Before Theology Had a Name: Scripture, Worship, and the First Christian Arguments About God

This article asks when Christian theology can properly be said to have begun. Rather than locating its origins primarily in the second-century Apologists, the major patristic theologians, or the conciliar period, it argues that theological reasoning was already present within the earliest Christian confession, worship, and interpretation of Scripture. Paul’s reformulation of Jewish monotheistic language around Christ, the Logos theology of John, early Christian liturgical practice, and the developing interpretive work of communities such as those represented by the Didache and Ignatius show that theology preceded the emergence of a formal theological discipline.

The article then examines the changing character of theological reasoning in Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Origen. Justin represents the movement of Christian claims into public philosophical argument; Irenaeus shows theology becoming a means of defending the coherence of Scripture, creation, redemption, and apostolic tradition; and Origen marks a further development toward sustained exegetical and philosophical theology. The article argues that later technical language did not create Christian theology from nothing. Rather, it arose from earlier questions generated by Christian worship, Scripture, mission, doctrinal conflict, and the need to speak coherently about God and Jesus Christ.

Christian theology therefore began before theology had acquired its later institutional and technical forms. Its earliest setting was not the theological school alone, but the worshipping and interpreting community attempting to understand what it meant to confess that God had acted decisively in Jesus Christ.