From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 31 2003 - 09:33:38 BST
Hi Rick,
> RICK
> The theologian studies that which the disciple believes. He doesn't learn
> 'how' or 'what' to think about god, rather, he learns 'how' and 'what'
> various given groups think about god. I would think that generally jives
> with what Sam means by "A theology student, in my experience, is taught
> various ways HOW to think about God." Only I see it as an objective
> process, and Sam thinks it's a matter of sectarianism.
Two quibbles about your last sentence there.
Firstly, doesn't the ideology of 'objective process' rely upon SOM
reasoning?
Secondly, the sense of 'sectarianism' that I was using - which was
introduced by DMB - is not intended to mean unintellectual, or anything
pejorative. It's more of a tautology - someone practising Christian theology
is a practising Christian.
For example, a theologian named Daphne Hampson has written a work of
theology called "After Christianity". She is someone who takes feminist
insights to be terminal for traditional Christianity (Father-Son language
etc) and who therefore describes her work as 'post-Christian'. It is still
working with a classical understanding of, for example, idolatry, but it's
pushing the thinking into different areas and trying to develop new
metaphors etc for how to think about God. So Daphne Hampson is a theologian,
but she is not a Christian theologian (or a Jewish, or a Muslim, etc). There
are other examples as well.
Sam
"When we speak of God we do not know what we are talking about. We are
simply using language from the familiar context in which we understand it
and using it to point, beyond what we understand, into the mystery that
surrounds and sustains the world we do partially understand" (Herbert
McCabe)
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Mar 31 2003 - 10:02:43 BST