Week One covers:

• What are we talking about when we talk about mission?
• The Bible Mission and Interpretation in History
• Theology and Mission
• What is Truth?

Key Questions:

• How involvement in Christian mission changes our interpretation of the Bible
• How we can know whether changes in understanding are acceptable or not
• How other people have dealt with these questions

Issues include:

1. What we are talking about when we refer to mission, and to interpretation.

2. The idea of hermeneutical keys - being conscious of the place where we start to put our thoughts together. The different things that come into focus if we start with God, the Church, or the World as our starting point, also if we start not with one entity, but a relationship - between God and the Church (worship and revelation); God and the world (religion and general revelation); or the Church and the world (Mission and Culture).

3. The history of bible translation, hermeneutics and the concern for truth.

4. Awareness and denial of context and its effects.

A fear of pluralism relates to an understandable concern that we cannot be certain about anything, or that any idea is as good as another. The reality is more complex. Perhaps we could think not simply about contradiction but about complementarity, and be aware that if two partial explanations of an eternal or absolute truth are different they could still both be correct as far as they go.

At this point we will be aware of the problem, perhaps have faith that there can be a credible solution, and be exciting about our own personal project for exploring these issues further - in relation to a particular cultural and historical situation of course!