Some people are puzzled by the word theology although it is quite a traditional word. Literally it means the study or understanding of God. It is true that by its transcendence the Divine is beyond the scope of human rational study. There are other roads to contact the Mystery at the root of all existence. Religions have somehow given testimony to it. The study of religions and of other ways in which the concept and the reality of the Divine has impacted in human history forms the specific field of the study of theology. It includes the study of the great Scriptures, and the way in which the respective communities have understood their message. For Christians the Bible is primary but not exclude other Scriptures. There is also the study of religious history of humanity and of our own community and of the many expressions for the Divine found in history.

Theology is necessary if religion wants to avoid the pitfalls of irrationality and narrow fundamentalism. It is important to study our own faiths by using the gifts of reason and understanding, and the sense of the higher values, which nature, or rather God, has given us. Theology is not a rationalization of religion or of faith. Rather it helps faith be truly human, flourish and be fruitful within the complexities of life.

The aim of Vidyajyoti is to do contextual theology. This means that the understanding of God and of the knowledge of God which our faith has given us takes into account the rich historical culture in which we find ourselves and is articulated in ways that make sense within this context. This has been in the past and continues to be the specific theological focus of Vidyajyoti, so much so that already in 1905 it started in Kurseong an ‘Indian Academy’ to facilitate the study of Indian religions at a time when colonialism was still the dominant culture.

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