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Constructing a biblical theology of mission from the

writings of Charles R. Taber (1928-2007). (Excerpt).
By Kevin Lines, former mission student at the graduate seminary, Emmanuel
School of Religion (1995-1998).
This paper seeks to construct a biblical theology of mission from the writings and
lectures of Dr. Charles R. Taber (1928-2007). Although he never officially penned
a biblical theology of mission as such, Taber left behind a corpus of works in
books, journals and lectures that often speak directly to the use of the Bible in
mission practice and theory.
Who was Charles R. Taber?
Born to American Brethren missionaries training in Paris, France, Taber resided
there the first eight years of his life and was afforded one of the preeminent
advantages of a Third Culture Kid: being bilingual from birth. After a one-year
furlough in the States, Taber then lived with his parents in the French colony of
Oubangui-Chari, which is now known as the Central African Republic, where for
five years they resided and young Taber learned to speak the Sango language
from other children. During World War II, the family moved to South Africa for 6
months, then to Southern Rhodesia for 3 months, before briefly returning to
Oubangui-Chari. While in South Africa, Taber notes that he began his first year of
high school in English. After returning to the U.S., Taber remained to finish his last
two years of high school in Allentown, Pennsylvania (Taber 2005:89).
Undoubtedly, these early experiences helped to form an understanding of
language that would serve Taber well the rest of his life as a missionary in the
Central African Republic, as a linguist with the United Bible Societies in West
Africa, and later, as a professor of world mission. Fluency in multiple languages
helped Taber become one of the foremost Bible translation experts, providing
direction for innumerable translation projects through The Theory and Practice of
Translation, co-authored with Eugene Nida in 1969. This text was reprinted as
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recently as 2003 in English and translated into multiple languages, most recently
into Mandarin and published in Shanghai in 2004.
Majoring in English, while teaching French, as an undergraduate at Bryan College,
Taber met his wife, Betty, and the two were married the summer after graduation in
1951. They served together as missionaries in the Central African Republic with
the Foreign Missionary Society of the Brethren church from 1953 until about 1960.
After returning to the States to care for family medical issues, Taber was invited by
his former Oubangui-Chari colleague, William Samarin, to pursue graduate studies
at the Kennedy School of Missions at the Hartford Seminary Foundation. Taber
immediately accepted the invitation. Samarin and Taber would later publish A
Dictionary of Sango together in 1964 (Taber 2005:90).
Taber completed an M.A. in 1964, a Ph.D. in 1966, and had begun working with
Eugene Nida of the American Bible Society before graduating from Hartford
Seminary.
While serving from 1969-1973 as a United Bible Societies translation consultant
who provided oversight for more than two dozen projects in West Africa, Taber
simultaneously served as the editor of the journal Practical Anthropology for the
four years previous to its merging with Missiology in 1973. After completing a term
with the UBS, Taber was invited by Tetsunao Yamamori to help start an institute of
world mission and church growth at Milligan College, Tennessee. After six years of
teaching at the undergraduate level in which he felt he was not well suited,
Yamamori leaving to take another position elsewhere, and the mission institute at
Milligan College never materializing for lack of finances, Taber began teaching at
Emmanuel School of Religion in 1979, where he taught at the graduate level for 18
years. During this time he served as the president of the Association of Professors
of Mission in 1981, the president of the American Society of Missiology in 1985-86
and as an ASM Publication Series Editor from 1988-1997 (Taber 2005:92)
In his autobiographical reflection, Taber noted a few major realizations through the
years that will help us understand his theology of mission. First, while working with
the UBS in West Africa, he and Betty came to realize as never before that the
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Bible does not need to be protected by a nineteenth-century philosophical scaffold;
it just needs to be turned loose (Taber 2005:92). For Taber, this meant that the
Scriptures did not require the incessant interpretations of missionaries or
translators. While Taber held a very high view of Scripture, he came to understand
that the national church was capable of being guided by the Holy Spirit using the
Scriptures (ibid).
Another reflected upon insight was that mission was best accomplished when
carried out by a single, holy catholic, and apostolic church when it manages to
transcend its divisions, even momentarily (Taber 2005:93). This renewed focus
on unity in the church and in mission led the Tabers away from the Brethren
Church and into the fold of the Restoration Movement, Christian churches and
churches of Christ. Taber became very intentional concerning his convictions on
the unity of the church in mission, sometimes digressing into discussions on the
topic when presenting papers or writing journal articles. One example can be
found when he was asked by Missiology to be the evangelical respondent to a
presentation in which there was to be a Catholic respondent, a conciliar
respondent and an evangelical. I have no recollection of the original topic being
responded to, as Taber took much of his space commenting on being called an
evangelical:
Beyond whatever doctrinal consensus there may be between persons who
call themselves evangelicals, the term is commonly used in a specifically
partisan and exclusive sense. Too many evangelicals, perhaps because they
lack an institutional embodiment, seem obsessed with building fences
between themselves and other Christians and spelling out the importance of
those fences. My roots are in the evangelical movement, and in many ways
my personal doctrinal position agrees with the central tenets of the
evangelical consensus. But I reject the partisan and divisive use of the term
and disassociate myself explicitly from all fence-building efforts in the name of
evangelicalism. I serve notice that I will no longer respond to the evangelical
label not because I reject the content of evangelical faith, but because I
want to maintain unbroken fellowship with all Christians, including those with
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whom I disagree heartily. As a matter of deep conviction, I ask to be called
"Christian" without divisive qualifier. (Taber 1981:88)
Finally, through autobiographical reflection, Taber learned that sin and salvation
are not purely individual matters, as the standard evangelical model seems to
suggest. For Taber, it was not merely individuals, but the structures and
systems that rebelled against God. In this light, salvation is seen as Gods
sovereign project to restore all things to Gods rule (Taber 2005:93).
It is interesting to note that while he spent the last 34 years of his life as a
missiologist, he began his career with doubts as to the validity of missiology as a
field of study that stands on its own in the academy, or even in a graduate
seminary.
Most of Tabers writings relate to the linguistic or anthropological aspects of the
gospel being comprehensible across boundaries.
Dr. Taber died at the age of seventy-eight. He was the president of the American
Society of Missiology.
Major bibliographic works of Charles R. Taber 1928-2007
Nida, Eugene Albert and Taber, Charles R.
1969 The Theory and Practice of Translation. Leiden ; Boston, MA: Brill.
Samarin, William J. and Taber, Charles Russell
1965 A Dictionary of Sango. Hartford, Ct: Hartford Seminary Foundation.
Taber, Charles R.
1964 French Loan Words in Sango: A Statistical Analysis of Incidence. Hartford
studies in linguistics; no. 12. (Masters Thesis) Hartford, Conn.: Hartford
Seminary Foundation.
1966 The Structure of Sango Narrative. Hartford studies in linguistics; no. 17.
(Ph.D. Dissertation) Hartford: Hartford Seminary Foundation.
1978 Limits of indigenization in theology. Missiology 6, no. 1 (January): 53-79.
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1978 The Church in Africa, 1977: Papers Presented at a Symposium at Milligan
College, March 31-April 3, 1977. South Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey
Library.
1981 Some evangelical questions. Missiology 9, no. 1: 87-91.
1983 Missiology and the Bible. Missiology 11, no. 2 (April): 229-245.
1986 The New Testament language of quantity and growth in relation to the
church. Missiology 14, no. 4 (October): 387-399.
1987 Contextualization. Religious Studies Review 13, no. 1 (January): 33-36.
1991 The World is Too Much With Us: "Culture" in Modern Protestant
Missions. Series: The Modern Mission Era, 1792-1992. Macon, Ga.: Mercer
University Press.
1991 Freedom to evangelize vs freedom to seek justice. Transformation 8
(April): 1-5.
1993 Mission and Ideologies : Confronting the Idols. Mission Studies 10, no. 1-2:
179-181.
1993 Is There More Than One Way to Do Theology : Anthropological Comments
on the doing of theology. Didaskalia 5, no. 1 (Fall): 3-18.
2000 To Understand the World, to Save the World: The Interface Between
Missiology and the Social Sciences. Series: Christian mission and modern
culture. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International.
2001 Introduction to the sociology of missions. International Bulletin of
Missionary Research 25, no. 4 (October): 186.
2002 The gospel as authentic meta-narrative. In Foust, Thomas F. A
Scandalous Prophet: The Way of Mission After Newbigin. Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans: 182-194.
2002 In the image of God: the Gospel and human rights. International
Bulletin of Missionary Research 26, no. 3 (July): 98-102.
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2005 My pilgrimage in mission. International Bulletin of Missionary Research
29, no. 2 (April): 89-93.
2007 Graduate Education for World Mission:1979 inaugural lecture. Emmanuel
Reflection Series 23. Johnson City, TN: Emmanuel School of Religion.
Taber, Charles R. and Betty J. Taber
1992 A Christian understanding of religion and the religions. Missiology
20, no. 1 (January): 69-78.
Yamamori, Tetsunao, and Taber, Charles R.
1975 Christopaganism or Indigenous Christianity? South Pasadena, Calif.:
William - Carey Library.










FUENTE: Extrado de: LINES, Kevin. Constructing a biblical theology of
mission from the writings of Charles R. Taber (1928-2007). Publicado el 18 de
mayo de 2009. Asbury Theological Seminary. Wilmore, Kentucky, Estados Unidos
de Amrica.
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A Tribute to Dr. Charles Taber
Although Dr. Taber was a noted missiologist and a word smith with few peers, I
keep coming back to something else that stood out about him: Christian maturity.
This most desirable of traits is not to be taken lightly. By his own admission he
wasn't naturally patient. He liked things punctual. He had high standards. Papers in
his class were due at the start of class. One of my friends once worked through the
class period, printed his paper, ran up to the classroom, followed Dr. Taber from
the classroom to his office, and gave him the paper. Dr. Taber thanked him for the
paper, suspended it over the trashcan between his pinching fingers, said "...but
when I said papers were due at the beginning of class I meant it," and then he let
the paper drop unceremoniously and unread into the trash.
That's the Dr. Taber I knew when I was given the opportunity to become the
minister at Grandview. When I was being considered for the position I was invited
to a big breakfast at the Buckner house. When I walked in and saw Dr. Taber I
said, "Hello, Dr. Taber, it's good to see you." His response was, "I'm not giving you
grades anymore. Call me Charles." From then on, with herculean effort, I learned
to call him by his first name.
When I arrived at Grandview we were in the midst of a worship wars ... hymnic
hostilities ... chorus combat (is that enough alliteration for you?). These weren't all-
out, take no prisoner, battles. They were more subtle than that. At the bottom of the
difficulties was (I think) fear. Fear that "my" favorite style of worship was going to
be taken from me. Fear causes turf wars.
In the midst of that I sought background information from as many people as I
could. The stories sounded mostly the same and they all focused on the events of
the previous ten years. When I had the chance to sit down with Charles he said
something I heard nowhere else.
"Grandview went through a leadership crisis years ago," he said, "and when they
did they invited [me and some others] to step into leadership. We did. And we stole
their church."
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Implicit in his tone and words was the realization that he and the others had not
intended to do so, but that upon reflection he seemed to think they had neglected a
segment of the church's music and life and (slowly) much of that segment had
gone away. I didn't push him on the point. I think I knew what he meant.
The people who sang old, gospel hymns lost their sappy Fanny Crosby songs and
saw them replaced with high church hymns. Call it Worship War I. Fast-forward to
Worship War II.
Perhaps it was with that realization that Charles designed the Missions Emphasis
worship service one year and included the song, "Shine, Jesus, Shine" in the
traditional 11am service at Grandview. I am certain he didn't like that song. I
believe he included it because he thought it was important to sing each other's
songs.
I remember worrying on that Sunday that I would have to field questions about the
inclusion of "Shine Jesus Shine" in the second service. Then I realized that I could
just say, "Hey, if you want to complain, complain to Dr. Charles R. Taber, professor
of Missions at Emmanuel School of Religion." What a relief!
Ever wonder what Christian maturity looks like? Charles wasn't worried about
losing his songs. He was worried about including others in the service he designed.
Christian maturity is more interested in unity and reaching out to others than in its
own musical likes and dislikes.
Others will remember Charles' contributions to the academy, I will remember his
contribution to the church and to my own growth as a disciple of Christ.
Thanks, Dr. Taber ... er ... Charles, for your example of Christian maturity, for your
fidelity to your wife and your family, for your love for the church, for your love for
the world, and for your love for God. You are missed.

FUENTE: URL: http://aaronwymer.blogspot.com.ar/2007/11/tribute-to-dr-charles-
taber.html 01/06/2014