Chapter 19 - Was Jesus Already in Asia and Africa before the Missionaries Came?

Summary

At various points in this study we cited the claim that God was in Asia and Africa before the missionaries came. Our own experience is that Asians and Africans usually agree with this remark wholeheartedly. They can indeed make the claim in a theological sense. The confession of God as creator of heaven and earth also implies, after all, the creation of Asia and Africa and, as he is praised in Israel in the psalms as the creator through references to nature, that should also be possible in Asia and Africa. The choice of an existing divine name as the name for Israel's God in Asian and African translations of the Bible confirms this understanding: Israel's God is not a strange God for Asians and Africans.

Can the same remark be broadened to include Jesus? There are three, rather divergent affirmative answers to this question: a theological, a historical and an anthropological answer.

1. Christ as Logos, as eternal Word, is also called the creator in the New Testament (John 1:1–4; Eph. 1:20–23; Col. 1:15–20). The same reasoning that was just used in reference to the Father applies to him. Especially in Asia, where the image of Jesus as Logos, as creative power, has found wide acceptance, we see this argument used often.

2. The historical answer refers to the early proclamation of the Gospel in Africa (North Africa and Ethiopia) and in India and China. It is actually stated that when the missionaries came proclaiming Jesus in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and later in the nineteenth century, they had already heard about him a thousand years earlier. Both the theological answer and the historical answer can count on wide support.