Towards an Asian Multitextual Theology

Abstract

Abstract The article criticizes some shortcomings of Asian contextual and liberation theologies that methodologically employ ‘hermeneutical circle’. The method focuses on experience as the starting point of doing theology. Despite its powerful insights that enable theologians to engage with concrete human and social problems, the method can easily preserve a theologian’s blind spot that hinders her/him from perspectives other than his or her own. I also criticize such an experience-based method as being too linear which can easily result in a methodological imperialism. In response to the weakness, I propose a multitextual theology, which on the one hand acknowledges the importance of perspectivism in any theology but also, on the other hand, celebrates theological freedom in viewing reality from ‘manywheres’. Since reality provides plurality of texts, a multitextual theology can begin simultaneously from any text, without being trapped into a procedural rigidity as clearly demonstrated in contextual and liberation theologies.