What Is the Difference Between Faith Theology Belief and Spirituality?

¶ … faith, theology, belief, and spirituality?

When considering the difference between belief, faith, theology, and spirituality, it is helpful to consider these terms in their commonly expressed linguistic forms, as they occur in our daily lives. In other words, in ordinary parlance, how does one usually use the words of belief, faith, theology, and spirituality? By examining such common usage, often one may find clues as to the subtle or not so subtle differences between the terms.

Take, for example, the notion of belief. I might say that I believe in evolution, that I believe that human beings evolved from primates. In other words, one can believe in a supposition that may or may not be correct that has nothing to do with conventional religious structures and institutions, or even, if one accepts fundamentalist interpretations of Genesis, goes against such religious suppositions. I might also say that I believe that my father will arrive around six in the evening to pick me up from school. Belief thus connotes something that one thinks is probable or likely -- I believe in God, I believe that McDonald's is better than Burger King, I believe -- or do not believe -- I will get a better job after graduating from college.

Faith has a more emotional implication in its expression of belief in a likelihood that something exists or will occur. Faith implies belief, but a belief based in something deeper or more tenuous than what can be ascertained with the naked eye. 'I have faith in evolution' sounds like a strange phrase to the ears, because evolution is a scientific theory based in observed logical analysis and factual evidence. Even the statement that 'I have faith that Google is a better search engine than Ask Jeeves' sounds odd, because one assumes one has personal and objective criteria to base one's judgment upon, regarding their relative merits. I have faith that my mother will get well does not sound odd -- no one can know what journey an illness might take. Have faith, one is often told in the face of overwhelming odds -- and in the context of a religion, faith is seen as the willingness to believe in something based on something beyond one's eyes, hence its popularity in Christianity, which tends to emphasize justification through faith, or inner and unsubstantiated belief on earth, rather than worldly acts or proof.

However, if faith usually has a more Christian connotation than an expression of 'belief,' theology, of all the words listed, perhaps has the most Christian implications. In Systematic Theology, Thomas Hodge wrote "If natural science be concerned with the facts and laws of nature, theology is concerned with the facts and the principles of the Bible." However, Hodge points out that the term is even older than the currently assembled Christian Bible, as when "sometimes the word is restricted to its etymological meaning," it comes from the ancient Greek term that means "a discourse concerning God." Both "Orpheus and Homer were called theologians among the Greeks, because their poems treated of the nature of the gods. Aristotle classed the sciences under the heads of physics, mathematics, and theology," or "those which concern nature, number and quantity, and that which concerns God." (Hodge, 2002) Theology is a systematic examination, in other words of particular truths about God within a tradition or a culture.

Hodge also calls theology a science of religion. Does this mean that a belief in evolution and Christian theology are the same? Not quite -- for theology is specific enough in its own scientific fashion in terms of how it 'proves' different things about God. In other words, natural science depends upon notions of observed events and evidence. In contrast, theology proves things about God based on its own, enclosed set of terms within a tradition. In Catholicism, this might be according to the accepted doctrine of the Church -- for instance, is it, according to the Catholic Apostolic tradition, theologically correct that the Pope is infallible? Although one cannot prove this with a scientific experiment, one can use past doctrines and texts to argue this proposition as theologically valid within a Catholic tradition. (Hodge, 2002)

"Well, but I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." How often has this sentence been uttered, in one's hearing, in modern America? Type in 'spirituality' into any Internet search engine, and immediately a flood of pages proclaiming self-help gurus' most sound doctrines and dogmas at a click of the mouse come to view -- along with advice about finding one's own personal guardian angel. This is in marked contrast to performing a similar action with the term of 'theology,' which tends to shift one to Catholic web pages and encyclopedias.

The nonaffiliated website hyperdictionary notes that "although spirituality is a prominent feature in American cultural life, few topics are more ambiguous or misunderstood," as spirituality is as difficult to define as the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity, the nature of the spirit of life that is supposed to infuse all of human kind, or of getting in touch with one's inner, spiritual as opposed to worldly self through psychology. Spirituality seems vague, referring to the unseen rather than the proven or likely or even hoped-for. But interestingly enough, the online dictionary defines spirituality both as a concern with things of the spirit, but also as property or income owned by a church, its medieval definition. Spirituality is thus of the unseen spirit or humanity's inner self, yet also once referred to the physical ways the church manifested itself in the world, in terms of property, if one looks at both potential contradictory meanings. Synonyms given by the dictionary are not only "otherworldliness" but also church property. (Hyperdictionary, "Spirituality," 2005)