A SUMMARY OF AVERY DULLES’ THE CRAFT OF THEOLOGY

A SUMMARY OF AVERY DULLES’ THE CRAFT OF THEOLOGY

John Wycliffe out rightly condemns university theology that it is not useful and important to the church. But the church appreciates university theology as seen in the apostolic constitution of Pope John Paull II

“Theology plays a particular important role in the search for a synthesis of knowledge as well as in the dialogue between faith and reason. It serves all other disciplines in their search for meaning not only by helping them to investigate how their discoveries will affect individuals and society but also by bringing a perspectives and an orientation not contained within their own methodologies.”

Theology as a discipline has taken different aspects over the centuries; theology done at the university has no opposition with the one done at other forums. At the prime of university theology which was certainly in the middle age, theology as a discipline spread wide in the university of Paris and Oxford. Outstanding individuals were produced by these universities who composed good philosophical articulations of Christian doctrines. At the era of secularization and enlightenment there was a backdrop on university theology.

John Henry Newman attempts to defend the existence of theology as a university discipline, he argued that theology as a branch of knowledge, it supposed to have a spot in the university, since all science are interrelated. It is not possible to teach it thoroughly without considering them all. More so, the none inclusion of theology would have a negative bearings on the disciplines since they would attempt to fill in the gap left by theology and thus exceeding their limits.

The idea of university theology is for research and in other to make advances, it maintains close contacts with other disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy etc. it involves the use of deductive reasoning and it concentrates on open and unresolved question that cannot be settled by simple appeal to authority.

Thus, Vatican II states that each branches of knowledge are to be pursued according to their own principles and methods, with appropriate freedom for scientific investigation. Hence theologians have the freedom of research and for communication of their own ideas. In that sense it is right that theologians may teach as true whatever they perceived to be crystally rational without any reference to Holy Book (scripture), sacred tradition or ecclesiastical authority. So theology would be reduced to a common rational reflection and thus would stop to render the kind of service required of it by the church. Thus the proclamations of theologians are to be subject to the judgment of the church, thus the rating of the theologian does not see him above the ecclesia.