On Rabbits and Christology (original) (raw)
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The logic and language of the incarnation : towards a Christology of identification
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Dogmatics After Babel: Beyond the Theologies of Word and Culture
Dogmatics After Babel: Beyond the Theologies of Word and Culture, 2018
Within the Western Christian tradition two distinct methodological approaches dominate the contemporary theological landscape: (1) the anthropological approach embodied in Paul Tillich’s theology of culture, and (2) the revelational approach originating in Karl Barth’s critical retrieval of orthodoxy. The proposed monograph will articulate a pneumatological approach that seeks to ground knowledge of God in human participation in the divine act of self-communication, thereby overcoming the dichotomy between revelation and experience characterizing the methodological divide separating Tillich and Barth and their respective intellectual progeny. The “theologian of culture” (examples include David Tracy, Sallie McFague, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Gordon Kaufman) begins with an examination of the historical and social context of the believing community, then seeks to ascertain the meaning of God’s message for the present human situation through a method of correlation by which the universal concerns of the human condition find expression in the particular symbols of the Christian faith. By contrast, the “church theologian” (figures like Hans W. Frei, George Lindbeck, Stanley Haurwaus, and John Milbank) eschews the particularities of human culture, focusing primarily on God’s message as revealed in Scripture (and to a lesser extent, the Christian tradition), before addressing the culture in which the church is located. The critique raised by the anthropological model about the revelational approach is that it perpetuates a “supranaturalist” theology in which Scripture stands outside of culture, thus shielded from criticism by culture, while the critique of the anthropological approach by more church-centered theologians is that, in its efforts to make the Christian faith relevant to culture, theologies of culture undermine the uniqueness of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This monograph argues that, despite methodological differences, both anthropological and revelational schools of thought are located within the Western, primarily European and North American, intellectual tradition, and both are responding to the post-Enlightenment atheistic rejection of Christianity manifested in the works of Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Appealing to the work of liberationist, feminist, and other contextual theologians, the proposed book moves systematic/constructive theology beyond the anthropological and revelational impasse by articulating a doctrine of revelation grounded in pneumatology that overcomes the perceived divides between scripture and tradition, Christ and culture, revelation and reason. However, since the forces of globalization have made interaction between the world’s major religions an inescapable fact of life, dogmatic reflection also demands clarity on the relationship of Christianity to other faiths. Consequently, the monograph also undertakes theological reflection on the doctrine of revelation by means of a comparative analysis of Christian, Jewish and Muslim beliefs. Avoiding the dichotomy between anthropological and revelational approaches is possible when revelation—understood as God’s self-disclosure—is not limited to the written Word or to one particular interpretive tradition, but is understood as a divine act mediated by and experienced through the work of the Spirit. In other words, revelation understood as (sacramental) encounter. This avenue of exploration (1) challenges the notion that revelation is an event in the past that ended with the closing of the biblical canon, (2) engages the Pentecostal movement’s affirmation that the infinite grace of the self-revealing God is made manifest in new works of the Spirit, and (3) demonstrates how an emphasis on the work of the Spirit makes doctrinal conversation possible among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In all three Abrahamic religions some variance of the doctrine of the hiddenness of God leads to the conclusion that the full mystery of God cannot be contained by human theological formulations. Complementarily, affirming that there is one God, that this God is known primarily through God’s own action, and that even in God’s self-disclosure God is not fully known but remains mystery, demands a conception of theology as an imperfect human endeavor. However, while the claims of theology are viewed as limited, open-ended, and subject to continual revision, this in no way undermines the ontological ground (God) that gives rise to the human hermeneutical enterprise in the first place.