Albert Nolan

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Albert Nolan

• The Experience of Those
• Sinned Against

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A Theology for South Africa

• Father of Liberation Theology in S.A.
• Born 1934

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Being Sinned Against

• Term for suffering under structures of sin
• A serious analytical category
• Ethical reflection on politics economics

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Seeking Good News

• Seeking Gods action will in the situation
• To find good news for those sinned against which
• has definite moral implications. It is the kind
  of news that challenges us to act. But good news
  is concerned with something more than morality or
  ethics. The good news is about the meaning of our
  times, about the significance of what is
  happening in our country, about what God is
  doing.

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Naming the Sin Suffering with Christ

• Biblically, a transgression of love
• Causing suffering, as apartheid in S.A.
• Experience of suffering makes God visible as the
  one who is being sinned against, indeed
  crucified
• Not measured by knowledge, but by pain inflicted

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Naming the Sinner - Apartheid

• Sinful structures emerge from generations of
  personal sinners
• going back to original sin
• In apartheid, going back to colonialism
• Expressed in social systems, nations, law,
• which teach us to treat each other as objects
• Structures do not cause sin, but tempt
• not opposing is entering into the structure

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Naming those Sinned Against - God of the Poor

• Sufferers involved in the struggle are subjects,
  the sinned against
• Sufferers who do not resist are sinners, who do
  not oppose the system
• neutrality with regard to the conflict that is
  raging in South Africa today is an illusion. The
  gospel we preach will not be a Gospel of Jesus
  Christ unless it takes sides with those who are
  being sinned against the poor and the
  oppressed.

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Faith in the Gospel

• Theology grounded in faith experience of those
  sinned against
• Theologians must share experience of suffering
• not universalise as western theologians tended
  to, in the monastery or university
• Paradigm shift to God acting in a particular time
  and place
• Giving the Gospel of Jesus Christ back to the
  poor and oppressed.
• Trusting experience and concrete reality

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Structures of Grace

• Faith questions of those sinned against
• how is God saving in and through Jesus Christ in
  this particular experience?
• biblical text gives the shape, experience gives
  the content of the Good News, these interact
• Jesus before Christianity Jesus faced structural
  sins of his time
• rose up against the Jewish system of that time
  as itself a system of oppression which caused
  intolerable suffering. He wanted to replace it
  with something he called the rule of God.
• Structures of grace
• enable us to experience Gods saving power
• are a combination of Gods gift and peoples
  struggle for liberation

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Salvation will Come

• Chronos western, measured concept of time,
• giving a chronological date for the day of the
  Lord
• Kairos qualitative, the kind of time we are in,
• reading the signs of the times,
• seeking Gods actions
• important for liberation struggle
• Eschaton the end of a series of events in
  history, a calendar date
• seems distant and thus irrelevant for those
  suffering
• Resurrection not final victory but a sign and
  promise of victories over evil yet to come
• Thus the day of the Lord is imminent

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Gods Time of Liberation

• When we introduce God into the picture, or
  rather we discover God already there in our
  world, it takes our breath away. When we begin to
  see God as the one who is sinned against and
  crucified in South Africa, it makes us shudder.
  We are struck with the full impact of the crisis,
  the conflict and the struggle and the day of
  liberation, when we see them as the wonderful
  works of God. We appreciate what is happening
  more fully, when we experience it as grace.