Living in three worlds. A relational hermeneutic for the integration of theological paradigms in the development of a South African contextual theology
Guillaume Smit
1. INTRODUCTION
To say South Africans are living in a rainbow nation – to borrow President Nelson Mandela’s signature phrase, amounts to stating the obvious. Not only is this country a plethora of cultures and societies, it is also the country that envisioned a shared future based on values, acceptance and working towards a better life for all South Africans. Yet, the chasms between the different nations comprising the rainbow remain as deep and divisive as ever. Economic divisions in the post-apartheid South Africa actually increased; political trust diminished and hinges mostly on nationalist rhetoric to disguise the shortcomings of people in positions of power; nation building at large looks seems to be in the empty stadiums of the Soccer World Cup; and the once cherished hope of a functioning civil society never seemed to get out of the starting blocks.
In a sense the ecclesial landscape of this subcontinent is reflective of the vastness of the challenge to overcome the obstacles in our way. We should not only look at the multitude of denominations and independent congregations that dot our specific Christian landscape. More striking is an increasing set of theological paradigms that undergirds these churches. These paradigms unconsciously dictate the way Biblical exegesis is conducted; they shape the outcome of systematic theologies; they influence the praxes developed for church ministry and mission; and they control the public theological discourse when the church engage society.
Depending on the set of scientific rules with which a paradigm operate, the outcome that is achieved is oftentimes totally different to that of a similar paradigm in the same field of inquiry. In the case of theological paradigms, this gets further confused by the fact that the same narrative text functions as the source of inquiry. Although the Bible seems to be the basis of many theological theories, the hermeneutical paradigm from which it is read radically alters the outcome of the research.
For the purpose of this investigation we will concentrate our discussion on three overarching paradigms, comprising of several smaller subsets that reflect the specific contexts from which they were developed. Yet, they all share the common denominators that will be presented with somewhat broad strokes of an inquisitive pen.
Thus, the hypothesis for the purposes of this discussion could be stated as follows:
The intentional integration of aspects of premodern, modern and late-modern theological paradigms through a relational hermeneutic enhances the shift towards a South African contextual theology.
Since this discussion centres on different paradigms, it only makes sense that I, as researcher, declare my own paradigmatic presuppositions. I am writing from a Dutch Reformed perspective, as an Afrikaans theologian who specialized in Practical Theological and New Testament science. I am also serving a middle class suburban congregation as pastor. My theological thought processes are therefore shaped by western theology in an African context while my congregational experiences come from a church community that is struggling with its calling as an African church while simultaneously growing out of the heresy of apartheid.
2. PERSPECTIVES ON THE NATURE OF PARADIGMS
A paradigm can be described as a scale model of a huge, complex or incomprehensible state of affairs and can be described as providing a road map to reality in the quest for better understanding the incomprehensibilities (Smit 1997:9). A paradigm nearly always has a fixed set of rules that define boundaries and establish guidelines for success (Barker 1985:14). The term “Paradigm Shift” is originally coined by Thomas Kuhn who likened the scientific embrace of a new paradigm to a person wearing inverted lenses, finding the same constellation of objects thoroughly transformed in many of their details (Kuhn 1996:122).
Kuhn’s thesis can be summarised as follows: Within a given scientific field its practitioners hold a common set of beliefs and assumptions, agree on the problems that need to be solved, the rules that govern their research and standards by which performance is to be measured. Paradigms, however, aren’t necessarily unchangeable. When several of a scientific discipline’s practitioners start to encounter anomalies or phenomena that cannot be explained by the established model, the paradigm starts to show signs of instability (Hairston 1982:76).
For some time the practitioners try to ignore these inconsistencies and contradictions or make improvised changes to counter the immediate crises. If enough anomalies accumulate to convince a substantial number of practitioners to start questioning the traditional paradigm with which they solved their problems, a few innovative thinkers devise a new model. When enough practitioners become convinced that the new paradigm works better than the old one, they will accept it as the new norm (Hairston 1982:76).
I am growing into a contention that paradigm shifts occur without diminishing the impact that the previously held system had on thinking. These shifts result in the apparent co-existence of seemingly exclusive theories, demanding the same scientific respect as their offspring and challenging practitioners of said science to incorporate opposing viewpoints. This is in accordance with what Sweet (1999:27) called the characteristic feature of postmodern culture where opposite things can happen without contradicting each other. Indeed, this has become an oxymoronic society of and/also, not either/or (Sweet 1999:370). Thus the development of theological theories is no longer isolated scientific exercises but an ongoing process of reflection that incorporates contradictions and doubt with a strengthened ease. It intentionally allows insights from other disciplines and paradigms to enhance its scope. This produces a paradigm shift to double reflexivity: researchers are reflecting on their own field of expertise and their perspectives as form of scholarship. Secondly, they are intentionally reflecting on the contribution of their research on the interlocking natural and social systems in which life is lived (Osmer 2008:240).
Within the subset of theological paradigms we should also take into account the existence of contextual theologies such as African theology, Pentecostal theology, feminist theology - among others - that developed from the reaction against westernised modernist logic in theological research and practice. Even the recent rise in a fundamentalist theological approach could be seen as part of the double ring of apparent contradictions.
For the further purpose of this discussion, the existence of the three overarching theological paradigms can be demonstrated as a continuum of views that share the common denominator of Biblical Scripture as foundational reference point:
3. UNDERSTANDING PREMODERN THEOLOGY
Premodern Theology has its origins in the church culture of the time between the New Testament writings and the sixteenth century of this Common Era. The first part of this time was dominated by the so-called apostolic paradigm, which distinguished itself from later premodern theology by virtue of its position in society. Later premodern theology formed part of another paradigm that can be called the Christendom Paradigm.
“Apostolic Paradigm” primarily refers to the ecclesiological understanding of faith communities in the time of the apostles and directly thereafter. The church in the Apostolic Paradigm was a tumultuous time (Mead 1991:9). Jesus’ call to go serve and convert the world, care for the sick, the prisoner and the widow, the fatherless and the poor resulted in the development of different styles and structures (Mead 1991:10). Collegial and monarchical structures coexisted and communal experiments held sway in different places. Different functions and roles emerged. Some churches fought to retain links with its Jewish roots while others distanced themselves from that community. Thus, the turbulence resulted from the Christian community’s search for its identity in mission. From this, the Apostolic Paradigm emerged. The early church was aware of itself as a religious community surrounded by a hostile environment to which each witness was called to witness about God’s love in Christ. They viewed themselves as bearers of the euaggelion, the Greek word used to denote evangelism.
Moreover, they had the task to carry into a hostile world the good news of healing, love and salvation (Mead 1991:10). Green (1984:59) argued that euanggelion was frequently used in this time as description for the good news about the Kingdom of God that was being personified in Jesus. Incidentally, euanggelion can also be translated in a more contemporary idiom as “breaking story” or “headline news” (Martoia 2007:8). At the centre of this task, the local church functioned. It was a community that lived by the power and values of Jesus (Mead 1991:10). These power and values were preserved and shared within the intimate community through apostolic teaching and preaching, the fellowship of believers and ritual acts such as the breaking of bread and wine in the Eucharist. People only gained entrance into the community when the members of the community were convinced that the newcomers were in agreement with those values and were born into that power.
Kreider (1999:23) showed how these early churches attempted to nurture communities whose values would be different from those of conventional society. It was assumed that people would live their way into a new kind of thinking. Thus, the socialization, professions and life commitments of candidates for church membership would determine whether they could receive what the Christian community considered to be good news.
The local church was an intense and personal community. To belong to it was an experience of being in immediate touch with God’s Spirit. This was, however, not a utopian community. The New Testament epistles frequently describe schisms and conflict between church members. To the other side was the hostile environment that was opposed to the church community. Each group of Christians was an illicit community and in many places, it was a capital offense to be associated with or to be a Christian (Mead 1991:10-11).
The second aspect of the Apostolic Paradigm was the commission built into the story that formed the church (Mead 1991:12). They understood their calling as one of reaching out to the environment, going into the world and not be of the world, engaging the world. The local churches saw its front doors as the frontier into mission. They called it witnessing and this shaped their community life. The difference between life inside the community and outside it was so great that entry from the world outside was a dramatic and powerful event, symbolized by baptism as a new birth.
The community’s leaders were involved in teaching and preaching the story and recreating the community in the act of thanksgiving as symbol of a new life in a new world. These new perspectives and possibilities were expressed in a symbolic and social language that was familiar and addressed people’s questions and struggles (Kreider 1999:15). The congregation members had roles that fit their mission to the world – servant-ministers carried food to the hungry and healers cared for the sick. As need arose, regional leaders were appointed or emerged to help connect communities. Hence, the prominence of itinerant teachers and trouble-shooters like Paul and Barnabas.
The local churches also perceived their mission to be the building up of its members with the courage, strength and skills to communicate the good news from God within that hostile world. Internally, it ordered its communal life, and established roles and relationships to nurture the members of the congregation in the mission that involved every member. The perception of the members was that they received their power to engage in this mission from the Holy Spirit (Mead 1991:12-13).
The Christendom Paradigm, where the church occupied a central position within Western societies, ranged from the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 313 CE to roughly the midpoint of the twentieth century (Gibbs & Bolger 2005:17). The conversion of Roman emperor Constantine in 313 ce changed the status of the Christian faith radically and introduced the Christendom Paradigm. Before this, paganism dominated the Roman Empire (Viola & Barna 2008:6). Within seventy years the status of Christianity changed from persecuted faith to legitimate faith and finally to state religion (De Jongh 1987:55). As a result, drastic changes in the Christian culture took place:
- In 321 ce the first day of the week was declared an official day of rest, although the name was kept to reflect the pagan heritage (Sunday);
- In 330 ce the feast of midwinter, on 25 December, was renamed Christmas to celebrate Christ’s birth, but without any changes to the way the feast day was conducted.
- In 380 ce, emperors Gratian and Theodosius declared all subjects of the Roman Emperor to adhere to the faith as confessed by the bishops of Rome and Alexandria.
- Since 392 ce it was illegal to conduct any private services of non-Christian religions (De Jongh 1987:56).
- By 592 ce an edict of emperor Justinian made conversion – including the baptism of infants – compulsory for any member of the Roman Empire (Kreider 1999:39).
With this, the Christendom Era was in full sway. The critical difference with the Apostolic Paradigm was that by law the church was now identified with the empire (Mead 1991:14): Everything in the world that immediately surrounded the church was legally identified with the church without any separation. The hostility by the environment was removed by making church and environment identical. Thus, instead of the congregation being a small local group that makes up the church it became an encompassing entity that included everyone living in the Empire. Now there was no boundary between church and the local community. The missionary frontier disappeared from the congregation’s doorstep to become the political boundary of society itself, far away. The church functioned as an integral part of culture, both in its premodern and modern appearance.
The premodern culture in which the church functioned, found its philosophical foundations particularly in the dialogues of Plato and the works of Aristotle (Drilling 2006:3 ff). The high point of this culture was reached in the thirteenth century ce, which was also the turning point of premodernism when a decadent scholasticism started to take hold. The underlying assumption of the premodern culture is that all reality is hierarchically ordered, beginning with God, who governs the realm of being. Thus, the laws of nature, humanly created society, and the mind that thinks, knows all these run parallel to each other and participate in an orderly cosmos that is directed in some way by the divine.
Because of the influential position of the church, Christian thinkers succeeded in changing Plato’s view of the eternity of matter into the Genesis-based belief that God created everything from nothing. Through exerting this Scripture-based influence on rational thinking, the onto-theological perspective of reality was extended to recognizing – even preconditioning - the rule of God in every dimension of nature, human and otherwise. Drilling (2006:3-4) showed, among others, the following implications of this development: The foundations of Christian interpretation of moral law were laid through the interpretation of the Decalogue into natural law and divine positive law and human law, along with the meaning and role of conscience; and Church structures were established and it defined the role of the ordained and the place of the baptized – the laity – along with the civil jurisdiction of the diocese and parish.
Eventually Thomas Aquinas explicitly developed the idea that all things created come forth from God and are ordered toward a return to God (Drilling 2006:4). This resulted in Aquinas’ famed two-step thinking process – An inquirer seeks first to grasp the inner essence or form of a subject by an act of understanding. To achieve this, the five senses are used. Secondly, the inquirer seeks to affirm or deny the actuality of objects whose essence or form has been grasped by an act of understanding. Everything that falls outside this scope is then rejected as imaginary as it doesn’t fit into the objective order of being in its truth and goodness. Aquinas thus formulated a correspondence theory of knowledge: what one truly knows corresponds with what actually exists and the mind is able to affirm that (Drilling 2006:4-5).
Mead (1991:14-22) attempted to describe the ecclesiological implications of this paradigm shift into premodern Christendom. First of all, congregation members were no longer personally engaged on the mission frontier. They were no longer called to witness in a hostile environment or supposed to be different from other people – as citizenship became identical with one’s religious responsibility, the logical thing to do. Second, the missional responsibility became the job of a “professional” on the edge of the Empire – the soldier and the missionary. Therefore, winning souls for God and expanding the Empire by conquest became the same thing. Third, it was expected of a Christian in his or her local context to be a good citizen and to support both the state and the church in reaching and converting the pagan outside the borders of the Empire (Mead 1991:14).
4. REVISITING MODERNISTIC THEOLOGY
The move from a premodern to a modern culture was precipitated by two factors (Drilling 2006:5): First, as a result of the emergence of humanism, a new acceptance of human creativity developed as it was discovered that the human imagination had always been part of being human. This led to the development of new modes of human expression, such as artistic, political, and philosophical and the Renaissance began. Second, the Thomist synthesis was broken apart by nominalist theology which was sceptical towards the inherent meaningfulness of things. The dominant view became that God can do as God wills, therefore reality is only what God decides to make. Names don’t denote the inner meaning of things, but are mere terms that humans imposed on things to distinguish them from other things based on their differences – hence nominalism. These two factors succeeded in focusing all reality in the creativity of human minds in the present moment.
The full advent of modern culture was specifically catalysed by two events (Drilling 2006:6). The first was the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century when the experimental method became the vehicle of a remarkable new moment in human creativity. With this, humans could take control as never before and direct it to their own ends. The second event was the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The experimental method became an agenda for all dimensions of life and human beings were challenged to take charge of life for themselves.
With these, control that once was in the hands of civil and religious authorities was wrested away. People increasingly became their own individuality and autonomy and felt more and more adept at determining their own destinies. Individual freedom and autonomy became the order of the day. The authority of church and state were criticized for its basis in obscure mysteries of faith as a front for control. Atrocious wars raged in the name of church and state in this time led to a quest for democracy as the political order of choice, effectively removing aristocrats and clerics from positions of power.
The Modern Culture was philosophically undergirded by the musings of Descartes and Kant and the idea that the mind must activate a procedure of doubt with the aim to reach absolutely certain truths, was born. This fit neatly in the methods of the new natural sciences who tried to assume nothing – a sort of doubt (Drilling 2006:7). The new natural sciences sought to be precise about the inner workings of objects of research by means of carefully constructed empirical experiments conducted upon particular elements comprising the research matter. This was a move away from the deductive method to the inductive method. Drilling (2006:7) showed that this rationalism and the idealism of Kant succeeded in creating a dark downside, namely the breakdown of all sense of common truths and values, and the consequent fragmentation of human social order.
Modernity positively succeeded in discovering the central role of the human subject in every instance of knowledge (Drilling 2006:8). This opens the way to the grounding of faith that was lacking in the premodern period. However, as modernism failed to work out the turn to the subject in several of its expressions, religious faith – faith based on revelation – was banished from socially acceptable discourse of the important issues of the day. Modernity’s willingness to consider religion was clouded by its only concern with a God of reason and natural religion.
5. THE RISE OF THE LATE-MODERN PARADIGM
The last fifty years were dominated by developments pertaining to communication, digital technology and digital social networking that integrate the first two. The impact of these developments is tremendous: It changed the way people conduct business and go about their work, it affects relationships and relational networks between people, it changes the way people gather, process and utilize information and it fundamentally transformed the way people interact with each other (Saxby 1990:3): Suddenly, information has become personal. Individuals have a large range of personal choices and opportunities for access to the distribution and reception of information. No longer are people passive receivers of information (Saxby 1990:259-299). More specifically, there is an increasing need for information as the basis for making decisions (Pettersson 1989:33).
The proliferation of new media technologies caused a significant shift in focus from reading and writing to watching and listening (Pettersson 1989:77-78). The result is a society where-in the reigning culture, value system and norms are increasingly dictated by image rather than regulating. Even more importantly, the digital world is busy changing humanity’s sense of time and history as this new world pulls the future into our consciousness while simultaneously extracting the best of the past (Miller 2004:76-77).
6. Epistemological Implications of the Digital Revolution
The implications of the digital revolution can be summarised as follows (Miller 2004:78): The digital culture’s need for direct, uncontrolled and first hand experiencing is busy replacing the passive gestalt of television and printed media types; The dependence by the digital culture on networks and personal relationships is replacing television’s bias towards collective stadium-event experiences; Digital culture’s open source technologies, organisations and thinking mechanisms (such as Wikipedia) have disrupted printed media and television’s tendencies for trademarking; The ability of the digital culture to revisit the past is replacing television and the printed media’s rejection of the past; The digital culture’s paradigm-based approach to complex issues and conflict is replacing the political approach by television and printed media; The integrated, multimedia language of the digital culture is replacing television and the printed media’s visual language; and finally, the digital culture’s integration of left brain and right brain processes is replacing television and the printed media’s sole reliance on right brain processes.
We truly live in an ecotone between the modern era and a time we cannot yet define (Sweet, McLaren & Haselmayer 2003:18). The dynamics of this Developing Paradigm can be summarised with seven qualities (Miller 2004:4-7):
- Interconnection: We have entered a chain-reaction world of exponential outcomes where problems and opportunities are intimately tied together. Networks are emerging which seem to have a collective intelligence that defies older logic and sequential decision-making processes (Miller 2004:4-5).
- Complexity: Systems do not behave as a collection of spare parts anymore, but as an integrated whole. Any single change sets in motion an invisible ripple effect and old analytical tools fail to anticipate potential consequences of policy or action within complex systems of relationships (Miller 2004:5).
- Acceleration: With each new technology or concept, change seems to be accelerating. This results in change taking on a life of its own, and people start to feel out of control from time to time (Miller 2004:5).
- Intangibility: The world is changing from a society that measures value in terms of products that can be touched or held to a society that measures value in terms of intangibles like information, potential or reputation (Miller 2004:5).
- Convergence: This is the inherent property of the digital era. All information, be it print, graphics, sound or data, can all reside on a single medium – CD or DVD – because it is all reproduced through the common digital language of bits and bytes. Therefore, the boundaries that separated disciplines of knowledge (such as physics, poetry, and metaphysics) are beginning to blur (Miller 2004:5-6).
- Immediacy: The time it takes to absorb and adjust to digitally paced activities is growing shorter and shorter. People are therefore under pressure to respond to the changes with immediacy similar to that required by fighter pilots in combat (Miller 2004:6).
- Unpredictability: In the old paradigm, physics taught that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. However, current complex and highly interactive systems are highly unpredictable. Since these systems are interconnected, the number of outcomes is exponentially multiplied, making it impossible to predict. In every instance, in complex systems its actions often create unintended and unforeseen consequences (Miller 2004:6-7).
The paradigm shift to the Late-Modern Paradigm has epistemological qualities that grew from the philosophical-literary hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jacques Derrida. According to Ricoeur (1991:165) language systems and the model of structural analysis can be applied to social phenomena as well. Language, as symbolic system, can provide meaning to social occurrences. As such structural analysis can help other sciences like theology to achieve deeper interpretations of a given situation. According to Lyotard (1984:1), “scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse. And it is fair to say that for the last forty years the ‘leading’ sciences and technologies have had to do with language: phonology and theories of linguistics, problems of communication and cybernetics, modern theories of algebra and informatics, computers and their languages, problems of translation and the search for areas of compatibility among computer languages, problems of information storage and data banks, telematics and the perfection of intelligent terminals, to paradoxology.” Knowledge ceased to be an end in itself. Language became creator of meaning, albeit a pragmatic one. Subsequently, Lyotard announced the fall of grand meta-narratives based on universal, transcendent truths (Lyotard 1984:37-38).
Derrida is viewed as the one of the fathers of deconstructionist literary theory, in which “he has elaborated a theory of deconstruction (of discourse, and therefore of the world) that challenges the idea of a frozen structure and advances the notion that there is no structure or centre, no univocal meaning. The notion of a direct relationship between signifier and signified is no longer tenable, and instead we have infinite shifts in meaning relayed from one signifier to another” (Guillemette & Cossette 2006). Through Derrida’s deconstruction, theology at large was possible to break free from its modernist constraints of over-analysing God and religion to discover the wholly other and, taking language by surprise, will tie our tongue and strike us almost dumb, while filling us with passion (Caputo, 1997:3).
7. CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A RELATIONAL HERMENEUTIC
Theology was traditionally practiced as a single unit, without distinction between any sub disciplines (König 1982:1). For the first eighteen hundred years of the church’s history, the typical church theologian was simultaneously Bible scholar, historian, and systematic theologian. The concept of investigating Christian teachings at the hand of a scientific method originates in the twelfth century ce and is attributed to either Abelard or Gilbert of Porraea, and in the thirteenth century the description, theological faculty, is first used at the University of Paris (König 1982:3). Studying theology as an integrated practice started to change with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ explosion in scientific knowledge.
Since 1797 the theology of the Old Testament and New Testament was researched separately when Bauer’s book, “Theologie des Alten Testaments”, was published (Hasel 2001:172). Combined with the subsequent expansion of the university as well as modernism’s secularization of institutions that started to give shape to everyday life (Osmer 2008:231), this forced theological faculties to rethink their diminishing position among other scientific schools of education. Through arguments presented by Friedrich Schleiermacher, theology was organized as a scholarly enterprise specializing in philosophical theology - determining the “essence” of Christianity, historical theology - utilizing Biblical sciences and church history, and practical theology – focusing on theory and practice (Osmer 2008:233). From here on it was impossible for any theologian to have an adequate knowledge of all the subjects associated with theological study as it served as the starting point of theological specialization.
The practice to present different theological subjects as part of an academic faculty devoted exclusively to the study of theology grows from the centrality of Jesus Christ and the faith in Him (König 1982:13-15). Central to all theology, therefore, is the revelation of God and studying it. Theology consists of the study of the revelation of God, specifically the revelation that God has given to us, its content, implications and the results thereof. Stated in other words, theological study is the process of theoretical justification (or explanation) - in a credible and critical manner - about the Christian religion (Van Huyssteen 1987:2). The question, “How do people get to know God?” is at the centre of theological reflection (Koester 1995:1). And in all of this, the Bible plays a central and integral role, as it forms the heart of the Christian faith (Smit 2006:7).
In every age the church has had to listen to God through the Bible to discern a pattern of living the gospel in a way that is appropriate for that age (McKnight 2008:129). This practice of discernment can also be understood as an ongoing conversation around the stories, concepts and language of the witnesses to God in the Bible. This enables us to connect with the people of our own time who are instinctively yearning for a connection to God (Martoia 2007:39). In the middle of this ongoing practice of discernment stands the church, a two thousand year old institution founded on and rooted in the religion of the Hebrew people and the message of one of its members, Jesus of Nazareth. The church is the common witness to God’s mission to this earth through Christ: By being aware of the communion with Christ and with each other Christians are compelled to give a visible witness together (Bosch 1991:463).
Following the contours of the biblical witness, Christians tell the story of God’s actions in human history through their testimony. They testify about God’s goodness, a goodness He has made known, revealed and which defines His purposes (Güder 2000:29). The church and its testimony are grounded in a particular history, apart from which Christians has no universal message to proclaim. As such, it can be argued that “the local church is the hope for the world” (Hybels 2002:27). Moreover, the Christian faith is intrinsically missional - otherwise it denies its reason for existence (Bosch 1991:8-9).
How, then, should a relational hermeneutic, that takes the integration between paradigms and scientific disciplines seriously, look?
A relational hermeneutic takes as its first cue the common purpose with which theology is practiced. As a whole the aim is to take part in God’s mission to the world and our engaging with the brokenness that He wants to mend. This shared vision thus serves as the focal point of all theological reflection, disregarding the paradigm from which it takes place.
A second cue is taken from the essence of the church’s ministry to the world. As living testament of God, we are a communicative organism, honour-bound to go and share what God is doing. Within the different narratives we all share the common bond of being one in Christ (Eph 4:1-6). To this extent the church is essentially an interpersonal organism – focused on the restoration of people’s relationship with God as well as with each other. The New Testament has approximately 96 different “one another” texts filled with imagery depicting the relational character of Christ’s body. In the context of my own theological tradition the Confession of Belhar testifies to the fact that the Bible demands the visible unity of God’s people through reconciled relationships as one of the prerequisites for the world to believe in God.
The third cue for a relational hermeneutic grows from the realisation that every one of the three paradigms has the challenge to develop theories of ministry practice for our current context. Since we live in an oxymoronic culture, the developers of these practices would do well to start listening to one another. As there is no one correct way of doing ministry, no single possibility to interpret biblical texts, or a definitive manner with which pastoral care is accomplished, a relational hermeneutic will seek to draw from each paradigm the most authentic developments in its quest to bridge the chasms. Faced with the reality of the South African context, a unified voice should be sought for the public discourse that demands from the church reasons for the hope it propagates (cf 1 Pet 3:15). Therefore the modernist churches of the well-to-do suburbs should humble themselves before the township voices that cry out the plight of the poor and destitute. The premodern fundamentalists should start to listen to the echoes of dignity that cannot be trapped in legalist language. And the late-modern dreamers should utilise their capacity to create meaning through concrete deeds of service in communities on the outside of their comfort zones.
Finally, a relational hermeneutic cannot be anything else than personal. Taking time to cross cultural, social and economical boundaries can only positively affect the scientific scope of theological reflection. The prophetic voice of public theology will sound with increasing clarity when God’s people know, trust and love one another regardless of their race, gender, or social standing.
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