not be taken as a call for the acceptance that exegetical or other theological work is within broader society without consequence; rather, soberness is pleaded for in this respect. Still, as scholars, when the famous Hugoean tenet that "on ne resiste pas a l'invasion des idees" ("the advance of [good] ideas cannot be halted" - Hugo 1879:464) meets the well-established conundrum within communication studies that positive attitudes do not always translate well into action (cf. e.g. Stiff & Mongeau 2003:55-77), it is to the former that exegetes should defer - albeit with modesty. However, exegesis is not activism. Theology does not straightforwardly produce engagement in the communities it serves. Yet, the better theologians do their theological work, the more solid and rich the theoretical framework will be with which to contribute to the formation of specialists in theology and outside it, in professional or in volunteer work (in traditional church language: in ordained or lay ministry). As a rule of thumb: the better the theology, the better the world - the same as with any other intellectual engagement. Though any effects are hardly as direct as would be welcomed by idealism or strong commitment to a cause, the alternative would be even less desirable. That would namely be to contribute poor theology to a noble cause, which does neither the cause nor theology any good. In addition, much else that could have been better is negatively affected along this route. Theo-logians do God-talk best, with much greater depth, validity, nuance and elegance than practitioners of any other discipline can offer. When theological work of the highest calibre is not rendered, it means that theology cannot render service to the widest horizons. This would stand in direct contradiction to the practical love premises of faith and to the commitments of contextual engagement by theologians.To take this one step further: the earlier insistence in a then divided South Africa that contextual theology stands over against a kind of esoteric or "needle point" theology - often brusquely worded as African and Black theology over against Western theology, or as relevant versus outdated approaches to theology - no longer has the valid resonance it carried in earlier decades. Continuing with such an inaccurate analysis in our context may perhaps feed into familiar earlier understandings, but currently it plays in a damaging way into the hands of the modernist assumption that theology has nothing valid to offer within the intellectual atmosphere of university life: that faith is for the most part non-reason/able.The latter assumption is a contextual fallacy of modernism that ought not to be carried through within postmodernism which, as a more humanely accommodating understanding of our life world, recognises again seemingly non-concrete aspects of humanity such as ethics, spirituality and ecology. Least of all should this assumption be carried forward as we enter the intellectual climate of post-secularism referred to above. Though many arguments from principle may be advanced, for the moment the pragmatic argument will already state the point strongly enough: despite the fact that the existence or non existence of God is beyond