After some encouragement from my boss, I am going to try and devote a little more of MyIrony’s space to theology. For those of you who are not theologically afflicted (read, “theologically educated”), this post will be a digestible intro.

“Theology” comes from the Greek words “theos” and “logos.” “Theos” means god/deity/divinity and “logos” means word/reason/ratio. In other words, theology is god-talk. (I will use the two terms interchangeably.) Although “theology” usually refers to the organized theological discipline, more loosely it can be used to label any talk about god, spoken or written, casual or deliberate, well-reasoned or ad hoc.

Theology is not religion. To be sure, organized religion employs god-talk on its own behalf (a mixed blessing for religion and theology both), but religion does not “own” god-talk. Often, theologians stand outside organized religion and critique it–explaining not only the many instances of god-talkers getting burned at the stake but also the many instances of god-talkers instituting major reforms that the religious hierarchy could not.

Theology, mythology, and philosophy have an ambigous history of relation to one another. At times they have been allies, at times enemies, at times parent and child.

If theology is god-talk, then mythology is god-narrative. In a way, this would seem to make mythology just a sub-type of theology–narrative being one type of talk. But their relationship is more paradoxical. Without the god-narratives, what would the god-talkers talk about? Today we may freely imagine new ways of talking about god without any reference to mythology whatsoever. But this is only because mythology precedes us by many millennia. Mythology was around even before the advent of written civilization, and the abstract sort of monotheism that envisions itself free of mythology did not appear no earlier than 600 BCE. And even then it was a reaction against mythology. The vague, agnostic deism of many moderns did not appear until the birth of the early modern era.

Yet mythology is not immutable. Theological critiques can lead to changes in mythology. And changes to any mythology represent a theological change in and of themselves.

Philosophy may also owe its existence to mythology. One prominent theory about the birth of Greek philosophy supposed that the first philosophers–being residents of port cities–encountered many different versions of common myths. To them the contradictions were untenable. Perhaps the gods of different cultures were actually just local nicknames for the same gods? Or perhaps all the gods were but different faces of “God-ness” or “God-ity?” Perhaps there are no gods? Perhaps the universe is best explained by the interactions of the basic elements? (Indian philosophy proceeded along similar lines.) In time philosophy–which simply means “friendship of wisdom”–grew into its own, asking it own questions, laying out its own ground rules for what counted as a good answer, and organizing its own cultural institutions to “keep the faith,” so to speak.

Many cultures developed what we would consider to be a hybrid form of theology and philosophy. This “wisdom literature” asks crucial questions about life, the universe, and everything, often within the setting of organized religion. Writers of wisdom literature often employ religious language to answer what we’d consider to be philosophical questions: What is the meaning of life? or Why is there suffering? Using religious language allowed them to critique their societies from within with familiar language. Good examples of wisdom literature include the biblical book Ecclesiastes, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, and Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.

In many ways, the hard division between theology and philosophy is a modern conceit. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle certainly talked about god, and their philosophical grandchildren–for instance Plotinus, Maimonedes, Augustine, and Aquinas–were explicitly religious and can be considered founders of major religious movements. Medieval philosophical debates about whether or not a rose by any other name is still a rose were considered to have life and death religious consequences. And even early modern philosophers like Kant and Hegel talked a good deal about god.

Even if the separation of philosophy and theology is largely a consequence of the slicing up of the modern university into neat departments, we can still observe some differences in the questions the two disciplines ask. Philosophy asks: What is the universe? What does it mean to exist, or to be? What does it mean to “know” something? Theology asks: Who or what is god? What does god require? How should we relate to god? They both ask: What is there suffering? How should I live my life? How did the universe come to be? Philosophy tends to downplay the questions of god’s requirements and our relation to God. Theology tends to downplay the questions of what “being” is and how we can know anything at all. But there are always exceptions, and trends in one end up influencing trends in the other.