Mission as Translation: A Fusion of Three Horizons

Introduction

Recently within mission studies, the idea of mission has come to be understood through the models of ‘inculturation’ and ‘contextualization’ as a response to the enlightenment or colonial model of mission. This article seeks to argue that both ‘inculturation’ and ‘contextualization’ are equally problematic as they broadly continue the enlightenment and colonial legacy of mission that they seek to critique. It must be mentioned that these terms, like any other linguistic terms, are constantly shaped and reshaped by different users in today’s post-colonial era. Equally it must be acknowledged that while scholars in the post-colonial era like Stephen Bevans and Robert Schreiter seek to be sensitive to such modernist ideals, one can continue to see traces of these ideals even in their works. While in ‘inculturation’ the text (gospel) is given priority over the mission field and the missionary, in ‘contextualization’ the mission field is said to gain prominence over both the text and the missionary. Of course, this is not to say that there are no overlaps between the two. There are instances where ‘inculturation’ and ‘contextualization’ are used synonymously. However, in this article, we would like to highlight the qualities of ‘inculturation’ and ‘contextualization’ that make them unique and different. In both these models, the role of the missionary is made invisible and what she brings to mission is eclipsed. Therefore, the subject-object dualism persists, disallowing a true dialogue. In this article, we want to argue that when mission is understood as translation, within the framework of textuality, it provides a conceptual model that seriously considers together the role of: 1) the missionary, 2) the gospel text and 3) the mission field in the act of mission – hence, ‘a fusion of three horizons’. We want to test this hypothesis in the Lotha Naga context by looking at Lotha translation of the biblical text. Finally, we want to draw broad implications for mission studies from a ‘mission as translation’ point of view.

Therefore, our article has five sections. First, we begin with a critique of the dominant enlightenment model of mission which is also termed colonial mission. Secondly, we present inculturation and contextualization as two responses in the 20th century to the enlightenment model, but argue that they continue the legacy of what they critique. This is not to say that there are no other models of mission and neither is our survey exhaustive of all models. But the epistemology behind the models we survey should cover most of the spectrum within which other models exist. Thirdly, we take a detour into translation studies within philosophy of language with a view to develop a model that could be applicable for mission. This is not an imposition of one discipline upon another, but the realization that mission studies, with its focus on the gospel text, missionary-interpreter and receptor community, shares commonalities with the central categories of translation studies. Fourthly, we propose an explorative model of ‘mission as translation’ which we argue is necessarily a fusion of three horizons. Finally, we test this model in the Lotha Naga context and end with broad implications for mission.

A Critique of the Enlightenment Model of Mission

Kollman argues that mission as we understand it today is a creation of the 16th century with its Ignatian innovation. ¹ David Bosch writes:

The right to ‘send’ ecclesiastical agents to distant colonies was so decisive that the activities and designation of the envoys were to derive their names from this action; their assignment came to be called ‘mission’ (a term first used in this sense by Ignatius of Loyola), and they themselves ‘missionaries’ … For fifteen centuries the church used other terms to refer to what we subsequently came to call ‘mission’: phrases such as ‘propagation of the faith’, ‘preaching of the gospel’, ‘apostolic proclamation’, ‘promulgation of the gospel’, ‘augmenting the faith’, ‘expanding the church’, ‘planting the church’, ‘propagation of the reign of Christ’, and ‘illuminating the nations’ … The new word, ‘mission’, is historically linked indissolubly with the colonial era and with the idea of a magisterial commissioning. The term presupposes an established church in Europe which dispatched delegates to convert overseas peoples and was as such an attendant phenomenon of European expansion … ‘Mission’ meant the activities by which the Western ecclesiastical system was extended into the rest of the world. The ‘missionary’ was irrevocably tied to an institution in Europe, from which he or she derived the mandate and power to confer salvation on those who accept certain tenets of the faith. ²

Bosch describes three characteristics of the Ignatian innovation:

We agree with Bosch and Kollman that the 16th century colonial era is different from other epochs in church history including that of the early church. However, the characteristics listed by Bosch, and termed by Kollman as the ‘Ignatian innovation’, are hardly a paradigm shift from earlier understandings of mission – although the socio-political conditions have definitely changed.

Kollman argues that the word ‘Mission’ comes from the Latin missio, mittere, missum, which means ‘to send’. He traces the term ‘mission’ to the 16th century, arguing that it was probably used by Ignatius of Loyola to denote ‘Christian evangelisation’ and the tasks carried out by the early Jesuits. ³ The term missio was used by Ignatius in the sense of relating the work of the Jesuits to the work of Jesus Christ, connecting ‘religious practice to divine ontology’. The meaning of missio developed over the centuries and it eventually came to refer to Christian work beyond Europe. ⁴ The study of missio came to be systematized as an academic discipline to study the mission activities of the church, with its workings taking the name missiology. ⁵ However, if missio in the Latin Vulgate translates the Greek terms ἀποστέλλειν (apostéllein) and πέμπει (pémpei), then there is no radical departure from mission as apostleship.

In this understanding, contrary to the claim of Kollman that mission as missio is a product of the 16th century, one can detect the language of mission and its presence in the very textualisation of the gospels. Kollman argues for a recent origin of mission by doing an etymological study of the Latin missio, but does not look at the term that missio translates from the Greek into Latin which is ἀποστέλλω (apostéllō). If the Greek ἀποστέλλω brings together ἀπό (from) and στέλλω (to send) then the act of mission as being ‘sent from’ to another is preserved. ⁶ But this is in no way to say that a surplus in meaning is added to missio in its translation to the Latin and a further excess in meaning added when missio becomes mission in English. Moreover, an ecclesiastical body sending missionaries to faraway lands continues the similarity with the practices of the early church. Of course, the early church did not collude with the state or empire. But after Constantine even that difference is obliterated.

The limitation of both Bosch and Kollman’s post-colonial critiques is that in their focus on the notion of spatiality and subject-object dualism within a colonial understanding, they have failed to interrogate the underlying enlightenment epistemology that has undergirded colonial mission.

We want to outline three characteristics of enlightenment mission:

This enlightenment epistemology disallowed the missionary from having an equal footing in their dialogue with the mission field. The mission field became an object to be disrobed of its historical situatedness and to be converted into the image of the universal Christian gospel. The historical situatedness of the missionary remained invisible due to her being perceived as a dispassionate and ahistorical messenger. Therefore, the mission field became voiceless and the people were termed ‘heathens’ with no value for their culture. There were a few highly reflexive missionaries who sought to embrace local customs to carry out their work, such as Roberto de Nobili, who embraced Indian local customs to work among the Hindu Brahmins – even if he was criticized for his methods by the church. In the Naga context, the Christian missionaries were clearly of the view that they needed to bring about ‘civilizing’ practices within the Naga society. ¹⁰ Although the government wanted to bring this about gradually, not wanting to disturb the law and order of the colony with any sudden disruption, the missionaries demanded a complete abolition of local cultural practices. ¹¹ They put restraints on local practices and were outraged when the colonial government actually encouraged these native practices. ¹²

Thus this epistemology failed to bring to light the Euro-American interpretation of the Christian gospel which was brought to the mission field in all its cultural and social glory. The gospel texts again disrobed of their historicity were seen as pristine principles which were then to operate as scientific truths in any culture without regard to their Jewish historicality or the great chain of being to which they were a part. The chain of interpretation through which the gospel text had been interpreted spanning from the early church up to the Euro-American missionary was eclipsed in this view.

In early missiology, the divide between the subject and object was highly magnified, with a stark differentiation between the missionaries (subject) and the mission field (object). According to David Bosch, the concept of mission has been changing from one era to another according to the changing times of the church and the contemporary worldviews. Bosch is of the view that we have come towards the end of the paradigm ‘Mission in the Wake of Enlightenment’ and we are now facing a paradigm shift towards ‘Elements of an Emerging Ecumenical Missionary Paradigm’. ¹³ He rightly notes that ‘the term ‘mission’ presupposes a sender, a person or persons sent by the sender, those to whom one is sent, and an assignment’. ¹⁴ It is this presupposition that has been critiqued as it implies the dominance of the colonial West. In recent mission studies, the binary between the subject and object has been appraised and voice is now being given to the emerging Christianity from the Global South. Thus, mission has come to be understood in the models of ‘inculturation’ and ‘contextualization’.

Response to The Enlightenment Model (Inculturation and Contextualization)

Building on this critique of enlightenment or colonial mission for its lack of focus and insensitivity on the mission field and its culture, two other models came as a response – inculturation and contextualization.

The term ‘inculturation’ is used for the first time in 1962 and then officially by Pope John Paul II in 1979. ¹⁵ The term ‘contextualization’ had its historic first appearance in 1972 in the ecumenical publication of the Theological Education Fund, Ministry in Context. These two models came out of the larger change in the philosophical climate in the academia which has been termed the post-modern turn. The revolt against universal rationality had begun to flourish with Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and was extended by the works of Lakatos, Feyerabad and Kuhn in the philosophy of science and Peter Winch in the social sciences. In the 1970s, Jean-Francois Lyotard defined the term ‘postmodern’ as an ‘incredulity’ for universal rationality. ¹⁶ The focus shifted from text to the context. The social, political and existential contexts that defined the conditions for the production of knowledge were given supremacy. It was against this background that both inculturation and contextualization were born.

Aylward Shorter defines inculturation as ‘the on-going dialogue between faith and culture or cultures … it is the creative and dynamic relationship between the Christian message and a culture or cultures’. ¹⁷ The term ‘inculturation’ is a development from old terms like ‘adaptation’, ‘accommodation’ and ‘indigenization’, as there is a need to move away from the concept of a Western culture imposing its universal gospel. Pedro Arrupe defines it as:

The incarnation of Christian life and of the Christian message in a particular context, in such a way that this experience not only finds expression through elements proper to the culture in question (this alone would be no more than a superficial adaptation) but becomes a principle that animates, directs and unifies the culture, transforming it and remaking it so as to bring about a ‘new creation’. ¹⁸

At first glance, it appears that there has indeed been a semantic shift from universality to the particularity of culture. However, a careful analysis reveals that enlightenment rationality continues to prevail even in this shift. The Christian life and the Christian message for Arrupe continue to be a ‘principle’ which unifies, transforms and remakes the culture of the mission field. In this model, although the focus is on culture, it is only to transform it. On the other hand, the Christ-text continues to be a principle transcending cultures and histories, and once again there is no mention of the missionary and her role continues to remain elusive. The sole purpose seems to be on ‘transforming’ the culture according to the message in order to bring about a ‘new creation’, whilst the missionary continues to be taken as a dispassionate observer/carrier of the message.

While contextualization is very similar to inculturation, Darrell L Whiteman notes that it seeks to make the gospel/text relevant to the context of the culture. ¹⁹ It is the model of contextualization that necessitated the rise of contextual theology, giving importance not only to the scripture but also the context in which it surfaces. ²⁰ Stephen Bevans understands classical theology as objective and contextual theology as subjective. ²¹ However, he claims that while it does not resort to relativism, it gives due importance to context because meaning is ascribed to reality through ‘the context of our culture or our historical period, interpreted from our own particular horizon and in our own particular thought forms’. ²² The contextual model of mission does direct us to the context of the mission field and its horizon. However, because the gospel text continues to be considered as a principle, it invariably dictates and controls the process of contextualization. And yet again, the missionary’s context along with the interpretive tradition of the gospel text remains invisible.

Thus, in the Enlightenment model, prominence is given to the gospel text which is seen as a universal principle, and the mission field is reduced to an object to be analyzed, studied and transformed. The missionary remains invisible as a dispassionate subject. In the postmodern model, however, even though it seeks to critique the colonial model, it seems that it holds onto the universalist notion of a gospel text. In both inculturation and contextualization, although the focus has shifted to the context of the mission field, the goal is once again to transform it rather than engage with it meaningfully. The missionary continues to be elusive and her context remains invisible.

Therefore we need a model that equally considers the gospel text, the missionary and the mission field. Gustav Warneck identifies this tripartite structure of mission. He makes three divisions – missionary subject, missionary lands as object and foundations of mission activity dealing with the gospel text. ²³ In other words, a model that seriously considers the role of the source gospel text, missionary as translator and the missional receptor text.

Translation studies arising out of the larger discipline of the philosophy of language or theory of textuality orders itself precisely based on these categories. The question is if there is value in taking a detour into translation studies in order to help us develop a model of mission which goes beyond both the enlightenment and postmodern models.

Exploring Translation Studies

A detour is needed into translation studies within theories of text to help conceptually build a model of translation which can be used to theorize mission.

The act of translation involves a four-fold structure:

We will very briefly look at what insights translation studies has to offer us for these four categories.

The debate within translation studies follows similar lines to the one we witnessed in mission studies. On the one hand, the literalists represented by the analytical school following the enlightenment model stress the cognitive function of language with its direct reference and correspondence to the world of objects. On the other hand, free translators influenced by the continental school stress difference and language as having a communicative and predicative function.

The debate in translation studies therefore is between word-for-word translation and sense-for-sense translation, represented by the literal translation school and the free translation school respectively. While language has been theorized from the 17th century onwards, it is in the 20th century that language has been problematized, which has had a huge bearing on translation studies. In his latest work, The Language Animal, Charles Taylor calls this the debate between the designative-instrumentalists and the constitutive-expressivists. ²⁴ It is apparent that while one school aims for faithfulness to the Source Text (ST), trying to bring out as literal a translation as possible, the other school focuses on the conveyance of meaning to the target audience. The history of translation studies indicates that there have been conceptual shifts in translation theories, based on the dichotomy stated above. Steiner brings out four stages in the history of the theory of translation: a) the debate between literal and free translation, b) the hermeneutical inquiry put forward by Heidegger, building on the work of Schlegel and Humboldt, (c) the structural linguistics and information theory which finally brought to the forefront (d) the debate between ‘universalists’ and ‘relativists’ in linguistic thought. ²⁵ The underlying problematic here seems to be the concept of language, where one school holds for the universality of all languages in the ideal language and the commonality achieved through syntax and semantic studies, while the other school holds for the inherent difference in the natural languages and the lack of commonality therein. This finds expression in translation theory where the debate is between literal and free translation, albeit expressed in different terminologies. In recent studies, Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson (1986) talk about Relevance Theory in Relevance: Communication and Cognition. ²⁶ This was taken forward by Ernst-August Gutt (1991) in his book Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. ²⁷ He brings in the importance of the three parts in translation: the original author, the translator and the target reader. However, Gutt seems to put more emphasis on the communication of the source text’s intention to the target text.

It is at this juncture that Paul Ricoeur enters the debate and seeks to reconcile the literal translators with the free translators through his idea of linguistic hospitality. Ricoeur dismisses the notion of a perfect or literal translation and instead advocates that the translator should make a conscious attempt to enter into a dialogue with the other’s language and make space for ‘openness’ between the two languages. ²⁸ Ricoeur’s work is rich with a variety of strategies that explore the process of translation. For our purposes today, we will focus only on his understanding of the contextualization, decontextualizing and recontextualizing of the text. Contextualization means interpreting a text in the historical and cultural context that birthed the text. This moves away from trying to uncover the authorial intention in the text and focuses on the world of texts or literature within which this particular text finds its home. The gospel text of the missionary is not a principle but arises out of a historical context (sitz im leben) which, however, entails the world of texts of which the gospel text is a part. As far as decontextualization goes, the problem with historicism is that the cultural and contextual factors that have shaped the gospel text distance contemporary readers from their meanings. Therefore, to decontextualize a text is to abstract it from its original web of interconnections with its social and cultural context. Decontextualization clears space to include the world of the translator in her reading and interpretation of the text. For Ricoeur, all texts must be repeatedly recontextualized within the time of tradition in order to remain living to people of faith. The receptor text, far from being a word-for word translation, is always recontextualized from within the context and challenges in which it is translated.

Let us try and put forward a model of translation in light of Ricoeur’s linguistic hospitality. Every act of translation entails the three-fold structure of source text, translator and receptor text.

Exploring ‘Mission as Translation’ Model

How can this inform our understanding of mission? On the basis of this detour into translation studies, we would like to explore a ‘Mission as Translation’ model which we argue seeks to overcome the limitations of both the enlightenment and postmodern models. If mission is seen through the lens of translation, then: i) the missionary would be the translator embedded in her historical context, ii) the gospel message that is transmitted by the missionary will be the biblical source text birthed out of its context and iii) the mission field will be the receptor community in whose language the gospel text is transmitted.

However, this is not the first time this model is being put forward. Mission as Translation has been put forward in the works of Andrew Walls, Lamen Sanneh and Kwame Bediako, and it was also the research field of Richard Haney at OCMS. Haney has done a thorough survey of the existing literature on mission as translation in his dissertation Mapping mission as translation with reference to Michael Polanyi’s heuristic philosophy (Haney, 2014), which therefore will not be reproduced here. ³⁷ Our contribution lies in uniquely bringing translation studies from the philosophy of language in dialogue with mission studies. Therefore, in the act of mission, we argue that there is a fusion of the missionary’s historical world, the literary sitz im leben of the gospel and the contextual world of the mission field.

If Christian mission is about the proclamation of Christ, then following Ricoeur, the historical Christ-event can be taken as the Christ-text and the final form of the New Testament text can be taken as the first linguistic translation of the Christ-text within the Hellenistic world. The authors of the Hellenistic gospel text can be considered as the first translators or interpreters and for our purposes as the first missionaries who took the Jewish Christ text to the first century Hellenized world. This interpretation reiterates the NT denotation of the gospel writers as apostles or ‘sent ones’. These missionary translators could be seen as the first in a chain of translators who through the centuries have continually recontextualized their received source text for their mission context. It is through this chain of translation that the text has been preserved and the Christian tradition has been kept alive even while expanding it. Every missionary as translator stands in this great chain of being.

The contemporary missionary as a translator is situated within her own historical context and culture. In both the enlightenment and postmodern mission models, the missionary’s horizon has been kept invisible but the missionary cannot escape her own horizon in the act of mission. Rather, the missionary as translator needs to reflexively lay out the conceptual pre-structures that inform her horizon or, in Gadamer’s words, to know her prejudices so that she is aware of what she is bringing to her act of mission. There should be no shame in being a Jew to the Gentile even if the goal is to become a Gentile to a Gentile.

Finally, the mission field as the receptor community is also situated within a historical context. From the missionary-translator’s horizon, there is a radical otherness in the receptor community. The receptor community is truly an alien society with strange practices. This otherness possesses its own historical trajectory through which it has formed its traditions. To be a missionary is then to be thrown into this otherly world. The missionary could either domesticate the difference of the other and subdue her in her image, or, allow the other to leave her trace on herself. Bakhtin talks about becoming polyglossic and MacIntyre refers to having two first languages. In other words, the missionary inhabits the world of the missional other and learns her cultural language to become bilingual.

Thus we can see that there is a confluence of three streams (of traditions) that constitute the missionary self. The act of mission necessitates the missionary to translate the source gospel text mediated through her own historical horizon into the language and horizon of the receptor community while being faithful to the textual tradition of the gospel text. Thus, not only is every act of mission an act of translation but it is equally a fusion of three horizons.

Testing ‘Mission as Translation’ in the Lotha Naga Context

If mission as translation is necessarily a fusion of three horizons, then in this final section we would like to test our hypothesis in the Lotha Naga context. Although we had said, following Ricoeur, that all missional actions can be treated as texts, in order to make this test work we have taken an example of the biblical text that has been translated into the Lotha Naga language. We would like to analyze a Lotha biblical text with a view to identifying the three horizons that have been fused in it.

The text we have in mind is Exodus 3:4:

NRSV: When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am’.

Lotha:  Tole ombona, ‘Hao, Shilo a vanka’ to ezocho.

 And  he  ‘Hao, Here I present’ thus said

Good News Bible:  He answered, ‘Yes, here I am’.

Hebrew:  הִנֵּֽנִי   וַיֹּאמֶר

 Behold me  And he said 

Greek:  ὁ  δὲ  εἶπεν   τί  ἐστιν

 The yet  he said what is

In the Hebrew, הנני, with the pronominal suffix, in the first person common singular, literally means ‘behold me’ using the Hebrew accusative pronoun ‘me’ and not the nominative ‘I’. The accusative is usually recognized by its position and syntactical connections. ³⁸ McLean argues that the reply of the Hebrew Moses reminds us that one is always a ‘me’ before God. In other words, God is always the sovereign subject with humans and the rest of creation as his direct objects. The French translation me voici ‘it is me’ closely follows the Hebraic understanding. However, the English Moses reverses the arrangement and the submissive ‘me’ becomes a domineering ‘I’. This is the English interpretation which brings out the ‘I’ as the subject. Accusative ‘me’ becomes a nominative ‘I’ and McLean comments that ‘G-d disappears before the arrogance of the I’ for the English Moses. Reflecting the background of the renaissance, there was an anticipation of the Cartesian supremacy of the ‘Ego’ which found expression in the English Moses. However, there is a radical departure in the LXX version. The Hellenized Moses replies with a τί ἐστιν (ti estin) meaning ‘What is this?’. McLean argues that the Hellenized Moses is asking the kind of question that a Greek would ask. The Greek enquires into the being of God by employing a form of the Greek verb ‘to be’ that explains that nature, property or characteristic of something. The Hellenized Moses represents the attitude of the Greek rationalist who sets out to explain God’s nature with confidence. However, McLean concludes that the God created by the Hellenized Moses is conceived in its own image. ³⁹ It is an illusory God created through human rationality, an extension of religious primitivism. Thus, there is a huge difference between the Hebrew Moses, the English Moses and the Hellenized Moses, each reflecting their own historical horizon.

Our final task is to examine the Lotha translation to see if there is indeed a fusion of three horizons. In a private conversation with the translator of this edition of the Lotha text, I was told by Rev Dr Ezamo Murry that the Bible Society’s Good News Bible was the translator’s text. The Good News Bible translated by the American Bible Society is indeed a product of a long historical chain of translations which could be traced back to the Hebrew text. If Murry is seen as a missionary translator, who is using the American Bible as his text, and the original source text is the Hebrew text, and the Lotha text is the translated text, then the Lotha translation must entail a fusion of these three horizons.

Exodus 3:4b, which contains the reply of Moses, in the original Hebrew source text entails five words, in English six words and in Lotha eight words. It is clearly seen that the Lotha translation contains a Hebrew residue and an English trace along with a surplus of meaning arising out of its own Lotha context. The Hebrew וַיֹּאמֶר ‘And he said’ is seen in the Lotha ‘ezocho’, while the English ‘Here I am’ is seen in the Lotha ‘Shilo a vanka’. But what is clearly visible is the influence of the Lotha context on the translation. There are two extra words and an innovation in the sentence structure which reveal the Lotha horizon in translation. ‘Hao’ does not relate or correspond to either the Greek or Hebrew text. This is revealing as it discloses a semantic level that both the Greek and Hebrew have made invisible – the dialogue. The semantic stress shifts both from God as subject of the Hebraic Moses and the self as subject of the English Moses and from objectifying God in the Hellenized Moses. The Lotha Moses replies with a Naga ‘Hao’, the natural response in dialogue to a name being called. The semantic thrust of the Lotha Moses is on the existential dialogue between God and Moses. A new layer of revelation is made possible through the Lotha Moses which is eclipsed both in the Hebrew text, the Septuagint and the English translation. It reminds us that the event which has had a history of translation through the Hebrew, Greek and English was primarily a conversation between two persons: a God who calls by name and Moses who replies ‘Hao’. ‘Hao’ has the power to signify presence of the self. And one could see that there is a double stress in expanding, as a self (a), in a space (shilo) and as a being (vanka). There is a dialogical response but it also brings a complex network of categories. All of the categories are united in the ‘Hao’, which is the addressee in the dialogue. ‘Hao’ is the unique answerability to the calling by presenting oneself.

The addition of the word ‘to’ towards the end of the sentence gives a narratival twist to the translation. It reflects a story being told similar to the folk stories passed down from generation to generation among the Lotha Nagas. The word ‘to’ meaning ‘thus/like this’ brings a dynamic encounter between God’s calling out ‘Moses! Moses!’ and Moses’ immediate response. This narratival structure is further accented in an irregular split in the sentence structure: Tole ombona, ‘Hao, Shilo a vanka’ to ezocho, which should have been technically Tole ombona ezocho, ‘Hao, Shilo a vanka’. It enables a structural proximity between the naming and the answering.

This is a literal example of mission as translation within the domain of text to reveal how the translated text should possess a fusion of three horizons.

Conclusion: Implication for Mission Studies and Practice

The implications of the mission as translation model for both mission practice and mission studies in our increasingly multicultural world could be broadly stated as follows. There is an internal accountability between these three horizons which therefore have the potentiality to install their own checks and balances to ensure that there is no oppression or dominance by one horizon; rather, every other has an equally dynamic place at the table of mission.

This model reveals the situatedness of the missionary translator which has been eclipsed or made invisible in both the enlightenment and postmodern models. In the Lotha context, there ought to be a visible strand of the American Baptist tradition interwoven into Lotha Christianity. By naming the American Baptist traditions, one is able to bring it within accountability structures to limit the missionary translator from, consciously or unconsciously, naively imposing her horizon upon the receptor community. This model will also make visible the significant contribution of the receptor mission field horizon. The alterity of the mission field will be revealed even as it becomes an equal stakeholder in mission activity.

For Levinas, the journey of Abraham is the model for interpretation and translation. Abraham was called to embark upon a journey without a hope of return. Levinas’ nomadic quest entails an interpretation (which does not return to itself). ⁴⁰ As Chalier aptly captures the Levinasian position, ‘Abraham discovers his integrity as a man called to be a blessing to all families of the earth, only on the condition that he loses himself’. ⁴¹ We can modify this slightly to conclude that it is Abraham and his call to the other, along with the other, which taken together describe the authentic call of missions in its fusion of horizons.