New View of Christian History

Many of us learned a simplistic view of Christian history. It begins with the pristine initial Church described in the New Testament. That pristine purity was lost during the millennium from 500 to 1500 AD. Since then (we were told) there has been a gradual and cumulative recovery, restoring the ideal New Testament Church. It’s a simple story, but it doesn’t match either the past 2,000 years of global Church history or our own “local history” as the Church in Toronto over the past decades. That old paradigm doesn’t match the historical record. We need a new perspective through which to view both the broad-sweep of history and our own place within it. Perhaps the views of the respected Christian scholar, Andrew F. Walls, can provide elements for a new paradigm. The biblical principles of “incarnation” and “translation” play important roles. The following piece points out some of Prof. Walls’ important insights.

Nigel Tomes

Edited from Tim Stafford, Christianity Today, Feb., 2007

Andrew F. Walls--the most important person you don't know.

Andrew F. Walls may be the most important Christian scholar you don't know. Most people think of Christianity as a Western religion. But the most important development for the church in the 20th & 21st centuries has not been in the West—either in Europe or North America.

Shifting Center of Gravity

The most striking feature has been the astonishing shift of Christianity's center of gravity from the “first (developed) world” to the “third world;” from the Western industrialized nations to Asia, Africa, & Latin America. In a short time, Christianity has been transformed from a Western religion to a global one.

Andrew Walls helps us understand what this means. Walls was one of the first scholars to notice and study this shift; he combines exhaustive knowledge of the worldwide church with a deep historical & theological vision...

"Andrew was a pioneer," says Yale Univ. Prof. L. Sanneh. "He is one of the few scholars who saw that African Christianity was not just an exotic, curious phenomenon in an obscure part of the world, but that African Christianity might be the shape of things to come." US historian Mark Noll says that "no one has written with greater wisdom about what it means for the Western Christian religion to become the global Christian religion than Andrew Walls."

Walls's insights go even deeper than that, probing Christian history to gain a prophetic vision of what "Christian" really means across an extraordinary diversity of times and cultures.

Love Affair with Africa

Andrew Walls is nearly 80 now, living on "injury time" as he puts it, borrowing the soccer term. He’s had several heart attacks and 20 years ago seemed close to death, but Andrew is hard to stop. He has an impossible schedule of travel, lecturing all over the world….

Walls went to Africa in 1957, a 29-year-old veteran of Oxford & Cambridge planning to teach church history at Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone. Walls didn’t stick to the European compound. He preached in village churches and participated in local preachers' meetings. He studied local church history; he sought to learn about the locals.

His first revelation came while he was teaching about the early church. "…One day the realization struck me that I …was actually living in a second-century church," he explains. "Why did I not stop pontificating and observe what was going on?" This realization transformed his understanding of church in Africa and the second-century. "I saw the same sort of intensity."

The Indigenous Church

After 5 years in Sierra Leone, Walls & his family moved to Nigeria, where began to grasp the dynamism of the African church. He learned of vast revival movements, of foundational preachers and evangelists, of extensive church networks with their own …ways of viewing Scripture. He left Nigeria in 1966, weeks before civil war erupted. Walls returned to Africa annually over the next 40 years, but never again to live. Instead, at the Univ. of Aberdeen & the Univ. of Edinburgh, he drew scholars from all over the world to learn with him.

Leap-frog across the Centuries

Walls recalls the contrast between the vibrant African church and the dwindling vitality in Scotland where Church buildings were turned into bars & pubs. To grasp the scope of Church history over the last 2,000 years Walls suggests we compare & contrast representative Christians over the past 20 centuries. Begin with first century Jewish believers, fond of large families and still worshiping in the temple. Then jump ahead to fifth-century Roman Empire believers, horrified at the idea of animal sacrifice and expecting church leaders to be celibate (unmarried).

Third consider Medieval Irish Christians--monks standing in ice-cold water reciting psalms. Next come English Christians of the 18th & 19th centuries, whose idea of holiness is not ice-water asceticism but activism for missions & against slavery. Lastly, visit Nigeria, Africa in the 20th century to meet white-robed Christians dancing & chanting in the streets, claiming to be cherubim & seraphim. What, Walls asked, do they all have in common?

Walls sees all these as part of a bigger story. How is the faith transmitted and transformed across cultures? How did the rationalistic faith of 19^th century Scottish Christians become the visionary, super-naturalized life of Nigerians believers?

The Gospel Re-translated

Walls began to think that a kind of Christian conversion is necessary whenever the Christian faith moves from one culture to another; in the process the gospel is retranslated to convey its essential message to another people group with their own culture, thought-patterns & language.

Christian History—Ebb & Flow

The spread of the gospel is often presented as inexorable progress outward, like an inkblot ever-expanding. However, looking at the broad-sweep of history, Walls saw the real story was of ebb and flow. The loss of Christian territory often happened at the Christian heartland. Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople & N. Europe have all been Christian “heartlands.” Jerusalem was Christianity’s first heartland until the Romans leveled it; then the Jewish church all but ceased to exist. Then came Rome, until the northern Barbarians sacked it; Constantinople, until Islam overran it; N. Europe, before Enlightenment skepticism cut its heart out. At each turning point, the gospel made a great escape, crossing over into an unknown culture just before disaster struck—e.g. from Jews to Gentiles & from Romans & Greeks to Barbarians. History suggested that Christianity lives by this “pilgrim principle” where the Christian faith (unlike other religions) has no fixed center, but is transmitted across cultural, language & physical boundaries.

Walls's study of Paul's letter to the Ephesians suggests that each culture adds new riches to an understanding of Christ, so that "the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13) becomes possible when all the different communities come together. Each culture also asks different questions of the gospel, and as new answers are unearthed, they enrich our understanding of Christ’s greatness. The second-century church asked philosophical questions that never occurred to Jews in Jerusalem. One result was the fourth-century Nicene Creed. Africa asks questions about witchcraft & spiritual forces that W. Enlightenment can't answer. Perhaps a new understanding of Jesus' victory over evil forces is in the works.

This means the gospel never stands outside our lives; it must enter human culture and be translated into the local language. It is not static, because it’s always in the process of being more fully discovered. Mission is about learning the gospel’s truth through a new way of life & thought. That process is happening today in overdrive.

Another Ephesian Moment

Some scholars (e.g. Philip Jenkins) emphasize a shift of power from W. churches to those south of the equator, Walls sees instead many centers: the riches of a hundred places learning from each other. That’s why Prof. Walls founded the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the Univ. of Edinburgh. Students come from all over the world to share what they are learning and to study together. As Kwame Bediako puts it, "The gospel that was in principle universal has now become in reality universal."