Torrance: Communicating the Gospel
Here is a quote from T. F. Torrance’s Lecture 5 Q & A in 1981 at Fuller Theological Seminary (http://www.gci.org/av/tftaudio):
“Since the second World War particularly, all our teachers of homiletics with some exception all around the world have said, ‘now look you’ve got to preach to people in terms that they already know, you communicate the Gospel in terms of the patterns of society and the paradigms of society that they already know,’ so what have we done? We’ve built into the Church, and into the Gospel, and theology a continuing obsolescence. Now, that is where we have damaged the whole relation of the Church to modern culture.
But you take the Fathers, what did they do? They had the exactly the same problems, so they set about the colossal task of reconstructing the whole foundations of culture, evangelizing them, that is what we’ve got to do today.”
One of the reasons I like this quote so much is because I’ve heard so much about contextualization of the Gospel (and this is right and good in itself). Yet, here is a theologian who is calling for deeper missiological depth and reflection. He challenges the common idea that being missional is all about contextualization, and points us to the need for evangelizing the very foundations of culture(s)–to bring Gospel transformation to culture(s), rather than simply wrapping the Gospel in cultural forms.
Thoughts?
Posted on October 17, 2011, in Ministry, Theology and tagged contextualization, Culture, evangelism, Gospel, Homiletics, missiology, missions, Preaching, Thomas F. Torrance. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
But contextualization isn’t the goal, it’s the means. You start with contextualization in order to meet people where they are and in terms they understand. Then, you take them to another place and build a new foundation. Kindergarteners learn addition and subtraction in terms of apples given and eaten, in order that someday they can understand algebra in terms of x and y without still talking about apples.
I agree Kirk!
I guess Torrance is targeting an approach that implements a “weak” form of contextualization, which solely stuffs the Gospel into contemporary culture without addressing the very foundations of the culture itself. In the larger context of his talk, he is providing a rationale for the need of Christians to engage in the disciplines of philosophy and theology, to bring the light of God’s self-revelation to foundational dimensions of culture (Metaphysics, epistemology, “Science,” etc.). So, not only do people need to be “evangelized,” but also cultures themselves.
Thanks for this post. I have these lectures on Torrance. I wonder if you know of any more audio lectures (Faith and Theology has a link, but it is broken).
Regards,
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