All other subjects that students in higher education study can be seen as potentially contributing to human happiness by improving the lives of the students and of wider society in a variety of different ways….However, only theology can tell you about the true and lasting happiness that comes from a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ, which is in the end the only form of happiness that truly matters.

On 14 August a letter organised by the Christian think tank Theos was published in Times Higher Education. The letter expressed concern about the steep decline in the number of Theology and Religious studies courses on offer in Higher Education institutions in England and Wales.

This letter, which has achieved a fair amount of publicity and can be read in full here, has seventy-five signatories, representing different academic institutions and different religious faiths. The most prominent of the signatories is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

I have spent the whole of my life since I first went up to Oxford as an undergraduate in 1981 studying, teaching and writing theology, and I share the signatories’ concern about the decline in the availability of courses in theology. However, If I had been asked to sign the open letter I would have declined to do so. In this article I shall explain why this is the case.

The basic thrust of this letter is that theology and religious studies have a twofold social benefit. First, courses in theology and religious studies equip ‘the citizens of tomorrow’ with the tools needed to navigate a future which looks ‘increasingly complex, diverse and pluralistic’ and in which people will need to be able to ‘wrestle with moral, ethical and spiritual challenges and ideas well.’ Secondly, courses in theology and religious studies equip students with skills for both ‘service-oriented careers’ and other forms of employment.

The reason I would have declined to sign this letter is because it seems to me that there are two serious problems with the argument which it puts forward.

The first problem is that the letter fails to show that the social benefit potentially delivered by departments of theology and religious studies could not be delivered equally effectively by other departments within the higher education sector, such as departments of philosophy, ethics, history, politics, sociology, literature, or law. Nor does it show that there is a need that can only be met by the teaching of theology and religious studies and, thus, that money should be spent on such teaching when money for higher education is in short supply.

The second and more fundamental problem is that the letter leaves God out of the picture entirely. God does not get any mention at all. From the standpoint of traditional Christian theology, this means that the letter totally misses the point of why theology matters.

As Alister McGrath correctly notes in his book, Christian Theology An Introduction, the study of theology has traditionally been understood as ‘discourse about God’ (which is the meaning of the Greek word ‘theologia’ from which the English word ‘theology’ is derived).

As McGrath goes on to write: ‘Theology was understood as systematic analysis of the nature, purposes and activity of God. At its heart lay the belief that it was an attempt to, however inadequate, to speak about a divine being, distinct from humans.

Read More