Reflection on Christian Theology



Reflection on Christian Theology

Introduction

From both a phenomenological and theoretical-theological point of view, religious pluralism is paradigmatic in that it is now something that must be addressed by religious devotees. The researcher known as Hans W. Frei's groundbreaking achievement in theological hermeneutics, Christology, and Christian formation has made possible new alternatives in contemporary theology, and has become a key impetus to the emergence of post liberal theology also known as the Yale School. Much discussion has taken place since the publication of The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative in 1974, and his work continues to generate intense debate among his proponents, critics, and sympathetic observers. One of the key questions in this debate is whether Frei's work signals a sectarian flight from the public world at large to a private enclave constituted by the intra textual world of the biblical narrative. Unfortunately, in the people's view his critics have misinterpreted his thought and failed to recognize that the notion of the public is a pivotal feature of his theology. Therefore, all the issues related to the reflection on Christian Theology will be discussed in detail.

Overview of Christian Theology

Mircea Eliade's study of religion at the University of Chicago, for example, explained religion as a universal phenomenon that manifests the experiences of the sacred in different ways in different cultures. In this approach, Christian theology is taken up as one expression of the universal quest for meaning and truth, rather than as Christian self-description specific to the distinctive and particular discourse and practice of the Christian church. Such emphasis on the particularities of religious traditions is now commonplace in religious studies, but during the period in which the major trajectories of the Yale School were set forth, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, it stood in stark contrast to the revisionist approach to the study of religion. If post liberals focused on the particular, revisionists favored the universal, and the difference between the two approaches had deep implications for how the question of meaning and truth was pursued.

One, theology is non-foundationalist in its truth-claims because knowledge is not grounded in a set of non-inferential, self-evident beliefs but rather is deeply shaped by language and previous experience. While revisionist theology sought to build a foundation for its truth-claims on wider cultural norms or universal human experience, post liberal theology maintained the following. There is no obvious experience because human experience is always already interpreted. Two, theology should engage in ad hoc apologetics rather than systematic apologetics because general conceptual tools, such as philosophy, art, and cultural experience, are used eclectically and provisionally, not as superstructures by which Christian claims must be validated. Three, theology should attend to the differences between religions, rather than harmonizing the doctrines of the world religions and four, in contrast to theological approaches that pursue doctrines or moral lessons as the real meaning of the biblical narrative, for the post liberal approach the real meaning of doctrines is the biblical narrative, which itself ...