Chapter 8 BALANCED CONTEXTUALIZATION

约翰·斯托得（John Stott）在他的讲道著作《在两个世界之间》（Between Two Worlds）中，将基督教的传播比作从圣经到当代世界架设一座桥梁。¹ 有些讲道就像“一座通往无处的桥”，它们建立在对圣经文本的扎实研究之上，但却未能落地到现实世界的另一端。换句话说，它们未能将圣经的真理与人们的内心及其生活问题联系起来。而另一些讲道则像“来自无处的桥”，它们关注当代问题，却未能从圣经文本中提炼出真正的洞见来应对现代挑战和人们的需求。正确的文化适应（contextualization）意味着将健全的圣经教义完整地带过桥，并以某种特定文化能够理解的方式重新表达出来。

那么，我们该如何做到这一点呢？学者们指出，任何想要理解圣经的读者都必须在两个不同的视角之间来回转换——即在斯托得的比喻中，穿梭于河流的两岸，即圣经文本和读者的文化环境。圣经拥有至高无上的权威，因此它不会出错，也不需要被纠正。然而，基督徒传达圣经信息的理解却可能是错误的——事实上，总是存在某些偏差，因此必须随时接受修正。同样，福音传播者对听众文化的理解也可能存在盲点，需要进一步的洞察和调整。

许多基督徒在向新的文化传播福音时，根本不愿意或无法面对这一问题；他们认为自己的任务只是将圣经教义传递到新的文化中。换句话说，他们将福音传播视为一座单向桥梁。他们不喜欢信息从另一端传回的想法，认为这无关紧要，或者认为这会威胁到圣经的权威。然而，这种传教观念存在一个根本问题——它假设我们站在桥的一侧，已经拥有对福音的清晰无误的理解，并且认为另一侧文化的知识并不重要。这种观点忽视了一个事实：我们不仅是有罪的，也是有限的，因此我们无法对任何事物拥有全面而无误的认识。我们往往没有意识到文化对我们理解事物的塑造力。²

那么，我们如何才能在维护圣经权威和完整性的同时，又保持对自身理解的开放态度，使其不断得到修正呢？我们如何确保自己向新文化传播的信息既忠实于圣经，又能产生果效？答案就是：让桥梁成为双向通道。

当我们阅读圣经时，我们带着“预设理解”（pre-understanding）——也就是我们对圣经所涉及主题的既有信念。这些信念根深蒂固，其中许多是隐性的——也就是说，我们很难用语言表达、形成体系，甚至很难在自身意识到。³ 这些信念来自于我们文化中各种声音的影响。这并不意味着我们无法获得对圣经教义的充分和真实的理解，但它确实意味着这个过程并不简单。因为我们已有的信念——其中许多是潜意识的——往往使我们难以正确解读圣经，让圣经纠正我们的思维，并忠实地将它带过桥，传递给需要的人。

由于文化视角的局限性，我们不仅需要向桥对岸的人传递信息，还需要倾听他们的声音。我们需要听取他们的看法，认真对待他们的问题、对我们信息的质疑，以及他们的希望和期盼。往往，与新的文化互动会让我们发现圣经中许多我们原本忽略或认为不重要的教导，甚至会暴露出我们因自身文化偏见而误读圣经的地方。

我曾在费城的威斯敏斯特神学院（Westminster Seminary）担任教授，我的许多学生从韩国来到我们学校学习。我经常带领案例研究研讨会，讨论现实生活中的事工情况，其中既有韩国学生，也有英美学生。尽管这些学生都持守保守的改革宗神学，但他们在事工方式上却有很大不同。其中一个关键区别在于他们如何看待和行使人的权柄。韩国文化赋予牧师和父亲更大的权力，而美国文化则更加平等和民主。韩国学生指出，圣经中确实有很多关于世俗官员、父母、长老和牧师权威的教导，而美国学生往往忽视这些内容，因为美国文化对体制和权威持怀疑态度。而与此同时，美国学生也向韩国学生指出，如马太福音 20:24-28 和彼得前书 5:1-4（警告领袖不要“辖制”他人）以及使徒行传 4:19 和 5:29（强调人不可让世俗权柄凌驾于神之上）等经文，甚至整本《启示录》都在警告人类权力的滥用可能会变得邪恶。⁴

这说明了什么？信息在桥上来回传递。与不同文化的互动促使我们向圣经提出新的问题，发现原本没有察觉的内容。从不同的文化视角进入圣经，为我们提供了一种“文化三角测量”（triangulation）的方式，帮助我们辨别自己对福音的文化化假设。结果，我们开始看到圣经中一直存在但我们却视而不见的真理和洞见。新文化的问题揭示出我们作为传递者所拥有的独特文化盲点。

另一个例子是，西方世俗文化高度重视个人主义，因此对种族歧视等侵犯人类尊严的行为特别敏感。他们对个人自由的承诺使他们能敏锐地察觉任何形式的种族偏见。许多基督徒在与世俗文化互动后，回到圣经中发现，圣经实际上对种族主义的邪恶有着远超他们之前所想的论述。这并不是说基督徒在纠正圣经，而是在与非圣经哲学的谦卑对话中修正了自己对圣经的理解。我们知道，神有时会在他的怜悯中赐给非信徒某种受道德影响的良知（罗马书 2），使他们能够识别真正的罪恶和真理，即使他们的世界观本身无法提供这些见解的理论基础。

我们对圣经的理解之所以常常有偏差，一个主要原因是所谓的“经内经”（canon within the canon）。也就是说，我们倾向于认为圣经的某些部分比其他部分更重要，并选择性地忽视或舍弃其中一些内容。所有基督徒都或多或少地陷入这种现象，这与我们的性格、经历和文化有关。D. A. Carson 指出许多例子。例如，圣经告诉我们，神以普遍的爱爱世人，同时又特别以恩典之爱爱他的子民，并且对恶人存有愤怒。⁵ 不同文化会对这些教义产生不同的反应。西方文化的人倾向于强调神对万民的爱，而排斥神对罪恶的愤怒；而传统部落文化的人则容易接受神的审判，却难以接受他对所有民族的普遍之爱。每种文化都会突出某些圣经教义，而淡化或忽视其他部分，从而形成“经内经”。然而，如果我们只强调神的普遍爱而忽略他的公义，或反之，我们就扭曲了信仰。与不同文化互动有助于我们摆脱文化盲点，逐步趋向更完整的圣经信仰。

因此，桥梁必须是双向的。虽然圣经本身不会被非基督教文化所修正，但个别基督徒——以及他们受文化影响的圣经理解——确实应该被修正。这座桥应该是一个双向的交流通道：我们要说，也要听；不断地说，不断地听，然后再说，每次都能更符合圣经，更有说服力地向文化传达福音。

THE BRIDGE AND THE SPIRAL

双向桥梁的比喻至关重要。回顾过去，我们现在意识到，20 世纪 70 年代最初对“处境化”（contextualization）的呼吁，本质上是对一座双向桥梁的呼吁，而不是早期“本土教会”模式中的单向桥梁。旧的模式并未鼓励本国的基督教领袖深入神学反思，以探讨福音如何深刻地挑战文化。它假定西方基督教是真正的、未受扭曲的、普遍适用的信仰表达。将其跨越桥梁传递到新的文化中，只需要进行一些微小的调整，比如翻译语言、采用当地的音乐和服饰。

哈维·康（Harvie Conn）指出，本土教会模式基于一种“功能主义”（functionalist）的文化观，认为文化是一系列彼此无关的实践，帮助一个群体适应其生存环境。在这种文化观下，人们认为可以简单地替换文化中的某个元素（比如用基督教取代印度教），而不会影响文化的其他方面（比如音乐、艺术、家庭结构、阶级关系等）。这种模式鼓励本地基督徒对自身文化进行不加批判的全面接受，而没有用圣经来审视它。同时，本土教会运动也未能挑战西方传教士，让他们意识到自己的神学和实践同样是文化适应的产物，而非完全普遍适用的信仰表达。

CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY AND HARVIE CONN

我在本节中的许多思考都来源于哈维·康（Harvie Conn）的“处境化神学”（Contextual Theology）课程，该课程的教学大纲及二十场讲座录音可在威斯敏斯特书店（Westminster bookstore）获取。康讲述了19世纪末至20世纪初的文化人类学家如何开始将每种文化视为一个复杂的实践、信仰和习俗体系，这些体系帮助一个群体适应其生存环境。

这种观点被称为“功能主义”（functionalism），它是一种达尔文式的方法论，认为文化使人们能够在特定环境中生存。研究文化的目的在于确定其如何在功能上满足人们的心理和社会需求。功能主义方法将文化视为一个相对机械的实体，就像一串钥匙上的各个钥匙，可以抽出几把换上新的，而不会影响整体结构。

功能主义的文化观与欧洲基督教中的敬虔主义（pietism）倾向十分契合。敬虔主义注重个人内在的属灵经历，而不会去探讨救赎经历如何改变人们使用金钱、从事工作、创作艺术、追求教育等方面的方式。在本土教会运动中，个人得救被强调，但人们很少思考基督教如何实质性地改变一个群体对权力与无权、艺术与商业、文化仪式与象征的态度。康指出：“基督教信仰被局限于思想与精神领域，而未能进入社会与文明历史的主流。”

请参考理查德·林茨（Richard Lints）在《神学的结构》（The Fabric of Theology）第101-116页中对这些问题的精彩综述。此外，在处境化光谱的中间地带，不同观点的重要著作还包括以下几本：
See Richard Lints’s excellent survey of the issues in The Fabric of Theology (pp. 101-16). Other important works that occupy various points of view across the middle of the contextualization spectrum include the following: Bevans, Stephen B. Models of Contextual Theology, rev. ed. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1992.
Carson, D. A. Biblical Interpretation and the Church: The Problem of Contextualization. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1984.
Conn, Harvie. Eternal Word and Changing World. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.
_“Contextualization: Where Do We Begin?” Pages 90-119 in Evangelicals and Liberation, ed. Carl Amerding. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1977.
__“The Missionary Task of Theology: A Love/Hate Relationship.” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983): 1–21.
__“Normativity, Relevance, and Relativity.” Pages 185-210 in Inerrancy and Hermeneutic, ed. Harvie Conn. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988.
Cook, Matthew et al., eds. Local Theology for the Global Church: Principles for an Evangelical Approach to Contextualization. Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2010.
Cortez, Marc. “Context and Concept: Contextual Theology and the Nature of Theological Discourse.” Westminster Theological Journal 67 (2005): 85-102.
__“Creation and Context: A Theological Framework for Contextual Theology.” Westminster Theological Journal 67 (2005): 347 – 62.
Hesselgrave, David J., and Edward Rommen. Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models. Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1989.
Kraft, Charles. Communication Theory for Christian Witness. Nashville: Abingdon, 1983.
_Anthropology for Christian Witness. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996.
Nicholls, Bruce J. Contextualization: A Theology of Gospel and Culture. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1979.
Ott, Craig, and Harold Netland, eds. Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006.
Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989.

尽管双向桥的比喻对于解释处境化有许多益处，但它仍然存在局限性。最终，福音派信徒认为桥的两端并不具有同等的权威——圣经至高无上。是的，我们与文化的互动可以帮助我们调整和改善对圣经的理解，但归根结底，圣经必须被视为对文化和我们自身意识的最终权威。

如果圣经被视为人类文化的易错产物，那么我们就会陷入一个无休止的诠释循环，在我们的文化和圣经之间不断往返。在这种观点下，圣经和文化具有同等的权威，也就是说，它们都是相对的。因此，我们可能会用圣经来纠正文化，但同时也可能用文化来论证圣经的某些部分已经过时。这就是为什么，例如，一些主流宗派会用圣经来谴责美国社会中的各种经济不公正，但与此同时，他们却坚持认为圣经关于性别和性道德的教导是压迫性的和过时的。按照这种模式，每一代、每一种文化中的基督教都会发生根本性变化，甚至常常与其他时代和地区的教会教导相矛盾。在这种情况下，我们无法逐步理解真理。

然而，这种“诠释学循环”方法的更深层次缺陷在于，它在现实生活中根本无法成立。尽管我们可能声称圣经和文化具有同等的权威，但最终我们并不会真正如此执行。如果我们说圣经的某些教导是正确的，而另一些教导是落后的、过时的，那么我们实际上是在绝对化我们的文化，并赋予它对圣经的最终权威。要么圣经拥有最终权威，并决定文化中的哪些内容是可以接受或不可接受的；要么文化拥有最终权威，并决定圣经中的哪些内容是可以接受或不可接受的。因此，循环（或完全对称的双向桥）的比喻是不足的。最终，这个循环必须被打破，而作为堕落的受造物，我们总是会以自己的文化偏见来打破它。

正因如此，福音派信徒始终坚持，尽管处境化必须是一个双向过程，但圣经的最终权威必须得到维护。这也是为什么许多人如今不再将处境化视为一个诠释学循环，而是称其为“诠释学螺旋”。如果圣经和文化具有同等的权威，那么在文本与文化之间的互动将形成一个无休止的循环，不断地变化。但如果圣经是至高的权威，而我们与文化的互动是为了更准确地理解圣经（而不是让圣经顺应文化），那么文本与文化之间的互动就会形成一个螺旋，使我们不断向前，越来越深入地理解神的话语，并探讨如何将其应用并传达给特定文化。

通过这一诠释学螺旋，福音派信徒试图避免理查德·林茨（Richard Lints）在其著作《神学的结构》（The Fabric of Theology）中描述的两个极端。在他的光谱一端，是一种文化基要主义，它认为我们可以在完全不受文化影响的前提下阅读圣经并表达其神学；在另一端，是一种文化相对主义，它认为“圣经的意义只能由当下语境所允许的观念来决定”。福音派信徒努力在这一光谱的中间地带工作，坚信尽管圣经的教导无法以一种普世、完全不受文化影响的方式表达，但圣经本身却传达了绝对和普遍的真理。我称这种方法为“平衡的处境化”，因为它避免了这两个极端，并最终牢固地立足于圣经权威的支点之上。

林茨指出，尽管人们努力寻找这一平衡的处境化方式，但在许多具体问题上仍然缺乏共识，而且许多福音派信徒倾向于偏向光谱的一端或另一端。有些人越来越倾向于让文化在福音传播方式上发挥更大的作用，而这又推动另一些人走向光谱的另一端，拒绝承认我们的神学表达本身受到文化的影响。由于本书是为实践者而写的，我不会深入探讨与处境化相关的理论问题，但我想强调的是，保持林茨和其他许多人所提到的平衡是至关重要的。

但重要的不仅是保持这种平衡，而是要以圣经的模式和榜样来塑造这一过程。我想探讨三个处境化的圣经基础，然后借鉴保罗的事工，提供一些具体的示例和实际的方法。

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION

  1. 在你处境化福音的过程中，如果出现错误，你更倾向于建造一座“通向虚无的桥”还是一座“源自虚无的桥”？是什么让你怀疑自己有这种倾向？有哪些因素或信念促成了这一倾向？
  2. 凯勒写道：“我们与不同文化的互动会促使我们向圣经提出从未想过的问题，并使我们看到以前不曾清晰认识的事物……结果，我们开始发现圣经中一直存在的真理和洞见，只是我们以前对它们视而不见。” 你是否曾因与另一种文化的互动而获得这样的益处？这种经历揭示了你在理解圣经和福音方面的哪些盲点？
  3. 你的“正典中的正典”是什么？花点时间写下你通常特别强调的圣经主题。你注意到其他基督徒强调哪些部分，而你没有？你是否发现了某种模式？这对你的属灵或文化盲点有何启示？
  4. 凯勒写道：“福音派一直在努力避免光谱上的两个极端……一端是文化基要主义，它认为我们可以在完全不受文化影响的前提下阅读圣经并表达其神学；另一端是文化相对主义，它认为‘圣经的意义只能由当下语境所允许的观念来决定’。” 这两个极端各有哪些危险？你见过哪些例子？你自己更倾向于偏向哪一端？

John Stott’s book on preaching, Between Two Worlds, likens Christian communication to building a bridge from the Scriptures to the contemporary world.¹ Some sermons are like “a bridge to nowhere.” They are grounded in solid study of the biblical text but never come down to earth on the other side. That is, they fail to connect the biblical truth to people’s hearts and the issues of their lives. Other sermons are like bridges from nowhere. They reflect on contemporary issues, but the insights they bring to bear on modern problems and felt needs don’t actually arise out of the biblical text. Proper contextualization is the act of bringing sound biblical doctrine all the way over the bridge by reexpressing it in terms coherent to a particular culture.

How do we do this? Scholars point out that any reader of the Bible who wants to understand it must go back and forth between two different horizons, between the two banks of the river in Stott’s analogy - the biblical text and the reader’s cultural context. Scripture has supreme authority, and so it cannot be wrong and does not need to be corrected. But a Christian communicator’s understanding of the Bible may definitely be wrong—indeed, is always partly so- and therefore must always be open to being corrected. The same goes for the gospel communicator’s understanding of the hearer’s context, which can also benefit from more insight and correction.

Many Christians seeking to preach the gospel to a new culture are simply unwilling or unable to deal with this issue; they believe their task is simply to carry biblical doctrine over the bridge into the new culture. In other words, they see gospel communication as a one way bridge. They do not like the idea that information must come over the bridge in the other direction. They don’t see its importance, or they see this as a threat to the authority of Scripture. The problem with this idea of mission is that it assumes we who are on one side of the bridge already have an undistorted grasp of the gospel, and that our knowledge of the culture on the other side is not important. This view is blind to the truth that we are not only sinful but also finite, and therefore we cannot have clear and exhaustive knowledge of anything. We are largely oblivious to the power of culture to shape our understanding of things.2

So how can we guard the authority and integrity of Scripture and remain open to being corrected in our understanding of it? How can our message to the new culture be both faithful and fruitful? The answer is to allow some two-way traffic on the bridge.

When we approach the biblical text, we come with a “pre-understanding,” a set of already established beliefs about the subjects addressed in the Bible. These beliefs are strong and deep, and many are tacit — that is, they are difficult to verbalize, formulate, or even recognize in oneself.3 They come from a variety of voices we have listened to within our own culture. This does not mean we cannot or have not arrived at a sufficient and true understanding of biblical teaching. But it does mean the process is not a simple one, for our existing beliefs - many of them virtually unconscious - make it difficult for us to read Scripture rightly, to let it correct our thinking, and to carry it faithfully over the bridge to someone who needs it.

Because of our cultural blinders, we must not only speak to the people over the bridge; we must listen to them as well. We need to listen to what they are saying and take seriously their questions, their objections to what we are saying, and their hopes and aspirations. More often than not, this interaction with a new culture shows us many things taught in the Bible - things we either missed altogether or thought unimportant, possibly even ways in which we misread the Bible through the lens of our own cultural assumptions.

When I was a professor at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, many of my students had traveled from Korea to study in our school. I often led case study seminars that discussed real-life ministry situations with both Korean and Anglo-American students. Despite the fact that all the students shared the same conservative Reformed theology, they approached ministry in very different ways. One of the key differences had to do with how my Asian students wielded and regarded human authority. Koreans cede far more power to pastors and fathers, while American culture is much more egalitarian and democratic. The Korean students were able to point out to American students that there is quite a lot in the Bible about the authority of civil magistrates, parents, elders, and ministers, which Americans tend to ignore or screen out because our culture is deeply suspicious of institutions and authority. But while Korean students could point to texts such as Romans 13 and Hebrews 13:17, American students could point Asian colleagues to passages such as Matthew 20:24-28 and 1 Peter 5:1-4 (warning against leaders “lording it over” others) or Acts 4:19 and 5:29 (telling us we must not let human authority usurp God’s) or the book of Revelation (in which human authority overreaches and becomes demonic).4

What was happening? Information was going back and forth over the bridge. Our interaction with a different culture leads us to ask the text questions we may never have asked it before and to see many things we didn’t see clearly before. Entering into the text from a different perspective provides a point of triangulation that can help us to identify our own culturally bound presuppositions about the gospel. As a result we begin to see truths and insights in the Bible that were there all along, yet we had simply been blind to them. The questions of the new culture reveal to us as communicators that we have our own unique cultural blind spots.

To provide another example, secular people in Western culture are highly individualistic, which makes them sensitive to violations of human dignity on the basis of race. Their commitment to individual freedom leads to sensitivity to racial prejudice wherever it exists. Many Christians who have interacted with secularists have gone back to the Scriptures and found that the Bible speaks far more about the evil of racism than they had thought. Christians are not correcting the Bible, but they are correcting their understanding of the Bible through humble interaction with nonbiblical philosophies. We know that God in his mercy sometimes gives pagans morally informed consciences (Romans 2), which sense real evil and truth even if their overall worldview has no basis for their insights.

One of the main ways our understanding of the Bible remains distorted is through what has been called “the canon within the canon.” That is, we treat some parts of Scripture as more important and ignore or discard other parts of it. All Christians fall victim to some form of this, depending on our temperament, experience, and culture. D. A. Carson notes many instances of this. For example, the Bible tells us that God loves everyone in the world with his providential love, and yet it also teaches us that he loves the saved with his gracious love and is angry at the wicked.5 Different cultures will respond to these biblical aspects of God’s love differently. Members of Western cultures love the concept of God’s love for all and recoil from the doctrine of God’s wrath on evil. More traditional tribal cultures will have no problem with a God of judgment but will bristle at the idea that he loves all people groups equally. Each culture, then, will tend to highlight certain biblical teachings and downplay others, creating a mini-canon within the canon of Scripture. But if we stress the first biblical teaching (about God’s universal, providential love) and play down the second (about God’s judgment) — or vice versa - we have distorted the faith. Interactions with different cultures help us lose our blinders and slowly but surely move to a more rounded biblical Christianity.

Other examples abound. The Bible has much to say about wealth and poverty, and what it says is enormously varied and nuanced. In some places it is very positive about private property and riches- such as when God blesses Abraham, Job, and others with great wealth. Other Bible passages contain severe warnings about the dangers of money and make strong statements about the responsibility of God’s people to promote justice and care for the poor. People typically ignore much of the teaching on one side and latch on to other parts, largely dependent on whether they live in prosperous conditions or in poor ones. Carson summarizes, “The name of the game is reductionism,” that is, taming Scripture by not letting all of it speak to us. Our sociocultural location makes us prone to flatten the teachings of Scripture, ignoring some parts and exaggerating others. When we interact with people from other cultures and social settings, we find our particular distortions being challenged. So while gospel communicators should seek to correct their hearers’ cultural beliefs with the gospel, it is inevitable that contact with a new culture will also end up correcting the communicators’ understanding of the gospel.

The bridge, then, must run in both directions. While the Bible itself cannot be corrected by non-Christian cultures, individual Christians - and their culturally conditioned understanding of the Bible - can and should be. There should be heavy traffic back and forth across the bridge. We speak and listen, and speak and listen, and speak again, each time doing so more biblically and more compellingly to the culture.

THE BRIDGE AND THE SPIRAL

The two-way bridge image is important. In hindsight, we now recognize that the original call for “contextualization” in the 1970s was essentially a call for a two-way bridge rather than the older, one-way bridge of the “indigenous church” model. The older model did not encourage national Christian leaders to engage in deep theological reflection on how profoundly the gospel challenges culture. It assumed that Western Christianity was the true, undistorted, universal expression of the faith. Transporting it across the bridge required only a few minor adaptations, such as language translation and appropriating native music and dress. Harvie Conn argued that the indigenous model was based on a “functionalist” view of culture, which saw culture as a set of unrelated practices that helped a people group adapt to its environment. In this view of culture, you can slip out one piece of a culture (say, by replacing Hinduism with Christianity) and not expect the rest of the culture to change (such as the music, art, family structures, relationships between classes, and so on). This encouraged national Christians to engage in wholesale adoption of much of their indigenous culture, uncritically embracing it without examining it in light of the Scriptures. The indigenous church movement also failed by not challenging Western missionaries to recognize the culturally adapted nature of their own theology and practices.

CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY AND HARVIE CONN

Much of my thinking in this section is derived from Harvie Conn’s “Contextual Theology” course, available as a course syllabus and recordings of twenty lectures from the Westminster bookstore.7 Conn relates how cultural anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century began to see each culture as a complex set of practices, beliefs, and customs that helped a people group adapt to its environment.

This view was called “functionalism,” and it was a Darwinian approach. Culture enabled people to survive in a particular environment. A culture was studied to determine how it functionally met people’s psychological and social needs. The functionalist approach saw culture as a fairly mechanical entity, like a set of keys on a ring. You could remove a couple of pieces and put others in their place without changing the whole.

The functionalist approach to culture fit in well with the pietistic impulse of much of European Christianity. Pietism focuses on the inner individual experience and does not expect or ask how the experience of salvation will change the way we use our money, do our work, create our art, pursue our education, etc. In the indigenous church movement, personal salvation is offered without much thought as to how Christianity substantially changes a people’s attitude toward power and powerlessness, art and commerce, cultural ritual and symbolism. Conn states, “The Christian faith is consigned to the realm of mind and spirit rather than to the broad stream of the history of society and civilization.”

请参考理查德·林茨（Richard Lints）在《神学的结构》（The Fabric of Theology）第101-116页中对这些问题的精彩综述。此外，在处境化光谱的中间地带，不同观点的重要著作还包括以下几本：
See Richard Lints’s excellent survey of the issues in The Fabric of Theology (pp. 101-16). Other important works that occupy various points of view across the middle of the contextualization spectrum include the following: Bevans, Stephen B. Models of Contextual Theology, rev. ed. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1992.
Carson, D. A. Biblical Interpretation and the Church: The Problem of Contextualization. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1984.
Conn, Harvie. Eternal Word and Changing World. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.
_“Contextualization: Where Do We Begin?” Pages 90-119 in Evangelicals and Liberation, ed. Carl Amerding. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1977.
__“The Missionary Task of Theology: A Love/Hate Relationship.” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983): 1–21.
__“Normativity, Relevance, and Relativity.” Pages 185-210 in Inerrancy and Hermeneutic, ed. Harvie Conn. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988.
Cook, Matthew et al., eds. Local Theology for the Global Church: Principles for an Evangelical Approach to Contextualization. Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2010.
Cortez, Marc. “Context and Concept: Contextual Theology and the Nature of Theological Discourse.” Westminster Theological Journal 67 (2005): 85-102.
__“Creation and Context: A Theological Framework for Contextual Theology.” Westminster Theological Journal 67 (2005): 347 – 62.
Hesselgrave, David J., and Edward Rommen. Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models. Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1989.
Kraft, Charles. Communication Theory for Christian Witness. Nashville: Abingdon, 1983.
_Anthropology for Christian Witness. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996.
Nicholls, Bruce J. Contextualization: A Theology of Gospel and Culture. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1979.
Ott, Craig, and Harold Netland, eds. Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006.
Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989.

But for all its benefits, the two-way bridge has limitations as a metaphor for explaining contextualization. In the end, evangelicals believe that the two sides of the bridge do not have equal authority-the Bible is supreme. Yes, our interaction with culture helps us adjust and change our understanding of the Bible for the better, but in the final analysis, the Bible must be seen as the ultimate authority over both the culture and our consciousness.

If the Bible is instead seen as a fallible product of human culture, then we are locked in an endless interpretive circle that goes back and forth between our culture and the Bible. In this view, the Bible and culture are equally authoritative, which is to say equally relative. Thus we may use the Bible to correct a culture, but we can also use the culture to argue that parts of the Bible are now obsolete. This is why, for example, some mainline denominations use the Bible to denounce various forms of economic injustice in the United States, but at the same time they insist that what the Bible teaches about sex and gender is oppressive and dated. Following this pattern, in every generation and culture Christianity will be changing radically, often contradicting the teaching of the church in other centuries and lands. There is no way for us to increasingly come to grasp the truth.

But the deeper flaw in this “hermeneutical circle” approach is that it cannot exist in real life. Though we may say we make the Bible and culture equally authoritative, in the end we really are not doing so. If we state that what the Bible says here is true but what the Bible says over here is regressive and outdated, we have absolutized our culture and given it final authority over the Bible. Either the Bible has final authority and determines what in the culture is acceptable or unacceptable, or the culture has final authority over the Bible and determines what in the text is acceptable or unacceptable. So the image of the circle (or of a completely symmetrical two-way bridge) falls short. In the end the circle must be broken, and, fallen creatures that we are, we will always break it by privileging our own cultural biases.

For these reasons evangelicals have insisted that while contextualization must be a two-way process, the final authority of the Bible must be maintained.2 This is why many have come now to speak of contextualization as a hermeneutical spiral rather than a circle. 10 If Scripture and culture are equally authoritative, the movement back and forth between text and context is an endless circle of change. But if Scripture is the supreme authority and the interaction with culture is for the purpose of understanding the text more accurately (not to bring it into line with the culture), then the text-context movement is a spiral, moving us toward better and better understanding of the Word of God and how it can be brought to bear on and communicated to a particular culture.11

Using the hermeneutical spiral, evangelicals have been seeking to avoid either extreme on a spectrum described by Richard Lints in his book The Fabric of Theology. 12 At one end of his spectrum is a cultural fundamentalism that believes we can read the Bible and express its theology in culture-free, universal terms; at the other end is a cultural relativism that holds “that the Scripture can have no other meaning than that which is permitted by the conceptuality of the present-day situation.”13 Evangelicals seek to work in the middle of this spectrum, insisting that while there are no universal, culture-free expressions of biblical teachings, the Bible nonetheless expresses absolute and universal truths. I would call this approach “balanced contextualization” because it avoids these two extremes as it rests, ultimately and firmly, on the fulcrum of scriptural authority.

Lints writes that despite the effort to find this middle ground of balanced contextualization, there is still a lack of consensus about many particulars, and of course many evangelicals tend to lean toward one side of the spectrum or the other. Some are moving more toward giving the culture more say in how the gospel is communicated, and this is driving others toward the other end of the spectrum, refusing to acknowledge how culturally influenced our theological formulations are. Since this is a book for practitioners, I will not delve further into a discussion of the more theoretical issues related to contextualization other than to say how important it is to maintain the balance that Lints and many others speak of.

But it’s important not only to maintain this balance, but to do so in a way that is shaped by the patterns and examples of Scripture. I want to look at three biblical foundations for doing contextualization and then use Paul’s ministry to provide some examples and practical “ways and means” to go about it.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION

  1. When you err in the way you contextualize the gospel, do you tend to create a “bridge to nowhere,” or a “bridge from nowhere?” What makes you suspect this is true? What factors or beliefs contribute to this tendency?
  2. Keller writes, “Our interaction with a different culture leads us to ask the text questions we may never have asked it before and to see many things we didn’t see clearly before… As a result we begin to see truths and insights in the Bible that were there all along, yet we had simply been blind to them.” Have you ever experienced the benefit of interacting with another culture in this way? What blind spots has this experience revealed to you in your own understanding of the Bible and the gospel?
  3. What is your “canon within the canon”? Take a few moments to jot down the themes of Scripture to which you typically give special prominence. Which parts do you notice other Christians emphasizing that you do not? Do you see a pattern? What does this tell you about your spiritual or cultural blind spots?
  4. Keller writes, “Evangelicals have been seeking to avoid either extreme on a spectrum… At one end… is a cultural fundamentalism that believes we can read the Bible and express its theology in culture-free, universal terms; at the other end is a cultural relativism that holds ‘that the Scripture can have no other meaning than that which is permitted by the conceptuality of the present-day situation.” “What dangers are associated with each of these two extremes? What examples have you seen of either extreme? On which side of the spectrum do you tend to err?