Theology for Beginners

Frank Sheed learned theology the hard way: on a soapbox. As a speaker for the Catholic Evidence Guild, he explained the faith in public to anyone who stopped, hecklers included. A crowd in a park gives you no mercy. Be vague and they walk. Be dull and they jeer. Sheed survived, and this book shows why.

Theology for Beginners marches through the great mysteries: God and the Trinity, creation, the fall, the Incarnation, redemption, grace, the Church and the life to come. Sheed's conviction is fierce and simple. Ordinary people can know God with their minds, not just feel warmly about him. He builds each idea brick by brick, uses homely examples, and has a knack for the sentence that makes a doctrine click. He opens with a wry story about a woman whose enthusiasm drained away when she heard his lecture would be on the Trinity. Then he sets out to prove her wrong.

It suits inquirers who want to understand, not just memorize, and catechists hunting for fresh ways to explain hard doctrines. It is short enough to finish in a few weeks.