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4. In search of theoretical frames
To reach the chosen aims, social representations theory can provide the adequate theoretical frame to interpret the situation.

Social representations are a special kind of knowledge: common sense knowledge. It’s specificity is on the social processes that produces them. In social representations we are talking about as ensemble of knowledges, beliefs, shared by a group opinions, about a certain social object. Social representations have a double relation with their objects: symbolization and interpretation. This mix of symbolization and interpretation results from a mental activity who leads the subject to a particular production and to a specific construction of the object. The subject rebuilds the reality. Information coming from the object are categorized, transformed, upgraded. They evolve to give reality a substantial meaning. This reality building function is mainly social. The active role of the subject we just described is activated within the social field in which he is embedded. For that reason we say a representation is always social. They are the product of social interactions. It’s the richness of internal communications of the group (beliefs, values…) that conforms, channels, modifies and guides the individual production. And because those representations are shared by the individuals of a given group, they are different and contribute to differentiate this group form other groups.
Why to use the social representation theory? Because, in this context of complexity, cultural fragmentation and multivocality the usual praxis of predetermining a set of contents (derived from a theory or induced by the results of a exploratory research) is just not adequate. In the best of the chances, such procedure would give us a static “picture” of the reality, a single photogram of a moving scene. Instead, a social representation approach can make justice to the complex nature of the reality. A SR is not an attitude, a value system, a set of opinions nor a stereotype .
SRT has some theoretical premises:
1. Human reality is socially constructed; therefore the limits between subject and object are blurred;
2. This constructed reality is based on the interaction-communication process;
3. The forms of knowledge, which construct this reality and which equally constitute forms of communication, are different from each other and yet equivalent: the consensual and reified universes are differentiated forms of communication yet each one serves its function and communicates with the other;
4. The knowing subject is active and creative, relying on his notional stock as well as his values, interests and projects to decipher anything that is new to him;
5. In complex, multifaceted societies, in the era of information and high-speed communication, social representation is characteristic of the organization of social thought .
SRT predicts and interprets two kinds of phenomenon that can be useful to our research: mute zones and cognitive polyphasia.
Mute zone of Social representations is part of a representation that doesn’t get easily expressed. The mute zone is not the unconscious part of the social representations. It belongs to the conscience of the subject but can not be expressed by him on the normal conditions of interaction production, because some social contexts can be contranormative.
Cognitive polyphasia are common and natural in social representations. SR carry contradictory meanings. This is not disturbing as long a SR is locally consistent. People do not live in homogenous worlds. In the context of different life-worlds holding to “contradictory” representations makes sense. SR are not primarly veridical representations of reality but above all they are elaborations for social groups serving to maintain the stability of their particular life-world.

Using the SRT we are asking for the common sense theological theories the referents produce. With an open (as possible) mind I want to put their consensual knowledge under the spotlight. That is compatible with the fact that the researcher assumes explicitly his own theological theory (even if reified): a Trinitarian christocentrism that coexists as fides qua and as fides quae, as content about God and as relation towards God. This theological theory influences the design of the empirical research instrument and also the theological evaluation.
The search for a theological theory has a caveat on the fragmentation of theology curricula. Usually “Mystery of God”, “Announcement of the mystery of God” and “theology of faith” are different disciplines. ???