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                                                                              WHAT IS THE PROPER TASK OF THEOLOGY?
                                                                                                   Schubert M. Ogden

I propose to answer this question by considering it as the first of four questions, the other three of which must also be considered if the first is to be answered at all adequately.

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But this is not all that can be said about theology's context, and it is only by considering what may be called its several contextual factors that the theological task itself can be fully understood. For the present, however, it must suffice to say that the several factors that go to make up the context of theology all fall into one or the other of two groups, which reflect the twofold question that theology asks and tries to answer and, behind that, its necessary and sufficient conditions as a process of reflection in the Christian witness of faith and the human existence for which that witness claims to be decisive, and hence true. Thus one may distinguish such factors as the following as belonging, respectively, to the two groups: (1) revelation, faith, church, the apostolic witness, Scripture, tradition; and (2) experience, reason, culture, religion, academy, history, philosophy, the special sciences and the arts. It should be evident that, in pursuing this fourth question of the context, or the contextual factors, of theology, one must perforce retread the ground covered only by all the loci of traditional prolegomena -- not only the locus on theology, but also the loci on revelation, on faith, and on Holy Scripture.

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