Blackwell Reference Online

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Attempts to define Christian theology can be notoriously facile. One is often told that such theology is “faith seeking understanding.” Alternately, it is often remarked that theology is the interpretation of doctrine, so that one regards interpretation as the business of testing and applying doctrine to the experienced life of the Church. Richard Hooker defined theology as “the science of things divine,” and developing Hooker's statement is Locke's famous definition of theology, from 1698: Theology, which, containing the knowledge of God and his creatures, our duty to him and our fellow-creatures, and a view of our present and future state, is the comprehension of all other knowledge, directed to its true end. Each of these definitions works quite straightforwardly, as do many others. One of the things one constantly discovers is that if Christian theology is Christian talk of God, then the fact that there are many different ways of doing that in today's world demonstrates that pluralism is inherent to any question of how to define theology. What matters then is to what extent such pluralism is true; or, better, to what extent theological ideas allow for different interpretations. Attempts to define modern theology exacerbate this difficulty, for the singular reason that the concept “modernity” itself allows for no unambiguous definition. To support this argument, consider solely ... log in or subscribe to read full text