ABSTRACT
Sociological theology raises the challenge presented by viewing theology and the churches as socially and culturally relative. An understanding of theology from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge assumes that theology is always a socially relative enterprise. This chapter attempts to unpack some of the implications of this understanding of theology and suggests three models that might be developed responding to modern pluralistic society. Just as for theologians in general God is axiomatic, so for Christian theologians Christ is axiomatic and central to a relationship to God. By regarding Christocentrism as axiomatic to Christian theology, apologetics is seen as distinct from theology. Christian theology is viewed by definition as both theistic and Christocentric. In looking to the natural order, models of creation raise particular problems for many Westerners today. In the comparatively monolithic social world of thirteenth-century Christendom it might more readily be assumed that the natural order was naturally ordered.
