Monday, 2 March 2015

Exclusion and Embrace: Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation,
Miroslav Volf, Abingdon Press, 1996, page 49

So, Volf continues, asking about the implications of the Pauline kind of universalism:

Each culture can retain its own cultural specificity; Christians need not "loose their cultural identity as Jew or Gentile and become one new humanity which is neither" (William S. Campbell, "Paul's Gospel in an Intercultural Context", in Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity, ed. Richard Friedli et al, Peter Lang 1991, page vi) ... Paul deprived each culture of ultimacy in order to give them all legitimacy in the wider family of cultures.

Talking about how it is necessary to "depart" from one's culture as part of the journey into faith, and comparing this as a spiritual parallel to Abraham's call to leave Haran and hs father's household, Vold adds:

Departure is no longer a spatial category; it can take place within the cultural space one inhabits.