Ludwig Feuerbach- our claims to knowledge reveal only the mysteries of our own nature.
Investigating content and coherency of Christian gospel within the cultural and intellectual context of it’s time.
So how has context shaped my understanding of theology?
What is context?
Context is the surroundings, circumstances, environment, background, or settings which determine, specify, or clarify the meaning of an event. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context
Having defined context, to start to explain the topic for today, it is also important to define modernism, post modernism and pluralism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movement
Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-modernism
Religious pluralism is a loosely defined expression concerning acceptance of various religions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_pluralism
In this lecture, the word context came up a lot. For theology and I suppose other sectors in life that have to do with history and thinking, context comes into play in the same way, tradition and culture does.
So what does it mean to take context seriously? We live in a world of context and consciousness but what does it mean to take context seriously? I.e. contextualisation?
Contextualization may refer to:
• Contextualization (Bible translation), the process of contextualizing the biblical message as perceived in the missionary mandate originated by Jesus
• Contextualization (sociolinguistics), the use of language and discourse to signal relevant aspects of an interactional or communicative situation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextualization
Before I carry on, I think it is important to refer back to modernism and post modernism and how this relates to context and pluralism.
Modernity encourages individualism. It encourages one to think for oneself and “test all things against the authority of reason” instead of just believing what people told you. Modernism is believed to have some relationship with science as science is a lot to do with proving things and it believes that the intrusion of personal faith and belief makes it impossible to make a fair judgment on what is true or not so it “hampers the quest for truth”.
Modernity works hand in hand with a Reductionism
Reductionism- is a habit of mind whereby a true explanation of reality is achieved by breaking it down into its smallest parts and identifying the laws by which those parts are related to each other.
Modernity uses science experiment and rationality and so does Reductionism.
Postmodenity on the other hand suggests a new culture that has completely left modernity behind. Completely may be a slight overstatement as Post modernity does have some if not very minor characteristics of modernity. For example it encourages individualism but it also discards reasoning and instead goes with the belief that a truth or a fact doesn’t exist as different things are true for different people- “we each see the world from our own point of view , and there simply is no truth which is true for us all”
Having briefly described defined and described the terms above one can see how they connect to theology and more particularly Christian theology. It is my belief that Pluralism or more particularly Christian Pluralism has evolved from modernity and post modernity because it has encouraged people to think for themselves instead of just following a very traditional institutionalized church that has laws, very strict rules and beliefs you can not question. Instead people have been encouraged to be different, to think outside the box and to question authority leading them to begin a community of people with simple interests, beliefs and personalities and forming a church that they can believe in and find more acceptable.
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