International Bulletin of Missionary Research

Issue 33:4, October 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FULL ISSUE (64 pp., 9.6 MB PDF)

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Syncretism and the Eternal Word

Syncretism—the combining of two apparently incompatible things to produce a third entity—is an everyday occurrence. Across much of Africa and Latin America, for example, horses and donkeys blend their DNA to generate the mule—a unique and extraordinarily versatile animal combining the sure-footedness of the latter and the strength of the former. Political, social, racial, chemical, and biological syncretisms occur so frequently that we are scarcely aware of them. It is religious syncretism that startles us.

This is surprising, in some ways, since the Christian faith itself springs from the most astonishing syncretism conceivable—God becomes a human being; the eternal becomes temporal; omnipotence yields to powerlessness. This audacious syncretism scandalized the custodians of Judaism in Jesus’ day, and it scandalizes non-Christian monotheists still. After two full millennia of puzzling, it continues to far exceed the intellectual compass of even the most penetrating theological minds.

In missiological discourse, syncretism has been largely confined to the vocabulary, formulations, symbols, and systems of Christendom-forged doctrines and practices. “Syncretism,” Harold Turner wrote in his masterful summation of the subject four decades ago, “arises in the course of presenting Jesus Christ as the sole Lord and Saviour to men of other religions living in cultures not moulded by the biblical revelation. By translating the gospel into local languages, and adapting or accommodating to local ideas and customs, these are absorbed into the life of the church. Many such elements have, however, been intimately related to another religion, and it is often difficult to incorporate them without also absorbing their previous religious associations and meanings.” He goes on to note that “when Christian elements are themselves interpreted and transformed in a pagan direction, it becomes again a pagan religion, although now enriched by Christian borrowings” (Concise Dictionary of the Christian World Mission [1971], p. 580).

The essays in this issue of the IBMR point up the enduring challenge of ensuring both the fidelity and the relevance of Christian faith across the shifting boundaries of time, languages, cultures, and institutions. Throughout most of the “Christianized” world, such concerns are most explicitly the domain of theological seminaries, whose mandate is the transmission of sound apostolic teaching “to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well” (2 Tim. 2:2). But concerns with revelatory fidelity and cultural relevance are implicit at multiple levels across the frontiers of Christian witness, where the letter and, it is hoped, the spirit of biblical teaching is articulated, appropriated, and applied within cultural settings and through languages worlds removed from those of the theologians and missionaries who have systematized and standardized this “sound teaching.” In either case, the line between relevance and syncretism can often be exasperatingly variable, difficult to discern, and controversial. Such concerns are reflected in Dale Irvin’s elucidation of the issues facing mission in an age of global cities. He observes (quoting Edward Said), “‘No one today is purely one thing.’ Our hybrids are proliferating and, contrary to nature, are multiplying exponentially.” As Todd Hartch relates in his article, Ivan Illich was convinced that American Christianity was so utterly and irredeemably syncretized as to disqualify its citizens from authentic missionary vocation. He did everything in his considerable power to undermine his own church’s missionary efforts in Latin America.

Jonas Adelin Jørgensen’s lead article shows how Christian witness on cultural-religious frontiers raises fresh questions about bewilderingly complex and constantly evolving issues of contextualization and syncretism in predominantly Hindu and Muslim societies, where the word “Christian” has long been associated with the worst that the West has to offer. In such environments, identifying oneself as “Christian” suggests the jettisoning of basic personal integrity. In such cultures to be a follower of Jesus is one thing; to be a Christian quite another.

The man whose short obituary appears in this issue did more than most to help remove doctrinal blinders that have long ensured the theological myopia of Christian missions. Ralph Winter opened our eyes to indisputable evidence of God’s salvific grace outside and beyond inherited Christendom theologies and ecclesiologies. The constructive missiological dialogue on “insider movements” fostered by his International Journal of Frontier Missiology has reminded readers of Gospel verities that have been too readily set aside: that salvation is not about Christianity but about Christ, and that it is not orthodoxy but orthopraxy that ultimately distinguishes sheep from goats on judgment day. Tjolzhitsay, the Flathead chief who had “a reputation for kindness that extended even to his enemies,” could not possibly pass the Christianity test, but his welcome of Ignace Partui, the Iroquois evangelist whose story John Mellis relates, places him securely in our Lord’s “Well done!” category, according to Matthew 25.

No human system of thought, language, and behavior can do full justice to the mystery of God revealed through history, through a people, through events, through human languages, through the Word made flesh. The treasure we carry is indeed entrusted to limited, earthen vessels.

—Jonathan J. Bonk
bonk@omsc.org

 

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Issue 33:4, October 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FULL ISSUE (64 pp., 9.6 MB PDF)

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