8/7/2019 The Trajectory of An Argument: "Encountering Otherness"

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An Outline of An Argument: What’s Theological About ‘Otherness’ 

I would like to make an argument about what is theological about otherness.

By ‘otherness’ here I have in mind the pluralism of irreducible identities—hybrid, conflicting and fluid asthey may be —in which persons and social groups stake their lives in. Identities have such weight because they areconceptual frameworks for meaning-making without which we would not be able to place ourselves in space andtime. Theology is a cultural practice “whose major concern is the identification and critical examination of the beliefsand values that are central parts of religious traditions” (Delwin Brown). In doing so, theology makes normativeclaims—just as say, social sciences and much of the humanities would— about the human community, socialrelationships, our relationship to the natural world, ethics and so on.

What is theological about otherness begins with our experiences of everyday life. As a Christian theologian, Iam particularly concerned with everyday life in the primary location in which religious beliefs and values areexercised: the local faith community. It is here that we experience a complex conflict. Here we encounter otherness ina variety of forms such as ethnicity, gender, socio-economics, political affiliation (and so on...) and indeed differingbeliefs and values exercised side-by-side in religious practices. Theology functions within this experience both as

norming norms which justify the status quo and as a critical reflection of it that is both practical and prophetic.Theology functions this way within the local community because here two fundamentally contradictory claims (oneoften verbal, the other embodied) are made. On the one hand, the church is confessed as a belief that the church is inthe image of the divine—the ultimate Other. Yet, it is experienced as a human community with all the complicationsthat come with that. The confession is that God came down precisely when the world was God’s enemy. The imagehistorical Christianity has used for this event is that of the trinity: a self-open-to-the-world community of reconcilinglove which does not remove or reduce it in all its differences, but seeks to incorporate them through a process of reconciliation. This process of reconciliation requires the self and the other. The self needs the differentiated other precisely because this is what God has done and continues to do in God’s preferred-future for the world.

That is what’s theological about otherness.

The Trajectory of An Argument | “Encountering the Other” in M.A.thesis (2011)

Timothy K. Snyder, M.A. cand. (Luther Seminary, Saint Paul, MN)____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Ꮱ END. with a call to re-engage(experience). Proposal:concrete ecclesiology asconf l i c t reso lu t ion o r  reconciliation of “conflictingidentities” (Gurevitch).

Return to same interpretation.

BEGIN. with experience.written as “theologicalethnography.”// truth-tellingis relationally-situated as it really is. (Bonhoeffer)

Requires an Interpretation.

PAUSE. Critical-Reflection: From a “wound”— Something must be addressed. “Socio-theology”.Interpretive (understand): “culture in action”(Swidler).Critical (emancipate): Trinitarian relationality. Churchin the image of the Triune God (Volf).

Figure 1:Doing & Writing Theology with the Experience-Reflection-Experience Model.