In Ruth's comment on my last post she alludes to theology that is 'after the fact' - i.e. that is made up, oops developed, to account for practice, rather than practice that emerges directly from theology.
This made me wonder if all theology is actually 'after the fact' - arising from or responding to experience or practice. This would make all theology practical theology (which from an academic perspective lays heaps of emphasis on its emergence form experience/practice) - something I seem to recall was said by Moltmann, though I may well be wrong.
I also wondered how robust some of our theology really is either - is it maybe actually 'after a fashion', with the phrase meaning, as it did in my youth, 'kind of'? If I'm honest some of my phraseology around little cup communion is definitely 'theology after a fashion.'
So, if anyone can come up with an example of irrefutably 'before the fact' theology, I'd love to know what it is!
Comments
While I can't pretend to comprehend too much of your 'Theology after the Fact' blog, I would just like to share a phenomenon surrounding little glass communion cups. (We gave up using a large single cup years ago, following a rather nasty episode of what I can only describe as 'back-wash'!) That and the need to wipe the cup after each slurp, it just didn't seem very hygenic. But the small cups create a problem all their own. That is, that whenever we collect them after the service, there is often one missing. Yet equally, on the odd occasion, there can actually be one extra! I can only imagine that someone perhaps takes it home (quite why I can't imagine) then surrepticously (that doesn't look like the correct spelling!) brings it back next time we have communion. On a related topic, I recall a few months ago discovering a magot in the bottom of one of the used cups after an evening service. Either it was in there when it was filled or we are talking of a serious back-wash problem with one of our members!
Er thanks for that Richard... I think! Clearly communion in your place is never dull. I once had a spider land in a chalice of 'wine' but never the grossness of maggots whose origins I had no knowledge of.
I have a theory that communion cups are like teaspoons and odd socks which get sucked into a black hole and reappear somewhere else in the space time continuum.
Somewhere a race of gigantic bees with an interesting take on sartorial elegance sup nectar from stolen communion cups and spoon honey into enormous pots. Or something equally unlikely.
Random non-theological reflections on communion...
Back in the Dark Ages, a burglar broke in and smashed all our communion cups. To prevent a repeat of these, they were replaced with stainless steel ones.
I HATE them!!!!
But I LOVE the cute little dispensers our team uses which put exactly one measure of grape juice into each tumbler [Purchased at Crex by a Pastor with an obsession for gadgets!]