The Nature of Practical Theology Repeating Transformation: Browning and Barth on Practical Theology

Three levels of Practical Theology experiential, reflective and orientational, must address the pursuit of practical Christian knowledge. Each level contributes to the formation of operational practical Christian knowledge as evaluating, ordering, localising and organising. Browning's correlational approach is criticised for leading to religious rather than Christian dynamic reflection. Barth's theology of theological knowledge offers a corrective because of its combination of mood and doctrine. Caputo's notion of repeating transformation is used to open a synthesis characterised as a lived hermeneutics of practising a repeated transformation which is lived in the ad hoc creativity of 'doing theology on safari'. A NVIL is primarily a journal of Practical Theology arising as it does, out of the mission of the practical spirituality of Evangelicalism as this is found in the practical tradition of Anglicanism. Thus Anvil can be seen as an ongoing example of reflection on practice, i.e. a tradition of Practical Theology. I think that there are three levels to Practical Theology (the experiential, the reflective and the orientational) and that the goal of Practical Theology is a certain kind of knowledge: practical Christian knowledge.1 I believe that it is this question of 'what kind of knowledge?' which is of major importance in the current development in Practical Theology. There have been a number of different strategies for developing an adequate Practical Theology and these have all been part of the development of theology within the modem period. 2 An adequate Practical Theology must not only address the levels of reflection but also provide a perspective and an orientation for the knowledge with which it is concemed.3 Emmanuel Lartey has recently written about three different approaches to Practical Theology: the branch approach, the process approach and the 1 c.f. R. Osmer, A Teachable Spirit, Westminster, Louisville 1990, p 162 who argues that Practical Theology is made up of three aspects: 1. 'practical moral reasoning', 2. 'the interpretation of particular situations', and 3. 'the enactment of concrete responses'. Osmer discusses Practical Theology within the context of developing a renewed model of Christian education. 2 For an interesting survey of approaches to Practical Theology in relation to modernity see J. van derV en, Practical Theology, Kok Pharos, Kampen 1993, parts 1-ill. 3 In this article I am dependent upon lngolf Dalferth' s analysis of fundamental theological issues in his book Theology and Philosophy, Blackwell, Oxford 1989. He identifies two issues, reflection and perspective, and also talks of orientational knowledge.