“But what does that have to do with real life?” I have come to expect an occasional question like this in courses on systematic theology. I confess that I am often tempted to snap back, “If you would just abandon your vulgar notions of ‘real’ life and muster some intellectual curiosity you could spare us your question!” Usually, I overcome the temptation and give a little speech instead. If students complain that theology is too “theoretical,” I invite them to consider Kant’s argument that nothing is as practical as a good theory. If they object that theologians entertain outdated and there­ fore irrelevant ideas, I offer them a Kierkegaardian observation that the right kind of non-contemporaneity may be more timely than today’s newspaper. I conclude by explaining how ideas that seem detached from everyday concerns may in fact touch the very heart of those concerns.

And yet, when I am done with my disquisition, I have dealt with only half of the worry expressed in my student’s skeptical question. We theolo­gians sometimes do teach and write as if we have made a studied effort to avoid contact with the “impurities” of human lives. We do so partly by our choice of topics. The number of pages theologians have devoted to the question of transubstantiation -which does or does not take place durng any given Sunday -would, I suspect, far exceed the number of pages we have devoted to the daily work that fills our lives Monday through Sat­urday. We also take flight from the concerns of the quotidian by how we treat great theological themes such as the Trinity, Christology, and soteriology. As thinkers we rightly focus on conceptual difficulties  -“How can God be one and three persons at the same time?” “How can Christ be both God and man?” “How can we owe salvation to nothing but grace and yet be free?”  -but in the process we sometimes lose the larger significance of these doctrines. Moreover, as academics we are caught in the movement toward increased specialization. On the one hand, specialization seems a necessary condition for fundamental research. On the other hand, it tends to make us lose sight of the overarching subject of the­ology. The scholarly interests of theologians then fail to match the realities of the people in the pew and on the street.

There is yet another important reason for a perceived disconnect be­ tween theology and so-called “real” life. It lies in the distinction between the theoretical and the practical sciences that goes all the way back to Aris­totle and his disciples. According to this distinction, the goal of the theoretical sciences is truth, and the goal of the practical sciences is action. Aristotle considered the theoretical sciences, in which knowledge is pursued for knowledge’s sake, a higher wisdom than the practical sciences, which are pursued for their usefulness. It has long been debated how theology fits into this Aristotelian scheme -Thomas Aquinas, for instance, weighed in on the side of theology being a theoretical science, and Duns Scotus argued that it was a practical ones. Obviously, if theology is a theoretical science, then it only secondarily has something to do with practices; one has to make separate inquiry into practical implications of knowledge pursued for its own sake. But if theology is a practical science, then practices are from the start included within the purview of its concerns.

From Miroslav Volf, “Theology for a Way of Life.” In Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life. Edited by Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002, p. 245-6.