Editor’s Note: This is the first of two related essays by Dr. Alexander Chow connected with his 2026 Timothy Lin Memorial Lectures at China Evangelical Seminary in Taiwan, delivered under the theme “Theology: Worldwide Faith Seeking Understanding.” Written before the lectures, this essay introduces a central concern behind the series: What happens when Chinese theology is not viewed merely as a local application of Western theology, but as part of the worldwide church’s ongoing work of faith seeking understanding? Chow invites readers to see Chinese and Majority World voices not as marginal examples, but as essential witnesses to how the gospel is understood, received, and lived across cultures.
A number of years ago, I presented a paper at an academic conference in the United States on Sino-Christian theology (漢語神學). I spoke of the ways Chinese scholars have been trying to make space for the study of theology in the secular Chinese academy.
The first question I was asked was, “So, are Chinese now able to produce their own theology?” I was taken aback by this question. Did the questioner not pay attention to my eloquent twenty-minute speech that focused on the ingenuities of this scholarly movement in the 1990s in offering theological approaches to China’s sociopolitical concerns. I didn’t think I was that boring!
Yet it also seemed that this person wasn’t aware that, since the early 20th century, there has been a very fruitful development of Christian theology in China. One of the greats, of course, was Zhao Zichen (趙紫宸, 1888–1979), whose five-volume collected works were published a few years earlier, and who was elected as one of the six presidents of the World Council of Churches in 1948. Yet why should I expect him to know about a figure like Zhao—such an esoteric figure. At the same time, there are many theologians in Europe and North America who are likewise esoteric, but no less important.
Over the last decade and a half since I have been at the University of Edinburgh, I have been reminded that it is not just Chinese Christians who are overlooked in the study of Christian theology. This is likewise true of much theology from the Majority World. On face value, many seminarians and Christian academics treat “World Christianity” as a kind of shorthand for idiosyncratic expressions of Christianity “out there.” Rather, it highlights the dynamic nature of a worldwide religion that experiences encounter and contestation, continuity and discontinuity, growth and decline.
In the academic study of Christianity, disciplines most disposed towards phenomenological analysis have tended to be the most embracing of World Christianity’s claims. Social historians, anthropologists, ethnographers, and sociologists have been at the forefront of World Christianity studies. These scholars recognize change and difference as commonplace.
In contrast, disciplines like theology and biblical studies, which often underscore normative claims about a transcendent God and how he relates with the world, have been much more resistant to the developments of World Christianity. This is accentuated by Enlightenment-influenced pursuits for a “reasonable” and “objective” faith. While the role of contextual factors is acknowledged in human perceptions of the Bible and theology, albeit often as a handicap, what is prioritized is the Wholly Other Who reveals himself in the created order. Despite the propensity of these academic disciplines, the lived realities of Christian experiences and engagements with theology and the Bible are often much more varied.
Theology is chiefly concerned with a transcendent God who made himself known in creation through the self-revelation of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet it is humans who dare to speak about the Unspeakable. We who are limited by human minds, human experiences, and human languages. The universalizing claims of the Gospel about an unchanging God are spoken of in tension with the subjectivizing conditions of our lives in an ever-changing world.
There is no such thing as a pristine, normative theology transplanted from a Western origin to Asia or Africa. Rather, there is a much more complex negotiation of theological ideas and experiences. For somebody like me whose interests have largely been about Chinese theology, studying theology arising from other parts of the world has forced me to appreciate those who have such different starting points and concerns than myself. The resultant theology and biblical interpretation may be new and innovative, but it is also sometimes esoteric and unnerving. Despite the reservations one may have, these are expressions of World Christianity produced by a World Church—just like their Western antecedents. These are examples of a worldwide faith seeking understanding.
