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Document Details :

Title: Kennen dat het gekende verwelkomt
Subtitle: Theologie & de andere geesteswetenschappen
Author(s): BORGMAN, Erik
Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie
Volume: 49    Issue: 1   Date: 2009   
Pages: 5-17
DOI: 10.2143/TVT.49.1.3203457

Abstract :
In its report, published at the end of 2008, the Dutch commission on the National Plan for the Humanities stressed that a flourishing study of the humanities is important for a living culture. This implies that the humanities are part of their own object. This essay explains the situation from the perspective of theology and the traditional view that theological texts are sacra doctrina, as are the texts read and studied in theology. The essay first explains that this presupposes a dynamic view of thinking and speaking in which neither cultural products nor people are seen as isolated entities. This differs from the dominant modern view. In a second step, it shows that this does not exclude criticism. According to the classical view of theology, reality speaks of a truth that implies a critical stance to what exists. The third step examines how Augustine presents the Bible in his De doctrina christiana. The Bible is not a norm for what theology is allowed to think and say and not a source of light for an otherwise dark world. Rather, it is a cultural place where the way to deal with the things of God can be learned in practice. According to Augustine, the analytical instruments derived from pagan culture find their true purpose in and are transformed into part of the new, Christian culture when applied to the Bible. The fourth step examines the anthropology in De doctrina christiana. The human being comes to light as pointing to God as object of desire in a world that, properly understood, also points to God. For Augustine, seeing and cultivating this openness is characteristic of Christian faith in the crucified and risen Christ. Augustine makes clear that the study of a cultural product – in this case the Bible – can create a new culture that cannot be reduced to the biblical text, the Bible’s reader or the analytical instruments used to study the Bible. It is theology’s task to bring about a situation in which the text, the analytical instruments and the interpreting subject open one another to God’s ungraspable presence. It is the inescapably theological tendency of the humanities to presuppose that the knowing subject welcomes the known: cum assentione cogitare. For Augustine this is the definition of faith.

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