Why the "pure gospel" doesn't exist, or at least why you'll never know it.

What is the Gospel?

Go ahead, think about it for a moment.  What is the Gospel?

How does the Gospel interact with groups of people?  Does it take on cultural images?  Is it rearticulated with new cultural language?  What about the form of worship?  Does that change with new cultures?  How about the form of leadership in the Church?

Let me draw you a picture.

In this picture, the Gospel is seen as being beyond history, and beyond culture.  When the Gospel reaches a group of people, it is simply translated to fit into that people group’s culture.  A good example is Jesus.  He came to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom of God.  He taught using agricultural parables, and economic, religious, and political metaphors that made sense to 1^st century Jews.  According to this model, the Gospel was simply translated.

What happens when Culture A, wants to share the Gospel with Culture B?  If this model is correct, Culture A must first become so self-aware that they can decipher how their living of the Gospel is being formed by their culture.  The gospel was “inculturated” or made tangible in their culture, so they must sift through all of their own cultural residue, in order to arrive at the “pure gospel” that is not “tainted” by their culture.  It is this “pure gospel” that then needs to be shared with Culture B, by translating the Gospel into Culture B’s culture!

The history of mission is often full of imperialism, where “sharing the gospel” actually resulted in the imposition of one culture upon another.  When European missionaries arrived in countries in Africa, tribal drums were seen as evil, and European Hymns were the only acceptable songs for worship.  Today we think of this type of mission as a tragedy, resulting in the destruction of local culture. 

You know what I think?  It’s not the missionaries’ fault.  It’s the faulty diagram.

The gigantic assumption is that the Gospel is beyond human culture and that we can somehow arrive at the “pure gospel.”    That assumption is too idealistic.  Don’t believe me?  Ok, let’s try another experiment:

At the onset of this post you reflected on the question, “What is the Gospel?”  Open up a Word document, or grab a piece of paper, and jot down a couple notes about your answer.  The only caveat, do not use human culture to do so.

So what’d you come up with?  “The Father loved us so much that he sent his Son to reconcile humanity to himself through Christ’s death and resurrection and subsequent transformation by the Holy Spirit?”  Something like that?  Is that pretty close to the “pure gospel?”  Here are a few examples of cultural influences in that “pure gospel.”

1.       The use of language, which is a cultural construction.

2.       (not fair you say) Ok, the use of family analogies to explain the Divine Plan:  Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

3.       The use of historical data (Christ’s death and resurrection).

4.       The use of Jewish religious terminology translated multiple times: “Christ” is the English translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for “Messiah” or “Anointed One.”  The only way to arrive at the significance of that word is to dive into a Hebrew understanding and expectation especially as it was understood to a 1^st century, Second Temple, Partly-Exiled, Hellenized, Jewish community. Yikes!

5.       Should I go on?

My point is this, IF there is such a thing as a “pure gospel” that exists outside of culture, we don’t know what it is!  And even if we did know what it is, we have no way of talking about it or understanding it outside of our own culture, or shall I say, our own context.

Let me draw you another picture that may more accurately depict the situation:

This picture shows that the Christ event took place within a particular culture, namely the 1^st Century Jewish culture.  That event was interpreted and retold by the original Christian community, and then continued on through time, up until our present day.  As the Christian witness moved on in time, cultures changed, and the Christian community expanded into new areas with new cultures.  The Christian witness was in an organic relationship to culture.  The Christ Event influenced the cultures, but the cultures also influenced the way the Christian community understood the Christ event.  Thus the line representing Christian witness does not only reflect the Christ Event, it reflects cultural characteristics as well.[i] 

A very simple example of this is in Christian worship.  Early Christian worship was inspired by the synagogue, and the breaking of bread (both historical and cultural).  As time moved on, there arose the need to formalize the way Christians worship, and the great Liturgical traditions of the East and West grew.  In the East, liturgy took on a more poetic, mystical flare inspired by Greek culture and language.  In the West, the liturgy reflected the Latin and Roman tendencies toward order and clarity.  Thus if you attend a Divine Liturgy, followed by a Roman Mass, you would note an overall similarity of significance, but very different form.  Worship is only one of MANY examples we could reference.

You, as a participant in the history of the Christian community, also have a culture through which you experience EVERYTHING.  The way you experience the history of the Christian community is also through your culture.  Here’s another picture:

You, as a person experiencing the Christian witness, and through that, the Christ Event, can only see and experience the witness through your own cultural lens.  It still affects you, but only through your language, symbols, value structures and so on.  There are a few implications for this:

1.       You will never see the “pure gospel” nor the “pure christ event.” 

2.       The Christian witness to the Christ event is informed by human culture.

3.       Human culture is informed by the Christ Event.

4.       This is a messy endeavor!  But this messiness wouldn’t be so surprisingly messy, if we never had our very first “clean” diagram.  What I’m suggesting here is nothing more than the human experience of life.   One of the mysteries of the incarnation is that God took on the stuff of human experience.  He took on flesh and with it, time, history, culture and so on.  The human, contextual, cultural experience is made sacred through the incarnation.  So when we see that the Church is influenced by culture, we need not shriek back in fear.  If God was influenced by human culture, why wouldn’t the Church?  

This is my introduction into the class “Theology of Ministry.”  We have read a book by Kennan Osborne in which he shows some of the ways that the Church’s views of ordained ministry and the laity has been informed by history and culture.   So if you were wondering what all this culture talk means, or how the Church has changed with culture, hopefully our next few posts will be of interest to you!

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[i] For a picture trying to capture the complex interplay between culture and the Christ Event, this is too simple.  The cultures are influenced by each other, and the Christian witness maintains cultural characteristics from say the 1^st C. Jewish Culture even as it moves into Culture x.