PAUL’S ATTEMPT TO SOLVE THE AUTHORITY AND CONFRONTATION PROBLEM IN MULTI-CULTURAL MINISTRIES
Introduction - Mr. Jones, was a missionary who became known for his sensitivity to the context, customs, and culture of the people. In fact some people wondered if he was hypocritical in being quite flexible with one congregation while being quite formalistic with another. Yet one day he wrote a letter that stirred up a terrific debate in the church. There would be no doubt any longer that this missionary was standing firm on his position, but where did he get his authority? His firmness, which revealed a solid resolution to root out pretentiousness in the church, evidenced a supernatural confidence in the truth. Eventually, this ability to distinguish primary from secondary problems would characterize his ministry, teaching, and writing. His stinging rebuke of several prominent church elders was necessary because of his teachings about the body of Christ. The stern attitude taken by Mr. Jones was proof that he would not allow his position, authority, or role diminished. His harsh judging tone in the letter made it sound that he was pointing the finger at particular people who had allowed this controversy to fester for too long. He would have no more part in any compromises with the truth as he believed he had received it from Christ. He would not cater to any hedging or double talk about the relativity of cultural practices on this issue. He was willing to take great criticism for his position in order to defend the truth.
Today we might consider such a missionary as being harsh, legalistic, and even too rigid to successfully work as a cross-cultural contextualizer. We may assume that he was simply trying to throw his weight around to show the new church just who was in charge. We may even assume that this missionary was out to prove a point of his own cultural superiority. In fact, some of us may even go so far as to say this missionary had a problem with his own ego. Perhaps, this missionary needed to realize that he was simply trying to cover up his human weaknesses in his failure to appreciate how the Holy Spirit was moving in another culture. Could it be that this missionary was simply to indignant over the attacks that others had made about his ministry approaches? Maybe this missionary simply did not understand the role of a cross-cultural contextualizer?
While these ideas may appear valid, let us understand that this missionary was going through a similar experience that the apostle Paul faced when writing a vigorous apologetic to the Galatians for the essential truth that people are justified solely through faith in Jesus Christ - nothing more and nothing less. He refused to allow the gospel be eroded by the hypocritical actions of the likes of Peter and Barnabas. He wanted to make it clear from the outset of the New Testament church that a man is sanctified not by legalistic works, but the obedience that results from one’s belief in Christ. He wanted everyone to know that through the works of law no man could be justified, for we have received the Spirit by faith. He even resorted to using such powerful language as, "You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? ... Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?" This is a vitriolic language that confronted some of the most well known Christians of the day with harsh rebukes - publically! Paul wanted it to be known that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. He insisted that to go back to living by the law is to make oneself a slave to it - "How is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you?... Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?" (Gal. 4:8-16) Strong but necessary words for the precedent setting cross-cultural contextualization missionary!
Where did Paul get his authority for his harsh, but necessary contextualized confrontations? Paul has a way of showing contextualizers how to deal with problems in a firm, but open way.
Even words of self-defense at times are hurled at his critics as he staunchly defends his personage for the sake of the truth of the gospel. Whenever he felt the dignity of the scriptures were at stake, he stood firmly to his authoritative source - Christ and his apostleship. Often his opponents would insist that if Paul really were an apostle he would not have to endure the humiliations of beatings, death threats, and imprisonments. He reversed the tables and used this argument against his critics. He insisted that his marks of suffering were proof of his identification with Christ and His ministry. He writes to the Galatians, "Let not one give me any more trouble, because I bear on my body the scars to show that I am a slave of Jesus Christ." (Gal. 6:17)
A missionary, like Paul, knew that it would be too easy to be drawn into debates about secondary issues instead of the essential truths of the scripture.
Some even tried to attack Paul’s personal appearance or manner of his letter writing. Still Paul stood very sure on the truth of his revelation from Jesus Christ. Missionaries are often so close to the earthly and mundane issues on the mission field, that it is a great temptation to be ensnared with human resentments. Instead Paul said,
"Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs - he wants to please his commanding officer." (2 Tim. 2:4,5)
Paul would have none of these matters distracting him from his goal of knowing Christ and making Him known. The following are some of the ways in which Paul helped contextualizers get an idea of how to solve the confrontation and authority problems in cross-cultural ministries:
1. Paul understood the revelation from Jesus Christ and His word as being absolute truth that should be understood in the context of circumstances of the era. He viewed the scriptures and the revelation from God as his authoritative mandate to guide, teach, correct, rebuke, and train in all aspects of life and godliness. He recognize that one would have to discipline oneself for the purpose of Godliness as guided by the scriptures. He resisted any attempt to dilute the absolute authority and inspiration of the scriptures as he wrote, "All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness so that the man of God could be thoroughly furnished for all good works." (2 Tim. 3:16)
2. Paul appreciated the fact that God did not dictate the scripture to its authors (As for example Muslims believe the Koran was dictated to Muhammad), but moved through their personalities, perspectives, and experiences. God used human agents in order to personalize his message in terms that people could best understand. He superintended their writing so that the results do not contain error while still allowing for individuality in expressions. He allowed the circumstances of each writer to influence what he wrote and how he addressed people from a cross-cultural perspective. He understood the progressive nature of revelation so as to include the influence of the teaching ministry of the church as they grew in maturity. At the same time, he expressed full confidence that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth reminding them of everything that Christ had said at appropriate times. Integrating the truths of Christ’s words, ministries, and his character would allow the writers to reflect the truth of John 1:1,14 in their writings - "The word became flesh and dwelt among us...Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."
3. Paul synthesized the historical, grammatical, cultural, spiritual, social, political, and even religious dimensions into his writing without compromising His truth. He weaves these aspects of each context around the silver threads of his authoritative revelation. He would reject the idea that these themes could be extracted and placed in isolation as in a systematic theology for all peoples to subscribe to precisely. IN fact Paul resisted attempts to draw up an absolute theological system instead preferring to personalize his approach in letters. Paul knew that propositional truth should be handled in such a way that he should be cognizant of all the factors of good communications. Yet, he knew that the understanding the context of scripture - its physical, geographical, administrative, personal, historical, educational, ideological, immediate, and regional contexts would weigh heavily in the interpretation of truth. Therefore Paul took care to defend his apostleship and blamelessness before God and men as he said in Acts 20:27):
"Herein do I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men... For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God."
4. Paul was a believer that all truth is God’s truth. He recognized that his writings would not be the final word on all truth. Instead, he understood the main purpose of his writing were to equip the saints for the work of the ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. IN this he labored to present every man complete in Christ. (Eph. 4:12, Col. 1:28) Yet he always allowed his writings to reflect the Biblical emphasis and revelation given to him by Christ. For example, he always interpreted the Old Testament truth in light of the New Testament Spirit led teachings and not visa versa. For example, in Galatians he writes:
"Consider Abraham: ’He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham... So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith." (Gal. 3:6-9)
5. Paul believed that the primary purpose of revelation was not just to increase our knowledge, but to change our lives into the image of Christ.
Paul tells the Corinthians who believed that the way to spirituality lay in more knowledge:
"We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." (I Cor. 8:1,2)
Paul knew that it was easy to let the pursuit of truth, become the prideful pursuit of knowledge. Man is constantly looking for ways to cover over his insecurities. Knowledge is commonly used as a mask to give one a false sense of pride and security in the acquisition of facts. But Paul insisted that a person, led by the Spirit, will characteristically temper his knowledge with love towards God and with people. This will give greater credibility to the contextualizer as he will affirm the fact that he is really known and accepted by God as one with God’s redeemed. Everyone contextualizer will have to come to the realization that his knowledge is limited and incomplete. This puts greater weight to the fact that the contextualizer is just as dependent, if not more, on God to reveal His truth through the Spirit in contextualized ways. Without the continuous ministry of the Spirit’s authoritative teaching, guiding, convicting, and personalizing of truth, the scriptural truth is skewed.
6. Paul subscribed to the belief that scripture is the only 100% true revelation from God to man. He would support the idea that it is authoritative because its source is ultimately God, even though human agents were its writers. He would resist the idea that scripture was simply a conversation between God and man. As some would like to view the Bible as a record of human experiences to inspire, inform, and challenge men throughout the ages. No doubt Paul would come down hard on those who see the scriptures as another book to motivate men to live upright, morally, and respectfully of everyone’s rights and opinions. As a supernatural book, Paul would insist today that it is the only completely balanced book ever written void of partialities toward any cultural standards. He would reject the ideas that the scriptures were simply carriers of the witness to the true revelation that can only be found by each individual’s subjective experience with the truth. Paul would stand against any attempts to dilute the scripture’s authority, inerrancy, or inspiration.
7. Paul would reject any attempts to soften the requirements of the gospel. For example, he would disagree with Charles Kraft who takes a pragmatic approach to process conversion when he writes:
"If the message and method are the same today as they were in biblical times, we must ask the hard question concerning the necessity of the knowledge of Christ in the response of contemporary "pagan"s. Can people who are chronologically A.D. but knowledge wise B.C. (i.e. have not heard of Christ) or those who are indoctrinated with a wrong understanding of Christ, be saved by committing themselves to faith in God as Abraham and the rest of those who were chronologically B.C. did (Heb. 11)? Could such persons be saved by "giving as much of themselves as they can give to as much of god as they can understand?" I personally believe that they can and many have.
Even though I may accept the fact that God continues to save in the same way as in the Old Testament times, I dare not let that belief either allow me to fall into universalism so that I assume that people can be saved without making a commitment of their wills to God, or lull me into assuming that because people could come to salvation without specific knowledge of Christ that, therefore, many will." (Kraft, 1979, p. 254)
There is a danger of softening one’s position on the authority of the gospel in efforts to improve one’s communications. Paul would prefer to keep the standards of the gospel clear, but present them in ways that as far as possible presented the truth in loving-understandable terms. Paul would be careful of taking any liberties with the essentials of truth for the sake of acceptability across cultures. Paul would be careful of not basing his teaching on any such faulty assumptions. He would be sure that people of African traditional religions knew about God, Christ, Salvation, The Holy Spirit, Grace, Faith, and the Sinful Helpless Condition of Man. Paul knew that people are not simply accepted into the family of God simply by acknowledging God as Jehovah. The Prophets were models for Paul as they demonstrated that the pagan religions were futile attempts to know God and be saved. He would continue to preach, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved." (Acts 16:31) He would insist that "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)
8. Paul would set up safe guards for preserving Biblical Christianity in each context he taught the truth.
