Abstract
Henning Wrogemann’s Christian Witness in a Globalized World draws readers to the classic yet enduring problem: What does theology have to do with our contemporary world that has no room for truth claims? Wrogemann confronts this conundrum by accentuating two points: [1] secular neutrality is incapable of understanding diverse forms of communication in different cultures and religions, and [2] theology’s intrinsic quality offers a better hermeneutical foundation for interreligious dialogue. These focal points serve as orienting perspectives for both Part I, “Christian Witness in the Context of Religious Plurality,” and Part II, “Christian Witness in the Context of Secularity and Interculturality,” which address the aforementioned problem respectively.
Part I covers the issue of theology’s interculturality in relation to the Other. Wrogemann begins his argument with the question of dialogue. He argues for classifying different modes of dialogue before asserting the necessity of intercultural and interreligious communication. Wrogemann identifies five categories to implement this task: contact, compromise, knowledge, consensus, and controversy dialogue (8). Among these categories, he considers the latter three as plausible domains for theological dialogue, provided that the limits of each model are acknowledged. Using this classification, Wrogemann juxtaposes hermeneutical reasoning to establish a foundation for a new communication framework. That absolute neutrality is an illusion in hermeneutics is uncontroversial. Despite this common understanding, however, Wrogemann further argues that secular pluralism often tends to ignore domestic expressions to favor such neutrality. He concomitantly claims the methodological validity of theological hermeneutics, of which the central perspective for interpretation stems from ‘within’; Christian theology begets reciprocal dialogue, lest it jettisons its raison d'être. The gospel’s message is by definition interactive as the register of its language ensues a peculiar communication form (John 1:14), which Wrogemann calls “the devotional self-suspendedness” (21). It is a particular way of knowing and communicating with others, as God suspended his epistemic high ground by emptying himself to win genuine knowing of the entirely other, humanity, that had been foreign to divinity. One of the primary tasks of theologians is, therefore, to navigate the gospel’s message in relation to the domestic communication frameworks of others. We may engage in dialogue with religio-cultural others to gain knowledge, reach consensus, and explore controversy, but our engagement should proceed from their grassroots expressions, not from an abstract point of academic neutrality. In Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, Wrogemann illustrates his approach with a dialogue between the Christian Church and religious others, especially Muslim neighbors. Chapter 4 invokes several missiologists to put a different hue on interreligious dialogue.
Part II develops the theological hermeneutic alongside Chapter 5’s dispositive application of doxology to intercultural communication, which elucidates the richness of a theological understanding of the Other, arising from theology’s own quality of “self-suspendedness.” This quality is not mediated by cognitive processes, but rather through a reality shaped by those who routinely practice the collective act of decentralizing their perceptions and ways of inhabiting the world. The dislocation of our epistemic gravity, however, inheres in a solid historical precedent: God’s Menschwerdung and the Son’s thanksgiving and glorification of the Father in the Spirit. This trinitarian communication form, perichoresis, is the very foundation for interreferential understanding of the Other, repudiating the absolutization of our own interpretation of the world. Hermeneutical humility is, in this sense, a “doxological endeavor” (102), enabling us to step back from our own definitions and concede the ultimate validity of perception to Deus absconditus. Wrogemann asserts that granting ultimate validity, not absoluteness, to this doxological hermeneutic of the Other should override the specious secular neutrality to promote genuine dialogue. To substantiate this assertion, Chapter 7 demonstrates the hegemonic influence of secularism in modern hermeneutics; communication techniques implemented by semiotic power in African demonology are often regarded as invalid or inferior forms of communication in the West. This exemplifies that secularism subliminally affects us to police, rather than elucidate, various forms of communication in different religions at the grassroots level. In Chapters 8 and 9, as a repudiation of and alternative to the juggernaut of secularism, Wrogemann highlights the intrinsic quality of Christian theology, which relativizes human boundaries and embraces Omnia Mundi for communication. In this way, mission becomes not just an ecumenical enterprise but “Oikumenical doxology” (136).
This book discovers the latent validity of doxology in hermeneutics. What makes this book unique, however, is not only its strong theological reasoning but also its studious effort to make theological hermeneutics positional and relational to other communication frameworks. For readers of the IBMR who are involved in intercultural ministry, this book is a must-read.
