ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part discusses the factors that require believers to re-interpret the heritage of their faith as well as the nature of the identity of the tradition in which this heritage is handed down. Doctrines are attempts by theologians to express the heritage of faith of a tradition coherently in a form that is relevant and adequate for their time and intelligible in terms of the conceptual forms familiar to the community of believers whom they address. Christianity soon developed into a gentile faith that was expressed in the Hellenistic thought forms of the Mediterranean world. Islam addressed itself to the desert tribes of seventh-century Arabia and was expressed in Arabian forms of thought. Because of the historical, sociological, cultural and conceptual differences between separate communities of believers, Judaism, Christianity and Islam tended to drift further and further apart in the course of time.
