Theology: A Very Short Introduction

"Theology deals with questions of meaning, truth, beauty, and practice raised in relation to religions and pursued through a range of academic disciplines."
--David F. Ford, Theology: A Very Short Introduction

David Ford's Very Short Introduction (VSI #9) to Theology is my sixth selection of Oxford's Very Short Introduction series. I liked it enough. Not much new, but I enjoyed a couple highlights. I really enjoyed the discussion of religion's place in the modern age with our multiple overwhelming. The idea of God as an overwhelming wasn't exactly revelatory, but it also was new and expansive, so perhaps there was a bit of revelation going on.

As a theologian Ford seems like a collector. A categorizer. He would have been just as happy, I think to have worked in the Smithsonian labeling and putting caterpillar pupal casings into multiple, thin boxes, arranged from 1 to 5. His scaling of theology was certainly useful as an introduction, but it almost became predictable that in each chapter he would present a scale of 1 to 5, and ignore the edges and focus on 2-4, the center three. Always.

The basic framework of the book:

I. Describing the Field
II. Theological Explorations
III. Skills, Disciplines, and Methods

Anyway, as a short introduction the other critique was Ford's focus on Christian theology (especially dominant in Part II). I get that is a Western theologian teaching at Cambridge, so his perspective on theology was going to rely heavily on Christian beliefs given his background and his studies. However, the book would probably have been better titled 'Christian Theology: A Very Short Introduction Utilizing Scales from 1 to 5, but focusing only on 2-4'

A devoted Christian

It engaged in a great deal of gobbledygook! Intellectualized nonsense.

Pretentious reading, and a bit over-bearing.

Not to my liking