Learning theology in seminary has been a vigorous and enjoyable thing for me. One of the things that has made the study of theology enjoyable is thinking theology in the context where we come from. We have issues to respond to different from Westerners, where the bulk of our theology learning comes from. With the turn of globalization this becomes a reality that we cannot ignore.
But reading through some contextual approaches that some theologians have come up with concerning this identity driven philosophical turn, some have, in my opinion gone too far in presenting a truly original bent to theology. Reading through the Dictionary of Global Theology on a particular article on Trinity, some of the presentations seem to digress to the point of losing a Christian position. I explain them vaguely here because I don’t have the book with me to cite. So with this, I’m somewhat sympathetic to the idea but find difficulty to ascribing to the whole notion of providing a truly contextual theology for Asia (Malaysia).
I would credit Sze Zeng for basically providing the turn of my fascination concerning contextualization to a more critical thought about the whole thing. He has written a good post concerning this which I heartily recommend others to read. It’s entitled The Issue of Contextualization, which gives a good critique to the wholesale of the whole idea. Have a read through it and I’d like to hear your views concerning contextualization.
A Chorus of Echoes 