Bridging the Gap Between Our Stated Theology and Our Lived Theology: Fellipe do Vale at LATC 2025

I’ve been sharing brief interviews with the theologians who will be presenting papers at Los Angeles Theology Conference 2025 (Mar 12-14, registration here). I really enjoyed Fellipe do Vale’s answers to these questions, and am looking forward to his paper in which he works out an applied soteriology that goes from a high-level Augustinian account of the nature of sin all the way down to… clothes!

Q: LATC 2025’s theme is Receiving Redemption, and it focuses on how salvation is received by human persons and communities. Why did this aspect of soteriology catch your attention and make you propose a paper on it?

A: I am endlessly interested in finding out about the reception of our salvation impacts how we live our daily lives. So often, we have a “stated theology” about redemption and a very different “lived theology”; I think this is a problem, and want to articulate Christian doctrine in such a way that this gap is bridged.

Q: The title of your paper is “‘Sin Consists Not in the Things Themselves, but in the Unlawful Use of Them:’ An Approach to the Moral Analysis of Contextual Goods.”  How will you be approaching the conference theme in this paper?

A: I am looking to develop a way of looking at contextual goods—like our clothing and food—that displays the impact of our redemption without making a context-free and timeless list of what Christians should dress or eat like. I believe the answer lies in Augustine’s claim that sin lies in the use of an object, and not in the object itself. I believe this has deep resonances with a Christian theology of idolatry. I then try to apply it to the case study of clothes.

Q: Can you describe how this paper fits in with your previous theological work, or with your recent scholarship?

A: I work in the space where theological anthropology and moral theology meet; ie., I want to know what it means to be human and how to do it well. Doing it well, I believe, involves living a redeemed life, even in relation to ostensibly “mundane” areas of life like our clothes.

Q: What are you looking forward to at the conference? Are there any papers or theological issues that have especially caught your eye?

A: I’ve heard this is a terrific conference! It has the perfect balance of interpersonal engagement and scholarly presentation. It is really hard to pick just a few papers, since they all sound so interesting, but Kyle Barton’s paper on deification and human distinctiveness looks fascinating, as does Cambria Kaltwasser’s paper on friendship and growth.