Today I will try to explain to you what is Theology from my own experience. I am in 2 years of religious sciences and I’m Catholic. It helps me in my studies. Because even if our faculty is really open to different religions (we have Jews and Muslims) but in baccalaureate, we study more things about Christianity and especially about the Catholic Church. The word theology has appeared for the first time in Greece. Theos-divinity and logos-rational study. So, Theology is a rational study of God. From my experience, I can agree with this definition but Theology studies also many spiritual questions. So, this question is settled. But what do we study? Something about different religions, dogmas, and the Bible?
Yes and no. We find in this field of knowledge in many different branches. For example, we have many courses that contain philosophy, history, art, sociology, psychology, law, and even sciences and questions about atheism. Of course, in these studies, the Bible and the Traditional documents of Church (especially documents of Vatican II) occupy the central place, but we have the liberty to discuss, criticize and analyze all this.
But here I tell you about the approach of the Western Catholic Church in Belgium. We call this region more progressive and open to the secular world than Eastern Orthodox Church where the tradition occupies the central place.
We can see the real opening of the Catholic Church to the secular world from the Council Vatican II in 1962-1965. From this time the Catholic Church became a real friend and supports people. So, Theology is the science about God that tries to explain with reason who is God and in what consists of our relation with our Lord.