Ancestors, Spirits and the Holy Spirit
Historically, one of the most important theological questions raised by missionaries as they entered new contexts was the so-called ‘term question’ – that is, how do we speak of the Christian God in a new language and a new context? Do we coin a neologism in the new language to transliterate Deus or YHWH, or to translate key divine characteristics? Or, more often, do we look for a ‘high god’ in the new context and appropriate this for Christianity? The term question, if you will, is the key question if the Gospel is to be heard among this new people.
However, as Majority World Christians wrestle with their new faith and their pre-existing cosmologies, a new theological question arises: how do we reckon with our world of spirits and ancestors? No longer is there a term question. Now there is a discernment question. And the focus shifts from the doctrine of God to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. How do we discern the spirits and, therefore, differentiate the one Holy Spirit from the rest?
Solutions offered by Western missionaries to this discernment question are often insufficient, because they tend to operate from a disenchanted world which is incapable of fully appreciating the existential questions at hand. It is therefore valuable that this issue of the journal highlights papers from the 2024 Yale–Edinburgh Conference held in Yale Divinity School, entitled ‘Spirit and the Spiritual: Ancestors, Deities and the Holy Spirit in Church and Mission’. The first four papers in this issue come from the conference, followed by two further papers that revolve around similar themes.
Yale-Edinburgh Articles
- Carlos F. Cardoza Orlandi, ‘Jesus in the World of the Spirits: Caribbean Evangélico Christianity and Afro-Caribbean Religions (Lukumí and Espiritismo Caribeño)’
- Esther E. Acolatse, ‘What Is Jesus Doing among the Spirits Today? A Response from an African Reformed Pastoral Theologian’
- Dongjun Seo, ‘Testing the Spirits? The Theological Controversy Surrounding David Yonggi Cho and the World’s Largest Church, 1983–1994’
- Alexander S. Lee, ‘“Playing” with Danger: The Rehabilitation of Spiritual Danger for Inter-Ritual Participation – An Evangelical Perspective’
Other Articles
- Seung Min Hong, ‘Prophetic TV to the Church? CBS Christian Now as an Insider Critic of Korean Protestantism’
- Robbie B. H. Goh, ‘Megachurch Discontents and Mainline Church Structures in Singapore: Affective Cultures, Spiritual Growth and Contested Religious Intimacies’
We must discern the spirits. But we are also aware that there are limits and challenges in human discernment. These six articles point to this difficulty. But they also point to a diversity – both across contexts, as well as within contexts. We are reminded that, theologically, the one Holy Spirit is also the source of unity in the diversity of the one world Church (Ephesians 4: 1–6).
This is an excerpt from the editorial of SWC 31.2 by Alexander Chow, entitled ‘Ancestors, Spirits and the Holy Spirit’.