Here I must address my fellow Westerners: not only do non-Western perspectives give us insights into God that we in the West could never get on our own; Western theology also has some serious flaws in it. For example, we are often beholden to Platonic dualism, which has filtered down to us through the millennia, and it is so hard for Western Christians to shake this dichotomistic thinking about the spiritual and physical worlds (this is played out in missions in the sense that evangelism is seen as more important than social justice). Another example is the influence of the Enlightenment on Western thought, which all but killed Christianity in Europe. Today, Europe is the most secular continent on earth, thanks to the Enlightenment and rationalism. Yet we unthinkingly and unwittingly export that mindset to the non-Western world because we cannot see past our own cultural lenses. A third example is individualism. Most cultures throughout world history have been communal, but we have reduced salvation to “me and the Jesus prayer.” Now we have Korean Christians who come to the West to study in our seminaries, imbibe individualistic theology and then take it back to their communal Asian contexts. It is destructive, because the pastors end up doing theology completely wrongly in their native context, but they think this individualism is normative because their Western theology professors told them it was so. One of the dangers of Westerners providing theological education to the Two-Thirds World is uncontextualised mechanical mimicry. A fourth example of problematic Western theology is a poverty in our pneumatology. The rest of the world understands spiritual realities far better than the West does; we are effectively “Binitarian” (rather than Trinitarian) in our theology: we have a great theology of God the Father, a wonderful Christocentrism, but very little knowledge or experience with the Holy Spirit. The irony is that the third person of the Trinity is the one who is with us on earth today! Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing segment of Christianity in the non-Western world today, for a good reason; perhaps we in the West can teach the rest of the world about Christology, but the rest of the world can teach us about pneumatology.
Allen Yeh in Polycentric Missiology.
19 replies on “World Theology 2”
Ok, need a little help with this. What’s ‘Platonic dualism’ and ‘pneumatology’?
Platonic dualism is the tendency to completely separate the physical and spiritual worlds. Pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks.
@kouya Rah ‘the next evangelicalism” goes over similar ground
Thanks Eddie. It’s so easy b to lose faith in the power of the gospel as we seek to build rational arguments to defend the truth of the gospel. We want people to see but they often only see the physical world. Science is the god of this age. Faith doesn’t completely jettison that but looks to the unseen spiritual realities. I admit to often leaning towards that end of the spectrum
Not sure Science is the God of this age. Maybe it was for a while but I reckon capitalism (or at least big business) is the modern saviour.
Thanks Phil. I hesitated to put the word science in because I realise that many wouldn’t see that. I kept it in though because in the broadest sense science has to do with what we can see. Science has become personalised. e.g. Even though the majority of scientists would believe climate change is really happening some will hold tight to evidence that it is not. I agree with your sentiments about capitalism. It’s interesting that the Oxford dictionary is making its word of the year post-truth. We buy into the truths we want to almost like subscribers. Many see our Christian faith just like that and believe that there are many other things we can legitimately buy into
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RT @kouya: World Theology 2: there are significant problems with Western theology. … https://t.co/2mBZclfAga
This is so so true, thanks Eddie. Living in an extended family for a few months has taught us so much, and L&A living in China has also helped us understand, a place where people live in families and work as a community, though sadly that is changing.
Also, it is not just theology but history which is being skewed eg I just read an article abt the Somme, someone had collected previously unseen accounts together. One soldier at the end of the first day said, ‘After that I could never believe in God,’ yet my grandad said the opposite, ‘You couldn’t live through that and not believe in God.’ Both statements and others were made but the skewing comes in choosing which to put in the article/book.
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I’d suggest that Scientism is the god of our age. The idea that science can some how resolve all our problems and make life meaningful. Or even perhaps just the “pursuit of knowledge”?
Great article. Perhaps the rot set in with the Great Schism in 1054 when the West broke away from the East, leading to growing corruption, leading to a Protestant reformation, leading to multiple interpretations of the Bible, leading to an individualism that produced fertile soil for the Enlightenment and rationalism. Just a thought!
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Eddie, have you looked into Third Article Theology yet? I think you might enjoy some of its perspectives.
I don’t really have much time for reading theology per se, so I’ve not given it much of a look. When I’m not reading directly for my doctorate, I tend to read novels!
My PhD supervisor has written a very good missiology text with a pneumatological focus.