Walbert Bühlmann is not an ivory-tower theologian: he is one who knows how to survey and interpret the course of history. He has a feel for new situations-a gift for asking the right questions, and pointing to the right thing at the right time. It is as if he were poking his head into the room where we are sitting and he calls out, "Look, there is something going on in our world!" This is what Biihlmann did with his book The coming of the Third church: he called attention to the quiet, unobtrusive shift in the center of gravity of the Church from the Western world to the Southern world, and courageously drew the conclusions that have to be drawn-for a Church on six continents. In this new book, Biihlmann draws attention to another momentous change. This time it is something that calls not so much for an outward, structural change, as for an inward change, a change in attitude. He challenges us to abandon the categories of egocentrism and ethnocentrism that pervade the patterns of our daily living, and to take a look at converging humanity in the light of biblical theology. No longer can we say, "Here's the chosen people, over here, and there are all the others, over there." There is but one people of God: humankind. It has existed as a single chosen people from the creation covenant onward; today it is crossing the frontier from tendency to actuality.