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newsletter of the
International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher
Education
ISSN: 1521-9631
Vol. 13, No. 1, continued.
November, 2001
Academic
Insert
Scholarship
at the Crossroads: Exploring Lesslie Newbigin’s
Missionary
Model of Contextualization
Dr.
Michael Goheen, Redeemer University College
Ancaster,
Ontario, Canada
The
goal of this paper is to explore the relationship between the gospel, culture,
and one aspect of cultural development–scholarship.Understanding the nature of
faithful Christian scholarship depends on a proper understanding of the deeper
relationship between the gospel and culture.Scholarship is a cultural product,
and Christian scholarship seeks to bring the light of the gospel to bear on
that particular area of culture.It is the relationship of gospel and culture
that has been essential to the cross?cultural missionary task for the last two
centuries.In the last three decades a rich and copious literature has emerged
on the subject of contextualization or the relation of gospel to culture that
appropriates the insights of the missionary experience.
Lesslie
Newbigin’s book Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture
opens with an interesting observation on this topic.On the one hand, the
relationship between the gospel and culture is not a new subject.One thinks,
for example, of the classic study of H. Richard Niebuhr who proposed five
models of the relation of Christ to culture, and of work of Paul Tillich, who
struggled toward what he called a ‘theology of culture’ (Niebuhr 1951; Tillich
1959).However, the majority of work has been done by scholars who have not had
the missionary experience of communicating the gospel to a radically foreign
culture.On the other hand, the last three decades have witnessed a spate
of studies on the issue of gospel and culture within the discipline of
missiology under the general rubric ‘contextualization studies.’Missionaries
have become more aware of the western captivity of the gospel and have
struggled more with the issue of the gospel and culture.Yet while "it has
sought to explore the problems of contextualization in all the cultures of
humankind from China to Peru, it has largely ignored the culture that is the
most widespread, powerful, and persuasive among all contemporary cultures—
namely . . . modern Western culture" (Newbigin 1986:2?3).To put Newbigin’s
observation another way, the missionary experience and tradition has gained
penetrating insight into the issue of gospel and culture but this tradition has
not been appropriated into mainstream western scholarship to shed light on the
issue of gospel and culture, and more particularly on the relationship between
the gospel and western culture.This is a great loss because the missionary
experience of cross?cultural witness offers important insight into the
gospel?culture relation.
Newbigin
spent almost forty years of his life as a missionary in India.
Out of this missionary experience has come rich insight into the gospel and
culture issue–insight which has important implications for faithful Christian
scholarship.Newbigin is one of the leading missionary thinkers and statesmen of
the 20th century with an incredible breadth and variety of experience, and with
the unusual ability to clearly communicate difficult concepts.This
paper briefly surveys Lesslie Newbigin’s missionary contribution to the issue
of gospel and culture with an eye to its relevance to faithful Christian
scholarship.
Model of
Cross?Cultural Communication
Newbigin’s understanding of the
relation of gospel to culture was shaped by his experience of the
cross?cultural communication of the gospel.Street preaching was a regular
evangelistic activity for Newbigin during his early missionary days in
India.The question that pressed itself upon him was, ‘how can one preach to a
crowd of people who have never heard of Jesus?’ Cross?cultural communication of
the gospel means that the evangelist must relate himself or herself to the
culture in two ways; indeed for the missionary maintaining both relations is a
matter of life and death.On the one hand, there must be solidarity; the
evangelist must use the language of the hearer.If there is to be communication,
the evangelist must use cultural forms that are familiar to the hearer.The
gospel must be ‘at home’ in the culture.On the other hand, there must be
conflict; the language uses terms that reflect a worldview or foundational
religious commitments by which the hearer must make sense of the world.These
foundational assumptions are in conflict with the gospel.The gospel is ‘at
odds’ with the culture.The Tamil language, for example, is a shared way of
understanding the world that reflects Hindu faith commitments.As such it
expresses commitments that are irreconcilable with the gospel.Therefore, there
will be a clash of ultimate commitments between the gospel and Hindu
culture.Thus cross?cultural communication of the gospel will call into question
the underlying worldview implicit in that language.The problem is how to use
the language and yet call into question the worldview that shapes that
language.
Newbigin
illustrates the problem with his evangelistic preaching in India (Newbigin
1978:1?3).What word can be used by the missionary to introduce Jesus to a
population who has no idea of who he is? Swamy, meaning Lord, offers a
possibility.The problem is that there are many lords—three hundred and thirty
million of them according to Hindu tradition—and if Jesus is just one more lord
there are more important matters to attend to than a message about another swamy.Avatar
seems like an obvious choice since it refers to the descent of God in
creaturely form to put down the power of evil and establish the faltering rule
of righteousness.The trouble here is that avatar is bound up in a
cyclical worldview that cannot ascribe finality to any avatar the way
the finality of Christ is portrayed in the Scriptural story.Maybe one could just
begin to tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth.But if one proceeds in this way,
Jesus will be identified with the world of maya, the world of passing
events which is simply illusion in the Hindu tradition.Indian hearers will lose
all interest.All other attempts—kadavul, supreme transcendent god; satguru,
teacher who initiates his disciple into the experience of realization; adipurushan,
the primal man who is the beginning of all creation; chit, the
intelligence and will which constitute the second member of the triad of
ultimate reality—eventually founder on the same problem: "What all these
answers have in common is that they necessarily describe Jesus in terms of a
model which embodies an interpretation of experience significantly different
from the interpretation which arises when Jesus is accepted as Lord
absolutely" (Newbigin 1978:2?3).
In
the work of evangelism, two dangers present themselves–irrelevance and
syncretism.If the evangelist is to be relevant, he or she must employ the
language, risking the absorption of the gospel into the reigning worldview.Then
the gospel loses its power to challenge cultural idolatry.If the evangelist is
relevant, he or she risks syncretism.The problem is how can the missionary be
both relevant and faithful to the gospel.This problem moves far beyond
evangelism to the relation of the gospel to all cultural products.In relation
to the problem of gospel and culture, the burning question for Newbigin is: how
does one avoid the twin problems of irrelevance and syncretism?
Yet there is more to the problem of the
cross?cultural communication of the gospel.The issue is distorted if it is
considered simply as the missionary’s attempt to communicate a culture?free
gospel into a pagan environment.The communication process enabled Newbigin to
realize how deeply his own understanding of the gospel was shaped by the
culture from which he had come, and that western culture was also in conflict
with the gospel.In his writings, Newbigin describes a number of events that
enabled him to see just how deeply his own understanding and embodiment of the
gospel was shaped by his western roots (Goheen 2000:40?41).Especially
noteworthy were his weekly meetings with Hindu monks at the Ramakrishna
monastery where he studied the Svetasvara Upanishad and the gospel of John with
them.Here he learned to "see the profound rationality of the world?view of
the Vedanta" (Newbigin1993:54).He reflects his experience prior to India
when he writes:
My
confession of Jesus as Lord is conditioned by the culture of which I am a
part.It is expressed in the language of the myth within which I live.Initially
I am not aware of this as a myth.As long as I retain the innocence of a
thoroughly indigenous western man, unshaken by serious involvement in another
culture, I am not aware of this myth.It is simply ‘how things are’. . . No myth
is seen as a myth by those who inhabit it: it is simply the way things are
(Newbigin 1978a:3).
An encounter
with the "immense power and rationality of the Vendantin’s vision of
reality" enabled Newbigin to understand the formative power of western
culture on him (Newbigin 1982:ix).The problem of gospel and culture that he
encountered in India is not simply a problem there; all cultures are shaped by
foundational religious commitments that distort its forms and
institutions.There will always be a tension between gospel and culture.
The
more deeply the church senses the contradiction between the gospel and the
idolatrous foundational assumptions that shape the culture, the more the
unbearable tension of living between two different worldviews is felt.As
Newbigin moved to Britain and engaged western culture, he stressed the public
doctrine of the West as a story.Both the gospel and the worldview of
western culture are in the form of a story–an interpretation of universal
history.The people of God find themselves at the crossroads between two stories.
This unbearable tension of living at
the crossroads arises from three factors.First, the church is part of a society
that embodies a cultural story.That cultural story is rooted in an idolatrous
religious faith, is determinative of every part of human life, and is embodied
by a community.By virtue of the creation mandate, the church is part of that
community that embodies this pattern of social life.Second, the Christian
community finds its identity in another story, one that is also rooted in
faith, equally comprehensive, and also socially embodied.The gospel is not a
disembodied message, "an ethereal something disinfected of all human cultural
ingredients," but is always incarnated in a community (Newbigin
1989:188).Third, the unbearable tension emerges because of ‘two embodiments’ in
the life of God’s people.As members of the cultural community, the church is
shaped by the cultural story.As members of the new humankind, if they are
faithful they are shaped by the Biblical story.Therefore, the embodiment of the
gospel will always be shaped by the culture: “there is not and cannot be a
gospel which is not culturally embodied" (Newbigin 1989:189). The
tension arises because the gospel and the cultural story are at odds and yet
‘meet’ in the life of the people of God.Contextualization is not the meeting of
a disembodied message and a rationally articulated understanding of culture; to
pose the issue in that way is both abstract and dualistic (Newbigin
1989:188?189).The encounter between gospel and culture happens in the life of
the community called to live in the story of the Bible.The people of God
incarnate the intersection of gospel and culture; the incompatibility of the
two stories, even "radical contradiction" (Newbigin 1987:4), produces
an unbearable tension.Hendrik Kraemer, who perhaps shaped Newbigin more than
any other person, writes: "The deeper the consciousness of the tension and
the urge to take this yoke upon itself are felt, the healthier the church
is.The more oblivious of this tension the Church is, the more well established
and at home in the world it feels, the more it is in deadly danger of being the
salt that lost its savor" (Kraemer 1956:36).Authentic contextualization is
the faithful resolution of this tension.
The
implications for Christian scholarship are evident.The Christian scholarly
community also finds itself at the crossroads of two stories.On the one hand,
we are part of the broader western scholarly community and tradition shaped by
our cultural story that embodies certain idolatrous faith commitments.On the
other hand, we are called to carry out our scholarly endeavours in the
Christian academic community shaped by the Biblical story rooted in a faith
commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.In reference to Christian scholarship,
Al Wolters nicely summarizes this:
.
. . Christians of whatever tradition . . . have to recognize in principle the de
facto influence of the Western philosophical tradition in their own
thinking.This means we are all to some extent synthesis thinkers–meaning
by that term the intermingling in a single perspective of both biblical and
unbiblical patterns of thought. . . . we must begin with what is historically
given.No one can start in history with a clean slate.To attempt to do so is
like trying to make a sudden turn at high speed in a car.You may end up facing
the opposite way, but you’ll still be travelling in the same direction (Wolters
1975:15).
The ‘unbearable
tension’ (as Newbigin calls it) between scholarship shaped by the western
tradition and scholarship shaped by the gospel must be felt if Christian
scholarship is to be healthy and faithful.
Both
Newbigin in describing his evangelistic activity, and Wolters in discussing the
task of Christian scholarship, refuse the options of withdrawal and
accommodation as a resolution to the tension.Newbigin states this in terms of
the dangers of syncretism and irrelevance; Wolters opposes the options of
evasion and domestication (Wolters 1975:14).Christian scholars can neither
evade the western scholarly tradition nor can they allow themselves to be
accommodated to or domesticated by it.It seems that these two dangers are
realized again and again in Christian scholarship.Yet tension is essential to
faithful Christian scholarship.
How
can this tension be resolved? What is the path of authentic or faithful
contextualization? Newbigin offers a way to the faithful contextualization of
the gospel (or more accurately, the faithful contextualizations of the gospel)
that includes three elements: faithfulness to the Scriptural story, a dialogue
with the varied cultures of humankind, and openness to the ecumenical
fellowship of all Christians (Newbigin 1978:10?22).
Faithfulness
to the Scriptural Story
The
starting point for Newbigin’s understanding of faithful contextualization is
the primacy of the gospel: the affirmation that the church begins by attending
to the story of Scripture as its ultimate commitment, understanding the culture
in the context of the Biblical story.If there is to be a missionary encounter
between the gospel and the foundational religious commitments of the culture
whether in evangelism or scholarship, there must be a proper understanding of
Scriptural authority.Newbigin writes: "One of the central issues involved
in a missionary encounter with our culture is the question: How do we appeal to
scripture as the source of authority . . . ?"(Newbigin 1984:13).The
problem that confronts the church in the West is that the Bible has been part
of the culture for so long that it has accommodated itself to the fundamental
assumptions of the culture and appears unable to challenge them.The response of
the Protestant church to the Enlightenment, where the religious assumptions of
the West came to mature expression, was to interpret the Bible in terms of the
ultimate faith commitments of the Enlightenment rather than the other way
round.Newbigin asks: "Have we got into a situation where the Biblical
message has been so thoroughly adapted to fit into our modern western culture
that we are unable to hear the radical challenge, the call for radical
conversion which it presents in our culture?" (1984:11).While many
Biblical scholars believe that the Enlightenment offered a neutral vantage
point from which to interpret the text, Newbigin responds: "The
Enlightenment did not (as is sometimes supposed) simply free the scholar from
the influence of ‘dogma’; it replaced one dogma by another" (1985:1).The
power of the Enlightenment dogma or faith commitment is such that it is
difficult to convince many modern Biblical expositors "to recognize the
creedal character of their approach" (Ibid).
Newbigin
points to four different dichotomies issuing from the Enlightenment that have
reshaped Scripture in the Enlightenment mould: fact?value, cause?purpose,
public?private, and subject?object (Goheen 2000:389?397).I will only touch on
the first–the fact?value–as it has important implications for our subject of
Christian scholarship.With autonomous scientific rationality as the arbiter and
criterion of public truth, only truth claims that can pass through the ‘screen’
of autonomous scientific reason are established as facts.All other claims are
relegated to the inferior epistemological realm of values which have not more
claim to truth than one’s personal preferences or tastes.
In
terms of Biblical authority, the church surrendered to this idol in at least
two ways. On the liberal side of the Christian fellowship, the Bible was split
by the fact?value dichotomy.On the one hand, the Bible was reduced to religious
experience, the world of values.The Bible narrates Israel’s religious
experience.On the other hand, liberal Biblical scholarship sought to determine
the ‘historical facts’ of the Bible by use of the higher?critical method.The
Bible as a true story of God’s mighty acts in history moving toward a goal for
the whole world is lost.On the conservative side of the Christian fellowship,
the Bible is simply reasserted as propositional truth in the fashion of
Enlightenment truth.Instead of breaking the Bible into historical?critical bits
as the liberal scholars do, the conservative wing of the church reshaped the
Biblical narrative into systematic theologies with systematic?theological
bits.In both cases, the Enlightenment understanding of facts is operative, and
the Biblical story loses its authority and can no longer issue a radical call
to conversion.When the Bible is fragmented into bits–higher?critical or
systematic?theological–the Bible is absorbed into the more ultimate story of
western culture.
Over against these proposals which
fragment and reshape Scripture, Newbigin contends for two aspects of Biblical
authority.First, the Bible displays the form of universal history and therefore
must be understood as a canonical whole (Newbigin 1989:89).When the process of
contextualization proceeds by selecting particular aspects of Scripture that
are most compatible with the patterns of various religions and cultures,
Scripture will be interpreted in the light of culture rather than culture in
the light of Scripture.Second, the Bible is not a book of religious or
theological ideas but rather tells the story of the mighty acts of God culminating
in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.For Newbigin, the central
difference between the Scriptural and Greek understanding of the world is to be
found in the nature of reliable truth: in the Greek worldview, truth is found
in timeless ideas, while in Scripture, truth is found in God’s historical acts,
especially in Jesus Christ, that move toward the goal of universal history.In
Jesus Christ, God has revealed and accomplished the end of history.It is
precisely at this point that Newbigin differs from many models of
contextualization advanced by evangelical and conservative Roman
Catholics.Contextualization is not the relation between timeless Biblical ideas
and culture, but between two different stories.When the Bible is turned into
timeless statements the real process of contextualization is subverted.
The
fact?value dichotomy has also crippled the authority of the Bible in the task
of scholarship.In his article “The Use of the Bible in Christian Scholarship,”
Sidney Greidanus rejects two uses of the Bible in Christian academic work that
are the result of the fact?value dichotomy.The first is dualism: the Bible
addresses itself to the spiritual realm, the realm of religious and moral
values, while science deals with the facts of the material world.Here the Bible
is declared irrelevant for all scientific investigation and there is no hope
for Christian scholarship.The second is Biblicism: the Bible speaks in
scientific terms and gives us data for our theorizing.While the first strategy
assigns the Bible to the realm of values, the second strategy reduces the Bible
to the notion of Enlightenment facts.Greidanus works out a way beyond these
Enlightenment options that involves three connections between the Bible and
scholarship: the Bible shapes a faith which bears fruit in scientific work; the
Bible offers a framework of reality that serves as a light for scientific
endeavour; and the Bible offers more specific norms that can guide the
Christian scholar in his or her scholarly activity (Greidanus 1982:144?147).
Faithful
contextualization requires a Christian (scholarly) community that lives in the
story of the Bible, and thereby discerns the word of grace and the word of
judgement that the Bible pronounces on culture.Faithful contextualization requires
a Christian scholarly community whose mind is shaped by the story of Scripture
in all its detail, enabling it to hear God’s ‘Yes’ and God’s ‘No’ to the
western tradition of non?Christian scholarship."True contextualization
accords the gospel its rightful primacy, its power to penetrate every culture
and speak within each culture, in its own speech and symbol, the word which is
both ‘No’ and ‘Yes,’ both judgment and grace" (Newbigin 1989:152).
Challenging
Relevance: Avoiding Syncretism and Irrelevance
Faithful
contextualization, secondly, involves a dialogue with the various cultures of
the world that avoids the twin problems of syncretism and irrelevance.The issue
is how all of culture can be both affirmed and rejected, how God’s ‘Yes’
and ‘No,’ God’s word of grace and judgment can be heard.Failure in
contextualization within a particular culture takes place when either of these
‘words’ of the gospel is suppressed.When God’s ‘No,’ his word of judgment, is
not applied, syncretism will be the result.The culture is simply affirmed and
the gospel is domesticated into the plausibility structure of the
culture.Alternately, when God’s ‘Yes,’ his word of grace, is not present,
irrelevance will be the result.The culture is rejected and, since cultural
embodiment is inevitable, the church will resort to a cultural form of the
gospel from another time or place, and will, thus, be irrelevant to its own
culture.
Newbigin
finds a solution to the issue of affirmation and rejection in two phrases—
challenging relevance and subversive fulfillment.The first term, the one used
most often, he borrows from Alfred Hogg (1945:9?26), and the second from
Hendrik Kraemer (1939:4).Both of these men were cross?cultural
missionaries–Hogg to India, Kraemer to Indonesia.Further, Newbigin’s employment
of the notion of subversive fulfillment in the dialogue between gospel and
culture is clearly indebted to Willem Visser’t Hooft (1967:13?14; Newbigin
1992:80; 1994:163).
For
Hogg, the missionary who refuses to employ Hindu concepts and institutions will
not be heard.At the same time, the danger of utilizing Hindu forms is the
possibility of "a Christianizing of Hinduism instead of an Indian way of
expressing Christianity" (Hogg 1945:23).The only way forward, according to
Hogg, is to employ the familiar images and forms of Hinduism which express the
religious longing of the Hindu and burst them open, giving them new meaning
with the fact of the gospel.Choosing a familiar category is inevitable, yet
challenging it is necessary because there is not straight line from Hinduism to
the gospel.Hogg illustrates this with Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel of the
kingdom.Jesus chooses the well?known category of the kingdom of God.However, he
did not simply accede to the current popular religious and cultural beliefs
about the kingdom; instead he challenged them, filling the notion with a new
understanding that called for repentance.The terms were familiar and relevant;
yet the proclamation challenged the distorted notions, calling for repentance.
Kraemer’s
notion of subversive fulfillment is quite similar (Kraemer 1939).The gospel
comes as fulfillment of the religious longing in the heart of humankind.Yet
there is not simply continuity; the gospel stands in contradiction to human
wisdom twisted by sin.Visser ’t Hooft utilizes Kraemer’s notion of subversive
fulfillment in the context of contextualization in culture.He writes:
Key?words
from other religions when taken over by the Christian Church are like displaced
persons, uprooted and unassimilated until they are naturalised.The uncritical
introduction of such words into Christian terminology can only lead to that
syncretism that denies the uniqueness and specific character of the different
religions and creates a grey relativism.What is needed is to re?interpret the
traditional concepts, to set them in a new context, to fill them with biblical
content.Kraemer uses the term "subversive fulfillment" and in the
same way we could speak of subversive accommodation.Words from the traditional
culture and religion must be used, but they must be converted in the way in
which Paul and John converted Greek philosophical and religious concepts
(Visser ’t Hooft 1967:13).
Newbigin
employs the notion of challenging relevance and subversive fulfillment to avoid
both syncretism and irrelevance.Like Visser ’t Hooft, he utilizes the model of
missionary communication that John offers in his gospel (Newbigin 1986:6;
1995b:336).Of the gospel of John, Newbigin writes:
I
suppose that the boldest and most brilliant essay in the communication of the
gospel to a particular culture in all Christian history is the gospel according
to John.Here the language and thought?forms of the Hellenistic world are so
employed that Gnostics in all ages have thought that the book was written
especially for them.And yet nowhere in Scripture is the absolute contradiction
between the word of God and human culture stated with more terrible clarity
(Newbigin1986:53).
John freely uses
the language and thought forms of classical religion and culture that form the
world of his hearers–light and darkness, body and soul, heaven and earth, flesh
and spirit, and more.Yet John uses this language and thought?forms in such a
way as to confront them with a fundamental question and indeed a
contradiction.John begins with the announcement, "In the beginning was the
logos." As he continues, it becomes apparent that logos is
not the impersonal law of rationality that permeates the universe giving it
order, but rather the man Jesus Christ.The logos became sarx.John
begins by identifying with the classical longing for the source of order
expressed in the term logos, but subverts, challenges, and contradicts
the idolatrous understanding that had developed in the classical world
(1982:1?3).In this way John is both relevant and faithful: relevant because he
uses familiar categories that express existential struggles, faithful because
he challenges with the gospel the idolatrous worldview that shapes those
categories calling for repentance.Similarly, in the Hindu context the
missionary must work with models, words, forms, and institutions the Hindu is
accustomed to use.But the missionary must challenge those forms with the fact
of the gospel.
The
notion of subversive fulfillment or challenging relevance is applicable not
only to language and verbal missionary communication.It is the process by which
the Christian community interacts with all the various institutions and customs
of its culture.The gospel speaks a ‘Yes’ and a ‘No’ to each cultural form—including
theories–‘Yes’ to the creational structure and ‘No’ the idolatrous
distortion.The church must discern what subversive solidarity means in each
situation.
Newbigin’s
understanding of challenging relevance or subversive fulfillment is similar to
Johann H.Bavinck’s understanding of possessio.Bavinck writes:
We
would . . . prefer to use the term possessio, to take possession [as
opposed to the common terms ‘adaptation’ and ‘accommodation’] . . . Within the
framework of the of the non?Christian life, customs and practices serve
idolatrous tendencies and drive a person away from God.The Christian life takes
them in hand and turns them in an entirely different direction; they acquire an
entirely different content.Even though in external form there is much that
resembles past practices, in reality everything has become new, the old has in
essence passed away and the new has come. . . . [Christ] fills each thing, each
word, and each practice with a new meaning and gives it new direction.Such is
neither ‘adaption’ nor accommodation; it is in essence the legitimate taking
possession of something by him to whom all power is given in heaven and on
earth (Bavinck 1960:178?179).
On
the one hand, Newbigin has elaborated the concept further than Bavinck and brought
it to bear on western culture.On the other hand, Bavinck has offered a more
solid theological and philosophical foundation for this concept than
Newbigin.This foundation is provided by Bavinck in his philosophical
understanding of culture and his theological understanding of creational
revelation and common grace.
There
are two important aspects of Bavinck’s analysis of culture that are
important.On the one hand, culture is a unified whole: "We regard them
[pagan religions and cultures] as powerful, life?controlling entities, as
complete indivisible structures, because each element coheres with all others
and receives its meaning from the total structures" (Bavinck 1960:173).On
the other hand, each aspect of culture is shaped by an idolatrous religious
core: "The entire culture, in all its manifestations, is a structural
totality, in which everything hangs together, and in which religion occupies a
central position" (Ibid).While both of these elements of culture
are implicit in Newbigin’s thought, they are insufficiently developed.
Affirming
only these two dimensions of culture by itself would lead to a pessimistic
analysis of culture which could only provide a basis for rejection but not
subversive fulfillment.Therefore, the second theological observation is equally
significant: God’s creational revelation or common grace continues to uphold
his creation and does not permit human idolatry to run its gamut.Bavinck
comments: "We must remember that although man has fallen from God, and
that the results of this fall are in evidence in his every thought and deed,
nevertheless, thanks to God’s common grace, man is safeguarded against complete
deterioration" (Ibid).
It
is precisely a recognition of both of these factors—the idolatrous shaping of
all culture and the powerful creation revelation of God.—that
provides a foundation for subversive fulfillment.Every custom, institution, and
practice of culture is corrupted by sin; yet the creational structure remains
because of God’s faithfulness to His creation.
This
approach to all cultural forms offers a way to deal with non?Christian
scholarship as a Christian academic community at the crossroads.The
neo?Calvinist or reformational tradition issuing from the Netherlands has used
the term “the inner reformation of the sciences.”Al Wolters describes this in
the following way: ". . . we must begin with what is historically given.
No one can start in history with a clean slate. . . .Reformation is working
along the grain of history, respecting what is good in the tradition and
bending it around to move in another direction" (1975:15).Henk Hart
describes it in the following way: "Christian scholars should work in
science for continuing reformation, changing science radically from within,
pulling its roots out of its traditionally idolatrous soil and transplanting
them in the soil of the gospel" (1988:14).Wolters suggests that the way
theories and concepts can be reformed or subverted from within is by asking
what the insight into the structure of creation is and how this insight has
become misdirected by religious idolatry (1978:12, 13).As a matter of fact, it
can be precisely at the point of idolatry that the insight into the creation
comes.Wolters writes:
Plato’s
distinction between perception and analysis (not made by his predecessors) . .
. is a real and valuable one . . . The neo?Platonic hierarchy of being, though
identified with the good?evil distinction, nevertheless points out many real
creational distinctions between e.g. space, physicality, vitality, perception,
and analysis.Kant can teach us much about the distinction between morality and
legality, and between the language of faith and the language of science and
ordinary experience.There is a great deal we can learn from Hegel about the
nature of history and the cohesiveness of cultures, and from Jaspers about the
committed nature of philosophy.In a paradoxical way, a great philosopher’s
contribution tends to lie precisely in the area of his idolatry. . . .Marx’s
discovery of the correlation between class and culture, although he inflated it
to become the basis of a new gospel for mankind, nevertheless unearths a
distinction and a relationship which cannot be ignored (1978:12f.).
Theories
uprooted from idolatrous soil and replanted in the soil of the gospel, respecting
the good in theories and bending it around from an idolatrous direction to move
toward Christ, filling the insight or longing with new content from the
gospel–all of these images offer a way to move beyond irrelevance and
syncretism, withdrawal and accommodation, evasion and domestication.
Ecumenical
Dialogue: Avoiding Ethnocentrism and Relativism
Finally,
faithful contextualization requires a dialogue that moves beyond cultural
boundaries.This dialogue must be "open to the witness of churches in all
other places, and thus saved from absorption into the culture of that place and
enabled to represent to that place the universality, the catholicity of God’s
purpose of grace and judgement for all humanity" (Newbigin 1989:152).There
is a danger that any one local contextualization will be absorbed into the
culture of that place; if it is to be challengingly relevant then a dialogue
must take place among believers from every culture.This dialogue will involve
both mutual correction and mutual enrichment (Newbigin 1978a:13; 1989:196):
mutual enrichment since each cultural contextualization opens up new insights
into the gospel, and mutual correction because each cultural contextualization
has blind spots.Newbigin writes:
The
reference to mutual correction is the crucial one.All our reading of the Bible
and all our Christian discipleship are necessarily shaped by the cultures which
have formed us.. . . the only way in which the gospel can challenge our
culturally conditioned interpretation of it is through the witness of those who
read the Bible with minds shaped by other cultures.We have to listen to
others.This mutual correction is sometimes unwelcome, but is necessary and it
is fruitful (Newbigin 1989:196).
For
Newbigin, the importance of ecumenical dialogue for faithfulness to the gospel
within a certain culture is evident when noting his use of the image of the
Archimedean point.When Newbigin returned to Britain from India he was consumed
with the question: "How can one find a perspective on one’s own culture. .
. .Could there be an Archimedean point, so to speak, from which one could look
critically at one’s own intellectual and spiritual formation?"
(1993:250?251).Newbigin found the Archimedean point in the mutual enrichment
and correction of an ecumenical dialogue around the Scriptures.
Newbigin
notes a number of problems that face the world church if it is to pursue this
kind of ecumenical dialogue.I mention only two that have implications for
Christian scholarship.First, at present dialogue takes place in the context of
only "one of the tribal cultures of humankind" (1978:152).The
dialogue proceeds in the context of only one cultural tradition of the
church—the West: "All of its [i.e. the ecumenical church’s] work is
conducted in the languages of western Europe.Only those who have had long
training in the methods of thinking, of study and research, and of argument
that have been developed in western Europe can share in its work"
(1978:151).Because of the dominance of western cultural patterns in the
ecumenical movement, western Christians do not receive from non?western
Christians the correction they need.
Because
of the total dominance of European culture in the ecumenical movement, there
has seldom been any awareness among Western theologians of the extent to which
their own theologies have been the result of a failure to challenge the
assumptions of their own culture; and because theologians of the younger
churches have been compelled to adopt this culture as the precondition of
participation in the ecumenical movement, they have not been in a position to
present the really sharp challenge that should be addressed to the theologies
of the Western churches (Newbigin1978:152?153).
Newbigin is
thinking here primarily of the theological disciplines.The problem is perhaps
even more acute in other academic disciplines.
A
second hurdle facing the church, if ecumenical dialogue is to be mutually
challenging, is the forum in which the conversation takes place.On the one
hand, Newbigin notes that the World Council of Churches has been the primary
forum in which the dialogue has occurred.Indeed, the rise of the WCC must be
placed in the context of a need for mutual correction and enrichment.On the
other hand, Newbigin raises a twofold problem about the future of the WCC as
the primary place of ecumenical dialogue: the dominant pluralist presence and
"wider ecumenism" threatens an authentic and faithful dialogue that
centers in the uniqueness of Jesus Christ (1994:119, 125); and many of the
thriving evangelical and pentecostal churches of the world church remain
outside this fellowship (1995a:9).
Again
the problem of a forum is perhaps more pronounced in the area of Christian
scholarship.Where is there such a forum? The only such forum that I know is the
International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education
(IAPCHE).IAPCHE is a world?wide community of scholars and institutions that
provides a network for Christian academic activity.IAPCHE exists to promote
dialogue among Christian scholars from various continents and cultural
traditions. Fostering a dialogue among Christian scholars of various
cultures needs to be a much higher priority for Christian scholarship; this is not
a frill but is essential to academic faithfulness.The work of IAPCHE needs
higher profile and commitment among Christian scholars.
Newbigin
points to another possibility for mutual correction and enrichment—the
cross?cultural missionary.Newbigin describes his own missionary experience:
My
Christianity was syncretistic, but so was theirs.Yet neither of us could
discover that without the challenge of the other.Such is the situation in
cross?cultural mission.The gospel comes to the Hindu embodied in the form given
to it by the culture of the missionary. . . .As second and third and later
generations of Christians make their own explorations in Scripture, they will
begin to test the Christianity of the missionaries in the light of their own
reading of the Scripture.So the missionary, if he is at all awake, finds
himself, as I did, in a new situation.He becomes, as a bearer of the gospel, a
critic of his own culture.He finds there the Archimedean point.He sees his own
culture with the Christian eyes of a foreigner, and the foreigner can see what
the native cannot see (1994:68).
The missionary
has the gift of new eyes; but he or she also has the knowledge of the sending
culture that enables him or her to be able to translate that insight for the
church (cf. Sanneh 1993:162?163).It is for this reason that the "the
foreign missionary is an enduring necessity in the life of the universal
Church." The reflexive action of the missionary is crucial "so that
the gospel comes back to us in the idiom of other cultures with the power to
question our understanding of it" (1994:115).Newbigin himself is an
outstanding example of this reflexive action.Again, this insight has relevance
for Christian scholarship.There are many Christian scholars serving in parts of
the world outside the West that can offer fresh insight for Christian academics
who work exclusively within the western context.
Conclusion
For
various reasons, missiology has been marginalized in the academic curriculum.It
is treated as a specialized discipline for those called to that part of the
church’s ministry.Thus studies in contextualization have not received the kind
of wide circulation that they deserve and the western church is poorer for
it.This paper has only begun to appropriate the insights of contextualization
by reference to Newbigin’s work.Newbigin has offered helpful insight toward the
gospel and culture and gospel and cultures issue that has relevance beyond the
cross?cultural mission of the church.Faithfulness to the gospel in any calling,
not least the academic profession, demands commitment to the Biblical story
centered in Christ as the real story of the world, an interaction with culture
that embraces its forms but challenges and fills them with new content through
the gospel, and an ecumenical dialogue that offers mutual correction and
enrichment.Christian scholars would do well to wrestle with this insight from
missiology in their academic callings.
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