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Authors
Supervisors
Bourgine, Benoit
Abstract
The present research proposes a systematic theology of testimony. The intuition that presides over the study is that the category of testimony, distinguished and duly articulated with its theological counterpart (revelation), is central to the theological project: on the one hand, because testimony presents itself as the only material on which theology is invited to work in order to think a discourse on God indebted to the Christic event and without which theology would not have its object, its methodology, its grammar and its lexicon; on the other hand, because the notion of testimony makes it possible to situate correctly the space of the free action of God and the human person, avoiding theologically invalid mythologisations of the action of one or the other. This is therefore the question of this study: in what sense can we claim that a human word or action can signify God or, what is more, become the place where God speaks? Relying primarily (though not exclusively) and critically on the referential framework proposed by Karl Barth, the thesis situates testimony (even canonised testimony, whether biblical or biographical) at the threshold of revelation: in other words, it cannot be thought of as offering a definitive word about God (and even less of God), but as the transmission of a work of interpretation of what is believed to be the Word of God. Testimony is therefore defined as sola traditio, blurring the distinction commonly made in theological debate between Scripture and tradition. In order for testimony to retain its theological significance, the thesis proposes to think of the actuality of revelation here and now, through what the study proposes to call the dialectic of mediated immediacy: on the one hand, Jesus Christ remains here and now the subject of his revelation; on the other hand, the revelation of which Jesus Christ is the initiator and object does not dispense with, but on the contrary challenges and elicits the testimony of those who receive the revelation. Within this conceptual framework, the thesis is confirmed: revelation is the unmasterable action of God in Jesus Christ, and testimony, both biblical and kerygmatic, forms an interpretative whole of this event of revelation; if theology aims to understand revelation, it works only with the tradition of testimony, and it is only through testimony that it can humbly aim to understand the Christic event of revelation. So there is nothing theological that is not testimonial. This is why testimony can be described as a practical disposition of theology, and theology as a critical disposition of testimony. Tradition lives from the to-and-fro of these two complementary movements. Sola traditio describes the interpretive game that theology is called upon to critique. And the fact that it is "Sola traditio" translates, in theological practice, into a particular attention to the interpretative game (because every testimonial word is an interpretative word and therefore contextualised in a place of speech) and into an attitude of dogmatic humility in the presence of the Word (because no testimonial word is the definitive Word).
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Dusabamahoro Valinho Gomes, P. (2023). Sola traditio : une théologie du témoignage. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/28175