The St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology is a nascent online, free-to-access encyclopaedia of the highest academic standards, treating the full discipline of theology with rigour and clarity. The Encyclopaedia will ultimately incorporate intellectual content from all major religious traditions, with an emphasis on material being written by scholars for whom these traditions are alive.
The Islam section:
Islamic theology as a discipline
Islam teaches submission to the One God, Who spoke to prophets throughout human history, culminating in the revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, the Seal of prophethood. Set against this backdrop, ‘Islamic theology’ has often been associated with kalām (literally: speech, discourse), an Arabic term signifying the formalized, systematic, and rational presentation of Islamic doctrine in the discursive language of the common Mediterranean philosophical tradition. Kalām first emerged during the second century AH/eighth century CE amidst early interreligious dialogue as a means of defending core Islamic beliefs, including Divine Unicity (tawḥīd), prophecy (nubuwwa), the Qur’an as the Word of God, and Muhammad as Seal of the Prophets.
Islam’s emphasis on tawḥīd prompts Muslim intellectuals to draw connections between kalām and other, seemingly disparate, fields of knowledge, examining ostensibly discrete religious issues across different subject areas, including falsafa (philosophy), taṣawwuf (mysticism), fiqh (jurisprudence), and other Islamic disciplines of learning. This ‘interdisciplinary’ approach to the nature of ultimate things is both reflective and demonstrative of divine nature, revealing God’s unifying presence within all things.
St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (encyclopaedia@st-andrews.ac.uk)
