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And so, without further ado, let me continue with more of these lecture notes. This part I suspect may particularly cause some reflection for some of the people here. Well, either reflection, or reflexion (as of the knee) 🙂
The photograph to the right, by the way, is of Brothers of the Melanesian Brotherhood praying for a new Bible translation.
Here we go then with the notes:
Why Theology must be Contextual
The realization that no one theology is unchanging, culture or context-less or a finished product has challenged European theology to its foundations. Missionaries in the nineteenth century often assumed that the theologies that they represented could be applied universally to all contexts and were often seemingly unaware of how culturally relative their theologies really were. Christians in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific are questioning the culturally relative theologies that they have received, as not making sense within their own cultural patterns and thought forms.
For example some traditional theological positions do not seem to fit well with some aspects of non-western cultures. Bevans writes of a colleague who was dismayed by the importing of wine into the Philippines for the celebration of the Eucharist. What better symbol, he argued, can we have that Christianity is something imported, Western and non-Filipino?
Similarly, how can the important symbol of baptism express cleanliness and inclusion when, in Masai culture in Africa, pouring water over a woman’s head is a ritual that curses her to barrenness.7
Melanesian theologian Henry Paroi talks about how in his own culture (Shortlands), sitting down for the Gospel reading expresses more respect than standing up.
Western theologies, influenced by Enlightenment thinking, scientific rationalism and reason often tries to explain away beliefs in witchcraft, sorcery, miraculous healings or events and the existence of spirits, good or bad. These are concepts central to the beliefs of people across, Asia, Africa and the Pacific, to name a few. In addition, classical Western theology has often emphasized the importance of individual salvation and morality, which does not always fit cultures that only recognize the individual in the context of the group. These are a cause of unease and dissatisfaction among non-Western Christians across the world.
Traditional theologies are often accused of being oppressive towards “traditional cultures”. In that, in some cases, it was the missionaries who decided what was best for the people and who decided what cultural concepts to keep and what to discard. Missionaries who interpret through European eyes. In some cases as in the Black theologies of the United States, it is claimed that black experience was ignored by white theologies that made black people invisible and inaudible. In Latin America, Liberation theologians claim that “traditional” theology is often used ideologically to justify the continued domination of the rich and powerful.8
How does the continued celibacy of Catholic priests fit in with African cultures for example, where one’s place as a man in society is determined by one’s proven ability to have children. Or in Melanesia where marriage is part of fulfilling tribal or kinship obligations?
The growing identity of local churches demands the development of contextual theologies in that former colonized countries are recognizing that traditional values in their own cultures and traditions are just as good or better than those of their colonizers. The assumption that the values of the colonizer were somehow superior to those of the colonized is being challenged across the world, particularly as former colonies, churches and nations have the confidence to work things out for themselves, on their own terms and in their own way.9
All of this stems from the shift in understanding what culture is. The assumption that there was one universal theology applicable to all accompanied a belief in their being one universal culture, largely synonymous with Western culture and civilization. It was assumed that people’s could be civilized by listening to or reading great works of European art, literature, philosophy etc.and become “cultured”.
However, this view of culture is challenged by those who define culture as a set of meanings and values that informs a way of life. There is no one “set” rather there are many and people are “cultured” within their own particular societies and cultures. Culture is not something “out there” but rather something that everyone participates in. This makes the development of contextual theology essential for every time, place and culture as people’s try to make sense of God from diverse cultural traditions and worldviews.
At the heart of this process is the challenge of the incarnational nature of Christianity (John 3:16). If God wants to share the divine self with everyone and invite all into a life-giving relationship with the Godhead, then it has to be in a way that all human beings can grasp. Christ became flesh, not generally but in a particular way. He became a human being, a man, a Jew, the son of Mary. In this way Jesus became a particular human being with a particular skin colour, particular hair colour, a particular personality, likes and dislikes and so on. The challenge for contextual theologians and all Christians is to continue this incarnational process. If God is to speak to all peoples and cultures of the world then through us he must become those people and speak to them directly from within those cultures. God must become, African, Asian, Melanesian, rich or poor, black or brown in order to speak to people’s within specific cultures and contexts and in a way that people understand and identify with.10
Who Does Theology?
“Many people nowadays think of “theology” as something beyond them. It seems to be too difficult, or too abstract, or it’s better to leave it to the experts. Somehow, somewhere, someone has misled them. Theology is no more difficult than any of the other life-skills that we can and need to acquire. Those who think that it is too difficult have been cheated—or perhaps it is just that no-one has ever shown them how.”11
Classical theology understood the process of doing theology as academic. The theologian had to be a scholar, an academic, a highly trained specialist with a wide knowledge of Christian doctrine and tradition. This makes sense when theology involved reflection on documents and books that needed considerable skill to understand.
But contextual theology is conceived in terms of expressing one’s present experience in terms of one’s faith. This means that ordinary people who are in touch with everyday life, who experience anxiety, oppression, the joys of work, married life, raising a family, life and death are the real theologians here. The so called experts become auxiliaries to the theologies of ordinary people.
The role of the trained theologian here (the priest, minister or teacher) is that of articulating more clearly what the people are expressing more generally or vaguely, deepening their ideas by providing them with the resources of Christian tradition and challenging them to broaden their horizons by expressing the whole of Christian theological expression. Mercado—the role of the theologian is to function as midwife to the people as they give birth to a theology that is rooted in a culture and moment of history.
As the context is taken seriously, on the one hand, theology can never be understood as a finished product, produced by experts and delivered, signed and sealed, to a Christian community for its consumption. On the other hand theology cannot be a mere recording of what “the people think”. Theology needs to be an activity of dialogue emerging out of mutual respect and an interaction between the faithful people, who are not technically trained and the faithful trained professional who listens and articulates the theologies of the faithful.
Importantly everyone does theology, it is not a matter of choice because we all do it when we make a moral decision or decide that one action is better than another, or when we take a stand on anything, or when we make any kind of commitment. All of these involve whether we realize it or not a theology of what is most important or valuable in human life and existence.12
It is not a question of whether or not we do theology. It is a question of whether we do it badly or whether we do it well.
Moving From An Implicit To An Explicit Theology
Most of our theology is carried out implicitly. We make decisions based on what we think at the time is the most appropriate action to take. Often, however, we are unsure just why a decision was made in such a way. Our parents, school, cultural values etc. help us to do implicit theology, but often the theologies we have absorbed from them are incomplete and/or distorted, depending on our experiences of family life, culture, school etc. It is the recognition of this incomplete and distorted condition of our implicit theology that gives rise to the search for a more explicit theology. (Darragh p14)
Our decisions about the worth and the goodness or badness of our actions become more explicit when we look more carefully and more critically at what we do, why we do it and what is done to us. Explicit theology is a way of becoming more reflective and more self-critical about what we do and what we undergo. This is a process which takes place over time and is never finished, we are continually developing theology from an implicit to an explicit state.13
We are not, however, the first people to do theology in an explicit way. There are already existing explicit theologies that we have access to, but which we haven’t worked out for ourselves. Such theologies are available to us through parents, teachers, books, sermons, theological libraries etc.
The problem however is that these explicit theologies have often been developed in quite different circumstances from the ones in we live. However good these theologies may have been in their original construction, they may be quite out of tune, inappropriate, even delusory in regard to our context and way of life.
This is particularly noticeable when such explicit theologies available to us, have traveled from one culture to another. If we understand “culture” to be the total way of life of a people, then a coherent and productive theology in one culture can become a fish out of water in a different cultural context.14
This can result in a gap between “life” and “theology”. Between the implicit theology that we all do anyway and a more explicit but culturally irrelevant theology.
This is a problem for cultures and communities that are not used to doing theology themselves but which have been accustomed simply to receiving it from elsewhere. We cannot do our own theology, however, without any help or criticism from other communities or cultures.
We need both to “do” our own theology and to “receive” theologies worked out by others. We need to be doers of theology in our own context, because no one else in the world can understand nor become involved in the world or God from this particular perspective except ourselves. But we do not start from scratch, but from already existing theologies and we have a great deal to learn from the rest of the world. We need then also to be receivers of the theologies from other contexts. For us, doing theology is a reinterpretation of our inherited theologies based on an understanding of our own circumstances and the characteristics of our own context.
The important point here is that doing theology in this more explicit or formal sense of the term does mean taking a step further than just our own implicit feelings or intuitions about living a Christian life or about what is right or wrong, good or bad. It also means getting out of the condition where we are mere consumers of the theological ideas originating from other contexts. It means doing our own explicit theology and on the basis of the progress we make here we can receive theologies from other contexts not as mindless consumers but as receptive partners. The end goal is to produce a theology which balances the doing and receiving of theology.
7 Bevans, 10.
8 Bevans, 10.
9 Bevans, 11.
10 Bevans, 12.
11 Darragh, 13.
12 Darragh, 13.
13 Darragh, 14.
14 Darragh, 17.
St Bosco said:
Instead of being on the outside looking in, why dont we ask Jesus to come in and sup with us, and we with Him?
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chalcedon451 said:
That, Bosco, is what we do at the Eucharist. Christ’s Church has been doing it since the last supper – why not follow your own advice and come sup with Him?
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St Bosco said:
Euchrist. Do you mean that golden Baal Sun symbol with the cracker in it?
If any one say…low, here is christ or low, there is Christ, believe it not.
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chalcedon451 said:
No. I mean the Eucharist. The memorial of the last supper.
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David B. Monier-Williams said:
So again SF, the map is not the territory or is Sturans suggesting that we, as individuals have our own IT to be mixed with ET and we come up with a compositus compositum mearly based on our own interpretation or are back again same station same spot on the dial, “Authority” but with a different context?
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Struans said:
I’ll leave SF to address this point. Perhaps after my fifth post, you could post on that comments thread for me to respond to if you’re still feeling like you’d like to make the same point David.
S.
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chalcedon451 said:
Another interesting one Struans, which increases my difficulty with the ‘European’ theology idea.
I am unconvinced that such an animal exists. I am also unconvinced that, the British apart, even other Western Europeans thought that theology was not contextual or unchanging. The Spanish and Portuguese, and to some extent the French, adapted their existing ideas to the cultural contexts they found themselves in.
As the story of Russian Orthodox and SS Cyril and Methodius shows, Greek Orthodoxy went so far as to invent an alphabet for the Slavs in order to get the message across.
I am left wondering whether this ‘European’ theology you speak of is not simply the usual British problem of thinking that the rest of the world should speak English and drink tea?
Still, a side bar, and some interesting ideas, as usual. C451
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Rob said:
The learning of languages by frontier missionaries, inventing of alphabets, production of primers, teaching of reading and translation of scripture has been going on continuously for many, many years. I did hear recently how many living languages still have no scripture and the date by which it is thought the job will be complete.
What a disgrace that is to the universal church! I do not mean RCC I men all of us. 2,000 years and we have not got that bit of the job done.
Small para-church evangelical organizations and church planters are struggling with comparatively very little resources working at as are associates of mine, some involved in tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, one young couple I met in a dangerous region working alone. Even a large people group like the Turkish only had an translation in antique language until friends recently completed an up to date one.
I do not know what the large Christian communities are doing if it’s not a lot it would be great to hear of them doing again the sort of work they accomplished for the slaves.
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Struans said:
Hmmm….’European theology’. Perhaps if I suggest that discussions about God which take place in a sort of ‘Western European context’ without including any form of caution as to other contexts might be said to be European theology.
Or are you suggesting that you cannot see that there is anything such as a ‘European context’? Of course, the geographical term ‘European’ is a rather arbitrary construction, but rather than ‘European’ being meant as some form of definitive boundary as regards culture, context and theology, the term in this case is merely descriptive of what I would call a somewhat common sort of discursive behaviour.
If there is some deeper point that you’re wanting to make – perhaps with some academic insight – then I’m afraid I’m missing it.
I am not in these posts suggesting that anyone in particular hasn’t in history taken account of context and culture – rather it is being suggested that in the past such matters were not necessarily so consciously thought of as today.
Perhaps these points will become clearer when all of the posts are up – Jess has scheduled the last for Tuesday. I very much hope that it will.
Looking forward to your interim comments in the meantime – I can see that you have a post scheduled.
A blessed Epiphany to you and all.
S.
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chalcedon451 said:
I think it is the nebulousness of the concept. I really can’t see what it is meant to mean. This ‘Western European Context’, is it the Thomist Catholicism of Spain France, Spain and Portugal? Is it the Lutheran theology of the Northern German speaking lands? Is it the Anglican patrimony? I don’t see these as an undifferentiated whole.
I think history is one of the most important contexts, and indeed that it tends to shape the form theology takes in particular locations. But there is no such entity as ‘Europe’ except in a political sense; indeed, that fact is behind many of its current problems, not least the contested nature of the relationship between the UK and ‘Europe’.
Neither am In convinced that people in the past were not conscious that they had a ‘cuture’ or that others did not. There was certainly a period for about a century after about 1830 when the British and other Western Europeans took a very dim view of other ‘cultures’, but too often now, that paradigm is assumed to have been there forever; another problem with our present-centred view of the past.
We now acknowledge what we used not – which is that other cultures can be ‘different’ without being ‘inferior’ – but we transfer our need to be condescending to our own ancestors, who were not quite as culturally conservative as they tend to be presented.
A blessed feast of the Epiphany to you & all.
C451
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Struans said:
Well, that’s OK. Replace ‘European’ by any one of the contexts you have chosen, and the points and texts are still able to make the points they seek to do, I think.
Context, of course, doesn’t have to be geographically focussed anyway. There can be theologies by those afflicted by blindness, or by slaves, or by the European aristocracies or any slice or cut of people one might care to take.
Perhaps though I can comment on your selection of contexts that you list. You seem to have chosen some quite discrete examples, but – as the lecture notes hopefully make clear – those theologies won’t necessary be the only ones in those particular states at those times. Most theology isn’t published or expounded in the sense of being discrete in this manner.
On a different matter: in the RC world, does a thurifer whizz his thurible in a circular motion at the elevation of the host? It happened today at church in a manner I have not experienced before – and I know the person has recently been attached to an RC parish as a part of his training (not training as a thurifer, I might add, something quite different).
S.
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chalcedon451 said:
Interesting, but as you and I have agreed elsewhere, we have to be careful with a theology which is purely personal; not all theologies are orthodox, and as the Apostles and the Church have thought orthodoxy important, I hope that at some point you will refer to this.
I think it also might be necessary to distinguish between what the Orthodoxy call theolegoumena and theology proper? There may be local ways of whirling a thiruble, and a complete diversity seems in order; there may be local ways of interpreting the phrase ‘Body and Blood’ which are not.
C451
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Struans said:
Having just re-read your comment, I missed responding to your reference to a need to be condescending. This is an important point you make, I think. There is indeed a human need to contrast oneself or one’s in-group with someone else. Latent narcissism, I suppose. We are all sinners indeed.
I hope I do not come across as being condescending to our ancestors – I am an avid fan of history (albeit not a scholar like your good self or my chum David W).
It reminds me of one of Hillel’s famous remarks: “If I do not look out for myself, then who will look out for me? Yet, if I look out only for myself, then who am I?” Or something like that.
Narcissism is a subject for another time – there is much I could say on the matter and it is of great interest to me. Indeed, I believe that it is quite central to Christian faith (along with much else).
S.
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chalcedon451 said:
Thank you for that. If presentism is an unending problem for historians, a new version of the Whig theory of history adds to it. When Macaulay and co believed everything we did was better than the past in a material sense, this new version things everything we do is morally superior because it conforms to our mores – a rather self-defining game. It rightly condemns the Nazis for what they did to the Jews and others, and yet it finds mass abortion quite acceptable, just in the way past societies found slavery so. Indeed, it does just what they did, which is to redefine the subject as being not human. The irony is almost unbearable.
C451
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Struans said:
I tend to agree.
Your mention of Macaulay reminds me of India – and that I said that I would post about my upcoming India trip in a couple of weeks time. I’m glad that my memory has been jogged. Perhaps I shall get to it at the end of the week once all this contextual theology stuff has subsided.
Amazon has just delivered the new book by Zareer Masani on Macaulay to me – I intend to bring it with me to read on my ten day trip.
S.
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Struans said:
This sort of thing gets me excited: http://www.aninews.in/videogallery2/17338-prince-charles-camilla-meet-cadets-at-ima-in-dehradun.html
Apparently, the officer cadets still swear the Chetwode motto.
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David B. Monier-Williams said:
Struans: being a ex-Thurifer prior to Vat II, the rule when processing and recessing, the Thurible should be swung shoulder height fore and aft and on all turns a complete 360. Now sadly they just wiggle it about a bit.
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Struans said:
I suspect at the Brompton Oratory they do the 360 thing.
Thanks for the feedback.
S.
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NEO said:
If I understand what Struans is saying here, it comes down to that expression that we used here long ago, “essentials and incidentals”. Not to put to fine a point on it, a 3d century Roman is not a medieval German peasant or an 5th century Indian, or a modern American, who is not a Filipino living on the street.
I think he is saying that the faith has to adapt some of its externalities to where it is.
To be a Christian they will share a set of beliefs but there will be other beliefs impinging on their Christianity which will be strikingly different, not necessarily wrong (or right) merely different.
That, at least is what I’m seeing here
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Carl D'Agostino said:
Certainly different if starving in India, in war torn areas and in regions of brutal repression. It is easy to be a Christian when you are belting out $85,000 a year instead of languishing in unmerited suffering. That “blessed are the meek” stuff doesn’t cut it.
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NEO said:
Think it is, Carl? I don’t, I think it more difficult, and that is what the news says as well.
How many of those belting out $85K a year would die for their Christianity? Very few, I’d guess, they go to church (occasionally) and mouth the forms, and never think any further than that. Christianity has, and always has been the religion of the downtrodden, and victimized, witness the martyrs we are seeing today all around the world.
I’m quite sure they love life as much as I do but, they have far more guts in proclaiming their faith than I ever shall.
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Carl D'Agostino said:
NEO-yes you make good sense here.
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Struans said:
Well, I am sharing some lecture notes primarily. Admittedly some notes that I like the content of.
There is the matter of essentials and inessentials too.
After all five posts are complete, I hope it will all become clearer.
A blessed Epiphany to you and all.
S.
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NEO said:
Thanks, and I suppose we shouldn’t overly personalise this, which we are wont to do.
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Servus Fidelis said:
Struans, I realize that you are borrowing from the class you have taken but am still unsure of the entire point that perhaps you might be making. For instance, any Christian who now professes the Faith was at one time of a contextual culture that was quite foreign to what it is today. All began as pagans and all had their taboos and their many strange traditions etc. only to have had their culture turned on its head and herded into a new culture and belief system. Wasn’t that where it all started? The Jewish people were counter-cultural as were the early Christians that even rejected many of the errors that were introduced within the Jewish culture of the time. Most of the cultural problems are only speed bumps in evangelization and we have overcome them time and time again. I think of Our Lady of Guadalupe who appeared as a Mexican Indian expectant mother or the many feast days that were taken from pagan cultures and turned into religious holidays. But these have nothing to do with the basic theology only with the ingenuity of our forefathers to take their culture and transform it much like the faith takes our worldly souls and transforms them into other Christs. So the essential theology seems to me to be accessible to every person in every age though in varying degree. It seems that the breaking down of cultural barriers is what we have come to know as ‘European’ theology – and it either accentuates that which is right and good and negates that which is not or it is (itself) transformed into a different faith that is more in keeping with the errors of the world.
The context must be, as you say, both intrinsic and extrinsic but there are the essentials that theology cannot dismiss. The growth in understanding of these essentials is also necessary but not the sacrificing of truth because a culture is still fundamentally superstitious or has taboos. The counter-cultural aspect of our beliefs as Christians cannot be only a secondary consideration of theology though in evangelism it might make a huge difference as to how one presents the faith: much like Paul with the altar of an unknown god as we read in the Book of Acts. This faith transforms both man and cultures and theology needs express that essence.
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Struans said:
Thanks for the comment. After the series of five posts is complete, I hope it will all be clearer. Happy to comment then. Perhaps the fifth and last post is going to have the comments thread to reflect on it all.
I very much note all you have written though.
A blessed Epiphany to you and all.
S.
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Rob said:
As the context is taken seriously!
Ideally humility and respect will allow for a two way learning experience between the church planter and the first disciples from the culture – growth will accelerate as the work is carried on by locals rather than the church planter – who more and more becomes the equipper / resource guy.
The first missionaries to the slaves in the Caribbean were Moravians to St. Thomas Island.
An aside – they have shared ministry in UK with the Anglican Church, there’s a Moravian church in the forest of dean now getting most of its ministry from the Anglican clergy. Sadly as with most movement they are not what they once were. As Catherine Booth commented ‘God has no Grandchildren’. The Spirit does however keep throwing up fresh first generation movements, we hope for a multitude more of them.
On arrival these 2 Scandinavian missionaries contacted the slaves, and lived among them – they told the slaves they had come to serve them. Servants of slaves I think that contextualization.
The slaves thought it was another white man ploy and wondered what it was all about. I’ve been told locals that the white plantation and slave owners (Anglicans, sorry S:) would not allow the church to preach to them and the ministers complied, I cannot verify that. After a year one of the Moravian missionaries returned home the other became sick and close to death. A family of slaves took him in to care for him. They were convinced of the missionary’s genuineness his message when they saw he remained following this life threatening danger and so the family became the first converts.
The Moravian church has made a DVD about this that you can download here “First Fruits – Vision Video – Christian Videos, Movies, and DVDs” or just read the the into to it. .
I’d also recommend that you take a look at another DVD available here ‘Mama Heidi’, probably no one here has heard of her here, but she is a charismatic Mother Teresa in every sense. Working in Mozambique they have planted over 8,000 churches over the last 20 years or so.
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Struans said:
Thanks, as ever, for your helpful insights, Rob.
A blessed Epiphany to you and all.
S.
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pancakesandwildhoney said:
I think the remarks of the Holy Father to a large group of religious superiors general back on November 29, 2013, but just posted by the Jesuit publication Civilta Cattolica, under the title ‘Wake up the World!’, have some relevance to this discussion. It is a 15-page document, that everyone should read, Catholic or not, but this is a particularly pertinent section:
“Great changes in history were realized when reality was seen not from the center but rather from the periphery. It is a hermeneutical question: reality is understood only when it is looked at from the periphery, and not when our viewpoint is equidistant from everything. Truly to understand reality we need to move away from the central position of calmness and peacefulness and direct ourselves to the peripheral areas. Being at the periphery helps to see and to understand better, to analyze reality more correctly, to shun centralism and ideological approaches.
It is not a good strategy to be at the center of a sphere. To understand we ought to move around, to see reality from various viewpoints. We ought to get used to thinking. I often refer to a letter of Father Pedro Arrupe, who had been General for the Society of Jesus. It was a letter directed to the Centros de Investigación y Acción Social (CIAS). In this letter Father Arrupe spoke of poverty and said that some time of real contact with the poor is necessary. This is really very important to me: the need to become acquainted with reality by experience, to spend time walking on the periphery in order really to become acquainted with the reality and life-experiences of people. If this does not happen we then run the risk of being abstract ideologists or fundamentalists, which is not healthy.” (pp. 3–4)
God bless
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Struans said:
“To understand we ought to move around, to see reality from various viewpoints. We ought to get used to thinking” – yes, yes, yes!!
Many thanks for the comment.
S.
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pancakesandwildhoney said:
I think the Pope’s theology is actually more conservative than most people realize, particularly the media, but many of his remarks in the aforementioned document, especially the one above, are pretty close to radical, within a papal context at least. I mean, the epistemic privileging of the margins over the center. That’s a wow, for sure.
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Struans said:
I think the radical (as regards ‘roots’, rather than its more modern use as ‘revolutionary’) is very much a part of the faith. I agree with you about the current common media view of Francis.
S.
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pancakesandwildhoney said:
In a way, I think the Holy Father’s comment is a bit of both. Within a papal context, it is more extreme than the traditional language of the papacy. Of course, within a broader theological context, it is more of a getting-back-to-the-original-message type of comment, which is much less radical.
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GC said:
For example some traditional theological positions do not seem to fit well with some aspects of non-western cultures. Bevans writes of a colleague who was dismayed by the importing of wine into the Philippines for the celebration of the Eucharist. What better symbol, he argued, can we have that Christianity is something imported, Western and non-Filipino?
Yes, Mr Struans, they were utterly bewildered and remain so to this very day.
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Struans said:
What’s that supposed to mean?
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GC said:
I think the more relevant question would be what do you mean with all of this publishing of other people’s notes. What is your point? See if I’ve guessed it right.
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Struans said:
In order to have an interesting discussion with friends. That’s what happens on this blog. Welcome! S.
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Rob said:
Responding to C451:
Everything society currently accepts is presented as morally superior and those who oppose this and the concept that morals are relative are marginalized. Increasing Christians are seen as non PC bigots, so we need to be careful not to reinforce that frequently false image.
My language may seem extreme but when it comes down to it this pressure is a demonic strategy to marginalize Christian and lock up the gospel of Christ. Our ultimate enemy is not ideas, words, our culture or the people within that culture it is the spirit behind every force seeking to degenerate the culture Daniel 10:13 & 20-21.
A Charismatic Approach: Our role in bringing Christ into our culture is one of ‘spiritual warfare (sw.)’, through which we address ‘the rulers and powers the world forces of darkness in spiritual realms’ i). We engaged in (sw.) in several ways prayer, speaking Holy Spirit inspired words, good works and spiritual gifts – please refer to and meditate on 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.
This has a lot to do with contextual theology – we must not accommodate revealed truth to the culture of the day but must bring a Kingdom of God culture to it, without our own cultural baggage Matt. Ch. 5 through 10.
The pressure is on all around us in every area of our lives but pressure presents opportunities to witness to Christ. The situation requires us to speak against matters but we need also need frame our approach in a positive way whenever we can – I think this is a tack the current Pope is taking.
A small example of how we can stand for what is good and challenge immorally driven PC:
My wife served on a National Gov. sponsored body at a meeting of delegates her place was set out for Ms. Mary Cottrell but she was known to be Mrs. She realized that this was a PC cover for moral ambiguity. She objection to her designated title in a way that was not judgmental of others but of positively valuing her marriage and requested that in future her place should be labeled Mrs.
As we each do many such small things with grace it will prompt questions. Some will be looking for answers, maybe in such a situation a delegate with a marriage problem. Each of these encounters becomes an opportunity to present ‘our theology’, actually to present Christ, in a real, meaningful and natural way that may bring healing to others or challenge the cultural context we are in rather than accommodate to it.
What I am often aiming at in my comments is to suggest how we can bring our discussions down to earth, to see how we can apply what is positive in them in our everyday life to the representation of Christ to those we are amongst. I hope this is helpful.
i) A number of NT texts relate to rulers & powers a) secular human authorities Rom. 13:1, Titus 3:1 & 1 Cor. 2:8 b) demonic forces Eph.1:21, 3:10, 6:12 & Col. 2:8, c) Rev. Ch. 13 & 18 depicts secular powers empowered by demonic forces.
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Carl D'Agostino said:
bring healing to others or challenge the cultural context we are in rather than accommodate to it.
true powerful words
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chalcedon451 said:
I agree, Rob, and your wife did well.
My own experiences, working in an environment almost entirely hostile to our faith, and certainly to my own church, is that there is nothing we can do to appease our enemies – short of disappearing. C451
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Rob said:
C: I think your environment / context is one of the least conducive to faith.
God has chosen the foolish things and not many wise in their own eyes etc – but the common people heard Christ gladly. If we can bring the gospel in relevant and spiritual powerful ways to them = perhaps starting with their point of self known need we may yet see a turning of our nations to the Lord. Faith HOPE love!
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chalcedon451 said:
It is certainly a challenge Rob, but important for that reason to bear witness there. I have had a crucifix in my office for the last thirty six years; I wonder how many more it will be there before someone objects?
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