Western European Theological Education: Challenges and Prospects
Western European Theological Education: Challenges and Prospects

Summary/Abstract: The essay focuses on the Western European debates on the role of theology and religious studies, using as reference point the trends at Radboud University (Nijmegen), and the approaches of scholars of this university (J. van der Ven, G. Essen). The growing interest in religious studies has to do with institutional differentiation and globali¬sation. In Western Christian society Christian theology no longer provides the overarching theory from which universal knowledge is described. These phenomena explain the growing interest in religious studies. Nonetheless, the simplistic view that opposes religious studies, as aiming at objectivity, to theology as partisan and subjective (R. Kloppenborg), needs to be revised. Therefore the previous models of dependence or opposition, used to describe the relationship between theology and religious studies, should be replaced by the model of complementarity. Both theology and religious studies should engage themselves in Christianity and the other religions, but each one from a different perspective. The material object of theology and religious studies is the same for both disciplines. However the formal object of theology is taken from an internal (“emic”) perspective, while religious studies take a strict external (“ethic”) perspective. Although scholarly approaches may adopt different premises, they agree in advocating that theology and religious studies are comple¬mentary.

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