Verbum Domini §114

The Bible and inculturation

114. The mystery of the incarnation tells us that while God always communicates in a concrete history, taking up the cultural codes embedded therein, the same word can and must also be passed on in different cultures, transforming them from within through what Pope Paul VI called the evangelization of cultures.[364] The word of God, like the Christian faith itself, has a profoundly intercultural character; it is capable of encountering different cultures and in turn enabling them to encounter one another.[365]

Here too we come to appreciate the importance of the inculturation of the Gospel.[366] The Church is firmly convinced that the word of God is inherently capable of speaking to all human persons in the context of their own culture: “this conviction springs from the Bible itself, which, right from the Book of Genesis, adopts a universalist stance (cf. Gen 1:27-28), maintains it subsequently in the blessing promised to all peoples through Abraham and his offspring (cf. Gen 12:3; 18:18), and confirms it definitively in extending to ‘all nations’ the proclamation of the Gospel”.[367] For this reason, inculturation is not to be confused with processes of superficial adaptation, much less with a confused syncretism which would dilute the uniqueness of the Gospel in an attempt to make it more easily accepted.[368] The authentic paradigm of inculturation is the incarnation itself of the Word: “‘Acculturation’ or ‘inculturation’ will truly be a reflection of the incarnation of the Word when a culture, transformed and regenerated by the Gospel, brings forth from its own living tradition original expressions of Christian life, celebration and thought”,[369] serving as a leaven within the local culture, enhancing the semina Verbi and all those positive elements present within that culture, thus opening it to the values of the Gospel.[370]

[364] Cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (8 December 1975), 20: AAS 68 (1976), 18-19.

[365] Cf. Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (22 February 2007), 78: AAS 99 (2007), 165.

[366] Cf. Propositio 48.

[367] Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (15 April 1993), IV, B: Enchiridion Vaticanum, 13, No. 3112.

[368] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity Ad Gentes, 22; Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (15 April 1993), IV, B: Enchiridion Vaticanum, 13, Nos. 3111-3117.

[369] John Paul II, Address to the Bishops of Kenya (7 May 1980), 6: AAS 72 (1980), 497.

[370] Cf. Instrumentum Laboris, 56.