Contextual theology pdf

A Mistaken Starting Point Underlying the disappointing results of theological contextualization so far is a mistaken starting point. Pacific Theology has been the response to the question, What if Jesus was a Pacifician?

This question takes us as far as possible away from the Bible, the most reliable eyewitness testimony to the historical Jesus. To be culture-centered is to be human-centered since we are our culture. Its results help us to understand our cultures better than the Jesus who walked on earth.

Contextualization Reflecting the Guilty Conscience of the West Firstly, in some quarters of the Pacific regions certainly true in the Pacific Theological College in Suva , the push towards contextualization seems to reflect the guilty conscience of west. Most foreigners who come to work in our theological Faculties with the exception of perhaps a few , seem to have given the guilty plead to the charge that their predecessors created the current theological muddy water in which we in the Pacific find ourselves, by their failure to contextualize.

So, they go the other extreme of being very open to anything we put forth as theological reflections from our cultures in order to regard that as theological creativity and cultural liberation on our part.

Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitness. Even to the extend of regretting that the missionaries who risked their lives to bring the gospel to our pre-Christian ancestors were successful in their bid to change our people with the message of Jesus Christ.

These foreigners therefore have failed to be critical of our theological products and seem happy to have their names associated in academic reviews with this new trend in their published works. This to me is another form of colonization and cultural domination. Tolerance has become the greatest virtue in the West today. So, armed with tolerance, these expatriates are dominating us by getting us to say all kinds of things that tolerate our pre-Christian culture in the name of theological creativity.

What is being disguised is their intolerance of their predecessors who transformed our cultures with the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the name of Tolerance, they want us to say that the nineteenth century missionaries were wrong in transforming our culture by their missionizing activities.

In other words, these neo-colonizers want us to say that the gospel message suppressed our pre-Christian culture by transforming it. I do not idolize the missionaries who brought the gospel to our shores.

But anyone living in our cultures today owes a debt of thankfulness to God for the effort of the nineteenth century missionaries. His wife was killed and cooked by your ancestors. Similarly, my pre-Christian Tongan ancestors killed three of the earliest missionaries to Tonga, in one their civil wars.

I do not say that to blame our pre-Christian ancestors — yours or mine. The missionaries had their faults of course. But it is not entirely true to say that they did not contextualize the gospel.

They did, for example, translate the Bible to our languages in wanting us to know Jesus better. They did bring education to our people in order to help us to read and write. The transformation brought about by the gospel message eventually stopped our people from continuing in cannibalism.

Even the foreigners who are encouraging our students to produce disappointing results of Pacific Theology are fortunate enough not to be cannibalized by us. Our cultural worldview has fundamentally been transformed by the gospel brought to us by the missionaries. In fact, we still need missionaries here in the Pacific to reach the unreached amongst our people.

A Bible-Minus Contextualization Secondly, contextualization shaped by the pot-plant transportation model is removing the confidence of our people from the Bible. Because of its mistaken starting point, it has taken our trained theologians and the training of our ministers away from the right source of theology, namely, the Holy Scriptures.

It is therefore not surprising that the results of Pacific Theology are irrelevant to our grassroots people in the local churches. Pacific Theology speaks to them in descriptive categories entirely foreign to them. While they still gather around the Bible for their weekly worship services, Pacific Theology comes in with stories of their pre-Christian time in darkness which they have happily moved away from and simply wanted to forget.

A Gospel-less Culture Thirdly, Contextualizaton is downplaying the power of the gospel in our people. Rather than seeking biblical solutions to the issue of leadership, say for example, we give in the foreign aids who come with their money offering to train leaders for our nations, in line with their godless principles.

Simply put, we no longer trust in the biblical solution and wisdom and in the power of the gospel to transform our people. We need to repent. In summary, Pacific Theology is making the gospel even more irrelevant to us here in the Pacific. The pot-plant transportation model is not helping us, the church of God, to be more relevant in the Pacific.

It offers us no solution to the moral issues that we are currently facing in the government, in our churches, in our families and in our children. Nothing new under the sun, says the wisdom of God. My disappointments with the church in Tonga is laid to rest when I read of the church of God in Corinth and all the problems they went through. I am left with thankfulness to God for what he has done here in the Pacific up to now with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is the title of a book by a Jewish Rabbi, Geza Vermes. The book itself is quite disappointing in terms of its attempt to verify the historical possibility of Jesus as who he was in the Gospels, by comparing him to other Jewish figures who did something similar to Jesus. However, the title is revealing of what the Bible tells us as the basic truth about Jesus.

Jesus is indeed a Jew, a descendant of Abraham and of David. In him, the promises to Abraham and to David are fulfilled. Instead, as parts of Christ we are therefore heirs of Abraham. Chacko, Laji.

Introduction to Christian Theologies in India. Chung, Woong-Sup. Cone, James H. A Black Theology of Liberation. New York: Orbis Book, Estep, James Riley.

Edited by James Riley Estep. Erskine, Noel. Edited by Israel Selvanayagam. Ferm, Deane William. Groome, Thomas H. Hnuni, R. Compiled by Wati Longchar. Ho, Huang Po. Kim, Sebastian. Longkumar, Limatula. Longchar, Wati. Merritt, David. Edited by Jack L. Nashville: Abingdon Press, Miller, Donald E. Education for Christian Living.

Second edition. Milne, Bruce. Know the Truth. Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, Then we draw our conclusion. And the revelat- model together! The notion that Scrip- ory act of God is living and visible work- ture, and how one lives out their lives is ing in and through the lives of people.

As it speaks little of orthodoxy as oppose to orthopraxy. The Anthropological model views theo- That is within the framework of this logy from the formulation of theological model, God is not just be understood assumptions concepts and ideas, born out through the prism of structured organised of the life of the nation of Israel itself and theological assumptions as much as that within the early Christian Community.

God is lived out in the realness of the community. The key term idea in contex-. Therefore, we say that God is ther looks at God not as an abstract enculturated into the very fabric of the thought in a book Bible but living and lives of people. It is in culture that God engaging in community, the model takes makes his self-disclosure.

As lated. It fosters ture, God in the community, not some ab- growth and cohesion. It does not look for stract enteral being, but real and living in those answers in Western thought and the community. In fact, the anthropolo- praxis, rather it generates this ongoing gical model see itself as God in the real discussion about issues. The drawbacks are Pears posits that prac- As we look at the anthropological model titioners of this model Vincent Donavan, in contextual theology, we felt that this is Robin Hood, she pointed out that there as key aspect in living theology as op- are drawbacks in this model.

Contextual theology explores awareness of the interrelatedness of God and culture. This book surveys important concepts, positions and problems of contextual theology, dealing with different criteria for the interpretation of 'context' and providing explanations of different theoretical models for contextual theology.

Particular topics discussed include: the importance of place for the experience of God; a dynamic, correlative and communicative view of tradition; the approach to knowledge in contextualism and the greater right of the poor to aesthetic knowledge; human ecological formation of theology, and the contributions of pictorial art and architecture to contextual theology. Clearly explaining the importance of contextual theology for all theology, this book offers an invaluable text for students and others exploring theology in context.

Stephen B Bevans's Models of Contextual Theology has become a staple in courses on theological method and as a handbook used by missioners and other Christians concerned with the Christian tradition's understanding of itself in relation to culture. First published in and now in its seventh printing in English, with translations underway into Spanish, Korean, and Indonesian, Bevans's book is a judicious examination of what the terms "contextual theology" and "to contextualize" mean. In the revised and expanded edition, Bevans adds a "counter-cultural" model to the five presented in the first edition -- the translation, the anthropological, the praxis, the synthetic, and the transcendental model.

The author's revisions also incorporate suggestions made by reviewers to enhance the clarity of the original three chapters on the nature of contextual theology and the five models.

Christianity has an inherent capability to assume, as its novel mode of expression, the local idioms, customs, and thought forms of a new cultural frontier that it encounters.