Tom Wirght talks about the gospel. I have doing some research on inculturation. One of the main confusions people have – be they Roman Catholics or Protestants – is whether the ‘gospel’ interacts with ‘culture’ or actually the church, the … Continue reading What is the Gospel?
I cannot help but share this. Also do note how many times Wright refers to some sort of contextualisation in this video: Continue reading N. T. Wright explores the question, “What is the gospel?”
There is a post at the Read the Spirit site entitled ‘Rediscover John XXIII, a Pope who stunned the world!‘ Many have thought that the new pope, Francis I, brings a refreshing aura with him into the office. So it would be natural for one to look back curiously for past popes with similar ‘aura of change’. John XXIII was one of them. He was the pope whom brought the Roman Catholic Church and the world a revolutionary change through the initiative of Vatican II. Excerpt from the above post: MORE THAN 1 BILLION CATHOLICSaround the world are wondering: Can a … Continue reading The Pope who Stunned the World
In the end, most of us would agree that life is not all that easy to understand, that the messages we receive from within and from others and from God are not always clear. As the Apostle Paul famously said; ‘Now we see in a mirror dimly (one translation has ‘in a riddle’)’, always remembering that mirrors in the ancient world gave a very distorted image. It is partly that all our messages are filtered through to us by our language and culture, but even more because we are fallible and sinful creatures. This last compounds the situation. Our proneness … Continue reading Understand the Context to Better Understand the Message
I wrote about the challenge of the church in the postmodern age. One of the key changes in the postmodern age is the increase of interest in spirituality and the reluctance to be limited by organised religion. Other reports have confirmed this: Over one-third of churchgoers attend services in more than one church. One in four attends services in different faiths, according to another Pew survey. More than one in five Christians believe in astrology, reincarnation, and spiritual energy in trees and nature. Seventeen percent believe in in the “evil eye” (casting curses on others). Over the last twenty years, … Continue reading Could the Increase of Interest in Spirituality erode the Church?
An Atheist Church – Atheistic Culture Coming of Age I heard about this new Atheist Church in Britain a few days ago and wondered how would a Christian feel when attending the assembly. My questions are answered by this post, which is an actual account of a person experiencing it on one Sunday. There are two things mentioned in the post which strike me. First, the talk by a physicist, which reminds me of how my little venture into science years ago actually brought me closer to God. So if the report of the above blog post is accurate, the … Continue reading An Atheist Church?
The standard explanation for the meaning of inculturation is from the REDEMPTORIS MISSIO: Incarnating the Gospel in Peoples’ Culture 52. As she carries out missionary activity among the nations, the Church encounters different cultures and becomes involved in the process of inculturation. The need for such involvement has marked the Church’s pilgrimage throughout her history, but today it is particularly urgent. The process of the Church’s insertion into peoples’ cultures is a lengthy one. It is not a matter of purely external adaptation, for inculturation “means the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through their integration in Christianity and the … Continue reading Inculturation Explained
I have finally come to understand why some Muslim in Malaysia are so against the use of ‘Allah’ by other religions, especially the Christians. One of the reasons, of course, has to do with theology. The Islamic faith has no notion of incarnation and hence, no idea of contextualisation or inculturation. The expansion of the Islamic faith is a socio-political-cultural expansion, and has always been geographical. Wherever it spreads to it brings along a set of cultural practices which is more or less fixed – the way of life, worship and rituals. On the other hand, the Christian faith has … Continue reading Is ‘Allah’ a Translation?
Excerpt from ‘A Conflict of Cultures’, the Review of: China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures Jacques Gernet – Cambridge University Press, 1985, by J.S. Cummins: Translating and closely analysing contemporary Chinese material, Gernet show that it was not merely clerical squabbles, doctrines, rituals or customs which separated missionary and potential convert. The twain were unable to meet because their respective world-pictures differed radically: the Chinese mind-set, for instance, rooted in concepts from the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, found literally inconceivable Christian ideas evolved from the Graeco-Roman- Judaic-Scholastic mental world. And vice versa. The literati, by and large … Continue reading China and the Christian Impact
‘A private truth for a limited circle of believers is no truth at all. Even the most devout faith will sooner or later falter and fail unless those who hold it are willing to bring it into public debate and to test it against experience in every area of life. If the Christian faith about the source and goal of human life is to be denied access to the human realm, where decisions are made on the great issues of the common life, then it cannot in the long run survive even as an option for a minority.’ Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness … Continue reading Private Truth = No Truth At All
We do not normally say that we are experiencing ‘cultural clash’. The term has always been associated with ‘bigger issues’ such as the dispute on minaret in Switzerland or the issue of Islamophobia in America after 911 – which not all of us would be involved on a regular basis. Also, in such cases there exists a clear cultural difference between the West and the Islamic cultural. However, cultural clash does happen at smaller scale and between even groups which are traditionally from the same cultural root. For example, as the number of mainland Chinese immigrants increases in Hong Kong and Singapore, … Continue reading Cultural Clash ‘for everyone’!
