What the Questions Are

Theology, in the Western tradition, encompasses questions such as where revelation of the sacred comes from; how the universe came to be; and the role of divinity in the upkeep and maintenance of the universe and its living things, an activity often known as providence.
On these foundational questions theologians then build structures that posit answers to questions such as anthropology, or what it means to be human.
The interaction of deity and the universe, with our understandable preoccupation with human beings, leads to the question of theodicy, that is, an explanation for why evil and misfortune exists in the world despite or because of the sort of deity posited. A corollary question tends to be, “how can I be delivered from the evils and misfortunes of the world?” This question is answered in a consideration known in Greek as soteriology, from the word “soterion,” meaning deliverance.
Other questions include pneumatology, or the question of the existence of a spirit world and how it interacts—or not—with the material world, and ecclesiology, or the question of how best to worship and/or appease the sort of deity proposed. This includes the question of various sacramental actions and how to lead a moral life.
Then of course there is the question of how, in the religion one chooses, to live with those who have chosen other religions.
Lastly there is the question of eschatology, or last things; that is, what does death mean; what happens after death, and what will eventually become of the universe.

Complicating these matters, when the religion has aged a bit, are traditions. Traditions with great meaning in one time and place don’t make sense in other times and other places.
Further complications are added by the existence of texts considered sacred. How tradition and text get interpreted leads to questions of epistemology—or how meaning is made—and hermeneutics, or how we go about doing interpretation.
All human religions grapple with these issues, though the Western frame does not always comfortably fit pre-Christian First People traditions or non-Western traditions.
Unitarian Universalist minister Alice Blair Wesley attempts to further synthesize theological questions by asking three:
What realities are most worthy of our devoted love?
How is our participation in these realities conditioned?
And how do they interact with other realties?

This nicely sums up what the questions are.