Posted on 10/13/2008 11:10:02 AM PDT by Gamecock
Theology
Gk. theos, “God” logos “discourse”
A reasoned study of God. Theology is a set of intellectual and emotional commitments with regard to God and man which dictate one’s beliefs and actions. Theology is intellectual in that is provides for a reasoned study and defense of one’s beliefs about God. Theology is emotional in that we approach the subject as humans with deep subjective commitments to our personal experiences and feelings about God.
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And, science is emotional in that we approach the subject as humans with deep subjective commitments to our personal experiences and feelings about it.
I'm kind'a partial to them both together.
Chuckling at the choice of the word since it is the root of “Theological”.
Literally "the science of God," used by the Stoics in the third century B.C. to describe a reasoned analysis of the deity. Earlier uses were more naturalistic. Thus, Plato in the Republic and Aristotle in his Metaphysics called Homer, Hesiod, and Orpheus theologians because they first determined the genealogies and attributes of the gods.
With the advent of Christianity, theology came to mean what its etymolgy suggested, and was defined by St. Augustine as "reasoning or discourse about the divinity." Through the patristic age to the period of The Schoolmen, this remained the acceptable generic meaning. Peter Abelard (1079-1142) is credited with first having used the term in its modern connotation. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) defended theology as a science because it investigates the contents of belief by means of reason enlightened by faith (fides quaerens intellectum), in order to acquire a deeper understanding or revelation. He also distinguished theology proper from "natural theology" or what Gottfried Leibniz later called "theolodicy," which studies God as knowable by reason alone and independent of divine authority. Since the thirteenth century the term has been applied to the whole study of revealed truth and gradually replaced its reival synonyms. (Etym. Latin theologia; from Greek: theo, God + -logia, knowledge.)
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