Theology vs. Spirituality

The Naked Theologian had a great post last week that I’m just now coming across, titled “Theology is to spirituality what honeycomb is to honey.” It discusses why we need both theology and spirituality, and why people who want to be “spiritual but not religious” are selling themselves short.

Here’s the key quote:

[This] analogy illustrates the fact that spirituality without theology is a puddle of sweet goo; it can’t be handed over (except in extremely messy form) to other people or to the next generation. Likewise, theology without spirituality is a lovely structure made of bland wax most people don’t want to eat.

This is more difficult for those of us in liberal religions who don’t have a theology we can easily plug into – or those of us who couldn’t plug into any theology we didn’t critically examine in great depth and revise to fit our own core beliefs. Building your own theology is a lot of hard work.

But ultimately, it’s necessary.