On Postcolonial theories and (liberal) indigenous theologies

The quote below is specifically focused on Third World or Indigenous Theologies and hermeneutics, but I do think the principle here is generally applicable to many "Postcolonial" theories in any discipline.

Accordingly they are unafraid to criticize global South Christians for “making the same Bible an uncaring, mean-spirited and cruel book by using it uncritically,” while simultaneously asserting that “the imposition of one’s culture on others is plainly unacceptable.” Yet others can ask of the postcolonialists, Is not their Western form of religious pluralism as institutionalized in academic culture an imposition upon those who do not wish to see the Bible “as an entertaining narrative devoid of its ecclesiastical and dogmatic functions”? Postcolonial theory is therefore in a blind: useful in helping Christians to recognize human finitude and fallenness in our theological understanding, but tending to assume the normative absence of divine revelation—ironically a sort of intellectual colonialism. (Daniel J. Treier, “Scripture and Hermeneutics,” in Kelly M. Kapic and Bruce L. McCormack, eds., Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction (Grand Rapid, MI: Baker, 2012), 90

Say no to liberal ecumenism

In recent years, we have discovered that the activities of some churches and organisations are harmful to us because these groups violate the laws and regulations of the Chinese government which is neither beneficial to themselves nor to churches in China. These activities range from sending missionaries, conducting training programs in clandestine fashion, setting up denominational churches and tempting Chinese Christians financially to join these churches. These practices destroy the unity of churches in China and generate misunderstandings, as their reports on churches in China can be misleading. [Gao Feng, "Co-operation and Partnership in the Mission of the Church in China," in Michael Nai-Chiu Poon, Church Partnerships in Asia: A Singapore Conversation (CSCA Christianity in Southeast Series; Singapore, Trinity Theological College, 2011), 63]

The emergence of many new denominations, parachurch organizations and Christian sects is challenging because it has created confusion and misunderstanding among churches about a common witness. It wii be imperative for MCC [Myanmar Council of Churches -DHC] to co-operate with Evangelicals, Pentecostals and other small mission bodies to find ways and means to resolve the situation. [Stephen Than Myint Oo, "The Life and Witness of the Church in Myanmar: Past, Present and Future," in Poon, 89]

If there is one thing that irks liberal ecumenists, it is when missionaries that are not approved by them enter into their country and their territory to do church planting. In China, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) churches, the "official" Protestant church, claims to speak for all Protestants in China. That there are millions of Chinese Christians in underground churches who refuse to submit to the TSPM undercuts their claim to ecumeneity of course, but liberal ecumenists, like liberals everywhere, are unconcerned about that inconvenient truth. In their minds, they are the only acceptable church and they represent ALL Christians in their region and/or country, consent of those they "represent" is not important at all!

In the case of Myanmar, evidently such a centralization of sorts (given the huge diversity in Myanmar) had occurred with the formation of the MCC. Just like the TSPM, they claim to speak for all Christians in their country regardless of what the normal people think.

All of such "ecumeneity" exists in most countries around the world. In Singapore, it is the NCCS (National Council of Churches in Singapore), which claims to speak for all Christians in Singapore. But of course, all they speak for are the mainstream denominations where the liberals hare ascendant, or where Evangelicals have capitulated in the matter of church governance and relations. The NCCS for example do not speak for me; I detest their very existence. The liberal ecumenical organizations tolerate at best and promote at worst a false gospel and a false Christ. Their very existence is to function as demonic counterfeits of true Christianity, to snare the unsuspecting and undiscerning away from God into a false religiosity in the name of true religion.

Since the TSPM and evidently the MCC represent the Antichrist in this time, they are not to be regarded as Christian institutions at all. They are irked by missionaries coming in unannounced to create trouble as it were. Well, as long as the missionaries are missionaries who believe in the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, I am all for them coming in and being "unhelpful" or "harmful" to these apostates! Let them "create misunderstanding," because the liberal ecumenical bodies have distorted the true biblical witness, so bringing in a true Christian witness is better than "uniting" around a false witness of heresy. For what has light to do with darkness, God to do with Satan?

Therefore, since the Southeast Asia region (and other regions too) has apostate liberal ecumenical bodies and churches around the region, Christian churches and missionaries should be interested in moving into these area and gain converts even through what those liberals would call "sheep stealing." Whoever attends those liberal churches may be a believer, but they need to be encouraged to attend a true church, while unbelievers within the liberal churches need to be called to repentance. The "churched" are to be targets for evangelism and discipleship as well. Since liberal theology does not save, those who follow it are just as lost as those from other religions. Believers in those churches are Christians despite them being in those churches, not because of it

So say no to liberal ecumenism, and liberalism in general. Have nothing to do with the false religion of liberalism. As John Gresham Machen shows in his book Christianity and Liberalism, Liberalism is another religion altogether, in contrast to biblical Christianity. While I cannot speak definitely of the status of Gao Feng and Stephen Than, both of them have to repent for their wickedness in promoting liberalism and liberal ecumeneity, or face the possibility of an eternity without Christ forever.

Neglecting the past: Indigenous "theologies" and the Singapore, Asian Context

Broadly speaking, for the past sixty years conservatives have been striving with the ecumenicists for global influence. For instance, the conservative International Council of Christian Churches pre-empted the World Council of Churches with its own gathering in Amsterdam a few months before WCC was inaugurated. Again, they waged a 'battle' against the ecumenicists in Bangkok in December 1949 by holding a conference on their own to counter the 'East Asian Christian Conference' that was taking place in the same time and same city. World Evangelical Fellowship convened a 'Theological Assistance Program' Consultation in Singapore in 1970 at the launch of the ecumenical Theological Education Fund Third Mandate, and evantually set up the Asia Theological Association as an alternative to the ecumenical ATESEA body. Despite well-meaning intents, these ecumenical-conservative conflicts, made possible by huge American financial investment, are destructive for world Christianity. They leave a legacy of rivalry and social polarisation especially among vulnerable churches around the world. [Michael Poon, "Introduction," in Michael Nai-Chiu Poon, ed., Church Partnerships in Asia: A Singapore Conversation (CSCA Christianity in Southeast Asia Series; Singapore, Trinity Theological College & Singapore, Armor Publishing, 2011), xviii]

Are Western theological conflicts alien to non-Westerners? Those into indigenious theologies (third-world theologies) evidently think so. They accuse Westerners of bringing their theological conflicts and inflicting it on non-Westerners, causing needless and sinful division of the Church in the non-Western countries. In this excerpt from a book intended to promote local "grassroots" Asian ecumenism, Michael Poon repeats the same charge of imperialism against essentially the Fundamentalists. According to him, such conflicts, "despite well-meaning intents," "are destructive for world Christianity," and "they leave a legacy of rivalry and social polarisation especially among vulnerable churches around the world." To say that Poon wishes for the Fundamentalist movement to stop being Fundamentalist is an obvious understatement, and in his view they are sinning and dividing the Church.

Christianity is a religion of truth. It claims, and proves itself to be, absolutely true. This is not an Enlightenment concept, but it can be found throughout the history of the Church in pre-modern times also. If Jesus is the only truth, that means that no falsehood should be tolerated by those who claim to follow Him, for to follow falsehood is to not follow the Christ who is the truth.

Thus, with regards to the divisions in Christendom, the question to be asked is not whether these divisions are created by the West, but whether the divisions are due to disputes over what is true. Does the amount of melanin in one's skin has any bearing on whether "1+1=2" is true, or whether "Socrates is a man" is a true proposition? Of course not! Does the truth value of the proposition matter if one were to say in English that "All humans will die" and to say the same thing in Chinese "每个人都会死"? Does the truth value changes if an Englishman say "There is one God" and a Japanese say the same thing "There is one God"? Most certainly not! The truth values of absolute truth propositions are independent of language, culture, ethnicity and nationality.

Similarly, to say that these issues and divisions have their beginnings in the West has absolutely no bearing on whether non-Westerners should or should not adopt the divisions and take sides in the conflicts in Western Christianity. The question remains: Are these issues and divisions disputes over truth? If they are, then non-Westerners should deal with them, and don't be intellectually lazy to discount them altogether. In fact, by doing so, "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," as Lord Acton had indicated.

The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy is very important, because liberals or modernists deny cardinal doctrines of the faith like the Virgin Birth, the Deity of Christ, and many others truths. By partnering with the Roman Catholic Church, it also indicates that it denies the importance of the doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone. Before the modernists came into the scene, the church was not split over these issues, but once they came onto the scene sprouting heresy, they split the church with their heresies.

Thus, it is very telling that Poon accused the Fundamentalists as being divisive. No, the divisive ones are the liberals like those in the WCC who promote and teach lies about the Christian faith. What they teach is destructive for world Christianity. The Asian Liberals who are re-inventing the faith through "indigenous theologies" are promoting division with their heresies. They are the ones who are promoting heresies and schisms against the true universal Christian faith, and it is those whom Poon should be rightly accusing of causing division instead of the Fundamentalists.

True Christianity is defined as the religion that conforms to the truth as Jesus is the Truth. Anything else is in error and promote division of believers away from Christ. Thus, when we come to theological issues, who the parties are and the location where any controversy occurs should be irrelevant for deciding who is correct. The side which does not conform to scriptural truths is the divisive side, which is normally not the side that is most cantekerous but the "peaceful" side of any conflict, as the experience of church history has shown (e.g. Athanasius' Arian opponents, the "peaceful" Amyraldians, the "loving" moderates opposing J.G. Machen).

There is therefore nothing wrong with adopting and taking sides in "Western theological controversies." There is also nothing wrong with conducting theology in the same manner as theologians in "Western Christianity." In fact, there is something wrong in NOT doing so, for it is an attack on the catholicity of the Church. Somehow, the fact that Evangelical "Western theology" is not really Western at all passed them by. Augustine was hardly a white European, neither were most of the delegates at Nicea or Chalcedon either.

By rejecting the catholicity of the church, indigenous theologies are almost certainly wrong from the beginning. And we do not have to worry about the baseless accusations of division from the liberals. Those who are promoting heresy are the ones culpable, not us. Yes, there are many vulnerable churches around the word, as Poon says, so let's protect them from the liberals!

The "white captivity" of the Church

In the formation of Christian theology, we also see white privilege at work. Theology that prioritizes the individual and arises out of the Western, white context becomes the standard expression of orthodox theology. In our understanding of what is considered orthodoxy, we see the emphasis on the individual aspects of faith. What is considered good, sound, orthodox theology is a Western theology that emphasizes a personal relationship with Jesus with its natural and expected antecedent of an individual sanctification and even an individualized ecclesiology. The critical issues and discussion in theology lean towards understanding issues relevant to individuals and Western sensibilities. The seemingly never-ending debate between the proponents of Calvinism and Arminianism, between predestination and free will, revolves around individual salvation.

Theologies that speak of a corporate responsibility or call for a social responsibility are given special names like: liberation theology, black theology, minjung theology, feminist theology, etc. In other words, Western theology with its individual focus is considered normative theology, while non-Western theology is theology on the fringes and must be explained as being a theology applicable only in a particular context and to a particular people group. Orthodoxy is determined by the Western value of individualism and an individualized soteriology rather than a broader understanding of the corporate themes that emerge out of Scripture.

Because theology emerging from a Western, white context is considered normative, it places non-Western theology in an inferior position and elevates Western theology as the standard by which all other theological frameworks and points of view are measured. This bias stifles the theological dialogue between the various cultures. ... We end up with a Western, white captivity of theology. Western theology becomes the form that is closest to God. [Soong-Chan Rah, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 77-8]

I believe in ... the holy catholic Church, the Communion of Saints .... (Apostles' Creed)

Soong-Chan Rah is a second-generation Korean-Amercan and founding senior pastor of Cambridge Community Fellowship Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In his book The New Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity, Rah excoriates the predominantly white American Evangelical churches for a variety of things, grouped under the umbrella theme of the "Western white captivity of the Church." Now, not all of Rah's criticism is necessarily off. Some of them with regards to the materialistic, individualistic captivity of the modern American church is right on, and I wouldn't be too surprised if there is some discrimination involved against non-whites. It is also something I ponder whether there exists some form of implicit superiority complex such that Caucasians would not submit themselves to a non-Caucasian pastor.

That being said, most of what Rah writes is extremely provocative, unnecessarily so. Rah writes with an almost triumphalist perspective that since non-White Christians would soon be in the majority even in America, "white" Christians ought to sit up and listen to their non-White brethren and stop claiming a monopoly on theology. The whole way the discussion is framed is already problematic. Does numerical superiority necessarily implies the obligation to be heard? Does that mean that the "white" Churches can ignore any group just because it is "in the minority" and only interact with them when they threaten to be in the majority? This sort of race and power play is quite deplorable in my opinion. When I think of theology, I do not look and see what the skin color of the person theologizing is, so why do so just because the one theologizing is white-skinned?

First of all, Rah only attacks the modern Evangelical churches, which in general have lost their way. Reformed theology admits of no individualism, and we believe, modifying Cyprian's words, that outside the church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation (WCF 25.2). We also believe in a "corporate" Covenant Theology, a "corporate" imputation of Adam's sin to all, and so on. Reformed theology at its finest is alien to the modern American Evangelical church, which has lost its way.

Secondly, Rah is misguided when he claims that the other "theologies" (Liberation, black, feminist, minjung, etc) are theologies that are "applicable only in a particular context and to a particular people group." The fact of the matter is that those are called "theologies," but are in fact heresies against the one true catholic Church. Thus, they should not be even considered applicable to their particular contexts and particular people groups! This brings us to the third point, in that Rah does not have a sense of the one catholic and apostolic faith. The true faith is not some "Westernized, white faith," but rather it is the faith given once for all to the saints. Unbiblical accretions added on throughout the centuries ought to be excised, which is why the modern Evangelical church is desperately in need of reform. It is not some "white captivity" of the Church that needs to be remedied, but the removal of all flavors of race and ethnicity from the One True Catholic and Apostolic Faith that needs to be removed. The objective truth however is that "Western" theology has been more faithful to the catholic and apostolic faith than all the other so-called "theologies" that many non-Westerns have embraced. Much of non-Western Christianity is half-baked syncretism. For example, in Africa, Pastor Conrad Mbewe has written about the syncretic aspect of African Charismatism.

Should there be more non-Whites in the Church, doing theology and being respected by their Caucasian counterparts? I most definitely think so. But they should do so because they are actually biblical Christians who believe in the one catholic and apostolic faith, not because they are "non-Whites." Skin color should be absolutely irrelevant in the Church. The issue is not one's skin color, but one's beliefs. As it stands, many of these supposed "non-White" Christians are ineligible even for membership in Reformed churches, if they are similar to Rah with his liberal views. If there are non-White Christian ministers who are biblical in their theology, they should be treated with as much respect and honor as their Caucasian counterparts. However, Christians holding to the one catholic, apostolic faith should beware of non-White Christian ministers like Rah with questionable theology at best. Let's be clear: it is not their skin color or immigrant background that should disqualify them, but their theology. There is no "white captivity" of the Church with regards to her theology. There might be some discrimination against non-Whites, but such is a personal not a doctrinal matter.

Disclosure: I am writing this as a non-White, not that that should matter at all in the Church!

Simon Chan and the assault upon the sufficiency of language

... The very being of the church cannot be understood apart from the narrative of the God who reveals himself by sending Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit

This point needs to be reiterated in our postmodern context. The problem is particularly acute for postmodern theologians who, having quite rightly done away with a positivistic view of doctrines as universal timeless truth, end up without any particular truth claims to make. (p. 12)

Perhaps Kevin Vanhoozer's idea of doctrine as drama provides a better way of understanding the relationship between the scriptural text and the ecclesial community that uses the text. According to Vanhoozer, "Doctrine is not merely a proposition, or an expression, but a prompt; a spiritual direction for one's fitting performance of the script."... (p. 13)

To use a different analogy, Scripture sets the initial trajectory for the subsequent development of doctrine in the Christian tradition. There is no separation between Scripture and tradition since Scripture is apostolic tradition. ... (p. 14)

As we have seen in the previous post, Simon Chan follows formally in the footsteps of the Roman Catholic Nouvelle Theologians in the way he goes about interacting with Scripture and tradition. We have a hint already in the manner by which he will discount Sola Scriptura through his framing of ressourcement as not just return to the past but creative engagement with those sources, or in other words interaction without necessary agreement with anything the sources say. All of this comes about through the postmodern linguistic skubalon Chan embraces.

Chan's philosophy of language is nihilistic to the core. He start off by denying doctrinal propositional truths through an attack against "positivism" as stating "eternal, timeless truths." First of all, propositions are not necessarily eternal or timeless, and they might not be true (there are after all false propositional statements). Chan and Vanhoozer and those like them doesn't even seem to understand what propositions are. Propositions are merely statements with a truth claim, which could be contingent or timeless. Chan's book is made up of all manner of propositions, like the statement quoted from Vanhoozer "Doctrine is not merely a proposition, or an expression, but a prompt; a spiritual direction for one's fitting performance of the script." Technically, it is four different propositions in one sentence. It is simply ludicrous when Chan attacks propositions when he is using propositions to do the job. Or does he even understand what the definition of "proposition" is?

As I have written, logic is epistemologically prior to even God, for one cannot even begin to say a single word without presupposing the basic laws of logic. Call me a "rationalist" if you so desire, but that is a fact. The minute you open our mouth or write a single word, you are already presupposing the rules of logic. Likewise, the mere act of refuting propositions requires the writing of propositions to do so. Even if one does not attempt a refutation of propositions, the mere act of stating what one believes uses propositions. Only postmodern linguists are so blind to what they are doing that they commit linguistic suicide over and over again. Chan, while disavowing postmodernism, does not seem to realize that he is doing the very same thing they do when he attacks propositions.

So yes, Scripture has poetry, and drama, and others. But all of these are conveyed using propositional sentences. Propositions stand behind the literary genres as the means through which they are expressed. The failure to recognize this is the fault of all who attack propositional truths, and as such deny the sufficiency of language to convey truth. Behind it all is the devil who first did the same when he questioned, "Has God said?".

"Asian theologies" and the Nouvelle trend

Singapore Nouvelle theologian Simon Chan has written a book on Asian "Grassroots theology," which I have just began to read. Right at the beginning we already see the beginnings of a shipwreck and the clear influence on this man's theology. Let me quote a bit from the beginning:

...Putting it another way, any healthy theological development requires holding together two processes in a healthy tension: ressourcement and aggiornamento. Ressourcement is not merely a return to the past; rather it is a creative engagement with earlier sources, the fountainhead of spiritual life. Only in this way can we begin to engage in the work of aggiornamento, or adaption and updating in light of the new situations in which the church finds itself. Without the prerequisite of ressourcement, aggiornamento could easily end up with the church capitulating to the spirit of the age. (p. 8)

Tradition implies a community with a history. For Christianity, the history of the church is a continuation of the history of Jesus Christ. ... Church and tradition, therefore, need to play a more critical role in the development of local theologies. We can no longer speak in terms of sola scriptura, at least not with qualification. (pp. 11-12)

— Simon Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the faith from the ground up (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014)

The terms ressourcement and aggiornamento are terms derived from the Nouvelle Theologie, a theological movement especially within northern European Roman Catholic (especially France) that seeks a new way of doing theology in the turn of the 20th century. It was censored by the Roman curia for a long time before it triumphed at Vatican II. The terms themselves look sound: Ressourcement is a French word which roughly means return back to the (past) sources, especially patristic sources. Aggiornamento is an Italian word which simply refer to the updating of theology, based upon the insights gained from ressourcement. Who doesn't like the idea of going back to the original sources and reforming the church accordingly? But all is not as it seems. As I have critiqued before, ressourcement is not the same as the Reformational principle of ad fonts. Rather, this sort of "return" and "reform" is a back door for smuggling all sorts of philosophies into both Scripture and the patristic and medieval writers through the back door, under the guise of reading these original sources.

We note here that Chan rejects the basic Christian principle of Sola Scriptura. This is despite the fact that the patristic sources held to the principle both formally and materially (See David King's and William Webster's three-volume work Holy Scripture: The Ground and Pillar of our Faith), and that the necessity of Scripture necessarily leads to the sufficiency of Holy Scripture. To claim otherwise is to say that the Scripture themselves were wrong when they proclaim its own sufficiency. So what kind of ressourcement is this when one claims to return to the Patristics yet deny what they teach?

We note also the absolute nonsense that "for Christianity, the history of the church is a continuation of the history of Jesus Christ." This is a blatant denial of the change in redemptive-historical eras between the apostolic times and our times. The closing of the canon and the cessation of special revelation implies a change in redemptive-historical eras. The Church is not Christ, the Church does not incarnate Christ, and the "body" language is federal language, not physical or essential language. The believer's union with Christ is mediated by the Holy Spirit, not an essential (i.e. esse, being) identification. In the times between the already and the not-yet, there is a real absence of Christ, so that believers yearn for the return of Christ. Maranatha (Our Lord come)! (1 Cor. 16:22) It is not "our Lord is already here." So much for Chan's ridiculous and unbiblical idea of tradition.

This attack against Scripture can only come about primarily by an attack on the sufficiency of language to convey truth, which is what I will discuss in my next post.

The New Faces of Christianity: Syncretism?

But other modern Christians [in the Global South] explore the Bible in order to justify coexistence and cooperation between faiths and cultures. ... When modern Christian thinkers consider these faiths (e.g. Hinduism and Buddhism), they find it difficult to believe that God was not in Asia before the missionaries brought the gospel. In various ways, it seems, perhaps the Spirit was working in the other religions. (p. 85)

Asian theologians commonly hold that Christianity needs to engage in a triple dialogue — with other religions, with other cultures, and (throughout the process) with the poor. (p. 86)

- Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Even when I was younger in the faith, the whole idea of "Asian theology" sounds absurd to the extreme. God is one; Christ is one; there is only one truth. In the Apostles' Creed, a creedal formulation of ancient origin, we confess the one, catholic (small "c") and apostolic church. Yet, it seems, we have in many places false Christians promoting falsehood and heresies against the Christian faith. No one for example can deny the exclusivity of Christ and be a Christian! Whoever do so are false believers and are not be treated as believers, but rather as pagans needing to repent of their sins.

In this section, Jenkins moved to the Asian context, whereby the existence of other ancient religions poses obstacles to the Christian faith. Jenkins speak about how some professing believers have decided to engage in syncretic dialogues with other faiths. Now, there is nothing wrong with dialoguing with other faiths. The problem is never with dialogue, but the goal and purpose of such dialogue.

If syncretism of any kind is part and parcel of the new face of Christianity, Jenkins can count me out of this new faith. I don't care what their motives are. The reason why the Gospel is exclusive is because God is. If one refuses to acknowledge the fact that God created the world and all cultures, including Asian cultures, if one refuses to acknowledge the making of a Covenant of Works with all peoples (inclusive of Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Indians, Vietnamese etc.) in Adam as their federal head, if one refuses to acknowledge the universality of sin and the inability of all peoples to be righteous before God, that is one's prerogative. But one shouldn't then call oneself a Christian. Call yourself something else, whatever you fancy, but a Christian you are not! And it is plain ridiculous that one thinks pluralism has never been encountered before in Church history. What else was the Greco-Roman world at the time of Christ, but a pluralistic world? Was the Apostle Paul a bigot in his sermon at Mars Hill, stating that he is proclaiming the unknown God to a people with many gods? If your religion is diametrically opposite Paul's, may I suggest you are the one who does not know what Christianity is? Perhaps, Paul does not need to repent, but you do?

So far, I have been totally unimpressed with Jenkins' trumpeting of the "Global South." Unless and until those people repudiates their false theologies for the one catholic apostolic faith, there is nothing more that can be added to the conversation.

Theology matters: The bane of extreme biblicism and reading Scripture literalistically

In his book The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, Philip Jenkins trumpeted the rise of a global (South) Christianity, a theme that follows from his previous book The Next Christendom. For those who think that Christianity is growing alive and well and thriving in the non-Western hemisphere, one would be sadly disappointed. The number of "professing churches and Christians" do continue to grow exponentially. But unless one were to derive encouragement from mere numbers of professors of the faith, instead of actually counting the number who confess the one catholic (small "c") and apostolic faith, one is hard pressed to find much to be encouraged in Jenkins' blowing of the trumpet of a "southern" Christian revival.

In this post, I would just like to comment on the extreme Biblicism and literalistic reading of Scripture of the indigenous African churches as recounted by Jenkins. Jenkins claimed that the Global South is especially tuned towards the world of the Old Testament, which is not surprising since the context of the Old and New Testaments is that of pre-modern society. He shows how the indigenous African Christians appropriate the entire Old Testament and contextualized it as African theology and African experience. Now, having first hand experience of famine, drought and agricultural imagery is one thing. What Jenkins recounts however is the African version of Anglo-Israelism. The Old Testament is made relevant in some African Christian circles even to the extent of contextualizing the Levitical sacrifices and the kosher food laws! The theocracy that is Israel complete with blessings and curses is appropriated by Africans. In page 81, Jenkins even recount a sermon in Malawi that speaks of the AIDS epidemic as the last plague sent by God because "God is fed up with our sins" when people "don't change their bad behavior"! Contemporary African prophets litter the African religious landscape, where, just like the Old Testament, such "prophets" receive direct revelation from God for the people.

There is so many things wrong with the theological mess in African theology. Of course, it could be due to involuntary ignorance and probably is. Yet, it is known that the emergence of these "third-world theologies" as a reaction against so-called "western theologies" is a willful rejection of all things considered "colonial" in origins. Whatever the mitigating factors, it is the case that the emergence of "third-world theologies" is a willful decision of indigenous people that they know more about the Scriptures than the "white man" after they have read parts of it. In other words, pride and unteachability surely lies at the root of part of the problem within indigenous churches.

Ultimately, the reason why theology is important is because theology works itself out in real life. Theology matters. Here, the literalistic hermeneutic of the African indigenous churches that are recounted by Jenkins will bear terrible fruit. Since we know from Scripture that the blessings and curses belong to the Mosaic Covenant and theocratic Israel, it does not apply in the same way to any African nation. Imagine the amount of needless guilty and fear when a natural disaster affects the country. Preachers would be (mis)reading providence to claim that the natural disaster must be due to some great national sin, real or imagined. But perhaps for example a spell of famine is purely natural due to failure to diversify crops to protect from pestilence, or something to that effect, such a false interpretation of providence might possibly result in false guilt. Or take the example of the AIDS epidemic. Perhaps, the reason why AIDS is such an epidemic is because sexual immorality is rampant. After all, there are only two main ways HIV is transmitted: blood (especially transfusion or sharing needles), and sex. It might be God's judgment on sexual immorality, but it is a false reading of providence to think that it is the last plague (like the last plague on the Egyptians) because God is "fed up with our sins"!

To put words into the mouth of God is to become a false prophet. To interpret the Scriptures falsely is to make God into a liar. So why is it that such an unbiblical hermeneutic in the African churches is celebrated by Jenkins? Theology matters, and all such hyper-spiritualization does more harm to the faith than good. It might be nice to see an angel on every blade of grass and a demon hiding behind every rock, but there are consequences for such false theology. What does it profit the Church when the African Christians are merely adding a Christian façade to their former animistic African outlook? What would happen when those reared in extreme spiritualism meet the real world? Will "Christianity" just become the successor to the African medicine man? The problems are too many. How is Christ exalted when those who claim to be His followers create their own "Christianity" which leads people astray, all in the name of contextualization? Is Christ glorified when "believers" resurrect the Levitical sacrifices, the food laws and the Saturday Sabbath? How would Paul have reacted to such, knowing what he thought of the Galatian Judaizers?

Theology matters! Reading Scripture literalistically might feel native and "African," but it is still wrong. The sheep are misled, scattered, all because some people think they know better than the one catholic, apostolic church and just go and invent their own "Third World theology."

Paper: Evaluating Kazoh Kitamori's Doctrine of the Atonement

My last paper to be handed in for this semester happened to be the first one back. Without further ado, here is my paper for the Doctrine of Christ course, entitled Evaluating Kazoh Kitamori's Doctrine of the Atonement. [Just FYI, there is always Google translate for the non-English words.] An excerpt:

The visible growth of Christianity in the non-Western world has been phenomenal. Alongside this growth has been the call for indigenized theologies to arise to re-contextualize theology for non-Western, non-Greco-Roman cultures, with a view towards giving meaning to “ancient traditions” which were denigrated by Westerners.

In this light, Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori (北森.嘉蔵) has been hailed in the West for coming up with the first indigenous Japanese theology, although Japanese theologians are not as excited about Kitamori’s theology as the West seems to be. Kitamori claimed to be recontextualizing Luther’s theology, especially Luther’s dichotomy between the theologia crucis and theologia gloriae, and between the Deus revelatus and Deus absconditus, and Luther’s idea of the communicatio idiomatum, to come up with his own theology of pain (theologia doloris)

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