The Cross versus the Crescent: Karl Kumm’s Missiology

ABSTRACT

This article surveys the missiology promoted in the writings of the Protestant missionary Karl Kumm during the first decades of the twentieth century. Kumm was famous as a missionary explorer. He was the first European to successfully cross the region known as the Sudan, from the Niger bend to the Nile. He was also notable because he founded two different missions in two different places in Africa, both aimed at evangelizing the peoples of the Sudan. Lastly, Kumm was significant for having constructed in his various writings a highly influential case against the evangelization of Muslims and for the evangelization of traditionalist people. Kumm, his ideas and actions helped shape government policy towards Christian missions and Christian–Muslim relations in colonial Northern Nigeria.     

That He Might Fill All Things: Creation and Christology in Two Treatises by Nicholas of Cusa

Abstract:  Theology in modernity is especially assisted by elements of Christian tradition which work to reunify, after Louis Dupré's formula, the lost synthesis of self, world and God. This article examines the tradition of Christ's immanence in creation, as seen in two short treatises by Nicholas of Cusa from 1445–46. Read together, these treatises illumine Cusa's 'pan-Christic ontology'. The first describes the prospect of 'filiation', the intellect's virtual participation in the Word's sovereignty over created being; the second explains how all beings are lesser theophanies participating in the theophany of God which is the body of Jesus.     

The Internet in Thailand: An Alternative Means of Communication

This paper aims to discuss the increasingly unbalanced structure of public communication in Thailand. To this end, an Internet survey and an in-depth interviews will be employed to investigate the unprecedented popularity of the Internet with people who are dissatisfied with the mainstream media (commercial newspapers, radio and television), which do not serve their need to have their voice heard in public. The study argues that due to (1) the media domination of political and business powers, (2) the lack of a public channel of communication and (3) the suppression of opposing viewpoints by the government, people utilise the Internet and the bulletin boards, in particular, as an alternative form of communication to express their concerns and engage in public affairs. The main argument of this paper is to dispel the notion that the Internet is a medium that is exclusively the purview of those who are affluent, who are privileged with resources, income or education. The predominant belief in Thailand today is that the Internet is there to serve the privileged and that this could lead to even more elitist control and censorship. Conversely, this investigation reveals that people as users can in fact make a difference; that is, to a large extent, they are capable of influencing the medium to be more supportive of them and their environment. As the Internet is capable of being a venue of popular usage, this paper argues that it is crucial to support this new medium’s penetration of a wider public. The problem of a digital divide needs to be addressed; large sections of population, especially those who lack either financial resources or technical skills, must be included in this Information and Communication Technologies development.

Newbigin's Trinitarian Missiology: The Doctrine of the Trinity as Good News for Western Culture

This paper explores Newbigin's trinitarian missiology by first evaluating its theological basis, and then looking at the practical implications for the church's mission within Western culture today. Newbigin claimed that “the doctrine of the Trinity … is the necessary starting point of preaching”. This statement actually involves two mutually related claims that are discussed using the resources of recent trinitarian theology. First, evangelism begins with describing the triune God, and second, the triune nature of God is irreducibly bound up with the substance of the gospel. This discussion evaluates these bold claims using the resources of trinitarian theology, taking the claims in reverse order because the second impinges upon the first. The second part of this paper applies the fruits of this discussion to the church's mission within Western culture. It briefly articulates a relational ontology based on the doctrine of the Trinity, and then describes a relational anthropology based on the imago Dei. Next it explores Newbigin's theology of the inter‐relatedness of all life as the clue to understanding missional election. The practical implications this has for ecclesiology and missiology vis‐à‐vis Newbigin's understanding of the congregation as the hermeneutic of the gospel conclude this exploration. They demonstrate the abiding significance of Lesslie Newbigin for continued theological, missiological, and practical reflection.     

The Practical Challenges to Renewal: An Answer to Stein and Singer

Years ago, as a young man in Jungian analysis, I suffered an identity crisis. Its catalyst was my discovery that–unlike my own analyst, the majority of my colleagues, and Jung himself I am not an introverted intuitive-thinking type. Rather, I was an introverted feeling-sensation type. Suddenly feeling excluded from the professional world that defined me, I experienced a strong pull to connect, through the natural world, to a deeper aspect of myself.     

Trinitarian Missiology: Towards a Theology of God as Missionary1

Abstract: This article explores the possibilities of using ‘missionary’ as an attribute of God, as has been done recently in some ecclesial discourse. To this end, it offers an exegesis of John 20:21–23 via expositions of Augustine's discussion of the divine missions in De Trinitate, Barth's account of election, and the Lateran condemnation of Joachim of Fiore, and a discussion of the relationship between trinitarian theology and the divine attributes.     

So That He Might Fill All Things: Comprehending the Cosmic Love of Christ

What does Jesus Christ have to do with the starry skies above and the good earth under our feet? Although theological discussions of cosmic and ecological issues have often been developed in dialogue with the natural sciences, “cosmic christology” is itself intrinsically a theological theme. In response to the cosmic vision of Ephesians, this paper explores the contributions of two contemporary theologians who have developed cosmic christologies, Colin Gunton and Jürgen Moltmann, and then seeks to build critically on their achievements by reclaiming Luther's ubiquity christology and by calling upon the Johannine witness to Christ as the light and the shepherd of the cosmos.     

The Healing Circle: An Alternative Path to Alcoholism Recovery

Recovery from alcoholism has typically involved the program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). However, the values espoused by AA, especially those related to spirituality, can be in conflict with the values of traditional Native Americans. This article discusses healing methods founded in the traditions of Native American culture in general and the Oglala Lakota (also called Oglala Sioux) nation specifically. An understanding of these methods gives non-Native American counselors additional tools for guiding Native American clients to an effective program of recovery.     

The Factor Structure of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory: An Alternative View

Wagner and Copper (1963) reported high discriminative power for one score (the ACTivity score) of the Wagner Hand Test between (unskilled and semi-skilled) workers at Goodwill Industries, Akron, Ohio who had been rated “Satisfactory” or “Unsatisfactory” by their superiors.

An attempt to crossvalidate this finding, in a three-group design, in a large Western Canadian Plywood mill failed to produce the expected relationship; neither the ACT score, nor any of the other scores derived from this test showed any consistent trend in terms of postdicting activity level, or general acceptability of the 18 Ss involved in this study.     

Culture-Specific Counseling: An Alternative Training Model

Culture-specific counseling has been proposed as a supplement to cross-cultural and multicultural approaches. In the culture-specific approach, we start with the culture and its peoples and search out natural helping styles. In contrast with the conventional approach of adapting existing counseling theory to “fit” a new culture, the culture-specific method seeks to generate new theory and technologies of helping. This preliminay study uses a case model drawn from African-Igbo culture and applies anthropological constructs that seek to discover a more culturally sensitive approach to counseling theory, to training in counseling skills and knowledge, and in using evaluative research techniques. The methods used in this report may be useful in generating a new set of theories more relevant to many different cultural groups. Se ha propuesto que la consejería culturalmente específica sirve como un complemento al acercamiento intercultural y multicultural. En el acercamiento culturalmente específico, empezamos con la cultura y sus gentes y buscamos estilos naturales de ayudar. En contraste con el acercamiento convencional en el que se adapta la teoría existente de consejería para que se ajuste a una cultura nueva, el método culturalmente específico procura engendrar nuevas teorías y técnicas de ayuda. Este estudio preliminar usa un caso modelo sacado de la cultura africana Igbo, aplicando constructos antropológicos que intentan descubrir un acercamiento más sensitivo a la teoría de consejeriá, preparación en habilidades y conocimientos de consejería, y en el uso de técnicas de investigación evaluativas. Los modelos usados en este artículo pueden ser útiles para engendrar un nuevo grupo de teorías mas pertinente para muchos grupos culturales diferentes.