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Document Details : Title: Toward a Fuller Catholicity Subtitle: The Promise of Asian Theological Method Author(s): SHEVELAND, John N. Journal: Louvain Studies Volume: 38 Issue: 2 Date: 2014 Pages: 184-197 DOI: 10.2143/LS.38.2.3073481 Abstract : This essay isolates and integrates three theological proposals available in the Federation of Asian Bishops’ document on theological method and recommends them for consideration in other global contexts. FABC Paper #96, published in the year 2000, is marked by a vital and attractive dynamism of movement involving the role of mystery in theological reflection, which gives rise to a modus vivendi of dialogue with Asian cultures, religions, and resources. In light of FABC construals of mystery and dialogue, a significant comfort level with theological pluralism as catholicity can be detected as a category distinct from and inhospitable to theological relativism. Finally, according to the psychology of faith development available in James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, the essay suggests the Asian bishops implicitly reflect and call for a faith that can be considered developmentally mature, one that is intensely particular in and animated by its foundation in Jesus Christ, because of which it is also productively vulnerable to divine presence in the strange truths of religiously different neighbors, traditions, and in unexpected cultural resources. |
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