Thomas O’Loughlin
Emeritus Professor of HIstorical Theology
University of Nottingham
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
Historical theology is one less well know approach to theology when compared with better known approaches of systematic theology and philosophical theology on the one hand, and the disciplines of church history or biblical exegesis on the other – yet historical theology has links with all of these approaches. Its basis lies in the reality of change: what any group of Christians, now or in the past, profess and how they imagine the world and their pace in it, is always changing. Historical theology investigates this phenomenon, the factors that lead to specific changes and developments, how that group then realign their ‘take’ on Christianity with the past (usually through a re-reading of history) and then the impact that has on the groups that come after them. So historical theology seeks to know what Christians believe and why they believe certain things at certain times by looking at particular point and situating it against the larger patterns of Christian belief. So when biblical scholars look at the work of the Chronicler, re-reading his history to make a theological point, and then describe the Chronicler’s theology vis-a-vis other understandings of Israel’s faith, those biblical scholars are acting as historical theologians. Likewise, when a systematician seeks to understand how western Christians could tear themselves asunder in the sixteenth century over ‘sacraments’ and seeks to explain this by noting how the notion of ‘seven sacraments’ began in twelfth-century canon law, and therefore all to do with the notion has to be seen as a function of that period’s view of the universe, that systematician is using the methods of historical theology (Source and fuller description: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/humanities/departments/theology-and-religious-studies/people/thomas.oloughlin).