Theology
[1] 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.
Theologians use various forms of analysis and argument (experiential, philosophical, ethnographic, historical, and others) to help understand, explain, 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.
Theology might also help a theologian address some present situation or need through a religious tradition,[7] or to explore possible ways of interpreting the world.
[18]what is the purpose of life In patristic Greek Christian sources, theologia could refer narrowly to devout and/or inspired knowledge of and teaching about the essential nature of God.
[19] In scholastic Latin sources, the term came to denote the rational study of the doctrines 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).
[citation needed] 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,[20] 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.
Theology can also be used in a derived sense to mean "a system of theoretical principles; an (impractical or rigid) ideology".
They suggest the term is less appropriate in religious contexts that are organized differently (i.e., religions without a single deity, or that deny that such subjects can be studied logically).
[26] This indicates the three distinct areas of God as theophanic revelation, the systematic study of the nature of divine and, more generally, of religious belief, and the spiritual path.
To find an equivalent for 'theology' in the Christian sense it is necessary to have recourse to several disciplines, and to the usul al-fiqh as much as to kalam.Some Universities in Germany established departments of islamic theology.
"[31] 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.
[34] Nevertheless, theology has been applied in some sectors across contemporary Pagan communities, including Wicca, Heathenry, Druidry and Kemetism.
For instance: The earliest universities were developed under the aegis of the Latin Church by papal bull as studia generalia and perhaps from cathedral schools.
[48] During the High Middle Ages, theology was the ultimate subject at universities, being named "The Queen of the Sciences".
[49] 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",[50][51] or ontology (the science of being).
[54][56][57][58] In some contexts, theology has been held to belong in institutions of higher education primarily as a form of professional training for Christian ministry.
This was the basis on which Friedrich Schleiermacher, a liberal theologian, argued for the inclusion of theology in the new University of Berlin in 1810.[59][54]: ch.
Seminaries and bible colleges have continued this alliance between the academic study of theology and training for Christian ministry.
[82] In 1772, Baron d'Holbach labeled theology "a continual insult to human reason" in Le Bon sens.
[82] Lord Bolingbroke, an English politician and political philosopher, wrote in Section IV of his Essays on Human Knowledge, "Theology is in fault not religion.
"[85] 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".
J. Ayer, a British former logical-positivist, sought to show in his essay "Critique of Ethics and Theology" that all statements about the divine are nonsensical and any divine-attribute is unprovable.
[92] 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.
[82][94] In an article published in The Independent in 1993, he severely criticizes theology as entirely useless,[94] declaring that it has completely and repeatedly failed to answer any questions about the nature of reality or the human condition.
