Sublime

A few more words about ‘religionlessness’. I expect you remember Bultmann’s essay on the ‘demythologizing’ of the New Testament?13 My view of it today would be, not that he went ‘too far’, as most people thought, but that he didn’t go far enough. It’s not only the ‘mythological’ concepts, such as miracle, ascension, and so on (which are not in

The margins of power may not be attractive or comfortable, but we take heart in the fact that God used Christians mightily in the early church in that context, and he is still doing that today in the global East and South. We can be the city on the hill without being on Capitol Hill.

It was more the case that the person of Christ, the work of the Spirit, and the fundamental dynamics of the gospel themselves changed their orientation toward God, God’s world, God’s creatures, and God’s good end. That made Christians seem like aliens from another planet.

Christ is seen as the converter of man in his culture and society, not apart from these, for there is no nature without culture and no turning of men from self and idols to God save in society.

As a young missionary, I was confident that the critical evaluations I made about Hindu beliefs and practices were securely founded on God's revelation in Christ. As I grew older, I learned to see that they were shaped more than I had realized by my own culture.

What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that we call "modern Western culture"?

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