Communication As A Theological And Pastoral Challenge
By Matthias Scharer
In the Christian sense, as K. Rahner has repeatedly emphasized, theology as “God-speaking” is speaking of people. It speaks of human communication in the face of God who communicates himself in many ways, ultimately in Jesus Christ. We can also say: the subject of theology is the act of communication based on belief in the one and triune God, who is relationship in himself and who communicates. This still applies even if the Christian perspective of hope may only be implicit in human communication or if the Christian act of faith only inadequately reveals its immanent form of communication.
The question of how Christian theologians get their “communicative” knowledge, i.e. their theology, is inextricably linked with the object of their knowledge: the incarnate God in Jesus Christ, who reveals himself to people, who is inherent in them and who allows them to communicate comprehensively enabled.
The decisive basis of a communicative theology is revelation as the self-communicating “communication” of God with human beings and as the human spirit's gift for comprehensive communication. In God-human communication, not just any partial knowledge about the central meaning of life and the world, about its history and its future is passed on; the God-human communication process reveals "truth in relationship": the search for “truth in relationship” characterizes theological questions as a communicative event in which the respective contexts in which people live and experience are explored for those traces of the Spirit of God that give an inkling of God's absolute devotion make people transparent.
Form Of Communication, Means Of Communication, And Communication Content
In a communication society that is geared towards the indiscriminate and limitless conveyance of information, a clear theological option is needed more than ever for the inextricable intertwining of the form of communication, means of communication, and communication content. Because it changes the respective belief content considerably whether it "comes across" in interpersonal encounters, i.e. developed in "communicative actions", is offered as a means of identification via concrete people with whom I am in a living relationship - with the required freedom, the identification to refuse - or whether a piece of faith information reaches me via a technical medium. In this regard, the question is the trust the churches have always, either more in the clarity of conceptual communication or in the diversity of interpersonal encounters and life testimony based on faith. It is easier to check concepts for their truth than human encounters.
Whether the correct content of faith or the truth of faith that is revealed in the relationship is emphasized, it must always be certain that no communication arrangement can or may guarantee the development of the Christian faith. Fundamental theological limits in the communication of faith are exceeded wherever communicative action is taken or the appearance is given that a certain content, a special method or a promising medium can guarantee the development of faith; rather, it can only ever be a question of the somewhat more correct or less correct conditions for the possibility of faith communication; the consent to faith must be left to the free responsibility of individuals and the gift of God.
Theology As Critical Reflection And Understanding
It is not for nothing that the churches, and, rightly, also the state, afford a theology. In an open society, theologians have the task of making their critical thinking and action potential, which they have gained in the discourse of Judeo-Christian and church tradition with today's social challenges, available to everyone as a decision-making aid in specific communication issues. To put it in a somewhat simplified way, it is about the difference between a commercial enterprise, which has highly qualified personnel for strategic planning and decisions in its management, and the church.
Participating and Cooperating Theologians
At the same time, such a critical discourse between theology, and church, and social communication practice, is in danger of becoming a superstructure or even an “ought to be” made by experts who know everything better, against which practitioners rightly defend themselves. Philosophical theological theses that are decoupled from communication with practitioners, deduced at the “green table” and conveyed from above, can still be correct, but they will not change practice. Only appropriate communication processes, excluding any superiority or subordination of professional theologians and practitioners, will change practice in the long term. These are communication processes in which everyone's competence is required and in which external expert knowledge is not fed in.
It is obvious such a claim must become a challenge for theological teaching. I encountered the most credible testimony of a participatory theologian in G. Gutierrez. A thousand kilometers north of Lima, in a communidad of the poor on the outskirts of Chiclayo, in which I lived for several weeks, almost every young person knew him from a personal encounter.
Whether the mutual and mutually-critical communication between explicit theological views and pastoral care is successful, or whether, on the contrary, it is derived from theology or practiced in a theology-forgotten manner, is not just an external communication problem. Not least as a result of our humanities studies, which are still largely based on deduction, some people have internalized the structures of a theology from above in such a way that they are unable to develop a theological judgment appropriate to the communicative challenges in pastoral care. For example, a pastor who has been in practice for 15 years and who is very much responsible for his wife in everyday life, told me that to this day she hardly dares to make an independent theological statement.
Theological (Self-) Awareness From Communicative Theology
The university course "Communicative Theology" at the Theological Faculty, Innsbruck, Austria, presents itself in a process-oriented way of working described challenges. This is carried out in the second round from SS 2003 in five semesters in blocked course weeks. It is aimed at pastors who have completed their theology studies a long time ago. The biographically-shaped experiences of faith and one's own theological history, the ecclesiologically-significant processes in a long-term group, the deep experiences of humanity and faith that are written in the biblical texts and are based on the theological categories – all are kept in a “dynamic balance”; their contextual “grounding” is sought in all phases. With the communicative approach of topic-centered interaction (RC Cohn), the theological hermeneutics of everyday communication processes in pastoral care is not dealt with theoretically, but practiced jointly in a way that decisively promotes personal growth, leadership, communication and conflict skills, combined with theological self-confidence. Information on the course can be found at: http://theol.uibk.ac.a
Literature
Rahner, Karl, New claims in pastoral theology on theology as a whole, in: ds., Complete Works, Bd. 19, Düsseldorf uaO 1995, 516 - 531.
Werbick, Jürgen, Responsibility for Faith. A fundamental theology, Freiburg i. Br. UaO 2000.
From Matthias Scharer:
INNOVATION: Develop theological and didactic attention.
Pastoral as an educational event?
Supervision between (strategic) power of interpretation and communicative
"powerlessness"
The "hallowed" fragment
Education as an intercultural diakonia
Communicate or discover the Holy Spirit?
"Do not leave until you are sent?" Is there a problem of pathological limitation of
missionary entitlement in the Church today?
"The spirit blows where it wants"