Glaube und Theologie / Faith and Theology

Reformatorische Grundeinsichten in der ökumenischen Diskussion / Basic Insights of the Reformation in Ecumenical Debate

Wolfram Kinzig, Julia Winnebeck, Wolfram Kinzig, Julia Winnebeck

• Editore: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783374058082
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Teología y religión
• Categoria: Ecumenismo religioso y cuestiones interconfesionales

Glaube und Theologie stehen seit den Anfängen des Christentums in produktiver Spannung zueinander, die die Reformation mit ihrem Prinzip des sola fide einerseits und mit ihrer Institutionalisierung einer schriftzentrierten akademischen Theologie andererseits in besonderer Weise aktualisiert hat. Dadurch entwickelte sich in den neu entstandenen Evangelisch-theologischen Fakultäten eine "wissenschaftliche Theologie" auf höchstem Niveau, die weltweit rezipiert wurde. Diese Theologie sieht sich allerdings in jüngster Zeit kritischen Anfragen ausgesetzt. Säkularisierungsprozesse führen zu einem massiven religiösen Bildungsverlust und damit zu einer Trivialisierung von Theologie. Zeitgleich breiten sich weltweit christliche Gruppen aus, die auf eine akademische theologische Ausbildung keinen Wert legen. In Anbetracht dieser Situation entsteht die Frage, inwiefern die Theologie reformatorischer Tradition auch in Zukunft religionsproduktiv sein und eine für die Kirchen grundlegende Arbeit leisten kann.Um diese Frage zu diskutieren, trafen sich auf Einladung des Evangelisch-Theologischen Fakultätentages, der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie und der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland im Oktober 2017 Theologinnen und Theologen unterschiedlicher christlicher Konfessionen in Wittenberg zu einer internationalen Konferenz. Deren wegweisende Beiträge sind in diesem Band veröffentlicht.Since the beginnings of Christianity, there has been a fundamental tension between faith and theology.The Reformation, with its principle of sola fide on the one hand and its institutionalisation of a scripture-based academic theology on the other hand, drew particular attention to the tension and suggested new answers to that problem. That effort contributed to a fundamental transformation of academic theology within the faculties of Protestant Theology which emerged as a result of the movement. In the past decades, however, academic theology has come under considerable pressure.[In much of Europe and North America, ] The process of secularization has led to a massive decline in religious education and – partially as a reaction to this – to a trivialization of academic theology. At the same time, one can observe a global proliferation of evangelical and Pentecostal groups. These groups sometimes display a certain indifference towards academic theological training, or even reject it altogether. In view of this development the question arisesto what extent the relationship between faith and theology as defined in the wake of the Reformation will in future continue to be religiously productive and may thus serve the churches and their congregations.

Glaube und Theologie
im Kontext

Contextualizing Faith
and Theology

Indien / India

FAITH AND THEOLOGY IN THE JOHANNINE
COMMUNITY AND IN THE REFORMATION

A Paradigm in the Indian Context

Johnson Thomaskutty

ABSTRACT / ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

The relationship between the exercise of faith within a believing community and the conceptualization of theology within the academic set-up is one of the most intriguing concerns discussed in modern theology. The current essay thus explores 1. the integral connection between faith and theology within the Johannine community context, 2. the impact the Johannine way to handle faith and theology may have had on the Reformation, and 3. the role the Johannine and Reformation paradigms play in the contemporary Indian context. The discussion as a whole is an attempt to demonstrate how the Johannine community, the Reformation Movement, and the Protestant Christianity in India relate theological reflection with ‘living’ devotion.

Die Beziehung zwischen der Glaubenspraxis einer Gemeinde und den theologischen Gedankengebilden der akademischen theologischen Wissenschaft ist eines der meistdiskutierten Probleme moderner Theologie. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht dieser Beitrag 1. die wesenhafte Verbindung von Glaube und Theologie im Kontext der johanneischen Gemeinde, 2. den möglichen Einfluss dieser engen Verbindung von Glaube und Theologie in der johanneischen Theologie auf die reformatorische Theologie, und 3. die Rolle, den die johanneischen und reformatorischen Paradigmen noch heute für die christliche Theologie in Indien spielen.

INTRODUCTION

The following paper deals with the relationship between the faith of the believing community and theology within the academic set-up. The Reformation movement with its emphasis on sola scriptura, sola fide, and solus Christus attempted to build a bridge between faith and theology. While the Reformers derived their core concepts and theological ideas mostly from the Pauline corpus, in the current investigation, I seek to explore the connection between the Johannine understanding of faith and theology and its significance in the Reformation context. The following questions are given prominence here: how did the Johannine community deal with the issues of the relationship between faith and theology in their personal and corporate living? How did the Reformers follow the ideology of the Johannine community in their interpretative endeavours in relating faith in the ecclesiastical set-up and the theology in the academic circles of their times? How did the Reformation movement influence Indian Christianity and its reinterpretation of faith and theology? How did the characteristic features of the Johannine community serve as a model to the Reformers and also to the post-Reformation Indian believers/scholars in developing their ideological and theological framework? An attempt is made to analyze the way in which Christ-centred interpretations work in the Johannine, in the Reformation, and in the Indian Christian contexts. At the integrative level, we will also explore the analeptic (to the Johannine community) and the proleptic (to the Indian Christian context) connection of the Reformation movement. The unique feature of the Reformation, as it relates to both the biblical past and the global future, gives us a significant outlook concerning the movement and its growth. As a Johannine scholar, I will, first, analyze faith and theology within the narrative framework of the Gospel of John; second, as a person influenced by Protestant theology, I will describe the connection of these two areas in the Reformation traditions; and third, as an Indian, I will study the impact and influence of the Johannine and the Reformation principles both in the historical and in the contemporary Indian scenario.

FAITH AND THEOLOGY IN THE JOHANNINE COMMUNITY CONTEXT

As a gnomic interpreter, the Johannine narrator recreates the story of Jesus with innovative techniques, immediate effects, and universal significance.¹ Louis Martyn conceives the Gospel of John as a two-level drama.² For him, the Fourth Gospel ‘seems far more detached from its ancient setting.’ Martyn says, ‘The very mention of this Gospel causes most of us to think of those marvellous discourses of Jesus, in the reading of which one feels immediately warmed by such “spiritual” and timeless affirmations as, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”’³ Raymond E. Brown explains the tension between Church and Synagogue and the polemic between Jews and the Johannine sectarians,⁴ arguing that the Johannine Christians, as a sectarian group expelled from the Synagogue, constructed a theology according to their existential demands and based on their faith affirmations.⁵ In the Johannine community context, the aspect of faith was dealt with using an entirely different emphasis and perspective. In the words of Robert Kysar, ‘Community experience was understood to be the key that unlocked the puzzles of the gospel–both its theological themes and the language it uses to tell its story of Jesus.’⁶ The communitarian tendencies of the Fourth Gospel enable the reader to relate the characters and the events from an ‘everywhere and ever’ point of view rather than from a ‘there and then’ perspective.⁷ In the words of Clement of Alexandria, John positions his Gospel over against the ‘external facts’ of the Synoptic Gospels, as the Fourth Gospel is a narrative filled with ‘internal facts’ which qualify this Gospel to be called ‘a spiritual Gospel.’⁸ This general framework persuades a reader to perceive the contemporaneous outlook of the Gospel. The questions to be answered in this paper are: ‘How did the situation of the Johannine community inform the reformulation of their faith along soteriological and eschatological lines?’, ‘How can the community’s theological engagements be a paradigm in the contemporary Indian context?’, and ‘What insights can an overview of the experiences of the Johannine community in relation to the Indian Christian situation offer into the connection between faith and theology in the contemporary world?’

In the Fourth Gospel, while the noun pistis does not occur, the verb pisteuō occurs nearly one hundred times.⁹ Richard Thomas France states, ‘At any rate, the verb expresses a vital component in John’s understanding of salvation. It summarizes what God requires of his people (6:28-29).’¹⁰ John’s usage of the verb can be briefly outlined as follows: first, the intellectual content of the verb is expressed twelve times by pisteuō with hoti (literally, ‘believe that’). All these uses (except 9:18) refer to a Christological conviction, i.e. the belief that Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, has come from God (6:69; 8:24; 11:27, 42; 13:19; 17:8, 21; 14:10-11; 16:27, 30; 20:31);¹¹ second, in no less than thirty-six cases it is expressed with pisteuō eis (literally, ‘believe into’), and once pisteuō en (‘believe in’; see 2:11; 3:15. 16. 18a, 36; 4:39; 6:29. 35. 40; 7:31. 48; 8:30; 9:36; 10:42; 11:45. 48; 12:11. 42; 14:1a; 17:20).¹² All these usages except two refer to a belief ‘into Jesus,’ or ‘into the name of Jesus’ (1:12; 2:23; 3:18);¹³ third, in thirty cases pisteuō is used absolutely, with no explicit indication of the object of belief. Often these uses follow closely after references to believing ‘into Jesus’ (see 3:18; 4:39, 41; 6:40. 47; 9:35-38).¹⁴ In the words of Udo Schnelle, ‘In the majority of cases, pisteuō is combined with eis (in or on), which indicates a fundamental characteristic of the Johannine understanding of faith.’¹⁵ It demonstrates a complete commitment and personal union between the believer and Christ. Believing in Jesus means to receive him (1:12; 5:43; 13:20), to receive his testimony (3:11), and to receive his words (12:48; 17:8).¹⁶ In that sense, faith is used as a shorthand expression for a Christian commitment that is mostly or even fully directed towards Jesus.¹⁷ Here, we see John’s distinctive linguistic usage of faith that is remarkably single-minded. While a few of John’s uses of pisteuō appear with the dative and refer to God or Scripture (or Moses) or a word spoken, in the vast majority of cases the object of faith is the person of Jesus himself.¹⁸ This understanding of the verb in John informs the reader about the following things: first, believing is significantly connected to the person and work of Jesus; second, it is a soteriologically loaded term that functions both at the intradiegetic (within the story of John) and metadiegetic (in relation to the readers) levels;¹⁹ and third, it is an existential demand or requirement to establish the identity of the community.

The first time the word ‘faith’ in verbal form (pisteusōsin) appears in 1:7. John the Baptist came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. In 1:12, it is said that believing (pisteuousin) in Jesus’ name will give people ‘power to become children of God.’²⁰ These initial and other references to ‘believing’ are well-aligned with the statement of purpose of the Gospel leading up to the climax of the story. In 20:31, the narrator concludes: ‘But these are written so that you may come to believe (pisteuēte) that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing (pisteuontes) you may have life in his name.’ Commenting on John 20:31, Larry W. Hurtado states, ‘The acclamation of Jesus as “the Christ” forms a central part of the author’s own summary of Christian faith.’²¹ In 20:30, the narrator gives the impression that the conten...