Church -Israel

"Michael J. Vlach, Ph.D.
Introduction
Dispensationalists and non-dispensationalists disagree sharply on the issue of Israel. Dispensationalists maintain that the nation Israel will be saved and restored to a place of service to the nations. Non-dispensationalists, on the other hand, argue that the nation Israel will never again have a role as a nation in the plan of God. Important to this non-dispensational understanding of Israel is Christ’s role as “true Israel.” In sum, the non-dispensational argument goes like this: “Jesus is the complete fulfillment of Israel and, thus, is the ‘true Israel.’ As a result, all those who are ‘in Christ,’ whether Jew or Gentile, are now part of Israel. Thus, there is no future significance for the nation Israel.” Our purpose here is to show that this non-dispensational understanding of Christ as “true Israel” is not supported by Scripture. On the contrary, we will argue that Christ’s identity as the true Israel is the basis for national Israel’s restoration. So instead of leading to the end of national Israel’s significance in the plan of God, Christ’s identity as true Israel guarantees the nation Israel’s significance."

GLifeLine: Adrian Bird, M.M. Thomas - Theological sign posts for the Emergence of Dalit theology

GLifeLine: Adrian Bird, M.M. Thomas - Theological sign posts for the Emergence of Dalit theology

Shroro: The Syriac Orthodox Christian Digest

METHODOLOGICAL iSSUES

Shroro: The Syriac Orthodox Christian Digest

Anan taught that each individual could use simple rules of reason to derive the Law directly from the text of the Torah. Anan's movement (called Ananism) brought various subsects together and eventually was supplanted by Karaism, which differed from Anan's teachings in many respects but still held him in high regard.

Anan ben David - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anan ben David - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Abu Hanifah was accustomed in certain cases to take the words of the Qur'an not in their literal, but in a symbolical sense (Ta'awil); see also Qur'an#Levels of meaning and inward aspects of the Qur'an. Anan adopted a similar method with the Hebrew text of the Bible. Illustrations of this method are not infrequently, indeed, afforded by the Talmud itself. Thus he interpreted the prohibition of plowing on Sabbath (Ex. xxxiv. 21) as applying to marital intercourse; the word 'brothers' (aḥim, Deut. xxv. 5) in connection with the levirate marriage he interpreted as 'relatives,' etc. Anan's method of interpretation, however, was distinct from its Muslim counterpart in that he primarily built upon analogy of expressions, words (the rabbinical gezerah shawah), and single letters.
The earliest sources tell also of another doctrine borrowed by Anan from the Muslims; namely, the belief in the transmigration of the soul (metempsychosis). This doctrine, represented in Greek antiquity especially by Empedocles and the Pythagoreans, had always been widespread in India, and was encountered there by a Muslim etc. called the Rawendites, adopted by them, and in the middle of the eighth century was carried to Babylonia (Iraq). It is also found in Kabbalah. Anan is said to have written a special work in its defense"

2010-09-08 Dr. Raimon Panikkar Obituary Manmorama Sept 8, 2010 Harikrishna

BBC News - Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

BBC News - Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

Nine Ways Not to Talk about God, by Raimon Panikkar

Nine Ways Not to Talk about God, by Raimon Panikkar

Sex allegations shock Kerala Church| Cathnews India

Sex allegations shock Kerala Church Cathnews India

Theologian Raimon Panikkar is no more| Cathnews India

Theologian Raimon Panikkar is no more Cathnews India



Obituary Malayalam papers 1

Manorama September 8 by Harikrishnan

Sanhedrin 106a says about Jesus' mother

http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/Sanhedrin on Mary
Just Genesis
Was Freud an agnostic Jew who believed in the Virgin May? This is likely, and further evidence of the complexity of Freud’s personality. He appears to have accepted at least on the level of myth the idea of Mary as the Bearer of God. Perhaps this Christian view of Mary became embedded through his early exposure to the veneration of the Virgin by the Catholic population of Freiburg, his hometown. Exploration of Freud’s obsession with Anne and the Virgin Mary suggests that he put more stock in the Christian view of Mary than in the Talmudic view which circulated through the synagogues of Europe. Sanhedrin 106a says Jesus' mother was a whore: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” I wonder what Freud would uncover through psychoanalysis of the rabbi who first wrote that? Posted by Alice C. Linsley

Identity Politics and Deconstruction of Theological Methodology

Identity Politics and Deconstruction of Theological Methodology
T. Jacob Thomas

Introduction
In the postmodernist world view there are no fixed or absolute universal foundations for knowledge. Knowledge exists in particular cultural and linguistic communities and is validated by the communities themselves. Reality then is viewed as existing in the interconnectedness of existence and thus deprived of its essentialist status. No essence, only inter-relations. Truth claims are validated within the parameters of particular religions or communities. A common centre of truth outside the community is rejected. Truth can exist at the interface of communities. This provides space to communities in their quest for identity. In India Dalits, tribals, feminists or environmentalists find identity and meaning in their struggles for space. Their identity politics have no common base or common goal unlike the mainstream politics. They create their meaning symbols and particular goals which have no perennial or essentialist claims. What they hold is that our knowledge systems are not doing justice to their particular aspirations and threaten them with the hegemonic claims of dominant knowledge systems and their politics. Todays theological challenge is to bring God into the political struggles of people for identity, freedom and life. Dominant theological schools with their essentialist foundational approaches cannot do justice to these particular politics. A deconstructed theological methodology can only address the challenges of identity politics.
How are traditional theologies constructed?
Early Greek philosophers like Protagoras, held that one’s opinion can be no more correct than another’s, though it did not find acceptance in major schools of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, which viewed the world in terms of “unchanging and invisible forms,” or ideas. For the classical philosophers sought ways to authenticate one’s knowledge and they searched a reason to justify our reasonings. This search for a foundation for their thinking led them to the idea of intuition, which could not be put to criticism. For them a knowledge system can be built only on the basis of what was already known which later Kant described as a priori categories. Sankarite school of advaita in india also based knowledge on something given earlier, either smrti or shruti. Aristotle called the basic forms of knowledge scientia, first principles.
In formulating Christian theology, St. Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle and regarded perception as the starting point and logic as the intellectual procedure for arriving at reliable knowledge of nature. He posited the articles of faith as the first principles, on the basis of the authority of the church. However, the Enlightenment philosophers, armed with the spirit of reformation, attacked such outside authority. Des Cartes made the certainty of the self as the foundation of all knowledge and considered the existence of God as a corollary. His assertion, cogito ergo sum, I cannot doubt that I who doubts exist, made mind as the source of knowledge and not empirical evidence as Aristotelians argued.4F.LeRonShults, The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmaans, 1999), 34.
Schleiermacher, the enlightenment theologian built his theology not on the authority of the Church or the mind but on the self-consciousness of every human being, the “feeling of absolute dependence,” as the foundation for sure knowledge of God. According to the skeptical epistemology of David Hume ( 1711-1776) we can trust only the knowledge that we acquire from our perceptions, either ideas or impressions. That makes knowledge dependent not on intuition, or on any authority outside oneself, nor even on something a priori or given. Hume held that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses. It has been said that ever since the time of Hume knowledge found it difficult to establish itself on any sure foundations. Our knowledge is limited to our reasoning.
The classical philosophical schools agreed that a knowledge is valid if it is universally true. This has been the position of the major philosophical schools of India also. Immanuel Kant while accepting the authority of reason has found room for faith in the limits of reason. He held that there is possibility for pure practical reason to postulate freedom, God and immortality, and that was the realm of faith. Thus faith is not against reason but exists at the limits of reason. Since Kant theology found itself in dialogue with reason which gave it some kind of scientific basis and universality. Theology was considered as science.
The Linguistic Turn and the Death of Foundationalism
Hans-Georg Gadamer ( 1900-2002) was critical of modern approaches to humanities that modeled themselves on the natural sciences and scientific methods and argued that a “historically effected consciousness” is embedded in the text which itself was the product of particular history and culture. Interpreting a text involves a “fusion of horizons” where the meaning emerges in dialogue with the text's history with the interpreter’s own background. The final outcome of all these developments was coming to the realization that no absolute knowledge is possible as the enlightenment conceived. The linguistic turn refers to the demise of the long reign of the philosophy of Cartesian monological subject and the recognition of the centrality of language in the constitution of knowledge5 It was Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein’s (1889-1951) Philosophical Investigations7 that marked the shift in philosophical method. His linguistic analysis perceived reality in terms of language games. No truth is possible outside the language. Languages are shaped by cultural systems and traditions into which we are born. Language is inextricably woven into the fabric of life. Language determines our knowledge. To understand something is no more to form mental “representations” of it as modernism insisted, rather, understanding has become a matter of actively interpreting our world experience—by means of language. The enlightenment belief that reason is neutral and would lead to truth irrespective of context, tradition, or language was found shaky. Schleiermacher had already liberated the hermeneutical theory from the Enlightenment “objectivity” to the consciousness of the feeling subject, paving the way for liberal humanism. Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger rejected the concept of knowing subject by the “lived experience” of the involved subject which would discover itself. All this led to the conviction that philosophy is no longer a search of truth or absolute knowledge, but linguistic analysis or interpretation. Knowledge exists in interpretation. Modern philosophy has become an art of interpretation through its avatars of structuralism, post-structuralism. Their approach to knowledge has been viewed as postmodernist, since they reject the enlightenment foundations knowledge.

Poststructuralism

Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics contended that language is a system of relations and the meaning is processed within that structure. The text has no given meaning and the author disappears behind the structure. The problem with Saussure’s structuralism has been that it rejects not only the Cartesian knowing self but also its subjectivity and subverts the identity consciousness of the marginalized and oppressed groups. The resurgence of identity politics among the submerged or subaltern groups challenged the unitary notions of human kind as false universalism that blocks substantive differences such as race, gender, or ethnicity. This gave rise to Poststructuralism and the strategy of deconstruction. Jacques Derrida’s notion of decentred universe challenged all fixed or absolute notions of centre and periphery and has conceived universe as a free play. There is no authoritative centre, which makes validation of knowledge necessary. Derrida has gone beyond Saussure’s notion that words derive their meaning in their difference with other words and pointed out that since the text has no foundational meaning any number of meaning can be formed by deferring the meaning of a word. This endless passive and active interplay of meaning is termed by Derrida as “differance.” Differance happens not in the difference of words as in structuralism but when something is known only from its absence. 8 The poststructuralist strategy of deconstruction devised by Derrida categorically asserts the absolute impossibility of attributing to any text one single ultimate meaning.9 In deconstruction "objective truth is to be replaced by hermeneutic truth.”10

Politics behind the construction of meaning.

Sacred texts, such as the Bible, do not have a single ultimate meaning nor are such texts necessarily authoritative. All sacred texts are compilations and various socio-cultural political interests played their part in their production. Deconstructing these texts helps us to see how texts are produced and meanings are created. Meanings are created by the social forces to suit their interests. Deconstruction is a rebellion against any absolute meanings or truth claims. It contest the given knowledge absolutized through hierarchical dualities which Derrida calls binary oppositions, creating superiority and inferiority structures of thought and social practices. Deconstruction disrupts and displaces the hierarchy and dismantles its authority and creates space for the “marginals” to present themselves as social agents. The web of relations outside the text may determine both the meaning of the text and the nature of its authority.

The linguistic turn led to the demise of the foundationalist tenet that for truth to exist there must be some sort of “extralinguistic” reality. Instead the legitimacy of a plurality of stand points and interpretations over an absolute or a contextual conception of knowledge or truth was affirmed. The linguistic turn has led to the postmodern argument that there are no truths, but only rival interpretations. This does not mean that language is everything, but that we know everything by means of language. There is no need of any foundation, either by way of intuition or by experience.
Deconstruction of Knowledge

Human experience, insights and the perspective, shape new ways of achieving and producing knowledge. The new view on knowledge does not assume reason to remain the same at all times and in all places. Rather it is now assumed that the subject of knowledge constitutes itself through a large number of social factors in its cultural context, like gender, wealth, class, and tradition.
Knowledge has now become a communicative function, an interplay between competence and performance, a “social construction of reality.” It is no longer result of any inherent human characteristic. Circumstances in society affect the subject’s knowing and knowledge. The question of the nature of knowledge is now replaced with the question of knowledge’s social connection and of rationality in communicative social course of events.
The nonfoundationalists defend an aesthetic relation to self; one should affirm “one’s liberty” by devising a personal style in opposition to all ruling norms. They attempt to immunize particular interpretations from critique by appealing only to the intra communal factors; they disengage themselves from any inter communal or extra communal factors. From a static and monist outlook on human kind, these newer attempts emphasize that the knowledge is produced in the interaction between subject and context. This means that the earlier anthropological essentialism was discarded in favour of a relational view of the human person.
Emergence of Postmodern theologies

The Liberation theology as well as the consequent third World theologies, though aimed at “a radical break” from the Euro-centric epistemologies could not escape the project of modernity, the dialectical progress of history and the Marxist “metanarrative”11 of class struggle. These contextual theologies could not accommodate epistemological and anthropological pluralism because of their basic foundationalistic world-view. Several contemporary scholars responded to the challenge raised by the nonfoundationalist theory of knowledge in a variety of ways. These nonfoundationalist theologies are postmodern as they reject the modern project of metanarratives but in that attempt find themselves in the awkward position of emitting ultraliberal as well as ultra conservative responses.12


The nonfoundational or antifoundational character of theology goes back to Karl Barth or even to Aquinas. Barth held that there could be no “foundation, support, or justification” for theology in any philosophy, theory or epistemology”20 Karl Barth affirmed the self-authenticating Word of God as the foundation of theology. The truth of this Word is self evident to the believer. It may not make any sense to those who do not share the faith. This Barthian approach to Bible has influenced the postliberalist thinking that other religions or schools of thought can have their own valid set of foundations with no need of authentication from any outside authority. George Lindbeck, a postliberal Lutheran theologian, is open about his indebtedness to Aquinas who wrote that the Christian language about God is true, but we do not know how it is true. We know God loves us, but we do not know what love would be like for God. We cannot go beyond our experience; we can only work within the rules the community provided to talk about God.21 As the title of another postliberal theologian William Placher’s book suggests, Christians need not "apologize" for their theology not conforming to non-Christian standards of rationality. Such is true about other religions or knowledge systems too its own way. One system need not conform with another, yet it can be true on its own way. In the classical methodology truth has to conform with other truth claims in order to be true.

Interpreting Hans Frei, the postliberalists argue that the Christian story for them can shape the Christian communal identity.23 It has the assimilative power to absorb the world. Postliberal theology emphasizes the importance of an intratextual use of scripture, relying on “the distinctive internal logic of Christian beliefs and practices.24 Identity politics does not go along with pluralism which says that different methods or religions are saying the same thing. Here the differences among religions, rather than their commonalities, are important. Identities refer to differences. Different identities are free to follow their own systems, meanings. Postliberal theology “emphasizes the scriptural stories or narratives by which Christians identify God and the Christian community and come to understand their own lives.”22 Kathryn Tanner “refuses to locate divine acts in some larger narrative of what is happening in creation, but insists on the primacy of God’s activity, but she sees such an account as ‘empowerment’ of quests for social justice rather than ‘tyranny.’25 Postliberalists attempt for the “creative fusion of hermeneutics and epistemology.”26
Dalit theology

Dalit theology emerged as an academic discipline in the 1980s. It emerged as a quest for a “contested epistemology; it offered a “methodological challenge to the grand narratives of ‘prefix-less’ theology and Indian Christian theology.”35 Arvind P. Nirmal(1936-1995)36 rejected the Brahminic tradition in Indian Christian theology37 He observed that even though a third world theology was emerged in the 1970s under the influence of the Latin American Liberation theology it “failed to see in the struggle of Indian dalits for liberation a subject matter appropriate for doing theology in India.”38 Liberation theology or the third world contextual theologies could not offer a proper method for analyzing and interpreting the story of the Dalits. Dalit theology needed “a methodological shift in this postmodern context.”39 In his search for a suitable critical and constructive method Nirmal digged out the neglected Indian protest tradition of Lokayata or Carvaka school of Indian philosophy which rejects the Brahminic notion of esoteric knowledge. Vinaya Raj introduces a nonfoundationalist poststructuralist method of deconstruction, suitable for Dalit theology. He writes: “Deconstruction-- the poststructural method, as it believes in the fluidity and nonfixity of the meaning/subjectivity helps us to produce new meanings through discursive readings.”40 The nonfoundationalist poststructuralist strategies offer alternate ways of looking at theories of self and social formations, and transform existing caste practices and institutions in order to construct a sense for Dalits as active social agents.

Conclusion

Colin Gunton is of the opinion that we should not give up our search for foundations. For him non-foundationalism is a reflex to foundationalism. He argues, “that the basis and criteria of rationality are intrinsic to particular human intellectual enterprises, which should not have imposed upon them in a procrustean way the methodologies which are appropriate for other forms of intellectual life.”41 Yet Gunton rejects non-foundationalism as it constructs a barrier to outside critique. The nonfoundationalists “run the risk of the rank subjectivism… they evade the intellectual challenge involved in the use of the word ‘God’.”42 Basing on the theology of Cappadocians Gunton writes that since God is a communion of persons and each person is distinct but inseparable from the others, God’s being consists in relationship with one another. He writes,

…[the] three persons are for and from each other in their otherness. They thus confer particularity upon and receive it from one another. That giving of particularity is very important: it is a matter of space to be. Father, Son and Spirit through the shape – the taxis – of their inseparable relatedness confer particularity and freedom on each other. That is their personal being.43

For Barth the doctrine of the imago Dei means that God created human beings for fellowship.44 Humans are naturally fellowshiping beings, with other beings and with God. It also means only in relationship with God that we can be fully human. There is no objectively existing datum that can be called religion, no “true religion” as such. Neither are we able to discover truth. We only become real only in relation between objectivity and subjectivity. Hendrick Kraemer called this Barthian approach “Biblical realism.” Since we cannot understand ourselves or others wholly we must focus on what we are made for—relationship. So the encounter with other religions must focus on the relational aspects of the encounter. The relational character of being human existence, the network of existence need to be the common ground between people, defined by way of religions, ethnicity, race, language or gender. Postliberlaism failed to note this relational aspect of Barthian theology, instead they used him mainly to insulate themselves from any outside scrutiny. Postliberal suggestion that Christian community exists alongside other communities with each having its own rules of discourse and linguistic conventions, each becoming a system unto itself, without any cross-cultural, universal values, is not satisfactory. The problem the postliberalists want to solve is not solved as there still looms the danger of the most dominant group exerting its values upon others. Colin Gunton criticizes postmodernity as “an imperious for truth which abolishes all other truth by a form of homogenization. It is, despite appearances, a form of universalism” 45 Postliberlaism deprives itself any theological warrant to establish mutual relationship as the rules of each community remain separate.
The challenge to Christian theology in India is to demonstrate that Christian faith, at its very heart, and not only in its moral preaching, promotes the dignity and honor of human personhood. Christians have to acknowledge the criticisms raised by contemporary discourses on casteism, racism and, sexism. In order to accept the other, to accept difference, theology should change its universal, fixed, absolute categories of knowledge and values and reorient its theoretical basis to accept the validity of multi-foundational faith, values and practices. If we redefine our worldviews it is possible to see that as stars in relation to galaxies, or galaxies in relation to the universe or universe in relation to multiverse are not necessarily centred on any particular point; the world organism, even the atoms and the subparticles exist only in relationship, one keep the other in its place with their simple presence, mutually influencing and shaping other’s identity. If that relationship is broken the entire universe will collapse. Hence our theologies need to be relational with respect to individuals, communities, genders, races, and all creation, resisting all efforts to subsume the difference or drift away from one another.
Select Bibliography
Ford, David F., ed. The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian theology in the twentieth century. Second edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997. Gellner Ernest. Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London: Routledge, 1992.Danish Yearbook of Philosophy vol 35, 2000. University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum press, 2001. Healy, Paul. Rationality, Hermeneutics, and Dialogue: Toward a Viable Postfoundationalist Account of Rationality. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. Healy, Paul. Rationality Judgment, and Critical Inquiry,” The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1:3, 1993. Kamitsuka, David G. Theology and Contemporary Culture: Liberation, Postliberal and Revisionary Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Lindbeck, Goeorge A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and theology in a postliberal age. Philadelphia: John Knox Press, 1984. Nirmal, Arvind P. Heuristic Explorations. Madras: CLS, 1990. Nirmal, Arvind P.ed. A Reader in Dalit Theology, Madras: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, 1991. Raj, Vinaya, Y. T. “Poststructructuralist theory of language, discourse, power and resistance and its implications for the re-working of Dalit theological methodology,” M.Th. Thesis submitted to the Senate of Serampore College, 2006. Rorty, Richard. The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method .Chicago: University of Chicago press[1967], 1992. Schrag, Calvin. The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge. Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1992. Schwarz, Hans,.Theology in A Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005. Shults, LeRon, F. The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmaans, 1999. Toulmin, Stephen. The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
1This article is a tribute to the memory of Dr. Prasanna Kumari, who always dared to go beyond rules. “The rules are there to be broken,” I heard her saying in one of our encounters. No rule is final. Rules have to be redefined to suit the new situations. Rules must be formed to facilitate growth of the persons and communities, to build realations, to live together. Nonfoundationalist theories challenge us to question our knowledge foundations and open ourselves to create space for differing view points to exist.

2J.Wentzel van Huyssteen, the James I. McCord Professor of Theology and Science at Princeton Theological Seminary, is a major proponent of postfoundationalist theology. He writes: “For theology today, an all-important focus of its dialogue with contemporary culture is not only the challenge of moving beyond the insular comfort of theological foundationalism but also and precisely its uneasy relationship with the sciences. In fact, as theologians, we are now confronted with a double challenge. First, we have to deal with the postmodern trilemma of trying to keep together, in a meaningful whole, a sense of continuity and tradition, a respect for and celebration of pluralism, and a resistance to any form of authoritarian (also epistemological) domination. This challenge does not call for a benign balancing act but rather for a serious engagement that may entail a radical revisioning of the way we theorize about our most basic Christian commitments.” J.Wentzel van Huyssteen, “Is the Postmodernist Always a Postfoundationalist?” Theology Today, vol.50,No.3 (October, 1993), 373.
3Paul Healy, Rationality, Hermeneutics, and Dialogue: Toward a Viable Postfoundationalist Account of Rationality (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 1.
4F.LeRonShults, The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmaans, 1999), 34.
5Richard Rorty, The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago: University of Chicago press [1967],1992), 9. According to Rorty it was Gustav Bergmann, of the logical positivist school of the Vienna circle, who coined the term, “linguistic turn;” see, Rorty, The Linguistic Turn, p.9. He describes linguistic turn as, “a ‘tedious roundabout,’ because it forces us to attend to word alone, instead of concepts or universals which words signify.”
6Different methodological turns can be identified since the emergence of modernity. Classical foundationalism can be described as turn to the subject. David J kamitsuka is of the opinion that the contemporary revisionary theology represented by David Tracy and Thomas F. Torrance was shaped by the modernity's "turn to the subject, with its view that the person is homo religiousus and its insistence that theology is critical reflection on Christian witness. David G. Kamitsuka, Theology and Contemporary Culture: Liberation, Postliberal and Revisionary Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1999), 3., Liberation theology has made a methodological shift from the "subject" to the "subjugated". Another is a sociological turn where metaphysical objectivity is replaced by sociological subjectivity The turn to sociological subjectivity leads to the rejection of human autonomy. This shift led to the rise liberation theology and varieties of socio-political theologies .The subject, that is, the person, is always part of a larger sociological matrix which includes history, culture, economics, religion, politics, and philosophical worldview. Theology does not "fall from the skies" but is constructed within a complex socio-cultural matrix." Socio-political theologies such as liberation theology from Latin America and minjung theology from Korea, homeland theology from Taiwan, and the theology of struggle from the Philippines, are challenging the official histories of the past and their accompanying theologies. Hegel introduced the category of history and the other in the process of knowing. Husserl and Heidegger established that the nature of reality is not to be found in objective truth but in the phenomenological linguistic event. It was Karl Marx who turned the Hegelian notion of epistemology as a dialectical process of consciousness and history to a product of material relations dialectics between free subject and the structure of society .
7Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr. by G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Prentice Hall, 1999). The first edtion was posthumously published in 1953.
8Non-cognition or anupalabdhi of Indian philosophy comes somewhat close to what is meant here. The Upanishadic neti, neti (not this, not this) mainly refer to non-perception of God in Indian epistemology. The Nastika (atheistic) school of Indian philosophy, the Carvakas, accept only perception as valid source of knowledge. R. D. Ranada, A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philisophy (Bombay:Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,1968), cited by K. P. Aleaz, The Role of Pramanas in Hindu-Christian Epistemology (Calcutta:Punthi-Pusthak, 1991), 96. Aleaz identifies six Indian pramanas (valid sources of knowledge) that can contribute to an appropriate method of doing theology in the Indian context. They are: pratyaksa (perception), anumana (inference), sabda (verbal testimony), upamana (comparison), arthapatti (postulation) and anupalabdhi (non-cognition);.see p. 120. Aleaz writes: …Indian Philosophy through non-cognition recommends apophatic Indian Christian Theology. There are four kinds of non-existence which can be known through the theological method of non-cognition. They are Pragabhava or the absence of the effect (jar) in its material cause (clay) previous to its coming into existence e.g., the absence of Creation in God previous to its coming into existence; dhvasmsabhava is non-existence as represented by destruction e.g., non-existence of jar in broken parts; non-existence of the image of God the broken humanity due to alienation from God; atyantabhava is the absolute non-existence of an object in a locus, e.g., absolute non-existence of evil in God; and anyonabhava is a difference or separateness owing to which we judge ‘A’ is not ‘B’ e.g., the third world is not the first world and vice versa” (pp 128-129).
9 Ze'ev Levy, "On Deconstruction -- Can There Be Any Ultimate Meaning of a Text?" Philosophy and Social Criticism 14, no. 1 (1988): 18
10 Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992), 35.
11 Lyotard says,” I define post-modern as incredulity towards metanarratives.” Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis: U. Minnesota, 1984) First published in French in 1979.
12 William A. Beardslee, David Ray Griffin Joe Holland, Varieties of Postmodern Theology (Albany:SUNY Press, 1989).
13 Graham Ward, ‘Postmodern Theology” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian theology in the twentieth century, second edition, edited by David F. Ford ( Cambridge, Mass. :Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997) 585-601, 588.
14Graham Ward, “Postmodern Theology” in The Modern Theologians, 589. For Mark C. Taylor, who coined the term “a/theology,” it is a post ecclesiastical theology, where theology and anthropology merge and “religious studies become a subset of cultural studies, even aesthetics, and transcendence issues only within immanence” Ibid., 590.
15 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine : Religion and theology in a postliberal age (Philadelphia: John Knox Press, 1984).
16 Graham Ward, ‘Postmodern Theology” in The Modern Theologians, 589. 993
17John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1993).
18See William C. Placher, “Postliberal Theology in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian theology in the twentieth century, second edition, edited by David F. Ford ( Cambridge, Mass. : Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997), 343-356.
19Ronald F. Thiemann, Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated promise (Notre Dame, IN, 1985). 158; cited by William C. Placher, “Postliberal Theology" in The Modern Theologians, 344.
20Karl Barth, CD I/1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1986), xiii.
21George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine : Religion and theology in a postliberal age (Philadelphia: Westminster, John Knox Press, 1984); also see William C. Placher, “Postliberal Theology,” in David F. Ford, ed., The Modern Theologians, 343 –356.
22 William C. Placher, “Postliberal Theology,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian theology in the twentieth century, second edition, edited by David F. Ford ( Cambridge, Mass. : Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997), 344-5.
23Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative (New Haven, 1974), 99; cited in William C. Placher, “Postliberal Theology in The Modern Theologians, 344-5.
24 David G. Kamitsuka, Theology and Contemporary ulture: Liberation, Postliberal and Revisionary Perspectives ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3.
25 William C. Placher, “Postliberal Theology,” in The Modern Theologians, 353; Kathryn Tanner, God and the Doctrine of Creation (New York: Blackwell, 1990).
26 Shults, The Postfoundationalist, 78.
27 Ibid., 80-81.
28 The Mark Bevir, “Postfoundationalism and Social Democracy” Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, vol. 35, 2000 ( University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum press, 2001), 8.
29Shults, The Postfoundationalist, .65.
30 Mark Bevir, “Postfoundationalism and Social Democracy,” Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, vol , 2000 ( University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2001), 9.
31 Tom Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol.1. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992, 560..
32F. Le Ron Shults, The Postfoundationalistic Task of theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality (Grand Rapid, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 46, 79.
33Calvin Schrag, The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992) 166; Shults, The Postfoundationalist, 65.
34 Shults, The Postfoundationalist, 64.
35 Y. T. Vinaya Raj, “Poststructructuralist theory of language, discourse, power and resistance and its implications for the re-working of Dalit theological methodology,” M.Th. Thesis submitted to the Senate of Serampore College, 2006, p.53, 64. Vinaya Rraj, a Dalit scholar, observes that Dalit theology followed “the salient features of the liberal humanism and the theoretical framework of the project of modernity .”
36Arvind P. Nirmal, Heuristic Explorations (Madras: CLS, 1990) 106. Nirmal made pioneering contributions to the academic discussions on Dalit theology while he was the head of the Department of Dalit Theology in Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, Chennai.
37Hans Schwarz, Theology in A Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans 2005), 529.
38Arvind P. Nirmal, “Towards a Christian Dalit Theology,” in A Reader in Dalit Theology, ed. Arvind P. Nirmal (Madras: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, 1991), 54.
39Vinaya Raj observes: Caste “as an episteme was a product of Brahmanic-Hindu epistemology.” “Brahminism upheld its hegemonic social position, by constructing certain knowledges and disciplinary practices.” “It is paradoxical that though Dalit theology criticizes the Euro-centric worldview, it shows an ambivalent relation to the European Enlightenment project.” Y. T. Vinaya Raj, “Poststructructuralist theory of language, p.53.
40 Y. T. Vinayraj, “Poststructructuralist theory of language, 74.
41 Colin Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 133.
42 Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, 134.
43 Colin Gunton, “Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of the Imago Dei,” Persons, divine and Human. King's College Essays in Theological Anthropology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark,1992), 56.
44 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), 347ff.
45Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, 131.

The Bible and Psychology

The Bible and Psychology


The first is the fear-anxiety-apprehension syndrome. The world is caught up in this to a great degree because it says, "There is no help for mankind---this is a meaningless universe." The world cares nothing for the individual who is only a number, and though each individual is a unique person there is really no help for that person. Each individual is just one of billions of other people. We live in an amoral world that is hostile to the individual. Therefore, because of this we have fears, anxieties, and apprehensions, as to what is coming.

The second set of emotions that bothers us is the anger-hostility-hated syndrome, since basically we are afraid. This is a cover up, and thus we exhibit our fears which come out through anger, hostility, and hatred. And hostility is the direct action to powerlessness in one's life because of what he fears. This bothers the Christian as well as the non-Christian.

The third set of emotions that we are plagued with is that of the depression-guilt-psychic pain syndrome. It is interesting to note that the majority of people that occupy hospital beds are there not because of physical illness, but because of emotional, mental and psychological problems. If as human beings we could be rid of these, there would be plenty of beds in all hospitals today. It is an abiding sorrow that bothers every individual. For the non-Christian, it is an unconsciousness sense of guilt, though that person may not acknowledge or recognize it. For the Christian it may be unconfessed sin which therefore leads to depression and guilt feelings.

The fourth set of emotions that bothers us is what may be termed as destructive egotism. This is another form of fear; "I am myself, I have an ego, and I have desire to have it built up to a certain degree. And yet in my desires to have my ego built up, there is also a certain amount of fear, and so I am trying to balance my fears with my ego as an individual," and that gives everyone problems.

Over against these four sets of adverse emotions needs to be fulfilled, else these destructive tendencies will overcome us as human beings. This is where the principles of God's Word are highly focused in the book of Philippians. In brief, they can be pointed out as follows:

The first emotional need that we have to be fulfilled is that of affection---to love and to be loved. Every baby born into the world desires this. Sometime ago, an experiment was made in Colorado, in which a doctor took a group of unwanted babies who had been abandoned. He found that within a year the majority of them died. Yes, they were well cared for and they were fed, and the nurses looked after them; but they died because they lacked affection and love, because every human being needs this. This is why God gave to us mothers, to breast-feed babies, not only for the benefit of the mother's milk that the baby receives, but for that sense of security that the baby gets as it is held in it's mother's arms. That is something that no bottle will ever accomplish, and every human being needs this affection not only as babies, but for the rest of one's life.

The second emotion that needs to be fulfilled is that of acceptance---of who one is, and each individual's unique character. We need to feel accepted by other people. This is part of our community of being together.

The third emotion is that of appreciation---to have a favorable critical estimate made of one's self: A certain kind of approbation, a slap on the back for a good job well done. We give medals, letters of commendation, watches, appreciation banquets---we pass out awards and rewards, and various sorts of things. Why? Because we all need it. We need to be appreciated.

The fourth emotion that all need is that of achievement---not only a sense of satisfaction or accomplishment, but also that which is praiseworthy, so when we achieve a certain goal there comes a certain amount of appreciation for that achievement, and it makes us feel good, so we desire it.

The Old Testament and the Sanctity of Life | CBHD.org

The Old Testament and the Sanctity of Life | CBHD.org
One of the most important contributions of the Old Testament creation theology is its implicit universality. Those familiar with the Bible tend to take this universality for granted, but it is an enormously important dimension of Old Testament creation theology and must not be overlooked. Consider the fact that all references to humanity in the early Genesis narratives are references to all humanity. God says, “Let us make humankind in our image.” This explicitly includes “male and female” (Gen. 1:26-27), and implicitly includes every male and female. The shedding of anyone’s blood is banned in Genesis 9:5-6 on the basis of everyone’s status as the image of God. Delegation of dominion is extended to all humans—William Brown describes this as the “democratization of royalty in the creation account”—such that we are all kings.1 Psalm 8 reflects on the “glory and honor” with which humanity as such is “crowned.” There is no hierarchy offered here between subcategories of human beings: Jew or non-Jew, male or female, young or old, slave or free, sick or well, friend or enemy (cf. Galatians 3, where Paul can be taken to argue that this original human egalitarianism has been renewed in Christ). The fact that such distinctions dominate much of human history and even creep into biblical law and narrative represents a weakening of this implicitly egalitarian and universalizing theology of creation.2 There is but one God who makes one humanity. This is a non-negotiable element of biblical creation theology.

The oneness of humanity in part results from our common origin not just in one Creator God but in one shared ancestor. The creation narrative found in Genesis 2 tells a story in which God begins to create humanity by creating one person first. Here the older, less gender-sensitive English style actually helps us: God creates “man[kind]” by creating “a man.” The first woman is then formed out of the first man. From them come absolutely everyone else. Paul put it this way at Mars Hill: “From one he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth” (Acts 17:26). Paul actually offers a wordplay here—from enos (one) to ethnos (nations/peoples). However unlike each other the different ethnoi may seem, we came from the same place. From one person, came all people. One might say that Genesis 1 teaches the universality of the imago Dei, and Genesis 2 teaches a primal human unity by narrating a story in which all human beings come from one common ancestor. In our origins, we are one race—the human race.

Doctrine of Man in the Old Testament

Doctrine of Man in the Old Testament
Throughout the OT the relationship of man to nature is everywhere stressed. As man shares with nature share with man in the actualities of his living. Thus, while nature was made to serve man, so man on his part is required to tend nature (Gen. 2:15). Nature is therefore not a sort of neutral entity in relation to man's life. For between the two, nature and man, there exists a mysterious bond so that when man sinned the natural order was itself deeply afflicted (Gen. 3:17 - 18; cf. Rom. 8:19 - 23). Since, however, nature suffered as a result of man's sin, so does it rejoice with him in his redemption (Ps. 96:10 - 13; Isa. 35, etc.), for in man's redemption it too will share (Isa. 11:6 - 9).

But however deeply related man is to the natural order, he is presented nonetheless as something different and distinctive. Having first called the earth into existence with its various requisites for human life, God then declared for the making of man. The impression that the Genesis account gives is that man was the special focus of God's creative purpose. It is not so much that man was the crown of God's creative acts, or the climax of the process, for although last in the ascending scale, he is first in the divine intention. All the previous acts of God are presented more in the nature of a continuous series by the recurring use of the conjunction "and" (Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24). "Then God said, 'Let us make man.'" "Then", when? When the cosmic order was finished, when the earth was ready to sustain man. Thus, while man stands before God in a relationship of created dependence, he has also the status of a unique and special personhood in relation to God.


Man's constituents
The three most significant words in the OT to describe man in relation to God and nature are "soul" (nepes, 754 times), "spirit" (ruah, 378 times), and "flesh" (basar, 266 times). The term "flesh" has sometimes a physical and sometimes a figuratively ethical sense. In its latter use it has its context in contrast with God to emphasize man's nature as contingent and dependent (Isa. 31:3; 40:6; Pss. 61:5; 78:39; Job 10:4). Both nepes and ruah denote in general the life principle of the human person, the former stressing more particularly his individuality, or life, and the latter focusing on the idea of a supernatural power above or within the individual.
Of the eighty parts of the body mentioned in the OT the terms for "heart" (leb), "liver" (kabed), "kidney" (kelayot), and "bowels" (me'im) are the most frequent. To each of these some emotional impulse or feeling is attributed either factually or metaphorically. The term "heart" has the widest reference. It is brought into relation with man's total phychical nature as the seal or instrument of his emotional, volitional, and intellectual manifestations. In the latter context it acquires a force we should call "mind" (Deut. 15:9; Judg. 5:15 - 16) or "intellect" (Job 8:10; 12:3; 34:10), and is frequently employed by metonymy to denote one's thought or wish with the idea of purpose or resolve. For one's thought or wish is what is "in the heart," or, as would be said today, "in the mind."

These several words do not, however, characterize man as a compound of separate and distinct elements. Hebrew psychology does not divide up man's nature into mutually exclusive parts. Behind these usages of words the thought conveyed by the Genesis account, that man's nature is twofold, remains. Yet even there man is not presented as a loose union of two disparate entities. There is no sense of a metaphysical dichotomy, while even that of an ethical dualism of soul and body is quite foreign to Hebrew thought. By God's inbreathing the man he formed from the dust became a living soul, a unified being in the interrelation of the terrestrial and the transcendental

The Old Testament View of Human Nature

The Old Testament View of Human Nature

No age knows so much and so many things about human nature as does ours, yet no age knows less about what man really is. Having lost their awareness of God, many people today are concerned primarily with their present existence. The loss of awareness of God makes many people uncertain about the meaning of life, because it is only in reference to God and His revelation that the nature and destiny of human life can be truly understood.

The question of human nature has been a consistent concern in the history of Western thought. In chapter 1 we noted that, historically, most Christians have defined human nature dualistically, that it consists of a material, mortal body and an immaterial, immortal soul which survives the body at death. Beginning with the Enlightenment (a philosophic movement of the 18th century), attempts have been made to define man as a machine that is part of a giant cosmic machine. Human beings hopelessly are trapped within a deterministic universe and their behavior is determined by such impersonal and involuntary forces as genetic factors, chemical secretions, education, upbringing, and societal conditioning. People do not have an immaterial, immortal soul, only a mortal, material body that is conditioned by the determinism of the cosmic machine.

This depressing materialistic view that reduces human beings to the status of a machine or an animal negates the Biblical view of man created in the image of God. Instead of being "like God," human beings are reduced to being "like an animal." Perhaps as a response to this pessimistic view, various modern pseudo-pagan cults and ideologies (like the New Age) deify human beings. Man is neither "like an animal" or "like God," he is god. He has inner divine power and resources that await to be unleashed. This new humanistic gospel is popular today because it challenges people to seek salvation within themselves by tapping into and releasing the powers and resources that slumber within.

What we are experiencing today is a violent swing of the pendulum from an extreme materialistic view of human nature to an extreme mystic, deification view. In this context, people are confronted with two choices: Either human beings are nothing but preprogrammed machines, or they are divine with unlimited potential. The Christian response to this challenge is to be sought in the Holy Scriptures which provide the basis for defining our beliefs and practices. Our study shows that Scripture teaches we are neither preprogrammed machines nor divine beings with unlimited potential. We are creatures created in the image of God, and dependent upon Him for our existence in this world and in the world to come.