Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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coming again has always been a means of motivating God’s own to be about their Lord’s
business (cf., 1Jn. 3:1-3).
The church often confuses these concepts of ‘compromise’ and ‘contextualization.’
Christians often erroneously assume that contextualisation means compromise; which is
certainly not the case, especially when contextualisation is done correctly.
Contextualisation means that believers attempt to “communicate the gospel in word and
deed and to establish the church in ways that make sense to people with their local
cultural context, presenting Christianity in such a way that it meets people’s deepest
needs and penetrates their worldview, thus allowing them to follow Christ and remain
with their own culture” (Bevans, 1999:43). We must seek to maintain the tension, or
balance, between an insider’s deep understanding and the outsider’s critique, which in
Anthropology is called the ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ perspectives.
One example of this is the way so many of the so-called main-line churches in North
America have compromised doctrinally, but have almost totally resisted making any
changes to their style of worship. On the one hand, homosexual ordinations and
marriages are approved of, standing in contrast to long-held traditions and more
importantly the teachings of Scripture. Taking this course is thought to put them more in
accord with contemporary society -- in truth, nothing more than compromise.
Postmodern trends would have the church compromise all to please the whims and
weaknesses of the flesh. This is precisely what so many churches have done, and it will
be their undoing -- not to mention how it must displease the Lord. Instead, we are called
to be relevant, or contextual, with our society -- without compromise. God’s people are
to discern the times, to know how best to speak to their generation, yet without
compromising who and what they are (cf., 1Ch. 12:32; Mat. 24:32-35; Act. 17:16-34).
Contextualisation is a relatively new word, first used around 1972 by Shoki Coe. The
concept, however, was employed by St. Patrick among the Celts, by the Italian Jesuit
missionary Roberto de Nobili among Hindus in the early 17th Century, and by the
Apostle Paul among the Greeks (cf., Act. 17), to name just a few. Contextualized
approaches seek to present the unchanging word of God in the varying languages and
cultures of human beings (Anderson, 1998:333). Contextualization explains how God’s
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa