Given theology’s share of discontinuities with the natural sciences, it might be thought to follow that theology is better classified among either the social sciences or, more likely, the humanities. It’s not an unreasonable inference. When you get down to it, it’s not easy to pinpoint how the procedures of theology differ from those of, say, philosophy, history, literary studies, interpretive anthropology, others could be listed. Nevertheless, I don’t think this is quite right. For one, the humanities take as their object of study (as the label suggests) humanity, i.e., its nature, condition, perspective, what-have-you. Theology, however, while of course having an interest in humanity, has for its primary subject matter God. The reason theology takes an interest in humanity, that is, is because of humanity’s relation to God, or better, because God has taken an interest in humanity. This is why I am tempted to think of theology as an enterprise sui generis, something distinguishable from both the sciences and humanities. I want to say that seminaries in the US, whether deliberately or not, are instructive here in virtue of their convention of granting M.Div. degrees, masters of divinity, and not of either sciences or humanities.

Of course, though, the true story is going to be more complex than my recounting has rendered it. For one complication, consider Calvin’s ever-so-suggestive remark that opens his Institutes: “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other [emphasis added]. The knowledge of God and of humanity, studies divine and humane, are intimately intertwined. While the knowledge of humanity Calvin has in mind here is more likely an already-theologically-laden anthropology, I still want to hear him as hinting to an opportunity for theology, as inviting theology to consider its relation to the humanities proper. To that end, here’s a list of readings, for anyone interested, that take up the nature and powers of humane studies in general and, more specifically, the question of theology’s interest in the humanities:

• Christopher Brittain and Francesca Murphy, eds. Theology, University, Humanities: Initium Sapientiae Timor Domini, (Wipf&Stock, 2011).
• Davies, Crisp, D’Costa, Hampson, eds., Christianity and the Disciplines: The Transformation of the University, (T&TClark, 2014).
• Ford, Quash, and Soskice, eds., Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-first Century, (Cambridge UnivPr, 2012).
• Gordon Graham, “Human Nature and the Study of the Humanities,” in Institution of Intellectual Values: Realism and Idealism in Higher Education, (Imprint Academic, 2007), 171-184.
• Jenann Ismael, “Why (Study) the Humanities? The View from Science,” in Making Sense of the World: New Essays on the Philosophy of Understanding, Ed. Grimm, (Oxford Uni. Pr, 2018), 177-193.
• Roger Scruton, “Scientism and the Humanities,” in Scientism: The New Orthodoxy (Bloomsbury, 2015)
• Peter Hacker, “Wittgenstein and the Autonomy of Humanistic Understanding,” in Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies, (OUP, 2001), 34-73.
• Pete Ward, ed., Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, (Eerdmans, 2012).
• John Webster, “Regina artium: Theology and the Humanities,” in The Domain of the Word, (Bloomsbury, 2012), 171-192.
• Rowan Williams, “Theology among the Humanities,” in The Vocation of Theology Today, edited by Greggs, Muers, & Zahl, (Cascade, 2013), 178-192.

There’s a thesis building steam of late that our notion of ‘religion’ is in need of some rinsing in historicist acids. What I have in mind here is not to be confused with anti-realist claims to the effect that, say, God is nothing more than a social construction. Rather, the thought goes that it’s about time we begin to question the supposition that the term ‘religion’ identifies a valid genus which can count among its species the likes of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. ‘Religion,’ too, that is, like so many other categories basic to modern Western societies, we should by now not be surprised to learn, has a history. The term has not always labeled what it labels today, raising the question of whether the realities so depicted are best served under this description. Again, we’re not talking here about the contents of particular religions, but merely the reigning categorial apparatus scholars use to specify a possible object of study. If this is sounding like a thesis that may be of any interest, you can follow it up — in various permutations — in works like the following:

• William Arnal, The Sacred is the Profane: The Political Nature of “Religion” (Oxford UnivPr, 2012).
• Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, (John Hopkins UnivPr, 1993).
• Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology, (John Hopkins UnivPr, 2007).
• Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, (Oxford UnivPr, 2003).
• Peter Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment, (Cambridge UnivPr, 2002).
• Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, (UChicago Press, 2005).
• Russell McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (Oxford UnivPr, 2003)
• Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept, (Yale UnivPr, 2013).
• Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, (MacMillan, 1962).
• Guy G. Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason, (Harvard UnivPr, 2010).

(For Extra Credit): Selected theological approaches to the category ‘Religion’

• Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, (Yale UnivPr, 1990)
• John B. Cobb Jr., “Beyond Pluralism,” in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, ed. Gavin D’Costa. (Orbis, 1990): 81-95.
• Ford, Quash, and Soskice, eds., Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-first Century, (Cambridge UnivPr, 2012).
• Gordon Graham, Wittgenstein and Natural Religion (Oxford UnivPr, 2014)
• Tom Greggs, Theology against Religion: Constructive Dialogues with Bonhoeffer and Barth (Bloomsbury, 2011)
• Christine Helmer, “Theology and the Study of Religion: a Relationship,” In The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies (Cambridge UnivPr, 2011), 230-.
• Veli-Matti Karkkainen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical & Contemporary Perspectives, (IVP Academic, 2003)
• Nicholas Lash, The Beginning and the End of ‘Religion’, (Cambridge UnivPr, 1996).