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Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the supernatural, but also deals with religious epistemology, asks and seeks to answer the question of revelation. Revelation pertains to the acceptance of God, gods, or deity, as not only transcendent or above the natural world, but also willing and able to interact with the natural world and to reveal themselves to humankind.
Theologians use various forms of analysis and argument (Spirituality, philosophy, ethnography, history, and others) to help understanding, explanation, test, critique, defend or promote any myriad of religious topics. As in philosophy of ethics and case law, arguments often assume the existence of previously resolved questions, and develop by making analogies from them to draw new inferences in new situations.
The study of theology may help a theologian more deeply understand their own Religion,See, e.g., Migliore, Daniel L. 2004. Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (2nd ed.) Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. another religious tradition,See, e.g., Kogan, Michael S. 1995. " Toward a Jewish Theology of Christianity." Journal of Ecumenical Studies 32(1):89–106. Archived from the online on 15 June 2006. or it may enable them to explore the nature of divinity without reference to any specific tradition. Theology may be used to Proselytism,See, e.g., Dormor, Duncan, et al., eds. 2003. Anglicanism, the Answer to Modernity. London: Continuum. reform,See, e.g., Spong, John Shelby. 2001. Why Christianity Must Change or Die. New York: Harper Collins. or Apologetics a religious tradition; or it may be used to compare,See, e.g., Burrell, David. 1994. Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. challenge (e.g. biblical criticism), or oppose (e.g. irreligion) a religious tradition or worldview. Theology might also help a theologian address some present situation or need through a religious tradition,See, e.g., Timothy Gorringe. 2004. Crime, ( Changing Society and the Churches Series). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. or to explore possible ways of interpreting the world.See e.g., Anne Hunt Overzee's gloss upon the view of Ricœur (1913–2005) as to the role and work of 'theologian': "Paul Ricœur speaks of the theologian as a hermeneut, whose task is to interpret the multivalent, rich metaphors arising from the symbolic bases of tradition so that the symbols may 'speak' once again to our existential situation."
Overzee, Anne Hunt. 1992. The Body Divine: The Symbol of the Body in the Works of Teilhard de Chardin and Ramanuja , ( Cambridge Studies in Religious Traditions 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Retrieved 5 April 2010. p. 4.
For examples of λόγια in the New Testament, cf. Acts 7:38; Romans 3:2; 1 Peter 4:11.
Scouteris, Constantine B. 1972 2016. Ἡ ἔννοια τῶν ὅρων 'Θεολογία', 'Θεολογεῖν', 'Θεολόγος', ἐν τῇ διδασκαλίᾳ τῶν Ἑλλήνων Πατέρων καί Ἐκκλησιαστικῶν συγγραφέων μέχρι καί τῶν Καππαδοκῶν The (in Greek). Athens. pp. 187. The term would pass on to Latin as theologia, then French as théologie, eventually becoming the English theology''.Through several variants (e.g., theologie, teologye), the English theology had evolved into its current form by 1362.Langland, Piers Plowman A ix 136 The sense that the word has in English depends in large part on the sense that the Latin and Greek equivalents had acquired in patristics and medieval Christian usage although the English term has now spread beyond Christian contexts. (left) and Aristotle in Raphael's 1509 fresco The School of Athens]]
Plato develops his rational theology (natural theology) in Book 10 of the Laws. In the dialogue, he opposes atheism and argues that the heavenly bodies are moved by the divine souls of the gods and their intelligence (nous). He also maintains that these gods care for humans and aim for the good of the universe as a whole.
Aristotle divided theoretical philosophy into mathematike, physike, and theologike, with the latter corresponding roughly to metaphysics, which, for Aristotle, included discourse on the nature of the divine. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Epsilon.
Drawing on Greek Stoicism sources, the Latin writer Varro distinguished three forms of such discourse:Augustine, City of God VI , ch. 5.
The Latin author Boethius, writing in the early 6th century, used theologia to denote a subdivision of philosophy as a subject of academic study, dealing with the motionless, incorporeal reality; as opposed to physica, which deals with Matter, moving realities. Boethius' definition influenced medieval Latin usage.Evans, G. R. 1980. Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic Discipline. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 31–32.
In patristics Greek Christian sources, theologia could refer narrowly to devout and/or inspired knowledge of and teaching about the essential nature of God.McGukin, John. 2001. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. p. 278:
Gregory of Nazianzus uses the word in this sense in his 4th-century Theological Orations . After his death, he was called "the Theologian" at the Council of Chalcedon and thereafter in Eastern Orthodoxy either because his Orations were seen as crucial examples of this kind of theology or in the sense that he was (like the author of the Book of Revelation) seen as one who was an inspired preacher of the words of God. (It is unlikely to mean, as claimed in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers introduction to his Theological Orations, that he was a defender of the divinity of Christ the Word.)
In scholasticism Latin sources, the term came to denote the rational study of the of the Christian religion, or (more precisely) the academic discipline that investigated the coherence and implications of the language and claims of the Bible and of the theological tradition (the latter often as represented in Peter Lombard's Sentences, a book of extracts from the Church Fathers).
In the Renaissance, especially with Florentine Platonist apologists of Dante Alighieri's poetics, the distinction between 'poetic theology' ( theologia poetica) and 'revealed' or Biblical theology serves as stepping stone for a revival of philosophy as independent of theological authority.
It is in the last sense, theology as an academic discipline involving rational study of Christian teaching, that the term passed into English in the 14th century,"Theology." Oxford English Dictionary. note. although it could also be used in the narrower sense found in Boethius and the Greek patristic authors, to mean rational study of the essential nature of God, a discourse now sometimes called theology proper.See, e.g., Charles Hodge. 1871. Systematic Theology 1, part 1.
From the 17th century onwards, the term theology began to be used to refer to the study of religious ideas and teachings that are not specifically Christian or correlated with Christianity (e.g., in the term natural theology, which denoted theology based on reasoning from natural facts independent of specifically Christian revelation) Oxford English Dictionary, sense 1 or that are specific to another religion (such as below).
Theology can also be used in a derived sense to mean "a system of theoretical principles; an (impractical or rigid) ideology"."Theology, 1(d)" and "Theological, A.3." Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. Times Literary Supplement 329/4. 5 June 1959: "The 'theological' approach to Soviet Marxism...proves in the long run unsatisfactory."
Some Universities in Germany established departments of islamic theology. (i.e.)
Whatever the case, there are various Buddhist theories and discussions on the nature of Buddhahood and the ultimate reality / highest form of divinity, which has been termed "buddhology" by some scholars like Louis de La Vallée-Poussin.de la Vallée Poussin, Louis. (1906). "XXXI. Studies in Buddhist Dogma. The Three Bodies of a Buddha (Trikāya). " Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, 38(4), 943–977. doi:10.1017/S0035869X0003522X This is a different usage of the term than when it is taken to mean the Buddhist studies, and here would refer to the study of the nature of what a Buddha is. In Mahayana, a central concept in its buddhology is the doctrine of the three Buddha bodies (Sanskrit: Trikaya). This doctrine is shared by all Mahayana Buddhist traditions.
Vaishnavism has been a subject of study for many devotees, philosophers and scholars in India for centuries. A large part of its study lies in classifying and organizing the manifestations of thousands of gods and their aspects. In recent decades the study of Hinduism has also been taken up by a number of academic institutions in Europe, such as the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Bhaktivedanta College.King, Anna S. 2006. "For Love of Krishna: Forty Years of Chanting." pp. 134–67 in The Hare Krishna Movement: Forty Years of Chant and Change, edited by G. Dwyer and R. J. Cole. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 163:
Describes developments in both institutions, and speaks of Hare Krishna devotees "studying Vaishnava theology and practice in mainstream universities."
There are also other traditions of Hindu theology, including the various theologies of Shaivism (which include dualistic and Nondualism strands) as well as the theologies of the Goddess centered Shaktism which posit a feminine deity as the ultimate.
Reagan, Timothy. 2004. Non-Western Educational Traditions: Alternative Approaches to Educational Thought and Practice (3rd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum. p. 185; and
Chitnis, Sunna. 2003. "Higher Education." pp. 1032–56 in The Oxford India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology, edited by Veena Das. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 1036.Scharfe, Hartmut. 2002. Education in Ancient India. Leiden: Brill.
The Al-Qarawiyyin mosque was founded in 859 AD, but "While instruction at the mosque must have begun almost from the beginning, it is only...by the end of the tenth-century that its reputation as a center of learning in both religious and secular sciences...must have begun to wax." as was Al-Azhar University in Cairo.Beattie, Andrew. 2005. Cairo: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 101.
The earliest universities were developed under the aegis of the Latin Church by papal bull as Studium Generale and perhaps from . It is possible, however, that the development of cathedral schools into universities was quite rare, with the University of Paris being an exception.Leff, Gordon. 1968. Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. An Institutional and Intellectual History. Wiley. Later they were also founded by kings (University of Naples Federico II, Charles University in Prague, Jagiellonian University in Kraków) or by municipal administrations (University of Cologne, University of Erfurt).
In the early medieval period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools, usually when these schools were deemed to have become primarily sites of higher education. Many historians state that universities and cathedral schools were a continuation of the interest in learning promoted by monasteries.Johnson, Paul. 2000. The Renaissance: A Short History, ( Modern Library Chronicles). New York: Modern Library. p. 9. Christian theological learning was, therefore, a component in these institutions, as was the study of church or canon law: universities played an important role in training people for ecclesiastical offices, in helping the church pursue the clarification and defence of its teaching, and in supporting the legal rights of the church over against secular rulers.Rüegg, Walter. 2003. "Themes." pp. 3–34 in A History of the University in Europe, edited by W. Rüegg and H. de Ridder-Symoens, ( Universities in the Middle Ages 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 15–16. At such universities, theological study was initially closely tied to the life of faith and of the church: it fed, and was fed by, practices of preaching, prayer and celebration of the Mass.See D'Costa, Gavin. 2005. Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation. Oxford: Blackwell. ch. 1.
During the High Middle Ages, theology was the ultimate subject at universities, being named "The Queen of the Sciences". It served as the capstone to the Trivium and Quadrivium that young men were expected to study. This meant that the other subjects (including philosophy) existed primarily to help with theological thought.Howard, Thomas Albert. 2006. Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University . Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 56: "philosophy, the scientia scientarum in one sense, was, in another, portrayed as the humble "handmaid of theology'."
In this context, medieval theology in the Christian West could subsume fields of study which would later become more self-sufficient, such as metaphysics (Aristotle's "first philosophy",
Christian theology's preeminent place in the university started to come under challenge during the European Enlightenment, especially in Germany.Howard, Thomas Albert. 2006. Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Other subjects gained in independence and prestige, and questions were raised about the place of a discipline that seemed to involve a commitment to the authority of particular religious traditions in institutions that were increasingly understood to be devoted to independent reason.See the discussion of, for instance, Immanuel Kant's Conflict of the Faculties (1798), and J.G. Fichte's Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin errichtenden höheren Lehranstalt (1807) in Howard, Thomas Albert. 2006. Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Since the early 19th century, various different approaches have emerged in the West to theology as an academic discipline. Much of the debate concerning theology's place in the university or within a general higher education curriculum centres on whether theology's methods are appropriately theoretical and (broadly speaking) scientific or, on the other hand, whether theology requires a pre-commitment of faith by its practitioners, and whether such a commitment conflicts with academic freedom.Frei, Hans W. 1992. Types of Christian Theology, edited by William Placher and George Hunsinger. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.D'Costa, Gavin. 2005. Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation. Oxford: Blackwell.McClendon, James W. 2000. "Theology and the University." Ch. 10 in Systematic Theology 3: Witness. Nashville, TN: Abingdon.
For instance, in Germany, theological faculties at state universities are typically tied to particular denominations, Protestant or Roman Catholic, and those faculties will offer denominationally-bound (konfessionsgebunden) degrees, and have denominationally bound public posts amongst their faculty; as well as contributing "to the development and growth of Christian knowledge" they "provide the academic training for the future clergy and teachers of religious instruction at German schools."Kratz, Reinhard G. 2002. "Academic Theology in Germany." Religion 32(2):113–116.
In the United States, several prominent colleges and universities were started in order to train Christian ministers. Harvard,George Marsden 1994. The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 41:
"The primary purpose of Harvard College was, accordingly, the training of clergy.' But 'the school served a dual purpose, training men for other professions as well."
Georgetown was a Jesuit institution founded in significant part to provide a pool of educated Catholics some of whom who could go on to full seminary training for the priesthood.
Yale's original 1701 charter speaks of the purpose being "Sincere Regard & Zeal for upholding & Propagating of the Christian Protestant Religion by a succession of Learned & Orthodox" and that "Youth may be instructed in the Arts and Sciences (and) through the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church and Civil State."
Seminaries and bible colleges have continued this alliance between the academic study of theology and training for Christian ministry. There are, for instance, numerous prominent examples in the United States, including Phoenix Seminary, Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley,See 'About the GTU' at The Graduate Theological Union website (Retrieved 29 August 2009): 'dedicated to educating students for teaching, research, ministry, and service.' Criswell College in Dallas, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, Dallas Theological Seminary, "About" at the Dallas Theological Seminary website: "At Dallas, the scholarly study of biblical and related subjects is inseparably fused with the cultivation of the spiritual life. All this is designed to prepare students to communicate the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God." Retrieved 29 August 2009. . North Texas Collegiate Institute in Farmers Branch, Texas, and the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri. The only Judeo-Christian seminary for theology is the 'Idaho Messianic Bible Seminary' which is part of the Jewish University of Colorado in Denver.
Since at least the eighteenth century, various authors have criticized the suitability of theology as an academic discipline. In 1772, Baron d'Holbach labeled theology "a continual insult to human reason" in Le Bon sens. Lord Bolingbroke, an English politician and political philosopher, wrote in Section IV of his Essays on Human Knowledge, "Theology is in fault not religion. Theology is a science that may justly be compared to the Box of Pandora. Many good things lie uppermost in it; but many evil lie under them, and scatter plagues and desolation throughout the world." The Philosophical Works of Lord Bolingbroke 3. p. 396.
Thomas Paine, a Deism American political theorist and pamphleteer, wrote in his three-part work The Age of Reason (1794, 1795, 1807):Thomas Paine. 1794/1795/1807 1945. "The Age of Reason." The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine, edited by P. S. Foner. New York: Citadel Press. p. 601.
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.The German atheism philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach sought to dissolve theology in his work Principles of the Philosophy of the Future: "The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology."Ludwig Feuerbach. 1986. Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, translated by M. H. Vogel. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company. p. 5. This mirrored his earlier work The Essence of Christianity (1841), for which he was banned from teaching in Germany, in which he had said that theology was a "web of contradictions and delusions".Ludwig Feuerbach. 1841 1989. "Preface, XVI." The Essence of Christianity, translated George Eliot. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books.
The American satirist Mark Twain remarked in his essay "The Lowest Animal", originally written in around 1896, but not published until after Twain's death in 1910, that:
Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
Jewish atheism philosopher Walter Kaufmann, in his essay "Against Theology", sought to differentiate theology from religion in general:Kaufmann, Walter. 1963. The Faith of a Heretic. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. pp. 114, 127–28, 130.
Theology, of course, is not religion; and a great deal of religion is emphatically anti-theological.... An attack on theology, therefore, should not be taken as necessarily involving an attack on religion. Religion can be, and often has been, untheological or even anti-theological.However, Kaufmann found that "Christianity is inescapably a theological religion."
English atheist Charles Bradlaugh believed theology prevented human beings from achieving liberty, although he also noted that many theologians of his time held that, because modern scientific research sometimes contradicts sacred scriptures, the scriptures must therefore be wrong. Robert G. Ingersoll, an American agnostic lawyer, stated that, when theologians had power, the majority of people lived in hovels, while a privileged few had palaces and cathedrals. In Ingersoll's opinion, it was science that improved people's lives, not theology. Ingersoll further maintained that trained theologians reason no better than a person who assumes the devil must exist because pictures resemble the devil so exactly.
The British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has been an outspoken critic of theology. In an article published in The Independent in 1993, he severely criticizes theology as entirely useless, declaring that it has completely and repeatedly failed to answer any questions about the nature of reality or the human condition. He states, "I have never heard any of them i.e. ever say anything of the smallest use, anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false." He then states that, if all theology were completely eradicated from the earth, no one would notice or even care. He concludes:
The achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't affect anything, don't achieve anything, don't even mean anything. What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?
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