This study has been written from the perspective of the principle of double transformation that usually accompanies a process of inculturation: a concept applied in another context changes the context but is also changed in turn. This creative process belongs to the “in-between” situation of each transfer event. This liminality also characterizes the transmission of the Gospel in non-Western cultures. Theologically, that event can be interpreted as both the confirmation (incarnation) and negation (dying and rising) of an existing culture.

The meaning that is ascribed to Jesus depends very much on how people think about the nature of his mediation between God and human beings. That mediation can be directed towards having the human share in the divine but also towards the descent of the divine into the human. Both lines of thought have points of contact in the Bible and the history of the church and must be assessed in terms of the degree to which they leave room for Jesus' actual life, including the cross and resurrection.

In this presentation of non-Western images of Jesus – Jesus as bodhisattva, avatara, guru, prophet, ancestor and healer – two questions continually arose: (a) How is Jesus' divinity related to his humanity? (b) How can his “substitution” be understood as liberating, as bringing salvation?

Ultimately, the question of the non-Western Jesus is focused on the question of whether Jesus was already in Asia and Africa before the Western missionaries arrived.