Lesslie Newbigin worked in India for more than 30 years. When he came back to England, he asked what his experience in the inculturation of the Gospel implied in the European context. He remarked that Europe was not simply a Christian continent anymore. Rather, secularisation had more or less succeeded, and the importance of Christian faith for the whole society was declining continuously.
Protestant theology in Europe is mainly shaped by the debates and disputes during the time of Reformation and in the 19th and 20th centuries. But times have changed. People in the 21st century think in other patterns, speak with other words, have other perceptions and images of human beings, the world and God. So the question is: how can the gospel be inculturated in our times?
Thinking about this, we have to regard the following insight by Lesslie Newbigin:
When you try to be relevant, you can fall into syncretism; when you try to avoid syncretism, you can become irrelevant.1
The question which arises out of this is: how can we tell the Gospel and speak about God so that we are involved in daily experiences without being completely absorbed by them?
Jesus as personal and living truth
A main question of the 19th and beginning 20th century was: what is true?
Science was booming and took more and more space in the common discourse as well as in daily lives. Engineers constructed skyscrapers, bridges, machines for the growing industries and daily work, based on physical rules. That was real. That was true. Concerning history, people asked: what is true?
Archaeology became significant.
The arts, however, lost some of their former influence. Therefore, theologians tried to save their message through arguing in patterns which were generally accepted. Some were looking for the historical Jesus. But they did not really find him. Others began to defend Biblical truth – the truth that they
1 Leslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greek, Grand Rapids (Michigan), Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986 (in the German version page 12).
understood as Biblical. That is characteristic of the later Evangelical movement. The Evangelicals are a very modern movement with a very modern question: what is true? And you can belong to it when you accept most of what it defines as truth. The main question for very different Christians was: what is true? And they gave very different answers.
The present main question is not: what is true? but: what is helpful? What is helpful for our lives? What helps us find orientation? What helps us to heal our wounds?
When we realize this, what does it mean to speak about Jesus as the truth?
Shall we simply continue to emphasize this and hope that people will accept it?
That would be not realizing what people feel and think is important. That would express an attitude to people that says: we are not really interested in you, your feelings, your hopes, your questions.
What would an alternative solution be? Shall we give up talking about Jesus as the truth? Some Christians claim that we need to take leave of such idioms.2 And they are not few, both the people who claim this, and the idioms that should be given up. Some Christians proclaim: “many ways lead to God.” You can be a Hindu or a Moslem or believe in Christ. It is important just to believe.
But inculturation does not mean to abandon essential idioms. It rather means to express them in new patterns, new figures, new ways of thinking and feeling. So, from my point of view, the question is not “Jesus alone” or “many ways lead to God” but: in which way can we understand “Jesus alone” anew and how can we realize that he will appreciate the people of all nations, who served Jesus - without knowing - by whatever they “did for one of the least of these brothers” for him (Mt 25:40)?
Connecting both questions I understand John 14:6 in the following way.
Jesus says: “Everyone who is on the way with me will discover the truth about him- / herself and about humankind and the world and will become true. So she and he will become alive. In no other way can no-one come to the father. “
Some may now think: is this the right truth? Especially someone from an Evangelical background may ask this question. But if we have a look at the Greek term we learn: it primarily means ‘true’ in a sense of real and truthful.
Only secondly it means truth in a sense of something you can find out, understand and have understood, something you can comprehend and conceive.
I think: really, Jesus is the truth. But he is it in another way than Evangelicals suggest. You cannot have understood him. You cannot ever finish understanding him. He is a person and not a doctrine. “The word became flesh”
(Jn 1:14) and not letters, books or doctrines. Jesus is alive and on the way.
When someone is on the way, he does not know in every detail what is facing him. Jesus met different people and was open to being interrupted in his plans, and for being surprised. His disciples learnt from and with Jesus. They began to
2 Cf. Klaus-Peter Jörns, Notwendige Abschiede. Auf dem Weg zu einem glaubwürdigen Christentum, Gütersloh, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2004.
get to know themselves in a better, deeper way. Peter recognized that he was a sinner when he met Jesus, not before. And after a long way with Jesus he had to learn that he could not keep his promise: “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” Jesus answered: “I tell you the truth …” (Mt 26: 33f.) Peter had to go the painful way of learning this truth: He denied Jesus. But the truth is as well: it is the same Peter who is the rock Jesus is building his church on (Mt 16: 18). It is the same Peter Jesus came to in Galilee. Jesus asked him three times: “Simon, do you love me? Do you truly love me?” … (Jn 21, 15-19) And Peter could feel that Jesus had forgiven him; that Jesus accepted, loved and reinstated him.
That happens not only to Peter but to many people on earth, in former times as well as in present and coming times. And my hope is that this also will happen on the way to the last judgement. I ask: could it be true that the last judgement is not irrevocable, but a serious and painful step on the way to heaven – serious and painful for Pentecostals and Evangelicals, for Lutherans and Calvinists, for Catholics and others alike – for people from other religions as well as for people without a religion?
If this is possible, you can understand John 14:6 in the way I described:
“Everyone who is on the way with me will discover the truth about him- / herself and about humankind and the world and will become true. So she and he will become alive. In no other way can one come to the father.” This can happen here and now as well as in the last judgement.
This is the way from “either or” to “both and”: a joint learning from the different Christian teachings.
Sin, salvation and fullness of life
In the age of the Reformation the question was: “how can I find a merciful God?” Luther and his fellows struggled for an answer which was reliable and sustainable for personal faith and strong enough against temptation and doubt.
Their discovery was that people are justified by faith alone. How justification was understood was shaped through this central discovery.
But “how can I get a merciful God?” is no major question today as we know since Helsinki 1963 (Assembly of Lutheran World Federation). The questions are: what about God at all? Does he exist? Is there not the same God in different religions? Would believing in him be a help for my daily life? And if I want to believe, shall I join one of the major religions? Do they help me in believing? Or do they hinder me? The situation is very different compared to the age of the Reformation. And last but not least: you cannot assume that sin is something of any importance for most of the people, as I mentioned before.
When we allow these questions to touch us – not only in our mind, but also in our hearts – our own understanding of faith receives a good shaking and becomes mixed up. And maybe for a time we are confused. I think such experiences are healthy in the end. They teach us to remain in powerlessness
and to endure because we have no quick answers and no easy solutions. They teach us to wait and to search for new answers together with other Christians from other wings of the church and with people who are not Christians.
For example, one path towards a new understanding of justification was shown by the internationally known German theologian Jürgen Moltmann. He pointed out that justice in this world and righteousness in the relation to God must not be torn apart from one another. They belong together. So what God is giving contains many more aspects than the Reformers could see in their historical situation. The justice and righteousness which God is giving mean:
God brings justice and righteousness to the victims and to the perpetrators as well. He will help the victims get justice and healing for their wounds.
Justification becomes precise through this. It strikes roots in central human experiences. Justification is not completely absorbed through this. But you cannot have it without consequences in daily life.
Justice for the victims necessarily includes justice for the perpetrators.
Otherwise justice for the victims would not be justice. So God will confront the perpetrators with what they have done. They have to bear their pain and punishment. But maybe – as I mentioned before – this pain and punishment does not last for ever. In this way God will give justice, righteousness and salvation together. So: “love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” (Ps 85, 10)
With this priority in what God is doing, in his righteousness and justice we can find a new understanding of sin as well. In this perspective sin is not only what we have to overcome, but what God overcomes as well. These two dimensions traditionally belong to the understanding of sin: sin includes what human beings are responsible for and of what they are guilty. This is one aspect. The other aspect which was increasingly forgotten in the theology of the last centuries is what develops, what emerges in a negative way, what we are involved in without having a real responsibility for. In the theological tradition this is called original sin. It is in our world before we act. It cannot be avoided.
If we are involved, it does not necessarily result in personal guilt. So from my point of view, war is always sin. It is never lawful and fair. It will never be justified by God. In every war innocent people are put to death. But nevertheless sometimes war may be unavoidable. So people may be involved in a destructive energy without being guilty individually. This is to be distinguished from the other aspect: people can become guilty as individuals in war as well as in other times.
Another example: if people lose their employment, one of the most difficult and pressing questions is: “what is my responsibility in this and what isn’t?
Could my colleague stay because she is a better worker than me? Or does she just have better connections than I have?” In cases of divorce people often ask:
“what was my mistake? What could I have done in a better way? Would this have saved my marriage?” Sometimes you can see specific guilt. Sometimes things have developed over a long time and have destroyed the relationship in
an imperceptible way, without someone being guilty in particular. We know the answer to individual guilt. It is to beg for forgiveness and to forgive, which can be very exhausting in some cases. The answer to sin as a tragically destructive energy, as original sin, is not to beg for forgiveness and to forgive.
We cannot take responsibility for what we are not guilty of. As simple as it sounds, this is not a common understanding among Christians. If you feel guilty for something too big, for something no single human being can take the responsibility for individually, then it is easy to feel pressurised and down-hearted.
The answer to sin as a tragic destructive energy, as the original sin, is to mourn. If you lose your job and you do not know if there is any personal responsibility, mourning can help you to get through this difficult situation. It is helpful and healthy to have a room for sadness, for anger and rage, for feeling helpless and powerless. It is good to have people around with open ears and open hearts so you can find the way back to life and energy and power. It is the same after losing your wife or husband through a break-up or a divorce.
The question is not “sin and salvation” or “fullness of life” as a main paradigm. We urgently need a third way because the present understanding of
“sin and salvation” is shaped by the questions of the 16th century (“how can I find a merciful God?”). But it should not be replaced with the paradigm of
“fullness of life”. This is an understandable yearning, but the reality of faith is not heaven on earth. The reality of faith includes healing and health in very different ways. The reality of faith includes the power of Christ hidden under its opposite – in our weakness – as well. Sometimes this power cannot be felt.
So the paradigm of “sin and salvation” should be replaced with questions like:
what is the connection between “sin” and “failure” (both is neither the same nor without any affinities)? Or: how can Christians stay alive or become newly alive while they still fail and remain vulnerable?
Cross and resurrection – the true image of transformation
As a third example for searching for a new, contemporary understanding of the Gospel, I will focus on the cross and resurrection. That is the centre of the Christian faith.
In the Christian tradition the cross stands for atonement, satisfaction and salvation. But if you do not come from a Christian context and you want to understand this, you have to know something about the ancient world and its sacrifices. For many Christians, the main meaning of the cross is: Jesus died for us – and not only for our benefit, but also instead of us. We call it “Jesus’
vicarious death on the cross” and the “atonement”. One misunderstanding connected with this is that God would need the death of his son to be able to have mercy and to forgive. But it is the other way round: God does not need a sacrifice, but he is the active one. In 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 Paul writes: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation. […] We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” (cf. Rom 5:1-11)
I cannot discuss the details of different ways of interpretation of the cross in the New Testament: next to “vicarious death”, “atonement” and
“reconciliation” we find “redemption” (Rom 3:24, cf. Mk 10:45) or “salvation”
(e.g. Rom 1:16f.). All these are ways of interpretation which were shaped by the ancient world. My experience is that some of these can hardly be explained to people who are not familiar with the Christian tradition, especially “vicarious death” and the “atonement”. People ask: “can’t God be merciful without this?”
My answer is: “He certainly can. He sent Jesus because He was already merciful, not to become merciful.” After such an answer I sometimes try to explain what the way of Jesus through the cross to the resurrection could mean.
I do it in this way: sending Jesus into this world was a sign of God’s really deep love. The great God sent his son into our world, not only for a short visit, but for sharing life with us – and not only the bright side of life but also the shady side. He was not born in a palace but afield, because there was no room for him at the inn. Was there no room for him in this world? (Cf. Jn 1: 11: “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”). When he was grown up, his mission was to go to the needy, poor and sick people to help and heal them. He proclaimed the good news and the kingdom of God. He called people to repent and to believe. He called them to change their lives and some to follow him. All this was an expression of God’s love in the midst of our world.
For the sake of God’s love, Jesus argued with the Scribes and Pharisees who could not accept his actions and teaching. This eventually led to his death on the cross. In my opinion the deepest reason for this is: people who have their life and their faith, their theology and their health, people who are not really needy, can hardly or not at all accept the love of God which Jesus brought to the poor and sick people and not to them. So they wanted to get rid of him.
Why did Jesus let this be done to him? He could have helped himself at the cross, like the people standing there told him. I am convinced that Jesus walked the way of the passion, the way to the bitter end at the cross, because every other option e.g. the ascension to heaven before suffering so much, would have shown us: whenever he gets into difficulties, he does not face them. Then we could not really trust him and his mercy, grace and love.
You see: you do not need “vicarious death”, “atonement”, “sacrifice” or the other ways of interpretation to understand and explain God’s love in Jesus, in his birth as well as in his actions, preaching and his death on the cross.
Furthermore, there is a second, even more certain reason for his love: the resurrection of Jesus. If I had been God and my son had been murdered, I do not know if I could have been very merciful. So I could understand if God had started the end of the world after his son had been crucified. But he did not.
Rather, he raised Jesus from the dead so that his love could be spread out in this world forever.
For example, when Jesus met Peter, he let him feel God’s love. He did not say: “look, I died instead of you.” He did not say: “my death was a sacrifice for you. So I can love you now.” He laid his fingers in Peter’s wounds. Three times Jesus asked Peter whether he loved him (Jn 21:15-17). But Jesus did not nail Peter down to his failure. Rather he gave him a mission - this Peter in this situation. He did not say: “after another year of discipleship-training and not failing this time, I can use you.” Instead he gave him a mission as he was, not as he should be. In this way Jesus showed Peter God’s love. Since the resurrection and Pentecost this love of God is spread out all over the world – through Christians filled with the Holy Spirit.
That is what people feel when they come to us: whether we have at least a bit of God’s love for them, whether we are really interested in them, whether we are more interested in them and their life and experiences than in defending our dogma.
Finally I ask: what do the previous considerations mean for our hermeneutics?
A new hermeneutic: suspicion and trust concerning the Bible In a little group of theologians we practised the following exercise for some years: We read a certain text from the Bible and then we first told each other what we would say if we had to preach about this text five minutes later. When doing your job for several years there is a lot which blurts out. Then, as a second step, we checked which parts of what we said were really contained in our Biblical text. Sometimes we were astonished how much was not contained in the text at all. As a third step we looked for all the things we had not noticed during our first reading. Sometimes we were surprised what we could find.
Sometimes it seemed that we had never read this particular passage before.
Concerning the Bible we need both: suspicion and trust; suspicion of our own resistance against specific Biblical sentences. For example, some Christians may not like Romans 9:16 if they have an Evangelical or Pentecostal background. Paul refers to Jacob and Esau, to their faith and them being loved by God, and writes: “it does not depend […] on men’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.” Others do not like sentences which connect rebirth and baptism.
In my judgement we find this in Titus 3:5: “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” I guess hereafter some of you will teach me that washing in this case has nothing to do with baptism.
Lutheran or Reformed Christians may keep a certain distance from verses about extraordinary gifts or experiences, for example 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul amongst others enumerates “healing by that one spirit”, “miraculous powers” or “speaking in different kind of tongues” as a spiritual gift. If you feel any resistance or defence against one of these items then could you imagine