For the Church

This summer has be a quieter time for my husband and I to enjoy being married (we celebrated 6 months together last week), while I have been taking theological German translation classes and reading through as much of the "missions cannon" as possible. The goal is to read twenty-two books. This afternoon, before I started my 13th book, I decided to peek at a book that just arrived in the mail for an ecclesiology class this Fall. I was struck by a a quote in the introductory pages by Walter Rauschenbusch, of Social Gospel fame:

O God, we pray for thy Church, which is set to-day amid the perplexities of a changing order, and face to face with a great new task. We remember with love the nurture she gave our spiritual life in its infancy, the tasks she sets for our growing strength, the influence of the devoted hearts she gathers,  the steadfast power for good she has exerted. When we compare her with all the human institutions, we rejoice, for there in none like her. But when we judge her by the mind of her Master, we bow in pity and contrition. Oh, baptize her afresh in the life-giving spirit of Jesus! Grant her a new birth, though it be with travail of repentance and humiliation. Bestow upon her a more imperious responsiveness to duty, a swifter compassion with suffering, and an utter loyalty to the will of God. Put upon her lips the ancient gospel of her Lord. Help her to proclaim boldly the coming of the Kingdom of God and the doom of all that resist it. Fill her with the prophet's scorn for tyranny and with a Christ-like tenderness for the heavy-laden and down-trodden. Give her faith to espouse the cause of the people, and the hands that grope after freedom and light to recognize the bleeding hands of Christ. Bid her cease from seeking her own life, lest she lose it. Maker her valiant to give her life to humanity, that like her crucified Lord she may mount by the path of the cross to higher glory. ("For the Church", 1909) 

I say amen to that, though I'm sure Rauschenbusch and I have some different ideas as to how some of these things would look like. Nevertheless, I agree with all that he wrote here and I am reminded that I need to be praying for the church, universal as well as the congregations closest to my heart. God has called me into the ministry, in part, to love his Bride. May I be ever mindful of that despite my preoccupation with the out-beyond: the very birth of new expressions of gathered peoples. 

The Lord has given us new opportunities to invest in our local church, which very large and over a hundred years old. We are praying that we will not only serve this congregation well, but that we will take the opportunity to be brought up a little more by those older and wiser within the ministry. I still hope and pray that we will be able to church plant and do missions, but I am also recognizing that God is very concerned that we love his Bride at all ages, from all backgrounds, and in every place.

Reminder: Principles Over Personalities

 

This is a re-posting of a thought I had in 2009 on my personal blog that I wish to hold onto. Obviously, the church is more than just this, but these hold some foundational things about church polity we need to remember when we start new congregations:

Reformation

After Hurricane Katrina I got to hang out with some of the best/worst people in New Orleans and I realized that I wished this was how the Church ran its business, too. History would have been positively different for it. Jesus showed in Scripture that drunks and prostitutes are people to learn from - especially when they find freedom in Christ. My obsession with perfection, comparing myself to shiny, polished people hasn't helped a bit. Wouldn't be so much healthier with no more egos? No more personality cults. Just broken people coming together for the goal of redemption and serenity from God.

So I'm beginning to think this is what I want my church to look like:

[Church] Traditions - Adapted from the AA traditions 

(shown in brackets)

1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon unity.

2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.

3. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop [destructive behavior].

4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or [the Church] as a whole.

5. Each group has but one primary purpose-to carry its message to the [broken] who still suffers.

6. A group ought never endorse, finance or lend the name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

7. Every group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

8. [The Church] should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.

9. [The church], as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.

10. [The church] has no opinion on outside issues; hence the Name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.

12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

Bibliographic Essay

World Religions Bibliography

 In the past hundred and fifty years, the world has moved from Eurocentric imperialism to a democratization of cultures with an accepted plurality of religions. While Christians have always had to reckon with other faiths, European colonialism left an indelible mark on religious life as the world entered into a new phase of globalization. 

Throughout this process, Western religious academics have attempted to rationalize the cultural dominance by Social Darwinist theories. Post-colonialism, they attempted to counteract their ethnocentrism by adopting pluralism, which is also based on the premise that religions come from cultural evolution. Both lead to a turning away for the truth claims of the salvific uniqueness of Jesus Christ for all nations. 

However, the Majority World cultures have also been maturing beyond colonialism. Those cultures that have been released from culturally oppressive bonds and have been equipped with the Scripture in their own languages, have been awakened by waves of revivals, creating unparalleled expansions of indigenous forms of faith that bring as many questions as answers to missiology. 

Because of both influences of pluralism and World Christianity can now be found in modern missiology, Christians must set their presuppositions on biblical realities when interacting with World Religions. The focus books of this bibliographic essay are predominantly of two natures. The first, are collections of essays on the various topics, primarily focused on theory of religions such as Christianity and the Religions, Four Views of Salvation, and The Unique Christ. The second type are monographs on World Religions and issues of World Christianity such as: Whose Religion is Christianity?, and the various dissertations. This bibliographic essay attempts to give a literary review highlighting the themes of: 
1) the conservative evangelical response to Social Darwinist theories in soteriology; 
2) issues revealed by studies on World Christianity and World Religions that confirm biblical views of salvation; 
3) and, the implications for cross-cultural witnessing among World Regions.

World Christianity & Soteriological Pluralism

In Dissonant Voices, Netland approaches the issues of religious pluralism as, primarily, an epistemological issue of conflicting truth claims. Netland, writes a particularist response to John Hick’s writings promoting religious pluralism, specially his “Copernican revolution,” which took Christ out of the center of salvation, making him equal to all other “saviors.”^[1] While acknowledging the contributions of John Hick’s work in epistemology, Netland disagrees with his conclusion that God extends salvation to those who place their faith on anyone other than Jesus Christ. He points out this problem of belief: if Christ is not the center of the religious universe, how can people know God? Netland is joined by the writing of Lesslie Newbigin and Christopher Wright concluding that this model of religions is self-defeating and overly abstract.

Christopher J. H. Wright, an Anglican theologian, writes in The Unique Christ, “Clearly ‘he’ cannot be identified or named in terms of any specific deity known within the different world faiths, for they are only partial responses to theos.”^[2] Don N. Howell, Jr. in Christianity and the Religions agrees, “If theos is everything, it is nothing. But in the New Testament . . . theos is the term of significance for God, the Father (pater) of the Lord Jesus Christ.”[3] So, biblically, Christ must the way of knowing God.

Wright and Netland also agree that Raimundo Panikkar and Paul Knitter’s pluralism is parasitic. “It Presupposes and feeds on the very tradition it undermines,” but leaves Christian faith and witness impotent.[4] Also in The Unique Christ, Kim-Sai Tan, a Korean professor of theology, acknowledges that pluralists show commendable sensitivity to non-Christian beliefs, but renounces their use of “myth” to refer to the gospel, pointing out that, as Christians, they are failing to bring people to salvation, and confuse Christians and seekers of truth.[5] This terminology portrays the bible as an equal “myth” to other faiths, pointing to the evolutionary presupposition that many missiologists have taken in their study of religions.

This is the case of classic liberalism, as explained in Okholm and Phillips’s introduction to Four Views of Salvation. Starting as a form of optimistic inclusivism, Schleiermacher supposed God was, “salvifically available in some degree in all religions, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment and the highest manifestation of this universal religious awareness. That is, Christianity is the all-inclusive and final religion.”[6] In other words, in the evolution of religions, Christianity is the pinnacle. James F. Lewis recounts that at the  same time, the darker side of this thought was revealed in the writing of Edward Burnett Tylor in his Primitive Cultures. Tylor, like Sigmund Freud, speculated that the idea of God was developed by the misinterpretation of dreams by “primitive peoples.”^[7] So, secularism used social evolution to make religion nothing more than bad dreams. Once anthropology debunked much of the Social Darwinism that was used to justify dominating and “civilizing the natives,” Lewis explains that liberal thought shifted to the pluralism of Ernst Troeltsch, who believed that Christianity was powerful and true, but “only for us.”^[8] The logical conclusion was to believe that Christianity was an illusion, but “our” illusion.

Another influence in the thought of these pluralists is the Eastern thought, described in Christianity and the Religions as upaya. This Buddhist idea allows for contradictory truth claims to coexist as layers of truth which are revealed according to an almost gnostic, or evolutionary assumption, that Buddha teaches people according to “their readiness to understand.”[9] Conservative Christians would have difficulty using classical Western logical with anyone who believes in non-logical belief systems, which are common outside of Western thought. And such is the case in dialogue with many pluralists.

Conservatives, can also be misled by this same such false teaching, or at least be affected by it. According to Christopher Wright, this happens is when soteriology becomes ecclesiocentric rather than Christocentric. Charles VanEngen agrees and warns against ecclesiocentism in Christianity and the Religions, explaining this happens when the institution or denomination becomes the “ark of salvation.”[10] This cultural trap views the church’s culture as more advanced, but uses terminology of “religious maturity” when the issue actually cultural, not spiritual. Ecclesiocentrism seeks to pluck people from their culture and into a church with a ethnocentristic worldview. This was the case of many early missionaries depicted in Sanneh’s work concerning work in Africa and in Gerald Allen Duncan’s historical review of missions among Australian aborigines in his dissertation.[11] This kind of approach is heartbreakingly disastrous to tribal cultures, but has proven to be entirely ineffective against other World Religions.

Rather, World Christianity has proven the importance of nationals leading nationals to Christ and establishing an expression of the church appropriate to their own cultural context. Hyung Jin Park, in his dissertation, “Journey of the Gospel,” believes that indigenous Christians will increasingly gain a world audience in telling their people’s versions of experiencing and embracing Christianity in their own histories, particularly in places like China where the house churches have successfully recorded much of their recent history.[12] The indigenous perspective also improves understanding of the spread of Christianity, allowing for better analysis of interactions with World Religions. For example, Park points out that indigenous research better revealed that cultural elements, such as the existence of government sanctioned religions, like as those in China, Persia, and India, slowed the growth of Christianity.[13]

World Christianity & World Religions

          The Manila Declaration of the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF) clarifies that pluralism in theological soteriology is different from sociological pluralism, which they acknowledge as a positive God ordained reality.[14] This is the direct opposite with the views of Pluralism based on religious evolution which puts some cultural and religious expressions as more advanced, but sees all faiths as equal.

As the West became aware and comfortable with other cultures, they naturally reassessed how to deal with World Religions in evangelism. One interesting line of this issue is mentioned by James Lewis in Christianity and the Religions in his historic view of the Christian response to World Religions. He states that the earliest apologists such as Justin, Origen, and Tertullian thought that all peoples were twisted, disallowing them from salvation. Any good that was in any non-Christian faith was the remnants of God’s good Creation, or perhaps learned by the Hebrews, and passed down orally to all nations. 

Western scholars, even modern conservative writers including Lewis, down play this explanation as speculative because they offer no proofs.^[15] However, during the development of missiology, the creation studies of those like Wilhelm Schmidt, who desired to disprove the Darwinist evolutionary theories, revealed that many “primitive” animistic people remembered their name for the Most High God, even if they did not worship him. They also shared many ancient stories with the Hebrews.^[16] Later, with the rise of World Christianity, writers like Sanneh point to the work of Schmidt and the many peoples have been brought to faith in Christ through Scripture translations that used the most ancient names for God in their language.^[17] Ph.D. dissertation writers like Park, Nehrbass, and Duncan agree with this phenomenon in missions among animists, who all record connections between missionaries using the oldest stories and ancient names of God to bridge to Bible Storying and Bible translation as method that leads to indigenous evangelism and discipleship.

Sanneh claims that ancient paganism, rather than competing with Christianity – as Islam and other World Religions that set themselves against Christ – actually predisposed some African peoples to Christ. This is most evident where the people still knew the name and some attributes of the Most High God, and where the Bible translators used those names to proclaim the gospel.[18] Park agrees with Sanneh and Kwame Bedianko, (who writes in Christianity and the Religions) that in Africa, Christianity allows for a continuation of the African worldview.^[19]

 

Christian Missions & World Religions

         Missionary practices are dramatically affected by the presuppositions brought with them. This section will examine some examples of Christian communication of the Gospel with World Religions from the selected literature. Because of the rise of World Christianity out of animistic religions, emphasis has been given to this category of religion that exists throughout the world.

In the case study of animists in The Unique Christ, Joshua K. Daimoi suggests how to work among animist in his own people group in Papa New Guinea. He is principle of the Christian Leaders College there.  He calls for a the need to “dig-out” the people’s worldview assumptions through conversation. Then believers should exegete the scriptures in a way that “relate to our heritage and to proclaim the uniqueness of Christ to our people.”[20] This practice is also pointed out in Nehrbass’s dissertation that compares four basic ways the that Christians have dealt with an African people group’s pagan worldview, dividing the ways of dealing with their pagan culture into: mixing, separating, transplanting, and finally contextualizing.^[21]

Australian Ph.D. student Gerald Duncan does a deeper study of the cultural history of Christians with animistic pasts in his dissertation on the First Peoples of his country. Deeply affected by Sanneh’s Whose Religion, Duncan examines the incomplete phenomenon of a burgeoning indigenous people movement that is revealed by the fact that nearly 70% of Aboriginals consider themselves Christian after centuries of being abused and ignored by European colonists.[22]

After a century of assuming that these peoples were “children of Ham,” by ecclesiocentric conservatives, and “Stone Age survivors”  by evolutionists, missionaries gradually started treating them as people. One thing of note, well into the Twentieth Century, with only a few exceptions, few Australian missionaries even attempted to translate the Bible into the language of the people. “Either the process of evolution would see them die out – becoming extinct, replaced by a ‘superior’ civilization – or they would assimilate into the now dominant culture, resulting in their cultural destruction.”[23] Because of such attitudes, he points out the benefits of times when, after initial exposure to the gospel, national leaders were left in control during gaps in missionary presence, allowing for swells of evangelism.^[24]

According to Duncan, “Aboriginal people [had] shown little interest in Christian religions. This was because Christianity in Australia was, until the 1980s, so culture-bound.”[25] However, in recent years, Australians have begun to realize that there can be no national Australian church without the partnership of indigenous peoples within the church. In this, the Uniting Church’s preamble of 1977 includes, “The same love and grace that was finally and fully revealed in Jesus Christ sustained the First Peoples and gave them particular insights into God’s ways.”[26] The response, as the statistics show, speak for themselves.

In Duncan’s dissertation, he draws that parallel between Sanneh’s explanation of this element of World Christianity in his study of Australian Christianity. In Victorian times, missionaries began to collect names of God among Aborigine who they regarded as the same “supernatural anthropomorphic being” with many names, but most particularly, the creator God with the describer “our father.”[27] He too finds that among the First People, those whose ancient names were used in Scripture have come to Christ more readily.

In a different, World Religion case in Answering Islam, Geisler and Saleeb explain that Allah is the name of the ancient, Most High God of the Arabs. However, Muhammad took the name and assigned a new theology, starkly separating the people from their ancient paganism.^[28] Coleman, in his dissertation on Insider Movements, says that Arab Christians were also already using Allah as the name of God when Islam took the name.[29] Geisler and Saleeb’s depictions of Muhammad’s Allah agree with Coleman’s thought that Muhammad’s Allah does not align with Scripture. Whether the name can properly be used for the God of the Bible, therefore, should be decided according to the local people’s understanding and usage in their own mother tongue.

Conclusion

This bibliographic essay gave some highlights to a few issues of missiology into the Twenty-first Century. Much depends on Christians’ ability to obey Scripture and be wise in dealing with other religions. While religious pluralism sounds humble in its Western setting, when looked at through the lens of those who would be Christians from other backgrounds, religious pluralism is nothing more than a Darwinist or gnostic mentality of cultural exclusivity.  In the end, they are self-defeating, declaring that there is no conversion at all. So, rather than being hopeful or loving, they leave all humanity damned.

In Christian dealings with World Religions, writers in this theme deal with the idea of God’s revelation existent within all peoples, which may make an impact on evangelism among unreached people groups. The context of World Christianity helps to break through the paternalistic bonds that are a danger within cross-cultural missions. Perhaps now better studies of people’s origins and linguistics should be more deeply considered in studying worldviews. More specifically, there is much evidence that preserving the names and attributes of God as he revealed himself to each people may encourage further indigenous discoveries of Christ that seem to lead to people movements in the future.  Sanneh mentions the work of Wilhelm Schmidt and Hermann Baumann, but a deeper study of these insightful early missiologists is needed to gain further insight.

Focus Sources

Coleman, Doug. “A Theological Analysis of the Insider Movement Paradigm from Four Perspectives: Theology of Religions, Revelation, Soteriology, and Ecclesiology.” Diss., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011.

Duncan, Gerald Allan. “Now I know That Jesus Can Speak Nunggubuyu’ The Missio Dei for the Australian Church: Imagining God from an Indigenous Perspective.” Diss., University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, 2011.

Geisler, Norman L., and Abdul Saleeb. Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross. 2^nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002.

Hick, John, Dennis L. Okholm, and Timothy R. Phillips, eds. Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub. House, 1996.

Kim, Hansung, “The Internationalization of Three Korean mission Agencies.”Diss., School of Intercultural Studies, Biola University, 2011.

Nehrbass, Kenneth Robert. “Christianity and Animism in a South Pacific Society: Four Ecclesiastical Approaches Toward “Kastom.” Diss., School of Intercultural Studies, Biola University, 2010.

Netland, Harold A. Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1991.

Nicholls, Bruce, ed. The Unique Christ in Our Pluralist World. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994.

Park, Hyung Jin. “Journey of the Gospel: A Study in the Emergence of World Christianity and the Shift of Christian Historiography in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century.” Diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2009.

Rommen, Edward and Harold Netland, eds. Christianity and the Religions: A Biblical Theology of World Religions. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1995.

Sanneh, Lamin O. Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2003.

Biography Sources

“About Dr. Geisler” Dr. Normal L. Geisler [online]; accessed 22 March 2013; available from http://www.normgeisler.com/about/default.htm; internet.

“Brief Biography” Alister McGrath [online]. Accessed 25 March 2013; available from http://alistermcgrath.weebly.com/brief-biography.html; internet.

Cramer, David C. “John Hick (1922-2012)” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online]; accessed 25 March 2013; available from http://www.iep.utm.edu/hick/; internet.

“The Dark Side of Islam.” Crossway [online]; accessed on 22 March 2013; available from http://www.crossway.org/books/the-dark-side-of-islam-hcj/; internet.

“Get Real: On Evangelism in the Late Modern World.” William Carey Library [online]; accessed on 22 March 2013; available from http://www.missionbooks.
org/williamcareylibrary/product.php?productid=692&cat=301&page=1; internet.

“IVP Books by Christopher J. H. Wright” InterVarsity Press [online]; accessed 22 March 2013; available from http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/author.pl/
author_id=343; internet.

“IVP Books by Timothy R. Phillips” InterVarsity Press [online]; accessed 22 March 2013; available from http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/author.pl/author_id=
417; internet.

“Kwame Bediako” Dictionary of African Christian Biography [online]; accessed 24 2013; available from http://www.dacb.org/stories/ghana/bediako_kwame.html; internet.

“Our Pastors and Elders” Signal Mountain Bible Church [online]; accessed 25 March 2013; available from http://www.smbible.com/pastors&elders.htm; internet.

“Portrait of Harold Netland.” Trinity Evangelical Divinity School [online]; accessed 22 March 2013; available from http://www.teds.edu/faculty/person.dot?id=4ff370a8-48be-4f15-91cf-3cf8f8aff3f7; internet.

“School of Theology: Dennis Okholm, Ph.D.” Azusa Pacific University [online]; accessed 22 March 2013; available from http://www.apu.edu/theology/faculty/
dokholm/; internet.

Thomaskutty, Johnson. “An Academic Interaction with Dr. Bruce J. Nicholls.” New Testament Scholarship Worldwide: Bridging Eastern and Western New Testament Scholarship, 16 May 2012 [online]; accessed 22 March 2013; available from  http://ntscholarship.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/a-nice-scholarly-interaction-with-dr-bruce-j-nocholls/; internet.

“Yale Divinity School: Lamin Sanneh” Yale University [online]; accessed 22 March 2013; available from http://divinity.yale.edu/sanneh; internet.

World Religion Sources

Other Works by Authors

Netland, Harold A. Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith & Mission. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001.

_________, and Keith E. Yandell. Buddhism: A Christian Exploration and Appraisal. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009.

Nicholls, Bruce. Contextualization: A Theology of Gospel and Culture. Vancouver: Regent College, 1995.

Phillips, Gary Allen. Evangelicals and Religious Pluralism a Perspective and Update in a Postmodern World. microform :. 1994.

Articles, Dissertations, & Theses

Cramer, Jeffrey Randolph. “Equipping Ministers of Youth to Prepare Christian High School Seniors to Face Religious and Secular Pluralism on the College Campus.” D.Min. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1993.

 Mahaffey, Patrick John. “Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth: An Inquiry in the Philosophy of Religious Worldviews.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1988.

Books

D’Costa, Gavin. Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions. Maryknoll, N.: Orbis Books, 1990.

 Hick, John. God Has Many Names: Britain's New Religious Pluralism. London: Macmillan, 1980.

_________. God and the Universe of Faiths : Essays in the Philosophy of Religion. London: Macmillan, 1988.

_________. Faith and Knowledge: A Modern Introduction to the Problem of Religious Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957.

_________. The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1993.

Hick, John, and Paul F. Knitter. The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, Faith Meets Faith Series: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Open Secret: Sketches for a Missionary Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

Panikkar, Raimundo. The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man: Icon-Person-Mystery. New York: Orbis Books, 1973.

Race, Alan. Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983.

Schmidt, Wilhelm. The Culture Historical Method of Ethnology; the Scientific Approach to the Racial Question. New York: Fortuny's, 1939.

_________. Der Ursprung der Gottesidee: eine Historisch-kritische und Positive Studie. Münster: Aschendorff, 1926.

_________. Die Uroffenbarung als Anfang der Offenbarungen Gottes: Aus Religion; Christentum; Kirche, eine Apologetik  Wissenschaftlich Gebildete. München: Josef Kösel, 1900.

*Schmidt, Wilhelm, and H. J. Rose. The Origin and Growth of Religion: Facts and Theories. New York: Dial Press, 1931.

Shaw, Mark. Global Awakening: How 20th-Century Revivals Triggered a Christian Revolution. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010.

---

[1][1]Harold A. Netland. Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth. (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), iv, x.

[2]Bruce Nicholls, ed. The Unique Christ in Our Pluralist World. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994), 33.

[3]Edward Rommen and Harold Netland, eds. Christianity and the Religions: A Biblical Theology of World Religions. (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1995) 94.

[4]Nicholls. The Unique Christ, 34.

[5]Nicholls. The Unique Christ, 74.

[6]John Hick, Dennis L. Okholm, and Timothy R. Phillips, eds. Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub. House, 1996), 8.

[7]Rommen and Netland, Christianity and the Religions,160.

[8]Hick, Okholm, and Phillips. Four Views on Salvation, 9.

[9]Rommen and Netland. Christianity and the Religions, 154.

[10]Rommen and Netland. Christianity and the Religions, 190.

[11]Duncan, Gerald Allan. “Now I know That Jesus Can Speak Nunggubuyu' The Missio Dei for the Australian Church: Imagining God from an Indigenous Perspective. Diss., University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, 2011.

[12]Park, “Journey of the Gospel,” 320-322.

[13]Park, “Journey of the Gospel,” 325.

[14]Nicholls. The Unique Christ, 21.

[15]Rommen and Netland. Christianity and the Religions,149.

[16]Sanneh, 18.

[17]Ibid., 49.

[18]Ibid., 18.

[19]Park, “Journey of the Gospel,” 326.

[20]Nicholls. The Unique Christ, 65.

[21]Nehrbass, Kenneth Robert. “Christianity and Animism in a South Pacific Society: Four Ecclesiastical Approaches Toward “Kastom.” Diss., School of Intercultural Studies, Biola University, 2010, 6.

[22]Gerald Allan Duncan. “Now I know That Jesus Can Speak Nunggubuyu’: The Missio Dei for the Australian Church: Imagining God from an Indigenous Perspective.” (Diss., University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, 2011), abstract.

[23]Ibid., 183.

[24]Ibid., 181.

[25]Ibid., 190.

[26]Ibid., 233.

[27]Ibid., 205-6.

[28]Norman L. Geisler, and Abdul Saleeb. Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross. 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002), 17-18.

[29]Coleman, Doug Coleman. “A Theological Analysis of the Insider Movement Paradigm from Four Perspectives: Theology of Religions, Revelation, Soteriology, and Ecclesiology.” Diss. (Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011) 111.

Trodden Weed

I have always found the work of Andrew Wyeth to be so evocative; as though every painting was full of echoing thoughts in the texture of the paint. Even the prints of his works cause people to stop an get lost in his universe of life made in to paint.

I keep little postcards of things that inspire in my little closet in the library of the school where I am slowly working through seminars. One such postcard is a copy of "Trodden Weed" where my eyes frequently rest. When I thought to create a new blog, I hoped its texture and evocative title it would in some way capture the way I want to approach missiology.

I like the word "trodden" because I love the dying art of past participles, but specifically this one, in that it speaks of a past of treading though the world, as those created to cross cultures to share the life and teachings of Christ do. As a researcher I am not treading much myself at the moment. But I am learning to track trodden paths to see what there is to discover. I do hope I discover something worth writing - and reading - but in the meantime I will write here for the discipline of it.