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The Trinity and Contextualization In this brief paper, we wish to consider the question of whether or not the early church employed a method that might be called contextualization in its formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. First, we must ask what contextualization means. Then, we will be able to investigate the process by which the church formulated its doctrine to see if it might be legitimately called "contextualization."
What is Contextualization? The word "contextualization" is as ambiguous as it is clumsy. As one might expect, this unattractive term was apparently invented by linguists in the 20th century as a technical term, "By contextualization is here meant, not only the recognition of the various phonetic contexts in which the phonemes occur, but the further identification of phonemes by determining their lexical and grammatical functions."[1] It soon came to be used by scholars from various fields with a remarkable diversity of meaning. Among theologians, the term came into popular use after it appeared in Ministry in Context: The Third Mandate Programme of the Theological Education Fund (1970-77).[2] As Hesselgrave and Rommen make clear, the origin of the application of this term in theological circles was "rooted in dissatisfaction with traditional models of theological education."[3] In particular, leaders in the World Council of Churches and the ecumenical movement sought to address the "widespread crisis of faith" as well as "issues of social justice and human development".[4] What this meant, among other things, was the development of a "contextual or experiential" approach to theology which, in the words of Nikos A. Nissiotis, director of the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches, "gives preference, as the point of departure for systematic theological thinking, to the contemporary historical scene over against the biblical tradition . . . ."[5] The crisis of faith referred to was not something new. For leaders in the WCC and their member churches, the Bible's authority had long been questioned due to the application of the "historical critical method" of study, or, in other words, the study of the Scripture in terms of the presuppositions of the Enlightenment.[6] Without the authority of God being clearly expressed in the Bible as a transcultural norm, the locus of authority shifted to man, and the culture and language of the people to whom the Gospel was to be communicated began to be taken as normative. Stephen Knapp in an unpublished paper suggested that the whole notion of contextualization was less an attempt to communicate than to contain the Gospel. Referring to the TMP, he wrote, "One cannot escape the impression that contextualization as it is now widely understood is merely the latest in a string of accommodations of the Gospel to contemporary thought-forms, in this case historicist and secularist (and in the case of some of the expressions of the theology of liberation, Marxist) ones. One cannot escape the impression that the hermeneutical approaches and their underlying philosophy of mission are rooted in part in an over accommodation to secular critiques of the alienating function of Christianity traditionally understood as well as a pervasive cultural devaluation of distinctiveness and distaste of proselytism."[7] Naturally, evangelical Christians found contextualization as defined by the TMP unacceptable. They did not, however, abandon the term. Rather, with some notable exceptions,[8] they were "enamored"[9] with the word contextualization. So, the word had to be redefined. Hesselgrave and Rommen select three early representative proposals.
Early evangelical definitions fit the notion of contextualization into their concern for effective communication of the Gospel.[11] Harvie Conn objects to this understanding of contextualization and urges something deeper. To begin with, according to Conn, Christians must allow the Scripture to judge their own enculturated interpretations and lifestyles - a process he calls "de-contextualization."[12] As he explains,
In that sense, the demand for de-contextualization, ignored largely by both liberation theologian and evangelical, becomes as important as contextualization. It does not take up the questions of culture without evaluating the legitimacy of the questions themselves.[13] According to Conn, we must subject the "presuppositional framework" itself to the "judgment of the Word of God.'[14] To contexualize the message of the Gospel into the language of another culture, we must first remove from our Gospel preaching those elements that are the results of our own cultural bias. For we, too, are parts of a cultural matrix that includes anti-Christian elements that inhibit the ministry of the Gospel to other peoples. What we have, then, is three important views on contextualization, one of them being an aspect or prerequisite for contextualization. First, there is the theologically liberal view of contextualization, which sees the culture as a standard into which the "truth" of the Gospel must be made to fit. This may be labeled for the purposes of this paper as "syncretistic contextualization." The idea in this view is that the teaching of the Gospel must be modified in order to fit with the worldview of the peoples to whom we preach. This model assumes that the Bible itself is a cultural product and that we can distinguish between the cultural accidents and the essential elements of the Christian message. Second, there is the view of conservatives who wish to keep the word "contextualization," but change the definition from that originally suggested by the TMP. This may be described as "linguistic contextualization." On this view, contextualization is merely an effort to communicate effectively to people who speak different languages and view the world in a different manner from those with a European cultural background. This may include restating basic Biblical truths in language that sounds odd to the Western ear, but there is neither an attempt to change nor an approval of any who basically change the message of the Christian Gospel itself. Third, a prerequisite to any real contextualization according to Harvie Conn is de-contextualization. This means taking the Bible as the standard not only for the answers to our questions but as a judge of the questions we ask. In other words, questioning the basic notions of our own or any other culture in terms of the Biblical worldview. Since neither the syncretistic nor the linguistic model necessarily stipulates this as an aspect of the process, it is important to state this as a separate point. In terms of the questions we wish to consider in this paper, this overly simplistic categorization of the subject of contextualization will suffice. What we must first do is ask whether the Trinitarian theology of the early Church fits the model of syncretistic Contextualization, as suggested, for example, by John Hick, or whether it is simply a matter of linguistic contextualization, which is quite frequently opined. We also need to consider the matter of de-contextualization. Is it a notion that may be applied in any way to the work of the early Church? We must keep in mind how very significant the issue itself is, for if the idea of contextualization is that Truth with a capital "T" cannot be expressed in any one language since each language includes the limitations of a particular culture, then contextualization necessarily presupposes some sort of pluralism.[15] [1] J. R. Firth quoted in The Oxford English Dictionary on Compact Disk for the Apple Macintosh, ver. 1.0d (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). [2] David J. Hesselgrave and Edward Rommen, Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989), p. 28. Hereinafter, references to the Third Mandate Programme will be abbreviated TMP. [3] Ibid, p. 29. [4] Quoted from TMP in ibid., p. 29. [5] Quoted in ibid., p. 29. [6] Ibid., p. 30-31. [7] Quoted in Marion Luther McFarland, Culture, Contextualization, and the Kingdom of God in James B. Jordan ed. Christianity and Civilization, no. 4, 1985, The Reconstruction of the Church (Tyler, Tx: Geneva Press, 1985), pp. 329-30. [8] Hesselgrave and Rommen refer to James O. Buswell and Bruce C. E. Flemming. Op. Cit., p. 33. [9] Ibid., p. 33. [10] Ibid., pp. 33-34. [11] Harvey Conn also makes this observation. Eternal Word and Changing Worlds: Theology, Anthropology, and Mission in Trialogue (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), pp. 179-84, esp. p. 182. [12] Conn, Op. Cit., p. 258. Cf. Also, Hesselgrave and Rommen, p. 34. [13] Conn, Ibid., p. 258.
[14] Ibid. [15] Though he denies that his view implies any such conclusion, the notion of contextualization proffered by Charles Kraft at least drifts in that direction. Carl F. H. Henrys critique of Kraft unmasks hidden and destructive assumptions in his view of culture and communication. See: The Cultural Relativizing of Revelation in Trinity Journal, 1:1, Fall, 1980, pp. 153-64. The fundamental problem in Kraft's whole approach is the exaltation of culture above Scripture.
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