Relationship of theology to the history of religions and philosophy
The concept of theology that is applicable as a science in all religions and that is therefore
neutral is difficult to distill and determine. The problem lies in the fact that, whereas theology as
a concept had its origins in the tradition of the ancient Greeks, it obtained its content and method
only within Christianity. Thus, theology, because of its peculiarly Christian profile, is not readily
transferable in its narrow sense to any other religion. In its broader thematic concerns, however,
theology as a subject matter is germane to other religions.
The Greek philosopher Plato, with whom the concept emerges for the first time, associated with
the term a polemical intention—as did his pupil Aristotle. For Plato, theology describedtheology
the mythical, which he allowed may have a temporary pedagogical significance that is beneficial
to the state but is to be cleansed from all offensive and abstruse elements with the help of
political legislation. This identification of theology and mythology also remained customary in
later Greek thought. In contrast to philosophers, “theologians” (e.g., the 8th-century-bce Greek
poets Hesiod and Homer, the cultic servants of the oracle at Delphi, and the rhetoricians of the
Roman cult of emperor worship) testified to and proclaimed that which they viewed as divine.
Theology thus became significant as the means of proclaiming the gods, of confessing to them,
and of teaching and “preaching” this confession. In this practice of “theology” by the Greeks lies
the prefiguration of what later would be known as theology in the history of Christianity. In spite
of all the contradictions and nuances that were to emerge in the understanding of this concept in
various Christian confessions and schools of thought, a formal criterion remains constant:
theology is the attempt of adherents of a faith to represent their statements of belief consistently,
to explicate them out of the basis (or fundamentals) of their faith, and to assign to such
statements their specific place within the context of all other worldly relations (e.g., nature and
history) and spiritual processes (e.g., reason and logic).
Here, then, the above indicated difficulty becomes apparent. In the first place, theology is a
spiritual or religious attempt of “believers” to explicate their faith. In this sense it is not neutral
and is not attempted from the perspective of removed observation—in contrast to a general
history of religions. The implication derived from the religious approach is that it does not
provide a formal and indifferent scheme devoid of presuppositions within which all religions
could be subsumed. In the second place, theology is influenced by its origins in the Greek and
