Yeago's Theology

1. In our Anglican parish, holding the Eucharist can also serve the same purpose as Yeago’s example of “sharing the peace.” Then, many theological questions pile up from the practice of the Eucharist such as: Why Jesus asked us to remember Him while we hold the Eucharist? And what should we remember? Do bread and wine really transform into Christ’s body and blood? If not, what are their symbolic meanings? How does the Eucharist reflect God’s salvation and reconciliation with human? What is the communal sense in the Eucharist?..

2 & 3. Yeago does not insist one have to be a Christian in order to “do theology.” As he states, “It is possible…to ask interesting questions about God and the world without any special reference to the Church…to ask questions about Jesus himself from a purely individualistic or academic or political or moral or other non-Church context.” (4) Yeago, however, carefully defines the paradigm of theology that is “a very particular tradition of reflection, a kind of ‘theology ‘ that is intimately involved with the life and witness of the Christian Church, and has been practiced in the Church at least since St. Paul. “(3) Theology is “not a specialist filed, an ivory tower occupation,” not a theoretical discipline but a practical one which closely relates to the life and witness of church. It concerns a tradition which Yeago calls it as the legacy of the Holy Apostles ¬– “the testimonies of the Holy Apostles, the original witnesses to the crucified and resurrected Christ.” (5) This tradition provides the meaning of the church so that the church lives on it by “receiving, holding-fast, handing on” to new believers and new generations. In here, Yeago stresses the theology attempts to “explicate and apply the ap...

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...d with the life and witness of the Christian Church. The major difference is, as well as surprise, Yeago offers me the foundation, the paradigm, to start in systematic theology. In before, I learned many theological themes and concepts such as: man, salvation, Christology and Trinity…But they are like separately pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I did not see a whole picture of that puzzle, the theology. Now, I can see the whole picture. I do not mean I pursue theology in full by finished one chapter. But I know where I should start – the Apostolic Tradition. It is originated from divine action, forms the core of Christian faith and provides us a solid foundation to construct our systematic theology. Even we read the Bible, practice Baptism, the Eucharist, confess our sins, we should do in the context of Apostolic Tradition, under the rule of faith as Yeago stresses on.