the messiness of life and, therefore, of theology

Life cannot be lived as a theory, not even when lived theologically. Though theology's cognitive aspect functions as a framework within which one chooses to live, neither this nor any other such framework (philosophical, political, ethical) is 'pure'. The practicalities of living intervene, and it is right and proper that they should. This reality of 'unsystematic living' ... confirms the importance of living as both embodied and influenced, even shaped, by both habits and interruptions, the precise content of which is not predictable or controllable.

Clive Marsh, Cinema and Sentiment: Film's Challenge to Theology (Paternoster, 2004), 132.

A Film is Never Only a Film

** Dedicated to my last batch of colleagues in television and film (yes, film!) productions, 2000-2003 (you know who you are, and you who know who you are know what I mean); with ambivalent memory of the good (though turbulent) old days.

.............................................

14 theses on the interrelationship between the cultural role of theology and the practice of film-watching:

1. Life's disjointedness takes some handling.

2. Spirituality is best understood as 'life structure'.

3. Spirituality without theology is vacuous.

4. The practice of theology makes integrated living easier.

5. To see film-watching as a spiritual discipline does not spoil the watching of a film.

6. A film theatre is never only a film theatre.

7. New ways of 'being church' will include finding ways of respecting people's cinema-going habits.

8. It is better to go to the cinema than to watch a film at home.

9. Film critics and film studies lecturer need to be better informed about religion and theology.

10. Theologians and religious studies lecturers need to be better informed about popular culture.

11. Religion could itself be revitalised through critical film-watching. Film-watching could be enhanced by relating to critical theology.

12. Emotionally conscious theology is not only for charismatics.

13. The question of what and who 'God' is remains vital throughout.

14. The only theology worth bothering with is a culturally informed and culture-critical theology.

Clive Marsh, 'A Film is Never Only a Film', in his Cinema and Sentiment: Film's Challenge to Theology (Paternoster, 2004), 132-147.

受難節思考 :: being messy and particular

... the Judeo-Christian tradition is one that emphasises the scandal of particularity that stems from understanding God's actions in the messy arena of history and of particular people with all their strengths, faults, and idiosyncrasies. The particularity of situatedness does not, however, isolate religion from the rest of life. A fideistic [*] approach that attempts to segregate faith from other currents of life is, on this reading, a gnostic or docetic impossibility, contrary to the postmodern rejection of the modern 'unencumbered self '. (my italics)

Dan R. Stiver, 'Theological Method', in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 180.

Theology is therefore ideally suited to handle life's messiness. Far from avoiding what life throws up, theology as a discipline is about handling a living tradition, fed by insights of a living body of people, in the service of understanding and living life to the full. (my italics)

Clive Marsh, Theology Goes to the Movies (Routledge, 2007), 163.

• rejoining 卡卡西：黑白之間 / 意義 / 宗教生活的基本形式

the horror, the horror ...

As one of us recently discovered when teaching a module on biblical hermeneutics to a class of divinity students training for the priesthood, work undertaken at the interface between the Bible and popular culture ... is often met with derision and disdain within theology. ...... the mere mention of Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990) or Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, 2003) led to at least one cry of 'blasphemy', and a general consensus among the students that the 'serious' business of theology was being dumbed down.

Christopher Deacy and Gaye Ortiz, Theology and Film: Challenging the Sacred/Secular Divide (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), x.

So, you see how far out I am?

Gracious God, have mercy on us.

prefix-less theology

In times past, it was easy for Western, white, male Caucasians to label other theologies with a prefix such as African American theology, Latin American theology, feminist theology, Asian theology, and so on, without recognising the white, masculine, Western flavour to their own theology. They were doing 'prefix-less' theology while everyone else was not! This is no longer possible. It is incumbent, then, upon theologians to be conscious of the tradition and perspective out of which they write ...

Dan R. Stiver, 'Theological Method', in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 179.

(as I've said HERE)

evangelicals and East Asian contextual theology

The history of evangelicalism suggests that the success of the movement rests on its willingness to correlate Scripture with the context in which it finds itself, rather than simply reaching backward into evangelical history to draw out past correlations, such as the way in which a text was applied by Calvin in his sixteenth-century Genevan context. Sixteenth-century Geneva bears little resemblance to today's Hong Kong or Singapore!

..... it was well known that Calvin was interested in --- and, to some extent, influenced by --- the language and concepts of the classical Roman philosophical and rhetorical tradition. China has an older philosophical and rhetorical tradition. Why should Asian Christians use the same ideas that Calvin borrowed when they have a distinguished heritage of their own from which to draw?

Alister E. McGrath, 'Evangelical Theological Method: The State of the Art', in John G. Stackhouse, Jr. (ed.) Evangelical Futures: A Conversation on Theological Method (Regent College / Baker / IVP, 2000), 36-37 (my italics).

I am a bit -- just a little bit -- surprised. Didn't quite expect a self-professed evangelical theologian and a professor of historical theology to say such things.

After all, I am happy that it is Alister McGrath who have said this. If they were my words, I could be stoned to death (figuratively, of course) for straying away from orthodoxy and betraying the Way, and setting a bad example for the kids (離經叛道，教壞細路).

So, thank you, Alister. When one day I face the heresy trial, I can have something to quote. And be mindful, all my ethnic Chinese Edinburgh colleagues!

theology and cinematic culture: contextuality, intertextuality, interdependency

That films may be addressing questions that churches are no longer meaningfully asking is of course an important issue, but it tends to overlook  the very real and vital sense in which theology is an intensely contextual discipline that has always ... depended upon an analysis of the close and inescapable interplay between theology and culture.  ...

... Not only is it impossible ... to do theology without constantly finding an intersection with popular culture. ... But [sic] we cannot even watch a Tim Burton film without encountering a critique of Bultmannn's program of demythologization, which is no less insightful than what Karl Jasper and John Macquarrie were espousing half a century ago.

[my italics]

Christopher Deacy, 'From Bultmann to Burton, Demytholigizing the Big Fish', in Robert K. Johnston (ed.) Reframing Theology and Film (Baker Academic, 2007), 238-258; quotation from p. 254.

core business of the church

One of the most important things that Christians need to know about the church is that the church is not of ultimate importance. ... What is of ultimate importance is the reign of God, and it is from the church's commitment to preach, serve and witness to that reign that the church receives and maintains its identity. ... The point of the church is not the church.  The church can only be church if it is poised toward the kingdom, continuing to embody the ministry of Jesus as the face of the Spirit, sharing in the abundant trinitarian life God shares in history.  The church is missionary by its very nature.  (original italics)

Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (2004), p. 396.  

Sounds familiar, huh?

Yes, it does remind me of an analogy from Karl Barth (Ben: was it him?), that the church exists because of its mission, just as fire exists because of combustion.  If there is no burning, there is no fire; likewise, when there is no mission, there is (or should be) no church. (Something like that.) I am glad to have been embedded in this line of thinking ever since my early years in church.  And yes, I am proud that my church taught me that; thank you, Rev. Lo.

Ironically, so much church-talks nowadays, wherever you are in the world, are church-oriented, church-focused, church-this, church-that. 

Well, you got me, 'church growth' ... uh oh! Could be one of the worst ideas over the last half a century.  

Dear God, have mercy on us.  And dear church, give me a break.

There is no such thing as theology ...

There is no such thing as "theology"; there is only contextual theology ... (original italics)

This is the first sentence in Stephen Bevan, Models of Contextual Theology (revised edition, 2002).

Then, building on Henri Bouillard's notion that a theology which is not actuelle (up-to-date) is a false theology, Bevan goes on to say that:

a theology that is not somehow reflective of our times, our culture, and our current concerns — and so not contextual — is also a false theology. (5)

This corresponds to my stance that all theologies or religious teachings or faith expressions, including the Holy Scriptures, are essentially and necessarily contextual.  As I have said here a year ago:

所有宗教信念的表述也必然是受文化侷限的 (all representations of religion are inevitably culture-bound)，因此任何宗教教導都必須而且必然是針對處境的，我們也只能這樣理解那些教導 (all religious teachings are thus necessarily contextual, and should duly be understood as such)。聖經亦然。

foresight on contextual theology from some 180 years ago

'If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God and carries you backward to phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not.'

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Self-Reliance' 

(RW Emerson, 1803-1882; Harvard Divinity School alumnus, 1825)

local theology and local culture

... if Christianity is alive at all in a situation, it will certainly change things about the culture. The Christian message, after all, is about change: repentance, salvation, and an eschatological reality to be realized. To think that Christianity will not change a situation is to rob the Christian message of its most important part.

Cultural romanticism on the part of Christian communities is often prompted by the lack of proper cultural sensitivity in the past. But to correct a lack of cultural sensitivity by creating an atmosphere inimical to any critique simply produces a new set of problems.

Robert Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985), p.29.
(my italics)

Brilliant statement.
Nonetheless, the author goes on to expound a form of 'hidden Christ theory' - the presupposition that Christ is indeed already anonymously present in different cultures. Apparently throughout the whole book the author works with such a premise, which is problematic, to say the least. The notion was probably popular during the time when the book was written. (I am not sure.) Yet in any case, the author seems not to aware that, notwithstanding his consistent emphasis on cultural sensitivity and listening to local cultures, this presupposition of his is a violent assault on local cultures - it violently imposes an alien concept into different cultures; and ironically this basic gesture is what the author himself is trying to fight against.

Doing Theology from the Margin

Without being forced to give up control in the confrontation with people at the margins, the self will always end up worshipping projections of its own power, a problem that the early critics of liberal theology have already realised. Without developing respect for human others, talk about the divine Other easily misses the mark: What sense does it make to claim respect for the divine Other if we are unable to respect out neighbours? Likewise, without gathering a broader understanding of the texts of the church that includes the repressed texts and the texts of those who are repressed, the theological turn to the text easily ends up perpetuating the status quo.

Joerg Rieger (2001) God and the Excluded: Visions and Blindspots in Contemporary Theology, 178.

The Contextual Nature of Truth

Truth is contextual not in the sense that it is primarily a function of a particular context ... but in the sense that it aims at making a difference in people's lives. Liberal theology understood in part the contextual nature of truth. But there context itself is often either universalized, especially in the older liberal approaches, or atomized into a pluralistic "anything goes", the preference of current liberalism. [my italics]

Joerg Rieger (2001) God and the Excluded: Visions and Blindspots in Contemporary Theology, 183.

Afterthought (thinking aloud in the morning of 14 May):

The critique on classical (older) liberal theologies (a la Paul Tillich) is right on.
What intrigues me is the notion that truth is contextual in the sense that it aims at making a difference in people's lives. How is that so? Truth (or rather, the representation of truth) is contextual; I have always buy in to that. But I never thought of it as related to 'making a difference in people's lives'.
Does he mean that 'truth' makes a difference in people's lives within their specific contexts instead of making a difference in an abstract vacuum?
That is to say, 真理 (或者真理的表述) 並非空泛地、抽象地帶來不可觸摸的改變，而是在人的實際處境中改變人們的生活和生命。
This might or might not be what he means, but it is what I understand.

到底研乜究？

『學術，對我來說，是次要。了解生活，才是重點。
……

研究，是解開一個一個死結的過程。有時候，死結真的是死結。有時候，死結解開來，變新的機遇。有時候，那些累人的研究評估，只是行政的形式主義，是簽名蓋章的例行公事，如果蓋過了熱情就把研究搞死了。

一個現代社會，如果有個小小的空間，讓文化工作者，做他們喜歡的工作，把生活、體驗、創意，自由抒發出來，那麼生活也許會豐富一點。』

馬傑偉：『人文館：北京筆記II』，《明報》時代版，2007年5月3日

act of faith and / or / versus theory of faith

'..... when Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal. ..... Of course, the earliest exponent of that meal (Paul, in 1 Corinthians) insists that it matters quite a lot that you understand what you are about as you come to share in it; but still it is the meal, not the understanding, that is the primary vehicle of meaning.'

N.T. Wright, 'The Cross and the Caricatures', Fulcrum, 23 April 2007.

The bishop of Durham (England), distinguished New Testament scholar, brilliantly spells out the discrepancy between the essence of faith and our human representation(s) and understanding of that faith.

Alas, so many of us imagine that the two are the same.

What makes a theologian

It is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian.

Martin Luther

Playing a Part in the Collective Project ... Anonymously

Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts ..... it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than any other artisans; 'eternal values', 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invaluable assurance and natural humility.

Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. .....

... if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plane [who anonymously rebuilt the destroyed structure]. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts. Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.

Ingmar Bergman (1969)
'Introduction' to The Seventh Seal (1957). (my emphasis)
【thanks to Jolyon Mitchell for bringing this quote to my attention】

Circumstances of the 'Intellectuals' (if there is such a thing)

'The intellectual is an endangered species. In place of such people as Bertrand Russell, Raymond Williams or Hannah Arendt — people with genuine learning, breadth of vision and a concern for public issues — we now have only facile pundits, think tank apologists and spin doctors. In the age of the knowledge economy, we have somehow managed to combine the widest ever participation in higher education with the most dumbed-down of cultures.'

Frank Furedi (2005) Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Confronting 21^st Century Philistinism. (from the front flap)

False (but popular) images of God

'Two false images of God are particularly irresistible to many of us - mostly unconsciously ... God the negotiator and the other, God the Santa Claus. Though we fashion both to serve our interests, they are each other's opposites. With one, we want to make advantageous deals. From the other, we want to get warm smiles and bagfuls of goodies. We run from one to the other. Some of their features are reminiscent of the God of Jesus Christ. But we've drawn these images of God mostly from two currents of the culture in which we swim - the current of hard and unforgiving economic realities, in which we exchange goods to maximize benefits, and the current of soft, even infantile, desires, in which we long to be showered with gifts simply because we exist.'

Miroslav Volf (2005) Free of Charge. 23-24.

借來的慨歎

'I am seeing the work of my life being undone in front of my own eyes. It's a sad feeling.'

Dr. Roger Payne, President of Ocean Alliance
interviewed by BBC in Planet Earth－ The Future
on the recent global setbacks on whale protection

昨夜看BBC FOUR。
一句話，說得簡單，說的人眼濕濕。
登時也觸動了我。
一直迴盪到如今。

共鳴。慨歎。感懷。揮不去。

不過我慨歎的不是海洋與鯨魚，雖然我也愛他們。
我只是借那句話來感懷身世而已。

昔日同袍戰友，必定知道我說甚麼。
不明所以的朋友，也無謂多想多問了。