Contextualization

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Contextualization Dr. M. David Sills
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Contextualization SIM Position Paper

• Understanding Contextualization
• Includes ideas inherent in words like
  indigenization or enculturation
• Indigenization asks, Who owns the program?
• Enculturation asks, Does it fit in the
  culture?
• Contextualization combines those two thoughts
  and asks, How do you transfer what God has said
  through holy men of old who lived in an ancient
  cultural context, into the language of people who
  live in a very different one, through the medium
  of translators who live in yet another context
  todays space age?

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Contextualization SIM Position Paper

• Defining Contextualization
• Meaningful and appropriate cross-cultural
  transmission of Biblical truth which is faithful
  to its original intent and sensitive to culture.
• Presuppositions behind this concept of
  contextualization
• Biblical truth is absolute and defines the
  essence of the gospel and the church. These
  truths cannot be compromised in any way.
• There are, however, various legitimate ways in
  which these same truths can be expressed and
  applied in different cultures. These expressions
  and applications must be consistent with
  principles of Biblical interpretation.

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Contextualization SIM Position Paper

• Presuppositions behind this concept of
  contextualization
• As every culture contextualizes the gospel and
  church, missionaries come to new cultures already
  biased towards their own home culture. To
  transmit this would be theological imperialism.
  It leads to confusion of the gospel and the
  planting of a foreign church.
• A contextualized gospel and church which are
  faithful to Scripture and sensitive to culture
  must be worked out for each culture being
  entered. This insures that the issues which must
  be decided for someone to be converted are the
  core issues. It allows flexibility in forms of
  expression which are meaningful to the new church
  within its culture.

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Contextualization SIM Position Paper

• Presuppositions behind this concept of
  contextualization
• A contextualized church will be better able to
  maintain its unity, sustain its purity, and
  witness to its own community. Having experienced
  the process of contextualization, it will be
  better equipped to transmit Biblical truth to
  other cultures. It may result in increased
  receptivity. If the process is not followed,
  artificial barriers may be erected and the
  converse of all the above may result.
• Areas of Application
• Dress, behavior, and lifestyle of the missionary
• Types of development projects, which if
  inappropriate, might be interpreted as
  inducements by the non-Christian community

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Contextualization SIM Position Paper

• Areas of Application
• Language, including the Scripture translation,
  used in evangelism and worship
• Thought patterns and communication style as found
  in the new culture
• Initial selection, sequence, and emphasis of
  certain aspects of the gospel relevant to any
  culture
• Worship posture and expression in prayer, music
  or formal discourse, allowing for various forms.
  We need to be careful, however, that we do not
  overlook the delicate relationship between form
  and meaning.

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Contextualization SIM Position Paper

• Areas of Application
• Discipling and training methods, keeping in mind
  the past experiences and future needs of new
  converts
• Church organization and government, allowing
  various forms
• The process of contextualization should be
  perpetuated not only by example but through
  teaching as a discipline among missionaries and
  church leaders

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Contextualization SIM Position Paper

• Problems with Contextualization
• In the rush to contextualize some may attempt to
  lessen the demands of the gospel or sacrifice
  Biblical truth to make the gospel or church more
  acceptable. This may lead to syncretism.
• Missionaries may not always understand the
  meaning behind forms which they either allow or
  disallow in the church. Accordingly, the best
  ones to decide what is appropriate are
  well-taught believers who can speak for their own
  culture
• Some theologians, arguing that the method of
  interpretation used by evangelicals is often
  dictated by their cultural mind set, produce new
  theologies based on different hermeneutical
  systems- all in the name of contextualization.

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Contextualization International Bulletin of
Missionary Research
Translating Challenges The translation and
dubbing must be as close to perfect as possible,
which means that we must redub portions of the
film. For example, in the initial film edition
of Zhuang, a language group in China, our
translation of angels was actually fairies.
We fixed the problem. In Kinyarwanda (Rwanda),
Mary asked, Am I a virgin? instead of stating,
I am a virgin. We changed it. In Illocano
(Philippines), when the translators needed a word
for prostitute they used a term comparable to
hooker. Although it was good contemporary
Illocano, it offended local pastors, and they
refused to show the film. We changed the word.
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Contextualization International Bulletin of
Missionary Research
Translating Challenges Continued Missionaries
and local churches sometimes fight to retain
Christian words, which may lessen the impact of
the film with nonbelievers. One disputed word is
the name for Jesus, which in Muslim countries has
been translated either Yesu (often favored by
Christians) or Isa (the Arabic usage). We
continually push for Isa because we are trying
to reach Muslims. Some Christians have refused
to show the film with this translation.
Finally, wrong voices or accents are sometimes
selected. In many cultures around the world,
Jesus is expected to have the accent of the
highest caste or class. If a voice with a
low-class accent is used, the viewing audience is
limited.
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Contextualization International Bulletin of
Missionary Research
Translating Challenges Continued Sometimes we
have faced the problem of communicating to
warring tribes that speak the same language but
with slightly different accents. Which tribal
voice do you choose for Jesus? Over the past
twenty-one years the Jesus Film Project has spent
more than 2 million to correct translation and
dubbing errors and problems.
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Perceptions of time

• African theologian John Mbiti, insists that the
  Swahili words for time, sasa and zamani, cannot
  be pressed into the Western temporal categories
  of past, present, and future. Sasa time, in
  which people currently participate, embraces the
  recent past, the present and immediate future.
  Yet, for many Africans, time is not pictured as a
  movement forward into an eternal future, as in
  the Westl instead, events move backwards and sasa
  disappears into an ever increasing past
  (zamani). Dean Flemming, Contextualization in
  the New Testament

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Cultural Words

• Every statement of the gospel in words is
  conditioned by the culture of which those words
  are a part, and every style of life that claims
  to embody the truth of the gospel is a culturally
  conditioned style of life. There can never be a
  culture-free gospel.
• Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to Greeks The
  Gospel and Western culture, 1986, p.4