Negativa (Negative Way) and Apophatic theology (See Cf. W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, SCM Press Limited, London 1983, 96, and also, Plato, Republic VI, 508b, Plotinus Enneds V, 4; VI, 9.
[58]K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 3.

[59] B. A. Demarest, “Systematic Theology,” in Walter and Elwell (ed.), The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Baker Book House, Michigan 1991, 495-496.

[60] William J. Hill, “Theology,” in J. A. Komanchak, (ed.), The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 1011 -1027.

[61] Augustine, De civitate Dei, VIII, 1(CCL 47, 217).

[62] H.G. Liddell & R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (with a revised supplement-1996), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1996,
790

[63]George D. Kilpatrick, “Theology,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol 26, 516.

[64]* G. Van Noort, “The True Religion,” in Dogmatic Theology, vol 1 Translated by John J. Castelot & William R Murphy, The Newman Press, Westminster 1959, xviii, It is more than a science because science in our ordinary vocabulary means physics, chemistry, medicine and other branches of learning whose methods are mainly empirical.

[65] Ibidem xvii.

[66] B. A. Demarest, “Systematic Theology,” in Walter and Elwell (ed.), The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology,
Baker Book House, Michigan 1991, 495-496.

[67] George D. Kilpatrick, “Theology,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol 26, 516.

[68] William J. Hill, Theology, in J. A. Komanchak, The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 1011 -1027.

[69] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 8.

[70] George D. Kilpatrick, “Theology,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol 26, 516.

[71] William J. Hill, Theology, in J. A. Komanchak, The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 1011 -1027.

[72] George D. Kilpatrick, “Theology,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol 26, 516-522.

[73] Ibidem

[74] Cf. G. F. Van Ackeren, “Theology,” in New Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol 14, 39-49.

[75] William J. Hill, “Theology,” in Komanchak, J.A (ed.), The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 1011 -1027.

[76]. Ibidem., See also in Athanasius, Oratio 1 contra Arianos 18; PG 26-49.

[77] George D. Kilpatrick, “Theology,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol 26, 516-522.

[78] Ibidem.

[79] G. F. Van Ackeren, “Theology,” in New Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol 14, 39-49.

[80] George D. Kilpatrick, “Theology,” in Encyclopaedia Americana, vol 26, 516-522.

[81] William J. Hill, “Theology,” in The New Dictionary of Theology, Komanchak, J.A (ed.), TPI, Bangalore 1999, 1011 -1027.

[82] J. Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, SCM Press, London 1966, 1.

[83] Cf. R. McBrien, Catholicism, 43: As soon as human beings began thinking about the ultimate meaning of life, about their relationship to the whole cosmos, about the ultimate purpose and direction of human history ( although the notion of “history” as such is a relatively modern development), about the experience of the holy and sacred, they were beginning to do theology.

[84] Ibidem.

[85] Cf. R. McBrien, Catholicism, 44-49, 69

[86] Vatican Council II, Decree on the Training of Priests, Optatam Totius, 28 Oct. 1965, No.16, AAS 58 ( 1966),Cf. Pius XII, Ecycl. Letter Humani Generis, 12 August 1950, no. 31, A S S 42 (1950) 567- 569.

[87] Vatican Council II, Decree Optatam Totius, Decree on the Training of Priests, 28 Oct. 1965, No.16, AAS 58 ( 1966), Cf. Leo XIII, Encycl. Providentissimus Deus, 18 November 1893: AAS 2C (1893-94), 283.

[88] Ibidem., 70. Further we can say of the formative elements (factors) of theology that John S. Pobbe speaks in his book “Towards an African Theolgy” Abingdon, Nashville 1979, 32., “(a) experience, (b) revelation (c) scripture (d) tradition (e) culture (f) reason.”

[89] Ibidem., 56-57.

[90] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 9.

[91] Cf. R. McBrien, Catholicism, 41.

[92] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 10.

[93] Ibidem: See also in, S. A. Matczak, “Fideism,” in New Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol 5, 908-910. Fideism is a philosophical and theological doctrine or attitude that minimizes the capacity of human intellect to attain certitude and assign faith as a criterion of the fundamental truths. And also in J. E. Gurr, “Rationalism,” in New Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol 12, 90-92. A theory or system that exaggerates reason’s independence from supernatural revelation in religion.

[94] Ibidem.

[95] Cf. Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio, 21, Nov. 1964, No 13, AAS 57 (1965) 90-112.

[96] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 12.

[97] Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio, 21, Nov. 1964, No 17, AAS 57 (1965) 90-112.

[98] K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 13.

[99] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, l 2-13.

[100] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 20.

[101] Cf. Ibidem.

[102] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, l4.

[103] Ibidem., 15- 16.

[104] Ibidem.

[105] J. P. Pinto, “Basic Communities and Inculturation,” in Vidhyajyoti, Journal of Theological Reflection, vol. 50 (1986) 241.

[106]J. Manelel, In his editorial to People’s Theology, in Jeevadara, vol. 22, no 129 (1991) 171.

[107] G. Lima, Evangelization in India through Basic Christian Communities, St. Paul’s Publication, Bombay 1996, 88.

[108] M. Amaladoss, An Emerging Indian Theology, in Vidhyajyoti, Journal of Theological Reflection, vol. 58, 1994.

[109] John H Leith, An introduction to the reformed tradition : a way of being the Christian community, John Knox Press,
Atlanta 1981, 91.

[110] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 20.

[111] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 39.

[112] John S. Pobbe, Towards an African Theolgy, Abingdon, Nashville 1979, 32.

[113] Vatican II, Dogm. Const., Dei Verbum, no 5, 15 Nov. 1965, 18 Nov. 1965, AA S 58 ( 1966 ) 817-835.

[114] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 143.

[115] John M. Krumm, Faith, Encyclopaedia Americana: vol. 10, p 723- 724.

[116] C. H. Pickar, Faith, New Catholic Encyclopaedia: vol. 5, 792- 796.

[117] Thomas Merton, Life and Holiness, Image Books, New York 1964, 73.

[118] John O’Donnell, “Faith,” in J. A. Komanchak (ed.), The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 375-386.

[119] R. McBrien, Catholicism, Catholicism 69.

[120] Cf. Avery Dulles “Faith that does Justice,” in Faith that Does Justice, John C. Haughey (ed), Paulist Press, New York 1977,14. And many great philosophers and theologians have affirmed the idea that faith is the basis of all knowledge. St. Augustine of Hippo in his statement "Crede, ut intelligas" ("Believe in order that you mayunderstand") goes beyond the sphere of religion to encompass the totality of knowledge. Unless we have faith, we will not know anything. Absence of faith in a person cautions us to be careful of the person. Can we imagine a world nobody has faith either in anybody or anything? Certainly that world is in peril. It is very difficult to imagine a person who does not have faith in one’s Creator!

[121] Avery Dulles “Faith that does Justice” 15. See also in St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II, 171, 5, obj.3. The certainty that
the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives. And see also in Catholicism: Cfr.S T,II-II, qq.1-7: Faith is thinking with an assent. What do we believe? God. Why do we believe? On the authority of God who reveals. For what purpose do we believe? That we might be united forever with God in heaven.

[122] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 36.

[123] Avery Dulles “Faith that does Justice” 15; See also in B. Lonergran, Method in Theology, Herder & Herder, New
York 1972, 115-124.

[124] Ibidem., 16

* See ibidem24-25. For Luther “Faith is living and unshakeable confidence, a belief in the grace of God so assured that a man would die a thousand deaths for its sake.” Luther’s doctrine of faith is conscious reaction against the Scholastic intellectualist understanding of faith as well as against doctrine of justification through good works. Faith is simply the act by which we apprehend and accept God’s saving action toward us in Jesus Christ.

[125] Ibidem., 25, See also in Institutes of Christian Religion, Bk. III, Chap.2, par.7.

[126] Ibidem., See also in Cfr. John O’Donnell, “Faith” ed Komanchak in The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 375-386. “Faith is that which God works in us, not something which we do. In this sense, faith is anything but a human being.”

[127] R. McBrien, Catholicism, Catholicism 69.

[128] Ibidem, See also, Vatican II, Declara. Dignitatis Humanae, No 2, 7 Dec. 1965, AAS 58 (1966) 929-941.

[129] Jon Sobrino’s orginal words are: “To know the truth is to do the truth; to know Jesus is to follow Jesus”. See also in K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 43.

[130] Cfr. R. McBrien, Catholicism, 22.

[131] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 43.

[132] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 149.

[133] Ibidem., 145

[134] Cfr. Can a mother forget her child? Even if she forgets her child, I will never forget you ( Isa 49, 15). See also C C C150: Faith is first of all a personal adherence of a man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As a personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in creature. See also, J. I. Packer, “Faith” ed.Walter and Elwell, in The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Baker Book House, ichigan 1991, 175- 176:“Psalmists and Prophets out their experiences present faith as uwavering trust in God to save his servents from their foes and fulfill his declared purpose of blessing them. Isaiah, particularly denounces reliance on human aid as inconsistant with such trust (30: 1-18).”

[135] Cfr. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 153.

[136] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 68. See also in Catholicism p 20: “Since whole Christian life is one of discipleship, and since worship is “summit” and “source” of that life ( Vatican II, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, n.10 ), discipleship embraces both worship and moral behaviour. It is, along with theology and doctrine, a major outcome of faith; indeed, it is the primary and decisive outcome of faith (see, for example, Mt. 7: 21 and 1Jn. 4:20).

[137] Ibidem., 142; Cfr. Vat II, D V,

[138] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 232.

[139]John F. Haught, “Revelation”, in Komanchak, J.A (ed.), The New Dictionary of Theology, TPI, Bangalore 1999, 1011 -1027.

[140] Vatican II, DV 2

[141] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 53.

[142] Cf. M. Schmaus, Dogma: God in Revelation, vol. 1, Sheed and Ward, Kansas City and London 1976, 5.

[143] Edmund J. Dunn, What is Theology, Twenty- Third Publication, Mystic 1988, 42.

[144] Cf. K. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 44.

[145] Cfr. R. McBrien, Catholicism, 270.

[146] R. Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, Mercier Press Ltd, Cork 1966, 21.

[147] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 270. See R. Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 40, for God’s word; The created things are the echo of the word of God, God’s word is essentially dynamic,which effects salvation at the same time as it proclaims
salvation.

[148] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 270.

[149] R. Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, Mercier Press Ltd, Cork 1966, 45.

[150] W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, 120. See also, Vat. I: DS 3004; ND 113. It
is made more clear in Vat II, Dei Verbum 2.

[151] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 65.

[152] K. Pathi1, 46. See also R. McBrien, Catholicism, 272: Revelation is closed only in the sense that Christ-event has already happened. Revelation continues, on the other hand, in that God is a living God and remains available to us. But God will not fundamentally alter or revoke the self- communication that has already occurred in Christ.

* Tradition is generally understood as “Entire process by which normative religious truths are passed on from one generation to another.”( J. Van Engen, “Tradition” in The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, W. A. Elwell (ed.), Baker Book House, Michigan 1984, 516-518.) Tradition (upper case) is the living and lived faith of the Church; tradition(s) (lower case) are customary ways of doing or expressing matter related to faith. If tradition can not be rejected or lost without essential distortion of the Gospel, it is part of Tradition itself. If a tradition is not essential (i.e., if it does not appear, for example, in the New Testament, or if it is not clearly taught as essential to Christian faith), then it is subject to change or even to elimination. It is not part of Tradition of the Church (R. P. McBrien, Catholicism, Harper San Francisco, New York 1989, 63.). The tradition (with small ‘t’ ) are different ecclesial traditions, liturgy and sacraments, creeds, dogmas, doctrines and beliefs, prayers, devotions and spiritualities, disciplines and codes, teachings of the fathers, and catechisms of the Church. (Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 56).

‡ Collegiality of the bishops means that all the bishops in the Catholic Church together constitute a single body or collegium, college or collegial body, upon which is vested the supreme teaching authority of the Church. This supreme authority has final authority in teaching, sanctifying and governing the Universal Church (Cfr. Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 67; Vat. II, LG 18-23).

‡‡ As a head of the Universal Church and as a head of the college of bishops in communion with the bishops, Pope has extraordinary authority to define and teach matters of faith and morals with infallibility. There are several kinds of Papal teaching, such as, Papal definitions or solemn infallible teachings, ordinary Papal teachings in the forms of encyclicals, Apostolic letters etc.

‡‡‡ The deposit of faith resides in the entire body of faithful- the people of God. Every Christian shares in the triple fold ministry of Christ- Priest (sanctifying office), Prophet (Preaching and teaching) and Pastor (shepherding or governing). The entire body of the faithful possesses ‘a supernatural sense of faith’ (sensus fidei), which is the ultimate norm in matters of faith and morals. The teachings of Roman Pontiff and the body of the bishops are based on this sensus fidei of entire Christian community (sensus fidelium).

[153] R. McBrien, Catholicism, 237.

[154] Ibidem 238- 240.

[155] Ibidem., 242, 271.

[156] Ibidem., 272.

[157] Pathil – D. Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, 39.

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