ther detail. Among earlier works, see also Morris Jastrow’s
The Study of Religion (London, 1901) and Joachim Wach’s
The Comparative Study of Religions (New York, 1958). For
more recent materials and invaluable bibliographies, see Mir-
cea Eliade’s magisterial A History of Religious Ideas, 3 vols.
(Chicago, 1978–1986). See also The History of Religions: Es-
says in Methodology, edited by Mircea Eliade and Joseph M.
Kitagawa (Chicago, 1959), and Jacques Waardenburg’s Clas-
sical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods and
Theories of Research, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1973–1974).
Representative of modern, influential tests in the emerging disci-
pline of comparative theology, the following works are wor-
thy of special attention:
Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. 3 vols.
Translated by E. B. Speirs and J. B. Sanderson. London,
1895; reprint, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1968.
Hocking, William E. Living Religions and a World Faith. New
York, 1940; reprint, New York, 1975.
Northrop, F. S. C. The Meeting of East and West. New York, 1946;
reprint, Woodbridge, Conn., 1979.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli. The Hindu View of Life. London,
1927; reprint, London, 1980.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli. Eastern Religions and Western Thought.
2d ed. Oxford, 1975.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured
Despisers. Translated by John Oman from the third edition.
London, 1894; reprint, New York, 1955.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith. Edited by H. R.
Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart. Edinburgh, 1928; reprint,
New York, 1963.
Tillich, Paul. The Future of Religions. Edited by Jerald C. Brauer.
New York, 1966.
Toynbee, Arnold. An Historian’s Approach to Religion. New York,
1956.
Troeltsch, Ernest. The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History
of Religions. Translated by David Reid. Richmond, Va.,
1971.
New Sources
Barnhart, Bruno, and Joseph Wong. Purity of Heart and Contem-
plation: A Monastic Dialogue between Christian and Asian
Traditions. New York, 2001.
Benin, Stephen. The Footprints of God: Divine Accommodation in
Jewish and Christian Thought. Albany, N.Y., 1993.
Bloom, Harold. Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels,
Dreams, and Resurrection. New York, 1996.
Leeming, David, and Jake Page. God: Myths of the Male Divine.
New York, 1996.
Neusner, Jacob, Bruce Chilton, and William Graham. God: The
Formative Faith and Practice of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam. Boston, 2002.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. Imagining Karma: Ethical Transforma-
tion in Amerinidian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth. New York,
1996.
Right, J. Edward. The Early History of Heaven. New York, 2000.
Viswanathan, Gauri. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Morality, and
Belief. Princeton, N.J., 1998.
DAVID TRACY (1987)
Revised Bibliography
THEOLOGY: CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
The word theology always means discourse or speech about
God. But which God is meant and what does this God do?
Plato, in his Republic, assigns theologia to the poets (379a5);
by theology he means narratives about the gods and theogo-
nies. Aristotle contrasts the “theologians,” who offer mytho-
logical explanations of the world, with the “philosophers,”
or “physiologists,” who look for the explanation of things
within things themselves. On one occasion he divides “theo-
retical” philosophy into three parts: mathematics, physics,
and theology, this last being identical with “first” philoso-
phy, or metaphysics (Metaphysics 6.1025a). Toward the end
of the second century BCE, Panaetius of Rhodes distinguished
three kinds of theology and was followed in this by Varro,
whom Augustine cites (City of God 6.5): mythological, “nat-
ural” or philosophico-cosmological, and civil or political.
“Civil theology” or “political theology” referred to the cult
of the Caesars.
Among Christians, the first applications of the term the-
ology to knowledge of the God in whom they believed occur
in the writings of Origen (d. 254). For Eusebius of Caesarea
(d. 339), theologia no longer applied to paganism at all but
designated exclusively the knowledge of the Christian God
and of Christ. Eusebius was also familiar with the distinction
that would become classic among the Greeks and would be
known to the Latin Middle Ages as well, between theology,
which means discourse about the inner life of God, and econ-
omy, meaning God’s activity for our salvation, which in-
cludes Christ, church, sacraments, and eschatology. Proclus
(d. 485), the Greek philosopher, wrote an Elements of Theolo-
gy, a treatise on the ultimate principles of reality.
In the West, theologia was for a long time used only in-
frequently; other terms prevailed, such as sacra scriptura
(“sacred scripture”), sacra erudito (“sacred knowledge”), and
divina pagina (“divine pages”). Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274)
preferred sacra doctrina (“sacred doctrine”). But in his time,
theologia, which Peter Abelard (d. 1142) had used as the title
of a work on Christian dogma in its entirety, meant the
knowledge elaborated and taught in the faculty of the same
name. Our modern use of the term was thus established.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. Theology exists because the
godhead is revealed in historical actions or events, the mean-
ings of which are conveyed in language or inspired writings.
The words of a sage, even one who is “inspired,” are not
enough. The writings provide food for a meditation of a sapi-
ential kind that is geared to the conduct of human life. God
revealed the relationship he wants to establish with man and
in the process was also self-revelatory.
Before the end of the first century after the Hijrah, Islam
was already discussing the dilemma of predestination and
free will. Next to be discussed were the last things and the
salvation of unbelievers who were in good faith. In these dis-
cussions and in the texts of the mystics were to be found only
fragments of a theology. While Judaism had too lofty an idea
of God’s absoluteness to make an effort to investigate his na-9134 THEOLOGY: CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY