What does it mean to contextualize the gospel?

What does it mean to contextualize the gospel?

The great missionary-theologian Lesslie Newbigin asked, “How can the gospel ‘come alive’ in all these different cultural contexts, and still be the same authentic gospel? That is the problem of contextualization.” [1]

Saving God's FaceBelow is a presentation I’ve created concerning how to contextualize the gospel. I was inspired in part by a new book by Jackson Wu: Saving God’s Face: A Chinese Contextualization of Salvation through Honor and Shame.[2] (Amazing scholarship and hard to read. Highly recommended.) This presentation explores issues such as:

  • What does it mean to “assume the gospel”?
  • Can biblical truth overlap with a cultural context, even though it does not fit into one’s theology?
  • Where do theological blind spots come from?
  • Why is honor and shame hardly recognized as a valid theological subject?
  • Traditional view of contextualization compared to an expanded view of contextualization
  • Introducing a “Canopy of Biblical Truth”—alerting us to various spectrums of biblical-cultural values
  • How does Campus Crusade’s “The Four Spiritual Laws” compare culturally to “The Father’s Love Gospel Booklet”—a gospel presentation focusing on story, family, and honor/shame?
  • How does culture influence our understanding and communication of the gospel?
  • What are some considerations about contextualizing the gospel?
  • How does this form a foundation for something called an “Abrahamic gospel”, based on Galatians 3:7–9?

I am working on a book concerning honor and shame in cross-cultural ministry; portions of this presentation will be incorporated into that book.

1. Lesslie Newbigin, 
The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/WCC, 1989), 142.
2Jackson Wu: Saving God’s Face: A Chinese Contextualization of Salvation through Honor and Shame (EMS Dissertation Series, William Carey International University Press: Pasadena, 2013)

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