Orthodoxy
has a problem with theology. The reasons for this problem are mainly
historical. The science of theology developed in the medieval universities, and
then passed through the waves of cultural history that swept through the West:
Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Romanticism. But by the time the universities
began to develop, in the twelfth century, Christendom had divided, and these
developments all took place in a world from which Orthodoxy was estranged. . .
. Most Orthodox are critical of the development of theology in the West, in
particular the way theology had developed as an academic discipline, remote
from the life of prayer (a complaint already heard in the West from the
fourteenth century onwards), and yet the fruits of critical scholarship, which
have led, among other things, to a rediscovery of the riches of the theology of
the Fathers, can hardly be ignored. (Andrew Louth, “Foreword,” in John Behr, Formation
of Christian Theology, 2 vols. [Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 2001], 1:viii)