Totaliter Aliter, God’s Mission, and the Postcolonial

Abstract

God’s mission theology finds a critical import in the postcolonial context of World Christianity, which has emerged as both a challenge and an opportunity for Western theology and its missional practices. God’s mission, re-imagined in this expansive global framework, functions as indigenous translations embedded within an emancipatory horizon in the aftermath of colonialism. Given this, I find it substantial to explicate the life horizon of God’s mission, hermeneutically relating its interconnection with other theological foci. Given this, I shall reread Karl Barth in light of theological phenomenology of totaliter aliter with respect to postcolonial theory. A phenomenology of God’s mission in speech-act seeks to develop its religious discourse in multiple senses, taking issue with the natural attitude or understanding of it (the first naiveté). A phenomenological approach to God’s mission is of a postcolonial character to undergird enculturation, emancipation, and comparative study of religion for a deeper meaning of God’s activity in the world of religions. Comparative epistemology in faith seeking understanding is renewed and deepened in the postcolonial discussion of faith and the Other.