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To date, constructive theology hasn’t been viewed or conceptualized as a movement or trend in theology on its own as a whole. Questions arise as to what constructive theology is, where it came from, why it considers itself “constructive,” and why constructive is something different from the ways in which theology has been done in the past. This book traces the overall historical arc of constructive theology, from proto-movement through the present. Inklings of constructive theology emerged well before it began to take any formalized shape. At the same time, an important shift occurred when a group of theologians decided to create the Workgroup on Constructive Theology. Further, even as the workgroup continues to work collectively, producing textbooks, statements, and methodologies concerning theology, many theologians who are not part of the workgroup or may not even know it exists have adopted the moniker of “constructive theologian.” The book also considers the term “constructive” itself, offering possible reasons and historical contexts that led to this distinction being made in contrast to “systematic” theology and its subcategories. Constructive theology speaks to a very specific, historically situated emergence in the academy generally and in theology’s attempts to engage those shifts specifically.
This essential introduction to contemporary constructive theology charts the most important disciplinary trends of the moment. It gives a historical overview of the field and discusses key hermeneutical and methodological concerns. The contributors apply a constructive perspective to a wide range of approaches, ranging from biblical hermeneutics and postcolonial studies to comparative, political, and black theology. What is Constructive Theology? shows how diverse and interdisciplinary constructive theology can be by exploring key themes in the field. The contributors explore the porous boundaries between Christianity and other religions, reflect on contextual, liberation and constructive theologies from Africa and from Black British perspectives, explore the connection between embodiment, epistemology and hermeneutics, and take a constructive approach to the dangerous memories and theologies of colonial histories in Belgium and Native Americans in the United States. This sampler of the field will help you rethink theologies and find constructive alternatives.
Coordinated by Serene Jones of Yale Divinity School and Paul Lakeland of Fairfield University, fifty of North America's top teaching theologians (members of the Workgroup on Constructive Christian Theology) have devised a text that allows students to experience the deeper point of theological questions, to delve into the fractures and disagreements that figured in the development of traditional Christian doctrines, and to sample the diverse and conflicting theological voices that vie for allegiance today.
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Responding to how little theological research has been done on intellectual (as opposed to physical) disability, this book asks, on behalf of individuals with profound intellectual disabilities, what it means to be human. That question has traditionally been answered with an emphasis on an intellectual capacity--the ability to employ concepts or to make moral choices--and has ignored the value of individuals who lack such intellectual capacities. The author suggests, rather, that human being be understood in terms of participation in relationships of mutual responsiveness, which includes but is not limited to intellectual forms of communicating. She supports her argument by developing a phenomenology of how an individual with a profound intellectual disability relates, drawn from her clinical experience as a physical therapist. She thereby demonstrates that these individuals participate in relationships of mutual responsiveness, though in nonsymbolic, bodily ways. To be human, to image God, she argues, is to respond to the world around us in any number of ways, bodily or symbolically. Such an understanding does not exclude people with intellectual disabilities but rather includes them among those who participate in the image of God.
Coming Full Circle provides a working constructive dogmatics in Native Christian theology. Drawing together leading scholars in the field, this volume seeks to encourage theologians to reconsider the rich possibilities present in the intersection between Native theory and practice and Christian theology and practice. This innovative work begins with a Native American theory for doing constructive Christian theology and illustrates the possibilities with chapters on specific Christian doctrines in a “theology in outline.” This volume will make an important contribution representing the Native American voice in Christian theology.
Most introductory textbooks in theology see their primary task as explaining Christian doctrines that no one quite understands anymore. While this is one of theology's jobs, it is by no means the only, nor even the most important, one. Theology has also been called to change the world, to help people connect deeply rooted beliefs about the world's source and goal to questions of personal meaning and communal thriving. Theology is here to help us make sense of the complex, flawed world into which we've been thrust and to assist us in our attempt to love our neighbors and live toward the common good. For more than forty years, the Workgroup on Constructive Theology has brought the liberal and liberationist theological traditions into creative encounter with lived human experience. In this introduction to the methods and tasks of theology, they invite a new generation of readers, many who will have little or no exposure to Christian doctrine, to see theology as a partner in the struggle for a better world. They demonstrate how theological ideas have "legs," playing themselves out not only in religious communities but in the public square as well. Theology, the authors tell us, is constructive when it joins in God's work of building human lives and human societies. Readers will learn to think about all of life in light of their religious commitments and to see theology as an essential tool for a life well lived.
Christian theology needs to be reconstructed in light of recent and momentous intellectual changes, social revolutions, and steep pedagogical challenges. That is the conviction of many of North America's leading theologians whose close collaboration over several years bring us this exciting volume. Reconstructing Christian Theology introduces theology in such a way that readers can discern the relevance of historical materials, pose theological questions, and begin to think theologically for themselves. Further, like other projects of the Workgroup on Constructive Theology, this volume stems from a deep desire to model a credible, creative, and engaged contemporary theology. So each chapter tackles major Christian teaching, juxtaposes it with a significant social or cultural challenge, and then reconstructs each in light of the other. The result is an innovative and compelling way to learn how theology can contribute to rethinking the most pressing issues of our day.
In this challenging work, Gordon Kaufman asserts that the prime task of theology is the imaginative construction of the doctrine of God. Kaufman maintains that both the absoluteness of the divinity and our own necessity demand that we construct the doctrine of God critically and in a manner appropriate to our own time and place. In thorough examinations of God and theology, Christ and christology, and of the ultimate foundations of religious thought, he shows how this construction can be accomplished faithfully and in full realization of our own humanity.