You may be impatient to get on with it now. After all, there's a deadline looming, and lots to do.
But I want to slow it down a little and ask you to consider something vital about the whole nature of this piece of attempted thinking in which you are about to engage. Theology is a unique science because it has as its object the holy God himself. That means that, even though the theology essay is an academic exercise, it is not by any means a merely academic exercise.
It's God we are dealing with here. Take off your shoes, we might say. You are walking on holy ground.
The object of this study dwells in unapproachable light. 'Our God is a consuming fire', and not a creature whose biorhythms and mating habits we might study. And our God has spoken, in the past by the prophets, and finally and decisively in the person of his Son, who is the exact imprint of his being.
How could we hope to say anything that isn't a blasphemy? How could we hope to say anything that isn't, at least potentially, the making of an idol?
And yet, the guts of the matter is that a word has been spoken; and that God has invited human beings to repeat and explain and explore this word, to 'take every thought captive' in his service.
What this means for theology - and for your theology essay - is that it must be humble before its object and responsible to it. If any verse is to be the theologian's motto it is 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom'. If you do not fear the Lord, that what, may I ask, are you doing studying theology? There are theology students who have embarked on the study of theology as a matter of mere interest, perhaps because they are struck by the breadth of the intellectual challenge before them. They may be fascinated by theology, even devoted to it. But if they are not devoted to God, then theology has itself become a false god. An interest in theology for its own sake is a perversion of the true end of theology - which is not just to know about God, but to know him and make him known.
And that means being responsible - in the sense of answerable - to it. The Lord whom we are called to fear is the judge of all. There is no trifling with this God! And he has spoken. Whatever thoughts we may have are after the fact of this speech. The criteria for successful theology is quite simply 'is it faithful to God's own revelation of himself?' For you that means that you ought to have no truck with playing intellectual games in your essay. You have no business simply showing off your intellectual brilliance. One of the worst temptations of the theological student is the temptation innovate for its own sake - to revel in the high of sublime ideas for their own sake. I confess that this is sometimes my own temptation: ideas are delightful, the life of the mind scintillating and the consequences truly dreadful.
Can a bad person do good theology? I was once in a master's seminar with Professor Oliver O'Donovan where he posed this question. Of course, the answer is "I really hope so" because there are no other kinds of human person. But O'Donovan had in mind as 'bad' the person who really had no fear of God at all, and who showed in his or her life only disregard and even contempt for God. He confessed that he had encountered such people - and, I regret to say, so have I. They may do brilliant intellectual work. But it is not good theology.
Those who write theology are not only limited creatures, but are sinful, and they stand before a holy God. And that is why they must start their work with prayer. They really have no other option. They must ask for God's help - they must start with this humble act, and submit their intellects to his service.
Here's what they might pray:
Father of all wisdom, I praise you that in your Son Jesus Christ you have made yourself known to men and women: enlighten and guide me by your Holy Spirit as I begin this work; help me in my weakness to think truly about you and in my pride to be humble before you; keep me from falsehood, and make me your servant in the building of your church; in the name of your Son by whose death and resurrection we have new life to the praise of your glorious grace: Amen.
And that prayer includes a final thought: that theology that begins with prayer will be done in the service of God and his people. There ought to be nothing self-indulgent about theological study. I trust you have begun your course of study in theology because you want to serve God's people, in whatever way. Your study will no doubt be of enormous spiritual benefit to you. But it will, I pray, be of enormous benefit to the church, too.
Does that make a difference to your approach to your theology essay? I most certainly hope it does. Not because anyone other than the marker will ever read it necessarily! But because this essay is an opportunity to know God better so that you might make him known more truly. It doesn't mean you will choose the most 'relevant' topic, or the most contentious, or the most obviously pastoral. It doesn't mean you will 'dumb down' your answer. The opposite in fact: you should be motivated to do as thorough a job as possible, because you are seeking to serve God and his people - humble before him, responsible to his revelation of himself, and seeking the benefit of others in what you do.
POSTSCRIPT
Because of its object - God - theology makes particular demands on its students. But in making these demands, it actually can teach other fields of study about how they should go about their work. There is an ethics, or a spirituality of theological study. And so there ought to be with any subject. The kind of faithfulness to its object that theology requires ought to present in every field. Just as theology treats its object as holy and seeks to known it on its own terms - God as he reveals himself - so any discipline ought to revere its object and seek to serve it. The worst kind of academic work is found when the things that are studied become merely the tools in some kind of intellectual game. This certainly happened somewhat in the field of literary studies, in which I received my early training. The great literary works disappeared from university courses and were replaced by a plethora of options for study including an emphasis on literary theory.
I am not against literary theory. But to study it as a study in and of itself seems to perpetuate a circle of self-indulgence - and to prove that much of it is not designed to say anything about literary texts, but rather to focus our attention elsewhere. You can't known something properly without in some way humbling yourself before it. This is as true for physics or history as it is for theology.
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