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I like what Mike Higton has to say about 'reason'. He shows us the way that through theological reason involving a christian community all the group shares, partaking in the excersice, giving thier own ideas and different perspectives. He highlighted that Karl Barth stated that the church 'should realise it must give account to God in the way it represents Gods in it's words and actions. How, is the church seen today? Are they seeing the love of God? Mike Higston talked about a couple sexuality is not the same as the church community. How does that community responds? In the C of E. With it's ever confusing responce to those who do not fit into straight norms. Sex - between man and woman. The C of E still finds it acceptable that they do not longer commune with the Anglcan church in the US for ordaining a Gay Bishop. Where is the the chuches love there. In thier own community.

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Dr Mair stated that Reason is a task, to learn something deeper to engage. He then quotes 1st John Ch 4. That we must test the spirit. I must admit I have not heard about testing the Spirit before. I think this is a valid point. There are a lot of noise out there. Like the radio we have to fine tune the radio to pick up the best quality sound. When we first hear the spirit. Have we heard correctly to what has been said? We may need to finely turn ourselves before rushing in to what we may of thought we heard. By testing the Spirit. This can be done in many ways: through further prayer, guidence, other peoples thoughs etc.

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I found this a bit hard to get my head around it. However, I think some Reasoning can change over time. Thoses who looked at reasoning many centuries ago, would been seen down thier Kaleidoscope lens, in thier setting, Knowlege, culture, language etc. Now we can look at Reasoning through our lens.

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I think there are two ways that stood out to me.

Theology as witness

My attempted definition: translation of your ideas and works in way a different group of people will understand

This resonates to me as a lot of my life is translating difficult concepts to other people. A thought happens in our brains, inspired by and guided by the Holy Spirit. We may feel a burning desire to share this thought, learning, insight, etc with others. To do this however we must first figure out how to translate what we have just witnessed.

We are constrained by the language we can produce, and by how those we speak to will in turn translate back into thoughts in their head and beyond. To do this effectively then takes a considerable amount of reasoning effort.

Are they from the same context as me? Do they speak the same mother language? Do they have the same philisophical, cultural, or other viewpoints as me? How do I give witness to my knowledge of God in a way that can be understood?

Theology as politics

My attempted definition: communal alignment of language and behaviours

I think this follows on from the previous, but in amongst a group setting. In small groups folksonomies of language start to emerge. In the household there are in-jokes and references. Similarly at work, or in communities. Responding to these group alignments is a constant and fascinating thing!

For example, in playing music at church, there are a lot of established behaviours around music. Our parish has a very mixed musical tradition: one week organ and choir, then the next week guitars and worship music. Understanding how people respond to these traditions requires reasoning about their responses. In turn, this starts to shape the future of the tradition in our church. Its a complex and delicate thing to be able to fully listen to and understand everything in such a way that enough evidence is available to actually reason!

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Which idea do you resonate with most strongly? (Maddie)

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Which idea do you resonate with most strongly? (Maddie)

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Theology as witness

If I’ve understood this idea correctly, it is about aligning one’s actions with one’s faith: e.g., not just believing something but trying to live in accordance with what it is saying. This feels a key bit of my faith - trying to be a nicer and better person, after the model of Jesus. And maybe inspiring others to find out more and follow Jesus’ example too, by being a good person in the world. It resonates because feels tangible and it’s something I can do to make a difference, and means my faith permeates my daily life (also I think it’s the ‘grown-up’ version of the ‘90s ‘WWJD’ bracelets, isn’t it… Which is making me smile!)

Theology as disclosure modelling

Learning and growing in my understanding feels like a core part of how I 'do' my faith.

If I've understood correctly, this idea talks about understanding of words/ concepts developing iteratively - understanding can be fluid and may change and develop over time. This feels a developmental, helpful, and kind way of framing our own understanding and learning around some really tricky things.

On this course, words/ concepts that I thought I understood have expanded in their meanings and how I understand them.

We are also watching this develop in our four year old, with her semantic mappings around faith and church developing e.g., recently clocking that ‘God’ was referring to one and three different entities at the same time. These kind of conversations feel amazing and really exciting.

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