ON CONTEMPORIZING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE AND THE ANALYSIS OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE

I. Contemporizing the Christian Message

A. A Critique of the Bultmannian Proposal

In his controversial essay “New Testament and Mythology” [New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1984. Augsburg: Fortress)], Rudolf Bultmann makes an observation on the mythical view of the world in the New Testament which was actually the general view of reality in the ancient Semitic world (with specific focus on cosmology). This is precisely the reason why Bultmann contends that ideas found in the Bible related to cosmology and other “allegedly” mythical aspects of reality are already obsolete for us today. Hence, he is making a proposal to reinterpret the Biblical message in the light of our contemporary scientifico-empirical orientation. He believes that these “mythological conceptions” can and must be changed without the hazard of losing the defining characters of Christianity.

I personally believe that the Christian message should truly address the sensitivity and sensibility of man in the contemporary milieu that defines his orientation and being. This amounts to a reinterpretation of the Biblical message—an existentialization, if you will. However, such a reinterpretation does not need to be grounded on the belief that the weltanschauung of the Bible is mythical in character, which is only hypothetical in Bultmann’s presentation. Existentializing reinterpretation is not really a demythologizing (in the Bultmannian parlance) but an attempt to recapture the eternal ancient message of God in contemporary medium with an objective to reach the modern man in his contemporary spiritual needs.

It is not, therefore, the cosmology of the ancient message that determines the reinterpretation but rather the present situation of the contemporary man. Whether the Biblical worldview is mythical or not is not an issue (perhaps, Bultmann has some significant and valuable points that cannot simply be ignored or dismissed but would technically be more functional in the field of Biblical criticism); what matters is that we cannot deny the reality of the supernatural and it is on this plane that God meets man (and vice versa) in a very personal way, and the Bible is replete with encounters of this nature. Drawing universal spiritual messages from them for the purposes of the contemporary man renders the Bultmannian hypothesis insignificant.

B. The Two Approaches to Contemporizing Theology


1.Transformers’ Approach. It starts with the assumption that Christianity’s belief are necessarily attached to the context of the ancient worldview and therefore cannot be sensible if separated from that context. It is not in anyway possible to signify the beliefs by simply restating them in the language understood by modern man because man has radically changed with the passing of time. By this assumption, man is made the measure of truth; thus, making truth relative to a large extent.

2. Translators’ Approach. It shares with the transformers’ approach the desire to be meaningful to the contemporary world. However, the translators strongly emphasize the need for making certain that no other message is being made meaningful but the authoritative message of the Scriptures. They believe that the essence of the message cannot be altered; they can only be put in a new “vessel” to be understood in the language of the receptor. The translators radically oppose the transformers’ effort to make man the measure of truth. God is the measure of truth and if transformation is truly needed, it is man that must be transformed, not the message.

C. A Critique of the Two Approaches to Contemporizing Theology

In looking at the two approaches, let us consider certain conditions:

First, Biblical messages are not monolithic and for my present purpose, I want to make use of two categories to distinguish the types of these messages. There are : 1) culture-bound messages and 2) universal messages. The first type can be transformed while the second can only be translated.

Now the crucial role of a contemporizing agent is his/her ability to properly distinguish between the two. Culture-bound messages are inseparably attached to the ancient worldview and cannot be made sensible by simply restating them. These messages must therefore be transformed but the transformer, on the one hand, must be careful not to traverse the boundary because he might unwittingly ignore some universal principles unnoticeably embedded in the culture-bound messages. The translator, on the other hand, may not be aware of culture-bound messages (e.g., John 13 and I Cor. 11.3-17) and treat them as if they are grounded on universal principles. However, the translator is on a safer ground as a contemporizing agent because his basic concern is simply to transmit a message in a way that it will become meaningful and understandable to the contemporary receptor.

II. The Analysis of Theological Language

A. Verificational and Functional Analyses in Relation to Theological Language

1. Verification analysis is grounded on the assumption that all meaningful statements are those statements that can be verified through sense experience (cf. A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic. 1971. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books). Since theological statements cannot in any way be verified through sense experience alone, they are therefore meaningless.

2. Functional analysis also assumes that the truth or falsity of a statement should be determined but sense experience is not the only criterion of verifiability whereby meaningfulness is determined. The meaningfulness of a statement is rather determined by how the language is used to make that statement understanable to the receptor. In view of this, theological language is meaningful because its concepts and categories are well-understood by the people who are involved participants in its language game wherein specific norms functionally govern the modes of communicability (cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. 1999. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers).

Functional analysis, therefore, is to be preferred over the extremely limited and close-ended verificational analysis. Language is an activity and it is used to communicate in various ways like giving orders, requesting for something, reporting events, expressing a feeling or emotion, etc. Hence, we cannot really prescribe a single criterion to verify the meaningfulness of a statement.

Meaning is inherent in our understanding of language whether what is said is verifiable by sense experience or not. Meaning, actually, has nothing to do with truth or falsity so that a synthetic statement is meaningful as long as it is understood by the receptor regardless of whether it can be verified by sense experience or not.

B. Theological Language as Personal Language and as Metaphysical Synthesis

1. Theological language as personal language. Theological language communicates something about a personal God (in Judaeo-Christian tradition) who has revealed himself to us in a personal way. There is no other way whereby we can know God besides this. Knowing, therefore, is not only done through sense-experience because when we know a person it is not through this method. We know a person only as he reveals himself. God reveals himself as a person in his historic acts and in his communication with prophets.

2. Theological language as a metaphysical synthesis. Every individual person has a worldview to be able to function in a consistent and coherent manner within his life-setting (Sitz im Leben). Such a worldview is synthetic because it encompasses the entirety of life’s experience within a meaningful pattern of reality. Without this synthesis there is no way a person can reasonably act and decide.

This synthesis is metaphysical because its formation is on the conceptual level and becomes functional if meaningfully uttered in convictional terms [Willem Zuurdeg's An Analytical Philosophy of Religion. (1959. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press)]. Theological language is an expression of such synthetic convictional utterances and the meaning of them can only be verified by various metaphysical means. Theological language is, therefore, rightly viewed as a metaphysical synthesis.