Page - 58 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:1

58 | www.limina-graz.eu robert J. schreiter | Globalization and Plural theologies mensions, but also relate these identities so discerned to the Christian tra- dition and the enduring message of the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. I posited some years ago that, in their interaction with the forces of glo- balization, they bring a kind of “universal” voice of a shared humanity to engaging globalization (Schreiter 1997, 15–21). While keenly aware of the potentially hegemonic character of Enlightenment universalisms, I pro- posed that one could see four “global flows” in theology. A global flow is constituted by sets of local discourses about given topics that are mutually intelligible to one another yet together provide a common network of ad- dressing urgent issues facing large swaths of humankind. These four flows are: theologies of liberation, theologies of feminism, ecological theologies, and theologies of human rights. They engage enduring issues of poverty and oppression, of gender equity, of climate change, and the plight of those denied human rights. In engaging these issues, they bring a Christian voice to the larger struggles in these four areas as they join those of other faiths and those who are secular in tackling the thorny challenges the entire world faces. In this process, two things emerge. First, they sketch an alternative to abstract universals that are now under suspicion in a postmodern world. While the critiques of the postcolonial situation and of postmodernity have laid stress on the abstract and often hegemonic character of Enlightenment universals, there is nonetheless a need to find common ground upon which to act together. Second, while it does not give a firm definition of the human as a basis for a shared humanity, it operates in a kind of negative dialectic by addressing what is not human in such a way as to move dialectically to- ward a greater sense of the human. Edward Schillebeeckx tried to articulate something of this in his two volumes on Christology (Schillebeeckx 1974; 1977). In the fourth part of his first volume, he sees humanity as not able to define itself theoretically, but as moving toward a humanum which will be realized in an eschatological future (Schillebeeckx 1974, 488–501). In the second volume, he tried to take this a step further in articulating what he called “anthropological constants” that hold every expression of the human, but by themselves do not articulate a full depiction of humanity (Schillebeeckx 1977, 671–683). While he owed his formulation to the secu- Four global flows: theologies of liberation, theologies of feminism, ecological theologies, and theologies of human rights.