Theology

Theology (Gr. theologia), a doctrine as to the Divine nature and operation. The word first occurs in Plato and Aristotle, who understand by it the doctrine of the Greek gods, and of their relation to the world. Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, &c. are called theologoi ('theologians') on account of the subject-matter of their verse. In the New Testament the word theology does not occur; the Greek Christians originally designated any deep philosophical apprehension of the truths of religion by the term Gnosis ('knowledge'), which was opposed to Pistis ('faith'), the simple irreflective trust of the majority of humble believers. First during the 3d and 4th centuries the word theology came into use, especially in connection with such of the Fathers as defended the doctrine of the deity of the Logos; in this sense the evangelist John and Gregory of Nazianzen were termed Theologians. Scholasticism understood by theology the whole complex of Christian doctrine—to which in England the name divinity is often given.

Natural theology, as discoverable by the light of reason alone, is distinguished from Revealed theology, based on the study of divine revelation. Theology is frequently divided into (1) Historical theology, treated in this work at CHURCH HISTORY (including history of Dogma); (2) Exegetical and Biblical theology (see EXEGESIS, BIBLE); (3) Apologetical theology, or the evidences (see APOLOGETICS); (4) Practical theology, including homiletics, pastoral theology, liturgics, and theories of church government; (5) Theology proper—that is, Dogmatic, systematic, or speculative theology. A further subdivision according to the special subject-matter discriminates between theology in the etymological sense as the doctrine of God the Father from Christology, the doctrine of the person of Christ; Pneumatology, or the doctrine of the Spirit; anthropology, or the doctrine of man; soteriology, the doctrine of redemption by incarnation and atonement; ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church; and eschatology, or the doctrine of last things, of rewards and punishments in a future life. Other sections are biblical archaeology, biblical psychology, theological or Christian ethics, and symbolics or the doctrine of creeds.

Dogmatic Theology, or Dogmatic, is the systematic exposition of the dogmas in which the faith of the Christian church has found its historical expression. Down to the end of the 17th century it was for the most part associated with Ethics (q.v.), and the two were combined as sacra doctrina or Theology, but from that time the separation became general, and the name dogmatica theologia, first used by the Lutheran Buddæus in 1724, was applied to the theoretical part of Christian doctrine. It is the main part of theology, combining the results of exegetical and historical inquiry which relate to faith as such. Dogmatic takes these results, brings out their organic connection with the facts of Christian consciousness, and gathers them into a coherent whole, which it presents as the sum of Christian truth in the form suited to the church's present need. It is not a product of the religious consciousness of the individual, but is drawn from those historical sources in which the Christian consciousness of the church has expressed itself in a form accepted as authoritative by the church, or a particular section of it. The churches of the Reformation recognised the Scriptures as the only source of knowledge as to the Christian faith. The orthodoxy of the 17th century, which laboured to bind the human spirit to the letter of Scripture by the fetters of a new scholasticism, was largely displaced in the 18th by the development of philosophical and historical science; and in the 19th the reconciliation of religion and science, the deepest Christian faith and the freest human culture, was initiated by Schleiermacher. With his Glaubenslehre begins the modern development of dogmatic, which is devoted to the investigation of the Christian faith as founded on religious experience, and to the study of doctrine for its religious and moral interest, apart from the questions of physical and metaphysical science in which the earlier theologians involved them. The division of dogmatic that has been most followed is by that known as the 'local' method, which treated the subject in separate parts, regarded as the articles (articuli, 'joints') of a corpus dogmaticum. Melanchthon in his chief work on dogmatic (Loci communes) adopted this traditional plan, and was also followed by later Protestant writers. In the 17th century Cocceius and Vitsins introduced the 'federal' method, in which the matter was divided according to the covenants (fœdera) which God entered into with man, distinguished as the covenant of nature or of works, and the covenant of grace, with its three economies—before the law, under the law, and after the law. The speculative theologians, Marheineke, Martensen, and Strauss, chose a threefold division as drawn out by Hegel, making the doctrine of the Trinity the basis of distribution. The attempt of Schleiermacher (in which he was followed by Rothe) to treat dogmatic simply as a historical science, giving a systematic account of the doctrines recognised as authoritative in a Christian community at a given time, led to new points of view in the division of dogmatic. Thus Rothe arranges the whole subject under two heads, the consciousness of sin, and the consciousness of grace. Of the earlier writers on dogmatic must be also named Calvin, and after him Ames, Turretin, Maastricht, and the Arminian Limborch, and the Lutherans Hütter, Calovius, Calixtus, and

Gerhard. Hill's Lectures on Divinity (1821) was the first noteworthy treatise on the subject published in English. Chalmers' Institutes of Theology is merely a suggestive sketch. Anglican systematic theology is usually in the form of expositions of the Creed or of the Articles. Among notable modern systems of dogmatic must be noted the Systematic Theology of the American Calvinistic Presbyterian, Dr Charles Hodge (3 vols. 1872-73). Gretillat's Exposé de Théologie Systématique (4 vols. 1885-92) is an important recent work.

Of other modern writers the chief are De Wette, Hase, Twisten, Nitzsch (Eng. trans. Edin. 1849), Lange, Martensen (Eng. trans. Edin. 1866), Schenkel, Scholten, and Dorner; together with Ebrard, Thomasius, Philippi, Kahnis, Hoffmann, Luthardt, Oosterzee, Nitsch, and Achelis, who treat the subject from a more strictly confessional point of view; the speculative theologians Daub, Weisse, and Heinrich Lang; and the Roman Catholics Hermes, Baader, Klee, Staudenmaier, Günther, and Peronne.

See Rothe, Zur Dogmatik (2d ed. 1869); Schöberlein, Das Princip und System der Dogmatik (1881); Hagenbach's Encyclopädie und Methodologie der Theologischen Wissenschaften; Dorner's Geschichte der Protestantischen Theologie; Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine; and the theological encyclopædia of Herzog (q.v.). For the biblical theology of the Old Testament there are the works of Oehler and Schultz; for the New Testament, Schmid, Weiss, Immer, and Reuss's Histoire de la Théologie Chrétienne au Siècle Apostolique.

Many of the theological articles in this work, besides those above mentioned, will be found in the lists appended to CHURCH HISTORY and ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. See also the articles on the several books of the Bible, those on the apostles and great Christian teachers, the paragraphs on the churches of the several countries, and the following: