In this section TheoLab Center presents contemporary challenges Christianity in general and the Armenian Apostolic Church face, their nature, classification, and the stance to be adopted by the Armenian Church in the face of those challenges. In the center of its research TheoLab places ecclesiology, particularly the study of concepts of “churchless” Christianity and “national church” on both academic and popular scientific levels.
Within the frames of Apologetical/Polemical Theology we provide studies linked to the historical contextualization of the genre canon, literary mannerism, lexicon, and readership on the one hand and on the contemporary apologetical/polemical vocabulary, ethics, mannerism, opponents, audience, popularization on the other. In the age of postmodernism the vector of Christian apologetics has switched from inter-faith debates towards the post-esoterics, occultism, popularization of divination and superstition, philosophy of secularism, atheism. It discusses issues like new ways of vindication of ecclesiastical tradition, reaction of the church to multitude of issues emerging from the new phase of science-Christianity interaction, speculations revolving around the meaning of freedom, etc.
Dialogue-struggle to correctly introduce opponents into one’s own tradition and stance is rooted in the Apologetics/Polemics. Therefore, Ecumenical Theology is part of TheoLab’s scholarly agenda that covers a wide range of topics from historical development of ecumenism to practical implementation of the concept.