Culture's Effect on Theological Development

 In many ways, every generation has the task of reiterating or re-understanding the beliefs they have received for the world they live in. (Indeed, reiteration is not simple repetition.) However, it seems that certain eras may require a greater re-consideration of the expression of a faith than others. Thanks to inter-library loan, I have been reading the fascinating book by Sidney Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam. It's been really instructive, and surprisingly readable, regarding the early history of Christian-Muslim interaction. (It reminds me of Jenkins' Lost History of Christianity, with a different focus.)

 Anyways, Griffith describes Theodore bar Koni's 8th century theological-apologetic work Scholion on Christianity which interacted with Islam. In the chapter responding to Muslim challenges, bar Koni addressed "the Scriptures and Christ; Baptism; the Eucharistic mystery; the veneration of the Cross; sacramental practice in general; the Son of God; and, of course, interwoven with all of them, the all-embracing doctrine of the Trinity." (pg 43)

 Griffith continues, "These same issues are the ones that will appear in the topical outlines of almost all of the apologetic tracts written by Christians living among the Muslims for the next five hundred years." Not much has changed in my experience; these topics are mostly still central in Islam's questioning of Christian beliefs.

 But, the next part is what I actually wanted to post; it expressed the generational and contextual call for both thinking and practicing in both old and new ways. "What is evident in the list of them is the obvious intermingling of questions of faith and practice in such a way that it is also clear that the shape of theology itself is determined in this milieu by the apologetic imperative to justify the reasonableness of religious beliefs in virtue of the public practices they entail." (pgs 43-44)

 It seems to me that we also live in a time where new thought and expression is needed to publicly walk in a faith which may seem unreasonable or impious to the reigning worldview.

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Bonus quotation: bar Koni says of his purpose that he is writing "against  those who while professing to accept the Old Testament, and acknowledging the coming of Christ our Lord, are nevertheless far removed from both of them, and now they demand from us an apology [written defense] for our faith, not from all of the scriptures, but only from those which they acknowledge." Griffith summarizes, "Clearly he had the Muslims in mind." (pg 43)