Tradition, Reason & Situated Knowledge
When is tradition a truthful reception, and when is it an instrument of exclusion?
Tradition is a living, contested practice of handing on the gospel; its claims require both charitable reception and immanent critique.
Tradition is examined as a contested social practice of reception. The seminar asks how continuity can be real amid development, and how critique can expose domination without imagining a view from nowhere.
- 01
Distinguish tradition from repetition and nostalgia
- 02
Evaluate doctrinal development without circularity
- 03
Produce a genealogy attentive to authorized and excluded voices
- 01
Tradition as an act
Tradition is the repeated act of handing on a gift, not a warehouse of unchanged propositions.
- 02
Development and corruption
A development makes latent implications explicit while a corruption protects the institution at the expense of the gospel.
- 03
Situated reason
Reason is socially formed yet capable of truthful self-criticism through encounter, argument, and conversion.
- 04
Genealogy for constructive use
Genealogy becomes theological when it moves from exposure to a judgment about faithful reception now.