Worldview, Challenge of
Contextualization and Church
Planting in West Africa — Part 2: Worldview,
Culture and Multi-disciplinary Study
By
D. Tuche
Dr. Damian O. Emetuche served as a missionary in
West Africa for eight years. He currently resides in
Seattle, Washington, where he is Associate Church Planting Director for the
Puget Sound Baptist
Association; Adjunct professor at Bakke Graduate University in Seattle, and
pastor of
Agape Community Church which he
planted. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mission
from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.
INTRODUCTION
This
is the second piece in the 4-part series, the term “worldview” will be
discussed and an historical review will be
provided. Also the concepts of “culture” and “worldview” along with an interdisciplinary perspective will be
presented.
In the last two pieces of the series, an overview of
West African worldviews and its missiological
Implications will be covered.
DEFINITION OF “WORLDVIEW” AND AN
HISTORICAL REVIEW
The
term “worldview” etymologically, has been derived from two German words, Welt, for world, and Anschauung,
for perception or view. According to David K. Naugle, the words placed
together, “Weltanschauung,
has been received both as a loanword and as a calque or copy in
the English language.”'
The Oxford English Dictionary defines
the word in a philosophical manner as “a particular philosophy or view of life; a
concept of the world held by an individual or
a group.”2 Naugle notes that in The
Oxford English Dictionary, “worldview” is “listed in the twenty-sixth subheading
under the discussion of world, where it is shown to be the English equivalent of Weltanschauung.
Here, ‘world-view’ is defined succinctly as a contemplation of the world, view of
life.”3
The history of worldview as a philosophical concept is
traced to Immanuel Kant, who was the first philosopher to coin
the phrase “worldview” in his “quintessential Kantian paragraph that
accents the power of the perception of the human mind.”4 Kant
states:
If the human mind is nonetheless to be able even to
think the given infinite without contradiction,
it must have within itself a power that is supersensible, whose idea of the
'David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a
Concept (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 64. 2The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “Weltanschauung.”
3Naugle, Worldview, 64.
4Ibid., 58.
noumenon cannot be intuited but
can yet be regarded as the substrate underlying what is
mere appearance,
namely, our intuition of the world [weltanschauung]. For only by means of this power and its idea do we, in a pure
intellectual estimation of magnitude, comprehend
the infinite in the world of sense entirely under a concept, even though in a mathematical estimation of magnitude by means of
numerical concepts we can never think
it in its entirety.5
Naugle
notes that Kant’s use of the word Weltanschauung
simply refers to the sense of perception, and there was
nothing remarkable in its use. Nevertheless, the concept was taken by other
philosophers from its German origin and carried over to other European
languages.6
Again, according to Naugle, “The textual apparatus
indicates it [worldview] was first used in English in 1858
by J. Martineau in his book Studies of Christianity, where he refers to ‘The deep penetration of his [Saint Paul’s]
mistaken world-view.”7 The second citation of the phrase “worldview” in English, Naugle observes,
dates from 1906 in D. S. Cairns’ Christianity in the Modern World, in which he states, “Christianity, alike in its
central Gospel, and its World-view,
must come to terms with Hellenism.”8 Furthermore, Naugle states:
Thus within sixty-eight
years of the inaugural use in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of
Judgment, Weltanschauung entered the English language in its naturalized form
as ‘world-view.’ Ten years later the German
word itself gained currency in Anglo-American academic discourse. Since
their middle nineteenth-century beginnings, both Weltanschauung and ‘world-view’ have flourished and became significant
terms in the thought and vocabulary
of thinking people in the English-speaking world.9
Consequently,
the term “worldview” gradually has developed into a technical word that in the last
three decades has become a significant term in philosophical and theological,
as well as in anthropological discourse. Each
discipline has to interpret worldview from its particular perspective.
MULTI-DISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF
“WORLDVIEW”
James W. Sire examines the concept from philosophical
and theological perspectives and defines worldview in ontological categories. He
defines worldview as:
A
commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a
story or in a set of presuppositions
(assumptions) which may be true, or entirely false, which we
hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or
inconsistently) about the basic
5Ibid., 58-59. See also Immanuel Kant, Critique
of Judgment: Including the First Introduction, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 111-12.
6Kant, Critique of Judgment, 111-12. See
Naugle, Worldview, for more on the concept’s history and development. 7Naugle, Worldview, 64-65. To read more on
Martineau’s use of “worldview,” see James Martineau, Studies in Christianity (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2003).
8Naugle, Worldview, 65. See D. S. Cairns, Christianity
in the Modern World (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907).
9Naugle,
Worldview, 64-65.
3
constitution
of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have
our being.10
In his book, Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing
Christianity in a World of Ideas, Ronald Nash
agrees with Sire. Nash argues that worldview is a “conceptual scheme by which
we consciously or unconsciously
place or fit everything we believe and by which we interpret and judge reality.”11 Therefore, he
concludes that all mature rational human beings have worldviews. Yet, a worldview may not be articulated or
arranged in a philosophical pattern as in the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless, it is the
lens by which each individual, community, and ethno-linguistic group perceives reality.
In the same manner, Nash advocates that Christian
faith should be seen as a worldview, a “conceptual
system, as a total world and life-view. Once people understand that both
Christianity and its adversaries in
the world of ideas are worldviews, they will be in [a] better position to judge the relative merits of the total Christian
system.”12 Nash notes that it is worldview difference that
accounts for the multitude of disagreements in societies. He states, “Many
disagreements among individuals, societies, and nations are clashes of competing
worldviews. This is certainly the case
between advocates of the pro-life and pro-choice positions on abortion. It is
also true with regard to the growing number of conflicts between secular
humanists and religious believers.”13
Naugle regrets the lack of attention given to
weltanschauung and worldview in English encyclopedias and dictionaries of philosophy. However, in the social
sciences and theological discussions,
the idea of “worldview” has attracted much in-depth study.14This
worldview study is particularly true
in cultural anthropology, where the concept of worldview is treated as part of cultural phenomena. Much has also been written in
other social sciences, for instance in sociology
in respect to culture. Sociologists have helped to identify different
components of culture, such as
symbols, language, values, beliefs, norms, and material culture.15
Sociologists
have also immensely contributed to an understanding of the social dynamics of
how people interact and organize their societies. Nevertheless, for the purpose
of this research, worldview will be considered from
the cultural anthropological perspective. However, considering worldview
from the perspective of cultural anthropology is not to overlook the importance of the concept in theology, philosophy,
and social sciences; but since this study relates to a culturally distinct people, “worldview” from the
perspective of cultural anthropology would
better serve its purpose.
10James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview
as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 122. 11Ronald H. Nash, Worldviews in Conflict:
Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992),
16.
12Ibid., 19-20. 13Ibid., 19-20. 14See Naugle, Worldview, 65.
15John J. Macionis, Sociology, 9th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 2003), 63.
4
“CULTURE” AND
“WORLDVIEW”
James L. Peacock observes that
anthropologists “have promiscuously showered affection on
the notion of culture, a notion so obvious in their experience and so central
to their discipline. Yet they have never agreed on a single definition.”16
For
Eugene Nida, “Culture is all learned behavior
which is socially acquired, that is, the material and nonmaterial traits which are passed on from one generation
to another. They are both transmittable and accumulative, and they are cultural
in the sense that they are transmitted by society, not by genes.”17
According to Stephen Grunlan and Marvin Mayers, culture must involve learned and shared attitudes, values, and
ways of behaving.18 Hiebert considers culture as “more or less integrated systems of ideas,
feelings, and values and their associated patterns of behavior and products shared by a group of people
who organize and regulate what they think, feel, and do.”1919 From
the observations of Nida, Grunlan, Mayers, and Hiebert cited above, it may be concluded that culture is learned rather
than inherited; it is social, shared, and unique to humanity.
In her book Globe-Trotting
in Sandals: A Guide to Cultural Research, Carol V.McKinney argues that
worldview has been used with a multitude of meanings. One of the common usages is in reference to a point of view,
a way of looking at an issue or a perspective. McKinney observes that worldview, when used in an ideological sense,
contrasts the nature of God
theologically with humanistic, materialistic ideologies like secular humanism,
Marxism, naturalism, or secularism.20
However, from the anthropological perspective,
worldview is the underlying assumption about reality. The worldview of a
culture reveals its basic assumptions about reality at a high level, the macro or metatheoretical level; it is
the framework, which provides consistency, more or less, and coherency in the way a people looks at the world.21
Sherwood Lingenfelter writes, “Worldview is fundamentally a system of
ideas, of logical relationships, through which actors in a sociocultural arena explain and rationalize
their thoughts and actions.”22
As to the relationship of worldview and culture,
Lingenfelter again observes, “The unique history, whether written or oral, of each society frames the foundation
categories, propositions, cosmology,
and explanatory events of its worldview.”2323 In other words, the
unique history
16James
L. Peacock, The Anthropological Lens: Harsh Light, Soft Focus (Cambridge:
University Press, 1986), 3. 17Eugene
Nida, Customs and Cultures: Anthropology for Christian Missions
(Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1979), 28.
18Stephen Grunlan and Marvin Mayers, Cultural
Anthropology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 1988), 39-51.
19Paul
G. Hiebert, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (Grand Rapids,
Baker, 1985), 30.
20Carol
V. McKinney, Globe-Trotting in Sandals: A Guide to Cultural Research (Dallas:
SIL International, 2000), 208.
21Ibid.
22Sherwood
Lingenfelter, Agents of Transformation: A Guide for Effective Cross-Cultural
Ministry (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 220.
23Ibid.
5
creates
relationships and connects ideas and meanings into noncontradictory
propositions. McKinney suggests two differing
theoretical approaches in the study of worldview. The first is
to examine the
content, which necessarily describes specific assumptions in the culture, while
the second looks at the structure
with the intention of understanding its basic categories.24
Brian J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton, in their book The
Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview, argue, “World views
are best understood as we see them incarnated,
fleshed out in actual ways of life. They are not systems of thought, like
theologies or philosophies. Rather,
world views are perceptual frameworks.”25 Culture is seen as pieces
of a puzzle in which worldview is the
key in solving or understanding it. Again, Walsh and Middleton write:
When we look at a
culture, we are looking at the pieces of a puzzle. We can see the functioning of assorted institutions, like the
family, government, schools, cultic institutions
(churches, temples, synagogues, and so on) and businesses. We can observe different modes of recreation, different sports,
transportation and eating habits. Each culture develops a unique
artistic and musical life. All of these cultural activities are pieces of the
puzzle. The question is, how do we put the puzzle together?How do the
pieces
interrelate? What is the pattern of the culture? Is there a key that unlocks
the pattern? Yes. The central element which brings
the pieces of the puzzle together into a coherent
whole, is the worldview that has the leading role in the life of that culture.26
Worldview therefore is central to
every culture. Charles H. Kraft agreed to the centrality of
worldview in every culture. He states, “Worldview, the deep level of culture,
is the culturally structured set of assumptions
(including values and commitments/allegiances) underlying how a people perceive
and respond to reality.”27 Furthermore, Kraft contends that “worldview
is not
separate
from culture. It is included in culture
as the deepest level presuppositions upon which people
base their lives.”28 In his most famous work, Christianity
in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical
Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective,
Kraft argues that not only does worldview lie at the heart of culture, but it
drives the culture, touching, interacting with, and strongly influencing
every other aspect of the culture.29 As to the foundation of
worldview, Kraft writes:
24McKinney, Globe-Trotting in Sandals, 208.
25Brian
J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton, The Transforming Vision: Shaping a
Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1984),
17
26Ibid.,
18-19.
27Charles
H. Kraft, “Culture, Worldview and Contextualization,” in Perspectives on the
World Christian Movement: A Reader,
ed. Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne (Pasadena, CA: William Carey
Library, 1999), 385. It should be noted that the early
writers on the theme of “intercultural communications” of the gospel used the
phrase “cross-cultural” to mean “intercultural.” This can be
seen in books and materials written by authors like Kraft, Nida, Hiebert,
Lingenfelter, McKinney, and Hesselgrave, among others. New writers, like
Everett Rogers and Thomas Steinfatt prefer the phrase
“intercultural.” In contemporary missiological writings, “intercultural”
communication of the gospel signifies
communicating the gospel from one culture to another culture, while
“cross-cultural communication” now has the
significance of that which is true, or common to every culture. In this
research, we will be using the phrase
“intercultural,” unless in a direct quotation from another author.
28Ibid.
29Charles H. Kraft, Christianity in Culture: A
Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979), 53.
6
The
worldview of any given culture presumably originated in a series of agreements
by the members of the original group concerning
their perception of reality and how they should
regard and react toward that reality. This, like all other aspects of culture,
has undergone constant change so that it now differs
to a greater or lesser extent from the original worldview and from other extant
worldviews that have developed (in related cultures)
from that common-ancestor worldview.
A worldview is imposed upon the
young of a society by means of [a] familiar process of teaching
and learning. In this way each youngster reared in a given culture is
conditioned to interpret reality in terms of the conceptual system of that
culture.30
Hiebert identifies three dimensions of culture: (1)
Cognitive dimension, which reflects the knowledge shared by
the society; (2) Affective dimension, which deals with the attitudes, notions of beauty, tastes in food and dress, likes
and dislikes, enjoyments and sharing of sorrows; and (3) Evaluative
dimension, which is concerned with values, standards by which human relationships are judged, sense of right and
wrong, truth and falsehood.31 Hiebert’s evaluative dimension of culture corresponds to Kraft’s
understanding of worldview.
The
Willowbank Report states.
Culture
holds people together over a span of time. It is received from the past, but
not by any process of natural inheritance. Culture has to be learned afresh by
each generation. This [enculturation] takes place broadly by the
process of absorption from the social environment, especially in the home. In
many societies, certain elements of the culture are communicated directly in rites of initiation, and by many other
forms of deliberate instruction.32
Furthermore,
“At its center is a worldview, that is, a general understanding of the nature
of the universe and one’s place in it. This center may be ‘religious’
(concerning God, or gods and spirits, and
of our relation to them), or it may express a ‘secular’ concept of reality, as
in a Marxist society.”33
Consequently,
worldview is a way people look at and judge the world; it is their perception
of reality. There may be as many worldviews as there are cultures. Each culture
looks at the world differently, and its perception determines to a certain
extent how the gospel is presented to that
culture. Unless there is a good grasp of a people’s worldview, sharing the gospel
in a way that will have a lasting impact in their culture will be difficult. It
is not that converts will not be made; but
there will be certain cultural norms that may not be transformed because of ignorance. Todd Gitlin, in The
Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked
by Culture Wars, notes,
30Ibid.
31Hiebert, Anthropological Insights for
Missionaries, 30-34.
32“The Willowbank Report: Report of a Consultation
on Gospel and Culture,” Lausanne Committee of World Evangelization
[on-line]; accessed 12 September 2003; available from http://www.
gospelcom.net/lcwe/LOP/lop02.htm, 3; Internet. See also “The Willowbank Report:
Report of a Consultation on Gospel
and Culture,” in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader,
484.
33“The Willowbank Report: Report of a Consultation
on Gospel and Culture,” Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.
7
How
men and women think is not simply a function of what they have seen or felt in
their own lives. Nor is their form of thought a genetic shadow cast by their
parents or grandparents. People think
within the intellectual and cultural currents that surround them--currents with histories, even if the
sources cannot be seen from downstream. Even dissenters are soaked in the currents that they believe themselves to be
swimming against. To paraphrase
Marx, men and women think, but not in language or concepts or even emotions utterly of their own making.34
Kraft therefore outlined the five major functions
of worldview as explanatory, evaluational,
psychological reinforcement, integrating, and adaptability. In respect to explanatory, Kraft notes that it is the worldview
that embodies the people “whether explicitly or implicitly, the basic assumptions concerning ultimate things on which
they base their lives.”35 For instance,
If
the worldview of a people conditions them to believe that the universe is
operated by a number of invisible personal
forces largely beyond their control, this will affect both their
understanding
of and their response to ‘reality.’ If, however, a people’s worldview explains
that the universe operates by means of a large number of impersonal, cause-andeffect
operations which, if learned by people, can be employed by them to control the universe,
the attitude of these people toward ‘reality’ will be much different.36
Concerning the evaluationary function, Kraft
states, “The basic institutions, values, and goals of a society are
ethnocentrically evaluated as best, and, therefore, sanctioned by the worldview of their own subculture. Other people’s
customs are judged to be inferior or at least inappropriate.”37 As it pertains to psychological
reinforcement, Kraft argues that in times of crisis, “It is to one’s conceptual system that one turns for
encouragement to continue or the stimulus
to take other action.”38
Crises such as death, birth, marriage, and illness
serve to reinforce a worldview, as each crisis is resolved in accordance with the customs and traditions of the
society. Often, Kraft suggests:
This reinforcement takes the
form of ritual or ceremony in which many people participate (e.g., funerals,
harvest celebrations, initiation or graduation ceremonies). Frequently there are
also individual worldview-required reinforcement observances such as prayer,
trance, scientific experimentation, or
‘thinking the matter through’ for the purpose of squaring a prospective
decision with one’s conceptual underpinning.39
Furthermore,
worldview serves to integrate different aspects of the culture into a whole, systematic order, and organizes the cultural
perception of reality into an overall design. In terms
34Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams:
Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars (New York: Henry
Holt, 1995), 200.
See also Everett M. Rogers and Thomas M. Steinfatt, Intercultural
Communication (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 1999), 2.
35Kraft, Christianity in Culture, 54.
36Ibid. 37Ibid., 55.
38Ibid.
39Ibid.
8
of this integrated and
integrating perspective, Kraft observes, “A people conceptualizes what reality
should be like and understands and interprets the multifarious events to which
they are exposed.”40
In addition to its integrating function,
worldview also serves in adaptation. People, by “adjusting to their
worldviews, devise means for resolving conflict and reducing cultural dissonance. That is, in circumstances of cultural
distortion or disequilibrium there is a resilient quality to worldviews by
means of which people reconcile hitherto apparently irreconcilable differences between old understandings and new
ones.”41
In
Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues, Hiebert notes, “Growing awareness of the fundamental differences between
cultures has raised a host of new questions about cross-cultural communication, incarnational ministries, contextualization,
and the relationship between theology and sociocultural contexts.”42
One may also add church planting methodology and
the issue of syncretism to the lists of questions. In many cases, Hiebert observes:
Emphasis
on anthropology and social sciences has led to the neglect of theology in mission
endeavor. A generation ago, most books and articles dealt with the nature of God’s
call, lostness of humanity, the need for prayer and faithfulness, and the
radical challenge of such old customs as
widow burning and human sacrifice. Today, publications
deal with planning, leadership, cultural sensitivity, effective sociocultural strategies
for evangelism, minimizing cultural dislocation in conversion, and how context determines
meaning in the contextualization of theology.43
The focus has now shifted more to pragmatism, an
accusation often levied against the Church Growth Movement and contextual
theologians. An example of such a book is Jesus
in Global Contexts, by Priscilla Pope-Levison and John Levison. The Levisons, writing
about the need for contextualized
Christology, insist that several developments within Christianity in the global
dialogue and theories of interpretation necessitate a conversation on the
nature of interpretation.44
Some
of the developments include the change in the center of gravity of the
Christian faith from the Western world to
Latin America, parts of Asia, and Africa. Another factor identified for the
imperative of dialogue is the contemporary model of literary interpretation. Prior to postmodernism, “The task of the scholar
has been to uncover the original meaning of the Bible by means of linguistic and historical analysis.”45
However, “This model of monologue has been
displaced by the model of dialogue between the text and the interpreter because
it is evident
40Ibid., 56. 41Ibid., 57. 42Paul G. Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on
Missiological Issues (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 9.
43Ibid., 9-10.
44Priscilla
Pope-Levison and John Levison, Jesus in Global Contexts (Louisville:
Westminster/John Knox, 1992),
12.
45Ibid., 14.
9
that
what the Bible says is determined to a great extent by what the interpreter
asks.”46The Levisons, citing Robert M. Grant
and David Tracey, state.
The
fact is that no interpreter enters into the attempt to understand any text or
historical event without prejudgments formed by the history of
the effects of her or his culture. There
does not exist any exegete or historian as purely autonomous as the
Enlightenment model promised. 47
Therefore,
the two theses in support of contextual theologies include: “(1) All theologies
are contextually conditioned. . . . (2) It may take
others to show us how conditioned, parochial, or ideologically
captive our own theology is.”48
In essence, the concern of critics on the relevance of
cultural studies and the shift toward pragmatism may be
legitimate. Nevertheless, some past missionaries often understood the Scriptures well but not the people they served;
and this scenario led to their message not being understood by the people. Consequently, as Hiebert points out:
Churches they planted
were often alien and, as a result, remained dependent on the outside support for their existence. Missionaries
brought with them, not only the gospel, but also Western cultures, and often they failed to differentiate
between the two. Many rejected Christ
because they rejected the foreignness of the missionary message—not because of the offence of the gospel.49
Stephen Neill, in Colonialism
and Christian Missions, also notes the dilemma of the colonial
missionaries in presenting the gospel in culturally relevant manners. He
commented:
It
has always been the aim of the missionary to present to the non-Christian the
pure doctrine of Jesus Christ without merely local or
cultural adulteration. But this has, in fact, proved
impracticable. We are all conditioned by our background and traditions . . .
which have little relationship to Christian Gospel.50
In
this situation, understanding worldview will help the intercultural missionary
understand his or her own culture as well as
the culture of the target people and facilitate contextualizing the message of the gospel.
Contextualization
and Worldviews
Many
evangelical scholars have addressed the question of contextualization. For
instance, Hiebert and Meneses insist, “We must begin by learning
to speak the language well so that we can communicate the gospel in the thought
forms of the people we serve. If we do not, we risk
46Ibid.
47Ibid., 15. See Robert M. Grant and David Tracey, A
Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 156.
48Jesus in Global Contexts, 15.
49Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on
Missiological Issues, 10.
50Stephen Neill, Colonialism and Christian Missions (London:
Lutterworth, 1966), 415.
10
talking
past people by using categories that make no sense to them.”51The
term contextualization has been interpreted and defined
in various ways, depending on where one is theologically.
For those in theological matrixes of Neo-orthodoxy and
Neo-liberalism, contextualization could mean “prophetic
contextualization,” and the method of contextualization would be “dialectic—discovering truth.” For theological
liberals, according to Hesselgrave, contextualization may involve syncretism;
and the method employed would be dialogic-- “pursuing truth.”52
However, for the evangelical orthodox, contextualization refers to the “apostolic” biblical examples, and the method of
effecting the contextualization must be didactic, signifying “teaching the truth.” Following the
latter approach, Hesselgrave defined contextualization
as:
The
attempt to communicate the message of the person, works, word, and will of God
in a way that is faithful to God’s revelation, especially as it is put forth in
the teaching of Holy Scripture, and that is
meaningful to respondents in their respective cultural and existential
contexts.53
Hesselgrave also states that
contextualization is both verbal and nonverbal and will affect theology,
Bible translation, interpretation and application, lifestyle, evangelism,
church planting, church growth, church
organization, worship style, and indeed, all the components of Christian mission
as reflected in the Great Commission.54 Therefore, to be able to
contextualize the gospel in a given culture, a good understanding of the
culture and worldview will be required.
Dean Flemming, in his book Contextualization
in the New Testament, observes, “Although
the term contextualization was quite recently minted, the activity of
expressing and embodying the gospel in
context-sensitive ways has characterized the Christian mission from the very
beginning.”5555 Charles Kraft agrees, and states:
Contextualization
of Christianity is part and parcel of the New Testament record.
This
is the process that apostles were involved in as they took the Christian
message that had come to them in Aramaic
language and culture and communicated it to those who spoke
Greek.56
For
the intercultural church planter, it should be his or her goal to plant
churches that would be relevant and be rooted in the culture of the
people. In order to achieve this, the understanding
of the target culture’s worldview will be imperative. As Kraft suggests,
different worldview assumptions will lead to different conclusions.
51Paul G. Hiebert and Eloise Hiebert Meneses, Incarnational
Ministry: Planting Churches in Band, Tribal, Peasant, and Urban Societies (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 371.
52David J. Hesselgrave, Communicating Christ
Cross-Culturally: An Introduction to Missionary Communication, 2nd ed.
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 143. See also David Hesselgrave and Edward
Rommen, Contextualization:
Meanings, Methods, and Models
(Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1989). 53Hesselgrave, Communicating Christ
Cross-Culturally, 143.
54Ibid., 143-44. See also Hesselgrave and Rommen, Contextualization:
Meanings, Methods, and Models, 200-11. 55Dean Flemming, Contextualization in the New
Testament: Patterns for Theology and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 15.
56Kraft “Culture, Worldview and Contextualization,”
389.
11
There is a good bit of
similarity to human behavior in spite of cultural differences. There is even a considerable body of evidence to suggest
that human reasoning processes are essentially
the same no matter what one’s culture is. For this reason it has been stated
that humans differ not so much in the
processes by means of which they reach their conclusions as in their starting points. That is, the members of
different cultures arrive at different conclusions concerning reality
because they have started from different assumptions.57
Therefore, a clear
understanding of a culture and its underlying worldview will be paramount not only
in proclamation of the gospel message, but in discipleship and leadership
training as well. In short, there will be
no genuine contextualization without prior understanding of a culture and its
worldview.
According to Hiebert, “First, the gospel must be
distinguished from all human cultures. It is
divine revelation, not human speculation. Since it belongs to no one culture,
it can be adequately expressed in all of
them.”58 Consequently, all intercultural church planters must recognize
not only the challenge of culture, but also the cultural Jewishness of the
gospel in its historical setting as well as its supra-cultural nature.
Therefore, he calls for “critical contextualization,”
a practice “whereby old beliefs and customs are neither rejected nor accepted without
examination. They are first studied with regard to meanings and places they
have within their cultural setting and then evaluated in the light of biblical
norms.”59
As
to how the critical contextualization may be realized, Hiebert suggests first a
phenomenological exegesis of the culture.
This will involve gathering and analyzing the traditional beliefs and customs associated with issues at hand. The
second step is the exegesis of the Scripture and the hermeneutical bridge, in
which the Christian leader seeks to study the questions at hand, as they relate to the Scripture. The third level is
the critical response. Here the people
corporately evaluate their customs in the light of biblical understanding and
take a stand on the issue under
consideration.60In other words, the critical contextualization must
take into consideration the whole
culture, and particularly the worldview of a people before true
contextualization can be actualized.
CONCLUSION
Thus far, in this second piece of the 4-part series began
with a discussion on the definition of “Worldview” and an
historical review. Then multi-disciplinary understanding of “Worldview”
has been presented leading to the discussion on the relationship between
“culture” and “worldview.”
Following this is second piece
in the 4-part series, part 3 will include an overview of West
African worldviews and part 4 will cover the missiological implications of the
research findings.
57Kraft, Christianity in Culture, 57.
58Hiebert,
Anthropological Insights for Missionaries, 53.
59Ibid.,
186.
60Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological
Issues, 88-90.
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