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Vol. 25, No.4 nternatlona• October 2001 etln• Mission, the DivinelHuDlan Enterprise handsomely produced volume recently reached our Not everyone will see God's hand in mission. But in our Adesk. Edited by an admired colleague and boasting a postmodem age, maybe the historian of mission can afford to be roster of expert authors for its several chapters, it offers a fresh at least cautiously open to evidence from beyond the global world history of Christianity. The controlling idea behind its stage. planningand productionwasto providea historyof Christianity that would be truly global in scope, avoiding the tendency of most such histories to invest the largest share of attention on Europe and North America. For that focus it is most welcomed. But one can hardly see, through the prism used by the authors, that the Christian God has had much to do with the On Page history of the globalcommunitythat namesJesus Christ as Lord. It's all just history-documentation of the varied, fascinating, 146 Miracles and Missions Revisited mixed phenomena of human actions, of social movements, of GaryB.McGee upheavals, retreats, advances, and declines on the human stage. Everything seems autonomous and, well, haphazard, explained 150 Adrian Hastings Remembered entirely by the actors on the world stage. Kevin Ward The openingfeature of this issue challenges such a flattened 157 Women Missionaries in India: Opening Up view of mission and the church. Gary McGee, a contributing the Restrictive Policies of Rufus Anderson editor, confronts mission historians with evidence that the Lord Eugene Heideman of the church has been playing a direct role all along. McGee also analyzes why even conservative scholars often have hesitated to 165 Gender, Mission, and Higher Education in give credit to the miraculous and timely interventions of God in Cross-Cultural Context: Isabella Thoburn in the advance of the Gospel. Of course mission is a human enter India prise, but certainly it is no less the result of an attentive provi Maina Chawla Singh dence. (See Heb. 1:1-2.) The interplay of the divine and the human is obvious also in 169 My Pilgrimage in Mission Eugene Heideman's account of the struggle of women mission Maria Rieckelman, M.M. aries in late nineteenth-century India to advance their sense of call in the face of obstacles rooted in the patriarchal assumptions 173 The Legacy of William Milne of mission administrators-all males at the time. P. Richard Bohr Maina Chawla Singh follows with an essay reflecting an unusual line of research. Noting how women missionaries from 177 Noteworthy America often gave home constituencies negative pictures of the 179 Book Reviews peoples and culture of India, she uncovers the surprisingly fond and positive memories that Hindu women had of their mission 187 Dissertations ary teachers-memories, she writes, that "did not mesh nicely withthe themes of dominationand oppression, and of resistance 188 Index, 2001 and subversion that my understanding of postcolonial theories of race and power pointed to." 192 Book Notes of issionaryResearch Miracles and Mission Revisited Gary B. McGee n 1839AlexanderDuff, the renowned Scottishmissionary obvious ideological agendas of the authors who controlled the I to India, wrote about the role of Christian education in evaluation of evidence, have naturally and rightly troubled training indigenous teachers and preachers of the Gospel. With modern historians." Theological and philosophical presupposi such an aim, said Duff, "Missionaries of the Church of Scotland tions havebeenof no less importancein the debate. The theologi have been sent forth ... in the absence of miracles."! Teaching cal issue has centered in part on whether miracles fulfilled their school in Calcutta, he was apparently unaware of what other purpose in the first century. "No transition in the history of the missionaries working in Burma (now Myanmar) were experi Church [was] so sudden, abrupt, and radical as that from the encing during the same period in their work among the Karens. apostolicto the post-apostolicage," wrotethe GermanReformed Venturing into the mountains, Jonathan and Deborah Wade lost historianPhilipSchaff. Andthenin a pronouncementofvirtually their way until they came upon a Karen house. An elderly man excathedra proportions, he declared: "God himself... established sitting on the veranda gazed on them for a few moments in an impassable gulf.... The apostolic age is the age of miracles."! silence and then called out, "The teacher has arrived; the teacher Presbyterian theologian Benjamin B.Warfield concurred. In his has arrived!" Soon a crowd from the neighborhood gathered, for judgment the extraordinary "gifts of power" of the apostles had they had received a prophecy telling them that "the teacher is in served to authenticate them as the "authoritative founders" of the jungle, and will call on you. You must . listen to his the church. In turn, they conferred this capability on their own precepts."! As a result, the Gospel received a warm reception, disciples. But as the latter gradually passed off the scene, so did converts were baptized, and a permanent mission station estab the demonstrations of miraculous power? Despite Anglican lished. attempts to defend the occurrences of miracles into the patristic Yet, while the educational legacy of Duffhas been endlessly age, Warfield would have none of it. In his estimation, the"great recounted in histories of missions, few people today know about the miraculous eventssurroundingthe introductionof the Chris tian faith in Myanmar. Historians of missions and missiologists Historians cannot afford to have generally ignored these kinds of reports, ironically crucial pieces to the puzzle of how Christianity developed in non crop miracles out of the Western countries. Consequently, this exclusion has seriously story of missions. limited the insights of historical and missiological analysis. To correct misapprehended interpretations, such stories must be considered. Historians may have reservations about the wide harvest of miracles" that came with the evolution of Roman angle lens of providential narratives, but they cannot afford to Catholicism grew from the tares of "heathendom.II8 crop them out of the picture. In recentyearshistorians havechallengedthis thesis, includ In light of discussions in the last several years about how the ing Stanley M. Burgess and Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B.,who have history of Christianity in the former mission lands should be reviewed the evidence and located new sources of information. written, as well as interest in the phenomenology of religion Burgess insists that "cessationists" like Warfield failed to look among non-Western peoples, this inquiry briefly explores se objectively at the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradi lected claims of paranormal happenings.' It then analyzes why tions. None of the early church fathers suggested that miracles the anticipation of miracles declined, examines views in the and the charismata had been intended only for the New Testa Protestant missionary community on the possibility and impor ment church," In his analysis of patristic sources, McDonnell tance of miracles, and recounts what historians have said or finds that the charisms of the Holy Spirit, including the gifts of failed to say about them in textbooks. While historians and tongues and prophecy, were sought for and received during the missiologists have examined aspects of how the Christian mes rites of Christian initiation (baptism, confirmation, Eucharist). sage was inserted into various cultures and the level of accep Evidenceprovidedbywitnessesfrom aroundthe Mediterranean tance it gained, the specific relationship of miracles to missions seaboard extends from the end of the second to the eighth and how missionaries and mission leaders perceived their im centuries." portance have been neglected.' More directly related to missions, records attest to super natural demonstrations of power in the advance of Christianity, Pre-Reformation Claims with some analogous to phenomena found in the New Testa ment. For instance, Basil of Cappadocia lauded the remarkable Precedent for miracles in missions is found from the time of the numberof conversionsin theministryofGregoryThaumaturgus apostles. However, theircredibilityhas longgenerated disagree ("wonder-worker"), a third-century missionary bishop in Asia ment in the West because of historical, theological, and philo Minor. "By the superabundance of gifts, wrought in him by the sophical considerations. Questions about sources, as well as the Spirit in all power and in signs and marvels," Basil reported, Gregory "was styled a second Moses by the very enemies of the Gary B. McGee, a contributing editor, is Professor of Church History and Church."!' In Egypt the fourth-century desert father Antony Pentecostal Studiesat Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Springfield, becamelegendaryfor his prevailinginconflicts withdemons, his Missouri. He wroteThis Gospel Shall Be Preached (1986), a two-volume feats being attributed to fidelity to Nicene Christology." historyofAssemblies ofGod international missions, andcoedited theDiction In the same era Nino, a slave girl taken captive to the ary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (1988). Caucasus region and afterward canonized by the Orthodox 146 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH Church of Georgia with the title "Equal to the Apostles," prayed International Bulletin for the healing of Queen Nana. The queen