The Renaissance of interest in Kierkegaard in recent decades is not without significance for Halik. The move in the 19th century from "study of God" (philosophical theology) to "an hermeneutic of the existential experience of faith" leads Halik to suggest that faith is the most radical existential expereince. And that theological tradition may have even more to say to our culture now than it did even in the existentialist high points of the mid 20th century.
"Out of all theological disciplines, that theological current is probably closest to spiritual theology; after all, spirituality is without doubt the dimension of Christian faith most relevant to the spiritual climate of present-day Western society. However if the theological impulses I have indicated are embodied in a lived faith and spirituality, then this liberation spirituality or exodus spirituality should not lead to shirking our responsibility for the society in which we have been placed. On the contrary, one of its essential tasks is sensitivity to the signs of the times in the cultural and political climate of today's world. "Solidarity with seekers" implies sharing in their seeking and questioning."
Here again Halik is arguing for a Church that vulnerably and willingly moves away from assertion and proclamation of claimed truth, to the much more humble position of listening, seeking and offering of truth from the experience of lived faith. To live responsibly in our culture, alert to the signs of the times, listening to the heartbeat and longings articulated by those who share our times and places, seeking a life more humane in which peace, forgiveness, conciliation, justice and mercy are lived out precisely as principles of a Gospel of peace, forgiveness, conciliation, justice and mercy. It isn't that the church should not be confident in the Gospel, but that it should stop being so self-confident that in its words and concepts, by its institutions and worship, in its history and traditions, through its theological articulations and apologetic arguments, it in any definitive sense HAS the Gospel as possession, has the truth in its finality, knows all there is to know, understands the incomprehensible, or conveniently flat packs the Infinite. The Church itself receives within its limited finitude only what it is given of the infinite riches of God in Christ, and so the Gospel is bigger than the church's idea of it, as Christ is greater than any formulation or conception purposed to contain Him.
A church confident in the Gospel is by definition one that should be the last to be guilty of self-confidence, and the first to confidently sit alongside the seekers of our age and culture and converse, explore, share and commend, review and revise, persuade and be persuaded as true, a way of life that in its embodied integrity gives credibility to those humble words we feel are capable of telling the truth, of bearing witness, to the reality of God as we have discovered that Loving Reality in Jesus.
I doubt if Halik would own all the weight I put on this - but I am largely persuaded for myself that such humble confidence, shared in the confidence of trust, would be a deep, and patient, and valid alternative form of witness to the One who once said to seekers who asked where he stayed, "Come and see". Confident in the Gospel of Jesus? Absolutely. Confident too, that the One for whom all things were made, who is the last word in wisdom and understanding, will lead those seekers in our own times, into that way that is truth and life. The role of the church may well be to create places of openness, moments of graced meeting and speaking, occasions of spiritual hospitality, encounters between those who seek and the One who is sought.
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