Abstract
Vince L. Bantu’s opening words for this excellent and useful volume illustrate the issue at hand: “Christianity is and has always been a global religion. For this reason, it is important never to think of Christianity as becoming global” (1). While it is true that the expansion of the Christian community can be traced in recent years to mission from the churches in the West, as the author illustrates well in the chapters that follow, even as Christianity was spreading in a western direction in late antiquity, it was also spreading to the South and the East. While some of this has been described by others such as Lamin Sanneh (e.g., Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity, 2008), even Sanneh comes in for some critique for a historiography, which Bantu describes as placing “Greek and Latin sources at the center of Christian mission with Asia and Africa as recipients of evangelization” (2, n. 5).
Bantu illustrates his point with scholarship that engages both primary sources and the best Patristic scholarship of early Christianity, both citing and critiquing sources such as Walter Bauer’s fascinating, though ultimately problematic argument (24). His clear explanation of the linguistic difficulties that were part of the rejection of the Chalcedonian position on Christology for both the Miaphysite position (especially in Ethiopia) and the Diaphysite position (in the Syriac-speaking East) will help illustrate the often-unacknowledged complexity of the respective positions, and the tragedy of the schisms that came in the wake of these misunderstandings. Bantu’s overview of the neglected history of the church in Nubia (84–95) is long overdue and fascinating, including both their successful military defense against the otherwise unstoppable Arab-Muslim invasion, and the possibility that the Nubian Christians had sought to bring the Gospel further south into Africa.
The sections on Christian history in the Middle East and Asia are likewise excellent, and one can especially appreciate Bantu’s conclusion, where he wisely circles back to Lamin Sanneh’s principle of translation and Andrew Walls’ twin indigenizing and pilgrim principles, noting the central importance of contextual approaches. He differentiates between an indigenizing approach to mission and one focused on indigeneity (227–28). He ultimately extends the latter into what he calls strategic indigeneity, in which outside workers only come if invited by the indigenous community (228). One weakness with this latter suggestion would be concerning communities in which there is no specifically indigenous community of believers at all.