Review of Wrogemann's Intercultural Hermeneutics

Intercultural Theology, vol. 1:  Intercultural Hermeneutics. By Henning Wrogemann. Translated by Karl E. Böhmer. Missiological Engagements. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016. xxii + 431 pp., $45.00. Originally published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 60:1 (March 2017), 167-69.

Translated from the German, this work is the first in a three-part series on intercultural theology by Henning Wrogemann, chair for mission studies, comparative religion, and ecumenics at the Protestant University Wuppertal/Bethel in Germany. Subsequent volumes, still awaiting translation and publication in English, address theology of mission and theology of religions. In terms of related works, Wrogemann’s work resembles K. C. Abraham’s edited volume Third World Theologies: Commonalities and Divergences (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990) as well as Stephen Bevans’s and Roger Schroeder’s Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004).

Opting for the term  intercultural theology instead of mission studies, Wrogemann’s aim in this book is to “take into account the broad scope of world Christianity” (p. 20). He asserts that intercultural theology will make “an important contribution to the processes in which Christians see themselves within the pluralized society of Europe and around the world” as “various forms of Christianity are analyzed from an intercultural perspective according to their particular characteristics … what they take for granted both culturally and contextually … what they view as problematic, and … their particular assumptions and priorities” (p. 395–96).

Read the remainder of the review HERE.

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