This is going to be the last post until Thursday. I’m swamped with Hebrew until I fly to Chicago for the Covenant Network’s conference: Made in the Image of God: Thinking Theologically About Sex. But until then, here are a few quotes from Mary Solberg’s Compelling Knowledge, and some thoughts following.
“In his God of the Oppressed, James H. Cone observes that: ‘theologians do not normally reveal the true source of their theological reflections…More often than not, it is a theologian’s personal history that serves as the most important factor in shaping the methodology and content of his or her theological perspective…Theologians ought to be a little more honest…'” (21)
“For me, scholarship and the thinking, knowing, and writing it entails have both an intensely personal and a fundamentally provisional character…I would not have written about any of this if it did not matter a great deal to me and to those I care about most passionately. What is autobiographical about this book, then, is reflected as much in the theological and ethical ideas I dispute and propose as it is in the stories, events and feelings I name as my own. I would hope that the convictions and commitments I reveal here strengthen, not diminsh, the value and cogency of the intellectual project.” (21)
Reading the introduction to Solberg’s book, especially the quote from Cone, leads me to ask questions of the role of experience in our theology. How can our personal experiences not play a role in our theologizing? Is it possible to separate the two (experience & theology)…and if it is, is it healthy? What good is a theology that does not speak to our human experiences, struggles, journeys, doubts?
At Whitworth, I primarily heard that our experience should not be involved in our theology – it may be able to inform it to a very small extent, but it should play a very minimal to non-existent role. I was taught to believe that since experiences are so varied, individualistic and subjective, this could lead to a multi-relativized mixed-bag of theology – and this is bad(!).
Solberg’s book on a feminist proposal for an epistemology of the cross, comes straight from her experiences in El Salvador. She makes no apologies that her experience there caused her to rethink her theology from new perspectives. Her experiences directly impacted, changed & continue to change her theology. Is this such a bad thing? Is it bad that as human creatures who are intimately involved in the world, we would live our lives in such a way that we are constantly practicing our theologies and seeing what works and what doesn’t work (is this leading to a base form of pragmatism?).
My theology is affected by the fact that I am a 24yr old, white, middle class, Protestant male. I can not (nor should I) make any excuses for that – that is the paradigm I was born into and that is what I must work from and struggle with. My theology is affected by the experiences I live out as that 24 yr old white, middle class, Protestant male. African-American women’s experiences affect their theology. Oppressed Latin Americans’ lives affect and impact their theology. The experiences of the LGBT community in America and around the world will impact their theologies and views of God and the Church. Isn’t this how we have been blessed by such varied theologies (black theologies, womanist theologies, queer theologies, feminist theologies, Liberation theologies, etc.)?
So there’s the question. What about the role of experience in theology? I don’t believe the Whitworth-mantra that your own personal experience must stay out of theology – I don’t know how that’s even possible. I want to be true to myself, to who God created me to be and to the experiences God has blessed me with. And I want to be honest in my seeking, questioning, doubting and theologizing about God. I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive…