NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 68, Issue 4, 2014

Uncritically claiming that Christianity’s centre of gravity has shifted from the West to the global South is problematic because such a claim does not pay sufficient attention to the underlying power dynamics at play. I critique the popular conception of World Christianity where the West is tacitly omitted from the ‘World’ of World Christianity and therefore retains its normative character. Furthermore, I critique the usage of the concept of centre of gravity, because it perpetuates the language of power. Dismantling the binary between the West and ‘the rest’ involves both a theological reappropriation of centre and periphery and renewed attention to the history of Christianity.

This paper argues that attention for the biographical, ideological, and cultural diversity, as it is present in a typical New Testament class room, can be very productive, especially when paying attention to the intercultural hermeneutics involved. In fact, this approach leads to new scholarly insights, also of a historical nature, and may well be more viable and even more productive than a supposedly ‘neutral’ approach.

Thomas Römer heeft een drievoudige redactieproces van het deuteronomistische geschiedwerk bepleit. In dit artikel wordt zijn these getest aan de hand van de berichten over koning Hizkia in 2 Koningen 18-20. De theorie van Römer kan niet worden gefalsifieerd. Wel blijkt zijn benadering te leiden tot interessante en functionele inzichten in de herinneringen aan Hizkia. De koning werd gezien als een rolmodel in de tijd van Josia, als een held in de periode van de Babylonische ballingschap en als een spiegel voor het particularisme in de Perzische periode.

This article explores perceptions of the past, and in particular of the apostle Paul, in recent newspaper articles that discuss male circumcision, using Charles Taylor’s category of the ‘social imaginary’. Applying Taylor’s category of the ‘imaginary’ to this contemporary debate shows that the past is constructed in several ways, sometimes in understanding history as progress, but also as a warning or a deciding factor in contemporary oppositions. Views of the past that mention Paul locate his relevance for contemporary attitudes in his presumed rejection of physical circumcision and emphasis on inner attitudes, but can draw very different conclusions from this for contemporary attitudes towards circumcision.

In 1947, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, two members of the so-called Frankfurt School of Sociology published The Dialectic of Enlightenment. The book, written in exile, did not study national-socialism as an accident or exception in European history, but rather as the result of an ongoing process of rationalization. The authors included a fierce critique of the capitalist modus of (re-)production as ‘culture industry’ that would in the end eliminate rational individuality. Although in the 1940ies the book did not receive very enthusiastic receptions, in the revolutionary sixties of the 20^th century, the analytical frame developed in the book received more and more attention. Thinking about theology and religious studies in the 21^st century, questions about perceptions of human dignity and individuality cannot go without relating these perceptions to the cultural context in which these are produced.