Abstract
The study of mission history introduces us to men and women whose views of Christianity and culture only partially coincide with our own, and we learn much from the differences as well as the similarities. Roberto de Nobili, SJ, a missionary in South India in the first half of the seventeenth century, is a good example: his immersion in Indian culture and his views on the necessary adaptation of the Christian message in new environments anticipated by centuries the methods and arguments of modern inculturation theory. Yet, as will be shown, his belief in the universality of reason is premodern, and is the feature of his thought that most clearly divides him from most modern missionaries and modern scholars of religion.
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