Author: Ekaterina Lomperis

Ekaterina Lomperis is a Ph.D. candidate in theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a co-author of Medicine and Religion: A Collection of Readings, forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press.

A Second Perspective

In her book, Theology and the End of Doctrine, Christine Helmer diagnoses the current subject-matter crisis of academic theology. Does theology belong in the contemporary secularized academy? After evoking a couple of sharp dismissals of the idea that theology still deserves a place on university campuses (including one critic’s rather bloodthirsty suggestion that theologians are now “fair game” to religious theorists), Helmer insightfully points out that it is precisely theologians’ historic focus on doctrine that makes their less charitable colleagues want to hunt theologians down in the enlightened woods of the post-Enlightenment academy.