Szabó Árpád (szerk.): Isten és ember szolgálatában. Erdő János emlékezete (Kolozsvár, 2007)

John A. Buehrens: A House for Hope. Liberal Theology and the Challenges of the 21st Century

quickly affirmed that this was their method as well - staying rooted in Japanese culture and Buddhist teaching, using one of its central texts, the Lotus Sutra, while taking a reformist interpretation of its teaching to empower more practical religious living, concern for the common good, and interfaith cooperation.

A man came to Rabbi Shamai and asked if he could teach him the entire Torah while standing on one leg. And Shamai, who was a very orthodox teacher, offended and thinking that he wanted knowledge without work, expelled him from the house of study. So then he went to the more liberal teacher, Rabbi Hillel, and asked the same question. And that great Rabbi replied, „It is very simple. The entire Torah is this: Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself. And all the rest is commentary.”

No doubt. But theology consists of other, larger, more encompassing questions.

Rather like those in Paul Gauguin’s great painting in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: Qui

sommes nous?

Döu

venons

nous? Ou allons nous? Who

are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

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H b e e

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a s

I t f T

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rene o g n H l e

t 0 0 S U P g r e y o y f a n d

Framing and Facing the Enduring Questions

We liberals often seek to put aside such questions, like the poet Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet who had asked some of the great questions, writing back, saying, „Have patience. [...] Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now press for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing things. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some day.”

Tie African American UU theologian Thandeka argues, with Schleier

macher, that

all theology, before words and after words, must rest in experience. But today I want to suggest a framework for giving words to some of the enduring questions of theology, using the metaphor of a house, or of a meetinghouse. In part, in using this metaphor, Rebecca Parker has had in mind the implications of a popular adult religious education curriculum in America called Building Your Own Theology, by Rev. Richard Gilbert. Americans pride themselves on being practical and self-reliant. So it is not surprising that many of our people believe in „do-it-yourself” religion, as well as household repairs and renovations. This is very much in keeping with Emerson’s admonition, „first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models ... and to dare to love God without mediator or veil.” [The Divinity School Address, 1838]