The last two posts reflected on the nature of the logos and the cosmos. I now consider how are the logos and cosmos to be related.
What is the relationship between Word and World? More specifically what is the relationship between theology and the sciences? How are cosmos and logos in a university to be related? Going back to Plato there are rich and subtle philosophical issues concerning ontology [what is real] and epistemology [what is true] that are still being explored and debated in universities. Could a Christian perspective be even richer?
A place to begin is to acknowledge the central role of hermeneutics (how we read and interpret a text), not just the text of the Bible, but also how we “read” the world in which we live. To access the living Word requires engaging the text of the Bible in a manner that uses a “hermeneutical circle (or spiral)”, whereby a specific part of the text is related to its context (chapter, book, whole Bible) in an iterative manner that goes from the part to the whole and back to the whole. Any theology should also be constructed in an iterative interaction with the text. Similarly, a local context (cultural, social, political, economic, linguistic, religious) has to be “read”; this requires observation, recording, analysis, and interpretation. Too often this is done in an intuitive manner without reflection or a basis in evidence. However, this “reading” can be done in a more systematic and reflective manner, drawing from methods in the social sciences. The local context must also be related to the global context and one needs to discern the relationship between the particularity of the local context and universals that describe many contexts.
When relating Word and world things become more complicated, challenging, and rich because these two hermeneutical practices are intertwined, perhaps more than we would like to admit. Again, perhaps the best approach is iterative, whereby both “readings” are done in parallel and allowed to influence one another in a constructive manner. Indeed, Peter Harrison has argued in detail that modern science arose in seventeenth-century Europe because the Protestant Reformation led to new ways of reading the Bible (in particular, a shift from the allegorical to the literal) that in turn led to new ways of “reading” the “book” of nature.
A key issue for the dialogue of logos and cosmos is the tension inherent in the Bible’s picture of the world. The cosmos is God’s creation, made through the logos (John 1:1). Christians need discernment as they live with a tension between the goodness of the creation and the fallen, rebellious nature of the world. What do we affirm and enjoy about the world? What do we deny or critique or resist or seek to redeem? Being made in the image of God, we have an incredible ability to read, analyse, and understand both the Word and the world. Yet, both these processes of observation and understanding are also corrupted by our sinful and rebellious nature. Sometimes we see what we want to see and don’t see what we don’t want to see. Pride, finitude, and self-deception diminish our understanding.
The good-bad tension is present in universities. Some of the logos about the cosmos that is presented to students and "discovered" by researchers reflect God’s truth about His amazing world and some of this knowledge reflects Kingdom values (truth, justice, human dignity, reconciliation, ...). On the other hand, some of this so-called knowledge is false, hostile to God, or does violence to Kingdom values. Universities grew out of medieval monasteries and were centred around theology until the last century. In the monasteries, scholarship was integrated with worship, service, communal life, and virtue. Today universities aspire to be global corporations with multi-billion-dollar budgets. In the process of this transformation from God-centred institutions to powerful businesses, there is less of the good and more of the bad.
For IFES some guidance comes from John Stott. In his book, The Contemporary Christian: An urgent plea for double listening, he discusses listening to the world and to the Word.
How can we develop a Christian mind, which is both shaped by the truths of historic, biblical Christianity, and acquainted with the realities of the contemporary world? How can we relate the Word to the world, understanding the world in the light of the Word, and even understanding the Word in the light of the world? We have to begin with a double refusal. We refuse to become either so absorbed in the Word, that we escape into it and fail to let it confront the world, or so absorbed in the world, that we conform to it and fail to subject it to the judgement of the Word. Escapism and conformity are opposite mistakes, but neither is a Christian option.
In place of this double refusal we are called to double listening, listening both to the Word and to the world. ... We listen to the Word with humble reverence, anxious to understand it, and resolved to believe and obey what we come to understand. We listen to the world with critical alertness, anxious to understand it too, and resolved not necessarily to believe and obey it, but to sympathise with it and to seek grace to discover how the gospel relates to it.
This is the origin of the title of the IFES journal, Word and World: Theological Conversations about the world students live in. How might we go about relating logos and cosmos? John Stott also says the framework of creation-fall-redemption-renewal is helpful for developing Christian thinking on a wide range of issues.
Finally, I come back to the role of local context. There is not one world, but many worlds. The beauty and potential of God’s multi-faceted creation can be seen in the diversity of human cultures and local contexts. Tragically, this diversity also reflects the creativity of human rebellion and sin.
Most discussions about science and theology are dominated by academics embedded in elite Western universities and seminaries. The discussions focus on issues associated with biological evolution, Big Bang cosmology, quantum physics, and human consciousness. Social sciences receive scant attention. It is contentious whether these Western discussions are helpful or relevant to other contexts, particularly in the Majority World.
One model for the logos-cosmos dialogue is provided by the Ph.D. program in Contextual Theology at Asian Theological Seminary in Manilla. Later I may discuss in more detail a few key elements of the philosophy of the program. These include a focus “on empowering local faith communities on empowering the faith community by giving it a language and praxis in its formation, growth, and service in the setting/s in which it finds itself”, bringing the local into dialogue with the global, and inter-disciplinarity.
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