Abstract
Pulling from over four decades of teaching experience first in Central Africa and then with college and seminary students in the United States, Thomas M. Stallter, Professor of Intercultural Studies and World Mission at Grace Theological Seminary, provides a helpful corrective to the arrogance and individualism often associated with western evangelical Christianity’s approach to understanding God. Stallter seeks to expose the ways western culture interferes with the ability of western peoples to know, follow, and experience God. His deep concern for the current trajectory of evangelical churches, schools, and mission agencies in the West pervades each chapter. With those institutions in mind, The Gap between God and Christianity is aimed at ministry students, pastors, missionaries, and institutional administrators in the West.
The book begins with a primer on the power of culture and moves quickly to describe the chasm between western culture and the Middle Eastern culture of the Bible. Stallter reveals the cultural context of the Bible where communication was more for “maintaining harmony and identity, changing attitudes, expressing feelings, articulating loyalties and allegiances, etc., than exchanging linear information, winning an argument, or stating a list of propositional truths” (28). Stallter’s most convincing and effective chapters are chapter 3, highlighting the difficulties inherent in biblical interpretation and hermeneutics when approaching the Bible from a western individualist lens, and chapter 15, dealing with the specific words that have different meanings in a western context compared with a Middle Eastern context. He effectively shows how seemingly simple words like “love” and “believe” can “be misused in our lives and ministries” (186) when we miss the Middle Eastern context.
Stallter is also convinced of the negative impacts of western culture on theological systems, yet most readers would appreciate a more robust presentation of the case. Specifically, chapter 8, which centers on theological systems, is succinct and light on concrete examples. Additionally, incorporating a discussion on western culture’s impact on the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession Faith, or an examination of non-denominational evangelical Christianity’s potential for aversion to theological clarity would have been a welcome inclusion.
In The Gap between God and Christianity, Stallter is a trusted guide who can help western people see the invisible ways our own culture, and in particular our individualism, can blind us and come between us and God. This book is highly recommended for students preparing for ministry, current pastors, missionaries, or administrators in evangelical institutions who seek a better understanding of the differences between our modern western culture and the Middle Eastern culture we are confronted with in the Bible.