Bringing the Good News of the Gospel to different cultures

3. In order to reveal himself, from the rich panoply of age-old cultures born of human genius, God chose for himself a People whose original culture he penetrated, purified and made fertile. The history of the Covenant is that of the rise of a culture that God himself inspired in his People. Sacred Scripture is the instrument willed and used by God to reveal himself, that which raises it to a supracultural plane. «To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their powers and faculties» (Dei Verbum, 11). In Sacred Scripture, the Word of God, which constitutes the original inculturation of the faith in the God of Abraham, the God of Jesus Christ, «the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language» (Ibid., 13). The message of the Revelation, inscribed in the sacred History, always presents itself in the guise of a cultural package from which it is inseparable, and of which it is an integral part. The Bible, the Word of God expressed in the words of men, constitutes the archetype of the fruitful encounter between the Word of God and culture.

In this respect, the call of Abraham is significant: «Leave your country, your family and your father's house» (Gen 12:1). «By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, living in tents... For he looked forward to the city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God» (Heb 11:8-10). The history of the People of God begins with an adherence of faith which is also a cultural split and culminates with what can be seen as another, the crucifixion of Christ. He was lifted up from the earth, but at the same time became the focal point which directs the history of the world upwards and gathers in unity the scattered children of God: «When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all men to myself» (Jn 12,32).

The cultural break with which Abraham's vocation began, he who was the «father of believers», conveys what happens in the depths of the human heart when God erupts in the existence of human beings, revealing himself and arousing the commitment of their whole being. Abraham was spiritually and culturally uprooted to be, in faith, planted by God in the Promised Land. Indeed, this break emphasizes the fundamental difference of nature that exists between faith and culture. Unlike idols, which are the product of a culture, the God of Abraham is totally different. It is by revelation that he enters Abraham's life. The cyclical time of the ancient religions becomes obsolete: with Abraham and the Jewish people, a new time begins and becomes the history of man walking towards God. It is not a people making itself a god, but God giving birth to a people, a people of God.

The culture of the Bible has a unique place. It is the culture of the people of God at the heart of which he became incarnate. The promise made to Abraham culminates in the glorification of Christ crucified. The Father of Believers, intent on the fulfilment of the Promise, announces the sacrifice of the Son of God on the wood of the Cross. In Christ, who came to recapitulate the whole of creation, the love of God calls all men to share in the condition of sonship. God who is totally different from us, manifests Himself in Jesus Christ as totally one with us: «the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men» (Dei Verbum, 13). But faith has the power to get to the core of every culture and to purify it, to make it fruitful, to enrich it and to make it blossom like the boundless love of Christ. The reception of Christ's message thus gives rise to a culture whose two fundamental components are, in a completely new way, the person and love. Christ's redeeming love unveils, beyond human persons' natural limitations, their deep value, which blossoms under the effects of Grace, God's gift. Christ is the source of this civilization of love, for which men, since the original fall in the Garden of Eden, are nostalgic, and which John Paul II, like Paul VI, incessantly calls us to make into a practical reality with all people of good will. For the fundamental bond of the Gospel, that is of Christ and of the Church, with man in his human nature is a creator of culture in its very foundation. By living the Gospel, as two millenniums of history demonstrate, the Church illuminates the meaning and the value of life, broadens the horizons of reason and strengthens the foundations of human morality. Lived authentically, the Christian faith reveals in all its depth the dignity of the human person and the sublime nature of man's vocation (Cf. Redemptor Hominis, 10). Pioneers like Saint Justin and Saint Clement of Alexandria, Origen and the Cappadocian Fathers bear witness to this. This fruitful encounter of the Gospel with the different philosophies through the ages is evoked by Pope John Paul II in his Encyclical Fides et Ratio (cf. 36-48). «Faith's encounter with different cultures has created something new» (Ibid., 70), in this way it creates an original culture, in the most varied contexts.