I have been at the IASYM conference for the past few days and whilst hearing some good stuff and having some great conversations, it has raised issues for me around the academic paradigm and theology as a tool for control and reinforced some questions I had around Grenz and Franke model for re-imagining within a triangle of Tradition, Culture and Scripture. Andrew Root presented a paper looking at christopraxis, and how this takes place within a bracket – on one side Theological and Biblical Norms and on the other side a cultural perspective (that any action must not do harm to another person) so you seek to work out the will of God for a given situation swinging between the brackets. You can download the papers here. Whilst I agree in part with the brackets (the cultural perspective which I link with orthopraxis) the question for me is how these models can restrict change through a restriction of the heretical imperative or the surplus in the theological text, because this is outside the theological side of the bracket. Can we widen the bracket as there is no one theological norm or tradition. How can we protect the imaginative practice and creativity and give this space and do theology?

I know this may be a slightly confused post but I hope you get the idea