An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Contextual Theology a Thesis
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An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Contextual Theology A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree Master of Sacred Theology by Michael Brunner Trinity Lutheran Seminary Columbus, Ohio May 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Michael W. Brunner All rights reserved iv Table of Contents Abstract page vi Introduction page 1 Chapter One: Typologies page 11 H. Richard Niebuhr page 11 Stephen B. Bevans page 34 Contextualized and Cultural Theology page 55 Chapter Two: Paul Tillich page 67 Tillich and the Doctrine of God page 70 Tillich, Morality, and Anthropology page 74 Tillich and the Fall page 79 Tillich and the Christ page 82 Chapter Three: Gustavo Gutiérrez and Liberation Theology page 87 Gutiérrez and Culture page 89 Gutiérrez and Theological Method page 92 v The Poor and the Kingdom of God page 96 Concluding Remarks page 100 Chapter Four: Eastern Orthodoxy and the Relationship between Theology and Culture page 103 Orthodox Theology, Relativism, and Salvation as it Pertains to Truth page 106 Orthodox Tradition and Contextualized Theology page 116 Nature and the Natural page 122 Orthodoxy and the Kingdom of God page 126 The Failures of Orthodoxy page 133 Conclusion: In Pursuit of Contextualized Theology page 138 vi Abstract This thesis explores an ambiguity found in the term "contextual theology". After evaluating two typologies classifying the relationship between culture and theology and I propose a new typology, which distinguishes two diverging tendencies in the practice of contextual theology— what I term “contextualized” theology and “cultural” theology. After discussing these typologies I offer two detailed case-studies in order to evaluate my proposed typology. The case-studies explore the work of Paul Tillich and Gustavo Gutiérrez, showing these two tendencies clearly, while also indicating that no theologian fits perfectly within any typology. Following these case-studies I expound an Eastern Orthodox contextual theology, showing that this tradition possesses particular resources which allow it to undertake a fully "contextualized" theology while avoiding many tendencies of "cultural" theology. 1 Introduction The question about how Christ and culture relate is as old as Christianity. It can be seen in the Old Testament when Israel kept failing to separate itself from pagan worship; it can be seen in the New Testament when Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians are trying to determine how Gentiles should be welcomed into Christianity; it can be seen in the developments of Just War Theory. “It appears in many forms as well as in all ages; as the problem of reason and revelation, of religion and science, of natural and divine law, of state and church, of nonresistance and coercion.”1 It is a question that continues today and will continue into the future. The current cultural climate is undergoing a radical shift from the modern world to the postmodern world. In the process of this shift, theology is being reshaped, reimagined, as something different. This shift is continuing the trend set in modern times of relegating Christian beliefs and practices to the sideline. The relegation of Christian beliefs and practices to a non-central domain can be seen as a result of the subjugation of the Church to the rising Nation-States of Europe in the late-medieval and early modern eras, as shown in William T. Cavanaugh’s book The Myth of Religious Violence.2 D.A. Carson notes that “the impact of postmodernism is still felt, not in surging intellectual power but in the detritus of indecision, in the widespread assumption that all cultures have equal value, in the assumption that all religions say the same thing or, at the very least, are of equal value and equal shame, in the reluctance to think hard about good and 1 H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 10. 2 William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 2 evil, holiness and the profane.”3 If all cultures and religions carry equal weight, as Carson suggests is the widely held assumption, one has to wonder if cultures and religions become relative. If one considers Cavanaugh’s arguments about the subjugation of the Church to the Nation-State and Carson’s proposal that it is widely assumed that all cultures and religions carry equal weight, it becomes clear to me that religion can be considered a relative cultural construction; religion is subsumed into the broader culture through the subjugation of religion by any given culture (Nation-State). As can be seen in Carson’s assessment of the current trends in the understanding of the enduring problem, there is an ambiguity in the understanding of what culture is. There is also an ambiguity in understanding how “religion” interacts with “secular” culture. The typical response to the question of the enduring problem has been, since the late middle ages, that there are two realms of culture—the private, “religious” realm and the public “secular” realm. As Carson states: “In more popular parlance…all three words—‘secular,’ ‘secularization,’ and ‘secularism’—have to do with the squeezing of the religious to the periphery of life.”4 Since the time of the late middle ages the “religious” life has been squeezed out of public life and been forced into a private, spiritual realm. In the late medieval period, there was a transfer of loyalty from an international church to a nation-state. As Cavanaugh says, “the gradual transfer of loyalty from international church to nation-state was…a migration of the holy from church to state…”5 With this transfer of loyalty came the modern understanding of religion. Cavanaugh 3 D.A. Carson, Christ & Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), vii. 4 Ibid., 116. 5 Cavanaugh, 10. 3 notes, “religion in modernity indicates a universal genus of which the various religions are species; each religion comes to be demarcated by a system of propositions; religion is identified with an essentially interior, private impulse; and religion comes to be seen as essentially distinct from secular pursuits such as politics, economics, and the like.”6 In other words, religion is something that is set inside of culture, it has its own function within a broader culture. Its role became, “attend[ing] to the care of souls and their attainment of eternal life.”7 Christianity became subordinate to the “secular” world. One of the results of this development has been that “religion,” specifically Christianity in the scope of this thesis, has been subsumed into the broader culture.8 With this, “culture is…essentially a transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a pattern capable of development and change, and it belongs to the concept of humanness itself. It follows that, if religion is a human phenomenon or human activity, it must affect, and be affected by, culture.”9 What Aylward Shorter is stating is that because Christianity is a human activity it affects and is affected by the broader culture. However, Shorter’s view is not the only one. As Hans Frei points out, “the status of Christianity in the modern West has been ambiguous: it has been viewed and has viewed itself both as an independent religious community or communities and as an official or at least privileged institution in the general cultural system, including the organization of learning and of thinking about the meaning of culture.”10 Although Shorter does not explicitly claim that Christianity is just a part of culture, his insistence that the faith itself 6 Ibid., 69. 7 Ibid., 127. 8 From this point forward I will be speaking specifically of Christianity and not about religion in general. However, it is safe to substitute the concept/term religion where I use the term Christianity in this context. 9 Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1999), 5. 10 Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 1. 4 is affected by the host culture certainly implies that Christianity is a part of culture. However, Christianity has held itself to be something different, an alternative reality that exists alongside of the broader culture but not a part of the broader culture. How Christianity is viewed in relation to the broader culture has had a profound effect on how theology is perceived. While there are still those who view Christianity—and theology—as something distinct from the world, the trend that I have noticed is towards a more pluralistic understanding of Christianity and Christian theology. David G. Kamitsuka’s statement, “The demands for intelligibility in the public realm, remembering the suffering of the victims of oppression, remaining open to plurality within the church, and the biblical imagination necessary to form Christian communities responsive to these challenges are simply too great for us to continue with our isolated enclaves of theological business as usual,”11 seems to be the way theology is moving in a general way. Kamitsuka goes on to say, “no theology exists in a vacuum; each theology has its own social location, interests, and so on.”12 As we will see below, in Stephen Bevans' typology, the idea that theology can exist outside of culture has become unthinkable for many. This new way of thinking about the enduring problem has given rise to what we call contextual theologies. It is within many of these theologies that the context, cultural or otherwise, has often assumed the lead role in the doing and evaluating of theology. “The context of belief, life and action must now be given priority.”13 Indeed, personal 11 David G. Kamitsuka, Theology and Contemporary Culture: Liberation, Postliberal and Revisionary Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 4. 12 Ibid., 106. 13 J.