Tim Tennent has produced a unique and helpful volume on global Christianity, Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church Is Influencing the Way We Think About and Discuss Theology. Here is the description of the book.
It’s no secret that the center of Christianity has shifted from the West to the global South and East. While the truths of the Christian faith are universal, new contexts bring new questions, new understandings, and new expressions. What does this mean for theology? Is the Christian faith not only culturally translatable, but also theologically translatable?
Timothy Tennent answers this question with a resounding yes. Theological reflection is alive and well in the majority world church, and these new perspectives need to be heard, considered, and brought into conversation with Western theologians. Global theology can make us aware of our own blind spots and biases. Because of its largely conservative stance, global theology has much to offer toward the revitalization of Western Christianity.
Tennent examines traditional theological categories in conversation with theologians from across the globe, making this volume valuable for students, pastors, missionaries, and theologians alike.
Along with the description, I also wanted to provide Christopher J.H. Wright’s comments on the book, which Justin Taylor has posted on his blog. Wright is an excellent Old Testament Scholar. Among his many fine volumes, he has produced The Mission of God, which is one of the most, if not the most, thorough Biblical theological presentations on missions in print.
This is the book we have waited a long time for. We have all sampled selections from the growing menu of theological reflection in the Majority World church, but so often these have been viewed by scholars and students in the West as the theological equivalent of ethnic restaurants–exotic and interesting but not to be taken too seriously in the dining hall of real (Western) theology. Meanwhile Philip Jenkins, Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, and others have thrust the staggering realities of Majority World Christians into the forefront of Western Christian consciousness. Theologians are now at last grappling with what missiologists have been saying for years: theology is a cross-cultural team game with global players. And the referee is no longer the Western academy, but the Scriptures themselves.
Tim Tennent engages all his experience in mission and theology to argue that it is not just the outer forms of Christianity that are culturally translatable, but theology itself. No part of the global body of Christ can say to any other part, “I have no need for you.” Every part is enriched–theologically too–by every other part. Theology, like mission, has to be “from everywhere to everywhere.” This book, organized in the systematic way that Western theology likes, offers teacher and student alike a representative, thorough, constructively critical compendium of some of the key contributors to the task of global theology. The point is not whether we will like everything we read here, but whether we are willing to listen. These are the voices we must increasingly engage with in the global conversation of Christian theology.
May Tennent’s book provide all of us with a realistic church-universal framework through which to think about how we do theology.
Posted in Biblical Theology, Christianity, Church, Missions, Persecuted Church
