基督教社会实践与基督徒身份

 

Christian Social Practice and Christian Identity

Author: Kathryn TANNER, Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale University Divinity School

Abstract:

Contemporary Christian theology often addresses the issue of Christian identity in ways that reflect a modern understanding of culture. Christian social practices are taken to be a group-specific, unified whole, sharply bounded to form, some sort of self-contained unit. These presumptions are contested by postmodern developments in cultural studies, and sit uneasily with a number of common claims in Christian theology; they also entail a judgment in favour of a particular position on substantive theological matters. Typically, theologians have offered one sort of answer for the many-sided question of Christian identity – defining identity in social terms, or with reference to cultural boundaries, or by looking at intrinsic continuities in Christian belief and action. This article proposes a variant of the last type, Christian identity in virtue of a distinctive cultural style. It considers how tradition and rules have been used to determine identity, and outlines a theory of style as an alternative, but reiterates that Christian identity is ultimately a task, one which necessarily eschews definitive formulae.


Keywords:

Christian identity, social practices, cultural style


Full Text (International Version):

Kathryn TANNERSCN JSCC.pdf

Full Text (Simplified Chinese Version):

Kathryn TANNERSCN JSCC.pdf