The question about the reason for theology and its identity might seem rhetorical since it is common knowledge that its statute is determined by the correlation between the newness of revelation and the understanding of faith. And yet, the question reveals the necessity of constantly balancing that «triple configuration» [1] of the fundamental idea of theology that places proclamation at the origin of its conformation and definition. And this, above all in relation to the risk of a dreaded implosion of the theological identity, [2] encouraged and, probably, caused by its encounter with other forms of knowledge that individuate and thematise historical and worldly hermeneutic differences. This, of itself, is not new in the history of theology, if only for the fact that increasing socio-cultural complexity with its resulting increase of interpretative systems, involves the need for a constant adjustment, on the part of theology, of its theoretical and ethical relevance, despite the risk, real or presumed, of a fragmentation of content. At the same time, the process of autonomy of different cultural areas and the emergence of a strange cultural amnesia of faith mean that theology must have a certain ability «to handle the complexity», [3] outside of which the contribution that theological reflection can offer to research could be irrelevant or unsuited to the demands of history. «Anyone who does not read history starting from a pre-established ideological pattern, who lets himself be disturbed and provoked by the “interrupted paths” of human life and suffering, who is willing to bear the burden of not having ready-made diagnoses and therapies accepts the complexity». [4]

Beyond the fact of whether this does or does not imply a change of working paradigm and theological teaching, the need for a re-examination of theological method has marked research in the post-conciliar years, starting from some intuitions mentioned by W. Kasper, who individuated in the quaestio the hermeneutic starting point of the fides quaerens intellectum, where the deeply-felt problem of faith is propounded in history and in the world. [5] The same theologian wrote: «For a correctly understood ecclesial and missionary responsibility of theology, it is necessary to open the way to experiments and risk». [6]

But there is more. The perception emerging in the 60s-80s of the 20^th century of a profound crisis of Christian identity and the problematic nature of ecclesial affinity, expressed symptomatically in the theological-pastoral search for a re-interpretation of the Creed and the suitability of new faith formulas more in keeping with the faith journey of ecclesial subjects and communities, [7] revealed the inalienable inculturative function of theology, of pastoral planning and catechesis in relation to the cultural-anthropological place where the question of meaning is asked. It is clear, above all starting from the wholesome provocation of the Encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi, that the connection between theology, evangelization and culture is inherent in theological epistemology, precisely in the increasingly decisive focalisation of the hermeneutics of revelation and its credibility for history. «Therefore theology is called to tackle on a critical-scientific level the problem of a synthesis between “culture, history and faith”, in the conviction that a message of salvation does not show its “universal effectiveness” unless it works in depth, and not only on a superficial level, in the cultural place in which the human person lives concretely and historically». [8]

The basic intention underlying this reflection is based on the conviction that theological and cultural formation [9] must be linked to the missionary and pastoral dimension. Indeed, the correlation between the two aspects is vital, precisely in virtue of what characterises the practice of theological reflection and its formative perspective. If the Church’s missionary dimension is at the service of the proclamation of the Word so that every human person may discover the beauty of Christian becoming, [10] the objective of formation must become attentive to the requests for a pedagogy of faith that knows how to take into account the complexity of history and humanity, aiming at the quality of the Christian identity in a concrete ecclesial experience. Although in a schematic way and in the form of a thesis, it is from this context that these indications come.

1. The affinity between critical knowledge and communication of faith

We will start from one fact that is found throughout the narration of the unique and unrepeatable experience contained in the New Testament. In New Testament ecclesiological consciousness, theological reflection is centred on the need to link and thematise the kerygma and its dogmatic definition. [11] This comes from the fact that the proclamation of the newness and otherness of the Gospel in different socio-cultural contexts has indicated requests and paths for a theological reflection that can always «have an answer ready» (1 Pet 3:15). The reason lies in the singularity of the revealing event of Jesus Christ and in his extraordinary impact with regard to the truth about God and the truth about the human person, which gave rise to many problems in the search for and individuation of the Christian identity compared, for example, to the Jewish root of Christianity itself. Confrontation with the newness that the Jesus Christ event meant within the context of aspirations in the encounter with divine truth is not indifferent in the progressive growing awareness of the first Christian communities. [12] It is here that the process of evangelization begins. And this, while determining a slow but inexorable cultural conversion, inaugurates a season that in the missionary dynamics slowly re-defines the Christian identity in constant contact with the challenges and provocations of cultures and religions, with their symbolic and existential values. The first Christian communities discovered, through reflex experience, that the response to the desire for life can be found in the Christological newness, in that more that leads to the need to announce to every person the discovery of the Gospel’s surplus of meaning. [13] Therefore mission implies fidelity to Jesus Christ, the One sent by the Father, and to his Gospel and it implies insertion in a cultural-historical context at the service of the formative process of Christian existence.

The model that inspires evangelization is the incarnation (cf. Redemptoris Missio 5), [14] the event of the kenosis, an «understanding» (Fides et Ratio 93) of which is the chief purpose of theology. Said in other words, evangelization is the inculturation of the Gospel, whose eschatological dimension [15] indicates that the content of the Christian message cannot be reduced to simple cultural patterns of the historical moment, but it goes beyond them though in the historical conditioning of the proclamation. It is in virtue of this otherness that goes back to the logic of the Trinitarian revelation in the historical presence of Jesus, that the Gospel can not only integrate with culture and cultures, but it inserts in cultural processes needs and values that contribute to human promotion and to the world’s advancement, also through its prophetic and countercultural force. [16] It follows that the theological task is dynamically fuelled by pastoral practice in its ecclesial context and by missionary outlook, which in the encounter with the other cooperate in the re-interpretation that theology is called to make constantly. In this sense theology that listens to the event of revelation is called to «re-tell this event to the human person of every age, in a form that may approach him existentially and is presented as the critical conscience of the Christian community; consequently, a theology that is able to accept man and his history as a “hermeneutic place” for an increasingly fuller and renewed understanding of the event of revelation and its proclamation». [17] A decisive consequence is that critical knowledge of faith and communication of faith belong to each other and interact with each other. This means that the missionary dimension is an essential element of theological reflection, it is not a regional aspect of it.

From this perspective, we should not be surprised at the conviction that theology (and its method) [18] is closely linked to the questions that come from life and to the challenges that the ecclesial community is called to face in its witness to the Kingdom. The urgency of mission, as the historical-prophetic prophecy of the Kingdom, means that theological reflection is part of the Church’s being a sacrament, whose power of signs lies in its task of being a witness in the logic of the gratuitousness of a Word whose qualitative difference opens the substance of history to the possibility of dialogue and confrontation. «If it takes the Church seriously, theology, like her, will have to act for the Kingdom of God in the world. It is in this activity for the Kingdom of God that theology also enters the political, cultural, economic and ecological life of a society [...]. In each of these areas the theology of the Kingdom of God is public theology, which therefore participates in the res publica of society and is involved “in critical and prophetic terms”, because it sees public reality in the perspective of the Kingdom of God that is coming». [19] In other words, it means that theology is always in context, that is, it interprets the meaning of God’s plan for history and the world in which the faith is lived and perceived in particular circumstances; but it is also invited to a hermeneutics of socio-cultural contexts, to know how to read in the movement of human research those signs of transcendence and that ontological need for salvation that intersect and innervate theological reflection, revealing the unsaid and the unimagined that dwells in Christological truth.

2. In view of an adequate formation

In virtue of this union between theological reflection and missionary dimension, that is, of a reciprocity between reflection and proclamation that listens to the signs of the times, we ought to ask what are the great modern challenges that demand of the Church’s theology and mission an extrovert capacity. [20] That is to say: the need for an extension of theological reflection that can answer the real needs of the modern world and bring about a cultural and pastoral conversion. There seem to be three challenges that direct reflection on the theological [21] and missiological [22] prospects for the 21^st century, which need to be examined carefully and which must be able to give educational answers. Schematically.

First of all, the concept of the world inaugurated by post-modernity, an ambiguous time, open to the search for new paths (cf. Italian Episcopal Conference, Comunicare il Vangelo in un mondo che cambia, 36-43), whose characteristics are: affirmation of the subject and desire for proximity, the return of the religious and the quest for new meaning, but also a New Age mentality, in which the psycho-physical wellbeing of the Self tops the list of modern culture’s desires and passions. It is not only a question of egoistic demands, but of proposals of other possible worlds, in which one can be free to express difference, in a constant change of patterns of life. [23]

Secondly, the impact of the phenomenon of globalisation [24] as an ideological narration of cultural and social contemporaneousness, which emphasises the question of identity and otherness, but also the logic of profit and the market as the criterion of anthropological and cosmological interpretation. It is obvious that, beyond the positive aspects, the risk that globalisation may become a single and ideological unassailable thought is more than a simple hypothesis. The consequences of a change of anthropological and ethical scenario, but also of a reduction of religious experience to the market of interests, involve Christianity’s critical power of resistance to forms of assimilation that reduce the concept of life to a false idea of unlimited freedom and to the conviction that information (the Net myth) is the same as reality.

Finally, the irruption of the plurality of the great religions. It is precisely the horizon of religious pluralism that is one of the most decisive theological issues [25] of the future, where it is perceived not as a simple fact, but as the interpretative beginning of God’s plan of salvation. The encounter with different religious and cultural worlds means that theology has the difficult task of studying the multiplicity of God’s way in relation to the singularity and unicity of Christ’s mediation; [26] and it transforms the Church’s mission into attention to the need for interreligious dialogue [27] and an understanding of the other through an intercultural hermeneutics. [28]

Therefore it is obvious that the assumption, on the part of theological reflection, of the missionary dimension enlarges the field of theological practice and of its return to an adequate path of formation that takes account of complexity albeit in the perspective of a systematic method. At the same time, it must be noted that, although the concept of mission [29] is gradually changing, it does however indicate in attention to subjects and their cultural and religious symbology a horizon of unequivocal reference. According to the interpretation and suggestions of D. Bosch, [30] missiology has a dual function in the context of theology.

a) A dimensional function: missiology, within the context of a broader concept of mission, is called to permeate theological reflection, in the recovery of that Gospel universality that connects God’s truth for man with the newness of Jesus Christ and his Spirit through the quest for meaning and salvation that dwells in the events of human history. In this sense, the non-exclusive presence of different interlocutors of 21^st century theology is extremely evident. «But, in the modern world, how can systematic theology [...] allow itself to neglect anti-Christian ideologies and the beliefs of followers of other faiths? Equally crucial, how can Western systematic theology continue to act as if it were universally valid and to reject the indispensable contribution to theological thought of Third World situations? And how can it even be blind to its own innate missionary nature? If it ignores the question: “Why mission?”, it also implicitly ignores the question: “Why the Church?” and “Why the Gospel?”». [31]

b) An intentional function of mission: themes like the first proclamation, inculturation, liberation, dialogue, sustainable development, the return of the religious, non-belief, are not a problem linked to other Churches, but they are areas for theological creativity that can surely be enriched by critical confrontation with missionary practice. In other words, the task of missiology involves a re-examination of systematic theology, but it is also a critical incentive to avoid any inclination to theoretical provincialism or ideological and cultural fragmentation. The indication of theology’s tension towards the future should be read in this perspective, as R. Fisichella writes: «On this scenario, theology should have a cosmic, indeed a planetary outlook. This means, growing in awareness that we cannot remain confined within the fixed patterns of Western theology alone, but we must extend our gaze towards the riches of Eastern theology and in this perspective be open to accept “categories, concepts, values, norms, models and traditions” that belong to the Churches and cultures of Africa, Asia and the Americas and vice versa». [32]

3. A didactic necessity

In the light of what we have indicated briefly, precisely because the task of missiology does not follow a purely pragmatic typology, it needs an adequate space of study and research in the sphere of pastoral-theological preparation, which goes beyond a simple reply to a precise «commission». [33] Already in the 1983 Ratio Studiorum of Major Seminaries the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) had emphasised the necessity of uniting speculative research and the present cultural context, theological reflection and the task of evangelization. [34] A necessity reiterated by the same CEI in Indicazioni per un’«Agenda Pastorale» del Prossimo Decennio (Indications for a «Pastoral Agenda» for the Next Decade) in an Appendix to the document Comunicare il Vangelo in un mondo che cambia, where in the paragraph on the necessities of mission in letter f) we read: «verify the formative choices of those who are preparing to become priests and the permanent formation of priests, so that they may be truly fathers in faith and acquire a missionary mentality».

Specifically, this will require ever greater curricular attention in the organisation of syllabuses for the Baccalaureate and/or six-year period of seminary study, which more than ever today require, in our opinion, the introduction of obligatory courses on the systematic theology of mission and the theology of religions, as a decisive service to theology and the Church’s missionary dimension, due to the fact that the communication of faith must be able to speak in and through culture and cultures, which should be known as the place where the human person and history can meet Jesus Christ. It concerns that learning marked by ecumenical openness which, according to the theologian N. Mette, is one of the essential didactic postulates for starting a reform of theological studies that can unite existence, knowledge and pastoral commitment. This means, with respect for disciplinary courses, knowing how to organise the various branches of theology in an interaction that aims at the ability to reason in an interdisciplinary manner on problems that concern the processes of encounter between the gospel and culture. «It is characteristic of ecumenical learning the fact that it should aim to create an awareness of the world Church and – to the same extent – a sensitivity to one’s own context, as well as attention to keeping one’s eyes open to the entire ecumenical Christianity, and a readiness for religious and intercultural dialogue, to direct one’s initiatives according to the concerns that give rise to the present and future situations of human life and to pledge oneself for a habitable earth». [35]

Therefore we must agree with what Card. C. Sepe points out in his Introduction at the inaugural session of the Congress for the 375^th anniversary of the foundation of the Urban College: «In virtue of the originality of the Gospel, the missionary action of the Church, an «expert in humanity», is called to offer every culture the plan of a Christian humanism that is testified by university research. This is one of the most urgent forms of cultural diaconia, above all in response to those nihilist tendencies that seem not to consider the centrality of the human person, marginalising him/her from economic and social processes. Thus, through the inculturation of faith evangelization becomes prophecy of a new culture, in which the values of the Kingdom of God are at the service of those expectations of salvation that are hidden in the questions and aspirations of each person and each culture». («Culture at the service of the missionary dimension» in L’Osservatore Romano (Italian edition), 30 November 2002, 4).

Notes