Christ and the Other by Adams Reverend Graham;

Author:Adams, Reverend Graham;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

The Shaken One and Christian Praxis: A Self-Critical Tradition

I should elaborate briefly on my implicit accusation that neither Hick nor Newbigin properly engages with the diversity of Christian perspectives and practice. It is a problem of ‘praxis’ – the relation between the tradition’s self-reflection and discernment and its practice in each context. While they both intend to appreciate the range of Christian praxis, their schemas prevent them from fulfilling such intentions.

Newbigin, on the one hand, believed in and pioneered the development of local theology and leadership in India. He denounced totalitarian tendencies in the world and wanted the Church globally to allow its diverse expressions mutually to correct each other. Thus Hunsberger discerns a ‘theology of cultural plurality’, a commitment to the perspectival and the essentially relational character of truth. Christians should love each other, learn from each other, work together and, in the process, build up both a fuller understanding of Christ and a fuller manifestation of the Body of Christ, as a sign of the gospel of reconciliation. Yet, on the other hand, Newbigin’s approach warns that contextualizations can replace the finality of Christ with their own finality; he even showed signs of being ‘against’ culture, believing fundamentally that there is a radical discontinuity between Christ and everything else, such as to question the ‘gift’ of cultural diversity. He basically maintained particular doctrinal readings of the central ‘clue’ that is Christ, so arguably manifested a Christian brand of imperialism. That is, by taking for granted the evangelical verities, he pre-empts the ecumenical conversation and delimits legitimate reflection on Christian history and practice. Being confident that ‘In the name of Jesus’ will be vindicated as the starting-point and the finishing-point of all historical reflection and practice, he implicitly subjects Christian diversity to the expectation that all Christians should accept Christ’s finality in those terms. Thus it is debatable whether he honestly engages the heterodoxy of diverse Christianities, even as he commits himself to ecumenical unity.

As for Hick, on the one hand, his Kantian epistemology ensures that all claims are seen as partial phenomena, each a valid experience of reality but none an absolute grasp of it. Thus he affirms the perspectival nature of truth, evident in the way distinct cultural contexts give rise to different religious traditions. Also the questions raised by his metaphorical christology indicate that he is keen for the Church to reflect critically on the ethical implications of its claims. In that sense Hick is appreciative of Christian heterodoxy, not least because he wants his alternative reading and its critique of the dominant perspective legitimized. Yet, on the other hand, though he denies and does not intend this, Hick’s ‘Enlightenment’ epistemology is simultaneously imperialistic, because he systematizes a grand scheme designed to place all (major) religious traditions in a framework of relations (untainted by their historical-cultural contexts); going to abstraction in order to universalize his common norm – the movement from self- to Real-centredness and thus the generation of saintliness.34 The problem is that, even as

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