1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
2.2 Contextualization in Missions
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12. As seemingly obvious as the idea of contextualization is, it is messy. Let's say that some ethical norm that is important to you is dismissed or downplayed by someone or somewhere else under the name of "that was just cultural on your part." For example, what if a Christian from some part of the world were to say, "Why don't you American Christians greet each other with a holy kiss? 1 Thessalonians 5:26 clearly says to do so."
Maybe the American Christian responds, "That was a cultural practice of the Mediterranean world. Can't I just give you a handshake?" This isn't an issue of debate for us currently, so it is an answer we can easily accept.
But what if it's an issue of greater significance? The German Christian says, "Your absolute prohibition on drinking is cultural. Can't I just drink in moderation and not get drunk?" What if someone says, "They didn't understand homosexuality in biblical times. What's wrong is visiting a temple prostitute or having sex with boys or forcing yourself on another person"?
You can begin to see the alarm that arose among some when the concept of contextualization came to the fore in the 1970s. "You just don't want to obey God. You're making excuses." And no doubt the concept of differing context has great potential to undermine moral principles. The fallen human mind has exquisite skills at rationalization, which is where you make excuses for inappropriate action. Rationalization is "reasoning away" your guilt or wrong behavior. We're very good at it.
In fact, humans are quite good at arguing that evil is good and good is evil (Isa. 5:20). The high priest "rents his clothes," rips them in a symbolic gesture, when Jesus acknowledges that he is the Son of God (Mark 14:23). "What further need of witnesses do we have?" It doesn't occur to him that Jesus actually might be the Son of God. He is making the good out to be evil.
13. So there is some legitimate concern about someone using the concept of culture to try to "wiggle out" of obedience to God's will. One might also suggest that the situation is different. Someone might say, "Normally it would be wrong to lie, but in this situation it is appropriate." There is a legitimate concern that the person is making excuses for sinful behavior.
About a decade ago, my church expanded its sense of legitimate reasons for divorce to include spousal abuse. It not only included physical abuse but emotional abuse. The idea is that a spouse can be unfaithful in ways that go well beyond sleeping with someone else. In my opinion, this is a good example of an ethical standard that is fully in keeping with the principles of Scripture without it being explicitly ennumerated in the Bible.
The problem is verifying it. "What if someone says they have been abused when they haven't?" I know of a case where a minister divorced his wife in the name of spousal abuse, but there were many who didn't believe him. There was actually an investigation to see if he could keep his ministerial credentials. Legislation was proposed to try to prevent abuse of the abuse clause.
Here we get to a fundamental issue -- if you make exceptions and allowances, someone is going to get away with cheating the allowance. I have heard of middle school teachers and substitutes who simply don't allow their students to use the restroom during class periods. "If you give an inch, they'll take a mile." If you say, "Lying is allowed under certain circumstances," then some people will take advantage of the allowance. If you say, "The prohibition on drinking is cultural," then some Christians are going to take advantage of it. Loopholes can open the door for bad behavior.
When I was an academic Dean, I realized that many policies come into existence because of people who "abuse the system." I remember a couple of faculty members who tried to drive a truck through the fact that there weren't explicit rules against practices that the rest of us followed as a matter of common sense. It was a little funny to me. They were really good at policy-making -- not themselves, but inspiring the rest of us to make policies so they couldn't abuse some aspect of the system.
14. However, in the end, I have a few responses to the fear of people abusing the concept of contextualization. The first is the old saying that "abuse is no excuse." The fact that someone might take advantage of the concept is a different issue than whether the concept is true or not. This is a form of the "fallacy of diversion." It confuses the application of a truth with the truth itself.
As we will see, it is simply the case that moral principles can play out differently in different situations and different contexts. I have a friend who thought he was having a major medical emergency. He had his wife drive him quickly to the hospital in the middle of the night. Later on, telling his young daughter about the incident, she was alarmed to find that her mother had driven through red lights on the way to the hospital.
In the binary ethical thinking of childhood, a red light is a red light. You don't run it ever. No exceptions. It's an absolute. It wouldn't matter if you were having a baby or dying of a heart attack. A rule's a rule.
Take the question of abortion. It is sometimes argued that, if we prohibit abortion, women will die in unsavory places trying to get one illegally. But this is a bad argument against prohibiting abortion. The objection to the prohibition relates to the application of a moral principle rather than the validity of the principle itself. Possible implications are a motivation to make sure we are right about the core ethic rather than an argument in relation to the ethic itself.
15. A second response is of course that God knows. No one is truly getting away with anything. God knows when we try to make evil good and good evil. In fact, God knows what is really going on inside our hearts even when we don't. We can hide our true motivations from ourselves. But God knows.
I suspect that some of the push back on these concepts is ultimately about control. We want to be able to police those who might abuse allowances. When my wife was in elementary school, a teacher expressed frustration to her father that she was always out of her seat. My father-in-law asked the teacher, "Why don't you tell her to sit down?" His response was full of pathos: "Because she always has a good reason!" Apparently, she had mad skills at coming up with reasonable excuses for undesired behavior.
I once worked with a professor who had elaborate systems to catch students at cheating. It's not that I didn't have my own techniques too, but he seemed to enjoy the quest to catch the cheater maybe a little too much. At some point, we have to remember that God is in control. It's not our job to catch every person whose motives aren't pure. In the end, God is the judge of our intentions (1 Cor. 4:3; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 4:12-13).
16. It is no surprise that as awareness of context became clearer and clearer in the missions circles of the 1970s, opposition to the concept of contextualization rose as well. In the first chapter, I talked about the predictable opposition to difference that arises when a new idea or practice is introduced that shakes or threatens to undermine the status quo. When we have unexamined assumptions about ideas or practices that are important to us, we can react very negatively toward the introduction of other thinking or approaches.
There are rhetorical machines that go to work to maintain the status quo. I've suggested that binary thinking is a predictable response -- the new idea or practice is evil or stupid. Rhetorical machines produce fine-sounding arguments why the new idea or practice is wrong. Some of these arguments can be quite clever. I often use the word ingenious for an incredibly intelligent work-around what seems more or less straightforward.
I had a oneness Pentecostal student once. Oneness Pentecostals don't believe in the Trinity. They are "modalists" who think that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all the same, one person in different modes during different periods of history.
This student was incredibly bright. At some point, we got into a discussion of Matthew 28:19, where Jesus tells his followers to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The most obvious reading of this verse, it seems to me, is that three distinct persons are mentioned here.
His response was ingenious. "Notice that the word name is singular. Even though there are three titles given here, they all relate to the one person who ultimately only has one name." Ingenious!
He didn't come up with that argument, of course. It was an argument created by the "machine" of his church to explain away what I would call "naughty verses" for them -- verses that seem to go against their theology. Every theological system has them. Some verses just fit more easily into our theological systems than others. More on paradigms in a later chapter.
17. Other arguments against a new concept are not quite as clever. You might call them "above average" arguments. They sound intelligent enough that, if they are arguing for a position you like, they provide an excuse to keep the ideas and practices you started out with. They work inside the bubble. Social media and legacy media are constantly giving us talking points that allow us to keep the positions we want to keep.
Of course binary thinking doesn't stop with letting me maintain a belief or practice. Rhetorical machines typically go on the offensive. They provide me with smart sounding reasons not only for why I am correct but why the other side is either stupid or evil. This is especially the case with political rhetoric.
In push-back to moves toward contextualization, an above average rhetorical machine went into action. It used the concepts of absolutes and relativism to try to undermine what it called "situational ethics" and "ethical relativism." These concepts became tools in the arsenal of idealological resistance. If you are claiming that Christians in some other place don't have to follow certain norms, we can shut you down by labeling you a relativist. If you are claiming that it's ok to steal if you're hungry, we can shut you down by calling that "situational ethics."
However, upon the simplest of examinations, this rhetoric doesn't actually do what it wants to do. Fundamentally, it tries to put all ethics into two boxes -- people who believe in right and wrong and those who don't. Absolutists are those who believe in right and wrong. Relativists are those who don't. It is an either/or, binary option. In the end, it is the fallacy of false alternative.
For example, an absolute by definition has no exceptions. Now consider the biblical instruction to submit to those in authority over you (Rom. 13:1; Heb. 13:17). Is that an absolute without exceptions?
Apparently not. Peter tells the Sanhedrin that they will not submit to its authority. "You tell us whether it is right to obey God or you" (Acts 4:19). That is to say, the principle of submitting to authority is a universal principle with exceptions. By definition, this is not an absolute. But it is not relativism either. It is another option on the ethical spectrum -- universal norm with exceptions.
18. Biblically, we find absolutes. But we also find universal norms with exceptions, and we also find instances of relativism. I would argue that the default scope of moral instruction in the Bible is universal with exceptions. Don't work on the Sabbath, but if your ox is in the ditch, make an exception (Matt. 12:11; Luke 14:5).
In this case, Paul goes beyond the Sabbath as a universal norm to more or less consider the Sabbath legislation as a matter of whether you are a Jew or a Gentile. He tells the Gentile Colossians not to let anyone judge them on whether they keep the Jewish Sabbath (Col. 2:16). Paul's teaching on the Jewish particulars of the Law approaches a kind of cultural relativism. I suspect he taught that it's fine for Jews to continue to abstain from pork, but Gentiles are not obligated to keep the food laws (so also Mark 7:19).
Indeed, you could argue that Paul makes Sabbath-keeping a matter of individual conviction in Romans 14:5 -- one person believes they must keep the Sabbath; another doesn't. Let that sink it. Paul makes Sabbath-keeping a matter of individual conscience and conviction. That goes beyond cultural relativism to individual relativism!
19. In short, the absolute-relativism rhetoric in the end doesn't do what it tries to do. Yes, the command to love God and neighbor is absolute -- no exceptions (Matt. 22:36-40). But other biblical commands seem to imply that there can be exceptions. There is the old question of someone hiding Jews during Nazi occupation during World War II. Do you lie when they ask if you are hiding Jews? The story of Rahab in Joshua 2 seems to imply as much. [8]
Upon considering this scenario, I had a student who said, "I guess it's ok to sin under some circumstances." But that is NOT what this argument is saying. We are saying that the right thing to do in some circumstances is to make an exception and that the wrong thing to do in some circumstands is to keep a rule. This student had the frameowork of absolutism so deeply carved on her mind that she couldn't see that it could actually twist morality in some extreme cases. [9]
But if there are potential exceptions, then the rhetoric falls apart. A concept or action cannot be dismissed simply by labeling. Now we have to do the hard work of ethical thinking. We have to identify moral principles that are in tension with each other and figure out which one takes precedence in this context or situation. But if we have to argue that out, then the rhetoric doesn't work as a quick answer to all our ethical questions.
If there are ethical norms that are universal but have exceptions, then I cannot use language of absolutes to shut down conversation. I have to do the hard work of ethical thinking. In the end, what a lot of people mean when they say "there are absolutes" is that "there is definite right and wrong." The problem is that relativists believe this too. They just think it depends on the culture, person, or situation. The rhetoric falls apart.
20. I grew up believing in convictions. Romans 14 is all about them. God may require something of me that he doesn't require of you. The Nazirites of the Old Testament were not allowed to drink or cut their hair. But everyone else could. This is an example of relativism.
There are individuals who were an alcoholic before they became a Christian. I have a friend who, while recognizing that the Bible fully allows the consumption of alcohol, would never drink himself because of his background. Abstinence for him is a personal conviction. This, again, is an example of ethical relativism, and it is biblically sanctioned.
Once again, we see that the "above average" machine of argumentation doesn't accomplish what it set out to do. Rhetoric of absolutes and relativism was meant to shut down any sense that ethics involves contextualization or the consideration of individuals or situation. But Scripture itself shuts the argument down.
Rather than morality being a binary of black and white, it involves a spectrum of possible decisions. There are moral absolutes. We've mentioned loving God and loving neighbor. All other ethical imperatives flow from these two. "Thou shalt not murder." This is an absolute because it does not include war or capital punishment or self-defense. If we worded it, "Thou shalt not kill," it would not be an absolute.
However, most ethical norms, it would seem, are on the level of universal principle with potential exceptions. There is a place in Scripture also for culturally relative norms -- wrong for one culture, allowed for another. And there is a place in Scripture for individual convictions, which are instances of personal relativism.
As you can see, morality is not a binary in this respect. It is a spectrum. We mentioned at the beginning of the chapter that moral nihilism is the approach to ethics that doesn't believe in any right or wrong. Relativism does believe in definite rights and wrongs. It is definitely wrong for my friend to drink, even though he would allow it might not be wrong for others. So it isn't even accurate to say that relativists don't believe in right and wrong.
Former President Biden is apparently a relativist when it comes to the subject of abortion. He believes it is wrong, but he wouldn't say it is wrong for others. The argument against him should not be, "That's relativist." The argument should be, "This is not an issue on which relativism is appropriate."
In the end, the absolutism/relativism argument fails to do what it sets out to do. On various issues, the Bible can be seen to take positions across the spectrum of moral scope. We therefore have to determine what the appropriate moral scope is for each action. We cannot simply dismiss an action by categorizing it. We have to do the hard work of moral reasoning.
We will return to ethics in chapter 8. Our purpose in this chapter has been to start us on the journey. The first step is to realize that we have moral assumptions we didn't know we had. The second step was for us to realize that binary thinking, while a natural response to new ideas, does not ultimately seem to work. There is a spectrum of moral scope. We will try to set a firmer philosophical basis for Christian ethics in chapter 8.
[8] Around 1800, Immanuel Kant coined the phrase "categorical imperative" in ethics. His philosophy was that, if something was wrong, it was always wrong without exceptions -- it was categorically wrong. He tried and tried to reformulate it so that it would make sense, but his difficulty ultimately belies the fact that he was just wrong.
His particular German culture was absolutist, but he couldn't pull off the argument. He finally said his categorical imperative amounted to the Golden Rule. But an exceptionless moral absolutism inevitably would violate the Golden Rule by applying an absolute standard to situations calling for exception or mercy. It inevitably leads to immoral action under extreme circumstances.
[9] I might add that while I am making my thinking fairly explicit in this series, I function more as a facilitator in teaching. In this case, I did not argue against the student's position, but I wanted her to understand accurately the nature of the argument.
