The centrality of marginality to Christian theology and life

This month at the theology reading group, we are discussing Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology by Jung Young Lee.

How do we make sense of our life experience in terms of theology? How do we make sense of theology in terms of our life experience? Given our humanity (finitude and egoism), it is impossible to completely separate our theology and our experience. Will they enrich or distort one another? Previously, I have written about the challenges of contextual theology.

Jung Young Lee was born in North Korea in 1935, escaped to South Korea during the Korean War, and immigrated to the USA as an undergraduate student. He then worked as a librarian, obtained a Ph.D., taught in a secular university, became a minister in the United Methodist Church, was active in its Korean-American congregations, and became a Professor of Systematic Theology at Drew University. Over the years, he experienced racism, prejudice, and stereotyping as an Asian-American.  Not feeling he belonged in the USA, he returned to South Korea at one point with the intention of staying. However, he discovered that he felt he no longer belonged there either.

Lee makes sense of his life through three lenses: historical, sociological, and theological. He recounts the historical experience of immigrants to the USA from Japan, Korea, and China, beginning in the nineteenth century. It is a sad and disturbing history of exploitation, discrimination, and humiliation. He discusses the sociological concept of marginality that was introduced to describe the "integration" of immigrants into the American "melting pot." He contests some of these definitions as they are developed by those in the centre and assume that being on the margins is bad and that the marginalised should move towards the centre. The centre is characterised by a concern with "wealth, power, and glory." (page 31)

"Immigration is the most vivid and profound symbol of marginality for us." (page 110).

Lee claims that "Theology is autobiographical so I reflect on my praxis and context." (page 33).

Lee discusses how marginality is central to the Biblical narrative. The Tower of Babel "was the symbol of centralisation" (p. 110). 

Lee suggests that in Old Testament narratives there are three acts (p,111). 

1. God's call to be a marginal people

2. Faith

3. "The promise which includes  receiving land, becoming a powerful nation, and making a great name (Genesis 12:1-9)."

"These three acts are inseparable. The first and third acts seem to contradict one another, but they are connected in the second act. The order of these acts cannot be reversed.... Tragedies in the history of Judaism and Christianity were due to the reversal this order... The coexistence of both marginality (the first act) and centrality (the third act) is possible in faith (the second act), the connecting principle..."

There is a dialectic. It is both/and rather than either/or.

God called Moses from his marginal status to lead the Israelite slaves out of Egypt. They wandered in the wilderness for forty years. Jesus was born in a stable, the son of a teenage unwed woman, and grew up in Galilee. In the wilderness, he resisted the temptation to embrace "wealth, power, and honour." He was scorned by the centre: the local religious and political leaders. The focus of his ministry was on the marginalised: the poor, sick, ritually unclean, hungry, lame, beggars, prostitutes, and tax collectors.  Jesus' death on the cross was the ultimate symbol of marginalisation. His disciples were not drawn from the social, political, or religious elites.

Humility, service, and love are the dominant characteristics Jesus said his followers should have. The early church did this and lived on the margins. Yet, following Constantine and the rise of Christendom, the church embraced centrality and scorned marginality. It was characterised by wealth, honour, and power. Today, the church, in all its diverse forms, still aspires to centrality. It is hierarchical, bureaucratic, and exclusive. Dogma does not recognise multiple shades of grey. (p. 125) "Centralism is the cardinal sin that destroys the authentic church." (p.142)

Lee presents a radical alternative vision for the church, including for seminaries. He argues that cell groups should be the core structural element of the church. Structures should be characterised by flexibility, local autonomy, and informality.

I have sympathy for his proposals, but sometimes I find he is idealistic and overly optimistic. Some of his proposals may work for a marginalised community such as Korean-Americans (who tend to be disciplined, well-organised, and highly educated). However, for groups of people such as the homeless and those with addictions or traumatic backgrounds, it is extremely challenging for them to develop structures and leaders. Such challenges are helpfully described in an earlier post by my wife, Robin.

On a personal level, I found the book challenging and discomforting. I am a child of the centre, in terms of family background, race, education, wealth, social status, and profession. Most of my life, I have been involved in churches and ministries that value and focus on centrality and marginality. This has not involved a blatant seeking after wealth, power, and honour. It has been much more subtle and subconscious, reflecting the surrounding culture and background of the participants and leaders. Too often I have been attracted to the centre and seduced by it. Only over the last fifteen years, I have a moved to a more marginal outlook and focus, stimulated by experiences in the Majority World. Yet the pull back to the centre is there day after day, particularly towards comfort, safety, and predictability.

The orientation and main messages of the book are largely not new to me. Nevertheless, it is a message I need to keep hearing. Lee's description of the immigrant experience, both his own and his historical predecessors, increased my imagination and empathy towards the immigrants I interact with. He gives seven characteristics of the experience of marginality: rejection, humiliation, alienation, loneliness, nothingness, allness, and a vision of new life.

Balance and emphasis are the impossible but necessary tasks of theology

Christian theology is talking and writing about the triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). It has a history of two thousand years. There are multiple traditions: Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Reformed, Liberal, Evangelical, Feminist, Black, Liberation, Conservative... 

There are multiple sub-disciplines of theology:  Biblical, Old Testament, New Testament, Trinitarian, missional, spiritual, historical, pastoral, practical, political, ...

There are multiple topics: Trinity, creation, sin, redemption, revelation, the Cross, the Incarnation, soteriology, ecclesiology, Christology, eschatology,...

Denominations, churches, parachurch ministries, and careers are often built on making one of these theologies central and dominant.

There is endless jockeying and competition within the church and the academy for the relative importance and priority of one of these theologies. Fashions come and go. The "breakthrough" or "paradigm" of yesterday is today seen as a mistake or irrelevant or simplistic... However, it is amazing how in the long run people keep coming back to something basic that centres around the Bible and the theology of the early church, such as in the Apostles Creed.

Different factions critique one another, sometimes carefully and graciously. Sometimes critiques are harsh, aggressive, dogmatic, selective, and ill-informed. People talk past one another. Individuals and groups and their voices get marginalised within certain communities if they do not conform to the favoured "theology".

How do we make sense of all these competing voices?

Much of the difference between these theologies is of emphasis. One particular topic, concept, method, perspective, Biblical passage, doctrine, creed, or historical figure is claimed to be the most important and to provide the key to making sense of everything else. The problem is whether the emphasis is helpful overall or whether the emphasis distorts the overall picture in an unhelpful way.  

Where does this diversity come from?

We should not be surprised by this diversity of perspectives and emphases as the diversity reflects the nature of the object under study and the nature of the subject studying it.

The objects under study are God, humanity, the world, and their interplay. This is a multi-faceted reality. The complexity of these objects requires descriptions at multiple levels and perspectives. This leads to a multiplicity of questions, methods, and conclusions.

Just consider the Bible. It has multiple authors, and possibly editors, who wrote in diverse contexts over two thousand years. There is a multiplicity of genres: history, law, poetry, prophecy, pastoral letters, and apocalyptic. How is this canon of literature to be interpreted? Naturally, the text will mean different things to different people at different times and in different contexts. The text does not interpret itself. Readers will interpret the text drawing on a complex interplay of interplay of reason, experience, and tradition. Even interpreters who claim to be drawing on a specific tradition have to also interpret that tradition. Given our diversity of personalities, life histories, and contexts it should not be surprising that we disagree about questions of meaning and significance on the most profound topic of all: God.

Everyone is a theologian. We are all human and this means that our theology is constrained by our limitations, individually and corporately. On the one hand, human language is incredibly powerful and a testament to what makes humans different from other animals. On the other hand, language, particularly formal academic language, cannot fully capture complex and subtle realities. That is why we have poetry!

Given our finite mental and linguistic capacities we need simplicity. This leads us to develop models, metaphors, frameworks, doctrinal statements and creeds. All models are wrong, but some are useful. 

Theologies can reflect the fallen nature of humanity. Our reason and communication are corrupted by sin. This can lead to the narcissism of small differences. Eugene Peterson says "a sect is a front for narcissism."

What do we really need? 

Humility, grace, and love. We need to be humble about our own abilities, individually and collectively, to discern the truth. We need to be gracious towards those who have different views. We need to be driven by love, love for God and love for others.

That there is a plurality of theologies does not mean they are all equally valid. On the one hand, we should not deny subjectivity. On the other hand, a careful comparison and critique of theologies different to our own may show their respective limitations. Commonalities that transcend our contexts may be a signpost to the essential truths to emphasise. Our focus should be on being more faithful to the centre, rather than trying to determine and enforce the boundaries of acceptable belief.

We need dialectic. A problem with many theologies is that they are dualistic. They are either/or. They embrace false dichotomies. There is room for both/and. Consider the following pairings: the humanity and divinity of Jesus, free will and predestination (human agency and God's sovereignty), faith and works, grace and judgement, redemption now but not yet, creation and fall (humans being made in the image of God versus corrupted by sin), faith and reason, special and general revelation, ... They need to be held in creative tension. Finding such a balance is impossible to do perfectly. But it is necessary if we are to be faithful to our subject.

Balance and emphasis are the impossible but necessary tasks of theology.

Contrasting ways that Asians and Westerner's think about theology

 In the theology reading group over two months we discussed Asian Christian Theology: Evangelical Perspectives, published by Langham. It is an edited volume with 16 different authors and is divided into two equal parts, covering doctrinal themes and contemporary concerns. Asia is defined in geographic terms and the authors come from more than ten different countries, including Hong Kong, Israel, and Sri Lanka. Although their contexts are very diverse there are some common features, such as gross economic inequality, Christians being a religious minority, societies are largely religious, globalisation, and limited religious and political freedoms.

Previously, I have written some about the challenges of contextual theology.

According to the Ph.D. program in contextual theology at the Asian Theological Seminary in Manila.

Contextual theology does not mean elevating the local to the detriment of the global. It simply challenges other local theologies that have been elevated to classical status. Thus, contextual theology, while oriented towards a particular society or culture or cultural sub-group, is still in conversation with other theologies in a global discourse since it recognizes that the church is both local and universal. This implies that issues tackled in research will be rooted in the local context but will have global resonance or implications.

The first part of the book aims to give some Asian perspectives on the following doctrinal themes: revelation, scripture, the Trinity, Christology, creation, the Holy Spirit, ecclesiology, and eschatology. I felt that these chapters were a little disappointing as they seemed too "Western" to me. Perhaps this is because almost all the authors did Ph.D.'s in the West!

I felt the second part of the book was better and here focus on just a few chapters.

On page 248 there is a fascinating footnote about Asian modes of thinking. 

In his book, Mangoes or Bananas: The Quest for an Authentic Christian Theology, Hwa Yung suggests that Easterners have a relational approach in contrast to the rational approach of Westerners. Melba Maggay suggests that Asians focus on synthesis and seek to harmonise contradictions. In contrast, Westerners have a "mental habit of logical negation and either-or-thinking."

In all Asian countries, except the Philippines, Christianity is a minority religion. This means that daily life for Christians in Asia involves interactions with people from different religions. Ivan Satyovatra and Kang-San Tan each present chapters on this topic.

The discussion of any topic, not just in theology, is framed and even determined by what questions one asks and what framework is used to answer those questions. With regard to non-Christian religions, questions commonly posed are "Can a non-Christian be saved?" and "Is the Christian God present in non-Christian religions?" Furthermore, addressing this topic, one should be clear about how a particular "religion" is defined and evaluated. Is it in terms of beliefs, practices, texts, or culture? And who gets to define these things: local practitioners, Western academics, or religious authorities?

There is a common typology used to classify the perspective of Christian writers on other religions: exclusivist, inclusivist, or pluralist. Tan reviews three main criticisms of this typology (p. 280-1). First, it oversimplifies the diversity of religions and the diversity within them. Second, it restricts the diversity of possible Christian responses. "Third, the focus of the typology has been mostly on doctrinal comparison between religious systems rather than on people and relationships between faith practitioners. In particular, the typology does not allow a sufficient role for the process of encounter between people from different religions." In different words, it represents a false trichotomy. I find this last criticism fascinating because it reflects an Asian inclination to focus on relationships rather than rationality, as noted in the comments from Yung and Maggay that I mentioned above.

Tan then proposes an alternative typology that is built around Hans Frei's Five Types of Theology, as recounted by David Ford in Theology: A Very Short Introduction. Although I think this is an interesting discussion and it surpasses the three-fold typology, I did not find it more illuminating.

In chapter 11, "Jesus and Other Faiths," Ivan Satyavratra first gives a detailed critique of the pluralist position. He concludes that its most serious weakness is "the huge logical inconsistency inherent in its attempt to deny the right of other worldviews to make any privileged claims, even as pluralism itself employs tradition-specific criteria in evaluating religious beliefs." It "makes exclusive truth claims about the nature of reality just like any other religious belief system." (page 229).

He then presents an alternative proposal in his own context, a "fulfillment" approach. Jesus is the ultimate fulfilment of other religions, in some ways similar to how Jesus was the fulfilment of Judaism. Paul's addresses to Gentile audiences that are recorded in Acts 14 and 17 reflect a similar perspective as Paul argues Jesus is the fulfillment of the god found in the local religion. There is then a nice overview of Indians with Hindu backgrounds who have embraced this approach over the last two hundred years. A similar approach has been advocated by John Mbiti with respect to African traditional religions.

Alternative models of contextual theology

Christian theology is a discussion that aims to apprehend and understand the triune God; the God that is claimed to be revealed by the Bible and the accounts therein of God's action in history.

But this discussion of God always occurs in a particular context: social, economic, political, cultural, linguistic, historical, and intellectual. Furthermore, the discussion is always conducted by groups of individuals who all have their own personalities and life experiences. Yet, the God of the Bible is so much greater than these contexts and individuals. 

Hence, I agree with the claim that "all theology is contextual". To me, this is almost stating the obvious. Contexts matter. However, to some, this claim is contentious and they may see it as a slippery slope towards relativism (all views are equally valid) and/or towards syncretism where the radical counter-cultural message of the Gospel is compromised and absorbed into a local culture. But, to me, this claim is more a position of humility and a desire to understand others and their context, and be willing to learn from them. It can help me explore how my own theology (both implicit and explicit) and the theology of those that I interact with, has been influenced, for better or worse, by our contexts.

Key questions I would like to explore include the following.

How does one define a context? 

What elements of a context are key to understanding how they influence the development of a particular theology?

How does one discern what should be normative in any contextual theology?

Behind the last question is a general philosophical problem that reflects the is-ought problem, the fact-value distinction, and the relationship between descriptive and prescriptive statements. Just because we observe something is, does not mean that is the way it should be. For example, someone observes that "teenagers are disrepectful," or "boys will be boys," or "there will always be poor people." That does not mean that the behaviour is morally correct, that one should not seek to change it, or that it is impossible to change.

There are many contextual theologies: liberation theology, Dalit theology, Catholic theology, Reformed theology, ... The fact that we observe them, describe them, and try to understand their relationship with the context from which they emerged does not mean that they are "true", appropriate, useful, or should not be changed.

A widely used text is by Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology. Laurie Green has a helpful dot-point summary of the book.  Bevans's more recent book, An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective  has a nice summary including the figures below.

This frames how contextual theology can be viewed as critical dialogue between the experience of the past (embodied in Scripture and Tradition) and the experience of the present. There are several reading and interpretation exercises (hermeneutics) going on. The Bible must be read and interpreted. A specific context must be read and interpreted. There is a hermeneutical circle for the Bible and for the context. The parts must be interpreted in light of the whole and the whole must be interpreted in light of the parts. Contextual theology will also involve a hermeneutical circle. The context is interpreted in light of the Bible and the Bible is interpreted in light of the context.

Bevans proposes six distinct models of contextual theology. They put different relative emphasis on the past and the present, leading to their different locations on the diagram above. Those on the left emphasise the goodness of creation and have a higher value of general revelation than special revelation. Those on the right emphasise the fallen nature of the creation and the need to redeem it, and put a low value on general revelation.

The names of the six models are given below.

Anthropological model

Local cultures can reflect the goodness of God and theology needs to affirm them and be adapted to them.

Praxis model

Practice and theological reflection cannot be separated.

Synthetic model

There are strengths and weaknesses of all these models and so one tries to take the good things from all the models.

Translation model

There is a message that is independent of any context and the primary task of theology is to translate that message into that context.

Countercultural model

Without Christ, cultures are fallen and stand against Christ. They need to be changed.

Transcendental model

The focus in on the subject, the person. Revelation must be experienced. In ones context, one experiences God.

In another post, I will discuss these models in more detail. Before, doing so I would state again that "all models are wrong, but some are useful." Bevans makes several pertinent observations about models. 

Models are a kind of pattern or template that offers a way of performing a task... Models... are streamlined, artificially constructed ways of thinking... like symbols... they should be taken "seriously, but not literally."...

Models may be either exclusive or complementary.

Models of something [that people have done] might also be models for something [that people might do].

Later I will also explore how some of these ideas may be relevant (or not) to considering science-theology interactions in different contexts.

Context matters

 "A text without a context is a pre-text". I have sometimes heard preachers say this in the context :) of interpreting a verse or passage in the Bible. Verses need to be interpreted in terms of passages. Passages need to be interpreted in terms of whole books. Books of the Bible need to be interpreted in terms of the context in which they were written.

Context also matters in many other areas of life. Everything that happens, whether a thought, a political revolution, a work of art, or a new technology happens in a context. There are many dimensions to a context: social, political, cultural, historical, geographic, linguistic, and economic. When trying to understand a specific event important questions about the context of the event include:

How do you define the context of the event? Specifically, what dimensions to the context may be relevant to understanding the event?

To what extent does the specific context influence the specific event?

On the latter, there are two extreme views. I will call them universalist and determinist. A universalist will say the context does not really matter. A determinist will say that the context determines the event. 

These questions are relevant to issues in the philosophy of science. Consider Einstein's theory of special relativity. It occurred in the context of Einstein working in the Swiss patent office, a time of rapid social change with Europe heading towards world war I, the beginnings of the decline of modernism, new "relativist" perspectives in art (Picasso),... Universalists say the context is irrelevant. The theory is true, was developed on purely scientific grounds, and the only thing contextual about it is that its development required the brilliance of Einstein. The social constructivist view of science tends towards a determinist view. Although, that tends to mostly focus on the influence that the scientific community as a social entity has on the acceptance of theories.

Broadly, these questions are at the heart of one of the biggest and most contested questions in sociology: what is the relationship between human agency and social structures?

There are several reasons why I am interested in the question of context. One concerns the issue of contextual theology. Another motivation is to understand how contexts influence discussions of the relationship between science and theology. But, more on these topics later...