What I Believe I/We must Learn from Theology

From Karl Barth we need to learn anew that it is God speaking to us in Holy Scripture’s witness to Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit.

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer we must learn that Christendom is over, to perpetuate it is folly, that is, unfaithfulness based on fear and lack of discernment), church must be rediscovered in the local, in the last and the least, and in the double immersion in the daily life of the world and the  life of Jesus to discern the will and way of God among us re recommends in his Letters and Papers from Prison.

From Michel de Certeau that the task of the church is to establish boundaries and create a space, a home for its members and at the same time transgress those boundaries in openness and welcome to those outside.

From Rene Girard that desire, disorded desire, mimicking what God and others do, have, and are generate the violence that corrodes and degrades all of us and our world.

From the Liberation theologians that God exercises a “preferential option for the poor.” Yes, that means God takes sides in our struggles for justice and freedom in both the church and the world.

From Ecological theologians that the creation itself is today one of those poor for whom God exercises preferential concerns and so must we in creation-care and responsible living.

From Feminist, Black, LBTG, and other oppressed group theologies we hear more voices of the “poor” whose genuine and full humanity have been denied, whose gifts for church and world have been ignored or denied, and whose practice of these gifts in both church and world restricted.

And, to bring the circle round, from Karl Barth: “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”