Abstract
How can an academic voice concerning systematic-theological reflection find expression at a public university in a postapartheid SA? In this chapter, the different research foci of the members of the Department of Dogmatics and Christian Ethics at the UP are presented and interpreted as attempts to find such a voice as a collection of voices within a society characterised by shifting social-ecclesial and theological landscapes. The specific research foci, namely eco-hermeneutics; evolutionary perspectives on religious experience; an ethic of sociality within postcolonial, pluralist and unequal societies; and ecclesiological challenges and political theology are structured and presented in terms of the hermeneutical question that was posed by Ricoeur, namely D’où parlez-vous? [Where do you speak from?]. Against the background of the vision, objectives and values of the Department, the main objectives of their respective approaches as explication of the ‘speaking from’ and ‘speaking to’ are outlined. Some of the most important contemporary issues are identified in a conclusion that are, according to them, to be addressed within the Southern African contexts.
Highlights
She argued that a revisited theological anthropology is a necessary step on the church’s journey towards reconciling diversity with special reference to the Netherdutch Reformed Church (NRC)’s historical justification of separate ethnic-based churches and the ongoing debates regarding the understanding of homosexuality (Van Wyk & Buitendag 2011a, 2011b)
It is clear that each member of the Department gives concrete expression to the question of Ricoeur, namely, Where do we speak from? It is a question that is explicitly taken seriously in order to speak from our specific contexts as white and black Reformed theologians at a public university in the 21st century to the contexts of our concrete existence in a postapartheid SA, acknowledging the historical-contextual character of all of our understandings of our life worlds. This could entail approaching being human from an eco-hermeneutical viewpoint or formulating more clearly from a strongly infused political and gender awareness our theological understandings of being church in the spaces in which we find ourselves
It could be to explicate as embodied persons our deepened and stronger integrated understandings of personhood from and within the theologyscience dialogues or within liberation-theological discourses and contexts or to explore and express as Africans, in reclaiming African intellectual subjectivity, our making moral sense of the world in which we live
Summary
South Africa Willem Fourie Department of Dogmatics and Christian Ethics Faculty of Theology University of Pretoria This conviction forms the basic thrust of post-dogmatic reflection that finds expression in numerous ways in our systematic-theological curriculum.39 One such way is reflection on the important role of art (especially icons), music, the film industry and philosophical discourses (e.g. anatheism) in our deep relationship with God that oozes life.
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