The Summary of the Art of Theological Reflection by John De Beer
When trying to brand proficient use of writings that stand at a neat distance from us–whether because they come from long ago or from across the boundaries of cultures, nosotros need some guidelines, some sense of how we might go about it. We pick upwardly a patristic theologian, say John Chrysostom, and observe his fashion of writing challenging, or his concepts likewise foreign to brand immediate sense. It is far as well easy to confuse "disquisitional thinking" with dismissive criticism.
The first job is to go some context, even as minimally as finding out when and where he lived, the kinds of things he wrote, and what his influence has been.
The 2d is to keep reading long enough to motion beyond the first painful encounter with an ancient rhetorical style or cumbersome a Victorian era translation. (I remember well a seminar in which I had students spend two or three weeks on each of several major patristic figures. The commencement week: Loathing and rejection. Second week: "Hmm, mayhap this guy has something to say." Tertiary week: "I love this–Tin can't nosotros spend merely a few more than weeks on it?" Then the same cycle with the side by side author.)
But one time we can read such a writer easily or enjoyably, we still need some style to make use of it–an approach that does non atomic number 82 usa to either reject the ideas as foreign and dated, or to elevate the by beyond reason and think that our ain context and experience must be wrong.
For this a useful model is found inThe Art of Theological Reflection past Patricia O'Connell Killen and John de Beer (New York: Crossroad, 1994). The process they described can sound rather too programmatic. Information technology describes work the authors did over many years in their detail international ministry training contexts. But even if one does non want to take on what they describe as a procedure or plan, they offer a needed perspective: some convictions to keep hold of, rather than steps to walk through.
The nugget of this is found in a venn diagram which my computer skills practise non allow me to reproduce. I'll depict it instead. Ane circumvolve is "experience" meaning the total self of the person engaging in theological reflection. The second circumvolve is labeled "tradition" pregnant the content of the Christian faith, and for our purposes it is the religion as found in the writings of the greats of past eras. The identify the 2 circles overlap is what they call "theological reflection."
Stand in "tradition" without overlapping into experience and you get the dogmatism they call the "standpoint of finality." Everything is evaluated in terms of the points of view we held before we started. Organized religion, or ministry, or theology all get forced into the pre-existing mold like playdough pushed through a "fun factory." Tradition here can accept in a cracking deal, only in evangelical bumper sticker linguistic communication that is "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." The risk is that we are so certain that even God cannot shake us into growth and change.
On the other hand, stand up entirely in "experience" without the part that overlaps the tradition nosotros evaluate all things by our own little selves. No acceptance is given to voices outside ourselves, whether they be the voices of Prophets and Apostles, or their lesser servants like Chrysostom. Measuring ideas, including theological teachings, by whether they make sense to us personally is quite popular today, but it should not exist confused with theological reflection.
The authors point out that these two problematic stances are so common today every bit to dominate the chat. That means we need something else–a style to talk over the Christian faith, its teachings, its teachers, its practices and priorities–that brings the existent us into chat with the real religion and faithfulness of the larger church building. Authentic theological reflection "invites us to befriend our Christian heritage, our lived experience, our civilisation, and our contemporary religion community equally chat partners on the journeying of religion." (p. 3)
The authors suggest we take a third stance, within the overlap of experience and tradition. They call it "exploration." It will crave genuine cocky-knowledge, to permit us to stand somewhere as we look at tradition. It will require there to be a tradition, with a respected vocalisation, to question or affirm our personal experience. But if we alive in that identify where tradition and experience are in agile conversation, we can profit enormously.
There is much more to the process, and much of what follows in the book is intended to help 1 be more acutely and accurately enlightened of the experience part of the venn diagram described above. If experience is to be a part of the conversation (not an authority to weigh aslope Scripture or to define truth, but a 18-carat part of the conversation) then nosotros demand to spark or nurture awareness of several aspects of experience–the things that happen, the feelings within u.s.a., the stories and metaphors nosotros use to draw our experience, the actions nosotros take. We come up to know what our experience is, including where we stand, the culture we stand within.
The chore here is to find ways to accept the other circumvolve with equal seriousness. Information technology takes some discernment in a Protestant context where the default position on "tradition" is to raise up the Reformation slogan of "Scripture alone". Only even reforming theologians like John Calvin weighed voices of the tradition very heavily. Calvin was in abiding dialogue with Chrysostom, lauding his exegesis and regretting points of his theology. Even more frequently he was engaged with Augustine, lauding his theology and regretting his exegesis.
Perhaps it is too simplistic to say, but the task today starts by reading the tradition. We bring ourselves as honestly every bit we can, and we invite the great figures of the by with as much understanding equally we can find. Then we live in the identify of overlap, set to seek wisdom for at present and the futurity every bit servants of Christ.
Source: https://garynealhansen.com/on-the-art-of-theological-reflection/
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