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Moving Forward : Poststructuralism and Contextual approaches to Theology

A pressing topic in the international discussion regarding the field of practical theology today is
whether theology is necessary or relevant in our globalized world marked by pluralism. If so, what
are workable ways of approaching theology? How legitimate are those approaches? How widely
applicable are they? These concerns keep appearing in academic and theological literature as the
debate continues. In the 1970s, theologians in Latin America, Asia and Africa took an interest in the
way different cultural contexts affect the interpretation of Christian faith, and since then many
theologians have argued that in order for theology to be relevant and meaningful, it needs to be
contextual theology.1 This essay aims to better understand the concerns, nuances and the usefulness
of contextual theology, focussing on the ways contextual theology is emerging in Western contexts.
It is a study of the context of contextual theology, so to speak; an examination of the historical and
philosophical situation from which the Western discourse of contextual theology is emerging. It
begins with a brief orientation to the concerns of contextual approaches to theology, followed by an
exploration of the philosophical changes throughout our Western intellectual, cultural and everyday
life, often referred to as the postmodern turn. It then discusses theory, methods and expressions in
uniquely Western contexts, drawing heavily on Sigurd Bergmann's God in Context : A Survey of
Contextual Theology. It argues that poststructuralist insights and techniques play a vital role in the
articulation of emerging theory, method and approaches to contextual theology.

I
Lesslie Newbigin, Scottish pastor and missionary in India, introduces the concerns of
contextual theology when he writes:
We must start with the basic fact that there is no such thing as a pure gospel if by that is meant
something which is not embodied in a culture. The simplest verbal statement of the gospel, “Jesus is
Lord,” depends for its meaning on the content which that culture gives to the word “Lord.” What kind
of thing is “lordship” in the culture in question? The gospel always comes as the testimony of a
community which, if it is faithful, is trying to live out the meaning of the gospel in a certain style of
life, certain ways of holding property, of maintaining law and order, of carrying on production and
consumption, and so on. Every interpretation of the gospel is embodied in some cultural form.2

Contextual theology is a somewhat fluid concept. To contextualise something means to “heighten

the consciousness of the significance of the context of thinking and acting,” and therefore one way
to understand contextual theology is as the interpretation of the Christian faith that is conscious of
the significance of the particulars of the social, cultural and ecological situation within which that
interpretation occurs.3 It also places that consciousness at the forefront of its theological processes.4

1 Sigurd Bergmann, trans. God in Context : A Survey of Contextual Theology (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003), 1.
2 Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing, 1989), 144.
3 Bergmann, God in Context , 2, 5.
4 Angie Pears, Doing Contextual Theology (New York: Routledge, 2010), 1.
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Another way to conceptualise contextual theology is as distinct from universal theology – an

interpretation of the Christian faith that is determined by its specific social and cultural context, as
opposed to one that is valid for all Christians regardless of their context.5 This conception places
universal and contextual theology as opposites; one being independent of context and the other
dependent. However, representatives of contextual theology assert that all interpretation of the
Christian faith occurs embodied in a society and culture, whether or not people are aware of it.6 In
other words, all theology is contextual. Therefore, Per Frostin argues that “one should distinguish
between interpretations of the Christian faith that are conscious of context and those that are not,
rather than differentiating between context-dependent and context-independent.”7 This call to a
greater consciousness of context moves theology away from studying God, transcendent of human
reality, to studying what God says and does in a specific time and place. Where God is and how
God is working in a given context.
Granted, this form of theology is not new in and of itself, as many methods and
interpretations of faith have been contextual in the long history of theology, but the discourse of
contextual theology that is presently emerging, is something specific to the global situation of the
last fifty years.8 The word 'contextualisation' is only of very recent coinage, spurred by the
recognition of an underestimation of the role of context in affecting the interpretation of the
Christian faith.9 This increased value on contextualised knowledge is partly due to a wider
philosophical change throughout both Western popular culture and academic disciplines that affects
the way reality, knowledge and rationality are conceptualised. Therefore, by turning attention to
philosophical changes through modernity to the postmodern era, it is my hope that the particular
concerns and complexities of the contextual approach to theology will become more intelligible.

II
Almost every scholar that discusses the time and situation we find ourselves in historically,
begins with the problematic nature of defining the actual scope of the discussion, because the way
people conceptualise postmodernity is often very different. To begin with, the word 'postmodernism'
seems to bring to mind different associations and meanings for different people, ranging from
paradoxical architecture, to subtleties drawn out by French intellectual theorists, to entertainment
and art that subverts expectations, to the equal validity of all differing values.10 As such,

5 Bergmann, God in Context , 5.

6 Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society , 144.
7 Bergmann, God in Context , 5.
8 Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education : An Overview.” Qualitative Studies in
Education 13, no. 5 (2000): 479.
9 Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society , 142.
10 Walter Truett Anderson, “Introduction: What's Going On Here?” in The Fontana Postmodern Reader, ed. Walter
 41444737 3

establishing some sort of understanding of how postmodernity shapes our current historical time, is
indeed a difficult task. Rather than defining postmodernism categorically through its content, it is
helpful to treat it as suggested by Myron Penner in his book Christianity and the Postmodern Turn:
“Postmodernism becomes much more intelligible when it is narrated within a stream of philosophical
practices and developments. The discursive practices of postmodernity, in other words, demand an
account of how these practices emerged and what their goals are. In particular, this approach to
postmodernism entails that we situate it historically, stressing the postmodern turn as a concrete
phenomenon.”11

Therefore, in attempting a narration of the emergence of postmodernity as a concrete phenomenon

situated historically, it is important to emphasise a few important points. Firstly, eras as a period of
time and transitions between eras are constructions made by historians for the purpose of
identifying and analysing cultural trends.12 This benefits the study of time periods by making them
more accessible, but has the disadvantage of generalising and simplifying the nuances of highly
complex situations.13 The forthcoming narrative of philosophical developments discussed in
historical time periods, therefore, may sacrifice some attention to complexity in its aim to convey
accessibly the significance and relatedness of particular trends and practices useful to understanding
our time. For example, this particular narrative focuses primarily on philosophical practices and
developments and only minimally highlights their connections to influential movements in art,
literature, architecture and popular culture.
Secondly, these time constructions assume a linear progression where one era develops out
of another, and consequently, the situation of a society or culture in a given era is often talked about
in terms of continuity with, as well as symbolic events that mark change from, the preceding eras.14
Therefore the modernity that characterised the preceding era is paramount to understanding
postmodernity. However, historians may attribute varying significance to continuity or highlight
different events as cultural change agents to construct slightly different narratives of history,
providing several different ways to understand the relationship between modernity and
postmodernity, and many possible narratives. This will be discussed in further detail later, but for
now it is important to remember that the following narrative is only one possible narrative
constructed specifically for the purposes of this essay.

Truett Anderson (London: Fontana Press, 1996), 7.

11 Myron B. Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn: Some Preliminary Considerations,” in
Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, ed. Myron B. Penner (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2005), 17.
12 Crystal L. Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith : Questioning Truth is Language Philosophy and Art
(Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 56.
13 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 27.
14 Ibid., 56.
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Philosophy in the Modern Era

To begin the narrative, medieval or premodern times have been characterised by a symbiotic
union of church and state that undergirded its social structures and cultural life.15 Philosophical
reflection existed in this context where the Christian metanarrative, as represented by the Roman
Catholic Church, defined the metaphysics of the universe. The universe was understood to be
created by God, functioning like an “organism” characterised by interconnection and
interdependence, and the central focus of philosophy aimed at explaining the metaphysical
mysteries of the universe.16 Reason, truth and knowledge were viewed primarily as properties of the
universe, and of God, rather than individual human consciousness. Hence, understanding came
through revelation from God, and mediation through the church.17 Humans were understood as
rational in as much as they were participants in the reason inherent in the universe, and as such, the
basic orientation of philosophical reflection concerned “the limits and scope of human rational
access to the world as it really is.”18 The premodern intellectual scholars functioned as embodied
people within their like-minded community and within their place in the God-created universe.
The focus of philosophical reflection changed dramatically in the modern era, moving away
from explanation of the metaphysical to epistemological questions of whether the universe can
actually be known. In her book The Flight to Objectivity, Susan Bordo argues that the opening up of
multiple perspectives in art, combined with the challenge to Catholicism's status quo which
materialised in a Protestant movement, allowed the potential for relativity. This in turn, contributed
to the emphasis on objectivity in modern philosophy, because objectivity served as an escape from
the anxieties of relativism.19 Her argument provides a useful context for understanding the primary
concerns and objectives of philosophical reflection in the modern era.
By the sixteeth century, Western society was beginning to feel the effects of the emerging
individualism, that became so highly valued through the modern era. This growing individualism
was reflected in the emphasis on perspective in Renaissance art. In contrast to medieval art that
depicted two-dimensional characters painted on gold-leaf backgrounds, early modern Renaissance
art presented scenes as viewed by an imaginary observer, at a given point in space.20 The Mona Lisa
is a classic example of this three-dimensional “realism” from a given perspective, and there is the

15 Michael Frost and Alan Hirch, The Shaping of Things to Come : Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century
Church (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 8.
16 Susan, R. Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity : Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1987), 60.
Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 20-21.
17 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 60.
18 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 21.
19 Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity , 69-73.
20 Ibid., 60.
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sense that, should the individual observer move to one side, they would perceive her from a
different perspective and see her profile.21 This enables a reality of different perspectives. In
conjunction, both Martin Luther's advocation of a “priesthood of all believers” based on the bible
only, and the availability of printed vernacular Scriptures, allowed for individual interpretations of
the bible. Not only did the Protestant movement reject some interpretations of the Catholic Church
that had previously undergirded metaphysical reality, but their own interpretations were
materialised in an enduring movement. The reality of different perspectives was therefore a
permanent, concrete philosophical and cultural realisation. This realisation served to challenge the
assumption that metaphysical reality, can indeed be known as it really is, exposing the naivete of
the premodern process of justifying beliefs about the nature of the universe.22 Philosophical inquiry
shifted to primarily epistemological questions of whether it is possible to know metaphysical reality
with certainty. With the possibility of different perspectives of reality, how does one know with
certainty what is most true?23 Richard Bernstein referred to this worry about relativity as “Cartesian
anxiety.”24
This anxiety is somewhat clarified in Rene Descartes' Meditations of 1637. That is not to say
every philosopher experienced it in the same way as Descartes conceptualised it. He speaks not only
of epistemological scepticism, but of the embodied experience of dreading existence in a chaos
where “nothing is fixed, where we can neither touch the bottom nor support ourselves on the
surface.”25 It assumes that if humanity cannot be certain that what they know of reality, knowledge,
and moral goodness, is in fact true, then their living existence is destined for intellectual and moral
chaos. This would suppose the need for something untouchable by scepticism to serve as an
epistemological foundation for all metaphysical inquiry.26 Thus, the chief project of modern
philosophy became a quest for objectivity untouched by the anxieties of relativity: “to establish a
set of infallible beliefs that can provide the epistemological foundations for an absolutely certain
body of knowledge.”27
Rene Descartes is widely regarded as mapping the foundations for modernity as he is the
first credited with attempting the project of grounding all metaphysical inquiry upon certain
epistemological foundations. He used a method of systematic doubt in which he examined all truth

21 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 59.

22 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 22.
23 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 60.
24 Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism : Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 16.
25 Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism , 18.
26 Kemal Ataman, Understanding Other Religions : Al-Biruni and Gadamer's “Fusion of Horizons” (Washington
D.C.: The Council of Research in Values and Philosophy, 2008), 78-79.
27 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 22.
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claims from individualised perspectives to discover if anything could remain indubitable.28 This
method caused him to doubt all knowledge of the external world, and all knowledge obtained
through the senses, because that knowledge is subject to change, and therefore uncertain.29 Finally,
his only certainty was in doubting and thinking, and therefore existing. His famous phrase Cogito
ergo sum, “I think therefore I am,” is representative of the modern conception of reason, which
locates rationality within human consciousness.30 Although few philosophers accepted Descartes
claims, the quest for a method of obtaining indubitable, objective knowledge continued to be at the
centre of modern philosophy, hence his treatment of reason had a notable impact on how modern
philosophy developed.31 His assertion that human reason alone can achieve universal, objective
knowledge, reframed rationality as existent only in human capabilities rather than the universe. This
placed philosophical reflection in “a rational, self-conscious and self-possessed human agent.”32
Modern philosophy then, which located rationality in the human mind in isolation of the
wider material world, developed a dualism between the human mind and the world, and between
the mind and the body.33 It is this detachment from the motion and change of the material world that
supposedly enabled the human agent to make universal truth claims and be capable of establishing
timeless, absolute foundations for knowledge.34 It is also this detachment and disembodiment from
the external world that enabled reason to become increasingly formalised, procedural and scientific.
John Locke conceptualised the human mind as a tabula rasa, or an erased slate, meaning that at
birth, humans have no innate knowledge or ideas and it is through the observations and sensations
in the material world that empirical knowledge is ascertained, and the mind then organises and
draws connections to find new perceptions and ideas.35 This conceptualisation privileges the reason
of the mind over what is perceived through the senses, because it cannot be doubted. Thus, the task
of philosophical reason, when dealing with the external, material world perceived through the
senses, became, to “measure, categorise, and intellectually master and control” it.36
This goal was shared with modern science. The modern era is marked by an explosion of
scientific discovery and revolution; scientific inquiry had moved away from the premodern focus on
wonder and natural science to empirical science – using reason to measure, quantify and explain
inductively the material universe as perceived by the five senses.37 Explanation derived from

28 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 60.

29 St.Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 494.
30 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 23.
31 Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism , 17-18.
32 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 23.
33 Bernstein,Beyond Objectivism and Relativism , 17.
34 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 23.
35 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 61.
36 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 23.
37 Ibid., 23.
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experiment and observation were prized above theory as more reliable. For example, although the
theory of evolution had been around for years, it was when Charles Darwin supplied an empirical
mechanism – natural selection supported by geological discoveries – that the theory became widely
accepted.38 Empirical science also emphasised the individual autonomy of reason. The value on the
individual exercising their rational faculties to think for themselves tended to cause scepticism
towards traditional scientific methods. Doubt, rather than wonder, was the acceptable posture for
rational scientific inquiry, as that was the most effective way of being certain for oneself that one
had not been deceived.39
This posture of doubt also affected the way modern philosophy treated belief and religion.
Voltaire, a major participant in the French Enlightenment, advocated that a universal morality could
be reached purely through reason, without any dependency on God to reveal, or religion to mediate.
These ideas mounted an attack on institutional Christianity for its totalising claims of moral truth,
its excesses, its overt corruption, and immorality.40 Reason was the starting point from which
individuals could make sense of their religious beliefs, whatever they may be, and this then, became
the dominant positioning of modern philosophy's belief in God and the miraculous: they were
viable beliefs as far as they were consistent with reason.41 Belief was permitted where reason
allowed. This was a remarkable shift away from premodern philosophy that saw belief as key to
reason. Further still, the emphasis on intellectual autonomy and material empirical data combined
with rejection of institutional Christianity prompted a movement away from religion altogether.
Voltaire critiqued the Church without seeking to deny the existence of God, however other writers
aimed to eliminate the concept God by arguing it was merely a product of a misguided imagination,
insupportable by the reliable scientific application of the senses.42 Reason and belief in God were
mutually exclusive, and reason was the intellectually viable option. Consequently, atheism was the
religion of modernity.
Progress, as a theme of modernity, resonated with the theory of evolution, with advances in
science, and with the economic and technological boom of the Industrial Revolution. Darwin, in On
the Origin of Species, expresses it well when he writes: “and as natural selection works solely by
and for good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards
perfection.”43 This belief in progress was also found in the influential philosophical work of Georg

38 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 66.

39 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 24.
40 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 62.
41 Ibid., 60.
42 Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism : The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (New York,
Doubleday, 2004), 30.
43 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 66.
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Hegel. Hegel, like Descartes, sought to develop a systematic philosophy which would underwrite all
knowledge, and some of his theories deeply shaped modern thought.44 He asserted that history was a
progression towards freedom.45 All metaphysics – all human activity and the material world, could
be understood in terms of progress. From the confusion and fragmentation of the present toward the
future, humankind will eventually reach the freedom and unity of absolute knowledge, the
“totalizing closure of knowledge,” where the rational mind finally masters all there is to know.46
This theory that privileges unity and sameness over what is fragmented and different, also led to a
value on uniformity. Hegel argued that dialectical oppositions could be resolved by grouping them
together under another form of categorisation. He aimed to “subsume difference under identity.”47
One implication of this Hegelian philosophy was that uniformity grew as a significant
modernist theme, and influenced thought concerning metaphysical reality. As described previously,
modern philosophy assumed that universal objective truth could be ascertained by anyone through
the proper use of unbiased reason. This assumption, coupled with the belief in progress, led many to
believe that the most logical and scientifically reliable explanation as to why non-European cultures
described reality so strangely, was because their reasoning abilities were less developed, and
therefore, “primitive.”48 This evolutionary view of human activity, where “primitive cultures” still
needed to evolve reliable, authentic rationality, effectively reduces the other to the same.49 In other
words, anything different is measured by the same criteria as the criteria that makes something else
rational, and thereby it is assessed as if it is the same, but judged as less rational than it should be.
Therefore there was only one right and perfect way of being, only one right and perfect way of
thinking, and once it is determined, it must be enforced.50 The enforcement of uniformity at its
height, is symbolised by the simple, rectangular and straight lined, functionally efficient design of
the Nazi concentration camps.51

Legitimacy and Modern Philosophy

By the twentieth century, these philosophical themes were so deeply embedded in the
Western cultural worldview, that they seemed natural and “logical.”52 Society celebrated everything
modern, and looked forward to an even brighter future. However, major upsets, such as the great
wars, and the economic downturn of the first half of the century caused serious doubt concerning
44 St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 494.
45 Ibid., 494.
46 Ibid., 495.
47 Ibid., 495.
48 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 149-150.
49 McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism , 221.
50 Ibid., 221.
51 Ibid., 224.
52 St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 494-495.
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the optimistic picture of humanity's progress of. As McGrath writes:

“...the excesses, failures and ultimately the uninhabitability of modernity led to a loss of enthusiasm
for its goals, and eventually a complete inversion of many of its leading ideas. Far from providing
eternal and universal truths of reason, by which humanity might live in peace and stability, modernity
found itself implicated as the perhaps unwitting accomplice of Nazism and Stalinism. Certainty, once
prized as the goal of true knowledge, now came to be seen as the grounds for coercing belief.”53

This disillusionment motivated, what ultimately led to, a rejection of the philosophical project of
grounding all metaphysical reality on unshakable epistemological foundations as it had developed
through the modern era. Through a myriad of writings and publications that would eventually be
termed poststructural and postmodern, the modern project was critiqued as philosophically
untenable.54
These critiques used ideas articulated by ex-positivist Ludwig Wittgenstein, who argued that
the way reality is perceived is moulded by the way language is used.55 He coined the term
“language games” to describe how a word is given meaning in its context of use, e.g. the
exclamation, 'water!'56 It can be a command to bring some drinking water, it can be a warning that
some unexpected water will cause flooding, or it could even be used as a code word signifying
something else that only members of a secret society would know. Therefore, the word itself has no
inherent meaning, but is dependent on its language game to give it meaning. Put another way, “each
of the categories of utterance can be defined in terms of rules specifying their properties and the
uses to which they can be put. In exactly the same way, the game of chess is defined by a set of
rules determining the properties of each of the pieces, determining the proper way to move them.”57
Jean-Francois Lyotard utilised Wittgenstein's ideas of language games to discuss how
scientific knowledge and procedures claim legitimacy.58 He contexts his discussion in the conflict
between 'scientific knowledge' and 'narrative knowledge'. When measured by the criteria of modern
science, narratives and stories are considered little better than fiction, because they do not appeal to
universal and autonomous reason for their legitimacy, and are instead, associated with ignorance,
barbarity and superstition.59 He defines scientific knowledge and narrative knowledge as language
games, where the rules of the game are agreed upon by all participants, and where “their rules do
not carry within themselves their own legitimation, but are the object of a contract, explicit or not,

53 McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism , 218.

54 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 25.
55 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 150-151.
56 Andrew Lugg, Wittgenstein's Investigations 1-133 : A guide and interpretation (London: Routledge, 2000), 47-48.
57 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition : A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian
Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 10.
58 Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture : An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary (London: Blackwell
Publishers, 1997), 24.
59 James K. A. Smith, “A Little Story about Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion, and Postmodernism Revisited,” in
Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, ed. Myron B. Penner (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2005), 128-
129.
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between players.”60 In the language game of narrative knowledge, Lyotard refers to anthropological
accounts of primitive societies that have clear rules about who has the authority and the
responsibility to speak in a specific social group. For example, a Cashinahua Indian in South
America begins his story with his Cashinahua name to affirm his right to speak, and confirm the
authenticity of the narrative as having been passed down from another Cashinahua.61 The narrative
knowledge is grounded in the custom of the culture, and this produces an immediate auto-
legitimation that is “implicit in the narrative itself as a story of the people.”62 By contrast, the
language game of scientific knowledge, according to Lyotard, tries to do away with the auto-
legitimation of narrative knowledge, and requires external empirical proof instead.63 Modern
science has numerous language games which do not all have the same previously agreed upon set of
rules, therefore legitimation requires an external and universal criterion, which is, of course,
reason.64
However, Lyotard famously argues that here, science will inevitably return to narrative for
its legitimation and authority.65 He analyses two principle narratives of legitimation. The first is the
political narrative of emancipation embodied in French revolution ideals, where scientific
knowledge made available to all, aids in emancipation. The second is the philosophical Hegelian
narrative where scientific knowledge is a key part of the progress of the human mind toward
absolute knowledge.66 These narratives are also what he terms “metanarratives,” or grand narratives,
that organise, subordinate and account for all other narratives. Hence, other narratives are given
meaning by the way the reflect and confirm the grand narrative.67 In other words, these
metanarratives use a criteria of legitimation that is understood to be external to any language game
and therefore can be accepted as universal.68 So Lyotard highlights the paradoxical nature of
scientific knowledge rejecting narrative knowledge, but grounding itself in a metanarrative for its
legitimation. This paradox served to challenge the assumption that scientific knowledge, confident
in its legitimacy, was more reliable than narrative knowledge, because it revealed that its legitimacy
lay in a language game, just like any other. This is the context in which he famously defines
postmodernity as an incredulity toward metanarratives, because “they are just another language
game, albeit masquerading as the game above all games.”69

60 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition , 10.

61 Connor, Postmodernist Culture , 24.
62 Smith, “A Little Story about Metanarratives,” 130.
63 Connor, Postmodernist Culture , 25.
64 Smith, “A Little Story about Metanarratives,” 130.
65 Ibid., 130.
66 Connor, Postmodernist Culture , 25-26.
67 Ibid., 26.
68 Smith, “A Little Story about Metanarratives,” 130.
69 Ibid., 130.
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With Lyotard's work revealing that scientific knowledge is, in fact, shaped by language, and
therefore, is not the unbiased reason leading to self-evident truth that it assumes to be, Richard
Rorty could use Wittgenstein's concept of language games to argue that philosophy was, itself, a
type of language game. Philosophic reflection that assumed objectivity through the proper use of
reason, could not guarante true objectivity as scientific rationality, since it has its own set of biased
rules.70 The rationality that legitimates philosophic reflection is also a metanarrative.71 Therefore,
the entire philosophical project which grounds all reality and truth on the unshakable,
epistemological foundation of reason alone, was seen to be untenable, as reason itself is shaped by
language. As St. Pierre summarises:
The mind/body dualism, foundationalism, the primacy of the intellect, the belief that the conscious,
thinking subject is the author of knowledge, the idea that the history of mankind is progressing towards
a harmonious resolution of conflict and difference, the belief that true knowledge is produced through
the rational observation and description of a reality detached from the observer, the idea that the purpose
of science is to predict and control, the idea that a positivist science can produce true knowledge about
both the material and social worlds, and the concept of absolute knowledge are all theories that have
operated for centuries to construct a particular version of knowledge and truth that seems almost
impossible to disrupt. Yet this inscription... has been critiqued for its insufficiency. 72

Postmodern philosophy then, can be understood as the attempt to think and conceptualise,
after the modern project of finding absolute certainty has been rejected.73 Rationality and reason, as
conceptualised in the modern era, is untenable, since it has become evident that language,
knowledge and reality do not exist in isolation of each other, but are interdependent.74 It is important
to emphasise, however, that the rejection of modern rationality as a metanarrative that gives a
totalising view of reality, is not a rejection of the rationality itself. To abandon that rationality and
develop a new self-grounding philosophy would be a modernist solution to the problem, but self-
grounding philosophies are not fashionable in postmodernity.75 Instead, critique has brought to
consciousness the subjectivity of the concept that reason, when applied correctly by any thinking
person, will lead to self-evident, objective, universal truth, and therefore it does not achieve the
objectivity it assumes it does. The imperative is then, to become aware of the social and historical
situatedness of the grand narrative of rationality, not to throw it away all together.
As such, rational reflection in postmodern philosophy that is conscious of the role of
language, focuses on “the language that constitutes the self that knows itself and the world.”76 Thus,
the shift in theoretical thought from modernity to postmodernity lies in becoming conscious of the

70 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 76, 152.

71 St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 486.
72 Ibid., 495-496.
73 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 25.
74 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 125.
75 McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism , 225.
76 Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 24.
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self as the thinking subject. All knowledge and truth as perceived by the thinking subject exists in
the context of the language games, power relations and cultural practices of the thinking subject.77
Knowledge and the thinking subject are both on the same plane, because neither is impartial or
value-neutral, and neither can be disembodied from power relations, cultural practices and
discourses to be universally authoritative.78 Laurel Richardson describes the centrality of
postmodern philosophy as:
... the doubt that any method or theory, discourse or genre, tradition or novelty, has a universal and
general claim as the “right” or the privileged form of authoritative knowledge. Postmodernism
suspects all truth claims of masking and serving particular interests in local, cultural, and political
struggles. But postmodernism does not automatically reject conventional methods of knowing and
telling as false or archaic. Rather, it opens those standard methods to inquiry and introduces new
methods, which are also, then, subject to critique. The postmodern context of doubt distrusts all
methods equally... But a postmodernist position does allow us to know “something” without claiming
to know everything. Having partial, local, historical knowledge is still knowing.79

Thus, with regard to knowledge and truth, “you can tell it like you know it, in accordance with the
rules of the discourse, without having to claim that you're telling it like it (absolutely,
metaphysically, incontrovertibly) is.”80 This allows that what is known through one discourse is far
from filling all possible spaces, and respectfully concedes that other discourses will conceptualise
knowledge and truth differently.
Therefore, rational reflection in postmodern philosophy deals with partial, subjective
knowledge that is conscious of its historical, social and cultural situatedness, and conscious of the
situatedness of the thinking subject as the author of knowledge. Because knowledge and truth
cannot be known objectively apart from language, and language constructs the world as perceived,
language and discourse have become the focal point of rational reflection.81 Postmodern philosophy
is said to have made a “linguistic turn.”82

Knowledge, Truth and Language in Text

Much of the development of language theory and textual analysis has been enabled through
new methods that disrupt taken-for-granted interpretations, and enable new knowledge to emerge.83
Through the modern era, the rationally accepted idea was that language mirrors what is in the
world. This approach became known as essentialism. It aimed to find the single, unique quality that

77 St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 496.

78 Ibid., 499.
79 Laurel Richardson, Fields of play: Constructing an academic life (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997),
517-518.
80 Catherine Belsey, “Towards Cultural History – in theory and practice,” Textual Practice 3, no. 2 (1989): 163.
81 Smith, “A Little Story about Metanarratives,” 54.
82 Ibid., 54.
83 Margaret Sommerville, “Postmodern emergence,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 20, no.
2 (2007): 226.
 41444737 13

defined a thing and identify it by its essence, so that the word would correspond directly to the thing
it names.84 Poststructural critique of language disrupts this idea, revealing a more complex
relationship between words, signs and meaning, where the meaning of language changes depending
on its social context. For example, in the essentialist approach, there are simply not enough words
to name everything that exists in the world. Hence, things that are very different in certain ways are
grouped together under one overarching word of identity, such as 'woman.'85 Feminist critique
argues that the word 'woman' does not mirror essential metaphysical truth about women, but is an
arbitrary identity that subsumes all differences – race, class, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity etc. -
under it.86 It calls for a recognition of the socially constructed identity of women by highlighting the
way language has been implicated in privileging essential identity over difference, which in turn,
enables mistreatment, enforced through the definition of the word 'woman.'87
In more abstract terms, structuralism, the bridge between essential and poststructural
thought, asserted that there is no essential, universal connection between a word as signifier, and its
meaning as the signified.88 Meaning is relational not instrinsic; it is articulated through its difference
from other signs in the language rather than an identity. To use an example from structural linguist
de Saussure: the word “whore” is not an identity in and of itself, but the word is given meaning
through its relational positioning to other signifiers of womanhood like “mother” and “virgin.”89
Poststructural thought builds off this idea, but stresses that structuralism doesn't account for
different meanings of the one signifier, and instead proposes that “the meaning of the signified is
never fixed once and for all but is constantly deferred.”90 Jacques Derrida develops furthur the
discussion of the power and poverty of language in textual analysis in his work Of Grammatology.
In it he “illustrates that language works not because there is an identity between a sign and a thing,
not because of presence, but because there is a difference, an absence: the structure of the sign is
determined by the trace or track of that other which is forever absent.”91 He argues that Western
philosophy has been dominated by a logic of identity and presence, and a failure to recognise the
role of difference and absence, which has enabled language to perpetrate hierarchised oppositions.92
Some examples of these hierarchised oppositions, or binaries, are male and female, white and black,
reason and belief. One term in the binary is superior, and defines itself in contradistinction to the

84 St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 480.

85 Ibid., 480.
86 Chris J. Cuomo, Feminism and ecological communities (London: Routledge, 1998), 114.
87 Cuomo, Feminism and ecological communities , 114.
88 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 125.
89 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course on General Linguistics, trans. W. Baskin (London: McGraw-Hill, 1959), 23.
90 St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 481.
91 Ibid., 482.
92 Ibid., 482.
 41444737 14

inferior term. It therefore contains a trace of what is absent, and the hierarchy of binaries is
reinforced through language. Michel Foucault's archaeology of the social sciences explores and
maps the history of how language has constructed these binaries, hierarchies, identity categories and
classification systems that order social contexts and cause them to seem natural and innate.93
Derrida then advocates an analysis of these structures ordered by identity and presence, called
deconstruction.
Deconstruction aims to “dismantle the metaphysical and rhetorical structures which are at
work” in language, to see how they are constructed, what keeps them functioning, and what results
from them.94 It brings to light the absences and ambiguities in the way knowledge and truth are
perceived, and because knowledge is not closed, these deep structures can be reinscribed to enable
other interpretations. Deconstruction then, has revolutionised language and textual studies.

Knowledge, Truth and Language in Culture

Another way to talk about the construction of reality through language, came through the
discipline of anthropology. As early as the 1930s, long before the noted critical theorists were
published, anthropologists challenged the metanarrative through their studies of non-European
cultures.95 They suggested that the so-called scientifically reliable criteria used to study other human
cultures may be insufficient. Rather than accepting the assumption that their reasoning capabilities
were less evolved than that of Europeans, anthropologists were beginning to argue that these
cultures perceive and process reality in a different manner to that of Europeans.96 Edward Evans-
Pritchard concluded from his study of the Sudanese, that they employed a different form of
rationality, and Benjamin Whorf demonstrated, through his study of the Hopi Indians, that the
language used affects the way they reason.97 Ultimately, they were arguing for relative rationalities.
Anthropologists were recognising that these cultures were better understood when their different
rationalities were acknowledged and valued, and as such, the discipline began to redevelop its
methods for studying otherness.98 By 1966, the argument for relative rationalities was familiar
enough, that The Social Construction of Reality : A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge,
published by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, was able to revolutionise the social sciences.
While Derrida focuses on language in text, Foucault focuses on the power and poverty of
language through analysis of culture. He is concerned with meaning and social relationships; the

93 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 135.

94 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974), xvii.
95 Ataman, Understanding Other Religions , 83.
96 Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 150.
97 Ibid., 150.
98 Roy Wagner, “The Idea of Culture,” in The Fontana Postmodern Reader, ed. Walter Truett Anderson (London:
Fontana Press, 1996), 49.
 41444737 15

scope of what can be said and thought; who is allowed to speak; and why they are authorised to.99
The anthropological idea of culture has moved beyond modern understandings of cultures as self-
contained and “clearly bounded units, internally consistent and unified wholes of beliefs and values
simply transmitted to every member of their respective groups as principles of social order.”100
Dialogue with other disciplines such as history, critical and literary theory, and “conflict” sociology,
as well as internal development within anthropology has motivated a greater recognition of the
historical processes that play a formative role in the embedded, taken-for-granted symbolic
structures that inform the social relations of cultures.101 The focus is on negotiation and interactive
processes, fragmentation and internal conflict, and ambiguous boundaries that distinguish a culture,
rather than its coherence and boundedness.102 To explore meaning and social relationships in a
culture is to examine the interactive processes between power, knowledge and truth, institutions and
population in a network of historically situated thought.103
Foucault's theory of discourse demonstrates how language abides by socially constructed
rules and regularities that prohibit some statements, and allow others, and which allow some people
to be the subject of a statement, and others the object.104 Discourses are “practices that
systematically form the objects of which they speak... Discourses are not about objects; they do not
identify objects, they constitute them, and in the practice of doing so, conceal their own
invention.”105 Therefore, meaning comes through institutional practises and power relations that are
intrinsically tied to language. People and institutions are empowered by discourse, and it is this
power that moulds meaning and perception, according to Foucault.106 Power in this instance is not
the modernist perception of power that is a product of human agency, nor does it belong to the
individual, nor is it essentially negative. Instead, power is always present in human relationships,
and it is unstable; power is a dynamic situation that produces reality. Whether personal, social or
institutional, techniques of power are simultaneously forms of knowledge.107
Significantly, discourse is not purely linguistic, since it translates a way of thinking into a
way of acting. When this way of acting seems “natural,” it becomes hard to imagine thinking
differently, yet this is possible through utilising Foucault's challenge to “dig deeply to show how
things have been historically contingent, for such and such reason intelligible but not necessary. We

99 Stephen J. Ball, Foucault and Education : Disciplines and Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1990), 2.
100Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture : A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 38.
101Tanner, Theories of Culture : A New Agenda for Theology , 56.
102Ibid., 38.
103Peter Burke,“Context In Context,” Common Knowledge 8, no. 1 (2002): 162.
104St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 485.
105Ball, Foucault and Education : Disciplines and Knowledge , 2.
106Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 154.
107Ann Swidler & Jorge Arditi, “The New Sociology of Knowledge,” Annual Review of Sociology 20 (1994): 314.
 41444737 16

must make the intelligible appear against a background of emptiness and deny its necessity. We
must think that what exists is far from filling all possible spaces. To make a truly unavoidable
challenge of the question: what can be played.”108 His works Madness and Civilisation, and The
Birth of the Clinic, demonstrate this approach well. Once the ambiguities and silences in knowledge
are revealed as historically contingent rather than necessary, discourses are open to reinscription.109
Foucault's work has enabled significant development in studies by 'the other' in a power relation.
Feminist, African American, and queer theories have emerged as strong discourses that generate
other knowledges and truths, previously unattended in the modernist narrative of history. Foucault
argues that encountering difference, or 'otherness,' both alerts us to presuppositions we were not
aware of holding, and reveals previously unrecognised possibilities for thinking, doing and being.110
He demonstrates a dedication to methodologies that question the limits of what seems necessary, in
order to find new ways of perceiving and producing truth and knowledge in culture.111

Where does postmodernity fit?

To conclude this narrative, all historians and scholars agree that the relationship between
postmodern and modern philosophy is significant, but the nature and positioning of their
relationship is contested.112 There are three main interpretations of postmodernity as located and
understood beyond, within, or before modernity.113
The first alternative presents postmodernity as a phenomenon that moves beyond modernist
assumptions and agendas. It is understood as a significant change from modernity, a rejection and
revision of what modernity offered, stemming from disillusionment.114 The benefit of this position is
that it frames the intent of many of the philosophical developments and discursive practices of
postmodernism. Their intention is to turn away from aspects of modernist philosophy and practices
that are limiting, untenable or unethical. For example, many developments in anthropology and the
social sciences have been in response to the poor treatment of the subject matter through
objectification, which in turn enabled unintended manipulation and unethical treatment.115
The second alternative highlights continuity with modernity, and locates postmodernity
within modernity by accentuating the way modernity paved the way, culturally and philosophically,

108Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth trans. P Rabinbow (New York: New Press, 1997), 139-140.
109St. Pierre, “Poststructural Feminism in Education,” 485.
110Healy, “Rationality, Dialogue and Critical Inquiry,” 154.
111Paul Healy, “Rationality, Dialogue and Critical Inquiry: Toward a viable Postfoundationalist stance,” Cosmos and
History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 3, no. 1 (2007): 152.
112Anderson,“Introduction: What's Going On Here?” 19.
113Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 18-19.
114Ibid., 18.
115Ataman, Understanding Other Religions , 82-83.
 41444737 17

for postmodernity.116 This view paints a picture of postmodernity as a more discerning and self-
conscious form of modernism.117 This is a realistic picture because much of the language games of
academic disciplines still gain meaning from modernist discourses. New approaches coin new
terminology and concepts, but even these still incorporate a lot of modern language and meaning.
There is still a significant amount of continuation from modernity, and the benefit of interpreting
postmodernity as an obverse form of modernity is that it emphasises that continuity.
The third view is somewhat surprising in that it places postmodernity before modernity.118 It
gives an account of the enigmatic objection of relativism that appears in almost every extensive
debate about the legitimacy of postmodern theory. The word relativism is part of popular discourse,
and on a most blatant level, the deconstruction of the objectivity / subjectivity binary advocates that
there is no objective truth or knowledge “out there” to be discovered, therefore, reality has no
grounding.119 This is a return to Bernstein's Cartesian anxiety. This anxiety is “based on an either/or
assumption, according to which, either our beliefs about what counts as true and right can be given
solid foundations in the form of universally valid standards for rational assessment, or we are
destined for an intellectual and moral chaos 'where nothing is, where we can neither touch the
bottom or support ourselves on the surface.'”120 The modern philosophical project and the
metanarrative of rationality were a solution to the threat of a relative, groundless reality, and the
failure and rejection of the project marks a cyclical return to the same anxiety. However, only some
postmodernists would eliminate the idea of objective truth altogether. This idea only inverts the
hierarchy so that subjectivity suppresses objectivity.121 Others assert that there is in fact, some sort
of reality, because evidence does exist, but it is the interpretation of that evidence that will always
be subjective.122 Thus the word relative can mean different things to different people, and anxiety
concerning relativism can manifest in different ways. Yet the placing of postmodernity before
modernity is still a useful interpretation because it gives a context for the complex dialogue around
worries to relativism and perspectivalism.

III
Theology as a body of knowledge has in no way been unaffected by the changes in
philosophy that distinguish the postmodern turn. However, in the 1970s, it was dominant voices
from Asia and Africa, rather than Western ones, that raised awareness of the need for international

116Penner, “Introduction: Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,” 18.

117Ibid., 18.
118Ibid., 19.
119Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 139.
120Ataman, Understanding Other Religions , 78.
121Anderson, “Introduction: What's Going On Here?” 19.
122Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 140.
 41444737 18

conversation regarding the recontextualisation of theological knowledge .123 Theology has long been
dominated by Enlightenment approaches that are logocentric, Eurocentric, male and rational, and
their colonising impact on other contexts has largely maintained the objective and contextless
perception of knowledge.124 It has been in the spaces that have opened following widespread
decolonisation throughout the twentieth century, that African, Latin American and Asian contexts
more accustomed to narrative ways of knowing, have called for contextualisation of theological
knowledge. Expressions such as Latin American liberation theologies, African and North American
black theologies, and Asian women's theologies, have been instrumental in defining and refining
contextual theological knowledge with regard to colonialism, race, ethnicity and/or gender as
shapers of their contexts.125 This is fitting as only approximately 3-4% of the world population of
Christians are Western Evangelical Protestants, and “the future, as Andrew Walls has so often and
eloquently said, belongs to Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific.”126 Western academic
theology joined the international dialogue more substantially through the 1980s.127 The emerging
discourse of contextual theology in Western contexts, the topic of this discussion, has benefited
from the insights of poststructuralism and cultural anthropology, and has used them in the process
of articulating theory, method and approaches. It is to these I now turn:

Crisis of Legitimacy
The discipline of theology has occupied a unique place of epistemic isolation in the academy
for a long time because of the story of modern philosophy. The shift from the belief that ultimate
truth is revealed by God, to ultimate truth is ascertained by the unaided human mind through the
proper use of reason, destabilised how knowledge of God was perceived, and questioned its
legitimacy. With reason as the preeminent source of all knowledge, belief in God is only legitimate
where it is in harmony with reason.128
The reactions of theologians to this destabilisation of theological knowledge were varied,
but this discussion concerns theologians who resisted marginalisation and elimination of belief by
accommodating to modernist rationality and its intellectual methods and concerns.129 They
answered the question of legitimacy by epistemologically grounding all knowledge of God in

123M. E. Andrew, “Contextual Theology as the Interpretation of God for the Peoples of a Region.” Asian Journal of
Theology 2, no. 2 (1988): 435.
124Bergmann, God in Context , ix.
125Pears, Doing Contextual Theology , 110.
126Joseph Huffman, “Faith, Reason and the Text : The Return of the Middle Ages in Postmodern Scholarship,”
Christian Scholar's Review 29 (1999): 298.
127Bergmann, God in Context , xiii.
128Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 60.
129John R. Franke, “The Nature of Theology: Culture, Language, and Truth,” in Christianity and the Postmodern Turn,
ed. Myron B. Penner (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2005), 202.
 41444737 19

infallible reason, and constructing their philosophical arguments for belief in God and Christian
apologetics accordingly. In this approach, critical analysis of biblical text, or exegesis, tended to
conceptualise “universal spiritual truth known independently of the texts, but exemplified in
them.”130 Also, as scientific rationality asserted that only scientifically verifiable facts can be
regarded as true, some theologians aimed to defend theology by proving the scientific accuracy of
the bible to legitimate its truth.131 In varying degrees, the approaches to theology have a long
tradition of conceptualising theological knowledge in much the same way as modernity
conceptualised knowledge and truth: as objective and above context, rational, universal,
scientifically verifiable, and indubitable. Consequently, John R. Franke argues that many systematic
theologies that profess to be biblical are entangled with a commitment to Enlightenment rationality
and its tendencies.132 Mark Strom articulates the situation well, when he writes regarding the
treatment of the letters of Paul in the New Testament:
Our interpretive and theological procedures too often abstract the text from its historical and modern
settings in order to establish what we regard as undiluted, absolute and objective truth. Ignoring the
differences between Paul's words to Corinth, Rome and Ephesus, we reduce the data to supposed
common denominators in order to formulate the abstract theological concepts of “Paul's doctrine of
church,” “Paul's doctrine of leadership” or “the centre of Paul's theology.” The truth is seen to lie above
any historical and cultural setting... Paul's letters are reduced from rich and provocative narratives and
improvisations to a data base for systems of theology.133

This is neither surprising nor essentially negative, however it results in the poststructural critique of
modernist knowledge and truth as it applies to the systematic theologies, apologetics and exegesis
that much theological knowledge depends upon for its legitimacy.
With the deconstruction of Enlightenment rationality, comes the rejection of the
epistemological certainty of objective knowledge ascertained through reason, as demonstrated in
the preceding narrative. Instead of this knowledge being beyond doubt, Lyotard's analysis reveals
that just like every other form of knowledge, it is subjected to its historical, sociocultural and
environmental context, and therefore cannot legitimately claim to be universal and infallible. Where
theological approaches have treated knowledge of God through Enlightenment rationality, those
approaches have also inherited the blind spot to its assumption of epistemological certainty.
Contextual theology then, addresses this blind spot in the assertion that all theology is contextual,
and the question of legitimacy must be answered in another way.
Various approaches within contextual theology may respond differently to the question of
the legitimacy of their theological knowledge, but within the Western academy, contextual theology
130Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative : A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 124.
131Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith , 105.
132Franke, “The Nature of Theology,” 202.
133Mark Strom, Reframing Paul : Conversations in Community and Grace (Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity
Press, 2000), 14.
 41444737 20

has been significantly influenced by Lyotard's narrative way of knowing. Knowledge of God arises
as particular understandings that harmonise with the rationality and embodied experiences of a
collective group of people, which produces the auto-legitimation “implicit in the narrative itself as a
story of the people.” 134 This knowledge does not purport to be total knowledge of God, but it does
claim legitimacy as knowledge of God incarnated in a specific context. And this is the field on
which contextual theology focuses its attention. Contextual theology asks: “how does God become
flesh in concrete situations? How does the embodied God act in a liberating way?”135 The challenge
is to explore the places and spaces where God engages with creatures and creation, and therefore
interpret God in function, as opposed to isolation.136 Effectively, contextual theology asks the
question, 'what can we as humans legitimately know of God?' and answers it with 'God in human
context.' This locates theology within the context of human activity, which is vastly more realistic
for claiming legitimacy, as humans cannot transcend their situatedness in history or culture.

Legitimacy and Tradition

However, dialogue continues amongst theologians concerning how individual self-
legitimising theologies in context, can engage with tradition, while refusing to pose the question of
legitimacy to any forum external to itself.137 Liberation theology has been critiqued by traditional
theology for this very reason.138 Contextual approaches stress the significance of historical
processes in generating meaning in a context, and therefore require a way to correlate Christian
tradition with current contextual theology as a self-legitimated theology.
In God in Context : A Survey of Contextual Theology, Sigurd Bergmann asserts that a way
forward is to reject an essentialist view of Christian history and tradition, and reinterpret it through
a dynamic and transmodern view that is compatible with the current theology.139 Tradition is no
longer seen as one whole, unambiguous body of knowledge that remains the same in different times
and different places that is passed along. It is reinterpreted as the partial and dynamic knowledge of
a series of local theologies passed over, in time, in varying processes, to construct a “social and
cultural memory which helps the fellowships of the holy to actualise series of local theologies for
the sake of their future.”140 This view of tradition does effectively correlate to contextual approaches
because it is a reinterpretation of Christian tradition in light of the goals and values of the self-
legitimated theology. It removes the relevance of the question of legitimacy for those who adhere to

134Smith, “A Little Story about Metanarratives,” 130.

135Bergmann, God in Context , xiii.
136Ibid., xv.
137Healy, “Rationality, Dialogue and Critical Inquiry,” 135.
138Bergmann, God in Context , 62.
139Ibid., 62.
140Ibid., 62-63.
 41444737 21

that theology. However, to those external to self-legitimated theology, the question of legitimacy is
left unanswered.
Yet turning to the notion of tradition, the interpretation of tradition in contextual theology
enables a re-structuring of theology without losing a Christian identity. In an essentialist view,
authentic Christian identity is measured by which theology mirrors, most consistently, the one
objective, unambiguous, static body of traditional knowledge.141 But in Bergmann's dynamic
transmodern view, measuring degrees of authenticity is not a credible exercise because traditional
knowledge is fragmented, diverse and dynamic. Identity can be sustained through the gradual and
continuous processes of that knowledge as it is transmitted and transformed, which is never rapid or
extreme in a way that would jeopardise identity.142 Kathryn Tanner argues that “what a body of
beliefs implies may not have been, even implicitly, believed prior to its derivation; continuity
between the two is nevertheless assured because those implications are drawn out of the body of
beliefs in a step-by-step process that builds on itself.”143 Therefore when considering the incarnation
of God in tradition, it occurred in a specific historical, geographical and cultural context: God
became a male, working-class Jew in Palestine some two thousand years ago, and stories of his life
were recorded in Greek.144 Contextual theologies are not unaffected by the multiple ways
Christianity was spread from Palestine through two millennia, nor by the dynamic interpretations of
the stories of Jesus Christ in the Christian bible. Self-legitimising theologies still maintain a sort of
continuity with tradition, which identify them as Christian theologies.
Another advantage of Bergmann's reinterpretation of Christian tradition is that it opens
spaces for the recognition and exploration of the “silenced traditions.”145 Where views of Christian
tradition have been essentialist, they've privileged the knowledge of some peoples over others, and
those other knowledges have been suppressed. In Foucauldian fashion, Bergmann's reinscription of
tradition demonstrates how essentialist Christian tradition is historically contingent rather than
necessary, and opens space for the knowledge of women, people of colour and oppressed
ethnicities, the illiterate, and the poor, to be explored and valued.146

Knowledge and Context

In exploring God incarnate in Western spaces, it is important to consider how practical
theological knowledge is conceived. This is an ongoing process, but five themes can be identified.

141Tanner, Theories of Culture : A New Agenda for Theology , 128.

142Ibid., 129.
143Ibid., 130.
144Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society , 144.
145Bergmann, God in Context , 63.
146Cuomo, Feminism and ecological communities , 114.
 41444737 22

First is the vital recognition that any knowledge of context is affected by the thinking subject, in this
case the theologian.147 The social and ecological context of the theologian will inevitably shape
what they perceive as important in organising thought about context and what they are most
consciously attentive to.
Second, power relations, conflict and discourse shape the way context is perceived.
Bergmann offers ten dimensions for understanding conflict in global society as a starting point for
context analysis: geography, gender, ethnic affiliation, culturally constructed power, class, economy,
ecology, generation, education and place.148 Conflict differentiates reality and polarises different
groups of people, and depending on how the power relations mobilise, certain dimensions will rise
as obvious shapers of knowledge.
Third, it should be noted that contextual theology stresses a plurality of methodological
approaches. The majority of Western knowledge is logocentric and linguistic-thinking, but fringe
groups point to aesthetics and art for recognising intuition and image-thinking.149 Therefore, for
theology to be consciousness of the context of thinking and acting, it must allow for all forms of
thinking and be sensitive to the broad range of methods it may produce. Already strong approaches
that are contextual exist, such as feminist theology, ecotheology and postfoundational narrative
theology, to name a few. Many local theologies exist too, however, local theologies may or may not
be contextual, depending on whether they are conscious of their situatedness.150
Fourth, a value on knowledge from the underside of history and nature promotes a problem-
oriented approach where the problems for academic study are posed by the public.151 Academic
research should focus primarily on generating knowledge that has use and relevance to the way
people construct the narratives of their lives.152 This attempt to lessen the gulf between theory and
practice echoes the move in the Western academy, to bridge the polarisation between formal and
informal knowledge.153
Finally, as contextual theology is part of a wider practical theology, biblical criticism is not
in focus. However, where biblical criticism is used, it is a joint critical study of both the text and its
reader.154 The text can be studied as 'the other;' the text is a message from the author to its intended
audience, all in another context, which will always be apprehended through the social and historical

147Bergmann, God in Context , 68.

148Ibid., 44.
149Ibid., 70.
150Ibid., 5.
151Ibid., 70.
152Swidler & Arditi, “The New Sociology of Knowledge,” 321.
153Tanner, Theories of Culture : A New Agenda for Theology , 71.
154Fernando F. Segovia, “'And They Began to Speak in Other Tongues': Competing Modes of Discourse in
Contemporary Biblical Criticism,” in Reading from this Place : Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the
United States, ed. Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 29.
 41444737 23

lens of the reader.155 Cultural anthropology's methods for studying otherness are useful to contextual
biblical criticism.

Conclusion
Contextual approaches to theology are those that are conscious of the role of their historical,
social, cultural and ecological situation in interpreting the Christian faith. Contextual theologians
assert that they can never rise above their own situatedness in time and culture, so theology asks
what they can know of God within their time and culture. Consequently, they concentrate on the
incarnation of God in a given context, and ask how God functions in that context.
This essay focuses on contextual theology of Western contexts, and as such, devotes
considerable time and attention to one narrative of the development of philosophy following the
Enlightenment through to the postmodern situation that marks the twenty-first century. The
epistemological preoccupation of modernist philosophy prompted the modernist project of
grounding all knowledge upon the supposedly epistemologically solid foundation of human reason,
which in turn significantly influenced the way knowledge was legitimised throughout the modern
era. After a disrupted start to the twentieth century, writers brought the modernist philosophical
project into question because the notion of rationality emphasised uniformity, and did not have an
adequate way of handling diversity, and because it did not achieve the indubitable legitimacy it
claimed to. Postmodern philosophy is preoccupied with the question of how knowledge can be
legitimated after the failure of the modernist project, and largely follows Lyotard's lead toward
narrative and partial knowledge. The role of language in constructing knowledge and reality was
brought into focus by Wittgenstein, and Derrida and Foucault have developed his ideas further in
textual criticism and cultural criticism respectively.
These poststructuralist theorists have had considerable influence in the way the discourse of
contextual theology is emerging in Western contexts. There is still much debate over the legitimacy
of contextual approaches and whether they can remain authentically Christian in regard to tradition.
For those that ascribe to contextual theology, Lyotard's narrative way of knowing is a way forward.
A reduction in the scope of what is claimed to be known, provides a field for contextual theology to
work with The treatment of knowledge and context is heavily influenced by Foucauldian and
cultural anthropological methods. In conclusion then, knowledge generated through
poststructuralism has aided the articulation of approaches, methods and theories of Western
contextual theology.

155Segovia, “'And They Began to Speak in Other Tongues',” 9.