crt - meeting minutes

CRT Session Notes 19 August 2005

2005-08-28T22:43:00.000+08:00

EXEGETING THE EPISTLES
Center for Reflexive Theology
19 August 2005

Summary from
New Testament Exegesis
A Handbook for Students & PastorsGordon Fee (3rd Edition)

What Is Exegesis?

The term "exegesis" is used in the sense of the historical investigation into the of the biblical text. The presupposition lying behind this task is that the biblical book had "authors" and "readers" and that the authors intended that the reader understand what was written.

Exegesis therefore answers the question: What did the biblical author mean?
This includes
• What he said?
• Why he said what he said?
From exegesis we move to hermeneutics - which in our context is taken to mean applying the text to our current situations

Step 1

Survey the historical context in general

1.Read the entire document in one setting

•What can you discover about the recipients?
•Are they Jew or Gentile or a combination
•What is their relationship with the author?
•Any hint of socio-economic condition of the church?
•Does the author say anything about the purpose - expressly or implied

2.Check your observation with secondary literature e.g. commentaries

Step 2

Confirm the limits of the passage Is the passage you have chosen to exegete a genuine self-contained unit? Don't be afraid to make a tentative decision on the limits of your text i.e. the pericope.

Step 3

Become thoroughly acquainted with your paragraph/pericope.
•Read the paragraph through several translations
•Try up to five to seven different translations
•Note the differences between the translations
•What are these differences - textual, grammar
•Which differences are significant?

Step 4

Analyze sentence structures and syntactical relationships
•Make a sentence flow diagram
•Establish the text •Romans 1:17b
•Analyse the grammar
•Analyse key words

Step 5

Research the historical cultural background
•The meaning of persons, places and events mentioned
•The cultural and social environment of the writer and reader
•Customs of the author and reader
•The thought world of the writer
•Intertextuality - links with other texts?

Step 6

Determine the formal character of the epistle
•Differences in character e.g. specifically occasioned or general tracts
•Structure aspects - which section is introduction, formal greeting, thanks, prayer or the body proper.
•To what extent does the structure impact the content
•What are the rhetorical features?
•Does the mood of the passage change?
•Does the form of argumentation change?
•Is it irony, hyperbole, just straight talk? Any elements of diatribe?
•Is it an argument, appeal or application?
•Any chiasm?

Step 7

Examine the historical context.

•Epistles are occasional documents.
•Try to reconstruct the situation of the author and readers
•Look for details that give clues - try to imagine a scene of what things would was like sitting there listening to the epistle
•What clues about the audience?
•Key words - what does it tell you about the culture
•Write a paragraph about the socio-cultural political and economic situation.

Step 8

Determine the literary context - which is the paragraph you want to study and the relationship with other paragraphs
•What is the point of this paragraph?
•Why does he say what he is saying now?
•Describe what the author has said and how he is developing his point
•How does this paragraph contribute to his argument

Step 9

Consider the broader Biblical and theological context
•How does this passage relate to other parts of the Bible
•OT, NT •Section of OT or NT
•Does it solve questions or raise more problems in interpretation?

Step 10

Accumulate secondary sources and read widely
•Investigate what others have said about the passage - those who agree and disagree with you.
•Compare and adjust your position and method if necessary.
•Be able to say "I understand what the other exegete is saying" first then say "I agree" or "I disagree".
•Is the other exegete misinformed, uninformed, inconsistent, incomplete, misinterprets?
•Where does the other exegete makes valuable contributions to your exegesis?

Step 11

How does all this apply to:
•your life
•the life of your church? How would you use your findings in a sermon?
•What would be the purpose of your sermon?
•What would your main points be?
•How do they support your purpose?
•What illustrations would you use?
•What response would you like to get from your hearers?

CRT Session 3 27 May 2005

2005-06-18T16:03:00.000+08:00

CRT embarked on examining the concept of God as developed within its interpretive community.

Background

1. In the first session on Liberation theology we talked about the importance of examining theology from the honesty and authenticity of our own experiences.
2. In the second session we looked into putting our experiences into a dialogue and forming an interpretive community. We also looked for sources of authority in Scriptures, Experience and Tradition
3. In this session, we tried to put into practice such a dialogue and see ways the concept of 'God' emerge within our own interpretive community.

Gathering Narratives

1. We gathered narratives that told us something about God from our own lives, from our experience with sacred texts and from our experiences as Christians.
2. Some of the stories include
a) Overwhelming sense of being loved and graced that incur into one's experiences
b) Cumulative sense of awe as one interprets the natural world and find orderliness, and synchronicity in other's experience of knowing the world
c) Sense of being home and belonging after personal experiences of breakup; a rest in respite.
d) Sometimes we experience God by being in the wilderness, without crutches and being alone
e) The bible presents very different pictures of God, sometimes one that develop with human/moral evolution.
[one narrative that I remember very well was a comment about the realization the order in the physical world is far more amazing than feeding 5000 with some fish and bread and raising the dead)

Interpreting our Narratives

1. We examined our pictures of God through our narratives and see what kind of images emerge. These images did
i) just present with us
ii) beyond the grasp of human instincts
iii) lover
iv) beyond words
v) cannot be explained by knowledge
vi) fulfillment of needs
vii) grace
viii) cannot be controlled
ix) total darkness
x) seems a fictional character (in the sense of one developed by writers)
xi) doubt
xii) syncrhonicity/ coincidence
xiii) very human
xiv) patient
xv) inherently contrasting
xvi) connected with struggles
xvii) doesn't care about the particulars of history
xviii) silent
xix) home
xx) rational
xxi) freedom
xxii) forgiveness
xxiii) love
xxiv) simplistic
xxv) synergistic/ symbiotic with human
xxvi) orderly
xxvii) intelligent design
xxviii) evolving
xxiv) purposeful
xxv) carries certainty
xxvi) wilderness
xxvii) fundemantal principles of the world
xxviii) flexible

2. We asked what we are certain that God is Not
i) it seemd that many of us wanted to say 'evil' but refrained
ii) these were the immediate gut responses
- Not judgemental
- Not hate
- Not Simple
- Not constant
- Not unreasonable
iii) when we compare our gut responses, we notice some possible contraditions (e.g. Not simple vs simplistic/ fundamental principles)

3. We examined our images of God again and tried to look for larger patterns. These patterns emerge
i) There is orderliness in God
ii) God is wilderness and chaos
iii) God is not unreasonable - there are large purposeful plans
iv) God is not constant
v) God reveals Godself cumulatively over time and over different communities
vi) God reveals Godself surprisingly at individual moments
vii) God has a certain nature and personality
viii) God is symbiotic to our own experiences (reversing the idea that God is 'out-there')
viii) God can be perceived with our senses and rationality
viii) God is beyond our senses and rationality

4. We looked at the paradoxes and identified some questions.
The questions that are asked
- How can God be home and yet calls us out into exile?
- How is God perceived and known and yet beyond the senses of our knowing (we'll keep the Cappadocian Fathers' answers oneside first)
- How is God orderly and yet totally messy?
- How does God have an eternal personality and yet seems to be changing?
- How is God eternal and yet imcomplete?
- How is God concerned about the big historical events and therefore indifferent to selfish individuals and yet care for each soul?

5. We tried to position ourselves on the scales of contradicting attributes
- Some of us liked the more experimental possibilities of God (incomplete, evolving, wilderness)
- Some liked the more traditional ideas of God (home, certainty, unchanging)
- Most find it difficult to put God on one end of the spectrum or the other

6. We tried to reason how it is possible to contain contradictions
a) One attempts at looking at time: the eternal vs the temporal. God may be eternal set with a certain personality; but in relating in time to people God relates flexibly, changing as needed with changed situations
b) Another looks at contexts: e.g. Justice, compassion, love and other 'bigger' attributes are expressed differently in different contexts
c) Another looks at God as consisting of fundamental priciples and other aspects of God accommodate with these fundamental principles. One such fundamental principle is love.
d) God is inherently contradicting to prevent us from making idols of God

Reflexive Development

We challenge ourselves to look at one image of God that provides challenge to us because
a) it is a new way of looking at God to me or
b) it challenges my existing way of looking at God
and we ask ourselves
'If I hold on to this particular image of God, how is it going to affect my life, my spirituality, my relation with others and my view of life?

CRT Session 2 29 April 2005 Report

2005-05-02T00:50:00.000+08:00

Preliminaries

1. Daniel spoke of his experience in facilitating a session on Liberation Theology during his seminary days and noted that because of its very diverse nature, it is difficult to structure a 'curriculum' for liberation theology (or more properly liberation theologies)

2. Dr Ibrahim Farajaje's article (Queer(y)ing Religious Education) was summarized. Our existing systems structure our identities as binary oppositions: male/ female, gay/straight, bodies/ spirits and each opposition carries structure that oppresses us with assumptions and expected behaviours when in reality we are diverse within the spectrum between these oppositions and hold within each our identities intersections of many such 'polar' structures. Our religious education should position us in the intersections of such definitions; and thereby freeing us from seeing us as minorities and breaks apart the dominant 'majority' claim.

3. Dahrendorf's article (The Rise and Fall of Meritocracy) was summarized. Political structures should be open to diversity, or else meritocracy merely perpetuate a class of its own members.

4. David noted that differences are wired into our beings and neccessarily creates different power platforms. Are therefore all oppressions wrong?

Our Personal Narratives

We spoke of sacred texts and values that inspire us, and our memories of oppression.

1. "The truth shall set you free"
I keep having to ask the question 'what is truth'?
Sometimes this allows me to empty my own presuppositions and see other people's truths.
It helps me to move on to a narrative of compassion and gives me a sense of freedom.

2. "For God so loved the world (John 3:16)"
The great love of God awes me and allows me to integrate my faith and sexuality and remain truthful to myself. I thereby can flourish under oppression.

3. I was brought up to believe that conforming is natural, be a good citizen and follow the rules. Authority is needed for social order.

4. "Meek shall inherit the earth". I struggle with this text. While it easily fits my non-abrasive nature and I try to develop a discipline of giving up power to others, it feels oppressive and unfair for myself. I also recognize that meekness has a shadow-side of being manipulative.

5. Being an ethnic minority makes me keenly aware of differences since young. Was inspired by a television show where a lesbian women stood up to an antagonistic audience and spoke of love.

6. I was thrown into the deep end since I was young and challenged to discover the world for my own. It often made me learn things the hard way.

7. I had been always different in school. Now I'm oppressed by others for not living up to the expectations of being a typical woman.

8. I remember in my home town, an old woman was asking for a drink of water. We normally boiled water before drinking it and I remember it was specifically told that she should be offered unboiled water. - How we treat our maids can be similar, in demanding separate utensils.

9. Offended by gay men who cannot recognize the needs of women.

10. Liberation starts with empathy. When we are conscious that bodies are subjugated.

Texts and Authorities

What kind of authorities do sacred texts have for us? Are they useful in helping us deal with oppression?
Where do we position ourselves in relation to these texts?

We considered different feminist hermeneutical approaches.
1 "Rejectionist" - Texts are not useful nor authoritative
2 "Loyalist" - Text cannot, by nature, be oppressive
3 " Revisionist" - patriachal aspects of text and tradition are historical accident and must be seen as part of their cultural context.
4 "Sublimationist" - Brings out the feminine in biblical symbolism
5 "Liberationist" - Brings together aspects of the above to liberate the reader

Reason for interpreter (reader) being the theological authority
- So what if we know the writer's intent? What is important is our reflection and response
Reason for historian being the theological authority, demanding contextual understanding
- We need to find kindred spirits who share our experience.
Synthesis of ideas
- Our authority lies in the interaction between an experiential component (our response), the interpretive community, and how we identify with aspects of the text.
Our Interpretive Community
- Our shared experience in FCC
- Our asking of common questions bring us into an interpretive community

Further Discussion

1. Sometimes we need to be freed from a discourse of anger
2. Christianity can be significantly oppressive
3. God has to be freed of our constraints.

----------------------------------------------------------

Synthesis

We long to be free. Part of this freedom is the ability to choose to be true to ourselves. This partly comes from the process of understanding God and the world from our own experiences upwards towards large theological concepts rather from a top-down acceptance of what others tell us. When we read the Bible we are aware of how our own experiences contribute to the texts' meaning, and we are open to how others are asking and answering similar questions. In order to be free, we also need to free God from our presuppositions. In our lives and works we often confront conflicts but when we recognize truths in other people's stories, we free ourselves to a place of compassion that brings us to the liberating truth.

CRT Session 1 18 March 2005 Report

2005-03-19T00:29:00.000+08:00

CENTRE FOR REFLEXIVE THEOLOGY (18.03.05)

LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Present

Peggy, David, Clarence, Susan, Gwo Yinn, Jaime, Jean Cheong, Jean Lee, Christine, Tuck-Leong

Prediscussion

We talked about spas and we were on video.
We noted the difference between liberation theology and systematic theology - liberation theology is something that has to be done and not talked about.
Liberation theology reverses the process of theologizing, it works from contexts/ situations and then moves to theory

Discussion Questions

[It is fairly difficult to objectively document this discussion because of the density of the content and the openness of the discussion to various input. So what follows are the points that seem significant for me - TL]

QUESTION

What kind of feelings does the context give you?

Some of the thoughts shared

Reminds me of the story of Lot sacrificing his daughter reflects some issues in the story felt like something of a distant culture.

You may not agree with it but is it permissable in the culture?

Do you judge another culture with your own? Or is there something universal?

3 issues - was the punishment fit the crime? What's so bad about sex between members of different castes? Why punish another person not related to the 'crime'?

There should be some basic human values across all cultures

Difficult to understand why such a punishment is meted out.

Eye to eye was meant to limit the retribution demanded, in OT laws; and not meant to be a principle of punishment

As a woman, one would hate being in the culture with the value system

One cannot feel terribly good about it.

Do we align ourselves with the oppressors?

We are used to be on the 'stronger' side, those who are in control. As an automatic response.

When we fall into the victim mentality we give rise to the oppressors.

'I don't want to be at the point of being culturally arrogant'.

One can stop being aware of the oppression and becomes part of the oppressors

How can we not be part of the oppressive system?

Know your own values

Be rebellious

"or asserting one's own individuality"

[There was some sense of going no-where in terms of our direction until Peggy raised the point that it happens in her practice of counselling lesbian and gay people that she finds herself telling her clients to adopt 'heterosexual' norms of partnering and settling down. The discussion got slightly more engaged. - TL]

Points discussed

Are we trapped by our own values adopted as resistance, or contrast to the mainstream and the normative, and thereby limiting our own choices?

It is easy for us to forget our roles as the oppressors

We could provide a range of choices

But who determines the choices?

Perhaps we can help people make up their mind.

Awareness of ourselves being oppressors strikes us

Is 'normalizing' people a means to empower people or to diminish their choice?

We oppress people through imposing on them values

Oppression happens when you have two unequal situation of power positions.

That causes one to objectify another person

Creating a sense of helplessness and being overpowered

[At this point, we wondered why we were discussing the life of Mai in order to derive theories and ideas; when her situation demanded action. - TL]

Liberation theology demands us being there, to experience the reality of situation

However we can't be physically there in Pakistan

When we do liberation theology we have to come back to our contexts, our lives

How do we treat each other in our contexts?

It is easy for us to think others as oppressors but we have to sensitize ourselves to our acts of oppression

[And as we marginally thought of how we acts as agents of oppression we realize that oppression is everywhere, parts of much larger systems with power greater than the sum of our oppressive performance. And we are rendered helpless -TL]

South Africa is a good example of Liberation theology in Action

The oppressed opted not to act as the oppressors

Rather chose the way of the gospel, to admit our roles in sin and then to experience forgiveness.

We are helpless against structures of sin and oppression and can only marginally hope to do our little part

And on our part we are called to a discipline of being aware of our oppressive powers

From that awareness we can come to conversion - metanoia (turning about of direction)

What about co-dependent situation, when the oppressed do not want freedom?

In the next session of CRT, we will continue to talk about systems of oppression by contextualizing them with our life experiences.

Notes:

Received from Gwo Yinn

http://windsofchange.net/archives/cat_geo_indiapakistan.php

Support for Mukhtar Mai by Robin Burk

Thousands of Pakistani women demonstrated yesterday in support of Mukhtar Mai.

Thousands of women rallied in eastern Pakistan on Monday to demand justice and protection for a woman who said she was gang-raped at the direction of a village council, after a court ordered the release of her alleged attackers. Waving signs and chanting, the demonstrators, many of them from nearby villages, joined the rally. Organizer Farzana Bari said more than 3,000 women were at the event.

Some 200 policemen observed the demonstration, which ended peacefully.

In June 2002, Mai said she was raped by four men on the orders of a village council that wanted to punish her family. Ultimately, it will be the refusal of ordinary people that will change social norms and honor-based violence against women. And it's worth keeping in mind that women aren't the only victims of tribal attitudes: Mai's brother was accused of having sex with a woman from a more prominent family, though Mai's family says the allegations were fabricated to cover up a sexual assault against the boy by several men.

Boys can suffer too.

CRT Session 1: 18 March 2005 Preparation Notes

2005-03-15T23:06:00.000+08:00

Question A

To prepare please read Matthew 5:39-43 and answer the following questions.
What does this passage mean to you
How do you know that what the passage means to you is what Jesus intended it to mean?
Could it mean something else to someone in a different situation?

Question B

In the Malay Mail dated 4 March 2005, the following article was featured:

"MULTAN: Nearly three years after the case cast an international spotlight on crimes against women in ultra-conservative Pakistan, a court yesterday threw out the death sentences of six men accussed of taking part in the gang-rape of a woman after a village council ordered her to be raped. Five of the men were ordered freed and a sixth has his sentence reduced to life in prison. The rape of Mukhtar Mai in 2002, on orders from a village council that was seeking to punish her for her brother's alleged illicit sexual relations with a woman from a more prominent family, led the Government to promise sweeping changes to end centuries of so-called "honor" killings and attacks. But the High Court yesterday ruled there was insufficient evidence to uphold the convictions. Mai was in court and wept upon hearing the court's decision. "I am in pain...," she said - Associated Press"

You are a Christian serving the "Singapore In Nations Saving Ltd, mission organization in Multan. Your organization is committed to the Great Commission in Matthew, Luke and Mark and you working to evangelise Pakistani village women. Mukhtar Mai has heard that in your country women are treated much better. She approaches you in her grief and asks you, "What your God and you will do about her predicament?" What would your response to Multan be?
Your mission organization, Singapore In Nations Saving Ltd, asks you to develop a strategy paper entitled "The Gospel to Every Pakistani Woman - 2010" for your organization's upcoming global missions strategy conference. What would you propose to your organization in that paper.

Please assume that the facts in the article about honor killings and attacks are true. Please assume also for discussion, that the standard of evidence required by the High Court is four males eye witnesses who saw the rape. However in this case, there was only one witness and he only saw (i) the six men shoving Mukhtar into a shack and (ii) after that one man gloating at how much he enjoyed raping her. The rest of the men were silent.

Resources

Liberation Theology

CRT 25 Feb 2005

2005-03-04T23:27:00.000+08:00

Present: Susan (Coordinator), Susan, David, Clarence, Peggy, Cyrus, Jaime, Lehlim (Clarence's non-Christian friend attending a theological discussion for the first time), Gwo YinnYinn , Tuck-Leong (Secretary)

A Summative Report

The CRT met at Clarence and Jason's home. Dinner and wine was served and we soon moved into meeting.

We engaged in a brainstorm session first, thinking about what is theology, how do we approach it, how the useful is a CRT group, how it relates to FCC and then the wider church in Singapore, and most importantly - the needs of our members and how we want to engage each other as a community.

Brainstorm

Brainstorms pieces were listed before trashing things out.

How do we know/ experience God?

Most ideas included intact to be respectful and reflective of the diversity of the people coming together

Guidelines

Signs and Wonder

Wonder of Science

From other religions

Awareness of natural world, in small events

Practical Application of Theology

Literature/ Arts/ Beauty

Randomness in life

Absence of God (reflecting God)

Lives of people reflecting Christ

Philosophy

Bible

A significant amount of time was taken to think about how we approach the Bible i.e. our methods of interpretation

Approaching Bible as a collection of narratives and -powerful stories which brings out fresh meanings for us.

The Bible as powerful symbols.

The Bible as Metaphors and Patterns and understanding them

The Bible as an Inspiring Text

The Bible to open the Imaginations

Karen Armstrong's psychoanalysis of Genesis brings significant way of understanding the human condition in her reading of Genesis

Using studies of human cultures and behaviours in social contexts and finding fresh meanings of the mythical elements of the Bible.

Systems of theology from which we can borrow to enrich ourselves

Patterns found across the Bible

Limitations of the Bible - the gaps

How CRT can connect to the needs of FCC and Beyond

Modeling and forstering a culture of thinking faith

Impact on Christian thinking

Provide Cell leaders with resources to think about theology

Guide cell leaders in compiling resources

Theological education

Encourage unity

Mission - Nurturing a culture that values thinking through faith in Singapore's thoughtChristianityChristian communities

An influence for FCC

What we individually hope for CRT

Personal integrity in belief

Getting reassurance and conviction

Engage with ideas on the margins

Engage ideas with differences and elements of conflict

Unity without uniformity

An influence for the wider community

Breadth and rigour in our theological understanding

Being consultative

Place safe for our private voice, our own private beliefs

Derive theology from real contexts

Some of our concerns

Elitism

People with different contexts of knowledge (in terms of complexity and culture)

Building community

Practical application of theology

Alienating from the Wider community

Makes some wider community want to alienate from us

Alienation among ourselves through language

Got to be understanding?

Must bridge big pictures to the personal

Taking over leadership of FCC

Being unsustainable

Figuring out who are our audience and participants

How we communicate among ourselves and with FCC and Cells

What drives us

Increased sensitivity towards others (often we can't tell what some of us respond negatively to)

Being thick-skinned

New insights

Reflexivity - the ability to question oneself from others' perspectives

Food

Connections

The processes we value

Kindergarten model - finding out about big ideas through asking lots of questions

Clarifying questions, clarifying answers

Book Study

Presenting views of established figures and engaging each other on their views

role-play and hot-seat for celebrity theologians

Bring down beliefs to personal levels

Personal journals two of which will be public cyber journals.

Reflecting, Dialoguing

Engaging the Bible imaginatively, try different methods

Deeply understand the genre and the contexts of the Bible

Communicating with the Cell-groups

Encouraging feedback from Cell-groups

Becoming a source of influence to FCC (or do you mean all influences to FCC to look on CRT as a possible model?) of a thinking community

Consciously using language that is inviting to non-members

Use appropriate language to communicate that doesn't antagonize but to lead on to Christ-likeness

Be comfortable and productive with conservative and liberal Christian concepts how about

other religious concepts - are there things to learn from there?

Allow ourselves to be surprised by people who disagree with us - go beyond personal bias

Synthesize ideas of people from different backgrounds who would not normally talk to each other.

Prepare materials for leader training

Levels of communication - some towards the larger, academic Christian world; another towards FCC.

Synthesis

At this point of time it is not appropriate to be an FCC official think-tank. That would be naïve and arrogant.

Nor should we prepare educational resources for FCC leaders. Presumptuous to take on the role now.

We need to build credibility first.

Our method is to build a community first

The form of a community will take after a monastic pattern: closed for our needs; hospitable to visitors

Apply different means of communicating to different audience

Provide range of resources to the larger communities

We can work on book studies : eg. When Religion Becomes Evil; Marcus Borg; Philip Yancey's Soul Survivors.

Action

Plans

For a start we will deal with a unit on approaching scriptures

The approach will be experimental and will be evaluated after a few sessions.

First session will be on interacting our own methods of using the Bible with those of an eminent praxis- (action) based liberation theologian to explore how we can Find Strengths and Build Bridges.

Process

We will engage in dialogues

We will be attentive to the voices of each other

We will encourage each other to clarify ideas

We will strive to bring the ideas shared into our lives and application

We will encourage fresh individual voices and promote a safe environment for disagreement

We will reflect and feedback after each session

While we have to be sensitive enough not to marginalize group members, we want to promote a culture of 'being thick-skinned

We will not take comments personally

We will have personal voices rounding up each session reflecting on the process from thehuman perspectives.

We will put up articles on the web and link it to personal weblogs to encourage individual responses

Next Meeting

18th March Friday

FCC Church Hall

1930 hrs

Clarence will pose some questions first.