Faith in History and Society: A Basic Theological Study of a Practice

Author: J.B. Metz (German)
Translator: Zhu Yanbing
Editor-in-Chief: Xu Yinong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1996-11-01
Features: Excerpt:
I. Between Evolution and Dialectics: The Situation from Which Contemporary Fundamental Theology Proceeds
The purpose and mission of any Christian theology can be defined as "to vindicate hope"①. "Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15). What hope is this?—It is the hope of the God of the living and the dead, the God who calls each person into the subjectivity (Subjektsein) of the common unity with God. When vindicating this hope, it is not about the dispute between impersonal ideas and conceptions; rather, it is about the concrete social-historical situation of the subjects, their experiences, sufferings, struggles, and contradictions.
1. The Necessity and Specificity of Confirming the Situation
Therefore, an initial requirement② is to confirm the situation, i.e., an analysis of the present and the era, but we cannot pre-determine or pre-engage in this analysis from either a theological or a certain standard philosophical perspective. Chapters 2 and 3 of this book will discuss the historical scope of this confirmation, while Chapter 4 will elaborate in greater detail on the main characteristics of the current socio-political situation from which fundamental theology proceeds. To prevent the situational analysis from being artificially separated from theological reflection, the specific factors of this situational analysis are placed in (middle part). Here, only two far-reaching characteristics of this environmental analysis—or to put it more casually, this situational confirmation—are generally pointed out.
(a) The confirmation of the social situation and conditions from which Christianity vindicates hope can only be carried out on a global scale today. Due to the increasing interdependence of socio-political and economic conditions, it is impossible to correctly determine a situation without a "global" perspective. Any attempt to obtain specific circumstances without considering this global connection is abstract and questionable. Therefore, if we recommend a different situational analytical method and corresponding results to the churches and theology of Latin America, differing from those we have established for ourselves, for what is called the Northern Hemisphere, that would be incorrect. The widely discussed North-South conflict cannot be defined and resolved within a regional framework; theology and the church cannot either neutralize it as a "purely political-economic" conflict, because it, as a far-reaching conflict, permeates the unified world church. The specific implications of this point will become clearer as we proceed with our reflections—in particular, in Chapter 4, where it will be elaborated in detail. From this perspective, European theology would do well to accept the challenges already faced by it due to the emergence of liberation theology③. The issue is that European theology can no longer simply be exported to those countries, where there are almost no buyers or those interested in it. In my view, it is important that European theology attempts self-reflection within the context of global connections and, in doing so, seriously takes into account the constraints on its own situation in the specific context of civil society in Central Europe.