When Dogmatics Colonises Theology

Abstract

This article offers a sustained Pacific decolonial response to Myk Habets’s essay, “The Vagaries of Theology: Thomas F. Torrance and Practical Theology,” which defends Thomas F. Torrance’s Christocentric dogmatics as the normative centre of theology and critiques contextual, Indigenous, and Pacific theologies as at risk of becoming “atheological.” I argue that Habets’s assessment reflects a colonising function of dogmatics when Eurocentric theological epistemologies are universalised and Indigenous modes of theological reasoning are marginalised. Drawing exclusively on verifiable, peer-reviewed Pacific theological scholarship—particularly the work of Jione Havea, Upolu Lumā Vaai, Mercy Ah Siu-Maliko, and Katalina Tahaafe-Williams—I demonstrate that Pacific theology is deeply Christological, scriptural, ecclesial, and ethically accountable. Far from being atheological, Pacific theology exposes the provincialism of Western dogmatics and calls theology toward epistemic humility, relationality, and attentiveness to land, ocean, and lived realities in Oceania.