Culture and Theology

Jeremy Jones responds over at Common Grounds. These paragraphs are not commonly heard among pastors and laymen in my denomination, and is good to hear.

In his thoughtful and generous response, Sean Lucas argues that the primary task of contextualization is to discern how our current theological formulations are already contextualized or shaped by culture, whether some past ecclesial culture – as in his neo-Puritan example – or by the church’s present host culture. It is certainly true that this is one of the purposes of contextual awareness: the church in every age must ask “how has our theology and practice been shaped by culture?” We could call this the negative side of contextualization, or the process of “de-contextualization,” the point of which is to recognize and repent of the ways in which our theology may have become sinfully enculturated or compromised by over-adapting to some past or present cultural setting. Such de-contextualization helps the church remain faithful to the always-fresh Word of God and discern where it needs to resist cultural influence by speaking and living as a prophetic counter-culture in the world.

However, to reduce contextualization to this task is to downplay or obscure the positive missional aspect of contextualization. (I doubt Sean intends to do this!). Sean quotes Keller as saying “there can never be a culture-free gospel” and applies that thought along the lines discussed above. But Keller is actually quoting Leslie Newbigin from Foolishness to the Greeks, where he argues (as throughout his work) not only for a negative contextualization but also for its positive counterpart. After all, the point of our contextual theology and ministry efforts is not only to preserve Biblical truth but also to communicate and embody such truth to and for lost people so that they may come to know our Lord. Such positive re-contextualization, wed to sound de-contextualization, will produce (under the blessing of the Spirit) biblically-faithful, historically-aware, yet creative adaptations or translations of the gospel and theology for the sake of faithful communication to the host culture.

Thus, a robust Biblical contextualization calls us to remain faithful in two directions at once: we must preserve the truth from cultural corruption and seek to communicate (even embody) that truth to a lost culture. Good theology is always both. Biblically faithful theology is always both. Good reformed theology is (and always has been) both.

Here’s Richard Muller in his The Study of Theology:

It ought to be made clear that the work of contextualization has been a part of the interpretive task of the church throughout the ages: contextualization occurred – with incredible success – when the essentially Palestinian phenomenon of earliest Christianity moved out into the gentile mission and became the faith first of the Greek-speaking world of the ancient Mediterranean basin and then of the Latin world of the western Mediterranean. It occurred again as Christianity was brought to the barbarian kingdoms beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, and to the barbarian rulers who became the lords of Rome – and it has occurred again with enormous diversity of expression in the spread of Christianity to sub-Saharan Africa and to Asia. In other words, contextualization is one of the basic elements of the life, spread, and survival of Christianity (654).

And again: “Rather than view the history of Western Christianity as the gradual and progressive construction of the ultimate theological system, we ought to view it as a laboratory of successful contextualization, indeed, of a series of such contextualizations” (655).

Why does Muller argue that good theology has always been an instance of “successful” contextualization? Because good theology is always incarnational. David Wells puts it nicely: “The Son of God assumed the form of a servant to seek and save the lost and theology must do likewise, incarnating itself in the cultural forms of its time without ever losing its identity as Christian theology” (from “The Nature and Task of Theology” in The Use of the Bible in Theology: Evangelical Options). Though the pilgrim church will never attain (in this life) Christ’s perfect integration of counter-cultural purity and missional engagement, this is our calling as a church, as well as the biblical measure for theological faithfulness. And this is why (as Greg already pointed out) we should not necessarily pit “faithfulness” over/against (biblically-grounded) “creativity” in theology; the two should go together.