Thursday, December 06, 2007

Corinthian Contextualization

How far do we go to be relevant? C3, C6??? How about less than C-Corinth. Interesting blog on Corinths contextualization of the Lord's supper. The following is from:

Conrad Gempf, would-be writer and lecturer in New Testament at London School of Theology
http://notquiteart.blogspot.com/2007/08/attractional-fallacy.html
Thus, it's incorrect to think that the Traditional Church's approach to doing church is an attractional model: that if we do things the way we've always done things, people will want to come in. From 1 Corinthians, we learn that the church's liturgy is more of a duty model: the Corinthians were chastised for trying to move the Lord's Supper away from its Jewish-specific roots and instead to practice it in the context of a Sophist's teaching/meal, which their culture understood and accepted. Paul tells them that such attempts at making worship culturally appropriate and self-expressive "do more harm than good" (1 Cor. 11:17).

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