The death of the Ecuadorian theologian René Padilla on the 27th of April 2021 calls for reflection on the continuing relevance of his missiology today. Though the specific context of Padilla's missiological reflection is Latin America, his contribution to the birth of ‘integral mission’, or ‘misión integral’ in Spanish, has profoundly impacted evangelical theological discourse around the world.
The term ‘intercultural theology’ was first used to refer to a particular field of study in 1975 when Hans Jochen Margull, Walter Hollenweger and Richard Friedli started publishing a book series called Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity. Hollenweger also used it to indicate a theological approach in a three-volume collection of shorter pieces. Intercultural theology only became the name for a specific discipline when a number of professorial chairs in missiology were renamed ‘intercultural theology’.
There was once a final-year student at a theological college in the West African sub-region. The student needed to take and pass one last course in the Spiritual Formation disciplines at the college’s undergraduate program. The task specified in the course description required the student to write a personal reflection paper that accounted for the life and ministry of “Holy” James Johnson’ (c. 1836–1917).
While doing research on Ethiopian Hermeneutics for the Biblical Hermeneutics encyclopaedia article, I came across a number of websites with valuable primary and secondary resources. Recent interest in the digital preservation of Ethiopian manuscripts has led to copies of paintings that were previously inaccessible being made publicly available for the first time.
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