Book Review Part 1: Ed. J.P. Greenman and G.K. Green, "Global Theology in Evangelical Perspective," IVP, 2012.

Review:
In four week installments:

The Book Global Theology in Evangelical Perspective, edited by J.P. Greenman and G.K. Green, IVP, 2012 is full of challenging insights from Majority World thinkers. In order to not short-change the important highlights from the book, the review will be in installments – spaced over the next 4 weeks.  The book is so important for understanding the global church that the reviews each week will only highlight major ideas of the contributors.
This week Arthur Walls’s chapter on “The Rise of Global Theologies,” sets the stage historically for the Majority World Theologies that follow.  Week two will be Latin American theologies, including North American Latino Protestant Theology. Week three will be Asian theologies, including Asian American Theology, and week four will be African Theologies, including African American Theology. 

Excerpt from “The Rise of Global Theologies,” by Arthur Walls from Global Theology in Evangelical Perspective.

 “Our present theological situation is the product of one of the most extraordinary centuries of Christian history…with the fastest recession from the Christian faith (in Europe), coinciding with the most considerable ascension to the Christian faith in its history (concentrated in Africa and some parts of Asia)…

The result of these developments has been the cultural and demographic transformation of the

Christian faith, raising the possibility of a theological explosion for which the nearest analogy we have is the theological explosion that took place in the early centuries of the Christian faith brought about by the interaction of the Christian faith with Greek and then Latin thought…

The 21^st century will face new theological issues that have little to do with Greek or Latin and still less to do with the later developments of European and American thought. The issues will arise from the Christian interaction with the cultures and realities of life in Africa and Asia and Latin America.” (pp. 26-27).

Summary of salient points in Wall’s chapter:

            “Theology in the early church was bounded by the history of Israel...In an entirely Jewish church the key category in Christology is messiahship…The theological high road…was opened in Antioch when some Jerusalem believers from Cyprus and Cyrene…deliberately introduced Greek-speaking pagans to Jesus…The term messiah, even when translated into Greek, would mean little to Gentiles used to the religious cults of the Hellenistic East Mediterranean.  The evangelists in Antioch presented Jesus as Lord” (p.21).

“Crossing the cultural frontier into the Greek world of thought opened theological issues undreamed of in the Messianic Judaism of the Jerusalem church…A new Christian lifestyle had to be devised under the guidance of the Holy Spirit now poured out on Gentiles: a Hellenistic way of following Jesus and a converted pattern of Hellenistic social and family life…Crossing the cultural frontier created new theological issues that arise from the need for a new sort of Christian life” (pp.22,24). 

“Commonly, the first theological issues arise from the question, “What should I do? How should I act as a Christian in this situations?”...But the ‘What should I think?” category of question inexorably follows as Christians seek to understand Christ in terms of the ways of thought and traditions of their culture” (p. 25).

“When Western Christians talk of the early church…they are usually thinking of the church in the Roman Empire, since that story is formative for Western Christianity. But much of the early church lay outside the Romans Empire…Much of Asia had a millennium and a half of Christian history before the first Western missionaries reached there…Its theology faced issues arising from Chinese, Indian and Buddhist language, culture and religion and it had to reckon with Islam…[Similarly,] some parts of Africa have a continuous Christian history far longer than Scotland’s…In the Christian kingdom of Axum and on the Ethiopian high plateau, the Christian gospel was making its impact on African life and engaging with the traditional powers of Africa…

One of the best ways of preparing for the new age of global theology may be to develop the story of the history and literature of the former age of global Christianity.  It is the joint inheritance of Western, African and Asian Christians alike” (pp.27, 29-30).

- M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D., 3/29/12