Richard J. Mouw - The Suffering and Victorious Christ: Toward a More Compassionate Christology

An Afterword

Willie James Jennings

T here is a revolution taking place in Christian theology. It is a revolution that Christian theology itself is yet to articulate fully. The elements of this revolution are being spied out, one by one. The first crucial element of this revolution is the growing clarity and power of the designation global Christianity. Another element is the effects of various conceptualitiespostevangelical, postcolonial, even the almost exhausted postmodernon theology. Another crucial element is the increased volume of formerly colonized subaltern theological voices who now present multigenerational Christian reflection shaped in the crucible of white Western supremacy and white masculine intellectual hegemony. Last there is the coming demographic shifts that will transform majority (read: white) culture into minority (read: other) culture. Together these changes constitute a fundamentally new condition for doing theology.

Indeed, we have reached a crucial moment in the discursive practice called theology. As we enter this time of revolution, Christian theology finds itself caught in endless self-presentation. Theologians are increasingly producing basic texts of theology and publishers are feverishly putting out introductions to theology, or companions to theology, or dictionaries of theology as though the crucial need is to reintroduce Christian thought and its systems of reflection. We could follow some common narratives being proposed today, which see this moment of endless, even obsessive self-presentation as the final outworkings of a post-Christendom moment. Some suggest that we respond to this new situation by reasserting the grammar of the faith, and invite Christians to enter more deeply into the logics of their theological traditions.

This moment, however, is not one in which people in the academy or in churches are unable to define or understand Christian theology or their traditions. The problem at this moment is with theologys placement, theologys deployment, which presses on us the question, Where do you put theology now?

Where do you put theology in relation to educational systems and programs of intellectual formation? Where do you put it in relationship to the presentation of other religious systems of thought? Where do you put it in relation to other disciplinary discursive practices, like sociology or economics? Where do you put it in relation to other ecclesial practices, especially spiritual disciplines? Where do you put it in relation to strategies of political or social intervention, or cultural or religious collaboration, or engagement with scientific investigations? These are not questions about the value, confidence, or reach of theology. These questions have to do with the position of theology in relation to its movement away from its historic pedagogical foundationalism.

With the emergence of colonialism Christian theology enjoyed the benefits of a pedagogical foundationalism in Western educational programs both in the metropolis and in the colony through which its reason for existence was self-evident and in no real need of justification. There was no need to outline its connection to political economies or social systems. Christian theology was at the center of the civilizing impulse that established doctrine and Bible knowledge as a fundamental basis on which to build Western educational systems and proper intellectual formation. Such a hegemonic place for theology allowed theologians to imagine an imperial position of adjudication for theology itself.

Christian theology emerged out of the perennial need to give an account of the basic realities of Christian existence, to present the doctrines of the faith, and to teach people what Christians have believed and should believe. This perennial need dovetails with the question of theologys placement precisely because what should be taught is part of the architecture of how, when, where, and to whom it should be taught. But this is not a simple matter of logistics. The position of theology deeply shapes its performance. Theology is about a process of education in which people are invited into a way of discernment and of making judgments about faithful Christian life and faithful Christian thinking about life. Yet the questions that have been opened up in this moment are, From where does one make those judgments? and, Who is making those judgments? The loss of Christian theologys hegemonic position within Western educational systems and the collapse of the civilizing impulse within which theology enjoyed an imperial right of adjudication means that the position of theological judgment has now come into view as never before.