Pachuau, Lalsangkima. 2024. 'World Christianity', St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/WorldChristianityPachuau, Lalsangkima. "World Christianity." In St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. University of St Andrews, 2022–. Article published August 30, 2024. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/WorldChristianity.Pachuau, L. (2024) World Christianity. In: B. N. Wolfe et al., eds. St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. University of St Andrews. Available at: https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/WorldChristianity [Accessed ].Lalsangkima Pachuau, 'World Christianity', in St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology, ed. by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. (University of St Andrews, 2024) <https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/WorldChristianity>
1 World Christianity
In popular understanding, world Christianity (see Pachuau 2022: 1–16) refers to the worldwide spread of Christianity. Historians in the past have used terms like the ‘expansion’ or ‘spread’ of the Christian faith. Yet what world Christianity has marked in history is the evolution of the worldwide character of Christianity as it came to be owned by people of diverse cultures and societies, from different regions and continents, within diverse church traditions, cultural expressions of faith practices, and doctrinal voices. As this author has pointed out elsewhere, what we come to call ‘world Christianity’ is the ‘worldwide, diverse, and multifaceted character of Christianity as a religion’ (Pachuau 2018: 2). World Christianity has been closely associated with tremendous demographic changes in Christianity which occurred in the late twentieth century. It is important to recognize how this phenomenon has developed a particular worldview with values shaped by the historic Christian faith, and that it has a theological substance which has important perspectival implications for understanding the nature of Christianity. One major consequence of the phenomenon is its influence on the reconsideration of theology in different regional, social, and cultural contexts. Such consideration of theology in context is in turn reshaping the method and substance of theology in the twenty-first century.
World Christianity refers to the multiplicity of Christianity’s self-expressions in different contexts, traditions, and practices. As will be argued later, Christianity’s treasured substance is its translatability, that is, its ability ‘to incarnate itself in every context to transform such contexts for the knowledge and likeness of God in Christ’ (Pachuau 2018: 2). Christianity in history has often failed to recognize this dynamic nature, imposing a missionary’s cultural expression of the faith on those in the mission fields as if it represented a universal form. Despite many good achievements, the Enlightenment-driven Christian missionary endeavour from the West is plagued by this problem. While Christians in the non-Western world are often at ease recognizing and affirming their form of Christianity as a piece of a larger whole, the older forms of Christianity in the West found it harder to accept the concept of world Christianity. Because the term ‘Christianity’ by itself commonly refers to the dominant Western form of Christianity, the term ‘world’ becomes necessary to express a more holistic sense of what Christianity truly is (Irvin 2008: 1).
The worldwide Christian community has unity and diversity. With its essential dynamic nature of adapting to cultures and transforming them, Christianity ought to be diverse. Because Christianity does not have a particular culture or civilization and is essentially dynamic, able to adapt and transform, Christian diversity follows human social and cultural diversities. As will be discussed, it is the movement for unity – not to be confused with uniformity – in Christianity that spurred the worldwide character of Christianity. The current discussion of world Christianity follows a historical tension between the West and the non-West which is deeply embedded in the history of colonialism. Because the diffusion of Christianity followed the path of Western colonial domination, the tension between the West and the non-West endured and became in some circles a pertinent point of departure in the discussion of world Christianity. Some have rightly complained that the discussion of world Christianity focuses too much on the rise of Christianity in the majority (or non-Western) world (Nagy 2021: 666). However, this focus is inevitable as the phenomenon is still in transition, requiring scholars to envision a truly world-Christian life. Until the third quarter of the twentieth century, most studies of Christianity focused on Western Christianity. Little has been known of the story of Christianity beyond the Northern and Western hemispheres. With the demographic shift of Christianity to the Southern and non-Western world, the notion of Christianity as a Western religion came to be challenged, bringing into focus the non-Western world in world Christianity studies. Scholarship on world Christianity, until recent years, continued to engage emphatically with the emerging newer Christianity in the majority world.
2 The study of world Christianity
A few scholars began to depict a worldwide changing demography of Christianity in the 1970s and the 1980s. One of those pioneering scholars, Andrew Walls, calls the change ‘the massive movement towards the Christian faith in all the southern continents’ (Walls 1996: 68). Through his mentorship and writings, Walls became an influential scholar of world Christianity. Using methods of comparative historical research, he argues for the authenticity and validity of the new Southern Christianity and places it on par with the older Northern form of Christianity. His thoughts revolve around the transmission of Christian faith across times, cultures, and social locations (see Walls 1996; 2002; 2017). Through in-depth historical analyses of the transmission of faith, he formulated historical wellsprings and viewpoints and expressed theological principles rooted in missiological themes.
Another pioneering scholar, Walbert Bühlmann, dubbed the rising church in the southern continents the ‘Third Church’, and announced its arrival as an ‘epoch-making event’ in his book The Coming of the Third Church (1977). The Third or ‘Southern’ Church, he said, is the ‘church of the Third World’ as well as the ‘church of the third millennium’ from which ‘the most important drives and inspirations for the whole church in the future will come’ (1986: 5–6). The First Church, the Eastern Church, came about in the first millennium (1986: 5–6) followed by the Second, the Western Church, which ‘shaped the Middle Ages and, from the time of the “discovery” of the New World, undertook all missionary initiatives’ (1986: 6). The tide turned from a Western church to the world church, the Third Church, in the 1970s. A clear sign among the Catholics came into sight in 1970, Bühlmann wrote, when ‘51 percent of all Catholics were living in the southern continents: Latin America, Africa, Asia-Oceania’ (1986: 4). With this, ‘the center of gravity of Christianity in the West has shifted more and more […] [towards] southern continents’ (Bühlmann 1986: 4).
The historical studies of the new Christians were complemented by statistical studies of the dramatic rise of Christianity in the non-Western world, which became foundational for the historical narratives of the new face of global Christianity. No one did more in this area than David B. Barrett, who pioneered the work and mentored a new generation of statisticians. The first edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia by Barrett appeared in 1982. New editions followed every two decades or so with intergenerational statisticians. The third edition of the encyclopaedia was published in 2019 (see Johnson and Zurlo 2020). Meanwhile, other statistically-based interpretive works were also produced. Some have reasonably raised doubts about the possibility of obtaining accurate global statistics. Even if one doubts the details of the numbers, the trends they represent are credible, as most scholars came to accept the overall picture they represent.
Around the same time as Bühlmann (Catholic) and Walls (Protestant) pioneered the demographic shift based on their studies of Christianity in Africa, a number of the majority world’s scholars published new histories of Christianity in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Historians dealing with the new face of Christianity in and from the majority world shifted the historiography away from a story of the expansion of Western Christianity towards identifying Christianity as a part of the national and the people’s story. Two examples of corporate works may be mentioned here.
First is the work of the Church History Association of India (CHAI), which began taking its historiographical shape in the 1970s. The 1973–1974 triennial meeting of the association – founded in 1935 – decided to take up the project of writing ‘a new, fuller and more up-to-date history of Christianity in India’ (Singh 1982: v). The ecumenically-composed editorial board adopted a perspective to be used in its multi-volume endeavour in February of 1974. The meeting intentionally decided to shift away from ‘the approach hitherto generally followed […], i.e., of treating history of Christianity in India as an eastward extension of Western ecclesiastical history […]’ (Singh 1982: v). An excerpt, used as a guideline in the writing of the multi-volume history of Christianity in India, depicts the approach as follows:
The history of Christianity in India is viewed as an integral part of the socio-cultural history of the Indian people rather than as separate from it. The history will, therefore, focus attention upon the Christian people in India; upon who they were and how they understood themselves, upon their social, religious, cultural and political encounters, upon the changes which these encounters produced in them and in the appropriation of the Christian gospel, as well as the Indian culture and society of which they themselves were a part. (Singh 1982: vi)
Such a perspective, drawn from the emerging majority world historians, impacted historical works on continent-wide books on Asia, as seen in the works of John England’s Hidden History of Christianity in Asia (England 1996), T. V. Philip’s East of Euphrates (Philip 1998), and Samuel Moffett’s two-volume A History of Christianity in Asia (Moffett 1992; 2005).
The second example is the work of La Comisión para el Estudio de la Historia de la Iglesia en Latinoamérica (CEHILA) or the Commission on the History of the Church in Latin America. Founded in 1983 under the leadership of philosopher-historian Enrique Dussell, CEHILA’s goal is to produce historical writings from the perspective of poor people in the region. While led by Catholic scholars, it is ecumenical, with Protestant participation, and international, with groups in different Latin and North American nations (Ramírez 2002: 6). In Raimundo Barreto’s words, CEHILA has been ‘the main powerhouse for the production of Latin American Christianity’s history as well as of a historiography of Christianity that is genuinely and unabashedly Latin American’ (Barreto 2021: 70). It produces a history of local, national, and regional churches of the region helping them ‘claim their rightful place in the history of the greater Church’ (Ramírez 2002: 6).
If CEHILA represented the perspective of the ‘poor’, CHAI’s approach was nationalistic in its solidarity with the Indian people among whom Christianity was a small minority. The perspectival stance taken against the dominant Euro-American approach in telling the story of the people’s Christianity paved the way for the development of what come to be called world Christianity. Their focus on the national and regional story became a part of the contextual theological endeavour which will be discussed later. Intentional rewriting of the history of Christianity from a world Christianity perspective came later, yet these regional and national perspectives prepared the way for it.
In Africa, major movement towards Christianity followed national independence from European colonial rules. Together with the pioneering missionary works of Bühlmann and Walls in the continent, described above, several individual scholars followed. Some, such as John Mbiti, Kwame Bediako, and Lamin Sanneh became noted world Christianity scholars among Protestants, and significantly, African women scholars made great strides. Lamin Sanneh’s work illustrates the historiographical shift in African Christian studies to usher in world Christianity. The shift was shown unmistakably in Sanneh’s first major book, West African Christianity (1983), and culminated in his major contribution to world Christianity, Disciples of All Nations (2008). In this work, he identifies various pillars of world Christianity as it developed in phases from the early church (‘mission pillar’) to the contemporary phase of multiple pillars. Contemporary pillars include the ‘pillar of Charismatic renewal’, the Enlightenment’s ‘critical pillar’, and the new Christian resurgence in Africa’s ‘primal pillar’ (Sanneh 2008).
If rereading and reinterpreting history from the Indigenous viewpoint made such a significant impact, it was the rise of contextual theology of different forms – liberation, interfaith dialogue, and inculturation – that has the final say in the theology of world Christianity. African women’s theology is to be noted here as one of the most significant theological voices in world Christianity. African women have voiced protests against missionary patriarchy for a long time (Ngong 2023). The trailblazing work of women scholars like Mercy Amba Oduyoye and the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians seemed to have enlightened and inspired feminist theologies in other majority world regions. Sticking to the holistic worldview of African Traditional Religion while challenging the tradition of patriarchy, these theologians have creatively constructed what it means to be African and women of faith. To quote the words of Oduyoye, ‘human community expects women to seek the well-being of the whole community through seeking their health and healing as this is at the center of well-being, shalom’ (Oduyoye 2019: 2).
3 The global-ecumenical church
The context in which the phenomenon of ‘world Christianity’ came about in the second half of the twentieth century was shaped by two major forces that relate to the theological essence of Christianity of the period. These are the ecumenical movement and globalization, and they play crucial roles in shaping the corporate theology of world Christianity. The spirit of ecumenism that calmed denominational competitiveness and promoted mutuality among Christians helped to change the face of Christianity and ushered in the phenomenon of world Christianity. In fact, the term ‘world Christianity’ was first used in that very context (Van Dusen 1947). Closely tied to (yet larger than) the ecumenical movement related to the World Council of Churches (WCC) was the new ecumenical spirit, which provided an important impetus while the larger globalizing developments helped to shape the phenomenon.
The twentieth century saw revolutionary changes in the church’s thinking and practice. Such changes came in large part from the mutual interactions among churches of different traditions. Embracing diversity, twentieth-century ecclesiology paved a new ecumenical passage by way of unity in diversity. While maintaining their identities and distinct doctrines and practices, most Christian denominations and traditions came to mutually recognize one another. For the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) came as a transforming moment. Captured under the rubric of aggiornamento or renewal, Vatican II redefined the concept of the church. The ‘Constitution of the Church’ was ascribed by Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) as a return ‘wholeheartedly to the total biblical testimony about the Church’ (Ratzinger 2009: 74). What captured the shift most significantly in the Catholic Church’s self-conception in relation to the universal ‘Church of Christ’ is expressed in a single phrase in Lumen Gentium (LG), which says: ‘This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church’ (LG Chapter 1, Article 8). The term ‘subsists in’ replaces ‘is’ of the previous draft, and became ‘one of the most significant steps taken by Vatican II’, says Avery Dulles (Dulles 1978: 117). The move is from the Catholic Church claiming itself to be the church of Christ to identifying itself as a part of the church of Christ.
The renewal and transformation of the Catholic Church followed what emerged as a significant ecumenical movement, beginning in the early twentieth century among Protestant and Orthodox churches. The movement consolidated in the founding and work of the World Council of Churches. The missionary cooperation in the nineteenth century, which climaxed at the World Missionary Conference of 1910 in Edinburgh with a strand of three ecumenical movements (International Missionary Council, Faith and Order Movement, and Life and Work Movement), led to the founding of the World Council of Churches. What is most significant in terms of the ecumenical character of the WCC is the participation of the Orthodox churches, both Eastern (Chalcedonian) and Oriental (non-Chalcedonian), beginning in the 1920s and more fully from the third assembly of the WCC in 1961. The same assembly saw the first Pentecostal church to join the WCC. The WCC, divisive at times in its struggle to embrace conservative evangelical Protestants, carried the torch of ecumenism in the twentieth century.
If the twentieth century is a century of cooperation for the church, the late twentieth century also saw another ‘unifying’ movement, namely the globalization of the world. From colonization by the West to modernization and internalization, the world passed to what came to be called ‘globalization’. So multifaceted is this phenomenon that its essence is difficult to capture. The elusiveness is manifested in its controversial nature. For the purpose of describing it as one of the shapers and contexts of world Christianity, it may be most helpful to use the definition by Roland Robertson of more than thirty years ago. To Robertson: ‘Globalization as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole’ (Robertson 1992: 8). Proximity among people and communities produced by new communication superhighways, in a sense, brought all human beings near as neighbours. The interlacing of locality and globality in the globalization concept became an important setting for integrating contextual theologies.
It is common and easy to contrast global with local in such a way that they are understood as belonging to two ends of a spectrum. Even if they are understood as belonging to opposite ends, their relationship shaped the current phenomenon of globalization. The localization of the global, and the globalization of the local, is what makes the contemporary globalizing world unique. While localization of the global is obvious in the contemporary globalization phenomenon, which locales and their elements are globalized is a point of contention. It is agreed that what is globalized is controlled by capitalism, yet many continue to associate or even equalize globalization with Westernization. The competition to become global is an essential part of contemporary economies. The act of globalizing local systems and values began with Western colonialism’s spread of its traditions and systems to the rest of the world. Western civilization that dominates the world has been increasingly challenged by competing values. Even if these do not necessarily clash, as Samuel Huntington suggests (1996), they provide alternatives.
In ecclesiastical experience, one may argue that the globalization of local practices and experiences is what produces world Christianity. If the missionary posture of the West in the past is seen mostly as an imposition of Western values, aspects of the world Christianity phenomenon now challenge and help to reverse the flow of that movement. Out of and beyond the global-local interactions, one can imagine a world-inclusive global theological construction by recognizing the richly diverse voices and experiences. A global theological construction can arise out of a spirit that recognizes that Christians are all a part of the one world, a world larger than each person, tradition, region, and sociocultural category.
The global-local relation in general, and the church’s ecumenical experience of mutual interactions of different traditions and regions in particular, are the two crucial and immediate settings for theology in the context of world Christianity. In this light, one can reconceive the world as consisting of multi-layered contexts. ‘At each layer, we share common traits with others. We can imagine these layers with our immediate context at the bottom and our commonality as human beings in one world at the top’ (Pachuau 2022: 15). The layers need not compete, as we own all the layers together.
Theology can be done in a very particular context as well as in a more general context. The particular ones are not authenticated by eliminating the more general ones. We all share a global context, and we all have our own local contexts. (Pachuau 2022: 15)
The global that humans co-own is the sum of the locals. Every theology is contextual, and every contextual theology is informed and shaped by the universal voice of the gospel which is crystallized into the life reality of the local culture and church tradition.
4 Theology and world Christianity
Theology of different forms, birthed in the context of global-local relations and produced by the mutually inclined ecumenical Christianity of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, has challenged, enhanced, and revised traditional theology. A number of scholars of world Christianity have done theological reflections on, and in relation to, the phenomenon of world Christianity. Those in the conciliar tradition of Christianity have mostly nurtured what may be called a polyphonous theology, drawn from the experience of Christians in different parts of the world. On the other hand, scholars from conservative and evangelical traditions tended towards common voices based on what it believed to be the unchanging truth of the gospel, adapted across cultures. The first kind (conciliar or ecumenical model) is exemplified by, among others, volumes like World Christianity in Local Context (Goodwin 2009) and the works of Noel David and Martin Conway. In their book World Christianity in the Twentieth (Davis and Conway 2008b) and its companion reader, Davis and Conway dealt with the development of world Christianity in four Christian traditions, followed by studies on seven selected regions and a study of selected major themes occupying Christians in the century. The accompanying reader (Davis and Conway 2008a) brings together a rich collection of polyphonous writings from around the world and from different ecclesiastical and confessional bodies, together with some historic ecumenical texts of the twentieth century. Using the twentieth-century ecumenical movement and its quest for unity as the centerpiece of world Christianity, the authors are critical of the ‘quantitative’ measure of world Christianity, and seek quality measures. They draw their quality measures from the three foci of the United Nations – peace, human rights, and concern for the poorer peoples (Davis and Conway 2008a: 15) – and the selected themes revolve around these three.
The collected work of evangelical scholars (including a few from the non-Western world) Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity (Ott and Netland 2006), is a good example of evangelical theology of world Christianity. While scholars of conciliar tradition are generally critical of the capitalist-driven globalizing economy (e.g. see Keum 2009), the editorial introduction in this volume mostly sees globalization as an inevitable and neutral phenomenon. In the very construction of the book title, the volume advocates the good use of the globalization phenomenon for the cause of the gospel. With clear confidence that Christians possess the ‘unchanging truths’ of God’s self-revelation in the gospel of Jesus Christ that applies ‘to all peoples in all cultures’ (Ott and Netland 2006: 16), the book understands its task as what Paul Hiebert calls doing ‘metatheology’, developing ‘global perspectives on theology that combine the local or particular with what transcends particular cultural settings and is thus universal’ (Ott and Netland 2006: 30). It carefully defines ‘globalizing theology’ as:
theological reflection rooted in God’s self-revelation in Scripture and informed by the historical legacy of the Christian community through the ages, the current realities in the world, and the diverse perspectives of Christian communities throughout the world, with a view of greater holiness in living and faithfulness in fulfilling God’s mission in all the world through the church. (Ott and Netland 2006: 30)
In a rather daring and adventurous project, Timothy Tennent illustrated how theology can be done in the context of world Christianity (2007). By gathering the interreligious, intercultural, and historical experiences of the ecumenical global church as theological interlocutors of world Christianity, Tennent exemplifies how traditional themes of theology may be interpreted in world Christianity’s context. The book deals with central themes of Christian theology typically found in more traditional systematic theology, including God the Father, scripture, humanity, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and others, reinterpreting them in the new interreligious, intercultural, and globalizing context. Not hiding his evangelical standpoint, Tennent dealt with these themes by considering how other religions and new Christians in the global South may do contemporary theology. Even as many theological textbooks are incorporating such new theological fields as the theology of religions and the new global church, Tennent’s work is striking as it illustrates how central theological themes of Christianity in history may freshly be contemplated and discussed in the new globally-induced Christian world.
The theology of world Christianity presupposes the universality of the gospel of salvation as declared at the birth of Jesus the Messiah to be ‘a great joy for all people’ (Luke 2:10–11). If the gospel is not meant for all people (and all creation), there is no reason to think about world Christianity. The phenomenon of world Christianity rests on the theological affirmation that each group or section of people (be it social, cultural, or national) receive the gospel as truly theirs because it is meant to be owned by each in their own way. Thus, the theology of incarnation, that God revealed Godself by taking the flesh of the human, is at the heart of the theology of world Christianity. The following section describes how World Christianity’s roots are found in the theology of incarnation, as the theology of world Christianity is contextual and intercultural theology. This is seen by tracing the story of contextual theology and intercultural theology, highlighting their embeddedness in world Christianity. Finally, it locates the theological root of world Christianity in the theology of incarnation by tracing the history of the theology and its social, cultural, and historical implications.
In the New Testament, John, Paul, and the author of Hebrews gave three different images of the incarnation (Pachuau 2022: 41–42). Using the image of dwelling, John talks about the enfleshed God dwelling among human beings, identifying himself in human space and time (John 1:1–14). Somewhat like John’s majestic and glorious Word (logos), the letter to the Hebrews described Jesus, the Son of God, as ‘the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being’ (Heb 1:3). The letter expresses the finality of God’s action in his coming in Jesus as his work in the ‘last days’ (Heb 1:2). Finally, God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, according to Paul, expresses the self-emptying mind of Christ in Phil 2:5–11. This self-humbling crucified mind is a model for the church to follow. The richness of the incarnation’s theology is illustrated by these images. Aspects of the incarnation as the theological foundation of world Christianity will be discussed later in this section.
4.1 Contextual theology and world Christianity
Around the same time as scholars began to recognize the demographic shift of worldwide Christianity, the concept of contextualization surfaced among theologian-missiologists in the non-Western world (then popularly called the Third World). The neologism ‘contextualization’ was introduced first in the circle of the Theological Education Fund (TEF), a fund established by the International Missionary Council for training ministers in the non-Western world. After the Council was merged with the WCC in 1961, TEF was established to continue the work. As its third decadal mandate, the TEF selected contextualization as its theme, succeeding ‘indigenization’. As the chief architect of the concept Shoki Coe of Taiwan explained, contextualization was meant to ‘press beyond [indigenization] for a more dynamic concept which is open to change and […] future-oriented’ (Coe 1973: 241). The rise and conceptualization of contextual theology serve world Christianity by providing it with a theological rationale, substance, and foundation.
A review of the discussions of the concept of context and contextualization over the past few decades shows two parallel trends. One is a move towards doing contextual theology in which the act of theologizing is central. The other is the contextualization of the Christian message which deals with cultural dynamics for meaningful communication and reception of the gospel. The former is primarily about the construction of theology in context and thus theologizing taking the context seriously, while the latter emphasizes the contextualization of the Christian message (Pachuau 2018: 94). While the latter became the central point of discussions among Western (mainly North American) missiologists, contextual theologizing or doing contextual theology became the new norm of theology spearheaded first by theologians of the global South. The array of contextual theological voices – from radical liberation voices such as the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) which claimed to represent voices from the ground realities (EATWOT 1990) to the confessionally-oriented moderate orthodox theology (Abraham 1990: 61) and conservative evangelical theology (e.g. Yung 1997: 191–219) – has been quite perplexing. The most helpful book in bringing order to this bewildering array of contextual theologies is Models of Contextual Theology by American Catholic theologian Stephen Bevans (2002b). In this book, Bevans classified the different theologies according to their proximity either to scripture-tradition of the past or to present sociocultural realities. Accordingly, he mapped out different contextual theologies into six models between the two.
Tracing the direction of contextual theology’s historical development and journey, Sigurd Bergmann recalled that in the early
1970s theologians in Asia and Africa took an interest in how different cultural contexts affected the interpretation of Christianity […]. During the 1980s local theologies and the contextual approach as well spread from South to North. Since then, there has been an intensive international discussion about expressions, methods, and theories for contextual theology. (Bergmann 2003: xii)
In Asia, as a part of native Christian identity formations in the colonial context, Indigenous theologies of different types began to emerge from the early twentieth century, especially in India and Japan. In India, from the pioneering theologies of Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya and the group of mostly lay thinkers called the ‘Rethinking Group’ (Devasahayam and Sudarisanam 1938) in the early twentieth century to the theology of dialogical transformation of M. M. Thomas and Paul D. Devanandan, Indian thinkers have been engaging actively with theology in their national context (see Thomas 1970). From the national to regional, religious, and ethnic contexts, Indian Christians have contributed to the theologies of interreligious dialogue, inculturation, and liberation. In Japan, pioneering thinkers like Danjo Ebina began using Fushi Ushin, a basic moral precept of Confucianism, to express a relation with God, and Kanzo Uchimura’s ‘Non-Church Movement’ was built on Confucian morality, fitting the Japanese worldview of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Furuya 1997: 14–19). In the second half of the twentieth century, other prominent theologians such as Kosuke Koyama (from Japan) and C. S. Song (from Taiwan) continued distinct Asian theologies. Today, diverse Asian contexts produce different kinds of contextual theology ranging from interreligious theologies to sociopolitical liberation and intercultural theologies (see e.g. Rajkumar 2015; Gener and Pardue 2019).
African theologians have often summarized African theology as belonging to two main groups, namely inculturation and liberation. Liberation had to do largely with freedom from Apartheid in Southern Africa. The term inculturation was popularly used first by Catholic scholars, while Protestants used indigenization, until it was subsumed into contextualization, as mentioned before. The two terms, inculturation and indigenization, generally meant a theology formed out of the dialogue between the Christian gospel and culture in a particular context. It is largely a theology of identity. In Catholic scholarly circles, the meaning of inculturation has been debated as one of theological dialogue and liturgical adaptations. Alwyrd Shorter (1988) persuasively argued that inculturation is not a mere adaptation, but is incarnational transformation through in-depth dialogical interaction between the gospel and a people’s culture. Protestant theologians who relate Christianity with African primal worldviews and draw out its distinct African theological characteristics include such scholars as John S. Mbiti (1991) of Kenya, Kwame Bediako (1995) and Mercy Amba Oduyoye (2004) of Ghana, and Ogbu Kalu (2007) of Nigeria. Instead of viewing such African beliefs as ancestors’ participation in the welfare of the living as liabilities, writes Kwame Bediako, Christians could use them as assets for Christian theology. They could be used, he argued, as pathways to connect the biblical world and African traditions (2004: 216–230). African theologians continue to relate the gospel with different dimensions of African identity including gender, culture, and spirituality. A good number of younger theologians such Musa Dube, Isabel Apawo Phiri, and David Ngong are creatively contributing new theological thoughts. Other scholars such as Afe Adogame, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadhu, and others have drawn on the new Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity and the growing diaspora experiences in their theological explorations.
Liberation theology has been closely associated with Latin America, where it emerged powerfully in the second half of the twentieth century. As Roberto Oliveros has noted, theology in Latin America is theology of liberation (1993: 3). A theology reflecting on the emancipation of people from bondage and oppression rings true to most marginalized people, yet this theology of liberation was first articulated meaningfully in the economically-impoverished context of Central and South America. Best-known Latin American liberation theologians include Gustavo Gutiérrez (of Peru), Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Jon Sobrino of El Salvador, and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay (see Ellacuría and Sobrino 1993). Driven by the consciousness of contextual oppression of different kinds, liberation theology was not confined to any region or particular orientation. Instead, it took different forms. In addition to Black theology of liberation in the racially-charged contexts of North America and South Africa, and feminist theologies in patriarchal contexts of different parts of the world, Asians have also diversified it in their interreligious and multicultural contexts (Amaladoss 1997). Theology of liberation became a rallying voice to unite a group of liberal theologians. EATWOT was organized in 1976 by theologians from the Third World and minorities in the United States. The association identified ‘the people’s resistance to oppression, racism, and dictatorships’ (EATWOT 1990: 197) as its common experience and declared: ‘Liberation is the common theme and central concern for all of us, because the central and common experience of all has been domination and oppression, whether colonial, racist, sexist, or capitalist’ (1990: 199).
What some theologians call ‘liberation’ and Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians call ‘deliverance’ may be seen as the two sides of the same coin. Both are biblical portrayals of Christ’s salvation, closely relatable to the traditional salvific theory called ‘Christus Victor’ (Pachuau 2022: 75–77). While the former emphasizes the social, economic, and political freedom taught and wrought by Christ, the latter stresses Christ’s work of exorcizing the human spirit from bondage. The global Pentecostal-Charismatic movement that swept popular Christianity in the majority world became an important characteristic of world Christianity. This popular Christianity is centred on the belief in the active work of the Holy Spirit in fulfilling Christ’s salvific works triumphing over all other spirits. As a countermovement to rationalist Christianity growing out of Western Enlightenment, the movement came to be recognized as a major characterizing player by new studies on world Christianity (see e.g. Jenkins 2002).
The journey path and direction of contextual theology that Bergmann identified from the global South to the global North saw a lively initiation in North America in the works of, among others Douglass John Hall. As the subtitles of his trilogy Thinking the Faith, Professing the Faith, and Confessing the Faith state, the major contribution of his work is Christian theology in the North American context. The bottom line of his theology is ‘contextualization’, which he claimed to be ‘the sine quo non of all genuine theological thought, and always has been’ (Hall 1989: 21).
A significant contribution of contextual theology is the recognition of the contextuality of every theology, including traditional Western theologies. Unlike traditional Western theology, which tended to treat itself as authoritative universal theology, contemporary Western theology increasingly sees itself as one particular theology among many. Contextualized theology of various kinds marked the nature of world Christianity in a globalizing world.
4.2 Intercultural theology and world Christianity
Just as missionary scholars were the first to discover the demographic shift and as theology’s contextuality first came through theologians in the missionary context, it was missiologists or theologians operating in the mission context who first developed contextual and global theology. If European scholars had been paralleling contextual theology and intercultural theology from their inception, the popular use of intercultural theology in North America may have followed a slightly different path. In North America, the terms ‘intercultural’ and ‘cross-cultural’ have been used more commonly in missionary practice than in theological circles. Catholic scholars seem to have easily crisscrossed between missionary practice and theological reflections. Robert Schreiter, American Catholic theologian and mission scholar, has been at the forefront of gathering and observing theology in the changing global context missiologically. From an earlier engagement of theology in local contexts (Schreiter 1985), he observed changes in the context by the last decade of the twentieth century. Seeing the concept of context being ‘deterritorialized’, ‘hyperdifferentiated’, and ‘hybridized’, (Schreiter 1997: 26–27) he saw ‘intercultural hermeneutics’ as the way forward in theology. Through such a process, he calls for ‘a new catholicity […] marked by a wholeness of inclusion and fullness of faith in a pattern of intercultural exchange and communication’ (Schreiter 1997: 132).
Schreiter’s call for ‘intercultural hermeneutics’ resonated clearly in Europe. As Werner Ustorf (2008) recounted the story, ecumenical missiologists in Europe have been using intercultural theology for a long time. Scholars like Hans Jochen Margull of Hamburg (Germany), Walter Hollenweger of Birmingham (England), and Richard Friedli of Fribourg (Switzerland) have been advocating the term to cast the global interaction of theology since the 1970s (Ustorf 2008: 229–231). Lately, the German Association for Mission Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Missionswissenschaft) strongly recommended ‘intercultural theology’ as the theological approach and theological explanation of mission studies (2008: 103–108). Along this European tradition, Henning Wrogemann published one of the most comprehensive studies, based largely on the German academic experience in conversation with churches and institutions in the global South, especially Africa. The study is comprehensive in that it relates intercultural theology and hermeneutics with general theological and hermeneutical studies while maintaining the missional distinctive of intercultural theology (Wrogemann 2016: 45–155).
Bringing the historical development of intercultural theology into conversation with such other thoughts and related ideas as inculturation, postcolonial theory, the new ecumenical climate, and contextual theologies, Wrogemann highlighted some significant points (Wrogemann 2016: 311–396). His concept of interculturality posits plurality of cultures and respect for cultural differences and mutuality among them. Keeping his focus on intercultural theology, he shows the multidimensional and complex use of inculturation. Although his concept of interculturality is broader than context, he sees contextual theology as largely produced by more or less culturally defined faith communities (Wrogemann 2016: 383–390). Thus, his discussion of contextual theologies worldwide has to do with the developments of ‘autonomous theologies’ in the non-Western world (Wrogemann 2016: 157–170). He questions postcolonial theory’s use of multiculturality and hybridity and maintains the concept of interculturality over transculturality. Wrogemann concludes that the diversifying Christian traditions and the plurality of Christian cultural identity are unified in ‘the one gospel’ (2016: 391–393).
5 Fully God and fully human: a doctrinal-theological foundation
The theological discussions surrounding world Christianity outlined above, especially contextual and intercultural theology, presupposed some common doctrinal foundations. In an attempt to establish a firm integral theology relating to the plurality of cultures and societies of the world, the foundational theological theme chosen here is the christological doctrine of the incarnation (for a more detailed discussion, see Pachuau 2022: 147–166). The discussion below will make it clear why and how the doctrine of the incarnation is so crucial for the theology of world Christianity. As noted, African theologians have also based their theology of inculturation on the theology of incarnation. The attention here to the theology of incarnation is drawn especially for its historical meaning and sociocultural implications.
The coming of God in the human flesh has consequences for human cultures and social realities, and the gospel impacts the plurality of human cultures and societies. The interest here is in the theological foundation for understanding culture and multicultural human society. God’s entry into the human culture in general and the Jewish culture in particular demonstrates his dealing with human cultures. Thus, the theology of culture and plurality of cultures can be sought in the implications of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ.
In his 1968 presidential lecture to the Society for the Study of Theology, T. F. Torrance contended that the incarnation is central to the relationship between God and the world. Consequently, the incarnation is the theological passageway in the relationship between God and culture, and thus, a theology of culture. Torrance argued that in Christian faith the incarnation is the only possible way to God in space and time (1969: 75). The theology of incarnation provides a passageway to understanding God’s relation to humanity and human cultures. Not only does it validate what we come to call contextual theology, but the incarnation also provides a way of conceiving the substance as well as limitations of contextual theology. The divine-human dynamics in the doctrine of Christ (Christology) hold an important key to perceiving God’s will in human culture, and thus, the theology of culture. Christ’s divinity and humanity reveal how God sees and deals with human cultures. A better understanding of this question comes from attention to the doctrine of Christ’s divinity and humanity in the Nicaean-Chalcedonian creed. The theological anthropology of the Chalcedon Council, especially its affirmation of Christ’s humanity, provides a foundation for understanding and interpreting the theology of culture.
While affirming the humanity of Jesus Christ, the Nicene Creed (325) clearly emphasized his divinity. It emphatically declared Jesus as ‘God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial (homoousion) with the Father, through whom all things came into being […]’. Its statement on the humanity of Christ, however, is relatively vague and brief, describing Jesus Christ as the Son of God ‘who for us and for our salvation came down and was made flesh […]’. It was the council of Chalcedon (451) that detailed the humanity of Christ and somewhat balanced it with the statement on his divinity.
Notorious for its schismatic outcome, the Council of Chalcedon produced a statement on the humanity of Christ that is definitive in Christian history. Its affirmation of Jesus to be fully human and fully divine implies a positive and consequential understanding of God’s relation to humanity and human cultures. Furthermore, the dynamic relationship between the fully divine and the fully human Christ offers a way of seeing human cultures in relation to God.
The most significant (for the present discussion) portion of the Chalcedonian Definition is in the final section:
Following the holy fathers, we all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ to be one and the same Son, perfect in divinity and humanity, truly God and truly human, consisting of a rational soul and a body, being of one substance with the Father in relation to his divinity, and being of one substance with us in relation to his humanity, and is like us in all things apart from sin (Hebrews 4:15). He was begotten of the Father before time in relation to his divinity, and in these recent days, was born from the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, for us and for our salvation. In relation to the humanity, he is one and the same Christ, the Son, the Lord, the only-begotten, who is to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation. The distinction of natures is in no way abolished on account of this union, but rather the characteristic property of each nature is preserved, and concurring into one Person and one subsistence, not as if Christ were parted or divided into two persons, but remains one and the same Son and only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; even as the Prophets from the beginning spoke concerning him, and our Lord Jesus Christ instructed us, and the Creed of the Fathers was handed down to us. (McGrath 2007: 281–282)
Intended to interpret and guard the Nicene Creed, this statement explains the status of Christ by providing further statements on his humanity. In the process, it affirms Christ’s two natures which became a sticking point of the council. A group of opponents resisted the statement on the two natures of Christ. Some of these regarded the definition as Nestorian, even though it was intended against Nestorius’ teaching. The definition clearly emphasizes the humanity of Christ without subverting the divinity. Not only does it express the humanity of Christ, it also explains how his humanity is to be affirmed together with his divinity.
The statement that Christ is ‘truly human […] being one substance with us’ inevitably shows his full identification with humanity. ‘Not only has he entered our story, but he has become one among us; he is us’ (Pachuau 2022: 154). As a human being, he became a part of one culture sharing the limitations of that culture, yet, for the purpose of transforming it. Jesus’ life story as presented in the gospels testified that he belonged to the Jewish culture while leaving no doubt that he was also beyond that culture, the Son of God. Though fully set in the Jewish culture, his life story is punctuated throughout by signs of his oneness with God. The ancient creeds tried to capture the mystery of this dual belonging; the Son of God, and the Son of Man. Belonging to one culture for all cultures with the intent to transform that culture and all other cultures, the process of identification with humanity was one of self-emptying (Phil 2:6), to use Paul’s language. This also was a model he left behind for cultural identification.
The small disagreement at Chalcedon seemed to have been amplified in the ensuing periods, yielding a division into what became the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian (now often called Oriental Orthodox) groups. Indian Syrian Orthodox theologian V. C. Samuel re-examined the theological division and pointed out how Western historians have misunderstood the group dubbed ‘non-Chalcedonian’ like the Indian Syrian Orthodox Church. On the humanity of Christ, Samuel declared that no one, to his knowledge, ‘has at any time criticized the council [of Chalcedon] for its affirmation of the fullness and reality of Christ’s humanity’ (Samuel 1977: 200). Their primary opposition was the language of ‘two natures’, which they considered heretical.
The point of the ancient church in this ecumenical statement is Christ’s fullness in his divinity and humanity. The fully God and fully human Christ is both within and beyond human culture. This may also be understood as the dynamic relation between the universality and the particularity of the gospel of Christ. While never forsaking the universal, the particular is affirmed and vice versa. Jesus functioned within one particular culture throughout his earthly ministry with a clear intention to restore it while maintaining the universality of his mission. This indicates his affirmation of the particularities of each culture for the universal mission. From his ministry to restore Judaism to its God-called covenantal relation, Jesus’ ministry moved to the salvation of all. The movement was ‘from one to the many’ (Pachuau 2022: 161), from one particular culture to all cultures, from one nation to all nations.
The contextuality of theology in the global-local reality of world Christianity is best explained through God’s incarnation into a particular time and space for universal salvation. The ministry in a particular culture for the universal salvation of God is the pattern observed in the incarnation process. The affirmation of the divine-human identity is a definitive confession, yet difficult to comprehend for the church. This is not only because the difficulty in the early history triggered the church to articulate such a confessional statement, but it is continuing to be difficult to comprehend in the everyday life of Christians in the pews. It seems quite common to emphatically identify Jesus Christ with God – and thus his divinity – while thinking of him as only partially human. However, what the church affirmed is his full humanity, which is also his affirmation of our very being. His identification with a particular culture is a foundation for understanding how he affirms each culture. Thus, Jesus’ humanity is a guide and even a model in life. To identify with him in his full divinity gives us a sense of God-belonging. To affirm his fullness with believers in our sociocultural being makes him a real presence with and in us.