Stephan van Erp
INCARNATIONAL THEOLOGY Systematic theology after Schillebeeckx
Fifty years ago, Edward Schillebeeckx wrote an article on the new turn in the systematic theology of his day in the very first issue of his own journal, Tijdschrift voor Theologie.1 This new turn consisted of a ‘living attention to the historically new in confrontation with faith, as well as in the new states of thought, created by and in a human experience that is forever expressing itself anew in this world, for example in modern literature and in philosophy.2 Schillebeeckx believed that this attention to the historically new will results in a double focus for modern theology. On the one hand, modern faith seems to indicate new theological modes of thought that need articulation and clarification. On the other, a changing faith forces us to reflect upon the renewals old theological achievements will undergo as a result of new influences. This is what gives modern systematic theology its double focus: on both the future and the past. Schillebeeckx repeatedly emphasises that the truth of old theology will not be lost as a result of the dynamics of a changing faith, but is instead purified and differentiated, and sometimes even corrected. He believes that systematic theology is the theological discipline par excellence to guide and reflect upon this growth. With that, the task of systematic theology has explicitly and fundamentally been determined as a historical one, ever since the middle of the twentieth century: both by safeguarding old theological truths and by reflecting on the experiences of the historically new in the present and the future.
1
2
52
E. Schillebeeckx, “De nieuwe wending in de huidige Dogmatiek”, in: Tijdschrift voor Theologie 1 (1961), 17–47. Ibid., 18.