Reconstructing Theology: Essay in Honour of Rev. Prof. Dr. J. A. David Onesimu's 65th Birthday

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About the Book The book titled Reconstructing Theology draws its name from the word "Reconstruction" refers to rebuilding some of the concepts of modernity while recognizing the questions and challenges of postmodern philosophies and contexts in the postmodern perspective. It has sought scholars and church leaders to reconstruct issues in mission from the Biblical, Theological, Historical, Religious, and Ministerial disciplines. These multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional reflections on various issues challenge to reconstruct a new space where God's reign is realised in new alternative ways where there are differences but each may recognise the image of God in the other by respecting each other's human dignity and sharing resources with each other in order to be a part of God's reign. This volume of reconstructing theology is an attempt to recognize the importance of not just being a critic of old structures, concepts, and beliefs, but tries to provide an alternative to them in the postmodern context of India.

About the Author Rev. Dr. Samuel Jayakumar, a Langham Scholar, is currently Director of Evangelical Theological Academy. He is the author of Dalit Consciousness and Christian Conversion: Mission Reader; and Renewal of Mission. He has co-edited Mission Mandate ll; and Christian Contribution to Nation Building: Towards an Integral Theology: Festschrift in Honour of Bishop Ezra Sargunam's 80th Birthday: Towards an Integral Spirituality: Festschrift in Honour of Bishop Sundar Singh's 75th Birthday. He has contributed articles to academic Journals such as Transformation, Indian Church History Review, Religion and Society and Evangelical Review of Theology.

Rev. Dr. K. Vijayan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Missiology. He was a former Lecturer at Calcutta Bible Seminary (CBS), Kolkata. Currently, he is teaching at the Madras Theological Seminary & College (MTSC), Chennai; and also teaching at the Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute (GLTCRI), Chennai. He holds Doctor of Theology from the Senate of Serampore College (University), Department of Research, SATHRI. His doctoral research area was on "Orlando E. Costas' Interpretation of Outside the Gate as a Postmodem Missiological Paradigm in the Context of India.

Preface In the highly pluralistic context of India, the search for relevant theology/ model of mission and evangelism in most cases is also an encounter between the Christian faith and other faiths, raising questions of Gospel and Culture at the theological level. The fundamental relation between religion and culture also thus becomes central to our search for new theological paradigms/ paradigms of mission and evangelism. The Modern Period which is that the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe, where human and reason and the scientific approach to the study of natural phenomena predominated in the thinking of man. This phase may, therefore, be referred to as the Age of Reason. The Postmodern phase is the emergence of a new and revolutionary system of thought in the last decades of the twentieth century. This phase may be to call it the Age of Subjective Relativism."

The word Postmodernism/Postmodern could be described as a philosophical concept and Postmodernity as a time or period concept. The same distinction can be applied also to Modern- as a philosophical concept and Modernity as a time concept. Charles Jencks, in his book, What is Post- Modernism, (London: Academy Editions, 1996), distinguishes Postmodern'- as an outright rejection of Modem- from 'Post-modern'- which is an attempt to appropriate whatever is good in Modern. In the above context, postmodernism as a paradigm shift provides necessary tools to both the people who have been categorizing and those who have been categorized by the modern Christian mission as 'the reached-unreached'; 'the civilized-uncivilized'; 'the developed-undeveloped'; 'the evangelized-unevangelized"; "the Christian-non Christian'; 'the insiders-outsiders' and the like.

**Contents and Sample Pages**