Towards Understanding of the Practice of Proclamation: The Core Element of Russian Baptist Worship, Timofey Cheprasov, 2015

convictions. In their book, McClendon and Smith argued that who we are, how we live and behave is defined by our convictions. Convictions are not just opinions (something that we easily acquire and reject); they constitute our real self.°° of faith, there should exist different types of theologies, like Catholic theology, Protestant theology, etc. (The Christian Faith, transl. H. R. Macintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh, T&T. Clark, 1968), pp 88-93). °8 McClendon, Ethics, p 22. Hans W. Frei approached the subject of theology from a similar perspective. Defining theology in his work, he indicated that theology should be viewed as ‘an instance of a general class or generic type and is therefore to be subsumed under general criteria of intelligibility, coherence, and truth that it must share with other academic disciplines.’ Moreover, according to him, theology is ‘an aspect of Christianity and is therefore partly or wholly defined by its relation to the cultural or semiotic system that constitutes that religion.’ (Types of Christian Theology, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992) p 2.) °° In a bit of a personal narrative of his experience with people and their understanding of theology McClendon wrote, ‘Thus my secret, or perhaps unconcealed, amazement when men reveal that they think of theology as essentially a tranquilizer of the urge to know the truth, or a coldstorage locker for preserving dogmas. For me theology has been more often a trial by ordeal, the very arena of conscientiousness. Given that personal history, one may ask why | did not abandon the discouragement of theological inquiry for some sunnier task. To which the best answer is the plain one that it still seems to me that there is no more important inquiry than the one which sets out to answer those whence and why and whither questions (or slightly updated versions of them), and my slow theological upbringing had the further effect of giving me time to discover that philosophers, for example, had no better answers to those questions than did their theological counterparts. In a word, some problems are hard problems, and turning away from them if they are my problems is neither easy nor a solution.’ (Biography as Theology, p 89). 6° McClendon and Smith, Convictions, p5. 154 There are two important assumptions in this definition. First is the assumption that convictions ‘are commonly shared,’ which means that both individual people and whole communities possess convictions. Furthermore, convictions produce a formative effect on those who share them. The second important element is implied in the definition that there are different kinds of convictions. As McClendon puts it, ‘One group may be formed by convictions about God and neighbour, another by convictions about guns, girls, and gold.” Obviously, different convictions influence one another, modifying and changing them. Thus, as conv