Chapter 11 A Call for Careful Discernment: A Theological Response to Prosperity Preaching

I wish to thank the editors Katherine Attanasi and Amos Yong as well as the other authors of this volume for presenting a very interesting and informative guide to so-called prosperity theology. I enjoyed reading each and every one of the chapters, though my response cannot mention them all due to the requirements of brevity. The question that would preoccupy many Christian theologians who discuss the prosperity message has to do with whether it is a valid contextualization of the gospel. If not, is it a syncretistic accommodation to an alien doctrine and ethical commitment that are at odds with the gospel of Christ? Such questions call for theological discernment, which, as with most cases of discernment, must be done carefully and charitably, with the possibility in mind that new movements can emerge among the churches that offer a novel way of contextualizing the gospel while still remaining essentially true to it. Such a possibility is the central focus of this theological evaluation of the prosperity message.