Inculturation
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Introducing
World Missions. |
Modeled
on the anthropological term enculturation, inculturation has been
used regularly in Catholic discussion since the 1970s as a parallel
to contextualization. The core idea is found in the widely quoted
statement from Pedro Arrupe, the former superior general of the
Jesuits, in a letter to the Society (Schineller, p. 109):
Inculturation
is the incarnation of Christian life and of the Christian message
in a particular cultural context, in such a way that this experience
not only finds expression through elements proper to the culture
in question, but becomes a principle that animates, directs and
unifies the culture, transforming and remaking it so as to bring
about "a new creation."
Just as contextualization
went beyond adaptation, so inculturation goes beyond Accommodation.
Rather than translating the concepts of the Gospel in a new cultural
setting by outsiders, it refers to the insiders of the culture integrating
at the root of their culture the values, ideals, teachings, and
orientation of the Gospel and church tradition (see Luzbetak, pp.
82-83).
While the general
sense of inculturation so closely parallels contextualization that
Protestants have little trouble with it, the emphasis on church
tradition as parallel to the Gospel in authority is a point of contention
for Protestants, who do not ascribe the same authority to church
tradition as Catholic teaching does.
Bibliography:
S. J. Bevans, The Japan Christian Review 62 (1996): 5-17;
M. Dhavamony, Studia Missionalia 44 (1995): 1-43; P. Divarkar,
A New Missionary Era, pp. 169-73; M. P. Gallagher, IRM
85 (1996): 173-80; L. J. Luzbetak, The Church and Cultures;
P. Schineller, IBMR 20 (1996):109-110, 112.
