INCULTURATION God’S Presence in Cultures
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INCULTURATION God’s Presence in Cultures One World Theology (Volume 12) INCULTURATION GOD’S PRESENCE IN CulturES 12 Edited by Klaus Krämer and Klaus Vellguth CLARETIAN COMMUNICATIONS FOUNDATION, INC. INCULTURATION God’s Presence in Cultures (One World Theology, Volume 12) Copyright © 2019 by Verlag Herder GmbH, Freiburg im Breisgau Published by Claretian Communications Foundation, Inc. U.P. P.O. Box 4, Diliman 1101 Quezon City, Philippines Tel.: (02) 921-3984 • Fax: (02) 921-6205 [email protected] www.claretianpublications.ph Claretian Communications Foundation, Inc. (CCFI) is a pastoral endeavor of the Claretian Missionaries in the Philippines that brings the Word of God to people from all walks of life. It aims to promote integral evangelization and renewed spirituality that is geared towards empowerment and total liberation in response to the needs and challenges of the Church today. CCFI is a member of Claret Publishing Group, a consortium of the publishing houses of the Claretian Missionaries all over the world: Bangalore, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Chennai, Colombo, Dar es Salaam, Lagos, Macau, Madrid, Manila, Owerry, São Paolo, Varsaw and Yaoundè. Cover design by Novel Bernabe P. Estillore Layout design by Ma. Myreen Q. Gayos All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without written permission from the publisher. ISBN: 978-621-426-088-1 Contents Preface ......................................................................................... ix Early Approaches to Inculturation in Church History Inculturation – ..................................................................... 3 An Intrinsic Quality of Christianity Mariano Delgado The Event of Tepeyac – ...................................................... 15 A Model for Cross-cultural Dialogue Juan Manuel Contreras Colín Rain in the Ethiopian Antiphonary (Dǝgwa) ........................ 37 A case of inculturation Daniel Assefa Early Approaches of Inculturation in Church History .......... 47 Edmund Kee-Fook Chia Understanding Revelation and Inculturation Inculturation and Revelation ............................................... 65 Klaus Krämer Understanding revelation and inculturation ........................ 77 Sebastian M. Michael Inculturation in the changing face of African Theology ....... 89 Francis Anekwe Oborji Inculturation and Paschal Mystery ...................................... 117 Francisco Taborda v vi Inculturation Models of Inculturation The Dynamic Impetus of Believing Differently .................... 129 Martin Üffing In Advocacy of a Perichoresis of Gospel and Culture ........ 151 Remarks on the dynamic of inculturation in African theology Rodrigue Naortangar Inculturation as holistic creativity and dynamism ................ 163 Julian Saldanha Working with Models of Inculturation .................................. 173 Paulo Sérgio Lopes Gonçalves Contextualisation and Inculturation Contextuality and Inculturation ........................................... 195 Hans Waldenfels Understanding church’s mission in the Context .................. 205 of the Philippines Andrew Gimenez Recepción Inculturation. ........................................................................ 221 Boldly Trusting in the Transforming Power of Contextuality Chibueze C. Udeani and Monika Udeani Inculturation in the Light of New Paradigms ....................... 229 José María Vigil From Inculturation to Interculturality Finding New Faith in Cultural Encounters .......................... 241 From the missiological paradigm of inculturation to the fundamental theological principle of interculturality Klaus Vellguth Interculturality: ..................................................................... 257 Appreciating the Process Promoted by the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences John Mansford Prior Contents vii Dancing with strangers ........................................................ 267 A heortological approach to intercultural theology Wilfred Sumani Intercultural Theology as a Transformation of Theology ..... 279 Thomas Fornet-Ponse Appendix Index of Authors ................................................................... 289 Index of Translators ............................................................. 295 Preface The neologism “inculturation” has been described as a new “programme for mission theology”. Inspired not least by the Second Vatican Council’s broader interpretation of revelation, it accentuates the importance of culture and has come to replace terms used earlier, such as accommodation, acculturation, adaptation, adjustment, assimilation, indigenisation, con-naturalisation, pre-evangelisation, transformation, etc. The term describes intercultural processes in the encounter between Christianity, or the Christian message, and a non-Christian culture. It needs to be borne in mind, however, that the Christian message has already undergone a specific cultural mediation before it encounters a different culture and that inculturation encompasses reciprocal hermeneutical processes which contribute to the mutual enrichment of different cultures. The five chapters in this One World Theology volume throw light on the complex concept of “inculturation”, which has become a key term in mission theology debates. The first chapter examines early approaches to inculturation in Church history while the second looks at the connections between the understanding of revelation and the concept of inculturation. The chapter headed “Models of Inculturation” shows the practical outcome of inculturation in different contexts. Chapter Four deals with the relationship between contextualisation and inculturation, while the final chapter looks at the strained con- nection between inculturation and interculturality. In the first chapter on “Early Approaches to Inculturation in Church History” Mariano Delgado points out that a capacity for inculturation was an intrinsic quality of Christianity from the very outset. He regards the incarnational route taken by the Gospel through history not as one among many but as the point of departure for other forms of incul- turation right up to the present day. A special aspect of inculturation from his point of view is the transformation of the ban on visual imagery ix x Inculturation in Christianity into a veneration of images. He considers this a major achievement in inculturation which “has had a lasting impact on the historical development of Christianity”. In his contribution entitled “The Event of Tepeyac” Juan Manuel Contreras Colín looks at the document Nican Mopuha which records the tradition surrounding the apparition of the “Virgin of Guadalupe”. He believes the authors of Nican Mopuha to be a team of indigenous writers from the Nahua people who articulated a new cultural under- standing of the narrative which is both Amerindian and European in character. Intercultural dialogue is conceived and structured from within the cultural universe of the indigenous population, although European Christianity is given the same theological status as the beliefs of the Indios. Colín regards the Nican Mopuha text as the most important document of indigenous Christian theology in the early modern age. “Being the product of genuine inter-faith dialogue, it lays the ground for a totally new experience and a totally new theological understanding that is both indigenous and Christian.” Daniel Assefa explores the significance of rain in the Dǝgwa, the antiphonary of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewaḥǝdo Church. He illus- trates the way in which the Ethiopian antiphonary takes up the biblical tradition of treating rain as a crucial, life-giving element in its texts. However, since it does not reflect the Palestine context, including its climate, the Dǝgwa goes beyond biblical tradition and is adapted to the Ethiopian context: “The particular attention given to nature and to the indigenous climate is a good example of inculturation and the antiphonary is a remarkable synthesis of biblical themes and the Ethiopian context.” The first chapter ends with an article by Edmund Kee-Fook Chia on “Early Approaches of Inculturation in Church History”. The author makes a fundamental distinction between two phases of inculturation. The first phase, which is as old as Christianity itself and lasted up to the Second Vatican Council, is characterised by an implicit inculturation of Christianity and by the struggle to find an appropriate form for it. Chia sees the second, “modern” phase as beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, when the concept of inculturation was coined as a neologism from the terms “incarnation”, on the one hand, and “enculturation” or “acculturation”, on the other. A concept was thus available which opened up the path to dialogue with other cultures Preface xi which Pope Paul VI had already called for in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam. It is not only with an eye on the FABC’s Triple Dialogue that Chia sees inculturation as the “litmus test” for successful evange- lisation: “This can even be regarded as a new measure of success for evangelisation. It is when the peoples are able to give the good news a new look and a new face. It is when the Gospel speaks to them through the language and idioms of their own culture as a result of having been immersed and involved in it.” The second chapter on “Understanding Revelation and Inculturation” begins with a contribution by Klaus Krämer in which he draws attention to the ambivalence inherent in inculturation. On the one hand, it absorbs