It has been said: that God reveals Himself in two books Scripture and Nature they are both ‘true’ but our understanding of either one or both of these books (Theology & Science) may be faulty and result in a conflict between them. Going further God seeks to reveal Himself to all cultures and all faiths contain some truth but given the fallen state of mankind we need to consider the vast variety of spiritual and religious experience carefully and assess it by the touchstone of the revelation of Jesus Christ, and records of His eye witnesses.
Comparing the OT and NT understanding of God it is obvious that the scriptures were produced in given cultural contexts and that the revelation was developmental – culminating in the incarnation.
Scripture claims to contain a revelation of God; there is that ‘incomplete revelation’ and therefore ‘imperfect revelation’ of the OT which comes to us in a certain cultural context, and here we must particularly be aware of the need of contextual understanding. I do not mean to say that contextualization is un-required in the NT but rather to illustrate that the vast advancement in knowledge of God through and in Christ demonstrates the need of it. Christ said there were many things He needed to teach but they were not ready and that later the Holy Spirit would lead them (the apostles) into ALL truth. This seems like Jesus used ‘theological contextualization’.
However it’s possible for our ‘theological contextualization’ to run amok as it functions on the ‘reason’ leg of our three legged ‘theological stool’ – scripture, tradition and reason. We may contextualize our theology but it is vital that we do not compromise the revelation given. We must not make use of ‘Contextual Theology’ to force scripture to fit comfortably with our own context. The processes of exegesis and hermeneutics must be applied to sort out what ‘truly has been revealed of God in the context of the original revelation. We may then interpret it into our own context or the one we work into, without loss of ‘revealed truth’. Truth is not ‘relative’ we must not bend it to our own or any other context or fashion.
God actually chose Abraham and Israel, their history and experience as the particular vehicle of His self revelation. We therefore give particular attention to this culture and context in theology and in positioning ourselves to interpret the revelation for our own time and culture. The history and experience provides us with a guideline to interpret our own spiritual experience.
Genuine experience of God is the origin of all theological understanding (spiritual experience = revelation = scripture historically understood = theology). On the experience level we have to sort the genuine from the false, in this respect those pre the incarnation and post ascension are in the same boat in that all their experience is subjective. This is why the writings of the apostolic age are unique in their authority as they record the objective’ experience of those who ‘knew the incarnate God’ intimately and those writings of others that were available to be confirmed by them. This eyewitnesses testimony is ‘a more sure word of prophecy’ 1 Pt. 1:19
The task of ‘Contextual Theology’ and transmission of this revelation can be broken down into three stages’:
a) Distinguish between which elements of scripture are unalterable revelation of God and the ways he requires us to respond and which simply represent the cultural setting. With the OT identify which parts represent an incomplete/imperfect revelation. We will not all agree on the finer details or on what the non essentials are.
b) Distinguish between which parts of the new host culture are compatible with the gospel and which parts are incompatible.
c) Distinguish between which parts of our own practice is cultural baggage not to be impose on the new host culture.
If we have thought through our faith and are thoroughly conversant with the NT we will already have distinguished in our own minds between revelation and cultural baggage.
Scripture and tradition requires contextual analysis but ‘revelation’ is the unalterable truth of God.
True knowledge of God is ‘experiential knowledge’ i.e. ‘that we might know Him’, here the ‘Anthropological Model’ assists. We do not come to such knowledge of God by reason or philosophy but may employ these tools to assess the validity of our knowledge in order to confirm, amend or reject it.
We must understand that reason and contextualization of theology as a function of reason, will not itself bring us or anyone else to a knowledge of God. The first three chapters of 1 Corinthians warn of the limitations of any accumulated cultural/contextual wisdom:
“God made foolish the wisdom of the world”
Paul categorically states that the world through its philosophy did not come to know God and that it was in God’s wisdom that they should not do so by that means.” 1 Cor. 1:19-22.
Nevertheless “we can speak philosophy among the perfect; but not a philosophy of this age, nor of the useless leaders of this time. We speak instead, a divine philosophy in the hidden mystery which God ordained before the ages for our rectification, which none of the leaders of this age recognized; for if they had recognize, they would not have crucified the master of that rectification” 1 Cor. 2:6-8 F. Fenton
Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God; He is the wisdom of God to us. Contextualization must never detract from the person, work, character, mission or authority of The Christ already revealed. The essential question and our appropriate response remains – “Who do you say that I am” and “follow me”. If we get these two right we are Christian if we don’t we are not.
I consider the purpose of ‘Contextual Theology’ is best restricted to considering how we may uncover the revealed of Christ so that it becomes implement in a meaningful manner in the target culture, rather for determining what the revelation actually is. The application of exegesis to the text and its cultural setting will clarify the actual revelation.
We could think of the six models as transparent overlays through which we view the task of uncovering revelation. In this way we benefit from the strengths and hopefully avoid the weaknesses.
Greeks search for (contextual) philosophy we preach Christ crucified as God’s self revelation.
All Along the Watchtower 
“revealed truth’. Truth is not ‘relative’ we must not bend it to our own or any other context or fashion”
How else do you understand Matt 25:31-46 and the sermon on the mount, by Luther’s and many protestants that faith and not works are necessary, but faith only?
How do you arrive at man being totally depraved unless you bend the context or fashion, How else do you found one on the 38,000 protestant sects unless you endlessly look for gnostic knowledge between the words of Paul?
Scripture is useful, but it is not an encyclopedia, once you replace the church is the pillar and foundation of truth, with scripture alone, it must be an encyclopedia, every thing you need must is hidden in it.
There is gnostic knowledge to be mined under the words. How else do you get to Calvin’s depraved humanity, the Rapture, the bending of current events hidden in Daniel and the revelation on the time of the ending of the world and the third coming of Christ? How else do you get that man is an animal, that Christ is a massive God on a massive throne and man is an insect who has no role to play in his salvation as in the Left Behind series? How do you get the knowledge that by words alone as the pilgrims invented you can enslave God’s freewill of judgement for you deeds by saying the sinner’s prayer, by replacement by Jesus alone.
Those are not the words or warnings of Christ. These are more like the words of Festus declared with a loud voice, “You’ve lost your mind, Paul! Too much learning is driving you mad”.
Though the transparent overlays I see only the few verses that people hand select to form and bend into their theology,
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Tom McEwen asked “How do you etc. …”
I don’t Tom!!
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That sounds good.
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Look back on my post ‘Faith and works’ eventually through the discussion with the RC contingent we agreed that we agreed, i.e. that we are talking about what the RC called ‘formed faith’.
My understanding of faith (in this sense) is not just intellectual agreement to a set of doctrine but an active living trust in Christ – this faith has works of faith (see James). If there are no works of faith there is no real faith. Paul was speaking of works of Law performed legalistically, as if we could earn salvation as being due to us rather than a gift, we all understand we cannot earn salvation this way. Salvation is by GRACE not by faith; faith is the mechanism by which we receive Gods grace Eph 2:8.
Through what is termed the ‘new perspective’ of justification (see the Anglican Bishop N T Wright’s “Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision”) we understand that Luther misunderstood Paul in many places e.g, Romans 3:22 “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” and Galatians 2:16 “That we may be justified by faith in Christ”. These reference should be translated as “By the faithfulness of Christ’ and refer to Christ faithfulness, not our faith.
This understanding is receiving current attention but has been that of those I associate with for many years. I think you would enjoy a book by a friend of mine “God’s Strategy in Human History by Roger Forster and Paul Marston”. Roger published this understanding in the first print 40 yrs ago, the current version is in 2 volumes.
The book also deals with many of the errors of Calvinism that you were concerned about in your post. The interesting point is that these errors are those of arising from Augustine of Hippo – a notable catholic saint, although the RC church never did swallow all he taught – as Calvin did.
From my perspective the RC church did still swallow a lot too much from Augustine and we could be a lot closer if the church took another critical look at his teaching. He did not follow the teaching of the earlier fathers and was probably negatively influenced by his former Manichaeism.
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Doing Theology requires thought – here is a little thinking exercise my 10 year old grandson just gave me:
“A cowboy left town on Friday. He was away for 3 days and returned on Friday.”
How did he do it?
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Because he left from where he returned to on Monday, spent three days away (probably all in the town), left the town on the Friday and returned back the same day.
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I can’t follow that one S: just about as hard as working out who is my second cousin one removed. My grandson’s answer was that the cowboy’s horse was called Friday.
I hope you had a trip.
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My reasoning goes something like this: the cowboy left home on Monday and went to the town. He spent three days there, he left the town on Friday and returned on Friday too. Your text didn’t necessarily imply that it was the town where the event of returning occurred. Good to hear from you again. 🙂
S.
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S: Your too smart by far for this cowboy – I’ll explain to my grandson and get him to tighten up his riddle.
Rob
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A great article Rob. Many thanks for picking up on my notes.
S.
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