市川喜一著作集 > 第26巻 Christ Outside Christianity > まえがき

Preface


This short book titled "Christ Outside Christianity" is a collection of 15 gospel messages by Kiichi Ichikawa in his independent evangerlcal works in Japan. His 24 books written in Japanese were published in 2015 and uploaded in his website "Tenryo", the travellers to heaven.

The internet site "Tenryo" was created to make ツ“Kiichi Ichikawa's collected works" on the New Testament available to those without the means to access his printed work. Because Kiichi Ichikawa's books were all written and published in Japanese, this website was initially solely available to Japanese-speaking individuals. In the face of a growing demand emanating from English-speaking countries, the author has been planning to translate essential parts of this site into English.

The Japanese version of this site, however, contains the texts of all twenty-five books which amounts to over ten thousand printed pages. Translating these books into English, even some parts of them, would be too herculean a task for the author who is approaching the age of 90; that task will therefore be left to a new generation of scholars. Instead, the author has decided to write, to the best of his English-writing abilities, a series of short evangelistic articles dedicated to the Gospel of Christ, faith and living in Christ and upload to his English website.

From 15 gospel messages uploaded onto this English website, I chose 14 gospel messages and rearranged the order. I added the last message 15 "Christ Outside Christianity" and made it the title of the book. I wanted to make it clear that Christ-faith which saves humanity from the corruption and the destruction is different from the faith in Christianity. I learned this fact chiefly from Paul who denied the circumcision for the Gentile believers and thus distinguished the salvation by Christ-faith from the religion Judaism.

September, 2020 K. Ichikawa