ABSTRACT
This chapter places some recent writing on tragedy and trauma within a framework of seven key methods or models of theological reflection as set out in Theological Reflection: Methods by Elaine Graham, Heather Walton and Frances Ward (London, 2nd Edition, 2019). By analysing different genres of theological reflection within trauma literature, I demonstrate how writers handle the sources and resources of tradition, Scripture, experience and culture to address profound issues relating to corporate and individual meaning in the face of suffering. Such an approach to theological understanding places emphasis on the practices of faith that enable people to discern ways of healing and wholeness in the face of suffering and aims to articulate a form of ‘practical wisdom’ for the church. It is a question of how to approach the sources and insights of both tradition and practice as resources for practical theological understanding, in the hope that renewed practices of reading, telling, blessing and caring might embody a new way of speaking of God in the light of tragedy.
