Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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merciful Creator, and have historically evolved under the influence of Greek thought. For some three centuries after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (632 ce) the theology of the new religion was stimulated by encounters with several eastern Christian traditions, a debt which was later to be repaid when Avicenna, Ghazali and Averroes exercised profound influence on theologians of the Latin west in the Middle Ages. In spite of these convergences, however, the term ‘theology’ has no one Arabic equivalent, and theology in the sense used in this chapter has been pursued across many of the traditional Islamic disciplines.

One such subject area is Islamic jurispurdence (usul al-fiqh), which incorporates discussions of moral liability, natural law, the status of non-Muslims and other topics which received exhaustive treatment of a theological nature.

Sufism, Islam’s highly diversified mystical and esoteric expression, also included systematic expositions of doctrine and cosmology in which mystical and exoteric teachings were juxtaposed, frequently in order to justify speculative or mystical insights to literalists.

A further discipline of great historic moment was Islamic philosophy (âfalsafa or hikma), which inherited late Greek philosophical syntheses and developed them into multiple religious systems. Many of these were regarded as too unscriptural and were therefore frequently confined to the status of private belief systems among elite circles.

Interacting with all these disciplines was kalam, conventionally translated as ‘Islamic theology’. This is primarily a scriptural enterprise, applying forms of reasoning of Greek origin to the frequently enigmatic data of revelation. Ghazali (d. 1111) and Shahrastani (d. 1153) incorporated aspects of the falsafa tradition to shape kalam into a highly complex and rigorous Islamic worldview. Their tradition, known as Ash’arism, is still taught as Islam’s orthodoxy in most Muslim countries. Orthodox status is also accorded to Maturidism, a theology which prevails among Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Uzbekistan and the Balkans. The debates between these schools are due mostly to the greater weight attached to rationality by Maturidism over against the comparatively more scriptural Ash’arism.

There have been various institutional settings for these types of theology, perhaps the most distinguished being Al-Azhar University in Cairo. In the twentieth century there have been many new universities. Those in Saudi Arabia, for example, have rejected the forms of reasoning from scripture found in both Ash’arism and Maturidism in favour of a strict literalism. These ‘fundamentalists’ (Salafis) are in a polemical relationship with traditional institutions such as Al-Azhar, and it may be that this engagement has become a more significant and widespread activity than the engagement with the discourses of modernity. In terms of the types used in this chapter, the main debates are between a Type 4, which inhabits and interprets the Qur’an with the aid of traditional Greek-influenced rationality, and a Type 5, which finds the Qur’an self-sufficient.

So far there has been comparatively little Muslim theology analogous to Types 1, 2 or 3. This is partly because of the widespread acceptance of the divinely inspired status of the Qur’anic text, and a rejection of the relevance of text-critical methodologies. There are some modern Muslim theologians open to post-Kantian approaches to metaphysics, found in more secular institutions such as Dar al-Ulum, a faculty of Cairo University or the Islamic Research Academy of Pakistan. Perhaps partly because the Qur’an contains comparatively little cosmological or other material that might clash with modern science, the defining controversies in modern Islam concern the extent of the relevance of medieval Islamic law to modern communities. So it is in matters of behaviour rather than belief that the greatest range of types is found.

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It is in universities in the European tradition that some of the potentially most far-reaching developments are now taking place. Due to the establishment of large Muslim communities in Europe and North America, making it now the second largest religion in the West, Muslim scholars and theologians are increasingly present in faculties of theology and religious studies. The study of Islam has shifted there away from ‘oriental studies’, and new forms of dialogue and interpretation are being developed.

Hinduism and Buddhism

Hinduism and Buddhism both have long and complex intellectual traditions of thought in many genres and many types of institutions. As with the other religious traditions, the university plays only a small role in contributing to Hindu and Buddhist religious or theological thought in the sense of a pursuit of wisdom. ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Buddhism’ themselves are terms which became popular due to Western interpreters in the nineteenth century but which mask the deeply plural phenomena that more developed understanding of these traditions now suggests. Nineteenth century university studies often approached these from the angle of philology, with more systematic studies of the religious dimensions frequently shaped by colonial concerns. The earlier conceptualizations of Hinduism concentrated on the Sanskritic (Brahmanical or elitist) forms as representative, with continuing repercussionsÂ.

India in the twentieth century has been one of the most important countries for dialogue between religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. This dialogue has been deeply affected by Hindu and Buddhist approaches that insisted not only on theoretical and doctrinal discussion and disputation, in which argument (tarka) based on textual exegesis (mimamsa) plays a prominent part (and where the argumentation has been vigorously intraand inter-religious in both traditions), but also on experience or realization of the goal (anubhava/saksat-kara, dhyana, ultimately moksa/nirvana), in what is an integrated grasp of truth-in-life.

This in turn encouraged suspicion of Western academic study applied to religion, especially the stress on the ‘objectivity’ of truth and knowledge and the tendency to separate understanding from practice. In Indian universities, the secular constitution led to religious traditions being studied mainly in departments of philosophy in ways similar to the more ‘neutralist’ approaches to religious studies in the West, and this reinforced the alienation of universities from the more wisdom-oriented inquiries of those concerned with the contemporary development of religious traditions and dialogue between them. In other countries of the East, however, there are other patterns – in Thailand, for example, where Buddhism is for all practical purposes the state religion, the study of Buddhism is privileged in the universities.

The numbers of Hindus and Buddhists living in diaspora in the West, together with large numbers of Westerners who now practise versions of these faiths, has begun to transform the situation of Hinduism and Buddhism in Western universities, where the late twentieth century saw a blossoming of posts related to them. The pattern has been repeated of a move from ‘oriental studies’ to ‘religious studies’ to a pluralist situation where oriental studies and religious studies continue, but there are also Hindus, Buddhists and others engaged in deliberating about questions of meaning, truth, beauty and practice with a view to wisdom for the contemporary situation.

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Christianity

So far, Christian theology has been dealt with mainly in its history as a discipline, its relation to religious studies and its types. The contemporary situation of Christian theology is described using the five types in Ford 2005.

Of the traditions described above, the closest parallel is with Judaism, and there are analogies in Christian theology for most of the strands in Jewish theology. There is rapid growth at present in studies and constructive contributions to ‘theology and …’ topics, the accompanying fields including notably philosophy, ethics, politics (leading to ‘theologies of liberation’), the natural and human sciences, culture and the arts, gender (leading to feminist and womanist theologies), race, education, other religions and postmodernity. The German and other European and North American academic traditions continue strongly, but the most obvious new development in the twentieth century has been that of theological traditions in other countries and cultures. African, Asian, Latin American and Antipodean theologies have all emerged (often displaying acute tensions between the types described above), and many of these are networked in transregional movements.

At the same time, major church traditions have undergone theological transformations, most noticeably the Roman Catholic Church through the Second Vatican Council. At present the Orthodox Church in countries formerly Communist is having to come to intellectual (and other) terms with exposure to massive global and local pressures; and the Pentecostal movement (reckoned to number over 300 million) is beginning to develop its own academic theology. Between the churches there have developed ecumenical theologies and theologies advocating or undergirding common action for justice, peace and ecological issues. As with other religious traditions, the spread of education has meant that far more members of churches are able to engage with theology, and there are local and international networks with university-educated laypeople addressing theological issues in relation to the Bible, tradition, and contemporary understanding and living.

The future of theology

Viewed globally, the vitality of theology in the twentieth century was unprecedented: the numbers of institutions, students, teachers, researchers, forms of theology and publications expanded vastly. It is unlikely that this vitality will diminish. Questions of meaning, truth, beauty and practice relating to the religions will continue to be relevant (and controversial), and the continuing rate of change in most areas of life will require that responses to those questions be constantly reimagined, rethought and reapplied. Higher education is likely to continue to expand, and there is no sign that the increase in numbers in members of the major religions is slowing. The convergence of such factors point to a healthy future, at least in quantitative terms.

Theology in universities is likely to continue according to a variety of patterns, such as the three mainly discussed in this chapter. Quantitatively, the main setting for theology or religious thought will continue to be institutions committed to particular religious traditions. There will also continue to be university settings in which religious studies are pursued without theology. My speculation is that the nature of the field, including its responsibilities towards academic disciplines, religious communities and public discourse, will also lead to an increase in places where theology and religious studies are integrated. The history of the field in recent centuries has not seen new forms superseding old ones (religious studies did not eliminate theology in universities) but the addition of new forms and the diversifying

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of old ones. Beyond the integration of theology and religious studies, further diversification is imaginable as theology engages more fully with different religions and disciplines and attempts to serve the search for wisdom through each.

Within the university it is perhaps the theological commitment to wisdom that is most important and also most controversial. Seeking wisdom through pursuing fundamental questions in the context of dialogue between radical commitments is never likely to sit easily within universities. Yet in a world where the religions, for better and for worse, shape the lives of billions of people, there is a strong case for universities encouraging theological questioning and dialogue as part of their intellectual life.

Note

1I am indebted to four other scholars who are joint authors of parts of this chapter: John Montag, SJ on the early history of theology in Europe, Timothy Winter on Islam, Julius Lipner on Hinduism and Buddhism (all from the University of Cambridge); and Peter Ochs on Judaism (University of Virginia).

Bibliography

Capps, Walter H., Religious Studies. The Making of a Discipline (Fortress Press, Minneapolis 1995). de Lange, Nicholas, Judaism (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1986).

Ford, David F., ‘Faith and Universities in a Religious and Secular World’ in Shaping Theology: Engagements in a Religious and Secular World (Blackwell, Oxford 2007), 115–42.

Ford, David F. with Muers, Rachel (ed.), The Modern Theologians. An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918 3rd edn (Blackwell, Oxford 2005).

Frei, Hans W., Types of Christian Theology, eds George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London 1992).

Harvey, Peter, An Introduction to Buddhism. Teachings, History and Practices (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990).

Keown, Damien, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000). Lipner, Julius, Hindus: their Religious Beliefs and Practices (Routledge, London 1998).

Martin, R.C., Woodward, M. and Atmaja, D., Defenders of Reason in Islam (Oneworld, Oxford 1997). Montgomery Watt, W., Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1985). Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine 5 vols (Chicago

University Press, Chicago 1989).

Waines, David, An Introduction to Islam 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003). Wiebe, Donald, The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy (St

Martins Press, New York 1999).

Winter, Tim, The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008).

Suggested reading

de Lange, Nicholas, Judaism (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1986).

A lucid overview, with chapters on theology and eschatology, and other chapters on further aspects of thought (Torah and tradition, law, ethics and mysticism), which are embraced in the definition of theology used in this chapter.

Ford, David F. (ed.), The Modern Theologians. An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918 3rd edn (Blackwell, Oxford 2005).

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Covers the main Christian theologies of the period, both individual thinkers and movements, as well as the debates and critical questions about them.

Frei, Hans W., Types of Christian Theology, eds George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London 1992).

Frei’s own account of the very useful typology of modern theologies, sensitive to historical and institutional contexts, which is described briefly in this chapter.

Harvey, Peter, An Introduction to Buddhism. Teachings, History and Practices (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990).

Perceptive and comprehensive, especially good on religious thought and its relation to practice.

Lipner, Julius, Hindus: their Religious Beliefs and Practices (Routledge, London 1998). Perhaps the best comprehensive introduction to Hinduism.

Winter, Tim, The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008).

An authoritative and up-to-date overview of the major themes and developments in pre-modern Muslim theology.