Harvey Conn on Systematic Theology and the Missiological Task of the Church
Systematic theology is not simply a coherent arrangement of supracultural universals. it is a compilation of the Western white history of dogma. And that history, in the process of compilation, has lost its missiological thrust.
The effect of this process on the Western churches is similarly destructive of missions. Seeing theology as an essentializing science and the creeds as the product of that kind of theological reflection inhibits us as well from facing up to our own contemporary missiological task and its risk. We assign all the problem of contextualization to distant, exotic places and worry about how others will avoid syncretism with this view of theology. We assume that such risks and such challenges are absent, or at least less pressing, in the West. We let our theologizing slip into a naive sort of idealistic pride in “our” model. We become less aware of the rosy presuppositional glasses with which we look at our rosy theological world. And our theology loses its evangelistic edge.
[M]Issiology’s task…becomes that of a gadfly in the house of theology. (p. 223)
