tors: the ongoing tasks of traditioning involve inter-cultural work not only
with living cultural- linguistic options but also with those mediated by
texts and traditions from the bygone past. We are just as apt to develop
inter-cultural proposals from cross-cultural conversations with contempo-
raries as with the ancients (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Buddha, and
Shankara).
It might well be the case that the meeting of many cultures and lan-
guages in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost generated just such an inter-
cultural project that we call Christian faith. We see snapshots of such an
inter- culturalism in the nascent Hellenistic, Hebraic, and Judean group of
messianists that struggled to survive in the ensuing weeks, months, and
perhaps years. As the Acts narrative depicts, such inter-culturality was not
without its challenges, even if there were clearly many other factors that
impinged on the dispersal of that early apostolic community. 12 What needs
to be recognized in the present context is what we will further develop in
the next section: that there is a sense in which all local hermeneutical and
theological work is also inter-cultural in various respects, especially in light
of migration and globalization realities. 13
Theologically, however, registration of the specifi cities of the witness of
particular cultural-linguistic perspectives (the project of a multi- cultural
approach as I have defi ned it here) and exploration of cross-cultural
achievements (the result of inter-cultural efforts here understood, and to
be elucidated further in the next section) beg for synthesis having trans-
cultural applicability. Whatever any particular cultural perspective might
insist upon, whether on its own terms or in cross-fertilization with other
cultural dynamics, theological claims ultimately aspire to universality:
what is true theologically is true for more than that cultural group, even
if its initial articulation derives from a particular vantage point or even
from inter- cultural exchange. This is because “God so loved the world”
(John 3:16), even if such an insight fi rst emerged, in all probability, within
around the turn of the second century CE in a community in Asia Minor.
In other words, multi- and inter-cultural theological formulations are sus-
tained as they are deemed to be viable across as many cultures as they
might encounter while not losing their distinctive contributions. 14 As such
they are deemed to be of trans- cultural import, having cross-cultural rel-
evance, even if forged within particular cultural-linguistic environments
(and thus distinctively so according to our multi-cultural construct) or
from out of specifi c inter-cultural developments (and thus exhibiting syn-
thesizing aspects).
180 A. YONG