This thesis examines whether the secular institutions of American higher education should address students questions of meaning, purpose, wisdom, and human destiny. That is, it investigates the place of the normative analysis of religious experience and behavior within the public university. I use the work of Ninian Smart, Russell T. McCutcheon and Ivan Strenski to illustrate the case against the inclusion of theology and spirituality in the academic study of religion. In their view, theology is at best an artifact, like ritual or religious art and not an academic discipline. Conversely, I use the work of Paul Tillich, John Dunne, and Darrell Fasching to argue for the emergence of an academic theology that can play an important role in the contemporary university. In their view, theology and spirituality address the questions appropriately raised by the humanities, and can be done as long as confessional and apologetic strategies are rejected. I will show how their theories help us understand the nature of the academic study of religion to be inclusive of theology and spirituality, and so respond constructively to the negative views of Smart, McCutcheon and Strenski. My thesis is that, contrary to Smart, McCutcheon and Strenski, theology and spirituality are essential to the academic study and teaching of comparative religions in state universities. If higher education is to achieve the ideals of a liberal arts education and to offer more than the aims of a technical-vocational college curriculum, I maintain that the university education should address students' questions of meaning, purpose, wisdom, and human destiny and not just their need for technical skills. This should be offered under the umbrella of the humanities, including the religious studies department and is best represented in an academic theology that can inspire students to live a life that facilitates a cross-cultural and inter-religious ethic of human dignity.

This work, inspired by the concept of the Pastor-Theologian, explores the correlation between academic theology and the local church in contemporary South Africa and the person of John Calvin. It is motivated by the assumption that academic theology and the local Church need each other but, within South Africa, these two institutes are struggling to correlate to each other. As such this research elicits an appreciation of the historical correlation between the local Church and academic theology. This appreciation aims to start to reawaken the need for a correlation between academic theology and the local Church within contemporary South Africa. This research works mainly from a method of critical correlation to establish how academic theology and the local church function in their own right but also correlate in a mutually beneficial way. In line with this methodology, a historical overview of the tradition is given providing the background to the debate. This history proves the longevity of the tradition, making it normative, while also outlining its demise. In the analysis of contemporary South Africa, the demise of the tradition is explored specifically in relation to the South African context. Here it is discovered that the correlation between academic theology and the Local church is in a state of disconnect which is detrimental to both. Academic theology is becoming isolated and commercialised. This had created a mix reaction among various churches. Some denominations have separated from theological education, while those still positive towards the academy experience its works to be irrelevant. In response to this Calvin is presented as a Pastor and a Theologian over two chapters, demonstrating the benefit of a correlation between academic theology and the Local Church. This in-depth historical analysis works to provide a vision for today. It shows the importance of the Pastor and the Theologian in its own right, as well as the essential need for the two vocations to correlate. In closing, this research brings all the lines of investigation together to prove how the vision of the Pastor-Theologian, as demonstrated through Calvin, is beneficial for today and in need of appreciation. / Dissertation (MTh)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Church History and Church Policy / MTh / Unrestricted

This study examines the rise, development, and crisis of theological encyclopaedia in nineteenth-century Germany. As introductory textbooks for theological study in the university, works of theological encyclopaedia addressed the pressing questions facing theology as a ‘science’ (Wissenschaft), a rigorous, critical discipline deserving of a seat in the modern university. The project of theological encyclopaedia, I argue, functioned as the place where theological reflection and the requirements of the institutional setting in which that reflection occurred—here the German university—converged. I explore its roots as a pioneering idealist model for organizing knowledge in the German university system in the late eighteenth century. I focus especially on Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), the father of modern Protestantism and principal intellectual architect of the University of Berlin (1810). Schleiermacher’s programme transformed the scholarly theological enterprise into one defined in terms of science. That transformation laid the groundwork for the later historicization of theology, which I investigate in the two predominant ‘schools’ of German university theology in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Hegelian ‘speculative’ school and ‘mediating theology’ (Vermittlungstheologie). Among the latter, I emphasize the remarkable international influence of the Swiss-German Karl Hagenbach (1801–74), whose theological encyclopaedia was among the most widely read theological books in German-speaking Europe from the 1830s through World War I. Finally, I analyze the project’s downfall in the context of Wilhelmine Germany and the Weimar Republic, beset by radical disciplinary specialization, a crisis of historicism, and the attacks of dialectical theology. Throughout, I contend that theological encyclopaedia represented the institutionalization of the idea of theology as science, which furnishes an explanatory grid for understanding the relationship between theology and the university. The project resulted in a powerful synthesis that fundamentally shaped the reigning theological paradigms in nineteenth-century Germany and beyond.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss what kind of normativity can be considered acceptable in academic theology today in Sweden. This I do by critically and comparatively analyze two debates. The first debate is from Sweden and has its origin in the book Den okände Jesus written by Cecilia Wassén och Tobias Hägerland. The second debate is an international debate about Joseph Ratzingers or Benedict XVI book Jesus of Nazareth. For the purpose of comparison I am working with three analytical questions. I am asking the different texts whether the author express any ontological assumptions or if he or she argumenting at a epistemological level, what enables intersubjective verifiability according to the author and what kind of methods does the author see as acceptable to reach historical knowledge? This questions works as a methodological cluster and the answers indicate what the authors think about acceptable normativity in academic theology. After that I identify similarities and divergences and I ́m comparing different positions and arguments. Finally I evaluate the reasonability of these positions and argument. The reader will be lead to the conclusion that intersubjective verifiability in academic theology and exegetic doesn ́t demand naturalistic or empirical points of departure but rather transparency and cognitive understandable argument which includes theological normative arguments and research. An attitude I name as methodological reciprocity.