a developed understanding of theology

Theology generally, means an inquiry into the God-experiences of human beings (contribution of Ancient Greek era) pursued in faith and fully guided by reason (contribution of the Scholastic era). It is, therefore distinct, yet related to other sciences. The fundamentals that distinguish theology like ‘God’, ‘human being’, ‘their relation’ ‘God-expereince’, its founding element ‘faith’, guiding principle ‘reason’ were not always understood similarly in the history of theology. It meant everything between pure pantheism (idealism) to radical dualism (materialism).

Accordingly theology, in the history, has been a discipline of the ‘imaginary world’/‘City of God’ reserved only to God-men/church-priests, and also as a discipline that exalted the ‘concrete world’ rejecting the existence of God, open to anyone who could make a clever argument, not to mention those positions that reside somewhere between these extremes. The discipline however has become balanced, more open and inclusive with a new understanding of theology in the contemporary period. This path-breaking novelty occurred in and through Karl Rahner (1904-1984), the German theologian, in catholic theology.

Rahner lived in a time that had been experiencing the brunt of irrational trust in reason and the reduction of Reality to matter that happened in the preceding centuries. Though it is justified that 17^th – 18^th century philosophy brought humanity back in touch with what it had lost – reason, art, culture and science – in the Christian early and middle ages with its outright other worldly philosophy and theology, yet the reaction was again lop-sided. With its emphasis on the socio-economical and cultural well-being, it failed to see the world/human beings in the broader perspective. Thus, it yielded to industrial revolution, which effected development at the expense of individuals’ well being and world wars, I and II that resulted in the mass destruction of human beings by human beings.

The traditional theism with its dualistic conception of God and the world and other profound intellectual jargon was irrelevant to the sufferings of the common person. It was as if God has been out for a long summer vacation in the late 19^th and the beginning of 20^th centuries. The dictum of the day was ‘God is dead’. It was both failure of God and failure of reason. In the midst of crisis, there evolved a new set of categories for doing philosophy, the existential approach. It took off from the concreteness (facticity/historicity/situatedness) of every individual, as a being-in-the-world. It produced a new shift in Theology that grew more sensitive to the existential conditions of human being (multi-religious context, colonialism, globalization and other socio-cultural-political context of the world). It reversed the process of theologizing with a humbler approach ‘from below’.  

Among the protagonists who were involved in this novelty, Rahner was a leading figure. He broke the traditional God-world duality by connecting the two as ‘distinct but non-separable’. He regarded God and human being as co-relative terms that would mutually affect each other and made plain that the ‘divine’ is manifest in us. It reveals itself in our quest, restlessness, questioning and creativity, which are nothing but ‘deep calling the deep’. He therefore refers to human beings an embodied-historical-spirit or as supernatural-existential.

With Rahner, there evolved a new God-talk that considered divine as an insider than a being beyond. Since an effort to understand God is an effort to understand human being, he propagated an authentic theological method that recommended a theology that situates the faith in the context of the theologian. He called it as ‘personal theology’. It was precisely the leap, from theology as a discipline discussing God and defending Him as if an outsider, with the aim to know His world like ‘heaven’ ‘angels’, ‘devils’, ‘prophets – his messengers’, to a theology that begins to perceive God as a mystery though distinct yet lives and transforms in and through the world. Rahner calls it as theological anthropology.

Contemporary theologians therefore following Rahner, though accept the traditional definition of theology as ‘inquiry in the God-experiences of human being pursued in faith guided by reason’, would redefine it as follows.

Theology is an enlightenment journey pursued in faith guided by hermeneutical reason, which helps us understand and then grapple with the unceasing revelation of the divine around us. The experience transforms us, gradually, into persons who lead a life in accordance to its values of selfless-love, justice, peace, equality and harmony.

Thus, it gave birth to pluralism in theology: contextual theology (regional theologies), liberation theology (black theology, dalit theology, minjung theology), feminist theology, narrative theology other than the traditional dogmatic theology and further opened the gates for ‘others’ introducing dialogical theology.

Note: In the Indian Tradition, this has always been the contention by major schools of thought. It is not however known to all nor accepted by all. Sadly, it is trying to ape the western mode of institutionalized religion.