Toward de-Americanization through transculturation.

"Americans ... ought to serve mankind in other fields than in religion." This was the assessment in 1926 of the prophetic Japanese writer Kanzo Uchimura, who was a first-generation convert to Christianity through the sacrificial efforts of American missionaries.

A contemporary appraisal

Some eighty years later, we may wonder whether Americans have improved their reputation among those they have sought to serve in Christ's name. A brief review of recent mission history supplies the answer.

When the Iron Curtain was drawn back in the late 1980s, more than 1,500 different missionary and church-based organizations entered Russia seeking to fulfill their perceived divine mandates. Walter Sawatsky gave the following report:

The inundation of Western mission representatives was such that local
pastors sometimes failed to preach to their own congregations for months
on end, due to the custom of deferring to visiting preachers. In fact,
church leaders met so many guests offering new partnership projects that
they rarely found time to follow through on anything agreed upon with
previous visitors....
  ... Younger leaders ... have taken financial retainers from Western
agencies.... This leads to disarray in the Christian community,
including disturbed relationships with Western parachurch agencies and
denominational bodies that had long maintained ties to Soviet churches.
  ... many missions are already very influential in shaping the
evangelistic task, in creating alternative religious culture (including
the potential Americanization of Soviet evangelicals), and in fostering
greater denominational diversification and competition....
  ... the common assumption is that there is an evangelism program,
package, or doctrinal framework that is right, which the Soviet partner
should now follow. (1)

Subsequent relations between Westerners and their Russian counterparts unfortunately did not improve. According to Peter and Anita Deyneka,

As the contact of evangelical missionaries with many national
Protestants has continued ... some Russian evangelicals have ... grown
increasingly critical of their cobelievers; they have become more
discerning in deciding with which foreign missionaries they will work.
In their "Open Letter of the Missionary Coordinating Council to All
Western Missionary Organizations" (1993), national Christians from ten
countries of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] thanked
Western missions.... But the statement also criticized Westerners who
overwhelm the indigenous church. "In Moscow alone, over one hundred
Western organizations were registered. And each one wants to accomplish
its program by using the existing church infrastructure, which is still
so weak that it cannot resist the pressure, neither organizationally nor
spiritually....
  Indigenous missionary organizations cannot compete with strong Western
missions and the best people prefer to work for Western organizations
and, naturally, for better payment.... Finally, instead of [receiving]
assistance and support from Western missionaries, local missions [find
that they] have to defend their own vision of missionary service. (2)

The Deynekas quote Grigori Komendant, president of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists of Ukraine: "The West needs to be more realistic in recognizing that Russia is not a Third World country. The church has been here a long time, and we are not interested in the Americanization of our church." More recently, an astute observer of the varied ministries of CoMission, a consortium of more than eighty different evangelical organizations, concluded:

Despite CoMission's efforts to co-opt Russian church support by
providing technological and financial assistance for the Orthodox
University in Moscow, the Moscow Patriarchate ultimately could not
countenance the affront of such open Protestant proselytizing in the
Orthodox heartland. The ensuing Russian church opposition to foreign
missionaries culminated in its challenge to the landmark 1990
legislation on religious liberty. In 1997 Russia's Parliament enacted a
far more restrictive law, "On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious
Associations." The irony is that although limited CoMission programming
continues in Russia, CoMission proselytizing helped to drive the very
1997 restrictions on religious associations that ultimately spelled its
own demise. (3)

In view of what transpired in Russia, William Taylor, of the World Evangelical Fellowship, called on Western mission organizations to not duplicate the same mistakes in China. (4) But his call, explains Samuel Chiang, apparently went unheeded:

While many individuals and groups have entered China both covertly and
blatantly open in converting flocks, their presence has often destroyed
the natural order of an existing church or church network. Dangling
funds, promises of assistance, and sometimes force-feeding of
theological positions have created a fragmented church....
  Outside influence through funds has not only caused leaders to fall,
but also, sometimes, endangered entire networks of churches. Money
talks.... One group has gotten the pastors in a local Guangdong district
to work on "pyramid" selling products [an entirely American concept].
The funding was so good that the pastor has pressed and pushed his flock
into sales. This outside group, in turn, highly influences the events in
church life....
  These are not isolated incidents but are habitual patterns in church
ministry in China. As a result, many thriving churches have divided, and
natural church orders are disassembled. (5)

Lamentably, the debacle of Western missionary involvement in China during the first half of the twentieth century is being replayed for all to see.

"Christianity" made in America

American Christians who desire to work in harmony with the motives, methods, and goals of the mission Dei in the twenty-first century should stop, think, pray, change, and commit themselves to reversing this state of affairs. The first step on this path is to realize that American missions are both products of and purveyors of American culture. American missionaries have very often been transmitters of their own culture in attempting to spread Christianity.

That there is indeed a distinct variety of American Christianity, with innate strengths and weaknesses, is undeniable. It is tremendously creative, efficiently organized, strategically oriented, highly energized, incredibly diverse, and endowed with seemingly boundless resources--financial, human, literary, and technological.

It also exhibits serious shortcomings. At the top of the list is a systemized theological perspective. Through the influence of the scientific method, God has not only been approached as an idea to be examined but also forced into very arbitrary categories. However, what is often overlooked is that these categories are culturally derived and bound. For example, the preoccupation with eschatology among evangelicals comes from a crisis-oriented culture that is obsessed with the future. Most of the rest of the world abides in a noncrisis environment contented with the present.

Second, although Americans did not invent the professionalization of the ministry, they have taken it to new levels. If servants of Christ have not received a "proper" theological education, Americans generally deem them unqualified for church leadership. Not only does this have very little to do with the first-century church, which essentially was a lay movement and had no concept of a paid clergy, but the effectiveness of such training has been called into serious question. (6)

Third, American Christianity is extremely anthropocentric. As a direct consequence of the Enlightenment, the American gospel starts with humanity's need and invites God to meet it. Think of recent bestsellers--Bruce Wilkinson's The Prayer of Jabez (Multnomah Publishers, 2000) and Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life (Zondervan, 2002). The first promises success in life, the second meaning to life. These writings demonstrate that Christianity is being manipulated to fulfill the American dream. Biblical authors such as the apostle Paul would not likely agree with this agenda, because he "did not start from man's need, but from God's deed [in Christ] ... the message is not about man and does not describe him, [yet] it is intended to elicit 'faith.'" (7)

Fourth, Christianity American style has been thoroughly McDonaldized. (8) Consumer-oriented marketing principles have been embraced to attract and satisfy more and more people in order to sustain ever-increasing egos, visions, budgets, staffs, and buildings. In such an environment, almost any conceivable program is justified as a legitimate means to a desired end. Yet this is nothing but unrestrained pragmatism. Such a missional posture is open to severe criticism because, even if something works, it does not necessarily make it right, true, or conducive to forming genuine followers of Christ.

Fifth, capitalism governs the day in the typical American church. If greed riding the wings of capitalism is not the besetting sin of American Christians, I wonder what is. This greed is being fueled by the present experiment in globalization, which has been labeled "a restricted utopia--a utopia for those in a good position." (9) As the world's wealth accumulates in the hands of the few, more is at the disposal of Americans to support various ministry ventures. This results in money-intensive mission strategies. Indeed, to do Christianity the American way requires exorbitant amounts of money. And as this model is held up as the one to emulate, the poor from around the world come with open hands that are in turn filled with that which has been acquired in a context of injustice.

Sixth, American Christianity exhibits a dichotomistic worldview. It has been successful at dissecting almost every conceivable aspect of the Christian life: sacred/secular, church/state, church/parachurch, clergy/laity, faith/works, evangelism/social action, sovereignty/free will, natural/supernatural, literate/illiterate, and form/meaning. Such differentiations are of course not necessarily incorrect or counterproductive. The problem comes when they are superimposed upon others as the only way of viewing the world and doing Christianity, particularly among those who have a more holistic perspective on life.

To fail to recognize that American Christianity is a local creation and thereby does not have universal appeal and applicability is to hinder what Andrew Walls calls the "Ephesian moment" in cross-cultural mission. He explains:

The Ephesian metaphors of the temple and of the body show each of the
culture-specific segments as necessary to the body but as incomplete in
itself. Only in Christ does completion, fullness, dwell. And Christ's
completion ... comes from all humanity, from the translation of the life
of Jesus into the lifeways of all the world's cultures and subcultures
through history. None of us can reach Christ's completeness on our own.
We need each other's vision to correct, enlarge, and focus our own; only
together are we complete in Christ. (10)

A better way

In light of the foregoing, contextualization must be placed at the top of the agenda for American missionaries. This subject is relatively new among evangelicals. Only since the Lausanne consultation on "Gospel and Culture" at Willowbank, Bermuda, (11) in 1978 have they been seriously discussing it. For some, the notion of contextualization implies compromise, but it is warranted on at least two grounds.

First, the manner in which God has chosen to communicate divine revelation is through the vehicle of human culture. For example, in the Old Testament the ritual of circumcision, a custom practiced in various Ancient Near East societies of Abraham's day, is adopted as a sign of what it means to be God's covenant people. Moreover, in the New Testament Paul discards the Jewish "Messiah" in favor of the Greek "Savior," a term taken from the religious climate of the eastern Mediterranean of his time, in an effort to impart knowledge about Christ's work. Thus, the only way in which we can hope to effectively pass on Christianity to others is by using their culture, their frame of reference. Yet, given that culture is not a neutral vehicle for expressing divine revelation, we must constantly be on guard against overcontextualization or syncretism. As a case in point, Paul rejected the Sophists and sided with the Cynics when it came to not charging for his services so as to not compromise the integrity of the gospel. (12)

Second, contextualization is not an attempt to change the inherent meaning of the gospel but to communicate it in such a way that people welcome it for the right reasons and not reject it for the wrong ones. Suffice it to say that Christians from various backgrounds will come up with vastly different responses to this kind of undertaking. Even the person of Jesus will be exegeted in diverse ways. The American Jesus frees from addictions; the African Jesus delivers from evil spirits; the Latino Jesus liberates from oppression; the Asian Jesus opens the way to transcendence. This should surprise no one, as cultural complexities are seemingly endless. Yet, as long as a shift in allegiance from false gods to the "true and living God" (1 Thess 1:9) remains the focus, one can be assured that the right path is being trod.

Ultimately, missionaries of all persuasions must learn the dance of transculturation. This entails the ability to move from the communicator's culture through biblical cultures to the receptor's culture so that the latter can comprehend God's message. To demonstrate how this dance is performed, I offer a contemporary case study in mission.

Personalities: American, ancient, and Arab

In view of recent events, the Arab world is arguably the greatest missional challenge facing the American church in the twenty-first century. To explore how Americans might successfully enter Arab culture and earn the privilege to be heard, each component of the transculturational model is described.

The typical American personality can be depicted in terms of the "me, myself, and I" triad. It is private, individualistic, autonomous, introspective, independent, egalitarian, competitive, achievement-driven, and inclined toward self-realization. (13) This personality has been nurtured in a "rights culture," and its conscience is governed by internal feelings of guilt. Bruce Malina explains:

This sort of conscience ... refers to the pain we feel within ourselves
over some past specific action that we ourselves, individual and alone,
judge to be "bad" because it was "wrong."...
  ... In our culture we are brought up to stand on our own two feet, as
distinctive wholes, distinctive individuals, male and female. We are
motivated to behave in the "right way," alone, if necessary, regardless
of what others might think or say. In our process of identity formation,
we are led to believe and act as though we do so singly and alone,
responsible only for our own actions, since each person is a unique
sphere of feeling and knowing, of judging and acting. When we relate to
other people, we feel that they are as distinct and unique beings as we
ourselves are. (14)

The average American lives for self, questions anything which inhibits self, and finds no greater authority for self other than self.

In contrast, the first-century Mediterranean world was populated with people who exhibited what has been labeled a dyadic personality. They were public, communal, collectivistic, outward-focused, interdependent, status-minded, traditionally bound, and devoted to group well-being. They attained fulfillment by upholding kinship values. Such people were raised in a honor-seeking, shame-avoidance culture, and as such their consciences were primarily preoccupied with the views of others. Again, Malina elaborates:

... [the] dyadic personality is one who simply needs another continually
in order to know who he or she really is.... Such persons need to test
this interrelatedness, with the focus of attention away from self....
Pivotal values for such persons would be honor and shame, not guilt....
  ... Conscience [in their case] is sensitivity to what others think
about and expect of a person.... [T]he person ... does not think of
himself or herself as an individual who acts alone regardless of what
others think and say. Rather, the person is ever aware of the
expectations of others ... and strives to match those expectations....

Since dyadic personality derives its information from outside of the self and, in turn, serves as a source of outside information for others, anything unique that goes on inside of a person is filtered out of attention. Individual psychology, individual uniqueness, and individual self-consciousness are simply dismissed as uninteresting and unimportant. Instead, all motivations, motives, and attitudes derive from culturally shared stereotypes ... from obvious and apparent group traits and behavior. People spend much of their concern on their honor rating within significant groups and in assessing the honor rating of their group relative to others. (15)

The normal human being in New Testament times was committed to social integration and community maintenance for the sake of honor. A clear example of this type of person is Paul. When encountered in the book of Acts he is dutifully discharging the obligations placed upon him by his religious leaders (Acts 7:58; 8:1; 9:1-2; 26:9-12; Phil 3:5). Furthermore, he is unaware of any personal failures in keeping the Law and therefore considers himself "blameless" (Phil 3:6). He reaches this conclusion because the people of his day avoided "introspection ... and evaluate[d] behavior on the basis of externally perceptible activity and in terms of the social functions of such activity." (16) Paul considered himself an upstanding member of his community--"a Hebrew of Hebrews" (Phil 3:5) and one who "was advancing in Judaism beyond many of [his] contemporaries" (Gal 1:14)--because of the esteem he obtained from others as a direct result of meeting their expectations. Therefore, according to Malina, it was not guilt or anxiety relative to the Law that led him to Christianity or maintained his Christian conversion. To assume so is to superimpose "an internalized standard of morality" on him as Augustine, Luther, and those in their wake have done. The more likely alternative, as Seyoon Kim points out, is to attribute Paul's conversion solely to the Damascus Christophany. (17)

It should come as no surprise that the social values of first-century Mediterranean society survive in the same part of the world today, in particular among Arabs. Consequently, most if not all of the characteristics of the dyadic personality would apply to them. But Arabs, comprising both Christians and Muslims, also display what has been called a "Fahlawi personality." "The one overriding concern of such a personality is to save face, to appear as a person who adheres to the ethical norms of his society." (18) What the Fahlawi personality dreads most, according to Raphael Patai, is not failure in itself but the shame and disgrace when such failure becomes known. This personality has been reared in a culture of "familism" where the family is considered extended, patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal, endogamous, and occasionally polygynous. In such a context, honor is viewed as a collective property of the family and upheld at all cost; loyalty to family takes priority over personal needs; status supersedes achievement; making a good impression on others is imperative; anything that threatens personal dignity must be rejected; and family honor is the greatest source of pressure to insure compliance to accepted behavior patterns. Thus, the Arab actually is dominated by concerns that lack counterparts in the modern American West, and, to make matters worse, the American personality at almost every point undermines the familism upon which Arab society is built.

De-Americanization in the Arab world

How, then, can American missionaries dance transculturally in the Arab world?

First, they must realize that it is the epitome of ethnocentrism to expect Arabs to comprehend and convert to an Americanized version of Christianity. Indeed, missionaries "have no mandate to spread their culture. The only legitimacy to their crossing cultural lines with a message for others is that the message is not their own, does not derive from their culture, but that it is God-given and thus transcends cultural variability." (19) Hence, the road less traveled in mission must include crucifying self by laying down strongly held theological, ecclesiastical, and/or methodological loyalties for the sake of God's kingdom. In this connection, Paul, who became "all things to all men and women" so that he "may by all means save some" (1 Cor 9:22), serves as a powerful model.

Second, American missionaries must acknowledge their cultural biases in approaching Scripture. In reality, the average American Christian is handicapped in this area. As David deSilva notes,

Those living or reared in Asiatic, Latin American, Mediterranean or
Islamic countries have considerable advantage in their reading of the
New Testament ... since many of those cultures place a prominent
emphasis on honor and shame. Readers living in the United States ... may
recognize immediately that we live at some distance from the honor
culture of the first-century ... Semitic peoples in the East. (20)

This distance causes Americans often to be oblivious to issues of honor, shame, and community dynamics in the Bible. For instance, when it comes to the parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15:11-32), interpreters have projected their own world on the text. This is evident in the endless homilies that concentrate on the deviant behavior and guilt-ridden conscience of the younger son. However, the main figure of the parable is clearly the forgiving father, whose reactions to both of his sons are center stage. Furthermore, each incident in the story--the granting of the inheritance, the father running and kissing the younger son, the robe, the ring, the sandals, the killing of the fatted calf, the celebration with the household servants and village community, and the father's pleading with the older son to join in--are masterfully woven together by Jesus with shame/honor language in order to convey the lengths to which God the Father is willing to go to be reconciled with those estranged from him.

The book of Romans is likewise relevant here. Since the Reformation, it has been understood as a work that sets forth the doctrine of justification by faith (and its ramifications) in a systematic way. However, a summary statement for Romans that is built solely on justification by faith may be suspect because of Western cultural biases. The epistle should be evaluated from a perspective more resembling Paul's viewpoint. This point of view has been best summarized by Krister Stendahl:

Paul's primary focus on Jews and Gentiles was lost in the history of
interpretation, and when it was retained, the church picked up the
negative side of the "mystery"--Israel's "No" to Jesus Christ--but
totally missed the warning against conceit and feelings of superiority.
Once this mystery became inoperative in the central thinking of the
church ... the road was ever more open for beautiful spiritualizations
of Pauline theology. Romans became a theological tractate on the nature
of faith. Justification no longer "justified" the status of Gentile
Christians as honorary Jews, but became the timeless answer to the
plights and pains of the introspective conscience of the West. And Paul
was no longer seen "among Jews and Gentiles" but rather as the guide for
those perplexed and troubled by the human predicament....
  ... Thus even justification by faith, important though we have seen it
to be, must be subsumed in the wider context of Paul's mission to the
Gentiles.... Or perhaps we should say it this way: Paul's thoughts about
justification were triggered by the issues of divisions and identities
in a pluralistic and torn world, not primarily by the inner tensions of
individual souls and consciences. (21)

This perspective also shows why the debate surrounding the "I" passages in Rom 7:14-25, where Paul is taken to be referring to either his pre-conversion or post-conversion experience from the standpoint of the inner workings of conscience, is fruitless. It is more reasonable to understand him "speaking as broadly as possible about humankind in Adam ... the general malaise of fallen humanity when it comes to sin, death, and Law." (22)

Third, American missionaries must minister within the context of Arab honor/shame sensibilities if they hope to be trusted, respected, and heeded. Accordingly, confrontational approaches aimed at exposing the sins, failures, and/or flaws in Arab character, which are common American evangelistic strategies, are unwise and can be disastrous. Arabs, who are compelled to conceal vulnerability, will automatically try to defend their dignity even in the face of facts to the contrary. They will attempt to hide shortcomings and failures in order to preserve appearances and save their self-respect.

Successful missional encounter necessitates enculturation into the Arab world. Americans must live and operate "in such a way that [Arab] conscience functions as an independent ... witness to the truth ... it is [this] conscience ... in agreement with biblical principles, which should provide [their] reference point." In other words, the American "who understands and works with native conscience [will find] conscience to be God's great and good gift, an ally which works to support repentance and faith." (23) On a practical level, this means that if the Christian faith is to become winsome to Arabs, American missionaries must excel in areas that Arabs value and admire. Specifically, they must outshine their Arab friends in such things as marriage, raising and loving children, producing respectable males and modest females, honoring parents, respecting the elderly, showing hospitality, being generous, caring for the stranger and poor, working for justice, resolving conflict through mediation--in sum, being as honorable as Arabs themselves. As Americans concentrate on "doing things in such a way that everyone can see [they] are honorable" (Rom 12:17 NLT), by having "regard for what is honorable, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men" (2 Cor 8:21), Arabs will eventually be confronted with issues relevant to their own moral standards. This will provide an opportunity for the Holy Spirit, who has been sent "to convict the world concerning sin" (John 16:8), to use Arab misconduct, whether publicly acknowledged or not, to reveal their "shame before a holy God." (24)

Undoubtedly, the offense of the gospel will at some point have to be addressed. But, just as Paul used whatever cultural information was available to convey the significance of Jesus Christ to his audience, Americans should employ the material latent within the Arab society to communicate truth about the Messiah. Thus, trajectories for discussions concerning such concepts as the atonement should be conducted within honor/shame categories. Anselm's satisfaction theory is particularly promising for Arabs. In brief, he surmised that through human sin God was robbed of the honor due him. Divine justice required sinners to be punished, but divine love sought a solution by which they could be saved. However, because the offense to God was infinite, the satisfaction must likewise be infinite--that is, divine. In addition, because humankind was the source of the offense, a human must be the one to offer restitution. Hence the rationale arose for the God-man whose sacrifice not only satisfied God and restored his honor but also provided a means by which sinners could receive forgiveness and eternal life.

There are, of course, problems with this view as with all atonement theories. The theory of penal substitution, heralded by American evangelicals as the correct way to understand the atonement, sets Christ "in opposition to the Father by maximizing the love of Christ and minimizing that of the Father." (25) For the Arab, the satisfaction theory is uniquely applicable as it not only makes the atonement comprehensible in readily accessible terms but also lifts up the God-honoring Messiah who places before humanity the necessity of living with the same doxological orientation.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In conclusion, the question as to whether "Americans ... ought to serve mankind in other fields than in religion" must be reconsidered. Yes, they should serve only in these areas--unless they are willing and able to de-Americanize by dancing transculturally, particularly in the Arab world.

Christopher R. Little

Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary

1. Walter Sawatsky, "After the Glasnost Revolution: Soviet Evangelicals and Western Missions." International Bulletin of Missionary Research 16 (1992): 54-59.

2. Peter and Anita Deyneka, "Evangelical Foreign Missionaries in Russia," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 22 (1998): 57.

3. Stephen Bataldan, "Review of The Quest for Russia's Soul: Evangelicals and Moral Education in Post-Communist Russia," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 28 (2004): 84.

4. William Taylor, "Partners into the Next Millennium," in Kingdom Partnerships for Synergy in Missions, ed. William Taylor (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1994), 241.

5. Samuel Chiang, "The China Challenge: New Lenses for a New Millennium," Evangelical Missions Quarterly 36 (2000): 161-62.

6. Robert Banks, Reenvisioning Theological Education: Exploring a Missional Alternative to Current Models (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 10.

7. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 444, 446.

8. John Drane, The McDonaldization of the Church: Consumer Culture and the Church's Future (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2001), 40-42.

9. Ofelia Ortega, "Revolutionary Hope in the Church after Christendom," in Hope for the World: Mission in a Global Context, ed. Walter Brueggemann (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 132.

10. Andrew Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 79.

11. John Stott, Making Christ Known: Historic Mission Documents from the Lausanne Movement 1974-1989 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 73-112.

12. Christopher R. Little, Mission in the Way of Paul: Biblical Mission for the Church in the Twenty-First Century (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005), 33-35.

13. See Handbook of Biblical Social Values, ed. John Pilch and Bruce Malina (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), xxxxii ff.

14. Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 64, 67.

15. Malina, The New Testament World, 67, 81.

16. Malina, The New Testament World, 73.

17. Seyoon Kim, The Origin of Paul's Gospel (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1981), 31, 231.

18. Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind (New-York: Hatherleigh, 2002), 113.

19. Robert Priest, "Missionary Elenctics: Conscience and Culture," Missiology: An International Review 22 (1994): 313.

20. David deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 25.

21. Krister Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 5, 40.

22. Ben Witherington III, Paul's Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 2004) 194. 198.

23. Priest, "Missionary Elenctics." 310-11, 315.

24. David Hesselgrave, "Missionary Elenctics and Guilt and Shame," Missiology: An International Review 11 (1983): 480.

25. Leon Morris, "Atonement, Theories of," in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 118.