Summary of Theology for Beginners by Frank Sheed

Frank Sheed’s Theology for Beginners is a concise, engaging, and accessible introduction to key theological concepts for those who seek a deeper understanding of God and the Catholic faith. In this book, Sheed invites readers to explore the profound mysteries of Christian theology with clarity and depth. Here’s a brief summary of some of the essential themes and chapters from the book:

Chapter 1: Why study theology?

Sheed opens by emphasizing that the study of theology enriches our relationship with God. The more we understand about God, the more reasons we have to love Him. Theology helps clear away misunderstandings and offers insights that deepen our love for God, who is Love itself.

Chapter 2: Spirit

Sheed explains that spirit is not just a key concept in theology—it’s the key concept. Understanding spirit begins with recognizing that it is the element within us that knows, loves, animates, by which therefore we decide.

Unlike matter, spirit is immaterial, not confined by space or divided into parts, and it produces immaterial things like ideas and love.

“If we are continually producing things which have no attribute of matter, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is in us some element which is not matter to produce them. This element we call spirit” (11).

Example: The power to make judgments: When I choose mercy over justice in a given case due to its usefulness, our minds have taken three concepts (mercy, justice, usefulness) together – without any “distance” between these concepts. “This is dependent upon the partlessness of the soul – one single, undivided thinking principle to take hold of and hold in one all the concepts we wish to compare” (14).

Chapter 3: The Infinite Spirit

This chapter delves into the nature of God as an infinite spirit who is omnipresent, eternal, all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful. Sheed explains that God’s existence is fundamentally different from our own; He is the source of all being and does not depend on anything else to exist. “God is existence,” Sheed writes, and He sustains all creation by His will.

Whereas as our souls are finite spirits that can, in a limited way, know, love, decide, and act, God is an infinite spirit that is all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful. This leads us to the greatest difference between our spirits and God’s spirit and points also to the primary truth about God – the soul owes its existence to God because God is existence, He has it in His own right. It is his nature to exist.

Question: “Who made God?”

Answer: “If nothing existed except receivers of existence, where would the existence come from? In order than anything may exist, there must be a being which simply has it. God can confer existence upon all other beings, precisely because he has it in his own right. It is his nature to exist. God does not have to receive existence, because he is existence” (18).

Question: “Where was God before the universe was created?”

Answer: First, “Where was God” has no application to God at all because “where” means “in what place,” which means “in what location in space” and God, who is a spirit, does not occupy space. Nevertheless, God, who is not in space at all, is everywhere because He is in everything.  Just as the “soul is in every part of my body, not by being spread out so that every bodily part has a little bit of the soul to itself, but because the soul’s life-giving energies pour into every part of the body” (19), so God is in everything because His life-giving power brings everything into existence and keeps it there. Second, “before the universe was created” has no application to God at all because time is a measurement of change and God is changeless so time has no meaning in relation to Him. We say that God is changeless because He is infinite and holds all perfections in the eternal now. Remember, “eternity does not mean everlasting time… eternity is not time at all. It is God’s total possession of himself” (20).

Since God is infinite, there is no distinction between His attributes and Himself: “Whatever God has, he is” (22). God is all-knowing: “His activity of knowing is both limitless and changeless; he is omniscient” (21). God is all-loving: “God loves with infinite loving-power: no loss possible, no increase conceivable… this is not stagnation but measureless vitality” (21). God is all-powerful: “There are no limits to what he can do, no limits to what he can make… He needs no material – he creates” (21).

Question: “Can a God make a weight so heavy that he cannot lift it?”

Answer: God indeed can do all things, but self-contradiction is not a thing. God cannot make a four-sided triangle, because the terms contradict each other and cancel out. Just as a four-sided triangle is meaningless, so too a weight than an almighty Being cannot lift is not a thing at all, it is nothing (20).

Chapter 4: The Blessed Trinity

Sheed addresses one of the most profound mysteries of the Christian faith: the Trinity. He explains that God is one in nature but three in persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each distinct but not separate. This inner life of God involves infinite knowing and loving among the three persons, highlighting that God’s essence is relational and communal.

God is a living God. But what does his life consist of? What does God do with his eternity? He is not infinitely idle; what is his life-work?

To say that he runs our universe is insufficient because running a finite universe could never be the whole life-work of an infinite Being.

Two great operations of spirit – God knows infinitely and loves infinitely. Us finite creatures are no adequate object for infinite love. Christ our Lord revealed to us that there is companionship within the one divine nature – not a number of Gods, but three persons within the one God. It is in the knowledge and love of the three persons that the divine life is lived.

There is a new element of more-than-oneness, which still leaves the oneness utterly perfect. “No one knows the Son but the Father; and no one knows the Father but the Son.” (Mt 11:27, Lk. 10:22). Here are two persons put on one same level. “I and the Father are one.” (Jn 10:30). In St. Matthew’s Gospel, a third is brought in, within the oneness – “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” – three persons, but with one name, and therefore one nature.

The Doctrine Outlined

1. In the one divine nature, there are three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
2. No one of the persons is either of the others, each is wholly himself.
3. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.
4. They are not three Gods but one God.
5. The three persons do not share the divine nature; it can be possessed only in its totality.
6. The three persons are distinct, but not separate.

We are not saying three equals one, but three persons in one nature.

“What” asks about the nature, “who” asks about the person.

My nature decides what I can do – eat, laugh, think. I cannot lay an egg, because that goes with bird nature. But though it is my nature which decides what actions are possible to me, I do them, I the person; nature is the source of our operations, person does them.

“Who are you?”  Each of the three could give his own answer, Father or Son or Spirit.

“What are you?” Each could but answer “God,” because each totally possesses the one same divine nature, and nature decides what a being is.

Chapter 5: The Three Persons

Sheed explores the unique roles of the three persons of the Trinity. The Father is the origin, the Son is the Word through whom all things are made, and the Holy Spirit is the mutual love between Father and Son. This understanding reveals God’s dynamic inner life and how each person of the Trinity plays a role in the divine work of creation, redemption, and sanctification.

God utters a Word – an idea in his mind – the idea God has of himself. Unlike us, the idea that God has of himself cannot be imperfect. Because God is God, his idea is God. Since the Father knows and loves; his idea knows and loves. In other words the idea is a person.

Is the Son younger than the Father? No. We, as humans, must wait til we develop to the point where we can generate. But God has not to wait for a certain amount of eternity to roll by before he is sufficiently developed. Eternity does not roll by; it is an abiding now; and God has all perfections in their fullness, not needing to develop.

The Holy Spirit

The production of a Second Person does not exhaust the infinite richness of the divine nature. Our Lord tells of a third person – the Holy Spirit.

As we have already seen, there is one huge and instant difference between God’s idea and any idea we may form. His is someone, ours is only something. His is an infinite someone; between thinker and idea there is an infinite dialogue, an infinite interflow, and infinite love with an infinite intensity. It has been revealed to us that this expression is a third divine person.

In the Holy Spirit, Father and Son utter their mutual love. This love is infinite, given totally between Father and Son. As knowing produced the Second Person, loving produced the Third. Therefore, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

The word “spirit” for the Holy Spirit is best understood as “breath” (“spirated”) – he is the “breath” or “breathing” of Father and Son. (1) Love has an effect upon breathing; (2) Close connection between breath and life.

Equality in Majesty: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are coeternal. God cannot will the second person out of existence, any more than he willed him into existence. There is no element whatever of contingency in the existence of the second person; there is origin but no dependence. God is as necessarily Son as he is Father. Same line of thought with the Holy Spirit. There is no difference among the three in eternity or necessity; and there in no inequality.

Appropriation: The distinction of action among the persons of the Blessed Trinity is a fact of the inner life of God. It is within the divine nature that each lives, knows, loves, as himself, distinct. There is no external operation of the divine nature which is the work of one person as distinct from the others – the universe is created & sustained, souls are created and sanctified through the Trinity.

Question: Why then is creation appropriated to the one, sanctification to the other? Appropriation is a constant reminder to us that they are distinct; not only that, it reminds us of the personal character of each – that the Father is Origin, the Son proceeds by the way of Knowledge, the Holy Spirit by the way of Love.

Chapter 6: The Human Mind and the Doctrine of the Trinity

Sheed reminds readers that while the Trinity is a mystery, it is not incomprehensible. We cannot fully know God as He knows Himself, but we can still understand aspects of the divine mystery. God’s knowing and loving nature enriches our understanding of being made in His image and calls us into a communal and loving relationship with Him and others.

The Trinity is not a truth we cannot know anything about, but a truth we cannot know everything about. We cannot know God as he knows himself. In studying God we begin with darkness, knowing nothing; we progress into light and revel in it, and at last we find ourselves face to face with darkness again, but a very different darkness from the first, a darkness richer than our light. Caligo quaedam lux – the darkness is a kind of light.

Making the doctrine our own

A man with an idea in his head and love in his heart is one man, not three men. God, knowing and loving, is one God – even though the idea produced by his knowledge is a person, and the inward utterance of his love is a person; for as we have seen, the idea remains within the mind that thinks it, the lovingness within the nature that loves.

God’s life consists of the infinite interflow of knowing and loving among three, who are one God.

God is love

God has an adequate object for his infinite loving power. It is only in the interchange of love with an equal that love reaches its height.

Knowledge of the three persons enriches our awareness of what is meant by ourselves being made in God’s image. Man is a social being with community life at his essence. “A community is a number of persons united by agreement about the things they love.” – St. Augustine. “Where each one seeks his rights, there is chaos.” – St Thomas Aquinas. For the secret of the divine community is infinite giving.

Chapter 7: Creation

Sheed explores why God created the universe, emphasizing that God did not need creation; rather, He created out of love so that creatures could share in His existence. The universe’s existence depends entirely on God, who holds everything in being. Without God, everything would return to nothingness.

Question: Why did God create a universe?  God needs no being other than Himself. The short answer is that He created a universe because He knew we would like it. Creation brings Him no gain, but brings us tremendous gain: it means that we are something instead of nothing, with all the possibilities of life and growth and happiness instead of mere blankness of nonentity.

Without God All Is Meaningless

If God withdrew his will for our existence, we should be nothing. I do not mean that we should die, I mean that we should be nothing at all. God is the explanation of everything. Leave out God, then, and you leave out the explanation of everything, you leave everything unexplainable.

How God Created

God simply willed creation. He is omnipotent, limitless in power, and therefore requires neither material to work upon nor any process of manufacture. Creation is “appropriated” to the Father, who within the Blessed Trinity is Origin.

Genesis

The Fathers and Doctors of the Church never thought of Genesis as giving us a scientific blueprint of creation. Chapter 1 of Genesis was not written until 400 years after Chapter 2 on Adam and Eve and the fall of man. Around 900 BC, Chapter 2 was written, when King Solomon was reigning in Jerusalem. 400-500 years later, the compilation of the books of Moses were written.

Catholics can believe in an immediate creation of the human body from the elements in the earth or in an evolutionary process by which the first human body comes from the earth by way of other animal bodies; but, we must not deny the immediate creation, for the first man and every subsequent man, of the soul. The soul, being a spirit, having no parts, cannot evolve from some lower form; it can exist only if God creates it.

Nor are we forced to choose between evolution and creation. Creation answers the question why does anything exist. Evolution is a theory as to how the universe did develop once it existed.

Chapter 8: The Nature of Man

Sheed discusses the unique nature of humans, created as a union of body and soul. Our spiritual soul gives us intellect and will, allowing us to know and love. He highlights that man is a social being, designed to live in communion with others, reflecting the communal nature of God Himself.

Body: “The Lord formed man of the slime of the earth”

Soul: “He breathed into his face the breath of life.”

“Let us make man to our image and likeness” – God breathed into man his own image and likeness – a spiritual soul.

Man’s soul, because it is a soul, animates his body, as the soul of a lower animal animates its; but because man’s soul is a spirit, it has the faculties of intellect and will by which it knows and loves as the animal cannot.

The relation of soul and body should not be seen as two separate things, one of which animates the other; but they are combined in one being, man himself.

Two other truths about man – [1] man is a social being – we do not come into existence unless other humans produced us.

God’s Law and Freedom

The second truth is that God’s will is the reason for man’s existence; so God’s will must be the law of his existence. To disobey the law is sin; to think we can gain by disobeying is insanity.

When we learn laws and live according to them we gain freedom. There is no such thing for man as freedom from these laws; there is only freedom within them. We learn the laws of gravity, air-currents, movement of bodies, and at last we can fly in the upper air.

That there are laws applying to man’s soul, moral laws, is just as true. The same God who made the laws of gravity made the laws of justice and purity. We cannot break the laws, but, if we ignore them, they can break us.

Man knows moral laws through [1] witness of his nature & [2] by the teaching of men entitled to speak in the name of God.

[1] Witness of his nature – if we disobey the laws for the running of the car, the engine makes strange noises and at last comes to a stop. If we disobey the laws of the body, we have pain, and ultimately death. The stirring of conscience in the soul is like the strange noises in the engine and the pain in the body; it is a protest against misuse.

Chapter 9: The Supernatural Life

Sheed describes the supernatural life given to us through grace, particularly sanctifying grace, which enables us to participate in the divine life of God. This grace is essential for eternal life, and without it, we cannot attain heaven. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity are infused into the soul, empowering us to live as God’s children.

The very essence of the life of heaven is called the Beatific Vision, which means the seeing that causes bliss. Every one of our powers – especially our intellect and will – will be energized at its very fullest upon its supreme object. And that, if you will think about it, is the definition of happiness.

The life of heaven requires powers which by nature we do not possess. If we are to live, we must be given new powers. For heaven our natural life is not sufficient; we need supernatural life. We can have it only be God’s free gift, which is why we call it grace (gratis).

Question: Do you have sanctifying grace in your soul? When we die, this will be the only question that matters. If we have, then to heaven we shall go. If we have not, then to heaven we cannot go because our souls lack the powers that living in heaven calls for. To die lacking it means eternal failure.

Grace is something truly super-natural. It is wholly above our nature. Grace is a new kind of life in our soul, with its own proper propers.

By sanctifying grace the soul has new powers – the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity; the moral virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude; the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The first three are called “theological” because they have God not only for their end but also for their object. All our actions should have God for their end or purpose, but they cannot all have God for their object. Faith is directed to God as supremely truthful, hope to God as supremely desirable, charity to God as supremely good.

The moral virtues have God for their end, but for their object they have created things – how we shall best use these to bring us to God.

Faith is the root of the whole supernatural life.

Hope has three elements: it desires final union with God, sees this as difficult, sees it as attainable.

Charity is love of God. And as a necessary consequence love of all that God loves. Only charity makes the soul and its habits come alive. That is why “the greatest of these is charity.” (1 Cor 13).

Supernatural Habits: Faith, hope, and charity are called habits by theologians. We say that a given habit grows on us. Really it grows in us, becomes second nature. The theological virtues are habits because they are really in our souls, and they enable us to do things which without them would be impossible for us. As natural habits are acquired gradually, supernatural habits are acquired instantly by God. As natural habits are lost gradually, supernaturally habits are lost instantly by one mortal sin against them.

Chapter 10: The Sin at Our Origin

Sheed examines the fall of both angels and humans, emphasizing that sin disrupts our relationship with God. Original sin, inherited from Adam, deprived humanity of sanctifying grace. Through Jesus Christ, God’s plan of redemption unfolds, restoring what was lost through sin.

Fall of Angels: God created angels with their natural life, pure spirits knowing and loving, and with supernatural life. The angels who stayed firm in the love of God were admitted to the Beatific Vision. The rest, who chose themselves out of pride instead of God, got what they asked for – separation from God.

Fall of Adam: God created man and woman with the natural life of soul and body, and with sanctifying grace, God dwelling in his soul and pouring supernatural life into it. In addition he gave man preternatural gifts, not supernatural but rather perfections of the natural – guarding it against destruction or damage. The body was subject to the soul. The natural habits wholly harmonious with the supernatural.

The point of union, for the first man as for all spiritual beings, was in the will, the faculty which loves, which decides. And Adam, through the temptation of Satan, willed to break that union.

Whereas the angels testing had been done on an individual basis; the human race was tested and fell in one man, the representative man. The angelic race could not be tested in an individual angel, for there is no angelic race. Men are related to one another, brought into being by others. Not so with angels. Each is created whole and entire by God.

Results of Adam’s Fall: We are all born with natural life only, without the supernatural life on sanctifying grace. Original sin is not to be thought of as a stain on the soul, but as the absence of that grace without which we cannot, as we have seen, reach the goal for which God destined man. And our nature too is not as Adam’s was before he failed the condition, but as it was after.

How to restore a fallen race? Four thousand years ago, the plan of redemption suddenly seems to take shape – at least to our eyes. God spoke to Abraham: his children were to be God’s chosen people. One nation bore mankind’s hopes, proclaiming that God is one; and of them was to be born the Saviour of the world.

Chapter 11: The Redeemer

In this chapter, Sheed explains the mystery of the Incarnation—God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ. He explores the dual nature of Christ, who is fully God and fully man, and how His life, death, and resurrection redeemed humanity from sin.

God Became Man: To effect the redemption of the world, God became man. The second person of the Trinity, the Son, the Word, became man. The order of the universe, as a work of wisdom, is appropriated by the Son. The order had been wrecked, and a new order must be made; it was the Son who made it. To make it, he became man.

The first step is to pierce as deep as we may into the being of Christ Our Lord. And for this we must read the Gospels – as though we had never read them before, as though we had never heard the story before.

Our Lord as We Meet Him: We must read, then, with the determination to meet Our Lord for ourselves, as He is. To become aware of the double stream of both word and action as man and other times as more than man – things that only God could do.

Christ: God and Man: Understanding what Christ is – is essential to understanding what He does. The nature anything has decides what it is. Nature, though it answers the question what, does not answer the question who.  Nature decides what a being can do; but the person does it.

Because Christ Our Lord, uniquely, had two natures, he could give two answers to the question “What are you?” – for nature decides what a person is. And he had two distinct principles, source we may say, of action. By the one nature he could do all that goes with being God – he could read the heart of man, for instance; he could raise Lazarus to life. By the other he could do all that belongs to being man – he could be born of a mother, could hunger and thirst, could suffer, could die.

But whether he was doing the things of God or the things of man, it was always the person who did them.

Mary was the mother of God – our Blessed Lady did exist before the second person of the Trinity was born into human nature; the Son already existed in his divine nature.

God died upon the Cross – God the Son, in his human nature, died upon the cross. And in his human nature God the Son rose from the dead.

The Manhood: The second person of the Trinity became man and is man in heaven and everlastingly. Although he did not sin, sin itself is not a way of defining a man, it is a way of missing manhood. So he was more completely man than we. As God, Christ our Lord was omniscient, he knew all things, his knowledge was infinite. The person who in one nature knew all things did, in the other nature grow in wisdom (called experimental knowledge).

Jesus had by God’s gift two other ways of knowing: [1] infused knowledge – God forming directly in their minds knowledge needed for the work he had sent them to do; [2] the Beatific Vision – the direct knowledge of God we shall all have in heaven.

How can a person pray, when he is himself God? – When Christ prayed, it was the second person of the Trinity who prayed.  Prayer is the utterance of the finite create to the infinite God. God the Son, taking on a human nature, must utter his nature, uttering its adoration and thanksgiving and petition.

What does a person who is God do with a human soul? Our Lord knew what his soul could do, for he had made this soul, and used every power of the soul to the uttermost of its possibility. He could do all that could be done with his human soul – but not more.

Chapter 12: Redemption

Sheed focuses on the redemptive act of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. Through His sacrifice, Jesus atoned for the sins of humanity, making salvation possible for all who believe. Sheed emphasizes that Christ’s resurrection and ascension confirm the completeness of His sacrifice.

Suffering and Death

God chose that the sin committed in human nature should be expiated in human nature. The life Christ offered as sacrifice was his human life; an offering of the divine life would have been meaningless.

The suffering was in his soul and body; the death was the separation of his soul and body.

Because Christ was truly man, his sacrifice was truly human, so that it could be set against the sin of the race. But because he was God, his act had an infinite value by which it compensated, outweighed, not only all the sin men ever had committed but all they ever could.

Every act of Christ was infinite in value because he who performed it was God.

Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension

Both the resurrection and ascension belong to the completeness of the sacrifice by which the breach between the race and God was healed, grace was made available in a new abundance and a new richness, heaven was opened to the members of the race.

In the Resurrection, God gives the visible sign that the priest who offered his own body and blood in sacrifice was wholly pleasing to him. In the Ascension God shows visibly that he is actually taking to himself that which has been offered to him.

Truth, Life, Union

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me.”

To have found the way is not the end; it is the beginning. The way is not the goal. Only the goal is, for us, permanence; the way may be lost. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (Phil 2:12).

As against the danger of losing the way we need truth. As against the danger of falling by the wayside we need life – the life of sanctifying grace.

Through union with Christ, and only so, do men come to that everlasting union with God which is their destiny.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mt 28:19-20). 

Observe how closely this follows the great formula of the Last Supper – truth, life, union. Truth through teaching. Life through baptism, the forgiveness of sins, and provide the Eucharist (Jn 6:54).

Chapter 13: The Visible Church

Sheed concludes by discussing the Church’s role as the visible body of Christ on earth, guided by the Holy Spirit. The Church continues Christ’s mission, administering the sacraments and teaching the truth of the Gospel to all nations.

The Structure of the Church

Through the Apostles, with Peter as their Rock upon which Christ built his Church, would give Christ’s teachings and life till the end of time.  Although men direct the church here upon earth, it is Christ we join when we join the church. And all gifts come through them, but always from the Holy Spirit.

The Church is Catholic and Apostolic

Catholic, is from a Greek word meaning “universal.” What does universal mean? The word contains two elements – all and one, all in one. One in that the Church would be built upon the Rock. All to encompass: all nations, all doctrines, all ages.

Apostolicity is seen in a variety of ways. First, the unbroken line back to Pentecost. Second, the Church, like the Apostles, teaches and has always taught what Christ taught. Third, the Church teaches as the Apostles taught, that is, with complete authority. Example: Council of Jersualem (Acts 15:28): “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”

As the Church is made by the God who made men, every sort of nation and every sort of man has joined the Church, feeling wholly at home.

The Church is One

Final Thoughts

Theology for Beginners is a profound yet accessible guide to understanding the essential doctrines of the Catholic faith. Sheed’s clear and logical presentation invites readers to deepen their knowledge of God, grow in faith, and embrace the love that God offers to all. As Sheed writes, “We cannot love God unless we know Him, and knowing leads to loving.”

This summary captures the core themes of Sheed’s book, which brilliantly distills complex theological concepts into understandable insights that inspire readers to seek God with their minds and hearts.