Contextualization for ministry and the Lutheran Heritage.

During my tenure as a Teaching Theologian I often have reflected on what it means to be a Black person within the Lutheran denomination. I perceived that the best way to determine the solution would be to engage African Lutherans in the diaspora in dialogue concerning this issue.

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In the initial coming together of African and African American theologians and church leaders, we held a Conference of International Black Lutherans (CIBL) at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Africa, September 4-12, 1986, to explore what it means for us to be both Black and Confessional Lutherans. A summary of this conference is found in Theology and the Black Experience. (1) An additional summary appears on the opening page of that book by Philip Hefner, who captured the Conference understanding of the Lutheran Heritage by asserting the following:

  The theologians whose essays are included in this book demonstrate
beyond all doubt that Lutheranism, as a theological and doctrinal
reality, is pluralistic at a very deep level. These men and women have
articulated their own traditions of Lutheranism, and they have reflected
on the concrete situations in which they are called upon to be the
theologians of the church. In the process, they have made it evident
that the Lutheran traditions take hold in different places in different
ways and give rise to distinctively different theological expressions.
  This kind of diversity in Lutheranism has not been acknowledged up to
this time. We have recognized that Lutherans have diverse cultural
patterns, as well as a variety of ways of worshiping and living out
their faith. But we have not recognized so clearly that there is also
a variety of theological interpretations of the tradition, and that
each of these interpretations has its own full authenticity and
legitimacy. These black theologians are now in the process of awakening
the Lutheran consciousness to this fundamental theological pluralism.
  This book demonstrates that there is more than one way to be
Lutheran--theologically. This alone makes it a theological event of
significance.

Hefner summarized further what our conference produced by stating that we have operated on the mistaken principle that if Lutheran doctrine were taught correctly and learned correctly, it would turn out to be the same, whether taught and learned in Heidelberg, Chicago, Makumira, Hong Kong, Brazil, or Buenos Aires.

As Carl Braaten has said, Lutherans have had no doctrine of doctrinal pluralism, no theology of theological pluralism. Lutheranism indeed may not have taken the pluralism of the white sisters and brothers seriously, but it will not be able to overlook the significance of the pluralism that emerges from the Black sisters and brothers--and that is emerging from the Asian and Latin American brothers and sisters and from the Lutheran feminists. This means that the Blacks may well constitute a breakthrough for all people.

What does this mean for our self-understanding as Lutherans? We may view the growth of Lutheran faith and life as the radiation of Lutheran perspectives from the heartland in Wittenberg out to the peripheries. The task in this view is to measure what happens in the peripheries by what was started in Wittenberg and determine thereby whether the peripheral action is adequate or not, simplistic or not. The things that have emerged on the peripheries have no intrinsic value.

An alternative picture is to see the radiation moving in the other direction--from the various sectors of the circle, and from the periphery of that circle, into the center. If the center represents what Lutheranism truly is, then the center is truly what the other sectors of the circles contribute to it. The center does not measure the rest of the circle, but rather the center is constituted by the contributions of the whole of the circle to the center.

In the first view, what is genuinely Lutheran is easy to grasp. It is what is in the center, and that is something relatively simple--it emanated from Luther and his cohorts. In the second view, genuine Lutheranism is everywhere in the circle. It is present in a special way in the center, to be sure, but not because the center is the only genuine thing; it is because the center holds the contributions of the whole, of the many parts. For this reason the center may be almost impossible to grasp fully, because it is a many, not a one; a diversity, not a uniformity; a dynamic process, not a onetime gift. This is a new self-understanding for Lutherans.

What does all this imply for our theological methodology? It means that we cannot really undertake Lutheran theology unless we attend both to the richness of the various parts of the circle and also to the richness of the center. This implies further that each of the Lutheran cultures must cultivate its own particularity with energy, devotion, and a sense of the larger whole.

The basic principle underlying ministry in a multicultural church is contextual. In context we find the key to the nature of unity in diversity. Therefore we explore ministry in this paper within the scope of a multicultural context in North America using the African American culture as paradigm. We must begin to think of ministry and other dogmatic issues from the point of view of many cultures, and not merely the straight line from Europe, if we take seriously Lutheranism's self-definition as being a multicultural global church.

Contextuality for ministry

My attempt to offer diverse perspectives on the function of ministry should rid us of one monolithic view of ministry and posit the secret of God's unity, namely, God's diversity within the priesthood of all believers. The challenge of ministry is in its diversity; its victory will be in its unity in the risen living Christ. Among the greatest heresies of the past were speaking in behalf of the people without consulting the people, being concerned about the soul at the expense of the body, and preaching the gospel with little or no concern for the context. I submit that text without context is a pretext.

To raise the question "What is the context of a pastor's ministry?" is to raise a host of questions related to our understanding of the nature of God, of humanity, of the Bible, of history, of Jesus Christ, and of the church. We must ask these kinds of questions because the ministry of the gospel denotes an activity that has its origin in the heart and will of God, which embraces both the indigenous culture as well as the entire world and all that happens in it, and that is directed at the total life of people in and out of the congregations in this world and their eternal destiny. How a pastor answers these basic questions under the tutelage of the people in a given context, or, more particularly, how a pastor applies the answers in a given cultural context and place in history, has a critical bearing on the methodology of his or her ministry in that time and place.

The nature of contextuality

By context we mean those patterns and language of a culture that most distinguish it from other cultures. Some synonyms for context are culture, indigenous, ethos, and particularity.

It goes without saying that the modern individual exists in a pluralistic world, migrating back and forth between competing and complementary cultures. It is relatively easy to be a Lutheran in a social situation where one can readily limit one's significant others to fellow Lutherans. The story is quite different in a situation where one is compelled to rub shoulders with a variety of "others," where one is saturated with communications that deny, reject, or ignore Lutheran ideas, and where one has a difficult time even finding some quiet Lutheran corner in which to withdraw. While the Lutheran Church has much to offer a pluralistic society, it must be big enough to accept the different lifestyles these cultures bring with them if it is to have any relevance to them at all. Once we grasp the context to which the gospel is applied, we also must grasp the inability of people to jump out of their skins.

We reject the approach to the gospel that stresses universality apart from particularity. There is no universality apart from the particularity of the gospel. The proclamation is always directed not toward humankind in general but toward humankind wrapped in all of its cultural diversity. In Lutheran terms, the law must be related to the context of the people so that the gospel can free them to live God's life in that context. Douglas John Hall has put it well:

What has achieved the reputation of theology in North American church
and society is not only noncontextual, it is anticontextual. Most
Christians do not regard Christian theology as a mode of engaging this
historical cultural, socioeconomic milieu. On the contrary, where they
consider the subject at all, laypersons tend to think of theology as a
more or less fixed set of beliefs, contained in embryo in the Bible,
codified in various historical creeds, confessions and faith statements,
refined in forbidding volumes of doctrine, and relayed to congregations
in simplified form through sermon, catechetical instruction, and (for a
few) college classes in religious knowledge. (2)

For Christians true contextuality means initiating and nurturing dialogue with one's culture, a partnership in discovery and investigation of the truths of the gospel. To put it concretely, it is possible for us to learn from each other. Tillich in his book Theology of Culture (3) speaks of the Christian community as a participator with the world. Therefore to know one's context is to participate in one's context. "When one is conscious of contextualization, one becomes aware that there is no such thing as non-contextual human thought, including theological thought." (4)

To illustrate one form of alienation, I turn to the Europeanization of the Christian theological tradition. Many of the formulations of Christian doctrines echo the many diverse movements involving European civilization. For example, with the development of the doctrine of atonement, one can see the history of Europe's anxieties and its ways of coping with anxieties. For all kinds of reasons this European theological contextuality in several typical forms (Augustinian, Thomistic, Calvinistic, Pietistic) has been permitted to conduct itself throughout the inhabited world as if it were not contextual but universal. This clearly is a misappropriation and misunderstanding of Tradition as a source of theology.

K. E. Skydsgaard gives us a clear and penetrating survey of tradition. (5) Tradition with a large T is the "holy Tradition" where we find the teachings of the Lord and the apostles in doctrinal, doxological, liturgical, and sacramental forms. Tradition with a small t is a given culture's indigenous or particular Christian tradition. Skydsgaard states that true tradition and freedom belong together, but in the history of our traditions we see how all too often human traditions come to be much more than supports for the Christian life and instead become positive controls and norms for human conscience. When they become that, members of the church quickly cease to be temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19) and become simply curators of a vast museum of relics left by their Spirit-guided ancestors. These are the conditions we must take into account no matter which culture we belong to within the institutional church. We must be careful not to see our own Christian cultural tradition as the Christian Tradition. All of the various Christian cultural traditions have a right to existence only insofar as they are vehicles for God's revelation.

The nature of contextualization always causes theological discourse. Theology, like all intellectual academic disciplines, moves very close to ideology. Subsequently, all human knowledge will always become an ideological tainted product. (6) To determine the spirit of the times (Zeitgeist) is the whole vocation of theological discourse. The Christian community must have access to the sources within its host culture in order to proclaim the proper usage of the kerygma (law/gospel).

The Christian community is always engaged in cultural transcendence (7) and immersion in the context. We can express Christian identity (Baptism) only by being immersed in the cultural context, plunged beneath the threatening waters of sin that grace might abound. In 1999 CIBL gathered in celebration of the Lutheran Reformation and the subsequent historic signing of the joint Catholic and Lutheran declaration on the doctrine of justification in Augsburg, Germany. We must remain aware that these glad tidings have come to African and African Americans clothed in German and English cultures and preserved in sixteenth-century doctrines of salvation, yet intended for twenty-first-century sinners.

My thesis is that the pastor's and the congregation's ministry can become what God has called them to be as people only immersed in their context. Tillich, using exclusive language typical of his context, asserts that a Christian pastor

must participate in the human predicament, not only actually--as he
always does--but also in conscious identification. He must participate
in man's finitude, which is also his own, and its anxiety, as though he
had never received the revelatory answer of "eternity." He must
participate in man's estrangement which is also his own, and show the
anxiety of guilt, as though he had never received the revelatory answer
of "forgiveness." The theologian does not rest on the theological answer
which he announces. He can give it in a convincing way only if he
participates with his whole being in the situation of the question,
namely, the human predicament. In the light of this demand, the method
of correlation protects the theologian from the arrogant claim of having
revelatory answers at his disposal. In formulating the answer, he must
struggle for it. (8)

In summation, one can identify several reasons why theology is contextual:

1. Theology is a human enterprise.

2. Theology attempts to speak of the Living God and of God's relation to a dynamic creation.

3. Theology exists for the sake of the church's confession.

4. Contextualization is a conscious element in the theological enterprise.

5. Tradition is a source of theology.

6. Theological discourse is a necessary ingredient in examining the nature of contextualization.

7. Theology and the incorporation of stories from the big T (Tradition) and the little t.

8. Contextualization means both immersion in the context and cultural transcendence.

The argument of the entire Christian tradition is not with difference (rather it celebrates difference) but with divisiveness, brokenness, alienation, and segregation--distortion by human sin. The biblical God sends apostles and pastors to engage this reality. The theology of the cross describes the reconciling work of Jesus Christ who turns apparent destructiveness toward good and not evil. The point is not to dissolve distinction but to eliminate sin from it. Pastors must initiate a praxis of justice. They are to embrace the drive for prophetic faith and the universal understanding of God's reconciling work, and without losing the truth of the divine universality we are simultaneously to be engaged in the indigenous contexts. Faith will be contextualized and made specific in the relation to the culture. For example, love to the neighbor must function in a radically particularized way, for love is not a principle to be conceptualized but an event in which it is involved (see the Parable of the Good Samaritan). Conceptualization too often ends up in generalization.

Finally, it would be hard for me to see a global theology that did not root itself in culture. Conversely, it would be impossible to pursue a theology of culture that did not lead to thinking of the whole. In correlating the two, the minister is aware that the universal thrust of the gospel prevents theology from becoming only indigenous, and the indigenous character of the gospel prevents theology from becoming merely theoretical or transcultural.

The nature, function, and call of the Holy Spirit to contextual ministry

Luther puts it quite plainly in his explanation of the Third Article of the Creed: I believe that the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel. The pastor who proclaims the gospel in word and deed makes a confession of faith in God the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who calls us by the gospel, enlightens us with his gifts, gives us faith, and convenes a congregation to hear the word. It is the Spirit who inspires the lessons of the day, and it is the Spirit who sanctifies the whole Christian church.

I am fully aware of the Lutheran church's reticence about referring to the Holy Spirit because of historical doctrinal positions. Some ministers and lay people would rather avoid the issue lest they be understood in terms of modern movements concerning the Holy Spirit. Others fear being caught up in an invisible presence we cannot domesticate nor control. How will I feel if I truly surrender myself to God? Rudolf Otto calls this strange feeling of attraction and dread mysterium tremendum. (9) It is the experience of God--an awesome experience, one so unthinkable in our scientific age that Wolfhart Pannenberg noted that the generation of the "death of God" theologians had a lost sense of the Holy Spirit. (10) No matter what we experience today, however, we are expected to give scientific explanation of a faith that often defies explanation. Yet, if we intend to get at the source and authority of our contextual witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we need some sense of the Spirit accompanied by power that is sufficient to deal with the reality of evil.

The call of Jesus--a model for our call to service

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented, and when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him and lo, a voice from heaven saying "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:13-17)

We are told: "Here is my beloved Son, get out in the wilderness. That's how much I love you. Get out in the wilderness." That's a different kind of love, it seems to me, than the kind that we've heard about.

In Luke 4, Jesus is sent or driven into the wilderness, tempted by the devil, and ministered to by the messengers of God's love. Then Jesus returns from the wilderness in the power of the Spirit. One cannot talk about spirituality without talking about the wilderness; it can't be done. Jesus returns from the wilderness in the power of the Spirit, comes into Galilee where a report concerning him went out to the surrounding country; he taught in the local synagogue, being glorified by all. He came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and went to the synagogue as was his custom on the Sabbath day; he stood up to read, and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to feel good, to feel warm, to tell everybody how I'm anointed with the Spirit. No! He has anointed me to preach Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Wow! Isn't he great? Filled with the Spirit!

But you all know the rest of that story, too. Jesus doesn't find it to be adequate to be general about things. Jesus gets very specific with the folks. He gets very concrete about a particular group of outcasts, whom the Lord seems to love at least as much as he does the good folks. And when he started talking about the particular, the good synagogue folks say in essence, "Lord, now you've gone from preaching to meddling." And they not only put him out but they try to do him in. How do you like that for spirituality?

Now let me try to say something about what all of this may mean for us. Spirituality is not only knowing that we are free; spirituality is knowing that we have been set free. It is knowing how we got free. And our freedom is a direct function of the redeeming, delivering, father/mother God. And we have been delivered, set free, not for our own selfish purposes but to serve God's purposes in the winds of change.

Spirituality then is the way of being that finds us continually struggling to know what is my calling and what is going on here. Spirituality is that constant tension of trying to understand what it is that God is calling us to be and to do. It is that expectant waiting on God and God's purposes more than they who wait for the morning. Spirituality at its deepest is recognizing the cleansing, frightening, empowering, but absolutely necessary role of the wilderness in our lives.

The wilderness is that time for fasting and for praying. The wilderness is that time and place for feeling sometimes parched and stretched out and attacked. Spirituality is recognizing that the wilderness presents continuous confrontation with our own demons, the demons who will not go away unless they are faced in utmost honesty. Spirituality is living in the presence of God's living, creating, healing spirit, recognizing that as we live in the presence of God's Spirit we are actually connected to all life.

To be anointed by the Spirit is to be anointed to action, or to praxis, as they say in some circles. To be anointed by the Spirit is to be commissioned for action for the poor, the outcast, the weak and exploited, the oppressed, and even the rich. Spirituality is living constantly with the blowing, driving, compelling, loving breath of God. "Breathe on me, breath of God"? Watch out! That breath of God can be a mighty powerful thing, pushing us, driving us, pulling us, upsetting us in ways that we never expected. Not just soothing us, and making us feel nice and warm all over. This is a wind that blows where it wishes. We have to be ready for it if we are concerned about spirituality, our spirituality. If it is based in the Spirit of God it is absolutely unpredictable and uncontrollable. Finally, there is no other deeper purpose for the ordained ministry in a multicultural context than to discover the face of God in the least of the sisters and the brothers.

There can be no authentic response to the Spirit for us unless it includes a call for help, a call for guidance. Precious Lord, take our hands. Lead us to see, to know, to be, to do, whatever it means, to serve you in the wilderness of this historical moment in this very difficult time.

We are part of along tradition of women and men who understood that their spiritual identity wasn't a Black identity or a blue, white, or brown identity, for that search for identity is not sufficient unless it is informed and washed with the Spirit. There are all kinds of searches for identity that have led to millions of dead people, so be careful of identity by itself. Identity without Spirit, identity without purpose, may be very dangerous. And we are a part of the people who have learned that, and knew that concern for identity without purpose can lead to chauvinism and death and murder and worse. And a concern for spirituality without service to the least can lead to nothing but empty piety. What a vision, that God has set free these Africans and slave people, not just to make it, not just to survive, but to speak to the nations of the world, a word in action that will make them and us free.

For me, Langston Hughes was a real spiritual man, even though he didn't always sound like it. There was something about him that was trying to find what is it that we should really be as human beings. He ends up one of his magnificent poems with these words about this country: "We the people must redeem our land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, the mountains, and the endless plain, and all the stretch of these great green states. We the people must redeem our land and make America again."

James Forbes lists a number of summary points that help our argument concerning the fundamental awareness of God's authority, power, appointment, and guidance for the vocation of the ministry. The dimensions are as follows:

1. Jesus had a unique relationship to his heavenly parent. As only begotten Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, he stands in a class by himself.

2. Jesus was nurtured in his family and the family of faith.

3. Jesus reached the point of vocational readiness to get on with doing that for which he was sent into the world.

4. Jesus acted upon the impulse of the Spirit by obediently following the guidance to submit himself for baptism.

5. Jesus experienced sacramental grace, which comes when one acts in obedience.

6. Jesus experienced divine approval, acceptance, and appointment.

7. Jesus experienced power from beyond the self, from on high.

8. Jesus was tested in the wilderness where he was able to come to clarification of mission, methodology, and the system of guidance by which his work would be done.

9. Jesus experienced the ministry of angels.

10. Jesus demonstrated strength to bear witness in his community of faith regarding his spiritual formation for the vocation to which he had been called. (11)

The intention here is to call attention to an enriching understanding of spiritual formation for ministry in a multicultural context. To follow Jesus is the true route for the minister's faithfulness and fulfillment. Therefore, as the laity of the church stand in the power of their anointing they also stand in readiness for the ministry.

When wrestling with the demons of classism, sexism, and racism, we can count on the Spirit's help. Tillich notes this in one of his sermons:

The Spirit can work in you with a soft but insistent voice, telling you
that your life is empty and meaningless, but that there are chances of a
new life waiting before the door of your inner self to fill its void and
to conquer its dullness. The Spirit can work in you, awakening the
desire to strive toward the sublime over against the profanity of the
average day. The Spirit can give you the courage which says yes to life
in spite of the destructiveness you have experienced around you and
within you. (12)

Each person knows her/his own contextual experience of how the Holy Spirit nourishes hope in the midst of hopelessness. I guess what we all share together is that we would not be here today if it were not for the blessings of God the Holy Spirit. Martin Luther King Jr. was able to say: "We've been to the mountaintop. And my eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord. I may not get there with you, but I know that we as a people will make it to the promised land."

It seems to me that a minister in a multicultural context who has experienced the ministry of the Holy Spirit has a head start on following Jesus. (13) Finally, all of us must offer ourselves as instruments for the continued development and understanding of a renewed spirit in our sacred vocations as pastors and laity.

Albert Pero, Jr.

Professor of Systematic Theology and Cross-Cultural Studies Emeritus Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

1. "A Message from Harare," in Theology and the Black Experience, ed. Albert Pero and Ambrose Moyo (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 264 ff.

2. Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 69.

3. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (Oxford Univ. Press, 1964).

4. Hall, Thinking the Faith, 76f. See also p. 93 for an in-depth explanation on the why of contextual theology.

5. K. E. Skydsgaard. "Tradition as an Issue in Contemporary Theology." In The Old and the New in the Church. WCC. Paul Minear Commission on Faith and Order (Augsburg, 1961), 22-35.

6. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), 194f.

7. Albert Pero, Jr., "Cultural/Self Transcendence," Currents in Theology and Mission 20 (1993): 380-89.

8. Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1957), 15.

9. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Oxford Univ. Press, 1958), 12-13.

10. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Christian Spirituality (1983), 83.

11. James Forbes, The Holy Spirit and Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989), 37f.

12. Tillich, Spiritual Presence: The Eternal Now (New York: Scribner's, 1963).

13. H. Richard Niebuhr deals with this issue in Christ and Culture, chap. 3, and concludes that "It becomes more or less clear that it is not possible honestly to confess that Jesus is the Christ of culture unless one can confess much more than this" (p. 115).