GOSPEL WHAT? JESUS WHO? REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORIZING THE GOSPEL MESSAGE

With the recent postmodern turns in the society, it has been said that it is indeed inevitable to contemporize the message of the Gospel. By contemporizing the message we mean that what we proclaim is made understandable today but still retaining its content and biblical doctrine (Erickson, p.115 ).

More than two thousand years ago, the bearer of that message, Jesus Christ, who is in fact the message himself came to the world. In his earthly life and ministry, throngs of people placed their faith in him, who in turn proclaimed the gospel. As the world gradually changed as inked in the historical books and found in the values of the contemporary people, the gospel seemed to lose its appeal and sadly, only few and few people are being proselytized and incorporated into the Body of Christ.

Theologians and church leaders alike as God’s people cannot just sit down in the laurels of their academic resumes and ecclesiastical posts and as a response to the current situation deemed it necessary that the gospel be contemporized so as to make it attractive and palatable to the contemporary hearers.

It is true that the world when the likes of biblical greats such as Moses, Joshua, King David, Elijah and Jesus lived is substantially different from our world today. And it is with much regard that the Christians of today must do something that the gospel might be understood in the contemporary culture, be it contemporizing the gospel.

The question of relevance of the gospel message is on the upfront of this issue. The language of the Bible appears so untenable that at the outset of presenting it to an unbeliever, it would seem to be meaningless. The message has to be understood in the language of the present society.

Rudolf Bultmann however went a step further with this. For him, it is not only a problem of the language that the Bible presents but its entirety is somehow mythical. The statement that any apologetic Christian may get freaked out with, is that Bultmann believes that this mythological view of the world was the general view of reality at the time the Bible was written (Erickson, p.117). Pondering upon these statements, one would have the thought that the demythologizer (allow me to use this term to refer to Bultmann) is certainly confused with his stand on the Scriptures as the eternal Word of God. Asserting that the Bible merely reflects a first century perspective is tantamount to believing that its contentions are as good as passé in this postmodern age. I would categorically lambast this idea for it is not just biblically sound but all the more worldly it its approach.

If, as he believes even the Christian cannot understand the language and the content of the Scriptures as he or she reads it, it is still not sufficient to conclude that it is mythological in its very essence. Allowing the Word of God to speak to us is embracing the truth that there is indeed a mystery that needs to be unlocked by the power of the Holy Spirit through the human teacher (in the case of preaching the Gospel)- those people in whom we can rely to dig deep into it and to pour out unto us a fresh look at God’s Word in a whole new and contemporary perspective. Translations of the Bible are useful tools in order to contemporize the Gospel message without staining the truth as found in God’s Word. We need to admit that the languages of the first century Christians and of the present world are poles apart. Yet, this acknowledgement does not necessarily recognize that for this reason alone, we conclude that the biblical statements about God, the world, humanity and others are first century truths only. I articulate with much steadfastness that the Word of God, timeless in its very nature, has eternal principles and truths though the words may be a little off for the readers of today.

Granting that today’s readers of the Scriptures are finding it hard to dissect the Bible...we must realize that thousands of years back, not all hearers of it understood what it meant in their context. Considering this matter, we must accept the reality that spiritual blindness is one immense factor why people throughout ages have not discovered the gem that is in the Scriptures and not just because they do not understand the language per se.

It is personally difficult to comprehend why in the world Bultmann would even try to demythologize the biblical facts which have been the anchor on which the Christian faith stands. It is a way of giving in to the pressures of the world that the message that we have is in fact already obsolete in the present. It is denying the truths that thousands of Christian martyrs have given up their lives for. It is forfeiting the message of hope and to the worst degree nullifying the purpose of the cross and the message of Christ, who is the person of the Scripture itself.

The meaningfulness of the Scriptures is not dependent on the language that it was written but in the truth that it asserts and the life-changing principles that had made it as the most-loved book in ages past and present. On the other hand, contemporizing its language for the hearers at hand is indispensable to make its message clearer and explicable.

The biblical language is admittedly difficult to understand. One can read it over and over again yet get nothing but a headache on the right hand and a growing confusion on the other. This statement has been accepted generally. Still and all, the language of the Bible functions in its own context but the timeless truths are universal at its core.

We cannot compromise this truth because the heart of the gospel is not on its language but on the message that it wants to communicate. The present language that we are using will be a passé years and years from now, but it wouldn’t mean that we are talking about mythologies just because the people of the future generations would not understand our use of words today. Language will always be a part of human communication and has to be understood in its own context.

In the attempt to contemporize theology, two approaches have been proposed. One is that of the translators who with the use of the contemporary language try to retain the original content of the message and the other, being the transformers who make serious changes in the gospel message in order to relate it to the modern world.

One of the most popular ways of transforming the Gospel message was proposed by the “Death of God” theology which had its way in the middle of the 1960s. This was represented by the likes of Thomas J. J. Altizer, William Hamilton and Paul Van Buren. These so-called Christian theologians, if they can be termed as such were convinced that there is the unreality of the idea of God (Erickson, p. 124).

In response to the idea that there is a need to contemporize the message, I cannot but agree on it. However, one has to be very careful in using a certain approach in doing it. In the case of the translators, there is not much an argument because they strive in making the Gospel message tenable for the present hearers without compromising the message itself. However, their counterpart, the transformers, are somewhere near becoming heretics or are already such, for the gravity of the changes that they make in order to fit into the mold of the present world is unjustified much less, unbiblical.

Liberal theologians espouse this idea and they believe that it is not really necessary to conserve or preserve the biblical doctrines believing that the quintessence of Christianity is not bound in the dogmas held by primeval Christians (Erickson, p.123).The liberals’ attempt to contemporize the message is a blatant disrespect to the purity of the Gospel since the doctrines that the early Christians held dear are the same dogmas that were painstakingly passed on to us and in which we stand now as a body of Christ. To say that we need not preserve nor conserve the biblical doctrines is as good as saying that we need not the Scriptures to live as God’s people.

The Bible is the very Word of God in which he dealt with his people whom he used to express his love for us throughout history. These people then passed on their faith to us, as inspired by God himself producing his Word, the Scriptures, which is his message for us today and our rule for life and living. In the process, God’s people preserved and conserved his words as they knew it necessary for them to live according to God’s ways.

In saying this, we must go back to the truth that the doctrine of the Bible is the light in which we walk our talk as believers. It is impossible to live as Christians without having a life-giving principle to live by. The liberal theologians pose a great danger in committing a blunder to the Christian walk with God as given in His word. It is a shameless insult to the words of the Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16 where he says,

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

It is as if saying that we don’t need to walk as Christians or worse, there is no need to be a Christian. Their attempt to contemporize the gospel message is a clear act of disregard to the Christian basis of life and faith and is unbiblical and worldly in its purpose.

The “Death of God” theology all the more made the transformers cling to the unbiblical way of contemporizing the gospel message. At the core of it is idea is the unreality of God or the word God (Erickson, p.125). I cannot ignore the fact that these are theologians who are championing this kind of belief. Their statement itself is a deliberate attack on the existence of God.

However, the statement also shows a great contradiction of ideas that they are espousing. They believe that there is a possibility of the unreality of God or the word God. Yet, the phrase “death of God” assumes that there was a God in the first place. How can someone die who in the first place have not existed in time and space at all?

If the idea of God is untenable as what they say, it is because the finiteness of our human mind cannot comprehend the truth of the existence of an infinite, all-powerful, sovereign God. But it doesn’t mean that there is no God or that God will die anytime soon upon proving that he does not exist in reality. If we say that He does not exist because we haven’t experienced him, we have to realize that experience (as we define it in human terms) does not discount the existence of God.

The rationale behind contemporizing the message should be treated with much care and sensitivity because if we are to make serious changes in the message just to fit in to the context of the present age, it might lead to changing the message itself as what the liberal theologians did and are doing. It is a deliberate compromise to the purity and the heart of the gospel message.

To question the relevance of the Gospel is unacceptable if not uncalled for. For in fact, the gospel has always been relevant and will always be relevant. The problem lies not on the message itself but on two factors: first, the gospel language; and second, which is the most important one- the gospel bearers of today. I would concur to the fact that the language of the Bible is clearly difficult to understand. From this perspective, those who have the know-how of making it understandable should do so with much respect to the Word of God.

However, the life of those who proclaim the message of Jesus Christ should by far be a clearer message than the language itself. And as Christians who profess and confess Jesus, we need to make a daily reality check if the message of our lives speaks of love and hope to the contemporary hearers of the Gospel in need of the light of our Savior.



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Copyright: Erland De Vera Palean
April 2009

sidenotes are from Erickson's Systematic Theology book, 3rd. ed.