The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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it in fact never gets beyond its Christian origins, Preus touts the category on the grounds that it eventually comes to encompass even Christianity. Where Dubuisson scorns the social scientific study of religion as theology in disguise, Preus glories in the social scientific study of religion as liberation from theology.

Preus traces the step-by-step emergence of the social scientific ‘paradigm’ out of the theological one. Initially, all religions got accounted for irreducibly religiously (Bodin, Herbert of Cherbury). Next, all religions save Christianity – or save Judaism and Christianity

– got accounted for nonreligiously (Fontenelle, Vico). Finally, all religions got accounted for nonreligiously (Hume, Comte, Tylor, Durkheim, and Freud). The social scientific paradigm is at last complete, though of course ever subject to revision.

Preus credits the social sciences with forging the comparative approach that overcame Christian ethnocentrism and thereby allowed for the recognition of the universality of religion. For Preus, the identification of the universal category religion led to universal explanations of religion. In other words, it led to theorizing. For Dubuisson, who never cites Preus, there has been no progress, so that there is nothing to celebrate. Dubuisson insists that even those theorists who have prided themselves on breaking with what Preus calls the theological paradigm have in fact not escaped from it. Theology has continued to ‘set the agenda’ for the study of religion. Therefore the only solution is the elimination of the category religion itself.

Dubuisson begins by posing three questions:

•â Is Christianity [not simply] the special form taken in the West by something that has always existed and that similarly exists elsewhere, if not everywhere, namely, religion or the religious phenomenon?

•â As the legitimate daughter of Christianity, is religion not rather than an element wholly unique to Western civilization, one of its most original creations?

•â Should we not, moreover, go somewhat farther and ask whether religion is not effectively the West’s most characteristic concept, around which it has established and developed its identity, while at the same time defining its way of conceiving humankind and the world? (Dubuisson 2003: 9)

His answers to these three questions are clear: (1) no, (2) yes, and (3) yes. To cite one of his many summary statements of his position:

Whatever term we choose – weltanschauung, cosmography, vision, conception, figuration of the world, and so on – the fact remains that all global conceptions of the world, all utopias, all messianic movements, all theologies, all the imaginary worlds that the West has conceived of (and eventually tried to impose) have always been realized by taking as model (whether it was admired, envied, hated, imitated, deformed, or denigrated) that or those promoted by the Christian religion in its capacity of appearing to offer the most complete, most hegemonic conception of the world.

(Dubuisson 2003: 37–38)

Dubuisson’s claim prompts many questions. For example, if Christianity is the common model on which modern theorists have blindly based their conception of religion, why have they differed with one another so sharply on their conception of religion? How constricting can deference to Christianity be when theorists who purportedly all defer to it castigate one another’s definitions?

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If Christianity is the common model on which theorists have ethnocentrically based their conception of religion, how have they managed to find so many other cases of religion? One would think that a model so particularistic – as Dubuisson’s answer to his first question claims – would never fit any other case, let alone hundreds of other cases.

Conversely, if Christianity is the common model on which theorists have blithely based their conception of religion, why, as Preus shows, did it take them so long to find commonality? One would think that a model so readily presumed to be universal would easily fit, or be taken easily to fit, every other case.

If Christianity is the model on which theorists have based their conception of religion, why have so many theorists emphasized the differences between Christianity and other religions? Similarly, if theorists have based their conception of religion on a single religion, why have so many theorists stressed the differences between kinds and between stages of religion? For Tylor, primitive religion is materialist, explanatory, and amoral, whereas modern religion is spiritual, metaphysical, and moral. For Tylor, primitive religion is like science, and modern religion is unlike it. For Durkheim, the change from mechanical to organic solidarity makes for changes in the nature of religion. For Weber, primitive, or magical, religion has scant gods, no priests, no ethics, and no metaphysics, and is concerned with immediate, worldly ends, whereas higher religion has gods, priests or prophets, ethics, and metaphysics, and is ultimately preoccupied with the need for meaningfulness. How are these theorists any less attentive to differences within the category of religion than is Dubuisson in his proposed replacement of ‘cosmographical formations’ for religions?

While Dubuisson, to his credit, does not take the postmodern route of dispensing altogether with categories, or similarities, his criticism of the category religion does appeal to the litany-like argument made by particularists against comparativists. Dubuisson asks rhetorically, ‘Does the fact that a human being – a Benedictine monk, a Roman augur, or Tungus shaman – addresses a supernatural suffice to authorize us to speak of a common religious phenomenon?’ (Dubuisson 2003: 13). But this argument is tautological: of course, similarities cannot identify differences, for if similarities could, they would not be similarities. But this argument is also question-begging: only if one presupposes that differences are somehow deeper than similarities can one dismiss similarities as superficial. If one were to presuppose that differences are trivial, then they would become superficial. Moreover, similarities are by no means confined to the surface. They often lie beneath the surface. An emigré to a foreign country is typically struck first by the differences between it and home, and only later comes to notice the similarities. And apparent differences can turn into underlying similarities.

At the same time similarities do not mean identities. Similarities mean just similarities. Similarities allow for differences, and exactly at the point at which no further similarities can be found. No one claims that Christianity is identical with Buddhism or Christianity of one time and place identical with Christianity of another. Rather, the claim is that they are akin, and sufficiently akin to be categorized as cases of religion and in turn explicable in the same way.

Finally, what is the force of the claim, made by Dubuisson and so many others, that the category religion is ‘constructed’? What is the alternative: revealed? Unless the category was already in the world when humans arrived, of course it was created. And of course it was created by someone at some time or place. Are scientific theories, which Dubuisson contrasts to social scientific ones, any less constructed? The issue is not the specificity of the origin of a category or a theory but the applicability of the category or theory beyond its origin. Automatically to restrict applicability to the time and place of origin is to commit the

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genetic fallacy. It is to collapse discovery into invention. To take a common example, Freud generalized from the cases of largely middle-class Viennese Jewish women at the turn of the twentieth century. The issue is whether his generalization nevertheless holds universally. To assume that it does not simply because of the ineluctably constricted origin of any category or theory is fallacious. To avoid the genetic fallacy, Dubuisson must actually prove, not simply assert, the following claim:

the history of religions … was itself a unique historical construction, intimately tied to the ideas of its time, on which it was dependent at every stage of development … The study of its first syntheses, drawn up in the second half of the nineteenth century, reveals, among the intellectual factors that surrounded its birth, the constant presence of the most ordinary prejudices of that period.

(Dubuisson 2003: 147)

Commendably, Dubuisson seeks to prove this claim and thereby sidesteps the fallacy.

If one version of the new challenge to the category religion has been an appeal to the time and place of the origin of the term, another has been an appeal to the political use to which the term has been put. This challenge is even more fervently postmodern since it appeals to the authority of Foucault and to that of his partial follower, Edward Said, author of the 1978 classic Orientalism (1991).

Among the most discussed books of this form of the challenge have been Talal Asad’s

Genealogies of Religion (1993) and Formations of the Secular (2003), Timothy Fitzgerald’s The Ideology of Religious Studies (2000) and recent Discourse on Civility and Barbarity (2007), and Richard King’s Orientalism and Religion (1999). There are differences among these authors. Asad follows Foucault. Fitzgerald follows Said. King follows both, and also Asad. Still, none of the three is uncritical of whomever he follows. Fitzgerald concentrates on the category ‘religious studies,’ which he wants replaced by ‘cultural studies.’ Asad concentrates on the category religion. King concentrates on Indian religion as a case of Orientalism. But for all three, knowledge – here the knowledge of religion – is power. That line is a crude slogan for Foucault’s position. While King’s book is the most derivative of the ones named, it is also the most accessible and will serve as an example of this kind of challenge to the category religion.

King begins with the term ‘mystical.’ This term, like religion, is ‘a social construction’ (King 1999: 14). The term has a changing meaning. The meaning reflects the time and place of its origin. Therefore no meaning can apply to all times and places. Above all, the term has never been merely academic but has always been political:

[T]he way one defines ‘the mystical’ relates to ways of establishing and defining authority. This is obvious in the pre-modern context since anyone claiming direct experiential knowledge of God or the ultimate reality is in effect claiming unmediated authority to speak the truth. In a traditional Christian context, for instance, such a claim might be seen as undermining the claim of the Church to mediate between heaven and the divine. Defining mysticism then is a way of defining power. One’s answers to the questions ‘What is mysticism?’ and ‘Who counts as a mystic’?’ reflect issues of authority.

(King 1999: 9–10)

If one replies that in modern times mysticism is seen as otherworldly and therefore apolitical, King answers that ‘the separation of the mystical from the political is itself a political decision’

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(King 1999: 10). He might have replied as Fitzgerald would surely have done: that the ‘depoliticizing’ of mysticism, as of religion in general, serves exactly to rob it of political power.

King then turns to the application of Said’s notion of Orientalism to India. King claims that the West has concocted a false, stereotyped, monolithic, and demeaning conception of India and claims that that conception has served its colonial interests. Western scholars have ignored the myriad, contradictory religions actually found in India and have instead created a single religion called Hinduism, which is then equated with all of Indian culture. The West has created ‘a romantic and exotic fantasy’ of Indian religion ‘as deeply mystical, introspective and otherworldly’ (King 1999: 142). Unchanging, passive, feminine India then gets contrasted to the worldly, active, manly West. This characterization of India has served politically to justify colonialism:

Thus works that purport to explain the ‘Oriental mind-set’ or the ‘Indian mentality’, etc., presupposes that there is a homogeneous, and almost Platonic ‘essence’ or ‘nature’ that can be directly intuited by the Indological expert. … [This] ‘essentialism’ [is objectionable] not just because it misrepresents the heterogeneity of the subject matter, but also because of the way in which such essentialism results in the construction of a cultural stereotype that may then be used to subordinate, classify and dominate the non-Western world.

(King 1999: 91–92)

King’s thesis, like Dubuisson’s, is tenuous. First, a definition – here of mysticism or of Hinduism – either holds or fails to holds, regardless of the political ends to which it is put. Second, a definition either holds or fails to hold, regardless of the time and place of its origin. Third, a definition either holds or fails to hold, regardless of the number of past definitions that have been offered. Fourth, a definition either holds or fails to hold, regardless of who invents it – here Westerners or Indians. Fifth and last, a definition is either useful or useless, not right or wrong. If it succeeds in identifying similarities among the range of cases it encompasses, it is useful. The legitimate objection to the Orientalist definition should be that it is erroneous or useless, not anything else.

Tomoko Masuzawa’s Invention of World Religions (2003) is a wonderfully bold attempt to uncover the origin and function of the idea of ‘world religions.’ Masuzawa shows that by the nineteenth century the religions of the world had been conventionally divided into four groups: Christianity; initially Judaism, later Buddhism; Islam (or Mohammedanism); and everything else, which was labeled paganism, heathenism, idolatry, or polytheism. Early in the nineteenth century this categorization began to be challenged, and by the early twentieth century it had been replaced by ‘world religions’, which now numbered a dozen or so. This categorization remains in place today, and is taken as no less natural than the prior one was. So argues Masuzawa.

The conventional view of the concept of ‘world religions’ is that it evinces the multicultural, empathetic spirit of contemporary scholars. God forbid that any religion should be overlooked, misunderstood, or criticized. That a dozen religions are considered worthy of the epithet ‘world’ is vaunted as evidence of the ecumenical vision of today’s scholars.

Masuzawa spurns this self-congratulatory view. She does not merely observe, as others before her have done, that the basis for inclusion is not quite self-evident. Instead, she argues that, despite the tolerance seemingly epitomized by the concept of multiple world religions, the concept ironically originated as a way of preserving the uniqueness and superiority of

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Christianity. She denies that the ‘advent’ of world religions marks ‘a turn away from the Eurocentric and Eurohegemonic conception of the world, toward a more egalitarian and lateral delineation’ (Masuzawa 2003: 13).

Masuzawa rightly ties the scientific study of religion to the comparison of religions. But where Preus argues that the scientific, comparative ‘paradigm’ for studying religion arose to replace the Christian-centered theological one, Masuzawa argues that the scientific study of religion arose within theology itself. She even demonstrates that the field that forged the topic of world religions was comparative theology. The grouping together of ‘great religious systems’ was intended to highlight the uniqueness of Christianity, which alone achieved the common goal of universality and transcendence. The comparative method was thus used to show differences, not similarities: ‘comparative theology would not compromise the unique and exclusive authority of Christianity’ (Masuzawa 2003: 81). Masuzawa devotes separate chapters to Buddhism and Islam, the religions that most threatened Christianity.

The retention of the superiority of Christianity faced one special obstacle: the emergence in linguistics of the divide between Indo-European and Semitic languages. Linguistic families were racial categories, as the synonym for Indo-European – Aryan – attests. Since Hebrew is a Semitic language, and since Christianity evolved out of Judaism, was Christianity not thereby a Semitic language and consequently a Semitic rather than European (or IndoEuropean) religion and culture and race? Masuzawa shows, as others before her have done, that Christianity was severed from Judaism and regrouped with Hellenism. Masuzawa shows how even the efforts of comparative theologians to pit Christianity against other religions to parade its superiority was attacked by yet more conservative theologians. While barely mentioned by her, the scholar who suffered most was William Robertson Smith, who dared to argue that Christianity arose from primitive religion, even while transcending it.

Masuzawa makes clear that she is not, like Dubussion, Asad, or Fitzgerald, writing about the term ‘religion’ or the term ‘religious studies.’ She confines herself to the term ‘world religions.’ But what she writes of it parallels what they have claimed of ‘religion’ and of ‘religious studies.’ Both Dubuisson and Fitzgerald have consequently called for the outright abandonment of their terms. Masuzawa does not explicitly go this far, though clearly for her the term is irretrievable.

Like the others’ books, Masuzawa’s book prompts questions. First, why did the category of ‘world religions’ become so prominent if the goal was to defend the uniqueness of Christianity? Second, does the retention of the term today dictate the retention of its original use? Third, does the use of the term in introductory courses and textbooks really evince the thinking of scholars? Finally, is the term in fact objectionable? Surely some religions, unlike most others, do transcend national or regional boundaries. As long as the criteria used for the category are explicit, and as long as the category identifies significant aspects of religion, why not still employ it?

In sum, the arguments made to date for the abandonment of the category ‘religion,’ ‘mysticism,’ or ‘world religions’ are considerably less decisive than their proponents assume.

Notes

1I exclude Rudolf Otto because he does not account for religion but instead simply defines religion as an encounter with God.

2Furthermore, the group comes together in the first place for religious reasons – one of the circularities in Durkheim’s argument. Thus Australian aboriginal clans, Durkheim’s test case, amass to ‘celebrate a religious ceremony’ (Durkheim 1965: 246).

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3Reductionism here means complete, or eliminative, reductionism. The reduction is ontological. By contrast, the reduction in social scientific accounts of religion is only methodological. Social scientists deny not that religious beliefs and practices exist but that those beliefs and practices generate and sustain themselves. Religious beliefs and practices are not considered hallucinatory. The ‘hallucination’ is the assumption that they create and perpetuate themselves.

Bibliography

Asad, Talal 1993 Genealogies of Religion. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Asad, Talal 2003 Formations of the Secular. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Beattie, John 1966 [1964] Other Cultures. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Free Press. Bellah, Robert N. 1970 Beyond Belief. New York: Harper & Row.

Berger, Peter L. 1967 The Sacred Canopy. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. (Also published as The Social Reality of Religion. London: Faber and Faber, 1969.)

Berger, Peter L. 1969 A Rumor of Angels. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Bloor, David 1991 Knowledge and Social Imagery. 2nd edn (1st edn 1976). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Douglas, Mary 1966 Purity and Danger. New York and London: Routledge.

Douglas, Mary 1973 Natural Symbols. 2nd edn (1st edn 1970). New York: Vintage Books; London: Barrie and Jenkins.

Dubuisson, Daniel 2003.The Western Construction of Religion, trans. William Sayers. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Durkheim, Émile 1965 [1912] The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain. New York: Free Press.

Eliade, Mircea 1963 [1958] Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed. Cleveland: Meridian Books.

Eliade, Mircea 1968 [1959] The Sacred and the Profane, trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harvest Books.

Erikson, Erik H. 1958 Young Man Luther. New York: Norton. Erikson, Erik H. 1969 Gandhi’s Truth. New York: Norton.

Fitzgerald, Timothy 2000 The Ideology of Religious Studies. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fitzgerald, Timothy 2007 Discourse on Civility and Barbarity. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Frazer, J. G. [James George] 1922 The Golden Bough. Abridged edn. London: Macmillan.

Freud, Sigmund 1950 Totem and Taboo, trans. James Strachey. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Freud, Sigmund 1964 [1961] The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott, rev. James Strachey.

Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books.

Geertz, Clifford 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, Clifford 1983 Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books.

Jung, C. G. 1938 Psychology and Religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. King, Richard 1999 Orientalism and Religion. London and New York: Routledge.

McCutcheon, Russell 1996 Manufacturing Religion. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malinowski, Bronislaw 1925 ‘Magic, Science and Religion,’ in Joseph Needham, ed., Science, Religion

and Reality (New York and London: Macmillan), 20–84.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels 1957 On Religion. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing. Masuzawa, Tomoko 1993 In Search of Dreamtime. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Masuzawa, Tomoko 2003 The Invention of World Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Müller, Friedrich Max 1867 ‘Comparative Mythology’ (1856), in his Chips from a German Workshop, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green), 1–141.

Preus, J. Samuel 1987 Explaining Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Said, Edward 1991 Orientalism. 3rd edn (1st edn 1978). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Segal, Robert A. 1989 Religion and the Social Sciences. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Segal, Robert A. 1992 Explaining and Interpreting Religion. New York: Peter Lang.

Segal, Robert A. 2005 ‘James and Freud on Mysticism,’ in Jeremy Carrette, ed., William James and ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’ (London and New York: Routledge), 124–32.

Taylor, Mark C., ed. 1998 Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Turner, Victor H. 1967 The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Turner, Victor H. 1968 The Drums of Affliction. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tylor, E B. [Edward Burnett] 1871 Primitive Culture. 2 vols. London: Murray.

Weber, Max 1963 The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff. Boston: Beacon Press.

Suggested reading

Because theories of religion come mainly from the social sciences, the most useful overviews are of the application of these disciplines to the study of religion. Edited by Robert A. Segal, The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion (Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006) contains lucid chapters on ‘Anthropology of Religion’ (Fiona Bowie), ‘Economics of Religion’ (Rodney Stark), ‘Psychology of Religion’ (Roderick Main), and ‘Sociology of Religion’ (Grace Davie).

Chapter 6

Theology

David F. Ford1

Definitions of theology and academic theology

Theology at its broadest is thinking about questions raised by, about and between the religions. The name ‘theology’ is not used in all religious traditions and is rejected by some. It is a term with its own history, which will be sketched below. Yet there is no other non-controversial term for what this chapter is about, so it is used here in full recognition of the disputes and diverse associations surrounding it. Theology has many analogues or comparable terms such as ‘religious thought’, ‘religious philosophy’, various technical terms for the teaching and deliberative dimension of particular religions and even ‘wisdom’. Indeed, wisdom (though itself a complex idea with different meanings and analogues in different traditions) is perhaps the most comprehensive and least controversial term for what theology is about. Wisdom may embrace describing, understanding, explaining, knowing and deciding, not only regarding matters of empirical fact but also regarding values, norms, beliefs and the shaping of lives, communities and institutions. The broad definition of theology given above could be refined by reference to wisdom. The questions raised by, about and between the religions include some that are not necessarily theological, and many of these are formative for the disciplines covered in other chapters in this volume. One helpful (if still quite vague) further determination of the nature of theology by reference to wisdom is: at its broadest, theology is thinking and deliberating in relation to the religions with a view to wisdom.

This chapter is mainly about the narrower subject of academic theology as pursued in universities and other advanced teaching and research institutions, especially in settings variously called departments of religion, religious studies, theology and religious studies, theology or divinity. The primary focus is on this academic theology in its European history and its present situation in universities that are in continuity with that tradition and its expansion beyond Europe. There have been numerous traditions of theology (or its analogues) originating in other parts of the world and in various religious traditions, some of which are increasingly significant within contemporary universities; but an appropriate way of portraying academic theology within one chapter is to concentrate on its characteristics in the academic tradition that generated the field called in other chapters the study of religion or religious studies.

In that tradition, as will be seen, theology is an inherently controversial discipline because of its subject matter, because of its history, because of the relations of other disciplines to religious issues and because of the nature of modern universities and the societies that support them. Academic theology is distinguished from theology in general mainly by its

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relation to the various disciplines of the academy. So a preliminary definition of academic theology (and analogues of theology) is that it seeks wisdom in relation to questions, such as those of meaning, truth, beauty and practice, which are raised by, about and between the religions and are pursued through engagement with a range of academic disciplines.

The final preliminary definition to be considered is that of religion. This too is a contested concept, as other chapters in this volume make clear. For the purposes of this chapter it is sufficient to identify religion in a low-key, non-technical way through a number of generally accepted examples. Religion, it is assumed, includes such ways of shaping human life in communities and their associated traditions as are exemplified by Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. This is not an exclusive definition; it simply limits the scope of reference of this chapter, while allowing that much of what it says could be applied to other instances of religion and to traditions (such as cultures, philosophical schools, or secular worldviews and ways of living) which might not be included in a particular definition of religion. It is also a definition that does not entail any particular position on such disputed matters as the essence, origin and function of religion.

Before focussing on the discipline of academic theology it is important first to say more about theology and its analogues in the broadest sense.

Theology beyond the academy

The religious communities mentioned in the definition above all place a high priority on learning and teaching. An immense amount of time and energy is spent on such activities as the study and interpretation of key texts, and instruction in tradition, prayer and ethics. Much learning happens through imitation, and the adoption of habits of thought, imagination, feeling and activity, which are assimilated through participation in a community’s life. Such learning and teaching have been important in helping those traditions survive and develop over many generations.

It is, however, never simply a matter of repeating the past. The texts and commentators raise questions that require consideration afresh by each generation; each period and situation raises new issues; there are conflicts, splits and challenges from inside and outside the tradition. Even when the verdict is that what is received from the past ought to be repeated and imitated as closely as possible in the present, that is a decision which cannot be arrived at without some deliberation. Thinking about appropriate ways to understand and act in the context of a particular tradition comes under my broad definition of theology. Such thought is pervasive and usually informal, and teaching usually aims at turning its basic features into implicit, taken-for-granted assumptions in the light of which questions are faced and behaviour shaped. Yet, because of the many factors which prompt internal and external questioning, explicit thought may also be provoked, and theological inquiry, in the sense described above, may be generated. What is the right interpretation of this text? How should children be educated in this tradition? What is the right response to legal or political injustice? Does God exist? If so, what sort of God? What about death, creation, salvation, gender issues? What, if any, is the purpose of life? How should those with very different traditions and conceptions be treated? Such questions may give rise to theological inquiry.

Yet it is not only those who identify with a particular community and its traditions who ask such questions. Religions provoke inquiry in many beyond their own members; and some of their own members may dissociate themselves from their community but may still (sometimes even more energetically) pursue such questions. In addition, there are public debates about

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every major area of life – medicine, politics, economics, war, justice and so on – which raise religious issues and require deliberation and decision. Such debates display various types of theological thinking, both implicit and explicit.

Therefore theology in the broad sense is practised not only within religious communities but also by many who are beyond such communities or in an ambivalent relationship with them; and it is also present between religious communities and in public debates, both within and between nations.

Finally, theological questions arise at all levels of education. They may be focussed in religious or theological education, but, because of the considerations discussed above, they are also distributed through other subjects, and they are relevant to overall educational policy and practice.

Overall, it is important to remember that only a very small part of the theology going on in the world is taught and learnt in the university settings that are the main concern of this chapter.

Academic theology: early history in Europe

The Greek word theologia meant an account of the gods, and it was taken over by the early Christian church to refer to the biblical account of God’s relationship to humanity. This close relationship to scripture was maintained through the Middle Ages in western Europe, when theology in the narrower sense of a specific discipline studied in universities arose with the development of universities in the early thirteenth century. It is significant that these universities themselves had many characteristics in common with Islamic institutions from which Christian scholars learnt a great deal.

Before the foundation of universities, theology had been nurtured in the many monasteries around Europe and in associated rural schools. Theology was there inseparable from the duties of worship and prayer, pervaded by the life of the cloister. In the cities the cathedral schools, founded for training diocesan clergy, were important theological centres. In addition, theology in the cities became part of the guild-oriented activity of a new rising class of freemen, both students and teachers, who responded favourably to new forms of argument and teaching and to the rediscovery of forgotten writings of the past. Here theology in schools (hence the label ‘scholastic’) was becoming a specialty subject for professional, philosophically trained dialecticians. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), based in a monastery, brought fresh systematic and argumentative rigour to theology, and described it as ‘faith seeking understanding’. Peter Abelard (1079–1142) represented the new sort of teacher and dialectician. In Paris, the new religious movement embodied in the Augustinian canons of St Victor mediated between the claims of the monastery and the schoolroom. This was an age of discovery, compilation and integration, which culminated in producing what became (in addition to the Bible) the standard theological text for discussion in the university schoolrooms of Europe during the next four centuries. This was the Sentences of Peter the Lombard (d. 1160), a collection of four books of the theological wisdom of Scripture and of the early Fathers of the church.

After the formal establishment of the first universities in the first part of the thirteenth century, scholastic theology developed under a new influence, the mendicant religious orders of Franciscans and Dominicans. Both flourished in the new University of Paris. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) among the Dominicans and Bonaventure (1221–1274) among the Franciscans developed distinctive ways of doing theology within the new universities. They