Essays In Contextual Theology

A collection of essays on the nature of contextual theology, criteria for orthodoxy, prophetic dialogue, conversion, culture and other relevant topics as Christian faith and particular contexts encounter one another.

"While the intent of the editors is to honor Steve Bevans, SVD, a towering figure in the field of missiology and a longtime author of Orbis books on missiology, this book will be designed less as a festschrift than as a textbook for classroom use. Designed around the three main foci of Bevans' theology (mission, contextual theologies, and dialogical theory), it will appeal to teachers of courses in Christian mission, theological method, contextual theologies, and contemporary Third World theologies. The contributors are a who's who of contemporary mission studies in a global context, including representatives from various Christian traditions and from throughout the global church"--

In this compact collection of essays on contextual theology, the reader is offered fresh voices from the United States, Latin America and Oceania. The inclusion of diverse cultural voices is one of the book's strengths: these voices emphasize the significance of contextual theology for our twenty-first century. The proposal of the book is to address new ways of doing theology, opening up new and fresh topics for our theological agenda.

In this volume, an attempt is undertaken to highlight the genesis, progress, and transformation of Asian contextual theology of minjung, introducing its historical point of departure, its development, and its transformation in light of younger Korean and Korean American scholars' endeavors. In this regard, the new Asian contextual theology, which is emerging, strives to integrate both minjung and the wisdom of World Religions into its own framework and direction, assuming the character of a public theology and remaining humble and open before God's mystery while featuring its association with minjung in a holistic way.

Christian theology, like all forms of knowledge, thinking and practice, arises from and is influenced by the context in which it is done. In Doing Contextual Theology, Angie Pears demonstrates the radically contextual nature of Christian theology by focusing on five forms of liberation theology: Latin American Liberation Theologies; Black Theologies; Feminist Informed Theologies; Sexual Theologies; Body Theologies. Pears analyses how each of these asserts a clear and persistent link to the Christian tradition through The Bible and Christology and discusses the implications of contextual and local theologies for understanding Christianity as a religion. Moreover, she considers whether fears are justified that a radically contextual reading of Christian theologies leads to a relativist understanding of the religion, or whether these theologies share some form of common identity both despite and because of their contextual nature. Doing Contextual Theology offers students a clear and up-to-date survey of the field of contemporary liberation theology and provides them with a sound understanding of how contextual theology works in practice.

Stephen B Bevans's Models of Contextual Theology has become a staple in courses on theological method and as a handbook used by missioners and other Christians concerned with the Christian tradition's understanding of itself in relation to culture. First published in 1992 and now in its seventh printing in English, with translations underway into Spanish, Korean, and Indonesian, Bevans's book is a judicious examination of what the terms "contextual theology" and "to contextualize" mean. In the revised and expanded edition, Bevans adds a "counter-cultural" model to the five presented in the first edition -- the translation, the anthropological, the praxis, the synthetic, and the transcendental model. This means that readers will be introduced to the way in which figures such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank, Lesslie Newbigin, "and (occasionally) Pope John Paul II" need to be taken into account. The author's revisions also incorporate suggestions made by reviewers to enhance the clarity of the original three chapters on the nature of contextual theology and the five models.

A collection of essays that demonstrates that to be effective in the twenty-first century, mission must be prophetic as it encounters other cultures and religious traditions. "When we speak as mission as dialogue, then, we are about as far away from imagining mission as 'conquering the world for Christ' and missionaries as 'marines of the Catholic Church' as we probably can get. There has indeed been a radical shift, both in the world in which the church does mission and within the church's own consciousness of the goodness and even holiness of that world." These words from one of the essays in this superb collection clearly demonstrate the changing of mission today. In this volume, Fathers Bevans and Schroeder address a primary challenge faced by Christians missioners today: How can they bring the Christian tradition to interact respectfully and effectively with members of other cultures and traditions from around the globe and still be prophetic?