AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS CONCERNING ESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES, PART V
AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS CONCERNING ISRAEL AND THE CHURCH
I. We affirm that by virtue of divine election (Rom. 11:1,2,25-26), the preservation and ultimate ingrafting of Jewish people demonstrate God's mercy and faithfulness to His Word and serves the purpose of the conversion of the Gentiles just as the ingrafting of the Gentiles serves the purpose of the conversion of the Jews.
We deny that this "divine election" implies the salvation of individual Jews without their repentance and conversion through the Gospel.
II. We affirm that Christians of all nations are called to show love and mercy to Jewish people and to call them to repentance as with other peoples as part of their witness (Rom. 11:30-31).
We deny that seeking to bring Jews to the knowledge of Jesus the Messiah is demeaning, disrespectful, or unloving (Rom. 11:14;9:3).
III. We affirm that Christians of all nations are indebted to the Jewish people for preserving the Scriptures and especially to the saved remnant of ancient Israel who were faithful to the covenants and brought the gospel to the world (Rom. 9:4,5;11:18).
We deny that this gives ground for Christians to idolize the Jewish people who will also be indebted to Christians of other nations at the end of the age for their salvation (Rom. 11:14,32,32).
IV. We affirm the legitimacy of Jewish followers of Jesus remaining part of their people whether individually or in Messianic Jewish congregations, or in Messianic Jewish cell groups in the structure of the larger Church.
We deny the validity of forming congregations with exclusive physical descent membership policies, or sectarian attitudes of separation from the larger Body of Christ (Eph. 2:14-18; Gal. 3:28) or that maintaining Jewish cultural expressions should be required.
V. We affirm the unity in the Messiah of Jew and Gentile as one new man and the spiritual seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:28,29; Eph. 1:6,7).
We deny that this precludes uniquely Jewish or other cultural/ethnic expressions of New Covenant faith or differences of calling among people in the Body of Christ (Rom. 11:29; I Cor. 12; 7:17-24).
VI. We affirm that the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel may or may not be part of God's prophetic fulfillment in working to bring all elect "Israel" to Himself. We further affirm that Jews who believe in Christ will be grafted back into the "Olive Tree" in which all followers of Jesus find their sustenance (Rom. 11:23-26).
We deny that this gives Israel the right to treat Gentiles in the Promised Land with injustice or give an unqualified right and mandate to take by military force at the present time the land promised to Abraham.
VII. We affirm that all forms of anti-Semitism are contrary to Christian faith. We further affirm that the Jewish people as a people are rich in cultural contributions to the world, a culture with significant praiseworthy elements (Rom. 9:15; Gen. 12:1-3).
We deny that Rabbinical Judaism is an adequate faith for the salvation of the Jewish people (Rom. 10:1-3).
VIII. We affirm that, with regard to salvation, God has always had only two categories of peoplethose who are His people and are saved and those who are not His people and are lost.
We deny that the Jewish people comprise a third category of humanity as if there are the saved, the lost, and the Jews.
IX. We affirm that the "middle wall of partition" (Eph. 2:14) has been broken down and there is now "one new man" in Christ, which comprise God's people.
We deny that God seeks to have all people groups dissolve into a homogeneity or that God may not have purposes for varieties of people.
AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS CONCERNING CULTURE, CONTEXTUALIZATION AND THE GOSPEL
I. We affirm that communication of the Gospel from one culture into the context of another is necessary and important. For the Christian to clearly communicate the Gospel, he must enter the pagan culture into which he seeks to introduce the message of reconciliation much in the same way as Jesus, in the Incarnation, left His heavenly realm ("culture") and entered the human realm (culture) to present and establish His Kingdom.
We deny that communication is all there is to contextualization and that the Gospel is an abstract formulation without cultural implications.
II. We affirm that the Gospel must judge all cultures rather than that any culture may stand in judgment of the Gospel.
We deny that the Gospel need only to simply root itself in the soil of each culture (indigenization) since mere indigenization does not include or have as its goal the concept of cultural judgment.
III. We affirm that true biblical contextualization seeks to not only make the church a part of the culture, but to change the culture toward conformity with the Holy Scriptures. Contextualization seeks to change the structures of society in order that they might conform to the intentions of God.
We deny that it is sufficient merely to make the church culturally independent in each new society where it is established or merely to make it an indigenous part of the new cultural setting.
IV. We affirm that the term "Contextualization of the Gospel" means the possessing of a culture in the name of King Jesus, with the activity of the new Christian church structured in such a way that it develops a new lifestyle which reflects that Jesus is truly the Lord of that culture's whole life. We further affirm that this lifestyle may require the taking of various countercultural positions as it seeks to bring all of culture into conformity with the laws of God (II Corinthians 1:4-5).
We deny that this definition of contextualization may rightly be called cultural genocide or chauvinism. We further deny that it is the duty of the church to allow various cultures to remain unaffected by any influence other than what God is doing in the world today.
V. We affirm that historic Western thought forms and lifestyles have developed to a great extent as a result of the influence of the Gospel's worldview and the Bible's description of the Kingdom of God.
We deny that contextualization of the Gospel (as defined in IV above: the possessing of a pagan culture) is only a disguised process of exporting Western thought forms and lifestyles in the name of Christianity or that the Western world must therefore cease the projection of its historic doctrines into non-Western cultures. We further deny that it is legitimate to say that biblical Christianity is a uniquely Western system.
VI. We affirm that biblical contextualization is always prophetic in that it is the Christian (in God's name) speaking to the unjust and unholy structures of the present culture and then seeking to transform that culture by changing these structures into conformance with the will of God. We affirm that God is at work through the Christian to bring about a better world and a progressively humane society.
We deny that the message of the Christian must be formulated in such a way that it remains in conformity to the existing values and structures of the target culture. We deny that such conformity qualifies the message as being biblically prophetic.
VII. We affirm that a biblical approach to contextualization is a "dynamic process through which the church continually challenges and/or incorporates-transforms elements of the cultural and social milieu of which it is an integral part in its daily struggle to be obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ in its life and mission in the world."
We deny that the biblical view of contextualization is dialectical, namely that the Kingdom of God confronts a non-Christian culture and produces a synthesis which is a humane and just society, imperfect but struggling toward perfection.
VIII. We affirm that God's Kingdom is coming as His people are totally governed by His authority and as, by this authority, they promote justice, righteousness, mercy, and love on the earth.
We deny that God's Kingdom is coming by social action and a growing humanization of the nations of the earth.
IX. We affirm that the Christian, in his lifestyle as a servant of the King in a covenant community, is a "contextualizer" of the Gospel.
We deny that it is biblical to acculturate the Bible through allegorizing it into cross-cultural models.
X. We affirm that Kingdom-lifestyle contextualization is the task of making the whole counsel of God indigenous and normative within a given culture.
We deny that the church may be content with transforming political, economic, social, and cultural spheres of life until those spheres and their presuppositional framework have been subjected to the judgment of God's Word.
XI. We affirm that the Christian is "above" cultural loyalties in the sense that the Christian's citizenship is in the Kingdom of Heaven because the bonds of allegiance to a worldly system have been broken.
We deny that this view means that the Christian is not required to be in submission to legitimate earthly powers and systems, according to the commands of the Lord (Romans 13:1-7). We further deny that to be "above cultural loyalties" means that the Christian has no interest in earthly culture.
XII. We affirm that Scripture interprets culture, science, and all realms of human knowledge.
We deny that culture, science, and other realms of human knowledge interpret Scripture.
XIII. We affirm that the Christian is an interpreter of the Biblical message and is used by God to bring the divine interpretation into the pagan culture (the context) in which a new disciple is seeking to make his new faith the norm in his own life and in the total life of his culture. We further affirm that the Christian's role as an interpreter of the Biblical message does not limit him only to speaking nor preclude him from working to change the pagan culture through applications of the mercy of God.
We deny that any cultural context, ancient or contemporary, may, in and of itself, be used to modify the meaning intended by the biblical author or limit the audience indicated in Scripture. We recognize, however, that the biblical author, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may have in some cases intended a given instruction to be viewed primarily within the context of the cultural contemporaneous with the instruction.
XIV. We affirm that in order to know the context (the pagan culture targeted for transformation), the Christian must available himself of all research that will help in understanding the pagan culture, including anthropology, economics, sociology, etc., insofar as this research has been conducted in a biblically reliable manner. The Christian's cultural research tools must be "of the Lord."
We deny that the social sciences may be used indiscriminately without reformulation themselves in the light of Scripture. We reject the reliability of social science conducted on the premises of the centrality of unredeemed man.
XV. We affirm that Christ's Great Commission to "disciple all nations" requires the utilization, rejection, or transformation of cultural forms in the process of response and obedience to "all that He has commanded."
We deny that the objective of discipling is limited to presentation of a "simple gospel" of saving people from hell and helping them to "cope" with life until they are taken from earth.
