Amos Yong: Hospitality and Interreligious Dialogue

Amos Yong is Professor of Theology at Regent University School of Divinity. He is also a clergyman with the Pentecostal Assemblies of God Church, and he has done extensive work in developing a theology of religions, particularly in the contribution that pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit) can play. His scholarly life is dedicated to deepening biblical theology and promoting ecumenical and interfaith understanding. Yong's recent work is Hospitality & the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor (Orbis Books, 2008). After trying to discover a mutually agreeable time to discuss this book, we were finally able to touch bases by phone last Friday. Following is a transcript of our discussion.

Morehead's Musings: Amos, thank you for discussing your new book. It brings together a number of topics of great interest to me including hospitality with the "religious other," interreligious dialogue, and a theology of religions. I found your book helpful in providing broader considerations for reflection and practice in these areas. At one point in your book you contrast what you call "conservative and progressive trajectories" among Christians as it relates to interreligious relations. Can you briefly summarize the general aspects and differences of approach in these two camps?

Amos Yong: I would draw the reader's attention to the specific context in the book where I discuss these different categories. But I would simply say that more conservative trajectories are more concerned about not compromising the integrity of the Christian identity or faith. More progressive trajectories are not. It's not that they aren't concerned about that, but they are less concerned about that and more concerned about building bridges, exploring opportunities for collaboration, for understanding, etc. It's not that conservatives aren't interested in building bridges or exploring opportunities for collaboration, they would subordinate those concerns to the other ones. And vice versa for the progressives. I don't want paint either camp in purely one-dimensional terms. By these concepts I want to draw attention to how people prioritize things.

Morehead's Musings: You also discuss the issue of performative theology, or theology as a dramatic performance. In this section of your book you are careful to point out the intimate relationships between theology and praxis. This would seem to be a basic and assumed aspect of the discussion, and yet you took time to develop this section of your argument. Have evangelicals made a wedge between their beliefs and practices, and is that is why you emphasized this in your book?

Amos Yong: I suppose that is one way of putting it. Coming from an evangelical background myself I was always considered with orthodoxy, meaning right thinking, right belief. That's an important emphasis, but I guess what I've grown to realize is, in global evangelicalism, often times it's not that right orthodoxy is not important, it is wherever evangelicals are to be found, but how that orthodoxy is lived out differs from situation to situation. Often times evangelicals will have the same confession but the practices and how they interact with people of other faiths are different depending upon the context. So that one confession is somehow able to sustain a plurality of practices. My intuition, however, is that there is a diversity of confessions within that one confession, and that's what actually sustains the diversity of practices. But again, when I say diversity of expressions I'm not necessarily saying included in those confessions are heterodoxies. If in fact confessions can take a plurality of articulations, then prioritization and emphases indicate that evangelicals around the world are much more diverse. I am trying to open up space in the book to understand how the diversity of practices are sustained by diverse orthodoxies.

Morehead's Musings: In light of that, how do you see the blending of theology and praxis brought together in performative theology as an essential aspect of encountering the religious other?

Amos Yong: Let's put it this way. If you ask evangelicals what they think about other religions propositionally they'll give you a pretty standard evangelical answer which may be exclusivistic in terms of the doctrinal aspects of that response. But their practices are much more open, much more interactive, dialogical and so forth. So what I'm trying to describe is a situation in which you have practices that are not just open and shut, not quite as exclusivistic as they are articulated theologically, so how can practices help us be more nuanced in our theological reflection and articulation? How can we engage in genuine open hospitality, but then only present the discourse or rhetoric of exclusivism? In other words, how might we need to rearticulate our theology that is then able to sustain those legitimately hospitable practices?

Morehead's Musings: As you discuss Christian mission in the context of dialogue and hospitality you note that we need to be about "engaging with our neighbors, including people of other faiths, not as objects (e.g., to be converted) but as neighbors who have important messages even for us Christians." How might Christians expand their concepts of neighborliness, hospitality, and dialogue so as to avoid this objectifying aspect?

Amos Yong: I guess I would look at it first and foremost as how this works out in the actual practice of neighborliness. So if someone moves in next door to me who is not a Christian and I approach that person foremost as an object to be converted, what happens if that person resists conversion? Does that mean that our relationship is over? Does that mean there is no longer an opportunity for neighborliness? If so then I've treated that neighbor as an it, there's no further use for them. Now if that's the way that I treat my neighbors then that's obviously not going to make for a very good community. It won't provide opportunity for us to work together on community issues that might need to be resolved. How do we treat our neighbors? I suggest that if our neighbor is someone of another faith we don't need to reduce that person, that community, to that one register. So we need to accept that person as created in the image of God, and all that they represent, as somebody God has put in our lives, not just for us to have a mission, but simply to appreciate that person as somebody in the creation of God. What might that do to open us up to an encounter with God through that person?

Morehead's Musings: I was intrigued by your mention of the need to involve mutuality and vulnerability in interreligious dialogue. You suggest that rather than using "polemical apologetics" we need to draw upon "relational and dialogical approaches" that look at the Christian and the dialogue partner as equals. You suggest that this then has the potential to make interreligious dialogue "a Christian practice in its own right, rather than being subservient to other ends." For evangelicals who might find this proposal hard going and who will also want such a proposal to be biblically informed, can you touch on a few biblical passages that you discuss in your book that support this view of interreligious dialogue?

Amos Yong: In one of the places in my book I discuss the prophet Jeremiah's invitation to the exiles to serve or to build homes, to plant gardens and to serve the city in which they find themselves (Jer. 29:7). Part of the problem is that evangelicals want to insist on having control of our situation, and if we're not in control of our situation we'd rather not be in it. But when I look at the experience of exile, refugee, immigrants or migrants we're looking at people who are not in control. Isn't the call of God is to be people not in control, to be a diaspora people, of exile, a wandering people in a certain sense. Then we have a call not to be in control. That's why I think I made such a big deal about being guests in my book. Hosts are always the one's who are in control. The guest is the one who is not in control, and we're not good at that. And of course there are lot of opportunities for us to be better hosts who are sensitive to our guests, but I want to go beyond that. I want to call us to be guests, to recognize that this world is not our home, and that we are actually guests of the others, of people of other faiths. My point is how we can learn to be better guests. And I think that's what real vulnerability is, it takes vulnerability to give up control, to be in a situation where we aren't the ones calling the shots.

Morehead's Musings: Related to the last questions, as you build your case you then move on to consideration of hospitality between Christians and those of other religions in our pluralistic world. You note the importance of hospitality and table fellowship in the ministry of Jesus and the early church. You then connect this to a theology of guests and hosts that arises out of a sense of exile, and you suggest that this "exilic posture is essential to a theology of hospitality in a postmodern and pluralistic world." Can you draw this out a little for readers?

Amos Yong: Again I think, to go back to the metaphor, often times when we talk about hospitality we think that the way it applies to us is that we need to be more hospitable. I agree. But my point is not so much that we continue to be the ones who are in charge, we're the hosts, we're inviting people to our table, we're the ones with the soup kitchen, we're the ones with the hospital. In a pluralistic, post-Western, post-Constantinian, post-Christendom world, that posture still smacks of imperialism, colonialism, and injustices we have perpetuated as people wanting to be good hosts. Again, I'm not saying abandon being hosts, but what does it look like to put ourselves in positions to be recipients of hospitality, like Abraham, the exilic experience, the diaspora. How did Jesus teach us to interact with our hosts? Putting on a guests mentality is something we haven't thought too much about because we've been in charge.

Morehead's Musings: How might church congregations and individual Christians develop a "stranger-centered" theology and practice of hospitality? What elements does this involve, and practically speaking, what does it "look like" as it is given expression in communities, neighborhoods and homes?

Amos Yong: When you're a guest it means that someone has invited you. Then you're in a situation that someone else is in charge and they have invited you to be in their midst. The challenge for us communities of people of faith is to develop relationships so that we become those who are invited to the meal, to the community project, to the committee to resolve a community problem, and so forth. Why aren't we getting those invitations? I think it's because we're not as relational or as friendly as we should be. So we should focus more on the relational aspect of building community, building friendships, those things require authenticity and vulnerability. The more authentic and vulnerable we are the more invitations we're going to get. We have a mono-dimensional model of interacting with others and we miss a lot of other things that are important in God's eyes like the cultural mandate or the missio Dei, the call to be neighbors, and so on. These things will help us get more invitations.

Morehead's Musings: Amos, thank you again for discussing your book and aspects related to its thesis. I hope we have raised enough curiosity that folks might pick up a copy and that its ideas might find their way into acts of dialogue and hospitality.

Amos Yong: John, thank you for your interest in my work, and thanks for your work too.

New Book by Amos Yong: Hospitality & The Other

Yesterday I received a review copy of a new book courtesy of its author, Amos Yong, and the publisher, Orbis Books, titled Hospitality & The Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor (Orbis, 2008). I have been impressed with Yong's work in the past in developing a theology of religions in light of our pluralistic, post-Christendom and post 9/11 context, and his interest in interreligious dialogue as well. Readers might recall my previous interview with Yong that can be found here and my summary and interaction with one of his articles here.

My initial skimming of Yong's latest book indicates that it looks very promising. As the back cover summarizes the contents:

"Building on careful biblical scholarship and insights into the practices of Jesus and the early church, launched on the day of Pentecost, Amos Yong shows that the religious 'other' is not a mere object for conversion but a neighbor to whom hospitality must be both extended and received. Contemporary practice, he shows, needs to catch up with the revolutionary biblical notion of extending hospitality beyond every boundary of faith, nation, and ethnicity."

This volume promises to make a new contribution to both scholarly and popular understandings of a Christian theology of religions and interreligious dialogue, and it provides a challenge to a neglected aspect of Christian attitudes and life in an increasingly pluralistic world. Look for an interview with Yong on this book here in the near future.

New Issue of Missiology

I just received the current issue of Missiology journal, Volume 35, No. 1 (January 2007). This issue is devoted to discussion of "Mission and Pentecost." There is an essay in it by Amos Yong titled "The Spirit of Hospitality: Pentecostal Perspectives toward a Performative Theology of Interreligious Encounter." This likely reflects some of the substance of Yong's forthcoming book on this topic mentioned in his interview on this blog. The abstract reads as follows:

"This essay discusses how the centrality of the narrative of the book of Acts in Pentecostal spirituality and piety both poses challenges to Pentecostal missionary and evangelistic approaches in a post-9/11, religiously plural world on the one hand, and yet also provides resources for developing new theological understandings of the religions shaped by the doctrine fo the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) on the other. It is further proposed that such a pneumatological theology of religions can be complimented by a theology of hospitality derived from Luke-Acts resulting in a performative pneumatological theology of interreligious hospitality for the church catholic today."

Further Reflections on Interpretation Journal and a Theology of Religions

In a previous post I mentioned an interested collection of articles in the January 2007 issue of the journal Interpretation. The issue is devoted to consideration of theology of religions, and it includes an essay by Terry Muck titled "Theology of Religions after Knitter and Hick: Beyond the Paradigm." The article is followed by two responsive pieces, the first by Marianne Farina of Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, and the second by Amos Yong of Regent University School of Divinity. Following is a summary of some of Muck's thoughts in his essay, and that of the responsive essays.

Muck's Essay

Muck's article summarizes the contributions of Paul Knitter and John Hick to the development of a theology of the religions. He considers three main points that each of these scholars has contributed to the issue, and includes positive comments on these contributions. Muck then moves from this overview of these "scholars par excellence" to a critique of their views. He then suggests what this theological and philosophical approach might go beyond in the form of "beyond Western," "beyond Modern, and "beyond 'the paradigm'" of exclusive-inclusive-pluralist, a paradigm that Muck feels has "outlived its usefulness."

Muck then moves to considerations of "where to go from here." As a way of suggesting items for a new theological agenda he suggests we need "bigger theology." Muck finds Amos Yong's writings on pneumatology to be especially helpful here, as well as Veli-Matti Karkkainen's work on the importance of Trinitarianism to Christian theology. Muck also suggests that we need a "wider methology" that develops a Christian theological framework "among the teachers and practitioners of Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim theologians." He suggests that an examples of this creative work can be found in Gerald McDermott through his book Can Evangelicals Learn From World Religions? (InterVarsity, 2000), Keith Ward at the University of Oxford, James Fredericks of Loyola Marymont University, and Robert Nevill at Boston University.

The third component of Muck's theological agenda is "deeper missiology" by which he means taking "the contextualization of the gospel to a whole new level" in the form of "radical contextualization" such as that being experimented with among "Muslim Background Believers and Hindu dharma-based Christians." This would involve "participant theologizing" which is similar to anthropological participant observation. Muck says that "participant theologizing means entering into the religious stories of indigenous peoples and doing religious thinking alongside them, using their terms, asking their questions, using methods common to their way of thinking religiously."

Muck concludes his essay by reiterating the need to move beyond the soteriological questions to working to make Jesus' deepest desire more real: "How can we all become one?

First Reponsive Essay

The first responsive essay by Farina was brief, and in my opinion it did not offer much by way of response or additional considerations. She notes that Muck's thesis is similar to other projects of interfaith engagement, and notes similiarties to efforts in Roman Catholicism. She also discusses her work in Bangladesh among Muslims, Hindus, and Christians in her own efforts at participant theologizing.

Second Reponsive Essay

The second responsive essay by Yong was also brief, but it provided much more by way of substantive interaction with and critique of Muck's ideas. He begins his essay noting his great respect and admiration for Muck on his own theological thinking and praxis before moving to consideration of his mentor's ideas. In Yong's view, although there are problems with the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist paradigm, which Yong has mentioned in his own writings, nevertheless he says that he is "beginning to wonder whether we can get beyond the paradigm in terms of this question." He then provides a few of his own thoughts as to why.

Yong then moves to question whether participant theologizing is helpful, and offers three questions which challenges Muck's suggestion. Even so, Yong continues his interaction with Muck and states that despite the difficult questions, "I am not prepared to throw in the towel on the idea of participant theologizing" as he wonders whether it is possible to engage in this process through means "that are both 'in' but also not 'of' the paradigm."

Conclusion

These three essays provide interesting ideas worthy of consideration by missional Christians as they consider one of the key theological and cultural issues of the twenty-first century, that of a theology of religions.

In a future post I will touch on aspects of another interesting article in this issue of Interpretation, one by Michael Barram titled "The Bible, Mission, and Social Location: Toward a Missional Hermeneutic."

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology on Christianity and Other Religions

While doing some research on Terry Muck's work in preparation for an intensive course he will be leading at the seminary I recently came across an interesting journal. It is titled Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology. The January 2007 issue is devoted to an exploration of Christianity and other religions. As the journal's website for this issue describes it:

A majority of the articles in this issue of Interpretation reach toward a similar goal. The discipline under scrutiny is the theology of religions. Few serious Christians will need to be convinced that this is one of the most urgent tasks of theology today. Novel forms of communication technology and the physical relocation of many millions of people to new homelands over the past few decades have put different religions in close proximity to one another, to a degree never before experienced. Increasingly, people with different faith commitments have to learn how to live together. In the West, disputes over the place of religion in public life are made more complex by the fact that once unfamiliar traditions are now also deeply involved in the conversation. Globalized threats of violence that claim religious sanction complicate the best efforts we might make to engage with the religious other in our societies; sometimes, fear of that violence can entirely sap the will even to begin to understand those who stand outside of the circle of one’s own faith group.

Several of the articles and contributors in this issue caught my attention:

"Theology of Religions after Knitter and Hick: Beyond the Paradigm" by Terry C. Muck

Abstract: Both Paul Knitter and John Hick rely heavily on the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist paradigm. In a world that has become increasingly suspicious of missionary activity, moving beyond this paradigm calls for a bigger theology, wider methodology, and deeper missiology characterized by participant theologizing.

"A response to Terry Muck" by Marianne Farina

"Can we get 'Beyond the Paradigm'? A response to Terry Muck" by Amos Yong

"The Bible, Mission, and Social Location: Toward a Missional Hermeneutic" by Michael Barram

Abstract: Despite a long-standing rift between missiology and biblical scholarship, current trends in both disciplines— such as a converging emphasis on the significance of social location in biblical interpretation—suggest that the time may be ripe for a "missional hermeneutic" that would privilege the missiological "location" of the Christian community in the world as a key to a critical and faithful approach to Scripture.

I have secured a copy of this issue but have not had a chance yet to read through these essays. I am looking forward to it and hope others will wade through them for reflection as well.

Amos Yong Interview: Pneumatology, Hospitality and Religious Pluralism

Amos Yong is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Regent University. He is a prolific author, having contributed to a number of scholarly journals and published a number of books. Some of the more intriguing as it relates to new religions, alternative spiritualties, and missions in the post-modern, post-Christendom, and post-9/11 West include Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Baker Academic, 2003), and the forthcoming The Spirit of Hospitality: Pentecost and Christian Practices in a World of Many Faiths (Orbis Books, 2008). Amos is also involved in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and his combined interests, background, and scholarly pursuits make for important contributions to theology, religious studies, and questions surrounding religious pluralism.

Amos has made some time in a busy schedule to participate in an interview in order to share some of his thoughts.

MoreheadsMusings: Amos, can you tell us a little about your background? I only discovered recently that you and I grew up in the same town and attended the same high school in northern California. Can you tell us more about where you grew up, and what influences, personal and theological, shaped your current perspectives and work in theology?

Amos Yong: I was born a PK [preacher's kid] into an Assemblies of God minister’s home in Taiping, W. Malaysia; we moved to California when I was ten, when my father was called to a pastorate among first generation Chinese-speaking immigrants, making me a MK (“missionary kid”) to the USA. I went to Bethany College (Assemblies of God liberal arts school in Santa Cruz, California), where I completed a BA in pastoral ministry, then went to Western Evangelical Seminary (WES), where courses in modern theology and church history rocked my preconceptions that modern pentecostalism fell “suddenly from heaven,” to use the phrase of a popular pentecostal history text written in the 1950s. From WES, I completed a second MA in history of philosophy at Portland State University (PSU), and then a PhD in religious studies at Boston University (BU). At PSU I studied for the first time Kant and Whitehead, felt attracted to process philosophy, but uncomfortable with process theology. I found in Robert Cummings Neville at BU a doctoral advisor who helped me work through process philosophy while gaining critical leverage on its theological aspects. The other part of the PhD program at BU which really shaped my work was its commitment to doing theology in the public context of the encounter between world religious traditions. We read core texts from the major world religions and had to develop Christian theological perspectives in dialogue with – not adopting, but not ignoring either – the major religious traditions of the world.

MM: The work you have done in pneumatology of religions first attracted my attention. At the risk of oversimplifying your thinking, can you summarize your ideas in this area?

Amos Yong: My work in this area can be seen as emerging out of a) the intuition that pneumatology is a neglected theological perspective, and that if pursued and given an opportunity, it might illuminate our theological reflections – thus it could be said that pneumatology is the frontier of theological reflection in the 21st century; b) the conviction that as a pentecostal Christian, pneumatology is a central experience, even a set of practices, which hence gives shape to a robust hermeneutical and methodological key that can be in principle applied to all theological questions, so why not this one – thus it could be said that a pneumatological theology may be one of pentecostal Christianity’s gifts to the wider church and academic conversation; and c) the sense that the question of the religions was one of the most important theological matters that we need to attend to in our time – thus it could be said, for me, that the intra-Christian ecumenical question opened up unavoidably to the inter-religious ecumenical question: if folk such as Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, etc., who I had been raised to think were non-Christians were now understood as possibly being saved, then where does one draw the line between who is and is not a Christian?

MM: Some of us in the Lausanne issue group addressing postmodern and alternative spiritualities have suggested that Western Protestantism's overemphasis on God's transcendance and a de-valuing of the work of the Spirit in creation may contribute to the growth and popularity of Neo-Pagan and nature-based spiritualities. Why do you think a fresh consideration of the Spirit in relation to creation is significant, particularly for our place historically and culturally in the West?

Amos Yong: As I have pursued this pneumatological research initiative, I have come to be convinced that there is nothing beyond the reach of the Holy Spirit – indeed, all creation is nurtured by the holy breath of God. At some level, I think that Neo-Pagan and nature-based spiritualities reflect both the hungering after an encounter with God that is both immanent and yet transcendental, and a sense that God is to be found in some significant way in such practices and within such arenas. However, since this has not been a distinct area of research of mine, I’m not sure what kinds of theological conclusions to draw yet about these matters. In these areas, I’m actually very much learning as I listen in on the discussions such as those you are having on this blog site and elsewhere. But I do think that pneumatological perspectives open up for us the tension between understanding the Spirit as in some ways intimately tied in with the work of the church of Jesus Christ on the one hand, and yet also being the Spirit of the wider created world on the other hand. I don’t think we can resolve this tension, although to collapse this tension to either side would be to deny the truth of the other side. Hence for me it is so important that Christians wrestle together among themselves, while remaining in engaging dialogue with others who are “outside” the (visible) church, on these things.

MM: You are involved in interreligious dialogue, particularly Buddhist-Christian dialogue. How did you get involved in this, and what you have learned as a result?

Amos Yong: I have been a member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies for a number of years. I was first introduced to Buddhism during a graduate course at PSU on process philosophy, during which time my theological research curiosity led me to the work of Hartshorne, Cobb, Griffin, and others at the Claremont Center for East-West Studies, which involved a fair bit of Christian-Buddhist dialogue. When I first learned about Buddhism and Chinese religious traditions, there were a few “aha” moments when I recognized how simply being raised in a Chinese home imbibed Buddhist notions like the “moderation of the middle way” without calling such “maxims of the Buddha.” As I have continued to study the various Buddhist traditions, I’ve been challenged: of all the world religious traditions, arguably Buddhism is the most foreign to Christianity in terms of its agnosticism about God’s existence. But perhaps also for the same reason, its very radical differences from Christian faith make it an important dialogue partner to stretch, test, and open up other perspectives on my Christian self-understanding. I think the biggest challenge remains, as I’ve come recently to acknowledge, that of the interrelationship between beliefs and practices: if Christian beliefs are as interconnected with and even emergent from Christian practices, are not Buddhist beliefs similarly dependent on certain kinds of practices, and if so, what are the implications for my own ongoing engagement with the Christian-Buddhist dialogue? I’m not sure how to respond to this question – so I can only say, for those interested, “stay tuned…”

MM: Evangelical theologies tend to be strongly influenced by European and American perspectives. Is there something valuable to be learned by engaging a broader, global perspective on theology, particularly theological reflection from Asia and the Two-Thirds World?

Amos Yong: Of course; we can’t avoid globalization; we can’t be parochial; we can’t be in denial that we live in what I’ve called the “post-al age”: post-western, post-colonial, post-patriarchal, post-Enlightenment, post-Christendom (in terms of Christianity being at the center of political power as in the age of Constantine), etc. In this “post-al” time zone, then, to ignore the scholarship, etc., coming from the rest of the world is to be left behind the times and to become increasingly irrelevant. Of course, there is much out there that is immaterial – and we must be discerning about which voices and perspectives we engage – but that goes for whatever is being produced in the “western world” as well.

MM: Your forthcoming book deals with the issue of hospitality in a religiously plural world. Can you tell us a little more about this book and what it will discuss?

Amos Yong: I am trying to do three things in this book: 1) given the connection between beliefs and practices, I am proposing a pneumatological perspective that I think will further our reflection on this matter, centered on the maxim, “many tongues, many practices”; 2) from this, I am trying to tease out the interconnections between exclusivistic, inclusivistic, and pluralistic theologies of religions and their concomitant or correlative practices; and 3) I am trying to salvage what I feel are important practices across the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist spectrum – e.g., kerygmatic proclamation of Jesus Christ, reciprocal and mutual dialogue, and social engagement – without having to buy into all of their theological positions – and I think the best way to do so is via a theology of hospitality; so, I am proposing a pneumatological theology of guests and hosts by which I attempt to get “beyond the impasse” of exclusivism-inclusivism-pluralism toward a holistic posture of beliefs-virtues-practices that will allow us to engage people of other faiths in a dialogical manner, being open to being transformed by the Holy Spirit through such encounters, even while believing that these same encounters will be opportunities through which the same Spirit will work transformatively in the lives of our non-Christian friends. This is the double and paradoxical bet.

MM: Why do you think hospitality is important in our world of many faiths, and how can this compliment dialogue and other forms of religious engagement?

Amos Yong: The interesting thing about hospitality is that there are guests and hosts, and Christians sometimes find themselves as the former, other times as the latter, and on occasions, as both simultaneously. I argue in my book that Jesus is the paradigmatic exemplar of guest, journeying into the far country (to echo Barth), even while representing and offering the redemptive hospitality of God, and that Christians also follow in Jesus’ footsteps as aliens and strangers into far countries, being guests of those who might welcome them, even while embodying and representing the eschatological hospitality of God’s redemptive banquet. Hospitality thus opens up to dialogue, but also requires works of love and mercy (witness the parable of the Good Samaritan). And of course, hospitality also provides, at the right moments and occasions, for a sharing of the truth in love. There is give and take, but there is also honesty, compassion, and genuine interpersonal interaction. I think the notion of hospitality bursts the categories of exclusivism-inclusivism-pluralism because it registers affections, postures, and sensibilities so important to the chief virtues and practices of our contemporary world, instead of staying only at the level of doctrinal abstractions or moral projects (and this is not to say that we should neglect these).

MM: Some aspects of evangelicalism, particularly those associated with a counter-cult or heresy-rationalist approach to new religions as well as boundary definition and maintenance approaches to Christian theology have expressed concern about your theological views in regards to pluralism and inclusivism, even going so far as to label them "dangerous." What would you say in response, and how might we move our theological and missiological reflection further in positive ways in evangelicalism?

Amos Yong: Well I do hope that my new book will dispel any lingering doubts about my commitments as a follower of Jesus Christ the Messiah, about my convictions regarding the essential aspect of bearing witness to Jesus in the power of the Spirit, and about my views regarding the Great Commission as the church’s raison d’etre. But I am also convinced that any new theological ideas are in some sense “dangerous” since they are new and hence will always be resisted – so I expect disagreements with new ideas will continue to the end of time. I do learn from my detractors, to the point that this book itself has been written with some of these previous criticisms in mind. Without critics, the weaknesses of one’s position can be realized only with much greater difficulty – so in a sense, I am grateful for them. Yet I do feel strongly that not all of us are called to do similar things. And given that pentecostalism has in some ways always been relegated to the Christian margins, perhaps that may also be where my views remain for the time being, being effective, if at all, from that location. I’m OK with that, so long as my most immediate circle of dialogue partners – those of my colleagues in the Society of Pentecostal Studies – both encourage me on as well as engage with me in the common task of bearing witness to Christ in the power of the Spirit in the complex world we call “our time.”

For example, my colleague at Regent, Prof. Wolfgang Vondey, wrote a critical review of my book The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Baker Academic, 2005) in one of the recent issues of PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies; but since then, he’s been motivated to the point that he’s now writing a book (which I hope will appear in the next two years) not at all refuting my work, but trying to do what I attempted there, although better! That is precisely what I had hoped my work would produce, so in that sense, I take that as confirmation that God is in what I do at least in some way.

MM: Amos, thanks for making time to share your thoughts with us. Your thinking provides a lot for us to interact with and reflect on carefully.

Amos Yong: Thanks for inviting my thoughts; I honored that you’ve paid enough attention to my work to invite this exchange, and can only say that if there is anything useful in what I’ve done, the credit belongs fully to God. Meanwhile, if criticisms must be lodged, I invite responses; know I pay attention to these, even if I might not be able to engage in a running discussion. Honestly, I am unsure how much interaction I can be involved in, if only because my work with the new PhD program in Renewal Studies at Regent University School of Divinity (where I teach) takes up much of my time now. Might I add that if any of you feel called to doing a PhD in this area – whether with a historical, theological, or biblical focus – please pray about coming to Regent to study with us. I have a wonderful set of colleagues and we are committed to the renewing work of the Spirit, in the church, the academy (essential for the PhD), and the whole world.