An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Contextual Theology a Thesis

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An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Contextual Theology

A Thesis

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of Requirements for the Degree

Master of Sacred Theology

Michael Brunner

Trinity Lutheran Seminary

Columbus, Ohio

May 2014

Table of Contents

Abstract page vi

Introduction page 1

Chapter One:

Typologies page 11

H. Richard Niebuhr page 11

Stephen B. Bevans page 34

Contextualized and Cultural Theology page 55

Chapter Two:

Paul Tillich page 67

Tillich and the Doctrine of God page 70

Tillich, Morality, and Anthropology page 74

Tillich and the Fall page 79

Tillich and the Christ page 82

Chapter Three:

Gustavo Gutiérrez and Liberation Theology page 87

Gutiérrez and Culture page 89

Gutiérrez and Theological Method page 92

The Poor and the Kingdom of God page 96

Concluding Remarks page 100

Chapter Four:

Eastern Orthodoxy and the Relationship between Theology and Culture page 103

Orthodox Theology, Relativism, and Salvation as it Pertains to Truth page 106

Orthodox Tradition and Contextualized Theology page 116

Nature and the Natural page 122

Orthodoxy and the Kingdom of God page 126

The Failures of Orthodoxy page 133

Conclusion: In Pursuit of Contextualized Theology page 138

Abstract

This thesis explores an ambiguity found in the term "contextual theology". After evaluating two typologies classifying the relationship between culture and theology and I propose a new typology, which distinguishes two diverging tendencies in the practice of contextual theology— what I term “contextualized” theology and “cultural” theology. After discussing these typologies I offer two detailed case-studies in order to evaluate my proposed typology. The case-studies explore the work of Paul Tillich and

Gustavo Gutiérrez, showing these two tendencies clearly, while also indicating that no theologian fits perfectly within any typology. Following these case-studies I expound an

Eastern Orthodox contextual theology, showing that this tradition possesses particular resources which allow it to undertake a fully "contextualized" theology while avoiding many tendencies of "cultural" theology.

Introduction

The question about how Christ and culture relate is as old as Christianity. It can be seen in the Old Testament when Israel kept failing to separate itself from pagan worship; it can be seen in the New Testament when Jewish Christians and Gentile

Christians are trying to determine how Gentiles should be welcomed into Christianity; it can be seen in the developments of Just War Theory. “It appears in many forms as well as in all ages; as the problem of reason and revelation, of religion and science, of natural and divine law, of state and church, of nonresistance and coercion.”1 It is a question that continues today and will continue into the future.

The current cultural climate is undergoing a radical shift from the modern world to the postmodern world. In the process of this shift, theology is being reshaped, reimagined, as something different. This shift is continuing the trend set in modern times of relegating Christian beliefs and practices to the sideline. The relegation of Christian beliefs and practices to a non-central domain can be seen as a result of the subjugation of the Church to the rising Nation-States of Europe in the late-medieval and early modern eras, as shown in William T. Cavanaugh’s book The Myth of Religious Violence.2 D.A.

Carson notes that “the impact of postmodernism is still felt, not in surging intellectual power but in the detritus of indecision, in the widespread assumption that all cultures have equal value, in the assumption that all religions say the same thing or, at the very least, are of equal value and equal shame, in the reluctance to think hard about good and

1 H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 10. 2 William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

2 evil, holiness and the profane.”3 If all cultures and religions carry equal weight, as

Carson suggests is the widely held assumption, one has to wonder if cultures and religions become relative. If one considers Cavanaugh’s arguments about the subjugation of the Church to the Nation-State and Carson’s proposal that it is widely assumed that all cultures and religions carry equal weight, it becomes clear to me that religion can be considered a relative cultural construction; religion is subsumed into the broader culture through the subjugation of religion by any given culture (Nation-State).

As can be seen in Carson’s assessment of the current trends in the understanding of the enduring problem, there is an ambiguity in the understanding of what culture is.

There is also an ambiguity in understanding how “religion” interacts with “secular” culture. The typical response to the question of the enduring problem has been, since the late middle ages, that there are two realms of culture—the private, “religious” realm and the public “secular” realm. As Carson states: “In more popular parlance…all three words—‘secular,’ ‘secularization,’ and ‘secularism’—have to do with the squeezing of the religious to the periphery of life.”4 Since the time of the late middle ages the

“religious” life has been squeezed out of public life and been forced into a private, spiritual realm.

In the late medieval period, there was a transfer of loyalty from an international church to a nation-state. As Cavanaugh says, “the gradual transfer of loyalty from international church to nation-state was…a migration of the holy from church to state…”5

With this transfer of loyalty came the modern understanding of religion. Cavanaugh

3 D.A. Carson, Christ & Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), vii. 4 Ibid., 116. 5 Cavanaugh, 10.

3 notes, “religion in modernity indicates a universal genus of which the various religions are species; each religion comes to be demarcated by a system of propositions; religion is identified with an essentially interior, private impulse; and religion comes to be seen as essentially distinct from secular pursuits such as politics, economics, and the like.”6 In other words, religion is something that is set inside of culture, it has its own function within a broader culture. Its role became, “attend[ing] to the care of souls and their attainment of eternal life.”7 Christianity became subordinate to the “secular” world.

One of the results of this development has been that “religion,” specifically

Christianity in the scope of this thesis, has been subsumed into the broader culture.8 With this, “culture is…essentially a transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a pattern capable of development and change, and it belongs to the concept of humanness itself. It follows that, if religion is a human phenomenon or human activity, it must affect, and be affected by, culture.”9 What Aylward Shorter is stating is that because

Christianity is a human activity it affects and is affected by the broader culture.

However, Shorter’s view is not the only one. As Hans Frei points out, “the status of

Christianity in the modern West has been ambiguous: it has been viewed and has viewed itself both as an independent religious community or communities and as an official or at least privileged institution in the general cultural system, including the organization of learning and of thinking about the meaning of culture.”10 Although Shorter does not explicitly claim that Christianity is just a part of culture, his insistence that the faith itself

6 Ibid., 69. 7 Ibid., 127. 8 From this point forward I will be speaking specifically of Christianity and not about religion in general. However, it is safe to substitute the concept/term religion where I use the term Christianity in this context. 9 Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1999), 5. 10 Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 1.

4 is affected by the host culture certainly implies that Christianity is a part of culture.

However, Christianity has held itself to be something different, an alternative reality that exists alongside of the broader culture but not a part of the broader culture. How

Christianity is viewed in relation to the broader culture has had a profound effect on how theology is perceived.

While there are still those who view Christianity—and theology—as something distinct from the world, the trend that I have noticed is towards a more pluralistic understanding of Christianity and Christian theology. David G. Kamitsuka’s statement,

“The demands for intelligibility in the public realm, remembering the suffering of the victims of oppression, remaining open to plurality within the church, and the biblical imagination necessary to form Christian communities responsive to these challenges are simply too great for us to continue with our isolated enclaves of theological business as usual,”11 seems to be the way theology is moving in a general way. Kamitsuka goes on to say, “no theology exists in a vacuum; each theology has its own social location, interests, and so on.”12 As we will see below, in Stephen Bevans' typology, the idea that theology can exist outside of culture has become unthinkable for many.

This new way of thinking about the enduring problem has given rise to what we call contextual theologies. It is within many of these theologies that the context, cultural or otherwise, has often assumed the lead role in the doing and evaluating of theology.

“The context of belief, life and action must now be given priority.”13 Indeed, personal

11 David G. Kamitsuka, Theology and Contemporary Culture: Liberation, Postliberal and Revisionary Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 4. 12 Ibid., 106. 13 J. Deotis Roberts Sr., “Contextual Theology: Liberation and Indigenization,” Christian Century 93: 3 (Ja 28, 1976): 64.

5 experience is the new barometer by which theology is judged (or, in many cases, simply accepted). So what has given rise to contextual theologies and the inherent understanding that all theologies are contextual?

The main cause of this shift is that during the evangelization of the New World

Christianity was not “contextualized.” Rather, Christianity was imported in the same forms, languages, and symbols as were relevant to those doing the importing. This has led to “a growing sense that the theologies being inherited from the older churches of the

North Atlantic community did not fit well into these quite different cultural circumstances.”14 As can be seen in Schreiter’s comment, theology itself is seen as something that is a byproduct of a culture. Theology is no longer viewed as something that has a universal character; it is now something that has become relative in so far as it must fit the culture to which it belongs.15

One of the benefits of this new understanding is that “it has gradually become unthinkable in many Christian churches to engage in any theological reflections without first studying the context in which it is taking place.”16 While I may disagree with the idea that theology is dependent on the culture in which it is developed (as I will discuss more in depth below), the idea that one must become familiar with the context with which a theology is either born in or imported into is important. Without understanding the culture to which you are taking Christianity into, you would be unable to contextualize theology in a relevant manner.

14 Robert J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985), 1. 15 “It was becoming increasingly evident that the theologies once thought to have a universal, and even enduring or perennial character…were but regional expressions of certain cultures.” Ibid., 3. 16 Ibid., 4.

Counter to the understanding that I will be proposing below, the basic understanding is that “theology is done by and for a given geographical area—by local people for their area, rather than by outsiders.”17 Theology is a product of its given culture—hence, theology itself has become relative. While many theologians who relegate theology to a product of any given culture would say that theology is not relative, the relegation of theology to a product of any given culture, without any universal application, indicates that it is, in fact, relative. This raises the ambiguity about what exactly constitutes contextual theology.

As Angie Pears points out, “the term ‘contextual theology’ is in some ways an evasive and fluid term to which a number of meanings, some contrasting, could and do attach themselves.”18 There have been numerous terms used to label this type of theology: local, inculturated, cultural, and contextual, just to name a few. Each of these terms is used differently by many different theologians and there is no consensus on how to understand what exactly is meant by these classifications.19 This ambiguity is what I am addressing in this thesis.20 Rather than viewing “contextualisation…as an umbrella term covering all the local theological approaches that take the socio-cultural context

17 Ibid., 5. 18 Angie Pears, Doing Contextual Theology (London: Routledge, 2010), 1. 19 “The variety of terminology connected with these classifications makes the situation complicated. In addition to the variety of terminology, each term also tends to be interpreted in various meanders by different theologians.” Mika Vähäkangas, “Modelling Contextualization in Theology,” Swedish Missiological Themes 98: 3 (2010): 280. 20 “The lack of consistent terminology, the need for neologisms, and the problem of conflicting connotations suggest something of the state of this shift in theological reflection. It is still new; many of the problems involved have not yet been thought through; and there is still no consensus about some basic and important issues.” Schreiter, 6. This paper is an attempt to work through some of the problems and propose a way forward in developing a consensus on the terminology associated with this theological shift.

7 seriously and reject the possibility of extracting a non-cultural Gospel,”21 I am proposing that there are two distinct ways contextual theology is done: “contextualized” theology and “cultural” theology.

I will argue that “cultural” theology “understands all Christian theology as being influenced and indeed determined by the context of those engaged in the theological enterprise.”22 Pears asks the question that I believe “contextualized” theology answers:

“In the face of the great pluralism that is Christian theologies is there a Christian

‘orthodoxy’ or a Christian ‘core’ that can be identified within these different theologies, regardless of context?”23 “Contextualized” theology upholds the universal character of an orthodox24 theology; it is a theology that takes the local context seriously but maintains that theology has a universal character that can be expressed in any cultural location.25

“Contextualized” theology recognizes that “Western Christianity has been transported and imposed on contexts and cultures very different to those out of which it emerged,”26 yet argues that the theology itself need not change; rather the mode and

21 Ibid., 284. 22 Pears, 1. 23 Ibid., 2. 24 While I am writing as an Eastern Orthodox theologian, my general implication here is a more generalized small -o- orthodoxy rather than referring to a big -O- Orthodoxy implying Eastern Orthodoxy. Throughout this thesis, I will use big -O- Orthodoxy to refer to Eastern Orthodoxy and small -o- orthodoxy to refer to a more general understanding of orthodoxy. 25 My proposal is that “contextualized” theology does what Schreiter states: “…there is a need to establish some criteria whereby Christian identity can be ascertained.” Schreiter, 117. I believe the concept of “contextualized” theology allows for Christian identity to be solidified, while allowing for cultural variations in how the theology is expressed. 26 Pears, 8.

8 means of communication of the theology must change.27 There has been cultural domination on the part of Western Christians who were not able to separate their theology from their culture and this must change. Christianity viewed itself as so ingrained in the culture around it that it represented a “world culture.” The way that

Christianity was brought to the New World was wrong, in many instances. The theologies of the non-Western world are not the only theologies that need to be critiqued.

“The experience of local communities…also remind us of the fallibility of parts of the tradition.”28 Contextual theologians have rightly critiqued the importation of Euro-

American culture and theology, at the same time affirming that culture and theology are intricately linked.29 When considering the importation of Euro-American culture and theology, the context in which the theology arose did affect the theology; but this is not the case in all aspects of Christian theology—something that is barely mentioned in the discussion of all theologies being contextual.

In this introduction I have set up my argument for a distinct dichotomy between

“cultural” theology and “contextualized” theology as the two ways to do or understand theology. I have attempted to note some of the causes of the emergence of “contextual” theologies. In what follows, I will be providing an analysis of the different ways that theology and culture are currently linked, two case-studies in how one can differentiate the two ways of doing contextual theology, and, finally, an Eastern Orthodox perspective on contextual theology. There are proper and improper ways of doing contextual

27 I will discuss the type or form of continuity I am pointing to here in chapter two. 28 Schreiter, 35. 29 One has to wonder how the church should approach evangelism according to the “contextual” theologians who have critiqued the importation of culture along with theology if culture and theology are as intricately connected as they propose.

9 theology. “Cultural” theology is the improper way of doing contextual theology and

“contextualized” theology is the proper way to do contextual theology.

Chapter one will deal primarily with laying out more fully my understanding of the current trends in the theology surrounding the relationship between theology and culture. I will be interacting primarily with Western, Evangelical and Catholic theologians. I do this for two reasons: (1) as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I recognize that this is a theological question that has had little impact on Orthodox theology, and, (2) being a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy I value certain things from my heritage and upbringing in Western Christian traditions, while acknowledging some of the shortcomings that inevitably led me toward Eastern Orthodoxy.

Chapters two and three will be case-studies in which I note the two distinct ways of doing contextual theology. Chapter two will be a discussion of some aspects of Paul

Tillich’s theology. I have chosen Tillich due to his reputation as an influential theologian of the twentieth century and to show that non-Euro-American theologies are not the only theologies that need to be critiqued in relation to the question of the relationship between theology and culture. There is as much, if not more, that needs to be critiqued in the

Euro-American theological tradition as there is in the emerging global theological traditions. Chapter three will be a discussion of some aspects of Gustavo Gutiérrez’s theology. I have chosen Gutiérrez due to his position as the “father” of contextual theology. His book A Theology of Liberation can be considered the first contextual theological text. Gutiérrez’s focus on the theme of liberation has had a profound impact on theology around the world and it would be a disservice to the topic if I did not include

10 some discussion of his theology. Neither theologian’s theology fits into one category exclusively; rather, they each exhibit traits from both types.

In chapter four I will discuss an Eastern Orthodox understanding of the relationship between theology and culture. As noted above, this is a question that has not had much traction within Orthodox theology; however, it is a question that Orthodoxy can contribute to. I am an ecumenically minded theologian who feels that dialogue between Eastern and Western traditions can be of value to both sides. I am also of the opinion that the West has much it could learn from the East when it comes to the question of the relationship between theology and culture.

Chapter One:

Typologies

This chapter will focus on the typologies of H. Richard Niebuhr and Stephen B. Bevans.

Following the discussion of the two typologies I will move into the dichotomy that this thesis sets up: “cultural” theology and “contextualized” theology as two ways to do contextual theology. The dichotomy that I set up between “cultural” and

“contextualized” types of contextual theology is reliant on Kevin Vanhoozer’s distinction between magisterial and ministerial placements of authority.

H. Richard Niebuhr

In H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, Niebuhr provides a typology, classifying the different approaches to the enduring problem that theologians have taken throughout the history of the church.30 He provides five different types: Christ against

Culture, Christ of Culture, Christ above Culture, Christ in paradox with Culture, and

Christ transforming Culture. The first two represent the ends of the spectrum, while the last three all fall somewhere in between. In what follows I will take a look at how

Niebuhr understands culture, provide a summary of each type, and offer some final thoughts on how the typology fares.

30 While Niebuhr’s typology is concerned with how Christ and culture are related in regards to ethics, this book has implications on how the relationship between theology and culture is understood as well.

Niebuhr and Culture

Niebuhr states that which “is man-made and man-intended is the world of culture.”31 Thus, the world of culture is the world that humanity creates for itself; language, politics, customs, etc. are the world of culture. “Culture is the social heritage they [humanity] receive and transmit.”32 One has to wonder how it is that Christianity is not seen as its own culture given the way Niebuhr states what culture is. If what Niebuhr states is true—“it includes speech, education, tradition, myth, science, art, philosophy, government, law, rite, beliefs, inventions, technologies”—does not Christianity also include all of these things, within itself? And yet, as will be seen, Niebuhr assumes the distinction between the “secular” and “religious” is one where both are held within the same broader culture; Christianity does not represent its own center of culture (its own polis).

One of the aspects of the theological shift, in the “secularization” of the world, when “religion” is subsumed under the broader culture, it becomes just another part of the temporal realm; it loses its ability to be both transcendent and immanent within the temporal, material realm. This can be seen in Niebuhr’s understanding of culture when he states: “Again, culture in all its forms and varieties is concerned with the temporal and material realization of values.”33 The problem with this statement is that Christianity has often been acknowledged to hold to a different set of values than the culture that surrounds it. In fact, much of the New Testament speaks about how Christians are to represent values that are contrary to the values of the world around them. In a way, the

31 Niebuhr, 34. 32 Ibid., 33. 33 Ibid., 36.

13 statement that Niebuhr makes is true of culture, in that even within Christianity, the

Christian culture is meant to be about the material realization of the values it holds.

However, when Christianity is relegated to one segment of the surrounding culture and not recognized as its own polis, it runs the risk of making all values relative. The problem of relativity will be something I address more in depth below.

One of the biggest issues with the “cultural” type of contextual theology is an assumption that how we experience and understand the “natural” in the present is representative of how nature was intended to be. However, what passes as “natural” today is oftentimes the opposite of what is meant to be “natural.” This is something that

Niebuhr is guilty of as well. “Though sometimes we state the fundamental human problem as that of grace and nature, in human existence we do not know a nature apart from culture. In any case we cannot escape nature, for ‘the man of nature, the

Naturmensch, does not exist,’ and ‘no man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes.’”34

What seems to be left out of this line of thinking is that the world as we experience it now is not how it is supposed to be ideally experienced. Whether the story of the Tower of

Babel is historical or metaphorical, it still points us to the idea that humanity once did not have separate cultures. The appearance of cultures is a result of human fallenness; in other words, having multiple cultures is not necessarily natural as such. However, this is not to say that culture is inherently evil; rather, it suggests that there is a discontinuity between how we experience reality now and experiencing it in its fullness, how it was meant to be.

34 Niebuhr, 39.

The question then becomes, when we consider the Christ event, how does the appearance of Jesus Christ impact our thinking about culture? Niebuhr states:

“In his single-minded direction toward God, Christ leads men away from the temporality and pluralism of culture. In its concern for the conservation of the many values of the past, culture rejects Christ who bids men rely on grace. Yet the Son of God is himself a child of a religious culture and sends his disciples to tend his lambs and sheep, who cannot be guarded without cultural work.”35

Niebuhr is correct in stating that Christ leads us away from the temporality of the various cultures in the world. Christ calls us to the Kingdom of God. However, to call Christ a child of a religious culture needs clarification. If what Niebuhr means is that Christ contextualized the Gospel according to his cultural surroundings, he would be on the right track. However, if Niebuhr is intimating that Christ adjusted the content of the message according to his cultural surroundings, he would be wrong. The idea that the content of the Gospel is dependent on the religious culture surrounding it relativizes the

Gospel;36 anyone could make any content they wish be considered true. It is also true that Christ’s “lambs and sheep” cannot be guarded without cultural work. The problem arises when the “what” of that cultural work is left ambiguous. The cultural work need not be a change to the content of the message; rather, it should be a contextualization of the message, through careful learning of the surrounding culture, allowing for a proper

35 Ibid. 36 Some may argue that the content of the Gospel is dependent on Israel or the Jewish culture. I would argue that this is not the case. Rather, Israel and the Jewish culture were dependent on God’s covenant with them. It is out of God’s covenant with Israel and her forefathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), that the Gospel comes, not from Israel itself. The content of the Gospel does not depend on Israel, but Israel was supposed to be living the Gospel in its covenant with God. The Gospel flows from Israel and the Jewish culture in so far as Israel and the Jewish culture were supposed to be a living example of the Gospel. While it would be beneficial to fully lay out this dynamic, the scope of this thesis does not allow for a fuller explanation of what I am discussing here.

15 contextualization of the message in the languages, symbols, etc. of the surrounding culture.

As can be seen above, Niebuhr can be interpreted in different ways. Part of the problem is statements that may be taken to be contradictory in themselves. Statements such as:

“It comes from him [Jesus Christ] in his Sonship in a double way, as man living to God and God living with men. Belief in him and loyalty to his cause involves men in the double movement from world to God and from God to world. Even when theologies fail to do justice to this fact, Christians living with Christ in their cultures are aware of it. For they are forever being challenged to abandon all things for the sake of God; and forever being sent back into the world to teach and practice all the things that have been commanded them.”37

In this statement, Niebuhr seems to indicate two contradictory realities. In one instance he is saying that Christians are living with Christ in their cultures. What can be taken from this is that Christians belong to the surrounding culture and Christ is simply present in that culture. While it must be noted that this is partially true—Christ is present in every culture—Niebuhr goes on to contradict this notion. When Niebuhr states that

Christians are being sent back into the world he seems to indicate that Christians belong to something outside their culture. This brings to the fore the idea that Christians are to be in the world and not of the world. Christians do not belong to the culture around them, they belong to the Kingdom of God; they are present in the culture around them while not belonging to that culture.

Furthermore, if Christians are simply a part of the broader culture, how can

Niebuhr state: “Not only Jews but also Greeks and Romans, medievalists and moderns,

37 Ibid., 29.

Westerners and Orientals have rejected Christ because they saw in him a threat to their culture.”38 Niebuhr makes it clear that Christ is seen as an enemy to “secular” cultures.39

Yet, at the same time there are undercurrents which suggest that Christians belong to that

“secular” culture. It is precisely this problem that leads to Niebuhr’s ambivalence towards proposing a concrete solution to the enduring problem and guides us towards a plurality of approaches, as we will see below in the evaluation of the five types.

Some of these same issues have been addressed by John Howard Yoder. Yoder points out that “when the New Testament speaks of ‘world’ it precisely does not mean, as

Niebuhr says (pp. 45-48), all of culture. It means rather culture as self-glorifying or culture as autonomous and rebellious and oppressive, opposed to authentic human flourishing.”40 What Yoder is pointing out is the tendency in Niebuhr—that can also be found any many of the “cultural” type of contextual theologies—to use an either/or approach to theology. Yoder is offering a both/and approach to culture instead. This is made more apparent when he says, “what is quite absent in all of the NT is any trace of the Niebuhrian assumption that the pagan cosmology as a whole must be responded to somehow as a monolith, either affirming it all, rejecting it all, synthesizing with it all, or paradoxing it all.”41 Yoder also states that Niebuhr “does not…work into the present book his awareness…that the Christian church as a sociological unit is distinguishable

38 Ibid., 4. 39 “The forgiveness that Christ practices and teaches is said to be irreconcilable with the demands of justice or the free man’s sense of moral responsibility. The injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount concerning anger and resistance to evil, oaths and marriage, anxiety and property, are found incompatible with the duties of life in society.” Ibid., 9. 40 Glen H. Stassen, D.M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder, Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 70. 41 Ibid., 87.

17 from the rest of culture and thereby constitutes a new cultural option.”42 As noted above in my critique, Yoder is pointing to the ambiguous nature of Niebuhr’s approach to

Christianity as to whether it is its own polis or whether it is simply a part of the broader culture.

One final question that needs to be considered in the issue of the enduring problem is that of whether how one speaks of Christ (or God for that matter) changes who or what it is one is worshipping, is loyal to, etc. Niebuhr, in his attempt at humility, indicates that no matter one’s approach or actual speech about Christ, all who speak of

Christ are loyal to the same Christ.43 Yet, if one believes in a Christ who only appeared human, would they not be worshipping a different Christ than the person who believes that Christ was fully human and fully divine? What Niebuhr fails to acknowledge is the ability to be deceived in one’s experiences. One has the capability of being led astray. Is this not why Paul told the people to whom he wrote that they must guard themselves against false teachers and prophets?

The questions and concerns about Niebuhr’s approach to what Christ and culture are, need to be kept in mind as we evaluate his typology.

The Typology

While typologies can be useful for locating broad themes or motifs, they are still susceptible to criticism. As Niebuhr points out, “a type is a mental construct to which no

42 Ibid., 75. 43 “However great the variations among Christians in experiencing and describing the authority of Jesus Christ have over them, they have this in common: that Jesus Christ is their authority, and that the one who exercises these various kinds of authority is the same Christ.” Niebuhr, 13.

18 individual wholly conforms.”44 Despite the fact that no theology can fit neatly into a specific type, typologies are useful in that they are “the effort to order [the] many elements [of theology] into families in such a way that some of the characteristic combinations of principles may be understood.”45 In moving forward, it will be important to keep in mind the way some of the types intersect and note that the deficiencies of one type may be corrected by another type.

The first type that Niebuhr discusses is Christ against Culture. In this type, the prime characteristic is that culture, outside of Christianity, is wholly evil. It is in this type that the emphasis is placed on the early Christians viewing Christians as a “new people with a new law.”46 There is a distinction drawn between the Christian community and those outside of the community. It is understood that in order to be loyal to Christ and the Christian community, one must reject the broader culture. As Niebuhr says, “they have maintained the distinction between Christ and Caesar, between revelation and reason, between God’s will and man’s.”47

This is one of the strengths of this type; however, Niebuhr would have you think otherwise. Christianity is a new community that is not “of” the world. It is distinct in that the Christian community belongs to the Kingdom of God and not any earthly kingdom. However, there are some negative aspects to this model as well.

“Human reason as it flourishes in culture is for these men not only inadequate because it does not lead to knowledge of God and the truth necessary to salvation; but it

44 Ibid., xxxviii. 45 Ibid., xxxvii-xxxviii. 46 Ibid., xliv. 47 Ibid., 66.

19 is also erroneous and deceptive.”48 As Niebuhr points out here, those in the Christ against Culture model are overly dismissive of the world outside of the Christian community. While it is a positive to be suspicious of human reason and “natural revelation,” human reason as such should not be completely dismissed. To do so calls into question the goodness of God’s creative action. To set the equation between Christ and culture to an either-or equation is to miss out on the beauty and truth that is seen in the world outside of the Christian community.49 Truth does not belong to the Christian community; rather, the Christian community belongs to the truth. As Jesus stated, he is the truth, and the Christian community ultimately belongs to Christ and not vice versa.

Despite the negatives in setting up an either-or decision, the Christ against

Culture type is correct in stating that the Christian is to be loyal to the Christian community rather than the world.50 If there is something in the world that runs contrary to the truth of Christ the Christian is to stay loyal to Christ and reject that something in the world. The problem is that the Christ against Culture type sets up the Christian community for failure, when it comes to being completely loyal to the “new order.”

“The logical answer of the radical seems to be that sin abounds in culture, but that

Christians have passed out of darkness into the light, and that a fundamental reason for separation from the world is the preservation of the holy community from corruption.”51

As can be noted throughout history, the Christian community is not without sin of its

48 Ibid., 77. 49 “Whatever may be the customs of the society in which the Christian lives, and whatever the human achievements it conserves, Christ is seen as opposed to them, so that he confronts men with the challenge of an “either-or” decision.” Ibid., 40. 50 “Hence the loyalty of the believer is directed entirely toward the new order, the new society and its Lord.” Ibid., 48. 51 Ibid., 78.

20 own. Humanity is sinful in itself and that sin is manifested in any community, regardless of whether that community is Christian or not. To think that one could become sinless by becoming a Christian and only interacting with other Christians is naive at best. This is at the heart of Niebuhr’s critique of this type. He asserts: “It is inadequate, for one thing, because it affirms in words what it denies in action; namely, the possibility of sole dependence on Jesus Christ to the exclusion of culture. Christ claims no man purely as a natural being, but always as one who has become human in a culture; who is not only in culture but into whom culture has penetrated.”52 While I agree with Niebuhr’s assessment to some extent, in that the Christian must acknowledge their own sinfulness regardless of cultural location, there are parts of this critique that miss the point.

This type is correct in pointing us to the fact that we must seek to be solely dependent on Jesus Christ. A problem with this type is when it is assumed that this is an immediate action upon conversion to Christianity. Rather, it is a process in which the person becomes more Christlike the more one acts in accordance with the teachings of

Christ. It is a process that is likely to not be completed in this life because we are influenced by the culture around us that does run contrary to the Gospel; however, that does not mean it is something we should not strive after. A problem with Niebhur’s critique is that Niebuhr assumes that one is capable of becoming fully human within a culture. This is the same problem mentioned above when discussing whether how we experience the world today is how it should be experienced. We live in a broken reality, not reality as it is meant to be. We can only become fully human when we live into the

52 Ibid., 69.

21 reality as it is meant to be and that means acknowledging that who we are, as sinful beings, is not fully human.

As can be seen, this type has its positives and its negatives. It lifts up the recognition of the Christian community as something that is distinct from the world and it fails to acknowledge the sinfulness of humanity regardless of cultural location. As I move forward it will be important to note both the positives and negatives of this type; the positives will play prominently in the two types of contextual theology I will propose.

The second type that Niebuhr surveys is the polar opposite of the Christ against

Culture type. The Christ of Culture type asserts Christ’s value to human culture. As

Niebuhr notes:

“Recognition of fundamental agreement between Christ and culture is typical of the answers offered by [the Christ of Culture type]. In them Jesus often appears as a great hero of human culture history; his life and teachings are regarded as the greatest human achievement; in him, it is believed, the aspirations of men toward their values are brought to a point of culmination; he confirms what is best in the past, and guides the process of civilization to its proper goal. Moreover, he is a part of culture in the sense that he himself is a part of the social heritage that must be transmitted and conserved.”53

It is in this type that humanity’s goodness is uplifted. All that is good in culture is seen as being an affirmation that it comes from Christ. “The dominant tendency is to regard the moral consciousness as independent of religion and as prior to revelation or faith.”54 For this type, culture is seen as a good that comes from Christ.

The greatest fault in this type is that the fallen nature of the world is almost completely dismissed. While I agree with the assessment that culture is not inherently

53 Ibid., 41. 54 Ibid., xlviii.

22 evil, accepting any cultural location wholesale without acknowledging flaws in that cultural location is a problem. “They feel no great tension between the church and the world, the social laws and the Gospel, the workings of divine grace and human effort, the ethics of salvation and the ethics of social conservation or progress.”55 They are too naive in their optimism.

The optimism about culture in this type ultimately leads to a sort of hypocrisy. As

Niebuhr points out, “those elements in cultural ethics are selected as normative which are most in agreement with the New Testament. Hence this type does not simply sanction prevailing culture with its natural law or common sense ethics; it emphasizes the ‘ideal’ in that morality.”56 This type wants to affirm that culture is inherently a good, but it picks and chooses what constitutes that good. In a way, this is a recognition that there is both good and evil within every cultural location, but the lack of affirmation that there is an underlying tension between the Christian community and the world is disturbing. If one must pick and choose the good within a culture, does that not mean that there are things within culture that are counter to the gospel? If there are things within culture that are counter to the gospel, one must admit that there is then tension between the church and the world.

Another issue that can be seen in this type is a tendency towards adoptionism.

Within this type, Christ is often seen “as the great educator, sometimes as the great philosopher or reformer.”57 In viewing Christ as a part of a cultural or religious system, one can relegate his divinity to the sideline, leading to an overemphasis on his humanity.

55 Ibid., 83. 56 Ibid., xlvi-xlvii. 57 Ibid., 84.

To say that his life and teachings represent the greatest human achievement seems to forget his divinity—it turns Christ into nothing more than a man. While Christ was a great teacher, to overemphasize this point causes issues with Christology as a whole.

In some ways, this type offers some positive insights on how theology and culture should interact. “The Christ-of-culture position appears…to make effective the universal meaning of the gospel, and the truth that Jesus is the savior, not of a selected little band of saints, but of the world.”58 It reminds us that there is truth within every cultural location that must be recognized as belonging to Christ. In other ways, this type has some flaws that must be corrected. “The terms differ, but the logic is always the same: Christ is identified with what men conceive to be their finest ideals, their noblest institutions, and their best philosophy.”59 There is a failure in this type to adequately address the evil that does reside within every culture. One cannot pick out the good in a culture and declare the entire culture good. In the end, Niebuhr provides us with a summary of what are, ultimately, the benefits of this model: “Though he commanded his disciples to seek the kingdom above all else, he did not advise them to scorn other goods; nor was he indifferent to the institution of the family, to order in the temple, to the freedom of the temporally oppressed, and to the fulfillment of duty by the powerful.”60 In other words,

Christians must acknowledge all truth, no matter its location, as belonging to Christ.

I have surveyed the two types that lie on opposite ends of the spectrum. What we have left to survey are the three types that lie somewhere in-between the Christ against

Culture type and the Christ of Culture type. As Niebuhr notes of the differences between

58 Ibid., 105. 59 Ibid., 103. 60 Ibid., 105-106.

24 the first two types and the last three: “these types are two-worldly [Christ against Culture and Christ of Culture] whereas the other types are one-worldly.”61

The first of the three median types is the Christ above Culture type. This type acknowledges the discontinuity between following the divine commandments found within the gospel and following the commandments of the law. It does this by locating the requirement to follow the commandments of the law as a divine imperative.62 In a way, the idea that culture is a divine imperative makes sense. When one looks at the story of the Tower of Babel, one can see the divine action of creating the various cultures of the world. However, to assume this is reality as it should be is missing the point.

Humanity forced God’s hand in the creation of multiple cultures; with the creation of multiple cultures reality as it should be became reality as we experience it now. This type seems to fall into the same trap as the Christ of Culture type: a naive optimism about the goodness of reality as we experience it now, as opposed to reality as it is meant to be.63

The benefit of this type, though, is that it does acknowledge that God is the Lord of both the Christian community and the world outside of the Christian community.64 It is a reminder that God is both transcendent and immanent in our world. “Christ is,

61 Ibid., xlix. 62 Niebuhr, 118. 63 “One of the theologically stated convictions with which the church of the center approaches the cultural problem is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Father Almighty who created heaven and earth. With that formulation it introduces into the discussion about Christ and culture the conception of nature on which all culture is founded and which is good and rightly ordered by the One to whom Jesus Christ is obedient and with whom he is inseparably united.” Ibid., 117. 64 “But the synthesist affirms both Christ and culture, as one who confesses a Lord who is both of this world and the other.” Ibid., 120.

25 indeed, a Christ of culture, but he is also a Christ above culture.”65 While the Christ against Culture type affirms that Christ is the Lord over all, it fails to locate him outside of the Christian community; while the Christ of Culture type affirms Christ’s presence in the world outside of the Christian community, it fails to locate the Christian community outside of the world. In this type, and we will see in the other two median types, Christ is found in both.

While the benefit of this type is that it recognizes Christ in the world as well as in the Christian community, it subverts the authority of the Christian community when it locates the arbiter of what is good in culture. “Culture discerns the rules for culture, because culture is the work of God-given reason in God-given nature.”66 This is, once again, the naive optimism toward culture rearing its ugly head. This naive optimism subverts the Christian community’s authority in its own right, apart from the world. As

Niebuhr notes: “It may be that a synthetic answer is possible in which it is recognized that the social religious institution that calls itself the church is as much a part of the temporal order and as much a human achievement as are state, school, and economic institutions.”67 It is in this statement that one can see the subordination of the Christian community—which belongs first of all to Christ and his Kingdom—to the world.

Niebuhr continues: “But it is hard to see how this could be; for if Christ’s grace, law, and reign are not institutionalized every synthesis must again be provisional and open, subject to radical attack, to conversion and replacement by the action of a free Lord and of men

65 Ibid., 42. 66 Ibid., 135. 67 Ibid., 147.

26 subject to his commandment rather than to the religious institution.”68 Equating the church to a mere institution in the temporal realm fails to recognize the church as institution ultimately being subject to Christ’s commandments. The institutionalization of the church must be remembered as an institutionalization that belongs to the Kingdom and not to this world. However, that is not to say that the church as institution has not erred. The institution of the church belongs to Christ, yet is occupied by people, despite their “new createdness in Christ,” who are sinful. I agree with the view that suggests that the church is without fault in that it is Christ’s body, yet the people who reside in the church are still sinful and are capable of working contrary to Christ’s commandments, as held by the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions.

This type does have its problems, most of which are the same problems that seem to creep into every type. However, the ultimate benefit of this type is that it breaks the pattern of either-or equations.69 It affirms the both-and equation that must be used when approaching the question of Christ and culture. Christ is indeed seen in every culture in that no culture is wholly evil; the Christian community is indeed a distinct culture, set apart from the world, for the world.

The fourth type is the Christ and Culture in Paradox type. In this type, the basic assumption is that there are two authorities—the church and the worldly culture—that

Christians must obey. There is a tension between the two because Christians must obey

68 Ibid. 69 “We cannot say, ‘Either Christ or culture,’ because we are dealing with God in both cases. We must not say, ‘Both Christ and culture,’ as though there were no great distinction between them; but we must say, ‘Both Christ and culture,’ in full awareness of the dual nature of our law, our end, and our situation.” Ibid., 122.

27 both even though they may contradict at times.70 This type “accepts the demands of nature and culture as inescapable and as divine demands.”71 Like the other median type above, it recognizes that what is revealed in nature (culture), as a command or demand, is a divine imperative. However, unlike the type above, this type acknowledges the disparity between the two competing authorities, and calls Christians to live in the tension of trying to obey both. This type is also “like the ‘Christ-against-culture’ [type], yet differs from them in the conviction that obedience to God requires obedience to the institutions of society and loyalty to its members as well as obedience to a Christ who sits in judgment on that society.”72

This type takes the two worst aspects of the Christ against Culture and Christ above Culture types and combines them. It sees the world as an evil, and subverts the authority of the church in its commitment to upholding obedience to the world even if it calls us to something that is contradictory to the gospel. For the Christ and Culture in

Paradox type, “the polarity and tension of Christ and culture life must be lived precariously and sinfully in the hope for a justification which lies beyond history.”73 In other words, we must accept that we live in sin in this life and hope for justification in what lies ahead for us after this life. What this type is doing is locating salvation to a non-temporal, “spiritual” sphere in the future.

This type seems to have a naive pessimism associated with it. This pessimism is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good in that it recognizes that “human culture is

70 Ibid., 42. 71 Ibid., li. 72 Ibid., 42. 73 Ibid., 43.

28 corrupt: and it includes all human work, not simply the achievements of men outside the church but also those in it.”74 Unlike the naive optimism of the Christ of Culture type, the Christ and Culture in Paradox type recognizes the sinfulness of all humanity, whether they are Christian or not. This type acknowledges the ever-present temptation to pervert what is good in our natural, created identity. However, this same acknowledgement is also a negative to the pessimism of this type. The proponent of this type “knows that he belongs to that culture and cannot get out of it, that God indeed sustains him in it and by it; for if God in His grace did not sustain the world in its sin it would not exist for a moment.”75 This type proposes that God is responsible for the continual existence of sin; God is responsible for cultural evil. Once again, we run into the problem that has been in every other type to this point: reality as it is now is accepted as “natural,” when it should be acknowledged as “less-than-natural.” In the pessimism of this type, sin is simply accepted as “natural” rather than as a perversion of the real

“natural.”

According to this type, the church belongs to the world in which it is found. The church does not represent something set apart, something different from what the world offers us. They base this claim off of the idea that “the battle [is] not with flesh and blood but against spiritual principles in the minds and hearts of men, there [is] no hiding place from their attacks in a new, Christian culture.”76 They look at the New Testament and come to the conclusion that it is not necessary to change cultural customs in order to

74 Ibid., 153. 75 Ibid., 156. 76 Ibid., 163.

29 come closer to the Kingdom of Christ.77 What they fail to acknowledge was that there were cultural customs changing as the Kingdom began to break through. Gentiles may not have had to be circumcised, they may not have had to give up eating meats that had been sacrificed to idols; however, the Jewish Christians had to allow for Gentiles to become a part of their community even without these things. That meant the Jewish

Christian community was changing its culture. All of the things that Jewish Christians came to accept were not simply about the “what”—the issue was inherently about the

“why.” The early Christians recognized that Jesus was more concerned with the “why” of actions, rather than the “what” of actions. Simply doing something was not sufficient; one had to have a change of who they were, and this comes from understanding the

“why” of doing or not doing something. This type is similar to a common critique of the

Pharisees who focused on the “what” of an action without any consideration of the “why” of an action.

The final type that Niebuhr provides is the Christ the Transformer of Culture type. It is apparent by his lack of any critique of this type that it is the type he prefers

While this type has proven appealing it nevertheless has problems.

The underlying principle of this type is that “Christ is seen as the converter of man in his culture and society, not apart from these, for there is no nature without culture and no turning of men from self and idols to God save in society.”78 In other words, it is within our already settled state in a culture that we are transformed into something other,

77 “It was not possible to come closer to the reign of Christ by changing cultural customs, as in matters of food and drink or the keeping of holy days, by abandoning family life in favor of celibacy, by seeking release from chattel slavery, or by escaping from the rule of political authorities.” Ibid., 164. 78 Ibid., 43.

30 yet we remain in our already settled culture. I agree with this sentiment to a point. The point of departure for me is that there is not a distinction between who we are before conversion to who we are after conversion. If we are in need of conversion, are we not in need of conversion from something? If we are indeed in need of conversion from something, then there must be some sort of change. Rather than the idea that the culture is being converted or transformed, I wonder if it would be better to speak about the

Kingdom itself becoming more of a reality, replacing the already established culture.

While I may be critical of what is meant in the idea of transforming culture, there are aspects of this type that need to be mentioned. Unlike the Christ against Culture and

Christ and Culture in Paradox types, this type views culture in a more positive light, without being naively optimistic like the Christ of Culture type.79 Rather than ignoring the fall altogether or over-stating the effects of the fall, it finds a balance that recognizes the presence of evil in the midst of a world created good. As Niebuhr puts it: “The word that must be used here to designate the consequences of the fall is ‘corruption.’ Man’s good nature has become corrupted; it is not bad, as something that ought not to exist, but warped, twisted, and misdirected.”80 This type recognizes that humanity can still be seen as good when it adheres to the will of God and can be seen as bad when it fails to adhere to the will of God.81 However, the problem once again arises with this type: the Christian community is not seen as something distinct from the world but is a part of an already established culture in the midst of transformation.

79 “What distinguishes conversionists from dualists is their more positive and hopeful attitude toward culture.” Ibid., 191. 80 Ibid., 194. 81 ibid., 211.

In speaking of how this type views culture, Niebuhr states: “It is perverted good, not evil: or it is evil as perversion, and not as badness of being. The problem of culture is therefore the problem of its conversion, not of its replacement by a new creation; though the conversion is so radical that it amounts to a kind of rebirth.”82 While this type affirms that not all culture is itself evil or perverted, it fails to acknowledge what the in-breaking of the Kingdom means. As humanity begins to live more fully into the reality as it is meant to be, reality as it is begins to be replaced. This is a matter of semantics to an extent, because what Niebuhr is describing as a transformation really is a replacement.

While not all things within any given culture will be replaced or disappear—because there is truth in every culture—the transformation of any culture will result in replacing previously held customs, practices, beliefs.

The Christ the Transformer of Culture type has positives that need to be emphasized and negatives that need to be critiqued. While some of my squabbles with this type are merely semantic and not actual in some sense, I believe that the ambiguity of some of the language needs to be clarified. In order to properly conclude this section on

Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture it is important that we look at some of his concluding remarks, along with some of the criticism that has been laid against this book.

In his final analysis, Niebuhr says,

“Yet one is stopped at one point or another from making the attempt to give a final answer, not only by the evident paucity at one’s historical knowledge, as compared with other historical men, and the evident weakness of one’s ability in conceptual construction, as compared with other thinkers, but by the conviction, the knowledge, that the giving of such an answer by any finite mind, to which any measure of limited and little faith has been granted, would be an act of usurpation of the

82 Ibid., 194.

Lordship of Christ which at the same time would involve doing violence to the liberty of Christian men and to the unconcluded history of the church in culture.”83

Niebuhr is attempting to provide some sense of humility in his concluding remarks about his typology. This comes about from the recognition that no type is perfect and no type has a perfect representative. In the end, Niebuhr seems content to allow for a plurality of answers to the enduring problem of the relationship between theology and culture.

However, in contrast to the issue that I raised in each one of the types—the issue on whether the Christian community represents something distinct from the world—Niebuhr brings up the biblical concept that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female.”84 Despite his mentioning of this concept, he goes on to contradict it within the same sentence when he says, “but in relation to other men a multitude of relative value considerations arise.”85 Niebuhr wants to affirm that in Christ the social constructions (race, sex, social status) disappear and in the world different value considerations arise, i.e. social constructs. This would seem to hint at the idea that there is a distinct difference between the world and the church, but Niebuhr is not indeed hinting at that. Rather, he is hinting at the individual nature of all of this.

As Craig A. Carter points out, “Niebuhr is extremely reluctant to call anyone wrong in this book—although it is clear that he will not be displeased if his readers conclude for themselves that the radical position is wrong.”86 But this sense of humility

83 Ibid., 232. 84 Ibid., 237. 85 Ibid. 86 Craig A. Carter, “The Legacy of an Inadequate Christology: Yoder’s Critique of Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 77: 3 (Jl 2003): 394.

33 is a false humility. Rather than saying that there is a right answer Niebuhr insists that there is no right answer. As Yoder points out:

“Humility means for Richard Niebuhr not simple subjection to Divine command but rather the recognition that for many questions there is no answer or no one right answer, so that we are left to our own resources, with none of us having any right to impose his convictions on anyone else…Thereby the responsible self has become (in the order of knowing, and despite verbal professions to the contrary) its own God.”87

This is not humility at all, but a proposal that resonates well with post-modern notion of deconstruction, while asserting that there are no universals—the statement that there are no universals is itself a universal.

As can be seen in much of my criticisms of each type, the question is not so much about the relationship between theology and culture, as such. Rather, the real question is about where authority resides. Carson notes that “Niebuhr is not so much talking about the relationship between Christ and culture, as between two sources of authority as they compete within culture, namely Christ…and every other source of authority divested of

Christ (though Niebuhr is thinking primarily of secular or civil authority rather than authority claimed by competing religions).”88 It is through the recognition of the

Christian community, belonging to Christ and the Kingdom of God, as something distinct from the world that the discussion of authority takes root.

In recognizing the Christian community as something distinct it is still important to recognize the presence of the Christian community in the world as well.

“Christians…are simultaneously distinguishable from the larger culture and part of it;

87 Stassen, Yeager, and Yoder, 66. 88 Carson, 12.

Christians influence culture, and vice versa.”89 What is important is that the Christian community must be wary of how culture influences it and how it influences culture. As I have stated, every culture has some truth and some evil in it. So, the Christian community should strive to accept the truth that is situated in any given culture and allow its message to be shaped by the truth that is situated within any given culture.

I will return to how the five types within Niebuhr’s typology play a role in the paradigm I will set up to conclude this chapter. Before I get to that point, however, I must turn to Stephen B. Bevans’ book Models of Contextual Theology. While Niebuhr paid more attention to the idea of ethics in the relationship between Christ (theology) and culture, Bevans’ book focuses squarely on the doing and evaluating of theology.90

Stephen B. Bevans

As the shift from the modern to the post-modern world continues, personal experience is becoming the dominant force in determining truth and value claims. In the midst of this shift lies the theologian who is trying to figure out how to communicate to a world that no longer accepts a universal (other than that there is no universal); or the theologian is trying to figure out how to express their theology in a meaningful way if they do not believe in a universal. “The point is that any kind of understanding of theology as an unchanging already finished theologia perennis is being challenged in the

First World in the name of relevance.”91

89 Ibid., 75. 90 It is important to note that Niebuhr was a Protestant theologian and Bevans is a Catholic missiologist. They are approaching the topic from two different starting points, which should be kept in mind when reading the Bevans section of this chapter. 91 Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), 9.

What is being challenged is the idea that any theology can be relevant anywhere outside of where it originated. The concept is that we can only know theology as we experience its contents. As Bevans points out, “no longer do we speak of culture and world events as areas to which theology is adapted and applied; culture and world events become the very sources of theological enterprise, along with and equal to scripture and tradition.”92 The idea that the gospel and the theology surrounding the gospel can be passed down from generation to generation in any church in any cultural location is no longer accepted. The uplifting of personal experience has played a role in the emergence of contextual theologies.

Bevans considers “contextual theology as taking two things seriously: the experience of the past (recorded in scripture and preserved and defended in tradition) and the experience of the present, that is, context (individual and social experience, secular or religious culture, social location, and social change.”93 While Bevans notes that contextual theology is the “experience of the past,” as it, “engages the present context,” the inheritance of the past is often changed in drastic ways.94 The inheritance of the past, as it has been passed down, is no longer the guiding principle in the doing and evaluating of theology; rather, current cultural, personal experience is the guiding principle. The inheritance is seen as irrelevant and incorrect if it does not line up with current experience. Oftentimes, the “cultural” type of contextual theology operates differently than what Bevans implies when he states: “Theology that is contextual realizes that culture, history, contemporary thought forms, and so forth are to be considered, along

92 Ibid., 16. 93 Ibid., xvi. 94 Ibid., xvii. To be fair, not all “contextual” theologies reinterpret the past in drastic ways.

36 with scripture and tradition, as valid sources for theological expression.”95 Many of the

“cultural” type of contextual theologies operate in a way that makes culture, contemporary thought forms, and personal experience the chief authority of determining what within scripture and tradition are valid sources for theological expression, rather than being one of a tripartite source of theological expression. It is out of the shifting of authority from the church’s collective experiences to the individual’s cultural experiences that I draw the term “cultural” theology

My critique of contextual theologies is not all negative though; the positive type of contextual theologies is what I call “contextualized” theology. As Bevans rightly notes, “some of our predominantly western and northern liturgical and theological images are meaningless in other cultural contexts.”96 What proper contextual theologies should be doing is reframing the inheritance in new images as it enters into new contexts—what

I call the “contextualized” type of contextual theology. My problem with much of contextual theology to date is that instead of reframing the inheritance in order for it to be relevant in new contexts, it changes the inheritance itself in order to make it relevant— much of contextual theology falls into the “cultural” type that I have described. If the idea was that the inheritance was simply being given new linguistic frameworks within new contexts I would have no problem with affirming what Bevans states: “The contextualization of theology—the attempt to understand Christian faith in terms of a particular context—is really a theological imperative.”97 However, what is meant by

“contextualization” is often ambiguous. This ambiguity will be seen as we proceed

95 Ibid., 4. 96 Ibid., xix. 97 Ibid., 3.

37 through the models that Bevans offers us. It is also this ambiguity that prompts my proposal of two types of contextual theology. Before we begin our investigation of

Bevans’ models of contextual theology it is important for us to look at how Bevans understands contextual theology.

“There is no such thing as ‘theology’; there is only contextual theology: feminist theology, black theology, liberation theology, Filipino theology, Asian-American theology, African theology, and so forth.”98 For Bevans, theology as a universal, culturally transcendent thing, is nonexistent. This comes from his premise that: “As theologians do theology, their social location needs to be acknowledged and even embraced.”99 Bevans is unclear in what he means about the “embracing” of a social location. It would be helpful if Bevans would state explicitly what he means on this point. In his failure to mention that not everything within every culture is in agreement with the gospel he leaves himself open to be critiqued as a naïve optimist. Certainly, as discussed above in the Niebuhr section, there will be aspects of any social location that must be rejected from a Christian standpoint.

Bevans’ failure to address the issue of rejecting portions of any social location has a profound impact on how he understands the doing and evaluating of theology:

“As our cultural and historical context plays a part in the construction of the reality in which we live, so our context influences the understanding of God and the expression of our faith. The time is past when we can speak of one, right, unchanging theology, a theologia perennis. We can only speak about a theology that makes sense at a certain place and in a certain time.”100

98 Ibid. 99 Ibid., 6. 100 Ibid., 4-5.

The problem inherent with this approach is that theology becomes relative. If the doctrine of the Trinity does not make sense in a certain place at a certain time, does that mean that it is disposable? If Jesus Christ being seen as both fully God and fully human does not make sense at a certain place and a certain time, does that make it disposable?

Bevans makes this claim because, for him, “a study of the history of theology will reveal that every authentic theology has been very much rooted in a particular context in some implicit or real way.”101 The ambiguity of what Bevans means by theology becomes a problem when we start thinking about the history of theological development.

One has to wonder if what is meant by “authentic theology” is the underlying theological concepts or the language that is used to communicate the underlying theological concepts. This ambiguity is seen more clearly when he states: “What becomes clear…is that even a cursory glance at the history of theology reveals that there has never been a genuine theology that was articulated in an ivory tower, with no reference to or dependence on the events, the thought forms, or the culture of its particular place and time.”102 One should always affirm that the ways in which theological concepts are communicated are always shaped by the cultural context in which those theological concepts are being expressed. The Church Fathers serve as an example with their indebtedness to Greek philosophical language to make theology understandable in their context. However, this does not seem to be what Bevans is implying here.

Instead of the language of the context being used to communicate the underlying theological concepts, Bevans is arguing that the underlying theological concepts

101 Ibid., 7. 102 Ibid., 9

39 themselves are culturally situated. His view of classical theology makes this clear:

“Classical theology conceived theology as a kind of objective science of faith. It was understood as a reflection in faith on the two…(theological sources) of scripture and tradition, the content of which has not and never will be changed, and is above culture and historically conditioned expression.”103 Bevans takes the post-modern idea that there are no universals seriously in his consideration of what constitutes an “authentic” theology. Instead of seeing theology as something that is above culture and historically conditioned expression, he sees theology as occupied with epistemology and therefore a subjective enterprise; theology is approached as subjectively based on personal experience, within a particular cultural location.104

The consequences of this view of theology—as subjective—would seem to imply a sort of relativity to the doing and evaluating of theology. However, Bevans states: “By subjective…I do not mean relative or private or anything like that but the fact that the human person or human society, culturally and historically bound as it is, is the source of reality, not a supposed value- and culture-free objectively ‘already out there now real.’”105 This appears to be one of the logical inconsistencies within the “cultural” type of contextual theology. The idea that theology is dependent on its cultural location to determine its validity or truthfulness would indicate a relativity to theology; theology’s truthfulness is bound up with its cultural location, rather than the ability of a theology to be communicated in culturally relevant ways. It appears that contextual theology, as

103 Ibid., 3-4. 104 “While classical theology understood theology as something objective, contextual theology understands theology as something unabashedly subjective.” Ibid., 4. 105 Ibid.

Bevans understands it, is not willing to own up to its creation of relativity within theology.106

As can be seen above, the chief criterion of “authentic” theology is that it is relevant to a person or cultural location. Personal experience is the barometer of truth for

Bevans. Bevans uses this concept of personal experience to imply that by accounting for personal experience the theologian is taking actual contexts seriously.107 But can one not take contexts seriously without relying on personal experience as the barometer of truth?

The ”contextualized” type of contextual theology, as I am proposing (as opposed to the

“cultural” type of contextual theology), does take contexts seriously in the communication of the inheritance but it is unwilling to change the content based on context.

As noted above, Bevans implies a subjectivity to theology while claiming that that does not result in relativity. This claim is further complicated by Bevans when he states:

“Pluralism in theology, as well as on every level of Christian life, must not only be tolerated; it must be positively encouraged and cultivated.”108 I do not know how it makes any sense to Bevans to state that plurality must be encouraged and cultivated and yet to deny that he is promoting theological relativity. Plurality by nature implies relativity. When it comes to the theological realm, it would make sense that subjectivity and plurality would only point to a relative character of theology. If what I experience and hence use to form my theology is different from what you experience and hence use

106 This is not meant to imply that Bevans himself is a relativist. It is meant to speak to the ambiguity of the language surrounding the different approaches to the doing and evaluating of contextual theology. 107 “This new, interpersonal notion of revelation…points to the necessity of a theology that takes seriously the actual contexts in which men and women experience God.” Ibid., 14. 108 Ibid., 15.

41 to form a theology that is contrary to my theology, both are deemed “authentic” theology, as Bevans implies. If our theologies are contradictory but both “authentic,” does that not imply relativity? Bevans’ language here is ambiguous as it is unclear whether

“authentic” means “true.” If “authentic” equals “true,” then Bevans is stating that theological relativism must be accepted.

It is clear that I take issue with how Bevans understands the doing and evaluating of theology. His language is ambiguous and that ambiguity is also evident in much of the literature on and by contextual theologies/theologians. However, despite my disagreements, I will agree with Bevans (understanding the term contextualization differently), when he states: “Contextualization…is not something on the fringes of the theological enterprise. It is at the very center of what it means to do theology in today’s world. Contextualization, in other words, is a theological imperative.”109 The only thing that I would change in this statement is that contextualization should have always been

(and in some traditions has always been) at the very center of doing theology throughout history.

Now that we have seen how Bevans approaches contextual theology it is time to turn to the models he provides in his book Models of Contextual Theology. For Bevans, each model proposes a distinct way of doing and evaluating theology.110 Each model is one that takes context seriously; although what that means is left in ambiguity. And much like Niebuhr, Bevans refuses to offer any sort of consensus on how to approach the doing and evaluating of theology, contextual or not: “There is no one completely

109 Ibid. 110 “Each model…presents a different way of theologizing that takes a particular context seriously, and so each represents a distinct theological starting point and distinct theological presuppositions.” Ibid., 31.

42 adequate way of doing theology. The various models discussed…point to various approaches that are actually being used in constructing contextual theology today, but no model is exhaustive or applicable to all situations of faith.”111

The Six Models

Bevans offers six different models for the doing and evaluating of theology: translation, anthropological, praxis, synthetic, transcendental, and countercultural. In many ways five of the six models can be compared to the five types that Niebuhr offered.

The one that Bevans adds is the praxis model; which, I will argue, may not actually deserve its own category. In what follows I will discuss each model and offer some insight on what each model provides and what each model needs to reevaluate.

The translation model is described as the translating of the gospel (or theology) into thought forms, language, etc. of each new cultural context that the gospel comes into contact with. As Bevans says of this model, “one always begins with a universal

(necessarily [supra-contextual]) message, which can be expressed in or translated into particular forms.”112 It is within this model that the theologian seeks what can be used in each particular culture to express the gospel in understandable ways to each particular culture. The content is not changed based on the context; rather, it is expressed in a new way that makes sense to the context it finds itself in.113

111 Ibid., 33. 112 Ibid., 51. 113 “…the basic Christian revelation is the kernel; the previous cultural settings in which it has been incarnated constitute the husk. The kernel has to be hulled time and again, as it were, to allow it to be translated into new cultural contexts.” Schreiter, 7.

There is a sense that the gospel can be adapted to fit into a particular cultural context. For Bevans, “what makes this particular model specifically a translation model…is its insistence on the message of the gospel as an unchanging message.”114

This is the core strength of this model; that it is unwilling to change the content of the gospel (theology) in order to make it relevant to any given culture. The gospel is, in its essence, transcendent of culture. For this model, the person’s identity as a Christian is seen, “as more important than, though not exclusive of, contextual reality or cultural identity.”115 It is in this model that we can be seen, first, as Christians, and second, as who we are in relation to the culture around us.

One of the dangers of this model is that it may accidentally change the content of the message without realizing it. As Bevans notes of this model, “we are concerned with translating the meaning of doctrines into another cultural context—and this translation might make those doctrines look and sound quite different from their original formulation.”116 It is a difficult task to offer many of the theological concepts that belong to orthodox theology in a new language, a language different from the language infused with Greek philosophical terminology. One must be very careful that in the process of translation one does not actually change the content. This will involve a careful critique of contemporary thought forms so as not to simply use contemporary thought forms but make sure that those contemporary thought forms being used are also reinterpreted according to the gospel.

114 Bevans, 37. 115 Ibid., 42. 116 Ibid., 39.

One of the issues with the ambiguity of the term contextual is that it oftentimes seems to be indicating “relative.” This can be seen in another of Bevans’ critiques of this model, when he states: “Rather than a list of doctrines to be believed, the Bible—and to some extent the Christian tradition—presents various valid ways of wrestling with faith and doing theology, and acceptance of scripture and tradition as God’s word is the acceptance of a challenge to imitate the writers of scripture and the giants of tradition in discerning God’s ways in the present.”117 The problem with this statement is that Bevans fails to address the fact that there are invalid ways of wrestling with faith and theology.

If all ways of doing theology are valid, then theology is relative. However, Bevans is correct in stating that we must imitate the writers of scripture and the giants of tradition in discerning God’s presence in the present. The question, though, is how do we imitate them? Not all ways of doing theology are imitations of the writers of scripture and the giants of tradition. This question is at the heart of the current topic; how we approach the doing and evaluating of theology should be an imitation of those who have gone before us, who belong to the orthodox tradition.

The translation model offers us a great reminder that the gospel is supra-cultural.

It reminds us that there is a core message that need not be changed. It reminds us that our identity as Christians is first and foremost as Christians, not as black, white, American,

Brazilian, etc. The next model offers the opposite view.

“If the primary concern of the translation model is the preservation of Christian identity while attempting to take culture, social change, and history seriously, the primary concern of the anthropological model is the establishment or preservation of cultural

117 Ibid.

45 identity by a person of Christian faith.”118 In other words, we are first culturally bound and need to find a way to be Christian within our cultural identity. As Bevans says,

“what is important in this model is the understanding that Christianity is about the human person and her or his fulfillment.”119 According to the anthropological model, it is in becoming Christian that we become fulfilled in our cultural identity.

Similar to Niebuhr’s Christ of Culture type, this model is concerned with expressing the goodness of humanity.

“It is within every person, and every society and social location and every culture, that God manifests the divine presence, and so theology is not just a matter of relating an external message—however [supra-cultural]—to a particular situation; rather, theology chiefly involves attending and listening to that situation so that God’s hidden presence can be manifested in the ordinary structures of the situation, often in surprising ways.”120

As is also seen in Niebuhr’s Christ of Culture type, this model presents us with a naive optimism about the goodness of humanity and human culture. There is a failure to recognize that not everything within a culture is good. Despite this naive optimism, there is something valuable that is pointed out in this model.

The idea that God is present in every culture is something that needs to be expressed by theologians seeking to spread the gospel in every new context. All truth belongs to Christ and every culture expresses some truth. Bevans points this out when he says, “the evangelizer should approach another culture with the conviction that God is already present within it, even though that culture, like all cultures, is also deeply

118 Ibid., 54. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 55.

46 flawed.”121 The only problem that arises from Bevans’ statement is that every culture is deeply flawed, something rarely mentioned in the works of those who fit within this model.

Rather than pointing out that a culture does contain some aspect of truth within it, and that truth is an expression or manifestation of God’s presence, the theologian who fits in this model sees the culture itself as the good. There is always a looking for truth within each culture but the pointing out of flaws and the need for transformation of said flaws tends to be absent. Bevans expresses this when he says, “the anthropological model would emphasize that it is within human culture that we find God’s revelation— not as a separate [supra-cultural] message, but in the very complexity of culture itself, in the warp and woof of human relationships, which are constitutive of cultural existence.”122 So for the anthropological model, God’s revelation in a particular context is only relevant for that context—God’s revelation does not transcend cultural location.

One of the issues with this uplifting of cultural context to the primary holder of

God’s context is that it seems to relativize God’s revelation. Bevans notes that, “the practitioner of the anthropological model understands that the Bible is the product of socially and culturally conditioned religious experiences arising out of the very life of

Israel and the early Christian community.”123 One must ask the question: if the Bible is culturally conditioned in its entirety, what makes it relevant at all today, in a culture completely foreign to the culture(s) out of which scripture came? I do find it necessary to point to some of the possible ways in which scripture may have been culturally

121 Ibid., 65-66. 122 Ibid., 56. 123 Ibid.

47 conditioned, but the failure of this model to indicate that not everything within scripture should be considered culturally conditioned remains a dangerous aspect of this model.

The anthropological model does provide theologians with some valuable insight into the doing and evaluating of theology. It is wrong to assume that any culture is abjectly evil; this model reminds us of the inherent goodness of humanity as creatures created in the image and likeness of God. However, this model also needs to be critiqued in its naive optimism of humanity’s goodness. For practitioners of this model to assert that culture may be challenged by Christianity but not be radically changed by

Christianity, is to have them ignore the evil that exists next to the good of every culture.124 When we become Christian we become a new creation, no longer bound to our culture in its entirety. It is in becoming Christian that we begin the process of becoming fully human, not in our particularity but in our unity as belonging to Christ.

This model would seem to indicate that it is in becoming Christian that we become fully human in our particularities and not in our unity in Christ.

The third model that Bevans articulates is the praxis model. As I mentioned above, I am unsure of whether this model should stand on its own. As we will see, this model provides insight on the impact of theology in our lives, but may not actually provide insight on the doing and evaluating of theology.

Bevans states that, “the praxis model understands revelation as the presence of

God in history—in the events of everyday life, in social and economic structures, in situations of oppression, in the experience of the poor and marginalized.”125 For the

124 Ibid., 57. 125 Ibid., 75.

48 praxis model, God’s revelation is not bound to the individual, it also constitutes the experience of groups of people. This is one of the valuable insights of this model; it reminds us that faith is not just about an individual experience, but that it is also about how the community experiences God.

The real strength of this model, though, lies in its assertion that Christianity is not just about what we believe, it is also about what we do. “When we speak of the praxis model of contextual theology, we are speaking about a model the central insight of which is that theology is done not simply by providing relevant expressions of Christian faith but also by commitment to Christian action.”126 What seems to have been forgotten over the course of time in the doing of theology is that we must also act in a way that is in accordance with what we say we believe. To say that we believe that all are created equally should mean we act in a way that affirms this belief.

The emphasis on Christian action leads this model to focus on the ways in which

Christianity can effect social change. As Angie Pears points out, “as such it is not only concerned with the expression of Christian faith within a particular context but also with the role of Christianity in bringing about social change.”127 This idea points to

Christianity as being something distinct from the broader culture in which it is located.

Christianity represents how reality should be experienced, rather than how it is experienced. As Pears continues, “a world that supports sin must be challenged on a practical basis for change and for the development of alternative structures.”128 It is within this model that we see Christianity as an alternative social structure. It is within

126 Ibid., 72. 127 Pears, 26. 128 Ibid., 27.

49 this model that, “theology finds its fulfillment not in mere ‘right thinking’ (ortho-doxy), but in ‘right action’ (ortho-praxy).”129

I question the validity of making this model something that stands on its own, outside of the other models. Every model that Bevans highlights should include this way of thinking. Perhaps the existence of this model can be attributed to the failure of

Christians to realize that Christianity should be, “understood to bring much to bear on the realities of daily life, and daily life can help to sharpen expressions of Christian faith.”130

The other problem may be that those who adhere to this model see it as a new way of doing theology themselves.131 This model should not be seen as a new way of doing theology; rather it should be seen that the way in which theology is understood should have a profound impact on who we are and what we do.

The fourth model that Bevans presents is the synthetic model. The strength of the synthetic model, as Bevans notes, “[it] is ‘both/and.’ It takes pains to keep the integrity of the traditional message while acknowledging the importance of taking all the aspects of context seriously.”132 It is within this model that the failures of the anthropological model can be rectified, to an extent. The acknowledgement that every culture is not entirely good or evil is of paramount importance. This model recognizes that every

129 Bevans, 72. 130 Ibid., 77. 131 “Practitioners of the praxis model believe that in this concept of praxis they have found a new and profound way to do theology, a way that, more than all the others, is able to deal adequately with the experiences of the past (scripture, tradition) and the experience of the present (human experience, culture, social location, and social change).” Ibid., 72. 132 Ibid., 89.

50 person and culture has something good to offer while also having something that needs to be transformed or abandoned.133

This model views God’s revelation as something that does have certain things that are transcendent of culture, but also as something that is continuing and operative within every culture.134 The issue of ambiguity, though, arises in this model. Bevans says that,

“Christians have to give up the notion that there is such a thing as ‘plain theology’ or

‘just theology.’ Theology as such does not exist. Because contexts constantly change, theology has constantly to change as well.”135 Ambiguity enters here in what is meant by change. Does the content of theology have to change or does the way the content is communicated have to change based on cultural location? One would assume that the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity would represent something that is “plain theology.”

How one communicates the doctrine of the Trinity does not indicate that the theology itself needs to change; rather, the communicative process must change. This model can present us with valuable insights to the need of changes in communicative processes, the ambiguity present within it needs to be clarified.

The fifth model is called the transcendental model by Bevans. This model is highly dependent on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the turn from objective reality to subjective knowing. As Bevans notes, “instead of beginning with the conviction that reality is ‘out there,’ existing somehow independently of human knowing, it suggests that the knowing subject is intimately involved in determining reality’s basic shape—and so one needs to begin one’s quest for knowing what ‘is’ by attending to the dynamic of

133 Ibid., 91. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid., 94.

51 one’s own consciousness and irrepressible desire to know.”136 For this model, there is no objective reality that exists apart from the knowing subject—each person is responsible for determining their own reality, their own truth.

The responsibility of the person is to be doing theology that expresses the reality which they experience. Bevans says of this model, “what is important is not so much that a particular theology is produced but that the theologian who is producing it operates as an authentic, converted subject.”137 The number one priority is staying true to oneself and one’s own experiences—it does not matter whether one’s experiences belie reality as it really is rather than reality as it is perceived.138

Bevans says of this model, “with its emphasis on theology as activity and process rather than theology as a particular content, it rightly insists that theology is not about finding out right answers that exist in some transcultural realm, but about a careful but passionate search for authenticity of expression of one’s religious and cultural identity.”139 Bevans is able to support this model because it fits with his notion that all theology is contextual. However, in eliminating the concept of an objective reality that exists outside of a person’s experiences this model eliminates any value associated with truth. It does this through placing the responsibility for truth on a person’s ability to practice the transcendental precepts. As Bevans notes,

136 Ibid., 104. 137 Ibid., 103. 138 “The only thing that is important, however, as a person from one context encounters a person from another, is that one must never relinquish one’s authenticity as a particular historical or cultural subject.” Ibid., 106. 139 Ibid., 108.

“what the transcendental model emphasizes…is that every authentic

Christian theologizes not by virtue of how much he or she knows or by the

accuracy with which he or she is able to express doctrine. Rather, to the

extent that a person of faith obeys the transcendental precepts—“Be

attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible”—in trying to

articulate and deepen his or her faith, he or she is doing genuine

theology.”140

There is a complete lack of acknowledgement in this model that not all experiences depict reality as it really is. Experiences of reality are able to be augmented. Take the example of someone who is drunk. The drunk person may be experiencing a room that is spinning, however, the sober person knows the reality is that the room is not spinning.

The person who is drunk has an augmented perception of reality because they are drunk.

The greatest weakness of this model is the fact that it relocates the concept of truth from an objective reality to the knowing subject. Reality exists outside of the self and the self’s perception’s of reality. Whether one accurately perceives reality or not should not determine the truth of reality as it is. In relocating the concept of truth from an objective reality to the knowing subject, this model has made the individual the barometer of truth. How one perceives reality is true for the person, and being true to oneself is what is placed in highest priority. If each person is responsible for determining truth and truth does not exist outside of the knowing subject, then truth is relative. This model cannot escape the accusation of promoting theological relativity.

140 Ibid., 106.

The final model runs contrary to the previous model, similar to how Niebuhr’s

Christ against Culture and Christ of Culture types ran contrary to each other. The final model that Bevans proposes is the countercultural model. “Within this model the gospel, not human experience, culture or context, is the driving force.”141 This model reminds us that, “no particular culture should be idealized or be seen to be without its own problems, and possible corruption.”142 Like Niebuhr’s Christ against Culture type, this model asserts Christianity as something distinct from the world—its own polis.

According to this model, Christianity as something other, should offend the culture around it. Christianity is something so “other” than the world that the world will hate it. Bevans notes of this type, “It offends…because there is always something in a communication of the gospel that calls a particular human experience, a particular culture, a particular social location and historical situation to judgment.”143 This idea should be the peak of the praxis model. The praxis model calls for social change and it is within this model that the critique of the culture leads to social change. The social change sought after in the praxis model is that which calls the culture to become more in line with the Kingdom of God—which the church should be representing.

Unlike the Christ against Culture type, this model proposes suspicion of culture, rather than outright rejection of culture. In a way, this model also lines up nicely with

Niebuhr’s Christ the Transformer of Culture type. This can be seen when Bevans says,

“it warns that context always needs to be treated with a good deal of suspicion. If the gospel is to truly take root within a people’s context, it needs to challenge and purify that

141 Pears, 30. 142 Ibid., 31. 143 Bevans, 117.

54 context.”144 The gospel is calling for a transformation of humanity and human culture, not an abolishment of culture. This model recognizes the inherent goodness of humanity, but also how it has become flawed post-fall.

The great strength of this model is that it locates the church and Christianity with something that has its own authority, outside of the world (yet not other-worldly in a spiritual sense).145 It recognizes that reality as we experience it is not reality as it should be. The Kingdom of God is reality as it should be and it focuses on the in-breaking of the

Kingdom of God, transforming the world.

Bevans offers six different models of how contextual theology is done. As with

Niebuhr’s typology, there are many aspects of each model that should be seen as positive along with many aspects that need to be challenged. Bevans goes to great pains to make sure that he is fair in his evaluation of each model, making sure that he does not explicitly endorse any one model. He also states, early on in the book, that he is not a proponent of theological relativity. However, his failure to acknowledge that there is a “right” approach to the doing and evaluating of theology belies that assertion. He also states:

“The question of the best model of contextual theology is an appropriate one, but within today’s world of radical plurality and ambiguity the best answer to the question can only be: ‘It depends on the context.’”146 While Bevans may offer a critique of each model and never explicitly states what model he finds most compelling, it is clear by his embrace of

144 Ibid. 145 “…it recognizes that the gospel represents an all-encompassing, radically alternate worldview that differs profoundly from human experiences of the world and culture that humans create.” Ibid., 118. 146 Ibid., 140.

55 plurality (relativity) that he would likely fit in best with the anthropological or transcendental models.147

Now that I have discussed two typologies/models for understanding the various approaches to the enduring problem of how to relate theology and culture, I will discuss my own paradigm. I have been careful to try to note that none of the types/models are perfect in their approach, but my bias towards certain types/models is certainly clear.

The paradigm that I outline below is an attempt to synthesize the positives of the various models we have surveyed, while locating the negatives in a category as well.

Contextualized and Cultural Theology

Both Niebuhr and Bevans offer insights on how various theologians approach the enduring problem of how to understand the relationship between Christianity and culture.

It has become popular in recent decades to offer harsh critiques about how modernity influenced theology. Both of the authors above offer, implicitly, a critique of the modern approach to theology. Both of the authors above also seem to be approaching the enduring problem from a post-modern philosophical mindset. While Niebuhr was writing and teaching in the beginning of post-modern development, Bevans is located in a situation that has come to grips with post-modernity in a more substantial way. While the shift from modernity to post-modernity is hardly complete and there is plenty of ambiguity about what exactly post-modernity is/means, “it does not seem to be very

147 Bevans fails to note the influence that post-modern philosophy has had on the theological method employed by both of these models.

56 common to see and understand that this shift is changing the patterns, organizations and beliefs of Christianity in a very radical way.”148

The post-modern theological critique of modernity and the way it impacted

Christianity is important. As Aylward Shorter notes, “Christians failed to recognize cultural changes and developments and the ways in which they affected the Church’s interpretation of the Christian message through history.”149 One of the most apt criticisms of modern theology (and modern missiology) was its importation of the culture it came from along with the gospel. The “Christian” culture of late-medieval and modern

Europe was so closely associated with Christianity itself, the culture was forced on the peoples of the New World and other non-European cultures. As Shorter (and many others have noted), “a universally true religion cannot be identified exclusively with any culture or groups of culture.”150 Christianity does not belong to any culture of the world.

At the same time, Christianity is not a culture in itself.

I may have intimated earlier, by saying Christianity is something distinct from the world, that Christianity represents its own culture. However, that is not the case.

Christianity is something distinct from the world in that it is the bearer of the Kingdom of

God within the world. It is its own polis; it has its own center of authority outside of culture; it is transcultural. What this means is that, “if it is correctly carried out,”

Christianity as the representative of the Kingdom of God, “should help people, not to despise their own culture, but to reappraise it in the light of Gospel values.”151 When one

148 Vähäkangas, 279. 149 Shorter, 20. 150 Ibid., 27. 151 Ibid.

57 becomes a Christian, it is not that they no longer have an identity within their culture, it is that that identity is transformed; the person is first and foremost a Christian who happens to be black, white, Hispanic, Asian.152 As Jesus states, we are born again; in becoming

Christian we experience a second birth; we are no longer citizens of a culture but are citizens of the Kingdom, located in a specific culture. As Kathryn Tanner says, “while a second birth means in part the renunciation of prior practices, one’s prior life is not simply cast aside but given back to one in a radically different form.”153

Many of the theologies that fall in the “cultural” type of contextual theology tend to overlook the ways that post-modern philosophy has changed the way theology is approached, much in the same way theologians of the modern era failed to notice how modern philosophy changed the way in which they approached theology. The way that post-modern philosophy is changing how theology is approached is the acceptance of relativity.154 It has become taboo to speak of a theology that is relevant to every culture.

As Bevans noted, there is no longer a theology, rather there are only black theologies, feminist theologies, liberation theologies. What has become the norm is that cultural identity supersedes one’s identity as a Christian. It is this type of contextual theology that

I label “cultural” theology.

152 “In becoming Christian, people are not invited to abandon their cultural identity. Rather, that identity is challenged and enhanced.” Ibid., 28. 153 Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 113. 154 “What is essential then for the church is a model of plurality which acknowledges that various approaches to culture are appropriate depending on the setting, the strength of the church, the strength of the opposition, and the particular issue.” Bruce L. Guenther, “The ‘Enduring Problem’ of Christ and Culture,” Direction 34: 2 (2005): 221.

What I am proposing is that this approach to theology is problematic. Rather than approaching theology from our cultural location, we should be approaching culture from our theological location—the Kingdom of God.155 In what follows I will begin to detail the approach that I believe should be used when it comes to the enduring problem of the relationship between our faith and culture. The term that I have begun using is

“contextualized” theology. It must be noted, no theologian or group of theologians fit into either category completely. There is a reason the relationship between Christianity and culture is an enduring problem—no theology is completely free from the influence of culture, including my own.

Contextualized Theology

One of the strengths of contextual theology is that it notices that, “the Gospel is relevant to every human culture. This relevance is both a need on the part of the culture and a recognition of truth in the culture on the part of the Gospel.”156 It is within the

“contextualized” type of contextual theology that it is argued no culture is completely evil—but it also recognizes that Christianity transcends cultural location. The gospel is relevant to every culture precisely because it transcends every culture. In our globalized world, the gospel is reaching a multiplicity of cultures around the world.157 As Bruce L.

Guenther says, “living in a pluralistic, multicultural, post-modern culture that celebrates

155 It must be noted that this relocation is a gradual process, that is near impossible to come to completion this side of the eschaton. 156 Shorter, 39. 157 “The Christian faith is not simply being inserted into a single culture, as happened at the beginning of the history of Christian Europe, it is now being inserted simultaneously into a multiplicity of cultures all over the world.” Ibid., 47.

59 diversity has now made Christian leaders more acutely aware than ever of the need for critical discernment.”158 What I am attempting here is that critical discernment about how Christianity relates to the world around it.

One of the issues with the “cultural” type of contextual theology is its embrace of pluralism, as a post-modern ideal. Theology, in many circles, has devolved into a “what is true for me is true for me and what is true for you is true for you” mentality—whether or not those two truth claims contradict each other. This embrace of pluralism, in a way, is a conformity to the world; it is a failure to adequately critique the post-modern cultural ideal of pluralism. It seems to be that many have forgotten that, “Jesus has called us to holiness and to not be conformed to this world, but he wants us to be in the world.”159

What this means is that we need to be able to recognize the things within our cultural systems that contradict what the gospel calls us to, rather than to change the content of the gospel to make it more amenable to the world around us. As Thomas K. Johnson says, “we should live in real contact with the world, without having our identity, thoughts, priorities, feelings, and values controlled by the world.”160

As noted above, Christianity represents something other than the world around us.

It is other-worldly, not in the sense of a “spiritual” world, but in that it calls us out of the world to be put back in the world as something other than the world. “Our entire lives, lived out in the world, should be a statement that there is a real alternative to the world’s impoverished values.”161 This is the key presupposition of the “contextualized” type of

158 Guenther, 223. 159 Thomas K. Johnson, “Christ and Culture,” Evangelical Review of Theology 35: 1 (Ja 2011): 5. 160 Ibid., 6. 161 Ibid., 8.

60 contextual theology’s approach: that Christianity represents an alternative to the ways of the world and that Christians are called to be representatives of that alternative. Kevin

Vanhoozer’s distinction between “magisterial” and “ministerial” offers us a glimpse into how the “contextualized” type of contextual theology works.

As Vanhoozer notes, “the final authority in the church is Jesus Christ, the one who is truth and right incarnate. Ecclesial authority is thus a matter of being rightly related to the one who is the truth.”162 What this means is that Jesus Christ, as truth and rightness incarnated, should serve as the final authority for Christians, who make up the church. With the argument that people find their humanity within their own culture, the authority that belongs to Christ shifts from him to humanity. It is in that approach that theologians seem to have forgotten that, “Christ presides over the church by means of his word and his word-ministering Spirit.”163 It would appear as though “cultural” theologians forget that the church is Christ’s body, as it exists in the world as a representation, sign, symbol of the Kingdom. The church has been relegated to something seen as being human-made, a worldly institution that is itself corrupt and in need of change. I will not pretend that the church is not in need of change in many respects or that it is free from corruption; however, it is the people of the church who are in need of change and who are not free from corruption, but as the body of Christ the church is holy.

With the view of the church as nothing more than a human-made institution has come the questioning of the church’s authority. The uplifting of the person as a culturally

162 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguisitic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 207. 163 Ibid., 208.

61 located person first, and Christian second relegates the church’s authority as something secondary. One only has to obey the church as long as the church is acting in accordance with how one feels it should be acting. No longer do people have to obey the church, the church has to obey the people. But this sentiment forgets that the church is Christ’s body and that the Spirit is the one guiding the church. As Vanhoozer says, “the authority of the church ‘is nothing other than its acknowledgement of the norm under which it stands.’”164 The norm has shifted and is in need of shifting back.

One of the trends in the contemporary church has been to question tradition.

Tradition has become a word that carries negative connotations. With this in mind, it is clear to see why the idea that the church no longer has any authority has taken root.

Tradition is no longer to be followed because it is not “relevant” to our contemporary situation. But, as Vanhoozer notes, “Tradition, inasmuch as it is a work of the Spirit preserving and prolonging the word, is indeed authoritative. Yet its authority is derivative—ministerial, not magisterial.”165 Tradition does not hold the key authority in determining how we act, but it does maintain an authority in that it serves us by allowing us to interpret the world around us in light of the gospel.166

With the first usage of the terms ministerial and magisterial in the preceding paragraph, this is an appropriate place to expand on what those terms mean. The terms imply a primary and secondary authority. What magisterial implies is the primary

164 Ibid., 207-208. 165 Ibid., 208. 166 It should be noted that I agree with Vanhoozer when he says, “‘Whatever the church does, is right’ is a faulty ecclesiological equation.” Ibid. While the church does maintain authority, as it is the embodiment or incarnation of Christ in the world today, it is still filled with fallen humans. The church, as it acts in contrary ways to the gospel, is not free from questioning.

62 authority; what ministerial implies is a secondary authority. Whatever is ministerial is meant as something that serves the magisterial. So in the question of the relationship between Christianity and culture, Christianity or Christian identity is the magisterial authority and culture serves Christianity or Christian identity; culture is something that can be used by Christianity to express Christianity in culturally relevant ways.

Christianity does not serve the culture in that its content does not need to be changed to fit into culture. Rather, culture is transformed by Christianity as Christianity uses cultural language, symbols, etc. in its communication of the unchanging gospel. A common trend found within the “cultural” type of contextual theology is to reverse these roles;

Christianity is transformed by the culture rather than the culture being transformed by

Christianity.

The way that this all affects theology is that theology needs to be seen as something that is transcultural and already relevant to every culture. The communicative process may be different in each culture but the content of theology should not be different. The communicative process may make certain doctrines look and sound different than they have before, but this does not mean the content has changed or needs to change. There is a lack of creative discernment in the claim that theology is different or should be different in each new culture. Rather than being creative in the process of communicating theology to a new culture, theologians are taking the easy way out and simply changing the theological content in order to be relevant to the new culture. The doctrines of the Trinity, the dual-natures of Christ, the liberative function of salvation

(both in a material and spiritual sense) are all already relevant to every culture. The main function of the theologian should be coming up with creative, culturally relevant ways to

63 express these truths, rather than changing the content of the doctrines to make them relevant to the new culture.

As mentioned throughout this chapter, “cultural” theologians view reality as it is as reality as it should be. However, reality as we experience it is not reality as it should be. Orthodox theology and practice is based on right participation in the spreading of the gospel. For the “contextualized” type of contextual theology, orthodoxy and orthopraxy cannot be separated.167 “Contextualized” theology views orthodox doctrine as essential to being able to carry out orthopraxy. As Vanhoozer notes, “doctrine gives direction for right participation in the theodrama, but ultimately doctrine is not a matter of what works but of what befits the way things—God, the world, oneself—are.”168 Orthodox doctrine expresses reality as it should be; it gives us the content of which we are meant to live into.

Vanhoozer gets to the heart of the issue when he says, “theologians have employed numerous conceptual schemes to speak of God (e.g., Platonism, existentialism): the nagging worry is that such schemes simply foist our categories and interests onto the subject matter, thus revealing more about the cultural-historical conditioning of humanity than about divinity.”169 This statement points to the distinction between how magisterial and ministerial function in the doing and evaluating of theology. The worry is that culture has served as the magisterial role in the construction

167 This is often the case in the “cultural” type of contextual theology as well. 168 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), xiv. 169 Ibid., 10.

64 of doctrine. My assertion is that this is what much of the “cultural” type of contextual theology has done.

One of the other problems with “cultural” theologies/theologians is that they have cut off any lines of communication with those who are critical of their methodology.

Vanhoozer says, “theological pride overestimates the adequacy of human language and thought; theological sloth underestimates the importance of responding to the provocations of God’s self-revelation.”170 Both sides of this statement appear in the typologies of Niebuhr and Bevans—specifically the types that tend to make up the ends of the spectrum. On one hand you have those who so fully embrace human goodness, and subsequently cultural goodness, that they fail to recognize the inadequacy of human language. On the other hand, you have those who so fully reject any semblance of goodness within humanity and culture, that they fail to recognize that the world

(including humanity) was created good and that goodness was not completely destroyed by the fall. Both sides of this debate are doing dishonest theology because they are so entrenched in their own theological pride that they fail to have real conversation. They assert that one must identify with their own position in order to even begin a conversation.

One of the strengths of contextual theology is its realization that there are many ways to speak about God. As Vanhoozer notes, “the divine playwright employs a plurality of human voices to communicate what he was doing in Christ to reconcile the world to himself.”171 The problem arises when that plurality of human voices is

170 Ibid., xvi. 171 Ibid., 26.

65 communicating contrary doctrines about what God was doing in Christ to reconcile the world to himself. Those contradictory doctrines tend to come about because theologians have embraced the idea that all experiences of God are valid experiences of God, with little discernment about whether the experiences were of God. There is a lack of discernment on the part of Christians today as to whether an experience of God was actually an experience of God; it is as if the idea that we can be deceived into believing something is from God when in reality it is not, has disappeared. In order “to speak well of God one must draw not from the repertoire of our best human experiences, but from the recital of the economy of salvation.”172 If our experiences contradict the gospel, or the economy of salvation, we must question whether those experiences really are from

God. The “contextualized” type of contextual theology is an attempt to provide that discernment in order to communicate the gospel in culturally relevant ways, remaining faithful to the economy of salvation.

Post-modern philosophy is having a profound effect on the way in which we approach the doing and evaluating of theology. It has led to an over-emphasis on what makes us different by uplifting the importance of maintaining our own cultural identity no matter the cost. However, as Vanhoozer states: “For the most basic distinction between theologians derives not from differences in gender, class, race, denominational affiliation, or even historical epoch. The real dividing line is between those who view theology only as talk about God-talk and those who believe in the possibility of true talk about God.”173 Many theologians have fallen prey to the tendency within post-modern

172 Ibid., 162. 173 Ibid., 182.

66 philosophy to deny the existence of absolute truth. As a result, theology can no longer be seen as true talk about God; theology can only be seen as talk about God-talk. At the same time, contextual theology has reminded us of the error of cultural domination as it relates to theology. Theology, and Christianity as a whole, is not bound to a single culture, it is transcultural. “No one metaphor, or literary genre, is sufficient to govern our theological thinking about God.”174 What the “contextualized” type of contextual theology is proposing is that there is a universal theological content that can be expressed in a multitude of ways, but the content itself need not change in order to make it relevant to any given culture. Vanhoozer states the point clearly when he says, “theology’s task is to offer a conceptual elaboration of the content of God’s self-revelation, and it is important that the concepts we use must illuminate the theological matter rather than force it into pre-packaged schemes based on descriptions of human experience.”175 The

“contextualized” type of contextual theology is attempting to call theologians to be focused on the discernment of God in human experiences; it is attempting to locate

Christianity and Christians in something that is both other-worldly and this-worldly. The

“contextualized” type of contextual theology asserts that the Kingdom of God, which

Christians and the church belong to first and foremost, is the magisterial authority when it comes to the doing and evaluating of theology.

174 Ibid., 194. 175 Ibid., 408.

Chapter 2:

Paul Tillich: A Case Study

In the first chapter I stated my claim that there are two general categories which contextual theology falls into: “contextualized” and “cultural.” In chapters two and three

I will be using two theologians as case-studies. Neither theologian falls into a single category—their work fluctuates between both categories. The purpose of providing these case-studies is not to pigeon-hole either theologian, but to illuminate the ways in which theology can be critiqued based on cultural influences. The first theologian is Paul

Tillich, and it is his theology that this chapter is focused on. I will give a brief glance at various theological categories that Tillich covers.

Throughout the chapter it will be important to keep in mind how Tillich understands the concept of religion, and how he views the relationship between religion and culture. For Tillich, “religion, in the largest and most basic sense of the word, is ultimate concern.”176 In other words, a religion can spring up from anything that one holds to be of ultimate concern. Tillich spoke of his time: “We are in the midst of a world revolution affecting every section of human existence, forcing upon us a new interpretation of life and the world.”177 That world revolution is continuing today in the transition from the modern to post-modern world.

176 Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 7-8. 177 Paul Tillich, Morality and Beyond (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 82.

One of my concerns with the shift from modernity to post-modernity is the rise of subjectivity over any understanding of an objective reality. This parallels a concern of

Tillich’s, as James C. Livingston observes: “Perhaps the greatest danger facing human beings as spiritual creatures is this tendency to give covert, ultimate allegiance to what deserves only preliminary commitment—to worship what is finite and ephemeral.”178

Tillich centers this concern in his “theology of culture.” Tillich says, “in the atmosphere of mere subjectivity of feeling without a definite object of emotion, without an ultimate content, religion dies.”179 What Tillich is observing is the tendency for a person to give their ultimate allegiance to something that is subjective, to a feeling that one has, over any sort of objective reality that exists outside of how one feels. The reason that Tillich finds this problematic is based on how he sees the relationship between religion (ultimate concern) and culture.

For Tillich, “religion as ultimate concern is the meaning giving substance of culture, and culture is the totality of forms in which the basic concern of religion expresses itself…religion is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion.”180

Given his understanding of culture being inherently religious—whether it realizes it or not—allowing religion to be determined through subjective feelings negates any sort of cultural impact that religion really has.181 Religion has a direct influence on cultural acts; however, “religion, put safely into the corner of subjective feelings, has lost its danger for

178 James C. Livingston, Francis Schussler Fiorenza, with Sarah Coakley and James H. Evans Jr., Modern Christian Thought: The Twentieth Century (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 142. 179 Theology of Culture, 7. 180 Ibid., 42. 181 “Culture as culture is therefore substantially, but not intentionally, religious.” Paul Tillich, What is Religion? (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), 59.

69 man’s cultural activities.”182 In his critique of religion’s dependence on subjective feelings, Tillich is critiquing Nihilism. Not only does religion die when it is placed in the realm of subjective feelings, but culture itself spins into nihilism, in practice, because the practices of culture (which are the forms of religion) become subjective.

Tillich is also careful to note that religion can not take precedence over culture either. He says, “the ranking of religion above culture makes religion into merely one of a series of meanings, and overlooks the fact that religion points to the ground and abyss of all meaning.”183 Religion, as the substance of culture, cannot be placed above culture because it is what gives culture its meaning. The two exist on the same plane, giving purpose to each other. “From the point of view of its form every religious act is therefore a cultural act; it is directed toward the totality of meaning.”184 In other words, religion is what gives meaning to cultural acts, and it is in cultural acts that one can see where one’s ultimate concern actually lies. When it comes to the danger that subjective feelings have on cultural acts, when subjective feelings are emphasized above any objective reality a cultural act becomes subjective; thus resulting in a lack of any real meaning in relation to an ultimate concern. If religion becomes subjective cultural acts become subjective, ignoring the objective reality that should be the ultimate concern. As we will see below, for Tillich the only objective reality that should be considered ultimate is the symbol of

God.

So what does this have to do with Tillich’s theology? It is evident that Tillich places religion and culture in a dependent relationship. This would indicate that theology

182 Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957), 39. 183 What is Religion?, 61. 184 Ibid., 60.

70 is also dependent on culture. Tillich notes that, “philosophy of religion belongs to the cultural or normative sciences. It sets forth in a creative and productive synthesis what is valid as religion.”185 While the philosophy of religion is what becomes the arbiter of what qualifies as a valid religion, theology is what provides “the normative and systematic presentation of the concrete realization of the concept of ‘religion.’”186 If the essence of religion is one’s ultimate concern, and this is made visible through culture, theology becomes a product of the culture that a religion produces.

The only real problem that I want to address in Tillich’s “theology of culture” is this relationship between theology and culture. For Tillich, theology is dependent on its cultural location. As I have argued in the first chapter, this is a wrong way to approach the doing and evaluating of theology. What Tillich does is place culture in the magisterial role and makes theology the servant of culture. Moving forward, I will evaluate certain aspects of Tillich’s theology noting where this understanding of the relationship between theology and culture has had an impact on his theology, both positive and negative.

Tillich and the Doctrine of God

Tillich’s theology surrounding the doctrine of God is too apophatic. Tillich states that all language about God is symbolic, rather than being something actual. He has this concern because of his understanding that God is not just another object which should be believed in. As Tillich says, “the Unconditional as such…can never be an object but only

185 Ibid., 31. 186 Ibid., 33.

71 the symbol in which the Unconditional is intuited and intended.”187 For Tillich, the

Unconditional (God) is the only real ultimate concern that humanity should have. All other gods that are given ultimate concern are finite and ephemeral. Tillich understands the Unconditional as the ground of being rather than as a being in himself. This can be seen when Tillich says, “the word ‘God’ is filled with the concrete symbols in which mankind has expressed its ultimate concern—its being grasped by something unconditional. And this ‘something’ is not just a thing, but the power of being in which every being participates.”188

Tillich is so concerned with God becoming just another object to be idolized that he turns God into a non-personal force. John F. Haught infers this from Tillich’s thought when he says, “God is not literally a person but instead the depth and ground of all being.”189 While it is important to keep God from being just some other being, to completely take away any understanding of God as a person negates any understanding of God being anything more than a non-personal force. One does not need to completely take away any understanding of God as subject, or person, in order to protect God from becoming just another object. Tillich actually seems to want to maintain some semblance of God as subject while not becoming a mere object when he says,

“God is no object for us as subjects. He is always that which precedes this division. But, on the other hand, we speak about him and we act upon him, and we cannot avoid it, because everything which becomes real to us enters the subject-object correlation. Out of this paradoxical situation the half-blasphemous and mythological concept of the ‘existence of God’ has

187 Ibid., 76. 188 Theology of Culture, 24-25. 189 Russell Re Manning, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 230.

arisen. And so have the abortive attempts to prove the existence of this ‘object.’”190

The idea that God is a subject, yet above (and before) the subject-object correlation is a paradox. In Tillich’s attempt to keep God from becoming another object he fails to accept the paradox that he notes: that God can be both a subject yet not an object. What

Tillich is indicating is that all subjects are seen as objects by other subjects; we act on other subjects as objects. Tillich is placing God outside of the subject-object correlation, yet failing to locate God as a subject who is not seen as object. It is here that Tillich is operating in the modern mindset that it is either one or the other, without being willing to accept that a paradox does indeed exist in this instance.

Tillich’s doctrine of God succeeds in not making God an object that must be proved. However, at the same time Tillich fails to place God within the subject-object correlation as a subject but not object. Rather, Tillich removes God from that paradox completely in order to hold onto the idea that God is not a mere object that can be acted upon. This will have a profound impact on his Christology, as I will explain later.

Before moving on to the next theological topic, it is important to briefly discuss the way that Tillich understands symbols in relation to theology. As noted in his doctrine of God, anything said about God is simply a symbol in that the symbol is only a human projection onto the Universal instead of a representation of the actual; this is apophatic theology without a balance of kataphatic theology. Tillich’s understanding of theology being dependent on culture can be seen in how he views religious symbols. Tillich says,

“their [religious symbols] truth is their adequacy to the religious situation in which they

190 Theology of Culture, 25.

73 are created, and their inadequacy to another situation is their untruth.”191 One has to wonder if Tillich is slipping into a type of pluralism. He goes on to say: “Religion is ambiguous and every religious symbol may become idolatrous, may be demoniacal, may elevate itself to ultimate validity although nothing is ultimate but the ultimate itself; no religious doctrine and no religious ritual may be.”192

For Tillich, religious symbols are relative to the culture in which they are found.

He is concerned with making sure that Jesus as the Christ is held to be the truth, which is why he is hesitant to affirm any religious symbol as something that actually represents the actual. This can further be seen when he says,

“The Church very early forgot the word of our Gospel that He is the truth; and claimed that her doctrines about Him are the truth. But these doctrines, however necessary and good they were, proved to be not the truth that liberates. Soon they became tools of suppression, of servitude under authorities; they became means to prevent the honest search for truth—weapons to split the souls of people between loyalty to the Church and sincerity to truth.”193

I understand Tillich’s concern here. It is true that Jesus Christ is the truth. However,

Tillich fails to understand the importance of right speech about Jesus Christ. The symbols that the church has used in speaking about Jesus Christ represent the truth of

Jesus’ existence. Take the dual-nature of Jesus as an example: the orthodox position of the church uses the symbol to state that Jesus was both divine and human; in another culture they may change the symbol to state that Jesus was only human or only divine; both symbols cannot reflect the truth of Jesus’ existence because they are contradictory.

If two cultures use contradictory symbols to speak about the truth of Jesus’ existence,

191 Ibid., 66. 192 Ibid., 66-67. 193 Paul Tillich, The New Being (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1955), 70-71.

74 meaning both symbols cannot be correct, symbolism needs to be seen as something that can transcend cultural location and as something that is, or has been, actualized.

Theological relativism is something that Tillich could be charged with. His desire to protect God from becoming just another object to be proved is admirable; however, in his attempt to do so he descends into relativity. Tillich does this, first, by making symbols a projection rather than a representation of the actual; second, by locating the validity of symbols inside culture. In doing these two things Tillich allows for any symbol to be considered valid whether it is an accurate representation of the actual or not.

Tillich, Morality, and Anthropology

One of the areas where Tillich can be seen as doing “contextualized” theology is in his anthropology. Tillich’s anthropology is largely based on a certain understanding of morality. According to Tillich, “every moral act is an act in which an individual self establishes itself as a person.”194 It is through performing moral acts that one becomes a person. This would indicate that who we are is something less than a person and that we must strive to become persons. This is similar to the idea that human nature as we experience it now is not how it is meant to be.195 Tillich understands humanity as something that is fallen, persons are not who they are essentially unless they are performing moral acts.

194 Morality and Beyond, 20. 195 While there may be similarities here, there is also a distinct difference. Tillich affirms that we are not our “essential” self, but he also proposes that we were created in existential estrangement from our “essential” self.

Tillich notes that, “the moral imperative is the demand to become actually what one is essentially and therefore potentially.”196 Once again, Tillich seems to be saying that who we are is not who we are meant to be. A person has an essential nature that has not been realized yet; a person simply has the potential to become what they essentially are. In order for a person to reach their potential and become their essential self, they must act morally. As Tillich says, “his true being shall become his actual being—this is the moral imperative.”197 The moral imperative is what operates within each person in order to draw them toward their essential self.

This means that morality is not an end in itself for Tillich. Rather, the moral imperative is something that is innate to each person, calling them to their essential self.

This can be seen when Tillich says, “a moral act is not an act in obedience to an external law, human or divine. It is the inner law of our true being, of our essential or created nature, which demands that we actualize what follows from it.”198 Tillich is correct in stating that morality is not an end in itself. When morality is turned into an end in itself, one sees the impact that the fall (existential estrangement) has had on the moral imperative that is operative in each person. For Tillich, the moral imperative “is not a strange law that demands our obedience, but the ‘silent voice’ of our nature as man, and as man with an individual character.”199 It seems that Tillich is equating the moral imperative with a person’s conscience. However, Tillich does some nuancing of the

196 Ibid. 197 Ibid. 198 Ibid. 199 Ibid., 24.

76 subject that points us to an idea that the moral imperative is not really inner to a person but something that exists outside of the person.

Tillich says, “the unconditional moral imperative confronts us as the sacred moral law.”200 Tillich is suggesting that the unconditional moral imperative is something that confronts us as something that is outside of the self. In other words, the moral imperative only appears to be something external to the self. In reality, the moral imperative is something found within the self, as a person strives to be who they are essentially without existential estrangement. It is the experience of existential estrangement that allows the moral imperative to be experienced as external. Tillich is displaying the paradoxical nature of the moral imperative as something that appears to be external through existential estrangement but is actually internal to the essential self. Tillich shows us that the unconditional moral imperative is, in fact, found within the person when he says, “the reason for the unconditional character of the moral imperative is that it puts our essential being as a demand against us. The moral imperative is not a strange law, imposed on us, but it is the law of our own being. In the moral imperative we ourselves, in our essential being, are put against ourselves, in our actual being.”201 This is, once again, hinting at the idea that who we are as persons now is not who we were meant to be as persons. For

Tillich, it would seem that who we were meant to be is still inside of us, struggling to work its way to being actualized in the present. It is because we are estranged from our essential self that we experience the moral imperative as something imposed on us.202

200 Ibid., 47. 201 Theology of Culture, 136. 202 “…the moral law is experienced as law only because man is estranged from the structural law of his essential being, to become a centered person.” Morality and Beyond, 48.

This is one of the instances where Tillich is doing contextualized theology.

Tillich speaks of humanity’s current state of being as existential estrangement from our essential nature. Tillich is using terminology from existential philosophy to contextualize the Christian understanding of anthropology. Tillich states that, “the law is not strange to man. It is natural law. It represents his true nature from which he is estranged.”203

Something happened that moved humanity away from its true nature—we are estranged from who we were meant to be. For this reason, Tillich can say of the Law of the Old

Testament, “[it] was a warning, a summoning back to original innocence.”204 The Law of scripture exists to point us, guide us to who we are meant to be, and shows us that we are not who we are meant to be.

This is how Oswald Bayer can say that, “Tillich understands sin as the

‘estrangement’ of man from his true being.”205 For Tillich, sin is humanity’s universal estrangement from its essential being. This is why for Tillich no individual act in itself can be considered sin. Rather, sin is the condition which humanity finds itself in its estrangement from its essential nature. Tillich’s understanding of God as the ground of all being comes into play here. For humanity to recover its essential nature it must recover its relationship with God. As Rachel Sophia Baard notes of Tillich’s hamartiology,

“The focus on estrangement from the ground of being is a move away from a moralistic doctrine of sin. In this existential concept, Tillich formulated in a new way the classical Christian insistence that wrongful acts are not the real problem, but rather the manifestations of a more

203 Paul Tillich, Love, Power, Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 76-77. 204 Morality and Beyond, 48. 205 Manning, 21.

fundamental problem, a brokenness, a chasm between humanity and the divine, between the finite and the infinite.”206

Tillich’s description of existential estrangement and the essential self would indicate that who we are is estranged from who we are meant to be; it is in locating the moral imperative without our person that we are able to participate in the recovery of our essential self. It is a synergistic approach to soteriology, suggesting that soteriology is neither completely dependent on humanity or on God; rather, we participate in the recovery of our essential self through the relationship that is restored between humanity and God in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Despite the value of Tillich’s “contextualized” theology of sin (using existentialist philosophy in the process of contextualization), he falls back into the realm of the

“cultural” type of contextual theology. Tillich states: “The contents, however, of the moral self-affirmation are conditioned, relative, dependent on the social and psychological constellation. While morality as the pure form of essential self-affirmation is absolute, the concrete systems of moral imperatives, the ‘moralisms’ are relative.”207 It is here that Tillich’s understanding between religion/theology and culture— religion/theology being dependent on culture—influences his theology in a negative way.

In understanding theology’s dependence on culture, the moral imperative then becomes relative to the culture that a person is living in. The question would be whether the content of the moral imperative remains the same from culture to culture and is just carried out in different actions. If the content of the moral imperative is different

206 Ibid., 281. 207 Theology of Culture, 137.

79 between cultures then the moral imperative would become relative. Tillich never directly answers this question and leaves himself open to the critique of moral relativity as it relates to the moral imperative.

Tillich does “contextualized” theology to an extent in his hamartiology.

However, he also slips into “cultural” theology. The reason he slips into the “cultural” type of contextual theology is because of how he views the Fall. In the next section I will discuss Tillich’s understanding of the Fall. This is one example of how a theologian can do both “contextualized” and “cultural” theology at the same time and why all theologians need to be discerning and open to correction in their doing and evaluating of theology.

Tillich and the Fall

Paul Tillich does not believe that the fall of humanity is a historical event.

Rather, he says, “theology must clearly and unambiguously represent ‘the Fall’ as a symbol for the human situation universally, not as the story of an event that happened

‘once upon a time.’”208 The problem here is not necessarily that Tillich does not care about the historicity of the Fall; rather, the problem is the result of Tillich’s insistence on it as a symbol. Tillich states that, “Creation and the Fall coincide in so far as there is no point in time and space in which created goodness was actualized and had existence.”209

Tillich’s conception of symbol leaves the door open for the idea that God is culpable for

208 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Volume II: Existence and The Christ (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), 29. 209 Ibid., 44.

80 the existence of sin. It would appear, based on the above quote, that Tillich would disagree with the Genesis account that creation was seen as “good” in God’s eyes.

As Livingston notes, “Tillich rejects [the Fall] as absurd for, in his view, the structures of nature, including human nature, were always what they are now.”210 This would indicate that humanity was created sinful—therefore humanity was not created good. Human nature as it is now—as sinful—is how human nature was created. Tillich is placing his existential philosophy in the magisterial role in his theology surrounding the Fall—it is a reversal of how well he contextualized in his anthropology (and poses problems for his anthropology). Tillich says, “‘Adam before the Fall’ and ‘nature before the curse’ are states of potentiality. They are not actual states. The actual state is that existence in which man finds himself along with the whole universe, and there is no time in which this was otherwise.”211 While nature before the curse was a state of potentiality, it was an actual state of potentiality. There may not have been a state of sinfulness or a state of sinlessness, the actual state was a state of potentiality to either of the other states.

To say otherwise is to say that God created humanity already sinful.

This can be seen when Tillich says, “creation is good in its essential character. If actualized, it falls into universal estrangement through freedom and destiny.”212 What

Tillich is saying is that the concept of creation was good before God actualized creation; in the process of actualizing creation God made humanity sinful. As Tillich says, “there was no ‘utopia’ in the past, just as there will be no ‘utopia’ in the future. Actualized

210 Livingston, 145. 211 Systematic Theology Volume II, 40-41. 212 Ibid., 44.

81 creation and estranged existence are identical.”213 David H. Kelsey understands Tillich as saying, “fallenness is our destiny.”214 As soon as humanity was actualized in creation it became estranged; if sin is estrangement, then humanity was created sinful.

One has to wonder what moved Tillich in this direction theologically. There seems to be a reaction against a certain type of historicism in Tillich’s work. It is the historicism that he reacts against in his doctrine of God—not wanting God to be simply another object amongst other objects—which places God solely within history. I will discuss this more below. Another reason Tillich may have gone this way is because of his doctrine of God; his doctrine of God appears to be pantheistic. Tillich’s doctrine of

God and his concern to not make God an object eliminates the personal character of God.

In doing so, he unwittingly makes God into some sort of non-personal force out of which humanity is created. In his description of existential estrangement as being estranged from our essential nature, which is found in God, he implies that humanity finds its essential nature when it is reabsorbed into the non-personal force of the Unconditional.

Eastern Orthodox theology makes a distinction between the essence and energies of God; in doing so Orthodoxy also stipulates that we can participate in the energies of God but not the essence of God. Tillich implies that humanity is absorbed into the essence of the

Unconditional. This is why I would argue that Tillich is unwittingly promoting pantheism. However, whether one considers either of the creation narratives in Genesis as historical realities, the symbolism within the creation narratives should lead one away from a pantheistic understanding of God. Humanity, nor any of creation, has ever been a

213 Ibid. 214 David H. Kelsey, “Paul Tillich,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. David F. Ford (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 93.

82 part of God’s essence; rather, creation is a result of God creating something outside of himself. Creation was good in its potentiality, before it was estranged. Creation did not begin estranged because it was something that was created outside of God’s essence; rather, it became estranged because humanity took the potentiality it was given and responded in a way that corrupted the relationship between God and humanity.

In the next section I will be discussing Tillich’s Christology. It will be important to keep in mind Tillich’s understanding of the Fall, his doctrine of God implying pantheism, and his anthropology being centered on existential estrangement, because each of those aspects of Tillich’s theology have affected his Christology.

Tillich and the Christ

In true existential terms Tillich says, “the paradox of the Christian message is that in one personal life essential manhood has appeared under the conditions of existence without being conquered by them.”215 The conditions of existence which Tillich is speaking about are existential estrangement. A person came into existence without experiencing existential estrangement. For Tillich, this person is the New Being. Tillich says, “Christianity is the message of the New Creation, the New Being, the New Reality which has appeared with the appearance of Jesus who for this reason, and just for this reason, is called the Christ. For the Christ, the Messiah, the selected and anointed one is

He who brings the new state of things.”216

215 Systematic Theology Volume II, 94. 216 The New Being, 15.

One of the major problems with Tillich’s Christology is that he does away with the orthodox understanding of Christ as having both a divine and human nature. He says,

“the assertion that Jesus as the Christ is the personal unity of a divine and a human nature must be replaced by the assertion that in Jesus as the Christ the eternal unity of God and man has become historical reality.”217 Jesus as the Christ is posited as a human who came into being without being estranged from the Unconditional—without being estranged from that which he came from. This is different than stating the Christ had both a divine and a human nature. When Tillich says, “[the virgin birth] takes away one of the fundamental doctrines of Chalcedon, viz., the classical Christian doctrine that the full humanity of Jesus must be maintained beside his whole divinity. A human being who has no human father has no full humanity,” he is proposing that Christ is only human and not also divine. As Kelsey notes of Tillich’s Christology, in regards to the dual-nature question,

“To say that Jesus is ‘human’ is to say that the entire analysis of ‘essential nature’ applies to him too, including vulnerability to disintegration and its underlying estrangement. To say that Jesus is ‘divine’ is to say that the power of being which is constantly present to all persons is mediated to others through him as the power of New Being in the midst of estrangement from essential nature. To say that they are one in Jesus is to say that this one life actualized without existential disruption (i.e., ‘without sin’) the eternal God-man-unity which characterizes our essential nature too…”218

Tillich presents Jesus as a human who was able to live without experiencing existential estrangement. This is where the implied pantheism causes problems with Tillich’s

217 Systematic Theology Volume II, 148. 218 Kelsey, 94-95.

Christology. Tillich seems to imply that Jesus is just a human who was created219 without experiencing existential estrangement; he was created out of the non-personal

Unconditional without experiencing estrangement in being created. His “divine” nature would be considered a symbol of his lack of existential estrangement, but he would not have an actualized “divine” nature along with a human nature.

Jesus as the Christ is the actualization of a New Creation, a creation that does not exist in existential estrangement. Tillich confirms this when he says, “Christ is the place where the New Reality is completely manifest because in him in every moment, the anxiety of finitude and the existential conflicts are overcome.”220 This leads us into

Tillich’s thoughts on salvation.

Tillich says, “we belong to the Old Creation, and the demand made upon us by

Christianity is that we also participate in the New Creation.”221 In other words, humanity belongs to the creation that comes out of existential estrangement from the

Unconditional, but we must participate in the New Being, in the creation that began with the birth of the Christ who was created without experiencing existential estrangement. It was because the Christ came into being without experiencing existential estrangement that humanity is able to participate in the New Creation. The New Creation is transforming the Old Creation, overcoming its existential estrangement.222

Despite the fact that Tillich’s Christology is problematic, his soteriology is not problematic. Tillich’s description of humanity’s predicament of existential estrangement

219 This also could bring the charge of Arianism against Tillich. 220 Theology of Culture, 212. 221 The New Being, 15. 222 “Salvation does not destroy creation; but it transforms the Old Creation into a New one.” Ibid., 20.

85 is not problematic in itself. The problem is the effect it has on his theology outside of soteriology. Tillich is correct in pointing out that it was through Christ that humanity

(and all of creation) is able to experience a New Creation. Indeed, as Tillich says, “the

New Creation is the reality in which the separated is reunited.”223 Tillich never denies the divinity of Christ outright, but it is in his pantheistic notion of the Unconditional and humanity’s existential estrangement from the Unconditional that he locates Christ’s divinity. It is through the fact that Christ came into being without existential estrangement that he never was separated from the Unconditional, not that he was divine in his actual being.224

While Tillich’s Christology is problematic, due to the pantheistic character of his doctrine of God and existential estrangement, he is correct in locating salvation as participation in a New Reality. It was with the coming of the Christ that a New Reality was brought to creation; that New Reality is the Kingdom of God. As Tillich says, “the message of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality.”225 The message of

Christianity is the Kingdom of God.

The church is to be the group of people who express the New Reality. While

Tillich supports the idea that the church is a part of culture he also allows for its ability to transcend the culture. “And if the Church which is the assembly of God has an ultimate significance, this is its significance: That here the reunion of man to man is pronounced

223 Ibid., 22 224 The problem with Tillich’s doctrine of God, especially in its pantheistic character, is an old one—Tillich never differentiates between God’s essence and energies. This classic understanding of God in the Eastern Christian tradition could help solve some of the issues in Tillich’s doctrine of God, and, subsequently, in several other areas of his theology. 225 The New Being, 24.

86 and confessed and realized, even if in fragments and weaknesses and distortions.”226 The church is not capable of completely transcending culture just as humanity is not able to completely overcome existential estrangement. Salvation is a historical process and during the process the church, along with humanity, must be seen as representatives of the New Reality, but not yet perfected themselves.

Paul Tillich made a remarkable attempt at doing “contextualized” theology. His attempt was made by trying to use existentialist philosophy in a way that could express

Christianity faithfully. There are areas of his theology that are properly “contextualized,” such as his description of humanity’s predicament being existential estrangement.

However, one must wonder if his attempt to use existentialist philosophy is responsible for the negative aspects of his theology that I noted; such as his doctrine of God being pantheistic, his conception of humanity being created sinful, and his elimination of the dual-nature doctrine in his Christology. The purpose of this chapter has been to demonstrate the ways in which white, Euro-American, male theology can be cultural, but also to demonstrate that the process of contextualization is not an easy one.

“Contextualized” theology is a challenge that the church must pay attention to, questioning the way in which culture shapes theology or theology shapes culture.

226 The New Being, 23.

Chapter 3:

Gustavo Gutiérrez and Liberation Theology

Liberation theology is the first contextual theology that has been recognized as such. It sprung up out of Latin America through the voice of a priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez.

Out of Liberation theology, every other contextual theology has developed; all contextual theologies are, in a way, attempting to liberate theology from the grasp of the white,

Euro-American, middle- to upper-class male. Liberation theology and Gustavo Gutiérrez have had a profound impact on theology all over the world. For this reason, I would be doing a disservice to contextual theology if I did not offer some thoughts on Gutiérrez’s theology of liberation. As was the case with Tillich, Gutiérrez does not fit into either category completely. His contextual theology is a mix of both “cultural” theology and

“contextualized” theology

Gutiérrez notes, “behind liberation theology are Christian communities, religious groups, and peoples, who are becoming increasingly conscious that the oppression and neglect from which they suffer are incompatible with their faith in Jesus Christ.”227

Liberation theology comes from people who have faced some type of oppression; it is a theology born out of their experiences as humans who are treated as less-than-human. In many cases, especially in Latin America, the church has either perpetrated (or stood idly by) the oppression. It has been the failure of the church to stop oppression which allows

Gutiérrez to say, “because the traditional approaches [to theology] have been exhausted,

227 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), xix.

88 new areas of theological reflection are being sought.”228 According to Gutiérrez,

“liberation theology is in fact ‘a new stage’ and, as such, strives to be in continuity with the teaching of the church.”229 In other words, liberation theology is a new way of doing and evaluating theology, attempting to remain faithful to the historical teaching of the church. However, as Kamitsuka points out, “to characterize Gutiérrez’s thought as theologically ‘revolutionary’ is itself misleading because his theological approach is to a great extent one of retrieving for his Latin American context many aspects of traditional

Christian theology and spirituality—always with the intent of empowering the church of the poor.”230 Kamitsuka also says, “Gutiérrez speaks from the perspective of the oppressed and their right to reclaim the Bible and effect socio-political change, but his theological views are quite doctrinally mainstream. That is, he believes that the orthodox tradition has the doctrinal and scriptural resources to speak a saving word to those who suffer.”231 Following what Kamitsuka notes, I contend that Gutiérrez’s theology is, for the most part, “contextualized” theology that only drifts into “cultural” theology depending on the topic.

For Gutiérrez, “the question regarding the theological meaning of liberation is, in truth, a question about the very meaning of Christianity and about the mission of the church.”232 Liberation, not just from sin but also from the results of sin (suffering, misery), should be the chief concern of the church. For Gutiérrez, simply having an intellectual assent to doctrine is not enough for the church; the church must start, once

228 Ibid., xiv. 229 Ibid., xliv. 230 Kamitsuka, 26. 231 Ibid., 185. 232 A Theology of Liberation, xiv.

89 again, to practice what it preaches. This is why Gutiérrez says, “the theology of liberation attempts to reflect on the experience and meaning of the faith based on the commitment to abolish injustice and to build a new society; this theology must be verified by the practice of that commitment, by active, effective participation in the struggle which the exploited social classes have undertaken against their oppressors.”233 The church must be committed to the liberation of the oppressed.

In this chapter I will discuss the “contextualized” nature of much of Gutiérrez’s theology and note the areas where he drifts into “cultural” theology. As with Tillich,

Gutiérrez does not fit into either category exclusively. Much of what comes out of liberation theology is an important message for the church to hear, however, I have my doubts that it deserves to be called a theology; rather, it is a reminder to the church that its practices and theology need to align.

Gutiérrez and Culture

Liberation theology is concerned with both the spiritual and the physical liberation of humanity. It attempts to protect the theme of liberation from becoming either “a disincarnate spiritualism” or a mere political activity.234 The need to protect it from a disincarnate spiritualism rises from much of the justification for slavery in Europe and the Americas. While humanity may experience release from oppression in the

233 Ibid., 174. 234 “It has been a concern of the theology of liberation from the very beginning to reject, on the one hand, a disincarnate spiritualism that emphasizes the religious side of people without attending to the material conditions in which they live, and, on the other, a political activity that sets aside until later the requirements and possibilities of the Christian faith, on the grounds that economics and social problems are more urgent.” Gustavo Gutiérrez, The Truth Shall Make You Free (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), 9.

90 eschaton, people should not have to wait until then to experience release. However, the spiritual side of liberation must not be put into the background of liberation. There is more to the release from oppression than political matters. It is in the uniting of the spiritual and the temporal experience of liberation that, “the theology of liberation is in keeping with the purpose of that theology, which is to develop a reflection that is concerned with and based on practice in the light of faith.”235

Theology is concerned with the practice of the faith. Because theology is concerned with the practice of faith it must come out of the historical moment. Gutiérrez notes, “every theology inquires into the meaning of God’s word for us at the present historical moment, and any attempted answers are in the context of our culture and of the problems which the people of our time are facing. In response to this cultural universe the church is constantly reformulating the gospel message for our contemporaries and for ourselves.”236 Gutiérrez is pointing out the need for theology to be contextualized, so that it may be understandable in each context it finds itself. As Gutiérrez says, “every theology is, and must be, a dialogue with the culture of its age. The dialogue brings into play the theology’s capacity for making the gospel relevant in human history. This supposes, on the one hand, a lucid fidelity to the ‘deposit of faith’ and, on the other, a great loyalty to the historical moment in which theology is being developed.”237 While I disagree with the notion that theology is being developed within any particular historical

235 Gustavo Gutiérrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 1. 236 The Truth Shall Make You Free, 11. 237 Ibid., 89.

91 moment, Gutiérrez’s point is well taken: tradition is important and must be conveyed to each context in a way that it can be understood.

The need for contextualization is seen by Gutiérrez through the Latin American experience of colonialism. Gutiérrez says, “I do not think an attempt should be made to apply liberation theology mechanically to Europe. In Latin America we have suffered a great deal from interpretations imposed from outside our real situation, and we do not want to do the same thing ourselves in the opposite geographical direction.”238 While

Gutiérrez notes that no theology should be imposed on a context without contextualization, he notes that there is a universal significance that can be contextualized. He says, “every theology also has a universal significance; or, to put it more accurately, every theology is a question and challenge for believers living in other human situations.”239 I would deem the “universal significance” that Gutiérrez speaks of theology (rather than implying that there are numerous theologies). That theology is what must be contextualized as it confronts each new context.

It is in Gutiérrez’s implication that there are numerous theologies that the notion of the “cultural” type of contextual theology comes to the fore. The implication is that each context has its own theology; the theology of any given context is based on its own experiences. I will be discussing Gutiérrez’s theological method in the next section. His theological method is highly dependent on experience, evident when he says, “the solidity and energy of theological thought depend precisely on the spiritual experience that

238 Ibid., 51. 239 A Theology of Liberation, xxxvi.

92 supports it.”240 Basing theology in experience poses a problem for those who wish to say contextual theology (of the “cultural” type) is not relative.

Gutiérrez and Theological Method

Gutiérrez says, “spiritual experience is the terrain in which theological reflection strikes root. Intellectual comprehension makes it possible to carry the experience of the faith to a deeper level, but the experience always comes first and is the source.”241 The idea that it is in spiritual experience that theological reflection takes root is not a problem.

Rather, the idea that theology itself must come from personal experience poses a problem. While theology does come from the experience of the disciples, as they were taught by Christ, theology today does not (nor should it) add to the theology of the tradition. It should be concerned with the contextualization of the tradition.

It is clear that Gutiérrez is reacting against the overemphasis on orthodoxy at the expense of orthopraxy over the last several centuries. This can be seen when Gutiérrez says, “that worship of God and the doing of God’s will are the necessary condition for thinking about God. Only if we start in this realm of practice will we be able to develop a discourse about God that is authentic and respectful.”242 It is Gutiérrez’s experience that the church has failed to live out its theology; his experience (and the experience of the oppressed of Latin America) has not matched what the church proclaims to be true. For this reason, I understand why Gutiérrez would note that experience comes first. It is in his reaction against the lack of attention paid to orthopraxy that Gutiérrez says, “from the

240 We Drink from Our Own Wells, 36-37. 241 Ibid., 35-36. 242 The Truth Shall Make You Free, 3.

93 viewpoint of liberation theology it must be said that we must first contemplate God and put God’s plan for history into practice and only then think about God. What this statement means is simply that adoration of God and the doing of God’s will are necessary conditions for the thinking about God.”243 Theology and practice must go hand-in-hand—we cannot have one without the other.

The problem with Gutiérrez’s theological method comes when he says, “discourse about God comes second because faith comes first and is the source of theology.”244 On the surface, this statement does not appear to pose any problems. The problem lies in the fact that one must put one’s faith in something. That something is already a subject of theological thought. Gutiérrez says, “according to the Bible, faith is the total human response to God, who saves through love. In this light, the understanding of the faith appears as the understanding not of the simple affirmation—almost memorization—of truths, but of a commitment, an overall attitude, a particular posture toward life.”245 If faith is a response to God, does not one need some idea of God before they can respond to God? Is that idea of God that one responds to not already theological? Gutiérrez is attempting to offer a balance to the overemphasis on intellectual assent as salvation

(liberation), but instead he goes beyond a balance and overemphasizes practice and experience.246

243 Ibid., 55. 244 A Theology of Liberation, xxxiii. 245 Ibid., 6. 246 “The intention, however, is not to deny the meaning of orthodoxy, understood as proclamation of and reflection on statements considered to be true. Rather, the goal is to balance and even to reject the primacy and almost exclusiveness which doctrine has enjoyed in Christian life and above all to modify the emphasis, often obsessive, upon the attainment of an orthodoxy which is often nothing more than fidelity to an obsolete tradition or a debatable interpretation.” Ibid., 8.

His overemphasis on practice can be seen when he says, “contemplation and commitment make up what liberation theology calls practice, the ‘first act,’ which is

Christian life itself; only then can this life inspire ‘second act,’ a process of reasoning.”247

So for Gutiérrez, theology comes out of practice. I contend that how we live, our practice, is what should be coming out of what we believe; that in fact, how we live is a testament to what we believe to be true. Gutiérrez, however, says, “the pastoral activity of the Church does not flow as a conclusion from theological premises. Theology does not produce pastoral activity; rather it reflects upon it. Theology must be able to find in pastoral activity the presence of the Spirit inspiring the action of the Christian community.”248 I would contend that the failure of the church to properly contextualize theology, along with some questionable theology to begin with, is what led to the oppressive situation in Latin America to begin with. It was a lack of locating theology as the source for pastoral activity that allowed the church to either perpetrate oppression or stand idly by while oppression occurred (and continues to occur).

Despite his location of practice before theology, Gutiérrez still insists that,

“believing in the truth and putting it into practice are two necessary and mutually implicative aspects of the following of Jesus, which is the obligatory setting of all theological reflection.”249 Theology cannot be separated from practice because what we do is a reflection of what we believe. What we believe should be what informs how we live. As Schreiter says, “theology cannot remain only with reflection; nor can it be reduced to practice. Good reflection leads to action, and action is not completed until it

247 The Truth Shall Make You Free, 56. 248 A Theology of Liberation, 9. 249 The Truth Shall Make You Free, 88-89.

95 has been reflected upon.”250 For Gutiérrez, this appears as a new approach to God, a new approach to theology.251 The new approach, according to Gutiérrez is: “God’s action requires that the people put God’s commandments into practice; it requires a certain behavior in the today of their lives.”252 I can understand how this may seem like a new approach to Gutiérrez, given his context in Latin America where the church has always appeared to lack any emphasis on orthopraxy; however, historically the church has connected orthodoxy and orthopraxy. What Gutiérrez is doing is reintroducing ancient thoughts and practices, calling the church back to itself. “The challenge is to be able to preserve the circular relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxis and the nourishment of each other by the other,”253 is a challenge the church has always faced and has, at times, lost sight of.

As Gutiérrez reminds us, “the suffering of the innocent and the questions it leads them to ask are indeed key problems for theology—that is, for discourse about God.”254

As the church lost sight of the challenge to maintain the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, it oftentimes allowed for suffering stemming from oppression in its midst. It is out of the experience of oppression that Gutiérrez is writing, and it is important to keep his context in mind. As Gutiérrez says, “talk about God presupposes and, at the same time, leads to a living encounter with God in specific historical

250 Schrieter, 92. 251 “In our age, the assertion of the human person as subject of its own history, as well as its increasing ability to transform nature, have gradually led to a different approach to God.” Gustavo Gutiérrez, The God of Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), xv. 252 Ibid., 5. 253 The Truth Shall Make You Free, 104. 254 Gustavo Gutiérrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), xv.

96 circumstances. It requires, therefore, that we discover the features of Christ in the sometimes disfigured faces of the poor of this world.”255 Gutiérrez is reminding the church that it must remember to practice what it believes in specific historical circumstances. The church’s perpetration of, or complicity in, oppression is what calls its theology into question. It is clear to me that Gutiérrez’s theological method, which places practice before theory, is a reaction against the church failing to live out its stated theology.

The Poor and the Kingdom of God

The most common theme in liberation theology is that God has a “preferential love for the poor.” This can be seen when Gutiérrez says, “God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will.”256 Gutiérrez clarifies the term “preferential” when he says, “the very word

‘preference’ denies all exclusiveness and seeks rather to call attention to those who are the first—though not the only ones—with whom we should be in solidarity.”257 The preferential option for the poor is closely connected with the Kingdom of God.258

In his discussion of the Kingdom of God, Gutiérrez balances the temporal and the spiritual dimensions of the Kingdom. Gutiérrez is reacting against a theology and

255 Ibid., 17. 256 Ibid., 94. 257 A Theology of Liberation, xxv-xxvi. 258 “This struggle for their rights is located within a quest for the kingdom of God and its justice—in other words, the struggle is part of the journey to a meeting with the God of the kingdom.” We Drink From Our Own Wells, 11.

97 practice that relegates liberation and salvation only in an eschatological future. Gutiérrez places the Kingdom squarely in the process of history. As Gutiérrez says, “Nor is the kingdom something purely interior that occurs in the depths of our souls. No, it is something planned by God that occurs at the heart of history in which human beings live and die and welcome or reject the grace that changes them from within.”259 In other words, being a Christian involves active participation in the Kingdom of God, and that active participation involves a change of the person within history. The Kingdom of God is what begins and gives meaning to history for Christians; it is a historical reality that began with the coming of Christ and continues until the eschaton when it will become the only reality.260

The Kingdom of God, as a historical reality, must be realized, actualized by the church. “The church must be a sign of the kingdom within human history.”261 The experience of the poor in Latin America indicates that the church has failed to be a sign of the Kingdom within human history. Gutiérrez notes, out of his experience in Latin

America, “its [the church’s] fidelity to the Gospel leaves it no alternative: the Church must be the visible sign of the presence of the Lord within the aspiration for liberation and the struggle for a more human and just society.”262 It should be through the church, as a visible sign of the Kingdom, that Christ’s presence should be made known in

259 The God of Life, 101. 260 “The Kingdom is the center of Jesus’ message, the utopia that sets history in motion for Christians.” Ibid., 120. “The kingdom, which is the object of God’s free and unmerited plan, is a dynamic reality that, for the followers of Jesus gives history its final meaning.” Ibid., 101. 261 A Theology of Liberation, xli. 262 Ibid., 148.

98 history.263 As David Bentley Hart says, “Christ’s pattern has been handed over and entrusted to the church as a project; he does not hover above history as an eschatological tension, a withdrawn possibility, an absence, or only a memory, but enters into history precisely in the degree that the church makes his story the essence of its practices.”264 In other words, as Gutiérrez says, “the Church can be understood only in relation to the reality which it announces to humankind. Its existence is not ‘for itself,’ but rather ‘for others.’”265

Gutiérrez, and liberation theology as a whole, is concerned with the church living out the principles of the Kingdom of God. This means that the church must practice what it professes to believe within history. For Gutiérrez this means, “Christians, and the church as a whole, are to seek the kingdom and righteousness of God by entering into human history, lining up with the poor and oppressed, and finding the Lord in the faces of the most needy.”266 The church, through being a sign of the Kingdom, must work to create a more human and just society; it is in the creation of a more human and just society that a new humanity is created—humanity as it should be rather than humanity as it is.267

263 “It is the task of the church to bear witness to this dwelling and this new world; in this way it proclaims the kingdom in which the Lord makes himself present in human history.” The God of Life, 106. 264 David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2003), 340. 265 A Theology of Liberation, 147. 266 The God of Life, 108. 267 “The attitudes of Christians is based on the understanding that the coming of the Kingdom implies the building of a just society.” A Theology of Liberation, 66. “It is important to keep in mind that beyond—or rather, through—the struggle against misery, injustice, and exploitation the goal is the creation of a new humanity.” Ibid., 81.

For Gutiérrez, it is through practicing the values of the Kingdom that salvation becomes a historical reality.268 This is his reaction against a theology that tells people to accept their oppressed state because their salvation will come in a spiritual way in the future. Gutiérrez is placing salvation squarely within the realm of history; salvation begins in this life and part of that salvation is being freed from oppression now. As

Gutiérrez says, “the historical destiny of humanity must be placed definitively in the salvific horizon.”269 In other words, the eschaton begins within history; the eschaton is not something that can be relegated to being just a future event. Gutiérrez states it even more clearly when he says, “salvation is not something otherworldly, in regard to which the present life is merely a test. Salvation—the communion of human beings with God and among themselves—is something which embraces all human reality, transforms it, and lends it to its fullness in Christ.”270

It is the Christian’s responsibility to participate in the grace of God, being transformed into the new humanity. Through the transformation into a new humanity, the church being the collective group of new humanity must seek to call the world to this new creation. The Kingdom represents a new reality which seeks justice, to liberate humanity from oppression. This is not an option, but a requirement. As Gutiérrez says,

“the kingdom is a gift but also a demand. It is a freely given gift of God and it calls for conformity to God’s will to life.”271

268 “…building the temporal city is not simply a stage of ‘humanization’ or ‘pre-evangelization’ as was held in theology until a few years ago. Rather it is to become a part of a saving process which embraces the whole of humanity and all human history.” Ibid., 91. 269 Ibid., 86. 270 Ibid., 85. 271 The God of Life, 118.

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Concluding Remarks

Gutiérrez lives in the midst of the oppression of the poor of Latin America. It is out of this experience that his theology takes shape. His theology is not anything new, rather it is calling the church to remember its identity. Much of Gutiérrez’s theology can also be found throughout the Patristic era. The foundation of his theology is that orthopraxy needs to come to the fore; the overemphasis on orthodoxy needs to be curtailed. As Gutiérrez says, “to live the faith means to put into practice, in the light of the demands of the reign of God, these fundamental elements of Christian existence.”272

The fundamental elements are summed up by Hart when he says,

“it is only as the offer of this peace within time, as a real and available practice, that the Christian evangel (and, in particular, the claim that Christ crucified has been raised from the dead) has any meaning at all; only if the form of Christ can be lived out in the community of the church is the confession of the church true; only if Christ can be practiced is Jesus Lord.”273

The church must practice its faith in Jesus Christ as resurrected, seeking to abolish all injustice, misery, and oppression.274

It is not enough for the church to claim it has the truth; the church must express the truth it maintains through actions within history. As Vähäkangas notes, “for praxis- oriented thinkers, like liberation theologians, it is no longer sufficient to believe correctly

272 A Theology of Liberation, xxxiv. 273 Beauty of the Infinite, 1. 274 “As a sign of the liberation of humankind and history, the Church itself in its concrete existence ought to be a place of liberation.” A Theology of Liberation, 147.

101

(orthodoxy) but to act correctly (orthopraxy).”275 In essence, liberation theology is not really a new theology; rather, it is a re-calling of historical theology which is grounded in theological ethics. The theology of the church need not necessarily change, but the church must connect what it professes theologically with how it lives. If a theology allows for the oppression of humanity it must be discarded—only in this way is liberation theology a theology. As Gutiérrez notes: “orthopraxis and orthodoxy need one another, and each is adversely affected when sight is lost of the other.”276

Eastern Orthodoxy would be in complete agreement with liberation theology on this point. This can be seen when Peter Bouteneff says, “(1) if you want to know the truth, you have to act rightly, you have to live in a right way, and (2) to the extent you do know the truth, it’s pointless if it doesn’t lead you to an ever-increasingly right way of life.”277 In other words, as Gutiérrez puts it, “it is action that determines our real orientation.”278

The challenge put forth by Gutiérrez, and liberation theology as a whole, is for the church to live according to its belief in Jesus Christ. Somewhere through the centuries, the church forgot that it is to be the representative of the Kingdom in history. Liberation theology calls the church back to its identity as the bearer of the Kingdom in history.

This means the church needs to eliminate oppression within itself, as well as to seek the elimination of oppression outside itself. The church must remember its call to take care of the orphan, the widow, and the poor. This means that anyone within the church should

275 Vähäkangas, 285. 276 A Theology of Liberation, xxxiv. 277 Peter Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey: Orthodox Thinking on Dogma and Truth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 117. 278 The God of Life, 138.

102 not experience poverty and the church should seek to abolish poverty outside itself as well. This will not be an easy process, as Gutiérrez notes, “it will take a great deal of effort to overcome cultural ideas that are so deeply rooted and strongly present in society, especially when we ourselves have in one way or another helped give them their staying power.”279 The church must separate itself from the surrounding worldly culture, following and practicing the demands of the Kingdom of God.

In chapters two and three I have provided case-studies of two Western theologians, evaluating their theology based on the dichotomy I propose between

“cultural” and “contextualized” types of contextual theology. In chapter four I will be investigating the ways in which Eastern Orthodox theological method corresponds with the “contextualized” type of contextual theology. The areas in which Eastern Orthodox theology has drifted into the “cultural” type of contextual theology will also be noted.

Up to this point I have focused primarily on Protestant and Catholic theologians in setting up my proposed dichotomy. Despite my location as an Eastern Orthodox theologian, I do find that there is much within Protestant and Catholic theology that is useful. While the theologians I have utilized to this point have been Protestant and Catholic, I maintain that

Eastern Orthodoxy has much to offer the Western Christian traditions when it comes to the doing and evaluating of theology.

279 Ibid., 166.

103

Chapter 4:

Eastern Orthodoxy and the Relationship Between Theology and Culture

Eastern Orthodoxy has much to offer when it comes to the conversation about the relationship between theology and culture. For its part, “present day Orthodox

Christianity understands itself as identical with the church of the first eight centuries when the Christian tradition shared a common ecclesial existence, broadly conceived, and before the separation of Christianity into Eastern and Western forms.”280 From the

Orthodox viewpoint, Western Christianity deviated from the Eastern half of the Christian tradition. In the millennium-long separation between the East and West many differences have appeared between the two traditions. It is in those differences that the West may be able to learn something from the East.

As mentioned above, Orthodoxy views itself as the continued existence of the original church. It is because of this view that Stanley Harakas can say: “In the Orthodox perspective it is in the mind-set…that is, the conscious memory and the life-experience of the historic church, that the fullness of the revelation, in all its richness and abundant dimensions, dwells.”281 In other words, Orthodoxy has maintained the fullness of the truth, through its continued passing down of the tradition throughout history; the West has deviated from the historic tradition and no longer is a bearer of the fullness of the truth.

280 Stanley Samuel Harakas, “Doing Theology Today: An Orthodox and Evangelical Dialogue on Theological Method,” Pro Ecclesia 11: 4 (Fall 2002): 435. 281 Ibid., 437.

104

One of the contributing factors to this understanding has been how the Orthodox continue to maintain that the Patristic era of theology has continued relevancy. For the

Orthodox, the Patristic model of doing theology has yet to be superseded by another way of doing theology.282 Alongside the continued relevancy of the Patristic era there are many other aspects of the Orthodox tradition that are lifted up. As Harakas points out,

“this rich and invigorating experience of God in Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures, the tradition, the liturgy, the sacraments, the iconography, the hagiology, the canons, the ethical and moral life, the spiritual and ascetic life, the desert, the country and the city, culture and knowledge, vestments and architecture, philanthropy and mercy, has boundaries.”283 All of these things are historically and locally situated. However, there is a theological continuity in the East that no longer exists in the West. The lack of theological continuity in the West can be seen through the fragmentation of the Western church into Roman Catholic, Anglican, and the vast amount of Protestant denominations.284 The continuity that has been maintained in Orthodox tradition(s) shows us the boundaries in the doing of theology that cannot be crossed. This will be demonstrated in the sections on Dogma (dogmas) and the existence of heresy below. It is this continuity that the Western churches could learn.

282 “More than in other Christian traditions, the patristic period is accepted by the Orthodox as the preferred model of theological creativity—a model that has not been historically superseded, as it was in the Latin West, by the great medieval scholastic systems, or rejected as a Hellenization of authentic biblical Christianity, as liberal Protestants of the nineteenth century thought it to be.” Daniel B Clendenin, ed., Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 91. 283 Harakas, 453. 284 I am not implying that each subsequent tradition caused by the fracturing of the Western church does not claim its own theological continuity; rather, I am speaking to the lack of theological continuity amongst all the various Western churches that have formed since the split between East and West in the eleventh century.

105

As John Meyendorff notes, “theological speculation often went wrong when it was used as an end in itself and not as a creative tool to answer the questions posed to the church by the surrounding world.”285 What Meyendorff is suggesting is that theology is not something that can stand alone—it is always a creative way of addressing the concerns, questions, cultures in which it finds itself dwelling. In the midst of the creative response to the concerns of the people, the church also operated as a judge of the world around it; the church was the barometer of truth in the world. However, that notion has changed in the West. “If in the past the world was evaluated by Christians in terms of the church, today the opposite is true: to many Christians, it is the world that must ‘validate’ the church.”286 At some point the church decided it must be validated by the world in order to maintain its relevance in the world. The search for relevance in the world has become the all-important quest for much of Christianity. However, “Christianity must not sell its birthright for a bowl full of temporary relevance.”287 The gospel is always relevant to the world; we must recognize that the world will not always want to hear the gospel, no matter how “relevant” it is made to be. As Hart says, “Christian thought— whose infinite is triune, whose God became incarnate, and whose account of salvation promises not liberation from, but glorification of, material creation—can never separate the formal particularity of beauty from the infinite it announces, and so tells the tale of

285 Clendenin, 91. 286 Alexander Schmemann, “Prayer, Liturgy, and Renewal,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 14: 1 (1996): 7, in Harakas, 457. 287 David W. Fagerberg, “The Cost of Understanding Schmemann in the West,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 53: 2-3 (2009): 201.

106 being in a way that will forever be a scandal to the Greeks.”288 The gospel will always seem foolish to those who do not have the eyes to see nor the ears to hear it.

This chapter will cover the Orthodox understanding of theology. Within that understanding lies a different understanding of truth to what was seen in the typologies of chapter one. After covering the Orthodox understanding of truth, I will address the importance of tradition in the Orthodox Church, including the importance of the community itself. After discussing tradition I will move on to the Orthodox perspective on “nature” and how it differs from the typologies of chapter one. In light of the view of

“nature” I will then discuss how the Orthodox Church views the Kingdom of God. To conclude this chapter, I will discuss two areas in which Orthodoxy has not followed its own principles consistently.

Orthodox Theology, Relativism, and Salvation as it Pertains to Truth

In contemporary theological discourse, the term “dogma” has a negative connotation. Bouteneff, however, disagrees with contemporary sentiments when he says:

“The ideas behind the word [dogma] need to be revived and explored: the ideas that there is such a thing as absolute truth about God and the world, that this truth can be discerned, that it can be an object of faith and love, that it is the root of creativity and freedom.”289

What Bouteneff is pointing to is that the term has an enduring use and meaning beyond the negative connotations. The underlying principles behind the concept of dogma need to be reevaluated; but more than just reevaluated, they need to be rediscovered.

288 The Beauty of the Infinite,151. 289 Sweeter than Honey, 19.

107

Dogma is not something that is completely unchangeable; rather, it is something that sets the boundaries which theologians must not cross. It is in the development of dogmas that we can see the creativity of the theologian. It is not a creative development that proposes new truth, but a creative development that speaks the truth in new ways.

Vladimir Lossky says, “in each case one can speak of a dogmatic development to the extent that the church extends the rule of faith while remaining, in her new definitions, in conformity with the dogmas already received by all.”290 What can be seen in Lossky’s statement is that the Orthodox believe that what has already been received by the Church is deemed true—not just true for the Orthodox but true for everyone, everywhere. But there is more to dogma than simple declarations of truth.

Bouteneff notes that, “Dogma (general truth) or dogmas (which are expressions of that truth) do not describe a code, a set of fixed and sterile rules. Rather, dogma describes and defines reality, what is.”291 Dogma is not just about things that must be believed; dogmas are the statements of the truth of reality as it is. As we come to know reality as it is (and how it was originally intended), we conform ourselves to the truth.

“From dogma, we derive an understanding of reality, an ethos of life, an understanding of how to live, how to stand in relationship with God, the cosmos, the other, and the self.”292

Dogmas are not just to be believed, they are to be practiced. They are expressions of the ultimate reality, made in a confessional manner, displaying what the church and

Christians are meant to be. Bouteneff also states: “If dogma described anything less than the ultimate reality of things, then the whole Church, its teachings and its life, would be

290 Clendenin, 143. 291 Bouteneff, 39. 292 Ibid.

108 nothing more than a sociological phenomenon, perhaps a cult, not worthy of attention other than from cultural anthropologists or psychologists.”293 Unfortunately, what

Bouteneff states about the church becoming a sociological phenomenon seems to be the case in much of the world today; the church is no longer viewed as something that portrays ultimate reality, but just one of many divergent realities.

The acceptance, by some theologians of the West, of the idea that theology is somehow contingent on one’s personal experience (as seen in many of the “cultural” type of contextual theologies) has led to a collapse of any sort of theological boundaries.

Heresy is no longer seen as a viable concept. However, as Harakas notes, “theology’s first task is marking the boundaries of the mosaic of the Christian faith, so that within there is much freedom of interpretation and application, but with the limit that is defined by the core apostolic faith, the ‘rule of faith.’”294 There is room within the doing and evaluating of theology for multiple interpretations of the ultimate reality. However, even though there is some creative freedom in the doing and evaluating of theology there also exist boundaries which may not be crossed. Those boundaries exist to make sure that we are faithful to the truth which has been handed down, throughout history, through the

Apostles, from Christ.

Many contemporary theologians seem to have abandoned the notion that absolutes exist. As seen in the typologies of chapter one, truth is now viewed as culturally located. While the charge of relativism is often argued against by such theologians, it is hard to ignore the implications of the argument that pluralism within

293 Ibid., 40 294 Harakas, 445.

109 theology as a good thing is not also the promotion of relativism within theology. As

Bouteneff notes, “relativism holds that my engagement with things dictates only my own personal truth, and that absolute truth itself cannot be apprehended or is nonexistent.”295

In what was discussed in chapter one, it should be apparent that the “cultural” type of contextual theologies are a product of this type of relativistic attitude towards reality and theology. One of the byproducts of relativism is a harsh critique of those who argue that there is a universal, an absolute outside the self. Those who claim that what they believe to be true is true for everyone, whether it is believed or not, are often dismissed as naive, or worse. However, as Bouteneff points out, “relativists believe that theirs is a view beyond views, a theory beyond theories. But relativist world views are just that: worldviews.”296 What often is failed to be acknowledged is that the imposition of relativism on theological discourse is itself promoted as a universal, an absolute. As can be seen, Orthodoxy believes there is such a thing as a universal, an absolute truth that stands outside of the self.297 The relevance of this point will be seen in how Orthodoxy views the contextualization of that truth to various cultural locations.

Lossky notes that, “theological teaching…is made for historical work here below.

It must be adopted to space and time, to environments and points in time.”298 The doing and evaluating of theology is historical in its nature—it cannot transcend its historical situation. However, this point is not made in a way which says that the content of

295 Bouteneff, 48. 296 Ibid., 49. 297 While Orthodoxy (and Orthodox theologians) certainly do hold the existence of absolutes, this is not to say that there are not also Catholic and Protestant theologians who do the same. The point here is to indicate the trend toward eliminating the concept of absolutes within much of post-modern influenced theology. 298 Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978), 14.

110 theology cannot transcend its historical situation. As the Orthodox look back to the

Patristic era they see the contextualization of the gospel in the theology of the Church

Fathers. As Meyendorff asserts, “the unavoidable necessity of reformulating and rethinking the Christian faith in the light of changing cultural patterns is widely recognized, and the effort of the Greek Fathers to formulate Christianity in the categories of Hellenism can only be viewed as legitimate.”299 Orthodoxy does not see the early developments in theology as the Hellenization of Christianity; rather, the view is that the

Hellenized world was Christianized.300

This idea of “contextualized” theology lies in the Orthodox view of missiology.

“The Orthodox maintained that each race, each culture, each identifiable group had the right to receive the gospel in its own language.”301 Orthodoxy has long recognized the need for contextualization of the gospel. Without using concepts that are familiar to a particular cultural location, the gospel is likely to land on deaf ears. Orthodoxy has long recognized that each context is different and will perceive the gospel differently. The question, after recognizing Orthodoxy’s insistence on contextualization, is: how should theology be contextualized?

The primary difference between how “cultural” theologians contextualize and how Orthodoxy (the “contextualized” type) portrays it is this: for the “cultural” type, the

299 John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends & Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), 2. 300 “And of this the Fathers themselves are the best example for by their ‘theologizing’ they exorcized, transformed and Christianized a world and a culture which were as opposed to the ‘foolishness’ of the Gospel as is our world and culture today.” Alexander Schmemann, Church, World, Mission (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979), 17. 301 James Stamoolis, “Eastern Orthodox Mission Theology,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 8: 2 (Ap 1984): 59.

111 content can change depending on the context; for Orthodoxy (the “contextualized” type), the content remains the same in every context. As John Behr asserts, “the continually changing context in which the same unchanging gospel is preached makes it necessary that different aspects or facets of the same gospel be drawn out to address contemporary challenges. However, while the context continually changes, the content of that tradition does not—it is the same gospel.”302 The difference between the two approaches comes down to the acceptance of boundaries to orthodox theology. As Harakas states: “While there is tremendous Christian freedom in understanding, living, experiencing, expressing and manifesting in life the truth of the revelation of God, the church, even the Scriptures themselves, recognize limits and boundaries.”303 For Orthodoxy, God’s revelation was completed through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. With Christ’s ascension the church was given the Holy Spirit to guide it into all truth. That guidance is helping the church to make sense of the revelation in, through, and from Jesus Christ.

Meyendorff asserts that, “the church can only define the limits of the authentic witness; it cannot add anything to that witness.”304 It is up to the church to define the limits within which theology can assert something to be true; the church does not exist to add to the revelation, the witness, of Jesus Christ. Meyendorff continues on to note that, “doctrinal definitions have a primarily negative role—that of preventing the spread of error—and that, in any case, their aim is not to exhaust the truth or freeze the teachings of the church

302 John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 64. 303 Harakas, 444. 304 Clendenin, 84.

112 into verbal formulae or systems, but only to indicate the ‘boundaries’ of truth.”305 When one looks back at the Patristic era it is easy to see that the assertion of doctrinal statements were almost always made to define the boundaries of truth. Each council that was called in the first millennium of the church had to do with defining what was considered to be true, over against the false teachings—the heresies.306

The idea of theological development is one that the East and West have differing opinions on. In the West, the idea of development often entails some sort of addition to the revelation.307 However, in the East, “the notions of ‘development’ or ‘growth’ could be applied only to the human appropriation of divine Truth, not to the Truth itself, and, of course, to the conceptual elaboration of Church doctrine, or to the refutation of heresies.”308 In other words, the Truth is everlasting, not suspect to change. What changes, based on cultural location, is how that Truth is expressed and applied within different cultural locations. Orthodoxy recognizes that, “each epoch puts forth its own views, ways of understanding, questions, heresies, and protests against Christian truth, or else repeats ancient ones which had been forgotten.”309 Heresy will always exist.

I have spent ample space discussing the existence of heresy for a reason. It is because many in the West have moved away from acknowledging the existence of heresy

305 Ibid., 89. 306 “All the ecumenical councils, beginning with Ephesus (431)—the first where minutes are preserved— emphasize explicitly that doctrinal definitions are not ends in themselves, and that the council fathers— reluctantly—proceed to define issues of doctrine only to exclude the wrong interpretations proposed by heretics.” Meyendorff, 10. 307 An example of this would be the development of some of the Marian dogmas in the Roman Catholic Church. 308 Ibid., 9. 309 Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (Platina, California: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2005), 47.

113 that many of the “cultural” type of contextual theologies are deemed orthodox. Moving back to the Orthodox understanding of “contextualized” theology, Orthodoxy acknowledges that theology “is necessarily expressed in each age in different languages and forms, it’s the same faith that was preached by the apostles.”310 It is not the way that theology is communicated that must not change, it is the content that must remain the same. As Lossky puts it: “using either philosophical terms or words of the current language, they change their meaning until they are rendered able to encompass this prodigiously new reality which Christianity alone reveals…”311 Theologians are called upon to change the cultural terminologies, symbolisms, analogies in order to express

Christian truth. Lossky continues, “they have not hesitated to use its language, to speak of ‘paradigms’ and ‘ideas.’ But they have impregnated this language with a thoroughly biblical respect for the sensible and living God.”312 In other words, theologians are to use the cultural terminologies, symbolisms in a ministerial way, shaping the cultural terminologies, symbolisms in a way that will express the magisterial Christian revelation.

Orthodoxy holds this position because of its view of truth. “Orthodox

Christianity makes a stunning claim: the teachings found in Scripture interpreted within the community of the Church are true. What’s more, they are not merely true for the community that produces and receives them but simply true.”313 The truth which

Orthodox Christianity proclaims is Jesus Christ. As Bouteneff points out, “Scripture

310 Bouteneff, 122. 311 Lossky, 40. 312 Ibid., 57. 313 Bouteneff, 11. This statement by Bouteneff should not be interpreted to mean that non-Orthodox theologians do not also hold a similar view of truth. I believe Bouteneff is responding to a similar problem that I have also identified in this thesis; that is, there is a growing tendency toward relativism within certain streams of Western theology.

114 identifies Jesus Christ not just with Christian truth, as opposed to everyone else’s truth, but with universal truth, the truth for everyone and everything.”314 Jesus said himself that he is the truth, not simply a truth. It is because of this that Orthodoxy can also say,

“everything that is true, whether or not it is said by a Christian, is true because of Christ; anything that is approaching truth is approaching Christ.”315 Truth, no matter where it is found, belongs to Christ—not the church, as the church also belongs to Christ and not

Christ to the church. As Bouteneff so eloquently puts it: “Card-carrying, Bible-reading

Christians do not hold a monopoly on truth.”316

This view of what qualifies as truth can be dangerous. In an age that lifts up personal experience as the barometer of truth, what is to keep one from saying that what they claim as truth is in accordance with Jesus? Orthodoxy proposes that it is within its tradition that one can verify truth claims by those outside the church. If a truth claim is contradictory to what the church knows to be true, that truth claim cannot be held to be true. But Orthodoxy also recognizes the age in which the world finds itself is one that promotes relativism. As Alexander Schmemann notes:

“At a time when a series of temptation appears to sacrifice Truth for a very sophisticated, very qualified and, because of this, only more dangerous relativism, to replace the search for unity with a search for a religious ‘peaceful coexistence,’ when the very possibility of error and heresy is virtually ruled out by a pseudo-ecumenical doctrine of ‘convergence,’ the Orthodox theologian must stand, alone if necessary, in defense of the very concept of Truth, without which Christianity, for all its ‘relevance,’ denies in fact its own absolute claim. To do this however, he must himself be open and obedient to all Truth, where he finds it.”317

314 Ibid., 26. 315 Ibid., 27. 316 Ibid. 317 Schmemann, 125.

115

There exists, in our time, a relativism that has permeated Christian theology that says we must ignore our differences in order to peacefully co-exist. What has come from this ignoring of our differences is a lack of willingness to say when something is not true. As

Hart puts it: “As for the failure of many of the Christians of the time to transcend their circumstances, it is enough to observe that it is easier to baptize a culture than to change it…”318 What has happened is a transformation of the thought process surrounding the relationship between culture and Christianity. It is indeed easier to baptize something than to seek to change it, to transform it, to replace it. It is as if Christians do not want to actually change; it is as if they are afraid to say that the reality we experience is not reality as it is meant to be.319 Christianity has accepted relativism at the expense of its claim to knowing the truth, Jesus Christ.

Orthodoxy recognizes that there is such a thing as absolute truth. At the same time, Orthodoxy recognizes the fact that that truth will be expressed differently in each cultural location in which is finds itself. The important thing, for Orthodoxy, is that the content of the message never changes; rather, the way in which the content is communicated and made understandable is what changes. The West would be wise to reevaluate the underlying principles of the term dogma, along with reevaluating how it understands heresy in a relativistic age. The next section will discuss the importance of tradition within Orthodoxy and how that tradition can be applied in the process of contextualization.

318 David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 44. 319 “Once we start to wrestle with the teachings of the Church as if they are absolutely true, we realize that we might have to change.” Bouteneff, 20.

116

Orthodox Tradition and Contextualized Theology

Not unlike the term dogma, the term tradition has garnered a negative connotation over the last century. Roman Catholicism and some Protestant denominations still maintain the importance of tradition in the West; however, there are also many streams of

Protestantism that claim to be anti-traditional or non-traditional. What many of those who claim to be anti- or non-traditional do not realize is that they are participating in a tradition of their own. Much like the term dogma, the term tradition needs to be reevaluated and there needs to be a more thorough investigation into what tradition really implies. The Orthodox understanding of what tradition entails could be useful in helping to recover a true sense of what tradition is in the segments of the West that are anti- or non-traditional.

For the Orthodox, tradition is first and foremost historical reflection. As Hart puts it, “the most important function of historical reflection is to wake us from two complacent a forgetfulness and to recall us to a knowledge of things that should never be lost to memory.”320 Tradition is what allows us to stay connected to those who have gone before us. It allows us to remember the things that have been passed down in the church, through the centuries. “Sacred Tradition is the tradition which comes from the ancient

Church of Apostolic times.”321 For Orthodoxy, the teachings and practices of the church can be traced back to the apostles. The apostolic witness is the part of history that should not be lost to memory. The reason why this is important is stated clearly by Meyendorff when he says, “the apostles witnessed the event, and the apostolic tradition preserves its

320 Atheist Delusions, xiv. 321 Pomazansky, 35.

117 meaning and interprets its significance within the realities of later history.”322 The church, as it understands tradition, is passing on the witness of the apostles—the witness of those who experienced Jesus Christ in the flesh.

The importance of recognizing the importance of the history behind what the church teaches is largely tied up with the idea of tradition being something active, rather than passive. There are connotations in the contemporary scene that would indicate that traditions are simply followed because “that’s how things have always been done.”

However, for the Orthodox, tradition is more than a passive acceptance of the tradition.

“Tradition is an activity or dynamism; it is the ‘handing down’ or ‘handing over’ of faith and practice from one person to another, one generation to another.”323 Tradition is an active process of passing the beliefs and practices of the church on from person to person and generation to generation. It must be taught, but it also must be actively lived into.

This historical consciousness in regards to the apostolic witness is inherently important for the doing and evaluating of theology. As John Behr notes, “the interpretive character of theological statements forces us to take seriously the exegetical practices of the apostles and the early Christians following in their footsteps, in and through which doctrinal formulas were articulated.”324 The ways in which the apostles and those who followed after them read and interpreted scripture is part of the tradition, part of what should not be lost to memory. It is “as we turn again to the early witnesses,” that, “we will be challenged to rethink our approach to theology, its vocabulary, and the manner in

322 Clendenin, 84. 323 Bouteneff, 144. 324 Behr, 16-17.

118 which we read scripture.”325 Perhaps it should be asked: does the tradition need to change or do I?

Behr puts it succinctly when he says, “while Christians are called to live in this tradition, and to give it ever new expression, the tradition itself does not ‘grow’ or

‘develop’ into something else.”326 This is important to note in the conversation about contextualization. The tradition itself does not change; the ways in which the tradition is expressed is what changes based on context. The point in doing contextualization is to find the underlying truth(s) behind the tradition (or theology) and learn to express those in new ways, in any given cultural location.327 It is also more than a task of translating the gospel in each new context. There is a deeper core to each doctrine and practice of the church that must be located and that is to be communicated in new ways. It is more than the “what” that needs to be communicated; the “why” also must be communicated.328

This notion of tradition has been challenged in the past century. The concept of historical memory has been superseded by the individual. Modern philosophy developed the idea of the individual in such a way that historical memory was no longer viewed as important. What became important was the individual’s opinion. The idea that the church was where truth resided was replaced with the idea that each individual was responsible for their own truth. The impact of this on the West can be seen in the

325 Ibid., 15. 326 Ibid., 65. 327 Bouteneff notes this about the canons of the Church: “But the point finally is not whether the canons are context-specific or timeless; rather, the responsibility is on those who apply the canons today to search out the timeless truth behind them.” Bouteneff, 181. 328 “It’s not just a matter of translation. It’s a matter of finding the meaning in the formulation.” Ibid., 206

119 splintering of the Western church into Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, and

Protestantism, and then in the splintering of Protestantism into the vast number of denominations that exist today. The individual no longer had to conform to the church; rather, the church had to conform to the individual.

The importance of consensus in Orthodoxy can be traced to its historical memory.

As Michael Pomazansky, speaking of Patristic theologians, puts it: “They did not trust themselves, but waited for the universal voice of the Church.”329 For the Patristic era, the consensus of the church about theological doctrine mattered more than any individual theologian’s theological ideas. As can be seen in the fight against Arianism in the fourth century, the entire church—not just those who were writing and making theological definitions—was responsible for the determining of truth. The bishops who were at the councils may have set the parameters for what defined orthodoxy, but if the people of the church disagreed with the statements of the bishops, made at the councils, the statements would have to be reevaluated. “The community of faith, the Church as a whole, accepts or rejects a decision of its bishops.”330 For Orthodoxy, no individual has the authority to determine what truth is—the entire community must come to a consensus.

The elevation of the individual in the West has gotten us to where we are now, especially as it relates to contextual theology. Much of the “cultural” type of contextual theology is seen as based on personal experience.331 It is within the elevation of the

329 Pomazansky, 35. 330 Donald Fairbairn, Eastern Orthodoxy Through Western Eyes (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 12. 331 While it is true that many contextual theologians are addressing concerns of praxis and how praxis has oppressed peoples, the changing of theology is done outside of the parameters of the tradition to which they belong. Theology is being changed based on the experience of oppression—theology is being blamed for the experience of oppression. While it is true that certain theological doctrines have been manipulated in

120 individual and one’s personal experience that theology has become subjective, relative.

However, as Meyendorff says, “the ecclesial and theologically ‘realistic’ context of the

Orthodox tradition…does not allow the reduction of truth to subjective, personal experience.”332 As noted above, Orthodoxy recognizes that reality as we experience it is not reality as it is meant to be. It has been distorted by the fall. It is because of this that

Bouteneff can say, “we know that our individual thinking, and even to an extent our corporate thinking, is subject to error and even to delusion, and therefore we submit our thinking to the council of the Church.”333 In Orthodoxy, the individual submits to an authority outside themselves. No individual experience has authority over the communal experience found in the church. As David W. Fagerberg notes: “The ‘experience’ is possessed by the whole Church, and this is Tradition. It is the normative, apostolic experience of the risen Christ in the Spirit, by which and to which we catechize and conform our personal experiences.”334 The individual is to conform themselves to the church and its teachings; the church and its teachings do not conform to the individual.

This discussion of the consensus being more important than the individual also points us to one of the other faults of theological development in the West. Namely, the limiting of theological definitions and salvation to intellectual assent to said theological definitions. For Orthodoxy, theology is important in a salvific way; theology is not just about propositional truth and intellectual assent to propositional truth; rather, theology

ways that allow for oppression, the theology itself does not always need to change. Rather, and this is what I think contextual theologians need to be praised for, the churches need to be challenged to evaluate whether their theology corresponds with how they act. 332 Clendenin, 85. 333 Bouteneff, 112. 334 Fagerberg, 185.

121 and the Christian life are bound up with the community.335 As Meyendorff puts it: “the

Christian faith does not consist only in the rational acceptance of certain propositional truths that can be spelled out in writing, but that it implies a continuous living communion with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, an experience of new life which is not individual or subjective, but sacramental and common to all the baptized.”336 For

Orthodoxy, theology cannot be boiled down to a science that is dependent on rational propositional truths, “it also presupposes living in communion with God and people, in

Christ and the Spirit, within the community of the church.”337

Despite all of this, there is room for theological opinion within Orthodoxy. As

Pomazansky points out, “in theology, attention is also given to certain private opinions of the Holy Fathers or teachers of the Church on questions which have not been precisely defined and accepted by the whole Church.”338 In the discussion of theological opinion,

Orthodoxy allows for different views on things which the church has not made a definitive teaching. The important thing to note here is that the theologoumena must not contradict the official teachings of the church. If a theologoumenon contradicts the consensus of the church on another theological matter, it must be rejected.339

335 This statement is more indicative of common practice and understanding amongst the laity rather than from the academy and official stances of Western churches. There has long been an understanding, whether officially taught or not, that one only has to intellectually assent to the idea of Christ as your personal savior in order to be “saved” in much of Western Christianity. Contextual theologians are actually helping in the reversal of this understanding with their emphasis on right practice. 336 Clendenin, 84. 337 Ibid., 83. 338 Pomazansky, 43. 339 “The Orthodox Christian is free to accept those theologoumena of the Holy Fathers that can be harmonized with the consensus of Patristic teaching. Most theologoumena fall in this category. One must reject only those theologoumena that clearly contradict the Patristic consensus—and especially those that have been condemned by a Church council…” Ibid.

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As is evident, tradition—as historical memory—is one of the foundations of

Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is deeply concerned with upholding what the church has always proclaimed. The West could learn from Orthodoxy in this regard: “Christians ought not to surrender the past but should instead deepen their own collective memory of what the gospel has been in human history.”340 In doing “contextualized” theology, it is important to recall the memory of the past, in the church, and to find creative ways in which to bring the historical memory into the present.

Nature and the Natural

In this section, I will be addressing the main concern I noted in chapter one— namely, that reality as we experience is not reality as it is meant to be. This will involve a brief discussion of the differences between the East and West on the conception of sin and move into how those differences impact the understanding of humanity’s nature. The way that Orthodoxy views nature and the natural have a profound impact on how

Orthodoxy views reality as we experience it and how reality is meant to be.

In speaking of the differences between East and West in the conception of sin,

Meyendorff says, “while the Latins took for granted their legalistic approach to divine justice—which, according to them, requires a retribution for every sinful act—the Greeks interpreted sin less in terms of the acts committed than in terms of a moral and spiritual

340 Atheist Delusions, 17. While, certainly, there are Western churches that do hold to a certain historical continuity, it is a different sort of historical continuity. The Roman Catholic Church has made additions to dogma after its split with the Eastern churches that the East would not have approved of—it is a step away from the historical continuity held within the East. While Patristic theology is regaining importance in many Protestant churches, the historical continuity of many Protestant churches is often more concerned with a continuity with the founder(s) of their church. It is also important to note that many contextual theologians do emphasize bringing historical memory into the present, as seen in Gutiérrez’s theology and the emphasis on praxis.

123 disease which was to be healed by divine forbearance and love.”341 Thus, for Orthodoxy, humanity is seen as sick and in need of a cure. That cure was provided in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Sin is not seen as something that needs to be punished but as a condition that needs to be healed. Meyendorff notes,

“One can actually see in the main characteristic of Eastern Christianity, in its ethical and social attitudes, is to consider man as already redeemed and glorified in Christ; by contrast, Western Christendom has traditionally understood the present state of humanity in both a more realistic and a more pessimistic way: though redeemed and ‘justified’ in the eyes of God by the sacrifice of the cross, man remains a sinner.”342

The differences between East and West when it comes to understanding sin has had a profound impact on how each has viewed human nature, and subsequently reality as we experience it. For the West, the legalistic notion of sin has resulted in the “what” of sin.

What I mean by this is that it is in the West that there is an emphasis on “do not do.”

However, in the East, the emphasis is more on the “why.” It is not simply a “do not do” this, but a why do we not do this. It is in our sinful acts that we act contrary to our nature; it is through doing the “right” that we act in accordance with our nature and grow more into our original nature, before the fall. Sin, as conceived by the East, is that which separates us from communion with God and with our fellow human beings. It is that separation that was overcome in Jesus Christ; the results of which—the ability for humanity to restore its original nature, that of living in communion with God and humanity—have been passed on to the rest of humanity.

341 Meyendorff, 220. Meyendorff may be generalizing and oversimplifying the differences in this statement. There have been and continue to be theologians in the West that do speak of salvation as healing. However, the overall emphasis that East and West place has tended towards one pole or the other, legalistic or medical metaphors for salvation. 342 Ibid., 215.

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Somewhere along the line, some theologians in the West began accepting fallen, sinful nature as natural, forgetting that in our current state human nature in its fallen state is a corrupted nature. Corrupted nature is not natural. In order for humanity to actually be natural it has to be living in communion with God. Humanity was only truly natural before the fall, before humanity’s alienation from God. It was in the person of Jesus

Christ that the alienation was overcome; in Christ’s two natures, human and divine, humanity’s alienation from God was healed. However, it is up to humanity to live into the natural, into reality as it should be rather than into reality as it is now.

It is in the differences in how the East and West understand salvation that we can begin to approach the issue of the real natural. In its approach to sin, the West seems to be content with the idea that humanity will always be sinful; there is nothing a person can do to avoid being sinful. For Orthodoxy, as Fairbairn puts it, “Christian life is in part a process of developing the mind of Christ, of bringing one’s convictions more and more into line with the truth of Scripture.”343 This is the process of salvation: to conform oneself to Christ. Orthodoxy does not deny that humanity is sinful. The difference is that

Orthodoxy does not see humanity as sinful as something natural. As Lossky puts it, “his nature having become detached from God, becomes non-natural, anti-natural.”344

Salvation is overcoming the detachment from God and actually becoming more human; who we are now is non-fully human, not actually natural. It is in becoming more like

343 Fairbairn, 131. 344 Lossky, 82.

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Christ—the first true or natural human being—that we become more fully human, more natural.345

How one views the natural has a profound impact on how one views the relationship between Christianity and the world around it; for the purpose of this thesis, the relationship between theology and culture. To Orthodoxy, to be living in communion with God, to be becoming more fully human, means to no longer be of this world.

However, as Christians, we are called to still be in the world. As Schmemann puts it, “to be fully in the world, to be of any ‘use’ to it, to fulfill their historical, cosmic and any other ‘function,’ the Church and the Christian must be at the same time totally not of this world.”346 It is in the process of being in the world that the East suggests that Christianity fulfills its calling, that Christians pursue their salvation. As opposed to the legalistic conception of salvation, Orthodoxy would say, “Christ bequeaths the church neither in simple ethical principles nor ‘facts’ of heaven, but a way of being in the world, a form that must be answered ‘gracefully.’”347 Our salvation begins in this life, as we participate in the world, yet have our home in an “other” world. While much of the ecclesiology in the West has located and accepted the church’s role in the world as simply something that is part of the world (a worldly institution or cultural product), the Eastern church has maintained its identity as that which is something other than this world, yet operates within this world. As Hart notes, “we all inhabit cultural and linguistic worlds that determine to a great extent what we think important, how we see reality, what

345 “That Christ is the first true human being, and that we ourselves only become fully human in his stature, is a point made by many Christian writers across the centuries.” Behr, 108. 346 Schmemann, 64. 347 Beauty of the Infinite, 338.

126 fundamental premises we assume, and even what we most deeply desire. We are not entirely confined to these worlds—we are living souls, not merely machines—but it requires considerable effort to see beyond their horizons.”348 While we may inhabit different cultural and linguistic worlds, Orthodoxy proposes that we can transcend these cultural and linguistic worlds, even if it is a struggle. Where we find ourselves in transcending our cultural location, as Christians, is in the Kingdom of God. It is to this topic that I now turn.

Orthodoxy and the Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God seemed to always be on the lips of Jesus. It was in his incarnation that the Kingdom of God began breaking into the world; it continues to break into the world today through Christ’s body, the church. The church should be the sign of the Kingdom’s presence in the world; it should represent an alternative reality to the one which we experience in the world. As Christians, we belong to the alternative reality that is the Kingdom of God, while we are called to live in the world. In this section I will discuss the Orthodox understanding of the Kingdom of God and its impact on

“contextualized” theology.

When one begins looking at the history of the understanding of the Kingdom of

God, it does not take long to find examples of how the church viewed itself as an alternative reality. The evidence surfaces early on in the Roman persecution of

Christians. As Hart notes:

348 Atheist Delusions, 19.

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“Christians were…enemies of society, impious, subversive, and irrational; and it was no more than civic prudence to despise them for refusing to honor the gods of their ancestors, for scorning the common good, and for advancing the grotesque and shameful claim that all gods and spirits had been made subject to a crucified criminal from Galilee—one who during his life had consorted with peasants and harlots, lepers and lunatics.”349

The world rejected Christianity early on in its history. Christians recognized that they belonged to something else; they recognized that the Kingdom of God was their true home and that it called them to something greater than the world. “To become a

Christian was to renounce a very great deal of what one had known and been to that point, in order to be joined to a new reality, the demands of which were absolute; it was to depart from one world, with an irrevocable finality, and to enter another.”350

With the understanding of the Kingdom of God being a new reality, something that was breaking into the world through the actions of the church, came a call to the world to conform to the standards of the Kingdom. As Hart points out, “the Christian vision of reality was nothing less than…a ‘transvaluation of all values,’ a complete revision of the moral and conceptual categories by which human beings were to understand themselves and one another and their place within the world.”351 Early

Christians recognized that they were to be conformed to the Kingdom of God and its new reality—reality as it should be rather than the reality as it is experienced in the world.

The early Christians recognized that they must reject worldly values that did not coincide with the values of the Kingdom.

349 Ibid., 115. 350 Ibid., 111. 351 Ibid., 171.

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Early Christians also recognized the church as the embodiment of this new reality.

The church did not belong to the world; rather, it was its own polis. Hart says that, “the church—governed by its own laws, acknowledging no rival allegiances—aimed at becoming a universal people, a universal race, more universal than any empire of gods or men, and subject only to Christ.”352 It was in the church that Christians gained their true identity, first and foremost as belonging to the Kingdom of God. But there are points in undertaking the task of contextualizing theology that contemporary theologians move away from the church’s earlier conviction and give pride of place to categories such as race or ethnicity, now seen as prior to their identity as Christianity. Orthodoxy has lost this sense of identity as well, as I will discuss in the next section. The idea that there need to be Asian, Black, Feminist theologies runs counter to the identity that Christians have in the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom, Christians are a universal race, a universal people that do not uphold social constructions of the world that are used to divide humanity.353

Somewhere along the way Christianity lost this idea of the Kingdom of God; most would probably contribute the loss of this idea to the emergence of Christianity as the official “religion” of the Roman Empire. I will discuss Orthodoxy’s loss of this idea in the following section, so for now I will be speaking about how the West lost the idea.

Schmemann, speaking about the theological development of the West—specifically about the synthesis of the worldly kingdom and the Kingdom of God—says, “the medieval

Christian synthesis in the Latin West was based indeed on a progressive elimination of

352 Ibid., 116. 353 This is a proposal of the ideal and does not express reality as we experience it. The appearance of theologies such as Black, Latino/a, Asian come from the fact that non-white and non-male people have experienced oppression and the failure of the church to recognize a universal humanity.

129 the Early Christian notion of the Kingdom of God, elimination, of course, not of the term itself but of its initial Christian understanding, as the antinomical presence in ‘this world’ of the ‘world to come,’ and of the tension implied in that antinomy.”354 Schmemann points to a change in eschatology as the point of departure for the West. He notes that,

“eschatology…became exclusively ‘futuristic,’ the Kingdom of God a reality only ‘to come’ but not to be experienced now as the new life in the Holy Spirit, as a real anticipation of the new creation.”355

This change in eschatology, from the idea that the reality of the Kingdom of God can be experienced in the here and now, has changed how the West views reality as we experience it now. When one ceases to see the Kingdom of God as its own polis, separate from the worldly polis, one fails to take seriously the claims of Jesus that the

Kingdom of God is at hand. The Kingdom of God began breaking into the world through the incarnation of the Son of God and continues to break into the world through his continued incarnation in the body of Christ, the church. As Schmemann says, “by abandoning this eschatological perspective, the West rejected in fact the possibility of any real ‘interpenetration’ of the Church and the world, or, in theological terms, of the world’s real sanctification.”356 In other words, the church became something that is simply worldly, no longer an incarnation of Christ in the world representing the breaking into the world of the Kingdom of God.

354 Schmemann, 59. 355 Ibid., 60. Schmemann is providing a generalization here, and it should be noted that not all Western churches or theologians have a futuristic eschatology. In fact, eschatology has been experiencing a resurgence in recent years; a resurgence that is moving back toward a less futuristic eschatology. 356 Ibid., 61.

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Contrary to an understanding of the church as a worldly institution, Orthodoxy understands the church as something that exists alongside the world, offering a new or alternative reality. Schmemann notes that, “the function of the Church in the world is to make present within it the eschaton, to manifest the Kingdom of God as the ultimate term of reference, and thus to relate to it the whole life of man and of his world.”357 The church, in belonging to the Kingdom of God rather than to the world, is the bearer of the world to come; it allows the world to see reality as it should be rather than reality as we experience it in the world. “What the world needs…is above all a new experience of the world itself, of life itself in its personal and social, cosmical and eschatological dimensions.”358

The new experience of the world is not the experience of some “other” world; rather, it is the experience of the world as it is meant to be. What the church brings to the world is an alternative reality, the renewed, restored creation. It is through communion with God, in the church as the bearer of the Kingdom of God, that creation is transformed, renewed. As Schmemann puts it: “Here the Church was viewed primarily not as ‘power’ or ‘jurisdiction,’ but as a sacramental organism whose function and purpose is to reveal, manifest and communicate the Kingdom of God, to communicate it as Truth, Grace and Communion with God and thus to fulfill the Church as the Body of

Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.”359

357 Ibid., 83. 358 Ibid., 22. 359 Ibid., 38-39. In general, I believe Schmemann oversimplified the West’s eschatology. Certainly there have been theologians in the West who have an eschatology much more similar to the Orthodox viewpoint than what Schmemann gives them credit for. However, what I believe separates the general Western eschatology from that of the Eastern churches can be seen in Schmemanns’s proposal as seeing the Church

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For Orthodoxy, then, the church as the manifestation of the Kingdom of God may represent a new reality, a new world, but it is not something that can be isolated from the world. Rather, it operates in the world as something alternative to the reality of the world, calling the world to the alternative reality. As Schmemann notes of the Patristic theologians: “Nowhere in them does one find any longing for a peaceful isolation of the

Church into a purely ‘spiritual’ sphere, a separation from the world and its ‘worries.’”360

From the beginning, Christians knew that they were meant to be in the world, calling the world to come and reside in the Kingdom of God. The world as we experience it outside of the Kingdom of God is not how it was meant to be—it lacks an understanding of its true meaning. However, “the Church…is the presence of the Kingdom in the midst of history, so that history can find its meaning.”361 The church exists in the world—not as something of the world—in order to call the world to its true meaning, to live in communion with God and the rest of creation.

It would be unfair to many contextual theologians to not mention that the general tendency in contextual theology is to reverse the trend of over-spiritualizing the eschatological Kingdom of God. However, the danger within many of the “cultural” type of contextual theologies is an over-temporalizing of the Kingdom of God. In the pursuit of worldly justice, there is a risk in linking the Kingdom of God and the worldly kingdom(s) too closely. Contextual theologians are providing the West with much

as a sacramental organism. While there are theologians in the West who would agree with Schmemann’s proposal and identify the church as a sacramental organism, unfortunately, the scope of this thesis does not allow the room to further evaluate the nuances of various eschatologies and their impact on the sacramental aspect of the church. 360 Ibid., 33. 361 Fagerberg, 198.

132 needed correction on this subject, but they must be careful to not go too far in their correction.

Theology will be useless to the world unless theologians can once again regain this understanding of the Kingdom of God.362 Without this understanding of the church as the manifestation of the Kingdom of God theology has sought to conform itself to the world’s standards. In its search for relevancy, Christianity has decided to conform itself to the world rather than calling the world to conform to the Kingdom of God.

Theologians have accepted reality as it is experienced in the world as reality as it should be. However, reality as it should be is the Kingdom of God, which requires a conformity to the Kingdom of God. As Hart notes, “the church exists in order to become the counterhistory, nature restored, the alternative way of being that Christ opens up: the way of return.”363 There are two competing histories operative in the same sphere: one is the worldly history that is less than natural; the second is history seen through the Kingdom of God that is truly natural. This means, as Hart says,

“that the church cannot conceive of itself as an institution within which a larger society, as a pillar of society, culture, and civic order, or as a spiritual association that commands an allegiance simply in addition to the allegiance its members of the powers of the wider world. The church is no less…than a politics, a society, another country, a new pattern of communal being meant not so much to complement the civic constitution of secular society as to displace it.”364

362 “No theological reflection on the world will be of any help, no theological reflection on the world will be possible unless we rediscover, make truly ours again, that reality which alone constitutes the Church and is the source of her faith, of her life and therefore of her theology: the reality of the Kingdom of God.” Schmemann, 83. 363 Beauty of the Infinite, 327. 364 Ibid., 339-340.

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The church and its theology must recognize its true location. The church is not something of this world; rather, it is the presence of the “world to come” in the present.

The church is its own society, calling those in the world to join this alternate society.

With this renewed understanding of the Kingdom of God as alternative reality the

“cultural” type of contextual theology can be seen for what it is: a conformity to the world around it.

The Failures of Orthodoxy

I have been presenting Orthodoxy in a positive light, not discussing the failures of

Orthodoxy in the same way I have discussed the failures of much of Western

Christianity. However, I have briefly mentioned one of the areas in which Orthodoxy could stand to improve. While Orthodoxy has a history of saying the right things when it comes to contextualization, in practice there are some issues with how it has carried out what it claims. One of the biggest issues facing Orthodoxy today is nationalism and ethnocentrism. In this section I will discuss Orthodoxy’s problem with nationalism and ethnocentrism and its impact on the concept of “contextualized” theology. I will also briefly touch on another weakness in Orthodox theology: the inability to appropriate

Patristic theological method in the doing of contemporary theology. In some segments, the Fathers of the church, along with their theology, are seen as the final authoritative word on all things.

In the United States the Orthodox church is wrestling with what to do in regards to jurisdiction. The Orthodox diaspora in the U.S. has led to numerous instances of jurisdictional overlap. In any given large city one may find a Greek parish, an

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Antiochian parish, a Ukrainian parish, a Russian parish, or any other parish that is identified by the Patriarchate to which it belongs outside of the U.S. While I recognize the importance of maintaining some sort of cultural identity from where one came from, the ethnic lines which divide the many Orthodox churches in the U.S. have hindered

Orthodoxy in the West. For a large part of its history in the U.S., Orthodox churches continued to use the language from which their church originated in their services. Some of this has changed recently, as the Antiochian parishes largely use English in their services and many Greek parishes are beginning to use more English in their services as well. However, in my interactions with other Orthodox Christians, it appears that many of the other jurisdictions continue to use their home-country’s language, even if the younger generations do not still speak the language. This trend, coupled with the inability of the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas to make progress of uniting the churches of North America into one jurisdiction, is a theological problem.

The history of Orthodox mission activity shows its willingness to translate the gospel and services of the church into the native language of cultural locations they found themselves in. As Meyendorff notes, “the deliberate policy of translation implied a mission evolving into the rapid ‘indigenization’ of the Church, which became an integral part of the various national churches.”365 Orthodoxy contributed to the existence of national churches—which are not inherently problematic. The problem arises when those national churches so closely associate the church with their culture. This is the same problem that the West faced when it practiced cultural domination in the colonization of

365 Meyendorff, 218.

135 the Americas. The culture is seen as inherently Christian and, therefore, the cultural identity of a person is viewed as equal to the person’s identity as a Christian. For many

Orthodox Christians, it is normal to view one’s culture as something that needs to be preserved, rather than the gospel being preserved and communicated in ways that the new culture can understand. Schmemann states the problem clearly when he says,

“that ecclesiastically the diaspora has resulted in the coexistence on the same territories within the same cities, of a dozen of ‘national’ or ‘ethnic’ jurisdictions, is considered by an overwhelming majority of the Orthodox people as something perfectly normal, as expressive of the very essence of that diaspora whose main vocation, as everyone knows and proudly proclaims, is the preservation of the various ‘cultural heritages’ proper to each ‘Orthodox world.’”366

However, it should not be normal; it operates in contradiction to how the church has historically settled in new lands. The bishops, along with the people of the church, need to realize that this is not how the church is supposed to exist. The church is to be the manifestation of the world to come, the world in which all divisions are destroyed. As

Donald Fairbairn notes, “the Church is the gathered community of the faithful in a single place for the purpose of reflecting the future age when division and imperfection will be overcome, when all creation will be united to God. Because of this community, any national divisions…are inappropriate within the Church.”367 In order for Orthodoxy to do “contextualized” theology, it must realize that its failures in jurisdictional issues are a theological issue that must be addressed.

The above problem with jurisdictional issues is one that the church must look back in its history to gain insight on how to move forward. It should be apparent at this

366 Schmemann, 13. 367 Fairbairn, 146.

136 point in this chapter that Orthodoxy holds the Patristic era in high esteem. However, the level of authority given to the Patristic theologians can pose a problem. As Pantelis

Kalaitzidis points out: “just as some Protestant churches still suffer from a certain level of fundamentalism regarding the Bible or biblical texts, the Orthodox Church, for its part, often finds itself trapped and frozen in a ‘fundamentalism of tradition’ or in a

‘fundamentalism of the Fathers.’”368 There are instances where Orthodox Christians place too much authority on the way things have been done or said in the past. The idea that “that is the way we have always done things” can be a hindrance to contemporary

Orthodox theology and practice. It is in this attitude that one can see the failure of

Orthodoxy to do “contextualized” theology today.

In this chapter I have discussed the way in which I believe Western churches could learn from Eastern Orthodoxy as it relates to the relationship between theology and culture. Eastern Orthodoxy has had far greater theological continuity than the Western church(es) that split from the East in the eleventh century. The value placed on theological continuity in the East is what many in the West seem to have forgotten. In the place of theological continuity many in the West have fallen under the spell of pluralistic relativity when it comes to theology. What the East has to offer is a recognition that heresy exists, that Dogma has an importance that should not be discarded, that we have examples of how to do “contextualized” theology by looking at the Church Fathers of the first several centuries of the church, and the recognition that the

368 Pantelis Kalaitzidis, “From the ‘Return to the Fathers’ to the Need for a Modern Orthodox Theology,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 54: 1 (2010): 8.

137 church is supposed to be a representative of an alternative reality. Despite what

Orthodoxy has to offer, it has some things it must correct alongside Western churches.

Its capitulation with social constructs such as race and ethnicity have brought about poor theological anthropology and mission practice. Orthodoxy must also be careful to maintain the spirit of Patristic theology, rather than importing exact copies of Patristic theology to new cultural contexts. Patristic theologians were doing “contextualized” theology, using the cultural context they found themselves in to explain the Gospel;

Orthodoxy must remember that the content of Patristic theology can be spoken in new languages and cultural symbols. In the end, Orthodoxy has much to offer the West and can join the West in attempting to fix areas of trouble that both share.

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Conclusion:

In Pursuit of Contextualized Theology

All theology is not contextual. Rather, all theology is able to be contextualized.

There is indeed a theology that is universal, trans-cultural. The task of the church is not to change the content of that theology in order to make it relevant in any given culture; the task of the church is to contextualize the content of that theology so that it may be communicated in a way that makes it comprehensible to any given culture.

In an age that uplifts plurality and the freedom of the individual to have their own truth, Christianity should be representing an alternative reality, one that says there is one truth. Dogmas and doctrines may not be the truth within themselves, but they contain the content of the revelation of the truth. There is a reason that the early church found itself having Ecumenical Councils—the church needed to make sure people knew what the truth was, as opposed to the falsehood found within heresy. There is such a thing as heresy. The task of the church is to maintain that if two theological opinions contradict each other they cannot both be correct.

While there is much of value within many contextual theologies, in many ways they are forcing the church to bow to the culture around them—the production of

“cultural” theologies as opposed to “contextualized” theologies. Culture has become the magisterial source for determining what is and is not true. However, the church should continue to maintain a stance that says that the culture is only able to serve the church in the doing and evaluating of theology. There must be a willingness on the part of the church to allow for the circumstance of the world’s rejection of the gospel. In the

139 church’s search for relevancy it has lost sight of the fact that not everyone will accept the gospel. The church cannot lose sight of its identity as an alternative reality to what is experienced in the world. In an attempt to allow for anyone to accept the gospel, churches have lost their identity as an alternative reality, allowing for theological relativity. This has led to a watering-down of the gospel message, and subsequent theology. At some point, forgetting its identity as an alternative reality, the church started telling people they can believe (almost) whatever they want, as long as they keep coming to church.369

What I have argued for in this thesis is that there is a truth that transcends culture.

The church would be wise to look back at its early history—specifically the Early Church

Fathers—in order to gain a better understanding on how theology should be communicated in each new context. The use of Greek Philosophy by many of the earliest theologians was not a corruption of Christianity, unlike much of the “cultural” type of contextual theology. Rather, the philosophy (and culture) itself was Christianized, absorbing and adapting new meanings where need be. The early theologians used the culture around them, changing it when necessary, in order to make the gospel more intelligible to the culture it found itself in. The church today must find its creative ability in order to follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before. It will not be easy, and no theologian will be able to produce a theology completely free from the culture they find themselves in. However, it is up to the church and the theologians of the church to begin to be more discerning in adherence to the truth that was, the truth that is, and the truth that will be—the revelation of Jesus Christ. It will be able to do so if it focuses on

369 One has to wonder if the emergence of the church as a business has played a role in the ever-widening acceptance of theological pluralism.

140 doing the “contextualized” type of contextual theology and limiting the “cultural” type of contextual theology.

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