[This is the finale of my response to Clemens Sedmak's Doing Local Theology. Below is my personal reflection on what he has put forth. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. My overall score of the book is at the end of this post.]

homeless woman

Clemens Sedmak’s Doing Local Theology deserves both negative and positive reflections. First, the overall writing of Sedmak’s book is at times repetitive and slightly monotonous. Also, when culture-specific theology is emphasized, everyone is a theologian. This is at times important, but the global Church does not always benefit from everyone practice theology. For instance and although Sedmak would resist such an example, no one outside of Nazi-sympathizers desires Adolf Hitler to be a theologian, even though in some cases he was. If one emphasizes cultural-specific theology, this is the danger.

However, even if the abuse of cultural-specific theology is possible, it should not be neglected, and Sedmak is correct that “little theologies” are incredibly important to the life of the Church. “Little theologies” can be used to touch the life of a single mother more than a “big theology” like Barth’s Church Dogmatics. Little theologies can help the homeless man in my neighborhood more than a big theology like Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Although “little theologians” will be less known, their grassroots influence cannot be overemphasized.

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[This is part 2 of my response to Clemen's Sedmak's Doing Local Theology. Read part 1 here.]

The majority of Doing Local Theology focuses on what Sedmak calls “little theologies,” as he defines, “To translate the big concepts of our theological tradition into our life experience is to create ‘little theologies’” (p. 46). Much of “little theologies” is understanding tradition. As Sedmak states, “Theologians are accountable to a community, a community that was there before them and will be there after they are gone. Chesterton talked about tradition as democracy including the dead, giving a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves any longer.” In this dialogue with tradition, the theologian not only receives a sense of identity but also respects other cultures in other contexts (p. 53).

Although theology must respect tradition, “the theological tradition has to be reappropriated [sic]” (p. 54). Theology must be done with people in mind, and the theologian must decide how a certain concept is expressed within a local culture. The Bible is the primary source for where Christians engage tradition. As one reads the biblical text, he or she must keep in mind, “Everybody who reads the Bible has an agenda,” and, due to this, Sedmak explains, “The Bible has to be reappropriated [sic], taken into the reality of the people” (p. 57). In this way, tradition is contextualized.

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[Many of you responded to my request to help me choose a book for my seminary class, and the one that received the most votes was Clemens Sedmak's Doing Local Theology. I have since wrote a response to the book for my class, and the first part of the response is below.]

Doing Local Theology

Clemens Sedmak in his book Doing Local Theology: A Guide for Artisans of a New Humanity uses fifty theses to discuss the importance of understanding the surrounding culture as the starting point for the task of theology. He proposes that theology is not universal but local and thus comes in many forms. In this sense, everyone is a theologian since theology addresses our deepest questions and desires. Sedmak’s proposal for the importance of local theology is helpful for the missional church, which seeks to understand its culture in order to speak within it rather than to it or above it.

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