As if to leave no doubt about the relationship of Christ to other faiths, at the top of the monument was the cross, standing over symbols of Chinese religion. Both the Saxon Heiland and the Chinese monument are examples of Christianity translating the message of Jesus Christ into new languages and contexts. In the second it was able to achieve only the most marginal of effects upon Chinese cultural life at the time, and the Christian community in China was soon to be eclipsed altogether by imperial edict. Through this ongoing process, the salvation that Jesus Christ in his historical incarnation embodied for the women and men around him has continued to be brought close to others in new times and places on earth. Without a doubt the act of translating and enculturing the gospel of Jesus Christ has been Christianity's greatest contribution to human civilization over these past two millennia.
Enculturation does two things.
Translating the gospel message affirms and preserves the cultural world of those who have received the gospel. At the same time, enculturation makes new believers aware that they belong to a wider community of faith, thereby relativizing their own language and culture. Examples of this relativizing aspect appear very early in the life of the Christian movement. This was especially the case when the foreigners could not speak Greek. The gospel has within it an inherent boundary-breaking impulse that contradicts the tribalistic tendency of cultures.