Abstract
In this article, I approach the issue of stereotyping on two levels. First, methodologically, by revisiting the somewhat classical discussion on the sources of theology, discussing methods of correlation in the theologies of Paul Tillich and David Tracy, and arguing that acknowledging other religious traditions as sources of Christian theology can actually work as an antidote to theological stereotypes. Second, eschatologically, by highlighting one area of Christian theology where theologians, generally considered well informed by, and open to, religious pluralism, tend to a sort of othering or stereotyping of the religious Other. Then, in an attempt to combine these two levels, I apply the methodological argument of the first level to the second level’s question of the religious Other in Christian eschatology. Concretely, this means that I briefly “correlate” some aspects of religious otherness in the eschatologies of the Christian theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg and the Muslim theologian Ahmad Sakr.
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Notes
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology I: Reason and Revelation. Being and God (Chicago: SCM, 1978), 60.
Paul Tillich, “The Problem of Theological Method: II,” Journal of Religion 27:1 (1947), 26.
For a more detailed account of Tillich’s theological circle, see Michael W. DeLashmutt, “Syncretism or Correlation: Teilhard and Tillich’s Contrasting Methodological Approaches to Science and Theology,” Zygon 40:3 (2005), 739–750.
David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (with a New Preface) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed. 1996), 44.
David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (London: SCM, 1981), 217f.
For the concept of “limit,” see Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 92–118. For the concept of “classic,” see Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, 99–153. For the concept of “fragment,” see David Tracy, “Form and Fragment: The Recovery of the Hidden and Incomprehensible God,” The Concept of God in Global Dialogue (ed. Werner G. Jeanrond and Aasulv Lande; New York: Orbis, 2005), 98–114.
David Tracy, “Hermeneutical Reflections in the New Paradigm,” Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future (ed. Hans Küng and David Tracy; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989).
In a noted article dated 1993, Tracy is criticized for separating experience and tradition into a dichotomy. From Tracy’s article in Paradigm Change in Theology it is clear that this critique is unfair. See Stephen L. Stell, “Hermeneutics in Theology and the Theology of Hermeneutics: Beyond Lindbeck and Tracy,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61:4 (1993), 679–702. See also Tracy “Hermeneutical Reflections in the New Paradigm,” 54.
Jerry L. Walls, The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford/NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2008).
See, for example, Ann R. Taket et al. (eds.), Theorising Social Exclusion (New York: Routledge, 2009), 166–184.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991–1998), 1.171.
Jakob Wirén, “Hope and Otherness: Christian Eschatology in an Interreligious Horizon,” Testing the Boundaries (ed. Patricia ‘Iolana and Samuel Tongue; Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 57–70.
Nerina Rustomji, The Garden and the Fire: Heaven and Hell in Islamic Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), xvii–xviii.
Ahmad H. Sakr, Life, Death and the Life After (New Dehli: Islamic Book Service, 1992), 127–129.
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© 2013 Jesper Svartvik and Jakob Wirén
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Wirén, J. (2013). Stereotypes in Christian Theology: Methodological and Eschatological Aspects. In: Svartvik, J., Wirén, J. (eds) Religious Stereotyping and Interreligious Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342676_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342676_10
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