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WHAT THEN IS THEOLOGY? Throughout the life-time of the Body of Christ, Christians have typically identified theology, a theoretical enterprise, with the everyday non-theoretical language of the Bible. Enthralled with the idea that as the Logos of the Greek philosophers provided an "intelligent... principle of the universe," so too, the first verse of the Gospel of John similarly provides Christians with a rational entrée to the mind of God and his creation. With such a view the Bible easily becomes a textbook regarding the real nature of everything. Hence it is assumed in many orthodox circles that it is the task of theology to provide the systematic organization of the "logical" propositions of the Bible.Ouweneel asks, Is theology really the same as "Bible study", or the "study of Christian doctrine"? Is theology "science"? And if so, what does this involve? How can you distinguish between scientific and non-scientific - or even unscientific - theology? If the Apostles Peter, John, and Paul were indeed "theologians", were they scientific, non-scientific, or unscientific theologians? Does it matter whether theology is "scientific" or not?All these questions and many more evoked by these questions are investigated in this challenging and ground-breaking work by the Dutch theologian Willem J. Ouweneel.

Probing the Past is the fifth volume in the series Academic Introductions for Beginners which has so far addressed Philosophy, Politics, Theology, and Psychology. The present volume probes into a series of fundamental questions regarding the formative unfolding of the creation order. Beginning with the question of how to properly characterize history, Ouweneel goes on to ask about the "meaning" of history; can we discern distinctive "patterns" or "epochs" in history; how should we understand God''s "providence" in history; and finally how does "the Kingdom of God" relate to the empirical unfolding of what is commonly called "world history"? "History is never just a recording of the mere facts, apart from the question whether such things exist in the first place. As I have explained in my Wisdom for Thinkers, facts are always facts-for-people; they are always contextually delineated. As far as we can ascertain, the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460 - c. 395 BC) was the first, other than his somewhat older contemporary Herodotus (c. 484 - 425 BC), who attempted to limit himself to ''the facts.'' However, both the choice and the representation of ''relevant'' facts means that the historian has to develop some ideas, not only about the when, where, and how of history but also about the why." - From the Introduction