Back to Where We Came From

Daniel Ang and I dropped our final episode for season 3 of Awkward Asian Theologians over the weekend, and we took the season home by talking about home.

We started our episode - “Back to Where We Came From” with looking at home not only as a place of physical security, but psychic security as well. Against this backdrop, we interrogated the all too easy association between security and the lack of change.

As opposed to the equation of home as the “fixed address”, we submitted that it is not only more historically, but also more scripturally consonant for home to sit in tension with the more consistent pattern of migration, however large or small scale and however near or far. This then raised a question for us, on whether one can then meaningfully link speaking of home to speaking of faith.

With reference to the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, we submitted that there was.

As I wrote in an article for Church Life Journal, Ratzinger suggested that home can be synonymous with faith when home is not so much a “where” as “who”. In his Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger juxtaposed the religion of Israel’s surrounding nations (organised around territory) and Israel (organised around the person of God). The times when Israel lacked a stable locus, forced it to come to terms with leaning on God’s person as their source of stability which, precisely because it was God’s personhood and not territory that underpinned the relationship, ensured God’s transcendence over Israel (and the surrounding nations) as well as His intimacy with the people of Israel.

Having come to the end of season 3, we will be taking a break from putting out new material, but stay tuned for season 4, coming out in July.

In the meantime, “Back to Where We Came From” can be listened to in full on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts.