Let us play : (un)shackling liaisons, (un)masking games and (un)hindered dialogue in the arena where theology takes place

Abstract

In 1973 the theme of the May issue of the theological journal Concilium was ‘The crisis of religious language’. The linguist Harald Weinrich (1973:329) used the compositum (composition) ‘narrative theology’ for the first time. In the same issue the German political theologian Jean-Baptiste Metz (1973:334–342) argued that ‘narrative theology’, within the broader context of political theology, is a mode of discourse which is particularly sensitive to the ‘experience’ of people. At the time, and in that particular context, this argument was not met with enthusiasm. Eberhard Jüngel (1974; [1977] 1992) and Dietrich Ritschl (1976; 1984) did not appreciate any theology that had anything to do with life experience and social relevance, and Ritschl (1976:18) referred to narrative theology as ‘that idiom’. Metz, on the other hand, argued that theology cannot in any circumstances be ‘socially uninvolved’ (Metz 1973; 1967). It was Metz who together with Jürgen Moltmann developed the notion ‘Political Theology’ during the 1960s as a sociocritical theology (Van Wyk 2015:1 of 8; cf. Schüssler Fiorenza 2013:38). Political theology is a theology ‘with its face toward the world’ (Metz 1968 [1969]:83; cf. Van Wyk 2015:1 of 8), committed to ‘justice, peace, and the integrity of creation’ (cf. WCC 1983). The three main tasks of political theology are: (1) socio-theoretical awareness of the complexity of different relationships; (2) an assessment of the state of affairs based on continuous social analysis; and (3) courage to engage multi-contextual and pluralistic environments (Schüssler Fiorenza, Tanner & Welker 2013:xiii–xiv; cf. Van Wyk 2015:6 of 8).