The Passion to Heal: A Theological Pastoral Approach to HIV/AIDS

Abstract. The global pandemic of HIV/AIDS is the most significant challenge of our time. The ongoing conversation between religion and science comes to a critical juncture in this pandemic. The global community has not yet found a vaccine or cure for this virulent virus, which will likely claim five million more lives in the coming year. The global statistics challenge even the most sophisticated imagination, with projections in the tens of millions of people dead, orphaned children, and many more living in various stages of incapacitation or diminished lives. There is a common prophetic religious imperative among Western faith communities that urgently requires both science and religion to respond. Both disciplines define their scope and purpose as universal, and the global pandemic provides a significant challenge to that universal claim. Regardless of the many differences among the nations and peoples challenged by this pandemic, there is a common moral foundation to which the Western religious and scientific traditions must respond. Religion and science cannot deny their respective social responsibilities by claiming the role of neutral bystander. There are several critical ethical choices to be made in response to the pandemic, and the disciplines of religion and science are critical in formulating those choices.     

Pan‐African Women's Voices across Borders

This article is structured from the epistemological vantage point of framing theological education within the context of Pan‐African women's experiences of migration, where theological education is defined in the widest sense of creating knowledge, ethos, and practices from within different versions of Christian tradition, as opposed to transmitting a static corpus of knowledge. It begins by examining the deconstructive potential of Pan‐African female migrants, particularly with regard to gendered patterns and projections of theological education. It then describes and analyzes the impact of Pan‐African female migrants on the project of contextual theological education as an act of birthing and bringing to life the dimensions of seeing and interpreting the one life‐giving story through the lenses of the lamenting, celebrating, and transforming stories of many. The article concludes by presenting Pan‐African female migration as an opportunity to revisit theological education as a creative, ecumenical, and intercultural enterprise, seeing the empirical location of Pan‐African female migrants as a paradigmatic lens for revisiting theological education as intercultural enterprise, and not (exclusively) as a contextual – and hence exceptional – historic experience.     

The Woman at the Well

The woman at the well argued theology with Jesus, and he listened to her and engaged her in conversation. Theological education today must make spaces for the voices of the marginalized to be heard and prepare church leaders to listen respectfully to people from the margins.     

Albert Einstein and Bernard Lonergan on Empirical Method

In the science–and–theology dialogue, it becomes imperative that theologians develop sophistication in empirical method. Albert Einstein stated that to understand what physicists do we should not listen to what they say but watch what they do. Still, he wrote incisively about method in physics. Theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan developed a methodical approach to theology that was influenced by the natural sciences. I present Einstein's thought on epistemology and the relationship between sense experience and theory. I then turn to Lonergan's understanding of empirical method in the natural sciences, generalized empirical method, and his treatment of Einstein's work.     

Kärkkäinen's spirit and salvation: A female pentecostal appraisal

Spirit and Salvation is the fourth volume of a constructive theology series by Professor Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. It is a continuation of Kärkkäinen's impressive scholarship in Pneumatology and offers a fine example of his inclusive methodology. Especially important and informative is the section regarding spiritual powers and cosmology, which provides for an ecumenical audience a healthy understanding of demonic powers. Experience is one epistemological factor in Kärkkäinen's work, which is observed through methodology. An alternative way to approach theological method, from the female pentecostal perspective, which regards experience as important, is offered as an option or a continuation to Kärkkäinen's scholarship.     

Gemeinde transformata semper transformanda evangelio: Theological education for what?

Two factors loom large in the crisis that the church and our institutions of theological education are facing today. The first is that the traditional formulations of the gospel that we have inherited are highly problematic from both a theological and a biblical perspective. The second is a model of church that in many ways no longer responds to our present-day realities. By defining the gospel in terms of transformation and healing and embracing new forms of community, we can enable more people to be immersed in the gospel in the context of communities that are both transformed and transforming.