¶ … 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...
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…
