Christian Mission And The Test Of Discipleship: The Princeton Lectures 1970

by Shoki Coe

Shoki Coe’s lectures on mission, published here for the first time since it was delivered in Princeton Theological Seminary in 1970, introduce a new generation of Asian Christians to Shoki Coe, the father of contextualizing theology. Coe delivered his Students’ Lectures on Mission at a critical turning point in his intellectual development and in the turbulent nation-building history in Asia. The three lectures, “Text and Context in Missions,” “Missio Dei” and “Christian Mission in the Context of Asian Nation Building,” transcribed and edited here, underline the key role that the Asia Pacific plays in world Christianity. They also shed light to Coe’s train of thoughts that led to the birth of contextualising theology. To place Coe’s lectures within the wider canvass of Asian theological development, this book includes one of Coe’s most important essays “My Political Involvement,” a tribute by the leading Asian ethnomusicologist Loh I-to, and Michael Poon’s introductory essay on “Shoki Coe and the Rise of Asia Pacific Christianity.” “The present crisis in mission is due largely to the fact that we have come to the end of an era and the beginning of another, in the history of both of the church and of the world. It is at this critical point of transition that the question of self-identity and self-identification, the question of faithfulness and the question of relevance of missions have to be raised.” /// This is a great Christian product sourced from BIML - Bible In My Language, the leader in foreign language Bibles and outreach materials from Baltimore, Maryland in the USA. BIML stocks Bibles in more than 600 languages.

74 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Duane Alexander Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am thankful that someone, many years later, transcribed and shared with us the text of these valuable lectures.

The main work that Coe is known for is his labor with the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches in the mid-1970s. It was during that time that the word 'contextualisation' became widely disseminated—though I note the actual word itself does appear in these lectures.

I especially recommend the last lecture which contains some important autobiographical notes that help us to understand the theory of contextualisation, and how it flows from his of life and experience of colonialism (Japanese and Communist Chinese—not British or American) and the great political and cultural tumult of those times.

I recommend this for any scholars of missions and missiology.