Doctoral Degrees (Systematic Theology)

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/11660/506

Browse

Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Systematic Theology) by Advisor "Venter, R."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Hope in suffering: an African interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection
    (University of the Free State, 2010-08) Banda, Lameck; Venter, R.
    The research project discusses Hope in Suffering: An African Interpretation of Jesus’ Resurrection. It develops an appropriate hermeneutic for Jesus’ resurrection from the African perspective. This is because interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection remains insufficient in African theology. Generally, Africans understand Jesus’ resurrection as liberation from spiritual forces. However, this is inadequate in the African context of suffering. Hence, the research addresses the problem by developing a hermeneutic from an African perspective which provides hope in suffering. In order to understand how the resurrection has been approached in the scholarly world, chapter one surveys various interpretations of the Easter event as articulated by Bultmann, Barth, Pannenberg, Moltmann, Sobrino, Wright and Crossan. The main motif from these interpretations is that the resurrection affirms Christian faith as ultimately based on the triumph of God’s justice in the situation of suffering. However, most of these theologians neglect critical issues that affect common people in contexts of suffering. In the second chapter, it has been argued that the quest for an African interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection needs a thorough understanding of the trends and tenets of theology in Africa. Thus, African theology forms the basis on which African interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection is sought. The researcher focuses on theological trends in sub-Saharan African thinking in this pursuit of an African hermeneutic for hope in suffering. The research surveys the hermeneutical approaches to Jesus’ resurrection in Western, Latin American and African Feminist theological thoughts. The analysis of these hermeneutical approaches in the third chapter reveals that most of these approaches are actually articulated ‘from above,’ which makes them unable to address the plight of the poor and deprived in the African society. Hence, it is necessary to develop an appropriate African hermeneutic of Jesus’ resurrection which embraces an approach ‘from below’: an approach from the premise of the radical transformation of systems in society. It is further contended in the research project that African experience of suffering is the specific framework within which the interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection is sought. Therefore, chapters four and five discuss the effects of suffering on the sub-Sahara African scene. While chapter four looks at the general perspective of suffering as a hermeneutical horizon for interpreting Jesus’ resurrection, the fifth chapter gives specific portrayals of suffering in Africa. The two chapters stress that despite the nature and reality of suffering, hope of victory over the terrors of poverty, refugees and wars, and HIV/AIDS is assured in Jesus’ resurrection. The research project also discusses the biblical perspective of suffering and resurrection. What clearly comes out in the Bible is that the situations of pain and suffering lead to developing and sustaining of faith in the resurrection. The resurrection demonstrates God’s intervention in the people’s experiences of suffering. In this way, God showed that he is the God of justice who grants life and hope to the lifeless and hopeless. The sixth chapter therefore, emphasizes that despite the form through which suffering may appear in the Bible, God through the Easter event remains an ever present and powerful source of hope in suffering. In the last chapter, it is suggested that the developed African interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection in the context of suffering requires embracing specific principles of Christian spirituality and ethos, and a clear direction with specific guidelines for continued research on the subject. Above all, an African hermeneutic of Jesus’ resurrection needs to affirm that hope in suffering ultimately lies in God’s ability to transform people’s lives in Africa. Their participation in the divine process of renewal is a response to God’s work of renewal.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Spirit and healing in Africa: a reformed pneumatological perspective
    (University of the Free State, 2012) Van den Bosch-Heij, Deborah; Venter, R.; Van der Kooi, C.
    English: This study is an exploration of the link between the Holy Spirit and healing in Africa from a Reformed perspective. It is meant as a contribution to the development of Reformed contextual perspectives on healing in Southern Africa, and investigates whether a pneumatological exploration, sensitive to multi-layered understandings of health, could open productive avenues for Reformed theology in Southern Africa. The exploration consists of two parts. The first part is based on interdisciplinary research, and gives an overview of African health concepts that are influential in Southern Africa. The exploration starts with the struggle to find an appropriate definition of health, resulting in the understanding of health as a social construct. This means that one’s social context determines one’s understanding of health. The approach of social constructivism is non-essentialist and inherently open to the contextual, social and subjective nature of health. As such, social constructivism provides the epistemological frame for this thesis’ understanding of health and healing in the African context. Social constructivism implies that there are multiple understandings of health in a society. When a health concept occurs in a systematic or coherent pattern of ideas and practices, this coherent structure can be characterized as a health discourse. In Southern Africa, various health discourses can be identified: (1) the African traditional healing or the ngoma discourse; (2) the missionary medicine discourse; (3) the HIV/AIDS discourse; and (4) the church-based healing discourse. Each African health discourse is determined by a specific notion which characterizes the way health is interpreted according to that particular health discourse. The notions that have been identified are: (1) relationality; (2) transformation; (3) quality of life; and (4) power. In the second part of the study, the relationship between African health discourses and Reformed theology is developed on the basis of a pneumatological focus, which begins with an account of pneumatological approaches, developed by Reformed theologians (Calvin, Kuyper, Barth, Van Ruler, Moltmann, Welker, Veenhof and Van der Kooi), and a description of the Heidelberg Catechism’s pneumatology. The overview of Reformed pneumatologies suggests that most key ideas of the African health discourses correlate with specific motifs of the Reformed pneumatological matrix. Only the motif of power seems to be underdeveloped in Reformed thought. Four pneumatological sketches of healing are offered. These sketches are fragments of language about God and healing, because the suggestion of a grand narrative about God and healing should be avoided. This study seeks to appreciate aspects such as contextuality, nonessentialism, diversity, non-closure and particularity. The implication is that the four pneumatological sketches may be contradictory but cannot be mutually exclusive: that is, each fragment refers to the diverse ways of the Spirit who brings healing in human life. The four sketches show that Reformed language about Spirit and healing can be developed on the basis of the motifs of relationality, transformation, quality of life and power. It is proposed that Reformed pneumatological perspectives on healing include (1) the retrieval of the identification of the Spirit as the bond of love and as ecstatic God who communicates God’s relational life to creation; (2) the focus on the disorienting and counter-cultural ways of the Spirit of adoption; (3) the biblical idea that the Spirit, the breath of life, redefines the vulnerability of human life as quality and beauty; and (4) the development of the idea that the Spirit redefines power and gives resurrection life after non-survival, even in this life.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Theological education in an African context: discipleship and mediated learning experience as framework
    (University of the Free State, 2011-05) Wahl, Willem Petrus; Wilkinson, A. C.; Venter, R.
    The purpose of this study is to create a framework for theological education in an African context. It focuses on discipleship and mediated learning experience (MLE) because it encapsulates the fundamental idea of this study, namely that the concepts and principles of discipleship and MLE can effectively contribute to construct a framework that is appropriate for theological education in an African context. In an analysis of the discourse on theological education over the past five decades the following six models for theological education are identified: classical model; vocational model; dialectical model; neo-traditional model; missional model; and ecumenical-diversified model. Further evaluation of these six models lets four central themes emerge, namely leadership stature, practical effectiveness, relational capacity, and spiritual accuracy. These four themes are then compared with a competence-based model for learning in order to conceptualise a broad outline framework for theological education in an African context. The development of this framework must address the primary challenge of competent church leaders in Africa, but also contextual challenges like access to theological education, a lack of resources, socio-political and socio-economic illness, and an Africanized scholarship and curriculum. An analysis of the concept discipleship focuses on its use in ancient Greek, the Old Testament, the Intertestamental period, and the New Testament. Discipleship developed from the general referral to an apprentice in ancient Greek, up to a specialised term in New Testament times. Discipleship in the New Testament is the result of obedience to the call of Jesus, which often requires a cost of self denial. This cost has an effect on the relational proximity within discipleship. Following leads to imitating, this leads to representation. The context of discipleship in the New Testament is the eschatological kingdom of God. Each of the four Gospels emphasises a different aspect of discipleship, which relates broadly to the central themes identified within the discourse on theological education. Discipleship in Matthew largely relates to leadership stature, Mark to practical effectiveness, Luke to relational capacity, and John to spiritual accuracy. The conceptual analysis of mediated learning experience (MLE) focuses on its historical background, theoretical background, and core parameters of intentionality-and-reciprocity, mediation of meaning, and transcendence. MLE is rooted in the belief that the human mind is modifiable. Intelligence is not fixed but is defined as a propensity for change. A lack of MLE results in cultural deprivation but can be altered by MLE interventions. A mediated approach to learning stems from constructivism but stands opposed to its direct approach to learning. In MLE a human mediator (H) is placed between the stimulus (S) and organism (O), and between the organism (O) and the response (R); thus a relational sequence of S-H-O-H-R. Various research studies show that MLE brings about cognitive development for individuals in an African context. MLE and discipleship share a mediated approach to learning. Further comparison between these two concepts bring about three shared foci, namely: a focus on relationship; a focus on process (as opposed to product); and a focus on culture. A framework for theological education in an African context is constructed from two sides, namely: (1) from the previously defined broad outline framework for theological education; and (2) from the concepts and principles of discipleship and MLE. This construction first merges a competence-based model for learning with a mediated approach to learning against a contextual background. This basis is secondly fused with a shared focus on relationship, a shared focus on process, and a shared focus on culture. The third step incorporates the themes leadership stature, practical effectiveness, relational capacity, and spiritual accuracy into the framework as four competences and in so doing creates a three-dimensional diagram. The framework for theological education in an African context, developed by this research study, provides possible solutions for the contextual challenges theological education in Africa is facing. Eight recommendations, in the form of research questions, are made to advance the research findings of this study.