The Art of Contextual Theology: Doing Theology in the Era of World Christianity
Ebook
Overview
Christianity has an inherent capability to assume, as its novel mode of expression, the local idioms, customs, and thought forms of a new cultural frontier that it encounters. As a result, Christianity has become multicultural and multilingual. What is the role of theology in the imagination and articulation of Christianity’s inherent multiculturalism and multi-vernacularity? Victor Ezigbo examines this question by exploring the nature and practice of contextual theology. To accomplish this task, this book engages the main genres of contextual theology, explores echoes of contextual theological thinking in some of Jesus’s sayings, and discusses insights into contextual theology that can be discerned in the discourses on theology and caste relations (Dalit theology), theology and primal cultures (African theology), and theology and poverty (Latin American liberation theology).
“Ezigbo’s fascinating book disrupts Western theology’s fondness
for navel-gazing by turning our attention to the body of Christians
scattered across the world. Working from embodied communities in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this resourceful book reconfigures
theological method, expands theological capital, and reimagines
theology to matter both contextually and globally. I want this in
the hands of theological teachers and students in the United States
and Europe.”
—Sathianathan Clarke, Wesley Theological Seminary
“The study of theology is greatly enriched by this new work from
Victor Ezigbo that asks what it means for community context to be a
fundamental—and equally-weighted—constituent of theology alongside
Scripture, reason, and tradition. From ancestor Christology to
Dalit anthropology, Ezigbo’s case studies illuminate with breadth
and precision how context so understood challenges all
theologians, as it relocates the form and practice of Christian
theology to local communities across the globe.”
—Chloë Starr, Yale Divinity School
“Victor Ezigbo makes a convincing case in this book for a paradigm
shift from an explanatory approach to a constitutive model of
contextual theology. I highly recommend this book as an
indispensable text to theologians, church ministers, faith-based
Christian NGOs, and theology students. All those who are looking
for a methodological road map for doing contextual and practical
theology or mission studies anywhere in the world today will find a
good guide in this book, which promises to be the most important
scholarly contribution to World Christianity so far from this great
African mind.”
—Stan Chu Ilo, DePaul University
- Title: The Art of Contextual Theology: Doing Theology in the Era of World Christianity
- Author: Victor Ezigbo
- Publisher: Cascade Books
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2021
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781725259300, 9781725259287, 9781725259294, 1725259303, 1725259281, 172525929X
- Resource ID: LLS:9781725259300
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-12-22T05:38:35Z
Dr. Victor Ezigbo, who attended Igbaja Seminary in Nigeria and earned his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, is Associate Professor of Systematic and Contextual Theology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of Introducing Christian Theologies: Voices from Global Christian Communities(Cascade, 2013) and Re-imagining African Christologies (Pickwick, 2010). His areas of research include Christology, African Christian theologies, African indigenous religions, and World Christianity.
In 2001 Dr. Ezigbo founded the Nigeria-based Center for Research in Global Christianity (CRGC), which provides quality materials to regional students and pastors engaged in outreach, preaching, and evangelism. The center aims to provide materials of particular relevance to Nigerian theological concerns and has proven to be a valuable resource to pastors and others involved in outreach.
Dr. Ezigbo recognizes the many faces of Christianity and was raised with an understanding that “the theologies that matter are the theologies that speak to the needs of the people, and the pastors who are successful are the ones who talk about the issues that really speak to the people.” He appreciates the beautiful landscape and growing diversity of Minnesota’s Twin Cities area, and loves playing soccer and helping his students “learn to think theologically [and] independently, and how to do theology that actually speaks to specific issues within their context.”