Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity

CONTENTS

Foreword - Wilbert R. Shenk
Preface - Craig Ott and Harold A. Netland
Introduction: Globalization and Theology Today - Harold A. Netland

Part 1 World Christianity and Theological Reflection

1. Christian Theology in an Era of World Christianity - Tite Tiénou
2. Anthropological Reflections on Contextualizing Theology in a Globalizing World - Darrell L. Whiteman
3. Globalization and the Study of Christian History - Andrew F. Walls

Part 2 Methodological Issues for Globalizing Theology

4. “One Rule to Rule Them All?” Theological Method in an Era of World Christianity - Kevin J. Vanhoozer
5. The Globalizing Hermeneutic of the Jerusalem Council - David K. Strong and Cynthia A. Strong
6. Creeds, Confessions, and Global Theologizing: A Case Study in Comparative Christologies - Steve Strauss
7. The Glocal Church: Locality and Catholicity in a Globalizing World - Charles E. Van Engen
8. “Experience-Near Theologizing” in Diverse Human Contexts - Robert J. Priest

Part 3 Implications of Globalizing Theology

9. The Challenge of Economic Globalization for Theology: From Latin America to a Hermeneutics of Responsibility - M. Daniel Carroll R.
10. Globalization, Nationalism, and Religious Resurgence - Vinoth Ramachandra
11. Bearing Witness in Rome with Theology from the Whole Church: Globalization, Theology, and Nationalism - Eloise Hiebert Meneses
12. Theological Implications of Globalizing Missions - James E. Plueddemann
13. Globalizing Theology and Theological Education - Lois McKinney Douglas
14. The Missionary as Mediator of Global Theologizing - Paul G. Hiebert

Conclusion: Globalizing Theology - Craig Ott

Foreword - Wilbert R. Shenk

From the human point of view, there is no way we can engage with the gospel independent of culture. Our interaction with the gospel relies on human language, worldview, and cultural context. The Bible speaks forcefully to this point: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Scripture reveals the gospel to us in terms of the Triune God’s actions in relation to a particular people in all the particularities of their time and place in the world over many generations. We are utterly dependent on human language to speak about the gospel. The gospel engages the full range and all facets of human experience through the narratives of countless people, each speaking in their own vernacular and from within their worldview.

Cultures are restless and dynamic. They rise and fall—flourishing for a time and then stagnating or disintegrating. New cultures arise to replace those that have disappeared. Over the past five centuries, modernity has transformed the world. One of the hallmarks of modern culture has been its universalizing dynamic. One consequence has been the development of an increasingly interconnected global system of relationships. Globalization per se is not new, but a new stage in this process toward an integrated world system has been reached. We have no choice but to recast knowledge and relationships in light of the processes of modern globalization.

At the time of the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe, the cultures of the world were all essentially traditional. In traditional culture, people validate actions and practices by appealing to tradition. The emergence of modernity marked a fundamental change by unleashing revolutions in knowledge, technology, political theory, epistemology, and the reorientation of all human endeavors to the future. Modernity was future oriented, and its focus was innovation. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment boldly claimed that its purpose was to discover universal principles, or laws, that would free humankind from the disabling constraints of backward-looking cultural contexts.
The Enlightenment program would allow humankind to escape the drudgery of traditional societies by harnessing nature to create a new kind of world. Indeed, modernity has produced a powerful culture that has penetrated all aspects of human life and extended itself to every part of the globe. In this respect, globalization as a process and as a reality is a direct fruit of modernity.

The essays that comprise this volume are dedicated to examining from multiple angles the significance of this process of globalization for theology. The authors hold up mirrors that reflect back to us the fact that the vocabulary, conceptualizations, and institutional forms that have held our modern worldview in place no longer work as they once did. To get our bearings in this new situation requires that we let go of what is worn-out and turn to the hard work of discerning new ways of seeing.

The church has been an active participant in the formation of modern culture. Like every other aspect of Western society, the modern church has been profoundly shaped by modernity and, consequently, is caught up in the crisis that has overtaken the wider culture. Major intellectual breakthroughs along the way advanced the idea that the process of modernization had no limits. As a result, modernity was tempted to overreach. It was self-confident of its ability to identify universals that were independent of cultural context and time, and thus the fruits of modern knowledge could be introduced throughout the world for the benefit of all people. Modern Christians have been largely uncritical of modernity in this regard.

Nowhere were the limits of modernity exposed more starkly than in the cross-cultural situation. The Western insertion into other cultures—first in the form of geographical exploration and the creation of systems of trade, followed by conquest and colonization—set in motion aggressive attempts to modernize and Westernize the rest of the world. Frequently, the West did not read the cultural signals correctly. The apparent acceptance of things Western often disguised the undertow of resistance. Traditional cultures stubbornly stood against the universalizing intent of modernity. The fruits of modernity were appropriated selectively, and ancient cultures did not disappear when modernity came on the scene. Indeed, these primal cultures remained the indispensable vessel that carried global cultural interaction forward. They have proven to be far more durable than was presumed by the promoters of modernity.

The modern missionary movement played an active role as a midwife in introducing modernity—along with the Christian message—to other peoples of the world. But it is too simplistic to say that modern missions were merely the religious adjunct of modernity. As John King Fairbank pointed out long ago, the modern missionary movement, spanning more than two centuries, is the single most extensive experiment in intercultural relationships in human history. What has set it apart historically from all others has been the fact that the essential rationale of the Christian mission was unlike all other movements, including military, cultural, economic, or political conquest. Missionary success was measured by what was shared with the host people, not what was extracted and carried off. In the end, missionaries were forced to abandon the Enlightenment disdain of cultural context, for inherent in the gospel is the demand that people be able to appropriate God’s Word to them in their own culture and language. The supreme expression of this commitment has been the translation of Scripture into the vernacular wherever missionaries have gone.

To engage in “globalizing theology” today means that we must guard the commitment to the particular and the local while taking account of the fact that we live with an intensified awareness of the global. If theology is to serve the church throughout the world, it must reflect this bifocal way of seeing; this becomes the vantage point from which we must rethink and revise theology conceptually, methodologically, and programmatically. Paul G. Hiebert, in whose honor this volume is being published, has been at the forefront of analyzing and interpreting this shift. These essays offer rich materials that suggest many of the themes and issues that will be involved in carrying forward the task of developing a theology that is faithful to God’s revelation, missionally motivated, and appropriately contextual to the twenty-first century.

Preface - Craig Ott and Harold A. Netland

Paul G. Hiebert, distinguished professor of anthropology and mission at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has repeatedly and prophetically emphasized in his writings the importance of globalizing theology. In honor of Hiebert’s seminal contributions to missiology, 180 missiologists, theologians, and friends from fifteen countries gathered June 21–22, 2004, on Trinity’s campus in Deerfield, Illinois, for the 2004 Trinity Consultation on Missiology. Under the theme “Doing Theology in a Globalizing World,” the consultation took up a number of related issues that have been addressed by Hiebert. The papers presented at that consultation comprise the core of this volume. They were rewritten based on interaction during the consultation. Additional contributions were then solicited to further round out the discussion of this complex topic from a variety of perspectives.

It is the hope of the editors and the contributors that this volume will offer a worthy tribute to Hiebert for his nearly five decades of serving the church through teaching and writing, not to mention his landmark contributions to the fields of missiology, anthropology, and theology. While these essays had their origin at the consultation honoring Hiebert, this is much more than a collection of conference papers. There is thematic unity to the chapters, and the essays, individually and collectively, make fresh contributions that take us further down the road that Hiebert and others have mapped out. Perhaps others—particularly those in theological disciplines other than missiology—will be stimulated through these pages to consider more seriously the implications of world Christianity for theology and praxis and to enter a more global dialogue on theological concerns. ...

While these essays will certainly not be the final word on the implications of our globalizing world for doing theology, it is our prayer that our understanding of both the theological task and the rapidly changing world will be enhanced through these reflections.