Vanjaar se Verantwoordelike Vernuwing konferensie se herwin hoop tema, en die prominensie van bate metafore in sommige van die aanbiedings en refleksies, het my laat wonder hoe ons kan seker maak dat gemeentes hul “bates” en hul eie vermoens om “batebouers” te wees in ‘n teologiese perspektief op hoop kan verstaan.  Aan die een kant bring die bates-metafore ‘n welkome fokus op die positiewe wat God aan gemeentes gee, en help dit met ‘n hoopvolle eerder as probleemstellende teologiese uitgangspunt.  Aan die ander kant sou die gevaar kon bestaan dat valse hoop geskep word in die bates self, eerder as om die fokus te hou op God as die eintlike Batebouer in verhouding tot ons rentmeesterskap van God se bates.  In die metafoor van ‘n ou Halleluja liedjie, hoe kan ons ons seeninge tel en terselfdertyd nooit die God wat die seeninge gee vervang met die seeninge self nie?

Ek het aan die volgende aanhaling van Douglas John Hall, in sy The Cross in Our Context (p.195), gedink:  “A theology that confesses hope, not finality or consummation, will certainly have a mission in the midst of a despairing world, but it will be a mission that recognizes an expansiveness of divine grace that far exceeds its own grasp and representation of this mission.  For in the first place it will be hope in God, not in its own always-limited appropriation of God’s redemptive work.  Christian mission is a particular, ongoing attempt faithfully to comprehend and participate in the missio Dei…  Christians are those who have glimpsed in faith something of the reality and depth of this divine labor and who strive to involve themselves in it.  But they know that it is not their work, and they know that its end eludes them and in its advent may utterly surprise them.  Therefore they do not, may not, present themselves as a community for which all is finished – a body uniquely knowledgeable of the divine economy, in possession of secret truth concerning God’s closure of history, etc. (they are not Gnostics!).”

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