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Theology is literally rational discourse concerning God ( Greek θεος, theos, "God", + λογος, logos, "rational discourse"). By extension, it also refers to the study of other religious topics.1 History of the term
The term theologia is used in Classical Greek literature, with the meaning "discourse on the Gods or cosmology" (see Lidell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon for references). Aristotle divided theoretical philosophy into mathematice, phusike and theologike, with the latter corresponding roughly to metaphysics, which for Aristotle included discussion of the nature of the divine.
Drawing on Greek sources, the Latin writer Varro influentially distinguished three forms of such discourse: mythical (concerning the myths of the Greek gods), rational (philosophical analysis of the gods and of cosmology) and civil (concerning the rites and duties of public religious observance).
The term was taken up by Christian writers. It appears once in some biblical manuscripts, in the heading to the book of Revelation: apokalupsis ioannou tou theologou, "the revelation of John the theologos". There, however, we are probably dealing with a slightly different sense of the root logos, to mean not "rational discourse" but "word" or "message": ho theologos here is probably meant to tell us that the author of Revelation has presented God's revealed messages – words of God, logoi tou theou – not that he was a "theologian" in the modern English sense of the word.
Other Christian writers used the term with several different ranges of meaning.
- Some Latin authors, such as Tertullian and Augustine followed Varro's threefold usage, described above.
- In patristic Greek sources, theologia could refer narrowly to the discussion of the nature and attributes of God.
- In other patristic Greek sources, theologia could also refer narrowly to the discussion of the attribution of divine nature to Jesus. (It is in this sense that Gregory Nazianzus was nicknamed "the theologian": he was a staunch defender of the divinity of Christ.)
- In medieval Greek and Latin sources, theologia (in the sense of "an account or record of the ways of God") could refer simply to the BibleThe Bible (From Greek βιβλια biblia meaning "books", which in turn is derived from βυβλος byblos meaning "papyrus", from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus).
- In scholasticScholasticism comes from the Latin word scholasticus which means "that [which] belongs to the school". It is a method, or technique, of teaching and learning created by late 11th Century medieval scholars and theologians. Scholasticism is not a philosophy Latin sources, the term came to denote the rational study of the doctrinesDoctrine from Latin doctrina (compare doctor , means "a body of teachings" or "instructions", taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system. The Greek analogy is the etymology of catechism. Often doctri of the Christian religion, or (more precisely) the academic disciplineDiscipline is any training intended to produce a specific character or pattern of behaviour, especially training that produces moral or mental development in a particular direction. Forms of discipline Control obtained by enforcing compliance or order. which 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 LombardPeter Lombard was a scholastic philosopher of the 12th century. His family was poor, but the patronage of St. Bernard allowed him to study at Bologna, at Reims, and at Paris. He later became a professor at the school of Notre Dame in Paris. He is most fam's SentencesPeter Lombard's seminal work, on which his reputation rests. Not a work of original theory, The Four Books of Sentences Libri Quattuor Sententiarum was rather a systematic compilation of theology, written around 1150. It became a standard university text, a book of extracts from the Church Fathers).
It is the last of these senses which lies behind most modern uses (though the second is also found in some academic and ecclesiastical contexts), and while the term "theology" can refer to any discussion of the nature of God or the gods, or indeed the discussion of any religious topic, it is also regularly used to denote the academic study (in UniversitiesA university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. University is derived from the Latin universitas meaning corporation since the first medieval, seminaries and elsewhere) of the doctrines of Christianity, or of any other religion, or of the relationships and contrasts between various different religions, although the latter is a field more usually termed " comparative religion."
