If the Apostles Had Complete Disdain for Contextualization, They Had a Strange Way of Showing It
I am taking a course with led by Tom Steffen. Tom shared a quote from John MacArthur. I don’t know the exact source, but I assume it is pretty accurate.
The apostles went out with an absolute disdain for contextualizaation. The modern drive for cultural contextualization is a curse, because people are wasting their time trying to figure out clever ways to draw in the elect. Contextualization is “zip-code ministry.” The message of Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is transcendent. It goes beyond its immediate culture or sub-culture. It crosses the world, and ignores the nuances of culture. It never descends to clothing or musical style, as if that had anything to do with the message of the Gospel…. Does your message ignore the trends and superficial icons of culture, and bring heaven down in its transcendent reality? Can you take your sermons and preach them anywhere?
-John MacArthur
It is an interesting quote. I haven’t really listened to John MacArthur in decades so I am not sure how to read it. Logically, it is all over the place, and I had always remembered him as being more…. ummm logical, I guess? The most obvious one is that even if one defines the Gospel so narrowly defined as to be seen as completely supracultural, that in no way implies that one can “take your sermons and preach them anywhere?” If this quote is viewed as being part of a sermon, it exists within a context where it makes sense. In a different setting, this sermon would be completely confusing or meaningless.
I don’t really want to address the question of whether the Gospel is above culture or not. Part of that depends on where one places the boundaries around what one calls the gospel. I suppose one could make the boundaries narrow enough that one can ignore the “nuances of culture,” but the gospel came to us from God through culture. The language and metaphors make sense within the culture. A broad understanding of the gospel cannot be walled off from culture.
My big question is in the first line. Is it true that “the apostles went out with an absolute disdain for contextualization?” If MacArthur is referring to Acts chapter 1, I suppose there may have been some truth to it. The apostles definitely thought of themselves as Jews reaching out to Jews with the Jewish message of Christ. Even if Acts 1:8 said that they would go to the ends of the earth, I don’t think they saw themselves as adjusting their message or themselves. However, the apostles soon did make adjustments. Acts 15 was a major adjustment. The issue of meat sacrificed to idols was an issue that had little relevance to the apostles until they crossed into Greek and Roman societies. Their response did not ignore the “nuances of culture.” The apostles chose to write down God’s revelation in Koine Greek and used a number of “Gentile” metaphors (hades, tartarus, Logos, Roman adoption, and more) to express aspects of the gospel message.
This is contextualization. But MacArthur certainly is aware of the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles. I assume it is a bit of a question of definition. The term “contextualization” only goes back to the 1970s. It could be thought of as coined by Shoki Coe related to a theological forum of the World Council of Churches. There are a lot of terms that overlap— contextualization, localization, indigenization, accommodation, and more. Many Evangelicals don’t like the term “accommodation” because of its roots in Roman Catholic thought. Many Evangelicals don’t like the term “contextualization” because of its connection to the WCC and conciliar missions. Still, I believe a majority of Evangelical missiologists and those interested in missions have come around to using the term “contextualization”— but in doing so have chosen to define this fairly broad term in a way that is not quite in touch with its original use. This is nothing new. The term “holism” is another term of the 20th century that Evangelicals have chosen to embrace, with modest adjustments to the definition from its original meaning.
But here is the deal. John MacArthur was clearly writing to Evangelical Christians. It seems like MacArthur is using the definition for contextualization of the WCC. At least that is the only way I can see the paragraph making sense. But if that is the case, he should have been using the Evangelical understanding of contextualization. Yes, some definitions of the word come much closer to a relavistic understanding of faith, or even syncretism, but in the context of the writing, the definition that needed to be used was far from this.
If he was writing to Evangelicals and using a word commonly used by Evangelicals but attaching a non-Evangelical definition to it— well, that is a true failure to contextualize.
In answer to the title question… The apostles clearly sought not to syncretize their faith. They did not seek to relativze the gospel of Christ as just another set of ideas in a world of ideas. However, they did try to answer the questions of other cultures with the message of Jesus utilizing the language and symbols of that culture.
