作者：陈耀鸿 Chan, John
FAITH AND PRAXIS IN THE POLITICAL THEOLOGIES OF J. B. METZ AND J. MOLTMANN
Political Theology Revisited
Faith, for J.B. Metz, is "a praxis in history and society that is to be understood as hope in solidarity in the God of Jesus as a God of the living and the dead who calls all men to be subjects in his presence".(1) That is, Metz sees Christian praxis, meaning faith, as social praxis which in turn is ethically determined, is accompanied by a making present of a collective historical memory, and is characterised by its pathic structure. This, then, is Metz's understanding of Christian faith in the light of his political theology as a "practical fundamental theology ".
Moltmann, on the other hand, has never claimed to have a "political theology" of his own. Faith for him is "the foundation upon which hope rests,…Without faith's knowledge of Christ, hope becomes a utopia…But without hope, faith falls to pieces".(2) Theology, and in particular political theology, to be responsible, is public. It stands "consciously between the Christian, eschatological message of freedom and the socio-political reality'. (3) Political theology for Moltmann, then, is a "hermeneutical category" defining the context and the medium in which Christian theology is to be articulated today. This is further understood in the assertion that "the new criterion of theology and of faith is to be found in praxis". (4)
Despite the similarity between Metz and Moltmann in their approach to the subject, there are crucial differences in their later developments. We shall return to this point in the fifth section of this paper.
The term "political" theology itself is not without ambiguity and misunderstandings. The traditional usage in Greek philosophy arises from the tripartite division of theology into mythic, natural, and political. Each of the three addresses itself to different gods with the political as inferior to the other two. Roman theology took up this division but with a reversal of priorities. That is, political theology took precedence over the metaphysical and became no more than a theological justification of the primacy of politics. Augustine, in The City of God, criticizes this all too immanent process at the expense of the transcendent. He emphazises the dependence of the political on the mythic and the metaphysical, the three being distinct but interrelated ways of speaking about God. Yet the Roman conception of political theology was revived from the Renaissance onwards to offer support to the uneasy 'marriage' between the church and the state. Political theology thus became, once again, the tool of those in power to justify a "Christendom" from “the right”.
A new political theology for today will have to dissociate itself from any conception of a "Christendom", either of the "Right" or of the “Left”. Political theology, a truly human endeavour, will necessarily be rooted in the world. And yet, as theology, it is at the same time always pointing to that which is beyond the world. A credible political theology will have to maintain a unity between the identity and non-identity of faith and culture, between redemption and human history; that the resurrection hope will not be swallowed up by history as it makes death and guilt transitory. Nor will it swallow up history because a hope based on the cross is fulfilled only when the dead and all creation are returned to the full lordship of God. (5)
While Moltmann sees political theology as no more than a hermeneutical horizon. Metz locates it firmly in the arena of fundamental theology. For Metz, fundamental theology today can no longer simply be a rational justification of faith that is narrowly apologetic in nature. That is, it must not be reduced to a "theological meta-theory" of existing world theories. Rather, it must justify itself as theology by "a return to subjects and the praxis of subjects''…"As such, its task is to evoke and describe a praxis which will resist all evolutionary attempts at reconstruction and any attempt to do away with religious practice as an independent entity or the religious subject as an authentic element in the process of a historical and materialist dialectical system".(6) In other words , the practical fundamental theology devised by Metz is always bound to the act of opposing any attempt to condition religion socially or to reconstruct it theoretically.
1)J. B. Metz, Faith in History and Society, Burns & Oates, London, 1980, p. 73. The term “praxis” implies the activity of the whole person, intellectual as well as physical. It is more than what is understood by the term “practice”. Henceforth, the former will be preferred to the latter in this essay. See also Metz’s article, “Political Theology”, in Sacramentum Mundi.
2)J. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, SCM Press, London, 1970, p. 20.
3)Moltmann, "Political Theology", in The Experiment Hope, SCM Press, London, 1975, p. 102.
4)Moltmann, "God in Revolution", in Religion, Revolution and the Future, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY 1969, p.138.
5)Moltmann, "The End of History", in Hope and Planning, SCM Press, London, 1971, p.167f.
6)Metz, 1980, p.7.
Political Theology & Liberation Theology
Political theology, understood in the restricted sense of Metz and Moltmann, is distinct from, though closely related to, the liberation theologies of Latin America. A common distinction made between the two is to consider their different contexts that give rise to their particular mode of theological reflection. This involves three aspects: the secularization of society, the privatization of faith, and the role of theology in the life of the Church. (7)
First, the German political theologians see the process of secularization in a positive light. The separation of church and state, the world ceasing to be the numinous, and the rise of the human subject in the search for emancipation, are key stages in the path to the freedom of faith expressed in human subjectivity. The Latin American liberation theologians criticise this projection as imposing the particular European model of church-state relationship on other regions. For them, the church is still very much bound up with the state. Secularization, while still in its beginning stages, leads not so much to the 'death-of -God' syndrome, but rather to a near schizophrenic dualism of faith and politics.
Second, the concern of political theology in Europe is to offer a critical corrective to the current existential theology which tends to advocate a privatization of faith in the wake of the secularization of society. In a secular society, Christian faith seems to have lost its public dimension except as a minority cult or even as expressions of personal, individual interest. Liberation theology from Latin America, on the other hand, is conceived as a critique of the Catholic liberal developmentalism that has been exported to the third world from the so-called developed countries. The model of development presupposes a social and economic structure that is not only insensitive to the real problems of the host nations, but is also instrumental in preserving the oppressive structures in these nations, thus perpetuating the evils of injustice. Liberation theology seeks to offer a radical break from the status quo based on a Christian foundation.
Third, the nature of political theology, in particular that of Metz and Moltmann, is more in the methodological realm. That is, they see the role of political theology as defining the context and the horizon in the task of doing theology. In their search to elaborate the relationship between religion and society, political theology tends to focus on the dialectics of theory and practices On the other hand, liberation theology seeks to give relevant interpretations of faith symbols of the Christian message of liberation. Their emphasis is less on methodology in the theological task. Rather their interest is centred more on the example of Jesus Christ as a bringer of liberation.
Despite the distinct differences between political theology and liberation theology, theologians from both sides do have a mutual influence on each other. For example, Sobrino’s heavy reliance on Moltmann’s theology of the cross in his Christlolgy at the Crossroads shows the methodological root of most Latin American theologians. Or, Metz’s second formulation of his political theology is the result of the critique of Latin American theologians who saw Metz’s theology of the world as no more than an extension of a form of Kantian political ethics in which the notion of faith is over-and-above and untouched by its historico-social context. (8)
It is not a matter of choosing between the one or the other, of political theology or liberation theology. Both are serious attempts to take theparticularity of history as the starting point for theological reflection. Their individual usefulness is determined more by the relevance of the issues out of which they are developed.
7)See F. P. Fiorenza, "Political Theology and Liberation Theology: an inquiry into their fundamental meaning", in Liberation, Revolution & Freedom, ed. by T. E. McFadden, Seabury Press, NY, 1975; also, C. Davis, Theology and Political Society, CUP, Cambridge, 1980, Chapter 1, "From Orthodoxy to Politics".
8)It is difficult to say how the mutual influences between theologians in the two continents are effected. The general impression is that the Latin American theologians depend on their European counterparts for method, while criticising them for not taking "praxis" seriously but of being concerned only with a "theology of praxis''.
See G. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, SCM Press, London, 1974.
Metz and Moltmann: their starting points and their objectives
The political theologies of Metz and Moltmann begin with the view that the self-revelation of God takes place primarily in the reality of the history of Jesus Christ. As this history is coextensive with the history of the world, political theology believes that the self-communication of God to man cannot be some timeless, acultural and theologically impartial entity, but has to be inextricably bound up with the discussion of the historico-political expression of faith.
It is, thus, the intention of Metz and Moltmann to counter the tendency to take the discussion of faith and theology out of the realm of the historico-political experience of man. That is not to say that theology before them is not interested in the human pole of God's self-communication. Rather they are adding a corrective to the reaction of theology's previous attempt to answer the challenge of the Enlightenment in Europe. The dualism of faith and history that emerged from that reaction is contributory to the crises of identity and relevance for Christianity. (9)
In Moltmann, we find a re-emphasis on the eschatological dimension of the gospel message. God is not a being totally detached from the world. He is the eschaton, the future which has come near drawing us forward. This imminence of the eschaton means, for Metz, that faith is not a flight from the secular world into the realm of individual piety. Rather, it is within the socio-political reality of this secular world that God encounters man (and woman). To return to an 'authentic' response to this divine condescension, Metz advocates a "de-privatization" of faith.
Thenceforth, Moltmann arrives at the positiion that the God who draws near in history is the revelation of the history of Himself. That is, theology's task in discerning God in history leads us further on to an insight into the history of God. For him, the challenge of political theology can be justified and sustained only because of what it reveals in the trinitarian history of God. Metz, on the other hand, finds that political theology is complete only if it leads to a completely different way of doing theology. He rejects the transcendental-idealistic approach because it fails to exercise its critical function as demanded by the gospel message it proclaims. As an alternative, Metz proposes a "praxical" approach to theology which expresses itself in narratives of painful memories in the history of human liberation and salvation.
9)Apart from the two articles on "Political Theology" by Metz and Moltmann mentioned above, see also T. W. Ogletree, "From Anxiety to Responsibility: The Shifting Focus of Theological Reflection", in New Theology No. 6, ed. by Marty & Peerman, Macmillan, NY, 1970.
The Context of Political Theology－Theological and Historical
In this section we will make a deeper analysis of the intentions and issues behind the political theologies of Moltmann and Metz with an attempt to draw out their similarities and differences. As mentioned already, political theology begins, as with all other theologies, in the self-revelation of God In Jesus Christ. This central core of Christian faith is and can never be contested, not even for political theology. What is at issue is the primacy of the form of expression of this faith and thus of Its mode of transmission. Whether this expression is to be characterised principally by the intellect, the will or the all-engaging human act, leads respectively to the corresponding modes of transmission of faith as orthodoxy, orthopoesis and orthopraxy.(10) Much of the controversy over the primacy question is influenced by the historical conditioning of the believer vis-a-vis his basic understanding of himself as human and the understanding of God as the transcendent. Arising thence are secondary questions, which include: the identity and non-identity of faith and that human historical conditioning, the epistemological structure of theology, and the continual discovery of the true character of the original biblical record of God's self-revelation in Christ, all acting as parameters within which the original question on primacy takes shape.
In the existentialist theology of Barth, Bultmann and Rahner, we find three different understandings of faith and its modes of expression. In Barth, the primacy of faith is identified with none of the three modes of expression－neither intellect, will nor praxis. Faith is primarily an act on God's part even in its its human expression. Theology becomes the explication of this divine action in man. The non-identity of faith with man's historical conditioning means that the original Word of God mediated in scripture is above historical criticism. It is only on the secondary level that faith enters as the human acknowledgment of the divine action, and love for one's fellowmen follows the proclamation of the Word.(11)
We find in Bultmann an opposite position. Faith, while acknowledging its ultimate divine origin, Is identified with the historico-existential conditions of man. Primacy is given to a form of orthopoesis whereby knowledge of a new relation with God and with oneself leads to a life of faith characterised by love and freedom. Theology becomes the tool for a continuous correlation between faith and the existential condition of man.
For Rahner, the question of primacy is further identified with the very constitution of man. The 'anonymity' of faith is synonymous with the transcendental subjectivity in man. Theology is thus 'anthropology'; and anthropology is impossible without its theological groundings. The biblical record is understood as the irreversible exemplar of the thematization of this transcendental subjectivity in the God-man Jesus Christ.
It would be unfair to say that in Bultmann and in Rahner there is a simple identification of faith with the human situation. Both writers are aware of the non-identity element, the not-yet of eschatology, in their theology. Yet their treatment of the tension created by this latter element falls into the intellectual trap of reifying history. As a result, Bultmann reduces the human condition to the historicity of man realized in the time-and-again decision of faith. In Rahner, the reality of the ambiguity of the history of religion exists more as an intellectual possibility rather than a fact under the broad vision of the 'anonymity' of faith. This imbalance of Identity over non-identity in Bultmann and Rahner is not a 'watering-down' of faith, but is rather the product of the 'over-spiritualizing' of man. The major weakness in their attempts to explicate faith, and to a similar extent the almost utter non-identity approach in Barth, is to locate the Christian message in some atemporal conception of truth that is accessible to the private, intellectual realm of an individual.
The revival of a praxical understanding of knowledge and truth led to a fresh challenge to Christianity's search for an adequate expression of the original self-revelation of God in Christ. The dissatisfaction with an idealistic conception of man and his history plus the critique of religion as an ideology was the occasion that gave rise to political theology as the answer to the search for a contemporary expression of faith. In the formulations of Moltmann and Metz, political theology emphasizes the critical function of faith. The identity of faith with the idealistic conception of history and humanity found in Bultmann and Rahner and the near non-identity found in Barth are replaced by a more optimum unity of identity and non-identity.
Faith lived as hope recognises the world and its history as the only reality whereby faith finds an expression. The 'already' element of eschatology finds expression in the practice of Christians. At the same time the 'not-yet' element is the ground of the 'already' as eschatology breaks into history and the future into the present. Yet knowledge of the promise of the Risen Christ no longer serves as an explanation of history. It confronts it. Theology becomes an hermeneutical tool to mediate between the practice of faith and political society. It defines the contexts whereby the Christian message of the resurrection of the crucified one takes up history seriously as the voice of the oppressed. The orthodoxy of dogmatic statements gives way to the orthopraxy of Christian "living as the embodiment and expression of the Truth. The biblical record too receives a fresh understanding as a body of faith-stories that seek to preserve the different memories of God's self-communication to man in history. As THEO-logy, these memories become the ground of all other forms of theology. They also give shape to the epistemic structure of a praxis-oriented political theology. In order to perform its role as a critique of society and also of Christianity in its institutions and subjects, political theology can only mediate the Christian message in the form of stories of subversive memories. The hope of the oppressed is thus grounded in the solidarity with Christ who rose from the dead. The history of freedom is thus remembered not as a series of triumphs but rather as stories of sufferings in history. Memory of the non-identity of human sufferings in history becomes the subversive tool of political theology to fulfil its critical function.(12) The need for narrative in political theology avoids the danger of only offering a critique of society on the transcendental-idealistic plane. This latter mode of critique is applicable only when its overall presupposition that society is guided by a rationalistic-idealistic ethic is operative at the time. If this is not the case, the critique will be no more than an academic exercise in the realm of ideas; and runs the risk of exonerating the burden of sufferings in history in exchange for the aesthetic satisfaction of a neat and reified 'history'.
If the negative moments in political theology remind us of the crisis theology of Barth, it is because of their coincidental interest in the non-identity of faith with any 'secular' expression of emancipation and of redemption. Yet there is a crucial difference between them, not only in the degree of non-identity but also in the capacity of the non-identity in their theology. In Barth's crisis theology, the non-identity has its roots in a denial of any form of natural revelation. Faith comes only through a direct proclamation of the Word, because faith is nothing but the adherence to its object, namely the Word of God. Thus the non-identity in Barth is overarching in his theology. It denies the world so that the latter may turn to faith in the search for freedom. In political theology, the non-identity never functions apart from the context of the identity of faith and the world. Faith is neither prior to nor over-and-above the world perceived as history. Faith is found only in and through the world. The non-identity of faith here has its roots in the eschatological contents of the Christian message. The present is always relativised by the future in which God, the 'object' of faith resides. The 'not-yet' of the eschaton is the core of this non-identity that pulls history. That is, God as future is continually beckoning man, symbolized in a praxis, forwards. Thus, faith is always critical of any attempt to remove this forward thrust, whether it is to suppress the pain of suffering thus creating an illusion of a fully realized 'already' or to remove the pull of the future as advent in projecting an eschatology that pretends to comprehend the totality of history. However, this non-identity element in political theology does recognize a genuine movement of letting men be full subjects as part of that eschatological history of man's emancipation in Christ.
10)See R. Panikkar, Myth, Faith & Hermeneutics, Paulist Press, 1979, Chapter VI, 2, "Faith as a Constitutive Human Dimension". Metz's understanding of "praxis" is different from that of Panikkar. The former is concerned with the practical side of social praxis, the critical function of memories in history, and the pathic structure of praxis, whereas Panikkar is concerned with finding a general (and acceptable) understanding of faith in a cross-cultural study. His interest in "praxis" as a form of a self-realization of the human agent tends to focus on the moral and anthropological determinant of social praxis. As such, he is really discussing the concept "praxis" rather than "praxis" itself; and his method is more akin to establishing an orthopoesis rather than an orthopraxy, i.e. he emphazises finding the right concept to guide action rather than finding the right activity to rest his reflection upon.
11)References to the conception of faith held by Barth, Bultmann and Rahner, come from: K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV. i. p. 742; R. Bultmann, Theology of the N. T., vol. 1, Ch. V(C), and also J. Macquarrie's An Existential Theology; K. Rahner, "A Short Formula of Christian Faith", in A Rahner Reader, ed. by G. A. McCool, and also Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith.
12)"Memory" for Metz is not only a "theme" for his practical fundamental theology, but also a "category"; that is, it not only provides the content of his political theology but also the structure and means whereby this theology effects changes. See Metz (1980), Chapters 5, 6 and 11.
A Divergence in Metz and Moltmann
So far, we have covered the common elements in the political theologies of Metz and Moltmann. In their recent development, there is a clear divergence in their orientations. The criterion used in this analysis is based on M. Lamb's division of the different modes of theological methods in the course of the history of the development of theology.(13) Of the five modes mentioned by Lamb, which we have translated into graphic form below (Figure 1, page 87), it is the criticomorphic and the politicomorphic modes that will concern us here. Both seek to arrive at a unity between the identity and non-identity of faith and culture. Unlike the neomorphic mode which favours an identification of faith and culture (e.g. H. Cox's The Secular City) or the fideomorphic which insists on the non-identity of faith and culture (as with Barth), the criticomorphic and the politicomorphic recognise the tension between the transcendent dimension of faith and the historico-political reality of its manifestation. The crucial difference between the two, according to Lamb, which correspondingly distinguishes the 'political' theologies of Moltmann and Metz, lies in the capacity of each to mediate the Christian message from the present into the future. The criticomorphic mode, relying on Scriptures and on a rational conception of the human situation, can only hold a dialogue between faith and an intellectual perception of the reality of man and thus be able to mediate the Christian message from the past to the present. Political theology, as a typical example of the politicomorphic mode of theologizing, takes the present reality, captured in the form of narratives and memories, as its starting point to create a future in and through the critique of faith on human history. As such, the paradigm-shift advocated by Metz in the construction of a praxical fundamental theology puts him one stage beyond the criticomorphic, according to Lamb; whereas the return of Moltmann to a speculative theology of the Trinitarian history of God represents a regress even to that of a more sophisticated form of fideomorphism.
To be fair to Moltmann, we have to point out that he does not confine himself to the realm of political theology. In fact, he has criticised the tendency to reduce political theology to a theology of politics, and of Christian praxis to social activism. He warns: "The modern world's devotion to what is ethical and pragmatic has led to the distintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity in moral monotheism. The reduction of faith to practice has not enriched faith; it has impoverished it.(14) The remedy, says Moltmann, is to take into practice adoration, to liberate practice from activism. This requires us to return to the notion of "knowing In wonder" which is found in the new theology of the Trinity. This new theology includes two histories. The history of God sending forth the Son and the Spirit in the act of self-propagating love reveals to man a God who suffers with his forsaken creation, who suffers because of it and for it. Yet this suffering of God is relativized and measured against the final freedom and perfect liberation of God at the end of history. Thus political theology as a tool to reveal this history of the sending-forth leads to a second history of gathering up and has to be interpreted in and by it. Soteriology, for Moltmann, is never far from doxology. The result of political theology seems to lead to a need to speculate (though not the same as empty abstraction) on the trinitarian nature of the history of God. This new understanding of the Trinity leads us further to the insight that in God, and therefore in man, there is no domination but only participation.
The new emphasis in Moltmann's theology leads him away from praxis to gnosis. In terms of the theory-praxis nexus, his theology is still very much based on that of the Kantian ethical model of theory guiding practice, reason directing action. The fideomorphic model of Barth, which focuses itself primarily on the sovereignty of God and the lordship of Christ in history, is advanced to a compassionate God and the forsaken Son, a shift from lordship to fellowship. The wholly Other of God in Barth and the comparative contingent man is modified into a panentheistic movement of God in human history. This tendency in Moltmann, according to his critics, and Metz in particular, runs the risk of reducing the reality of human history to man’s conception of it. Metz even accuses Moltmann of exonerating the burden of the history of suffering in claiming that the suffering in this world has already been overcome in Christ’s passion. For Metz, the reality of the suffering in society and in history, their non-identity character, is not and cannot be identified with any meaning other than its subversive power as a dangerous memory. Metz feels that Moltmann has confused the negativity of the history of suffering with the “negativity of the dislectically mediated concept of suffering”. (15)
While Metz and Moltmann are both concerned with the offering of a theodicy in face of suffering in the world, Metz feels that an adequate apology of suffering can only be met on its own level, namely in praxis. Thus he criticises Moltmann's attempt as merely giving a rational explanation of suffering and meeting his problem on the level of speculative theology. If Moltmann's political theology of the cross is the beginning of a dialogue between theology and the 'critical theory' of Adorno and Horkhelmer, Metz's political theology as practical fundamental theology is the product of taking this same theme of the cross to its logical (praxical) conclusion.(16) The speculative turn in Moltmann's political theology means that a certain timelessness is unconsciously introduced when suffering is ontologised in the being of God. The in-breaking of eschatology into history, of the future into the present, somehow loses its crisis element because the present so conceived and history thus qualified remain within the realm of what A. Fierro called a "first-stage" theological discourse, i.e. a discourse acceptable only to members of a believing community.(17) The result is a 'Christianization' of the conception of history and of the present, with the subsequent danger of taking lightly the ambiguity of human history.
In the political theology of Metz, the "negative" character of critical theory is clearly manifested. Despite the accusations of Schillebeeckx, Metz is not making a simple identification of Christian liberation with the emancipation of the Critical School.(18) Methodologically speaking, Metz does pattern his own on those of the early critical theorists. However in terms of content, he is at pains to note the non-identity of faith with the emancipation of the Frankfurt School, which F. Fiorenza, on the other hand, sees as a close parallel to a reinterpretation of atonement and redemption in Christology.(19) Metz's strong reliance on memory as a category of his narrative-practical theology shows his debt to Marcuse. His persistent denial of any attempt to ontologize suffering can be traced to Benjamin's understanding of the history of suffering and to Adorno's immanent critique of ontology.(20) But that is as far as any direct parallel between Metz's political theology and the critical school goes. He is fully aware of the Christian character of any political theology. Yet, unlike Moltmann, he does not want to interpret political society in terms of the political dimension of the cross. Rather he concentrates on the critical function of political theology and directs it at the crisis of Christianity in its institutions and subjects.
For Metz, the Church Is the institutionalization of the dangerous memory of Christ. This dangerous memory, to be truly Christian, is more than a mere recalling of the history of suffering. It is at the same time the very expression of the eschatological hope of faith. Nevertheless, it is not simply an eschatology that only lends meaning to history. Rather its principal task is to remove any sense of timelessness from our understanding of history by providing an "apocalyptic ‘sting’" of the "not-yet" of the Eschaton. With Moltmann, Metz asserts that political theology relativizes all ideology and political system in that none of them is or can be identified with the subject of faith, the believing subject. This is not to say that Metz too is reverting to a fideomorphic dichotomy of faith and history. Rather the basis of non-identity of the subject with any socio-political class is rooted in the critical nature of faith. To identify the believing subject with any social class will simultaneously marginalize other classes and return to a form of Christendom-type political theology. The negative content of political theology is to highlight the urgency of the Christian message to thwart any false security arising from a complacent and misguided view of pluralism. Metz is not claiming that the believing subject exists in a social vacuum. Quite the opposite, Metz believes that political theology can only be practised in an institutionalised form. The Church is or should be this vehicle whereby the critical function of faith is exercised. Even the very notion of the "imitation of Christ" is to be institutionalized and is exemplified in the religious orders within the Roman Catholic Church. (21)
By institutionalization, Metz is not advocating a simple view of building a 'superstructure' for faith. Rather it is the recognition of the socio-political reality of the believing subjects that the community of the Church is inseparable from the praxis of faith. Political theology can only be practised within the Church if it is to be Christian at all. It provides the hermeneutical horizon for the believing community to justify their faith by exercising that critical function in face of any structure that prevents persons from becoming subjects. It is not a political ethics, so it does not provide concrete guidelines for action. Rather its function is theological, which includes the critique of any theology that incorrectly identifies faith with any ideology or philosophy, the keeping alive and relevant that original truth intention of the biblical testimony to the memory of the raising of Christ from the dead, and the pursuing of the task of solidarity in hope with all men who are called to be subjects in the presence of God. All these Metz sees as the reasons for a continuous dialogue and exchange between theology and the other sciences and philosophies in the development of a "praxical" form of theology, and thus his commitment to the inter-disciplinary project at the Institute of Theological Research in Bielefeld.
13)See M. Lamb, History, Method, and Theology: A dialectical comparison of Wilhem Dilthey’s critique of Historical Reason and Bernard Lonergan’s Meta-Methodology, Scholar Press, Montana, 1978. And also his article in CTSA Proceedings, vol. 31, 1976, “The Theory-Praxis Relationship in Contemporary Christian Theologies”.
14)Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, SCM Press, London, 1981, p.8.
15)Metz, 1980, p.l32. The term "non-identity" is used in this paper to denote both, following the method adopted by Metz and Moltmann. See Metz, 1980, Chapter 7, and also Moltmann, The Crucified God, SCM Press, 1974, Chapter 1.
16)On Critical Theory, see D. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas, Hutchinson, London, 1980.
17)A. Fierro, The Militant Gospel: A Critical Introduction to Political Theologies, Orbis, Maryknoll, 1977.
18)E. Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, S. & W., London, 1974, Chs. 6 & 7.
19)F. P. Fiorenza, "Critical Social Theory and Christology: Toward an Understanding of Atonement and Redemption as Emancipatory Solidarity", CTSA Proceedings, 1975.
20)See T. W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, RKP, London, 1973, Part One, II., and W. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History", 1940.
21)See Metz, Followers of Christ, Burns & Oates, London, 1978.
The Concluding Problem
The negative character of political theology forms the basis of a fresh problem vis-a-vis its role in the path to knowledge and truths. Does it have any positive content apart from its negative and critical function in society and in the Church? Despite the fact of faith as praxis in Christians who "are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus", will political theology have room to behold the freedom and glory of the kingdom? How does it deal with the stories of the joy of the disciples when they met the Risen Lord in view of the memory of the crucified one? Will political theology admit of a variety of levels of theological discourse, some narrative and some speculative? As every praxis has its moments of transcendental reflection, can political theology be an exception? These are indeed the key issues in the debate within political theology and its relation with the rest of the theological world. To substantiate its claim as the hermeneutical horizon and the fundamental task in contemporary theology, political theology must expound its positive relation with other theological tasks and elucidate the conditions of its truthfulness.
As Metz has pointed out, "the political tendency of a political theology can only be accepted as valid if its theological tendency is valid. The reverse is not true".(22) And how, one may ask, is one to judge the "theological tendency" but in the light of coherence with the body of theological discourses. One is tempted to conclude with the remark that, if Barth's crisis theology revolutionised contemporary ways of theologising by introducing the Trinity to the fore, Metz and Moltmann embody this crisis in the praxis of theology by bringing the Trinity to the fore of revolution.
Figure 1
22)Metz, 1980, p. 49.