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4. In search of theoretical frames
Following an empirical-theological method it is mandatory to clarify the theological and the human sciences theoretical guidelines that will structure this research.
4.1 Theological theory
To be able to understand the problem of faith in God we have to overcome the disciplinary fragmentation still present in many theology schools curricula between Mystery of God, Evangelization and De Fides.
The Scripture and the best ecclesial Tradition always defended the existence of a strong nexus between a certain kind of relation with God and the acceptance of a determined image of God.
In the Old Testament, to believe is to trust in God, as in a solid rock. Believe in God is not an optional to the subject; it is a central and structuring experience.
In the New Testament, faith retains all the characteristics found in the Old Testament but now specified by the connection to Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, His person, acts, words, death and resurrection, are presented as the highest point of God self-revelation. Because of that, the faith act turns around the person of Jesus and His soteriologic potential.
In the ecclesial Tradition will remain a permanent link between a subjective dimension of faith and a objective one, between fides qua and fides quae. If the core of the faith act is the trust and the meeting with the saving God in Jesus, such experience requests the acceptance of the contents associated with that experience (the facts and words of Jesus and all the catechetical synthesis made by the apostolic community).
According to Dei Verbum 5, faith in God is the convergence of two freedoms: between God, that reveals Himself in history and the human person that surrenders his life to Him. The human component of the faith act must not be neglected.
Christian faith is normatively defined by christocentrism. But one that leads to the confession of the triune God: Father, Son and Spirit.
Believing in God is, obviously, a personal experience (credo) but also an ecclesial one (credimus). “The place where the faith is born is the concrete history of men (…) Even if faith is not reducible to sociological laws, she appears and explains it self in a community.” The community is the place where faith in God happens as ecclesial act.
Faith is a fundamental choice in favour of God and it’s project. To believe in God is always associated with a transformative and ortopraxic dimension. To believe in God causes change in the understanding and action upon self and external reality.
But a proper theological reflection upon this process of believing in God should always incorporate a inculturation-contextualization perspective. To think about the adolescents praxis of faith is a task where attention must be paid to the cultural, socio-political and eco-economic aspects of the environment where such praxis exists. This theological perspective should also extend to the fact that the social representation of the adolescents under scrutiny appears on a consensual model and not on a reified one, as is the case of our usual theological production.
4.2 Human sciences theory
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 which 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 repertoire 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 processes 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.
Abric and the Aix-en-Provence school inaugurated a structural approach to TRS. According to this approach SR are internally structured in two systems: the central and the peripheral systems. The central system (noyau central) is rigid, coherent and stable. Defines the homogeneity of the group and is connected to the group history. The central system is responsible for organizing the representations. The peripheral elements are more flexible. They change more often, are more conditioned by the context, integrate the individual experience.
Social representations are embodied in different modes and mediums . There are four modes of representation: habitual behaviour, individual cognition, informal communication and formal communication. The mediums of representation can be associated with body movement, words, visual images and non-linguistic sounds.