What is Theology? 1.10 - Katherine Apostolacus

Apr 04, 2025

Katherine Apostolacus is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Villanova University where she holds the Fellowship in Philosophy & Theology and teaches an introductory course on philosophy. Her dissertation examines the metaphysics of love as a forgotten element of Platonist and medieval philosophy. She also has interest in the place of liturgy and the use of poetic form in philosophical reflection.

I have known for a while Katherine to be someone who allows our loves their proper places in thought. This, in particular, comes to the fore when reflecting on our knowing, being with, and love of God. It is a powerful instrument in this regard. Katherine is a compassionate thinker who remains attentive to the human spirit. Her reflections, across many forms, have been illuminating for me. I knew, then, that to speak with her on these topics of theology would be a privilege. On this I was correct. I am immensely grateful to Katherine for these careful and considered reflections on knowing God in this conversation.

Here, Katherine reflects insightfully on the etymology of theology/philosophy, Ecclesiastes, the Mass, and more with prudent insight. Her reflections on suffering I found particular potent. Importantly, I feel that Katherine allows the reality of an attentive and loving God to be present in her reflections, open to God’s activity in our lives and the reality of ourselves living with God.

Katherine has her own Substack, which you can enjoy here:

My gratitude to Katherine once more for this conversation. I hope you enjoy.

Dylan: Katherine, what is theology?

Katherine: The crudest definition is - theology is the discourse or study of God. If you take an intro to theology course that’s usually how it’ll be presented to you. And historically it’s been contrasted with philosophy. So, under this framing when we’re doing something “theological” rather than “philosophical,” the insinuation is that we’re doing something that pertains to doctrine and dogma, something that emerges out of faith. A kind of intellectual assent from faith to God. I’m reminded of Anselm [of Canterbury, theologian, priest, 1033-1109] who says ‘Fides quaerens intellectum’, faith seeking understanding, and that’s contrasted with philosophy which is now talked about as seeking the truth through natural reason alone. But I think this distinction is much too hard and fast these days. Philosophers will denigrate theology and theologians will say, ‘Oh you’re being too philosophical!’ as if we could ever assent to God through reason alone. I think the trouble here is the temptation to, despite their distinct characters, make faith and reason alien to one another, when in reality faith is never without reason. For instance, we don’t have faith in God simply because, well, that’s what we want to believe, or someone told us to. No, we have faith in God because something has been revealed to us. Whether it’s the incarnation or the book of nature, so to speak, declaring God’s glory. But then on the other side, in philosophy, reason is never alone. Some contemporary philosophers have begun to get at this, especially in virtue epistemology. Figures like Linda Zagzebski [b. 1946] and Miranda Fricker [b. 1966]. There’s something about reason which relies on trust, in many facets. There’s trust in my own faculties, there’s trust in the faculties of others, there’s trust in God even in philosophy, especially if you go back to early modernity, the Middle Ages, and the ancient period. There’s also trust in authority, trust in tradition. Reason, moreover, does not ground itself; it is not self-motivated. As Plato says, philosophy begins in wonder. So, even though they’re distinct they also rely on each other in various ways.

So coming back to the question of ‘what is theology?’, theology is, then, the movement of the soul and of the body toward God in its entire sense. Because if we are to limit devotion to just an intellectual assent, then anything like infant baptism is useless. Or, if we limit theology to just having faith without any discourse of reason or intellectual assent then you preclude the possibility of contemplation which, in the mystical tradition and scholastic tradition, is so central. So, theology in this holistic sense will emphasise not only the practical element of doing theology but also the holistic element of it.

This highlights, I think, a curious mismatch between the etymology of theology and the etymology of philosophy. So theology being ‘the discourse of God’ or ‘the speech about God’ - literally understood, very intellectual pursuit. And yet we associate theology with this more practical movement or spiritual movement. And yet on the other hand we have philosophy which is literally ‘the love of wisdom’. It’s not about reason at all, well maybe not at all. It’s not about seeking to grasp certainty, it’s seeking to love wisdom itself. And in that way philosophy is more traditionally, more literally driven by this spiritual movement. This etymological mismatch, I think, just signals that they are two sides of the same coin. Even if philosophy is maybe a little more curious about the causes and reasons behind dogma, theology nonetheless is right there with it. To ask why - well you can say, ‘well the Council of Nicaea [Church council, 325] told us so’, but, if you read their writings and look at their discourses, they have their reasons as well. They might be reasons different than we might appreciate but they are reasons nonetheless.

All of this isn’t to collapse faith and reason together, it’s not to say they’re one in the same, but it is to say that they are united in such a way that they require the other.

D: Do you think that mismatch you describe and the issues we have etymologically with theology and philosophy has something to do with how, today especially, a lot of people come to understand what it means to know something and to grow in the knowledge of something? So doing theology and philosophy isn’t just getting more information for one aspect of the self, but it’s something holistic for the whole person and the whole human. So do you think the way we envisage what it means to know something and, for example, knowing God and knowing wisdom impacts how we do it and our practice?

K: Yeah, absolutely. There’s actually a big movement, at least in the US, and it’s been going on for some years now, of theology departments trying to make theology an attractive major for people who aren’t religious. I can appreciate the motivation behind this. But I do think it treats theology as an intellectual exercise merely. Whereas if you look at, especially, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, theology is done primarily in the mass. It’s not necessarily a public discourse but it’s public worship. The Orthodox will even say that the liturgy is “firsttheology.” And so insofar as we teach theology in the university, it needs to be coupled with a kind of attentiveness to and presence with the human spirit. And not just as an object in the abstract but also the human spirit within the students before us and within ourselves as educators.

I have a friend here at Villanova, Fr. Martin Laird [b. 1959, professor and member of The Order of St. Augustine], who makes it a point in his classes to have time for silent meditation, no matter what the class is on. Often he’s teaching on contemplative traditions or patristics or something like this so it naturally fits, but I think no matter what he teaches he would do that. The students are receptive and it doesn’t feel weird to them because he’s a monk and he’s usually just wearing his habit around, but it would be different if someone like me did it who is not a nun, is not a priest, and has no aspirations to become either. That said, I could still do it and I think it would be productive. But, there’s something about teaching theology or even philosophy that gets missed if it’s not about the human spirit and its relationship to the divine.

I teach philosophy and in my philosophy class I try to emphasise to my students, ‘Yeah, we’re having these debates and conversations, but really what I’m interested in is seeing you develop as a person.’ Often people, especially in the philosophy department, will say, ‘Oh Katherine, you talk like a theologian.’ And then I go over to the theology department and they tell me, ‘Oh, you talk much like a philosopher.’ I try to integrate the spirit of both disciplines.

Does that answer your question?

D: Yeah, totally. I guess I was thinking about how we do theology and I think that’s really insightful and a really good reflection on the importance of attending to the human spirit, like you say, the role of contemplation in theology, and the role of contemplation and prayer in just knowing God more broadly in the liturgy. What you say about encouraging your students to think about their education and your educating of them as something that helps them develop, something that helps their spirit develop I think is really important and really good, and leads quite nicely to talk about why we do theology in its broadest and most holistic sense. So why do you think we do theology in the way you’ve described it?

K: I think we do theology because we love God. That’s the plain and simple answer. I will say that doing theology as I’ve described is something much more broadly conceived than just, ‘Oh I’m studying [Hans Urs von] Balthasar [1905 - 1988, Swiss Catholic theologian] I’m studying [Søren] Kierkegaard [1813 - 1855, Danish theologian].’ You could study no one, none of them, and still be doing theology by virtue of the fact that you’re attending the liturgy and meditating on it and trying to think through, ‘why is it this way?’, ‘why does God love me?’, or ‘why did God become man, cur Deus homo (from Anselm)?’ So you don’t have to attend to the traditional canon of theological figures so long as you’re attending to the true and original source of love, which is God. And in that respect I think more people do theology than they realise. But, if you’re not doing that kind of reflective work then I think your faith is impoverished and, as Kierkegaard would say, it’s cheap - it doesn’t require anything of you.

D: I think I relate to that somewhat, well, a lot actually, because I think for a long time while I was officially a theology student, an undergraduate and even beyond that, I was reading the texts and studying them and taking them in and writing the essays, but for a while I didn’t take that step of involving myself to that degree you’re describing, opening myself up in a way spiritually to God. And that’s something, thank God, I’ve had time to address. I really relate to that. And I’ve found that as my spiritual life has grown the way I engage with these texts has become so much richer. Not that it wasn’t rich or impactful before, it really was, but there’s a more profound sense now.

K: Yeah, I can see that. When I was an undergrad, I went to an evangelical undergrad here in the US (Eastern University) and for most of my time there I would have described myself as an atheist, especially of the Nietzschean, death-of-God style sort. And so in that respect I was very much a philosopher for a long time. Even in high school I would debate my friends, I would read Plato [428/427 or 424/423 - 348 BC, ancient Greek philosopher], read [Giles] Deleuze [1925 - 1995, French philosopher]. Actually, I should think I didn’t truly become a philosopher until I went to Mass and just remained open to the presence of God there. Because that was the source of all that I sought. All that I loved and desired in the world was contained in a piece of bread. Which, by ‘reason alone’, I would have thought was ridiculous. There is something about just opening up yourself to that process. And you don’t need to write a dissertation to do that, thank God!

D: No, no definitely not! And that’s the really wonderful thing, and something I’ve found in my church community, especially, where these people haven’t gone and done theology degrees, but they’ve spent a lot of time being attentive to their spirit and being attentive to God, and you can tell when they speak, even in just how they speak, that they’ve really opened themselves up to that knowledge and that involvement and relationship with God - which is what theology is aiming for.

K: You can tell the people who have actually sat with themselves and with God, and with other people. And you can distinguish them from the people who are really just playing a game. Or, as philosophers will say, they’re being sophists. It doesn’t actually matter the language that you use so long as it’s in accordance with the tradition, which already is a vague enough term. You can tell.

D: I think it goes back quite nicely to what you said about how we do theology because we love God, because at the centre of it is a burning fire of that relationship. I do think about Anselm and what he said about faith and reason, and faith and understanding, where he would pray and the wonders of the experience in his spirit would lead him to want to go and understand more and think things through, but then the things that he is thinking about there would send him back to praying and it’s this sort of dual movement. I just find that really captivating.

K: The Proslogion [written by Anselm between 1077 and 1088] especially I think is, I mean people read that all the time, but I think it’s actually one of the fundamental texts in the history of philosophy and of theology. Because, just as you say, he gives this ontological argument in the beginning and some people will treat it as, ‘Oh well he’s trying to just have a certain proof and that’s it’. I do think it logically works, but if you read through the Proslogion he’ll even say, multiple times, around about chapter fourteen and then toward the end he’s like, ‘And yet have I found you my God?’ And there’s something about the pursuit of knowledge and the machinations of logic that, in a way, can assent to God, but they can’t conjure God from out of thin air.

This also makes me think of how we like to compartmentalise things. Like, ’Oh I’m going to study biology just under the domain of biology or I’m going to study chemistry just under the domain of chemistry.’ And, even from a plainly secular perspective, that kind of approach has diminishing returns. Because chemistry is governed by physics, for instance, and physics is governed by mathematics, and mathematics is governed by logic, and logic is governed by metaphysics, and metaphysics understood through experience, and so on. You can follow these things.

And so the temptation to compartmentalise things applies also to a temptation to compartmentalise theology and philosophy when, in reality, philosophy is a discipline of all things. That has been true up until the last hundred years. Philosophers would have studied everything, everything they could possibly get their hands on, right? They would study the natural world, they would study mathematics. All of the early modern scientists are also philosophers. So the temptation to compartmentalise God out of anything is tacitly to say that God is a finite thing and that God isn’t present in everything. But, as we see in the tradition, we have the vestigium Trinitaris, the vestige of the Trinity, in all things. God is in absolutely everything. Even if we just want to understand what the branch is or what the atom is - God is in all of it. ‘Oh, we just want to understand the branch’s relation to the tree.’ (I’m talking about trees because I’m just staring at a tree outside.) The branch’s relation to the tree, there’s something ontological to it, something botanical about it, but there’s also something theological in it. And to miss that theological element is to miss the ground of its very being. And this is true of everything because everything derives its being from God.

D: Do you think, as well, that dually relates to the end of things, a thing’s purpose, its fulfilment? Everything has its ground of being in God and everything has its fulfilment in God as well.

K: Yes. It’s a bold and, to some maybe a hasty, yes because there are things like suffering, there are wars, evils, genocides. Or the almost quotidian pains of desire. So, there are things worth wrestling with that might, at least at first, seem to challenge the notion that all things find their fulfilment in God. But I think when we wrestle with those things we will realise yes, even those things will find their fulfilment in God. And fulfilment for things like suffering is different than the fulfilment of a longing.

D: I really like the language of wrestling with it as well because it’s not just off-handing it intellectually but engaging with it, having it in one’s lived life. I’m wary of how easily suffering can just be off handed as a conceptual problem, but, as you say, it’s different to wrestle with it, and to grapple with it, and to have it there, and still consider it in that way theologically and philosophically, in our whole lives.

K: I think a lot about suffering in my own life and how I’ve more or less gotten through it. It’s never been helpful to me, or even true, to say that this suffering is the end of my entire world. And maybe that’s just because I haven’t suffered to greater degrees. I have, at times, suffered greatly, but there are people who have suffered much more than me and for much more prolonged periods. But, there is something about suffering that attempts to colonise your mind and your spirit and say, ‘This is all there is and all there ever will be.’ If you read a lot of contemporary philosophy you’ll notice this kind of pathos, lingering, ‘everything is suffering, everything is death.’ And, in a way, there’s something akin to Ecclesiastes in this, but even at the end of Ecclesiastes he says, ‘all things are breath, all things are mere breath’ (that’s Robert Alter’s [b. 1935, Hebrew scholar] translation). We know the traditional insinuation of this, we breathe in, we breathe out, and air dissipates; everything will pass away, everything is meaningless, all is vanity. These kinds of insinuations. But at the end of Ecclesiastes, in chapter 12, he reiterates this refrain, ‘all is breath, all is mere breath’, but now it’s in the context of everything comes from God and everything returns to God. And so everything is the breath of God, alluding back to Genesis where God breathes His life into Adam. I think that aspect of Ecclesiastes is so much overlooked because in our age we haven’t the eyes to see or the skin to feel the breath of God, even exhaling from ourselves. All we can see is suffering. But when we notice this source and this return to the divine the significance of everything else changes. I think this is the real message of Ecclesiastes because at one point, for instance, he says, ‘Oh, look at women they’re the worst, they’re worse than even Satan himself, sorrowful is the man who has a wife who shall nag him and be terrible and so on.’ It comes off pretty misogynistic. And then at the end of Ecclesiastes he says, after he’s talking about ‘merest breath’ in this renewed sense, he says, ‘Now go love your wife, cherish her, and do good upon her.’ Traditionally the book that follows Ecclesiastes is the Song of Solomon, both in terms of canon and in terms of catechesis. When you’re teaching Ecclesiastes, right after you teach Song of Solomon because the natural conclusion of coming to love God is, then, truly loving your beloved, your wife or betrothed. And there’s no holding back in that kind of love. It’s erotic, it’s romantic, and it’s prepared to be patient, to say, ‘Don’t awake love before it’s time.’1

All of this is quite easy to say in the comfort of my Bryn Mawr home, but I think it is true, across the board. But what makes it true is not just telling someone, ‘Oh yeah you just need to believe these things’ it’s sitting with them and, in a certain manner, suffering with them, to the extent that it’s helpful and empathetic.

As the procession of these conversations has gone on, there have been certain feelings and ideas I have been hoping, in some form or another, to pay testament to. A topic as broad and deep as theology welcomes a host of notions that one can bring into focus. But one element that has always been present and, in fact, has grown in its intensity here on the blog and in my own heart is exploring the understanding of our knowing of God, of theology, as something holistic in our human growth with God which involves the whole of ourselves. Knowing God, it seems to me, is not something easily or properly compartmentalised to a particular aspect of ourselves but something that embraces us in our fullness, in our heart and mind as well as our body and soul.2 To know in this sense is not just to assess and ‘comprehend’ from a distance. It is, rather, to bring our being into relationship and love, and so to grow in knowing in this way. And with God, crucially, our knowing depends first on being known, and God knows and loves us in the wholeness of ourselves. So when we speak of knowing God, when we speak of theology, perhaps we do so most properly by saying how we know God in the wholeness of our life, of which elements are the intellectual, academic, spiritual, ethical, devotional, liturgical, communal, etc., which all interplay and dance with one another in one direction of love.

It was my pleasure, then, when I found in this conversation with Katherine an expression, I felt, of something of this, something I have been wrestling with for some time. Katherine articulates well how knowing God pertains to the whole of ourselves, not at the denigration or isolation of the intellectual, academic, spiritual, or liturgical, but with the inclusion and relation of all these elements.

In my own life, I have found this conception to be enriching. To image and feel our knowing of God as something done in our fullness has brought a good deal of meaning and great deal of wonder into life. It is very much an idea I am still wrestling (perhaps growing) with. But our knowing and loving always grows and carries on because the one we are knowing carries on knowing us. Our loving is not concluded, because the one we love carries on loving us.

World Without End

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