Worldview,
Challenge of Contextualization and Church Planting in West Africa – Part 1:
Definition of Worldview and the Historical Development of the Concept
D Tuche
Published in Global Missiology “Contextualization” July 2008
www.globalmissiology.net
(Editor’s note: this is first of a 3-part series on worldview
in West Africa)
INTRODUCTION
This is an introductory study on worldview and
contextualization in West Africa covering
several themes to form the basis for subsequent studies: Contextualization and worldviews, multi-disciplinary understanding of
worldview, culture and worldview, contextualization
and worldviews.
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 claque or copy in the English
language.”1 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 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
3Naugle,
Worldview, 64. 4Ibid.,
58.
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).
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, theological,
and 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 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
8Naugle,
Worldview, 65. See D. S. Cairns, Christianity in the Modern World
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907).
9Naugle, Worldview, 64-65.
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.
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
12Ibid.,
19-20. 13Ibid., 19-20. 14See Naugle, Worldview, 65.
15John J. Macionis, Sociology,
9th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), 63.
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.
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 states,
“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.
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.
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 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
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.
24McKinney,
Globe-Trotting in Sandals, 208.
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
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.
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:
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
29Charles
H. Kraft, Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing
in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979), 53.
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.
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,
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 34 ink,
but not in language or concepts or
even emotions utterly of their own making.
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,
33“The
Willowbank Report: Report of a Consultation on Gospel and Culture,” Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.
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.
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-and-effect 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 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
36Ibid.
37Ibid., 55.
38Ibid. 39Ibid. 40Ibid., 56.
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
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.
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 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
45Ibid.,
14. 4eIbid.
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.
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 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
50Stephen
Neill, Colonialism and Christian Missions (London: Lutterworth, 1966),
415.
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).
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.
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.
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
57Kraft,
Christianity in Culture, 57.
58Hiebert,
Anthropological Insights for Missionaries, 53. 59Ibid., 186.
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
In this introductory study of the 3-part series on
worldview and contextualization in West Africa, a review of the literature on
several themes have been conducted: contextualization
and worldviews, multi-disciplinary understanding of worldview, culture and worldview, contextualization and worldviews.
In two subsequent studies, an examination
of West African worldview will be followed by the derived missiological implications for church planting.
60Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological
Issues, 88-90.