THEOLOGY AS ACADEMIC DISCOURSE IN GRECO-ROMAN 1 LATE ANTIQUITY Josef Lössl, Cardiff University (
[email protected]) Abstract: Following conventional wisdom Theology as an academic discipline (taught at Universities) is something which developed only in the Middle Ages, or in a certain sense even as late as the 19th century. The present essay in contrast traces its origins to Classical Antiquity and outlines its development in early Christianity, especially with a view to institutions of higher education that existed in Late Antiquity, e. g. in rhetoric and philosophy. It concludes that there were forms of academic theological discourse in Late Antiquity which were to become the basis of later developments in the discipline. Introduction The title of this paper may seem problematic in the sense that Classical Antiquity knew neither an academic discipline called “theology”2 nor a secular institution of higher education that could be compared with what we understand by “university”.3 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented on 16 April 2013 at a symposium on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main. I thank the organi-sers of the symposium, in particular Prof. Dr. Knut Wenzel, for inviting me to speak on that occasion. 2 Of course, early Christian discourse as reflected in the extant literary remains of early Christianity is generally assumed to be, at least to a large part, also in some sense theology; for a discussion of this point see Chr. Markschies, Die kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen (Tübingen, 2009), now translated as Chr.