2.7. Contextual Theology
The above
discussions thus far have provided for this thesis many layers of
background. In this last item of theoretical and theological
orientation, the local urgency and theological undertaking are laid
out in a direct manner in order to grasp the meaning of
contextualization in doing local theology.
Walls argues that
the southward shift of the center of gravity of the Christian world
will place the Third World (or better, Two-Thirds World, as Bediako
would say)1
theology in the mainstream of Christian theology. This theology, in
Walls' reading of Gustavo Gutierrez, is about “testing your actions
by Scripture.”2
The tasks of this theology in its context, according to Walls, are
going to be so basic, so vital, that there will be little time for
the barren, sterile, time-wasting by-paths into which so much Western
theology and theological research has gone in recent years. [It] will
be...about doing things, about things that deeply affect the
lives of numbers of people.3
Walls further illustrates this with South African Black Theology,
citing that it is literally about “life and death.”4
The same issue is
at stake in Minahasa and in many other parts of the Two-Thirds World.
There is no time for a leisure theology. The more we wait, more women
will be trafficked, more men will have no income to feed their
family, more children will catch preventable diseases, and more
indigenous land will be usurped by a multinational corporation for
exploitation. Contextual
theology, therefore, is more than liberation theology or cultural
identity.5
It is a theology of reality, “of action and reflection,” and of
Christian piety. In other words, it is our Christian identity.
Further, contextual theology is the biblical theology
that speaks to the people and their needs. In
Minahasa it must be a theology that speak to the needs of the
Minahasans. As Bediako
asserts, “[w]e need to meet God in the Lord Jesus Christ speaking
immediately to us in our particular circumstances, in a way that
assures us that we can be authentic Africans [here I add Minahasans]
and true Christians.”6
------
1 Kwame
Bediako, Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 108.
2 Walls,
The Missionary Movement in Christian History, 10.
3 Walls,
The Missionary Movement in Christian History, 10 (italics
author's).
4 Walls,
The Missionary Movement in Christian History, 10.
5 See
Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies, 12-16.
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