Reconfigurating ecclesial identity : in conversation with Paul Ricoeur

Abstract

The complex interrelated histories of the family of churches within the Dutch Reformed Church pose serious historiographical questions. At the heart lies the methodological question of the representation of the past. This question is also central to Paul Ricoeur’s monumental work La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (translated in 2004 as Memory, history, forgetting). After giving a broad outline of Ricoeur’s overall argument in this book, the main body of this article attends to Ricoeur’s discussion of the uses and abuses of memory, as well as his theory of the three phases of the historical operation. The last section of the article draws in part on Ricoeur’s work and gives a brief outline of four trajectories that seek to contribute to the discussion regarding an adequate methodology for doing church history in Southern Africa today.