Eine Theologie der Teilhabe

Nausner is a prominent Methodist theologian currently serving as senior researcher of the Church of Sweden’s Unit for Research and Analysis in Uppsala. Nine of the fourteen chapters have been previously published but were substantially revised for the book.The impetus for the book is Nausner’s alarm at growing nationalism in European societies, exacerbated by climate-induced migration from ecologically distressed countries in the southern hemisphere (303–4). The result is polarizing tendencies that provoke political, social, cultural, and religious tactics of exclusion, racism, and xenophobia. In response, Nausner pleads for a model of non-exclusive participation of all in every sphere of creaturely life. To make this case, he develops a theology of ‘participation’ (Teilhabe), centred in a relational cosmic vision of mutual participation in God’s renewing work toward the ‘new creation’, a theme that runs like a ‘red thread’ through the book (11). The key interlocutors in constructing this vision are Wesleyan/Methodist theology; process theology/process philosophy; and postcolonial theory/postcolonial theology. Theodore Runyon’s 1998 classic The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today furnishes the theological ligaments and essential nomenclature, while process philosophy (especially Whitehead) supplies the philosophical heft. Postcolonial theory and postcolonial theology offer a prophetic edge, with vigilant attention to power in the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion (‘inclusion’ and ‘participation’ are inherently ambivalent practices). Thus, ‘boundaries’ (Grenzen), and what happens at them (254), are a central feature of the argument.Within this framework, Nausner unfolds a theologically subtle concept of ‘participation’. Participation is both a mode and goal of God’s renewing work. As such, the aim of ‘participation’ is soteriological, with ‘mutuality’ and ‘relationality’ the central features of redeemed relationships between, respectively, God and creation, Christians and their social (public) contexts, Christians and their cultural/secular and religious neighbours, and human beings and non-human creation. Thus, a theology of participation is anchored in everyday forms of participation. This commitment shapes the logic and structure of the three parts of the book: a participatory conception of God (part I), Christian and ecclesial life as modes of participation (part II), and responsible participation in the human, societal, and natural communities beyond the church (part III).Nausner incorporates several Wesleyan/Methodist distinctives in his definition of participation: divine-human/creaturely synergy of grace and responsibility (‘participation’ is both gift [Teilhabe] and task [Teilnahme]) (1); salvation as therapeutic; divine power as non-coercive creative love; experience as locus theologicus; knowledge as experiential (Erfahrungsgewissen); and Christian witness as integrating ‘right living’ and ‘right thinking’—‘orthopathy’ (Runyon)—with a preference for the ethical and the practical.Buttressed by process philosophy, part I lays out the theological presuppositions for the argument, with ‘power’ as relational, reciprocal, and noncoercive love the central focus. As such, salvation (chapter 2) is participatory and communal; God’s power is ‘powerful powerlessness’ (chapter 4); God’s immutability ‘changeable unchangeableness’ (chapter 5); Christian ‘truth’ (chapter 3) intuited (erahnen) communally and trained on the ethical (‘truth is . . . more a truth-of-relation than a truth-of-assertion’ [77]). The foil for Nausner’s argument is ‘Platonic’ conceptions of God (101–2), which inspire hierarchy, absolutism, and dominance.Part II explores the ‘realization’ (Verwirklichung) of God’s love as the synergy of grace and responsibility in key dimensions of the Christian life. Chapter 6 develops a Wesleyan-Methodist public theology, with salvation’s cosmic reach as rationale (creation is the ultimate ‘public’). Chapter 7 turns to ‘experience’ as theological locus. ‘Right experience’ (orthopathy) is a holistic, experiential form of knowing (Erfahrungswissen) of God’s love in which personal piety and social responsibility emerge together—the spiritual and the material are inextricably bound; ‘personal’ experience is always already ‘social’ (166). These themes continue in the next four chapters on the Eucharist (chapter 8), prayer (chapter 9), singing (chapter 10), and healing and health (chapter 11). Chapters 7 and 8 alone are worth the price of the book. In a real sense, the Eucharist sums up Nausner’s theology of participation: it is the ‘paradigmatic’ celebration of participation in the divine renewal of creation. It is a ‘boundary’ experience, manifesting a double permeability (Durchlässigkeit) (182–88): toward the brokenness of the world and toward God’s coming righteousness. As the organic union of praxis and theory, experience and reason, doctrine and life, church and world (181, 188), the Eucharist enjoins a public Methodist witness of ‘lived righteousness’.In part III, Nausner relates his theology of participation to Europe’s growing cultural and religious diversity. In the face of Europe’s slide into ‘unthinking renationalisation’ (263), ‘non-exclusive’ participation holds great potential for peaceful coexistence amid intercultural diversity (chapter 13) and interreligious pluralism (chapter 14). Grounding this discussion is a theology of migration (chapter 12): migrants’ hybrid experience demonstrates there is no ‘pure’ culture or identity to justify exclusionary tactics. As non-oppositional, non-exclusive participation can lead to a Christian practice of ‘identity without singularity, difference without dominance, and participation without exclusion’ (281).Nausner is prominent among a growing cadre of Methodist theologians who employ process philosophy and postcolonial theory in their work. Eine Theologie der Teilhabe persuasively demonstrates the rich rewards such efforts yield for Wesleyan/Methodist scholarship. It deserves a wide reading.

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