Come and See

Edward Rommen

Description

The mission of the Church is to introduce the person of Christ to individual human beings who by faith enter into communion with God. This does not involve adapting information to a particular context, but rather establishing the context prescribed by God for the presence of Christ wherever we happen to be among the peoples of the world. Contextualization, then, creates a new invitational core context which is host to the presence of the divine person. This is defined with the help of the gifts of ecclesial Tradition, which enables conditions that facilitate communion, and which thus helps us engage the world.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Philosophie et théologie
• Growth
• Christian Church

Informations

• Publié par: William Carey Publishing
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780878088799
• Langue: English

Extrait

Come and See: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Contextualization
Copyright 2013 Edward Rommen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise-without prior written permission of the publisher, except brief quotations used in connection with reviews in magazines or newspapers.
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the King James Version.
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version . Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Published by William Carey Library
1605 E. Elizabeth Street
Pasadena, CA 91104 | www.missionbooks.org
Melissa Hicks, editor
Brad Koenig, copyeditor
Hugh Pindur, graphic design
Rose Lee-Norman, indexer
William Carey Library is a ministry of the U.S. Center for World Mission
Pasadena, CA | www.uscwm.org
Printed in the United States of America
Digital Ebook Release BP 2013
ISBN: 978-0-87808-879-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rommen, Edward, 1947-
Come and see : an Eastern Orthodox perspective on contextualization / Edward Rommen.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-87808-534-7
1. Christianity and culture. 2. Missions-Theory. 3. Orthodox Eastern Church-Doctrines. I. Title.
BR115.C8R657 2013
261-dc23
2012044577
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Contextualization and the Challenge of the Gospel-as-person
1. Theological Roots of the Gospel-as-person
2. On Human Personhood
3. On Contextualization
CHAPTER 2
The Place of Divine Presence
1. Church as the Place of Divine Presence
2. Sacrament as Concretization of the Field of Divine Presence
3. Implications for the Process of Contextualization
CHAPTER 3
The Core Context of Mission
1. Holy Scripture
2. Apostolic Succession
3. Liturgical Structures
4. Councils
5. Hagiography
6. Iconography
CHAPTER 4
The Conditions of Communion
1. Spiritual State of the Inviter
2. Human-to-human Communion
3. Human-to-divine Communion
CHAPTER 5
Engaging the Fields of Personal Presence
1. Preliminary Observations
2. Can the Invitational Context Exist in Cyberspace?
Conclusions: A Reversal of Perspective
1. Basic Principles of Contextualization
2. The Task of Contextualization
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
The evangelistic task is to introduce the person of Christ This is the most fundamental principle in the process of contextualization. These statements come from the concluding chapter of this book. And this book is one of the most significant of many recent works on contextualization.
That having been said, readers will probably expect me to overview what the author has written and tell why it is significant. I will not proceed in that fashion for two reasons. First, the author has already summarized the book in his introduction. Second, the significance of this work stems from Dr. Rommen s expertise but also the uniqueness of his objective-namely, to explore the potential of the gospel, the role of the sacraments, and the use of cyberspace in effecting the kind of contextualization that will enable people to know the Lord Jesus personally and intimately.
Rommen s book is not an easy read, nor is its message easy to grasp, much less put into practice. However, I think that process will be helped along by the relating of several biographical vignettes.
I first met Ed during his student days at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the 1960s. Under the leadership of Dean Kenneth Kantzer, TEDS attracted many of the brightest and most dedicated students of theology and mission at the time, Ed among them. As a student, Ed s Norwegian parentage and background in the Norwegian Evangelical Free Church became apparent in a variety of ways but, far from being restrictive, they proved to be advantageous later on when Ed and his wife, Ainee, served as Free Church missionaries in Germany.
It was in a missionary capacity that Ed Rommen s extraordinary abilities to master the German language and culture, and to work effectively both independently and in concert with leaders and lay members of the Evangelical Free Church of Germany, became most apparent. Following several successful church plants, Rommen was invited by Free Church leaders to join the faculty of their denominational seminary at Ewersbach. Somewhat later, when the Berlin Wall came down, he was appointed to a leading role in making preparation for the reunification of the Free Churches of East and West Germany.
Not being of a mind to pass up an opportunity to enhance his own learning and skills, Ed completed a doctor of theology program at the prestigious University of Munich while simultaneously engaged in these various ministries. In the end, however, a serious asthmatic condition that steadily worsened in the German environment necessitated the return of the Rommen family to the States.
Back home, Dr. Rommen engaged the minds and hearts of his students while serving on the faculties of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and then Columbia Biblical Seminary. Eventually, however, Ed and Ainee were to make a decision that would change the course of their ministry dramatically. Involvement with several Columbia-area evangelical churches they deemed to be altogether too free, unchurchly, and laissez faire caused the Rommens to distance themselves from that kind of evangelicalism. Instead, they associated with a local congregation of the Orthodox Church-a church in which they felt enabled to retain orthodox doctrine without sacrificing sensibilities of worship and witness.
One thing led to another. Before long, their giftedness and devotion to Christ having been recognized in this new ecclesiastical context, the Rommens were afforded special responsibilities and opportunities for significant service. Eventually, Dr. Rommen was called to be the priest of Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. For a number of years now he has also served as adjunct professor at Duke Divinity School.
With this as background, let me return to the primary thesis of Come and See: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Contextualization. Namely, that the kind of contextualization called for in promulgating the biblical gospel leads to more than correct information about the Christ of the gospel; it also leads to a personal and life-changing relationship with the Christ who is the gospel. Now in making this very important distinction, I rather think that Dr. Rommen undervalues somewhat the contribution of our early book Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models. True, in that we attempted to display various aberrant contextualized theologies while explicating and illustrating a kind of contextualization we deemed more faithful to Scripture, our book primarily had to do with information about Christ and the gospel. But I think that exercise was, and is, very useful in much the same way as knowing the few facts about Dr. Rommen offered above can and should prove helpful to understanding his book. But let it serve to enhance and in no way diminish the quintessential importance of trusting and knowing Christ personally and of the kind of contextualization of Christian witness, worship, and works that help effect that relationship. Two interrelated illustrations-one more existential in nature and the other more theological-will give some indication of what I have in mind here.
First, students of mission especially want to give attention to the ways in which the Rommens dis-ease and perhaps even angst with evangelical worship in America may have contributed to their acceptance and effectiveness among evangelicals in Germany. I refer to the Rommens genuine disdain for the noncreedal, nonliturgical and, at times, somewhat freewheeling nature of many worship services in America and, on the flipside, their corresponding appreciation for the more ordered, liturgical, and doctrinally robust nature of corporate worship in evangelical churches in Germany. I myself have had occasion to experience the profound difference between celebrations of, for example, the Lord s Supper in many Free Churches in the United States and its celebration in Free Churches in Germany. The latter tend to be, not only more frequent, but also more solemn and symbolically significant. Dr. Rommen would be the first to admit that this frequency, uniformity, and solemnity can-and sometimes does-result in rote observance and empty form. But, if I understand him correctly, his contention would be that, contextualized and administered properly, this ordinance/sacrament has the potential to bring members of the body of Christ into a much more intimate relationship with the Christ who is the gospel.
Second, we must ask whether or not Scripture will uphold Rommen s contention? I am not a sacramentarian, nevertheless I think that we must answer that question in the affirmative. A careful examination of Paul s words concerning the observance of the Lord s Supper in his first letter to the Corinthian church (1 Cor 11:17-34) reveals that the Supper is indeed a remembrance (in the sense of recollection ) of the Lord s death, but it is much more than that. The more is epitomized in two related Greek verbs employed by New Testament writers and usually translated as remember : mimneskomai and mnemoneuo. These verbs sometimes convey the simple meaning of remembering or bringing to mind the events of the past. At other times, however, the remembering is intended to evoke a present response, whether in thankful prayer (1 Thess 1:3), a proper attitude (John 2:22; Eph 2:11), or an appropriate action (Gal 2:10; Rev 2:5). Accordingly, the related noun anamnesis , as used by Paul in the Corinthian passage before us (1 Cor 11:24,25), entails not merely participation