ANTHROPOLOGICALLY INFORMED THEOLOGY In an early attempt to deal with God and culture from what I am labeling a Christian ethnotheological position, William A. Smalley and Marie Fetzer (now Reyburn) coined the terms superculture and supercultural to refer to God’s transcendent relationship to culture.’
Smalley later developed this concept in the pages of the journal Practical Anthrqbology in an article entitled “Culture and Supercul- ture.“2 His article was prompted by a letter published in that journal the previous year, the author of which betrayed a high degree of confusion as to just what roles theology and anthropology should play in our attempts to discover what is absolute and what is relative.
The author of the letter contended that “one should not establish an episcopal church government simply because the society is char- acterized by strong kings and subordinate lords” since “the question of church government is not an anthropological but a theological one.“3 Rather, the missionary should go into the situation convinced through a study of theology “that either the congregational or the episcopal or some other form of church government is the kind Jesus Christ meant for every society, all over the world and at all times.”
He continues,
this procedure-first the theological and then the anthropological - must be applied to a myriad of problems . . . such as theft, polygamy, premarital sexual relations, lying, lay and/or clerical marriages, etc. . . .
1. Smalley and Kraft, “A Christian View of Anthropology,” in Modem Science and Christian Faith, ed. F. A. Everest (Wheaton, Ill.: Van Kampen Press, 1948).
2. Smalley, “Culture and Superculture,”Practical Anthropology 2 ( 1955) : 58-7 1.
3. Since the author of the letter has now totally changed his views, I think it best to refrain from referring to him by name. The position he espoused is so common and well articulated. however. that it is heluful to cite the letter directlv.
Reprinted from Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologi&g in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books,
1979), pp. 116-46.
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3 1 0 CONTEMPORARYAPPROACHES SUPRACULTURAL MEANINGS VIA CULTURAL FORMS 311 made and culture-bound.4 Our theology, therefore, must be informed by anthropology and our anthropology informed by theology.
From an anthropologically informed theology, then, we propose model 4c: Christianness lies primarily in the “supacultural” (see below) functions and meanings expressed in culture rather than in the mere forms of any given culture. What God desires is not a single form of church government “absolutely right, valid for every society and during every epoch,” but the employment of the large number of diverse cultural forms of government with a single function -to glo- rify God by facilitating the smooth, well-ordered, and in-culturally intelligible operation of the organizations that bear his name.
To assume that this point of view endorses an abandonment of theological absolutes (or constants) is to miss the point in the other direction. Yet this is a natural overreaction, since theological under- standings (especially at the popular level) have so often focused strongly on particular cultural forms such as the wording of creeds, the modes (rather than the meanings) of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the supposed sacredness of monologic preaching, the merits of one or another form of church government, refraining from smok- ing and drinking, and the like-as if these were absolute under- standings of God’s absolute models. Seldom have arguments over such matters dealt with anything but the forms of belief or practice.
Neither the Reformation nor any subsequent church split, for example, has centered around whether the church should be governed (i.e., the necessity or non-necessity of the governing function). That churches should be governed has always been assumed, since Chris- tian things are to be done “decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40).
Church splits have, rather, focused on the @pe of church govern- ment-a matter of form, not of function. Nor have arguments con- cerning doctrine generally focused on whether or not, for example, God has provided for human redemption, inspired the Scriptures, invited human beings to respond in faith, worked in history, or the like. They have nearly always dealt with the forms these doctrines An anthropologist describes but a Christian prescribes. He believes
that God has revealed a system which is absolutely right, valid for every society during every epoch. [Italics mine]
The writer of that letter was seeking to dichotomize the theolog- ical and the anthropological evaluations of the situation. He says,
“it is one thing to be a Christian and another to be an anthropol- ogist.” One may look at the situation anthropologically, he contends, only in order to obtain information about the customs of the people one seeks to reach. One should have already made up one’s mind on the theological issues. Thus, in applying his theological conclu- sions to the indigenous situation, the writer says, “I must ‘play God’ ” and “prescribe” the system that God has revealed to me through my study of theology as “absolutely right, valid for every society during every epoch.”
The writer is undoubtedly right when he says, “The anthropology minded Christian missionary . . . must not be so enchanted by his science that he fails to pursue the consummation of his goal: the establishment of a truly Christian but, nevertheless, indigenous Church” (italics mine).
The author’s desire to discover absolute models before approach- ing the indigenous system and his feeling that it is to theology that we should turn for understanding of these models are likewise com- mendable. Unfortunately, his position appears deficient at two cru- cial points: (1) he does not see the contradiction between the imposition from outside of an “absolutely right” system that will be the same in cultural form (not merely in function or meaning) “for every society during every epoch” and the necessity that a truly indigenous church spring from the employment by Christianity of indigenous cultural forms, and (2) he fails to take account of the extreme limitation that the monoculturalness of most Western the- ology imposes upon its ability to deal with these issues in a cross- culturally valid way.
What cross-cultural witnesses need is not a continuation of the current dichotomization of the theological and the anthropological perspectives but a single perspective in which the insights of each specialization are taken seriously at the same level. For both are hu- man-made disciplines (in spite of the sacredness of the subject mat- ter of the one). And both disciplines suffer from the kind of myopia that all specialization leads to. For when we specialize into anything we automatically specialize out of everything else. In attempting to understand this or any other aspect of the relationships between Christianity and culture, therefore, we cannot afford to be “en- chanted” with either discipline. For each discipline is too limited by itself to handle the specialization of the other adequately. Our model 4b postulates that theology (as well as anthropology) is human-
4. ED I T O R'S NOTE: This essay is excerpted from a larger discussion in which Kraft proposes various models that have been advanced concerning God’s relation- ship to culture. He presents several broadly defined categories of relationships (in- cluding God against culture, God in culture, and God above culture). oavina specialI,I , %. . attention to what he calls the “God-above-but-through-culture position,” which in the context of the larger discussion is labeled “model 4a” (see Christiunitv in Culture:
A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective [Mar&roll, N.Y.:
Orbis Books, 19791, pp. 113-15).
Having introduced this model of an essentially transcendent God who uses culture to effect his purposes, Kraft is now turning to a consideration of the relationships between Christian meanings and the cultural forms into which they are fitted. He maintains that these considerations call for the development of an anthropologically informed theology-and it is at this point that we join his argument here.
3 1 2 CONTEMPORARYAPPROACHES should take. They have ordinarily centered on theories of how they are to be understood and formulated rather than on the fact that God has provided for these very important functions.
An anthropologically informed approach, however, identifies as the constants of Christianity the functions and meanings behind such forms rather than any given set of doctrinal or behavioral forms. It would leave the cultural forms in which these constant functions are expressed largely negotiable in terms of the cultural matrix of those with whom God is dealing at the time. In what follows, then, I will argue that it is the meaning conveyed by a partic- ular doctrine (e.g., consumption of alcoholic beverages, baptism) that is of primary concern of God. There is, I believe, no absolute- ness to the human formulation of the doctrine, the historical accu- racy of the way in which the ritual is performed, or the rigidity with which one abides by one’s behavorial rules.
This is the point at which Jesus scored the Pharisees. For they, in their strict adherence to the forms of their orthodox doctrines, rituals, and behavior, had ignored the fact that these forms had changed their meanings. The way they used the forms had come to signify oppression rather than concern, self-interest rather than di- vine interest, rejection rather than acceptance, God against human beings rather than God with them. That is, as the culture changed, the meanings of the forms that once adequately conveyed God’s message changed, along with the rest of the culture. And those whose responsibility it was to see to it that the message of God continued to be understood became primarily concerned with per- petuating and elaborating on the cultural forms in which the mes- sage came to them. They became legalistic concerning the traditional forms. But according to Jesus, godliness lies in the motives behind the meanings conveyed by the forms of belief and behavior, not simply in adherence to the beliefs and practices as traditionally observed. The beliefs and practices are simply the cultural vehicles (the forms) through which God-motivated concern, interest, and acceptance are to be expressed. And these forms must be continually watched and altered to make sure that they are fulfilling their proper function-the transmission of the eternal message of God. As cul- ture changes, these forms of belief and behavior must be updated in order to preserve the eternal message.
Perhaps it is this focus on function and meaning rather than on cultural form that led John to refer to Christ as the logos, the expres- sion of God (John 1: 1, JBP). Perhaps more clearly than with other cultural forms, linguistic forms such as words are seen to be im- portant only insofar as their function is important. In John’s pro- logue, Christ the Word, the Expression of God, is presented functioning as creator and sustainer, as the light of the world, and,
SUPRACULTURAL MEANINGS VIA CULTURAL FORMS 3 1 3 latterly, as a human embodiment of God. The focus is continually
‘on his functioning on behalf of God, on his expressing God with respect to the human context. The form that he took to communicate these functions is mentioned but never elaborated upon because it is so subsidiary to his function of expressing God.
This is not to deny the importance of cultural forms -whether they be words, rituals, behavior, beliefs, or the physical body in which the Son of God lived on earth. The forms are extremely im- portant because only through the forms does the communication take place. Even though it may be said that the water is more im- portant to a river than the riverbed in which it flows, it is still the riverbed that determines what the destination of the water will be (except in a flood). So it is that the forms (like the riverbed) through which the meanings of language and culture flow determine the destination of those meanings. In communication, however, as in irrigating a garden, it is of crucial importance that would-be com- municators (or irrigators) choose the proper channel (set of forms).
They must then direct their message (water) into that channel rather than into another one if they are to reach those whom they seek to reach. Intelligent irrigators do not choose last year’s channels simply because they have become attached to them, having learned to re- gard them reverently because the channels served them so well last year. Rather, they decide where they want the water to go and adapt last year’s channels or create new ones to reach this year’s crops.
Even so, the effective communicator (human or God) chooses, adapts, or creates cultural forms (channels) specifically appropriate to the task of getting his or her meaning (the “water”) across to the present hearers. In this way the forms he or she chooses are very important, but only as means, never as ends in themselves.
THE SUPRACULTURAL AND THE CULTURAL (MODEL 4d)
In the development of an ethnotheological understanding of the re- lationship between God and culture, Smalley’s reply to the letter mentioned previously was a truly significant contribution. I will here build upon that approach, though with two major and several minor modifications. The first of these is to change Smalley’s term supercultural to supracultural and to reject noun forms such as super- culture or supraculture as unusable. 5 Since I contend that there is no
5. Smalley’s original term superarltural was developed by analogy with supernatural.
Perhaps because of such widespread terms as superman, superbowl, superstar, and the like, the prefix super- makes a word to which it is appended particularly prone to be used as a noun. The use of the prefix mpm- is not nearly so likely to result in a noun. I understand that Smalley himself now prefers the term supracultural.