The Theologian’s Task Today
Theology bridges the gap between belief and everyday life – without losing its soul.
The contemporary generation, much like the past generation, encounters specific theological challenges that require theologians to come forward with solutions similar to the clarity provided by the Church Fathers during the intellectual crisis.
Tracy Rowland in the book Catholic Theology points out four building blocks of fundamental theology are: (i) the relationship between faith and reason, and thus philosophy and theology, (ii) the relationship between nature and grace, (iii) the relationship between Scripture and Tradition and (iv) the relationship between history and ontology.
These essential building blocks, in my view, can effectively serve as a platform for today’s theologians in addressing the gap that exists between faith and culture. Instead of engaging in what Balthasar calls the distillation of values, where some theologian and christians attempt to distill Christian values from the kerygma and present them to the world, in the hope of not overburdening non-christians with the underlying theological principles of the values distilled. Therefore the responsibility of the theologian and the Church is to discern how this breakdown occurred and to amend the fissure by a process of trinitarian healing and transformation.
Another pressing issue is the reduction of the Catholic faith to mere moral framework where the ethos precede logos. Guardini associates this phenomenon with the pathology that is in our modern culture. Today it is fashionable to take the responsibility of promoting the social welfare of others but not extending the invitation to participation in the life of the Church.
Thus in my opinion being a Christian is being reduced to mere social work. Morality is thus divorced from theological christian virtues that are found in Christ. It is not associated with discipleship to Christ, a sharing in Christ’s virtues rather promotion of the temporal welfare of others in the society. This Results to christian utilitarianism and philanthropic altruism.
Theologians in their function of Magisterium Cathedrae Magistralis should promote the culture of the Church, especially the ethos of the institutions of the Catholic Church, such as schools, universities, hospitals, etc. This is because the Church is radically different from all other institutions precisely because it is built on the trinitarian framework. Therefore, the culture should be different from other corporate practices that are characterised with bureaucratic rationality. Our culture is Christocentric and Incarnational.
Finally, I firmly believe that context is crucial, and theologians must engage in a theology of contextualization or a theology that contextualizes. This is different from contextual theology or contextualized theology. The former is an active, dynamic circular process that reveals intentionality. This is because there is a n essentially critical dimension to the Word of God which transcends time and context, but which becomes “meaningful” when it is contextualized in each time and place. This presents the hermeneutical challenge we face today.