Discussion platform - Theological reflection on the Bible, crisis and catastrophe

Au regard des enjeux, ne serait-il pas utile ici de faire valoir le pluralisme linguistique pour plus d'efficience vers l'atteinte des résultats?
Votre réaction m'obligerait.
Merci.

As with the 2007 Global Platform, we welcome postings and attached documents in different languages. Unfortunately, the WCC does not have the resources to translate these.

A good initiative to have this theological reflection going on via the Internet. I look forward to good exchanges of viewpoints here! Thanks for inviting me to take part.

I add my thanks for this forum. SImon could you post a little explanatory note as to how you expect this conversation to move forward? Will you post some introductory materials? I have read with interest the hermeneutic background papers, but assume this pertains mostly to the form of the conversation, not the content. I look forward to the dialogue.

Thanks for your comments. I will be posting papers etc that people have sent us to generate discussion. I will also post the general concept paper for the Global Platform to give people the basic thinking behind it.

Thank you for the invitation to participate; it is an important project.

What has emerged in reflection on African biblical hermeneutics in the past few years have been a recognition that we use a tri-polar hermeneutic. This includes 3 poles: the pole of the biblical text, the pole of the reader's context, and the pole of appropriation. While African biblical hermeneutics has been explicit about the former two poles (text and context), it has been less clear on HOW these poles are brought into dialogue. What makes African biblical scholarship (and other advocacy/committed forms of biblical scholarship) distinctive is that it has been overt about a deliberate engagement between text and context. However, by not being overt about HOW text and context engage, we have not given sufficient attention to the kinds of ideo-theological trajectories that are, in my view, the primary components of the third pole (appropriation).

Appropriation does not simply happen. It is shaped by particular ideo-theological orientations or trajectories of particular readers/interpreters. Most of us would want to claim, of course, that our ideo-theological orientations are shaped by the biblical text. Of course they are. But they are also shaped by our context and our contextual commitments. And most of us would acknowledge this, overtly. They are also shaped by our missionary-colonial ecclesio-missionary heritages (eg. Catholic, evangelical, etc.). They are also shaped by the dominant features of our context at any historical moment (eg. racial separation, HIV/AIDS, etc.).

In sum, the constant to-and-fro between text and context, within the constant impact of the other features I have mentioned, some more explicit than others, an ideo-theological orientation takes shape which enables us to address particular issues, such as those targetted by this forum: Christian Zionism, climate change and HIV/AIDS.

What I am arguing is that there usually is some kind of (non explicit) coherence in how a particular interpreter goes about engaging with such issues. AND it is not only determined by 'what the Bible says'. The Bible, of course, says nothing without a reader and every reader has a dominant ideo-theological trajectory.

Within African biblical scholarship one can discern at least four ideo-theological trajectories: inculturation, liberation, African feminist, and postcolonial. While there is substantial overlap between these, there is also some distinctiveness. Ecclesio-missionary heritages also provide their own particular emphases to each of these.

So, for example, my own ideo-theological trajectory is liberationist, but includes elements from the other three. I would want to claim that it is a strong biblical trajectory, though not always the dominant one (unfortunately). For me it begins with the God who hears the cry of slaves (in Exodus), is taken up by the prophets in their contestation with the monarchy and the priesthood, and is confirmed and elaborated by Jesus, himself one of the oppressed. However, I have to acknowledge that it is not a self-evident biblical trajectory (a mistake made by many liberation theologians). Just as our world is a site of contestation and struggle, so is the Bible. Having said this, one can see how my contextual location also shapes my ideo-theological orientation. I see life, through my context, as an ongoing struggle of the God of life against the forces of idolatry and death. My ecclesio-missionary heritage does not play much of a role in my ideo-theological orientation, probably because I see the church as a site of struggle, being dominated by conserving, consolidating, and controlling impulses (which, unfortunately, are also found in the Bible). Significant African contextual features such as HIV/AIDS, global neo-liberal capitalism, unemployment, etc. have a powerful impact on my ideo-theological orientation.

I have offered all this as a way of indicating that the Bible is only a component in a rich and complex hermeneutic process -- one that is governed by ideo-theological orientations. If we were overt about our own ideo-theological orientations we would be much closer to understanding each other and understanding why we agree or disagree with each other around Christian Zionism, climate change and HIV/AIDS. We would also be able to be overt about how we deploy the Bible, for we would have acknowledged that there is nothing self-evident about what the Bible 'says'.

So I must admit that my take on each of these three issues is governed by a privileging of the poor and marginalised in each case (and I would privilege economic factors over other factors such as ethnicity, gender, etc.). What would the Bible 'say' to those on the economic margins of Christian Zionism, climate change and HIV/AIDS? This would be my starting point.

I hope this sufficiently provocative!

It is disappointing that nothing seems to be happening here. I have sent many emails and none have been replied to, and a paper, and there are no recent comments. Is this idea of a Global Platform still alive?

We hope it is still alive and look forward to your comments on what is already up for discussion. It is open for any of the large number of people who have signed up to actualy make use of the opportunity of dialogue. We will put up additional papers when we've had interaction on what is here already. We want to encourage interaction rather than simply posting papers. All the papers that get submitted will be used, where appropriae, as resources for the meeting in September.

As a member of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, my particular interest is in the response to catastrophe and disaster in the historic tradition of the Orthodox Churches. So I am looking at the various Chronicles and their desc<x>ription of these events, and how they are categorised or understood.

But I would also be interested to study how representative historical figures of other Christian traditions also understood similar events. Does anyone have any pointers for studying the response to the European plagues of the Middle Ages from a Roman Catholic perspective, and the plagues as they affected England after the Protestant Reformation from a Protestant perspective.

It seems im<x>portant to me, and this is due to my Orthodox background I am sure, that a discussion is grounded in history as well as in the present use and interpretation of sc<x>ripture in regard to disaster and catastrophe. I would like to know, for instance, how the thoughts of Rudolf H. Pasaribu fit into the Protestant tradition of such responses. Are they his own ideas as he reflects from within a particular Protestant context, or do they reflect the historical response of that tradition.

As Gerald West has written, the Bible is not self-evident and we read it within our own traditions. Therefore it would be useful to me, at least, to be able to study something more of the traditional and historical responses to the situations in view. I know many of the sources within my own Orthodox tradition, but pointers to sources within Roman Catholicism and the variety of Protestant traditions would be welcomed.