The Translational Fabric of Mission and Culture: Engaging Cross-Cultural Theologies On Translation
The Translational Fabric of Mission and Culture: Engaging Cross-Cultural Theologies On Translation
The Translational Fabric of Mission and Culture: Engaging Cross-Cultural Theologies On Translation
1–2 (2019) 30–46 Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology (print) ISSN 2397-3471
https://doi.org/10.1558/isit.38319 Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology (online) ISSN 2397-348X
Norbert Hintersteiner
University of Münster
norbert.hintersteiner@uni-muenster.de
Abstract
Within theological circles Robert J. Schreiter stands out for his
extensive culture theory and theology engagement. Interestingly,
therein, the area of cultural translation has not figured prominently
in his scholarship, despite having enjoyed a certain pride of place at
the times of his early career, both in mission studies and in cultural
semiotics, his favorite theory of culture. What is suggested here then
is to review the missional discourse of cross-cultural translation
(Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh and Kwame Bediako), on the one hand,
and its critiques from contextual theology (Stephan Bevans and Robert
Schreiter) on the other, explaining his reservation. Additionally, the
essay elaborates on translation in cultural semiotics (Yuri Lotman) and
recent translation studies with its foundational as well as fluid concept
of translation, not dissimilar to Schreiter’s understanding of globalized
culture, suggesting it as potential terrain for future theologies of cross-
cultural translation.
Keywords
World Christianity, Mission, Culture, History, Cross-Cultural Theology,
Intercultural Theology, Translation, Translation Theory, Cross-Cultural
Translation, Adaptation, Assimilation, Inculturation, Contextual Theology,
Cultural Semiotics, Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, Kwame Bediako, Stephen
Bevans, Robert Schreiter, Yuri Lotman
Introduction
Translation has, no doubt, been a powerful force throughout human
history for as long as it has been practiced. One of the realms in which
the force of translation is most evident is religion and theology:
translations of scriptures, religious texts and theologies have initiated
and sustained the spread of religions far from their place of origin
across cultures, in the process altering societies’ ways of life and
understanding of the human and divine.
With the rise of cultural studies in the 1970s, translation has received
attention as one of the prominent turns in cultural studies (Bachmann-
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX
Engaging Cross-Cultural Theologies on Translation 31
Medick 2006). The notion of translation has also enjoyed a certain pride
of place in mission studies and cross-cultural theology, in particular
among approaches adopted by Protestant scholars studying the cross-
cultural process of World Christianity, like historians of mission
and cross-cultural theologians Andrew Walls (1928–), Lamin Sanneh
(1942–2019) and Kwame Bediako (1945–2008). By translation, they
were not only referring to the literal translation of texts—although
this has played a central role in the history and strategy of Christian
missions; for example, the many terminological disputes about the
translation of the Bible into vernacular languages—but here the term
has been used in the broader sense of “cross-cultural translation.”
Cross-cultural translation was suggested to conceptualize the complex
intercultural dimensions of expansion and reception of Christianity
beyond the cultural borders of the European and Northern continents
into numerous local languages and cultures (Walls, Sanneh) as well
as vernacular identity construction through translation (Bediako),
especially within the Global South and, given their shared regional
interest, particularly in Africa.
While the combined insights of Walls, Sanneh and Bediako offer an
important beginning to a conceptual view of cross-cultural theology
and particularly of mission as translation, they have invited critiques
from other missiologists and theologians, especially from Catholic
scholars who prominently charted another kind of cross-cultural
theology, framed in the contextual theology discourse from the 1980s
onwards, therein critiquing what they label, “the translation model” of
contextual theology, expressed particularly by Stephen Bevans (1944–)
and Robert J. Schreiter (1947–). Bevans claims that practitioners of
this translation model use a method of discerning the essence of the
gospel, then clothing it with new trappings from the receiving culture.
Bevans argues that this model insists on the message of the gospel as
an unchanging message. Bevans would argue that in this translation
model, the translator understands revelation as propositional, as a
message to be adapted to a new context. Bevans and Schreiter also
critique the translation model for what Bevans regards as a naïve view
of culture and for what Schreiter terms “a positivist view of culture”
(Schreiter 1985, 8). Schreiter’s emphasis on local theologies represents
an additional critique of translation regarding the missional priority
of indigenous agency (Schreiter 1985).
The other line of critical engagement with missions and theologies
of cross-cultural translation must be figured around the concept of
translation and translation theory itself, either readily adopted or not
5. Bevans argues that revelation is not just a message from God or a list
of doctrinal propositions. He contends for understanding revelation as
a manifestation of God’s presence and regards the Bible primarily as a
record of that manifesting presence at particular times and places,
namely, Israel and the early Church (2002, 44).
6. Bevans does not include any mention of Walls or Sanneh in Models of
Contextual Theology. Because he does not interact particularly with Walls
and Sanneh, I contend that some of the nuances in the arguments and
ideas of Walls and his colleagues do not fit the “translation model of
contextual theology” as Bevans has constructed it. In Bevans 2009, he
suggests Walls might belong to the anthropological model despite his
writings on translation.
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Engaging Cross-Cultural Theologies on Translation 37
7. First, the supposition that Christianity is limited to a fixed and static text
contrasts with a more dynamic interplay of a Living Word and the Holy
Spirit. Secondly, this model tends to emphasise the outside missionary’s
© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2019
38 Norbert Hintersteiner
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