The Critical Asian Principle or in short CAP is something Union Theological Seminary, Philippines can be proud of. It was formulated and introduced by our former president Emerito P. Nacpil. Since the inception and eventually adopted as a bases doing theology in Asia, CAP has been playing a vital role in unearthing the richness of Asian thought in doing theology. The primary concerns of the CAP is realizing each day in many of the Asian nations i.e. promoting theological education which is basically Asian and its distinctiveness in reaching and doing theology to the various communities in Asia.
Our uniqueness as Asian; our cultures, religious needs and questions, our experiences etcetera etcetera, are distinct from the thoughts and experiences of other parts of the world. Our distinctiveness and uniqueness calls for such principle as CAP. So that it will be able to address the issues and concerns of the Asian community effectively. Having subscribed to CAP doesn’t necessarily exclude other theologies or thoughts as many opined. Rather it is given priority to the CAP in such a way that we have a platform of our own to do theology which eventually is helpful to us. It is beyond doubt that some of the ideas and thoughts, especially from those developed nations are not applicable here in the Asian context. Written from different perspectives and world, it failed to address the issues and concern of our Asian community in many ways. Only if our forefather could see CAP two hundred years ago, it would have been a different story altogether now. CAP is daring endeavor! We decided to stand neck and neck with the ‘already popular-and-settled’ theologies of the developed nations. We are second to none; for God created us equally. Who is more? And who is less? We can’t expect others to go ahead of us all the time. Or are we always expecting developed nations to give us new ideas and thoughts. Many of us will comfortably sit back and wait for others to come up. We have inferiority complex in doing theology, thinking that we are no comparison to others. CAP is a stepping stone to break away from such feeble mind, which is deeply implanted by others and sometime by ourselves. Now is the time to work earnestly, laying the foundation for the generation to come.
The strength lies in the rich experiences of our people. Asian are basically religious people. We can observe from the fact that all the major religions we know today are born from Asia. It is an indication that Asians are religious by nature.
Due to ignorance of our learned people, we don’t have enough scholars and literature to do theology in compare to the myriads of western scholarships. The mindsets of the students also post a huge challenge for the CAP. Western ideas and thoughts are readily accepted without much debate or sometimes we debate over western thoughts upon western thought. In one way, it is the weakness of CAP in her inability to capture the mindsets of the students.
Our uniqueness as Asian; our cultures, religious needs and questions, our experiences etcetera etcetera, are distinct from the thoughts and experiences of other parts of the world. Our distinctiveness and uniqueness calls for such principle as CAP. So that it will be able to address the issues and concerns of the Asian community effectively. Having subscribed to CAP doesn’t necessarily exclude other theologies or thoughts as many opined. Rather it is given priority to the CAP in such a way that we have a platform of our own to do theology which eventually is helpful to us. It is beyond doubt that some of the ideas and thoughts, especially from those developed nations are not applicable here in the Asian context. Written from different perspectives and world, it failed to address the issues and concern of our Asian community in many ways. Only if our forefather could see CAP two hundred years ago, it would have been a different story altogether now. CAP is daring endeavor! We decided to stand neck and neck with the ‘already popular-and-settled’ theologies of the developed nations. We are second to none; for God created us equally. Who is more? And who is less? We can’t expect others to go ahead of us all the time. Or are we always expecting developed nations to give us new ideas and thoughts. Many of us will comfortably sit back and wait for others to come up. We have inferiority complex in doing theology, thinking that we are no comparison to others. CAP is a stepping stone to break away from such feeble mind, which is deeply implanted by others and sometime by ourselves. Now is the time to work earnestly, laying the foundation for the generation to come.
The strength lies in the rich experiences of our people. Asian are basically religious people. We can observe from the fact that all the major religions we know today are born from Asia. It is an indication that Asians are religious by nature.
Due to ignorance of our learned people, we don’t have enough scholars and literature to do theology in compare to the myriads of western scholarships. The mindsets of the students also post a huge challenge for the CAP. Western ideas and thoughts are readily accepted without much debate or sometimes we debate over western thoughts upon western thought. In one way, it is the weakness of CAP in her inability to capture the mindsets of the students.
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