Systematic theology: Encyclopedia II - Systematic theology - History

Systematic theology - History

The attempt to set out the varied ideas of the Christian religion (and the various topics and themes of the diverse texts of the Bible) in a single, coherent and well-ordered presentation is a relatively late development. In Eastern Orthodoxy, an early example is provided by John of Damascus's 8th century Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, in which he attempts to set in order, and demonstrate the coherence of, the theology of the classic texts of the Eastern theological tradition. In the West, Peter Lombard's 12th century 'Sentences', in which he collected thematically a large series of quotations from the Church Fathers, became the basis of a medieval scholastic tradition of thematic commentary and explanation - best exemplified in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. A Protestant tradition of thematic, ordered exposition of the whole of Christian theology (Protestant Orthodoxy) emerged in the 16th century, with Philipp Melanchthon's Loci Communes and John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.

In the 19th century, primarily in Protestant circles, a new kind of systematic theology arose: the attempt to demonstrate that Christian doctrine formed a more tightly coherent system grounded in some core axiom or axioms. Such theologies often involved a more drastic pruning and reinterpretation of traditional belief in order to cohere with the axiom or axioms. Friedrich Schleiermacher, for instance, produced Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsatzen der evangelischen Kirche in the 1820s, in which the core idea is the universal presence amongst humanity (sometimes more hidden, sometimes more explicit) of a feeling or awareness of 'absolute dependence'; all theological themes are reinterpreted as descriptions or expressions of modifications of this feeling.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki