Against False Alternatives
Why Nothing Is Alien to the Christian Faith
Polarisations increasingly dominate social, church-related and theological discourses. They work with exclusionary alternatives to make the options of the "other" side impossible and to mobilise decisiveness: softening of the doctrine – stubborn clinging to what is outdated; moralisation of the Gospel – questioning the order of Creation; dissolution of what is Christian into political options – retreat into the sacral ghetto. The challenge of getting involved with the deep ambivalences of human existence disappears behind the work with the false alternatives.
In his new book, Jürgen Werbick traces and confronts this strategy in examinations of the church and theology. He drafts a theology that engages in the ambivalences of human/all-too-human concerns with an approach of curiosity. It does not resort to a superior position of judgement. Instead, it wants to find out how its talk of being human, of grace, redemption and freedom, of human desire and fulfilment, of failure and sin, of a God who does not give up on people changes and renews itself in the current experiences of crises.
- Theology in the ambivalences of being human
