Written by: Stefania Tarasut on October 26, 2013

As I picked up Alister McGrath’s Christian Theology: An Introduction, I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of information that flooded my mind. What stood out to me the most in the midst of the 500 pages is people and tradition. I don’t know if it’s my lack of confidence in my abilities to minister, or the sheer awe that comes over someone when they realize how small they are when surrounded by such spiritual giants, but for the first time in a long time I felt surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses that Hebrews talks about. Reading their short biographies and about their fight to maintain tradition reminded me of the human side of Christianity.

I continued to come back to a quote I read in the beginning of the book. McGrath says, “the validity of the church’s ministry and preaching did not come to depend upon the holiness of its ministers, but upon the person of Jesus Christ. The personal unworthiness of a minister did not compromise the validity of the sacraments.” (P18) This was the lens through which I read through this book. It’s easy to find fault, ignore, or even disqualify people and teachings based on the shortcomings of people, but if the worthiness of the person determined the validity of the teaching, then Christianity would have died off when the apostles died. We are walking contradictions most of the time, and our theology seems to change depending on our experiences and seasons of life.

There is a human component to theology that we like to ignore. We believe that the Holy Spirit worked differently two thousand years ago then he does today, but that’s not true. Our scriptures were put together by men with flaws… reformations were started by men with flaws… everything we believe about God came through men and women with flaws. Acknowledging the flaws of humanity should only push us into doing theology, but I’m afraid that our humanity is what hinders us the most.

As an immigrant, I really struggle with tradition. It is in tradition that we find stability and continuity, so when you mess with tradition you shake the foundation, but if you don’t shake the foundation you’re stuck with meaningless traditions. It’s a vicious cycle that is at the center of immigrant life. It struck me when McGrath said, “theology was frequently understood in terms of the faithful repetition of the legacy of the past.” (P78) Isn’t that beautiful? To know that you’re walking in the footsteps of history is again humbling, but I want to challenge that by saying that if we are only repeating the past for the sake of continuity, then we have not done theology for ourselves. Our faith has not become our own, and we have not done much thinking about God. “Part of the notion of ‘theology’ is to take seriously the theological heritage of the past. We cannot be in the church without taking responsibility as much for the theology of the past as for the theology of our present day.” (P3)  I think that this is the challenge to theology today, moving forward while staying connected with the past. Are we up for the challenge?

About the Author

Stefania Tarasut