Panel: COMMUNICATING INDUCTIVE THEOLOGY



942.2 - TEACHING INDUCTIVE THEOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

AUTHORS:
Graff-Kallevåg K. (MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society ~ Oslo ~ Norway)
Text:
This paper examines the implications of inductive theology for teaching systematic theology in higher education. Drawing on practice-oriented approaches to theology, the paper explores how inductive theology challenges pedagogical models that begin with established doctrines and theoretical frameworks without bringing them into dialogue with theology and religion found in everyday life. Instead, the paper investigates how theological knowledge can be formed in educational settings that take empirical material, lived experience, and concrete practices as their starting point. The paper builds theoretically on Geir Afdal's concept of distributed normativity (2021) and Hanna Reichel's understanding of theology as design (2023), with particular attention to the affordances of doctrine. These perspectives are used to argue that normativity in theology is not produced exclusively within academic discourse but emerges through participation in multiple practices, including those brought into the classroom by students. From this perspective, teaching inductive theology involves engaging students in processes where empirical material and theological concepts are brought into reflective interaction, rather than transmitting pre-established theological interpretations. Drawing on practice theory, learning is in this paper understood as participation in and transformation of practices, where disturbance, negotiation, and re-articulation play a central role. The paper argues that inductive theology invites a reconceptualization of learning in systematic theology as a process of theological formation where lived experiences and concrete practices are brought into dialogue with academic and ecclesial theological interpretations, through which theological knowledge is developed, tested, and revised. In this way, the paper contributes to the panel's interest in how inductive theology reshapes the teaching and communication of theology in academic contexts.