Original Research - Special Collection: The use of the Bible in Theology

Aspects of the concept of theo-logy in the Old Testament: A discussion on J. Gericke

Christo Lombaard
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 76, No 4 | a6135 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v76i4.6135 | © 2020 Christo Lombaard | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 18 May 2020 | Published: 22 December 2020

About the author(s)

Christo Lombaard, Department of Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract

In this contribution, an aspect of the research of one of the more distinct voices in South African theology, Jaco Gericke, is contextualised and outlined. Although Old Testament Theology is an oft-enough reflected on topic by South African Bible scholars, such a theology is never written by South African scholars. However, Gericke’s work tends in this direction. His work on God-talk, theo-logy, is the more important for our time, because it often relates to the kind of ideas popularly related to for instance God as creator in the Genesis texts. Gericke’s work is however also attractive to intellectuals who work from the precepts of modernism or who are engaged in interdisciplinary research or who for purposes of decoloniality explore alternatives to Western scholarship. However, it is initially not easy for many readers to understand Gericke’s contribution in combining philosophy and Old Testament studies, both practised on high levels. To this end, three instances of Gericke’s argumentation are related as examples, with explanatory and interpretative comments made to demonstrate the high heuristic value of his contributions.

Contribution: Jaco Gericke’s work can be characterised as theo-logy, in that he takes seriously the implications of modernism for ‘God-talk’. He combines Philosophy and Old Testament Exegesis as academic enterprises, the intellectual productivity of which is demonstrable by means of examples.


Keywords

God concept; J Gericke; Old Testament studies; philosophy; interdisciplinarity; modernism; decoloniality

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