Book of the Week: Theology from the Global Church
Stephen T. Purdue
Why Evangelical Theology Needs the Global Church
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023.
One thing I’ve tried to stress in my own work is that the Anglo-American evangelical world needs to look downward into the “Great Tradition” of the church as well as look around the global church for insights in how to do theology. This is what can prevent the Western churches from becoming embarrassingly parochial and unable to see how external cultures also influence them (because people often think that “culture” is something that happens to other people).
I have to say that Stephen Purdue’s new book on global theology is a great antidote to that problem as he elegantly shows why you should learn from the global church and how you can do it.
Purdue lists and prosecutes several theses about global theology concerning the magisterial authority of scripture, the material good of culture, ecclesiology is indelibly tied to the gospel, the merit of global diversity, and the wealth of the Great Tradition.
Purdue has a great discussion of “contextualization,” where the problem has always been how do you do synthesis without syncretism, maintain the authority of scripture while making it relevant to a culture, and balance the universal faith with local circumstances. On that score, the book is great!
Purdue also introduces his readers to global theologians that they might not ordinarily know about. People such as Antonio González, René Padilla, Carver T. Yu, Simon Chan, Jules Martinez-Olivieri, and Kwame Bediako. Note, he’s not interested in token tidbits from these people, but wants to show how they can provide constructive ideas for theology for everyone.
For me the highlights were the discussions of whether “culture” is the good guy or the bad guy, contextualization without diminishing scriptural authority, and the importance of reading theology by people who are not from where you are from!
In other words, for Purdue, the church is still experiencing the problems of Babel, we are not communicating and everyone is doing their own thing in a confusing way, whereas what we need is Pentecost, everyone speaking their own language, but in a way that creates coherence rather than a cacophony of noise.
Thoroughly recommend for anyone interested in theology, hermeneutics, or missions!
Acts 11 addresses this very problem. It seems some things never change.
I wholeheartedly agree that the evangelicals need the global church. That being said, I have zero confidence that they will embrace one. I mean really, they can't even acknowledge that they need to change for their own sake OR for the sake of other Christian in America, let alone those in the global context. They are still living ( in great part) in the era of the Scopes Trials.