Women's consultation on constructive theology: Consultation

The Women’s Consultation on Constructive Theology session began with a
presentation by Sophia Park. Park led attendees into an exploration of grace through Mechtild of Magdeburg’s concept of grace as fließen, a “flowing or fluid light” from the trinitarian Godhead. Park set the context of this exploration as what she described as a world called toward various encounters “including those between cultures, races, genders, and places.” The quality of “in-betweenness” of such encounters with each other particularly causes great anxiety because they lack the assurance of certainty, predictability, and definitiveness. Further, such encounters challenge the givens in our world, to the extent that they may no longer apply today and certainly into the future. We were led to ask how we could live our faith in this context. Park proposed that Mechtild’s view of grace as fließen can provide some guidance. For Mechtild grace as fließen leads to boundary crossings, fragmentations, and polyphony, challenging us to
flexibility, receptivity to the “other,” and a unity with the trinitarian Godself. Park
showed that already this was possible, as evidenced by our early Christian history recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The first and most obvious example is Pentecost where the Holy Spirit enabled understanding between many people even as each person kept their own language. The second example is in the inter-subjective encounter between Peter and Cornelius. As a consequence, “Christians in Jerusalem accept that the Gospel is also for Gentiles.”