Culture and questions (3): Synthesis
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
OK, the title says synthesis, but I’m not sure I can do this justice. Anyway, let’s see how we go. I’ve got three or four different things floating around my mind that I want to try to link. The first two are the quotes on the previous posts (from Tony Campolo and Kwame Bediako). The third is the often-referred to book by Curtis Chang: Engaging Unbelief. The fourth-ish is the experience of the early church.
So, where to start? How about Bediako and the talk The Emergence of World Christianity and the Remaking of Theology (pdf, mp3). There are many interesting things in this lecture, but I was particularly interested the idea that theological development takes place, primarily at cultural crossings, when Christianity hits a new culture:
There is, then, a symbiotic relationship between mission as “cultural crossing” and theology as the process whereby the faith appropriated is lived, embodied and communicated. In as much as the several historical shifts of the heartlands of the Christian faith, as noted earlier, have been cultural crossings, they are privileged moments for understanding the meanings inherent in the faith, that is, for the development of theology.
And why is this? Because in the interaction with new cultures, new questions and concerns come to light. And so, the church finds it has to develop theology applicable to these new areas.
But isn’t this the way the early church did theology? They don’t seem to sit down, figure things out and then find how they apply. They experience new things, were forced into new areas and quickly had to catch up theologically. (Of course, the new theology then had new applications — see Paul’s letters where theology feeds ethics. In a similar way to scientific knowledge, experience produced theory produces new application.)
I think this links nicely with Curtis Chang’s ideas in Engaging Unbelief. If you remember (and if you don’t, why haven’t you read it yet?), Chang suggests that Augustine and Aquinas took an apologetic approach that listened carefully to the stories of those around, found what the key tensions were and showed how Jesus provided the answer. It doesn’t take much of a leap to think that what they were doing was more than apologetics — it fed into theology. Certainly, that is the way their writings were used subsequently.
And this finally brings us to the Campolo quote: If we are not careful, we fail to hear the questions of our culture, the tensions in the stories of those around. We are so socialised to limit our questions to the ones our theology has already answered that we forget that others may have different concerns. And, consequently, there are “areas of life where Western theology has no answers because it has no questions”. Bediako uses this quote in the contrast between the West and non-western cultures, but I think it is equally true from different constituents of one culture.
Somehow, we need to learn to listen to the questions of our culture and of the new cultures we meet. Only then can we be servants and agents for cultural renewal (as Tim Keller phrases it).
Tags: church, culture, Engaging Unbelief (Chang)
Culture and questions (2): Bediako
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
…our changed Christian world presents opportunities and challenges for Christian theology that are not generally available in the Western context, for the task of Christian articulation has now been taken “into areas of life where Western theology has no answers because it has no questions“. This is another way of saying that since the significant cultural crossings of the Christian gospel are taking place in the churches of the South, it is to these theatres of Christian interaction that we must turn for the reorientation that is needed for embracing the task of theology afresh in our time.
– Kwame Bediako
Culture and questions (1): Campolo
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Sigmund Freud once commented that the Church socializes its youth to ask only those questions he Church is able to answer. Any questions it cannot adequately handle are made to seem ridiculous. By the time the children come of age, the Church seems to have the answer to all the important questions of life, because the Church has taught them which questions to ask and which questions should not be asked.
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[This] helps us to understand why people who are in the Church think it has all the answers to all the questions and problems that are important, while those outside the Church fell that it has nothing to say about the things that are really important.
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According to [Paul] Tillich, the place of the Church is not to raise questions, but to attempt to provide answers. the Church should step aside and let the people of the world raise questoins. The Church should be a listening body — sensitive to the deepest concerns of the world’s peoples, intently interested in their problems, struggling to provide solutions to their most troublesome inquiruesm, and endevoring always to serve as their servant. It’s all too easy for the people of the Church to say, “We’ve got all the answers,” without having first inquired as to what the questions might be.– Tony Campolo
Graham Tomlin on church and work
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
Graham Tomlin of St Paul’s Theological Centre has a great post on his blog, sort of based on Thoughts on the Financial Crisis, but extending onto thoughts on the task of the church in the wider culture and the way the church connects with the work of its members:
Stanley Hauerwas argues that “the most important social task of Christians is to be nothing less than a community capable of forming people with virtues sufficient to witness to God’s truth in the world” In other words, the church’s primary task is not to tell the world how to run itself, nor to prescribe particular policies or strategies, but to be a community capable of developing people of virtue and goodness, who are more likely to make good, considerate, wise choices, than bad, harmful or selfish ones.…
Holy Trinity Brompton, my church in London has what in my experience are rather unusual regular prayer meetings. The unique thing is that the solicitors, the teachers and the healthcare workers do not gather to pray for the work of the church, but the church meets to pray for the work of the solicitors, the teachers and the healthcare workers. Here the church … simply meets to encourage them, pray for them that they may have the perspective of the kingdom of God on their work, to pray for wisdom, courage and grace in the work they are called to… It is a vision of a church trying to be what Hauerwas suggests – a church seeking not to prescribe policy, but to form them in practical Christ-like goodness and wisdom, so that they become the bedrock of a functioning society, and trustworthy signposts to the Kingdom of God.
celebrating cultivation
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In the same vein as the last post, here is a quote from Andy Crouch (see Cultivating Where We’re Planted)
In their book Church on Sunday, Work on Monday Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan tell the story of the woman who litigated the clean up of the terribly polluted Boston Harbor for the Environmental Protection Association—one of the major environmental breakthroughs of the twenty-first century. She was a member of an evangelical church, and the only time she was ever recognized from the front of this church was the year that she taught second grade Sunday school. Obviously we should celebrate our Sunday school teachers, but when one of our members acting out of vocation leads in such a tremendous restoration of God’s creation, why wouldn’t we celebrate that, too? And if our churches celebrated that more there would be a less of a sense of saying “yes” to the one, “no” to the other.Celebrating what people are doing out beyond church walls feels like a risk for pastors, but I think that fear is unfounded.
theology and personality
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I wonder how much theological friction comes down to personality difference? How much is because our styles don’t match? Or because we describe things differently and it all sounds a bit strange to others? Yes, I know there are often very important issues, so this isn’t a blanket comment, but bear with me as I sketch my big theory(!) What if sometimes they were style issues that got polarised and before we know it we’ve moved our tents far enough apart that we don’t have to talk any more? Tags: church
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...