The Gospel in Human Contexts

Anthropological Explorations for Contemporary Missions

Paul G. Hiebert

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780801036811
• eBook ISBN: 9781441211316
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

While the gospel is timeless truth, it enters into ever-changing and widely varied human contexts. In order to meaningfully communicate the gospel to particular humans, those involved in cross-cultural ministry need to understand people and the particular influences--social, cultural, psychological, and ecological--that shape them. Further, we must understand ourselves and the influences that have shaped us, since our own contexts influence how we understand and transmit the gospel message. Therefore, we must master not only the skill of biblical interpretation but also the skill of human interpretation. That task is the topic of this book, the summation of a lifetime of experience and thinking by a world-renowned missiologist and anthropologist, the late Paul Hiebert.

Part 1

Theoretical Foundations

1

Changing Views

How can we embody in human contexts divine revelation given to us in Scripture so that people believe and follow Christ, and societies are transformed? And how can we do this in such a way that the gospel does not become captive to the world? Before we answer these questions, we need to study the way we as Christians have viewed the relationship between the gospel and human contexts.

As humans we live in particular contexts: our family, our neighborhood, our town, our country. We seldom give specific thought to them, but these contexts shape what we see, feel, and value, and what we believe without question to be true, right, and proper. These beliefs are so obvious to us that they seem to be universal. They simply are the way things truly are. We assume that others see things the way we do. Houses have bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, and living rooms. Cars are driven on the right side of the road, stay in lanes, and stop at stop signs. We must put postage stamps on letters before dropping them in the mailbox. We fail to recognize that many of the assumptions and values that underlie our culture are not biblically based. They are our human creations.

Most of us, particularly in our childhood, are monocultural. Only when things go wrong, or change rapidly, or when our views of reality conflict with the assumptions from another culture do we question them. Such experiences make us aware that we live in particular contexts, and they force us to start thinking about them—their structure and givens. Others of us have grown up or live in multicultural contexts: missionaries, missionary kids, immigrants, business people, diplomats, and refugees. We are aware of cultural differences and have learned to negotiate between two worlds in daily living. Still, even in these circumstances we often do not stop to consciously examine these contexts, the way they shape our thinking, and the deep differences between them. We are, to some extent, bicultural, but would find it hard to explain to others what this means.

In a rapidly globalizing world, it is important that all of us give thought to human contexts and the way these shape others as well as ourselves. We need to learn how to live in a multicontext world, to build bridges of understanding and relationship between different contexts, and to judge between them. This is true for social, cultural, linguistic, religious, and historical contexts. How do, and how should, we relate to others and to otherness?

As Christians, we are often unaware that our beliefs are frequently shaped more by our culture than by the gospel. We take our Christianity to be biblically based and normative for everyone. We do not stop to ask what parts of it come from our sociocultural and historical contexts, and what parts come from Scripture. Missionaries are forced to deal with sociocultural differences and, therefore, with social and cultural contexts. But even they may take little time to systematically study in depth the contexts in which they serve, despite the fact that the effectiveness of their ministries is determined in large measure by how well they do this.

Finally, humans live in many types of contexts: geographic, social, cultural, political, and historical. Missionaries seek to plant churches in local social contexts and to communicate the gospel in local cultural contexts.1.he church without the gospel ceases to be the church. The gospel without humans and social institutions, such as families and congregations, dies. In this chapter, we focus primarily on social and cultural contexts and the importance of understanding them for the sake of missions. A full analysis of missions must take historical, personal, and other contexts into account and examine the relationships among the different contexts in which the people we serve live.

Views of Contextualization

Our conscious awareness of cultural contexts, including our own, often goes through changing perceptions as we encounter others and otherness. Those who grow up in multicultural settings develop at least some awareness of social and cultural differences and, therefore, of societies and cultures themselves. The changing perceptions outlined below are a model—a way of looking at our growing awareness of others and otherness in cross-cultural ministries. It is not a descriptor of the phases all persons go through in their encounters with other cultures. These changes are not necessarily linear, and they may overlap. Rather, the model is a tool to help us understand the history of the modern mission movement that carried missionaries from Europe and North America to the ends of the earth, and to help us learn from past experiences. Nonetheless, both personal and corporate views of contextualization change as we encounter other cultures and face the questions raised by “otherness.”

View One: Noncontextualization

Most monocultural people are largely unaware of the cultures in which they live, or the depth to which these contexts shape how and what they think and do. For them the contextualization of the gospel is not an issue.

NONCONTEXTUALIZATION

“Just go and preach the gospel. Why waste time going to college and seminary?” my boss said when he learned that I wanted to be a missionary and wanted, first, to complete college, seminary, and graduate studies. His is a widespread attitude commonly found in the church.

When people go as missionaries, we know they need to understand the gospel, but we are sure they know enough from church and Sunday school to reach the lost abroad. Even if we recognize their need for more Bible training, most of us are unaware of the profound issues raised by cultural, social, and historical differences. We know that missionaries might benefit from a class or two on the culture in which they plan to serve. We are confident that in a few years they will naturally learn the local language and customs and be able to minister as they have in our church. All they need to do is proclaim the gospel to the people, and the people will understand and believe. They need to persuade the people to leave their old gods and receive Jesus as their Savior, and move on to new areas where the gospel has not been proclaimed. The gospel is seen as acultural and ahistorical in its very nature.

In this phase we equate the gospel with our Christianity (fig. 1.1). New converts should learn from us and our ways, and they should join us because we are Christians and this is the way we practice it. To live Christianity differently raises difficult questions. How differently can Christians in other cultures live? Is our Christianity normative for all? To what extent has our way of practicing Christianity been shaped by the gospel, and to what extent by our culture? We avoid these difficult questions and come as outsiders, assuming that new converts will join and imitate us.

The epistemological foundation for this phase is positivism (Hiebert 1999), which holds that our scientific knowledge is an accurate, true photograph of the world and corresponds one-to-one with reality. Its theories are not models but facts. Scientists seek objective truth and must eliminate feelings and morals from the rational/empirical processes used to ascertain truth because they introduce subjectivity—and subjectivity is viewed negatively as contaminating the Truth.

Theological positivism holds that our central concern is truth, and that our theology corresponds one-to-one to Scripture. Other theologies and religions are false and must be refuted. We are concerned with truth and define it in rational terms. We divorce it from feelings and values because these undermine the objectivity of the truth. Our concern is that people believe the gospel to be truth because that determines whether they are saved. We define the truth in propositional terms and seek to transmit it unchanged. We see ourselves as God’s lawyers and put our trust in experts who have studied Scripture deeply. Finally, we see the gospel as acultural and ahistorical. It is unchanging and universal, can be codified in abstract rational terms, and can be communicated in all languages without loss of meaning. Neither the sociocultural contexts of the listeners nor that of the messengers need be taken into account.

FIGURE 1.1
View One: Noncontextualization

Most missionaries, when they enter another culture, move quickly to phase two, but some remain in phase one all their lives. They work through translators and control the converts and churches. They make certain that new Christians conform to the cultural norms introduced by the missionary. Converts must wear clothes, learn to read, and have only one wife. They cannot practice theological reflection on their own. They must learn theology from the missionary.

MINIMAL CONTEXTUALIZATION

When we enter another culture, we soon encounter deep differences. We experience culture shock: the feeling of disorientation that arises when all our familiar cultural ways no longer hold. We experience language shock— the inability to communicate even the simplest messages and the growing realization that languages shape the very way we experience and see reality. We also experience religious shock—the fact that other religions make sense to their followers, even though to us these are strange and obviously wrong. We meet Muslims and Hindus who are good people, often better than some of the Christians we know. They can articulate their beliefs clearly and persuasively. How can we say that they are lost? Why are we Christians? Was it a matter of conviction or of birth and upbringing? We are forced to examine our own beliefs more deeply and the basis for our convictions. Such encounters with cultural differences force us to deal with others and, ultimately, with the question of otherness.

This encounter with otherness requires missionaries to decide how they will live in a new land. What kind of food should they eat at home? What kind of clothes should they wear? What kind of houses should they live in? In this stage, missionaries try to preserve their culture abroad for psychological survival and for their children, who, they assume, will eventually return to their home culture.

Otherness also raises the question of the messengers’ attitudes toward the local people. They are so different—so other! In this view, we see them as “primitive,” “backward,” and in need of help to become like us. As we come to know them personally, they become more human to us—friends and neighbors—but we keep a psychological barrier between ourselves and them. They are others, not us. We do not think seriously of migrating and becoming citizens of the new country or that our children might marry locally and settle down as natives. We think of “returning home” when we retire.

The more we live with and study the people we serve, the more we become aware of the depth and power of their culture and the need to contextualize both the messenger and the message for them to understand and live the gospel. But we are afraid that this contextualization will distort the gospel, so our conclusion is that it must be done minimally (fig. 1.2). We realize that we must speak and translate the Bible into the people’s language, and we organize their services and churches in ways the people understand, but we still equate Christianity with our own beliefs and practices.

FIGURE 1.2
View One-A: Minimal Contextualization

In this paradigm we link Christianity to civilization. We see ourselves as modern and others as primitive and backward—in need of development. Therefore, we do not need to study other cultures deeply, except to find the distortions they cause in understanding the gospel. We build schools and hospitals to teach people the truths of science and to civilize them. We see other cultures as primitive or evil, with little to contribute to our own understanding of reality. There is little in the old culture worth preserving. The minds of the natives are a tabula rasa on which we can write Christianity and science. To become Christian and civilized, the people must become like us. As the Chinese used to say, “One more Christian, one less Chinese.”

In positivism signs, such as words and mathematical formulas, are thought to correspond directly to empirical realities (fig. 1.3). The word tree refers to real trees, the word cow to real cows. This view assumes that all people live in essentially the same world and simply attach different labels to realities. Their thought categories, logic, way of ordering realities, and worldview are essentially like our own, only less developed. In communication and Bible translation, missionaries need simply to find the corresponding words in another language, adjust the grammar, and the people will understand the message accurately.

FIGURE 1.3
Signs: Positivism

One characteristic of this view of signs is its strong affirmation of singular truth. Signs are mere labels, but they are directly attached to the truth. So in evangelism and teaching, an emphasis is placed on accurate, rationally developed arguments and apologetic confrontation with other religions. A second characteristic is that communication is measured by what is said or transmitted. It is sender-oriented communication. What is important is the number of sermons preached, hours of radio broadcast, and quantity of tracts and Bibles distributed.

In contextualization, positivist semiotics assumes that signs in other cultures, such as drama, drums, and music, are inherently tied to their pagan meanings and therefore cannot be used by Christians. This leads to widespread rejection of local signs, and the importation of Western Christian ones. We sing Western hymns translated into the local language, build churches in European styles, and import our liturgies. If we are Anglicans, we have priests; if Presbyterians, we have presbyters; if Baptists, we introduce voting. The result is a minimally contextualized approach to missions.

View Two: Uncritical Contextualization

The more deeply we are involved in cross-...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Theoretical Foundations
• Part 2: Exegeting Humans
• Part 3: Mission as Intercultural Mediation
• References Cited
• Back Cover