hlm 2-akhir

sionary spirit. You will understand something of this by ruminating on the following quotation from his Toward an Old
Testament Theology:
Our proposal is to distinguish
sharply biblical theology's method
from that of systematics or the history of religion. There is an inner
center or plan to which each [Bible]
writer consciously contributed. A
principle of selectivity is already evident and divinely determined by the
rudimentary disclosure of the divine
blessing-promise theme to all men
everywhere as the canon opens in
Genesis 1-11 and continues in Genesis 12-5O. Rather than selecting that
theological data which strikes our
fancy or meets some current need,
the text will already have set up priorities and preferences of its own.
These nodal points can be identified,
not on the basis of ecclesiastical or
theological camps, but by such criteria as: (1) the critical placement of
interpretive statements in the textual
sequence; (2) the frequency of the
repetition of ideas; (3) the recurrence
of phrases or terms that begin to
take on a technical status; (4) the
resumption of themes where a forerunner had stopped often with a
more extensive area of reference, (5)
the use of categories of assertions
previously used that easily lend
themselves to a description of a new
stage in the program of history; and
(6) the organizing standard by
which people, places, and ideas
were marked for approval , contrast,
inclusion, and future and present
significance (Kaiser 1978: 11-12).
In effect, Kaiser is saying that certain
basic hermeneutical principles are
implicit in the biblical text itself if we pay
attention to them. This becomes
tremendously important in circumstances
where (1) sound principles of biblical
interpretation are widely disregarded in
sending churches; and, (2) such
principles, when introduced to members
of the receiving churches, seem to be
imposed upon the text by foreign
“experts” rather than growing out of
Scripture itself.
Timothy M. Warner first crossed
my pathway when some years ago I
became exercised over the direction
that so muchof Christian counseling was
taking, following as it was upon the
heels of humanistic psychology. One of
my colleagues at TEDS, Warner became
more and more involved in spiritual
warfare and a deliverance ministry. It is a
long story, but I will just say that one
day before his departure for another ministry I went to his office. During the
ensuing discussion Warner made a statement that was to be confirmation of
the direction my own thinking and writing
was taking at the time. He said,
“Dave, I have become convinced that
truth encounter must precede power
encounter.” He went on to explain that a
great number of Christian people
themselves—many of them already in
Christian service (!)–have not really
grasped a biblical worldview and as a
consequence live frustrated, defeated
lives. He was in process, therefore, of
building his counseling ministry upon
the foundation of a reexamination of the
relationship between the Triune God,
men and women, the spirit world, and the
self as it unfolds in Scripture beginning with Genesis and working straight
through the Old and New Testaments.
Very late in my teaching ministry at
TEDS, the Lord brought the anthropologist Paul Hiebert to be a faculty colleague. His arrival occasioned a restudy of his “critical contextualization”
writings and that has provided what
may prove to be one of the final pieces in
completing the contextualization puzzle. Hiebert takes a very common sense
view of the nature of language—the
view of “critical realism” (Hiebert 1989).
That is, meaning is to be found in the
correspondence between the mental image
of the word-user and the outer reality
to which the word refers. “Critical realism” avoids two extreme —it opposes
the view that says that meaning is to be
found only in persons and that one
must somehow get “into the head” of the
message source in order to discover
his/her meaning. It also opposes the opposite view—namely, that meaning is
inherent in the signs and forms themselves. The former view leads to
over-contextualization by making even
the signs and forms of the Gospel,
such as doctrinal formulae and water baptism, almost totally subjective and
cultural. The latter view leads to undercontextualization by making certain forms of the
receiving culture inherently evil and
by insisting on certain (Christian) linguistic and behavioral forms without
bothering to inquire into the meanings
assigned to them in the receiving culture.
“Critical realism” insists that
meaning is to be found in the relationship
between signs/forms and reality; that
it is discoverable by a careful examination
of context; and that, insofar as possible, the people of the receiving culture
context must contribute to that process.
Process Principles
Perhaps we are now prepared to
begin to put the pieces together in such a
way as to view the larger dimensions
of contextualization as herein conceived.
Three principles apply throughout
that process.
First, Great Commission contextualization strategy begins with a practical
application of Scripture as seen
through the lens of biblical theology.
Scripture must become not only the
substance but also the strategy—not only
the message, but also the method—of
authentic and effective Gospel contextualization. If God has revealed His will
and plan, then almost by definition the
strategy He employed in doing so
takes priority over human strategies. If
God has chosen certain methods of
communication in Scripture, then insofaras those methods are reproducible,
they take precedence over our own methods.
For example, one of the most effective means of communication is
story-telling. It may then be advantageous
for me to begin my Christian witness
by telling the story of how God has dealt
with me personally–with how he has
changed my life and given me hope for

the future. But Great Commission contextualization as proposed here requires
me to move early on to the story of God’s
dealings with mankind, not just to
inferences gleaned from that story. This
may well be part of the “all things
that I have commanded” of the Great
Commission!
Second, if God’s revelation to mankind is to become meaningful—really
“meaning-full”–to the people of any given
culture, those who introduce it and those
who carry it forward (the
“planters” and the “waterers”)
must allow the Gospel message
as unfolded in Scripture to
inform every aspect of the discipling ministry. Missionizing,
evangelizing, catechizing,
counseling, preaching, worshipping—these and other discipling-related activities are 4not
to be separate and unrelated
ministries developed by the
“experts” in each of these ministries. All
must work in line with one divine
“blueprint” and complement each other.
Thirdly, if the Gospel is to be
understood by people of various languages and cultural contexts, the
divine Word must, of course, be transmitted in the thought forms and symbol
systems of those peoples. The Old and
New Testaments do not constitute a
replica of some heavenly document.
Unlike the Koran, the Bible is translatable. Morever, the Bible writers were
inspired by the Holy Spirit to write
their respective portions of the one story
in ways that were meaningful to their
particular audiences and at a critical juncture when it was imperative that people representing a variety of languages
and cultures simultaneously hear and
understand the Gospel on that first Pentecost. It is that same Holy Spirit who
gave the “gift of tongues” enabling Parthians, Medes, Elamites and others to do
just that (Acts 2:10).
In our own case, however, the situation is quite different. We must labor

diligently to understand both the original
language/culture of the Bible writers
and the language/culture of contemporary
respondents with a view to proper
translation and interpretation. When we
do that we soon discover that there is
no one-to-one correlation between the linguistic and non-linguistic forms of
Scripture, our own culture, and respondent cultures. For example, hamartia
in the New Testament may translate as
“sin” in the United States and tsumi in
Japan, but not only are the word symbols
different. their meanings are quite different as well. Again the ritual of bowing
in the Old Testament, bowing to an
audience in America and bowing before
the portrait of the deceased at a Japanese funeral, while appearing to be the
same act, nevertheless have radically
different meanings.
These examples are simply indicative of the fact that at the earliest stage of
missionizing in Japan, qualified
informants were greatly needed. At later
stages the Japanese church as a priesthood of believers became (or should have
become) a “hermeneutical community” deciding how the Scripture is best
understood and applied in the Japanese cultural context. While often overlooked, this is what is involved in the
discipling of the panta ta ethne of the
Great Commission.
The Process Analyzed
Now perhaps, we are somewhat better prepared to analyze some specific
proposals that will serve us when evaluating, comparing and contrasting what I
have called “Great Commission Contextualization” with two other
approaches–one quite traditional and
the other very contemporary. The setting
is a village in the Central African
Republic. (For most of us that will assure
enough cultural distance to make
more objective analysis possible.) The
particular issue involved is that ageold problem of polygamy and the contextualization focus will be upon one of
the qualifications for local
church episcopoi (overseers) as we have it in Paul's
first letter to Timothy,
Chapter 3 verse 2: “the husband of one wife.”
First, consider the “undercontextualization”
approach of C. Caverno and
some missionaries to
Africa. The attitude and action
of many missionaries and
not a few of their national counterparts
vis-a-vis polygamy and I Timothy 3:2
has been informed by people like C.
Caverno who have analyzed the practice of polygamy in one dimension only–
the moral dimension. In an article that
appears in the 1939 edition of The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
he wrote:
Polygamy has been and is the open
blazon by the human race of sex
vice. . . There is hypocrisy beneath
the word polygamy. It is an
attempt to cover up by the term
“plural marriage” what is not marriage and cannot be marriage.
There is no particular need of
defining what the condition is, so
long as we can look upon it as a
violation and negation of the marriage relation. The very use of the
term from any language covering a
like condition is an attempt—“to
steal the livery of the court of
heaven to serve the devil in”
(Caverno 1939: 2416).
Caverno goes on to explain that
polygamy is primarily the outcome of
tribal wars when victors took women captive as concubines and slaves. In
polygamy, he says, “Woman is reduced to

the position of ministrant to man’s
unmodified sensuality” (Ibid.).
Please pay special attention to the
phrase “in any language;” to his
explanation of polygamy in terms of tribal
wars; and to his insistence that unbridled sensuality is the root cause of polygamy. That he could easily be challenged on all three counts does not seem
to occur to him. His judgment is
strictly moral and, to a lesser extent,
theological.
It is important to understand that a
previous generation of missionaries
largely would have concurred. I remember discussing the subject of polygamy in tribal Africa with the late Walter
Trobisch, author of the best selling
books I Loved a Girl and I Loved a Boy.
He spoke of the growing desperation
he experienced when his Africa mission
colleagues almost unilaterally decided
to refuse communion to polygamists until
such time as they had divested themselves of all but one wife. Those missionaries were not without compassion.
However, given their understanding of the
biblical text, the roots or “polygamy,”
and the immoral nature of the practice as
described by such scholars as
Caverno, they felt that they had no choice.
To accept polygamists as members of
the congregations in good standing would
be to compromise Christian truth. To
refuse to accept them helped to assure
missionaries that church leadership
would not fall into unworthy hands.
Polygamy had to be rejected out of
hand.
Nevertheless, as Trobisch himself probed the issue from an African perspective, he concluded that iconoclastic denunciation of polygamy in this
fashion was tantamount to exorcising
the house only to let more devils in. The
natives did indeed have some most
bizarre notions regarding sex and marriage, but Trobisch found that those
notions functioned quite well as practical
safeguards against physical and social
dangers. Though polygamy did indeed
entail some negative consequences, in the
African context the moral code did
not militate against it; it protected wives
from serial pregnancies; it made provision for women who might otherwise be
left helpless; it provided the husband
with ready and willing labor for his gardens; and it enhanced the husband's
prestige and status in the village. To force
the polygamist to divest himself of all
but one wife, on the other hand, had cruel
consequences for those wives who
suddenly found themselves without solace
or support.
Little Improvement
Now we might be tempted to think
that this is a scenario of the past when
missionaries were not anthropologically
informed and were less sensitive to
cultural concerns, and when national leaders were more willing to conform to
foreign domination. Not entirely so, as
time has passed, the problem of
polygamy is not as great as it once was
due to a variety of factors. But it is
still there. Perhaps more importantly, our
approach to a variety of issues in
church and mission shows little or no
improvement whatsoever. As often as
not we fail to study the text carefully we
oversimplify the nature of language
and culture; we do not consider the difference between form and function; and
(perhaps most importantly) we do not take
time to explore emic (insider perspective) understandings and interpretations.
Under-contextualization is very much
with us today.
Far removed from the approach
informed by the likes of scholars such as
Caverno is the approach informed by
scholars such as Charles Kraft. Kraft
believes that meaning is to be found
in persons, not in words or rituals themselves. In his understanding, the Bible
is a cultural sea with supracultural truths
floating around on it. The Bible is not
revelation as such, but nevertheless all of
it is potentially revelatory. As for cultures, they are divinely ordained and give
evidence of their divine origin in the ways
that they order life and values and
allow societies to maintain themselves
(C. Kraft 1978).
Given these assumptions, one
approaches the list of qualifications
for church leadership in I Timothy 3:3-9
very differently (Kraft 1978). The
qualifications were not normative and
meant not to be applied “as is” to
every cultural situation. Rather, they mirrored the expectations and values of
Ephesus and the larger Greco-Roman
world in which Paul and his colleagues labored. In that cultural context,
adherence to the list of qualifications
as they appear in Paul’s letter resulted in
the kind of church leadership that
merited the respect and admiration of the
community. In the eyes of the public
of that time and place adherence resulted
in church leadership that was, in
Paul's words, “above reproach” (I Tim.
3:2).
By way of contrast, the current North
American context is very different.
Our culture acknowledges such things as
the equality of women, the capability
of young people, the legitimacy of
divorce in many situations, and so on.
According to Kraft, this should result in a
culturally-nuanced interpretation and
application of the biblical text. To begin
with, insofar as order reflects priorities, the order of leadership qualifications
might be changed so as to reflect, for
example, the value that we in North
America place upon youthful vigor as
over against senior status and maturity.
Secondly certain items should be
changed somewhat: as concerns marital
status, it seems that in the first century Greco-Roman context irreproachability (“without reproach”) demanded
that a man not take a second wife after the
death or divorce of his first wife.
American congregations experience no
problem at all with remarriage after
the death of a spouse. Most (but not all)
would have a problem with the remarriage of a pastor (at least) after divorce,

Dynamic-equivalent transculturation
in our Central African Republic will
involve a process. Those who pioneer the
work will need to be armed with an
understanding (misunderstanding?) of language and biblical revelation that
allows for this kind of (over?) contextualization. They will then be free to translate I Timothy 3:1-9 (and the rest of Scripture) in the manner indicated, and
they will teach the Scripture accordingly.
Polygamy, therefore, will present no
real problem initially. At the same time
they will be aware of the fact that
monogamy is both the ideal of Scripture
and the direction in which world cultures are moving. Polygamy should be,
and will be, replaced by monogamy.
That being the case, over time and as
national leadership emerges and is
trained, both the original translation and
attendant interpretation and instruction will be modified to reflect the biblical
ideal and macro-cultural realities.
It goes without saying that this
approach entails significant difficulties for those who would employ it, even
though polygamy itself may not
appear as an immediate problem. Not
only will the emerging church have to
cope with problems that accrue to social
change, but eventually the contextualizers will be forced to explain how it is
that the Bible could seemingly say
one thing at one time and something else
at another time. But, of course, the
explanation for that state of affairs reveals
why, for the conservative contextualizer, Kraft's approach entails not only
significant difficulties, but insuperable ones
Over the years I have come to believe
that an omniscient God has already
provided the key to both world
evangelization and effective
contextualization.
not so much with lay remarriage, and
more and more churches are putting
women in top leadership roles in accord
with societal changes. “The husband
of one wife,” therefore, contextualizes
into “faithful to one spouse (at a
time).” Thirdly, we may choose to add
such things as administrative ability
and personableness to the list. Kraft calls
this “dynamic-equivalent transculturation.”
Returning to our African village
mission/church scenario, the specific problem is
polygamy and
the focus is on I
Timothy 3:1-9,
especially verse 2.
Since Kraft’s
missionary experience was among
the Higi of Nigeria, those who would
employ his approach in our village
situation would have no difficulty knowing how to proceed. In the beginning,
they would translate (not just interpret)
the passage differently. First, the village culture valuing membership in the
“royal class,” maturity, and hospitality very highly, these would be placed at
the top of the list of leadership qualifications.
Second, “the husband of one
wife”qualification would be omitted and
“one who manages his own household well” would be modified. As we
have seen in the African context, plural wives often elevate a man’s social
status and prestige. Moreover, “managing a household well” is deemed to be
demonstrated best in a polygamous
household for any man should be able to
manage a household with only one
wife in it! (The Kru of Liberia have a saying, “You cannot trust a man with
only one wife.”) So the solution would be
to delete “the husband of one wife”
and change “one who manages his own
household well” (verse 4) to “one
who manages his own (polygamous)
household well.”
The Biblical Narrative
Third, we will turn to a “Great
Commission contextualization” scenario
as advocated here. It begins with
quite different understandings and
assumptions of the nature of symbols
and rituals, revelation and contextualization, and the Great Commission and
world evangelization as such.
Whether our Central African
Republic village represents virgin territory or has already had a Church
planted for a generation
or more, the contextualization approach
advocated here will
likely be much the
same. How ever
church planters may
make their initial
contacts, identify with
the people and gain
a hearing, they will quickly introduce the
Bible narrative—first communicating
chronologically the great events and
themes and then over time filling in
the gaps. In whatever state “church waterers” may find an existing church,
very possibly they will find it necessary to
begin at the beginning and proceed in
much the same fashion.
As indicated above, the Great
Commission contextualization process
will then be carried forward by learning the significance of local culture language and customs from the villagers;
by rehearsing and applying lessons
learned from the events and themes of
biblical revelation; and by employing and
reinforcing the methods of biblical
theology in all ministries of the mission
and church. In this way, whether in
evangelism, catechizing, counseling or
preparing leadership, Christian
believers will become well informed on
such matters as Adam and Eve's relationship to God and each other; the marriages of Abraham, Jacob, David and
Solomon; the selection of O.T. judges,
kings and prophets as well as New
Testament apostles, elders and deacons;

the Church, and so on.
Insofar as polygamy is not a
moral issue in the village, it may not
emerge as a significant problem
early on. However, it is obvious that at
some juncture it will surface as a primary concern. When it does, Great Commission contextualization will build
upon the foundation already laid and
exhibit four critical characteristics.
First, the matter will be considered in the
church—the “body of Christ,”the
“company of the committed,” the “hermeneutical community.” Second,
those who lead this process will be prepared to encourage open discussion
concerning local understandings related
to polygamous marriages. Third,
leaders will both teach and model basic
principles of Bible interpretation.
Fourth, the problem will be discussed in relation to the various contexts of Scripture: monogamy and polygamy in the Old Testament; the
teachings of Jesus including his teaching
on divorce; the New Testament epistles with special attention to the Pastoral
Epistles; the context of First Timothy
including the doctrinal section immediately preceding the list of qualifications in chapter 3; and, finally, the events
and imagery of the Book of Revelation. Bathed in prayer and concern for
God’s greater glory, this kind of discussion can be expected to lead to mutually acceptable decisions.
Our immediate reaction may be that
this seems like an extremely arid and
laborious task. But, if it seems so, I suggest that you recall the multiplied
hours you have likely spent in Bible studies that were little more than a recital
of proof texts and personal opinions. I
suggest that you also remember the
seemingly endless hours spent on questions of far less importance in church
business meetings. Also I ask that you
consider how many church divisions
and world compromises might have been
avoided if local congregations would
have met in prayer and around the Word
of God in this fashion.
The Prognosis
Perhaps all of this is another case
of “old men dreaming dreams.” The very
idea of any large grouping of missionaries, evangelists, counselors, and
pastor/teachers subordinating their
carefully studied—or at least, habitual—
approaches to the framework of biblical theology seems idealistic in the
extreme. The notion that it would
make any significant difference if they did
may seem to be hopeful but quite
impractical. Not so! After going through
“Walk Through the Bible,” “Divine
Drama,” “Bible Panorama” and similar
studies, even Christians who have
been in the church for many years often
exclaim, “I’ve never seen it this way
before.”
In my estimation, Great Commission contextualization is our most
hopeful strategy if we are serious
about world evangelization. Not only does
it best meet the requirements of Scripture itself, it also qualifies on the basis of
sound principles of communication,
anthropology, psychology and other
social science disciplines.
To be sure habits are not easily
changed. Though storytelling is one
of the earliest and most important arts
known to man, telling and retelling
redemptive history and prophecy does not
seem sophisticated enough for moderns and post-moderns who are beholden
to human sciences. We have become
so addicted to the idea that some strategy
of man’s devising (once baptized with
the holy water of Bible proof texting) is
key to world evangelization that we
cling to that idea even though recent history shows that one key after another
fails to turn in the lock. Could it be that,
despite all our emphasis on understanding receptor cultures, we have failed
to understand how captive we are to
our own culture and its worldview?
Were someone to ask me what I
believe to be the greatest missiological
strategy ever devised I would now
answer,”Tell them the story of Jesus.
Write on their hearts every word.”I
would remind us all of that which we
may already know—namely, that He is
the Seed of the woman in Genesis 3,
the Bright Morning Star of Revelation 22,
and that indeed, the whole Bible
relates the “story of Jesus.