The intercultural perspective of systematic theology cannot be understood only as an ingredient that is added to the already set contents in an additive or descriptive way. It rather requires the fundamental and critical reflection of the dogmatic processes of understanding, teaching and learning in view of their cultural relativities.
The special challenge of intercultural hermeneutics lies in the fact that the field of tension of the different and manifold contextuality of theological knowledge is not to be differentiated to one side or the other, but to be embraced and reflected as a vital and necessarily experience of tension.
The current holder of the professorship for systematic theology in an intercultural perspective sees academic theological reflection and also the practice of the church in Germany massively challenged by the presence of the worldwide brothers and sisters in their own neighborhood. This present intercultural challenge offers theology and the churches at the same time a historical opportunity to overcome a confessionalistic understanding of the Christian faith and to allow the blossom of a new form of catholicity (in the sense of a constant relation of the particular to the other and the whole).
A particular concern of the holder of the professorship is not simply to discard European theology as "outdated" and "eurocentric" but, on the contrary, to liberate it from existing power asymmetries and thus to make it serve the intercultural discourse and become a commonly shared resource.
The following writing elaborates the mentioned aspects in a fundamental way:
- J. Weth, Weltweite Kirche vor Ort - Interkulturelle Ekklesiologie im Anschluss an Wolfhart Pannenberg und Jürgen Moltmann, Leipzig 2022.
