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CHAPTER FIVE
5.0 THE NECESSITY FOR CONTEXTUALISATION OF THE CHRISTIAN
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describes the protestant mission era from 1800-1950 as the period of non- contextualisation.
This is a period when the majority of the missionaries believed that Western theology had eternal validity and theologians believed that the Christian faith was based on eternal unalterable truth, which had been stated in its final form.3 The Christianity and Christian truths that were introduced to the Africans by the first missionary were heavily tinged with Western culture. In fact, the cross-cultural differences between American or European culture and African culture are formidable. Consequently, the American evangelist who thinks he can come to this African nation and effectively communicate the life-giving and soul-changing message of the gospel without becoming “all things to all men” (1 Corinthians 9:22) is committing a grievous error. The linguistic, cultural, historical, and religious setting in Ibadanland, for instance, is much different from that found in America or Europe. As a result, translating biblical truths into African culture takes some practice. In reality, so many of the examples used in the American pulpit to illustrate biblical truths simply do not work appropriately in Ibadan.
In order to apply biblical principles to African life, it is essential to know something about the African culture and contextualise her faith. This implies that there is a need to understand the cultural plurality of the community and present the gospel in a way that can be understood according to the forms and symbols of Africans. Therefore, the church must make sure their worship and liturgy are relevant to the culture of the community. She would have to incarnate in the community by interacting with the community with a view to appreciating the importance of the cultural dynamics in the process of relating the biblical message, liturgy and worship to the life of the people.4
Baillie avers that “theological ideas are created on the Continent of Europe, corrected in Great Britain and corrupted in America.”5 In the past, many communicators of the Good News have often underestimated the importance of cultural factors in communication, while some were so insensitive to the cultural thought, patterns and behaviour of the people they are leading, teaching and proclaiming the Gospel to. This has affected the outcome of their mission work negatively. The discontentment of Africans with the mode of organisation of
3 Paul Hiebert, 1987. Critical contextualisation‟ International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol.11 pp.104-112.
4 D. J. Hesselgrave, and E. Rommen, 1989. Contextualisation: meaning, methods and models. Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House p.211.
5 John Baillie quoted by Isaiah 2000 : 63.
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mission or mainline churches by foreign white leaders led to the emergence of African Indigenous Churches. African Indigenous Churches were founded by Africans for Africans without depending on foreign aids and assistance. They are self- supporting, self- governing and self-financing with a target set before them to contextualise the gospel by respecting African opinions and mindsets.6 Africans ought to be at liberty to adopt or adapt the original contents of the Scriptures for the purpose of effective communication. While adoption implies a faithful reproduction of the original text, adaptation involves substantial modification without distorting the basic message.7 This work sees adaptation as only a form of modification that does not provide the appropriate solution needed.
Indigenisation, according to Isaiah “is going native, everything foreign becomes native, local person takes upon himself and behave like foreign missionaries”.8 According to Koyama, Indigenisation means a “theologically informed endeavour to make the content and expression of Christian theology, ministry and life adapted and rooted in a community of different cultural localities”. He avers that the purpose of indigenisation is to create an authentic Christian community.9 Even in Henry Venn‟s mission principle, he advocated the concept of training indigenous leadership, local leadership, to replace the white missionary.
He pointed out that native agency is basic to the development of the mission in Africa. He told native teachers then that they were those “upon whom the hopes of an African Church are fixed”. In this statement he intertwined the principles of native agency, education, self-reliance, and continuous advance which will help to inculcate self-reliance rather than dependence. He even pointed out the need to draw out Africans‟ native resources and let them feel their own powers and responsibilities. This action brought some changes in certain areas like language, putting on one‟s culture by using native names for Church, but administration still remains foreign, with European habits, European ideas and European tastes in vogue.10
6 G. A. Oshitelu, 2007. History of the Aladura Independent Churches, 1918-1940 Ibadan : Hopeful Publications p.1 and D. Aiyegboyin, & S.A. Ishola, 1997. African Indigenous Churches, Lagos : Greater Heights Publications p.9
7 Matthew M. Umukoro, 2010. „Nigerian theatre and the multilingual challenge‟, Ibadan Journal of Humanistic Studies (Nos. 19 &20) 2009/2010, Ibadan : Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria p.95
8 E. S. Isaiah, 2007,Course outline and notes on contextualisation of theology Parts 1 and 2 (Gospel and Culture or Doing Theology, Bethany International University ,Singapore, Unpublished
9 Kosuke Koyama, 1978 quoting P.B. Santram ,” Indeginisation of the Church in India: A Biblical and Theological Appraisal”, Samuel Amirtham(Ed.), A Vision For Man, CLS, Madras. p.180.
10 Wilbert R. Shenk, 1983. Henry Venn-Missionary Statesman, Mary Knoll, New York Orbis Books pp.31-33.
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In short, structure, power, money and properties are at stake in indigenisation. It only helps to increase nominalism, which is a hindrance to mission work because indigenisation has no passion for mission therefore it cannot achieve the expected result. This is why contextualisation is necessary to do work of mission today and communicate the Gospel everywhere to every culture appropriately. The participants in the Jerusalem Conference in 1928 defined the indigenous church as “understanding cultural accommodation” while the Madras Conference of 1938 restated the definition, emphasizing witness to Christ in “ a direct, clear, and close relationship with the cultural and religious heritage of the Country”.11 Inculturation is sustaining worship in every culture. It is interpreting values, principles and practices of Christianity through cultural lens. It is in itself a cultural hermeneutical process (interpretative process) to effectively pass across the whole essence of the gospel to the people of a particular culture. Thus, it is all-encompassing covering every aspect of Christian worship and faith.
Contextualisation is a new term imported into theology to express a deeper concept than indigenisation does, because contextualisation makes concepts, methods or ideals relevant in a given or historical situation. Contextualisation is a derivative of the word
"context", which has its roots in contextus (Latin) meaning "weaving together." In literary pursuits, context is that which comes before and after a word, phrase, or statement, helping to fix its meaning or the circumstances in which an event occurs. Missiological contextualisation can be viewed as enabling the message of God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ to become alive as it addresses the vital issues of a socio-cultural context and transforms its world view, its values, and its goals.12 It is not simply a fad or a catchword but a theological necessity demanded by the incarnational nature of the Word. Contextuality is the capacity to respond meaningfully to the gospel within the framework of one‟s own situation. The heart of contextualisation is having an unchanging gospel in a changing world.
Contextualisation has been practised from Old Testament times, but was articulated as a named subject only in the early 1970‟s with the TEF (Theological Education Fund) of
11 Isaiah, E. S,2000 Contextualisation, a Course Reader, Compiled for the private use of Bethany International
University , Singapore.
12 J. M. Terry, Ebbie Smith and Justice Anderson.1998. Missiology: An Introduction to the foundations, History, and Strategies of World Missions. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers. p. 318.
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the World Council of Churches. Their coining and definition of the word “contextualisation”
was largely based on the Louvain Conference held in 1972 when the theory confirmed that the Holy Bible merely “contained” the Word of God and contemporary context determines its meaning. Context becomes the source of theological truth. The provenance of the word contextualisation, first employed in 1972 by the directors of the Theological Education Fund, Shoki Coe and Aharon Sapsezian; in the World Council of Churches document Ministry, in Context of The Third Mandate Programme of the Theological Education Fund, made it suspect to many evangelicals. The TEF report for that year, Ministry and Context, suggested that contextualisation implies all that is involved in the familiar term Indigenisation but seeks to press beyond it. The report introduces the TEF‟s Third Mandate as a response to “the widespread crisis of faith and search for meaning in life; the urgent issues of human development and social justice; the dialectic between a universal technological civilisation and local culture and religious situations”.13 By then, the Bible had officially lost its foundational normative character, and culture was seen as a large determining factor in the search for theological truth.
The term however was soon adopted and largely redefined by Evangelicals at Lausanne I in 1974, when Byang Kato masterfully asserted the need for contextualisation, but one that is firmly rooted in Biblical truth, without damaging Christian tenets or over-adapting to culture. It was then that contextuality was viewed, to mean the capacity to respond meaningfully to the gospel within the framework of one‟s own culture and situation.
Kato recognises its importance for the well-being of the African church and argues that it did not imply compromising any of the theological principles considered fundamental. His approach stresses that mainstream African evangelicalism should not become entrenched in an obscurantist and contextually irrelevant fundamentalism.14
Feliciano describes contextualisation as the process of communicating absolute truths from the Holy Bible “to an individual‟s historic-cultural experience and background,
13 Bruce J. Nicholls, 1976. Contextualisation : a theology of gospel and culture, Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, & The Paternoster Press, Exeter, England. p.21 & World Council of Churches, Ministry in Context: The Third Mandate Programme of the Theological Education Fund, 1970-77 Bromley, U.K.: TEF Fund, 1972.
14 Paul Bowers, 1980. "Evangelical theology in Africa: Byang Kato's Legacy," Trinity Journal, n.s., 1 : 86).
and (Byang H. Kato, “The Gospel, cultural context and religious syncretism,” Let the earth hear His voice, pp1216-1228.
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his social structure and orientation, his thought pattern and world view”.15 Whiteman terms contextualisation as an attempt to communicate the gospel in word and deed and to establish the church in ways that make sense to people within their local cultural context, presenting Christianity in such a way that it meets people's deepest needs and penetrates their world view, thus allowing them to follow Christ and remain within their own culture.16 Contextualisation, then, seeks an effective, long-term Christian witness in a culture foreign to the communicator. This definition rightly presumes that the gospel is a transcultural message capable of being authentically embodied in the wide embrace of human societies.
This principle is implicit in Jesus' teaching (John 4), directed the leading of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8) and became axiomatic for first century Christian missionaries (1 Corinthians 9). In taking the gospel beyond Palestinian Judaism, evangelists to the Gentiles clearly separated cultural Jewish wineskins from the wine of the gospel. Reaction from Judaizers was both swift and predictable, but God's wisdom prevailed and the Apostles affirmed that salvation is independent of conversion to Judaism. The scriptural question, then, is not "if," but
"where" and "how" contextualisation should shape understanding of the scripture, the missionary enterprise and mode of worshiping LORD.
Contextualisation of the gospel is an inevitable task, if we take it to mean making concepts or ideas relevant in a given situation; and working in an effort to express the never-changing word of God in ever-never-changing modes for relevance in Christian practices, liturgy and worship. Since the gospel message is inspired but the mode of its expression is not by white missionaries in Africa, contextualisation of the modes is not only right, but also necessary.17 Contextualisation is a dynamic process of the church‟s reflection, in obedience to Christ and his mission in the world, on the interaction of the text as a specific human situation. It is essentially a missiological concept. Contextual theology can be defined as a way of doing theology in which one takes into account the spirit and the gospel; the tradition of the Christian people; the culture in which one is theologizing; and social change in that culture, whether brought about by Westernisation process or the grass-roots struggle for equality, justice, and liberation. In today‟s understanding of doing theology,
15 Feliciano, V. David, 1977, Contextualisation of the Christian Faith in the Philippine setting,” Christian Forum, An annual Journal Silang, Cavite: PMI. March :1-31.
16 Darrel L. Whiteman, 1997. "Contextualisation: The Theory, the Gap, the Challenge," International Bulletin of Missionary Research, January, : 2.
17 B. Kato, 1975. Theological pPitfalls in Africa Nairobi : Evangel Publishing House p.23.
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contextualisation is part of the very nature of theology itself. To understand theology as contextual is to assert something both new and traditional. The one engaged in this process may be part of the context or as a cross-cultural communicator, represent a second context in a three-way process.18
Contextualisation is not a passing trend. It is essential to our understanding of God‟s self-revelation. The incarnation is the ultimate paradigm of the translation of the text into context. Jesus Christ, the word of God incarnate as a Jew, identified with a particular culture at a limited moment of history though transcending it. He had shown a supreme model of contextualisation; each of his command was actually a command to contextualisation, whether to love one‟s neighbour or to disciple the nation. The implication of this process is seen in the apostolic witness and the life of the New Testament church. Contextualised theology is the dynamic reflection carried out by the particular church upon its own life in light of the word of God and historic Christian truth. How does the message of the gospel get into the hearts of people of all nations, and how do churches and church leaders maximize the power of the gospel touching all the life? While this is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit, the responsibility of how to get the message across lies upon the messenger.
The issue at hand therefore is the way in which the word, as scripture, and the word as revealed in the truths of culture interact in determining Christian truth for a given people and place. Many conservatives feared that the absolute truths of the gospel were in danger of being compromised in what appeared to be a low view of revelation.19
Speaking about contextualisation implies that our faith and life are not fully inserted into African culture, or that the Christian and religious life of Africans remain something foreign to us. The production of any creative work requires being truly rooted in one‟s tradition. In Africa everything has an inborn nature with it, whether it is culture, tradition, language, religion or life style. Hence, Hesselgrave interprets contextualisation to mean “the communication of the Christian message in a way that is faithful to God‟s revelation, especially as it is put forth in the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, which is meaningful to
18 Anna Ebun Ogunlokun, 1995. “Towards the contextualization of Theology in the Two Thirds World with special reference to the Yoruba tribe of Nigeria”. M.A. Thesis, Ashin University Korea. p.3
19 Anna Ebun Ogunlokun., 1995. “Towards the contextualization of Theology in the Two Thirds World with special reference to the Yoruba tribe of Nigeria”. M.A. Thesis, Ashin University Korea p. 7.
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respondents in their respective cultural and existential contexts”.20 This is an attempt to communicate the message of the person, works, word, and will of God in a way that is faithful to God‟s revelation, especially as it is put forth in the teaching of Holy Scripture, and that is meaningful to respondents in their respective cultural and existential contexts.
Contextualisation, which is both verbal and nonverbal, will affect theology, Bible translation, interpretation and application, liturgy, lifestyle, evangelism, church planting, church growth, church organisation, worship style, and all the components of Christian mission, as reflected in the Great Commission. Therefore, to be able to contextualise the gospel in a given culture, a good understanding of the culture and its world view will be required.21
Contextualisation, according to Sundhir Isaiah, is faithful to the scripture and relevant to the culture- John 4:22-23. It is a suitable way of making the gospel relevant to the culture of a group, or people group, such as Indigenous African Churches (Ona Iwa Mimo Cherubim and Seraphim church in Ibadan.) Newbigin says “the value of the word contextualisation is that it suggests the placing of the gospel in the total context of a culture at a particular moment, a moment that is shaped by the past and looks to the future”.22 Among the Roman Catholic Church members, contextualisation is taken to be inculturation. Gelbi claims that inculturation is a theological term that characterises an ideal of sound evangelisation.
Inculturated evangelisation seeks an “incarnational” proclamation of the gospel, meaning that the divine word took flesh in a particular people and drew upon the religious heritage of the Hebrews to interpret to others His person, and mission.
Therefore, in the same way, the proclaimed word of the gospel must find embodiment in a various nations, traditions and people.23 Therefore, this work opines that contextualisation can be described as communicating the Good News in cultural forms that are meaningful, relevant, and understandable to the hearers or worshippers in liturgy and
20 D. J. Hesselgrave, & E. Rommen, 1989. Contextualisation: Meaning, Method and Models, (Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House. p.143.
21 David J. Hesselgrave, 1991. Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally: An Introduction to Missionary Communication, 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. p 143.
22 Leslie Newbigin, 2008.” Foolishness to the Greeks” in Paul Chilcote & Laceye C. Warner (eds) The study of evangelism: exploring a missional practice of the Church, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans publishing company p 346.
23 Donald L. Gelpi, 1988. Inculturating North American theology: an experiment in foundational method, Atlanta: Scholar Press, p.2.
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thought forms (contents) that speak to the real issues and needs of the worshippers or hearers in the framework of their societal structure. This seems not to be available in the way American and European missionaries brought and spread the Gospel in Africa. Feliciano asserts that, when American missionaries were coming to Africa or Philippines Island with purpose of evangelisation, they often overlooked the necessity of “acculturation, of identification, and of cultural relevance”. They were too fully convinced that their culture was a superior culture, which they expected the “natives” to adopt. Thus, Christians in a place like Ibadan land often become strangers to their own people, whereas this is certainly not in God‟s plan.24
Upkong describes inculturation as an approach in evangelisation which is an ongoing process of rooting and rerooting the Christian faith in a culture. It also involves a process whereby the Christian faith is made to influence a culture and attain expression through the genius of that culture. This approach makes the gospel to challenge and animate the culture and also helps to utilise the resources of every culture in expressing the Christian faith.25 The effort to make the gospel meaningful and relevant in a particular context is continuous and is as old as the gospel itself. This is because, in one way or the other, the apostolic Church utilised Greek and Roman socio-cultural ideas and elements in order to meaningfully reach out to as many people as possible with eternal truth. This establishes the fact that the gospel did not emanate and cannot be preached in a setting that is culturally fallow. Every human/people group like the Yor has an existing system of beliefs about God, man, spirits and magic. Therefore, when missionaries enter a new culture, they are not entering a cultural vacuum as against the view of the missionaries that brought the Gospel to Africa, especially into Yoruba and Ibadan land. Whereas, the missionaries ought to learn how the people view their world, in order to effectively communicate the gospel to people of another culture.26
The liturgy and the way of worship in Ibadan should be relevant to the community because active participation is important in worship not the domination of rules and rites.
24 Feliciano V. David, 1977, Contextualisation of the Christian Faith in the Philippine setting,” Christian Forum, An annual Journal Silang, Cavite: PMI. March : 26.
25 Justin S. Upkong, 1990. “Jesus and the Jewish Culture and Religion: A New Testament Perspective on Christology and Inculturation” Proceedings of the 5th Nigerian Theological Conference. p.39.
26 Gailyn Van Rheenen, 1991. Communicating Christ in animistic Context, Grand Rapids : Baker Book House.
pp148-149.