Theology is Not the Road

A good map can be a very helpful guide, but a poor map can be a disaster. Theology is like that. A good theology can be quite enlightening. But a poor theology? Not so much. However, a map is not the road, nor is theology the realm it seeks to understand. For it is one thing to know about God but quite another to actually know God.

Our Lord Jesus Christ did not come to bring us theology or to plot out a religious map for us to follow. On the night of the Last Supper, he said to his disciples:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
     Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
     Jesus answered, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:1-7)

Jesus is not the map. He does not merely show us the Way; he is the Way. He does not merely tell us about the truth; he is the Truth. He does not merely give us Life; he is the Life we are given. And it is only through him that we are able to know the Father. This knowledge is not merely theological knowledge, or conceptual, theoretical, or propositional knowledge. But it is personal and experiential, even mystical and mysterious in its knowing. 

It is through our Lord Jesus Christ that we know the Father, for he fully and perfectly reveals the Father. Whoever knows Lord Jesus knows the Father as well. Whoever has seen Lord Jesus has seen the Father as well. To know the Father and the Son is the essence of Life, now and forever. “Now this is eternal life — that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent” (John 17:3).

Theology is just a map, not the road. Jesus is the Way through whom we come to know the Father. Even as we learn the road by walking it, so also do we learn the Way, Jesus, by following him.