Reread a bit of Grenz & Franke's proposals about theology and culture in their Beyond Foundationalism. They caterogised theologising for cultural relevance into three 'methods', which I found interesting:
1. Correlation (Tillich, Kaufmann, Tracy, etc.)
Assume a universal human reality (via philosophical - and usually existential - questioning), and construct a theological edifice. A cultural philosophy in Gospel dress?
Won't be too favourable given Tillich's relatively 'bad boy' name among evangelicals, plus the (over?)-emphasis and use of existentialism.
2. Contextualisation (Schreiter, Kraft, Bevans, Hiebert, Bosch, etc.)
Assume a transcendent (Platonic?) culture-free gospel, engage a particular culture, and construct a 'local theology'. Gospel in local dressing?
Hot. Everyone's on board the contextualisation train these days (even yours truly is keen, grin). One's eventual construct will depend on one's take about the merits of culture as a whole, which itself depends on one's view of the "Christ And?/Against?/In?/Through?/With?Of? Culture" debate. The more traditionally minded will lean more towards the faith's distinctives but others may prefer to let cultural particularities lead the way.
3. Interaction (Grenz, Franke, Dyrness, Gunton, etc.)
Listening, scrutinizing and responding to a local culture with Christian motifs (Trinity, eschatology and community), allowing culture to be transformed by Gospel and theological construction to be informed by culture. Gospel and culture in dance?
Result: Many different 'culture-types' of Gospel(s), all pointing to one God, Lord and Saviour, and united by salvation-history as recorded in Scripture? This is presumably the post-conservative approach, the major characteristic being that proponents are less hesistent in rethinking and re-constructing traditional theology in response to the culture they're working in.
Interactionism would also be the trajectory that post-modernity inclined theologians would take (see chapt. 4 of Roger Olson's Reformed and Always Reforming for a hopefully balanced observation of this phenomenon).
Needless to say, often the lines between the methods cum models are blurred, other models may emerge and theologies/(ians) may overlap.
A good example is Hwa Yung (in Mangoes and Banans) holds fast to the ecumenical creeds of the early Church councils (as a criteria of faithfulness to the tradition) in the process of insisting that a truly contextual theology must be socio-political, pastoral/evangelistic and adequately inculturated.
This would make him a good contextualiser, except along the way he also jettisons inerrancy and encourages 'Asian' thinking, which might make certain parties question his evangelical credentials. Nevertheless, he doesn't actually construct any new theological concepts, forms or categories (at least not in the book), and so perhaps it might be too early to tag him an interactionist.
Sherman's two-part piece, A Universal Core? (pt.1 and pt.2), is another good reflection along these lines. He speaks approvingly of the emergent approach of theologising with a 'time-sensitive' and 'perennially changing' core to the Christian faith and even says this is the only true approach a contextualised theology can take. On the other hand, he limits the role of culture to merely raising questions which 'move' the core somehow without redefining it.
Whilst no doubt more thinking needs to be done, I suppose these models can help crystallize our thinking, so we can chart a (better) way forward.
