Christian Theology

What then might a specifically Christian theology be? More, I take it, than simply an account of what Christians have believed in the past, or believe in the present, though those tasks will always be part of the whole. That whole includes a necessarily normative element. It will attempt not just to describe but to commend a way of looking at, speaking about, and engaging with the god in whom Christians believe, and with the world that this god has ceated. It will carry the implication that this is not only what is believed but what ought to be believed. To the relativist's response, that this will seem very arrogant, Christian theology will reply that it can do no other. If it is not a claim about the whole of reality, seen and unseen, it is nothing. It is not a set of private aesthetic judgments upon reality, with a 'take-it-or-leave-it' clause attached. Even the relativist, after all, believes that relativism is universally true, and sometimes seeks to propogate that belief with missionary zeal. Christian theology only does what all other worldviews and their ancillary belief-systems do: it claims to be talking about reality as a whole.

- N.T. Wright