Salvation as Praxis

A Practical Theology of Salvation for a Multi-Faith World

Wayne Morris

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780567443366
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia

Will people of other faiths be 'saved' and to what extent should the response to this question shape Christian engagements with people of other faiths? Historically, the predominant answer to these questions has been that the person of another faith will not be saved and is therefore in need of conversion to Christianity for their salvation to be possible. Consequently, it has been understood to be the obligation of Christian persons to convert people of other faiths. More recent theologies of religions for the past half century and more have sought to reconsider these approaches to soteriology. This has sometimes led to a reaffirmation of the status quo and at other times to an alternative soteriological understanding. In seeking to articulate soteriologies that make logical and doctrinal sense, too often these new approaches to salvation and people of other faiths have paid little attention to questions of practice. Drawing on alternative understandings of soteriology as deification, healing, and liberation, each perspective having ancient roots in the Christian tradition, it is argued that salvation can be understood as form of concrete earthly practice. Understood in this way, this book considers how these alternative theologies of salvation might shape Christian practices in a way that departs from a history in which the person of another faith has been perceived as a threat to Christianity and therefore in need of conversion. Further it asks how the complex multi-faith world of the twenty-first century might better inform and shape the way in which Christian theologies frame soteriological understandings.

PART ONE

Why a practical theology of salvation?

1

A practical theological perspective

Introduction

Soteriological beliefs have historically served to justify many kinds of oppressive Christian practices towards people of other faiths, also including sometimes one Christian tradition towards other forms of Christian expression. These beliefs have been based on an understanding that salvation, possessed by an elite few and understood as a future post-mortem possibility, is only achievable through subscription to a particular set of beliefs and practices to the exclusion of all others, reinforcing a particularly Western and Christian ‘presumption of superiority’. More recent discourses in the so-called theologies of religions have sought to articulate some alternative theologies whereby it has been argued that it may be possible for people of other faiths to participate in a future post-mortem existence without conformation and subscription to particularly Christian beliefs and practices. However, it is contended here that insufficient attention has been paid to both deconstructing these historic and present practices towards people of other faiths and reconstructing alternative approaches to practice – praxis – in the formulation of these revised soteriological perspectives.

This chapter argues, to use Elaine Graham’s term, that theologies of religions need to more fully engage in a ‘turn to practice’¹ as they seek to respond to the horrors of historic Christian approaches to people of other faiths, conscious that in a post-Holocaust context, alternative practices and beliefs are necessary. In light of this, it is argued here that while attention to questions of practice are essential for all theological discourse, it is particularly so for theologies regarding people of other faiths. The practical theological method used to try to do this will be that of ‘critical conversation’ and this will be explored and presented as the key methodology in this chapter that best describes the approach taken in this book. This chapter will then turn to consider why this work is necessarily a ‘particular’ form of theology as well as theology that may have ‘public’ significance. It is ‘particular’ because it first and foremost aims to be a theology that seeks to transform ‘particularly’ Christian belief and practice rather than impose anything on to people of other faiths and none. It aims to speak to both members of Christian communities in particular, but also to contribute to wider public debates about the role of Christian faith communities in a twenty-first century multi-faith world. Finally, Campbell’s notion that practical theology must aim to tread cautiously a path between ‘practical relevance’ and ‘theological integrity’ will be explored as a guiding principle for this work.

Theology and practice: Inseparable bedfellows

The practical and contextual nature of all theology

It is a widely held view, especially among those whose perspectives have historically been marginalized and excluded in the churches and academy, that all theology is essentially contextual.² That is, all theology emerges out of and is shaped by the concrete realities of life and uses the language, assumptions and philosophical frameworks of the individuals and groups who are engaged in the process of doing theology to speak theologically. Elaine Graham, however, also proposes that all theology is essentially practical as well as contextual in nature.³ By this, she expresses agreement that all theology emerges out of a context and is articulated in and for a context, but that theological principles themselves are also expressed and discovered in the ‘purposeful practices’ of faith communities too.⁴ Theology is, therefore, not simply found in magisterial texts, ancient scriptures or significant theological tomes of the past and present that may emerge out of any contextual position, but is also found in the lived expression of communities of faith in worship, devotion, relationships, social action, community engagement and so forth. As a result, practical theology should ‘refuse a distinction between words and deeds, faith and action’.⁵ Moreover, Graham rightly argues that theology has always been developed and expressed in these ways explaining that, ‘indeed, to establish itself, it [Christianity] had to embrace the cultural patterns and philosophies of its day’ and that this ‘integral aspect of its self-understanding has always been a part of theological formulation and Christian practice’.⁶ Both theory and practice are, and always have been, inseparable bedfellows, each influencing and impacting upon one another. Thus theology is always practiced and practice itself is a theological resource worthy of interrogation.

This is true in theologies of religions just as in any other aspect of theology, but a survey of publications in this area, as we shall see in Chapter 4, would largely suggest that, in broad terms contextual and practical questions and concerns have driven the search for alternative soteriological discourses. However, too much attention has been paid to questions of how salvation might be understood differently with too little explicit exploration of what the implications of such alternative soteriologies might mean for Christian praxis. As we shall see in Chapter 3, however, practice and theology regarding people of other faiths have always been inextricably linked, and attention to questions of practice is ignored at our peril. If all theology is practical and contextual, and I contend that it is, let us consider in more detail why, in general, explicit attention to practice is so important.

Paying attention to practice

Emilie Townes argues that all study of theology and religion should seek to be engaged with questions of practice. She acknowledges that it is ‘imperative’ for scholarship in theology and religious studies to ‘be rigorous, relentless, and responsible to the issues of the day while pushing our understanding of what is before us in our modern/postmodern worlds’⁷ and many theologians and religious studies scholars would agree with her. However, she goes on to argue that all scholarship’ should also help map out strategies for creating a more just and free society and world’.⁸ As a critique of the contemporary methods of much theological scholarship, Pattison argues that ‘too much contemporary theology seems to be a kind of whispered conversation on matters esoteric conducted in a foreign language behind closed doors in a distant attic’.⁹ Pattison goes on to suggest that ‘its supreme achievement has been to make even the idea of God boring’.¹⁰ Likewise, Terry Veling purports that if theology remains a purely ‘speculative enterprise’¹¹ as it is understood, in his view, by some systematic theologians, there is a danger that

our serene theories with their grand visions of life too often deny to knowledge any origin in the practical difficulties of life, but rather seek to transcend these difficulties into a vision of Being that is pristine and unaffected by human affairs.¹²

Without addressing itself to matters that affect people’s lives, to practice, theology becomes little more than an irrelevance, boring and detached from the reality of lived experience. For theology to continue in such a vein would be potentially dangerous because religion and theology shapes practice. This is because, as Townes argues, the study of theology and religion that takes seriously the world beyond the academy is crucial in order to ‘help make sense out of the chaos and spinning top of wars we now live in as part of the mundane and everyday in far too many people’s lives’.¹³

Townes argues that the reason that all theological and religious scholarship should be attentive to questions of practice is past experience and that no published work is discrete and without the capacity to affect people’s lives outside the academy. She thus calls for scholars of theology and religious studies to be conscious and aware of how their ideas might be received and how they might impact on people’s lives. She further argues, ‘I believe that what should drive our research in large measure is that we are exploring traditions that have driven people to incredible heights of valour and despicable degrees of cravenness. In other words, the research we do is not a free-floating solitary intellectual quest. It is profoundly tethered to people’s lives – the fullness and the incompleteness of them’.¹⁴ Scholarship that does not consider the way that it may be used by others and the impact it may have on others is, for Townes, irresponsible.

With Amos Yong, I argue that, ‘all too often the relationship between Christian theologies and religion and Christian practices vis-à-vis the religions has not been spelled out’¹⁵ and that, therefore, ‘Christians need to give much more sustained reflection to the implications of their theologies of religion for Christian attitudes and actions regarding other faiths’.¹⁶ It is important also, however, not to look only at the implications of theology for practice, but to acknowledge that practices themselves have shaped and express theological beliefs in ways that are sometimes distinct from the written ‘sources and norms’ of much Christian theology, such as the Bible and traditions of the churches. As Isherwood rightly notes, it is difficult to determine whether theology shapes practice and culture or visa versa,¹⁷ but the likelihood is both, through complex processes of mutual interaction, shape one another. All theology is practical and contextual and so all theology should be concerned to pay as much attention to the implications it may have for practice as it is for the internal and intellectual coherence and rigour of the argument itself. Let us consider, therefore, how this necessary attention to practice is approached in this work.

Towards a practical theological method

Practical theology as applied theology

Much of the literature that explicitly identifies itself as practical theology is concerned to articulate what practical theology is and what, in particular, is distinctive about this approach to theology compared to others. This is due to a combination of scholars such as Elaine Graham, Emmanuel Lartey, Stephen Pattison, James Woodward, Heather Walton, John Swinton and Zoe Bennett, to name a few who have written on this subject from a British context, variously seeking to both define the discipline and push it in new directions. This has been further accompanied by the construction of an apologetics for the discipline, conscious that it has often historically been understood as marginal to the ‘real’ work of systematic and dogmatic theologies.

Graham, Walton and Ward, and Richard Osmer have each suggested that what is distinctive about contemporary practical theolo...