the notion of theology in Dorothee Solle
Introduction
Faith
in God is the foundation on which theology is established. And faith comes
about as a result of hearing the word of God that is contain in the Bible. We
cannot say that, faith comes from theological reflection rather faith comes as
a result of the experience of God. But faith alone is not sufficient, that is
why it is also necessary to calls for critical theological reflection, to seek
self understanding in order to avoid subjectivism of everybody has his own
faith. Apart from this subjectiveness of faith, theology also stands the gap
between the believers and the world with which they communicate. So, the task
of theology especially the systematic theology is to identify three elements:
first, scripture and tradition, or the text, second, the historical situation
of the text and its interpreters, or the context, and lastly, the community of
believers or the people of God.[1]
Theology has the task of interpreting scripture
and tradition in a particular historical situation for the community of
believers for the purpose of strengthen their faith. Since this is the case,
faith needs theology to understand itself and to communicate, but the
significance of this theological theory is to lead to a deeper faith. Theology
is not there for its own sake but to help us to grow into faith. And the
thought-model of theology begins and ends with praxis, lived-out faith, it goes
this way, faith-theology-faith.[2]
Therefore,
in this paper, we shall expose the notion of theology in Dorothee Solle’s work.
To achieve this, we shall adopt the following pattern: clarification of concept
(what is theology?), types, and method.
Clarification of Concept (What is Theology?)
Theology comes from two Greek words
Θεός which means God and λόγος meaning word. Together is called Θεόλόγια which
meaning discourse on God. In defining what theology is, Solle quoted Karl
Rahner, that, theology is an intellectual reflection of an idea of Christian. It
is the conscious effort of the Christian to hearken to the actual verbal
revelation which God has promulgated in history.[3] For Solle, the object of theology is the
relationship between God and human beings, and this is sustains by faith. In other
word, reflections on the experiences that have compelled human beings to talk
about something like God. In consenting with Rahner, she said, only those who
have faith in God’s ‘revelation of the word’ in history can actually do
theology.[4] This revealed word of God
is found in the Bible. In doing theology and interpreting the word of God,
Solle identify three basic theological frameworks.
Types of Theology
Theology has the task of
interpreting scripture and tradition in a particular historical situation for
the community of believers. That is a formal definition, the content of which
can lead to very different consequences.[5] There is no one theology,
but extremely different theologies, even in one and the same historical
situation. However, in this contemporary time, there are three basic frameworks
that seem to be relevant:
1. Orthodox
or Conservative Theology
2. Liberal
Theology
3. Radical
or Liberation Theology
Orthodox or Conservative Theology
Orthodox
is understood to be ‘right believing or faith’ in contrast to error and heresy
as conscious and deliberate rejection of a doctrine. Therefore, the starting
point of Orthodox theology is the Bible and the dogmatic tradition.[6] Belief then means the
acceptance in faith of the truth revealed in the tradition. This ‘revelation’
which is inaccessible to reason, has taken place only and exclusively in Jesus
Christ. Base on this inaccessibility of reason to revelation, there are two
types orthodoxy:
1. Catholic
Orthodoxy, and
2. Protestant
Orthodoxy.
Protestant
orthodoxy believes in sola scriptura. And agreed in the fact that, there cannot be any harmonious scheme
of nature and supernature, in which human beings and God, nature and grace,
reason and faith, philosophy and theology, belong together like a natural basis
and a supernatural superstructure.[7] While Catholic Orthodoxy
believe in two level of knowledge; fidel et ratio (faith and reason). This
can be found in the Thomistic synthesis of reason and faith within a unitary
culture which is regarded as good and necessary, if not adequate, understands
Christ as standing above culture. The Christ above culture presents the
attitude of synthesis between nature and supernature.[8]
Protestant
Orthodoxy believes that, there is a great distinction between faith and reason,
culture and Christ. And these for them are irreconcilable. In sustain their
view, they recourse to diastasis which plays a great role among all
protestants. This diastasis contains a critical minus of reason, nature, the human
from other principles that governs the thought of orthodoxy. So true faith for
Protestants is a belief in Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy
Scripture, and seeing Christ as the one word of God which men and women have to
hear, which we have to trust and obey in life and death.[9] On this thesis of
Protestant, she poses a statement that, their paradigm is theologically
ambivalent. However, to say Christ is the one word of God we must hear, it as
well follows that, some Christians can assert that only heterosexual love
counts as obedience to Christ; that it is sin to love another person of the
same sex.[10]
Liberal Theology
The
paradigm of theological orthodoxy gave way as being untenable during the
enlightenment. In echoing Kant, enlightenment is an era of courage for one to make
use of his own understanding, reason or initiative.[11] During this period a new
frame of theology called liberal evolved. This new liberal theological spirit
established the priority of reason over faith.[12] For them, what is
important to do theology is (reason alone) sola ratio. So philosophy is use
with its approach to human beings over theology; and of the new interest in the
natural sciences, going along with natural philosophy and natural religion. It
developed new form of criticism of the Bible, the Church, and the state. It
attempted to reconcile the modern scientific consciousness, which understood
itself primarily to be anti-religious, with Christian faith. And finally it did
away with many incomprehensible authoritarian principles and opinions which had
become offensive.
Liberal theology affirmed the validity of
science. On this basis, science alone can give us a reliable knowledge in all
fields of our endeavours. For instance, the origin of nature and the origin of
the different species and forms of life are considered to be the subject of
scientific explanation. So on this note, Bible is taken literarily and every
church that is not scientifically explained is opposed.[13] Because science
progresses in cumulative experience, everything that exists in the world must
be reduces to history including all religions. That means all writings, all
confession of faith, dogmas, all church constitutions, expressions of piety,
Christian customs, prayers, came into being in history and subjected to
scientific investigation.
Liberal
theology holds that, there should be unity of culture and religion. For them,
religion must stand in a living relationship to the culture around it and
cannot in the long run encapsulate itself in a group which has quite different rules
of life and custom. Despite the unity of
the culture and religion, Solle criticised the liberal theology on the grounds
of its assumption of the need for the separation of church and state, and its
consistent individualism.[14] The basic view of liberal
theology has done nothing for the poor; the separation of church and state has
not functioned either in a positive way, for the landless peasants or for the
industrial proletariat, bringing emancipation, or even in a conservative way,
simply by protecting them- and that completely ignores the marginalized masses
which now live in the third world.[15] And in the third world,
individualism is really pronounce that Christians are despised and avoided, and
no longer tolerated in many professions which result in persecution, torture
and death for the sake of the faith are becoming increasingly more frequent.[16]
Radical or Liberation Theology
This theological paradigm evolved
among the poor in the South Africa in the refugee camps of El Salvador, the
textile workers of Sri Lanka, and the oppressed on account of their race, their
sex and their class situation. The principle of this paradigm is that poor are
the teachers, and so we learn most today from the poor and through the poor:
not technology, not knowledge, but faith and hope. For the basis of faith is
not that it was Christ who spoke with divine authority, but rather, the praxis
of the poor man from Nazareth who shared his bread with the hungry, made the
blind see, and lived and died for justice. So obedience to authority does not
get people further but praxis does.[17]
Furthermore,
God is considered to be with the poor and for the poor, the tormented and
oppressed in the most varied circumstances. Therefore, desire in fighting for
liberation and attempt to rebuild a new and more just society have become loci theologici, theology contexts, from
which the word of God is interpreted and the presence of God is experienced.[18] Taking Jesus Christ as
the central word of God, radical theology goes to the roots of our anguish at
our hopelessness and assures us that ‘all things are possible’, (Mark 9:14-29).
So
it is seen that, every theologian in the history either belongs to one or
another of these frameworks in theologizing about God. And this is reflected in
the way they interpret the scripture or Bible. Solle consider this framework as
a paradigm. For her, in line with Thomas Kuhn idea of paradigm, it is a general
constellation of convictions, values and modes of experience which are shared
by a particular community.[19] Further, there is no
paradigm without a political undertone. That is, there are no basic theological
convictions which then can, but need not, also find a political application.
The dissent between positions is in fact theological and political. For any
serious theological statement has a political focus, related to the way the
world is shaped.[20]
The Methodical Approach of these
Theological paradigms to Bible
In all of these paradigms, Bible is
considered as the foundation of theology. Because the Bible contains the word
of God and this word of God is called Holy Scripture because it is written by
people who were inspired or filled by the Holy Spirit. For the church sees this
word of God to shape our life from Latin theological expression, norma normans which is mean normative
norms that sets rules.
Orthodox Approach to Bible
Protestant
Orthodoxy believed in Bible. But this believes was expressed thus: we believe,
teach and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writings of Old and New
Testaments are the rule and norm according to which all teachings and all
teachers must be evaluated and judged. There is an emphasis on authority of the
Bible. However scripture was held to be literally true, and liberalism (belief
in the letter), as this attitude is also called, was expressed in two doctrines
about the origin of the Bible.[21] For them, the former
notion is that, it is God that dictates the words in the Bible, and another is
that God gave inspiration to the authors of the Bible so that what they wrote
is directly the word of God. So base on these, the scripture acquired excessive
authority which led to excessive stress on the letter of the text.[22]
However,
Catholic Orthodoxy on the other hand, combined both scripture and tradition in
order to avoid becoming biblicistic. For this, authority of the scripture is
guaranteed by the authority of the church. Orthodoxy developed a dogmatic
method of thinking. It began from a revelation which utterly remote from the
relativity of history and lived in an absolute sphere: God – revelation – Holy
Scripture. From the conservative perspective there is some comfort in the
elevation of the Bible above time: the eternity of God speaks from the Bible.
But Solle said, even the Bible also belongs to the historical sphere and speaks
from one generation to another.[23] Because, human being
changes and there are ups and downs in the life of the individual and history.
Liberal Theological Approach
The
liberalist came and challenges the rigid cardinal of authorities of the
conservative theologians; the authority of the father, the state, and of order.
Because these authorities led to the tradition of subjection, lack of
intellectual freedom, anti-intellectualism, and resignation to fate and a wrong
understanding of obedience. For them belief in authority, tradition and
institution was not the faith of Jesus.[24] Base on these reasons,
the liberal paradigm began what is called three norms of criticism. The
criticism of the text of Holy Scripture, institutional criticism of the church
and its representatives, and criticism of the rule of authorities and powers
which legitimate themselves as being ‘appointed by God’ or belonging to ‘the
order of creation’ belong at the foundations of liberal theology.[25]
Solle
said this paradigm shift represents the replacement of a method of explaining
the world: the scientific method takes the place of the dogmatic method.
Because in orthodox thinking, the Bible was the ‘word of God’ without any ifs
and buts; in the liberal understanding it is regarded as a book like any other.
For her, the paradigm shift has changed two things in the relationship of
believers to the Bible. It has relativized the Bible and it has historicized
it. ‘Relativism’ in this sense should be understood as a critical revision of
the reformation scriptural principle sola
scriptura.[26]
Liberalism
Solle said, represents a new attempt to understand what it means that the Bible
is the word of God. For them it is believe that it is truly word of God but it
is spoken by human beings. That means that it comes from
historically-conditioned human beings who are capable of error, who perhaps did
not know particular facts of science and were not aware of particular
historical facts. There are mistakes in the Bible, for instance, Joshua says:
sun stand still over Gibeon (Joshua10:12).the basic notion was the sun travels
round the earth, but the modern scientific knowledge state sun is the centre of
the universe and earth move round it. So the experience of scientific and historical
truth stands over against the revealed truth of scripture. Historicity
confronts revelation.[27]
Liberation or Radical Theological
Approach
In interpreting Bible, this paradigm
thinks in terms of the non-person whose human nature is denied, perhaps because
she is poor, a woman or not white. Racism, sexism and class society are far
more basic boundaries of separation and destruction than so-called ‘question of
faith’ which leave this reality out of account.[28] The hermeneutical model
of liberation theology does not take just
the text of scripture seriously, as orthodoxy does; it also rejects the
liberal thought-model in which scripture and ‘modern man’ are confronted with
each other. Instead, it sets text against context, and does so from the biblical
perspective of the ‘poor’. The word of God in the Bible is understood as acting
‘from’ the poor and spoken ‘to’ them. Hence, the historical and
socio-historical context of the Bible is fundamental.[29]
There are four different factors in
play in the hermeneutical model of liberation theologies: (1) the biblical text=Holy
Scripture, (2) the biblical context, (3) one’s own context, and (4) the
biblical text ‘for us’=God’s Word. A biblical interpretation which seeks to
find God’s word in the Bible must take account of both contexts. That is,
perceiving it in the light of the victims. For them, without perception of the
victims, the oppressed, there is no perception of liberation. Liberation
theology believes that the whole Bible is written from the perspective of the
poor: its promise and its promises are for the poor. So the poor are the
criterion for the interpretation of scripture.[30]
Conclusion
In this paper we able to know what
theology is and how is being done. For Dorothee Solle, theology is an act of interpreting
the scripture in order to help the community to grow into deeper faith. Since
she asserted that, faith is the foundation of theology, and from this initial
faith in God, theologians help the believers to have more understanding of God
through their reflections on the word of God and which in turn make the
community of believers grow stronger in God through faith. However, in
theologizing, there is no particular way. Solle show us three theological
frame-works on how to do theology which are: Orthodox way of doing theology,
liberal way of doing theology, and radical or liberational way of doing
theology.
These
different theological frame-works have their approaches to the act of
interpreting the Bible or Holy Scripture. And these approaches, for Solle,
serve different purposes and at different situations. Hence, these approaches
to the Bible make the word of God bigger than the Bible itself.
[1] Dorothee Solle, Thinking about God: An Introduction to
Theology (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1990), p. 3
[3]
Karl Rahner, Concise Theological
Dictionary (Buns and Oates, 1965), in Dorothee
Solle, Thinking about God: An
Introduction to Theology, pp.1-2
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