[Jan.11] The Gospel and Culture [Kraft, chs. 9-12]
1. What is the Gospel? What does it mean to
evangelize/bring the Gospel?
a)
Message,
communication of information
b)
Relationship
c)
Values,
lifestyle-transformation
2. Form, meaning and message
a)
Divine
revelation and mission
b)
Scripture:
Textbook or casebook?
3. From the New Testament to our world today: Gospel
and culture
a)
Jesus’
parables and mission to Israel – The Gospel in its original cultural setting
b)
Paul:
Neither Jew nor Greek; Flesh & spirit…misunderstood?
c)
The
Early Church: Justin, Tertullian
Discussion:
Begin with questionnaire on Gospel and culture. Connects with issues about Church diversity, and also raises the question of what it is we are to proclaim: how much of our particular cultural expression of Christianity do we need/want to pass on to those with whom we share the Gospel? What is essential?
What is the Gospel? What does
it mean to ‘bring the Gospel’?
What do we need to communicate? Theology & doctrine, attitude to God?
Great commission: not just make converts, but disciples, teaching them. Mission is more than just the sharing of tracts or the preaching of evangelistic sermons, although the ‘more than’ includes these things as well. You cannot make disciples if people do not first come to faith in Christ. Perhaps we should see our aim as making followers of Christ. This way, we recognize that more than conversion is involved in mission. Christ, as we saw, proclaimed the good news concerning the Kingdom of God. That in itself tells us a lot. It is about bringing human lives under God’s sovereignty, into obedience to God. The equivalent in Aramaic to the Greek phrase used in the Gospels for ‘kingdom of God’ would mean essentially the reign of God.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ has as its focus (surprise surprise) Jesus Christ. When we share our faith, we can often get bogged down in debates about side issues: evolution, predestination, or whatever. We must also be careful not to spend so much time on preliminaries that we never get to the point. On the other hand, if we skip straight to Jesus we can be misunderstood, as Paul found in Athens, and so sometimes we need to do as he did, focusing first on issues relating to God as creator, as one, etc. We must be careful to distinguish between non-essentials (e.g. evolution) and essentials (e.g. belief in one God).
The 1974 International Conference on World Evangelism at Lausanne defined evangelism this way:
To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that as the reigning Lord he now offers the forgiveness of sins and the liberating gift of the Spirit to all who repent and believe. Our Christian presence in the world is indispensable to evangelism, and so is that kind of dialogue whose purpose is to listen sensitively in order to understand. But evangelism itself is the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God. In issuing the gospel invitation we have no liberty to conceal the cost of discipleship. Jesus still calls all who would follow him to deny themselves, take up their cross, and identify themselves with his new community. The results of evangelism include obedience to Christ, incorporation into his church and responsible service in the world.[1]
What do you think of this definition?
We will have to consider, however, how we explain to people what Jesus’ death accomplished. To use words like ‘sacrifice’ may not be the most effective or appropriate way. The language of sacrifice was used by Jesus’ followers to explain Jesus’ death and its significance in terms their contemporaries would understand. Today, what was then an effective explanation and aid to understanding may be more of a hindrance than a help to our contemporaries understanding!
How do we communicate it? Individual level, large group? [We’ll talk more about the advantages and disadvantages of these and other types of communication another time]
Need to start where people are at. Francis Schaeffer is reported to have said that if he had an hour to share the Gospel with someone, he would spend the first 45 minutes finding out where that person was at in terms of their thinking about God, and then spend the last 15 sharing the Gospel in a relevant manner. We, on the other hand, tend to want to reduce the Gospel to as minimal and summarized a form as possible, so that it can fit on a small tract, and be shared in less than a minute. But is this biblical? Jesus appears to have related to individuals as individuals, and spoken to their needs and situations.
How much do we need to use the Bible in evangelism? I don’t mean whether or not the content needs to be Biblical! But based on the example of Jesus and his earliest followers, to what extent do we need, in evangelism, to open the Bible as part of the process of bringing someone to faith?
Also, how much information does one need about Jesus to become his follower? Is mission and evangelism about bringing people into a saving relationship with Jesus, or about making sure they believe he has two natures in one person/hypostasis? In John 6, the disciples do not understand what Jesus is saying, but they realize he has the words of eternal life. Getting people to follow Jesus even when they don’t understand is what it is all about, not getting people to understand even if they decide not to follow! Abraham was saved by faith, and is used as an example of saving faith in the New Testament. But how much doctrine do you think he understood? His faith was first and foremost an attitude towards God.
To what extent are we to communicate a different set of values by living a different lifestyle? To what extent is this part of the church’s mission; or is it rather something that happens to the life of Christians after they have been the objects of mission in the sense of evangelism?
A friend of mine is working on a PhD thesis on Paul’s theology. One of the things he is trying to demonstrate is that for Paul to ‘evangelize’ or ‘Gospelize’ or we might say to ‘good news’ people is more than simply to tell them something. It is to bring a miraculous, life-changing power into their midst and into their lives, one that does a lot more than simply change the way they think about God and Jesus!
a) To what extent are things like social work part of the Church's mission? If the Church is Christ's body and continues his ministry, then presumably Christ's compassion should continue to express itself in and through us. [What else can be mission? Education?]
b) Should Christianity have an impact in the area of economics? [In the OT, the prophets were very concerned with economic justice. In Luther’s time, the radical doctrine of justification by faith alone was a challenge to the economic stranglehold that the Church authorities had on people and nations, through the selling of indulgences, etc. So it was not simply radical change for the individual, but also for society!]
c) Should justice in general be a concern? Why or why not? Are we aiming to transform only individuals or also social structures? [E.g. will converting everyone in a divided, segregated society in South Africa or the southern U.S. lead to integration, or do social structures need to be challenged as well? Do we give one priority, or do both at the same time?]
How do we challenge social structures? According to the Indian Christian author Vishal Mangalwadi, Jesus himself left us a pattern to follow in this respect when he told us to take up the cross and follow him. He writes:
The capital punishment of crucifixion was the weapon used to perpetuate Rome’s reign of terror. Those condemned to die had to carry their own crosses to a public place where they were crucified. Jesus asked his disciples to fight Rome with its own weapon, instead of trying to fight it with the sword.
Mahatma Gandhi well understood and imitated Christ on this point. Some Indians wanted to fight British colonialism with guns and bombs. But Gandhi asked his followers to fill the British jails and accept the British stick-blows and bullets. When the British threw Gandhi in jail, it was not Gandhi who was judged and condemned but the British themselves. When they beat and killed the peaceful protesters, they in fact destroyed their own kingdom. That was what Jesus invited his disciples to do. To ‘take up your cross’ means to become a rebel, to fight a corrupt establishment with its own weapons, to be a troublemaker and take the consequences of that.
Historically, the cross was the strategy of Christ and His followers in their battle against the powers, principalities and rulers of a dark age…[2]
There is certainly some basis for this view of Jesus’ mission in relation to non-violent protest in the sermon on the mount. Some have found in Matthew 5:39-41 a program for resistance that avoids the extremes of either passivity or violence. All three settings mentioned here presuppose the situation of a powerless person in the context of the Roman world. (i) Strike the person next to you on the right cheek… (ii) Taking a cloak in law court; courts were only used by the powerful against the powerless (equals did not normally go to court against one another); (iii) Extra mile – Roman soldiers could compel subjected people to carry their packs for them up to a mile…
d) After the time of Constantine, Church and State became linked, and this had a profound impact on mission. Even into the 20th century colonialism and evangelization were connected. How do you evaluate this? What are some of the dangers of this approach? Should Christians be involved in politics today, and if so what might some of the dangers be? [God’s values identified with those of a political party; changed situation – Bible not written for people in a democracy, thus it doesn’t address us and our situation directly!]
e) Evangelistic mandate (communication of Christian belief) and cultural mandate (transformation of society, justice):
Exclusive ----- Predominates ----- Equal ----- Predominates ----- Exclusive
f) The Orthodox Church regards the liturgy as a form of mission. And so it is that Archbishop Aram Keshishian of Armenia writes: “The church itself has no mission. Its mission is to participate in God’s mission. The very being of the church is missionary; the church is, indeed, a missionary event. Therefore, mission is not one of the ‘functions’ of the church, but the life of the church that goes beyond itself to embrace the whole of humanity and the whole of creation…”.[3]
Catholic mission historically was carried out through the establishment of monasteries. How would you evaluate these approaches to mission? Is there one ‘right way’ of doing mission? What are the limits to the diversity of acceptable approaches? [Watch ‘The Mission’?]
The
Mission of the Church according to Luke-Acts
In thinking about these different aspects of the mission of the church, we should return now to the Biblical evidence in greater detail, and I thought it would be a good idea to focus in primarily on one author, and see what the emphasis is that he wanted to communicate in what he wrote. And the work that we'll be focusing in on is Luke's two-volume work, known to us as the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.
The starting point for understanding any work is, of course, the beginning, since that is where we can expect to find set out for the reader the key emphases of the author, as well as the background information that he feels it is necessary to give us. Thus, when we turn to the prologue of Luke's second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, we read [READ Acts 1:1-8]. For our purposes, the thing which I want us to reflect on is that Luke describes his first volume, the Gospel according to Luke, as "what Jesus began to do and teach". The clear implication is that what we will find in his second volume, which describes the ongoing life of the Church, is what Jesus continued to do and teach. The Church, to borrow a phrase from Paul, is the Body of Christ, the means through which he continues to do, to teach, to be active in the world. This same emphasis comes across in Acts 9:4, in the appearance of Christ to Paul on the Damascus Road. Paul is in the process of persecuting the Church, and Jesus asks him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting...the church?" No! "Why are you persecuting me?" The Church is the Body of Christ - we are his hands, his feet, his voice. God has much more that he wants to accomplish in the world, and we are the means through which he does it.
I. Proclaiming Jesus' Message
We may break up the mission of the Church as it is presented in Luke-Acts conveniently under three headings. The first one is: Proclaiming Jesus' message. The Church is called to carry on proclaiming the message which Jesus proclaimed during his earthly life. Now what was the focus of Jesus' message? The Kingdom of God. That this was his central emphasis comes across very clearly in the descriptions which we are given in the New Testament of Jesus' preaching and teaching: 'Repent, for the kingdom of God is near'; in the parables we are told that 'the kingdom of God is like...a mustard seed, yeast, a person who did this or that, and so on'. Jesus speaks of seeing the kingdom, of entering the kingdom, of being 'not far from the kingdom'. This is the central thrust of Jesus' message. It is surely significant, then, that Luke presents the message of the early Christians in exactly the same terms. In Acts 8:12 we're told that Philip 'preached the good news of the kingdom of God'. In Acts 19:8, it is Paul who 'argues persuasively about the kingdom of God'. In 20:25 Paul's preaching activity in Ephesus and elsewhere is described as a preaching of the kingdom of God. And finally in chapter 28, verses 23 and 31, we find Paul explaining, declaring and preaching the kingdom of God. In Luke's view, then, part of the mission of the Church is to proclaim the message of the kingdom of God, the message which Jesus himself proclaimed.
What does 'kingdom of God' mean? Is it heaven, is it a political entity, or both, or something else? If we want to know what Jesus meant, the most helpful thing to do is look at the phrase as it would have been in the language which Jesus spoke, Aramaic. In Aramaic, the equivalent phrase would refer to the 'reign of God'. Thus the kingdom of God means God's rule, lordship and authority being extended. Also central to Jesus' message was the way he called them to the kingdom: namely through repentance. To become part of God's kingdom is to allow God's will to be done 'on earth as it is in heaven', to allow God to take center place in our lives, and to reorient our lives around him with him at the center.
One often gets the impression that the Church of our day seems to have sold out: the Church often appears to have exchanged this message for an easier, more comfortable one. In so many places today, the message that one hears about is not extending the area of God's authority or bringing lives into obedience and submission to him, but rather almost seems to be about extending our control over God, extending the list of things that God does for us. A lot of preaching and many popular books give the impression that it is our kingdom, that God serves us rather than vice versa. Few would say it like that, but in practice very often that's what it looks like. And so we need to ask ourselves whether our Gospel is the Gospel (or good news) of the kingdom of God. Is our message all blessing and no costly discipleship? If we want to hear what Luke has to say to us today, we need to ask whether the heart of our message reflects the emphases of Jesus' own words and teaching.
On the other hand, when attempting to communicate the same message in a new context, it is necessary to say things differently. For example, if you go to Romania, and want to greet people, it's no good going up to someone and saying 'hi', because 'hai' in the Romanian language means 'come on' or 'come with me'. Having the Bible in our own language is a wonderful blessing, but it can be dangerous, if it causes us to forget that the writers of the New Testament spoke a different language than any of us do today, and were part of a very different culture as well. The New Testament accounts themselves are translations of Jesus' words: Jesus' main language would have been Aramaic, but the lingua franca or universal common language in the eastern Roman Empire was Greek, and thus from a very early stage Jesus' teaching was translated into another language, a language which was much more widely known than Aramaic, so that the message could be spread to people outside Palestine. Luke's Gospel is one example of this.
When Jesus taught, he used parables which took familiar elements of everyday life among peasants in the Near East, and used them to communicate his message about God. The parables were a teaching aid, helping people to understand the message. If we use the same language and idioms as the New Testament authors did, very often we'll have the opposite effect than they did: they used the language of their day to make the message clearer, whereas if we use antiquated language that no one understands, we are obscuring the message, so that people will not understand the very important message that we are trying to bring them. One thinks of idioms and metaphors from first century Jewish culture which I've even heard people go out on the street and preach: gird up the loins of your mind; or washed in the blood of the lamb. But it is the content of the message that is important, not the words or form. Thus part of our mission as the Church is to find ways of communicating Jesus' message in ways that will be intelligible and meaningful for people today. If we simply repeat the traditional words, without actually communicating, then as far as Luke is concerned, we are not fulfilling the mission of the Church. If we look at the sermons in Acts, the preachers start where their audience is, and lead them on from there. In Acts 17, when Paul is addressing pagans, he even quotes a pagan poem about Zeus! It thus seems safe to say that Luke was aware that to simply quote the Jewish scriptures to people who had no knowledge of them and who did not accept their authority would not be to communicate the Gospel effectively. It is hard work to find ways of communicating effectively, but it is worth it. The Gospel spread the way it did, as we find described in Luke-Acts, because those who proclaimed it communicated the Gospel of the kingdom of God, the message of Jesus, clearly and effectively, in ways that their hearers could understand and relate to. We today are likewise called to communicate to our contemporaries the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, the message which Jesus proclaimed.
II. Living Jesus' Life
The second point which needs to be made about the mission of the Church as Luke-Acts presents it is living Jesus' life, that is, living in the way Jesus lived, for Jesus did not just proclaim a different way of life: he lived it. It is not only Luke, and not even only Christians who have realized this fact. Even a Marxist author from what was then Czechoslovakia once wrote: "Jesus' 'doctrine'...set the world on fire not because of the obvious superiority of his theoretical program, but because he himself was at one with the program, because he himself was the attraction. They saw in him a man who already belonged to this coming Kingdom of God; they saw what it meant to be 'full of grace', what it meant to be not only a preacher but himself the product of his preaching, a child of the future age to the marrow of his bones". In other words, a key reason why Jesus' ministry, and that of his earliest followers after him, was so effective, was that their words and actions matched. They did not just proclaim the good news of the kingdom: they lived it.
One example of this can be seen in Luke's fascination with food. Luke mentions an unusually large number of meals in his two-volume work. In Luke 5:29ff, Levi holds a banquet for Jesus at his house. In 7:36ff, Jesus is invited to dinner at a Pharisee's house. In 14:7ff, Jesus is at a banquet and notices how the guests choose places of honor at the table. In 19:5ff Jesus is Zacchaeus' guest for 'dinner'. Likewise in Acts 2:42,46 one of the key things which the early Christians do is eat together. In chapters 10-11 the whole focus is on Peter going and having a meal with a non-Jew. In 16:34 Paul and Silas have a meal with the Philippian jailer. And on it goes; you can see I'm not just imagining this, it is there! And I'm going to guess that the reason for this emphasis was not because Luke was hungry when he wrote: no, there's a good reason for it, as we'll now see.
In order to understand this aspect of Luke-Acts, we need to understand something of the customs of the time. In those days, one only ate with peers, with people of the same race and social status as oneself. If one had a meal at which people of another class would be present, there would normally be a different quality of food and separate tables for those of the other class! Meals were something of a symbol of the divisions in society in that time. Pliny the Younger, writing around New Testament times, tells the following story in one of his letters, giving a negative assessment of a practice that was by and large generally accepted in society in his time:
It would be a long story, and of no importance, were I to recount too particularly by what accident I (who am not fond at all of society) supped lately with a person, who in his own opinion lives in splendor combined with economy; but according to mine, in a sordid but expensive manner. Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of the company; while those which were placed before the rest were cheap and paltry. He had apportioned in small flagons three different sorts of wine; but you are not to suppose that it was that the guests might take their choice: on the contrary, [it was so] that they might not choose at all. One was for himself and me; the next for his friends of a lower order (for you must know, he measures out his friendship according to the degrees of quality); and the third for his own freedmen and mine. One who sat next to me took notice of this, and asked me if I approved of it. “Not at all,” I told him. “Please, then,” said he, “what is your method on such occasions?” “Mine,” I returned, “is to give all my company the same fare; for when I make an invitation, it is to sup, not to be censoring. Every man whom I have placed on an equality with myself by admitting him to my table, I treat as an equal in all particulars.” “Even freedmen?” he asked. “Even them,” I said; “for on those occasions I regard them not as freedmen but as boon-companions.” “This must put you to great expense,” said he. I assured him not at all; and on his asking how that could be, I said, “Why, you must know my freedmen do not drink the same wine I do – but I drink what they do.”[4]
So, the meals described in Luke-Acts help us to see an example of one way in which Jesus and the early Christians sought not just to proclaim the Gospel, but to live it. In Paul's letter to the Galatians, we are told that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female: just the sort of divisions which separated people at meals in those days. In Luke-Acts, we see this emphasis being lived out, challenging the status quo. Jesus went in and ate with the outcasts of his day, people who some regarded as 'sinners'. His followers continued in his practice, going even further and extending fellowship to non-Jews as well. The lifestyle of the earliest Christians would have represented an important challenge to the society of that time. Their proclamation and way of life went hand in hand, and (in Luke's own words) 'turned the world upside-down'.
When we hear Luke's message today, we need to ask ourselves very seriously whether the Church reflects the values of the society we live in, or challenges them. The Church has even in very recent times been guilty of reflecting the values of society rather than the values of Jesus in precisely this area. In South Africa in the recent past, and in Northern Ireland even today, the Church very often has simply followed the world and reflected the racism and bigotry of their contemporaries. Also, all around the world today, we can find in Churches a rampant individualism: it is me and God that matters, never mind anyone else. When this sort of thing happens, shame is brought, not only on the Church as an institution, but on the Gospel message, on Christ and on God. If our proclamation is ineffective, a good question to ask ourselves is whether our actions match our words or contradict them. Because, as someone very wise once said, 'actions speak louder than words'. Part of our mission as the Church is to proclaim Jesus' message, but directly connected with that is our second point: living as Jesus lived. The Church should challenge the society it lives in rather than imitate it. This is not to say that whatever society does is always wrong: but when it is, we need to present an alternative through our words and actions.
III. Sharing Jesus' Sufferings
The third aspect of the mission of the Church according to Luke-Acts is to share in Jesus' suffering. A good place to begin discussing this topic is a relatively recent example. During the Communist period in Romania, a pastor named Iosif Ton refused to compromise with the authorities, and for this he was persecuted and eventually exiled. He asked God why, and this is what he felt God was showing him: through suffering the Gospel spreads. This, as we shall now see, is a Biblically-based principal, but it also has practical demonstrations, such as Iosif Ton's former church in Oradea, Romania, which now has several thousand members, although it is unfortunately not continuing in the spirit of the legacy he left there.
In Luke, we see Jesus put to death for what he proclaimed and lived. As he is being crucified, he prays for those who are doing it: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing". At Pentecost, we see the result: Peter accuses the crowd, saying "You crucified him but God raised him", and thousands are converted. Luke also shows Christians following Jesus' example: we can see this in particular in Acts 7: Stephen is martyred for following Jesus, and for the things he proclaims and lives, and as he dies he prays as Jesus prayed: for the forgiveness of those who are killing him. The clearest result of this prayer is the conversion of Paul, one of those present and involved in Stephen's murder, transformed not only into a Christian but a missionary, who himself goes on to follow the same pattern, proclaiming Jesus' message, living it out in practice and suffering because of it.
This is what we are called to do. We have already seen that, as the Church, we are called to stand for what is right, to refuse to accept evil, to speak out against it and to live differently. When this happens, we can expect to meet with attacks, for any time someone's way of life or worldview is challenged, you can expect them to fight back. But by standing against it to the point of being willing to suffer, we expose its evil character: by attacking its critics, the world shows its true colors, and this public demonstration of the evil at the heart of the world is the beginning of its downfall.
We can see other examples in history of people who saw injustice in the world, something that God was not happy with, and sought to change it. We need only think about individuals like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Gandhi, to see that Jesus' 'method', if we can call it that, clearly works. These people were willing to stand against evils in society, to make a stand for what is right and to suffer for it, and had an enormous impact. Can we as Christians do any less for the sake of being faithful to Jesus' message and way of life? According to Luke, willingness to suffer because of the message we proclaim and the life we live is also an integral part of being the Church in the world.
Conclusion
We need to be faithful in following Jesus and in being the means in which his mission continues to be carried out in the world. This, it should be emphasized, is the calling of the whole church. This is not just something for overseas workers or people who are called to some sort of specific full-time ministry. This is about being full-time Christians, and living out the faith we profess.
We need to count the cost of this sort of discipleship, for it is costly to proclaim Jesus' message. Dom Helder Camara, a Brazilian Christian involved in non-violent protest against injustice there, said: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist". If we want to do a little bit of charity on the side, no one really minds. But if we starting asking why things are the way that they are, and (God forbid) actually suggest that things in individuals, in society and in the world as a whole actually need to change, that someone might actually be guilty of something, then people don't like it: they start labeling you as a subversive, a fanatic. Fanaticism in general is bad, but some evil is so fanatically adhered to in the world we live in that maybe only an equally fanatical voice of protest against it will be heard. At any rate, when we start pointing out sin, and calling people to change, to turn, to repent, you can be sure that most are not going to like it. It is costly to proclaim the message.
It is costly to live as Jesus lived. It will obviously cost time and money if we are dedicated to putting into practice Jesus' teaching and to making a difference in the world we live in. But even more costly is accepting peoples' response. It is costly to suffer - but effective. It brings about change. It exposes evil for what it really is. It is part of God's plan for the spread of his kingdom, and it is when the Church is willing to stand up for what is right to the point of suffering for it that it is most effective.
So, in conclusion, Luke-Acts sets out for us the way we can, as a Church, play our part in the spread of the kingdom: by proclaiming Jesus' message, living as he lived, and being prepared to suffer for it. All that is left is for us to respond.
Two tendencies in theology, contextualization, and mission, which can be summed up by quotes from two great minds of the early Church, Tertullian and Justin Martyr:
Tertullian: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”
Justin Martyr: “Whatever is rightly said by any teacher belongs to us Christians”
These two emphases can already be found within the NT. Compare the early Jewish Christians’ belief that the Messiah is tied to their culture and customs, with Paul’s attempt to become all things to all men. In some works the tension is found within a single work and a single author’s thought: for example, what is the relationship between John’s statement that the Logos/Word gives light to every person coming into the world, and the statement that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, so that no one comes to the Father except through him?
In Tertullian’s case, we can recognize with hindsight a certain degree of naďveté. Tertullian was converted from Stoicism, and this background continued to color his theology. It is not surprising that he, with his Stoic background, introduced the concept of substance into discussion of the Trinity, since for the Stoics spirit was simply a special type of matter.
We shall look at a typology of different Christian attitudes to culture next time, but for now it is important to see that the different approaches are not something new, but represent different Christian approaches to culture that have been manifested and tried throughout the history of the Church, since the very beginning. It is the tension between these two poles of preservation of the message and translation/accommodation thereof to a particular context that is the creative tension behind mission, and indeed behind all theology if we think about it.
The Bible: Casebook or textbook?
What is the role of the Bible in mission today? Is it, to put the question as Kraft does, a textbook or a casebook? In other words, does the Bible give us the information based on which God will pass or fail us in the ‘final examination’, or does it give us concrete examples of some of the ways God has revealed himself in human history?
The implications are great. If the Bible is a ‘textbook’, then if Paul says ‘cover your heads, ladies’ (and it is by no means clear that that is what he says, but that is another matter!) – if he says this, then we must do it today. On the other hand, if the covering of heads is an instance of applying basic principles to a concrete situation, then we should not imitate the action so much as use similar methods in applying the same principles in a contextually appropriate way today.
[1] Quoted by David Watson, I Believe in Evangelism, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1976, pp.25-26.
[2] Vishal Mangalwadi, Truth and Social Reform, Spire/Hodder & Stoughton, 1989.
[3] Aram Keshishian, Orthodox Perspectives on Mission, Oxford: Regnum/Lynx, 1992, p.98.
[4] Pliny the Younger, Letters 2:6. Quoted in Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992, p.136.