Abstract
Drawing on the contributions of Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls, co-editor Thomas John Hastings argues that the relatively new awareness of Christianity as a translated religion and its demographic and cultural expansion should have by now subverted the enduring pretentions of Western-centric theological normativity and given way to a more fallibilist disposition that encourages two-way traffic between Christians from different cultures and church traditions. Drawing on Karl Barth’s apologia for a variety of faith perspectives within a “polycentric ecumenism,” he suggests that these new insights are consonant with fallibilism, emergence, and eschatology. Finally, he offers a reevaluation of the pro me and pro nobis dimensions of Christian faith as a way of fostering serious intercultural theological engagements in the future.
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Notes
- 1.
This taunting rhetorical question from an African Christian who spent most of his teaching career in the West is reminiscent of the work of Kosuke Koyama, an Asian Christian who also spent most of his teaching career in the West. Koyama criticized the hubris of every human attempt to control or manipulate the cross of Christ in No Handle on the Cross: An Asian Meditation on the Crucified Mind (Orbis, 1977).
- 2.
Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 97.
- 3.
Wycliffe Global Alliance website, http://www.wycliffe.net/statistics, accessed February 15, 2019.
- 4.
Lamin Sanneh, “Christian Missions and the Western Guilt Complex,” in The Christian Century, April 8, 1987, 331–334.
- 5.
Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001).
- 6.
“The Expansion of Christianity: An Interview with Andrew Walls,” Christian Century 117, no. 22 (August 2–9, 2000): 795. The biblical reference is to Eph. 4:1–16, especially verses 11–13: “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (NRSV).
- 7.
Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (New York: Orbis, 1996), 260.
- 8.
Gina A. Zurlo, Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing. “Christianity 2019: What’s Missing? A Call for Further Research,” International Bulletin of Mission Research, January 2019.
- 9.
On the one hand, the phenomenon of globalization attracted significant attention during the 1990s. Using the key words “theological education” and “globalization,” I located 140 articles, published between 1986 and 2002, on the ATLA Religion index. In this literature, the efforts of the Association of Theological Schools were particularly noteworthy. See Judith A. Berling, ed., “Incarnating Globalization in ATS Schools: Issues, Experiences, Understandings, Challenges,” Theological Education 35 (Spring 1999): i–vii, 1–189. On the other hand, the insights of Sanneh, Walls, and their colleagues have been overlooked until the recent trend in World Christianity studies.
- 10.
And this at a time when so many Western theologians themselves are captivated by “post-colonial” modes of discourse, which so far as I can tell is almost exclusively a Western trend, not unrelated to the guilt complex mentioned above. One often hears lip service paid to abstract notions of the Global South but seldom sees proactive efforts to engage church leaders and theologians from new Christian centers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania.
- 11.
Thomas John Hastings, “Extending the Global Academic Table: An Introduction,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 51 (1) (March 2016).
- 12.
As a few examples of this development, we may point to the rapid growth of graduate programs in World Christianity, the annual meeting of Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity (1992–Present, founded by Sanneh and Walls), and Princeton Theological Seminary’s World Christianity Conference, which began in 2018.
- 13.
For example, see Alle Hoekema, “Barth and Asia: No Boring Theology,” Exchange 33 (2004): 102–131.
- 14.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1, 762–763 (italics mine).
- 15.
We should note that he addressed the letter to the South East Asian Christians because it was published in The South East Asian Journal of Theology. But clearly he also had in mind the Japanese “Barthians” with whom he had direct or indirect personal contact, such as Kan Enkichi, Ashida Keiji, Takizawa Katsumi, Kuwada Hidenobu, Ōsaki Setsurō, Yamamoto Kanō, and Inoue Yoshio.
- 16.
Karl Barth, “No Boring Theology! A Letter from Karl Barth,” South East Asia Journal of Theology 11 (1969): 3–5.
- 17.
Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2: 340–344.
- 18.
Thomas John Hastings, “Japanese Protestantism’s Perduring Preoccupation with Western Theological Texts,” Theology Today, (April 2005).
- 19.
Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies 21 (2007): 168–178. I wish to thank Daniel P. Horan, OFM, for this reference (see “The Synod on Young People, Missionary Discipleship, and the Decolonial Option,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 43 (3) (July 2019)).
- 20.
Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963), 10.
- 21.
- 22.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theological Anthropology (New York, Sheed and Ward, 1967), viii. Von Balthasar poignantly adds that “neither the conservatives nor the progressives can bear” this fact of existence.
- 23.
See Thomas John Hastings, “Negotiating Identity in a Global Age: The Situation of Japanese Youth,” in Youth, Religion and Globalization: New Research in Practical Theology, eds. Richard R. Osmer and Kenda Creasy-Dean (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2007).
- 24.
Readers may do a Google search for the key words “temple of the Holy Spirit” and “health” to see how the meaning is so easily twisted to say things it does not say, because of our individualistic culture and the conflation of the singular and plural.
- 25.
Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: Harper, 1996), 204, n. 11 (italics mine).
- 26.
The pro me or existential dimension of faith is important, but since the mission of God in Jesus Christ always begins with the pro nobis, the pro me is always being decentered, relativized, or demythologized across a lifetime of Christian discipleship, in the sense of Galatians 2: 19–20. “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
- 27.
Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (2nd Edition): Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary (Hyde Park: New City Press of the Focolare, 1993), 46.
- 28.
Barth, Church Dogmatics, “The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Christian Community,” IV.1, 63.
- 29.
Thomas John Hastings, Seeing All Things Whole: The Scientific Mysticism and Art of Kagawa Toyohiko (1888–1960) (Eugene: Pickwick, 2015).
- 30.
Toyohiko Kagawa, Christ and Japan (New York: Friendship, 1934), 120–121.
- 31.
Kagawa, Christ and Japan, 95–96. Kagawa’s comments were prescient if not prophetic. After 160 years since the first missionaries arrived, Christians still represent only 1 percent of the population, and Protestantism, which accounts for roughly half of the Christians, is viewed as an individualistic religious preference of an educated, urban middle class. Christianity still seems foreign to most Japanese. Approximately 80 percent of Japanese Christians reside in one of the port cities where the early missionaries settled. Religion Yearbook (Tokyo: Gyosei, 2004), 45.
- 32.
Kuribayashi Teruo, “Rereading Kagawa’s Theology in the Midst of a Recession” [in Japanese], Quarterly AT (Tokyo: Altertrade Japan, 2009): 55.
- 33.
Toyohiko Kagawa, “Following in His Steps,” Friends of Jesus 4.1 (1931): 6.
- 34.
Ōta Yūzō, “Kagawa Toyohiko: A Pacifist?” in Pacifism in Japan: The Christian and Socialist Tradition (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1978), 172.
- 35.
Sumiya Mikio, Kagawa Toyohiko [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1995), 170.
Bibliography
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———. 1963. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
———. 1969. No Boring Theology! A Letter from Karl Barth. South East Asia Journal of Theology 11: 3–5.
Berling, Judith A., ed. 1999. Incarnating Globalization in ATS Schools: Issues, Experiences, Understandings, Challenges. Theological Education 35: i–vii, 1–189.
Clément, Olivier. 1993. The Roots of Christian Mysticism (2nd Edition): Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary. Hyde Park: New City Press of the Focolare.
Hastings, Thomas John. 2005. Japanese Protestantism’s Perduring Preoccupation with Western Theological Texts. Theology Today 62 (1): 49–57.
———. 2007. Negotiating Identity in a Global Age: The Situation of Japanese Youth. In Youth, Religion and Globalization: New Research in Practical Theology, ed. Richard R. Osmer and Kenda Creasy-Dean. Münster: Lit Verlag.
———. 2015. Seeing All Things Whole: The Scientific Mysticism and Art of Kagawa Toyohiko (1888–1960). Eugene: Pickwick.
———. 2016. Extending the Global Academic Table: An Introduction. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 51 (1): 7–20.
Hays, Richard B. 1996. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. San Francisco: Harper.
Hoekema, Alle. 2004. Barth and Asia: No Boring Theology. Exchange 33: 102–131.
Kagawa, Toyohiko. 1931. Following in His Steps. Friends of Jesus 4 (1): 6.
———. 1934. Christ and Japan. New York: Friendship.
Koyama, Kosuke. 1977. No Handle on the Cross: An Asian Meditation on the Crucified Mind. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
Kuribayashi, Teruo. 2009. Rereading Kagawa’s Theology in the Midst of a Recession [in Japanese]. Quarterly AT. Tokyo: Altertrade Japan.
Religion Yearbook [in Japanese]. 2004. Tokyo: Gyosei.
Sanneh, Lamin. 1987. Christian Missions and the Western Guilt Complex. The Christian Century 104 (11): 331–334.
———. 2001. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
———. 2003. Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Sumiya, Mikio. 1995. Kagawa Toyohiko [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Iwanami.
von Balthasar, Hans Urs. 1967. A Theological Anthropology. New York: Sheed and Ward.
Walls, Andrew. 1996. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
———. 2000. The Expansion of Christianity: An Interview with Andrew Walls. Christian Century 117 (22): 792–795.
Wycliffe Global Alliance website. http://www.wycliffe.net/statistics
Yūzō, Ōta. 1978. Kagawa Toyohiko: A Pacifist? In Pacifism in Japan: The Christian and Socialist Tradition. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Zurlo, Gina A., Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing. 2019. Christianity 2019: What’s Missing? A Call for Further Research. International Bulletin of Mission Research 42 (1): 92–102.
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Hastings, T.J. (2021). Restoring the Pro Nobis > Pro Me: A Translated Religion, Polycentric Ecumenism, and Moderate Fallibilism. In: Hastings, T.J., Sæther, KW. (eds) The Grace of Being Fallible in Philosophy, Theology, and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55916-8_9
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