Theology and Community
Thoughts on Karl Barth Pt.1
I’m currently reading “The Word of Christ and the World of Culture – Sacred and Secular through the Theology of Karl Barth” by Paul Louis Metzger.
This will be the first of a few postings on my thoughts about this book. It’s not actually a Karl Barth book, but a book by someone about Karl Barth’s books, which is hard to get your head round. However, my first thoughts are a step back from that to something broader.
For me the writings unfortunately end just where I start to find them interesting – as they veer towards sociology.
Is it the role of theology to guard against wandering away from authentic belief?
If that is so, do we allow the theologians to be our conscience, pulling us back everytime we stray too far leftfield?
Or is it everyone’s individual responsibilty to be theologically adept – to plunge into an undeniably closed discourse that requires us to delve into a realm that is (sometimes) far too insular to allow the average person of faith to grasp meaning?
My feeling is that a sense of community is vital in this. It is a source of conflict that could yield tremendous wisdom for all – if we allow it to.
Both the theologian and the average christian have a responsibility towards each other.
The community must call the theologian to account. It is simply not acceptable for theological discourse to maintain a sub-cultural insularity; it must allow it’s relevance to be explained clearly in order for the undeniable benefits it has to be manifest in the church. It is important to explain what the difference is (for example) between something like anhypostasis and enhypostasis, what the relevance is, and why it matters, in clear terms that people can understand.
Barth is undeniably a modern – and it is true that we live in a postmodern age, and therefore that meta-narratives need to be questioned responsibly. Otherwise such discourse will run the risk of seperation, irrelevance, and dissonance.
However to put the other side of the argument, it is equally important that theology be allowed to question the community, and draw that community back to orthodoxy when it strays too far.
For that, everybody needs to be inquisitive enough to insist on a sense of responsibility. We all need to “do theology”, in order to rest and rescue it from death by academia – to make it within our grasp if it is not.
I have deliberately posted this comment to take up the thread on theology that has been wandering betwen different blogs recently, as I think it is a helpful one.
But only if we remember that without responsibility, Christ’s church dies.
