Wolfe / McKerron Christoph Schwöbel

Theology in Conversation
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-11-163024-3
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 214, 371 Seiten

Reihe: Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann

Christoph Schwöbel shaped a generation of theologians with his vision of the Trinity as an eternal conversation which addresses all humans and draws them into conversation with each other and God. This volume continues Schwöbel’s theology through essays engaging his central topics of conversation: Trinity, tradition, the arts, religion and society.

Zielgruppe

Theolog/-innen, Philosoph/-innen

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wolfe, Judith

McKerron, Margaret

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christliche Kirchen, Konfessionen, Denominationen Protestantismus, evangelische und protestantische Kirchen

Leseproben

In loving memory of

Christoph Schwöbel (1955–2021)

Foreword

Theology in Conversation

When you asked Christoph Schwöbel for an account of his theology or the main contributions he had made to the field of Protestant theology in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, he would look at you, often over the edge of his glasses, possibly take a puff from his pipe, and then, he would start talking. Not, though, about his expertise in the field or about any original contribution of his to doing theology in contemporary times. But about the fortunate and formative encounters with theologians and philosophers on his journey. Stories of encounters with people whom, it seemed to him, he owed important insights, formative introductions to crucial questions, or eye-opening pointers towards wider horizons. Soon in such a conversation, it would have become clear, that, in his own perception, Christoph Schwöbel’s theology was a theology that had developed by and in exchange with colleagues and friends as a theology in conversation.

Christoph would mention the group of young philosophers around Wilhelm Anz at the Church University in Bethel, where he started his theology degree. They introduced him to Heidegger, Bloch, and others, and to a practice of philosophy that would closely study primary sources in order to listen to the philosopher’s own voice, trying to understand a philosopher’s perspective from the inside. A couple of semesters later, at Marburg University, it was his future Doktorvater, Carl Heinz Ratschow, who had a huge impact on the way Christoph would learn to do theology. Ratschow, who had started his academic career in Oriental Studies and Theology, had written a thesis on Ludwig Klages’ philosophy and had gained his habilitation in Old Testament studies with a study about the Hebrew verb hayah. From early on, he personified an interdisciplinary approach to theology. As a systematic theologian and philosopher of religion, Ratschow never lost his interest in Egyptology, Oriental Studies more broadly, the ancient Near-East cultures, and Arabic. Quite the opposite: throughout his career he would expand his areas of expertise to shores even farer afield by learning Sanskrit and Pali, studying Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam and their sacred texts. Learning to do theology with Carl Heinz Ratschow meant, for Christoph, not only the need to regard the dialogue with philosophy and between the theological disciplines as key to the craftmanship of systematic theology, but also to do theology always as conversations with other religious traditions. Moreover, Ratschow did not inhabit an academic ivory tower. He was both a public theologian and a church theologian, who would bring his encyclopaedic philosophical, religious and theological knowledge into conversation with contemporary society and, on a regular basis, in the pulpit with the community of believers. In faithfulness to Christian faith’s nature as a reasoning, reflecting faith – a faith seeking understanding – theology had to reflect on the orienting knowledge that Christian faith provides for the conduct of human life, both for individual believers and for human society as a whole (locally and globally). Ratschow’s incredibly broad horizon and his ability to do theology in interdisciplinary conversation set (high) standards for Christoph’s own approach to the enterprise of doing theology.

Other conversations developed in similarly significant ways – for instance, the friendship with the American philosopher of religion John Clayton; and the encounter with Dutch philosophers of religion and theologians around Vincent Brümmer, a philosophical and theological “pilgrim community” on their annual journey in Brümmer’s VW bus to conferences in England. These encounters set the course for Christoph’s love of the Anglo-Saxon world of theology and his post as lecturer in Systematic Theology at King’s College London. Here, the fruitful exchange with colleagues, particularly with Colin Gunton, and the theological debates that the seminars of the Research Institute in Systematic Theology housed, shaped Christoph’s theology and planted the seeds of what would later be called the renaissance of trinitarian theology. Whenever Christoph spoke of his account of Trinitarian theology as the “framework theory” of Christian faith, he always paid tribute to the formative conversations and discussions he had had with colleagues and friends – discussions that facilitated his understanding of the central place of the Trinity in Christian faith and his formulation of a Trinitarian account of revelation. For Christoph, such an account served as an entrance gate both to Christian faith and to Christian theology.

Theology as Conversation

As much as Christoph’s theology developed in conversation, with teachers, colleagues, and friends, it would not have gained its full impact as theology as conversation without the further development of Christoph’s understanding of God: understanding God as God-in-relationship (developed very much in conversation with Wilfried Härle’s and Eilert Herms’ reflections on the relational ontology of Christian faith) now required a more precise description. In conversation with Martin Luther’s theology and put to the test in extensive debates with the (Neoplatonist) philosopher and friend Jens Halfwassen, Christoph clarified that the relationships that characterise God’s inner being and therefore God’s dealings with humanity have to be understood as communicative relations. As the God whom theology’s reasoning tries to grasp is conversation – the conversation of the Father as the Speaker, speaking the word that is the Son to the understanding listener who is the Holy Spirit – it only seemed natural that in recent years, doing theology for Christoph included a “dialogical imperative” and so was to be done as a theology in conversation.

Christian faith itself is fundamentally a conversation: God’s self-communication in the history of the people of Israel and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that calls God’s people into a relationship with this God. This relationship is the relationship of faith, which replies to God’s call in existential trust in this God and in God’s original and eternal will to be in communion with God’s creatures and the whole of creation. Faith, then, is a communicative relationship actualised in the believers’ reply to God’s call in prayers of praise and lament, petition, intercession and thanks. Theology’s original location is therefore at the centre of the life of the church: it starts with what happens in worship, in God’s service for humanity and human beings’ response in faith. Moreover, it is not only the explicitly religious practice of conversation between believers and God in worship that forms the response of faith. Rather, how Christians conduct their lives is to be understood as actualising this conversation between God and God’s creature – that is, how they live in practice is best understood as occurring within an ongoing conversation between God’s promise and human trust. Indeed, the Christian life is to be understood as a life lived in response to God’s will to be humanity’s God, to be the one “from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress” as Martin Luther expresses in The Large Catechism.1 How human beings respond to this promise by existential trust not only in their particular religious practice but also in relating all other relationships of and in their life to this fundamental relationship forms the particular response of individuals and the church as the community of all believers to God’s promise. Theology is the reflection of this conversation of the self-communicating God and humanity, the self-reflection of Christian faith. For that reason, theology should mirror the communicative dynamics of faith as its object. Due to the communication which faith is it seems appropriate for theology to work with communicative and communicable methods and the respective shape and style of theology.

A Life in Conversation – Being Curious and Constructive

This theological insight into faith as conversation and its impact on methods, style and shape of proper theology, it seems to me, resonated well with the theologian Christoph Schwöbel as a person. In many ways, he genuinely embodied what it means to live a life in conversation. His curiosity combined with his broad horizon allowed him to relate to other philosophies and theologies, worldviews and cultures in a genuinely interested manner. It was an exciting and inspiring enterprise for him to discover the potential of the orienting knowledge of Christian faith in conversation with music and literature, other religions and philosophies, the sciences and economics, diverse areas of conversation, some of which re-appear as the sections in this volume. Not only was he curious but constructive. In seemingly effortless ways, he...

Über Autor(innen)

Judith Wolfe und Margaret McKerron, University of St Andrews, Schottland.

Judith Wolfe and Margaret McKerron, University of St Andrews, Schottland.