Simplification is not contextualization. Of course we want to communicate the gospel as simply as possible. Yet, the gospel is not as “simple” as many people suppose.
Consider the various contexts involved. We have to understand the gospel as it was understood in multiple ancient settings. Our own cultural lenses limit our interpretations. In addition, we are trying to communicate and apply that message in a cross-cultural context.
Do we preach an “abstract” gospel?
There is nothing simple about this process. Accordingly, oversimplifying the gospel may in fact undermine biblically faithful and culturally meaningful contextualization
In order to simplify, people reduce the message to what they deem to be the bare minimum content of the gospel. The result is a presentation that strings together a set of propositions divorced from the history and the grand biblical narrative. Ironically, this process of “simplification” produces abstract theology. Such gospel presentations then make little sense in the local context of people’s lives.
Over at David Platt’s blog, Radical, there is a good post on “The Danger of Simplistic Evangelism.” He gives an excerpt from Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, where J. I. Packer, says:
The first and fundamental job of Paul as a preacher of the gospel was to communicate knowledge, to get truth fixed in people’s minds. Teaching the truth was the basic evangelistic activity. Although the apostles as evangelists did keep certain themes in the forefront, these central doctrines could never be communicated in a vacuum. They must be related to the whole counsel of God.
There must be a context given to the points of the gospel or else communication cannot take place. We must allow, however, for a great difference between what a Christian’s understanding of the gospel should be and that of a non-Christian who is just beginning to learn it. For Paul, the only right method of evangelism was the teaching method. Therefore, scriptural evangelism has extensive–not minimal–instruction as its goal.
What about 1 Corinthians 15?
No doubt . . . 1 Cor 15 offers one of the few very explicit articulations of the gospel anywhere in the New Testament. A common problem, however, is that people tend to reduce Paul’s explanation of the gospel to vv. 4–8. As Scot McKnight argues well in The King Jesus Gospel, the entire chapter in fact unpacks what Paul says via shorthand in vv. 4–8.
For example, vv. 24–28 explains the significance of Christ’s resurrection, which is at the center of the gospel:
24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
The gospel proclaims that Jesus is King. It is only because of his resurrection that anyone can say that he “died for our sins” (15:3).
In other words, the gospel is first of all royal; only then is it redemptive.
Comprehensive, not Exhaustive
Ironically, one way to simplify the biblical message is to make it more comprehensive. Why? Because that is how it becomes more coherent.
Comprehensive doesn’t imply exhaustive.
Of course, we cannot say everything there is to say. However, we can broaden the scope of the story we tell and the passages from which we draw from.
We need to be mindful of the major movements of the grand Story as well as the metaphors and themes that are most shape the authors’ thinking. Accordingly, we will better perceive the world in a way that is comprehensive, coherent, and concrete.
The gospel presents a radically different kind of worldview. Worldviews are embedded in stories, which tend to resist oversimplification. For example, how could you possibly tell the story of your life in 3-minutes, using only 4 simple points?
From this perspective, one sees the importance of distinguishing between the gospel’s “framework themes” and “explanation themes” (which I mentioned in a previous post). We all have certain basic categories in our mind that help us to organize our experience and the information we take in.
In One Gospel for All Nations, I suggest a model of contextualization that utilizes a few of these “big categories.” They help us make better sense of the Bible and the world. They allow us to preach a more comprehensive gospel and so minimize oversimplified evangelism.
(This post belongs to a series introducing my book One Gospel for All Nations: A Practical Approach to Biblical Contextualization. For other posts in the series, click here.)
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