Abstract

NELL, I.A.. Calvin as "practical theologian": The contribution of a theodramatic paradigm. In Skriflig (Online) [online]. 2011, vol.45, n.1, pp.97-120. ISSN 2305-0853.

In order to ask the question about the role and place of a specific discipline (in this case Practical Theology), one must realise where one comes from. This article seeks to answer the question about the role of Practical Theology within the field of theology in conversation with some perspectives offered by the sixteenth-century reformer, John Calvin. It is argued that Calvin lived in a century that scholars regard as one of the golden periods in which the world of the arts and theatre flourished. Hence Calvin's age was characterised by a dramatic vision of human existence and such a vision also had an impact on his own theological thinking. Against this backdrop, the article engages the question of the role and place of practical theology by proposing a theodramatic approach in which the possibilities that the notion of "re-dramatisation" holds, come to the fore.

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