{"id":3911,"date":"2015-02-06T08:43:07","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T08:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=3911"},"modified":"2015-02-06T18:31:10","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T18:31:10","slug":"the-past-present-and-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-past-present-and-theology\/","title":{"rendered":"The past, present and “theology”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bevans\"<\/a>In Bevans\u2019 introduction to his book Contextual theology<\/em>, the author starts with a story about his time in Roman as a theology student in the late 1960. Consistent with his discussion of contextualization, Bevans shares about a past experience which involved the preparations for the liturgy of the Advent. \u00a0Bevans writes:<\/p>\n

The central idea of the liturgy was based on the song by the Beatles\u2019 George Harrison, Here Comes the Sun\u201d (these were the days of \u201ctheme liturgies)\u2026 Christ was the sum, bringing light to our darkness and warmth to our cold, God-less world-\u2026 it\u2019s been a long, cold, lonely winter\u2026[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Advent liturgy and the Beatles? How fitting that Bevans chose such a comparison to capture the \u201c\u2026 the experience of the past and the experience of the present \u2026\u201d <\/em>so\u00a0<\/em>beautifully! With the idea of contextual theology in mind, I thought about the religious ethos today. How is the \u201cexperience of the past\u201d engaging \u201c\u2026 the experience of the present?\u201d [2]<\/a> Such a question echoed through my mind because I was impact by Bevan\u2019s ideas which caused inquiries about ‘theology’ and its relationship with history and current affairs. I am was also captivated by the author\u2019s claim, \u201cthere is no such thing as \u201ctheology\u201d; there is only contextual theology\u2026\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

What a shift! How then is a believer supposed to understand the current events of the measles outbreak in the United States, wars in the news from around the world? What is the proper role of theologizing? As I listened to President Obama\u2019s speech at today\u2019s National Prayer Breakfast, I was reminded that contextual theology is always playing itself out, perhaps unbeknownst to some Christians. Religions and their various theologies seem to be intermingling \u00a0the experiences of the past and presents. For example the President\u2019s speech highlighted religious violence and how it is not unique to one religion. According the President Obama:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen faith driving us to do right, but we\u2019ve also seen faith being twisted and distorted or worse, sometimes being used as a weapon. From a school in Pakistan to the streets in Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand for faith, their faith. Profess to stand for Islam but are in fact betraying it. We see ISIS, a brutal vicious, death cult that in the name of religion carries out unspeakable acts of barbarianism against religious minorities…, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, claiming a mantle of religious authority for such religious actions. We see sectarian wars in Syrian, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe so often perpetrated in the name of religion. So how do we as people of faith reconcile these realities? The profound good, the strength, the tenacity, the compassion, the love that can flow from all our faiths; operating alongside those who seek to hijack religion for their own murders sense. Human has been grappling with questions throughout human history. Least we get on our high horse and think and think this is unique to some other place, remember that the crusade and inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our own country, all too often Jim Crow and slavery was justified in the name of Christ.<\/em><\/p>\n

The above example is yet another glimpse of the interaction between, faith, religion, public theologizing and politics from the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. It was timely that I was reading Bevan and the Neville\u2019s book material this week because I also found myself intersecting with discussions about theology and global perspectives about justice. In fact, while teaching a class on \u201cConflict, Refugee and justice\u201d, I applied some the material to demonstrate the importance of contextual theology and a possible understanding of biblical justice as \u201crelational reality\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0in our different contexts.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology<\/em> (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002), 1.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid.,<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 3.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> David J. Neville, ed. The Bible, Justice and Public Theology<\/em> (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Bevans\u2019 introduction to his book Contextual theology, the author starts with a story about his time in Roman as a theology student in the late 1960. Consistent with his discussion of contextualization, Bevans shares about a past experience which involved the preparations for the liturgy of the Advent. \u00a0Bevans writes: The central idea of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[601],"class_list":["post-3911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bevins-neville-and-tanner","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3911"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3922,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911\/revisions\/3922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}