From the Tower of Babel to Salvation through Christ: The Church in the Time of Globalization

Abstract

The tower of Babel and the Salvation through Christ offer paradigms that help us to revisit the challenges of the church in this time of globalization. The tower of Babel story is the last great judgment that befell mankind in primeval times (Gen 11: 1-9). It is not told to justify or to explain the origins of linguistic, cultural or racial diversity. In the chapters preceding the Babel story, there is a continuing dialectic of creation and fall, blessing and judgment, of God’s love and human rebellion. Given the diversity of Nations, where cultural and racial diversity are seen as part of a good creation, Babel represents a continuation of the fall, a first attempt at human imperialism, i.e. to build a civilization on the basis of a unique language. In other words, Babel is the culmination of the story of primeval rebellion against God, a cultural and civilizational project from which God is excluded, a project in which human cultural and political efforts seek to reach or replace God.