Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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terminate this inquiry with the statement that
I have reasonable grounds for affirming
God’s existence (Adler, 1980:150).
Compromise versus Contextualisation
All manner of modernists, pluralists and relativists have demanded that God’s people
compromise their beliefs in Christ and Scripture -- exchanging supernaturalism for
naturalism, and theocentricity for anthropocentricity. In recent decades, the
postmodernists have joined these critics, pressing the church even harder to compromise
their traditions, beliefs, and moral values. Sadly, many traditional streams of the church
have compromised to the demands of prevailing culture, instead of remaining the ‘setapart,’
or holy and prophetic people God called and established them to be.
Especially in this context, compromise has meant coming to terms with critics and
doubters through concession -- the Hegelian dialectic at work, which (again) Francis
Schaeffer warned the church about several decades ago. Back in 1947, Carl F.H. Henry
began publicly criticizing Christians for compromise, and for their withdrawal from the
public arena. Later, in Twilight of a Great Civilization: The Drift toward Neo-Paganism
(1988), Henry said: “We live in the twilight of a great civilization, amid the deepening
decline of modern culture... much of what passes for practical Christianity is really an
apostate compromise with the spirit of the age” (1988:15).
God’s people have always faced opposition in some form -- yet are at all times called,
mandated and Spirit-empowered to be light and salt to a sin-corrupted world (cf., Mat.
4:16). God’s people are called out from the world, but until glorification are hardly
untainted by sin: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
God’s people, in their weaknesses, but God’s power, provide a living witness about Him,
reflecting God’s glory.
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa