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Document Details : Title: Weerspannige liefde Subtitle: Een poging tot theologische introspectie Author(s): BORGMAN, Erik Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 59 Issue: 1 Date: 2019 Pages: 5-19 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.59.1.3285791 Abstract : This essay is a personal evaluation of the current situation in Dutch theology. The author sets out by describing how he was moved by David Steindl-Rast’s explanation of the judgement of Solomon. The latter regards the culture of his own as the woman who, when she could not have the child for herself, was prepared to have it cut in two, and Christianity as the mother who would rather give up the child to ensure that it lives. Just like Steindl-Rast based his decision to enter monastic life on this story, it made the author decide to choose theology. Yet, now he finds that its representatives seem to be prepared to have theology cut in half in order to be presentable as a respected science. What to do now? Theology’s task is presented in an analogy to the way in which the French writer Édouard Louis and sociologist Didier Eribon reveal in their works that which the current cultures choose to hide. African-American theologian Melissa Harris-Perry’s image of the crooked room is used as a metaphor for dominant culture: it is disorienting and causes a counterproductive response. A description of a ritual in the novel Beloved by African-American author Toni Morisson, on the other hand, helps to show how faith and liturgy can mediate human dignity and freedom under slavery – like a true mother. Finally, Simone Weil shows that this is the essence of the solidarity that Jesus Christ has shown with human misfortune. ‘Love sees the invisible’, Weil says: the dignity of that which is not considered to have any. The dignity of theology is that of slaves ‘waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast’, as Jesus puts it in a parable, ‘so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks’ and serve him (Lk 12,35). Performing it in such a way in the current climate will affirm the feeling of being ‘strangers and exiles’ (Heb 11,13), but the author believes it is the best way to be ‘fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God’ (Eph 2,19). Sadly. |
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