Understanding What Contextualization Is and What It Is Not

[역사학도]

Understanding What Contextualization Is and What It Is Not

Author: Dae Ryeong Kim

Published on: January 22, 2005

     "Contextualization" is now a keyword for the ministry of the Church. The is commonly used among church leaders, yet sounds jargon to many ears. It is the word one cannot understand by an etymological study. For fuller understanding of this word one needs to have a glimpse of mission history.

      While the word ‘contextualization’ and its theory is new development, the principle of contextualization is seen in the Bible. If the message is not communicated in the language of the receptor, it can hardly be communicated. Newbigin explains that “the movement of the gospel from its articulation in the language and practice of Greek-speaking Communities” in the New Testament provides us with the model of gospel communication across a cultural frontier." Exposing the twenty-sixth chapter of Acts, he goes on, “The communication has to be in the language of the receptor culture. It has to be such that it accepts at least provisionally, the way of understanding things that is embodied in that language” (1986:4-6).

      Here, Newbigin is speaking of the contextualization of communication to the language of the receptor. In our days one believes this is a matter of fact and taken granted. But a glimpse of mission history shows this was not always the case. The Greek Orthodox Church sent missionaries to China hundred years earlier, but the gospel was never rooted in its culture because they did not contextualize language. So was the Spanish and Portuguese mission to Latin China. It was not that long ago that missionary work was done even without Bible translation. The Russian Orthodox Church still uses the old Slavic although most modern Russians are inaccessible to that language.

      The word "contextualization" inherited the meaning of ‘indigenous church movement' rather than it is derived from its suffix "context." Originally, contextualization was developed as ‘indigenous church movement' in the mid-nineteenth century when Protestant missionary leaders had striven for the development of ‘indigenous’ churches in accordance with the famous ‘Three Self’ principle. Thus, while the practice of contextualization goes back to the biblical times, its theory was begun to be formulated as late as the middle of the nineteenth century.

      In early twentieth century ‘indigenous church movement' was given a new meaning as the educated elite of the churches began movements to recover elements of the traditional culture from their Westernized church cultures. So far, the phrase ‘indigenous church movement' was exclusively used in reference to foreign mission. It was not until the last quarter of the twenty century when, in the work of the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches, the word ‘contextualization’ was coined (1972).

      Contextualization that evolved out of ‘indigenous church movement' was, therefore, a missiological breakthrough. To be a "Korean" does not mean he or she always has to live in a 19th-century home or wear a 19th-century dress. The ‘indigenous church movement' emphasizes that the native people preserve their old culture. While the idea is good, it is nonsense to claim that only ancient culture is a native culture. Equally, one does not have to be completely westernized to be a Christian. One can remain a Korean-like Korean, and still can be a good Christian. Therefore, the idea of contextualization is better than the idea of ‘indigenous church movement.'

      One theological aspect of culture is that it is “the promise originally given to man of what he is to become” (Barth 1962a:341). Culture is a possibility in Christ because it can be “a witness to the promise which was given man in the beginning” (:343). This theology of culture is important for understanding contextualization. What is a pre-conception of a missionary about a pagan culture? Is a particular native's culture is bad or evil? In fact, such prejudice is not valid. There are occasions when Western culture is secularized and a non-Western culture becomes a Christian culture. Culture is a possibility in Christ and a culture is ever changing. Contextualization, therefore, seeks for the potential a culture has in Christ in the present and in the future. As Newbigin put it, when the word ‘contextualization’ was coined in 1972, it called for “a new style of theology which would not so much look back (as ‘indigenous’ did), but address the actual present context as the starting point for doing theology.”

      But it is very important to know that contextualization is not assimilated to culture. In a mission field a young native church assimilated to the worldview of folk religions appear in the form of syncretism. But this kind of assimilated to culture has happened in the very hearts of Western Christian societies as well. And that happened in the theological center of Europe. In his critique of the 19th-century theology, Barth states that the failure of its theology is its conforming to the worldly worldview, when it is assimilated to culture (Barth 1962a:16). The 19th-century theologians assimilated faith to culture by their attempt to provide the possibility of faith in its relatedness to, and its conditioning by, the worldviews which were normative for their contemporaries and even for themselves.

      If Barth saw assimilation to culture in the early twenty century, Newbigin saw syncretism with culture in later years of the century. When he came back to England after decades of missionary work, the syncretism he saw in his mission field in India he saw in his own Western culture. He saw that most English theology was falling into the syncretism. Instead of confronting the culture with the gospel, the western churches were perpetually trying to fit the gospel into the culture. They made the gospel relevant to the contemporary culture in order to communicate it. But there was an element of syncretism in that they interpreted the gospel by the categories of the Western culture. This is the syncretism that is not seen by those who are a part of this culture.

      Thus, on one side there is a need to contextualize Christian communicate to the language of the receptor, and to address the actual present context as the starting point for doing theology. Yet, on the other side, one has to keep in mind that contextualization does not justify every kind of relatedness to culture. Assimilation to culture is not contextualization. Assimilation to culture is easy temptation Christians is often unaware of its danger. There is the Scylla and Charybdis between which one must steer. And this, especially in our pluralist society, calls a missiological delineation of what contextualization is and what it is not.

   http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/christian_gospel_culture/113508

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