corrupted, though from a very early period. He regards the Stoics as having initiated a philosophical theology, and gives numerous references for the “three theologies” which they distinguished. Philo the Jew is also quoted as using θεολόγος of poets, of Moses par excellence, and of Greek philosophers. It is possible that the epithet θεολόγος for St John may go back as far as Papias. This is the first appearance of the term upon Christian ground. The primitive application of θεολόγοι to the poets and myth-fanciers meets us again in Church writers; but there is also a tendency to use the name for a philosophical theology based on the doctrine of the Logos. In this sense Gregory Nazianzen also receives the title θεολόγος. His περὶ θεολόγας is a dissertation on the knowledge of God.[1] Many centuries later Abelard generalized the expression in books which came to bear the titles Theologia Christiana and Introductio ad Theologiam. (Abelard speaks himself of “theologia nostra.”)[2] It is of interest to note that even in these books the Trinity and Christology are the topics of outstanding importance. In the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas the technical sense is fully established. Except in special circumstances which generally explain themselves, e.g. “Homeric Theology” (a book by Nägelsbach), Old Testament Theology, Comparative Theology, Natural Theology, the word in modern languages means the theology of the Christian Church. What follows here will be confined to that subject.
While the word points to God as the special theme of the theologian, other topics inevitably find entrance. Theistic philosophy thinks of God as the absolute being; and every monotheistic religion insists, not indeed that the knowledge of God includes all knowledge, but Contents of theology. that this supremely important knowledge throws fresh light upon everything. So, with an added Christian intensity, St Paul declares: “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ” (2 Cor. v. 17, 18). A minimum division might be threefold—Gottesbegriff, Selbstbeurteilung, Weltanschauung.[3] But historically it is more important to note that Christian theology has developed as a doctrine concerning Christ: his relation to God, our relation to God in or through him. For Christ is viewed as bringing redemption—a conception of importance in many religions, but in none so important as in Christianity. Indeed, another possibility opens up here. Instead of being mainly a doctrine concerning God, or one concerning Christ, theology may be construed as being mainly the theory of Christian experience. Most schools of theology will concur, however, in giving prominence to a complementary point of view and making their systems a study of Divine revelation. Even if they accept Natural Theology, they generally hold that Christian theology, properly so called, begins at a further point. Those who deny this were formerly called Naturalists, i.e. deniers of supernatural revelation; those who extend the province of reason in theology, and push back the frontier of revelation, are often called Rationalists.[4] Such being the usual point of view, it is plain that the claim of Theology as a science. theology to be a science, or a group of sciences, is made in a sense of its own in so far as theology is orderly, coherent, systematic, and seeks to rest upon good grounds of some sort, it may be called a science. But, in so far as it claims to deal with special revelation, it lifts itself out of the circle of the sciences, and turns away from natural knowledge towards what it regards as more intimate messages from God.
Two special usages should be noted: (1) a medieval use of “theology” for mystical or intuitive knowledge of God, as in the well-known book called Theologia Germanica; (2) “theology proper,” in Protestant systems, is the portion of theology which deals directly with the doctrine of God.
Another characteristic of theology is its secondary and reflective character. Religion, therefore, is earlier than theology. Or the theology which religion contains is in a state of solution—vaguely defined and suffused with emotion; important practically, but intellectuallyTheology and Religion. unsatisfying. “Scientific” theology contrasts with this as a laboratory extract. History may soften the contrast by discovering transitional forms, and by showing the religious interest at work in theology as well as the scientific interest affecting early utterances of religion. Still, this contrast enters into the meaning of divines when they say that they are at work upon a science. A religious man need no more, be a theologian than a poet need have a theory of aesthetics.
Where, then, are we to look for Christian theology? It is not the truism it may seem if we reply that we are to find it in the writings of theologians. As authorities controlling their work, theologians may name the Bible, or tradition, or the religious consciousness, or the Church, or Sources. some combination of these. But the teaching of the Bible is not systematic, and the authority of consciousness is vague; while the creeds into which Church tradition crystallizes emerge out of long theological discussions. Ordinarily, doctrine has been in close connexion not only with edification but with controversy. Anselm of Canterbury stands almost alone among the great theological masters in working purely from a scientific interest; this holds alike of his contribution to theism and of his doctrine of Atonement. Among the earlier theological statements are catechetical books, e.g. Cyril of Jerusalem. These books record doctrinal instruction given, for practical ends, to laymen of adult years who were candidates for baptism. Disinterested discussions by experts for experts is medieval rather than primitive. Modern catechisms in the form of question and answer for the instruction of baptized children are sometimes convenient if dry summaries of doctrine (e.g. the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism); but sometimes they have the glow of religious tenderness, like Luther’s Lesser Catechism, or the Heidelberg Catechism. They generally expound (1) The Apostles’ Creed, (2) the Ten Commandments, (3) the Lord’s Prayer. Medieval theology has an appearance of keeping in touch with the Apostles’ Creed when it divides the substance of doctrine into (usually) twelve “articles”—not always the same twelve—a reminiscence of the legendary composition of the Creed in twelve sections by the twelve apostles. This treatment, however, has little real influence upon the structure of medieval theology. German Protestant writers, again, following their catechisms, often distinguish three articles—of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This, too, is no more than convenient phraseology.
Before the Christian age, there had been a good deal of reflective thinking in the Jewish schools, though the interest there was legal rather than speculative. To some extent Christianity inherited this Jewish theology. True, Jesus Christ sprang from the people. He was a “layman” (Paul Wernle) withoutJewish theology. technical Jewish lore. The great attainment of the Old Testament, ethical monotheism, had become the common property of the nation; it occurs in Christianity as a simple presupposition. Early Christian writers find it unnecessary to prove what no one dreams of questioning. Along with this great doctrine there pass on into Christianity the slowly attained hope of resurrection and the dreadful doctrine of future punishment for the wicked. Leading thoughts in the teaching of Jesus, so far as they are new, are the Fatherhood of God—new at least in the central place given it—the imminence of the “kingdom” or judgment of God, and Jesus’ own place as Messiah, i.e. as king (and as judge). The “second founder” of Christianity, Paul of Tarsus, was indeed rabbinically trained. HisSt Paul. recoil from Judaism is all the more intense because of the special intellectual presuppositions which he continues to share with Judaism. In many respects, Pauline Christianity is the obverse of the Pharisaic creed. Modern Christians are
- ↑ Other usages of θεολογία are the Divine nature of Christ (St John Chrysostom, quoted in Konstantinides’ Greek Lexicon), Old and New Testaments (Theodoret, ib.) ; Greek theology and Mosaic or revealed theology (Theodoret).
- ↑ F. Nitzsch in Herzog-Plitt, Realencyk. (1877). Fuller details regarding Abelard’s writings in the same author’s art. in Herzog-Hauck (1896).
- ↑ So Ritschl, following Schleiermacher, Der Christliche Glaube, § 30.
- ↑ A. W. Benn (History of English Rationalism in the 19th Cent.) goes beyond ordinary usage in defining rationalism as a militant theory opposed to all belief in God.
