This article represents the genre of auto-ethnographic, autobiographical research. It consists of questions which evoke narrative responses because the questions register a life story in itself. Pieter G.R. de Villiers is the interpellator and Andries G. van Aarde the respondent. They are long-standing friends and both professors of New Testament studies. De Villiers is presently the editor at LitNet Academic (Religious Studies), and Van Aarde is the editor of HTS Theological Studies. Since 1990, De Villiers has been Executive (...) Director of the Centre for Christian Spirituality and Ethics and has been a Research Fellow and Professor Extraordinarius in Biblical Spirituality at the Department of Old and New Testament Studies at the Faculty of Theology, University of the Free State (since 2001).Contribution: The article reflects a conversation between Andries G. van Aarde and Pieter G.R. de Villiers. It contributes to an understanding of contemporary South African church history, including the protest by academics in Afrikaans ecclesial circles against apartheid and gender injustice. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to argue that healing stories in the Jesus tradition should be understood as exorcisms, even if the concept of demonisation does not occur in the narrative. In the theistic and mythological context of the 1st-century Graeco-Roman religious and political world, external forces responsible for social imbalances pertain to the demonisation of body and spirit. Medical cure was also embedded in the same biopolitical setting. The article describes aspects of this biopolitics and the role of (...) ancient physicians. However, Jesus’ revolutionary acts were not deeds of a medical doctor, but ought to be understood as the healing activity of a faith healer who empowered traumatised people by creating safe space for them within a quasi-fictive kinship network. The article concludes with an application of the dialectic notion ‘Christus medicus – Christus patiens’ in the life of the present-day network of Jesus-followers. (shrink)

Black theology in South Africa is still relevant 20 years after the apartheid regime ended. It is a theology that gave to Black South Africans human dignity and a black identity. Black theology in South Africa confronted the imbalances of power and abusive power structures through an affirmation of human dignity and the uniqueness of the identity of black people. The biblical narrative of the Exodus is a definitive narrative in American black theology and liberation theology in overcoming oppression understood (...) as political victimisation. Black theology in South Africa is not primarily about power and economics but also about the rediscovery of human dignity and black identity and to a lesser extent about victimisation. A third generation of black theology in South Africa will gain impetus through a rediscovery of human dignity and identity as its core values instead of a Black American liberation theology of victimisation or a Marxist liberation theology of the eradication of all power or economic imbalances. (shrink)

This article forms part of the commemoration of Friedrich Schleiermacher, who died 185 years ago on 12 February 1834. It focuses on the aspects of Schleiermacher’s life and work that have influenced the author the most. The article consists of personal annotations, Schleiermacher’s understanding of ‘divine’ hermeneutics, his notion of congeniality and his ‘subscription’ to creedal Christianity while promoting the freedom of the exegete to interpret the Bible and ecclesiastical confessions robustly and critically.

The article explores various aspects of understanding Paul. It focuses on his use of the expression ‘the gospel of God’ as the ‘good news’ that originates with God (a subjective genitive) and one that is about God (an objective genitive). The article argues that the cross and resurrection constitute the core of Paul’s message and that this message demands a new ethos because of the ‘dying and rising’ in participation with Christ Jesus. For Paul, the messianic era had already commenced. (...) In Paul’s point of view, the heart of the gospel was the announcement of a historical happening, namely the crucifixion of the historical Jesus which is connected to another ‘event’, namely the resurrection of Jesus, which does not qualify as history. For Paul, faith is engagement with the kerygma, and not a kind of loyalty to inherited religious customs. Faith implies undivided loyalty, a personal decision and commitment to believe what is proclaimed. (shrink)

Church and theology on a mesoparadigmatic shift towards the third millennium This article is written from the assumption that the present-day shift from modernity to postmodernity, which influences both church and theology, might be described as mesoparadigmatic in nature. From a specific angle, postmodern theology is considered a contextualization of dialectical thinking and it should, therefore, not be understood as an absolute alternative to the previous paradigm, including reformational theology which anticipated the modem era in a particular sense. The aim (...) of the article is at focusing on postmodernity's selective departure from modernity by means of debating the opinions which have been held by the author and been responded to by others. The article is concluded with an illumination of the road the author is convinced ought to be taken by the church and in theology heading towards the third millennium, specifically against the background of the changing South African context. (shrink)

This article aims to apply the model of change agent to the interpretation of Colossians. Presuming a continuity between Jesus and Paul, the article introduces the concept of ‘by faith alone’ from the Pauline letters. By this expression is meant an undivided fidelity to an inclusive approach to understanding God’s work, with concrete historical roots in Jesus’ crossing of gender, ethnic and cultural boundaries. Living in this manner requires reformation, transformation and change. The study spells out in fuller detail what (...) is understood ‘by faith alone’ by discussing the meaning of ‘faith’ within its semantic domain embedded in the codes of 1st-century Mediterranean culture. Living in faith is both a change of one’s inner convictions and about a life in faith. (shrink)