Editing Theology (section)

=== Later usage ===
Some Latin Christian authors, such as [[Tertullian]] and [[Augustine of Hippo|Augustine]], followed Varro's threefold usage.<ref name=":0" /><ref>[[Tertullian]], [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.viii.ii.i.html ''Ad Nationes'' II] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070513210420/http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.viii.ii.i.html |date=13 May 2007 }}, ch. 1.</ref> However, Augustine also defined ''theologia'' as "reasoning or discussion concerning the Deity".<ref name="Cityof">[[Augustine of Hippo]]. ''[[City of God (book)|City of God]]'' [http://logicmuseum.googlepages.com/civitate-8.htm Book VIII. i.]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080404123631/http://logicmuseum.googlepages.com/civitate-8.htm|date=4 April 2008}}: "de divinitate rationem sive sermonem."</ref>

The Latin author [[Boethius]], writing in the early 6th century, used ''theologia'' to denote a subdivision of philosophy as a subject of academic study, dealing with the motionless, incorporeal reality; as opposed to ''physica'', which deals with [[Matter|corporeal]], moving realities.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://pvspade.com/Logic/docs/BoethiusDeTrin.pdf |title=Boethius, On the Holy Trinity |access-date=2012-11-11 |archive-date=7 February 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120207050745/http://pvspade.com/Logic/docs/BoethiusDeTrin.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> Boethius' definition influenced medieval Latin usage.<ref>Evans, G. R. 1980. ''Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic Discipline''. Oxford: [[Clarendon Press]]. pp. 31–32.</ref>

In [[patristics|patristic]] Greek Christian sources, ''theologia'' could refer narrowly to devout and/or inspired knowledge of and teaching about the essential nature of God.<ref>McGukin, John. 2001. ''Saint Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography''. Crestwood, NY: [[St. Vladimir's Seminary Press]]. p. 278:

[[Gregory of Nazianzus]] uses the word in this sense in his 4th-century [http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-07/Npnf2-07-42.htm#P4178_1277213 ''Theological Orations''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060807233004/http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-07/Npnf2-07-42.htm#P4178_1277213 |date=7 August 2006 }}. After his death, he was called "the Theologian" at the [[Council of Chalcedon]] and thereafter in [[Eastern Orthodoxy]] either because his ''Orations'' were seen as crucial examples of this kind of theology or in the sense that he was (like the author of the [[Book of Revelation]]) seen as one who was an inspired preacher of the words of God. (It is unlikely to mean, as claimed in the [http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-07/Npnf2-07-41.htm#P4162_1255901 ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060716140059/http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-07/Npnf2-07-41.htm#P4162_1255901 |date=16 July 2006 }} introduction to his ''Theological Orations'', that he was a defender of the divinity of Christ the Word.)</ref>

In [[scholasticism|scholastic]] Latin sources, the term came to denote the rational study of the [[doctrine]]s of the [[Christian religion]], or (more precisely) the academic [[discipline]] that investigated the coherence and implications of the language and claims of the Bible and of the theological tradition (the latter often as represented in [[Peter Lombard]]'s ''[[Sentences]]'', a book of extracts from the [[Church Fathers]]).{{citation needed|date=January 2023}}

In the [[Renaissance]], especially with Florentine Platonist apologists of [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s poetics, the distinction between 'poetic theology' (''[[Theologia Poetica|theologia poetica]]'') and 'revealed' or [[Biblical theology]] serves as stepping stone for a revival of philosophy as independent of theological authority.{{citation needed|date=January 2023}}

It is in the last sense, theology as an academic discipline involving rational study of Christian teaching, that the term passed into English in the 14th century,<ref>"Theology." ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]''. note.</ref> although it could also be used in the narrower sense found in Boethius and the Greek patristic authors, to mean rational study of the essential nature of God, a discourse now sometimes called [[theology proper]].<ref>See, e.g., [[Charles Hodge|Hodge, Charles]]. 1871. ''Systematic Theology'' 1, part 1.</ref>

From the 17th century onwards, the term ''theology'' began to be used to refer to the study of religious ideas and teachings that are not specifically Christian or correlated with Christianity (e.g., in the term ''[[natural theology]]'', which denoted theology based on reasoning from natural facts independent of specifically Christian revelation)<ref>''Oxford English Dictionary'', sense 1</ref> or that are specific to another religion (such as below).

''Theology'' can also be used in a derived sense to mean "a system of theoretical principles; an (impractical or rigid) ideology".<ref>"Theology, 1(d)" and "Theological, A.3." ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]''. 1989.</ref><ref>''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'' 329/4. 5 June 1959: "The 'theological' approach to [[Soviet Marxism]]...proves in the long run unsatisfactory."</ref>