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 …
Category: Contextualization
Missions and its role interacting with human culture.
The “Golden Mean” Theory of Creating Cultic Groups
Yesterday I was riding with other faculty to a resort on the outskirts of Davao City (Mindanao). We were talking about a couple of religious groups that spun off of Christianity to the point that they could not be called orthodox, and perhaps not even Christian. Some would call them cults... but I like to …
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Excerpt from my Chapter on Localization of Theology
The following is an excerpt of a chapter that I am writing for a compilation of works that relate the Filipino theology. Along with writing one chapter, I am co-editor. Hopefully it will be available by the end of the year. It is a bit unusual in that close to half of the book is …
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Purified, Strenthened, Permeated, Concretized and Actualized Cultural Values
My daughters attended a Catholic University here in the Philippines, and Religious education was part of the curriculum. My daughters found some of the classes interesting and valuable... others drab and dull. It seems like the interest and investment of the instructors in their topic tended to rub off on the students. Anyway, they gave …
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Contextual Biblical Theology Quote
I have been reading Grenz and Olson's book, "Who Needs Theology?" and found that they have a nice section of contextual theology. The following is a quote addressing the question of whether contextualization of theology should start from the Bible, as opposed to starting from culture. (I am reading the Kindle version, so I don't …
Maintaining Otherness. Why Do People Fail to Adapt to a New Culture?
I want to focus on one reason for failing to adapt to a new culture, but before I do, I suppose I should list some other reasons first. #1. Unintentional Ethnocentrism. This is the belief that "Our Way is the Only Way." This may be unintentional because the person comes from a monocultural setting, perhaps, …
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Thoughts on Localization of Theology
I have been working on a couple of articles. One of them I decided to remove a large section. I will include it here. Most of it comes from parts of my books on on Interreligious Dialoge and Theology of Mission (using some of the work of David Hesselgrave, Stephen Bevans, and Paul Hiebert). Theology …
Flavors of Localized Theology. Part 1
The following is s from a chapter I am writing on Localizing Theology. I decided to talk about "Flavors" of Localized Theology versus "Theories" or "Models" of Localized Theology (I will use "LW" forward). The reason is that if one speaks of Models of something, there is the temptation of people to assume that one …
Easter. It’s Okay… Really.
I wrote a post a few years ago called, "Christmas. It's Okay... Really." You can read it by CLICKING HERE. I am writing this during Holy Week (Maundy Thursday to be exact). Easter is just three days away. The points of my previous post also applies to this holiday. The former post had several points: …
Using Non-Christian Works to Lead People to Christ?
A friend of mine is writing a paper on the use of the Qur'an as part of the evangelization process of Muslims. In his research he got some pushback. Some feel that it is inappropriate for a Christian to use a non-canonical work (obviously using the term 'canonical' from the Christian rather than Muslim perspective). …
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