The American Society of Missiology Series, in collaboration with Orbis Books, seeks to publish

scholarly works of high merit and wide interest on numerous aspects of missiology—the study of
mission. Able presentations on new and creative approaches to the practice and understanding of
mission will receive close attention.

For a complete list of titles already published in the The American Society of Missiology Series and
available through Orbis Books, visit www.orbisbooks.com.
 American Society of Missiology Series, No. 16

TRANSFORMING MISSION
Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

David J. Bosch
Founded in 1970, Orbis Books endeavors to publish works that enlighten the mind, nourish the spirit, and challenge the conscience. The
publishing arm of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, Orbis seeks to explore the global dimensions of the Christian faith and mission, to
invite dialogue with diverse cultures and religious traditions, and to serve the cause of reconciliation and peace. The books published
reflect the views of their authors and do not represent the official position of the Maryknoll Society. To learn more about Maryknoll and
Orbis Books, please visit our website at www.maryknollsociety.org.

Copyright © 1991, 2011 by Orbis Books

New concluding chapter copyright © 2011 by Martin Reppenhagen and Darrell L. Guder Published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New
York 10545
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bosch, David Jacobus.

Transforming mission : paradigm shifts in theology of mission / David J. Bosch.
p. cm.—(American Society of Missiology series ; no. 16)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88344-744-4; ISBN 0-88344-719-3 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-57075-948-2 (rev pbk)
1. Missions—Theory. 2. Missions—Theory—History of doctrines.
3. Christianity and other religions. I. Title. II. Title:
Paradigm shifts in theology of mission. III. Series.
BV2063.B649 1991
266’.001—dc20 90-21619
CIP
For Annemie
 Contents

Preface to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition

By William R. Burrows

Preface to the Series

In Memoriam: David J. Bosch, 1929-1992

Foreword

Abbreviations

Introduction. Mission: The Contemporary Crisis

Between Danger and Opportunity
The Wider Crisis
Foundation, Aim, and Nature of Mission
From Confidence to Malaise
A “Pluriverse” of Missiology
Mission: An Interim Definition

Part 1
New Testament Models of Mission

1. Reflections on the New Testament as a Missionary Document

The Mother of Theology
Mission in the Old Testament
Bible and Mission
Jesus and Israel
An All-Inclusive Mission
And the Gentiles?
Salient Features of Jesus’ Person and Ministry
Jesus and the Reign of God
Jesus and the Law (the Torah)
Jesus and His Disciples
Mission from the Perspective of Easter
The Early Christian Mission
The Missionary Practice of Jesus and the Early Church
Where the Early Church Failed
Were There Any Alternatives?

2. Matthew: Mission as Disciple-Making

A “Great Commission”?
 Matthew and His Community
Contradictions in Matthew
Matthew and Israel
Matthew and “the Nations”
Key Notions in Matthew's Gospel
“Teaching Them to Observe All…”
The Sermon on the Mount
God's Reign and Justice-Righteousness
“Make Disciples…”
Modelled on Jesus, and Yet…
Matthew's Paradigm: Missionary Discipleship

3. Luke-Acts: Practicing Forgiveness and Solidarity with the Poor

The Significance of Luke
Jew, Samaritan, and Gentile in Luke-Acts
The Difference between the Gospel and Acts
The Gentile Mission in Luke 4:16-30
Encounters with Samaritans
Luke's “Great Commission”
The Jewishness of Luke
Jerusalem
To the Jews First, and to the Gentiles
The Division of Israel
A Tragic Story
Gospel for the Poor—And the Rich
The Poor in Luke's Gospel
And the Rich?
Jesus in Nazareth
Evangelist of the Rich?
All Are in Need of Repentance
Salvation in Luke-Acts
No More Vengeance!
The Inexplicable Volte-Face
Isaiah 61 in the First Century AD
Vengence Superseded!
The Lukan Missionary Paradigm

4. Mission in Paul: Invitation to Join the Eschatological Community

First Missionary: First Theologian
Paul's Conversion and Call
Paul's Missionary Strategy
Mission to the Metropolises
Paul and His Colleagues
Paul's Apostolic Self-Consciousness
Paul's Missionary Motivation
 A Sense of Concern
A Sense of Responsibility
A Sense of Gratitude
Mission and the Triumph of God
The Apocalyptic Paul
The Christian Church and Apocalyptic
Apocalyptic's New Center of Gravity
New Life in Christ
The Nations’ Pilgrimage to Jerusalem
Paul's Universalism
Apocalyptic and Ethics
The Law, Israel, and the Gentiles
Paul and Judaism
The Function of the Law
Unconditional Acceptance
The Problem of Unrepentant Israel
Romans 9-11
The Church: The Interim Eschatological Community
Ekklesia in Paul
Baptism and the Transcending of Barriers
For the Sake of the World
The Pauline Missionary Paradigm

Part 2
Historical Paradigms of Mission

5. Paradigm Changes in Missiology

Six Epochs
The Paradigm Theory of Thomas Kuhn
Paradigm Shifts in Theology
Paradigms in Missiology

6. The Missionary Paradigm of the Eastern Church

“To the Jew First but also to the Greek”
The Church and Its Context
The Church and the Philosophers
Eschatology
Gnosticism
The Church in Eastern Theology
Mission in Non-Roman Asia
The Patristic and Orthodox Missionary Paradigm
The First Paradigm Shift: An Interim Balance

7. The Medieval Roman Catholic Missionary Paradigm

Changed Context
 The Individualization of Salvation
The Ecclesiasticization of Salvation
Mission between Church and State
Indirect and Direct “Missionary Wars”
Colonialism and Mission
The Mission of Monasticism
The Medieval Paradigm: An Appraisal

8. The Missionary Paradigm of the Protestant Reformation

The Nature of the New Movement
The Reformers and Mission
Lutheran Orthodoxy and Mission
The Pietist Breakthrough
Second Reformation and Puritanism
Ambivalences in the Reformation Paradigm

9. Mission in the Wake of the Enlightenment

Contours of the Enlightenment Worldview
Enlightenment and Christian Faith
Mission in the Mirror of the Enlightenment
Church and State
Forces of Renewal
The Second Awakening
The Nineteenth Century
The Twentieth Century
Missionary Motifs in the Enlightenment Era
The Glory of God
“Constrained by Jesus ’ Love”?
The Gospel and Culture
Mission and Manifest Destiny
Mission and Colonialism
Mission and the Millennium
Voluntarism
Missionary Fervor, Optimism, and Pragmatism
The Biblical Motif
Modern Missionary Motives and Motifs—A Profile

Part 3
Toward a Relevant Missiology

10. The Emergence of a Postmodern Paradigm

The End of the Modern Era
The Challenge to the Enlightenment
The Expansion of Rationality
Beyond the Subject-Object Scheme
 Rediscovery of the Teleological Dimension
The Challenge to Progress Thinking
A Fiduciary Framework
Chastened Optimism
Toward Interdependence

11. Mission in a Time of Testing

12. Elements of an Emerging Ecumenical Missionary Paradigm

Mission as the Church-With-Others
Church and Mission
Shifts in Missionary Thinking
“Missionary by Its Very Nature”
God's Pilgrim People
Sacrament, Sign, and Instrument
Church and World
Rediscovering the Local Church
Creative Tension
Mission as Missio Dei
Mission as Mediating Salvation
Traditional Interpretations of Salvation
Salvation in the Modern Paradigm
Crisis in the Modern Understanding of Salvation
Toward Comprehensive Salvation
Mission as the Quest for Justice
The Legacy of History
The Tension between Justice and Love
The Two Mandates
A Convergence of Convictions
Mission as Evangelism
Evangelism: A Plethora of Definitions
Toward a Constructive Understanding of Evangelism
Mission as Contextualization
The Genesis of Contextual Theology
The Epistemological Break
The Ambiguities of Contextualization
Mission as Liberation
From Development to Liberation
“God's Preferential Option for the Poor”
Liberal Theology and Liberation Theology
The Marxist Connection
Integral Liberation
Mission as Inculturation
The Vicissitudes of Accommodation and Indigenization
Twentieth-Century Developments
 Toward Inculturation
The Limits of Inculturation
Interculturation
Mission as Common Witness
The (Re)birth of the Ecumenical Idea in Mission
Catholics, Mission, and Ecumenism
Unity in Mission; Mission in Unity
Mission as Ministry by the Whole People of God
The Evolution of the Ordained Ministry
The Apostolate of the Laity
Forms of Ministry
Mission as Witness to People of Other Living Faiths
The Shifting Scene
Postmodern Responses?
Dialogue and Mission
Mission as Theology
Mission Marginalized
From a Theology of Mission to a Missionary Theology
What Missiology Can and Cannot Do
Mission as Action in Hope
The “Eschatology Office” Closed
The Blurring of the Eschatological Horizon
The “Eschatology Office” Reopened
Extreme Eschatologization of Mission
History as Salvation
Eschatology and Mission in Creative Tension

13. Mission in Many Modes

Is Everything Mission?
Faces of the Church-in-Mission
Whither Mission?

Conclusion to the Anniversary Edition: The Continuing Transformation of Mission: David J.

Bosch's Living Legacy: 1991-2011
By Martin Reppenhagen and Darrell L. Guder
The Work and Life of David Jacobus Bosch
Beyond Biblical Foundations of Mission
Theology of Mission as the Mission of Theology
Africa and Other Contexts
After Christendom: Mission to the West and the Emergence of “Missional Theology”
Transforming the Study and Teaching of Mission

Notes

Bibliography
Index of Scriptural References

Index of Subjects

Index of Authors and Personal Names

 In Memoriam
David J. Bosch, 1929-1992
On April 15, 1992, just one year after Transforming Mission was published, David J. Bosch died in
an automobile accident in South Africa. At the age of 62, a preeminent Protestant missiologist, his
contribution and influence in mission studies globally was immense.
After missionary service in Transkei from 1957 to 1971, David was professor of missiology at the
University of South Africa from 1971. He served as dean of the faculty of theology in 1974-1977 and
again in 1981-1987. He was general secretary of the Southern African Missiological Society from its
founding in 1968 and editor of its journal Missionalia from its inception in 1973. He served as
national chairman of the South African Christian Leadership Assembly in 1979 and as chairman of the
National Initiative for Reconciliation from 1989, as part of his tireless ministry to bring about
reconciliation among racial, denominational, and theological groups in South Africa and across the
world.
A prolific author and eloquent lecturer, fluent in Xhosa, Afrikaans, Dutch, German, and English,
Bosch lectured widely in Europe, Britain, and North America. His doctorate from Basel was in New
Testament, and he brought profound biblical insights to his work in missiology. He was a “bridge
person,” respected as much in the World Council of Churches as in the World Evangelical Fellowship
and the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.
When Transforming Mission first appeared, it was received with critical acclaim, recognized as a
monumental, magisterial work and a superb teaching tool. It was selected as one of the “Fifteen
Outstanding Books of 1991 for Mission Studies” by the International Bulletin of Missionary
Research. But it is more than that. Transforming Mission is in a class by itself. It has become a
standard reference in studies of the Christian world mission, perhaps the most widely used textbook
in mission courses. David Bosch's magnum opus has become his enduring legacy to all who seek to
understand, to serve, and to spread the cause of Christ in the world.
One of my lasting memories of David Bosch is from his visit with me a few years before
Transforming Mission was published. He had received an invitation to join the faculty of one of the
leading seminaries in the United States as professor of world mission. As we walked along the ocean
beach in Ventnor, New Jersey, he discussed the pros and cons of leaving South Africa and coming to
this attractive post, where he could devote himself more fully to teaching and writing, removed from
the stress and struggle going on in South African society, events in which he was deeply involved. I
encouraged him to accept the invitation. But at the end of our long conversation, he said, “No, I don't
think I can leave my colleagues and the struggle in South Africa. It is a critical moment and that is
where God has placed me.”
It was this kind of “bold humility” that characterized David Bosch, and it is what he calls for in
Transforming Mission.
 Preface to the 20th Anniversary Edition
WILLIAM R. BURROWS

In the years since 1991, when David Bosch's long-awaited masterpiece Transforming Mission was
first published, it has achieved such wide recognition that—not without reason—adjectives such as
“classic” and “magisterial” have been applied to it. Moreover, in the twenty years between the first
printing of the original Orbis edition and this 20th Anniversary Edition, translations have been
published in Chinese, Korean, French, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Japanese,
and Hungarian, not to mention a South Asian edition published in India. Meanwhile, other translations
are currently underway into German, Czech, Turkish, and Polish.
David Bosch did not live to see the fruits of his labor disseminated beyond boundaries no one
could have predicted in early 1991. During Holy Week, on April 15, 1992, four days before Easter,
David died in a road accident. David and I formed what may have been one of the first international
friendships born with new technology as the midwife, before we met each other on a rainy spring day
in 1991. In the two years before Transforming Mission was published, before email had become
common, we were constantly faxing one another with questions, suggestions for revisions, criticisms
of the text, and so forth. In the Orbis files, the record of our growing friendship is five inches thick.
We met face-to-face for the first time in April 1991 and talked nearly non-stop for ten hours before
my wife and I dropped him off in New Haven at the Overseas Ministries Study Center. I never saw
David again, but I knew that I had worked with and had become friends with a man whose great
holiness and immense learning expressed what God had accomplished in a great heart.
It is an honor to pay tribute to a saint and doctor of the church and to commend a new edition of his
missiological masterwork to a new generation of readers. And it is especially pleasant to point to the
splendid final chapter authored by Martin Reppenhagen and Darrell Guder. They place David and
Transforming Mission in context. They bring into relief its salient features and make us aware of the
main currents of both praise and criticism of the book. Most of all, they bring up-to-date the
missionary task of both theology and the church in the third millennium.
As the editor at Orbis who worked with David in honing the message and preparing his book for
press, it has been gratifying to see this book achieve such success and recognition. For the Maryknoll
Society that sponsors Orbis and for my colleagues at this Roman Catholic press, it is especially
gratifying that a book that comes out of the Reformed tradition has become a truly catholic success
across the globe. Some reviewers have complained that Transforming Mission pays insufficient
attention to Africa and to writings on mission from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. On the surface
there is merit to those criticisms, but I think the reception of the book and the number of translations
attests to the fact that, while writing primarily with explicit reference to European and American
scholarship, Bosch has written a classic and not a merely Western work. Nor should it be forgotten
that the heart that attained the catholicity that his book is praised for was formed in the midst of
struggles for justice in the South Africa he so loved.
Literary critics differ on the question of what constitutes a “classic” as opposed to a work of more
limited value, but one thing can certainly be said. Classics such as the Bhagavad-Gita, the Torah, the
Tao-te Ching, the Gospel of John, and Plato's Republic become so not by eliminating what is
culturally particular to reach a lowest common denominator that everyone can agree on. That is a
particularly modern fallacy. Instead, the true classic intensifies and epitomizes concrete particulars in
concrete language in a way that touches any intelligent reader of that text, no matter the cultural home
of the reader. Nor does the universality of the message of a classic mean that readers must agree with
it. One may think, for instance, that the Bhagavad-Gita is completely mistaken in propounding its
message without denying its power to disclose universal themes in human life across the ages in
every culture.
It is too early to know if Transforming Mission will become a “major” Christian classic such as
the Confessions of Augustine, which gains new readers in every age. Few if any scholarly books do
—which ought to make academics and academic book editors modest about their accomplishments.
But even if five hundred years from now this book is viewed as a “minor” classic, its significance for
our age can scarcely be exaggerated. I think the reason for this is because David Bosch's breadth of
both spiritual and intellectual gifts allowed him to participate in and synthesize what is at play since
the post-World War II world's travails revealed the feet of clay, first of Western culture, then of its
appropriations of the Christian ideal, and most recently the false pretenses of the great systems of
politics and economics that 20th century idealists predicted would end human suffering. Though
written in the ashes of modernity's holocaust, Transforming Mission is an irenic book. The reader
will search in vain for angry post-colonial rhetoric. Nevertheless, it is a book whose every page
moves beyond the hegemony of Western theological reductionism.
In reopening the “eschatology office,” to use David's ironic phrase in Chapter 12, he retrieves a
universe in God's cosmic scale where “truth” is revealed in paradox and irony, where God weighs
history on a scale in which every culture and human enterprise—including theological and Biblical
studies and the ecclesiastical plans we devise to achieve what we take to be God's purposes—are
relativized without being treated as unimportant. In Transforming Mission such classic Christian
themes express the genius of Calvin and his Institutes, retrieving them in contemporary idiom to help
make Christians a more catholic people.
The reason Transforming Mission has been translated into so many languages and is now being
brought out in an anniversary edition is precisely because David Bosch leads us so skillfully through
theological underbrush to an oasis in which God is free to be God. God, of course, is always free. It
is we humans who build up illusion-creating systems that tame God's mystery to make God safe for
us, for our institutions, our political ideals and for our professional guilds.
The title, Transforming Mission is a play on words, a word-game that brings into relief the
tension between transforming ideas about mission (in the sense of broadening and extending our
concepts of God's action and our vocation in the world), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, our
participation in God's mission as a reality that will, one hopes, transform the world's people to open
their hearts to see and participate in God's reign. To participate in that mission, as David wrote in
another book, requires a spirituality “of the road” (Bosch 1969). It involves putting ourselves in a
place where God's Spirit will lead us along paths that, left to our own devices, we could not imagine
and would not choose.
Seen through this prism, Transforming Mission is a book for a post-colonial world. Written in the
midst of the struggles of South Africa that so epitomize the search for justice and peace amidst
structures bequeathed by colonialism—a struggle in which he was vitally engaged—it is a book
understandable only from within the horizon of the Western captivity of Christianity that he knew was
doomed and whose hegemony he longed to see end. David Bosch's book reminds me of the kenosis of
Jesus at Calvary. Jesus did not cease to be a first-century Jew when he was executed, but in passing
through death he became the concrete, universal Christ in his resurrection. David Bosch leads his
reader to the horizon that reveals Christian mission to be far deeper and more subversive than
expanding the size of the church or leading a social revolution. The transforming mission of the Christ
propels the followers of Jesus into the highways and byways of the world. Its prime criterion for
“truth” is not mere conceptual fidelity to Bible and tradition but the authenticity of the disciple who
allows the Spirit of Christ to lead. In that dynamic, “truth” takes on a transformative event-character.
To the extent that doctrines are true, they are subordinate to the living mystery of a church animated by
the Spirit to be Christ's body in the world. Christianity is real to the extent that the follower of Jesus
repents, turns to the Christ, and allows the Spirit to transform himself or herself. The disciple finds in
Christ in the communion of saints and the church a verification principle deeper than words. In
Bosch's vision, theology and spirituality can be distinguished but they cannot be separated.
At another level Transforming Mission recovers the universal horizon of God luring us beyond
ourselves and becomes, paradoxically, an invitation to particularize our theology, missiology,
ecclesiology, and spirituality. The universal only becomes real in the concrete and particular, and the
concrete and particular are where we, as cultural beings, are reared in particular traditions, formed
according to the genius of concrete linguistic and cultural horizons. And today, whether one likes the
word “globalization” or not, we live in a world of “inter-cultural” and “cross-cultural” global
interchange. David Bosch's vision of transforming mission is one where the followers of Jesus are in
vital dialogue with all persons of good will as transformations are understood, judged, and acted
upon in the light of faith. No line of separation between inner life and the public forum can be drawn,
for all life, including the life of faith, is political. Yet that gives Christians no license to consider
themselves superior. Instead, in David's vision of “mission in bold humility,” one seeks to serve.
In the concluding pages of his book, Bosch reminds us that for the New Testament the Cross is not
just the end of the earthly life of Jesus, it is the revelation of the process wherein God's son is led
through death to life to become “a model to be emulated by those whom he commissions.” What we
seek to contextualize, in other words, are not cultural forms of religiosity but culturally appropriate
ways of dying to self and rising to manifest God's life-giving love.
James A. Scherer, Chair
Mary Motte, FMM
Charles R. Taber
ASM Series Editorial Committee
 GERALD H. ANDERSON

Preface to the Series

The purpose of the ASM Series—now in existence since 1980—is to publish, without regard for
disciplinary, national, or denominational boundaries, scholarly works of high quality and wide
interest on missiological themes from the entire spectrum of scholarly pursuits, e.g., biblical studies,
theology, history, history of religions, cultural anthropology, linguistics, art, education, political
science, economics, and development, to name only the major components. Always the focus will be
on Christian mission.
By “mission” in this context is meant a passage over the boundary between faith in Jesus Christ
and its absence. In this understanding of mission, the basic functions of Christian proclamation,
dialogue, witness, service, worship, and nurture are of special concern. How does the transition from
one cultural context to another influence the shape and interaction between these dynamic functions?
Cultural and religious plurality are recognized as fundamental characteristics of the six-continent
missionary context in East and West, North and South.
Missiologists know that they need the other disciplines. And those in other disciplines need
missiology, perhaps more than they sometimes realize. Neither the insider's nor the outsider's view is
complete in itself. The world Christian mission has through two millennia amassed a rich and well-
documented body of experience to share with other disciplines. The complementary relation between
missiology and other learned disciplines is a key of this Series, and interaction will be its hallmark.
The promotion of scholarly dialogue among missiologists may, at times, involve the publication of
views and positions that other missiologists cannot accept, and with which members of the Editorial
Committee do not agree. Manuscripts published in this series reflect the opinions of their authors and
are not meant to represent the position of the American Society of Missiology or of the Editorial
Committee for the ASM Series. The committee's selection of texts is guided by such criteria as
intrinsic worth, readability, relative brevity, freedom from excessive scholarly apparatus, and
accessibility to a broad range of interested persons and not merely to experts or specialists.
On behalf of the membership of the American Society of Missiology we express our deep thanks
to the staff of Orbis Books, whose steadfast support over a decade for this joint publishing venture
has enabled it to mature and bear scholarly fruit.
 Foreword

The title of this book—first suggested to me by Eve Drogin of Orbis Books—is ambiguous.
“Transforming” can be an adjective describing “mission.” In this case, mission is understood as an
enterprise that transforms reality. “Transforming” can, however, also be a present participle, the
activity of transforming, of which “mission” is the object. Here, mission is not the enterprise that
transforms reality, but something that is itself being transformed.
I must admit that I had some misgivings about the suggested title. Then, one day, I discussed it with
Prof Francis Wilson of Cape Town University who, together with Dr Mamphela Ramphele,
coordinated the Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in Southern Africa. Wilson
pointed out to me that the title of their book on the project, Uprooting Poverty, reflects the same
ambiguity. It depicts poverty as something that uproots while, at the same time, articulating the
challenge that poverty is something that has to be uprooted. Since this discussion I have had peace of
mind about an ambiguous title for my own book!
The ambiguity in the title in fact reflects the subject matter of the book very accurately. With the
aid of the idea of paradigm shifts I am attempting to demonstrate the extent to which the understanding
and practice of mission have changed during almost twenty centuries of Christian missionary history.
In some instances the transformations were so profound and far-reaching that the historian has
difficulty in recognizing any similarities between the different missionary models. My thesis is,
furthermore, that this process of transformation has not yet come to an end (and will, in fact, never
come to an end), and that we find ourselves, at the moment, in the midst of one of the most important
shifts in the understanding and practice of the Christian mission.
The study is, however, not only descriptive. It does not set out merely to portray the development
and modifications of an idea, but also suggests that mission remains an indispensable dimension of
the Christian faith and that, at its most profound level, its purpose is to transform reality around it.
Mission, in this perspective, is that dimension of our faith that refuses to accept reality as it is and
aims at changing it. “Transforming” is, therefore, an adjective that depicts an essential feature of what
Christian mission is all about.
A few observations about the genesis of this book may be in order here. In 1980 I published
Witness to the World: The Christian Mission in Theological Perspective. At the formal level, the
present book deals, to some extent, with the same subject matter as my book of a decade ago. That
book has been out of print for a number of years, and I originally set out to write a revision of it. It
soon became clear, however, that I had “outgrown” my previous book and that, in any case, a book for
the early eighties would not address the challenges of the early nineties. Too much had happened in
the eighties, in respect of theology, politics, sociology, economics, etc. Of course, there are essential
continuities between my previous book and the present one, just as there are continuities between the
world of the early eighties and that of the early nineties. Some of these continuities, together with the
important discontinuities, are—I hope—reflected in the present study.
The writing of this book has preoccupied me since at least 1985. In 1987 the University of South
Africa, together with the (South African) Human Sciences Research Council, made a research grant
available which enabled me to spend six months of virtually uninterrupted research at Princeton
Theological Seminary in New Jersey. I would like to express my gratitude to my university and the
HSRC for the grant, but also to Princeton Theological Seminary and its president, Dr Tom Gillespie,
for providing me and my family with accommodation as well as superb resource facilities.
For the successful completion of my writing project I am deeply indebted to more people than I
could possibly mention by name. Some of them, however, have to be singled out. I am thinking of my
colleagues in the Department of Missiology at the University of South Africa—Willem Saayman, J. N.
J. (“Klippies”) Kritzinger, and Inus Daneel, together with our two splendid secretaries, Hazel van
Rensburg and Marietjie Willemse—who have not only continually stimulated my own theological
thinking but have also created space and time for me to pursue my research. Other friends and
colleagues who have also read sections of my manuscript and interacted with me on its contents
include Henri Lederle, Cilliers Breytenbach, Bertie du Plessis, Kevin Livingston, Daniël Nel, Johann
Mouton, Adrio König, Willem Nicol, Gerald Pillay, J. J. (“Dons”) Kritzinger and several others.
Some of them also participated in the January 1990 meeting of the Southern African Missiological
Society which was devoted to my theological oeuvre (cf J. N. J. Kritzinger and W. A. Saayman [eds],
Mission in Creative Tension: A Dialogue with David Bosch. Pretoria: S. A. Missiological Society,
1990]). It is indeed a joy to work with such colleagues!
A word of appreciation should also go to Orbis Books for its readiness to publish this book. Eve
Drogin, Senior Editor at Orbis, guided me through the early stages of writing and of negotiations with
the publishers. My sincerest thanks to her. During the final and crucial stages of preparing and editing
the manuscript, William Burrows, Orbis's Managing Editor, took personal charge. His detailed and
incisive commentary on my first draft revealed to me his superb qualities as skillful editor, articulate
theologian, and sensitive interlocutor. Subsequent communications between us confirmed my first
impressions. Nobody could have wished for a better editor.
The book appears in the American Society of Missiology Series. I deem this a great honor and
wish to express my gratitude to the members of the editorial committee (the names of Gerald H.
Anderson [New Haven] and James A. Scherer [Chicago] should be singled out in this respect) and, in
fact, to the entire American Society of Missiology. I have had the privilege of attending several of its
annual meetings and will always cherish those memories.
Last but not least: This book is dedicated to my wife of thirty-something years, Annemarie
Elisabeth. For several years she has had to put up with the writing of this book and to forfeit holidays
as well as adequate support from me in family and other matters. She remained encouraging and
understanding, however, and was, throughout, the “help meet” on whom I could bounce off my ideas
and from whom I could always expect intelligent and sympathetic feedback. I owe her more than I can
express in words.
 Abbreviations

AG Ad Gentes (Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity [Vatican II])

CMS Church Missionary Society (Anglican)
CWME Commission for World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches
CT Catechesi Tradendae (Apostolic Exhortation of Pope John Paul II, 1979)
Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians EN Evangelii Nuntiandi (Apostolic
EATWOT
Exhortation of Pope Paul VI, 1975)
FO Faith and Order (Commission of the World Council of Churches)
GS Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Vatican II])
IMC International Missionary Council
The Lausanne Covenant (produced by the International Congress on World Evangelization,
LC
Lausanne, 1974)
Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization LG Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic
LCWE
Constitution on the Church [Vatican II])
LMS London Missionary Society
Mission and Evangelism—An Ecumenical Affirmation (World Council of Churches’
ME
Document on Mission and Evangelism, published in 1982)
Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non Christian Religions
NA
[Vatican II])
NEB New English Bible
NIV New International Version (of the Bible)
RSV Revised Standard Version (of the Bible)
SPCK Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge
SPG Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
SVM Student Volunteer Movement
WCC World Council of Churches
WEF World Evangelical Fellowship
WSCF World Students Christian Federation
 Introduction
Mission: The Contemporary Crisis

BETWEEN DANGER AND OPPORTUNITY

Since the 1950s there has been a remarkable escalation in the use of the word “mission” among
Christians. This went hand in hand with a significant broadening of the concept, at least in certain
circles. Until the 1950s “mission,” even if not used in a univocal sense, had a fairly circumscribed set
of meanings. It referred to (a) the sending of missionaries to a designated territory, (b) the activities
undertaken by such missionaries, (c) the geographical area where the missionaries were active, (d)
the agency which despatched the missionaries, (e) the non-Christian world or “mission field,” or (f)
the center from which the missionaries operated on the “mission field” (cf Ohm 1962:521). In a
slightly different context it could also refer to (g) a local congregation without a resident minister and
still dependent on the support of an older, established church, or (h) a series of special services
intended to deepen or spread the Christian faith, usually in a nominally Christian environment. If we
attempt a more specifically theological synopsis of “mission” as the concept has traditionally been
used, we note that it has been paraphrased as (a) propagation of the faith, (b) expansion of the reign of
God, (c) conversion of the heathen, and (d) the founding of new churches (cf Müller 1987:31-34).
Still, all these connotations attached to the word “mission,” familiar as they may be, are of fairly
recent origin. Until the sixteenth century the term was used exclusively with reference to the doctrine
of the Trinity, that is, of the sending of the Son by the Father and of the Holy Spirit by the Father and
the Son. The Jesuits were the first to use it in terms of the spread of the Christian faith among people
(including Protestants) who were not members of the Catholic Church (cf Ohm 1962:37-39). In this
new sense it was intimately associated with the colonial expansion of the Western world into what
has more recently become known as the Third World (or, sometimes, the Two-Thirds World). The
term “mission” presupposes a sender, a person or persons sent by the sender, those to whom one is
sent, and an assignment. The entire terminology thus presumes that the one who sends has the
authority to do so. Often it was argued that the real sender was God who had indisputable authority
to decree that people be sent to execute his will. In practice, however, the authority was understood to
be vested in the church or in a mission society, or even in a Christian potentate. In Roman Catholic
missions, in particular, juridical authority remained, for a long time, the constitutive element for the
legitimacy of the missionary enterprise (cf Rütti 1972:228). It was part of this entire approach to
view mission in terms of expansion, occupation of fields, the conquest of other religions, and the like.
In Chapters 10 to 13 of this study I will argue that this traditional interpretation of mission was
gradually modified in the course of the twentieth century. Much of what follows will be an
investigation of the factors that have led to this modification. Some introductory remarks may,
however, serve to set the scene for our investigation, not least because—more than ever before in its
history—the Christian mission is in the firing line today.
What is new about our era, it seems to me, is that the Christian mission—at least as it has
traditionally been interpreted and performed—is under attack not only from without but also from
within its own ranks. One of the earliest examples of this kind of missionary self-criticism is Schütz
(1930). Another and even more trenchant censure of mission, particularly as it was conducted in
China, was conducted by Paton (1953). Similar publications followed. In one year alone, 1964, four
such books appeared, all written by missiologists or mission executives: R. K. Orchard, Missions in
a Time of Testing; James A. Scherer, Missionary, Go Home!; Ralph Dodge, The Unpopular
Missionary; and John Carden, The Ugly Missionary. More recently, James Heissig (1981), writing
in a missiological journal, has even characterized Christian mission as “the selfish war.”
These circumstances alone necessitate and justify reflection on mission as a permanent item on the
agenda of theology. If theology is a “reflective account of the faith” (T. Rendtorff), it is part of the task
of theology critically to consider mission as one of the expressions (however warped an expression it
may be in practice) of the Christian faith.
The criticism of mission should not, in itself, surprise us. It is, rather, normal for Christians to live
in a situation of crisis. It should never have been different. In a volume written in preparation for the
1938 Tambaram conference of the International Missionary Council (IMC), Kraemer (1947:24)
formulated this as follows, “Strictly speaking, one ought to say that the Church is always in a state of
crisis and that its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it.” This ought to be the
case, Kraemer argued, because of “the abiding tension between (the church's) essential nature and its
empirical condition” (:24f). Why is it, then, that we are so seldom aware of this element of crisis and
tension in the church? Because, Kraemer added, the church “has always needed apparent failure and
suffering in order to become fully alive to its real nature and mission” (:26). And for many centuries
the church has suffered very little and has been led to believe that it is a success.
Like its Lord, the church—if it is faithful to its being—will, however, always be controversial, a
“sign that will be spoken against” (Lk 2:34). That there were so many centuries of crisis-free
existence for the church was therefore an abnormality. Now, at long last, we are “back to normal”…
and we know it! And if the atmosphere of crisislessness still lingers on in many parts of the West, this
is simply the result of a dangerous delusion. Let us also know that to encounter crisis is to encounter
the possibility of truly being the church. The Japanese character for “crisis” is a combination of the
characters for “danger” and “opportunity” (or “promise”); crisis is therefore not the end of
opportunity but in reality only its beginning (Koyama 1980:4), the point where danger and opportunity
meet, where the future is in the balance and where events can go either way.

THE WIDER CRISIS

The crisis we are referring to is, naturally, not only a crisis in regard to mission. It affects the entire
church, indeed the entire world (cf Glazik 1979:152). As far as the Christian church, theology, and
mission are concerned, the crisis manifests itself, inter alia, in the following factors:
1. The advance of science and technology and with them, the worldwide process of secularization
seem to have made faith in God redundant; why turn to religion if we ourselves have ways and means
of dealing with the exigencies of modern life?
2. Linked to the former point is the reality that the West—traditionally not only the home of
Catholic and Protestant Christianity, but also the base of the entire modern missionary enterprise—is
slowly but steadily being dechristianized. David Barrett (1982:7) has calculated that, in Europe and
North America, an average of 53,000 persons are permanently leaving the Christian church from one
Sunday to the next. He confirms a trend first identified almost half a century ago, when Godin and
Daniel (1943) shocked the Catholic world with the publication of France: pays de mission?, in
which they argued that France had again become a mission field, a country of neo-pagans, of people
in the grip of atheism, secularism, unbelief, and superstition.
3. Partly because of the above, the world can no longer be divided into “Christian” and “non-
Christian” territories separated by oceans. Because of the dechristianization of the West and the
multiple migrations of people of many faiths we now live in a religiously pluralist world, in which
Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and adherents of many traditional religions rub shoulders daily. This
proximity to others has forced Christians to reexamine their traditional stereotypical views about
those faiths. Moreover, the devotees of other faiths often prove to be more actively and aggressively
missionary than the members of Christian churches are.
4. Because of its complicity in the subjugation and exploitation of peoples of color, the West—and
also Western Christians—tends to suffer from an acute sense of guilt. This circumstance often leads to
an inability or unwillingness among Western Christians to “give an account of the hope they have” (cf
1 Pet 3:15) to people of other persuasions.
5. More than ever before we are today aware of the fact that the world is divided—apparently
irreversibly—between the rich and the poor and that, by and large, the rich are those who consider
themselves (or are considered by the poor) to be Christians. In addition, and according to most
indicators, the rich are still getting richer and the poor poorer. This circumstance creates, on the one
hand, anger and frustration among the poor and, on the other, a reluctance among affluent Christians to
share their faith.
6. For centuries, Western theology and Western ecclesial ways and practices were normative and
undisputed, also in the “mission fields.” Today the situation is fundamentally different. The younger
churches refuse to be dictated to and are putting a high premium on their “autonomy.” In addition,
Western theology is today suspect in many parts of the world. It is often regarded as irrelevant,
speculative, and the product of ivory tower institutions. In many parts of the world it is being
replaced by Third-World theologies: liberation theology, black theology, contextual theology,
minjung theology, African theology, Asian theology, and the like. This circumstance has also
contributed to profound uncertainties in Western churches, even about the validity of the Christian
mission as such.
Naturally, these and other factors also have a positive side, and much of the last part of my study
will be an attempt to identify this. It is, in fact, the thesis of this book that the events we have been
experiencing at least since World War II and the consequent crisis in Christian mission are not to be
understood as merely incidental and reversible. Rather, what has unfolded in theological and
missionary circles during the last decades is the result of a fundamental paradigm shift, not only in
mission or theology, but in the experience and thinking of the whole world. Many of us are only aware
of the crisis we are facing now. It will, however, be argued that what is happening in our time is not
the first paradigm shift the world (or the church) has experienced. There have been profound crises
and major paradigm shifts before. Each of them constituted the end of one world and the birth of
another, in which much of what people used to think and do had to be redefined. Those earlier shifts
will also be traced in some detail, insofar as they had a significant bearing on missionary thought and
practice. It will, furthermore, be proposed that such a paradigm shift does not—to paraphrase
Koyama—confront us only with a danger but also with opportunities. In earlier ages the church has
responded imaginatively to paradigm changes; we are challenged to do the same for our time and
context.

FOUNDATION, AIM, AND NATURE OF MISSION

The contemporary crisis, as far as mission is concerned, manifests itself in three areas: the
foundation, the motives and aim, and the nature of mission (cf Gensichen 1971:27-29).
As regards the foundation for mission, one has to concede that, for a long time, the missionary
enterprise had to make do with a minimal basis. This emerges, inter alia, from the publications of
both Gustav Warneck (1834-1910) and Josef Schmidlin (1876-1944), respectively the founders of
Protestant and Catholic missiology. Warneck, for instance, distinguished between a “supernatural”
and a “natural” foundation for mission (cf Schärer 1944:5-10). As regards the first, he identified two
elements: mission is founded on Scripture (particularly the “Great Commission” of Matthew 2:18-20)
and on the monotheistic nature of the Christian faith. Equally important are the “natural” grounds for
mission: (a) the absoluteness and superiority of the Christian religion when compared with others; (b)
the acceptability and adaptability of Christianity to all peoples and conditions; (c) the superior
achievements of the Christian mission on the “mission fields”; and (d) the fact that Christianity has, in
past and present, shown itself to be stronger than all other religions.
The reflections on missionary motives and the aim of mission were often equally ambiguous.
Verkuyl (1978a:168-75; cf Dürr 1951:2-10) identified the following “impure motives”: (a) the
imperialist motive (turning “natives” into docile subjects of colonial authorities); (b) the cultural
motive (mission as the transfer of the missionary's “superior” culture); (c) the romantic motive (the
desire to go to far-away and exotic countries and peoples); and (d) the motive of ecclesiastical
colonialism (the urge to export one's own confession and church order to other territories).
Theologically more adequate but in their manifestation often also ambiguous are four other
missionary motives (cf Freytag 1961:207-17; Verkuyl 1978a:164-68): (a) the motive of conversion,
which emphasizes the value of personal decision and commitment—but tends to narrow the reign of
God spiritualistically and individualistically to the sum total of saved souls; (b) the eschatological
motive, which fixes people's eyes on the reign of God as a future reality but, in its eagerness to hasten
the irruption of that final reign, has no interest in the exigencies of this life; (c) the motive of plantatio
ecclesiae (church planting), which stresses the need for the gathering of a community of the committed
but is inclined to identify the church with the kingdom of God; and (d) the philanthropic motive,
through which the church is challenged to seek justice in the world but which easily equates God's
reign with an improved society.
An inadequate foundation for mission and ambiguous missionary motives and aims are bound to
lead to an unsatisfactory missionary practice. The young churches “planted” on the “mission fields”
were replicas of the churches on the mission agency's “home front,” “blessed” with all the
paraphernalia of those churches, “everything from harmoniums to archdeacons” (Newbigin
1969:107). Like the churches in Europe and North America, they were communities under the
jurisdiction of full-time pastors. And they had to adhere to confessions prepared centuries before in
Europe, in circumstances and in response to challenges fundamentally different from those that faced
the young churches of India or Africa. At the same time they were regarded as remaining under the
tutelage of Western mission agencies, at least until the latter should decide to grant them a “certificate
of maturity,” that is, until the younger churches had proved that they were fully self-supporting, self-
governing, and self-propagating.
It was this ecclesiastical export trade that caused Schütz to cry out in protest, “The house of the
church is on fire! In our missionary outreach we resemble a lunatic who carries the harvest into his
burning barn” (1930:195—my translation). Schütz located the problem not “outside,” on the mission
field, but in the heart of the Western church itself. So he calls the church back from the mission field
where it did not proclaim the gospel but individualism and the values of the West, back to become
what it was not but should be: church of Jesus Christ in the midst of the peoples of the earth. “Intra
muros!” he shouted, “the outcome is determined by what happens inside the church, not outside, on
the mission field.”
 Because of the inadequate foundation and ambiguous motivation of the missionary enterprise few
advocates and supporters of mission were able to appreciate the challenges presented by Schütz or,
twenty-three years later, after the “missionary dêbâcle” in China, by David Paton (1953). Most felt
content with the performance of Western agencies. In fact, their “accomplishments” were, ironically,
often used to undergird the shaky foundations of mission; looking with approval upon the practice of
mission, the champions identified their missionary projects with what they saw in the pages of the
New Testament, which in turn became the theological justification for the continuation of the
enterprise.
By means of such circular reasoning, the success of the Christian mission became the foundation
for mission. Other religions were regarded as moribund; they would all soon disappear. To mention a
couple of examples of this reasoning: In the year 1900 the General Secretary of the Norwegian
Missionary Society, Lars Dahle, having compared statistics of the numbers of Christians in Asia and
Africa in 1800 and 1900 respectively, was able to devise a mathematical formula which revealed the
growth rate of Christianity, decade by decade, during the nineteenth century. It was only logical that
Dahle would apply the formula also to successive decades of the twentieth century. On the basis of
this he could calmly predict that, by the year 1990, the entire human race would be won for the
Christian faith (cf Sundkler 1968:121). A few years later Johannes Warneck, son of Gustav Warneck,
wrote a book entitled Die Lebenskräfte des Evangeliums (2d impression 1908), in which he
demonstrated the power of the Christian mission vis-à-vis other faiths. The American translator of the
book was even more sanguine than Warneck himself had been: he published it under the title The
Loving Christ and Dying Heathenism (1909).
Indeed, Christianity's successes proved its superiority! Today, however, we know that those
optimistic predictions were unfounded. There are no longer any signs of what J. Warneck called
“dying heathenism.” Virtually all world religions display a vigor nobody would have credited them
with some decades ago. The confident predictions of Dahle and others concerning the triumphal
march and imminent total victory of Christianity have come to nothing. The Christian faith is still a
minority religion, at best holding its own in relation to the overall world population. And if
Christianity is no longer successful, is it still unique and true?

FROM CONFIDENCE TO MALAISE

It is circumstances like these that have led to the confidence about imminent victory being replaced by
a profound malaise in some missionary circles. Toward the end of his life Max Warren, for many
years General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society in Great Britain, referred to what he
termed “a terrible failure of nerve about the missionary enterprise.” In some circles this has led to an
almost complete paralysis and total withdrawal from any activity traditionally associated with
mission, in whatever form. Others are plunging themselves into projects which might just as well—
and more efficiently—be undertaken by secular agencies.
Again, in some Christian circles there is no sign of such a failure or nerve. Quite the contrary. It is
“business as usual” as regards the continuation of oneway missionary traffic from the West to the
Third World and the proclamation of a gospel which appears to have little interest in the conditions in
which people find themselves, since the preachers’ only concern seems to be the saving of souls from
eternal damnation. Here the right of Christians to proclaim their religion is beyond dispute since the
Bible clearly commands world mission. To even suggest that there is a fundamental crisis in mission
would be tantamount to making concessions to “liberal” theology and to doubting the abiding validity
of the faith once handed down to us.
 Whilst the zeal for mission and the self-sacrificing dedication evidenced in these circles must be
applauded, one cannot help wondering whether they are really rendering a valid and long-term
solution. Our spiritual forebears may perhaps be pardoned for not having been aware of the fact that
they were facing a crisis. Present generations, however, can hardly be excused for their lack of
awareness.

A “PLURIVERSE” OF MISSIOLOGY
If there is no possibility of ignoring the present crisis in mission, nor any point in trying to circumvent
it, the only valid way open to us is to deal with the crisis in utmost sincerity yet without allowing
ourselves to succumb to it. Once again: crisis is the point where danger and opportunity meet. Some
see only the opportunity and rush on, oblivious of the pitfalls on all sides. Others are only aware of
the danger and become so paralyzed by it that they back off. We can, however, only do justice to our
high calling if we acknowledge the presence of both danger and opportunity and execute our mission
within the field of tension engendered by both.
I suggest, then, that the solution to the problem presented by the present failure of nerve does not
lie in a simple return to an earlier missionary consciousness and practice. Clinging to yesterday's
images provides solace, but little else. And artificial respiration will yield little beyond the
semblance of returning life. Neither does the solution lie in embracing the values of the contemporary
world and attempting to respond to whatever a particular individual or group chooses to call mission.
Rather, we require a new vision to break out of the present stalemate toward a different kind of
missionary involvement—which need not mean jettisoning everything generations of Christians have
done before us or haughty condemnations of all their blunders.
The bravest among missionary thinkers have already for some time begun to sense that a new
paradigm for mission was emerging. More than thirty years ago Hendrik Kraemer ([1959] 1970:70)
said that we had to recognize a crisis in mission, even an “impasse.” And yet, he said, “we do not
stand at the end of mission”; rather, “we stand at the definite end of a specific period or era of
mission, and the clearer we see this and accept this with all our heart, the better.” We are called to a
new “pioneer task which will be more demanding and less romantic than the heroic deeds of the past
missionary era.”
The world of the 1990s is undoubtedly different from that of Edinburgh 1910 (when advocates of
mission believed that the entire world would soon be Christian), or from that of the 1960s (when
many predicted confidently that it was only a matter of time before all humankind would be free from
want and injustice). Both manifestations of optimism have been destroyed, fundamentally and
permanently, by subsequent events. The harsh realities of today compel us to reconceive and
reformulate the church's mission, to do this boldly and imaginatively, yet also in continuity with the
best of what mission has been in the past decades and centuries.
The thesis of this book is that it is neither possible nor proper to attempt a revised definition of
mission without taking a thorough look at the vicissitudes of missions and the missionary idea during
the past twenty centuries of Christian church history. A major part of this study will therefore be
devoted to tracing the contours of successive missionary paradigms, from the first century to the
twentieth. It should soon become clear that at no time in the past two millennia was there only one
single “theology of mission.” This was true even for the church in its pristine state (as the next four
chapters will hopefully illustrate). However, different theologies of mission do not necessarily
exclude each other; they form a multicolored mosaic of complementary and mutually enriching as
well as mutually challenging frames of reference. Instead of trying to formulate one uniform view of
mission we should rather attempt to chart the contours of “a pluriverse of missiology in a universe of
mission” (Soares-Prabhu 1986:87).
I am not suggesting that each historical missionary model can be reconciled with every other such
model. Frequently different understandings of mission are at odds with one another. Because of this it
will be necessary to look critically at the evolution of the missionary idea, to take a stand for one and
against another interpretation. It means, of course, that the scholar, too, operates with certain
presuppositions (which, naturally, must remain revisable!), and it would only be fair to state these in
advance. This is what I would like to do on the next few pages. I shall not, at this stage, attempt to
substantiate my convictions about mission in any detail—these will only emerge in the course of the
study. Still, I believe that one cannot really embark on a project of this nature without sharing with the
reader some of the assumptions operating when surveying and evaluating the vicissitudes of mission
and missionary thinking in the course of twenty centuries. I am aware of the fact that, in following this
route, I have—to some extent—anticipated views which will emerge in clearer profile only in the
final part of this study. There I shall, however, develop them within the framework of what I shall call
the emerging ecumenical paradigm of mission.

MISSION: AN INTERIM DEFINITION

1. The Christian faith, I submit, is intrinsically missionary. It is not the only persuasion that is
missionary. Rather, it shares this characteristic with several other religions, notably Islam and
Buddhism, and also with a variety of ideologies, such as Marxism (cf Jongeneel 1986:6f). A
distinctive element of missionary religions, in contrast to missionary ideologies, is that they all “hold
to some great ‘unveiling’ of ultimate truth believed to be of universal import” (Stackhouse 1988:189).
The Christian faith, for example, sees “all generations of the earth” as objects of God's salvific will
and plan of salvation or, in New Testament terms, it regards the “reign of God” which has come in
Jesus Christ as intended for “all humanity” (cf Oecumenische inleiding 1988:19). This dimension of
the Christian faith is not an optional extra: Christianity is missionary by its very nature, or it denies its
very raison d’être.
2. Missiology, as a branch of the discipline of Christian theology, is not a disinterested or neutral
enterprise; rather, it seeks to look at the world from the perspective of commitment to the Christian
faith (see also Oecumenische inleiding 1988:19f). Such an approach does not suggest an absence of
critical examination; as a matter of fact, precisely for the sake of the Christian mission, it will be
necessary to subject every definition and every manifestation of the Christian mission to rigorous
analysis and appraisal.
3. We may, therefore, never arrogate it to ourselves to delineate mission too sharply and too self-
confidently. Ultimately, mission remains undefinable; it should never be incarcerated in the narrow
confines of our own predilections. The most we can hope for is to formulate some approximations of
what mission is all about.
4. Christian mission gives expression to the dynamic relationship between God and the world,
particularly as this was portrayed, first, in the story of the covenant people of Israel and then,
supremely, in the birth, life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus of Nazareth. A theological
foundation for mission, says Kramm, “is only possible if we continually refer back to the ground of
our faith: God's self-communication in Jesus Christ” (1979:213—my translation).
5. The Bible is not to be treated as a storehouse of truths on which we can draw at random. There
are no immutable and objectively correct “laws of mission” to which exegesis of Scripture gives us
access and which provide us with blueprints we can apply in every situation. Our missionary practice
is not performed in unbroken continuity with the biblical witness; it is an altogether ambivalent
enterprise executed in the context of tension between divine providence and human confusion (cf
Gensichen 1971:16). The church's involvement in mission remains an act of faith without earthly
guarantees.
6. The entire Christian existence is to be characterized as missionary existence (Hoekendijk
1967a:338) or, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, “the church on earth is by its very nature
missionary” (AG 2). In light of this it is tautological to refer to a “universal gospel” (Hoekendijk
1967a:309). The church begins to be missionary not through its universal proclamation of the gospel,
but through the universality of the gospel it proclaims (Frazier 1987:13).
7. Theologically speaking, “foreign missions” is not a separate entity. The missionary nature of
the church does not just depend on the situation in which it finds itself at a given moment but is
grounded in the gospel itself. The justification and foundation for foreign missions, as for home
missions, “lies in the universality of salvation and the indivisibility of the reign of Christ” (Linz
1964: 209—my translation). The difference between home and foreign missions is not one of
principle but of scope. We therefore have to repudiate the mystical doctrine of salt water (Bridston
1965:32); that is, the idea that travelling to foreign lands is the sine qua non for any kind of
missionary endeavor and the final test and criterion of what is truly missionary (:33). Godin and
Daniel's publication (1943) was the first serious study to have destroyed the “geographical myth”
(Bridston) of mission: it proved that Europe, too, was a “mission field.” The book did not go far
enough, however. To the concept of mission as the first preaching of the gospel to pagans it simply
added the idea of mission as the reintroduction of the gospel to neo-pagans. It still defined mission in
terms of its addressees, not in terms of its nature, and suggested that mission is accomplished once the
gospel has been (re)introduced to a group of people.
8. We have to distinguish between mission (singular) and missions (plural). The first refers
primarily to the missio Dei (God's mission), that is, God's self-revelation as the One who loves the
world, God's involvement in and with the world, the nature and activity of God, which embraces both
the church and the world, and in which the church is privileged to participate. Missio Dei enunciates
the good news that God is a God-for-people. Missions (the missiones ecclesiae: the missionary
ventures of the church), refer to particular forms, related to specific times, places, or needs, of
participation in the missio Dei (Davies 1966:33; cf Hoekendijk 1967a:346; Rütti 1972:232).
9. The missionary task is as coherent, broad, and deep as the need and exigencies of human life
(Gort 1980a:55). Various international missionary conferences since the 1950s have formulated this
as “the whole church bringing the whole gospel to the whole world.” People live in a series of
integrated relationships; it is therefore indicative of a false anthropology and sociology to divorce the
spiritual or the personal sphere from the material and the social.
10. It follows from the above that mission is God's “yes” to the world (cf Günther 1967:20f).
When we speak about God, the world as the theater of God's activity is already implied (cf
Hoekendijk 1967a:344). God's love and attention are directed primarily at the world, and mission is
“participation in God's existence in the world” (Schütz 1930:245—my translation). In our time, God's
yes to the world reveals itself, to a large extent, in the church's missionary engagement in respect of
the realities of injustice, oppression, poverty, discrimi nation, and violence. We increasingly find
ourselves in a truly apocalyptic situation where the rich get richer and the poor poorer, and where
violence and oppression from both the right and the left are escalating. The church-in-mission cannot
possibly close its eyes to these realities, since “the pattern of the church in the chaos of our time is
political through and through” (Schütz 1930:246—my translation).
 11. Mission includes evangelism as one of its essential dimensions. Evangelism is the
proclamation of salvation in Christ to those who do not believe in him, calling them to repentance and
conversion, announcing forgiveness of sin, and inviting them to become living members of Christ's
earthly community and to begin a life of service to others in the power of the Holy Spirit.
12. Mission is also God's “no” to the world (cf Günther 1967:21f). I have suggested, above, that
mission is God's “yes” to the world. This was submitted in the conviction that there is continuity
between the reign of God, the mission of the church, and justice, peace, and wholeness in society, and
that salvation also has to do with what happens to people in this world. Still, what God has provided
for us in Jesus Christ and what the church proclaims and embodies in its mission and evangelism is
not simply an affirmation of the best people can expect in this world by way of health, liberty, peace,
and freedom from want. God's reign is more than human progress on the horizontal plane. So if, on the
one hand, we assert God's “yes” to the world as expression of the Christian's solidarity with society,
we also have to affirm mission and evangelism as God's “no,” as an expression of our opposition to
and engagement with the world. If Christianity blends with social and political movements to the
point of becoming completely identified with them, “the church will again become what is called a
religion of society…But can the church of the crucified man from Nazareth ever become a political
religion, without forgetting him and losing its identity?” (Moltmann 1975:3).
God's “no” to the world does not, however, signify any dualism, just as God's “yes” does not
imply any unbroken continuity between this world and God's reign (cf Knapp 1977:166-168).
Therefore, neither a secularized church (that is, a church which concerns itself only with this-worldly
activities and interests) nor a separatist church (that is, a church which involves itself only in soul-
saving and preparation of converts for the hereafter) can faithfully articulate the missio Dei.
13. The church-in-mission—as will be argued in detail later—may be described in terms of
sacrament and sign. It is a sign in the sense of pointer, symbol, example, or model; it is a sacrament
in the sense of mediation, representation, or anticipation (cf Gassmann 1986:14). It is not identical
with God's reign yet not unrelated to it either; it is “a foretaste of its coming, the sacrament of its
anticipations in history” (Memorandum 1982:461). Living in the creative tension of, at the same time,
being called out of the world and sent into the world, it is challenged to be God's experimental garden
on earth, a fragment of the reign of God, having “the first fruits of the Spirit” (Rom 8:23) as a pledge
of what is to come (2 Cor 1:22).
 Part 1

NEW TESTAMENT MODELS

OF MISSION
 Chapter 1

Reflections on the New Testament

as a Missionary Document

THE MOTHER OF THEOLOGY

Introductions to missiology tend to begin with a section called something like “Biblical Foundations
for Mission,” Once these “foundations” have been established—so the argument seems to go—the
author can proceed by developing his or her exegetical findings into a systematic “theory” or
“theology” of mission.
In this volume I wish to proceed in a different manner. By means of a brief overview of the
missionary character of the ministry of Jesus and the early church, followed by an in-depth discussion
of the ways in which three prominent New Testament authors interpreted mission, I will argue that, in
this respect, the New Testament witnesses to a fundamental shift when compared with the Old
Testament. In surveying paradigm shifts in missionary thinking I wish to suggest that the first and
cardinal paradigm change took place with the advent of Jesus of Nazareth and what followed after
that. It is the contours of this first and foundational shift that I shall attempt to trace in the next four
chapters, before turning to a second shift, less fundamental but also important—that of the “patristic”
Greek church.
The missionary character of the New Testament has not always been appreciated. For a very long
time it was customary, says Fiorenza (1976:1), to consider the New Testament writings primarily as
“documents of an inner-Christian doctrinal struggle” and early Christian history as “confessional”
history, “as a struggle between different Christian parties and theologians.” In what follows I would
like to submit that this approach to the New Testament is, at least to some extent, misguided. Instead I
suggest, with Martin Hengel, that the history and the theology of early Christianity are, first of all,
“mission history” and “mission theology” (Hengel 1983b:53). Hengel applies this description in the
first place to the apostle Paul, but he certainly implies that the same is true of other New Testament
writers as well. Other New Testament scholars, such as Heinrich Kasting and Ben Meyer, affirm this.
Kasting states: “Mission was, in the early stages, more than a mere function; it was a fundamental
expression of the life of the church. The beginnings of a missionary theology are therefore also the
beginnings of Christian theology as such” (1969:127—my translation). Ben Meyer interprets:
“Christianity had never been more itself, more consistent with Jesus and more evidently en route to its
own future, than in the launching of the world mission” (1986:206, cf 18). In its mission, early
Christianity took an astonishing “leap of life” from one world to another (Dix 1955:55), since it
understood itself as the vanguard of a saved humankind (Meyer 1986:92).
Contemporary New Testament scholars are thus affirming what the systematic theologian Martin
Kähler said eight decades ago: Mission is “the mother of theology” (Kähler [1908] 1971:190; my
translation).1 Theology, said Kähler, began as “an accompanying manifestation of the Christian
mission” and not as “a luxury of the world-dominating church” (:189). The New Testament writers
were not scholars who had the leisure to research the evidence before they put pen to paper. Rather,
they wrote in the context of an “emergency situation,” of a church which, because of its missionary
encounter with the world, was forced to theologize (Kähler [1908] 1971:189; cf also Russell 1988).
The gospels, in particular, are to be viewed not as writings produced by an historical impulse but as
expressions of an ardent faith, written with the purpose of commending Jesus Christ to the
Mediterranean world (Fiorenza 1976:20).
It is important to note that the New Testament authors also differed from one another, not least in
their understanding of mission—as the ensuing three chapters will illustrate. We should, however, not
be surprised if the New Testament does not reflect a uniform view of mission but, rather, a variety of
“theologies of mission” (Spindler 1967:10; Kasting 1969:132; Rütti 1972:113f; Kramm 1979: 215).
As a matter of fact, no single overarching term for mission can as such be uncovered in the New
Testament (Frankemölle 1982:94f). Pesch (1982:14-16) lists no less than ninety-five Greek
expressions which relate to essential but frequently different aspects of the New Testament
perspective on mission. So perhaps the New Testament authors were less interested in definitions of
mission than in the missionary existence of their readers; to give expression to the latter they used a
rich variety of metaphors, such as “the salt of the earth,” “the light of the world,” “a city on a hill,”
and the like. We may therefore, at best, succeed in creating a “semantic field” of New Testament
perspectives on mission (Frankemölle 1982:96f). Hopefully the contours of this will become clearer
as we proceed.
I shall return to the reasons for the differences between New Testament authors in respect of their
understanding of mission. For the moment, however, let me briefly turn to the Old Testament.

MISSION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

It might be asked whether one should not begin with the Old Testament in the search for an
understanding of mission. This is a legitimate question. There is, for the Christian church and
Christian theology, no New Testament divorced from the Old. However, on the issue of mission we
run into difficulties here, particularly if we adhere to the traditional understanding of mission as the
sending of preachers to distant places (a definition which, in the course of this study, will be
challenged in several ways). There is, in the Old Testament, no indication of the believers of the old
covenant being sent by God to cross geographical, religious, and social frontiers in order to win
others to faith in Yahweh (cf Bosch 1959:19; Hahn 1965:20; Gensichen 1971:57,62; Rütti 1972:98;
Huppenbauer 1977:38). Rzepkowski may therefore be correct when he says: “The decisive
difference between the Old and the New Testament is mission. The New Testament is essentially a
book about mission” (1974:80). Even the book Jonah has nothing to do with mission in the normal
sense of the word. The prophet is sent to Nineveh not to proclaim salvation to non-believers but to
announce doom. Neither is he himself interested in mission; he is only interested in destruction.
Contrary to what earlier scholars have suggested, not even Second Isaiah is to be regarded as a book
about mission (Hahn 195:19).
Even so, the Old Testament is fundamental to the understanding of mission in the New. There is,
first, the decisive difference between the faith of Israel and the religions of the surrounding nations.
Those religions are hierophanic in nature; they express themselves as manifestations of the divine at
specified holy places, where the human world can communicate with the divine. This occurs in cults
or rituals, in which the threatening powers of chaos and destruction can be neutralized. At the same
time the religions are caught up in the cycle of the seasons, where winter and summer follow each
other in an eternal battle for supremacy. The emphasis, throughout, is on the reenactment of what has
once been, on repetition and remembrance.
Not so with the faith of Israel. The essence of this faith is the firm conviction that God has saved
the fathers and mothers from Egypt, led them through the desert and settled them in the land Canaan.
They have only become a people because of God's intervention. What is more, God has made a
covenant with them at Mount Sinai, and this covenant determines their entire subsequent history. In the
religions of Israel's neighbors God is present in the eternal cycle of nature and at certain cultic
places. In Israel, however, history is the arena of God's activity. The focus is on what God has done,
is doing, and is yet to do according to his declared intention (cf Stanley 1980:57-59). God is, in the
words of the title of the well-known book by G. E. Wright (1952), the “God who acts” It may
therefore be more accurate to refer to the Bible as the Acts of God rather than call it the Word of God
(Wright 1952:13). For the people of Israel (unless they allow themselves, as in fact often happens, to
be seduced by the hierophanic religions) faith can never be a religion of the status quo. Dynamic
change is to be expected since God is a dynamic being, engaged in the active direction of history
(:22). The Old Testament surely knows of the immediate awareness of God's presence in worship and
prayer, but its “main emphasis…is certainly on his revelation of himself in historical acts” (:23).
As the God of history God is, secondly, also the God of promise. This becomes evident once we
reflect on the Old Testament understanding of revelation. We often interpret this as merely a making
public or an unveiling of something that has always been there but was kept hidden. Revelation is,
however, an event in which God commits in the present to be involved with his people in the future.
He reveals himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in other words as the God who has been
active in past history and who precisely for this reason will also be the God of the future. Nature
festivals such as those of the first fruits and of the harvest are therefore, in line with this logic,
gradually transformed into festivals of historical events such as the exodus from Egypt and the sealing
of the covenant at Sinai; that is, the festivals of nature become celebrations of events in the history of
salvation. And these celebrations are more than just occasions to remember; they are, at the same
time, celebrations in anticipation of God's future involvement with his people, of God being ahead of
his people (Rütti 1972:8386, with reference to Th. C. Vriezen, Gerhard von Rad, and other Old
Testament scholars).
God as revealed in history is, thirdly, the One who has elected Israel. The purpose of the election
is service, and when this is withheld, election loses its meaning. Primarily Israel is to serve the
marginal in its midst: the orphan, the widow, the poor, and the stranger. Whenever the people of Israel
renew their covenant with Yahweh, they recognize that they are renewing their obligations to the
victims of society.
From an early stage, furthermore, there has been the conviction that God's compassion embraces
the nations also. There is an ambivalent attitude toward the other nations in the Old Testament. On the
one hand they are Israel's political enemies or at least rivals; on the other hand God himself brings
them into Israel's circle of vision. The story of Abraham is an illustration of this. It follows hard on
the Babel episode, which dramatizes the foundering of the nations’ own schemes. And then God
begins all over again—with Abraham. What Babel has been unable to achieve is promised and
guaranteed in Abraham, namely the blessing of all nations. In the Abraham stories of the Yahwist
there is not one which does not, in one way or another, illustrate Abraham's (and therefore Israel's)
relationship with the nations (Huppenbauer 1977:39f). The entire history of Israel unveils the
continuation of God's involvement with the nations. The God of Israel is the Creator and Lord of the
whole world. For this reason Israel can comprehend its own history only in continuity with the history
of the nations, not as a separate history.
At this point the Old Testament's dialectical tension between judgment and mercy comes into play
—judgment and mercy of which both Israel and the nations are the recipients. Second Isaiah (Is 40-
55) and Jonah illustrate two sides of the same coin. Jonah symbolizes the people of Israel, who have
perverted their election into pride and privilege. The booklet does not aim at reaching and converting
Gentiles; it aims, rather, at the repentance and conversion of Israel and contrasts God's magnanimity
with the parochialism of his own people. Second Isaiah, on the other hand, particularly in the
metaphor of the suffering servant, paints the picture of an Israel which has already been the recipient
of God's judgment and wrath, and which now, precisely in its weakness and lowliness, becomes a
witness to God's victory. Just at the moment of Israel's deepest humiliation and despondency we see
the nations approach Israel and confess: “The Lord…is faithful, the Holy One of Israel…has chosen
you” (Is 49:7).
Thus, as Yahweh's compassion reaches out to Israel and beyond, it gradually becomes clear that,
in the final analysis, God is as concerned with the nations as with Israel. On the basis of its faith
Israel can draw two fundamental conclusions: Since the true God has made himself known to Israel,
he is to be encountered only in Israel; and since the God of Israel is the only true God, he also is the
God of the whole world. The first conclusion emphasizes isolation and exclusion from the rest of
humankind; the second suggests a basic openness and the possibility of reaching out to the nations (cf
Labuschagne 1975:9).
Israel would, however, not actually go out to the nations. Neither would Israel expressly call the
nations to faith in Yahweh. If they do come, it is because God is bringing them in. So, if there is a
“missionary” in the Old Testament, it is God himself who will, as his eschatological deed par
excellence, bring the nations to Jerusalem to worship him there together with his covenant people.
The prophecies alluding to the future worship of Yahweh by all nations are, however, few; in
addition, they are not always free from ambiguity. Still we may, with Jeremias (1958:57-60), piece
together some evidence in this regard. The most positive composite picture—positive, that is, from
the point of view of the nations—might have looked something like the following:
The nations are waiting for Yahweh and trusting in him (Is 51:5). His glory will be revealed to
them all (Is 40:5). All the ends of the earth are called upon to look to God and be saved (Is 45:22).
He makes his servant known as a light to the Gentiles (Is 42:6; 49:6). A highway is constructed, from
Egypt and Assyria to Jerusalem (Is 19:23); the nations encourage each other to go up to the mountain
of the Lord (Is 2:5), and they carry precious gifts with them (Is 18:7). The purpose of all of this is to
worship at the temple in Jerusalem, the sanctuary of the whole world, together with the covenant
people (Ps 96:9). Egypt will be blessed as God's people, Assyria as the work of his hands, and Israel
as his heritage (Is 19:25). The visible expression of this global reconciliation will be the celebration
of the messianic banquet upon the mountain of God; the nations will behold God with unveiled faces,
and death will be swallowed up forever (Is 25:6-8).
There is, however, also a dark backdrop to this positive picture. As the nations journey to
Jerusalem, Israel remains the center of the center and the recipient of “the wealth of the nations” (Is
60:11). Even in Second Isaiah, which represents the high-water mark of Old Testament universalism,
there are traces of this Israel-centeredness. The Sabeans, for instance, will come to the people of
Israel in chains and bow down before them (45:14). Elsewhere, too, when judgment is announced on
some nations (e.g. Is 47), it is not always clear whether they are seen as people who have refused
God's merciful overtures or, rather, primarily as enemies of Israel.
It is therefore not strange that, in the course of time, it is the negative attitude toward the nations
that prevails. As the political and social conditions of the people of the old covenant deteriorate,
there increasingly develops the expectation that, one day, the Messiah will come to conquer the
Gentile nations and restore Israel. This expectation is usually linked with fantastic ideas of world
domination by Israel, to whom all the nations will be subject. It reaches its peak in the apocalyptic
beliefs and attitudes of the Essene communities along the shores of the Dead Sea. The horizons of
apocalyptic belief are cosmic: God will destroy the entire present world and usher in a new world
according to a detailed and predetermined plan. The present world, with all its inhabitants, is
radically evil. The faithful have to separate themselves from it, keep themselves pure as the holy
remnant, and wait for God's intervention. In such a climate even the idea of a missionary attitude to
the Gentiles would be preposterous (Kasting 1969:129). At best God would, without any involvement
on the part of Israel, by means of a divine act, save those Gentiles he had elected in advance.
To a large extent Jewish apocalyptic spells the end of the earlier dynamic understanding of history.
Past salvific events are no longer celebrated as guarantees and anticipations of God's future
involvement with his people; they have become sacred traditions which have to be preserved
unchanged. The Law becomes an absolute entity which Israel has to serve and obey. Greek
metaphysical categories gradually begin to replace historical thinking. Faith becomes a matter of
timeless metahistorical and carefully systematized teaching (Rütti 1972:95).

BIBLE AND MISSION

This is the context and climate into which Jesus of Nazareth was born. And he clearly and
unequivocally understood his mission in terms of the authentic Old Testament tradition.
Until fairly recently it has been customary in Christian and particularly missionary circles to view
Jesus in purely idealistic terms. In the course of time, so the argument goes, all this-worldly, national,
social, and historical aspects of the Old Testament faith were overcome and the way prepared for a
truly universal religion for all humankind. This universal tendency, which was always, even if only
latently, present in the Old Testament, then reached perfection in Jesus’ teaching. The center of his
teaching—so this understanding of Jesus is classically summarized by the Catholic missiologist,
Thomas Ohm, in his magnum opus— was his message about God's reign as being of “a purely
religious, supra-national, other-worldly, predominantly spiritual and inward nature” (1962:247—my
translation). It was something infinitely “higher” than the Old Testament and was no longer tied to the
people of Israel.
Today we know that this view can no longer be maintained. Even so, it may still come as a
surprise to many to be told that, during his life on earth, Jesus ministered, lived, and thought almost
exclusively within the framework of first century Jewish religious faith and life. He is introduced to
us, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, as the One who has come to fulfill what had been promised
to the fathers and mothers of the faith. It could not have been immediately clear to his early followers
that the door of faith would soon be opened to the Gentiles too.
Of course, we no longer have any direct access to the story of Jesus. The only access we have to
that story is through the New Testament authors, particularly those who wrote our four gospels. The
subdiscipline of form criticism, which dominated (Western) New Testament scholarship from the
1920s to the 1950s has, however, taught us to be very skeptical about the historical reliability of our
gospels and to accept as authentic only those sayings of Jesus which could in no way have been
“invented” by subsequent tradition. For the “Jesus of history” all this had a devastating effect. Rudolf
Bultmann chose to say virtually nothing about him. His story was covered under so many layers of
Gemeindetheologie (the theology of the early Christian communities) that it would be a Sisyphean
task to piece it together again.
Meanwhile, however, we have left the heyday of form criticism behind us. Redaction criticism has
helped us to concentrate not so much on uncovering authentic sayings of Jesus as to concentrate,
rather, on the evangelists’ witness to him. We have discovered that there is no “Jesus of history”
divorced from the “Christ of faith,” since the evangelists—in witnessing about him—could not but
look through the eyes of faith at Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, the sayings of Jesus in the gospels are
already and at the same time sayings about Jesus (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:2, cf 4). Precisely
from this perspective the “historical Jesus” has again become crucial as we begin to rediscover him,
and the context in which he lived and labored, through the eyes of faith of the four evangelists. Today
scholars show a greater confidence in the earthly Jesus than was customary some decades ago
(Burchard 1980:13; Hengel 1983a:29). Consequently, the “practice of Jesus” (Echegaray 1984) has
become the focus of much contemporary theologizing. Jesus, as Echegaray puts it (1984:xv-xvi),
inspired the early Christian communities to prolong the logic of their own life and ministry in a
creative way amid historical circumstances that were in many respects new and different. They
handled the traditions about him with creative but responsible freedom, retaining those traditions
while at the same time adapting them.
That the first Christians proceeded in this way should not trouble us. If we take the incarnation
seriously, the Word has to become flesh in every new context. For this very reason the contemporary
theologian's task is not really different from what the New Testament authors set out so boldly to do.
What they did for their time, we have to do for ours. We too must listen to the past and speak to the
present and the future (LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:596). At the same time, our task today is far
more difficult than that of the New Testament authors. Matthew, Luke, Paul, and the others lived in
cultures radically different from ours and faced problems of which we have no idea (just as we face
problems of which they knew nothing). Moreover, they used notions their contemporaries
immediately understood but we do not.
There have, of course, always been those who attempted to cut the Gordian knot by setting up a
direct relationship between the Jesus of the New Testament and their own situation, applying the
ancient words uncritically and on a one-to-one basis to their own circumstances. Others have, with
the aid of all the critical tools at their disposal, set out to reconstruct “objective” histories of Jesus.
Surprisingly, however, there was often little difference between the Jesus of conservative authors and
the Jesus of critical scholarship. Only too frequently Jesus was re-created in the image of the
contemporary theologian and made subservient to the latter's interests and predilections (cf
Schweitzer 1952:4). Small wonder then that the many books written on Jesus during the past two
centuries or so picture an absolute bewildering variety of Jesuses, some of whom are literally poles
apart from others. Jesus may turn out to be a benign middle-class American, the “founder of modern
business,” the executive who proved that dedication to one's task and a spirit of servanthood
guarantee success (cf Barton 1925). Or he may be a Jesus of the right-wing establishment who like
some latter-day Führer leads his nation to a position of domination over others (see examples in
Hengel 1971:34f). Again, he may be a revolutionary Jesus, who broadcasts Marxist slogans, has a
carefully worked-out strategy, in three stages, for overthrowing the politico-economic system, and
who assiduously cultivates a following in preparation for that great moment (Pixley 1981:71-82). In
each case the “Jesus of history” turns out to be the Jesus of the historian concerned.
Christians are, however, not at liberty to talk about Jesus in any way they choose. They are
challenged to speak about him from within the context of the community of believers, “the whole
people of God,” past and present (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:vi). The variety of Christian
utterances can therefore not be unlimited. It is, in fact, limited—not only by the community of
believers but, even more fundamentally, by the community's “charter of foundation,” the event of Jesus
Christ. It is the events at the origin of the Christian community—the “agenda” set by Jesus living,
dying, and rising from the dead—that basically and primarily established the distinctiveness of that
community, and to those events we too have to orientate ourselves. God comes to us primarily in the
history of Jesus and his deeds (Echegaray 1984:9). There remains a difference between the first
decisive dimensions of a historical event and its subsequent evolution; in light of this we may indeed,
as Schleiermacher suggested (cf Gerrish 1984:196), regard the New Testament as norm for what is
authentically Christian. A crucial task for the church today is to test continually whether its
understanding of Christ corresponds with that of the first witnesses (Küng 1987:238; cf also the
perceptive discussion of Smit 1988).
This implies, naturally, that we cannot, with integrity, reflect on what mission might mean today
unless we turn to the Jesus of the New Testament, since our mission is “moored to Jesus’ person and
ministry” (Hahn 1984:269). As Kramm puts it,
A theological foundation for mission is only possible with reference to the point of departure of our faith: God's self-
communication in Christ as the basis which logically precedes and is fundamental to every other reflection 1979:213—my
translation).

To affirm this is not to say that all we have to do is to establish what mission meant for Jesus and
the early church and then define our missionary practice in the same terms, as though the whole
problem can be solved by way of a direct application of Scripture. To do this would be to succumb to
“the temptation of concordism, which equates the social groups and forces within first-century
Palestine with those of our own time” (G. Gutiérrez, in Echegaray 1984:xi). In some circumstances,
as a matter of fact, such an approach would be even more unwarranted than in others; the historical
gap of two millennia between our time and the time of Jesus, may turn out to be of less importance
than the social gap that separates today's middle-class elite from the first Christians or, for that matter,
from many marginalized people today (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:vii). One only has to read the
several volumes of Ernesto Cardenal's The Gospel in Solentiname to discover that the socio-
political circumstances of the Nicaraguan peasants who made up Cardenal's basic Christian
community were closer to the context of the early church than the situation of many Christians in the
West is to that of the early church. The same may be true of some indigenous African independent
churches or the house-churches of mainland China.
Yet even where the socio-cultural gap between today's communities and those of the first
Christians is narrow, it is there, and it should be respected. A historico-critical study may help us to
comprehend what mission was for Paul and Mark and John but it will not immediately tell us what we
must think about mission in our own concrete situation (Soares-Prabhu 1986:86). The text of the New
Testament generates various valid interpretations in different readers, as Paul Ricoeur has often
argued. Thus the meaning of a text cannot be reduced to a single, univocal sense, to what it
“originally” meant.
The approach called for requires an interaction between the self-definition of early Christian
authors and actors and the self-definition of today's believers who wish to be inspired and guided by
those early witnesses. How did the early Christians as well as subsequent generations understand
themselves? How do we, today's Christians, understand ourselves? And what effect do these “self-
understandings” have on their and our interpretation of mission? These are the questions I wish to
pursue.
In recent decades scholars such as G. Theissen, A. J. Malherbe, E. A. Judge, L. Schottroff, W. A.
Meeks, and B. F. Meyer have helped us tremendously in gaining a better understanding of the social
world of early Christianity. By subjecting the contexts in which those Christians lived to careful
sociological analysis these scholars have added significantly to our understanding of the early church
and its mission. It seems to me, however, that—without in any sense disparaging the important work
that has been done in this field—we are now in need of going beyond sociological analysis to an
approach which may be termed critical hermeneutics (cf Nel 1988). The bias of most social analysis
(as Meyer 1986:31 has shown) is toward a view from the outside. The bias of critical hermeneutics,
on the other hand, is toward a view from the inside—in other words, toward inquiring into the self-
definitions of those with whom we wish to enter into dialogue. Indeed, self-definition becomes a key
concept in this approach. In his study on the early Christians’ “world mission and self-discovery” Ben
Meyer has (in my view, convincingly) shown that it was because of a new self-definition that at least
some first-century disciples felt urged to get involved in missionary outreach to the surrounding
world. Meyer then sets about tracing the contours of this new self-definition by attempting answers to
questions such as the following (Meyer 1986:17),
How is it that, alone of the parties, movements, and sects of first-century Judaism, Christianity discovered within itself the
impetus to found gentile religious communities and to include them under the name “the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16)? How can we
explain the dynamics of the decision in favor of this impetus?…How can we account for the origins of the conception of Christ
not only as the fulfillment of the promises to Israel but as…the first man of a new mankind?

The critical hermeneutic approach goes beyond the (historically-interesting) quest of making
explicit early Christian self-definitions, however. It desires to encourage dialogue between those
self-definitions and all subsequent ones, including those of ourselves and our contemporaries. It
accepts that self-definitions may be inadequate or even wrong. So its aim is that those self-definitions
be extended, criticized, or challenged (cf Nel 1988:163). It assumes that there is no such thing as an
objective reality “out there,” which now needs to be understood and interpreted. Rather, reality is
intersubjective (:153f); it is always interpreted reality and this interpretation is profoundly affected
by our self-definitions (:209). It follows from this that reality changes if one's self-definition changes.
This is precisely what happened with early Christians and, in a variety of comparable ways, with
later generations of Christians. The changes in self-definition were not always adequate; as a matter
of fact, they were often warped, as I hope to show in the course of my exploration. Still, they have to
be taken seriously and should be challenged by the self-definitions of other Christians, particularly
those who first experienced a “paradigm shift” in their understanding of reality. In light of this the
challenge to the study of mission may be described (in the words of van Engelen 1975:310) as
relating the always-relevant Jesus event of twenty centuries ago to the future of God's promised reign
by means of meaningful initiatives for the here and now.
Naturally, if we explore what I have here referred to as the self-definition of early Christians, we
will be forced also to ask about the self-definition of Jesus (cf Goppelt 1981:159-205). This is a
quest we have to pursue even if, as has been said above, we only know Jesus via the witness of the
early church, that is, via the self-definitions of those believers. The point is that there are no
simplistic or obvious moves from the New Testament to our contemporary missionary practice. The
Bible does not function in such a direct way. There may be, rather, a range of alternative moves which
remain in deep tension with each other but may nevertheless all be valid (Brueggemann 1982:397,
408). As the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (1986:48) says,
The Holy Spirit who guides into all truth, may be present not so much exclusively on one side of a theological dispute as in the
very encounter of diverse visions held by persons…who share a faithfulness and commitment to Christ and to each other.

JESUS AND ISRAEL

In his classic book on conversion, A. D. Nock has demonstrated that the era from Alexander the Great
to Augustine was a time of unprecedented economic, social, and religious ferment and change. Greek
religions and Greek philosophy spread eastward, into Central Asia. At the same time many Eastern
religions, particularly those of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor penetrated into the Greco-Roman world
and won thousands of converts there (Nock 1933; cf Grant 1986:29-42).
The Jewish faith was one of those which had permeated the entire region. There was little
evidence of any active going out to Gentiles in order to win them over to the faith. Still, Gentiles
were often attracted to the Jewish faith. The very term used for such converts to Judaism,
“proselytes,”2 illustrated this; individual Gentiles, more or less on their own initiative, approached
Jews, submitted to the Torah, and asked to be circumcised. Outside of this circle of people who had
made the transition to Judaism, there was another category, the “God-fearers” who, though attracted to
Judaism, did not take the final step of asking for circumcision.3 On the whole, however; the attention
of pious Jews was not focused on Gentiles. Frequently their concern was not even with all members
of their own race. For several centuries prior to the birth of Jesus the conviction was gaining ground
that not all Israel but only a faithful remnant would be saved. Several religious groups within Judaism
regarded themselves as this remnant and all others, even fellow Jews, as being beyond the pale. This
was particularly true of the Essene communities along the Dead Sea.4 In most of these circles there
was little concern for recruiting others even of their own kind, let alone Gentiles.
Still, all these endeavors have to be seen within the horizon of the struggle for the true Israel, for
the sake of the restitution of the people of the covenant. In this context we also have to see the
ministry of John the Baptist. He appeared on the scene as a prophetic preacher sent by God to call
Israel to repentance and conversion. In the Baptist's view it could no longer be assumed that all Israel
was elected. The Jews of his time were a “brood of vipers” (Mt 3:7; Lk 3:7) and equated with
pagans. Only a remnant would be saved if they repented and produced fruit in keeping with
repentance (Mt 3:8; Lk 3:8). To underscore the fact that all Israel were Gentiles in the eyes of God,
outside the covenant, the repentant had to submit to the rite of baptism in the same way Gentile
converts to Judaism did.
This, then, was the religious climate into which Jesus was born: it was a time of sectarianism and
fanaticism, of religious traffic between East and West, of merchants and soldiers carrying home new
ideas, of experimenting with new faiths. Socio-politically the period was no less volatile. Palestine
was under Roman occupation. One of the results of this was a system of large estates spreading
gradually but irresistibly throughout the country, at the expense of communal property. The already
poor peasants were soon transformed into a labor pool for the estate owners and managers; these are
the “day laborers” we frequently meet in the gospel parables.
Rome consolidated its hold on the Jews by organizing a census (in AD 6), followed by the actual
collection of taxes. For the Jews this was more than an irritation, it was an assault on their ancestral
rights and their holy land, which was now degraded to a mere province of the vast Roman Empire. It
was understandable that, at such a time, the memories of the past would be revived: the liberation
from Egypt, the glorious reign of David, the Maccabean revolt, etc. Small wonder then that, precisely
during the various stages of the census, there often were disturbances. We read in Acts 5:37 that Judas
the Galilean led a band of people in revolt “in the days of the census.” The fact that Jesus’ birth was
linked to the taking of the census (Lk 2:1-2) perhaps also contributed to the view that he might be the
expected Messiah, that precisely in Israel's darkest hour God would send a deliverer.
Jesus’ life and ministry have to be seen within this concrete historical context. If not, we will not
begin to understand him. He stands in the tradition of the prophets. Like them and like John the Baptist
his concern is the repentance and salvation of Israel.
As…Jew he understands himself as being sent to his own people. His call for repentance concerns this people…. His life's work
is limited to them. That he is sent only to Israel, is already evident in Matthew 1:21 and Luke 1:54. According to the reports of all
the gospels he finds himself virtually always on the soil of the Holy Land. He appears to enter Gentile and Samaritan territories
only with some reluctance. He restlessly moves around in the land of the Jews, back and forth…. Precisely as Son of Man he
has to fulfill the calling of the son of David: to liberate his people…He devotes himself to Israel with unconditional devotion while
declining every other solicitation (Bosch 1959:77; translated from the German).

Still, the question about the earthly Jesus’ attitude to Gentiles is important but secondary, as we
hope to illustrate below (cf also Bosch 1959:93-115; Jeremias 1958; Hahn 1965:26-41). There
undoubtedly is a difference between Jesus and the Jewish religious groups of his time, between his
self-definition and theirs. All of them (including, apparently, John the Baptist) concern themselves
with the salvation of only a remnant of Israel. Jesus’ mission is to all Israel. This is expressed, first,
in his constantly being on the move, throughout the entire Jewish land, as a wandering preacher and
healer, without permanent ties to family, profession, or residence. The fact that he selects twelve
disciples to be with him and that he sends them out into the Jewish land points in the same direction:
their number refers back to the ancient composition of the people of Israel and their mission to the
future messianic reign, when “all Israel” will be saved (cf Goppelt 1981:207-213; Meyer 1986:62).
Jesus’ attitude to the Pharisees appears to constitute a special case. The earliest tradition does not
present them as Jesus’ implacable enemies. They were not yet the leaders of Judaism; they would
establish their undisputed hegemony only after the destruction of Jerusalem (in AD 70). Like Jesus,
they attempted to deal theologically with Israel's distress, even if in a very different manner. There
can, therefore, be no doubt that Jesus sought to win them over (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:35 and
125, note 94).
More important than Jesus’ plea to the Pharisees, however, is his “consistent challenge to attitudes,
practices and structures that tended arbitrarily to restrict or exclude potential members of the Israelite
community” (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:154). This applies particularly to those who are marginal
to the Jewish establishment. The Jesus story mentions them by many names: the poor, the blind, the
lepers, the hungry, those who weep, the sinners, the tax-collectors, those possessed by demons, the
persecuted, the captives, those who are weary and heavy laden, the rabble who know nothing of the
law, the little ones, the least, the last, the lost sheep of the house of Israel, even the prostitutes (Nolan
1976:21-29). As happens in our own time, the affliction of many of those on the periphery of society
is occasioned by repression, discrimination, violence, and exploitation. They are, in the full sense of
the word, victims of the society of the day. Even the “sinners” are not without ado to be understood in
modern terms. We should not beatify them either. They are probably at one and the same time victims
of circumstances, practitioners of despised trades, and shady characters (Schottroff and Stegemann
1986:14f). The point is simply that Jesus turns to all people who have been pushed aside: to the sick
who are segregated on cultic and ritual grounds, to the prostitutes and sinners who are ostracized on
moral grounds, and to the tax-collectors who are excluded on religious and political grounds (Hahn
1965:30). Tax-collectors and prostitutes may even be praised by Jesus as models to emulate, since
they heed his call while others do not (Mt 21:31; cf Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:33).
Jesus’ socializing with tax-collectors must have been particularly offensive to the religious
establishment. Tax-collectors were regarded as traitors to the Jewish cause, as collaborators with the
Romans and exploiters of their own people (Ford 1984:70-78; Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:7-13;
Wedderburn 1988:168), but Jesus does not pass them by. He invites himself to the home of Zacchaeus,
a wealthy chief tax-collector (Lk 17:1-5). And he invites Levi (or Matthew) to leave his booth and
follow him (Mt 9:9 par.). The call is an act of grace, a restoration of fellowship, the beginning of a
new life—even for tax-collectors (Schweizer 1971:40).
Preeminently, however, the tradition (particularly as retained in Luke's gospel) tells of Jesus as
“the hope of the poor” (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986). “The poor” is a comprehensive term, which
often includes some of the other categories already mentioned. What makes them “the poor” is the fact
that circumstances (or, perhaps more precisely, the wealthy and powerful) have treated them unkindly.
They are the ones who cannot but be anxious about tomorrow (cf Mt 6:34) and worry about what to
eat and to wear (Mt 6:25). The standard wage for a laborer was a silver denarius a day, which was
barely enough to keep a small family at a subsistence level. If such a laborer did not find work for
several days, his family was destitute. In such circumstances the fourth petition in the Lord's Prayer
(“Give us today our bread for this day”) takes on a poignancy many of us no longer experience. It is a
prayer for survival.
In the ministry of Jesus, God is inaugurating his eschatological reign and he is doing it among the
poor, the lowly, and the despised. “No greater religious claim could have been made in the context of
Jewish religion” (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:36). The wretched life of the poor is contrary to
God's purposes, and Jesus has come to put an end to their misery.

AN ALL-INCLUSIVE MISSION
What amazes one again and again is the inclusiveness of Jesus’ mission. It embraces both the poor
and the rich, both the oppressed and the oppressor, both the sinners and the devout. His mission is one
of dissolving alienation and breaking down walls of hostility, of crossing boundaries between
individuals and groups. As God forgives us gratuitously, we are to forgive those who wrong us—up
to seventy times seven times, which in fact means limitlessly, more often than we are able to count
(Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:148f).
The inclusiveness of Jesus’ mission is highlighted particularly in the Logia or Sayings-Source
(also known as Q).5 The wandering prophets who make use of the Logia, undoubtedly have all of
Israel in mind as they move around in the Jewish land and proclaim the words of Jesus to all they
meet (Schottroff and Stegemann 48f). This is the only aspect from the rich and varied theology of Q I
wish to accentuate here.
There can be no doubt that a primary concern of the Logia is the preaching of love even to enemies
in order that, if at all possible, such enemies may be won over. Mark 2:16 (which does not come from
Q) already illustrates a basic problem the Pharisees have with Jesus (even those who do not a priori
feel negatively toward him)—the fact that he does not lay down any conditions. We can still detect the
amazement in their voices when they say to the disciples: “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and
sinners?” The Q prophets are in basic continuity with this element in the early tradition about Jesus.
They are perhaps persecuted for their beliefs. Yet in spite of this (or because of this?) they turn their
full attention to their persecutors and to all others who have rejected the message of Jesus. The self-
understanding of this group of messengers of Jesus is, as far as we know, “without sociological or
religio-sociological parallel” (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:61, cf 58).
The injunction to love one's enemies has rightly been described as the most characteristic saying
of Jesus (references in Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:159). Even Lapide (1986:91), an Orthodox Jew,
says that this was “an innovation introduced by Jesus.” And the Q prophets faithfully retain and
observe it. It would appear that these preachers are reviled, interrogated, ostracized, and threatened
like sheep among wolves, yet they continue to offer their message of peace and love to the very
people who treat them so unjustly. Even the persistent rejection of their message does not cause them
to give up.
Some of the sentiments conveyed by the Logia are indeed deeply moving and at the same time
eminently missionary. “This generation”—those who oppose the preachers and spurn their message—
is like children to whom other children call out: “‘We piped to you, and you did not dance; we
wailed, and you did not mourn’” (Mt 11:16f). Again and again invitations go out to them, but they
refuse to respond. Another Q-saying is directed to Jerusalem as symbol of all Israel, which kills the
prophets and stones those sent to her. Yet still the flow of prophets to Israel continues unabated:
“How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
and you would not!” (Mt 23:37 par). Like Noah of old the Logia prophets face people who are
unaware of the impending judgment and indifferent to their urgent warnings, yet they continue to issue
these warnings (cf Mt 24:37-39). People only have to ask, the preachers say, and God will respond;
they only have to knock and the door will be opened. God is the Father of all Israel; and which father
will give his son a stone instead of bread, or a snake if he asks for a fish? “If you then, who are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give
good gifts to those who ask him!” (Mt 7:11 par). Once again the addressees (those who are “evil”—v
11) are the enemies of the message of Jesus, but God has not turned his back upon them. He still
makes his sun rise even on them (Mt 5:44 par). In keeping with God's magnanimity the followers of
Jesus do not define their identity in terms of opposition to outsiders. They remind themselves of
Jesus’ words: “If you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors
do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even
the Gentiles do the same?” (Mt 5:46f).
The Q prophets certainly also announce judgment. The towns that reject their message, they say,
face a fate more terrible than the fate that befell Sodom and Gomorrah (Mt 10:11-15 par). Yet the
preachers of the Sayings-Source are not latter-day Jonahs who look forward with glee to the disaster
they prophesy. Rather, their announcements of doom are intended as a kind of shock treatment, as a
last urgent call to repentance and conversion, as an expression of their deep concern for those who
oppose and revile them. “They practice love of enemies and proclaim judgment; in fact, they practice
love by means of their proclamation of judgment” (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:58). Their call for
conversion is implicit in each of the judgment sayings. They continue to pursue those who refuse to
listen, and they are prepared to persevere with this ministry until the last headstrong and wayward
Israelite has been found and returned to the fold. Does not, as a matter of fact, a good shepherd do the
same? Does he not leave the ninety-nine and go after the one sheep that has gone astray? (Mt 18:12
par). And would God expect less of the followers of Jesus?
This is the way in which the Q prophets emulate their Master. Evidently their compassion for all
Israel, like their Master's, is total. And like him, their proclamation knows nothing of coercion. It
always remains an invitation. Is it possible to imagine a more ardent and compelling missionary
spirit?

AND THE GENTILES?

The preachers of the Logia still operate within a limited horizon. Jesus’ own mission, they believe,
was restricted to Israel. So is theirs. Of course, like Jesus, their concern is with all Israel, not just
with a remnant. But the Gentile world really falls outside of their purview, although they are aware
that a mission among Gentiles has already begun and it is most unlikely that they oppose this ministry.
Moreover, the very nature of their commitment to Israel, even to the point of loving their worst
enemies and inviting them to follow Jesus, gives witness to the fact that, in the long run, their message
cannot be confined to Israel. They know that John the Baptist already proclaimed that God was able
to raise up children for Abraham out of stones and that he was therefore not bound to Israel (Mt 3:9
par). They also repeat sayings of Jesus according to which Gentiles may become an indictment to
Jews: the people of Nineveh will condemn “this generation,” for they repented at the preaching of
Jonah whilst the Jews of their own time do not, in spite of the presence of “something greater than
Jonah” (Mt 12:41 par).
The Gentiles thus do appear in Q, but mainly within the framework of judgment sayings or as a
warning to Israel that it may jeopardize its position of privilege. The prophets know that some non-
Jews have already, during Jesus’ own ministry, put Jews to shame. One of the best-known examples is
that of a centurion from Capernaum who amazed Jesus and caused him to exclaim: “Truly, I say to
you, not even in Israel have I found such faith” (Mt 8:10 par). In like manner a Canaanite woman's
conduct prompts him to say: “O woman, great is your faith!” (Mt 15:28). Small wonder, then, that
Gentiles can sometimes be portrayed as substitute guests at the eschatological banquet. People will
come from east and west and north and south and take their places at the feast, while “those who were
born to the kingdom” will be thrown out (Mt 8:11-13, NEB; cf Lk 13:28-30). They are, in the
metaphoric language of the parable of the great banquet, the guests who have refused the invitation on
the basis of incredibly flimsy excuses and now have to look on while the Gentiles take their places,
not because of any merit such Gentiles may have, but simply because they have responded positively.
Such Gentiles are perhaps prefigured in the tax collectors and prostitutes who “go into the kingdom of
God” ahead of the religious establishment (Mt 21:31) and in the parable of the prodigal son, which
Jesus tells precisely because the Pharisees are upset when he welcomes tax-collectors and sinners
and eats with them (Lk 15:1f).
What is it that gave rise to the many sayings, parables, and stories that seem, at the very least, to
nourish the idea that, one day, God's covenant will reach far beyond the people of Israel? In my view
there can be no doubt: the primary inspiration for all these stories could only have been the
provocative, boundary-breaking nature of Jesus’ own ministry.
For a long time New Testament scholars tended to deny the fundamental missionary dimension of
Jesus’ earthly ministry (often on the basis of the argument that we know too little about the historical
Jesus to make any such claim) and to attribute the entire phenomenon of the Gentile mission after
Easter to a variety of socio-religious circumstances or impute it almost exclusively to individual
Christian leaders such as Paul. Although such views are occasionally still being mooted it would, I
believe, be correct to say that scholars are today far more ready to credit Jesus himself with laying
the foundations for the Gentile mission. In the words of Martin Hengel (1983b:61-63; cf Senior and
Stuhlmueller 1983:141f; Hahn 1984:269, 272):
It is necessary to stress the obvious fact that without the activity of the earthly Jesus it becomes absurd to speak of “Jesus’
concern”; and the church founded by Easter which, for whatever reason, no longer dares to ask after the earthly Jesus, is
separated from its starting point. One can speak meaningfully of Easter only if one knows that here the man Jesus of Nazareth
is raised, someone who in his human life, with its activity and suffering, is not just any interchangeable blank sheet. We
therefore have to look for the earthly Jesus if we want to elucidate “the beginnings of the earliest Christian mission”…the
content of the preaching of Jesus had just as much “missionary” character as that of his disciples after Easter…Here we are
confronted with the real starting point of the primitive Christian mission: it lies in the conduct of Jesus himself. If anyone is to be
called “the primal missionary,” he must be…The ultimate basis for the earliest Christian mission lies in the messianic sending of
Jesus.

SALIENT FEATURES OF JESUS’ PERSON AND MINISTRY

The above quotation from Hengel shows that Jesus’ “self-definition” was such that he consistently
challenged the attitudes, practices, and structures which tended arbitrarily to exclude certain
categories of people from the Jewish community. I shall now endeavor to uncover, in some detail, the
salient features of his ministry in order better to appreciate the missionary thrust of his person and
work. I do this in the conviction that it will also help us to discern the meaning of mission for our own
time. Four of these features will be highlighted: Jesus’ proclamation concerning the reign of God, his
attitude to the Jewish law, the calling and commissioning of his disciples, and the significance of the
Easter event.
Jesus and the Reign of God
The expression “reign of God” (malkuth Yahweh in Hebrew) does not appear in the Old Testament
(Bright 1953:18). It is first encountered in late Judaism, though the idea itself is older. It developed
through several stages. At one point it was believed that the royal rule of God would manifest itself in
the Davidic dynasty (cf 2 Sam 7:12-16). At another stage it was thought that God would reconcile and
rule the world from the temple through the priesthood (cf Ezek 40-43). Both these expectations came
to nothing (Bright 1953:24-70). So the conviction grew, particularly during periods of foreign
domination, that God's kingdom was an entirely future entity and would manifest itself in a complete
turning of the tables, with Israel at the top and the oppressors becoming the oppressed (cf Bright
1953:156-186; Boff 1983:56f). It was this last view that was dominant during Jesus’ earthly ministry.
It is still captured, for instance, in the words of the disciples after Easter: “Lord, will you at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6).
The reign of God (basileia tou Theou) is undoubtedly central to Jesus’ entire ministry.7 It is,
likewise, central to his understanding of his own mission. One may even say that, for Jesus, God's
reign is the “starting point and context for mission” (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:144) and that it
puts “the traditional values of ancient Judaism in question at decisive points” (Hengel 1983b:61).
It is not easy to define Jesus’ view of the basileia. He speaks of it mainly in parables. And
parables are a form of discourse which deliberately veils the mystery of God's reign (in the sense of
Mark 4:11), at the same time that it discloses it (cf Lochman 1986:61).
Two features in Jesus’ preaching of God's reign are of particular importance if we wish to
appreciate the missionary nature of Jesus’ self-understanding and ministry. Both are fundamentally
different from those of his contemporaries.
First, God's reign is not understood as exclusively future but as both future and already present.
We today can hardly grasp the truly revolutionary dimension in Jesus’ announcement that the reign of
God has drawn near and is, in fact “upon” his listeners, “in their very midst” (Lk 17:21, NEB).
According to both Mark and Matthew he inaugurates his public ministry with an announcement about
the nearness of God's reign (Mk 1:15; Mt 4:17). Something totally new is happening: the irruption of
a new era, of a new order of life. The hope of deliverance is not a distant song about a far-away
future. The future has invaded the present.
There remains, however, an unresolved tension between the present and the future dimensions of
God's reign. It has arrived, and yet is still to come. Because of the latter, the disciples are taught in the
Lord's Prayer to pray for its coming.
Such apparently conflicting sayings are an embarrassment to us. Small wonder that, throughout the
history of the church, Christians have attempted to resolve the tension. Under the influence of Origen
and Augustine the expectation of God's reign in the future was made to refer either to the spiritual
journey of the individual believer or to the church as the kingdom of God on earth. Future eschatology
was gradually pushed out of the mainstream of church life and thus relegated to the ranks of heretical
aberration (cf Beker 1984:61). For nineteenth-century liberal theology God's kingdom was more or
less the equivalent of the ideal moral order couched in categories of Western civilization and culture.
At the turn of the century Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer went to the opposite extreme: they
eliminated all references to God's reign as present and regarded Jesus, in typical apocalyptic fashion,
as proclaiming only a future coming of the kingdom. According to Schweitzer Jesus in the end
provoked his own execution which would then, so Jesus believed, precipitate the coming of the
kingdom, which, sadly, did not happen.8 Today, however, most scholars agree that the tension between
the “already” and the “not yet” of God's reign in Jesus’ ministry belongs to the essence of his person
and consciousness and should not be resolved; it is precisely in this creative tension that the reality of
God's reign has significance for our contemporary mission (Burchard 1980).9
The missionary nature of Jesus ministry is also revealed in a second fundamental characteristic of
his kingdom ministry: it launches an all-out attack on evil in all its manifestations. God's reign arrives
wherever Jesus overcomes the power of evil. Then, as it does now, evil took many forms: pain,
sickness, death, demon-possession, personal sin and immorality, the loveless self-righteousness of
those who claim to know God, the maintaining of special class privileges, the brokenness of human
relationships. Jesus is, however, saying: If human distress takes many forms, the power of God does
likewise.
I have already made mention of Jesus’ ministry to those on the margins. This can only be
comprehended if we grasp Jesus’ understanding of the reign of God. It is particularly to those on the
periphery of society that he communicates the possibility of new life on the basis of the reality of the
love of God (Hengel 1983b:61). These people can hold their heads high as children of God and
citizens of his kingdom. After all, he cares about sparrows, how would he not care about them? Even
the hairs of their heads are all numbered (Mt 10:28-31). This, then, is Jesus’ missionary ministry: the
long expected reign of God is being inaugurated…among the lowly and the despised (Schottroff &
Stegemann 1986:36). God's reign is not intended for those who regard themselves as VIPs, but for
those on the margins: for those who suffer, for tax-collectors and sinners, for widows and children
(Burchard 1980:18).
The assault of God's reign on evil is particularly manifest in Jesus’ healing miracles, most notably
in his exorcisms. It is in the demon-possessed, so Jesus’ contemporaries believed, that Satan was able
to prove beyond dispute that he was lord of this world. So if Jesus, “by the finger of God” (Lk 11:20;
the parallel in Mt 12:28 has “by the Spirit of God”), drives out demons, “then the reign of God has
come upon you,” since the very pillars on which Satan's supposed reign rests are under assault
(Käsemann 1980:66f).
Evil was experienced as something very real and tangible in the ancient world. It should therefore
not surprise us if the evangelists use “religious” words to describe what Jesus did in the face of
sickness, demon possession, and exploitation. One of those words is “to save” (Greek: sozein),
which for us has become an exclusively religious term. However, in at least eighteen cases the
evangelists use it with reference to Jesus’ healing of the sick. Thus there is, in Jesus’ ministry, no
tension between saving from sin and saving from physical ailment, between the spiritual and the
social. The same applies to the term used for “forgiveness” (Greek: aphesis); it includes a wide
range of meanings, from the freeing of bonded slaves to the cancellation of monetary debts,
eschatological liberation, and the forgiveness of sins. All shades of meaning of these terms give
expression to the all-embracing nature of God's reign; they aim at dissolving all forms of alienation
and at breaking down walls of hostility and exclusion (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:149; cf also the
chapter on Luke in this volume).
Does this mean that God's reign is political? Certainly, though not necessarily in the modern sense
of the word. We cannot apply Jesus’ ministry in a direct manner to our contemporary controversies. It
is not easy to spell out how the manifestation of God's reign in Christ can help us find the right
political system or an ideal economic order or a fair national labor policy or correct relations with
foreign powers. Jesus did not address the macrostructure of his own time. To the embarrassment of
many he appears to have said virtually nothing by way of criticism about the Roman masters of his
day. His immediate concern is the small world of Palestine and the Jewish rather than the Roman
establishment. It is wishful thinking to describe the movement he founded as a revolutionary
organization for the political liberation of the Jews. He was not a Zealot.10 When the people try to
make him king, he withdraws (Jn 6:15). This report is hardly a “distortion” of the tradition by John or
prudence on the part of Jesus since the time for a coup has not yet come, but it is consistent with what
we otherwise know about him (cf Crosby 1977:164f).
Even so, in another sense the manifestation of God's reign in Jesus is eminently political. To
declare lepers, tax-collectors, sinners and the poor to be “children of God's kingdom” is a decidedly
political statement, at least over against the Jewish establishment of the day. It expresses a profound
discontent with the way things are, a fervent desire to see them changed. It certainly does not wipe out
as if by magic the oppressive circumstances under which those people exist, but it brings their
circumstances within the force field of God's sovereign will and thereby relativizes them and robs
them of their ultimate validity. It assures the victims of society that they are no longer prisoners of an
omnipotent fate. Faith in the reality and presence of God's reign takes the form of a resistance
movement against fate and against being manipulated and exploited by others (Lochman 1986:67).
This upstart from Galilee and his ragged band of simple fisher-folk are indeed overturning the
well-ordered proprieties of society. They enter the public stage with a truly stupendous claim: that
Jesus is the embodiment and expression of God's presence among people, and that this is only the
beginning, that there is more to come. The second petition of the Lord's Prayer, “Your kingdom
come!” is therefore a word of defiance (Lochman l986:67); to pray it is a “subversive activity” (cf
the title of Crosby 1977). This is also how the authorities understand the ministry of Jesus: it is
seditious and therefore not to be tolerated. Jesus cannot but seem politically dangerous to the
establishment—and the authorities sense this, far more clearly, in fact, than Jesus’ own followers do.
In the end he is crucified because of what has been interpreted as his “political” claims. For this is
what they were—admittedly for different reasons—in the eyes of both the Roman and the Jewish
authorities.
It is from these observations that we may legitimately extrapolate from the “practice of Jesus”
(Echegaray 1984) to our own. We can neither apply Jesus’ words and ministry on a one-to-one basis
to a fundamentally different world nor just deduce “principles” from his ministry. Rather, and once
again, we are challenged to let Jesus inspire us to prolong the logic of his own ministry in an
imaginative and creative way amid changed historical conditions. Now, as then, it should make all the
difference to society if there is within it a group of human beings who, focusing their minds on the
reality of God's reign and praying for its coming, advocate the cause of the poor, serve those on the
periphery, raise up the oppressed and broken and, above all, “proclaim the year of the Lord's favof’
(cf Lochman 1986:67). Mission in the perspective of God's reign includes putting “poor, neglected,
and despised people on their feet again as having recovered before God and people their full
humanity” (Matthey 1980:170).
In Jesus’ ministry, then, God's reign is interpreted as the expression of God's caring authority over
the whole of life. Meanwhile, however, the counter-forces remain a reality. They continue to declare
themselves as the real absolutes. So we remain both impatient and modest. We know that our mission
will not usher in God's reign. Neither did Jesus. He inaugurated it but did not bring it to its
consummation. Like him, we are called to erect signs of God's ultimate reign—not more, but certainly
not less either (Käsemann 1980:67). As we pray “your kingdom come!” we also commit ourselves to
initiate, here and now, approximations and anticipations of God's reign. Once again: God's reign will
come, since it has already come. It is both bestowal and challenge, gift and promise, present and
future, celebration and anticipation (cf Boff 1983:16). We have the firm assurance that its coming
cannot be thwarted. “Even rejection, the cross and sin are not insuperable obstacles to God. Even the
enemies of the kingdom are at the service of the kingdom” (Boff 1983:60).
Jesus and the Law (the Torah)
We can only appreciate Jesus’ attitude toward the Torah if we view it as an integral element of his
consciousness of being the one who inaugurates the reign of God. It is in this sense that the theme
“Jesus and the Law” acquires significance for our understanding of both Jesus’ mission and our own.
Moltmann (1967:193) aptly summarizes:
The central place of the Torah in late Jewish apocalyptic is…taken by the person and the cross of Christ. The place of life in the
law is taken by fellowship with Christ in the following of the crucified one. The place of the self-preservation of the righteous
from the world is taken by the mission of the believer in the world.

Even so, according to the gospels, particularly Matthew, Jesus seems to view the Torah in a way
that is not essentially different from that of his contemporaries, including the Pharisees (Bornkamm
1965a:28). At closer look, however, there are some fundamental dissimilarities. For one thing, Jesus
attacks the hypocrisy of allowing a discrepancy between accepting the Law as authoritative and yet
not acting according to it. For another, he radicalizes the Law in an unparalleled manner (cf Mt 5:17-
48). Third, in supreme self-confidence he takes it upon himself simply to abrogate the law, or at least
certain elements in it.11
Why does he do that? This, of course, is the question his contemporaries also ask, either in utter
amazement or in bitter anger. The answer lies in several mutually related elements, all of which
involve Jesus’ understanding of his mission.
First, the reign of God and not the Torah is for Jesus the decisive principle of action. This does not
imply the annulment of the Law or antinominianism as though there could be a basic discrepancy
between God's reign and the God's Law. What happens, rather, is that the Law is pushed back in
relation to God's reign (Merklein 1978:95, 105f). And this reign of God manifests itself as love to all.
The Old Testament knows of God's unfathomable and tender love to Israel—dramatized, inter alia, in
the enacted parable of the prophet Hosea's marriage to a prostitute. Now, however, God's love begins
to reach out beyond the boundaries of Israel. This, says William Manson, was an absolutely new thing
in the religious history of humankind (1953:392).
Second, and intimately related to the point just mentioned: in Jesus’ ministry people matter more
than rules and rituals. The individual commandments are interpreted ad hominem. This is why
sometimes the Law's rigor is increased whereas, at other times, some commandments are simply
abrogated. With magnificent freedom Jesus disregards all regulations when, for instance, love for
people in need require him to heal even on the Sabbath (cf Schweizer 1971:34). In this way he
demonstrates that it is impossible to love God without loving one's neighbor. Love for people in need
is not secondary to love for God. It is part of it. Years later the first letter of John would formulate
this in a way that could not be misunderstood: “If any one says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he
is a liar” (4:20). Love of God, in Jesus’ ministry, is interpreted by love of neighbor. This also
involves new criteria for inter-human relations. The disciples of Jesus should reflect, in their
relations with others, a different standard of high and low, of great and small. They should do this by
serving others rather than ruling over them. In this they would emulate their Lord who washed their
feet. Jesus gives himself in love to others; so should they, constrained by his love. Does this not
reveal a profoundly missionary stance?
Jesus and His Disciples
In Mark's and Matthew's gospels Jesus’ public ministry begins with the proclamation: “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel!” (Mk 1:14f; Mt 4:17).
Immediately following this announcement, both evangelists relate the calling of the first four disciples
(Mk 1:16-20; Mt 4:18-22).
This sequence of events cannot have been accidental. Mark, in particular, clearly has an explicitly
missionary purpose in mind in his account of the calling of the disciples. The calling takes place on
the shores of Lake Galilee. This territory is, in Mark's gospel, the true scene of Jesus’ preaching and
the lake is for him a bridge toward the Gentiles. Mark thus puts a missionary stamp on his gospel
from the very first chapter. The disciples are called to be missionaries. In a study on Mark 1:16-20,
Pesch puts it as follows: “Their mission would take the fishers of humans across the lake to the
Gentiles, to the people for whom Jesus was to die (9:31;10:45)” (Pesch 1969:27—my translation).
“The calling of the disciples is a call to follow Jesus and a being set aside for missionary activities.
Calling, discipleship and mission belong together” (:15)—not only for the first disciples who walk
with Jesus but also for those who would respond to this call after Easter (:29). In light of this it is
appropriate that we reflect on the missionary significance of Jesus having gathered around him a band
of disciples.
The rabbis of Jesus’ time also had disciples (Aramaic: talmidim; Greek: mathetai). On the
surface there appears to be very little difference between the disciples of the rabbis and those of
Jesus. In both cases a disciple is always attached to a particular teacher. In substance, however, the
two types are fundamentally different. When we take a closer look at some of these differences we
shall notice that all of them, in one way or another, have to do with the way the evangelists understand
Jesus’ and his disciples’ mission (cf Rengstorf 1967:441455; Goppelt 1981:208f).
1. In the Judaism of Jesus’ time it was the talmid's prerogative to choose his own teacher and
attach himself to that teacher. None of Jesus’ disciples, however, attaches himself of his own volition
to Jesus. Some try to do so but are discouraged in no uncertain terms (Mt 8:19f; Lk 9:57f, 61f). Those
who do follow him are able to do so simply because they are called by him, because they respond to
the command, “Follow me!” The choice is Jesus’, not the disciples’.
Moreover, the call does not seem to expect anything but an immediate and positive response. And
the response is recorded as if it is the most natural thing in the world, without any suggestion of the
possibility of reservations and difficulties on the part of those who are called (Schweizer 1971:40).
There is no hint at any compromise; the one called, leaves “everything,” whether his tax-collector's
booth, as in the case of Levi (Mt 9:9), or their fishing boats, as in the case of the first four disciples.
For both Matthew and Mark, then, the response of the first four disciples to Jesus’ calling—
following, as it does, hard on the one-sentence summary of his first preaching—suggests that they are
the first who “repent and believe.” Getting up and following Jesus is the same as repenting and
believing. In the synoptic gospels repentance (metanoia) is not a psychological process but means
embracing the reality and the presence of the reign of God (Rütti 1972:340). The call to discipleship
is a call into God's reign and is, as such, an act of grace (Schweizer 1971:40: cf Lohfink 1988:11).
2. In the case of late Judaism, it was the Law, the Torah, that stood in the center. It was for his
knowledge of the Torah and only for this, that would-be disciples approached a particular rabbi. “The
personal authority which a teacher of the Torah enjoys he owes, for all the recognition of his own
personal gifts, to the Torah which he sacrificially studies” (Rengstorf 1967:447f). The authority was
the Torah's, not the teacher's. Jesus, however, waives any legitimation of his authority on the Torah, or
on anything else, for that matter. He expects his disciples to renounce everything not for the sake of
the Law but for his sake alone: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…
and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me…and he who loses his life for
my sake will find it” (Mt 10:38f). No Jewish rabbi could say this. Here Jesus takes the place of the
Torah.
3. In Judaism discipleship was merely a means to an end. Being a talmid, a student of the law, was
no more than a transitional stage. The student's goal was to become a rabbi himself. The rabbi was, in
this process, certainly indispensable, but he himself looked forward to the crowning of his own
efforts—the day his disciples would become teachers like himself. With this in mind, he guided and
helped them eventually to master the Torah.
For the disciple of Jesus, however, the stage of discipleship is not the first step toward a
promising career. It is in itself the fulfillment of his destiny. The disciple of Jesus never graduates into
a rabbi. He may, of course, became an apostle, but an apostle is not a disciple with a degree in
theology. Apostleship is not, in itself, an elevated status. An apostle is, essentially, a witness to the
resurrection.
4. The disciples of the rabbis were only their students, nothing more. Jesus’ disciples are also his
servants (douloi) something quite alien to late Judaism (Rengstorf 1967:448). They do not just bow
to his greater knowledge; they obey him. He is not only their teacher, but also their Lord. He says to
them: “A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Mt 10:24).
At the same time, however, the Master is also a servant. So John tells us of Jesus performing the
most menial task—that of washing the feet of his disciples. The culmination of his service is, of
course, his death on the cross. A key saying of Jesus in Mark's gospel is found in chapter 10:45: “For
the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Thus servanthood, as a matter of course, involves suffering, also for the followers of Jesus. In fact,
“the tradition is unanimous that…Jesus left His disciples in no doubt that they were committing
themselves to suffering if they followed Him” (Rengstorf 1967:449). In Mark 10:45 “the Son of Man
calls (his disciples) to walk the road on which he precedes them” (Breytenbach 1984:278—my
translation).
5. What, however, do they become disciples for? First, as Mark puts it, they are called to be
disciples simply “to be with him” (3:14). Schweizer (1971:41) elucidates:
It means that the disciples walk with him, eat and drink with him, listen to what he says and see what he does, are invited with
him into houses and hovels, or are turned away with him. They are not called to great achievements, religious or otherwise. They
are invited as companions to share in what takes place around Jesus. They are therefore called not to attach much importance to
themselves and what they accomplish or fail to accomplish, but to attach great importance to what takes place through Jesus and
with him. They are called to delegate their cares and worries and anxieties.

Mark says more, however. Jesus also appoints them “to be sent out to preach and have authority to
cast out demons” (3:14f). Following Jesus or being with him, and sharing in his mission thus belong
together (Schneider 1982:84). The call to discipleship is not for its own sake; it enlists the disciples
in the service of God's reign. The peculiar expression “fishers” of human beings is in this respect of
particular importance. The phrase is a key one in Mark's gospel and undoubtedly points to the
disciples’ future involvement in mission (Pesch 1969).
Again the difference between the disciples of Jesus and the talmidim of the Jewish teachers is
striking. To follow Jesus does not mean passing on his teachings or becoming the faithful custodians
of his insights, but to be his “witnesses.”
Jesus sent out his disciples to preach and heal during his own lifetime—about this there can be
little doubt, even if the stories about these missions, as related in all three synoptic gospels, reveal
evidence of the church's missionary experience after Easter (Hahn 1965:40; Hengel 1983b:178, note
75; Pesch 1982:27). What is clear from these commissions is that Jesus endows his disciples with
full authority to do his work. As a matter of fact, in most cases the synoptic gospels use the same
words for the activities of both Jesus and the disciples, for instance, in respect of preaching, teaching,
evangelizing, exorcising, and healing. The disciples have simply to proclaim and do what Jesus
proclaims and does (Frankemölle 1974:105f). They are, in Paul's language, Christ's ambassadors
through whom God is making his appeal (2 Cor 5:20).
6. Another, and final, difference between the talmidim of the Jewish teachers and the disciples of
Jesus is that the latter are the vanguard of the messianic people of the end-time. The gospel of Mark,
in particular, puts discipleship within the force field between the passion of the earthly Jesus and the
parousia of the coming Son of Man; to be a disciple means to follow the suffering Jesus and look
forward to his return in glory (cf Breytenbach 1984:passim). It is the expectation of the parousia
which provides the motivation for discipleship and compels it to express itself in mission (:338). The
expectation of the future is an integral element in Mark's understanding of discipleship-in-mission
(:280-330).
Precisely as vanguard of the messianic people of the end-time, en route toward the parousia, the
disciples should not regard themselves as an exclusive group of super-followers of Jesus. Therefore
the term mathetes is not restricted to them. They are simply the first fruits of the kingdom, which is
clearly not to be “under the management of hereditary administrators” (Lochman 1986:69). They are
essentially members of the Jesus community just like everybody else. Paul Minear (1977:146)
comments,
In the early Church the stories of the disciples were normally understood as archetypes of the dilemmas and opportunities that
later Christians experienced. Each Gospel pericope became a paradigm with a message for the Church, because each Christian
had inherited a relationship to Jesus similar to that of James and John and the others.

Naturally this applies to their mission also. The “ordinary” members of the first Christian
communities cannot appropriate the term “disciple” to themselves unless they are also willing to be
enlisted in Jesus’ fellowship of service to the world. The entry point for all alike is receiving
forgiveness and accepting the reality of God's reign; this determines the whole life of the disciple and
of the community to which he or she belongs.
Mission from the Perspective of Easter
For the disciples of Jesus the Easter experience was pivotal. They interpreted the cross as the end of
the old world and the resurrection of Jesus as the irruption of the new. The resurrection was
ultimately viewed as the vindication of Jesus (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:158; Meyer 1986:48) as
putting a seal of approval on the practice of Jesus (Echegaray 1984:xvi).
It is only because of Easter that our gospels were written. Without Easter they make no sense.
Even more particularly, they were written from the perspective of Easter; the glow of that experience
permeates all the gospels not only the fourth). The stories about pre-Easter events express the
message of an ardent faith more than the chronicles of past events. Yet, even if the memory of the
deeds and words of the earthly Jesus is colored by the Easter experience, it is not blurred by it
(Echegaray 1984:17). It is, in fact, precisely the Easter faith that enables the early Christian
community to see the practice of Jesus in a specific light—as the criterion for understanding their own
situation and calling (cf Kramm 1979:216; Breytenbach 1984:336). “It is only on the basis of Easter
that the Jesus affair had a future. Easter had a creative significance for the church” (Kasting 1969:126
—my translation).
It is equally clear that it was the Easter experience that determined the early Christian community's
self-definition and identity. Nothing else suffices to account for its coming into being (Meyer
1986:36). Not that its self-understanding was the product solely of the Easter experience. Rather,
having been initiated by the historic mission of Jesus, the apostles’ self-understanding was
consummated and sealed by the Easter experience (:43, 49). It was also Easter that kept the
community alive. It is therefore only natural that all our gospels would link Easter with mission and
that this event would play a key role in the origins of the mission of the early church (cf Kasting
1969:81,127, Rütti: 1972:124). It is the exalted Christ who draws all people to him (cf Jn 12:32; cf
also the hymn which Paul quotes in 1 Tim 3:16 and which likewise links Easter with mission).
In terms of the New Testament the exaltation of Jesus is the sign of the victory Jesus has already
won over the evil one. Mission means the proclamation and manifestation of Jesus’ all-embracing
reign, which is not yet recognized and acknowledged by all but is nevertheless already a reality. So
the church's mission will not inaugurate God's reign, but neither will the possible failure of that
mission thwart it. The reign of God is not a program but a reality, ushered in by the Easter event. The
first Christians respond to this reality, which has overpowered them in the Easter experience, by
mission. They feel themselves challenged to declare the praises of God who has called them out of
darkness into his wonderful light (cf 1 Pet 2:9).
Intimately related to the resurrection, almost part of the Easter event itself, is the gift of the Spirit,
which is equally integrally linked to mission. Roland Allen (1962) was one of the first theologians to
have stressed the missionary dimension of pneumatology. Subsequently Harry Boer (1961) undertook
a thorough study in which he demonstrated the indissoluble link between Pentecost and mission.
Berkhof (1964:30; cf 30-41) regards mission as the first activity of the Spirit. Newbigin (1982:148;
1987:17) calls mission “an overflow from Pentecost.” Thus, if it was the experience of the
resurrection that gave the early Christians certainty, it was Pentecost that gave them boldness; only
through the power of the Spirit did they become witnesses (Acts 1:8). The Spirit is the risen Christ
who is active in the world. On the day of Pentecost Christ, through the Spirit, throws open the doors
and thrusts the disciples out into the world.
Where this occurs, so the New Testament authors bear witness, the forces of the future world
stream in. Easter is “the dawn of the end-time” (Kasting 1969: 129; cf Rütti 1972:240), and a high-
strung expectation of the end characterizes the early Christian community. The time is short. The
eschatological people of God has to be gathered immediately. The commissionings reported in the
synoptic gospels, particularly in Matthew 10 and Luke 10, reflect much of this—the disciples have to
travel light, keep moving, and waste no time on the road.
Even so, scholars tend to overemphasize the early Christian community's Naherwartung (its
expectation of the imminent end of the world) or, rather, to misinterpret it. It differs fundamentally
from the expectations of the end prevalent among apocalyptic groups of the time for whom all
salvation was still future.12 For the Jesus community, on the contrary, the resurrection of Christ and
the coming of the Spirit are tangible proof of the “already-ness” of God's reign. The future dimension
of God's reign and of salvation is nurtured by the present reality of that reign. The “not yet” feeds on
the “already.” Two orders of life, two ages, have come to co-exist. The new age has begun, but the
old has yet to end (Man-son 1953:390f; cf also Rütti 1972:104, 240). It is therefore incorrect to claim
that the so-called delay of the parousia plunged the early church into an extreme crisis; this was not
the case (Kasting 1969:142; Pesch 1982:32). This is not to deny that the delay of the parousia did not
put the early Christian community under considerable strain. What I do deny is that it had a paralyzing
effect on the early church. The very opposite was true, at least in the first decades.
The early church understood its missionary engagement with the world in terms of this end-time,
which had already come and is at the same time still pending. As a matter of fact, its missionary
involvement was itself a constitutive element of its eschatological self-understanding. The
expectation of the imminent end was a component of and presupposition for mission; at the same time
it expressed itself in mission (Pesch 1982:32). It is not true that, in the early church, mission
gradually replaced the expectation of the end. Rather, mission was, in itself, an eschatological event.

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MISSION

Having briefly surveyed what I have termed four salient features of Jesus’ person and ministry, which
may help us better to understand the missionary thrust of his person and work, I now turn to the
beginnings of the Christian mission.
In the years immediately following the first Easter, the early church's missionary engagement
remained confined to Israel, as Jesus own ministry had been. Jerusalem remained the center of the
new community, the members of which continued to visit the temple regularly. The restoration of
God's covenant people took priority; in this final hour it had to be gathered and renewed (Kasting
1969:130). To abandon Israel now would be to be unfaithful to the intention of Jesus. The disciples
had “the sacred duty to proclaim to apostate Israel its last chance of repentance before the coming of
the Son of man” (Hengel 1983b:58).
During the early stages there was clearly no intention to form a separate religion. The Judaism of
the time exhibited a degree of pluralism which permitted Jewish Christianity to exist as one group
among many without severing its links with the main body. The members of the Jesus community
continued to worship in the temple and the synagogues. The situation only changed after the Jewish
War and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 (Brown 1980:209, 212; Schweizer 1971:123).
But what about a mission to Gentiles? The first Christian community was not opposed to the
conversion of Gentiles. Contemporary Judaism was not averse to winning proselytes, and it would
have been extremely odd if Jewish Christians had not at least matched other Jews in this respect.
Many of the first Gentile converts to Jesus were, in fact, proselytes or “God-fearers.” One of the
attractions of the Christian church was that, whereas proselytes were never fully integrated into
Judaism (cf Malherbe 1983:67), they were embraced without reserve by Christians (Hahn 1984:269).
Yet the Jewish Christian community did not, in these early stages, go out of its way to win Gentiles.
The first conversions of Gentiles came about as a spin-off of a mission directed primarily at Jews
(Kasting 1969:109).
In the general spirit of the time it would, moreover, have been the most natural thing in the world
to require Gentile converts to be circumcised. It is, however, possible that there were occasional
exceptions to this rule from a fairly early stage. We simply know too little about the origins of the
Gentile mission to make any categorical statements about its nature and scope; it is therefore
advisable to be circumspect and reserved in our claims (cf Pesch 1982:45). Certainly many Gentiles
regarded circumcision as an insurmountable stumbling block to becoming Christians. We know that
this was a problem for converts to Judaism and it is only logical that the same would be true of
prospective converts to the Jesus movement. Gradually, however, it became the practice in some
circles to accept Gentiles into the Christian fold without first circumcising them.
This did not come about without controversy, as is evident from a reading of the Book of Acts. In
order to appreciate something of this controversy and its significance for the early Christian mission,
it is necessary to take cognizance of the differences in self-understanding between the hebraioi
(“Hebrews,” or Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians) and the hellenistai (“Hellenists,” or Greek-
speaking Jewish Christians) (cf Hengel 1983a:passim; Meyer 1986:53-83).
The “Hebrews,” initially under the leadership of Peter and embracing all the “apostles,”
understood themselves as embodying and anticipating the restoration of Israel. Calling the nation to
enter into its rightful heritage, they insisted that there was no entry into this heritage except through
confessing the risen Messiah and being baptized (Meyer 1986:169). At the same time, Torah piety
belonged to their horizon, and they assimilated the experience of salvation in Christ in a way that left
allegiance to the Torah intact (:175). This made it possible for them to remain in Jerusalem when
persecution broke out (Acts 8:1). They believed that their mission was limited to the house of Israel
and that the salvation of the Gentiles would take place by means of the eschatological pilgrimage of
the nations to Jerusalem, as depicted in the Old Testament (:67, 82). Their self-definition made it
impossible for them to embark on a mission to the world outside Israel (:67).
The Hellenists differed from the Hebrews at decisive points. In their case, a paradigm shift was
much more clearly in evidence. By translating Jesus’ message into the Greek language, this community
became the “needle's eye” through which the earliest Christian kerygma found a way into the Greco-
Roman world (Hengel 1983a:26f). The Hellenists believed that the Easter experience had bypassed
Torah and temple. It would be “the Spirit” rather than the Law that would guide the believers’ life. It
was this attitude which brought them into conflict with the Jewish authorities and precipitated the
murder of Stephen and the subsequent persecution of the Hellenists (cf Hengel 1986:71-80).
The Hellenists’ critical attitude toward the Law and the temple reflected the attitude and ministry
of the historical Jesus (Hengel 1983a:24, 29; 1986:72f, 84). The same was true of their openness to
Samaritans and Gentiles. Thus, when they were expelled from Jerusalem, they as a matter of course
began to preach among the despised Samaritans as well as among the Gentiles in Phoenicia and Syria
as far as Antioch. It was equally a matter of course that they proclaimed a gospel which no longer
required circumcision and the observance of the ritual law (Hengel 1986:100; Meyer 1986:82f;
Wedderburn 1988:163).
It was in Antioch that the decisive breakthrough occurred (Hengel 1986:99110). Antioch was the
third largest city in the ancient world, after Rome and Alexandria, and capital of the combined Roman
province of Syria and Cylicia during this period. It became the first great city in which Christianity
gained a footing, when the “largely anonymous, extraordinary assured, open, active, pneumatic, city-
oriented, Greek-speaking Jewish Christian heirs of Stephen” (Meyer 1986:97), exiled from
Jerusalem, arrived there and founded a church made up of both Jews and Gentiles.
The Antioch church was, by any standards, a remarkable body of people. In Jerusalem the Jesus
movement had still been regarded as a Jewish sect, by Jews and Romans alike. In Antioch it soon
became clear that the community was neither Jewish nor “traditionally” Gentile, but constituted a
third entity. Luke mentions that it was here that the disciples were first called “Christians” (Acts
11:26).
The Antioch community was indeed amazingly innovative. Soon Barnabas was sent there by the
Jerusalem church (Acts 11:22), not least to keep an eye on developments which already at that stage
were causing some alarm in the parent community. Yet instead of censuring the Antiochians for what
he saw, Barnabas was himself caught up in the events there and “encouraged” the believers (11:23).
Luke describes him as “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,” and adds that, after his
arrival, even more people were “added to the Lord” (11:24). Barnabas then remembered Paul, whom
he had first introduced to the church leadership in Jerusalem (Acts 9:27), and now went to Tarsus to
persuade Paul to join him in Antioch. In addition to the rapid growth of the Christian community,
startling things were happening there. There was, to begin with, no church apartheid in Antioch. Jews
and Gentiles ate together—something unparalleled in the ancient world, particularly since those
Gentiles were not circumcised. It was evident that, whereas the Hebrews found their identity in the
past of Israel and of Jesus, the Hellenists understood themselves as the link with the future, not as
heralds only of a renewed Israel but as vanguard of a new humanity.
Even so, the Hellenists did not immediately launch a worldwide mission from Antioch (cf Hengel
1986:80). When it did come to that, it was Paul who became the catalytic factor. He was the one who
provided the theological basis for the Torah-free self-definition of Gentile Christianity; it was his
message that made the Christian kerygma intelligible and viable in the Mediterranean world and that
prepared the way for a far-flung missionary program (cf Hengel 1983a:29; Meyer 1986:169).
Through the ministry of Paul and Barnabas the Antioch church became a community with a concern
for people they had never met—people living on Cyprus, the mainland of Asia Minor, and elsewhere.
They decided to send missionaries there…and went ahead and commissioned their two most gifted
and experienced leaders to go (Acts 13:1f). This far-reaching decision and action was, however, not
peripheral to the early Christian community, a kind of expendable extra. Rather, in retrospect it
becomes clear “that Christianity had never been more itself, more consistent with Jesus and more
evidently en route to its own future, than in the launching of the world mission” (Meyer 1986:206).
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the situation was apparently different. There was little joy when
Cornelius was converted, only horror over the fact that Peter had entered the house of uncircumcised
men and eaten with them (Acts 11:2f). Later, James sent some men from Jerusalem to inspect the
situation in Antioch and report on it (Gal 2:12). They immediately demanded that the Gentile converts
be circumcised (Acts 15:1) and refused to have table fellowship with them until they were. Peter and
some other Jewish Christians who had shared fully with the Antioch believers until then, were so
unnerved and intimidated by the uncompromising attitude of the Jerusalem delegation that they, too,
separated themselves from the Gentile Christians (Gal 2:12f).
Still, the differences between the hebraioi and the hellenistai should not be exaggerated. Early
Christianity was a living organism, developing all the time; it cannot be frozen into two mutually
exclusive positions (cf Meyer 1986:195f). Both groups confessed Jesus as the risen Messiah and
practiced baptism as condition for incorporation into the new community; both agreed that they shared
an identity that was new and distinctive and normative (cf Meyer 1986:169). One has to add that the
inclusion of the Gentiles in God's saving act was integral to the faith convictions of both hebraioi and
hellenistai. Whereas the former expected their inclusion to be brought about by the eschatological
pilgrimage of the nations to Jerusalem, promised in the Old Testament, the latter believed that the
Gentiles would be brought in through an historical missionary outreach of the church (Meyer 1986:67,
82, 206). The two communities certainly had different self-understandings: the hebraioi considered
themselves as the beginning of the restoration of Israel; the hellenistai regarded themselves as
launching-pad for a new humanity. It is, however, unwarranted to deduce two gospels from two self-
understandings (Meyer 1986:99).
 Yet even within each community there were differences. This was particularly true of the
hebraioi. It is difficult to piece together a coherent picture of the situation, but it may be correct to
surmise that this group consisted of a center (represented by James, the brother of Jesus), a “left
wing” (represented by Peter and John), and a “right wing” made up of those who were not prepared
to concede the possibility of Gentiles being incorporated into the community without circumcision (cf
Meyer 1986:107). Peter's willingness (if only after some hesitation!) to go to Cornelius and baptize
uncircumcised Gentiles, as well as the Jerusalem elders’ fierce reaction to this (Acts 11:2f), surely
indicate that he really stood closer to Paul than is often recognized (cf Dietzfelbinger 1985:139). He
was not a typical representative of a Jewish Christianity practicing strict observance of the Law, but
occupied a mediating position, although he tended to vacillate under pressure (cf Hengel 1986:92-
98). All of this may have led to him being replaced by the more conservative James as leader of the
Jerusalem church (around AD 43/44). In subsequent years the “right wing” became ever more
influential: in Acts 21:20 Luke refers to a situation in the mid-fifties, when “all” believers had
become “zealous for the law” (cf Hengel 1983a:25; 1986:95-97). The “Judaizers,” who opposed
Paul's work in the fifties and sixties, have to be located somewhere on the fringe of this “right wing.”
It is hard to know whether the Judaistic viewpoint had been there from the very beginning. Perhaps
it only developed in the late forties of the first century (Kasting 1969:116). On the other hand, it could
have been present latently since a very early stage. Still, there was little cause for anxiety then. The
Judaizers only really became alarmed when the unprecedented growth of the Gentile Christian
community came to their attention. They had previously been irritated by the views and activities of
the Hellenists, but not really threatened since there were so few Gentile converts. By the late forties,
however, they had reason to fear that the very character and composition of the Jewish Christian
community was in jeopardy. Recruitment from the Jewish community had probably already passed its
peak, but the Christian church had remained essentially Jewish since circumcision still provided a
hurdle to Gentiles who might not be prepared to embrace the Jewish lifeview and worldview. With
this hurdle gone, and Gentiles pouring into the church, the Judaizers balked. Their primary targets
were Paul, Barnabas, and the Antioch community, where they detected antinominian tendencies and
where Jewish and Gentile Christians were living in full fellowship. A major crisis was on hand and it
was decided to attempt to resolve it at what became known as the “Apostolic Council.” It is not easy
to establish in detail how the crisis actually unfolded and was dealt with. We can, however, piece
together some of its major elements from Luke's report in Acts 15 and Paul's reflections in Galatians
2, in spite of some discrepancies between the two accounts. In spite of the fact that many scholars are
rather skeptical about the historical trustworthiness of Luke's account that an agreement was reached
at the Council (cf Brown 1980: 208-210; Sanders 1983:187; Martyn 1985:307-324), others believe
that substantial progress toward the resolution of a particularly thorny issue was indeed reached (cf
Holmberg 1978:20-32). According to this latter view, the fact that the meeting had to take place in
Jerusalem and that the apostles had a crucial role to play in the debate, was not something accepted
grudgingly by Paul and the rest of the Antiochian delegation, nor a mere conciliatory gesture on their
part; rather, the unique position of Jerusalem and the apostles was part and parcel of their self-
understanding (cf Holmherg 1978:26-28). This “concession” was not exploited by the “pillars” in
Jerusalem; like Paul, they recoiled from division and were prepared to take every possible step to
retain unity. There was a general desire to listen to each other. The Jerusalem leaders did not wish to
do anything that would jeopardize Gentile Christian communities, some of which had been in
existence for more than a decade at this time (Hengel 1986:116). They were able to differentiate
between Torah piety and the heart of the Christian experience. All these factors together prepared the
way for the decision taken at the council, which Meyer (1986:101) identifies as “by all odds the
cardinal policy decision of the first-century church.”
It goes without saying that there were, both before and after the council, Christian hebraioi who
were stubbornly critical of the very idea of a Torah-free mission (Meyer 1986:99). At the council
they were still in a minority. In subsequent years they were to gain more and more influence in the
Jerusalem church; Luke's account of the conflict-ridden situation that obtained during Paul's last visit
to Jerusalem (Acts 21:17-26) seems to underline this (Hengel 1986:116f).
Differences about the issues debated during the council persisted until the Jewish War. Even
before the destruction of the temple and the fall of Jerusalem, however, most Jewish Christians had
left Judea. By the time the war broke out, the Sadducee movement was losing popularity and support.
When the temple was destroyed, the Sadducees lost the last foothold they had had. The turmoil of the
war spelled the end for them, but also for the Zealots and the Essenes as separate organized groups.
Only the Pharisees survived the crisis, partly because their strength lay in the synagogues, scattered
throughout the Jewish land and farther afield. In the years immediately after the war they managed to
gain control over virtually all of Judaism. As they rose to ascendancy they began to introduce
restrictions on Jewish Christians who were still members of local synagogue communities. It became
increasingly difficult to remain both a practicing Jew and a Christian. Eventually, around AD 85, it
was made impossible. The Eighteen Benedictions, promulgated by the Pharisees at their new center
at Jamnia, included a clause which anathematized both Christians (“Nazarenes”) and heretics (minim)
and excluded them from the synagogues.13
This did not spell the end of the Jesus movement. It had by that time survived its first major
challenge: whether it was to remain essentially within the confines of Judaism or live up to the logic
of Jesus’ own ministry and transcend all barriers. It chose the latter. The community's sense of
mission made it impossible for its members to do otherwise; once their horizon had been widened
infinitely there really was no possibility of turning back The church had irrevocably taken its “leap
for life,” and it did so only just in time (Dix 1953:55).

THE MISSIONARY PRACTICE OF JESUS

AND THE EARLY CHURCH
Let me now attempt to draw together some major ingredients of the missionary ministry of Jesus and
the early church.
1. First and foremost, the early Christian mission involved the person of Jesus himself. It remains
impossible, however, to fit Jesus into a clearly circumscribable framework. Schweizer rightly calls
him “the man who fits no formula” (1971:13). What he said and did, says Schweizer (:25f),
shocked all his contemporaries. They would have understood and tolerated an ascetic who wrote off this world for the sake of
the future kingdom of God. They would have understood and tolerated an apocalypticist who lived only for hope, completely
uninterested in worldly affairs…They would have understood and tolerated a Pharisee who urgently summoned people to accept
the kingdom of God here and now in obedience to the law, for the sake of participating in the future kingdom of God. They
would have understood and tolerated a realist or skeptic who took his stand in this life with both feet on the ground, declaring
himself an agnostic with respect to any future expectations. But they could not understand a man who claimed that the kingdom
of God came upon men in what he himself said and did, but nevertheless with incomprehensible caution refused to perform
decisive miracles; healed individuals, but refused to put an end to the misery of leprosy or blindness; spoke of destroying the old
temple and building a new one, but did not even boycott the Jerusalem cult like the Qumran sect to inaugurate a new, purified
cult in the cloister of the desert; who above all spoke of the impotence of those who can only kill the body, but refused to drive
the Romans from the country.
 In all our discussions about Jesus’ mission we should keep this perspective in mind.
2. The early Christian mission was political, indeed revolutionary. Ernst Bloch, the Marxist
philosopher, once said that it was difficult to wage a revolution without the Bible. To this Moltmann
(1975:6) adds, referring to Acts 17:6f, “It is even more difficult not to bring about a revolution with
the Bible.”
In his definitive three-volume study of political metaphysics from Solon (sixth century BC) to
Augustine (fifth century AD), the German jurist, Arnold Ehrhardt, has demonstrated the subversive
nature of the early Christian faith and documents (1959:5-44). An authority on Roman and Greek
jurisprudence and politics in antiquity, Ehrhardt was able to identify many early Christian sayings and
attitudes that were outright seditious at the time but which we no longer experience as such. This
applies not only to the Jesus movement in Palestine around AD 30, but also to Paul, Luke, and other
New Testament writers. The Christian movement of the first centuries was a radically revolutionary
movement “and ought to be that today also” but, adds Ehrhardt, we should then keep in mind that
revolutions are not to be evaluated in terms of the terror they spread, nor of the destruction they cause,
but rather in terms of the alternatives they are able to offer (:19). In its missionary outreach into the
Greco-Roman world the early church offered such alternatives. It rejected all gods and in doing this
demolished the metaphysical foundations of prevailing political theories. In a great variety of forms,
all of which made sense in the religio-political context of the time, Christians confessed Jesus as
Lord of all lords—the most revolutionary political demonstration imaginable in the Roman Empire of
the first centuries of the Christian era The idea of “religion as a private affair,” of divorcing the
“spiritual” from the “physical,” was an unthinkable attitude in light of the all-embracing nature of
God's reign ushered in by Jesus.
3. The revolutionary nature of the early Christian mission manifested itself, inter alia, in the new
relationships that came into being in the community. Jew and Roman, Greek and barbarian, free and
slave, rich and poor, woman and man, accepted one another as brothers and sisters. It was a
movement without analogy, indeed a “sociological impossibility” (Hoekendijk 1967a:245). Small
wonder that the early Christian community caused so much astonishment in the Roman Empire and
beyond. The reaction was not always positive. In fact, the Christian community and its faith was so
different from anything known in the ancient world that it often made no sense to others. Suetonius
described Christianity as a “new and malevolent superstition”; Tacitus called it “vain and insane,”
blamed Christians for their “hatred of the human race,” and referred to them as “reprobate characters”
because they despised the temples as morgues, scorned the gods, and mocked sacred things
(references in Harnack 1962:267-270; for an excellent survey of pagan views of Christians during the
first Christian centuries, cf Wilken 1980:passim). What Christians were and did simply fell outside of
the frame of reference of many philosophers of the period. At the same time, it should be remembered
that, during the first century, Christians were criticized for social rather than political reasons. Only
as Christianity began to assume a separate identity as a potentially powerful movement was political
action directed against it (cf Malherbe 1983:21f).
Still, many of their contemporaries began to see something more positive in the Christians.
Tertullian mentioned that they were referred to as a “third race,” after the Romans and Greeks (the
first race) and the Jews (the second). About the year 200 the designation third race for Christians was
perfectly common on the lips of pagans in Carthage. It soon became a term of honor on the lips of the
Christians themselves (Harnack 1962:271-278), and was perhaps the most revolutionary notion of all
used at that time (Ehrhardt 1959:88f). Christians—so we read in the second century Letter to
Diognetus—are not distinguished from the rest of humankind as regards their speech, their customs,
and where they live. There remains a critical distance between them and reality around them,
however. They are kept in the world as in a prison-house, and yet they are the ones who hold the
world together.
The way in which they held the world together was, preeminently, through their practice of love
and service to all. Harnack devotes an entire chapter of his book on the mission and expansion of the
early church to what he calls “the gospel of love and charity” (1962:147-98). Through meticulous
research he pieced together a remarkable picture of the early Christians’ involvement with the poor,
orphans, widows, the sick, mine-workers, prisoners, slaves, and travellers. “The new language on the
lips of Christians,” he summarizes, “was the language of love. But it was more than a language, it was
a thing of power and action” (:149). This was a “social gospel” in the very best sense of the word
and was practiced not as a stratagem to lure outsiders to the church but simply as a natural expression
of faith in Christ.
4. In their mission the early Christians did not usher in utopia, nor did they attempt to do so. Their
invocation, “Marana tha!” (“Our Lord, come!”) expressed an intense hope that had not yet been
fulfilled. Injustice had not yet vanished, oppression had not yet been eliminated, poverty, hunger, even
persecution were still very much the order of the day.
The same was of course true of Jesus’ own earthly ministry. He did not heal and liberate everyone
who came to him: In the words of Ernst Käsemann (1980:67):
The earthly paradise in no way began with him, and what he actually did brought him in the end to the cross. Through him, the
reign of God was carried into the demonic kingdom but not finally and universally completed there. He established signs showing
that this kingdom had drawn near and that the struggle with the powers and authorities of this age had begun.

In his earthly ministry, death, and resurrection, and in the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of
Pentecost, the forces of the future world began to stream in. But the counter-forces also rushed in—
the destructive forces of alienation and of human rebellion—in an attempt to thwart the irruption of
God's new world. God's reign did not come in all its fullness.
Jesus’ ministry of erecting signs of God's incipient reign was emulated by the early church.
Christians were not called to do more than erect signs; neither were they called to do less.
5. When the infant Jesus was presented to God in the Jerusalem temple, so Luke tells us, the aged
Simeon blessed him and said to Mary, “This child is set…for a sign that is spoken against” (Lk 2:34).
So even the signs that he did erect and the sign that he himself was were ambiguous and disputed. It
was not possible to convince everybody of the authenticity of Jesus. He ministered in weakness,
under a shadow, as it were. This is, however, how authentic mission always presents itself—in
weakness. As Paul says, in defiance of all logic: “It is when I am weak that I am strong” (2 Cor
12:10).
It was, we are told, by the marks of his passion that the disciples were able to identify the risen
Lord (Jn 20:20). It happened again, says John, when Thomas was with the others, a week later.
Similarly, Cleopas and his friend recognized Jesus when he broke the bread and they saw his hands
(Lk 24:31f). The risen Lord still carries in his body the scars of his passion. The Greek word for
“witness” is martys. From this our word “martyr” is derived, for in the early church the martys often
had to seal his martyria (witness) with his blood. “Martyrdom and mission,” says Hans von
Campenhausen (1974:71), “belong together. Martyrdom is especially at home on the mission field.”

WHERE THE EARLY CHURCH FAILED

I am, of course, not suggesting that everything was well in the early church. It certainly was not! We
only have to read Paul's first letter to the Corinthians and the letters to the seven churches of Asia
Minor (Rev 2-3) to realize that the early Christian communities were as far from being ideal as our
own churches are. Neither was this phenomenon the result of a late development, say only toward the
end of the first century AD. No, the flaws were there from the beginning. There is, for instance,
evidence of rivalries at an early stage among the disciples of Jesus. To mention only one example:
James and John asked for special seats of honor in Jesus’ kingdom (Mk 10:35-41), to the indignation
of the others. There are, moreover (and particularly in Mark), many examples of the disciples’ lack of
understanding and faith (cf Breytenbach 1984:191-206). And the book of Acts, in spite of presenting,
on the whole, an idealized picture of the early church, does not hide from us some of the tensions,
failures, and sins of early Christians, including the leadership.
I shall not say more about these general shortcomings in early Christianity. Yet I do wish to attend,
very briefly, to some more specific weaknesses of the first Christians in the area of mission—
weaknesses which threatened, in different degrees, to undo the integral nature of the first paradigm
shift.
1. I have suggested that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. Those who followed
him were given no name to distinguish them from other groups, no creed of their own, no rite which
revealed their distinctive group character, no geographical center from which they would operate
(Schweizer 1971:42; Goppelt 1981:208). The twelve were to be the vanguard of all Israel and,
beyond Israel, by implication, of the whole ecumene. The community around Jesus was to function as
a kind of pars pro toto, a community for the sake of all others, a model for others to emulate and be
challenged by. Never, however, was this community to sever itself from the others.
This high level of calling was, however, not maintained for long. Already at a very early stage
Christians tended to be more aware of what distinguished them from others than of their calling and
responsibility toward those others. Their survival as a separate religious group, rather than their
commitment to the reign of God, began to preoccupy them. In the words of Alfred Loisy (1976:166),
“Jesus foretold the kingdom and it was the Church that came.” In the course of time the Jesus
community simply became a new religion, Christianity, a new principle of division among humankind.
And so it has remained to this day.
2. Intimately linked to this first failure of the early church is a second: it ceased to be a movement
and turned into an institution. There are essential differences between an institution and a movement,
says H. R. Niebuhr (following Bergson): the one is conservative, the other progressive; the one is
more or less passive, yielding to influences from outside, the other is active, influencing rather than
being influenced; the one looks to the past, the other to the future (Niebuhr 1959:11f). In addition, we
might add, the one is anxious, the other is prepared to take risks; the one guards boundaries, the other
crosses them.
We perceive something of this difference between an institution and a movement if we compare the
Christian community in Jerusalem with that of Antioch in the forties of the first century AD. The
Antioch church's pioneering spirit precipitated an inspection by Jerusalem. It was clear that the
Jerusalem party's concern was not mission, but consolidation; not grace, but law; not crossing
frontiers, but fixing them; not life, but doctrine; not movement, but institution.
The tension between these two self-understandings led, as we have seen, to the convening of the
“Apostolic Council” in AD 47 or 48. According to Luke's report in Acts 15 and also according to
Paul in Galatians 2, the Gentile point of view prevailed at that juncture. The situation remained
volatile, however, and the tendency in early Christianity to become an institution appeared, in the long
run, to be irresistible—not only in Jewish Christian communities but certainly also in Gentile ones.
At an early stage there were indications of two separate types of ministry developing: the settled
ministry of bishops (or elders) and deacons, and the mobile ministry of apostles, prophets, and
evangelists. The first tended to push early Christianity toward becoming an institution, the second
retained the dynamic of a movement. In the early years in Antioch there was still a creative tension
between these two types of ministry. Paul and Barnabas were at the same time leaders in the local
church and itinerant missionaries, and apparently they resumed their congregational duties as a matter
of course whenever they returned to Antioch. Elsewhere, however (and certainly at a later stage also
in Antioch), the churches became ever more institutionalized and less concerned with the world
outside their walls. Soon they had to design rules for guaranteeing the decorum of their worship
meetings (cf 1 Cor 11:2-33; 1 Tim 2:1-15), for establishing criteria for the ideal clergyman and his
wife (1 Tim 2:1-13), and for addressing cases of inhospitality to church emissaries and of hunger for
power (3 Jn; cf Malherbe 1983:92-112). As time went by, intra-ecclesial issues and the struggle for
survival as a separate religious group consumed more and more of the energy of Christians.
3. The third respect in which the early church failed was one we have already touched upon: it
proved unable, in the long run, to make Jews feel at home. Beginning as a religious movement that
worked exclusively among Jews, it changed, in the forties of the first century, to a movement for Jews
and Gentiles alike, but wound up proclaiming its message to Gentiles only.
There were two catalytic events in this regard, one religio-cultural (the issue of circumcision of
Gentile converts), the other socio-political (the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70).
After the war Pharisaic Judaism became far too xenophobic to tolerate anything but a hard-line,
exclusive Jewish approach. Jewish Christians were forced to choose between the church and the
synagogue, and it appears that many chose the latter. In addition, the mood of the time made it
virtually impossible to recruit further converts from Judaism. In the fifties of the first century Paul
still felt himself passionately and unconditionally committed to the conversion of the Jews. Even
some decades later, long after the Jewish war, both Matthew and Luke still tried to make clear “the
necessity of mission to the Jews and the lasting precedence of Israel” (Hahn 1965:166). In the long
run, however, the tension snapped. The church responded with anti-Jewishness to Judaism's anti-
Christian stance.

WERE THERE ANY ALTERNATIVES?

Looking back today to the early church's mission, we cannot but lament the three failures we have
briefly highlighted. However, we have to ask ourselves whether they were really avoidable, given the
total context in which early Christianity found itself. Most probably they were not.
First, we have to ask whether it is fair to expect a movement to survive only as movement. Either
the movement disintegrates or it becomes an institution—this is simply a sociological law. Every
religious group that started out as a movement and managed to survive, did so because it was
gradually institutionalized: the Waldensians, the Moravians, the Quakers, the Pentecostals, and many
more. The same was bound to happen to the early Christian movement. It could not, in the long run,
survive merely in the shape of a charismatic leader with his band of lower-class artisans from the
periphery of society. Actually, it probably took that form only during the first months of Jesus public
ministry. Whereas earlier New Testament scholars (such as Adolf Deissmann) and some
contemporary Marxist ones hold that, during the first century or so, the overwhelming majority of
Christians came from the lower strata of society and that Christianity, therefore, was essentially a
proletarian movement, recent studies are pointing in another direction. Scholars now agree that the
church in Corinth was, by and large, a lower-class church, but they believe that this was not true of
the majority of other churches (cf Malherbe 1983:passim; Meeks 1983:51-73).
Also prominent members of the Jewish establishment showed a keen interest in the Jesus
movement from an early stage. Two names come to mind: Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus. We
may criticize both of them for their hesitancy in this matter and blame their slowness to rally openly to
Jesus’ cause on their exaggerated sense of bourgeois respectability, but would it be fair to do that?
After all, both Joseph and Nicodemus did make a move before Easter, without knowing that Jesus
would rise from the dead. This was perhaps as strong a stand as men in their position could be
expected to take, what with all the middle-class responsibilities they had (cf Singleton 1977:31). We
might say that they were halfhearted, that they should have left wife, children, and the Sanhedrin (of
which they were members) and follow Jesus around as he visited the hamlets of Galilee, but would it
be fair to expect that? The point is that very few people can be both at the periphery and at the center
at the same time. And even if they do manage that, they usually do so only for a very short while.
Be this as it may, the Josephs and Nicodemuses helped to smooth the transition from a charismatic
movement to a religious institution. In this way they also helped to guarantee the survival of the
movement. Without that, and speaking humanly and sociologically, the Jesus movement would perhaps
have been absorbed into Judaism or have disappeared, “leaving but a vague souvenir of a bizarre,
millennial movement” (Singleton 1977:28).
We cannot have it both ways, then: purely and exclusively a religious movement, yet at the same
time something that will survive the centuries and continue to exercise a dynamic influence. Our main
point of censure should therefore not be that the movement became an institution but that, when this
happened, it also lost much of its verve. Its white-hot convictions, poured into the hearts of the first
adherents, cooled down and became crystallized codes, solidified institutions, and petrified dogmas.
The prophet became a priest of the establishment, charisma became office, and love became routine.
The horizon was no longer the world but the boundaries of the local parish. The impetuous
missionary torrent of earlier years was tamed into a still-flowing rivulet and eventually into a
stationary pond. It is this development that we have to deplore. Institution and movement may never
be mutually exclusive categories; neither may church and mission.
This brings us to the second failure of the early church in the area of mission: the break with the
Jewish people. Once again we have to ask whether that development was avoidable. How could the
early church do anything but follow through on the logic of Jesus’ ministry and still, in the long run,
embrace the Jewish law as a way of salvation? By the same taken, how could Judaism have remained
both true to itself and open to a mission to Gentiles free from the requirements of the law? Given
these circumstances, was there, in the long run, any alternative to a parting of the ways? Given, in
addition, the events of the Jewish War (AD 66-70) and the fact that Judaism was almost wiped out by
it, is it fair to blame post-war Pharisaic Judaism for having developed into a xenophobic religious
club and having conceived the Eighteen Benedictions?
The sociological (and therefore human) answer to all these questions can only be a resounding no.
The die was, in fact, already cast in the earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Forty years later, at the
end of the Jewish War, the fate of both Judaism and Christianity was finally sealed; they would
henceforth go their separate ways.
Even so, this is not a story Christians can tell with joy, particularly in light of subsequent
Christian-Jewish relations. And we have to admit that the seeds of anti-Jewishness were already
sown at a very early stage. The apostle Paul who, on the one hand, could wish that he himself were
cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of Israel (Rom 9:3f), could also, on the other hand, accuse
the Jews of having killed Jesus, of displeasing God, and being hostile to all people, thus heaping up
their sins to the limit and invoking the eternal wrath of God upon themselves (1 Thes 2:15f). This
attitude became the model for later views on Judaism. Twice in the book of Revelation the Jewish
religious assembly is referred to as “a synagogue of Satan” (2:9; 3:9). The Epistle of Barnabas (circa
AD 113) and Justin's Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (circa AD 150) for all practical purposes
excluded Jews from the church's field of vision, calling them the worst, most godless and God-
forsaken nation on earth, the devil's own people, seduced by a wicked angel from the very first and
having no claim whatsoever to the Old Testament (references in Harnack 1962:66f). In the writings of
Tertullian and Cyprian we encounter the view that, at most, some individual Jews could be converted.
This too was finally to disappear with the anti-Jewish edicts of Emperor Theodosius in 378. Harnack
(1962:69) comments:
Such an injustice as that done by the Gentile church to Judaism is almost unprecedented in the annals of history. The Gentile
church stripped it of everything; she took away its sacred book; herself but a transformation of Judaism, she cut off all
connection with the parent religion. The daughter first robbed her mother, and then repudiated her!

I began this chapter with the claim that the New Testament has to be understood as a missionary
document. The profile of the missionary nature of this document and of the early church has, I hope,
become somewhat clearer as we gradually uncovered the evidence. There is a degree of ambivalence
about the nature and scope of mission, we found, and this seems to have been the case virtually from
the beginning. Some firm and enduring elements of mission appear, however, to have emerged in the
course of our investigation. The mission of the church is rooted in God's revelation in the man from
Nazareth who lived and labored in Palestine, was crucified on Golgotha, and, so the church believes,
was raised from the dead. For the New Testament mission is determined by the knowledge that the
eschatological hour has dawned, bringing salvation within reach of all and leading to its final
completion (Hahn 1965:167f). Mission is “the Church's service, made possible by the coming of
Christ and the dawning of the eschatological event of salvation…The Church goes in confidence and
hope to meet the future of its Lord, with the duty of testifying before the whole world to God's love
and redemptive deed” (Hahn 1965:173; cf Hahn 1980:37). The New Testament witnesses assume the
possibility of a community of people who, in the face of the tribulations they encounter, keep their
eyes steadfastly on the reign of God by praying for its coming, by being its disciples, by proclaiming
its presence, by working for peace and justice in the midst of hatred and oppression, and by looking
and working toward God's liberating future (cf Lochman 1986:67).
A careful study of the New Testament and the early church may help us to come to greater clarity
about what mission meant then and might mean today. So we shall now, as it were, retrace our steps,
listen to the testimony of three New Testament writers, Matthew, Luke, and Paul, who each represents
a sub-paradigm of the early Christian missionary paradigm, discover how they interpreted mission for
their communities, and emulate the imaginative way in which they did this as a model for our
missionary involvement today.
I should, perhaps, very briefly explain why I have chosen to concentrate on the three New
Testament witnesses just mentioned. I could, of course, have surveyed the entire New Testament and
also other early Christian writings. For two reasons I have decided to limit my reflections to
Matthew's gospel, Luke-Acts, and the letters of Paul. First, a thorough and creditable treatment of all
the material we have from the first century AD would have called for more than just one volume and
made it impossible to include an in-depth discussion of today's missiological issues. Second, and
perhaps more important, I believe that the three New Testament authors chosen for my survey are, on
the whole, representative of first-century missionary thinking and practice. A few words on this may
elucidate what I mean.
Matthew wrote as a Jew to a predominantly Jewish Christian community. The entire purpose of
his writing was to nudge his community toward a missionary involvement with its environment. The
Protestant missionary enterprise of the past two centuries or so has therefore rightly appealed to
Matthew's “Great Commission” when it had to give an account of its outreach to people across the
globe. Unfortunately, however, as I hope to illustrate, the appeal to the “Great Commission” usually
took no account of the fact that this pericope cannot be properly understood in isolation from the
gospel of Matthew as a whole.
Luke was selected because he did not only write a gospel, as Mark, Matthew, and John did, but
actually a two-part volume: the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Since John's gospel is, in our
Bibles, inserted between Luke and Acts, we easily overlook the fact that Luke-Acts was written as a
unit and should be read as such, In the way he structured his two volumes, Luke wished to
demonstrate the essential unity between the mission of Jesus and that of the early church. This fact
alone makes the inclusion of Luke-Acts indispensable in a survey of this kind.
The decision to include Paul's letters should speak for itself. No discussion of the early church's
missionary thinking and practice is even conceivable without a study of the writings and activities of
the “apostle to the Gentiles.”
 Chapter 2

Matthew: Mission as
Disciple-Making

A “GREAT COMMISSION”?
The gospel of Matthew reflects an important and distinct sub-paradigm of the early church's
interpretation and experience of mission. However, in missionary circles much of the discussion
about Matthew has, unfortunately, been obfuscated by the high prominence given (especially, but not
exclusively, in Protestant circles) to the significance and interpretation of the so-called “Great
Commission” at the end of the gospel (28:16-20) (for a survey, cf Bosch 1983:218-220).
Interestingly enough, New Testament scholarship for a long time appeared to have been very little
interested in this passage. Even in commentaries on Matthew little attention was paid to it. In his
monumental work, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries,
Harnack even toyed with the idea that these words might be a later addition to the gospel, since he
could not understand why Matthew would have added them (Harnack [1908] 1962:40f, note 2). Even
so, in the fourth edition of his book in German, he added that this “manifesto” (as he now calls it) was
a “masterpiece.” He summarized his comments on the passage by saying, “It is impossible to say
anything greater and more than this in only forty words” (Harnack 1924:45f, note 2—my translation).
It was, however, not until the 1940s that biblical scholarship, pioneered by Michel (1941 and
1950/51) and Lohmeyer (1951) began to pay serious attention to Matthew 28:18-20. Since then there
has been a sustained and, in fact, expanding interest among New Testament scholars in the closing
lines of Matthew's gospel. Scores of theologians have tried to lay bare the origins and significance of
this majestic passage. In 1973 Joachim Lange devoted a monograph of 573 pages to a tradition-and
redaction-critical study of the pericope (Lange 1973). A year later Benjamin Hubbard published
another major monograph on it (Hubbard 1974). And still, so it appears, there remains more to
discover about the “Great Commission.” John P. Meier comments, “There are certain great pericopes
in the bible which constantly engender discussion and research, while apparently never admitting to
definite solutions. Mt 28:16-20 seems to be such a pericope” (Meier 1977:407). On one thing
scholars agree, however, says Meier: “The pivotal nature of these verses.”
This is a significant shift away from the earlier position. Michel (1950/51:21), for instance, says
that the entire gospel was written only from the perspective of the presuppositions embodied in this
pericope (Michel 1950/51:21). In a more recent essay, Friedrich (1983:177, note 114) lists some
phrases scholars have used to give expression to the importance of these verses for understanding
Matthew's gospel: “the theological program of Matthew” (J. Blank); “a summary of the entire gospel
of Matthew” (G. Bornkamm); “the most important concern of the Gospel” (H. Kosmala), “the ‘climax’
of the gospel” (U. Luck); “a sort of culmination of everything said up to this point” (P. Nepper-
Christensen); “a ‘manifesto’” (G. Otto); and “a ‘table of contents’ of the gospel” (G. Schille).
Friedrich himself says that “Matthew has, as if in a burning-glass, focused everything that was dear to
him in these words and put them as the crowning culmination at the end of his gospel” (Friedrich
1983:177—my translation). Today scholars agree that the entire gospel points to these final verses:
all the threads woven into the fabric of Matthew, from chapter 1 onward, draw together here.
All this means that the way the “Great Commission” has traditionally been utilized in providing a
biblical basis for mission has to be challenged or at least modified. It is inadmissible to lift these
words out of Matthew's gospel, as it were, allow them a life of their own, and understand them
without any reference to the context in which they first appeared. Where this happens, the “Great
Commission” is easily degraded to a mere slogan, or used as a pretext for what we have in advance
decided, perhaps unconsciously, it should mean (cf Schreiter 1982:431). We then, however, run the
risk of doing violence to the text and its intention. One thing contemporary scholars are agreed upon,
is that Matthew 28:18-20 has to be interpreted against the background of Matthew's gospel as a
whole and unless we keep this in mind we shall fail to understand it. No exegesis of the “Great
Commission” divorced from its moorings in this gospel can be valid. It should therefore come as no
surprise if we discover that, as far as use of language is concerned, the “Great Commission” is
perhaps the most Matthean in the entire gospel: virtually every word or expression used in these
verses is peculiar to the author of the first gospel.
In what follows I shall argue that we shall only understand what this pericope means if we first
ask about the self-definition of the author of this gospel and his community. From that we might be
able to make some inferences about Matthew's overall missionary paradigm.

MATTHEW AND HIS COMMUNITY

Our first gospel is essentially a missionary text. It was primarily because of his missionary vision that
Matthew set out to write his gospel, not to compose a “life of Jesus” but to provide guidance to a
community in crisis on how it should understand its calling and mission.
I accept, together with the majority of contemporary scholars, that the author of the first gospel
was a member of a Jewish Christian community which had left Judea before the Jewish war and
settled in a predominantly Gentile environment, probably Syria. In Judea the community had most
likely shared some of the insularity of other Jewish Christians and had participated, at least to some
extent, in the general cultural and cultic life of Judaism inasmuch as that was possible before the war.
The Christians had not yet understood themselves as being members of a separate religion over
against Judaism but primarily as a renewal movement within it. They had, of course, known about the
vigorous missionary expansion among Gentiles but this happened outside of their experience and
range of vision.
However, by the late seventies or early eighties of the first century AD, the situation was
fundamentally different. At Jamnia (as has been mentioned in the previous chapter) the Pharisees,
with Johannan ben Zakkai their leader, were assuming exclusive control. The synagogue worship was
regulated and partly structured on that of the now defunct temple. The rabbinate was introduced as
authoritative interpreter of the law. Even more important, a bitter polemic had developed between
Jamnia Pharisaism and Jewish Christianity and was inexorably moving, around AD 85, toward the
formulation of the Twelfth Benediction: “Let the Nazarenes and the heretics be destroyed in a
moment…Let their names be expurgated from the Book of Life and not be entered with those of the
just.”
Apparently this moment of final and absolute break with the synagogue had not yet arrived when
Matthew wrote his gospel (cf Bornkamm 1965a:19; LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:585; Brown
1980:216; Frankemölle 1982:122f). The community still defends its right to be viewed as the true
Israel (cf the title of Trilling 1964), but it faces a crisis of unprecedented magnitude as regards its
self-understanding. What should its identity be in the coming years? Can it continue as a movement
within Judaism? What attitude should it adopt toward the Law? Can it give up on viewing Jesus as
more than just a prophet? And can it give up on a mission to fellow Jews? It is for this community that
Matthew writes, a community cut off from its roots, its attachment to Judaism exposed to the harshest
test possible, divided in itself as to what its priorities should be, groping for direction in the face of
previously unknown problems. And his primary concern is not simply to help his people cope with
the new pressures they confront, but to assist them in developing a missionary ethos that will match
the challenges of a new epoch. He does this in an exemplary fashion by prolonging the logic of Jesus’
ministry into the historical circumstances he is facing.
Not everybody in Matthew's community agrees on the direction that should be taken at the present
juncture. Some emphasize faithfulness to the Law, even to the smallest letter; others claim to have the
Spirit through whom they perform miracles (cf Friedrich 1983:177). With his remarkable pastoral
style and with the aid of a dialectic approach, Matthew shows, on the basis of the Jesus tradition, that
both are right…but at the same time wrong. This accounts, inter alia, for the many apparent
contradictions in his gospel. He does not gloss over the differences but points beyond both. In this
manner he prepares the way for reconciliation, forgiveness, and mutual love within the community;
and he seems to suggest that the confusion, tension, and conflict that divide them one from another can
only be overcome if they join hands and hearts in a mission to the Gentiles among whom they live
(LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:574).
Matthew desires his community no longer to regard itself as a sectarian group but boldly and
consciously as the church of Christ (he is the only evangelist who uses the word ekklesia, “church”)
and precisely therefore as the “true Israel” (although Matthew himself does not use this expression; cf
Trilling 1964:95f; Bornkamm 1965a:36). To substantiate this claim he includes a plethora of explicit
quotations from the Old Testament and even more indirect allusions, more than any of the other
evangelists. The purpose of the so-called formula quotations is to prove that Jesus is the Messiah and
as such the fulfillment of Old Testament promises. Matthew therefore uses the Old Testament as
witness against the Jewish theologians of his day and their use of Scripture (Frankemölle 1974:288).
He does this by casting “the aura of fulfillment over his entire portrait of Jesus” and by applying “the
label of fulfillment to practically every dimension of Jesus’ life.” (Senior and Stuhlmueller
1983:241). The genealogy with which he opens his gospel plants Jesus deep within the heritage of
Judaism. His infancy narrative, which Matthew does not share with any of the other gospels, is
replete with Old Testament references. Each event here—the visit of the magi, the flight to Egypt, the
massacre of the innocents, the return to Nazareth—is presented as the fulfillment of an Old Testament
text. Throughout the gospel titles forged in the Hebrew Scriptures are applied to Jesus: Immanuel,
Christ, Son of David, Son of Man, etc (cf LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:596; Senior and
Stuhlmueller 1983:241). At the same time Jesus is subtly cast in the role of a new Moses (Hubbard
1974:91-94), not only in the infancy narrative (Jesus’ escape from Herod's execution order and his
return from exile), but also in the forty days and forty nights he spent in the desert, in the Sermon of
the Mount where he reveals the new “law” (Luke situates this event in a plain) and in the
transfiguration (where Matthew adds: “And his face shone like the sun”—17:2). At the same time
there can be no doubt in the minds of Matthew's readers that “more than Moses is here.”
Throughout, then, Matthew's use of the Old Testament is not just polemical—to counter rabbinic
claims to the Old Testament—but deeply pastoral and missionary—pastoral, in that he wishes to
convey self-confidence to a community facing a crisis of identity; missionary, in that he wishes to
embolden the community members toward seeing opportunities for witness and service around them.
 CONTRADICTIONS IN MATTHEW
It is against this general background that we have to see the apparent contradictions in Matthew's
gospel. On the one hand, scholars argue, this is clearly the most Jewish of all our gospels. E. von
Dobschütz (1928:343) once even called Matthew “a converted Jewish rabbi.” Stendahl (1968) and
others claim that he has arranged his gospel in such a way that it would resemble the first five books
of the Old Testament. Still others contend that he has often “rejudaized” the tradition handed down to
him (Brown 1977:25-28). By contrast, others argue that Matthew's gospel consistently and
systematically engages in polemics against the Jews and their leadership, a stance that clearly
demonstrates his “Gentile bias,” which would be natural only if he were “a Gentile author” (Clark
1980:4; cf Strecker 1962:15-35).
Matthew's gospel is indeed, in many respects, baffling. I have argued that the “Great Commission”
at the end of the gospel is to be understood as the key to Matthew's understanding of the mission and
ministry of Jesus. Matthew has, stronger than any other evangelist, emphasized Jesus’ activities among
Gentiles (cf Hahn 1965:103-111). Still, in the central section of his gospel he includes some
particularistic sayings which must have been extremely offensive to Gentile readers. Chapter 10
relates the sending out of the twelve apostles (v 2) to whom Jesus says, “Go nowhere among the
Gentiles; and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (v
5f). What Jesus says to the Canaanite woman according to Matthew 15 must have been even more
disagreeable to Gentiles. Matthew has taken this episode over from Mark, but he introduces important
changes. Jesus repeats what he has said to the Twelve, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel” (v 24; this saying has no parallel in any of the other gospels). When the woman insists that
Jesus help, he adds, “It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs” (v 26). It is
clear that in Matthew's two major sources (Mark and the Logia) there is no trace of absolute
exclusivism and particulari sm. Why then has this issue become a problem in Matthew's gospel (cf
Frankemölle 1974:109)?
Many attempts have been made to solve the contradictions in Matthew (cf Hahn 1965:26-28;
Frankemölle 1982:100-102). It is probably best to assume that Matthew deliberately included both
sets of conflicting sayings in the service of the overall purpose of his gospel. It is indeed possible that
the different sayings also reflect opposing views and traditions in Matthew's community and were, we
may deduce, responsible for some sharp differences. Matthew, however, chooses to include both.
This certainly speaks for his pastoral concern; he does not simply play off one group against another.
But it also reflects his theological position: a mission to Israel and one to Gentiles need not exclude
but ought rather to embrace each other.
So Matthew does not just advocate a chronological sequence of the two missions (as Mark
appears to do: cf the “first” in Mk 7:26) but upholds a theological correlation of one to the other.
Hahn uses the metaphor of two concentric circles (the larger one signifying the Gentile mission, the
other the mission to Israel) which necessarily belong together but, of course, in such a way that the
Gentile mission becomes the all-embracing and over-arching one (Hahn 1965:127; cf Frankemölle
1982:113). Matthew achieves this by means of the skillful way in which he organizes his material, for
instance by having Gentiles play a role from the beginning to the end (the four non-Israelite women in
Jesus’ genealogy [ch 1]; the visit of the magi [2:1-12]; the centurion of Capernaum, who prompts
Jesus to say that many Gentiles will one day take their places with the patriarchs in the kingdom of
heaven [8:5-13]; the Canaanite woman [15:21-28]; the statement in the eschatological discourse that
the gospel will be preached to all the nations [24:14; cf 26:13]; and the reaction of the Roman
centurion and those with him at the crucifixion of Jesus, who exclaim, “Truly he was the Son of God”
[27:54; Mark mentions the reaction of the centurion only, not that of his division of soldiers also]).
Perhaps even more important are the not-so-obvious allusions to Gentiles and a future mission to
them: God's “people” (laos) who will be saved from their sin (1:21; this points to the “nation”
[ethnos] who will take Israel's place as inheritors of God's reign, cf 21:43); the identification of
Galilee as “Galilee of the Gentiles” (4:15; at the end of the gospel it is again in Galilee, semi-Gentile
territory to Matthew, that the disciples are commissioned); the summary of Jesus’ activities in 4:23-
25, which adds that news about him “spread throughout all Syria” (in 9:35-38 Matthew has an almost
identical summary, where he adds Jesus’ word about a plentiful harvest, an obvious allusion to a
wider mission; again, Matthew's readers [in Syria] could not have overheard the assertion that the
earthly Jesus had been known in Syria); the reference to the disciples as the salt of the earth and the
light of the world (5:13f); the quotation from Isaiah in 12:1821 with its twofold mentioning of
Gentiles; the saying that the field on which the “sons of the Kingdom” are sown is “the world”
(13:38); the cleansing of the forecourt of the temple (also known as the forecourt of the Gentiles) as
indication that salvation is at hand for Gentiles also (cf Hahn 1984:273); Jesus’ spontaneous
willingness to enter Gentile homes (cf 8:7; in Luke's gospel Jesus does not seem prepared to do this:
cf Frankemölle 1974:113), etc.
In these and other ways Matthew nourishes universalism and skillfully conditions his reader
toward a mission to the Gentiles. He does it with a remarkable degree of consistency without ever
allowing his reader to wander off (Frankemölle 1982:112; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:152). Even
particularistic sayings such as Matthew 15:24, and 26 do not permit his Jewish reader a sigh of relief,
since Jesus immediately praises the Canaanite woman's remarkable faith (15:28). As a matter of fact,
one thing about Gentiles that Matthew frequently stresses is their faith in Jesus, their spontaneous and
positive response to him, which is so different from that of (the majority of) Jews. In addition to the
Canaanite woman we may refer to the Capernaum centurion (Jesus says of him, “Truly, I say to you,
not even in Israel have I found such faith”—8:10) as well as to the centurion with his contingent of
soldiers who were watching the crucifixion (27:54; no word is said about the reaction of the Jewish
crowds). The magi even confess their faith in Jesus before having seen or heard him. The faith
response of Gentiles, compared to the lack of such a response among Jews, is a recurring theme in
Matthew (cf Hahn 1965:35; Frankemölle 1974:114, 118).
Even so, Matthew never tells of Jesus actually taking the initiative and going out to Gentiles. They
approach him, not he them—the magi, the centurion of Capernaum, the Canaanite woman. Matthew
here clearly follows the tradition about Jesus handed down to him and also reflected in the other
gospels, including John (cf, for instance, Jn 12:32). There is no evidence of a conscious Gentile
missionary outreach, “even though such evidence would have been highly useful for the…evangelists
who were writing to an increasingly Gentile church” (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:142).

MATTHEW AND ISRAEL

Throughout, Matthew's judgment on Jews is severe. This may, in part, reflect the confrontations his
community had with Jamnia Pharisaism at the time of writing but was certainly also a recurring theme
in the tradition he uses. His judgment of the Jews is, in virtually every instance, more negative than
that of Mark and Luke (e.g. in 11:16-19; 11:20-24; 12:41-45; 22:1-14; 23:29-39; cf Frankemölle
1974:115). The parable of the two sons (21:28-32) is told by Matthew only. In his rendering of Jesus’
own exposition of the parable (v 31f), the “chief priests and the elders of the people” (v 23) are the
son who said he would go and work in his fathers vineyard but did not, whereas the “tax-collectors
and the harlots” (v 31)—those of whom one would least expect it—are the son who first said that he
would not go but eventually went. (Since the pairing of tax-collectors and prostitutes obviously no
longer has any immediate and concrete significance for Matthew's readers, they understand this as an
implicit reference to a positive response to Jesus from Gentiles [cf Schottroff and Stegemann
1986:33]).
The parable of the tenants that follows immediately (21:33-44) exposes the central (but still
hidden) thrust of the parable of the two sons. Once again Jesus’ listeners are the Jewish religious
establishment; as a matter of fact, at the end of the parable “they perceived that he was speaking about
them” (v 45). The tenants have failed in their duty; they did not produce any fruit. So the landowner
brings “those wretches to a miserable death” and will rent his vineyard “to other tenants, who will
give him the fruits in their seasons” (v 41). Matthew shares this parable with Luke (20:9-10) and
Mark (12:1-12), but he goes further than both and puts an interpretation of the parable in Jesus’ mouth:
“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation
producing the fruits of it” (v 43). Thus Matthew here takes up the theme of the substitution of Israel by
a new covenant people, a theme which, in fact, is present under the surface throughout his gospel. It
is, indeed, a central theme of Matthew and this parable occupies a pivotal place in his theology (cf
Trilling 1964:55-65). In the old covenant God's kingdom was entrusted to a nation; now once again
his reign is entrusted to a “nation.” For Matthew the fact that the kingdom has been taken away from
Israel is the real punishment, not so much the physical judgment on the Jews, for instance, the
destruction of Jerusalem (Trilling 1964:65).
The supreme transgression of the tenants in the parable is, however, not just that they refused to
send the landowner his share of the crop, but that they maltreated and killed his servants and,
ultimately, his son, in a scandalous attempt to arrogate the vineyard to themselves. This detail
Matthew takes over from Mark; the only difference he introduces is to say that the son was killed
outside the vineyard (21:39), thus modelling the parable even more explicitly on what happened to
Jesus. In his gospel Matthew emphasizes the involvement of the Jewish leaders in the betrayal, arrest,
and condemnation of Jesus, reaching a climax in his rendering of the trial before Pilate (27:11-26).
The fact that leaders and people chose Barabbas is stressed much more forcefully than in Mark's
account. Also, only Matthew reports the pleas of Pilate's wife on behalf of “that righteous man”
(27:19). Pilate is distracted for a moment and the chief priests use this opportunity to persuade the
crowds to ask for Barabbas's release (cf Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:245). The concern of Pilate's
wife for Jesus and Pilate's washing of his hands in public (27:24; again only Matthew reports the
latter) once more serve to underline the difference in attitude between Jews and Gentiles, particularly
when all the people (not just the chief priests) boldly declare, “His blood be on us and on our
children!” (27:25; once again only Matthew relates this).
Certainly Matthew's portrayal of the Jews and their leadership contains an anti-Semitic potential
which we, particularly after the Holocaust, should not brush aside too lightly. However, Matthew
himself is no anti-Semite; after all, he was, in all probability, himself a Jew. Donald Senior
(1983:246) interprets his purpose correctly, I believe:
Matthew is trying to fit a series of baffling, even tragic events into his conviction that God acts in and through history. These
tragic events, from Matthew's viewpoint, included the death of Jesus, the failure of the Christian mission to Israel, and the
intransigence of Christians in his own church who were opposed to accepting Gentiles.

Senior adds, however, that “these considerations do not completely remove the dark potential of
Matthew's formulations in 27:24-25” (1983:246), even if his overall concern is a positive one;
namely, that Israel's rejection of its Messiah has become a paradoxical impulse to a new life-giving
stage in God's plan of history. “From the death of Jesus comes the birth of a resurrection community;
from the failure of the mission to Israel comes the opening to the Gentiles” (:244).

MATTHEW AND “THE NATIONS”

It may shed some light on the issue under discussion if we, at this point, look at the phrase panta ta
ethne in the “Great Commission.” Following through on the supposition that, for Matthew, the Jews
have—by their conduct—forfeited the “right” to be preached to, some scholars (particularly those
who believe that the author of our first gospel was a Gentile) suggest that these words refer to all
nations excluding the Jews: those who had not been called before may now become Jesus’ disciples;
those who had been called previously are now rejected (Clark 1980:2; cf Walker 1967:111-113).
I believe, with many New Testament scholars, that this is a misinterpretation of Matthew (cf
Michel 1950/51:26; Strecker 1962:117f; Trilling 1964:26-28; Hahn 1965:125; Zumstein 1972:26;
Frankemölle 1974:119-123; 1982:112-114; Matthew 1980:168, note 14; Friedrich 1983:179f). The
Jews are included among “all the nations”—no longer, however, as a specially privileged people.
“Israel” as a theological entity belongs to the past (Frankemölle 1974:123). “Israel” is no longer the
“church.” In what happened to Jesus, the ancient notion of “Israel” has been ruptured and God's
eschatological community ushered on to the stage of history. All restrictions have been lifted.
It is true that ethne in Matthew's gospel mostly refer to Gentiles only. But, in almost all these cases
we have to do with either Old Testament quotations or material of non-Matthean origin. To this we
must add that, where Matthew adds panta, “all,” to ta ethne, an important nuance is added. Matthew
uses panta ta ethne four times, and all of these are in the final part of his gospel (24:9, 14; 25:32; and
28:19), where the Gentile mission comes into focus ever more clearly. The various parallels to
Matthew's fourfold use of panta ta ethne also evoke universalist imagery: hole he oikoumene (the
whole inhabited world), holos (hapas) ho kosmos (the whole [human] world) and pasa he ktisis (the
entire [human] creation). It is clear, then, that Matthew was simply trying to say that Jesus was no
longer sent only to Israel but had, in fact, become the Savior of all humankind. If Matthew had
intended his readers (many of whom were Jews, still part of the wider Jewish community) to
understand him as saying that Jews could no longer be recipients of the gospel, he would have had to
say it much more unambiguously. An unbiased reader of chapters 24 to 28 of his gospel can only
understand them as suggesting that Matthew's concern was with all of humankind, including the Jews.
Therefore, despite his strong views on the hardheartedness of Jews, Matthew never doubts the
continued validity of a mission to his compatriots. This remains the inalienable task of himself and his
community; they continue to regard themselves as inwardly and outwardly tied to Israel (Hahn
1965:125). Yet he is equally committed to the Gentile mission. Between the two missions there exists
a unity full of tension, a kind of contrasting interdependence (Frankemölle 1982:113, 120) to which
Matthew remains obligated, since it is the only way in which he can hold on to both his “text” (God's
promises to his covenant people in the Old Testament) and his “context” (God's obvious endorsement
of the Gentile mission).
In his view the Gentile mission is, however, only a possibility after the death and resurrection of
the Messiah of the Jews. Prior to those events it can be referred to only in the future tense (8:11;
24:14; 26:13). The parable of the tenants graphically illustrates that the vineyard can only go to others
after the son has been killed. The two demon-possessed men from the region of the Gadarenes
(Gentile territory!) therefore rightly complain that Jesus has come to torture them “before the
(appointed) time,” in other words, before his death and resurrection (Mt 8:29; only Matthew has this
phrase; cf Frankemölle 1974:115).
The risen Jesus, however, boldly and unreservedly, sends his followers to disciple “all nations”
(panta ta ethne: Mt 28:19). The reign of God has been entrusted to God's new people (cf 21:43).

KEY NOTIONS IN MATTHEW'S GOSPEL

From what has been said so far, one should not deduce that Matthew's entire gospel exhausts itself in
an attempt to solve the enigma of the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. To narrow his
understanding of mission down to this aspect alone would be totally unwarranted (Frankemölle
1982:100). Yet it certainly forms a backdrop to virtually everything else Matthew tells us and has to
be kept in mind constantly.
Matthew, I have said, fights a battle on two fronts: Pharisaic Judaism and the inroads it was
making into his community, and the antinominianism of an enthusiastic Hellenistic Jewish Christianity.
This has led to much confusion in the interpretation of Matthew's gospel. An example of this was the
publication, more or less simultaneously, of two books that came to almost exactly opposite
conclusions: Strecker (1962) who understood Matthew as a gospel written from a Gentile Christian
bias, and Hummel (1963) who interpreted Matthew as being in close proximity to Pharisaic Judaism
(cf also Bornkamm 1965b:229, 306).
All this makes it hard really to get to the bottom of Matthew's “theology of mission.” I believe that
we shall only understand it (and even then only approximately) if we see Matthew as attempting to
move beyond both positions he is opposing. In this respect there are a number of key concepts in his
gospel which are all intimately interrelated and also supremely significant for interpreting his
missionary consciousness. The most important of these concepts are: the reign (basileia) of God (or
of heaven), God's will (thelema), justice (dikaiosyne), commandments (entolai), the challenge to be
perfect (teleios), to surpass or excel (perisseuo), to observe or keep (tereo), to bear fruit (karpous
poiein), and to teach (didasko). At first glance, most of these concepts appear to support a kind of
rabbinic salvation by works. They have a different function, however. Sometimes one concept is a
synonym for another, sometimes not. Throughout, they appear to be intimately linked to and dependent
upon each other. All taken together, they are like plaited strands woven into the very fabric of the
entire gospel.
Some of these ideas (such as that of the reign of God) I have already touched upon in the previous
chapter. I shall therefore, in this chapter, only (and briefly) attend to such key concepts insofar as they
are central to Matthew and his perception of mission.

“TEACHING THEM TO OBSERVE ALL…”

The final part of the “Great Commission” makes mention of “teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you” (Mt 28:20). On the face of it, this “teaching them,” together with the preceding
“baptizing them,” appears to be the real content of disciple-making, and therefore of mission, in
Matthew's understanding. It moreover appears to be something rather different from mission in
parallel passages in the other gospels and in Acts. In Luke 24:47 the message proclaimed to the
nations is one of repentance and forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus. In Acts 1:8 the disciples are
told that they will be witnesses to the Easter events, empowered by the Holy Spirit. In John 20:21-23
the disciples are likewise promised the Holy Spirit and sent into the world by the risen Christ with
the authority to forgive sins. Matthew, it seems, has nothing of all this. The Matthean Jesus sounds
extremely didactic and legalistic and is an embarrassment, particularly to Protestants, who would
prefer to hear about proclamation rather than teaching, about forgiveness of sins and the power of the
Holy Spirit rather than the keeping of commandments.
Let us, however, look more closely at what Jesus says according to Matthew, and at how these
words, in a truly extraordinary way, summarize some of the basic concerns Jesus has expressed
throughout the gospel. Beginning with the words in the latter part of the “Great Commission” we
shall, as it were, move from smaller to larger concentric circles as we attempt to trace Matthew's
missionary concern,
Three terms in the “Great Commission” summarize the essence of mission for Matthew: make
disciples, baptize, teach. I shall return to the first two below and turn, for the moment, to the third.
Whereas Mark uses “proclaim” (kerysso) and “teach” (didasko) as synonyms, Matthew consistently
distinguishes between the two activities (cf Trilling 1964:36; Hahn 1965:121; 1980:42). In Matthew,
“preach” or “proclaim” always refers to a message addressed to outsiders; it is frequently used
together with “the gospel of the kingdom.” The expression “proclaim the gospel (of the kingdom)” is
sometimes also used with specific reference to a future (Gentile) mission (24:14; 26:13; cf 10:7).
Jesus never “preaches” to his disciples; them he “teaches.” Similarly, in the synagogues and in the
temple (that is, among “believers”) Jesus never “preaches” but always “teaches.” Why then does he
drop this overtly missionary terminology in his “Great Commission?” Why no word about “preach”
(nine times in Matthew), “proclaim the gospel” (four times), “evangelize” (once)? This is the kind of
terminology Jesus used in the commissioning narrative in Matthew 10. So why not here, in a
commissioning which involves a universal outreach?
The extremely sober vocabulary of the “Great Commission” certainly is, at least in part, to be
attributed to the evangelist's differences with the enthusiasts in his community. Surely, however,
polemics is not his only consideration. Behind his choice of terms there are important theological
(read: missiological) considerations. To appreciate these, it is important to recognize that, for
Matthew, teaching is by no means a merely intellectual enterprise (as it often is for us and was for the
ancient Greeks). Jesus’ teaching is an appeal to his listeners’ will, not primarily to their intellect; it is
a call for a concrete decision to follow him and to submit to God's will (cf Frankemölle 1982:127f).
Moreover, teaching does not merely involve inculcating the precepts of the Law and obeying them, as
contemporary Judaism interpreted it (cf also Jesus’ very “Jewish” advice to the rich young man in
Matthew 19:17). No, what the apostles should “teach” the new disciples according to Matthew
28:20, is to submit to the will of God as revealed in Jesus’ ministry and teaching. There is no gospel
that may distance itself in an enthusiasm of the Spirit from the earthly Jesus. His instructions remain
valid and authoritative, also for the future. Continuity must be maintained between the earthly Jesus
and the exalted Christ. Those made disciples and baptized by Christ's messengers are to follow Jesus
just as the eleven did (Friedrich 1983:181). He himself is now the content of his own earlier
teaching, the embodiment of God's reign, the gospel (Lohmeyer 1956:418). Discipleship is
determined by the relation to Christ himself, not by conformity to an impersonal ordinance. The
context of this is not the classroom (where “teaching” usually takes place for us), nor even the church,
but the world.
We have to say more, however, by way of fleshing out this teaching, these “commandments” of
Jesus. The Matthean term that comes to mind first when we attempt this, is “the will of the Father” (cf
Giessen 1982:224-235). More than the other evangelists Matthew highlights the centrality of God's
will for Jesus and the disciples. Parallels in other gospels are rare. Virtually all occurrences of the
expression are restricted to Matthew and they are all remarkable. Matthew's version of the Lord's
Prayer, taken over from the Logia, resembles Luke's version in almost every detail, yet only Matthew
has the petition “Thy will be done” (6:10). In addition, whereas all the other petitions of the Lord's
Prayer have parallels in Judaism, this one has none (Frankemölle 1974:276 and note 15). In Matthew
7:21 the reference to the Father's will appears in an eschatological context, against the dark backdrop
of the last judgment: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven,
but he who does the will of my Father.” In similar vein “it is not the will of my Father who is in
heaven” that any of the little ones should be lost (Mt 18:14). And as mentioned before, only Matthew
has the parable of the two sons (21:28-31) who differ in one respect only: the one did the will of his
father; the other did not.
For Israel the will of God is contained in the Torah or, for the Qumran community, in their manual
(Frankemölle 1974:277-280, 282, 287). Not so for Jesus and his disciples. The expression is
particularly crucial for our understanding of the Sermon on the Mount, in the very center of which
Matthew places the Lord's Prayer. It is the heart of the Sermon just as the Decalogue is the heart and
center of the Torah. What precedes the Prayer is recapitulated in the first three petitions; what follows
it is extrapolated from the last three (cf also Frankemölle 1974:274f). The Sermon on the Mount is,
however, not a new code, a new Torah. The critical corrective for any law that tends to hypostatize
itself is the twofold commandment of love. This becomes the principle of interpretation in the face of
the nascent legalism in Matthew's own community (:278f). The criterion for every act and attitude is
love of God and neighbor (cf Mt 22:37-40).
As a matter of fact, love of neighbor may be regarded as the litmus test for love of God. The same
is true of deeds. They are the test for the authenticity of words. To “believe,” to “follow Jesus,” to
“understand,” all contain an element of active commitment that flows into deeds. The actual
commandments themselves are hereby relativized since they are contingent upon the context and
circumstances of the neighbor. This dimension of proper response is a major theme in Matthew
(Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:247). He addressed himself to both opposing groups in his community;
enthusiasts and legalists are equally prone to majoring in words rather than deeds.
It is particularly in the Sermon on the Mount, the first of Matthew's five great compositions of
Jesus’ teaching, that this concern surfaces, notably in the final section (cf 7:21): “Not every one who
says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father,”
and 7:24, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them…”). Matthew himself
summarizes Jesus’ entire ministry with the words “the deeds of the Christ” (ta erga tou Christou—
11:2). This summary appears in the important central section of his gospel, after the first two
discourses and prior to the last three. In prison John the Baptist hears about “the deeds of the Christ”
and sends his disciples to Jesus. This episode introduces a series of narratives about rejection and
acceptance in preparation for the third and central discourse (ch 13: the parables of the reign of God)
and is crucial to the overall structure of the gospel. The expression “the deeds of the Christ” may be
regarded as the caption of the entire first half of the gospel (Wilkens 1985:37) and clearly has a
missionary connotation; indeed, it is a key missionary concept and one that puts its stamp on
Matthew's basic understanding of mission (Frankemölle 1982:98, 126-128). Orthopraxis is hereby
made into a critical yardstick for orthodoxy and becomes the norm for God's covenant people (cf,
again, 7:21; 12:50; and 21:31) (Frankemölle 1974:279f).
The true disciples of Jesus are challenged to “bear fruit.” The Baptist already preached, “Bear
fruit that befits repentance” (3:8). Matthew has found this reference in the Logia but then uses it, in
one form or another, elsewhere in his gospel as well. I have already referred to 7:16-20. Matthew
takes up the same metaphor in 12:33 and also uses it more extensively than the other synoptic gospels
do in the parable of the tenants (21:33-46); in fact, it becomes the dominant theme in Matthew's
rendering of this parable (Frankemölle 1974:279f).
It is in this context that we have to appreciate Matthew's understanding of sin or failure, or, more
specifically Matthean, hypocrisy. The context reveals that it means the absence of good deeds, of
fruit, even if one might have the right words. A near synonym for hypocrisy is anomia (“iniquity”;
Matthew, the only evangelist who employs this word, uses it four times). This shows that, for
Matthew, hypocrisy is more than pretending or sanctimoniousness. Hypocrisy is evil-doing. It is a
failure of conduct with reference both to people and to God. Not doing good means doing evil; not
bearing fruit means bearing wrong fruit. The hypocrites have failed to obey God's will; they live
outside God's covenantal relationship; they are no longer heirs to God's reign. Over against the
evildoers and hypocrites stand the dikaioi, the righteous, the fruit-bearers (Mt 13:41-43; 23:27f) (cf
Frankemölle 1974:284-286; Giessen 1982:202-224; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:248).

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

In the previous section several references were made to the so-called Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7).
A few additional comments about this remarkable body of literature may help us to grasp the
missionary dimension of Matthew's gospel, not least because, through the ages, this passage has
fascinated both Christians and people of other faiths. In the eyes of many people it embodies
something like the final will of Jesus.
Matthew's gospel contains five major sermons or discourses (forming, according to some
scholars, Matthew's “pentateuch”). They are the sermons on (1) discipleship (ch 5-7); (2) the
apostolic mission (ch 10); (3) how the reign of God comes (ch 13); (4) church discipline (ch 18); and
(5) false teachers and the end (ch 23-25). The phrase “teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you” (Mt 28:19) refers back primarily to the first of these discourses, the Sermon on the
Mount. Indeed, this sermon expresses, like no other New Testament passage, the essence of the ethics
of Jesus. Through the ages, however, Christians have usually found ways around the clear meaning of
the Sermon on the Mount. Strecker (1983:169) mentions three misinterpretations, whereas Lapide
(1986:46) lists no fewer than eight. I enumerate only some of these:
a. Already the early church, and later on particularly Thomas Aquinas, believed that not all
Christians need to obey the injunctions of Matthew 5-7; they are intended only for a special category
of Christians, more particularly the clergy.
b. The Lutheran Orthodoxy of the seventeenth century argued that it was impossible to obey the
demands of Jesus in these chapters, but that this was, strictly speaking, not their purpose. The very
unrealizability of these superhuman demands should, rather, expose our own inadequacy and
sinfulness and cause us to put all our trust only in Christ rather than in our own ability to do God's
will.
c. During the nineteenth century, with its emphasis on individualism, it was believed that what
counted was not the concrete obedience of these demands but rather the correct disposition of heart.
Individual attitudes were more important than actual deeds.
d. Yet another explanation was to write off the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount as
manifestations of an “interim ethic.” Such extraordinary accomplishments as are expected here, it was
argued, only make sense in the context of an expectation of the parousia as imminent. Only during a
very short interim period can anyone live up to such high expectations.
Today, however, most scholars agree that these and similar interpretations are inadequate, that
there is no getting around the fact that, in Matthew's view, Jesus actually expected all his followers to
live according to these norms always and under all circumstances (cf Strecker 1983:169; Lapide
1986:6f). If we recognize this we also, however, have to concede that, down through the centuries,
precious few followers of Jesus have actually lived up to these expectations. There is a discrepancy
between what Jesus taught and what actually happened to his teaching. This is particularly true of his
injunction to love our enemies which, more than any other command, reflects the true nature of Jesus’
boundary-breaking ministry (Lapide 1986:96-104). It forms the culmination of Jesus’ ethic of the
reign of God. Yet at this point “the eschatological prophet of Nazareth represents a stumbling block
for both his Jewish contemporaries and the church of all times”; as a matter of fact, the history of the
church may very well be written “as a history of those who have shut themselves off from this
command” (Strecker 1983:167—my translation).
The failure of Christians to live according to the standards of the Sermon on the Mount does not,
however, absolve them from the challenge to do so. Particularly in our contemporary world of
violence and counter-violence, of oppression from the right and the left, of the rich getting richer and
the poor poorer, it is imperative for the church-in-mission to include the “superior justice” of the
Sermon on the Mount (cf Mt 5:20) in its missionary agenda. Its mission cannot concern itself
exclusively with the personal, inward, spiritual, and “vertical” aspects of people's lives. Such an
approach suggests a dichotomy totally foreign to the Jesus tradition as interpreted by Matthew.
I have argued in the previous chapter that Jesus had no intention of establishing a political
kingdom in Israel. This does not mean, however, that his ministry was apolitical. It certainly was not.
The Sermon on the Mount, in particular, is eminently political since it challenges almost every
traditional societal structure. His politics was, however, one of peace-making, of reconciliation, of
justice, of refusing vengeance (I shall return to this aspect in more detail in the next chapter) and,
above all, of love of enemy. To quote Lapide again: “(Jesus) was a threefold rebel of love, much
more radical than revolutionaries of our day” (1986:103). This was the case particularly since there
was no tension between what he said and what he did.
Frankemölle therefore rightly regards the expression ta erga tou Christou (the works or deeds of
Christ) in Matthew 11:2 as a “nodal point in Matthew's gospel” where the various strands of the
missionary practice of Jesus flow together. The expression ta erga tou Christou forms a kind of
Oberbegriff (generic term) which illuminates the various aspects of Jesus’ mission (Frankemölle
1982:98, 128). His supreme “work” of selfless love was, of course, his dying on the cross. Without
this, the instruction on the Mount remains an eloquent but hollow sermon. “It gets its true binding
force only through the exemplary life, sufferings, and death of the Nazarene who sealed its validity
with his own blood” (Lapide 1986:141).

GOD'S REIGN AND JUSTICE-RIGHTEOUSNESS

We can no longer circumvent two other Matthean expressions which have all along been hovering in
the background, as it were, and have been pressing themselves upon us as eminently missionary
notions. I am referring to the terms basileia ([God's] reign) and dikaiosyne (justice or righteousness).
The basileia concept has been explored in the previous chapter and will be referred to here only
insofar as it relates to dikaiosyne and insofar as it has a particularly Matthean flavor. Compared to
eighteen times in Mark, Matthew uses the term basileia fifty-one times, mostly with the addition “of
heaven.” It is the dominant theme in the proclamation of the Matthean Jesus, in his parables (cf
particularly the parable discourse of chapter 13), his healings and his exorcisms (cf 12:28). Twice, in
summaries about the ministry of Jesus, Matthew uses the expression “preaching the gospel of the
kingdom” (4:23; 9:35). “Good news” or “gospel” here refers to the entire event of Jesus’ coming. The
basileia which then follows (in the genitive construction “gospel of the basileia”) appears to refer to
Jesus himself. “From Matthew's perspective, to encounter the kingdom is to encounter Jesus Christ”
(Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:237f). In Jesus, the reign of God has drawn near to humankind. The
unique phrase, “the gospel of the basileia,” “underlines the inherent universal and missionary
character of the kingdom ministry of Jesus. This universal horizon of the kingdom metaphor is implicit
in Mark but comes much closer to the surface in the mission theology of Matthew” (:238).
Linked with God's reign in a mysterious way is the concept dikaiosyne, which is perhaps the most
characteristically Matthean notion of all. A careful analysis shows that it is unlikely that Matthew has
found this term in his sources; it is introduced by himself at each point, usually in such a way that it
contrasts clearly with what he had encountered in his sources (cf Strecker 1962:149-158).
The translation of dikaiosyne poses problems, however, at least in English. It can refer to
justification (God's merciful act of declaring us just, thus changing our status and pronouncing us
acceptable to him), or to righteousness (a preeminently religious or spiritual concept: an attribute of
God or a spiritual quality that we receive from God), or to justice (people's right conduct in relation
to their fellow human beings, seeking for them that to which they have a right). Most English New
Testament translations reveal a bias toward the second meaning. Often the word “justice” does not
appear at all in an English New Testament—with important consequences. One discovers this if one
translates dikaiosyne in the sayings of Jesus alternatively with “righteousness” and “justice.” The
fourth beatitude (Mt 5:6) may then refer either to those who hunger and thirst after (spiritual)
righteousness and holiness, or to those who long to see that justice be done to the oppressed. By the
same token, the “persecuted” of Matthew 5:10 may be suffering because of their religious devoutness
(righteousness), or because they champion the cause of the marginalized (justice). Again, according to
Matthew 5:20, either the disciples’ religiosity or, alternatively, their practice of justice has to surpass
that of the Pharisees. Likewise, if we translate Matthew 6:33, “But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (RSV), it may mean that the spiritual is
more important than the material and that, if only we have our priorities right (putting God's reign and
his righteousness above this-worldly concerns) God will bless us materially as well. If, on the other
hand, we translate, “set your mind on God's kingdom and his justice before everything else, and all
the rest will come to you as well” (NEB), it may mean that Jesus asks us not to be concerned with our
own desires and interests but with the practice of justice in respect of those who are the victims of
circumstances and society, that this is what God's reign is all about. To find the correct translation is,
therefore, crucial. A wrong translation may in fact prove the aptness of the Italian saying, traduttore
traditore—“The translator is a traitor!”
Perhaps, however, we should not allow ourselves to choose between “righteousness” and
“justice” when seeking for the meaning of dikaiosyne. Our problem may, rather, lie in the fact that the
English language is unable to embrace the wide scope of the concept dikaiosyne in one word. Maybe,
then, we should translate it with “justice-righteousness,” in an attempt to hold on to both dimensions.
Michael Crosby, for instance, translates dikaiosyne alternatively as “justice,” “holiness,” “piety,” and
“godliness” (1981:118-124). He believes that dikaiosyne contains both a “constitutive” and a
“normative” dimension: “With ‘the Spirit of the Lord God’ anointing us (Is 61:1), we are clothed with
a robe of justice; we are wrapped in a mantle of justice (Is 61:10). The robe and the mantle enable us
to experience God in the depths of our being as our justice.” This is the constitutive dimension: God
justifying us, making us righteous and holy in his sight. Once constituted in God's justice, “God uses
us to ‘make justice and praise spring up before all the nations’ (Is 61:11).” This is the normative
dimension: God raising up people who become ministers to others of the same justice they have
experienced from God (Crosby 1981:118f: quotations on p 118). God's justice, then, is his saving
activity on behalf of his people. Human justice is the effort we make to respond to God's goodness by
carrying out his will (:139).
If Matthew's Jesus calls his disciples to the practice of dikaiosyne it is primarily this second
dimension he has in mind, but in such a way that the first dimension remains constitutive (cf Giessen
1982:259-263). To emphasize only the ethical aspect would hardly be in keeping with Matthew's
fierce polemic against legalism (cf Frankemölle 1984:281, 287). Dikaiosyne is faith in action, the
practice of devotion or, as Matthew 6:1 suggests, an act of right conduct “before your Father” (:283);
it is doing the will of God. Like the Decalogue and its summary (Mt 22:37-40), dikaiosyne relates to
both God and neighbor (:281f). It manifests itself in active faith in God's involvement in history. It is,
first of all, gift, and only then obligation. In this respect it resembles the original intention of the
Decalogue: Israel understood and celebrated the announcement of the ten commandments as a salvific
event of the first order, since “Yahweh proved his covenantal faithfulness to Israel” in this experience
(G. von Rad, quoted by Frankemölle 1974:292—my translation).1
Matthew's pleas for a justice that “surpasses” that of the Pharisees and for being “perfect” have to
be seen in the same light (cf Giessen 1982:122-146). It makes no sense to see these injunctions in the
context of moral superiority or higher accomplishments. If that were the way Matthew uses it, how
could anyone dare use an expression such as “you must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”
(5:48)? “Perfect” is never an attribute of God in the Septuagint, yet Matthew puts this expression—
which is without parallel also in the Qumran texts and the Judaism of his time (cf Frankemölle
1974:282, 288)—into the mouth of Jesus. He does not, however, have any quantitatively higher
fulfillment of the Law in mind, but a qualitative transforming or transcending of it. “Perfection is, for
Matthew, a strictly theocentric concept which leaves any traditional understanding of the Law far
behind” (Frankemölle 1974:293—my translation; cf 283, 292). The dikaiosyne of God's reign is
particularly expressed in a series of statements where Jesus contrasts his commands with what his
listeners have heard was said to the people of old (Mt 5:21-46). None of these injunctions can merely
be seen as a tightening of the Law; they refer to obedience of another kind, of another order, since they
are spawned by the irruption of God's reign in the life of Jesus. Merely performing superlative acts of
sacrifice is not enough and will not do it. The rich young man was not just asked to give all his
possessions to the poor, but also to follow Jesus. The latter summons is the really decisive one; the
“being perfect” manifests itself in discipleship (cf Barth 1965:90, 93).

“MAKE DISCIPLES…”
My survey of the intimate interrelatedness of notions such as commandment, teaching, the will of the
Father, the reign of heaven, justice-righteousness, and being perfect may have helped the reader to
understand the commission “teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20).
I have illustrated how these words draw together in one phrase a major portion of the theological
wealth and depth of Matthew's gospel and may open missionary perspectives to us. We have,
however, not yet exhausted Matthew's missionary message and significance. So we turn to another key
expression of the “Great Commission.” I refer to the entire semantic field of the terms “disciple”
(mathetes) and “make disciples” (matheteuein).
The theme of discipleship is central to Matthew's gospel and to Matthew's understanding of the
church and mission. “‘The disciples’ is the specifically ecclesiological concept of the evangelist”
(Bornkamm 1965b:300—my translation; cf Bornkamm 1965a:37-40). Let us, however, first turn to the
verb, matheteuein, “to make disciples.” The verb occurs only four times in the New Testament, three
of these in Matthew (13:52, 27:57; 28:19) and one in Acts (14:21).
The most striking use of the verb matheteuein is encountered in the “Great Commission” (28:19).
It is also the only instance in which it is used in the imperative sense: matheteusate, “make
disciples!” It is, moreover, the principal verb in the “Great Commission” and the heart of the
commissioning. The two participles “baptizing” and “teaching” are clearly subordinate to “make
disciples” and describe the form the disciple-making is to take (Trilling 1964:28-32; Hahn 1980:35;
Matthey 1980:168). The overall “aim of mission is the winning of all people to the status of being
true Christians” (Trilling 1964:50—my translation). With this in view and in opposition to both the
enthusiast and the antinominian elements in his community, Matthew employs the sober injunction,
“Make disciples,” matheteusate!
In contrast to the rareness of the verb “to make disciples,” the noun “disciple” (mathetes) is
common, at least in the four gospels and Acts, for it is not found anywhere else in the New Testament.
Paul, for instance, never uses it.
“Disciple” is far more central in Matthew than in the other synoptic gospels. The term occurs
seventy-three times in Matthew, compared to forty-six times in Mark and only thirty-seven times in
Luke. It is, in fact the only name for Christ's followers in the gospels. The verb that most commonly
goes with “disciple” is the verb akolouthein, “to follow (after).” This verb is also more common in
Matthew than in his sources; at several points he has introduced it into the narrative (cf Strecker
1962:193; Kasting 1969:35f; Frankemölle 1974:153; Friedrich 1983:165). (The English word
“discipleship” is therefore a correct rendering of the German Nachfolge, “following after” [cf the
translation of the title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Nachfolge as The Cost of Discipleship].)
More important than the difference between Matthew, Mark, and Luke as regards the frequency of
the term mathetes is the difference in nuances of meaning. For Matthew, the expression “disciples”
does not refer to the Twelve only (as it does in Mark and Luke). It is used in a less exact way,
although the Twelve are always presupposed when the word is used. Put positively, for Matthew the
first disciples are prototypes for the church. The term thus expands to include the “disciples” of
Matthew's own time. His gospel is known, and for a very good reason, as the gospel of the church.
The link between Jesus’ own time and the time of Matthew's community is, in fact, given in the
command “Make disciples!” (28:19). In other words, the followers of the earthly Jesus have to make
others into what they themselves are: disciples. In the final analysis, therefore, there is, for Matthew,
no break, no discontinuity between the history of Jesus and the era of the church. The community of
believers of Matthew's time does not constitute a new period in the economy of salvation. The past
relation between the Master and his first disciples is being transformed into something more than
history—it aims at nourishing and challenging the present hour. Faith takes effect in what Kierkegaard
has called contemporaneity, that is to say, in the unceasing yet irreversible recurrence of the
foundational and exemplary history of the Master and the disciples. It is precisely this indispensable
dialectic between the history of Jesus and the life of the church of his own time that justifies, for
Matthew, the writing of his gospel (cf Zumstein 1972:31-33; Minear 1977:145-148).
The notion of the first disciples as prototypes for the later church manifests itself in many forms.
The members of Matthew's community, too, are the ones who expect God's reign (5:20). They too are
the salt of the earth and the light of the world (5:13f). They too are the blessed ones, for many
reasons, all of which are summarized in the “on my account” of Matthew 5:11. God is their Father,
and they are the children of God (5:9; 5:42) and of God's reign (13:38); as such children they are free
(17:25f). They are, moreover, adelphoi (brothers) among one another (5:22, 23, 24, 47; 18:15, 21,
35; 23:8), even servants of one another (Frankemölle 1974:159-190, with detailed references and
argument). The “disciples” of Matthew's time are thus not just linked to the first disciples but also to
one another. Every disciple follows the Master, but never alone; every disciple is a member of the
fellowship of disciples, the body, or no disciple at all.

MODELLED ON JESUS, AND YET…

The “disciples” of Matthew's own time, then, are modelled on Jesus’ first disciples, just as those first
disciples are modelled on Jesus himself. I have, in the previous chapter, argued that the relation
between Jesus and his disciples was fundamentally different from that between the Jewish rabbis and
their students. We have to go further, however. According to Matthew it is not just a case of the
disciples having to teach what Jesus has taught (28:20), nor of them being Jesus’ fellow-workers and
not merely his messengers (Hahn 1965:41). There is an even more profound correspondence and
solidarity here. This becomes particularly evident in the central part of the gospel, chapter 9:35-11:1,
which can be subdivided into eleven short sections. At the center of these eleven paragraphs we have
Chapter 10:24f: “A disciple is not above his teacher nor a servant above his master; it is enough for
the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master.” Around this centerpiece Matthew
has arranged a whole series of sayings which all illuminate one fact only: what applies to Jesus
applies to his disciples also. Their sharing becomes apparent particularly in two seemingly
contradictory respects: Jesus and his disciples share in suffering and in missionary authority (cf
Brown 1978:76-79 and Frankemölle 1974:85-108, both with detailed references; cf also
Frankemölle 1982: 125-129).
Even if the disciples are modelled so carefully and consistently on Jesus, there is no indication of
a blurring of the essential difference between him and them. Two small but nevertheless important
details in Matthew illustrate this. The first is Matthew's use of the verbproskynein, “to worship” or
literally “to fall prostrate.” It occurs, inter alia, in the “Great Commission” pericope: when the
disciples saw Jesus, “they worshiped him” (28:17). Proskynein is a favorite word of Matthew. He
uses it no less than thirteen times (compared to twice each in Mark and Luke). He frequently
introduces proskynein where he follows Mark, for instance in Matthew 8:2; 9:18; 15:25 and 20:20
(Hubbard 1974:75). The verb refers to a gesture that should be reserved for expressing submission to
and adoration of God alone, as Jesus’ answer to Satan in the temptation episode explicitly states (Mt
4:10, with a reference to Deut 6:16). After Jesus has walked on the water only Matthew has the
disciples fall at his feet and exclaim, “Truly, you are the Son of God” (Mt 14:33) (cf also Lange
1973:472-474; Matthey 1980:164). Jesus is clearly for Matthew much more than somebody to be
emulated. He is, in the ultimate sense of the word, the Lord.
This brings us to the other significant detail which illustrates the difference between Jesus and the
disciples: Matthew's use of the expression Kyrios, “Lord.” In Matthew this appellation is reserved
for use by the disciples and by those who suffer and come to Jesus for help; Jesus’ opponents, on the
other hand, always address him as “Teacher” or “Rabbi.” This differentiation is carried through
consistently. Where Matthew's sources have “teacher” or “rabbi” in the mouth of the disciples, he has
changed this to “Lord.” The result is that Jesus’ opponents never address him as “Lord” and the
disciples never in any way other than “Lord.” There is one exception, however—Judas Iscariot twice
calls him “Rabbi,” both times in the context of his betrayal of Jesus (Mt 26:25,48) (cf Strecker
1962:33,123f; Bornkamm 1965a:38; 1965b:301f; 33, 123f; Lange 1973:218-229). Kyrios was, of
course, at the time not only a royal or divine title but also simply used as an appellation of showing
respect. Even so, it can hardly be doubted that Matthew understood it primarily as a divine title
(Bornkamm 1965a:39).
 It has often been pointed out that Matthew tends to idealize the disciples, particularly in
comparison to Mark (for details, cf Strecker 1962:193; Frankemölle 1974:150-155). Let us not,
however, rashly accuse Matthew of misconstruing history, but rather remember that, as I have
repeatedly argued, he is, in his unique way, prolonging the logic of Jesus’ ministry into his own time
and circumstances. His concern is both pastoral and missionary-pastoral, in that he holds up the first
disciples as models for his own community, as ideals to emulate; missionary, in that he urges his
community to “make disciples” who should resemble those first ones. It is, however, important also
to note that Matthew does not remove all negative traits (Strecker 1962:193f; Frankemölle 1974:152-
155). The disciples are sometimes referred to as being “of little faith” or “afraid” or “full of doubt.”
The last of these, distazein, appears only in Matthew. Particularly striking is its appearance in the
context of the “Great Commission”: “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted”
(28:17).
Clearly these references to the weakness of the disciples have an important meaning for Matthew's
readers. Being a disciple of Jesus does not signify that one has, as it were, arrived. Matthew's gospel
records several parables about the need for remaining vigilant to the last moment (cf LaVerdiere and
Thompson 1976:580f). Even the brother or the servant in God's household may turn out to be a
“hypocrite” (7:5; 24:51). The separation between the saved and the lost is reserved for the day of
judgment, as the parables of the wheat and the tares and of the fish net (both only in Matthew; cf
13:24-30 and 13:47-50) make clear (Bornkamm 1965a:16f, 40). The call to constant vigilance is
certainly intended as warning against any possible self-exaltation, but also as motivation to an eager
engagement in mission (cf LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:581; Frankemölle 1982:127).
The weaknesses of the disciples in Matthew's gospel do not, however, have a dark side only. In
Matthew 28:17 the disciples’ doubt is strangely juxtaposed to their worship: “They (all!) worshiped
him; but some doubted.” The same two verbs are closely connected in Matthew 14:31, 33 (cf
Zumstein 1972:20, 24; Hubbard 1974:77; Matthey 1980:165). As Matthew looks at the members of
his own community—living at a frontier, experiencing difficulty in defining their own identity on the
borderline between increasingly hostile Jews and as yet alien Gentiles—he reminds them of a rather
bewildered band of simple folk on the slopes of a mountain in Galilee, just across the border from
Syria where they are now living, and he wishes his community to know that mission never takes place
in self-confidence but in the knowledge of our own weakness, at a point of crisis where danger and
opportunity come together. Matthew's Christians, like the first disciples, stand in the dialectical
tension between worship and doubt, between faith and fear.
Almost as if he refuses to come to their aid and help them combat their doubt, Matthew portrays
the risen Jesus’ final appearance to his disciples in starkly sober language. He simply says that the
eleven disciples went to the mountain in Galilee where Jesus had told them to go. Then Jesus came to
them and commissioned them (28:16-18). He is simply Jesus, the same name given to him in the
gospel narrative; he is the same one who walked the dusty roads of Palestine with them. He is now
risen from the dead, yes, but his glory is hidden, wrapped in a mystery. No ascension into heaven or
outpouring of the Holy Spirit is reported or even anticipated (cf Trilling 1964:43; Bornkamm
1965b:290; Schneider 1982:86). There is a remarkable restraint in the way Matthew describes the
entire scene; the concentration is almost exclusively on Jesus’ words (cf Bosch 1959:188; Matthey
1980:166). Whereas Matthew is usually given to quoting the Old Testament in order to authenticate
what Jesus is and does, no such formula quotation appears here; the readers have to accept the
validity of the words of the risen Jesus on the basis of their own authority (cf Hahn 1980:32). Nothing
spectacular! Nothing for the enthusiasts!
 In his characteristically dialectical style, however, Matthew contrasts the sobriety of this scene
with two other elements: Jesus’ statement about his all-embracing authority (v 18) and his very last
words, with which Matthew concludes his gospel, “And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the
age” (v 20). We turn, first, to this latter saying.
The expressions “with you” and “the close of the age” are typically Matthean. Once again, as he so
often does in this final pericope, Matthew reaches back to themes he has developed in the earlier part
of his gospel. In the case of “I am with you” he takes up the words from Isaiah 7:14, which he has
used in chapter 1:23, “And his name shall be called Immanuel (which means, God with us).” At the
beginning of the gospel Jesus’ presence was promised primarily to Israel; here at the end it pertains to
all disciples wherever they may be (cf also 8:23-27 and 18:20). His presence is, moreover,
permanent—until the end of the age. It is for this reason that no ascension, no outpouring of the Spirit,
and no parousia need to be mentioned. “The interest in that appears to be absorbed by the experience
of the always immediate, comforting and empowering presence of the Lord…The consciousness of
the present experience of the Lord is so intense that it can embrace the entire future. What is a reality
now remains valid for ever. Here speaks the faith of the church, not apocalyptic speculation” (Trilling
1964:43f—my translation). In this way the conclusion of the gospel signals a new beginning (Legrand
1987:12).
Jesus’ abiding presence is, however, intimately linked to his followers’ engagement in mission. It
is as they make disciples, baptize them, and teach them, that Jesus remains with those followers
(Matthey 1980:172; Schneider 1982:85f). In the Old Testament the Lord's presence with his people is
particularly emphasized where a dangerous mission is to be undertaken (cf Josh 1:5; Is 43:1f, 4f). The
same assistance Yahweh has assured his people of old, Jesus now promises his disciples as they go
out on their hazardous mission and encounter rebuffs and persecution (cf Zumstein 1972:28; Senior
and Stuhlmueller 1983:242). The clause “I am with you always” is, however, not logically
subordinated to the “go…and make disciples.” It is, rather, the other way round—because Jesus
continues to be present with his disciples, they go out in mission (Legrand 1987:12).
The second feature with the aid of which Matthew counterbalances his sober depiction of the final
appearance of Jesus is expressed in the words with which Jesus prefaces the actual “Great
Commission”: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (28:18). Now, after his
resurrection, Jesus is given all authority, not only on earth (cf 9:6) but also in heaven. What is new is
the universal extension of his authority (cf Strecker 1962:211f; Zumstein 1972:24; Lange 1973:96-
169; Meier 1977:413; Matthey 1980:166f). Again Matthew takes up a theme from the earlier part of
his gospel: in 4:8f the devil offered Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” if
Jesus would only bow down and worship him. But Jesus refused. Now, in the final scene of the
gospel, the disciples worship him and he announces that God has given him much more than the devil
has promised. “The Crucified has become the Lord of the cosmos” (Friedrich 1983:179—my
translation; cf also Lohmeyer 1951:passim).
This announcement appears to be contradicted immediately, however, by Jesus’ next words: “Go
therefore and make disciples…” (28:19f). Is Jesus then still not really and fully the universal Lord?
Do his followers have to make him that, through their discipling, baptizing, and teaching of the
nations? Does his sovereignty still have to be ratified by the nations acknowledging him as King? And
is his reign in jeopardy if they do not?
Or, conversely, if his lordship is already established beyond any dispute, why is it still necessary
to go into all the world and persuade the nations to submit to him? Are they not already his subjects?
If Jesus has “all authority in heaven and on earth,” what is the point in trying to manifest that authority
still further?
An insignificant and often overlooked word (and another one of Matthew's favorite expressions; cf
Lange 1973:306f; Friedrich 1983:174) provides the answer: the word “(go) therefore” (Greek:
oun).2 It links the announcement of a reality (Jesus’ universal authority) with a solemn challenge:
“Make disciples.” If Jesus is indeed Lord of all, this reality just has to be proclaimed. Nobody who
knows of this can remain silent about it. He or she can do only one thing—help others also to
acknowledge Jesus’ lordship. And this is what mission is all about—“the proclaiming of the lordship
of Christ” (Michel 1941:262). Jesus’ enthronement inaugurates and makes possible a worldwide
mission inconceivable up to now. The universal and unlimited dominion of the risen Jesus evokes an
equally universal and limitless response from his ambassadors (cf Friedrich 1983:180). Mission is a
logical consequence of Jesus’ induction as sovereign Lord of the universe. In the light of this, the
“Great Commission” enunciates any empowerment rather than a command (Hahn 1980:38). It is a
creative statement in the manner of Genesis 1:3, “Let there be…”
The phrase “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”
(28:19) has to be seen in the same light. The fact that Matthew puts the baptismal command before the
command to teach, whereas the missionary practice of many centuries has been adhering to the exactly
opposite sequence, has led some missionaries and missiologists to advocate a return to the original
modus operandi: first baptize converts, then teach them. It is, however, seriously to be doubted
whether Matthew can be used in this way. The Matthean Jesus makes a theological statement, as it
were. In the words of Gerhard Friedrich (1983:182—my translation; cf 183):
The sequel “baptizing” and “teaching” is not a doctrinal oversight but consciously chosen by Matthew. Through baptism people
are called into becoming disciples of Jesus. Baptism is no human act or decision, but a gift of grace. Through baptism the one
who is baptized is made to partake of the entire fullness of the divine promise and the reality of the forgiveness of sins.

This may also explain the absence of any explicit reference to forgiveness of sins which, as I have
previously mentioned, is emphasized in corresponding passages in both Luke (24:47) and John
(20:21-23). Forgiveness of sins is a central idea in Matthew's gospel (contra Strecker 1962:148f).
As early as 1:21 Matthew quotes an angel saying to Mary, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will
save his people from their sins.” Immediately following the Lord's Prayer—which contains the
petition, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Mt 6:12)—Matthew has Jesus
say, “For if you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you” (6:14f).
Furthermore, at the institution of the Lord's Supper the Matthean Jesus says, “For this is my blood of
the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28). The reference to
forgiveness does not occur in the other synoptic gospels’ accounts of the Last Supper (cf also Trilling
1964:32).
In view of all this it would have been redundant expressly to mention the forgiveness of sins in the
“Great Commission.” For Matthew, this was self-evidently included in the baptismal formula: “One
becomes a disciple through baptism in that one's sins are pardoned” (Friedrich 1983:183—my
translation). As Paul also says (precisely in the context of a baptismal text!), “Consider yourselves
dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:11); in other words, accept as real what God
has already done, and act accordingly! What God has done in Christ—the forgiveness of sins—is the
point of departure of the new life of the disciple (contra Strecker 1962:l49) and is being sealed in the
act of baptism.

MATTHEW'S PARADIGM: MISSIONARY DISCIPLESHIP

I wish to conclude this chapter by highlighting some of the elements which are unique to the Matthean
paradigm of mission, as they have begun to emerge in our exposition above. What was it that the
author of the first gospel contributed to the understanding of mission?3
Much has undoubtedly changed since Jesus’ earthly ministry and also since the Christian church,
from the late forties of the first century onward, has increasingly become a Gentile rather than a
Jewish body. If my dating of Matthew's gospel (the eighties of the first century) is correct, then the
devastation of the Jewish War already lies almost twenty years back and Pharisaic Judaism is
increasingly adopting a fiercely negative stance toward the Christian community. Matthew's own
community is, however, still predominantly (or exclusively?) Jewish; its members no longer live in
their ancestral homeland but lead a ghettolike existence in Syria. They are a community in transition
(cf LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976), rejected by their compatriots yet without, as yet, having
embraced a new identity. They are also a divided community, made up of enthusiasts and legalists,
with the main body probably somewhere in between.
1. In attempting to articulate an identity for this community, Matthew draws on the tradition about
Jesus of Nazareth. He clarifies the community's identity as an identity-in-mission by writing a gospel
permeated, from beginning to end, by the notion of a mission to Jews and Gentiles (cf Michel
1950/51:21) and by designing it in such a way that it would culminate in the “Great Commission.”
Virtually every word of this commission reaches back to the story of Jesus as told in earlier passages
of the gospel: the fact that the meeting took place on a mountain in Galilee; the disciples’ wavering
between worship and doubt; the references to Jesus’ authority, to making disciples, and teaching, and
expressions such as “go,” “therefore,” “observe,” “command,” “I with you,” and “the close of the
age” (cf Lange 1973; Hubbard 1974:73-99; Meier 1977:408-410). It also appears that Matthew has
fashioned the “Great Commission” in such a way that it would constitute a counterpart to the
temptation narrative (4:8f). Both episodes take place on a mountain, in both cases the issue of power
is central, both times the verb “to fall prostrate” or “to worship” (proskynein) is employed. Thus,
says Matthey (1980:163), “we have placed at the beginning and at the end of Jesus’ ministry two texts
which describe alternative understandings of his mission as Son of God, alternative methods to
incarnate the kingdom of heaven” (cf Friedrich 1983:178, note 115).
2. Matthew seems to espouse a “low” christology in that he portrays Jesus in terms reminiscent of
Moses, without, however, in the least casting any doubt an his conviction that Jesus is the Lord who
has to be worshiped. His low christology enables him to depict the disciples in such a way that they
are, on the one hand, very similar and close to Jesus, almost as students following a rabbi; on the
other hand, he stresses, more than the other synoptic gospels, the disciples’ attitude of reverence and
dependence.
The first emphasis enables him to represent the risen Jesus not as the One who has ascended into
heaven and sits at the right hand of God, and who will one day return (cf Acts 1:11), but as the One
who remains with his disciples always, until the end of the age. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us
(1:23). Matthew does not find it necessary to say that Jesus will return; how could he, if he always
remains with his disciples?! It was precisely because of such bold fusion of the awareness of the
present lordship of Christ with his empowering his followers to make disciples of all nations that the
delay of the parousia did not cause a catastrophe in the early church (cf Bornkamm 1965b:295). The
community's involvement in mission was in itself an integral part of the parousia expectation, a kind
of “proleptic parousia” (Osborne 1976:82). Matthew has his eyes on the contemporary situation, not
on the “end of the age” (cf Trilling 1964:45). The experience of the presence of Christ is so
overpowering that it embraces the future. Today's reality remains permanently valid (:43f), since the
incarnation continues in the disciples’ self-giving service to the world. “The resurrected Jesus is
present among the missionaries” (Matthey 1980:166). They go to the ends of the earth in the
confidence that “those who receive you, receive me,” just as “those who receive me, receive the One
who sent me” (10:40). All of this highlights the close proximity between Jesus and the disciples.
Throughout the final pericope he remains “Jesus,” the One whom they had known in the flesh, on
whom their entire ministry is modelled, and who stays with them always.
The second emphasis enables Matthew to highlight the fact that Jesus is not just a leader in the
manner that Moses was, but the disciples’ Lord (for this is how they invariably address him) and the
One who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. For Matthew, missionary discipleship
unfolds itself in the creative tension between these two emphases and has far-reaching consequences
for his understanding of mission.
3. In developing his missionary paradigm, Matthew is both traditional and innovative, a
disposition which enables him to communicate with both “wings” of his community: those who
emphasize continued faithfulness to the Law, and those who claim that they rely only on the guidance
of the Spirit (cf Friedrich 1983:177).
One way of responding creatively to this dual challenge is the manner in which Matthew
underscores orthopraxis—an approach which probably brought him in tension with both main groups
in his community. He selects, from the Jesus tradition, stories and sayings about deeds (especially the
“deeds of the Christ,” 11:2), about bearing fruit, about doing God's will, about keeping his
commandments, about being perfect, about practicing justice. All these clearly point toward a very
specific understanding of mission. Neither a legalistic insistence on right doctrine nor an enthusiastic
claim that one is led by the Spirit serves any purpose if it is not corroborated by the bearing of fruit
“that befits repentance” (3:8). After all, a good tree is known only by its fruits (7:19f).
For Matthew, then, being a disciple means living out the teachings of Jesus, which the evangelist
has recorded in great detail in his gospel. It is unthinkable to divorce the Christian life of love and
justice from being a disciple. Discipleship involves a commitment to God's reign, to justice and love,
and to obedience to the entire will of God. Mission is not narrowed down to an activity of making
individuals new creatures, of providing them with “blessed assurance” so that, come what may, they
will be “eternally saved.” Mission involves, from the beginning and as matter of course, making new
believers sensitive to the needs of others, opening their eyes and hearts to recognize injustice,
suffering, oppression, and the plight of those who have fallen by the wayside. It is unjustifiable to
regard the “Great Commission” as being concerned primarily with “evangelism” and the “Great
Commandment” (Mt 22:37-40) as referring to “social involvement.” As Jacques Matthey (1980:171)
puts it,
According to Matthew's “Great Commission,” it is not possible to make disciples without telling them to practice God's call of
justice for the poor. The love commandment, which is the basis for the church's involvement in politics, is an integral part of the
mission commandment.

To become a disciple means a decisive and irrevocable turning to both God and neighbor. What
follows from there is a journey which, in fact, never ends in this life, a journey of continually
discovering new dimensions of loving God and neighbor, as “the reign of God and his justice” (Mt
6:33—my translation) are increasingly revealed in the life of the disciple.
4. Matthew's tendency to opt for creative tension, of combining the pastoral and the prophetic, is
also evidenced by the way in which he portrays the call to a mission to both Jews and Gentiles. I
have referred to the many and serious contradictions in his gospel, in particular the manifest
irreconcilability between sayings such as 10:5f and 15:24 on the one hand and 28:18-20 on the other.
Matthew keeps both sets of sayings, probably because he wishes to hold on to the tension. Nothing is
sorted out neatly. It is, as yet, uncertain which way things will go. The attitude of the synagogue is a
harsh and painful reality. But does this mean that God has abandoned his people? Matthew cannot
bring himself to saying that. So, while on the one hand affirming and promoting the Gentile mission,
also among the members of his own community, he on the other hand portrays Jesus as having been
sent to Israel only. He does not devise a “theology” to accommodate these contradictory positions
(the way Paul did—cf ch 4); he simply affirms and holds on to both.
5. Bornkamm (1965a) and others have pointed out that no other gospel is as manifestly stamped by
the idea of the church as Matthew's and as clearly shaped for ecclesial use. Matthew is also the only
evangelist who puts the word ekklesia, church, into the mouth of the earthly Jesus (on two occasions:
Mt 16:18 and 18:17).
We should, however, guard against reading into Matthew's gospel our contemporary use of the
word “church,” particularly in the sense of “denomination.” Where he identifies mission as “making
disciples,” Matthew does not have in mind the adding of new members to an existing “congregation”
or “denomination.” To be a disciple is not just the same as being a member of a local “church” and
“making disciples” does not simply mean the numerical expansion of the church. We should therefore
not overemphasize the gemeindemässige (ecclesial) tone of the verb matheteuein, “to make
disciples” (Trilling 1964:32). There is, for Matthew, a certain tension between church and
discipleship; at the same time they may never be divorced from each other (Kohler 1974:463).
Ideally, every church member should be a true disciple, but this is obviously not the case in the
Christian communities Matthew knows; he therefore reminds them of the parable of the tares among
the wheat (13:24-30) and of the fact that worthless fishes are sometimes caught in the net of the
kingdom (13:47-50). Some converts are shallow and abandon the faith when persecutions come;
others succumb to the temptations or pressures of this world (13:20-22).
Matthew's interest, then, is in costly discipleship. If this attitude scares some would-be converts
away from the church, so be it. In Matthew's understanding the church is only to be found where
disciples live in community with one another and their Lord and where they seek to live according to
“the will of the Father” (cf Hahn 1980:35). The church is, moreover, seen in the context of
eschatological expectation (cf Bornkamm 1965a:passim). God's reign is an eschatological entity; so
is the church, although Matthew does not confuse the two.

I have pointed out that Matthew is not interested in missionary terminology as such; he sets out to
describe the missionary practice of Jesus and the disciples and, by implication, of the community of
his own time and of later times. The terms used in this regard include the following: “send,” “go,”
“proclaim,” “heal,” “exorcise,” “make peace,” “witness,” “teach,” and “make disciples” (cf Franke-
mölle 1982:97f). We cannot deduce a universally valid missionary theory from Matthew's gospel; we
are, however, challenged to look in the same direction Matthew does. He assures us that, on the basis
of the earthly ministry, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, the “road” of mission to the Gentiles is
open. All limitations have been lifted and a new era has been inaugurated (cf Friedrich 1983:179).
The disciples are called to proclaim Jesus’ ultimate victory over the power of evil, to witness to his
abiding presence, and to lead the world toward the recognition of the love of God. In Matthew's
view, Christians find their true identity when they are involved in mission, in communicating to others
a new way of life, a new interpretation of reality and of God, and in committing themselves to the
liberation and salvation of others. A missionary community is one that understands itself as being both
different from and committed to its environment; it exists within its context in a way which is both
winsome and challenging (cf Frankemölle 1982:99,127f). In the midst of confusion and uncertainty,
Matthew's community is driven back to its roots, to the persons and experiences which gave birth to
it, so that it can rediscover and reclaim those persons and events, come to a more appropriate self-
understanding, and on the basis of this discern the nature of its existence and calling (cf LaVerdiere
and Thompson 1976:594).
 Chapter 3

Luke-Acts: Practicing Forgiveness

and Solidarity with the Poor

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LUKE

In this chapter I wish to trace the outlines of the Lukan missionary paradigm.1 It will emerge that
Luke's understanding of mission differed in significant respects from that of Matthew (ch 2) and Paul
(ch 4). In spite of these differences, however, the three portrayals are, at most, subparadigms of one
coherent early Christian paradigm of mission.
In the previous chapter we took note of the major role played by the Matthean “Great
Commission” in providing a biblical foundation for mission, particularly in the Western Protestantism
of the past two centuries. In recent years, however, another New Testament passage has become very
prominent in the debate about a biblical foundation for mission: Luke's rendering of Jesus’ sermon in
his home synagogue of Nazareth, in which he applied the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1f to himself and his
ministry. The incident is recorded, in this form, only in Luke's gospel, and it is clear from the entire
context that it occupies a crucial place here. Precisely this has been recognized in recent years,
particularly in conciliar and liberation theology circles. Luke 4:16-21 has, for all practical purposes,
replaced Matthew's “Great Commission” as the key text not only for understanding Christ's own
mission but also that of the church. This circumstance alone should be sufficient reason for taking a
closer look at Luke's understanding of mission.
There are, however, also other important reasons for choosing Luke when researching the early
church's perception of mission. One of these lies in the very fact of the centrality of mission in Luke's
writings. Hahn refers to it as “the dominating theme” for Luke (1965:136). Another reason for
selecting Luke is to be found in a basic difference between him and the other three evangelists—Luke
not only wrote a gospel, but also the Book of Acts. It will, I hope, gradually become clear why this
factor is so important for our theme. A third reason emerges when we compare Luke with Matthew.
The latter, as I have argued, was most probably a Jewish Christian writing for a predominantly
Jewish Christian community in the wake of the momentous events around AD 70. Luke, on the other
hand, was perhaps the only Gentile author of a New Testament book and wrote for Christians who
were predominantly of Gentile origin. Moreover, he appears to have had in view many communities
rather than one single community, as did Matthew (cf LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976: 582f).
Even so, there are enough similarities between Luke's and Matthew's gospels to warrant a
worthwhile comparison. For one thing, both gospels were written in approximately the same period,
probably in the eighties of the first century, that is, during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian.
Second, Luke and Matthew, to quite a large extent, made use of the same sources, namely the Gospel
of Mark and the Sayings-Source (or Q). Third, both Matthew and Luke wrote for communities in
transition (cf the title of LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976). Matthew's concern was with a
predominantly (perhaps even exclusively) Jewish Christian community which, in the wake of the
Jewish War and in the face of the increasingly hostile attitude toward the church displayed by
Pharisaism, was facing both an identity crisis and an uncertain future. Luke also had a crisis situation
in mind when he set out to write his two-volume work—which brings us to the question about the
factors that occasioned his writings.
More than half a century had passed since those momentous events concerning Jesus of Nazareth.
Very much had happened during these years. The Zealot movement within Judaism had precipitated
the Jewish War which, in turn, had led to the destruction of Jerusalem and almost totally changed the
face of Judaism. The Christian church, which began as a renewal movement within Judaism had,
during the preceding four decades or so, undergone an almost complete transformation. It was no
longer winning any significant numbers of Jews to faith in Jesus Christ. It had, in fact, for all intents
and purposes become a Gentile church. The vigorous missionary program of Paul, in particular, was
responsible for the predominantly Gentile character of the church of the eighties. Yet the heyday of
missionary expansion and of Paul's energetic outreach in all directions already lay a quarter of a
century back and a degree of stagnation had set in. The church was now a church of the second
generation and revealed all the characteristics of a movement that no longer shared the fervor and
dedication of recent converts. The return of Christ, which was so fervently expected by the first
generation of believers, did not take place. The faith of the church was tested in at least two ways:
from within, there was a flagging of enthusiasm; from without, there were hostility and opposition
from both Jews and pagans. In addition, Gentile Christians were facing a crisis of identity. They were
asking, “Who are we really? How do we relate to the Jewish past, particularly in view of the
manifest animosity of contemporary Judaism? Is Christianity a new religion or a continuation of the
faith of the Old Testament? And above all, how do we relate to the earthly Jesus, who is gradually
and irrevocably receding into the past?”
Luke decided to come to the aid of these Christians. Anyone who acted as though nothing had
happened since Jesus’ ministry in Galilee and Judea would be untrue to that very Jesus. A naive
equation of the discipleship practiced by the Christian communities of Luke's time with that of the
first disciples was no longer possible. Luke, more than most of his contemporaries, saw the problem
posed by the passage of time and of the transformation of the Christian community from being
exclusively Jewish to being predominantly Gentile. The history of half a century could not simply be
passed over but needed to be reinterpreted (cf Schweizer 1971:137-146). Luke provided this
reinterpretation in a unique manner. He argued that the Christians of his time were not really in a less
advantageous position than Jesus’ first disciples were, that the risen Lord was still with them,
particularly through his Spirit who was continually guiding them into new adventures. Jesus was still
present in his community, in his “name” and in his “power,” through which the past became
efficacious. This happened where Jesus was obeyed and truly accepted as Lord, and also where the
community followed the lead of his Spirit into new situations of mission.
As Luke retells the story of Jesus and of the early church there are certain themes to which he
returns again and again: the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the centrality of repentance and forgiveness,
of prayer, of love and acceptance of enemies, of justice and fairness in inter-human relationships.
There are also particular categories of people who are prominent in his writings. Heading the list (at
least as far as the gospel is concerned) are the poor. Also to be mentioned is his emphasis on Jesus’
association with women—a stunning crossing of a social and religious barrier in the patriarchal
society of his day (cf Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:261)—tax-collectors, and Samaritans. The entire
ministry of Jesus and his relationships with all these and other marginalized people witness, in Luke's
writings, to Jesus’ practice of boundary-breaking compassion, which the church is called to emulate.
In order to appreciate Luke's unique contribution to the understanding of mission it is necessary to
say a few words about Hans Conzelmann's seminal studies on Luke, particularly his book Die Mitte
der Zeit (ET: The Theology of St Luke), first published in 1953. Conzelmann argued that Luke had
consistently toned down the expectation of an imminent eschatological consummation that
characterized the early Christian community. The Holy Spirit was, in Luke's writings, “no longer the
eschatological gift, but the substitute in the meantime for the possession of ultimate salvation”
(Conzelmann 1964:95). In this way the coming of the Holy Spirit solved, for Luke, the problem
caused by the delay of the parousia. This means, for Conzelmann, that Luke had introduced the idea of
Heilsgeschichte, “salvation history,” which he regarded as comprising three distinct epochs: (1) the
epoch of Israel, up to and including John the Baptist; (2) the epoch of Jesus’ ministry, which Luke
regarded as past and as constituting the middle period of salvation (hence the German title of his
book); and (3) the epoch of the church, which was inaugurated on the day of Pentecost.
There is undoubtedly a degree of validity to Conzelmann's reconstruction of Luke's overall plan. I
have already mentioned that Luke was, more than the other evangelists, painfully aware of the fact that
he and the church of his time lived in an era which differed in crucial respects from the period of
Jesus’ earthly ministry. Yet most scholars today agree that Conzelmann has overstated his case, that it
is hardly possible to maintain that Luke had systematically recast his sources in order to squeeze them
into a preconceived overall theological framework.
It is, moreover, incorrect to maintain that Luke regarded the church's mission in the power of the
Spirit as a substitute for eschatological expectation. Luke preserves the tension between eschatology
and history and does not place the eschaton as terminus at the end of a salvation-historical era (cf
Rütti 1972:171f, and Nissen 1984:92, note 12, where further bibliographical references can be
found).
More important, it is incorrect to subdivide the three periods of salvation history as absolutely as
Conzelmann does (cf Schweizer 1971:142). LaVerdiere and Thompson have reminded us that the
Holy Spirit is prominent not only in Acts but also in Luke's gospel. To a very real extent then, Luke
unites the time of Jesus and the time of the church in one era of the Spirit. The two times are certainly
not identical but neither can they be divorced from each other. For Luke's ecclesiology, both the
distinction and the close relationship between the time of Jesus and the time of the church are
significant: Jesus and the church belong to one and the same era. The historical life of Jesus was not
purely and simply relegated to the past. The church lives in continuity with the life and work of Jesus.
Still, even if we cannot subscribe to Conzelmann's entire interpretation of Luke's writings, we
have to agree that Luke was first and foremost a theologian who wanted to communicate a specific
understanding of Jesus and his coming. He was not a mere chronicler or historian (in spite of what he
himself said in the introduction to his gospel, 1:1-4). He was not interested in retelling the stories of
Jesus and the church “as they actually happened.” In the words of Eduard Schweizer, “He was too
good a witness to let this happen” (1971:144). In chapter 1, I attempted a brief reconstruction of the
main flow of the origins of the Christian mission. This was not what Luke tried to do in Acts. His
interest was in the way the Gentile mission was to be motivated theologically, not in an historical
report of the origins and course of the mission (cf Jervell 1972:42). Naturally this does not mean that
his rendering is without value as a historical source; it still remains the best and most reliable source
we have of the beginnings of Christianity (cf Hengel 1983a:2; 1986:35-39, 59-68; Meyer 1986:97).
The thrust of his concern was not historical detail, however, but the restructuring of the tradition in
such a way that it conveyed a message and a challenge to his contemporaries. What Haenchen
(1971:110) says about the differences between Luke's three accounts of Paul's conversion may
perhaps be said about the entire corpus of his writings,
 That a writer should thus make free with tradition must at first strike us as irresponsible, as an unwarranted license. But
evidently Luke has a conception of the narrator's calling different from ours. For him, a narration should not describe an event
with the precision of a police-report, but must make the listener and reader aware of the inner significance of what happened,
and impress upon him unforgettably the truth of the power of God made manifest in it. The writer's obedience is indeed fulfilled
in the very freedom of his rendering.

JEW, SAMARITAN, AND GENTILE IN LUKE-ACTS

The Difference between the Gospel and Acts
Wilson (1973:239) suggests that the description of Luke's approach to the Gentiles as theological is
misleading; the most striking characteristic of Luke-Acts, he believes, is precisely the lack of any
consistent theology of the Gentiles. This statement as it stands is saying too much. Luke most certainly
has an overall theological understanding of a mission to Jews and Gentiles, even if the way in which
he develops this might not always satisfy modern Western demands for logical consistency.
The principal manner in which Luke attempts to articulate his theology of mission is by writing not
only one book, but two. Most scholars agree that the writing of the Book of Acts was not an
afterthought but that, from the outset, Luke intended to write two volumes (cf Stanek 1985:17). This
emerges clearly when we look at the overall structure of the two writings. Luke regards Jesus’
mission as universal in intent but incomplete in execution (LaVerdiere and Thompson l976:595). A
mission to Gentiles is mentioned explicitly only once in the gospel: in Luke 24:47, that is, in the final
pericope. The Gentile mission would be the task of the church, not of the historical Jesus (cf Hahn
1965:129; Wilson 1973:52f). The gospel takes us to the very threshold of the Gentile mission; the
Book of Acts would tell that story in detail (compare Luke 24:47 with Acts 1:8). This is certainly not
just a Lukan theological construct but a historical fact. It is striking, throughout Luke's gospel, how
reserved Jesus is in relation to Gentiles. Only once explicit mention is made of a visit to non-Jewish
country, to the land of the Gerasenes (8:26-39); for the rest Jesus apparently remains on Jewish soil
(cf Bosch 1959:108).
Luke also uses other strategies to reveal the inner unity of his understanding of mission. One of
these is geography. In the gospel, Jesus’ ministry unfolds in three stages: Galilee (4:14-9:50), his
journey from Galilee to Jerusalem (9:5119:40), and finally the events in Jerusalem (19:41 to the end
of the gospel; it is striking that Luke does not mention any appearances of the risen Christ in Galilee
—everything is concentrated in Jerusalem). In Acts, the church's missionary ministry likewise
evolves in three phases, indicated in 1:8, “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea
and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” The opening chapters of Acts relate the birth and growth of
the church in Jerusalem; the second part portrays the expansion of the church into Samaria and the
coastal plains until it reaches Antioch; the third section relates the missionary outreach in several
directions, concluding with Paul's arrival in Rome, at which point the book comes to a rather abrupt
end.
Thus the overall outline of the two books is geographical, from Galilee to Jerusalem and again
from Jerusalem to Rome, but this doubtless has more than geographical significance. Geography
simply becomes a vehicle for conveying theological (or missiological) meaning. Luke employs it so
as to disclose the relationship between the mission of Jesus and the mission of the church. Jerusalem,
in particular, is for Luke much more than a geographical center (cf Dupont 1979:12f; Dillon
1979:241, 246; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:255).
The Gentile Mission in Luke 4:16-30
An implicit reference to the future Gentile mission does, however, surface in the so-called Nazareth
episode (Lk 4:16-30). At least three fundamental concerns of Luke are expressed here: (1) the
centrality of the poor in Jesus’ ministry; (2) the setting aside of vengeance; and (3) the Gentile
mission. For the moment I turn to this last aspect only; I shall return to the other two.
Luke takes up an event Mark relates much later in his gospel (6:1-6; Mt 13:53-58) and presents it
as the story about the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, at the same time modifying the story almost
beyond recognition. It is clear both from the context in which Luke places this event and from its
contents that Luke himself regards the incident as exceptionally significant. It stands as a “preface” to
Jesus’ entire public ministry (Anderson 1964:260), even as a condensed version of the gospel story
as a whole (Dillon 1979:249). It is a “programmatic discourse” which fulfills the same function in
Luke's gospel as the Sermon on the Mount does in Matthew's (Dupont 1979:20f). This is underlined
by Jesus confidently and emphatically appropriating an Old Testament prophecy to his person and
ministry. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him and has anointed him. The final messianic future is now
operative. Isaiah's prophecy is being fulfilled.
Luke tells the reader very little of what Jesus said at this occasion. He concentrates, rather, on the
reaction of the synagogue congregation of Jesus’ hometown. It is clear from this reaction that Jesus
must have said something that antagonized them. I shall return to this point in more detail. For the
moment it suffices to note that the people of Nazareth refused to believe Jesus’ claim and rejected
him. Jesus then challenged the congregation's “ethics of election” (Nissen 1984:75). What he
communicated to them, inter alia, was that God was not only the God of Israel but also, and equally,
the God of the Gentiles. He reminded them of the fact that the prophet Elijah had bestowed God's
favor upon a Gentile woman in Sidon and that Elisha had healed only one leper, Naaman, a Syrian.
God was, therefore, not irrevocably bound to Israel. Dupont rightly points out that this incident
reveals a striking parallel with several stories in Acts where, time and time again, the gospel of Jesus
is offered to Jews who refuse it, with the result that the apostles then go to the Gentiles (Dupont
1979:21f). There can, therefore, be little doubt that, in Luke's mind, the Nazareth episode has a
clearly Gentile mission orientation and serves to highlight this fundamental thrust of Jesus’ entire
ministry at his very first appearance in public (cf LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:589, 593; Senior
and Stuhlmueller 1983:268).
Encounters with Samaritans
Luke's accounts of encounters between Jesus and Samaritans fulfill a similar function. Once again a
comparison with Mark and Matthew reveals a striking difference. Mark gives no reference to
Samaritans or Samaria, whereas Matthew records only Jesus’ prohibition to enter any Samaritan town
(10:5). Luke, on the other hand, has several such references, of which at least some are highly
significant for his purpose in Luke-Acts; namely, to show that the Samaritan mission was the
beginning of the Gentile mission and was part of the divine plan (cf Ford 1984:79-95).
These encounters are all reported in Luke's central section, that is, in the part of the gospel which
recounts Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem (9:5119:40). Actually, this part of the gospel opens
with an episode in which Jesus encounters Samaritans (9:51-56). Jesus sends out messengers to
prepare lodgings for himself and his disciples in a Samaritan town, but the inhabitants refuse them
accommodation. James and John are furious and, like latter-day Elijahs, immediately wish to call
down fire from heaven and burn up the Samaritans, but Jesus rebukes the two disciples and goes to
another town.
In order to understand this episode, and particularly Jesus’ reaction, one must keep in mind that,
for nationalistic Jews, Samaritans were worse than Gentiles (cf Hengel 1983b:56). This attitude was
due, to a large degree, to the Samaritan defilement of the Jewish temple and the killing of a company
of Jewish pilgrims by Samaritans (for details, cf Ford 1984:83-86). The Jewish reader of Luke's
gospel would therefore fully understand the attitude of James and John, not however the reaction of
Jesus. It is clear from the context that Jesus’ conduct reflects an explicit and active denial of the law
of retaliation (cf Ford 1984:91), and is, precisely as such, also a pointer toward a mission beyond
Israel.
Luke's next reference to Samaritans is even more important for our theme. I refer to the parable of
the good Samaritan (10:25-37). The fact that this parable follows hard on the sending out and the
return of the seventy(-two) disciples further emphasizes a future mission to all nations. The parable
marks a significant, highly provocative, and novel step in the mission of Jesus (Ford 1984:93). Jesus’
audience, including his disciples, must have found this parable unpalatable, indeed obnoxious. The
Samaritan in the narrative, says Mazamisa, represents profanity; even more, he stands for non-
humanity. In terms of Jewish religion the Samaritans were enemies not only of Jews, but also of God.
In the context of the narrative the Samaritan thus has a negative religious value. He is furthest
removed from the fulfilling of the law (it was a question about this which provoked Jesus to narrate
the parable), at the bottom of the religious and moral hierarchy, whereas the priest and the Levite are
at the tap (Mazamisa 1987:86). Jews were forbidden to receive works of love from non-Jews and
were not allowed to purchase or use oil and wine obtained from Samaritans (cf Ford 1984:92f). Yet
it is not the “human” in Jewish society who takes pity on the man who has fallen among robbers, but
the “non-human.” He offers the victim a “beatific comradeship” (cf the tale of Mazamisa's book on
this parable).
Luke relates one more incident about Samaritans in his central section: the healing of ten lepers
(17:11-19). This happens in the borderland of Samaria and Galilee (17:11). The horror of leprosy has
served to erase the differences between Jews and Samaritans here, for the story suggests that of the
ten lepers nine are Jews and one is a Samaritan. All are sent to show themselves to the priests, but
only one returns to thank Jesus—the Samaritan. Jesus’ words to him, “Go on your way; your faith has
cured (or “saved,” sesoken) you,” are another clear pointer to the fact that salvation has also come to
this despised people.
In his next volume Luke then brings his “Samaritan theology” to a close. The resurrected Lord
announces that, after Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria will be the recipient of the gospel (Acts 1:8). The
Samaritan mission suggests a fundamental break with traditional Jewish attitudes.
Luke's “Great Commission”
I said above that a mission to Gentiles and Samaritans remains only implicit in Luke's first volume.
All the references—in the infancy narratives (2:31f; 3:6 [cf Schneider 1982:89]), in Jesus’ sermon in
his home town, in his encounters with Samaritans—remain ambiguous and open to more than one
interpretation. In the final pericope of the gospel, however, the curtain is lifted. The risen Jesus meets
his disciples in Jerusalem (not in Galilee, as in Matthew), and opens their minds to understand the
scriptures.
Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of
sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I
send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high (Lk 24:46-49).

I have argued, in the previous chapter, that Matthew's entire gospel can only be read and
understood from the perspective of the final pericope. The same is true of Luke's gospel. From its
first verse this gospel moves toward the climax at the end (cf also Dillon 1979:242; Mann 1981:67).
Jesus’ words quoted above reflect, in a nutshell, Luke's entire understanding of the Christian mission:
it is the fulfillment of scriptural promises; it only becomes possible after the death and resurrection of
the Messiah of Israel; its central thrust is the message of repentance and forgiveness; it is intended for
“all nations”; it is to begin “from Jerusalem”; it is to be executed by “witnesses”; and it will be
accomplished in the power of the Holy Spirit. These elements constitute the “fibers of Luke's mission
theology” running through both the gospel and Acts, binding this two-volume work together (Senior
and Stuhlmueller 1983:259). Luke presents all this, not in the form of a mandate or commission, as
Matthew does, but rather in the form of a fact and a promise; as such the words of Jesus at the end of
the gospel corresponds to what he says in the beginning of Acts (1:8) (cf Schneider 1982:88).
The Jewishness of Luke
It has for a long time been customary among scholars to interpret Luke's two-volume work almost
exclusively in terms of the Gentile mission only. The suggestion is that the Jews, at most, form a dark
backdrop to Gentiles and the Gentile mission: Luke describes the rejection of the Christian
proclamation on the part of the Jewish people, and he dwells extensively on this subject only
because, in his thinking, the Jews’ rejection of Jesus forms a decisive presupposition for the Gentile
mission, which is the real area of Luke's interest. Haenchen, one of the most accomplished scholars
on Luke-Acts, says that, from the first page of Acts to the last, Luke is wrestling “with the problem of
the mission to the Gentiles without the law. His entire presentation is influenced by this” (1971:100;
italics in the original).
This interpretation, even if it contains an element of truth, seems to me to be oversimplified and
one-sided, as the subsequent exposition will hopefully show. A careful reading of his gospel reveals
that Luke has an exceptionally positive attitude to the Jewish people, their religion and culture. Let me
mention only a few aspects of this and further refer to the illuminating article of Irik on this subject,
where detailed references are to be found (1982:passim).
To begin with, Luke does not, to the same degree as the other evangelists, emphasize the difference
between the teaching of Jesus and that of the scribes. Jesus does criticize the Pharisees, but not as
severely as in Matthew; they are never called “hypocrites” or “blind guides.” Luke relates three
instances of Jesus having been invited to meals in the houses of Pharisees. He omits controversial
passages (such as Mk 7:1-20), which might have been experienced as unpleasant by Jews. He does
not apply the parable of the tenants to the chief priests and the Pharisees, as Matthew does. In his
passion narrative the crowd does not cry out, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Mt 27:25);
instead, Luke mentions that “a great multitude of the people” mourned and lamented over Jesus
(23:27). Only Luke has the Crucified pray, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”
(23:34), and it is highly unlikely that he intends to suggest that Jesus is praying only for his Roman
executioners. Actually, Luke frequently emphasizes that the Jewish authorities did what they did out
of ignorance (cf Acts 3:17; 13:27).
The Greek Luke writes is also of significance for the subject under discussion. It is, on the whole,
the Hebraized Greek of the Septuagint and of the synagogues of the Jewish diaspora (cf also Tiede
1980:8, 15). This fact, too, seems to indicate that Luke wrote his two-volume work for the benefit of
Jews as much as Gentiles.
At the same time, his two books serve to reassure Gentile Christians about their origins; Luke
makes it abundantly clear that the Gentile mission is in no way an illegitimate offshoot of renegade
Christians but deeply rooted in God's ancient covenant (cf Wilson 1973:241), even though he
distinguishes carefully between Jews and Gentiles. The difference between the two is not historical
or national, but theological (cf Wilckens 1963:97).
It is particularly in his infancy narrative that Luke highlights the theological significance of Israel. I
have referred to the allusions to a (future) Gentile mission in these stories. Such allusions remain
vague, however. Not so the references to Israel's salvation! Luke, the non-Jew, here presents Jesus as
first and foremost the Savior of the old covenant people. In the Magnificat (Lk 1:54f) Mary sings,
“(God) has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to
Abraham and to his posterity for ever.”
In Zechariah's hymn (1:68f) the same sentiments are expressed, “Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the
house of his servant David.” And Simeon is “looking for the consolation of Israel” (2:25); he praises
God for the “salvation” he is privileged to see with his own eyes (2:30) and for the light that will be
“glory to thy people Israel” (2:32). Again, the prophetess Anna talks about the child Jesus to all who
are looking “for the redemption of Jerusalem” (2:38).
From the entire context it is clear that these utterances can in no way be interpreted symbolically
or “spiritually”2—Luke has the empirical Israel in mind (cf Irik 1982:286; Tannehill 1985:71f;
Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:28f). And it is not only in the infancy narrative that we find these
references (although they are particularly abundant there). At the end of the gospel the two travellers
to Emmaus, referring to the death of Jesus, say, “And we had hoped that he was the one to redeem (or
liberate) Israel” (24:21). Similarly, at the beginning of Acts the disciples ask the risen Jesus, “Lord,
will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (1:6). The disciples are talking about the same
hope as the travellers to Emmaus. It surfaces again in later chapters of Acts. In 3:19 Peter, addressing
a Jewish crowd at the temple, refers to the “times of refreshing” (apokatastasis) God may still grant
Israel. Even in the final pericope of the book we hear Paul say to the Jews in Rome that it is “because
of the hope of Israel” that he is in chains (28:20).
Jerusalem
The importance Luke attaches to Israel is borne out by the central role he ascribes to Jerusalem in his
narrative. The city is, for Luke, a highly concentrated theological symbol—an understanding he shares
with the Judaism of his time, for which Jerusalem was the sacred center of the world, the place where
the Messiah would make his appearance, and where not only the Jewish diaspora but all the nations
would gather to praise God.
The entire central section of Luke's gospel (9:51-19:40), as remarked earlier, can be put under the
rubric of “Jesus en route to Jerusalem” (cf Bosch 1959:103111; Conzelmann 1964:60-65). It is also
in this section that Luke includes the pericopes on Samaria and the Samaritans, none of which are
found in Mark and Matthew. Luke describes the beginning of Jesus’ journey in an unusually solemn,
indeed awesome manner: “And it came to pass, when the days were fulfilled for him to be received
up, he resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51, NIV). There immediately follows the story
about his rejection by a Samaritan town (9:52-56), which forms a pendant to the first episode of
Jesus’ Galilean ministry where he was rejected by his own people. The first pericope of the middle
section of the gospel thus emphasizes two elements: Jesus’ approaching passion, and the fact that both
Jew and non-Jew have rejected him; and both these are linked intimately with Jerusalem. The journey
itself is, however, sketched in a most extraordinary manner. Luke 9:51 solemnly announces the
journey's beginning; Luke 19:41 dramatically heralds its end: “And when he drew near and saw the
city he wept over it.” The narrative covers ten chapters, more than one-third of the entire gospel, but
it contains the absolute minimum of geographical details. The reader is, however, continually
reminded of the fact that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem (in 9:51, 53; 13:22, 33; 17:11; 18:31;
19:11, 28; and 41), that is, to his passion. In 13:33 Luke has Jesus say, “I must go on my way today
and tomorrow and the following day, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from
Jerusalem.” Conzelmann summarizes correctly: “Jesus’ awareness that he must suffer is expressed in
terms of the journey…he does not travel in a different area from before, but he travels in a different
manner” (1964:65; cf Dillon 1979:245f).
All that follows—passion, death, resurrection, appearances, and ascension—take place in
Jerusalem. In the final passage Jesus announces that repentance and forgiveness of sins will be
proclaimed to all nations, “beginning from Jerusalem” (24:47). The holy city is thus not only the
destination of Jesus’ wanderings and the place of his death, but also the location from which the
message will go out in concentric circles to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The
Christian mission “beginning from Jerusalem” is a substantive, keynote “beginning,” not just a matter
of geographical fact (Dillon 1979:251). First and foremost, however, it is the center for, a mission to
Israel: “Anyone who wanted to address all Israel had to do so in Jerusalem” (Hengel 1983b:59). The
equipment “with power from on high” (Lk 24:49) also takes place in Jerusalem, on the day of
Pentecost, and immediately the missionary outreach begins—among Jews. Luke tells us, at various
intervals in Acts, about large numbers of Jews who were converted; it is evident, however, that the
most spectacular conversions take place in Jerusalem. It is here, in the center of Israel, that the gospel
celebrates its greatest triumphs (Jervell 1972:45f).
To the Jews First, and to the Gentiles
Equally significant in Luke's account is the incontrovertible Jewishness of Jesus, of those around him,
and of the Jewish converts of Acts. Jesus’ parents are Jews faithful to the Torah and traditional
Jewish practices (Lk 2:27, 31). The temple in Jerusalem is Jesus’ proper place (2:49f) and he
participates in synagogue worship (4:16-21). In Acts, Luke emphasizes that the early Jerusalem
Christians live as pious Jews: they frequent the temple, live in strictest observance of the law and in
accordance with the customs of the fathers (cf 2:46; 3:1; 5:12; 16:3; 21:20). Many of the Gentiles
who become Christians have been proselytes or “God-fearers,” that is, people who were previously
related to Israel; it is the Gentiles of the synagogue who accept the gospel (cf Jervell 1972:44f, 49f).
A comparison between Luke 7:1-10 and Matthew 8:5-13 is also illuminating in this respect. In Luke
the centurion is clearly a “God-fearer”—he sends Jewish elders to speak to Jesus on his behalf, and
they tell Jesus that he deserves a favor from him, “for he loves our nation, and he built us our
synagogue” (Lk 7:5) (cf Bosch 1959: 95).
In light of all this we can comprehend why, throughout the Book of Acts, it is emphasized that the
gospel first has to be proclaimed to Jews, and only then to Gentiles. This is not merely a reference to
an actual historical sequence. Neither is it just a matter of communications strategy, on the basis of the
argument that the Jews, particularly those in the synagogues of the diaspora, would be more likely
converts than the pagans. No, it was due to theological reasons, to the priority of the Jews in the light
of salvation history (cf Zingg 1973:205; Irik 1982:287). This explains why, according to Acts, even
Paul, the “apostle to the Gentiles,” spends as much, if not more, of his time preaching to Jews as to
Gentiles (Wilson 1973:249). It also clarifies why—even after he has solemnly declared that, since
the Jews have rejected the gospel, he is now turning to the Gentiles—Paul continues, with almost
monotonous repetition, to go to the synagogue first in every city where he arrives (cf Acts 14:1; 17:1,
10, 17; 18:4, 19, 26; 19:8) (for the likely historical kernel in this, cf Bornkamm 1966:200; Hultgren
1985:138-143).
 The emphasis on salvation for the Jews and their theological priority is, however, never divorced
from the Gentiles and a mission to them. The risen Lord has entrusted the Gentile mission to the
apostles (Lk 24:47; Acts 1:8); they execute this mission by turning, first, to the Jews! The Gentile
mission is not secondary to the Jewish mission. Neither is the one merely a consequence of the other.
Rather, the Gentile mission is coordinated to the Jewish mission.
It is therefore incorrect, or at the very least insufficient, to say (as is still being suggested by some
scholars, inter alia Anderson 1964:269, 272; Hahn 1965:134; Sanders 1981:667) that the Gentile
mission only became possible after the Jews had rejected the gospel. In its more extreme form this
view suggests that Luke's whole purpose was to prove beyond any doubt that the Jews had, through
their own decision, forfeited any hope of salvation. According to this view the Jews are, for Luke,
“mere theological pawns”—people who are obstinate and perverted, and only serve to justify the
Gentile mission and the formation of a Gentile church (Sanders 1981:668).3
The Division of Israel
Undoubtedly the Jews’ resistance to the gospel forms an important and recurring theme in Acts. What
many Jews would do with the proclamation of the apostles is, in fact, foreshadowed in the Nazareth
episode in the gospel (4:16-30) and in the parable of the pounds where Luke's version tells us that the
fellow-citizens of the newly appointed king refused to accept him as their sovereign (19:14). In Acts,
then, Luke repeatedly emphasizes that many Jews rejected Jesus. Frequently, after such an episode,
the Christian preacher would say that, in view of the fact that the Jews had rejected the message, he
was now going to the Gentiles. Strangely, however, the apostles continue to preach to Jews even after
such an incident—which only makes sense if we accept that Luke wishes to say that the apostles are
warning their Jewish listeners not to miss the opportunity for salvation offered to them (cf Paul's
words to the Jews in Pisidian Antioch: Acts 13:40; see further Jervell 1972:61).
More important, the many incidences of rejection by Jews have to be seen in relation to their
counterpart: the stores about Jews accepting the gospel. Jervell has shown that wherever Acts tell us
about Jewish rejection of the message it also reports that there were those who responded positively
(Jervell 1972). Luke has already, in his gospel, indicated a more positive response of Jews to Jesus
than did the other gospels (cf Irik 1982:283f). Acts reveals a similar tendency. Mass conversions of
Jews are again and again reported, particularly of Jews in Jerusalem (which, as indicated above,
occupies a very special position in Luke's theology) but also of those in the diaspora. There is,
moreover, a clear progression in these reports: in Acts 2:41, three thousand Jews are converted; in
4:4 there are five thousand; in 5:14 “multitudes both of men and women” are added; in 6:7 the number
of disciples in Jerusalem has “multiplied greatly”; in 21:20 Paul is informed about “many thousands”
(myriades, “tens of thousands”) of believing Jews (cf Jervell 1972:44-46).
In light of these oft-repeated reports it can, thus, hardly be maintained that it was the Jewish
rejection of Jesus which precipitated the Gentile mission. On the other hand, Jervell goes too far
when he says, “It is more correct to say that only when Israel has accepted the gospel can the way to
Gentiles be opened” (:55). Rather, what Luke wants to communicate is that it is the combination of
acceptance and rejection by Jews, or more precisely, it is the division within Judaism, between the
repentant and the unrepentant, which opens the way for the Gentile mission. The difference in their
response, and not just the story of their obduracy, is told again and again, up to the very last passage
of Acts. Israel has not rejected the gospel, but has become divided over the issue (Jervell 1972:49; cf
Meyer 1986:95f).
I have proposed that Luke, from the very beginning of his gospel, is interested in the “restoration”
of Israel. It may now be said, with some justification, that the restoration has taken place in the
conversion of (a significant part of) Israel. This constitutes the purified, restored, and true Israel,
from which those who have rejected the gospel are purged. Through their negative response the latter
have excluded themselves from Israel. Luke does not describe the Christian church as a kind of “third
race,” in addition to Jews and Gentiles. Rather, for him the Christian community consists of the
converted Jews, after the obdurate ones have consciously excluded themselves and to which the
Gentile converts are added. The Christian church did not begin as a new entity on the day of
Pentecost. On that day many Jews became what they truly were—Israel. Subsequently Gentiles were
incorporated into Israel. Gentile Christians are part of Israel, not a “new” Israel. There is no break in
the history of salvation. Not to be converted means to be purged from Israel; conversion means a
share in the covenant with Abraham. The promises to the fathers have been fulfilled. The church is
born from out of the womb of Israel of old, not as an outsider laying claims to Israel's historic
prerogatives (cf Schweizer 1971:150; Jervell 1972:49, 53f, 58; Dillon 1979:252 and 268, note 85;
Tiede 1980:9f, 132).
A Tragic Story
Does this mean that the reaction of unrepentant Jews constitutes no problem for Luke, that the struggle
for all Israel now belongs to history, that he has eliminated the possibility of a further mission to Jews
for the church of his time because the judgment by and on the Jews has been irrevocably passed and
the unbelieving portion of Israel is rejected for all times? May the church now wash its hands of
Israel? This is the verdict Jervell (1972:54f, 64, 68) reaches. Robert Tannehill and others have,
however—I believe quite rightly—denied that this is the case (cf Tannehill 1985:passim). The
infancy narrative of Luke's gospel, in particular, stands in any unresolved tension with the book of
Acts, particularly the latter's conclusion; the expectations raised in the gospel are largely not fulfilled
in the subsequent narrative. Tannehill (:73f) considers various possible explanations and then comes
to the conclusion that Luke is deliberately and consciously guiding his readers to experience the story
of Israel and its Messiah as a tragic story. What the reader was given to expect did not happen. There
has been an unanticipated turn in the plot, a reversal of fortunes (:78). With the aid of the repetition of
key words or word roots (such as the word soterion, “salvation”) Luke points to the tragic disparity
between the great promise of Israel's beginnings and the failure of its later history (:81).
Already in the gospel the element of tragedy is underscored through the recurrent awakening of
hope and the repeated failure of fulfillment. There is, for instance, the sadness of the travellers to
Emmaus, who say, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (24:21; cf Tannehill
1985:76). Even more striking are the four texts in Luke which speak of Jerusalem's rejection of Jesus
and its coming destruction: 13:33-35; 19:41-44; 21:20-24; and 23:27-31. All of these passages,
except the first, are unique to Luke. None of these stories reveals any trace of vindictiveness or
gloating on the part of Luke, as though he experiences glee over the judgment on the Jews and their
city (as Sanders 1981 suggests). Rather, the tone is pathetic, the emotions aroused in the reader are
those of anguish, pity, and sorrow (Tannehill 1985:75, 79, 81; cf Tiede 1980:15). The reader senses
that, in spite of all indications to the contrary, Luke has not absolutely and finally given up on the
Jews. One might perhaps even say that his entire two-volume work is conceived on the basis of the
conviction that the final decision has not yet fallen and the definite answer not yet given (Stanek
1985:25). Jesus weeps for Jerusalem; so does Luke. Jesus’ yearning for Israel's salvation remains
unfulfilled; so does Luke's. But “times of relief “and” “restoration” may yet come, in spite of all
indications to the contrary. The complete disappearance of this hope would leave Luke with an
unsolvable theological problem, since he has, in many different ways, depicted salvation for Israel as
a major aspect of God's purpose. So he does not give up this hope. Jerusalem—he has Jesus say—
will be trampled by foreigners “until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Lk 21:24; this saying
probably does not refer to a future Gentile mission); Jerusalem will not “see” its king until the time
comes when it will say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Lk 13:35) (cf Tannehill
1985:85). Sure, the hope beyond tragedy is expressed only in vague terms, but it is there. Even in the
final scene in Acts 28:23-28 Paul is still preaching to the Jews (:82f).
In light of the above, I believe that Jervell, Tannehill, and others are correct in assigning a central
place in Luke's theology of mission to the salvation-historical relationship between Jews and
Gentiles, We would, however, be going too far if we were to insist that Luke's entire mission theology
can be interpreted as an effort to solve this mystery. Rather, the turn to the Gentiles follows upon the
rejection by Israel and the acceptance of the gospel by a significant portion of Israel, but is not
wholly explained by it (cf Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:272). Evidently, Luke is no systematic
theologian in the modern sense of the word. He has several intermingling missionary motifs. The first
is certainly the relationship between the mission to Jews and the mission to Gentiles. Other major
themes include Luke's message to the poor and the rich; his understanding of repentance, forgiveness,
and salvation; and his emphasis on Jesus’ ministry of superseding vengeance. To these we now turn.

GOSPEL FOR THE POOR—AND THE RICH

The Poor in Luke's Gospel
It is common knowledge that Luke has a particular interest in the poor and other marginalized groups.
Already in the Magnificat (Lk 1:53) we read: “(God) has filled the hungry with good things, and the
rich he has sent away empty.”
This sentiment is sustained throughout the gospel. We need to think only of the beatitude of the
poor and the parallel woe-saying on the rich (6:20, 24), the parable of the rich fool (12:16-21), the
story of the rich man and Lazarus (16:1931), and the exemplary conduct of Zacchaeus, the chief tax-
collector of Jericho (19:1-10). All of these are unique to Luke. In addition, he has frequently edited
the tradition handed down to him in such a way that a bias toward the dispossessed becomes evident.
He is, for instance, the only evangelist who has John the Baptist spell out in practical terms what it
means to “bear fruits that befit repentance” (3:8), and he does this in terms of economic relations
(3:10-14). The term ptochos (“poor”) occurs ten times in Luke, compared to five times each in Mark
and Matthew.4 Not only the word ptochos, but also other terms referring to want and need abound in
Luke. The same is true of terms referring to wealth, such as plousios (“rich”) and hyparchonta
(“possessions”) (cf Bergquist 1986:4f). “If we did not have Luke,” comments Schottroff and
Stegemann (1986:67), “we would probably have lost an important, if not the most important, part of
the earliest Christian tradition and its intense preoccupation with the figure and message of Jesus as
the hope of the poor.” Mazamisa (1987:99) summarizes,
[Luke's] concern is with the social issues he writes about: with the demons and evil forces in first century society which
deprived women, men and children of dignity and selfhood, of sight and voice and bread, and sought to control their lives for
private gain; with the people's own selfishness and servility; and with the promises and possibilities of the poor and the outcasts.

Much has been written in recent years in an attempt to identify the poor to whom Luke refers. In
particular, the difference between Matthew's and Luke's first beatitude (Mt 5:3, “Blessed are the poor
in spirit”; Lk 6:20, “Blessed are you who are poor”) has long fascinated scholars and ordinary Bible
readers. This is not the place to reopen the debate or to attempt a novel contribution, Suffice it to say
that not even the Matthean version of the first beatitude may be understood only in a spiritual sense. In
Luke such a spiritualization is still more unwarranted. This does not, however, mean that such
nuances are excluded. They are not. The poor are also the devout, the humble (cf tapeinos in the
Magnificat: Lk 1:47, 52), those who live in utter dependence upon God (cf Pobee 1987:18-20).
Ptochos (“poor”) is moreover often a collective term for all the disadvantaged (cf Albertz 1983:199;
Nissen 1984:94; Pobee 1987:20). This emerges from the way in which Luke, when he gives a list of
people who suffer, either puts the poor at the head of the list (cf 4:18; 6:20; 14:13; 14:21) or at the
end, as a climax (as in 7:22). All who experience misery are, in some very real sense, the poor. This
is particularly true of those who are sick. Lazarus, the exemplary poor person in Luke, is both poor
and sick. Primarily then, poverty is a social category in Luke, although it certainly has other
undertones as well. It is, however, unwarranted to allow what is secondary to become primary (cf
Nolan 1976:23; Fung 1980:91).
And the Rich?
What Luke says about the rich can only be understood against the background of this portrait of the
poor. Plousios (“rich”) is, like ptochos, a comprehensive term. The rich are primarily those who are
greedy, who exploit the poor, who are so bent on making money that they do not even allow
themselves the time to accept an invitation to a banquet (Lk 14:18f), who do not notice the Lazarus at
their gate (16:20), who conduct a hedonistic lifestyle but are nonetheless (or, rather, because of this)
choked by cares about those very riches (8:I4). They are, at the same time, slaves and worshipers of
Mammon (cf D'Sa 1988:172-175).
From this primary meaning of plousios several secondary meanings follow. Luke calls the
Pharisees philargyroi, “lovers of money” (16:14); this does not simply refer to one trait among
others, “but involves the whole moral identity of the person,” “the entire orientation of their lives”
(Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:96). They are, like the Pharisee in the parable, those who trust in
themselves that they are righteous and despise others (18:9). The rich are thus also the arrogant and
the powerful who abuse power. They are, supremely, the impious who are bent only on the things of
this world and therefore are “not rich toward God” (12:21) or “paupers in the sight of God” (NEB).
In essence this means that, through their avarice, haughtiness, exploitation of the poor, and
godlessness, they have willfully and consciously placed themselves outside of the range of God's
grace. They are only interested in what they can get out of the present moment. The woe-sayings (Lk
6:24f), which contrast the beatitudes, thus become transparent:

But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you that are full now, for you shall go hungry.
Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

The motif is the same one we encounter in the Magnificat (1:51-53) and also in the story of the
rich man and Lazarus (16:25) (cf Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:99)—the motif of reversal, of
contrasting present bliss with future agony (and present agony with fixture bliss). The rich have—not
only because they are rich, but also because of the way they behave—used up their portion of
happiness (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:32) and relinquished any hope of blessings in the future.
Jesus in Nazareth
The first words the Lukan Jesus speaks in public (Lk 4:18f) contain a programmatic statement
concerning his mission to reverse the destiny of the poor:
 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind;
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

These words from the Book of Isaiah become, in Luke's gospel, a sort of manifesto of Jesus:
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21). The prisoners, the blind, and the
oppressed (or the bruised) are all subsumed under “the poor”; they are all manifestations of poverty,
all in need of “good news.” The major part of the quotation comes from Isaiah 61:1f, a prophecy first
directed to the disappointed Jews shortly after the Babylonian exile. There it is aimed at encouraging
them by assuring them that God had not forgotten them but would come to their aid by ushering in “the
year of the Lord's favor,” namely the Jubilee (cf Albertz 1983:187-189).
Remarkably, however, Luke does not only quote from Isaiah 61:1f. He inserts a phrase from Isaiah
58:6 between Isaiah 61:1 and 61:2, “to let the oppressed go free.” Scholars have made many attempts
to explain this strange state of affairs, but none of these explanations really satisfies. We have to
accept, I believe, that Luke intentionally inserted these words from another chapter of the book of
Isaiah in order to communicate something to his readers which was apparently not sufficiently clearly
expressed in Isaiah 61 (cf Dillon 1979:253; Albertz 1983:183f, 191). The phrase “to let the
oppressed go free” has a distinctly social profile in Isaiah 58. It stands in the context of prophetic
criticism of social discrepancies in Judah, of the exploitation of the poor by the rich. Even on a day of
fasting the latter pursue their own interests, make their employees work the harder (v 3), and wrangle
with those who owe them money (v 4; cf Albertz 1983:193). It is in this context that the prophet then
exclaims, in v 6f:

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him…?

The context of Isaiah 58 is also reflected in Nehemiah 5, where we are told of poor Jews who, in
order to pay the taxes levied by the Persian king, had to mortgage their vineyards and homes and even
sell their children into slavery to rich fellow-Jews who grasped the opportunity to capitalize on the
predicament of the poor. In light of this, the “oppressed” or “bruised” or “broken victims” of Isaiah
58:6 are to be understood as those who were economically ruined, those who had become bonded
slaves and had no hope of ever again escaping from the throttling grip of poverty. Only a Jubilee, a
“year of the Lord's favor,” could provide them with a way out of their misery.
The social-ethical thrust of this phrase was undoubtedly familiar to Jesus’ listeners, even if they no
longer knew the detailed circumstances of the “oppressed” of Isaiah 58:6. The tethrausmenoi of Luke
4:18 should therefore equally be regarded as those who have become destitute because of their ever-
growing debts (cf Albertz 1983:196f). For them, as well as for the other oppressed groups listed
here, the “year of the Lord's favor” is being announced.
What all this meant in the actual historical ministry of Jesus or in the earliest Jesus tradition is not
easy to establish. We do not have direct access to that tradition, only to the evangelists’ interpretation
of it. Still, it is doubtful that Jesus intended to launch a people's movement for political liberation or
that his sermon in Nazareth could be regarded as manifesto for a popular uprising. That Jesus
announced and exerted himself for fundamental changes in the society of his day cannot, however, be
denied. The present form of Luke 4:16-30 still gives clear evidence of that, and the way Luke has
incorporated this story into his gospel illustrates this. It is now our task to attempt to interpret the
Nazareth episode within the context of Luke's writings and theology.
Evangelist of the Rich?
I begin with Luke's sayings about the rich and what they should do in the face of abject poverty. From
the gospel it is evident that Jesus had many dealings with wealthy people; similarly, in Acts we read
about wealthy and distinguished people who joined the Christian community. What is Luke hoping to
communicate about them? What is he saying to the wealthy of his own time? He intends, apparently, to
articulate something very explicit. This he does, inter alia, with the aid of a variety of parables,
stories, and injunctions. Their situation, before God and in the face of the poor, need not remain what
it is. So Luke “wants the rich and respected to be reconciled to the message and way of life of Jesus
and the disciples; he wants to motivate them to a conversion that is in keeping with the social message
of Jesus” (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:91; cf D'Sa 1988:175-177).
One such possible response is exemplified by Zacchaeus, the chief tax-collector of Jericho (Lk
19:1-10) (cf Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:106-109; Pobee 1987:46-53), whose conversion takes
as concrete a form as his preceding transgression. He will repay those he has exploited and give half
of his possessions to the poor. Even if he is not called to follow Jesus physically, he becomes a
disciple by putting Jesus’ words into practice. He is, in fact, the only rich person in the gospel about
whom it is explicitly told that he chose another lifestyle (Nissen 1984:82).
Luke contrasts the story about Zacchaeus with that of the rich young ruler (18:18-30). In both
cases, wealthy persons are challenged by Jesus, but they respond differently. The ruler, who
otherwise leads an exemplary life according to the letter of the law (and who is also in this respect
contrasted with the tax-collector and his disreputable lifestyle) is, however, not prepared to take up
Jesus’ challenge. He becomes very sad and leaves, “for he was very rich.” For Luke, this story is one
of an unsuccessful call to discipleship (cf Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:75). It has a parallel in
Acts, in the story of Ananias and Sapphira (5:1-11), just as the conduct of Barnabas in Acts (4:36f) is
analogous to that of Zacchaeus. The problems facing the wealthy in the post-Easter community are
thus obviously not different from those facing the rich who encountered Jesus. Zacchaeus and
Barnabas become paradigms of what Luke expects of wealthy Christians.
The attitude the wealthy should adopt toward the destitute is explicated in more detail in other
Lukan sayings. Particularly illuminating is the Lukan redaction of some material from Q, included in
Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain (6:30-35a), and which differs at decisive points from the Matthean
redaction:
Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men
should do to you, do so to them. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love
them…And if you lend to those from who you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to
receive as much again. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.

The whole passage is shot through with references to what the conduct of the rich ought to be
toward the poor (cf Albertz 1983:202f; Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:112-116). What is
particularly remarkable is that the Matthean love of enemies is now interpreted as love toward those
who do not repay their debts! Perhaps the “treat spitefully” or “abuse” (epereazo) of 6:28 (the
parallel in Matthew has “persecute”) also refers to the abuse of those who borrow money without
repaying it. Luke understands these words as an exhortation to rich Christians. The social ethic of the
time suggested that the rich invite only the rich, in order to be invited back (cf 14:12). Precisely this
the Lukan Jesus rejects. It is the kind of conduct one would expect of sinners who only do good to
those who do good to them and only lend money if repayment is guaranteed (6:32-34). Jesus’
disciples, however, should lend without expecting anything in return (6:35a). They are challenged to
be merciful, as their heavenly Father is (6:36). This will bring them reward (6:35b): if they acquit
(apolya) their debtors, they will themselves be acquitted, that is, forgiven (6:37).5 All of this is put in
the context of the Lukan Jesus’ understanding of who my neighbor is. From the parable of the good
Samaritan we know that the neighbor is the one in need who makes a demand on me and whom I dare
not leave by the roadside. In economic terms, it means that the rich members of Luke's community are
challenged to give up a significant portion of their wealth, and also to perform specific unpleasant
actions, such as the issuing of risky loans and the cancelling of debts. All this is, of course, also
Jubilee language—the idea of the Jubilee indeed permeates Luke's gospel.
Luke's “ethic of economics” also finds expression in the idea of almsgiving. Apart from Matthew
6:1-4 the term eleemosyne (almsgiving) occurs in the New Testament only in the Lukan writings (Lk
11:41; 12:33; Acts 3:2, 3, 10; 9:36; 10:2, 4, 31; 24:17). In addition, whereas almsgiving was, at the
time, usually understood as charity directed to fellow-believers, whether Jews or Christians, Luke
understands it as also directed to outsiders (cf Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:109). Today, of course,
charity is a bad word in many circles and often seen as the very antithesis of justice. In the Old
Testament and Judaism it was different (:116), as it still is in Islam. Almsgiving is not something that
subverts justice and structural change; rather, it is an expression of justice and stands in its service. In
the Old Testament the two concepts are often synonyms. Almsgiving (eleemosyne) is, furthermore, an
expression of having mercy (eleos).
In light of all this, we may conclude that Luke cannot really be called the evangelist of the poor;
“He can more correctly be called the ‘evangelist of the rich’” (Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:117).
Albertz, who particularly emphasizes Luke's interest in Isaiah 58, comes to a similar conclusion
(1983:203—my translation):
Both Is 58:5ff and the Gospel of Luke address the wealthy. Both wish to inspire them to perform extraordinary far-reaching
accomplishments, to renounce a large portion of their possessions and waive the recovery of debts, and to give alms generally, in
this way alleviating the plight of the poor members of the community. Is 58:5-9a spoke to the upper stratum of the community
immediately after the Exile, in the midst of a severe social crisis; Luke addresses his two-volume work to the upper stratum of
the Hellenistic community.

All Are in Need of Repentance

Luke should, however, not be interpreted as if he knows of only one sin, that of wealth, and only one
kind of conversion, that of giving up one's possessions. Both the poor and the rich need salvation. At
the same time, each person has his or her specific sinfulness and enslavement. The patterns of
enslavement differ, which means that the specific sinfulness of the rich is different from that of the
poor. Therefore, in Luke's gospel, the rich are tested on the ground of their wealth, whereas others are
tested on loyalty toward their family, their people, their culture, and their work (Lk 9:59-61) (Nissen
1984:175). This means that the poor are sinners like everyone else, because ultimately sinfulness is
rooted in the human heart. Just as the materially rich can be spiritually poor, the materially poor can
be spiritually poor (:176; cf Pobee 1987:19, 53). Luke undoubtedly wishes to communicate to his
readers what is today often referred to as God's preferential option for the poor, but this option cannot
be interpreted in any exclusive sense (Pobee 1987:54). It does not exclude God's concern for the rich,
but, in fact, stresses it for, in both his gospel and Acts, Luke wishes his readers to know that there is
hope for the rich, insofar as they act and serve in solidarity with the poor and oppressed. In their
being converted to God, rich and poor are converted toward each other. The main emphasis,
ultimately, is on sharing, on community. At various points in Acts, Luke highlights this “communism of
love” (cf Acts 2:44f; 4:32, 36f).
Nevertheless, a problem remains. Whereas no serious student of Luke can doubt that the motif of
the gospel as good news for the poor is absolutely crucial for the understanding of his gospel, it is
equally obvious that this motif appears to have run dry in the Book of Acts (cf Bergquist 1986). In
none of the dozen or so speeches of Peter, Stephen, and Paul reported in Acts is there any reference to
the poor; as a matter of fact, the word ptochos, “poor,” does not even occur in Acts. Indeed, the
whole thrust of Luke's second volume appears to be elsewhere. This is even more remarkable if we
keep in mind that the two volumes were, from the beginning, planned and written as a unit.
Why then would Luke have gone to such lengths in editing his sources (particularly Mark and Q),
to include a great variety of explicit and implicit references to the poor and to the responsibility of the
rich toward them, only to drop this entire emphasis when he starts writing his second volume? James
Bergquist examines several suggested solutions and then concludes that the reason is to be found in
the fact that, in Luke's view, the motif of good news for the poor is indeed a central but at the same
time an incomplete part of a wider controlling theological purpose in Luke-Acts. This controlling
theological motif, he suggests, lies in the announcement of God's final salvation in Jesus. Bergquist
finds confirmation for this thesis in the fact that, in Acts, the term “Gentiles” replaces the
characteristic gospel terms for the poor and the outsider: the outsiders in Acts become the Gentiles;
Luke mentions Gentiles forty-three times in Acts and builds his narrative of mission with them in
view (Bergquist 1986:12; cf also Wedderburn 1988:164).
Bergquist's suggestion may have merit. We shall, however, be in a position to judge this only after
we have taken a closer look at what salvation meant for Luke. To this we now turn.

SALVATION IN LUKE-ACTS
There can be no doubt that “salvation,” as well as its attendant ideas of repentance and forgiveness of
sins, are central to Luke's two-volume work. The words soteria and soterion (“salvation”) appear
six times each in Luke and Acts, against no occurrences in Mark and Matthew, and only one in John.
Four times salvation is mentioned in Luke's infancy narrative. In two of these instances Luke uses the
less common form soterion which, apart from Acts 28:28 (that is, at the very end of his two-volume
work) occurs only in Ephesians 6:17. In a sense then, Luke frames his entire body of writing with the
idea of the salvation that has dawned in Christ. Among the synoptics, only Luke calls Jesus Soter
(“Savior”), once in the gospel (2:11), and twice in Acts (5:31; 13:23).
In similar way, Luke gives prominence to metanoeo (“repent”) and metanoia (“repentance”;
sometimes he uses epistrephein [“turn about”] as alternative). Mark 2:17, for instance, reads, “I came
not to call the righteous, but sinners”; Luke 5:32 adds “to repentance.” “Repent” or “repentance” is,
in Luke's writings, often linked closely to “sinners” (hamartoloi) and “forgiveness” (aphesis). It is a
message that reverberates in the missionary sermons in Acts (cf 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 8:22; 10:43; 13:38;
17:30; 20:21; 26:18, 20). This message does not, however, begin only in Acts. At the end of the
gospel the risen Jesus tells his disciples, inter alia, that “repentance and forgiveness of sins” will be
proclaimed in his name to all nations (24:47). Only Luke records the words of the repentant criminal
on the cross and Jesus’ response to him which, even if the word “forgiveness” is not used here, can
only imply forgiveness and salvation (“today you will be with me in Paradise”—Lk 23:43). Only
Luke has Jesus’ word “Father, forgive them…” (23:34). And the parable of the prodigal son (again
only Luke relates it) is a dramatic story about repentance and forgiveness. Thus repentance,
conversion, and forgiveness become a dominant theme in the ministry not only of Jesus, but also of the
apostles and evangelists after him and of John the Baptist before him.
It is not immediately evident, particularly in Acts, what the sins are people have to repent of. Often
the apostles just call upon their listeners to repent of their sins, without specifying what they are. The
sins of Jews and Gentiles are, however, different. The Jews have to repent of their share in the death
of Jesus, following which they will (again) be incorporated in salvation history (cf, in particular,
Acts 2:36-40 and 3:19). The sins of Gentiles, who are only now being incorporated in salvation
history, consist primarily in their worship of idols (Acts 17:29) (cf Wilckens 1963:96-100; 180-182;
Grant 1986:19-28, 49f). In the gospel the situation appears to be somewhat different. Luke uses the
word hamartolos, “sinner,” much more frequently than do the other two synoptic gospels; in addition,
even where the word or its cognates do not appear, the idea itself is present. On the basis of the Q-
saying about Jesus as “friend of tax-collectors and sinners” (Lk 7:34), Schottroff and Stegemann
suggest that, in the earliest Jesus movement, no call of repentance was directed to “the poor, tax-
collectors, and sinners, since their ‘sin’ consisted in their wretched condition rather than their
criminality” (1986:33). This view cannot be proved from the sources, however; the two authors in
fact admit that “this aspect of the earliest preaching can only be the subject of hypotheses” (:33). Still,
an element of validity in Schottroff and Stegemann's conjecture may lie in the fact that, in Luke's
gospel, “sin” and “sinners” usually refer to moral conduct, particularly in respect of other people—a
circumstance which may betray something about the earliest preaching of Jesus. This already
becomes evident in Luke's rendering of the ministry of John the Baptist (3:10-14). In like manner, the
rich man in the parable (16:19-31) is a sinner because he shows no compassion for Lazarus. The
priest and Levite are, by implication, depicted as sinners in that they ignore the plight of the person
who has fallen among robbers (10:30-37). The prodigal son has sinned against heaven and against his
father by his conduct, but even more by the way he treated his father (15:11-32). The tax-collector of
the parable pleads for mercy because of his evil practices of extortion (18:9-14); this was clearly
also the sin of Zacchaeus (19:8). And one's sinfulness is greater if one denies being a sinner. This is
the case with the Pharisees who appear oblivious of their sins; they are not really righteous but self-
righteous, particularly in respect of others (cf the elder son in Luke 15:29f and the Pharisee in
18:11f).
If we compare these examples with the missionary sermons in Acts, there is indeed a difference in
the understanding of sin. This becomes obvious particularly if we compare the reaction to the
preaching of John the Baptist with the reaction to Peter's sermon in Acts 2. In both cases the response
of the listeners is expressed in the soul-searching question, “What then shall we do?” (Lk 3:10; 12;
14; Acts 2:37). In Acts, Peter's reply remains vague, with only a hint at the fact that his listeners were
accomplices in the death of Jesus (2:38-40). In the gospel, the Baptist's reply is very concrete—it
concerns sharing a coat with him who has none, giving food to the hungry, and not robbing people
who are at one's mercy (Lk 3:11-14).
Comparing the gospel with Acts on the content of the repentance and conversion required we
notice, thus, a certain vagueness in the latter book. The suggestion is that conversion means that Jews
accept Jesus as their Messiah and that Gentiles turn from their idols to faith in him. In the gospel
conversion is more specific. Zacchaeus undertakes to give half of his possessions to the poor and to
repay fourfold all those from whom he has extorted money. The conversion of the prodigal son
consists in his coming to his senses and returning to his father. Reasons for the absence of conversion
are equally important. The elder son experiences no conversion, since he refuses to accept his
brother; in addition, in his self-centeredness he calculates and compares, just as the Phari see does in
the parable about forgiveness (18:11f). The rich young ruler refuses Jesus specific injunction, “for he
was very rich” (18:23); therefore his conversion miscarries.
Those who repent and whose sins are forgiven, experience soteria, “salvation.” In the infancy
narrative of Luke “salvation” obviously has political undertones: God has raised up a “horn of
salvation” for Israel (1:69); he has saved Israel from its enemies (1:71); and will give his people “the
knowledge of salvation” (1:77). Perhaps Ford (1984:77) is correct in arguing that Luke has
deliberately structured his infancy narrative in terms of political conquest and liberation, so as to
contrast Jesus’ ministry with that (see below). It is evident that the salvation that has come to
Zacchaeus's house is not really political. In his case, as with the prodigal son, salvation means
acceptance, fellowship, new life. Often this is expressed in the imagery of a banquet: Jesus has table-
fellowship with Zacchaeus, the prodigal son is treated with a feast, and those from the streets and
alleys of the town, from the roads and country lanes are invited to the rich man's banquet (14:16-23).
Whatever salvation is, then, in every specific context, it includes the total transformation of human
life, forgiveness of sin, healing from infirmities, and release from any kind of bondage (Luke uses
aphesis for both “forgiveness” and “release” or “liberation”: compare 24:47 with 4:18).
This comprehensive understanding of salvation is evident to both the gospel and Acts. The mission
of the Christian community in Acts is a mission of salvation, as was the work of Jesus (cf Senior and
Stuhlmueller 1983:273). Salvation involves the reversal of all the evil consequences of sin, against
both God and neighbor. It does not have only a “vertical” dimension. It is therefore incomplete to say,
with Mann (1981:69), that the parable of the prodigal son gives no direction for one's earthly conduct
but only for one's relationship to God. Zacchaeus is not only inwardly liberated from all the ties of his
possessions, but actually does reparation (cf Albertz 1983:202). Liberation from is also liberation to,
else it is not an expression of salvation. And liberation to always involves love to God and neighbor.
“Anyone who reduces the following of Jesus to an enterprise of the heart, the head, and private
interpersonal relations restricts the following of Jesus and trivializes Jesus himself’ (Schottroff and
Stegemann 1986:5f).
There is in the final analysis, therefore, no irreconcilable discrepancy between the gospel of Luke
and Acts (although the tension between the emphasis of the two volumes should not be denied). In
both, salvation is ultimately tied to the person of Jesus. In her Magnificat, Mary praises God's great
deeds because of the child she carries in her womb. The disciples, those of both the gospel and Acts,
turn their backs on their previous life and lifestyle because of their extraordinary encounter with
Jesus, for the reign of God is already present in him (cf Lk 17:21). In the story of Zacchaeus, it is the
presence of Jesus, not the supererogatory performance of the chief tax-collector, which ushers in
salvation. Jesus is, really, the person who invites the cripples and the outcasts to a banquet. He is the
Samaritan, who takes pity on his Jewish archenemy. He is the father, in whose home and heart there is
room for both lost sons. Only in his name and in his power are true repentance, forgiveness of sins,
and salvation to be found (cf Acts 4:12).
Seen from this perspective, Luke-Acts becomes a paean of praise to the incomparable grace of
God, lavished upon sinners. The thrust of this can only be grasped, and then only partially, if we see it
against the background of the understanding of God at the time: omnipotent, terrifying, and
inscrutable. He is not to be understood as a pleasant and innocuous God, who is always prepared to
forgive even more than people are prone to sin (in the sense of Voltaire's contemptuous remark,
“Pardonner, c'est son métier,” “to forgive is, after all, his profession”; cf Schweizer 1971;146). It is
precisely as the omnipotent and inscrutable that he forgives—for the sake of Jesus. The initiative,
throughout, remains God's (cf Wilckens 1963:183). And it manifests itself in ways that make no sense
to the human mind. The prodigal son becomes the recipient of unfathomable and undeserved kindness;
sinners are not only sought and accepted but receive honor, responsibility, and authority (Ford
1484:77). God answers the prayer of the tax-collector, not—as Jesus’ listeners have anticipated—that
of the Pharisee. Salvation comes to a chief tax-collector, of all people, but only after Jesus has taken
the initiative and invited himself to the house of Zacchaeus. A Samaritan—the most unlikely candidate
imaginable-—performs an extraordinary deed of compassion. A contemptible criminal receives
pardon and the promise of paradise in the hour of death, without any possibility of making restitution
for his wicked deeds. The crucifiers of the innocent man from Nazareth hear him pray for forgiveness
for what they are doing to him. And in Acts despised Samaritans and idol-worshiping Gentiles
receive pardon and are incorporated into Israel, with whom they form the one people of God. What
Jeremias said with reference to Jesus’ word that the tax-collector, rather than the Pharisee, went home
“justified” (Lk 18:14), can be said about all the examples referred to above: “Such a conclusion must
have utterly overwhelmed (Jesus’) hearers. It was beyond the capacity of any of them to imagine.
What fault had the Pharisee committed, and what had the publican done by way of reparation?”
(quoted in Ford 1984:75). The Jesus Luke introduces to his readers is somebody who brings the
outsider, the stranger, and the enemy home and gives him and her, to the chagrin of the “righteous,” a
place of honor at the banquet in the reign of God.
With this observation I have already introduced the theme of the next section.

NO MORE VENGEANCE!
The Inexplicable Volte-Face
I turn, once again, to the story of Jesus’ rejection by his home congregation of Nazareth (Lk 4:16-30).
It has often puzzled scholars and other Bible readers that there is a shift in the story that seems
unaccounted for. In the first part, up to verse 22, the encounter unfolds quite amicably. Jesus is
obviously welcome in the synagogue, is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, reads from it, and
returns the scroll. Luke then continues, “And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him” (v
20), apparently in expectation of what he was going to say. Of his sermon itself nothing is reported,
except the opening lines, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v 21). The next
verse then recounts the reaction of the synagogue congregation: “And all spoke well of him and
wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. ‘Is not this Joseph's son?’ they
asked” (RSV); or, “There was a general stir of admiration; they were surprised that words of such
grace should fall from his lips. ‘Is not this Joseph's son?’ they asked” (NEB). The next verse,
however, suggests a decisive shift in the nature of the encounter. Jesus says, “Doubtless you will
quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’” (v 23a). He then reminds his listeners of God's
mercy on the Gentile widow of Sidon and on Naaman, the Syrian. But by now all in the congregation
are infuriated; they leap up, drive him out of the town to the brow of the hill on which it was built and
try to hurl him over the edge, but he escapes miraculously.
What baffles the reader is why the Nazareth congregation changes from great admiration of what
Jesus is saying to murderous intent in such a short time. Senior and Stuhlmueller (1983:260) refer to
the somewhat puzzling exchange of verses 22-29, whereas A. R. C. Leany (quoted by Anderson
1964:266) says that “it is not too much to say that Luke has given us an impossible story.” It may
therefore be justifiable to look at this story from the perspective of an examination of Luke's
“theology of mission.”
Isaiah 61 in the First Century AD
Perhaps the solution to the apparent discrepancy between Luke 4:16-22 and 4:23-30 may be found by
asking how the portion from Scripture Jesus was reading was understood by the Jews of his time. In
order to do so I turn again, briefly, to Luke's infancy narrative. It has already been pointed out that this
section—particularly Mary's Magniftcat (Lk 1:46-55), Zechariah's song (1:68-79), and the words of
Simeon (2:29-32)—contains a plethora of references to liberation for Israel. Ford even devotes a
whole chapter to what she calls “revolutionary Messianism and the first Christmas” (1984:13-36).
An examination of the infancy narratives, she says (:36), shows that the war angel, Gabriel, appeared
to Zechariah and Mary. John the Baptist was to work in the spirit and power of the zealous prophet
Elijah. Jesus (Joshua), John, and Simeon are names found among Jewish freedom fighters. The
annunciation to Mary and the Magnificat have political and military overtones. The same is true of the
story about the shepherds, to whom a heavenly army appears. When Jesus is presented in the temple,
two persons appear, Simeon and Anna, who may have been anticipating a political leader.
Thus Luke, so Ford argues, deliberately structures his first few chapters in such a way that the
contemporary Jewish messianic expectations are highlighted. This, she believes, is a faithful picture
of Jewish life at the time: Palestine was “a seething cauldron” in the first century (Ford 1984:1-12).
Galilee, in particular, was rife with revolutionaries and apocalyptic thinkers (:53), and Nazareth was
hardly an exception. So what would Jesus’ audience have expected when they heard him reading from
Isaiah 61? The words were originally addressed to the Jews who had returned from Babylonian
exile, and who were “grieving for Zion” (v 3), despondent because of their lost freedom and the
destruction of their land. Precisely these former exiles were then, in Isaiah 61, promised a total
reversal of their present wretched conditions. Israel would recover, the prophet said, since the Lord
will turn their dismal present into a new and permanent Jubilee. Not only that, they would also get
even with their powerful oppressors. So the prophet not only predicts “the year of the Lord's favor”
(the Jubilee), but also “the day of the vengeance of our God” (v 2)—vengeance, namely, on Israel's
enemies (cf Albertz 1983: 188f). The words anticipated a future state of Israel in which foreigners
would serve the Hebrews (vv 5-7) and not the other way round, as was the case at the time of the
prophecy. What sentiments would this prophecy evoke in Jesus’ audience? Ford (1984:55) suggests
that the text would be heard in a similar way in the first century AD; the audience would, however, be
expecting release from Roman, not Babylonian, domination.
Ford also draws attention to a fragment from the Qumran writings, dating back roughly to the first
century, called 11 Q Melchizedek, in which a dramatic change in the concept of the Jubilee has been
effected. The Qumran community changed the social notion of the Jubilee to an eschatological and
apocalyptic one. However, along with the emphasis on the good news of the Jubilee, and as
prominent as that, is the day of vengeance (:57). Among God's agents on that day would be the
prophet anointed by the Lord and also Melchizedek, through whom God would usher in a day of
vengeance (and slaughter) for the ungodly, particularly Israel's enemies. Thus, when Jesus read Isaiah
61 in the synagogue, the congregation probably expected him to announce vengeance on their foes,
especially the Romans—a vengeance which would be a preliminary step toward the time of
liberation (:59f). This may explain the initial positive response to Jesus—“and the eyes of all in the
synagogue were fixed on him” (v 20). They were fervently expecting a sermon with a revolutionary
thrust and perhaps Jesus’ opening words, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v
21), further fanned these expectations.
Vengeance Superseded!
The eyes fixed on Jesus might, however, also have been filled with suspicion! According to Luke,
Jesus only reads up to the first part of Isaiah 61:2, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He
stops short of the words, “and the day of vengeance of our God,” which, according to Hebrew
parallelism, belong intrinsically to the first part. He also omits the rest of the prophecy, which paints
the imminent reversal in glowing colors; by doing this he removes all the elements that refer to Israel
and Zion (cf Albertz 1983:190f) as well as all elements that are hostile to Gentiles. “What is he up
to?” the congregation wonders. “Why does he leave out the vengeance part? Is he perhaps suggesting
that there is no longer any room for retribution?” Apparently he is! Whereas, in 11 Q Melchizedek
and much of contemporary Judaism, salvation was destined only for (a small group of) Jews, Jesus
not only omits any reference to judgment on Israel's enemies but also reminds his listeners of God's
compassion on those enemies (4:2527), a fact that fills all in the synagogue with wrath (v 28) (cf
Ford 1984:61).
These circumstances have prompted B. Violet and particularly Joachim Jeremias to suggest that
the key to the entire enigma of interpreting the Nazareth episode should be looked for in the dramatic
way in which the reading from Isaiah 61 is terminated just before the reference to the day of
vengeance and the portrayal of the hoped-for reversal—for which the entire congregation must have
been waiting. Jesus does the unimaginable by omitting this (cf Jeremias 1958:4146). Jeremias
therefore takes a fresh look at verse 22—which, as indicated above, is usually interpreted in terms of
a very positive response to Jesus’ sermon—and retranslates it as follows, “They protested with one
voice and were furious, because he only spoke about (God's year of) mercy (and omitted the words
about the messianic vengeance).”
We cannot repeat Jeremias‘s detailed argument in support of a translation which so drastically
deviates from most other interpretations of Luke 4:22. Suffice it to say that it is probably the only
translation that helps us make sense of what Luke writes about the events in the Nazareth synagogue.
Several scholars have also, in recent years, and particularly in the light of the Qumran evidence,
come out in support of Jeremias (cf, for instance, Albertz and Ford). Ford regards the event in
Nazareth and the strategic place it occupies in Luke as a deliberate contrast to the expectations
evoked in his infancy narrative. In the first scenes of the gospel Luke dramatically portrays the
families of John the Baptist and of Jesus as Jews who expect a prophet and a king who will conduct a
holy war on Israel's enemies. In his fourth chapter, then, Luke introduces the awaited leader. He is
wholly different from what has been expected. He is the Anointed of God who will announce a year
of favor for both Jews and their opponents. The Nazareth congregation receives his message with
such astonishment and hostility that they try to assassinate him (Ford 1984:136). In this prominent
story of Jesus’ extraordinary behavior, then, Luke is able to foreshadow the major elements of his
theology. This “will be found to be inimical to that of many of (Jesus’) contemporaries, especially the
revolutionaries, and will lead to repeated rejection and finally a martyr's death” (:54). The Nazareth
pericope thus sets the stage for Jesus’ entire ministry.
Once one has been made aware of this important thrust of Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth, one may
discover the same motif throughout Luke. Let me highlight some instances. Jeremias (1958:45f) points
out that it is not only in the Nazareth incident that Jesus omits any reference to vengeance. The same
happens in Luke 7:22f (par Mt 11:5f). In his reply to John the Baptist Jesus again, as he did in 4:18f,
“splices” different passages from Isaiah (in this case Is 35:5f, 29:18f, and 61:1). All three of these
passages contain, in one form or another, references to divine vengeance (35:4; 29:20; 61:2), but
again Jesus omits any references to it. This can hardly be unintentional, moreso because of the added
remark, “And blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (Lk 7:23). In other words: Blessed is
everyone who does not take offense at the fact that the era of salvation differs from what he or she has
expected, that God's compassion on the poor, the outcast and the stranger—even on Israel's enemies
—has superseded divine vengeance!
Jesus’ attitude toward Samaritans has already been referred to. When, at the beginning of his
“journey to Jerusalem,” John and James wished to pray down fire from heaven to destroy the
Samaritan town which refused them hospitality, Jesus rebuked them. As a matter of fact, all Luke's
stories and parables about Samaritans give evidence to Jesus refusal to embrace the vengeful
sentiments of his compatriots.
A more controversial incident is the one reported in Luke 13:1-5. Jesus is told about a group of
Galileans whose blood the Roman legionaries have “mingled with their sacrifices” (cf Jeremias
1958:41). His audience probably expects him to condemn Pilate, but he does not do so; instead, he
uses the occasion to call them to repentance instead of vengefulness. In our understanding today this
may suggest that Jesus adopted an apolitical stance and, in doing so, actually condoned what the
Romans did. There may indeed be something of that in the way Luke interprets the incident (see
below); at the same time it is evidence of his understanding of Jesus as someone who refuses to return
evil for evil (cf Ford 1984:98-101). In fact, Jesus’ entire conduct throughout his arrest, trial, and
execution, as Luke presents them, underscores his unwavering commitment to nonviolence (for
details, cf Ford 1984:108-135). Jesus’ prayer of forgiveness for his executioners, to which attention
has already been drawn, likewise brings out his complete absence of vengefulness. His prayer,
together with the word of pardon to the criminal on the cross (both reported only by Luke), show that,
even while dying a slave's and criminal's death, Jesus turned in love and forgiveness to outcasts and
enemies, thus living out an ethic that was completely contrary to the militant ideology of both
oppressor and oppressed (cf Ford 1984:134, 135). The Jubilee year was supposed to begin on the
great Day of Atonement. Perhaps, in Luke's understanding, that day commences when Jesus on the
cross, as the new high priest on a new day of atonement, intercedes for all sinners—Jews and
Gentiles (:133).
The events at the end of his life thus dramatically underscore the thrust of Jesus’ words in the
Nazareth synagogue. It is against this background—which breathed a relentless, vengeful, and holy
wrath against pagans—and the expectation of a second coming of Melchizedek, who would wreak
divine vengeance on the Gentiles, that the Lukan pericope as a whole must be understood (Ford
1984:62). The first words of Jesus’ public ministry are ones of forgiveness and healing, not wrath and
destruction. The Nazareth pericope is, in fact, the basis of Luke's entire gospel and a prelude to Acts,
especially in regard to the Gentile mission (:63).
Luke writes his two-volume work in the wake of the devastation of the Jewish War, in which the
political hopes of the Zealots were crushed; many of his readers lived in a war-torn country, occupied
by foreign troops who often took advantage of the population; violence and banditry have been their
meat and drink for many a year (cf Ford 1984:1-12). They have, in a real sense, reaped the
whirlwind. And now Luke presents them with a challenge: Jesus and his powerful message of
nonviolent resistance and, above all; of loving one's enemy in word and deed. The peace that comes
with Jesus is not won through weapons, but through love, forgiveness, and acceptance of one's
enemies into the covenant community (:136). “Everyone who believes in him” is welcome—this is
the astonishing discovery that Peter makes in his encounter with Cornelius (Acts 10:43). The Lukan
Jesus turns his back on the in-group exegesis of his contemporaries by challenging their “ethic of
election” (cf Nissen 1984:75f). From the Nazareth episode onward, Luke has his eye on the Christian
church, where there is room for rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, even oppressor and oppressed (cf
Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:37; Sundermeier 1986:72)—which does not, of course, suggest that
conditions should remain what they are.
This may also help to explain the fact that Romans are accorded a singularly sympathetic treatment
throughout Luke-Acts (LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976: 586). There is, perhaps, a certain
ambivalence here: on the one hand, Luke realizes that any further revolutionary opposition to Rome is
futile; on the other, there is his deep commitment to Jesus’ own preaching and example of forgiveness
and peace-making. So he does not wish to antagonize the authorities. They should cause the church no
difficulties. By implication, Luke claims for the church the protection of the law and the status of a
religiolicita, an “approved religion” (cf Stanek 1985:10, 16f; Bovon 1985:73f, 127).6 However, all
this is, for Luke, hardly a matter of expediency; he adopts this attitude because he is convinced that
the gospel of Jesus is one that puts a supreme premium an peacemaking, love of enemies, and
forgiveness. There is no room for vengefulness and wrath in the community of Jesus.

THE LUKAN MISSIONARY PARADIGM

Let us now attempt to identify some of the major ingredients of the Lukan missionary paradigm, as
these have emerged in our discussion thus far.
1. I turn, first, to Luke's pneumatology. More than the other evangelists Luke dealt theologically
with the fact that history went on and that Christ did not immediately return. His community knew that
Jesus was no longer with them; they realized that the following of Jesus, in completely different
circumstances, could not consist in a simple, slavish imitation of the Jesus or a reproduction of the
past but had to be reinterpreted (cf Schweizer 1971:150; Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:98). At the
same time, they had to be shown that there was no reason for despair. The story of the two disciples
who had gone to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35) was retold by Luke for precisely this reason—since Jesus
can now be experienced in an entirely new manner, believers are not left in distressful sadness
(LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:291f).
It was preeminently through the Spirit that the risen Christ was present in the community. In Mark
and Matthew the Spirit is not particularly prominent and is rarely linked with mission. Not so in Luke.
Among the evangelists he may be singled out as the “theologian of the Holy Spirit” (G. Montague,
quoted in Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:277). Luke realized that Jesus’ mission and ministry had to be
reinterpreted for the church of his own time, and he believed that this reinterpretation would be
mediated by the Spirit. He did not introduce this notion only at Pentecost. The ministry of the earthly
Jesus is already portrayed in terms of the initiative and guidance of the Spirit.
The idea of being led by the Spirit into mission is then, however, applied in a far more
comprehensive manner to the ministry of the disciples. They will turn into Jesus’ witnesses as soon as
they are clothed with power from on high (Lk 24:49; Acts 1:8). The same Spirit in whose power
Jesus went to Galilee also thrusts the disciples into mission. The Spirit becomes the catalyst, the
guiding and driving force of mission. At every point the church's mission is both inspired and
confirmed by manifestations of the Spirit (cf Wilson 1973:241; Zingg 1973:207f; Senior and
Stuhlmueller 1983:275). The decisive event, of course, is Pentecost (cf Boer 1961:passim). The
Spirit has descended upon Jesus at his baptism (Lk 3:21f), and now the Spirit descends for a second
“baptism” (cf Acts 1:5); in this way the Spirit's particular ministry is both distinguished from the
ministry of Jesus (Pentecost follows a full ten days after the ascension) and intimately coordinated
with it. The gift of the Spirit is the gift of becoming involved in mission, for mission is the direct
consequence of the outpouring of the Spirit. Luke's pneumatology excludes the possibility of a
missionary command; it implies, rather, a promise that the disciples will get involved in mission. It
was these circumstances that prompted Roland Allen to write:
St Luke fixes our attention, not upon an external voice, but upon an internal Spirit. This manner of command is peculiar to the
Gospel. Others direct from without, Christ directs within; others order, Christ inspires…This is the manner of the command in St
Luke's writings. He speaks not of men who, being what they were, strove to obey the last orders of a beloved Master, but of
men who, receiving a Spirit, were driven by that Spirit to act in accordance with the nature of that Spirit (1962:5).

Moreover, the Spirit not only initiates mission, he also guides the missionaries about where they
should go and how they should proceed. The missionaries are not to execute their own plans but have
to wait on the Spirit to direct them (cf Zingg 1973:208f). Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian
eunuch, for instance, is through the agency of the Spirit (Acts 8:29). Of special importance for the
understanding of Luke's second volume is the conversion of Cornelius. The acceptance of this Gentile
(without circumcision!) into the Christian fold is confirmed when a second Pentecost is enacted: the
Spirit is poured out even on a Gentile and his family (Acts 10:44-48). In his report to the Jerusalem
community, Peter explains that it was the Spirit who told him not to hesitate but to go to Cornelius
(Acts 11:12). Again, the ratification by the Jerusalem Council of the decision to baptize Gentiles
without prior circumcision is also described as having taken place under the impulse of the Spirit
(Acts 15:8, 28) (cf Zingg 1973:207; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:275). Similarly, it is the Spirit
who charges the worshiping and fasting church of Antioch to set Saul and Barnabas apart for a
special task (13:2), as it is the Spirit who sends them on their way (13:4). The Spirit prevents Paul
from going deeper into Asia (16:6): through the vision of a man from Macedonia the Spirit directs
him to Europe (16:9). In all these narratives the emphasis is on the Holy Spirit as catalyst, guide, and
inspirer toward mission.
In the Lukan writings the Spirit of mission is also the Spirit of power (Greek: dynamis). This is
true of the mission of both Jesus (Lk 4:14; Acts 10:38) and the apostles (Lk 24:49; Acts 1:8). The
Spirit is thus, further, not only the initiator and guide of mission, but also the one who empowers to
mission. This manifests itself particularly in the boldness of the witnesses once they have been
endowed with the Spirit. In Acts, Luke often uses the words parresia and parresiazomai (“boldness”;
“to speak boldly”) (cf 4:13, 29, 31; 9:27; 13:46; 14:3; 18:26; 19:8). The suggestion is always that
this has been made possible by the power of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who emboldens previously
timid disciples. Through the Spirit, God is in control of the mission (Gaventa 1982:415).
The intimate linking of pneumatology and mission is Luke's distinctive contribution to the early
church's missionary paradigm. In Paul's letters—probably written some thirty years before Luke-Acts
—the Spirit is only marginally related to mission (cf Kremer 1982:154). By the second century AD
the emphasis had shifted almost exclusively to the Spirit as the agent of sanctification or as the
guarantor of apostolicity. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century tended to put the major
emphasis on the work of the Spirit as bearing witness to and interpreting the Word of God. Only in the
twentieth century has there been a gradual rediscovery of the intrinsic missionary character of the
Holy Spirit. This came about, inter alia, because of a renewed study of the writings of Luke.
Undoubtedly, Luke did not intend to suggest that the initiative, direction, and power of the Spirit in
mission applied only to the period about which he was writing. It had, in his view, permanent
validity. For Luke, the concept of the Spirit sealed the kinship between God's universal will to save,
the liberating ministry of Jesus, and the worldwide mission of the church (Senior 1983:269).
2. Another specifically Lukan contribution to the understanding of mission in the first century was
his correlation of the Jewish and Gentile missions. At the time of Luke's writing Jewish Christianity
was probably largely a spent force; very few, if any, conversions of Jews were still taking place. In
most Christian communities Gentiles predominated. However, the Gentile church could neither deny
nor denounce its Jewish origins. It was Luke, the Gentile, who saw the need for rooting the Gentile
church in Israel. He did this in a bold way: Jesus was first and foremost the Messiah of Israel and
precisely for this reason also the Savior of the Gentiles!
The Christian church may never forget that it developed organically and gradually from the womb
of Israel and that it may therefore not, as an outsider, lay claim to Israel's historic prerogatives
(Dillon 1979:252; cf 268). This is, unfortunately, what happened only too frequently as Christians
boldly (even rashly) designated themselves as the “new Israel.”
With the ascendancy of Gentile Christianity and the virtual disappearance of Jewish believers in
Jesus, generations of Gentile Christians have ignored their dependence on the faith of Israel and often
boasted of their new faith over against the Jews (Tiede 1980:128). Frequently, this happened on the
basis of Luke-Acts; indeed, from the second century to the twentieth most expositors have read the
Book of Acts at the expense of the Jews, frequently with disdain for the obvious evidence of the
struggle within the Jewish context from which it originates (:128). Gentile Christianity did not,
however, replace the Jews as the people of God; rather, in the wake of Pentecost thousands of Jews,
after embracing the staggering realization that their sacred customs are to give way before the
“impartiality” of God (cf Acts 10:15, 34, 47; 11:9, 17, 18), became what they truly were—“Israel.”
Peter's amazement at what was taking place can still be detected in his words in the house of
Cornelius, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality!” (10:34). Into this renewed (not new)
Israel, Gentile converts were incorporated. There is, for Luke, no break in the history of salvation.
The church may therefore never in a spirit of triumphalism arrogate the gospel to itself and in the
process turn its back on the people of the old covenant.
3. “You are witnesses to these things” (Lk 24:48)”. The noun “witness(es)” (martys/martyres)
occurs thirteen times in Acts but only once in Luke's gospel (in the pivotal final pericope). This then,
says Dillon (1979:242), is why the group has been kept together since Calvary and what the whole
Lukan Easter story is about. It is dedicated to telling us not just how perplexed observers became
Easter believers, but how uncomprehending eyewitnesses were made witnesses of the risen Christ,
sharers of his messianic destiny, and spokespersons of the word of forgiveness in his name to all the
nations.
Undoubtedly the witness terminology is crucial for the understanding of Luke's paradigm for
mission. In Acts, “witness” becomes the appropriate term for “mission” (Gaventa 1982:416). To
some extent the terms “apostle” and “witness” are synonyms. It is the apostles who are told that they
will be Jesus’ witnesses (cf Acts 1:2, 8). To Cornelius Peter says that Jesus was seen by “us who
were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (10:41).
Again, in Pisidian Antioch Paul says, “For many days (Jesus) appeared to those who came up with
him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people” (13:31). This understanding
of “witness” is similar to what we find in the fourth gospel, where Jesus says to the disciples, “You…
are witnesses because you have been with me from the beginning” (Jn 15:27).
At the same time, the term “witness” is expanded and applied to others, such as Paul (Acts 22:15;
26:16) and Stephen (22:20). Thus there is already in the Lukan writings an extension of the concept of
witness to people other than the apostles. In addition, in Acts 22:20, we already sense an allusion to
the “witness” (martys) being regarded as a “martyr.”
In Acts the content of the witness (the martyria) refers, on the whole, to the church's proclamation
of the gospel (cf Kremer 1982:147). Primarily, “gospel” alludes to the resurrection of Jesus and its
significance. In Acts 1:22 Luke quotes Peter as saying that the task of the new apostle to be elected
would be to “become with us a witness to his resurrection” (cf also Acts 10:41). Elsewhere, again,
Luke seems to suggest that the martyria pertains not only to Jesus’ resurrection, but to his entire life
and ministry (cf Lk 24:48 and Acts 13:31). Jesus himself proclaimed the “(good news of) the
kingdom of God” (Lk 4:43; 8:1; 9:11; 16:16). This is essentially what the witnesses in Acts also do
(cf 8:12; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31): the good news of the reign of God is Jesus Christ, incarnated,
crucified and risen, and what he has accomplished.
The term “witness” is a very fitting one for what Luke wishes to communicate. It is evident, from
Acts, that this task is entrusted to very fallible human beings who can do nothing in their own power,
but are continuously dependent upon empowerment by the Spirit. But also, in a sense, they are not
really called to accomplish anything, only to point to what God has done and is doing, to give
testimony to what they have seen and heard and touched (cf 1 Jn 1:1). Paul and the other second
generation witnesses have not seen and heard and touched Jesus, but obviously, in Luke's mind, this
does not make their witness inferior. It is rendered in the same power, carries the same conviction,
and issues in the same call to those who hear it.
4. “Repentance, forgiveness of sins, and salvation.” Luke's gospel and Acts are built on the
expectation of response. The martyria of the missionaries aims at repentance and forgiveness (cf Lk
24:48; Acts 2:38), which leads to salvation (cf Acts 2:40, “save yourselves from this crooked
generation!”). Luke formulates this more fully in Acts 26:17f, where Paul refers to what Jesus said to
him on the Damascus road, “The Gentiles…to whom I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn
from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins
and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (cf also Kremer 1982:149). In the gospel
the hosting of Jesus was equivalent to the hosting of salvation (Lk 19:9) (cf LaVerdiere and Thompson
1976:592). It is not essentially different in Acts, since salvation is in his name only. Salvation is
liberation from all bondage as well as new life in Christ. The missionaries witness as people who
know that life and death depend on their testimony. Therefore, in spite of all appreciation they may
have for the religious life of Gentiles (cf Acts 17:22f), they continue to insist on repentance and
conversion. Their urgency certainly has to do with the way they view those “outside Christ”: to turn
one's back on one's past is tantamount to turning from “darkness to light” (Acts 22:18; cf also the title
of Gaventa 1986). Much is at stake and the witnesses cannot possibly be indifferent about the destiny
of others. They therefore do not offer the invitation to join their community in a spirit of “take it or
leave it” (cf Zingg 1973:209; Kremer 1982:162).
Even so, personal conversion is not a goal in itself. To interpret the work of the church as the
“winning of souls” is to make conversion into a final product, which flatly contradicts Luke's
understanding of the purpose of mission (Gaventa 1986:150-152). Conversion does not pertain
merely to an individual's act of conviction and commitment; it moves the individual believer into the
community of believers and involves a real—even a radical—change in the life of the believer,
which carries with it moral responsibilities that distinguish Christians from “outsiders” while at the
same time stressing their obligation to those “outsiders” (cf Malherbe 1987:49).
5. With Scheffler (1988:57-108), one could say that, for Luke, salvation actually had six
dimensions: economic, social, political, physical, psychological, and spiritual. Luke seemed to pay
special attention to the first of these. We may thus detect a major element in Luke's missionary
paradigm in what he writes about the new relationship between rich and poor. There are, at this
point, parallels between Matthew and Luke; the difference is that, whereas Matthew emphasized
justice in general, Luke seemed to have a peculiar interest in eco nomic justice.
Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth (4:16-30) constitutes the Lukan parallel to Mark's (1:15) and Matthew's
(4:17) accounts of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. In Mark, Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” Jesus’ reading from the Isaiah
scroll says essentially the same. If Jesus, anointed by the Spirit of God, proclaims good news to the
poor, freedom for prisoners, and sight for the blind, and if he announces the year of the Lord's favor,
he is saying that the reign of God is at hand and calling all to repentance and faith. In the context of the
early church, salvation and faith in Christ could not possibly exclude succor to those who had fallen
by the wayside. The “deeper healing” the disciples experienced through their encounter with Jesus
could not remain barren or idle—it strove at “bearing fruit.” John the Baptist already challenged
those who were only interested in “spiritual” healing (3:10-14), Similarly, in Nazareth Jesus did not
soar off into the heavenly heights but drew his listeners’ attention to the altogether real conditions of
the poor, the blind, the captives, and the oppressed (cf Lochman 1986:66). He championed “God's
preferential option for the poor.” He announced the Jubilee, which would inaugurate a reversal of the
dismal fate of the dispossessed, the oppressed, and the sick, by calling on the wealthy and healthy to
share with those who are victims of exploitation and tragic circumstances.
He did this in the teeth of the ideological defense mechanisms of the privileged, who only too
frequently convince themselves that Jesus was more interested in the “correct attitude” toward wealth
than in its possession and use. These mechanisms then allow free range to the privileged's unsatiable
urge to move upward, socially and economically, and to pursue a hedonistic lifestyle devoid of an
ethic that exalts values like self-sacrifice, restraint, and solidarity. But where self-centered sentiments
reign supreme, the rich cannot claim to be involved in mission and cannot be in continuity with the
Lukan Jesus and church.
It is true that, in Acts, there is much less evidence of compassion with poor and marginalized
humanity than is the case in Luke's gospel. However, the context might explain at least some of this. In
Acts, compassion and sharing were practiced within the Christian fold where many members were
poor, so much so that Paul had to appeal to the Gentile churches to come to the aid of the poor
Christians in Judea. Luke does not tire of reminding us of the sacrificial attitude that prevailed in the
early days of the church in Jerusalem. They shared everything they had, he tells us (Acts 2:44f; 4:32),
with the result that there was no needy person among them (4:34). If rich Christians today would only
practice solidarity with poor Christians—let alone the billions of poor people who are not Christians
—this in itself would be a powerful missionary testimony and a modern-day fulfillment of Jesus’
sermon in Nazareth. The gospel cannot be good news if the witnesses are incapable of discerning the
real issues and concerns that matter to the marginalized (cf Mazamisa 1987:99). As was the case in
Jesus’ own ministry, those in pain are to liberated, the poor cared for, the outcasts and rejected
brought home, and all sinners offered forgiveness and salvation.
6. “Preaching the good news of peace by Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36). In her fine study on Luke,
Josephine Ford has drawn attention to a much-neglected aspect of the mission of Jesus according to
Luke: that of peace-making, of nonviolent resistance to evil, of the futility and self-destructive nature
of hatred and vengeance. Today, few Christians would doubt that peace-making is an intrinsic aspect
of the church's missionary message. In the contemporary world, where terrorism, violence, crime,
war, and poverty, often intimately related to and caused by one another, are the most important issues
of the day, this aspect of Luke's gospel is acutely pertinent (Ford 1984:137). Our missionary
involvement may be very successful in other respects, but if we fail here, we stand guilty before the
Lord of mission. Peace-making, I therefore suggest, is a major ingredient of Luke's missionary
paradigm. The message that there is no room for vengeance in the heart of the follower of Jesus
permeates both the gospel and Acts. It culminates in the account of Jesus praying for his crucifiers (Lk
23:34), which is echoed in the prayer of the dying Stephen (Acts 7:60).
Naturally, we cannot ignore Luke's own context and experience here. The horror of the Jewish War
has taught him that the “peace” won through violent means has little to do with the peace Jesus offers.
At the time of writing, the fledgling Christian church was still not sanctioned as an approved religion
in the Empire. Luke was concerned about this and did not wish to see the church's position
jeopardized. His considerations were undoubtedly pragmatic, but they were also more than that. On
the basis of his understanding of Jesus he just could not see how followers of Jesus could bring
themselves to propagating the way of violence. Peace-making was, for him, integral to the church's
missionary existence in the world.
7. Yet another dimension of Luke's missionary paradigm has to do with his ecclesiology. We have
seen, in the previous chapter, that Matthew's gospel is preeminently the “gospel of the church.” There
is no church in Luke's gospel, only “disciples,” “followers” of the Nazarene. Not so in Acts. One
might say that what distinguishes Acts from the gospel is the church. But the two are not unrelated, in
the way Conzelmann (1964) depicts it. Luke regards the life of Jesus and the story of the church as
being united in one era of the Spirit (LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:595). The lordship of Christ is
not exercised in a vacuum but in the concrete historical circumstances of a community which lives
under the direction of the Spirit (cf Schweizer 1971:145).
Luke presents a picture of the church as he thinks it should be, not so much as it really is (cf
Schottroff & Stegemann 1986:117). Yet, even if his portrayal is idealized, there can be no doubt that
the early Christian community did constitute a remarkable fellowship. The mutual acceptance of Jew
and Gentile must have been particularly noteworthy. The Cornelius story demonstrates that receiving
Gentiles into the faith meant entering their homes and accepting hospitality from them; the inclusion of
Gentiles and table-fellowship with them were inseparably related (cf Gaventa 1986:120f).
Luke's church may be said to have a bipolar orientation, “inward” and “outward” (cf Flender
1967:166; LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:590). First, it is a community which devotes itself “to the
apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Teaching refers
not so much (as it does in Matthew) to the contents of Jesus’ preaching as to the resurrection event;
fellowship refers to the new community in which barriers have been overcome; the breaking of bread
refers to the eucharistic life of the community and is experienced as continuing the meals with Jesus
reported in the gospel; and the prayer life of Jesus, a prominent feature in Luke's gospel, is extended
into the church. All this is accomplished in the power of the Spirit: “The Church is the place where
the exalted one manifests his presence and where the Holy Spirit creates anew” (Flender 1967:166).
Secondly, the community also has an outward orientation. It refuses to understand itself as a
sectarian group. It is actively engaged in a mission to those still outside the pale of the gospel. And
the inner life of the church is connected to its outer life (cf LaVerdiere and Thompson 1976:593).
Luke paints the picture of the Christian church at a relatively early stage of its development—one
of the factors, incidentally, that indicate a composition of Acts not later than the eighties of the first
century. There is, as yet, no reference to local churches institutionally united into one structure. The
picture is rather that of various, larger or smaller, local associations of believers (cf Flender
1967:166; Bovon 1985:128-138). The term ekklesia, “church,” refers to individual congregations
rather than to a universal church. Only in Acts 9:31 does the term have the later, broader extension
(“the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria”). The pastors of such local churches do not
stand in any kind of “apostolic succession,” but have been made overseers of their flocks by the Holy
Spirit (cf Acts 20:28). There is, as yet, few signs of a settled ministry of bishops or elders and
deacons over against the mobile ministry of apostles, prophets, and evangelists. New converts are
still not primarily “church members” but “disciples” of Jesus or “believers” (Bovon 1985:137).
This “unstructured” picture of the church has, however, another side to it too. The church is
intimately linked to the apostles, in a dual sense of the word. It is founded on the “teachings of the
apostles” and like them sent into the world as witnesses. The “apostles” are a fixed body of persons;
Matthias is elected to restore the original body of twelve (Acts 1:21f). Only these twelve are
apostles, and Luke views them as important for the church. So, when the apostles in Jerusalem heard
that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John there. The suggestion seems to
be that the work there, started “unofficially,” had to be validated by the apostles—and through their
praying and laying on of hands the Samaritans received the Holy Spirit (8:14-17). The first church
outside Judea should not arise entirely without apostolic contact and should not become an isolated
sect with no bonds of union with the apostolic church in Jerusalem (Ford 1984:95, drawing on F. D.
Bruner; cf also Hahn 1965:132f).
The Cornelius episode goes further, however. Peter does not merely provide an endorsement of
what others have done; he himself acts as missionary. Apostolic authority in the establishing of
churches among the non-Jews is evidently important to Luke. Even Paul's mission to Gentiles (his
conversion is recorded in Acts 9) cannot get underway until the apostles have implicitly ratified such
a mission. The Cornelius episode and its sequel (Acts 10-12) are therefore interpolated between
Paul's conversion and the beginning of his mission to Gentiles; once the apostles, through their most
senior member, Peter, have endorsed a mission to Gentiles, the way is clear for the large-scale launch
of Paul's lifework. After this Peter features only once more in Luke's account—at the meeting of the
“Jerusalem Council,” where he defends the Pauline mission (Acts 15:7-11).8
In Luke's view mission is, therefore, an “ecclesial” enterprise (cf Kremer 1982:161). The apostles
are the nucleus of witnesses who will provide continuity between the history of Jesus and that of the
church; their distinctive role is that of providing an authoritative link between Jesus and the church
(Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:266). Luke reveals no churchism, however. The apostles make
mistakes and are frequently shortsighted. Often mission takes place in spite of them rather than
because of them (cf Gaventa 1982:416). God often overrules them, first in the missionary outreach of
the Hellenists, and then, supremely, in the paradigmatic missionary Paul, the “non-apostle,” whom
Luke, with bold grasp, claims for his own epoch as the great prototype of the church's missionary
activity (cf Hahn 1965:134).
8. I mention one last ingredient of Luke's missionary paradigm: the fact that mission, of necessity,
encounters adversity and suffering. In a variety of ways Luke portrays Jesus’ journey from Galilee to
Jerusalem (Lk 9:51-19:40) as a journey to his passion and death (cf Scheffler 1988:109-160).
Sayings like 9:51; 13:33; 17:25; 18:31-34; and 24:7 underscore this and find support in the words of
the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these
things?” (24:27).
What is true of the Master is also true of his disciples. Luke shares with Mark many sayings about
the future suffering of the disciples (Scheffler 1988:163f), but he adds “daily” to Jesus’ words about
the need for carrying a cross (9:23). In Acts, the journey of the church-in-mission parallels that of
Jesus to Jerusalem. In 13:31 Paul says that the risen Jesus “appeared to those who came up with him
from Galilee to Jerusalem.” They are his “witnesses,” which means that they must do more than
report on the Lord's journey to Jerusalem. They must join him on the way and face the mortal threat he
faced (Frazier 1987:40). They have to be prepared to embrace the “Jerusalem destiny” as their own
(cf Dillon 1979:255), as Stephen did, who was both “witness” and “martyr” (cf Acts 22:20).
Early in Acts, Luke reports the arrest of Peter and John and their questioning by the rulers. Luke
characterizes their defense as “bold.” As a matter of fact, in Acts boldness (parresia) almost always
manifests itself in the context of adversity (cf Gaventa 1982:417-420). When the believers gather
together after Peter and John have been threatened by the Sanhedrin, they do not pray that their
adversaries be struck down (as John and James did with reference to the Samaritans who had refused
them hospitality—cf Lk 9:54); instead, they pray for boldness (Acts 4:27-30; cf Gaventa 1982:418).
The juxtaposition of adversity and boldness is not accidental but integral to the entire Book of Acts
(:419).
It is, however, particularly Paul's ministry that is characterized by adversity. Luke portrays him as
a kind of parallel to Jesus. The parallel is, however, incomplete. Luke does not relate Paul's death as
a martyr. This has often puzzled scholars, but perhaps Luke has deliberately omitted it in order to
show that, for him, Paul was not a second Jesus. Even so, the parallel remains striking. After Paul's
conversion the risen Lord says to Ananias, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of
my name” (Acts 9:16). And wherever Paul proclaims the gospel, opposition arises: in Pisidian
Antioch, in Iconium, in Corinth, and finally in Rome. It is however particularly his fateful journey to
Jerusalem which is, like his Master's journey to that city, charged with symbolism. There are even
two announcements of the suffering that is awaiting him in Jerusalem (20:22-25; 21:10f)—
announcements which remind the reader of similar sayings in the gospel concerning Jesus’ passion
and death (cf Kremer 1982:159, 163; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:276). The disciple is to share the
destiny of his Master, as Stephen and James indeed did. Paul and some of the other apostles also
shared this destiny; even so, in Acts this is not recorded, only that they continually live in the shadow
of death (cf Stanek 1985:17). But they know that they “must enter the kingdom of God through many
tribulations” (Acts 14:22).
William Frazier suggests that, on this point, Luke's writings have a significance far beyond the
first-century church (1987:46). He refers, in this regard, to the Roman Catholic ritual that usually
crowns the sending ceremony of missionary communities, where the new missionaries are equipped
with cross or crucifix. Frazier continues:
Somewhere beneath the layers of meaning that have attached themselves to this practice from the days of Francis Xavier to our
own is the simple truth enunciated by Justin and Tertullian: the way faithful Christians die is the most contagious aspect of what
being a Christian means. The missionary cross or crucifix is no mere ornament depicting Christianity in general. Rather, it is a
vigorous commentary on what gives the gospel its universal appeal. Those who receive it possess not only a symbol of their
mission but a handbook on how to carry it out (1987:46).
 Chapter 4

Mission in Paul: Invitation to Join

the Eschatological Community

FIRST MISSIONARY: FIRST THEOLOGIAN

The apostle Paul has always had a special fascination for missionaries. Small wonder that, through
the years, several monographs on Paul's significance for the Christian mission have been written by
missionaries and missiologists. Roland Allen's Missionary Methods: St Paul's or Ours? (1956 [first
published 1912]) occupies pride of place in this regard and has had a profound influence particularly
in English-speaking missionary circles. A year after Allen, Johannes Warneck published his Paulus
im Lichte der heutigen Heidenmission, a book which has had a comparable impact among German-
speaking missionaries. The main interest of Allen, Warneck, and other missiologists after them (such
as Gilliland 1983) was in Paul's missionary methods and what contemporary missionaries may learn
from these. This is, of course, a legitimate pursuit, though not my primary focus in this chapter.
My reflections will differ also in another respect from those referred to above. Whereas they (and,
for that matter, most earlier Pauline studies by biblical scholars) tended simply to “fuse” the Paul of
the letters with the Paul of Acts, I shall concentrate virtually exclusively on the Pauline letters. Not
that Acts is devoid of value in this respect; it contains much material that is unquestionably based on
reliable tradition (cf Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:162; Hengel 1986:35-39) and is, after all, our
“first commentary on Paul” (Haas 1971:119). For all this, however, Acts remains a secondary source
on Paul, and it is methodologically unsound to mix primary with secondary sources.
There is another limitation as regards sources. I shall restrict myself to the seven letters widely
regarded as indisputably from Paul's hand: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1
Thessalonians, and Philemon, without however prejudging the issue of the possible Pauline
authorship of the other six letters attributed to Paul. These letters will in any case supply us with more
food for thought than we can possibly digest in one chapter! It is generally agreed that 1
Thessalonians is Paul's first letter and either Romans or Philippians his last. All seven letters were
written during Paul's years of active missionary service after he had left Antioch, a relatively short
period of only seven or eight years (cf Hahn 1965:97; Hengel 1983b:52; Ollrog 1979:243-250),
stretching from AD 49 to approximately AD 56. This means that Paul wrote his letters some fifteen to
twenty years before Mark authored his gospel, and thirty or more years before Matthew and Luke
wrote theirs.1
The missionary dimension of Paul's theology has not always been recognized. For many years he
was primarily regarded as the creator of a dogmatic system. With the rise of the history-of-religions
school he was viewed preeminently as a mystic. Later still the emphasis shifted to the
“ecclesiastical” Paul (cf Dahl 1977a:70; Beker 1980:304). Only very gradually did biblical scholars
discover (what missionaries have always known!) that Paul was first and foremost to be understood,
also in his letters, as apostolic missionary. In 1899 a young New Testament scholar in Basel, Paul
Wernle, published a tract entitled Paulus der Heidenmissionar, which was perhaps the first serious
scholarly attempt to look at Paul from the perspective of his missionary calling and ministry. All
Paul's letters, said Wernle, supply only one answer to the question who he was and wanted to be—an
apostle of Jesus Christ, a missionary. “He knew…that God had sent him into the world to proclaim
the gospel, not to contemplate and speculate” (1899:5—my translation).
It was, however, not until the 1960s that the full import of this new perception of Paul was
recognized and properly appraised. It is today widely acknowledged that Paul was the first Christian
theologian precisely because he was the first Christian missionary (Hengel 1983b:53; cf Dahl
1977a:70; Russell 1988), that his “theology of mission is practically synonymous with the totality of
(his) awesome reflections on Christian life” (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:161) and “practically
coextensive with his entire Christian vision” (:165) so that “there is something wrong in the very
distinction between Paul's mission and his theology” (Dahl 1977a:70; cf Hahn 1965:97). The “Sitz im
Leben” of Pauline theology is the mission of this apostle (Hengel 1983b:50).
Paul's theology and his mission do not simply relate to each other as “theory” to “practice” in the
sense that his mission “flows” from his theology, but rather in the sense that his theology is a
missionary theology (Hultgren 1985:145) and that mission is integrally related to his identity and
thought as such (:125). Paul's understanding of mission is not an abstract construct dangling from a
universal principle, “but an analysis of reality triggered by an initial experience that gave Paul a new
world-view” (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:171). This is particularly true of the epistle to the
Romans (cf Legrand 1988:161-165; Russell 1988), the only letter Paul wrote to a church not founded
by himself.
If this is true, one cannot really study our theme by looking for and analyzing “mission texts” in
Paul's letters. One would have to examine his entire theological corpus. This is, of course, an
awesome undertaking, not least since Paul is a most complex thinker. Small wonder that already an
early Christian author had to complain about Paul's letters that “there are some things in them hard to
understand” (2 Pet 3:16)! It is not any easier today, particularly in view of the many disparate
interpretations of Paul that the serious student encounters.

PAUL'S CONVERSION AND CALL

Perhaps then we should begin where Paul himself began—with the event of his conversion and call.
What is it that changed a Pharisee of the Pharisees (cf Gal 1:4; Phil 3:4-5) into Christ's apostle to the
Gentiles, a persecutor of the early Christian movement into its chief protagonist, a person who
perceived Jesus as an impostor and a threat to Judaism into one who embraced him as the center of
his life, indeed of the universe? Pau1 himself gives only one answer: it was his encounter with the
risen Christ. In his letters Paul never elaborates on this event (as does the Lukan Paul of Acts, who
recounts his conversion in great detail at three occasions: Acts 9:1-19; 22:4-16; and 26:9-19; cf
Gaventa 1986:52-95). In his letters Paul also refers to this event three times: Galatians 1:11-17;
Philippians 3:2-11; and perhaps Romans 7:13-25 (cf Dietzfelbinger 1985:44-75; Gaventa 1986:22-
36), but he does so in a manner that differs considerably from the reports in Acts. The references are
strikingly sober and only serve to illustrate the non-human origin of his gospel (Beker 1980:6f).
Several scholars have argued that we should not use the word “conversion” with reference to
Paul's Damascus road experience. Their reasons are essentially twofold. First, conversion suggests a
changing of religions, and Paul clearly did not change his; what we call Christianity was in Paul's
time a sect within Judaism (cf Stendahl 1976:7; Beker 1980:144; Gaventa 1986:18). Second, it is
unwarranted to portray Paul, as still happens, as tormented and guilt-ridden because of his sins, as
experiencing an inner conflict which eventually led to his conversion. In a now classic essay, first
published in Swedish in 1960, Stendahl has persuasively argued that such a “psychological”
interpretation of what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus reflects a typical modern
understanding of the event (Stendahl 1976:78-96; cf 7-23). The phenomenon of the “introspective
conscience,” of penetrating self-examination coupled with a yearning to acquire certainty of
salvation, is a typically Western one, says Stendahl. It would be totally anachronistic to assume that
Paul shared this trait. Truth to tell, it was not until Augustine that such religious introspection really
began to manifest itself. He was the first Christian to write something so oriented to the self as a
spiritual autobiography, his Confessions. This practice was developed and reinforced during the
Middle Ages and eventually canonized, as far as Protestantism is concerned, in the “conversion” of
Martin Luther who was, not by accident, an Augustinian monk (Stendahl 1976:16f, 82f). For the last
several centuries it has been customary to read Paul through the eyes of Luther, as it were, and to
universalize the typical Western conversion experience by not only reading it back into the New
Testament, but also declaring it mandatory for all new converts to the Christian faith. Such an
experience is not what interests Paul, however. Neither is it what he expects of the people to whom
he proclaims the gospel (cf also Krass 1978:7072; Beker 1980:6-8; Senior and Stuhlmueller
1983:169-171).
This circumstance has led Stendahl and others to suggest that it is preferable not to use
“conversion language” for what happened to Paul (and, by implication, for what Paul expected to
happen in his mission work). Instead of referring to Paul's “conversion” we should, rather, talk about
his “call.” “Paul does not speak biographically of his ‘Damascus experience,’ but theologically of his
being called to be an apostle to the Gentiles” (Wilckens 1959:274—my translation; cf Hengel
1983b:53; Beker 1980:6-10; Hultgren 1985:125; and particularly Stendahl 1976:7-23 and
Dietzfelbinger 1985:44-82, 88f). Whenever Paul refers to the appearance of Christ to himself, he
claims that he was thereby called and commissioned as an apostle, and he does this with
unmistakable allusions to the prophetic calls of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Like them, his vocation
originated in a decisive act of God and was communicated to him through a revelation and a vision
(cf Gal 1:15f). What is often referred to as his conversion experience is absorbed by the greater
reality of his apostolic calling.
The emphasis on Paul's calling is certainly a most important correction to the traditional
understanding of Paul's conversion. Even so, Stendahl and others go too far by regarding what
happened to Paul exclusively in terms of a call. In a recent study on conversion in the New Testament,
Gaventa has distinguished between alternation (a relatively limited form of change which actually
develops out of one's own past), transformation (a radical change of perspective which does not
require a rejection or negation of the past or of previously held values, but nevertheless involves a
new perception, a recognition of the past—in the language of Thomas Kuhn “a paradigm shift”), and
conversion (a pendulum-like change in which there is a rupture between past and present, with the
past portrayed in strongly negative terms) (Gaventa 1986:4-14). Stendahl seems to understand what
happened to Paul in terms of an alternation. Paul is in basic continuity with his past to which is added
“only” a calling to the Gentile mission. However, what Paul himself describes in Galatians 1:11-17
does not suggest that what has occurred to him can be subsumed under this category. Paul underwent a
radical change in values, self-definition, and commitments. “Where in the orthodoxy of the Torah was
there room for a crucified Christ?” asks Meyer (1986:162), and he answers, “Nowhere.” Paul
experienced a fundamental revision of his perception of Jesus of Nazareth and of the salvific value of
the Law; and in spite of the many and important elements of his worldview that remained essentially
unaltered (to which I shall return) it is preferable to use the term “conversion” (or, at least,
“transformation”) for what happened to him, as Gaventa demonstrates in a very thorough analysis of
the evidence (1986:17-51; cf Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:168). It was indeed a primordial
experience and one that Paul understood to be paradigmatic of that of every Christian (Gaventa
1986:38).
So even Peter, Paul, and John, who had lived as righteous Jews, had to experience something else
in order to be members of the people of God; they had to have faith in Christ (Sanders 1983:172).
The Christ-event signifies the reversal of the ages and denotes, for Paul, the proclamation of the new
state of affairs that God has initiated in Christ (cf Beker 1980:7f). The Law as way of salvation is
superseded by the crucified and risen Messiah. One of the things those who wish to follow Christ
have to die to is the law (Rom 7:4), which means that they have to abandon or give up something—
and this is conversion language (cf Sanders 1983:177f).
The encounter with Jesus radically altered Paul's understanding of the course of history; that Jesus
was the Messiah could only mean for a Jew that the final age had indeed begun (cf Senior and
Stuhlmueller 1983:169). Paul understands this to mean that salvation in Christ is now to be offered to
the Gentile world. In his experience, and according to his own testimony, his conversion and his call
to the Gentile mission coincide (Zeller 1982:173). Hahn puts it well: “His concept of apostleship is
characterized by the fact of his being simultaneously converted, entrusted with the gospel, and sent to
the Gentiles” (1965:98). The risen Christ transformed the erstwhile persecutor into his special
ambassador: God, he says “was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him
among the Gentiles” (Gal 1:16). There is indeed, in light of Paul's own testimony, no reason to doubt
his claim that his conversion and commissioning coincided (cf Dietzfelbinger 1985:138, 142-144).2
Paul, or rather Saul, was from the school of Hillel, which was more open to Gentiles than other
rabbinic schools. It is therefore possible that, before he became a Christian, Paul had been well-
acquainted with and perhaps even actively involved in Jewish proselytism. This factor most probably
had a formative influence also on Paul the Christian (cf Hengel 1983b:53). More important, Saul's
opposition to the Jesus movement had focused specifically on the Greek-speaking diaspora
synagogues in Jerusalem and elsewhere, and it was in these circles, originally under the leadership of
Stephen, that the first steps toward a Christian outreach to Gentiles were taken (cf Hengel 1983b:53f;
Ollrog 1979: 155-157). Paul inherited the gospel he was to proclaim from the very people he had
persecuted (Beker 1980:341; Zeller 1982:173; for a detailed interpretation and evaluation of Paul's
persecution of Jewish Christians, cf Dietzfelbinger 1985:4-42). By the time he embarked on his
missionary journeys, Christian missionary activity had already spread across the Empire, at least as
far as Rome. Thus, even if Paul himself claims that the call to the Gentile mission coincided with his
conversion, it is clear that his Pharisaic past and his contacts with Hellenistic Jews played a role in
this. It is also likely that he only gradually embraced the full significance of his call; the most
energetic part of his mission to the Gentiles only began some years after his Damascus experience, in
the wake of the events described in Galatians 2:11f and the apostles’ council in Jerusalem (cf Hengel
1983b:50; Zeller 1982:173; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:169).
It is important to note that the response of Hellenistic Jews to the gospel was varied. Many Greek-
speaking Jews were filled with contempt for and abhorrence of the pagan world, and were fiercely
loyal to their own tradition; they were therefore extremely hostile to the new “sect.” It was from these
circles that Paul originated. Other Hellenistic Jews reacted more positively. They were the ones Paul
began to emulate after his Damascus road experience; they constituted the real bridge between Jesus
and Paul. All three “groups” (Jesus, the Hellenists, and Paul) had in common an unconditional
openness to the outsider (cf Hengel 1983a:29; Dietzfelbinger 1985:141; Wedderburn 1988:passim). It
is equally important to point out that Paul never abandoned the theological views he inherited from
the hellenistai; at the same time, he soon went beyond those (cf Dietzfelbinger 1985:141; Meyer
1986:117, 169f, 206; Hengel 1986:82-85).
If it is true that Paul is not the initiator of the Christian mission to Gentiles, it is equally true that he
had no intention of breaking with the Jerusalem leadership. His relationship with Jewish Christianity
is often misconstrued, says Beker, who adds:
(Liberal scholarship) portrayed Paul as the lonely genius who, after the apostolic council in Jerusalem and his quarrel with Peter
and Barnabas in Antioch…breaks entirely with Jerusalem. He is described as one who turns his back on Judaism and Jewish
Christianity and is intent on making Christianity an entirely Gentile religion based on a law-free gospel (1980: 331).

On several occasions Paul, in fact, clearly reveals his passionate desire to remain in full
fellowship with the Jerusalem church, particularly as represented by the three “pillars” (Gal 2:9); in
1 Corinthians 15:11 he even claims that he is preaching the same gospel they preach (cf Haas
1971:46-51; Dahl 1977a:71f; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:164). Paul is not the “second founder” of
Christianity, the person who turned the religion of Jesus into the religion about Christ. He did not
invent the gospel about Jesus as the Christ—he inherited it (cf Beker 1980:341).
Paul's reasons for maintaining cordial relationships with the Jerusalem leadership are both
practical and theological (cf Holmberg 1978:14-57). To begin with, he lays his gospel before “those
who were of repute,” lest somehow, he says, “I should be running or had run in vain” (Gal 2:2). This
practical consideration—the success of his mission work among Gentiles should not be jeopardized
by the possibility of opposition to it—is, however, intimately related to theological reflections,
particularly to Paul's passionate convictions about the indestructible unity of the church made up of
Jews and Gentiles: “The mission of the church cannot succeed without the unity of the church in the
truth of the gospel” (Beker 1980:306, cf 331f; Hahn 1984:282f; Meyer 1986:169f). Paul's collection
from his Gentile congregations for the poor Christians in Jerusalem is one way of symbolizing that
unity (cf Haas 1971:52f; Beker 1980:306; Hultgren 1985:145; Meyer 1986:183f); it is, at the same
time, a recognition of the privileged position of the Jerusalem community in salvation history (cf
Brown 1980:209).
Paul is, however, not interested in unity for its own sake, or in unity at all costs. He does not
hesitate to “oppose Peter to his face” (Gal 2:11) or to pronounce a curse on Judaizers in Galatia (Gal
1:7-9) and on the “different gospel” in Corinth (2 Cor 11:4), even if such action may, in the eyes of
some, jeopardize the unity of the church (cf Beker 1980:306). “Paul cannot bear to be repudiated by
the Jerusalem authorities, but he is equally unable to accept their right to pass judgment on his
preaching” (Brown 1980:206). He therefore passionately defends his right to be called an apostle,
completely on a par with any of those who have walked with Jesus. Like them, his apostleship is
derived not from tradition but from an encounter with the risen Lord, who commissioned him to be his
ambassador and representative (cf Wilckens 1959:275; Dahl 1977a:71f; Hengel 1983b:59f).
Paul's ministry thus unfolds in a creative tension between loyalty to the first apostles and their
message on the one hand and an overpowering awareness of the uniqueness of his own calling and
commission on the other. In Paul's usage, contrary to that of the other apostles, “the words ‘gospel’
and ‘apostle’ are correlates, and both are missionary terms” (Dahl 1977a:71). It should therefore
come as no surprise that, of all New Testament writers, Paul gives the most profound and most
systematic presentation of a universal Christian missionary vision (cf Senior and Stuhlmueller
1983:161).
I shall now attempt to trace some of the distinctive features of this vision and practice.
 PAUL'S MISSIONARY STRATEGY
Mission to the Metropolises
The characteristics of the Pauline understanding of mission just mentioned, and others, manifest
themselves first of all in what one (for lack of a better term) may call Paul's “missionary strategy.”
During the first decades of the early Christian movement there were, speaking in general, three
main types of missionary enterprises: (1) the wandering preachers who moved from place to place in
the Jewish land and proclaimed the imminent reign of God (exemplified in the prophets of the
Sayings-Source whom we met in chapter 1); (2) Greek-speaking Jewish Christians who embarked on
a mission to Gentiles, first from Jerusalem (often forced to leave the city because of persecutions)
and then from Antioch; and (3) Judaizing Christian missionaries who, according to 2 Corinthians and
Galatians, went to already existing Christian churches in order to “correct” what they regarded as a
false interpretation of the gospel.3. For his own missionary program Paul takes over elements from
the first two types mentioned above; at the same time he modifies these elements decisively (cf Ollrog
1979:150-161; Zelter 1982:179f). Perhaps one could say that his own understanding of his mission is
best expressed in a passage toward the end of his letter to the Romans (15:15-21; cf Legrand
1988:154-156, 158-161):
But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister
of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable,
sanctified by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak
of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of
signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum I have fully preached
the gospel of Christ, thus making it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on
another man's foundation, but as it is written, “They shall see who have never been told of him, and they shall understand who
have never heard of him.”

From Acts one may get the impression that Paul was, almost exclusively, an itinerant preacher.
This is not correct, particularly in view of the fact that in some places he stayed for longer periods
(about one and a half years in Corinth, two to three years in Ephesus). It may therefore be more
appropriate to say, with Ollrog (1979:125-129, 158), that Paul was engaged in “Zentrumsmission,”
that is, mission in certain strategic centers. He frequently speaks of his mission as directed toward
various countries and geographical regions (Gal 1:17, 21; Rom 15:19, 23, 26, 28; 2 Cor 10:16) (cf
Hultgren 1985:133). There is undoubtedly a certain method in his selection of these centers (even if
Wernle goes too far when he says, “With a veritable eagle's view he studies the missionary map from
his vantage point and traces in advance his route on it” [1899:17—my translation]). He concentrates
on the district or provincial capitals, each of which stands for a whole region: Philippi for
Macedonia (Phil 4:15), Thessalonica for Macedonia and Achaia (1 Thes 1:7f), Corinth for Achaia (1
Cor 16:15; 2 Cor 1:1), and Ephesus for Asia (Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19; 2 Cor 1:8) (Hultgren
1985:132; cf Kasting 1969:105-108; Haas 1971:83-86; Hengel 1983b:49f; Ollrog 1979:126; Zeller
1982:180-182). These “metropolises” are the main centers as far as communication, culture,
commerce, politics, and religion are concerned (cf Haas 1971:85). To say that Paul “did not think in
terms of individual ‘gentiles’ so much as ‘nations’” (Hultgren 1985:133; cf Haas 1971:35) is,
however, misleading and, actually, an anachronism. Paul thinks regionally, not ethnically; he chooses
cities that have a representative character. In each of these he lays the foundations for a Christian
community, clearly in the hope that, from these strategic centers, the gospel will be carried into the
surrounding countryside and towns. And apparently this indeed happened, for in his very first letter,
written to the believers in Thessalonica less than a year after he first arrived there (Malherbe
1987:108), he says, “The word of the Lord (has) sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia”
(1 Thes 1:8).
Paul's missionary vision is worldwide, at least as regards the world known to him. Up to the time
of the apostolic council (AD 48) the missionary outreach to Gentiles was probably confined to Syria
and Cilicia (cf Gal 1:21; the church in Rome, which perhaps dates back to the early forties of the first
century AD, began as a Jewish Christian church). Soon after the Council, however, Paul begins to see
mission in “ecumenical” terms: the entire inhabited world has to be reached with the gospel.4 And
since Rome is the capital of the empire, it is natural that he would contemplate a visit to this
metropolis (cf Rom 1:13); however, when he is informed of the existence of a Christian community
there, he postpones his visit to a later period when he would call upon the Roman Christians en route
to Spain (Rom 15:24) (cf Zeller 1982:182). Meanwhile he concentrates his efforts in the
predominantly Greek-speaking parts of the empire, in a region extending from Jerusalem to Illyricum
(Rom 15:19). Soon, however, he would attempt to go to Spain.
Does this mean that Paul rushes breathlessly through the Roman Empire as an announcer of the
imminent end of the world, as is sometimes suggested (Conzelmann, quoted by Hengel 1983b: 169,
note 22; cf Wernle 1899:18)? Most scholars disagree (cf, inter alia, Bieder 1965:31f; Kasting
1969:107f; Beker 1980:52; Zeller 1982:185f; Hultgren 1985:133; Kertelge 1987:372f). Indeed,
several important circumstances militate against such an interpretation. To begin with, the end
remains, for Paul, always incalculable—the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night (1 Thes
5:2). At another occasion, some years later, he says no more than that “salvation is nearer to us now
than when we first believed” (Rom 13:11). Furthermore, Paul is founding local churches, which he
seeks to nurture through occasional pastoral visits and lengthy letters, and by sending his fellow-
workers to them. He intercedes on behalf of his congregations and counsels them about a great variety
of very practical and down-to-earth matters; he waits for them to grow in spiritual maturity and
stewardship, and to become beacons of light in their environment. All of this obviously takes time.
Nevertheless, it takes place within the framework of a fervent eschatological expectation. Whereas,
in some early Christian circles, an ardent expectation of the imminent end tended to dampen the idea
of a wide-ranging missionary outreach, exactly the opposite is true in Paul's case: “He is the herald of
the gospel, Christ's ambassador to the Gentiles, an example for his churches and their intercessor and
counselor, and all of this is part of his eschatological mission “(Dahl 1977a:73; emphasis added)”.
There is, then, no abiding conflict between apostolicity and apocalyptic in Paul, only a creative
tension. In the words of Beker (1980:52):
There is passion in Paul—but it is passion of sobriety; and there is impatience in Paul—but it is impatience tempered by the
patience of preparing the world for its coming destiny, which the Christ-event has inaugurated…apocalyptic fervor and
missionary strategy go hand in hand…(They) do not contradict each other, as if the one paralyses the strength of the other.

These observations may also help us to understand Paul's strange statement in Romans 15:23, “I no
longer have any room for work in these regions” (he refers to the whole region from Jerusalem to
Illyricum). He therefore, he says, has to move on to other regions, since he has made it his ambition to
peach the gospel not where Christ has already been named, “lest I build on another man's foundation”
(Rom 15:20). Hengel (1983b:52) puts this down to Paul's “ambition,” which is hardly an adequate
explanation. Why then does Paul make these two statements? Probably for two reasons: (a) In view of
the shortness of time and the urgency of the task it would be bad stewardship to go to places where
others have already evangelized; (b) he is not suggesting that the work of mission is completed in the
regions where he has worked, but simply that there are now viable churches, which may reach out
into their respective hinterlands; therefore he has to move on to the “regions beyond.”
Paul and His Colleagues
Another characteristic of Paul's missionary practice lies in the way in which he makes use of a
variety of associates. Ollrog has argued for the view that these men (and women, such as Priscilla)
were not just Paul's assistants or subordinates but truly his colleagues (Ollrog 1979:passim). Ollrog
distinguishes among three categories of associates: first the most intimate circle, comprising
Barnabas, Silvanus, and particularly Timothy (:92f); second, the “independent co-workers,” such as
Priscilla and Aquila, and Titus (:94f); and third, and perhaps most important, representatives from
local churches, such as Epaphroditus, Epaphras, Aristarchus, Gaius, and Jason (:95-106). The
churches, Ollrog argues, put these persons at Paul's disposal for limited periods (:119-125). Through
them the churches themselves are represented in the Pauline mission and become co-responsible for
the work (:121). As a matter of fact, not being represented in this venture constitutes a shortcoming in
a local church; such a church has excluded itself from participating in the Pauline missionary
enterprise (:122).
In his fellow-workers Paul embraces the churches and these identify with his missionary efforts;
this is the primary intention of the cooperative mission (Ollrog 1974:125). Where members of the
community are chosen for this work they put their charisma for a certain period at the disposal of the
mission (:131), and through their delegates the churches themselves become partners in the entire
enterprise (:132). The role of the co-workers only becomes transparent if seen in relation to the
churches (:160). This ministry demonstrates the coming of age of the churches (:160, 235). The
foundational relationship between the co-workers and their local churches has to be taken into
account at all times (:234). Theologically this signifies that Paul regards his mission as a function of
the church (:234f).
Paul's Apostolic Self-Consciousness
Of particular significance in this respect is Paul's apostolic self-consciousness and the way in which
he presents himself as model to be emulated, not only by his fellow-workers, but by all Christians.
Referring to 1 Thessalonians 1:6 (“And you became imitators of us and of the Lord”), Malherbe
writes, “Paul's method of shaping a community was to gather converts around himself and by his own
behavior to demonstrate what he taught” (1987:52). He adds that, in doing so, Paul follows a method
widely practiced at the time, particularly by moral philosophers. As with serious philosophers, Paul's
life cannot be distinguished from what he preaches; his life authenticates his gospel (:54, cf 68). In
spite of remarkable similarities between him and the moral philosophers in this respect there are,
nevertheless, also some distinctive differences, both as regards the philosophers’ understanding of
themselves and their tasks and with respect to the way they carry out their responsibilities. In their
exhortations the philosophers point to other individuals as examples; Paul however offers himself as
a model to be emulated. But, and this is important, Paul's confidence in offering himself as archetype
does not reside in himself and his own accomplishments; rather, he continually refers to God's
initiative and power in his life (:59). By the same token Paul's boldness is not, as is the case with the
philosophers, based on a moral freedom gained by reason and exercise of the will; it is, as he clearly
states in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-5, given by God. This enables him to emphasize his own self-giving to a
degree that the philosophers could not (:59). Since he does not think that his life can be distinguished
from his gospel (:68), he is convinced that, through his life and ministry, God is calling people into
the divine kingdom and glory (:109).
 Paul's amazing self-confidence and self-consciousness has been a stumbling block for many. How
can he be proud of or boast about his work (Rom 15:17 and several other references)? Is boasting (cf
the word-group kauchaomai/kauchema/ kauchesis in Paul's letters, particularly 2 Corinthians) a
Christian virtue? And dare mortal beings summon others to “imitate” (cf the references to mimeomai
and mimetes in Paul's letters, as well as Haas 1971:73-79) them? This certainly conflicts with
proprieties as we understand them today unless we keep in mind that the unconditional obedience on
which Paul insists and the authority to which he lays claim are not for himself, but for the gospel, that
is, for Christ (cf Ollrog 1979:201). And the demands he makes on himself are far greater than those
he makes on others: “I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should
be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27). It is fully in line with this when he says that he would rather boast of
his weaknesses, since Christ has taught him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). He can even say, “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor
12:10), an expression Ernst Fuchs once referred to as “the most famous paradox in the entire New
Testament.”5 His decision to support himself through the work of his own hands and not to accept any
financial support from the churches he has founded (except, interestingly enough, the church in
Philippi; cf Phil 4:15) has to be understood in the same spirit. He worked day and night, he writes to
the Thessalonians, that he might not burden any of them while he preached to them the gospel of God
(1 Thes 2:9). The thrust of the argument lies in the last part of the phrase just referred to; he forfeits
his right (for this is what it is; cf 1 Cor 9:4-12) in this respect, so as to make the gospel he proclaims
more credible. He asserts this in yet another way in 1 Corinthians 9:19, “For though I am free from all
men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more “(cf Haas 1971:7072)”. Necessity
is laid upon Paul: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).

PAUL'S MISSIONARY MOTIVATION

We have in the meantime, almost imperceptibly, moved from Paul's missionary strategy to his
missionary motivation. Michael Green (1970:236-255) has suggested that three main missionary
motives were operative in the early church, all of which are particularly clearly identifiable in Paul:
a sense of gratitude, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of concern. It may not really be possible to
subdivide missionary motives in this way since they very frequently overlap in Paul. Even so, Green's
analysis may help us to get a better grasp of Paul's understanding of mission, so I shall use it, but in
reverse order.
A Sense of Concern
It is important to realize that, in his assessment of paganism, Paul concurs with the views of the
Judaism of his time. This judgment is decidedly negative, not least because of what Jews considered
to be the low morality of Gentiles; catalogs of their vices appear in 1 Corinthians 5:10, 6:9-11, and
elsewhere (cf Green 1970:249f; Bussmann 1971:120f; Zeller 1982:167; Meeks 1983:94f; Malherbe
1987:95).6 It is, however, above everything else, idolatry that Paul deems reprehensible. Idols are
fabrications of the perverted human mind (cf Rom 1:23, 25), and yet, in spite of the fact that they are
human creations, they take control of people, who are “led astray to dumb idols” (1 Cor 12:2) and are
“in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods,” slaves of “weak and beggarly elemental spirits”
(Gal 4:9f). Their being in bondage to idols is therefore due not to ignorance (as the Stoics would
argue) but to willfulness. In fact, “idolatry” is not limited to worship of idols but includes a broader
sense of allegiance to anything that is false (cf Bussmann 1971:38-56; Senior and Stuhlmueller
1983:186; Hultgren 1985:39f; Grant 1986:46-49; Malherbe 1987:31f).
 Over against this pervasive idolatry of the Greco-Roman world Paul proclaims (in full harmony
with his Jewish religious roots) the uncompromising message of one God who lays exclusive claim to
people's loyalty.7 In absolute contrast to the idols Paul describes God as “living and true” (1 Thes
1:9). We know this, not simply because we infer it from God's miraculous creation and governance of
the existing world together with his continuing revelation through his prophets; no, we know it above
all because God has revealed himself to us through his Son (Gal 4:4f) (cf Bussmann 1971:75-80;
Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:186; Grant 1986:47).
This is the point where Paul's concern comes into play. He sees humanity outside Christ as utterly
lost, en route to perdition (cf 1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15), and in dire need of salvation (see also Eph
2:12). The idea of imminent judgment on those who “do not obey the truth” (Rom 2:8) is a recurring
theme in Paul. Precisely for this reason he allows himself no relaxation. He has to proclaim, to as
many as possible, deliverance “from the wrath to come” (1 Thes 1:10). He is Christ's ambassador;
God makes his appeal to the lost through Paul and his fellow-workers: “We beseech you on behalf of
Christ, be reconciled to God!” (2 Cor 5:20) (cf also Lippert 1968:148; Zeller 1982:167f, 185; Meeks
1983:95; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:186; Hahn 1984:275; Boring 1986:277f; Malherbe
1987:32f).
The primary concern of Paul's preaching is not, however, the “wrath to come” (cf Legrand
1988:163). He never dwells in any detail on this. God's wrath is, rather, the dark foil for the positive
message he proclaims: salvation through Christ and the imminent triumph of God. His gospel is good
news, addressed to people who have willfully sinned, who are without excuse, and who deserve
God's judgment (Rom 1:20, 23, 25; 2:1f, 5-10), but to whom God in his kindness is providing an
opportunity for repentance (Rom 2:4) (cf Malherbe 1987:32).8 Where his listeners indeed respond
positively, they turn, says Paul in his very first letter, “to God from idols, to serve a living and true
God” (1 Thes 1:10). “Conversion has brought the converts from the realm of death and unreality to
the realm of the life and reality of God” (Grant 1986:46f). This is a metamorphosis far more
fundamental than anything the philosophers envisage; for Paul, “the goal is not the achievement of
one's natural potential but the formation of Christ in the believer” (Malherbe 1987:33, referring to
Gal 4:19 and Rom 8:29). The expression “turning to God from idols” in 1 Thessalonians 1:10 is
language inherited from the Jewish diaspora, “but it is immediately reinforced by an eschatological
clause with distinctive Christian content: ‘And to await from the heavens his Son; whom he raised
from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come’” (Meeks 1983:95). Salvation is, for
Paul, the experience of undeserved liberation through the encounter with the one God and Father of
Jesus Christ (Walter 1979:430). Other expressions he uses in this regard include “adoption as sons,”
“the redemption of our bodies,” “being called to freedom,” “delivered from a deadly peril,”
“knowing God,” and (frequently) “justified.”
The purpose of Paul's mission, then, is to lead people to salvation in Christ. This anthropological
perspective is, however, not the ultimate objective of his ministry. In and through his mission he is
preparing the world for God's coming glory and for the day when all the universe will praise him (cf
Zeller 1982:186f; Beker 1984:57).
A Sense of Responsibility
Paul's sense of concern for the Gentiles of the Roman Empire evinces itself in a deep awareness that
it is his obligation to proclaim the gospel to them. It is a charge laid upon him, an anangke
(“inescapable necessity”): “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16). In the epistle to
the Romans he frequently employs the words opheilema and opheiletes (“debt”; “debtor”) in this
regard. Romans 1:14 is particularly pertinent here: “I am under obligation (opheiletes eimi) both to
Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.” This is, as Paul Minear (1961:42-44)
has shown, a rather puzzling expression. A sense of debt presupposes (a) a gift from one person to
another, and (b) knowledge and appreciation of both the gift and the giver. But Paul neither knows his
“creditors” nor have they given him anything. So the normal way in which the expression “debt” is
used would make no sense here. Paul is, however, indebted to Christ, and this is transmuted into a
debt to those whom Christ wishes to bring to salvation. Obligation to him who dies produces
obligation to those for whom he died. Faith in Christ creates a mutuality of indebtedness; it recognizes
that the believer is as deeply indebted to unbelievers as to Christ. Yet in no sense does it depend upon
the tangible contributions of the creditors to the debtors, only and wholly upon the gift of God in
Christ. Precisely for this reason the idea of “reward” does not enter into the picture; that would
presuppose that Paul is of his own choice engaged in mission in order to gain something from it (cf,
once again, 1 Cor 9:16).
In his second letter to the Corinthians Paul employs another term in an attempt to give expression
to the “debt” he has: “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor 5:11). Green
interprets correctly, “This…is not the craven fear of the underdog, but the loving fear of the friend and
trusted servant who dreads disappointing his beloved Mastef” (1970:245). Here also is to be found
the reason why Paul dreads the possibility that “after preaching to others I myself should be
disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27).
All these references emphasize an indebtedness to both Christ and the people to whom Paul is
sent. The latter element becomes more prominent in the famous passage in 1 Corinthians:
I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those
under the law I became as one under the law—though not being myself under the law—that I might win those under the law. To
those outside the law I became as one outside the law—not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ—that I
might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men,
that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings (9:19-23).

These verses really say more about Paul's sense of responsibility than about his missionary
methods. No doubt they suggest that Paul's manner of preaching the gospel is “one of flexibility,
sensitivity, and empathy” (Beker 1984:58), and that, for him, mission means neither the Hellenization
of Jews nor the Judaization of Greeks (Steiger 1980:46; Stegemann 1984:301f). However, in the
entire context this is peripheral to what Paul is saying. He is not offering guidelines for cross-cultural
missionary accommodation (Bieder 1965:32-35). The last phrase quoted shows “how little this
passage has to do with a mere art of adjustment or a successful missionary technique. The freedom of
his service is not a matter of his discretion; it is a matter of his obedience to the gospel, so much so
that his own eternal salvation is at stake” (Bornkamm 1966:197f). Paul is essentially saying two
things here: the gospel of Jesus Christ is intended for all, without any distinction; and he, Paul, is
under an inescapable obligation to try to “win”9 as many as possible. Precisely for this reason Paul
insists that no unnecessary stumbling blocks be put in the way of prospective converts or of “weak”
believers, for instance in 1 Corinthians 8-10 where he argues the case about eating or not eating meat
offered to idols (cf Meeks 1983:69f, 97-100, 105). It is not necessary for Christians from different
backgrounds to become carbon copies of one another.
It may be instructive to turn, at this point, to what Paul has to say about the believers’ attitude and
conduct toward “outsiders,” as this may throw additional light on his understanding of his own and
other Christians’ responsibility. First, he impresses upon his readers that they are a community of a
special kind. Meeks has highlighted several features which are significant for the self-understanding
of Christians in Paul's letters (1983:84-96; cf van Swigchem 1955:40-57). They constitute a
community with boundaries, a fact which finds expression in Paul's use of “the language of
belonging” (which emphasizes the internal cohesion and solidarity of the group—Paul uses a great
variety of special terms for believers) and “the language of separation” (to distinguish them from
those who do not belong). They have to behave in an exemplary way, because they are “saints,” God's
“elect,” “called,” and “known” by God.
The suggestion therefore is that, simply because of their unique status as God's children, their
conduct should be exceptional. However, and this is the second point, very frequently Paul says that
an exemplary demeanor is required for the sake of the Christian witness toward outsiders. It is true,
of course, that Paul often portrays non-members of the community in rather negative terms. I have
already referred to some of the expressions he uses in this regard. Other terms include “unrighteous,”
“nonbelievers,” and “those…who obey wickedness.” And yet, it is not words like these, or others
such as “adversaries” or “sinners,” which become technical terms for non-Christians. There are, says
van Swigchem, really only two such technical terms in the Pauline letters: hoi loipoi (“the others”)
and hoi exo (“outsiders”). Both of these carry a milder connotation than some of the other more
emotive expressions Paul sporadically uses (1955:57-59, 72)10 and are remarkably free from
condemnation.
Paul would rather criticize those who profess to be believers: “For what have I to do with judging
outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside” (1 Cor
5:12f). So the weight of his emphasis is put on the conduct of “insiders” in relation to “outsiders” and
for the latter's sake. Christians should not jeopardize relationships with outsiders by irresponsible,
disorderly lives. They should live in such a way that they “command the respect of outsiders” (1 Thes
4:12). Paul admonishes them “to live quietly” (1 Thes 4:11), but not in the Stoic sense of retiring into
contemplation for its own sake or in the Epicurean sense of contemptuously shunning society; rather,
Christians should, by living quietly, aim at earning the approval of society at large (Malherbe
1987:96-99, 105; cf Meeks 1983:106). In addition, Christians are to love all people (1 Thes 3:12).
Lippert lists the concrete ways in which this love ought to manifest itself: Christians should relinquish
all desires to judge others; their behavior should be exemplary over against the civil order; they
should be ready to serve others; they are called upon to forgive, pray for, and bless others
(1968:153f; cf Malherbe 1987:95-107).
Earning the respect and even admiration of outsiders is, however, not enough. The Christians’
lifestyle should not only be exemplary, but also winsome. It should attract outsiders and invite them to
join the community. Put differently, the believers should practice a missionary lifestyle. It is true that
the Christian community is exclusive and has definite boundaries (Meeks 1983:84-105), but there are
“gates in the boundaries” (:105). Meeks correctly points out that a sect which claims to have a
monopoly on salvation usually does not welcome free interchange with outsiders. A case in point is
the Essene communities at Qumran. The Pauline churches, however, are manifestly different. They are
characterized by a missionary drive which sees in the outsider a potential insider (:105-107). Their
“exemplary existence” (Lippert 1968:164) is a powerful magnet that draws outsiders toward the
church.
On the other hand, the missionary dimension of the conduct of the Pauline Christians remains
implicit rather than explicit. They are, to employ a distinction introduced by Hans-Werner Gensichen
(1971:168-186), “missionary (“missionarisch”) rather than “missionizing” (“missionierend”).
References to specific cases of direct missionary involvement by the churches are rare in Paul's
letters (cf Lippert 1968:127f, 175f).11 But this is not just to be seen as a deficiency. Rather, Paul's
whole argument is that the attractive lifestyle of the small Christian communities gives credibility to
the missionary outreach in which he and his fellow-workers are involved. The primary responsibility
of “ordinary” Christians is not to go out and preach, but to support the mission project through their
appealing conduct and by making “outsides” feel welcome in their midst.
A Sense of Gratitude
Only now do we reach the deepest level of Paul's missionary motivation. He goes to the ends of the
earth because of the overwhelming experience of the love of God he has received through Jesus
Christ. “The Son of God…loved me and gave himself for me,” he writes to the Galatians (2:20), and
to the Romans he says, “God's love has been poured into our hearts” (5:5). The classical expression
of Paul's awareness of God's love as a motivation for mission is to be found in 2 Corinthians 5. In
verse 11 he says, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men.” As I have argued,
“fear” here refers to Paul's desire not to disappoint his beloved Master (cf Green 1970:245). In verse
14 he then articulates the positive side of what he says in verse 11, “For the love of Christ controls
us.”
For Paul, then, the most elemental reason for proclaiming the gospel to all is not just his concern
for the lost, nor is it primarily the sense of an obligation laid upon him, but rather a sense of
privilege. Through Chist, he says, “I received the privilege of a commission in his name to lead to
faith and obedience men in all nations” (Rom 1:5, NEB). Again, in Romans 15:15f, he refers to “the
grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.”
Privilege, grace, gratitude (charis is the New Testament Greek word used for all three of these
terms)—these are the notions Paul employs when referring to his missionary task. In his letter to the
Romans he establishes an intimate relationship between “grace” or “gratitude” and “duty”; put
differently, Paul's acknowledgment of indebtedness is immediately translated into a sense of gratitude.
The debt or obligation he feels does not represent a burden which inhibits him; rather, recognition of
debt is synonymous with giving thanks. The way Paul gives thanks is to be a missionary to Jew and
Gentile (cf Minear 1961:passim). He has exchanged the terrible debt of sin for another debt, the debt
of gratitude, which manifests itself in mission (cf Kähler [1899] 1971:457).
Paul sometimes uses cultic language to give expression to his own and his fellow-believers’ “debt
of gratitude.” In Romans 15:16, to which I have already referred several times, he speaks of himself
as a leitourgos (“minister”) to the Gentiles and of his missionary involvement as “priestly service”
(leitourgein, “to function as a priest”) (cf Schlier 1971:passim). In Philippians 2:17 he designates
this a thysia (“libation”) and leitourgia (“sacrifice”). The Gentile converts he is taking to Jerusalem,
together with the collection for the poor Christians there, he calls aprosphora (“sacrificial offering”:
Rom 15:16). In similar fashion he appeals to his readers to present their bodies to God as a “living
and holy sacrifice,” which, he says, is their “spiritual worship”; and the collection the Philippians
sent to him through Epaphroditus he labels a “fragrant offering” (Phil 4:18).
Behind all these expressions lies the idea of a sacrifice or offering that is given out of love and
because of the love Paul and his communities have received from God through Christ. The cultic-
sacrificial language of the mystery religions is transformed metaphorically and applied soberly and
concretely to the daily lifestyle of believers (cf Beker 1980:320; cf also Schlier 1971 and,
particularly, Walter 1979:436-441). Perhaps some of Paul's recent converts were puzzled by his
insistence on cult-free worship; to them he gives the assurance that all cultic practices have been
antiquated by God himself. Even so, Christians do have a form of latreia; their exemplary conduct for
the sake of the salvation of others is “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,” their “spiritual
worship” (Rom 12:2) rendered in their day-to-day existence; this is their substitute for all cultic
practices. Also, Paul does not use the expression hilaskesthai (“to propitiate” or “make expiation for
sins”; in the New Testament this verb occurs only in Hebrews 2:17). He prefers the words
katallassein (“reconcile”) and katallage (“reconciliation”). However, he turns both the Gentile and
the Jewish use of these terms upside down.12 It is not a case of God having to be propitiated by
people because of their transgressions against him. Rather, God himself “pleads to be reconciled with
us, his enemies. So low does God bow in partnership with human beings” (Walter 1979:441—my
translation). This is the boundless and inexpressible love that Paul and his communities experience. Is
it conceivable that they could respond to it with anything but a profound “debt of gratitude”?

MISSION AND THE TRIUMPH OF GOD

The Apocalyptic Paul
In endeavoring to portray the distinctive features of Paul's missionary theology we have to go beyond
what I have termed his missionary strategy and motivation. This is a hazardous enterprise, since
Paul's world of thought is exceedingly complex. It is therefore impossible to select one single element
as the fundamental motif of Paul's theology. There are, rather, several important motifs, all of which
are interrelated. To mention only some of those which are associated with his understanding of his
mission: his interpretation of the Law; of justification by faith; of the interdependence of a mission to
Jews and Gentiles; of the absolute priority of the Gentile mission for the present moment; of the
universal, indeed cosmic, significance of the gospel; of the incontestable centrality of Christ and the
meaning of Christ's death and resurrection; and of the relevance of his mission for paving the way for
God's coming triumph.
I shall begin with this last-mentioned motif, with the qualification, however, that the other motifs
have to be presupposed throughout.
Significant advances in Pauline studies during the last decade or two have shown many of the
traditional assumptions about Paul's theology to be erroneous or at least incomplete. Important
Pauline studies published since the middle of the 1970s include Sanders (1977 and 1983), Beker
(1980 and 1984) and Räisänen (1983). Scholars now tend to agree that Paul has to be understood not
only in opposition to his Jewish past but also in continuation with that past. This applies to his
appreciation for the Law and the abiding validity of God's promises to Israel (to which I shall return),
as well as to his eschatological convictions.
In an essay published in 1959, Wilckens suggested that Paul (or Saul) before his conversion was
not to be regarded as a typical orthodox rabbinic Pharisee (as countless generations of Christians
have portrayed him). Rather, Saul (as Pharisee!) stood in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition from
Daniel onward, a tradition which decisively influenced the theology of Paul the Christian; we will
never understand Paul until this is fully recognized (Wilckens 1959:passim; see, however, Sanders
1977:479). Ernst Käsemann has also, in several publications since 1960, argued in favor of
understanding Paul in the context of apocalyptic (cf particularly Käsemann 1969a, 1969b, 1969c,
1969e). In more recent years Beker (1980 and 1984) has left no stone unturned in an effort to
rehabilitate the original “apocalyptic Paul.” In contrast to E. P. Sanders, who tends to fuse
apocalyptic into the mainstream of rabbinic Judaism (1977:423f; but cf Sanders 1983:5, 12, note 13),
Beker distinguishes between the apocalyptic ambience of Judaism before the Jewish War and the
negative reaction to apocalyptic in the wake of the war. Classical Judaism of the post-Jamnia period
made apocalyptic responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, because of its
messianic speculations. Since the Jamnia council of AD 90, the rabbinic-Hebrew canon, because of
its distaste for apocalyptic, had excluded both the Apocrypha and the apocalyptic Pseudepigrapha
(Beker 1980:345, 359). Paul, however, belongs to pre-war Judaism and should be read and
understood against that background. Small wonder, therefore, that many of the stock themes of Jewish
apocalyptic are to be detected in Paul. These include the four basic motifs of “vindication,”
“universalism,” “dualism,” and “imminence” (Beker 1984:30-54), all of which were linked with the
peculiar perception of the Law operative in Jewish apocalyptic (cf Wilckens 1959).
Before I turn to the profound way in which Paul, in spite of all continuity, modifies Jewish
apocalyptic, it may be of interest to point out that just as the Judaism of the period after AD 70 turned
its back on its apocalyptic heritage, so also has most of “main-line” Christianity, down through the
ages, refused to accept an “apocalyptic” Paul. Paul was understood as though he was reacting to
(Christianity's interpretation of) classical post-war rabbinic Judaism.
Apocalyptic is often characterized by the supposition that the present is empty and that all
salvation lies only in the future. The despair and frustration people experience in the present propel
them to long for total redemption in the future, which is usually understood to be both imminent and
calculable. Montanism, a late second- and early-third century heresy, is one of the earliest examples
of a Christian apocalyptic movement and bears resemblance to many other millenarian sects that
flourished in the Middle Ages, at the time of the Reformation, and later. The cultural climate of our
own time appears to be particularly conducive to such movements, as the writings of Hal Lindsey
(such at The Late Great Planet Earth and The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon) testify. As Beker
has cogently argued, such movements are, however, totally out of tune with the essence of the
Christian faith. He highlights several grave distortions of the gospel which characterize Lindsey's
updated version of Montanism. Lindsey's descriptions of the future are deterministic in the extreme;
his apocalyptic is devoid of a christological focus; the biblical materials he cites are totally divorced
from their proper historical contexts; his hope for the future is self-centered in the extreme; and there
is no theology of the cross in his apocalyptic (Beker 1984:26f).
The Christian Church and Apocalyptic
In light of the above, it should not surprise us if the Christian church, down through the centuries, has
often reacted negatively if not violently to any manifestation of apocalyptic. It was either silenced or
neutralized by the established church,13 which resulted in future eschatology being largely pushed out
of the mainstream of Christianity and into heretical aberrations. Whereas the apocalypticists at least
kept alive the conviction of a fundamental reordering of reality in time at some future moment, the
main body of the church soon came under the spell of Platonic thinking. This manifested itself in
several ways, particularly under the influence of Origen and Augustine. The resurrection of Christ
was viewed as a completed event and severed from the hope of a future resurrection of believers.
Christian history after the Christ-event was regarded as little more than the working out of God's
once-for-all action in Christ. The expectation of a “new heaven and a new earth” was spiritualized
away. The emphasis was laid on the spiritual journey of the individual believer and on a post-mortem
afterlife rather than on a future resurrection from the dead. The church was increasingly identified
with the kingdom of God; it became the dispenser of sacraments and the place where, through the
sacraments, souls were won for Christ (Beker 1980:303f, 356; 1984:73f, 85-87, 108f; cf also Lampe
1957:passim).
Modern theologians have produced their own variations of the solutions offered in early
Christianity. Nineteenth-century liberal theology, for instance, summarily removed Paul's future
eschatological expectation as an ornamental husk (cf Beker 1984:61). Again, in Protestantism
(particularly in its Lutheran branch) there has been a tendency to declare Paul's basic motif, virtually
to the exclusion of all others, “to be found in his understanding of law and grace, that is, in his
message of justification” (Bornkamm 1966:201), often also at the expense of an expectation of the
future.14 Bultmann's program of demythologizing the New Testament and particularly its eschatology,
and of substituting an existentialist interpretation, thus restricting it to hope in a God who “is always
One who comes” in “permanent futurity,” is a variation of the justification-by-faith theme and an
attempt at dealing with the reality of the delay of the parousia, but again at the expense of any future
orientation in Paul (cf Beker 1980:17, 355). The “realized eschatology” program of C. H. Dodd and
others had a similar effect—once again the embarrassing consciousness of the ongoing and apparently
never-ending history of this world caused theologians to adjust Paul's teachings to what he “really
meant.” Dodd saw Paul developing from an apocalypticist in his earliest letters to embracing a more
mature “realized eschatology” in Colossians and Ephesians. Paul, Dodd suggested, thus replaced
apocalyptic with ecclesiology (cf Beker 1980:303, 361; 1984:49, 86). Oscar Cullmann's proposition
of understanding Paul (and the entire New Testament) from a salvation-history perspective, according
to which the decisive battle for God's kingdom (the “D-Day”) has already been won, even if the
ratification of the victory (the “V-Day”) may still be far off, appears, at the first glance, to present a
real alternative to the solutions of Bultmann, Dodd, and others. Cullmann's emphasis on Christ as the
“midpoint” means, however, that in his thinking the Christ-event, as the center of Christian theology,
has effectively displaced the event of God's coming glory and, in Cullmann's own words, dethroned
eschatology (cf Beker 1980:355f).
Beker therefore pleads for the rehabilitation of the much maligned term “apocalyptic” over against
“eschatology,” which has simply become a herme-neutical term for “ultimate,” and the use of which is
“multivalent and often chaotic.” By contrast, “apocalyptic” clarifies the future-temporal character of
Paul's gospel and denotes an end-time occurrence that is both cosmic-universal and definitive
(1980:361; 1984:14). Precisely for this reason, says Beker, the term “apocalyptic” has to be
reinstated as a valid theological concept and reclaimed from the groups which have given it such a
bad name.15
Apocalyptic's New Center of Gravity
As mentioned above, one of the basic errors of much apocalyptic, ancient or modern, lies in the fact
that it minimizes the central significance of Christ. It is precisely at this point that Paul's apocalyptic
goes an entirely different route. Paul, the Christian, still formulates his spirituality in terms of his
inherited (Jewish) apocalyptic, but apocalyptic is given a new “center of gravity,” Jesus Christ (Dahl
1977a:71). Precisely where the Law stood in Judaism the Christ-event now stands (Wilckens
1959:280, 285f; Hengel 1983b:53; cf also Moltmann 1967:192). The proclamation of Christ's death-
resurrection (and not the life and ministry of the earthly Jesus or Jesus’ preaching about God's reign)
forms the center of Paul's missionary message, as 1 Corinthians 15 clearly attests (cf Zeller
1982:173; Grant 1986:47; Kertelge 1987:373). In the words of Beker 1984:35 (cf Zeller 1982:171;
Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:171, 174),
The division in humankind is constituted not by those faithful to the Torah and those who are wicked and “Gentile sinners” (Gal
2:15) but rather by the death of Jesus Christ as the focal point of God's universal wrath and judgment. The death of Christ
signifies the apocalyptic judgment on all humankind, whereas the resurrection signifies the free gift of new life in Christ for all.

The Christ-event is, however, not a closure or completed event; it is not “the end of history.”
Rather, Paul struggles with the problem that although the Messiah has come, his kingdom has not
(Beker 1980:345f). The emphasis is not just on the messiahship of Jesus, but also on the salvation-
historical turning point. The death and resurrection of Christ mark the incursion of the future new age
into the present old age (cf de Boer 1989:187, note 17; Duff 1989:285-289). This event signifies the
inauguration and the anticipation of the coming triumph of God, the overture to it, and its guarantee. It
is a decisive sign, which determines the character of all future signs and indeed of the Christian hope
itself. Paul can therefore designate Christ as the “first fruits” of the final resurrection of the dead, or
the “first-born among many brethren” (1 Cor 15:20, 23; Rom 8:29). The resurrection of Christ
necessarily points to the future glory of God and its completion. This means that Paul's theology is not
unifocal, but bifocal; coming from God's past act in Christ it moves toward God's future act. Indeed,
both events stand or fall together, and both converge on Christian life in the present: “For as often as
you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26).
The imminence motif is intensified by the death and resurrection of Christ; the believers therefore
pray, “Marana tha”—“Our Lord, come!” (1 Cor 16:22; cf 2 Cor 6:2).
Compared to the Jewish apocalyptic of the time Paul's expectation of God's imminent intervention
in human history is intensified. He expects the interim period to be completed during his own lifetime
(cf 1 Thes 4:15, 17; 1 Cor 7:29). The form of this world is already passing away (1 Cor 7:31). It is
full time now for believers to wake from sleep, “for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first
believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:11f). Christians belong to those “upon
whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor 10:11). Having the first fruits of the Spirit, they groan
inwardly as they wait for the adoption as children, the redemption of their bodies (Rom 8:23) (cf Aus
1979:232, 262; Beker 1980:146f; 1984:40f, 47). In the case of Paul, then, apocalyptic is indeed the
“mother of theology” (Käsemann 1969a:102; 1969b:137).
New Life in Christ
It should, however, once again be emphasized that Paul's focus is not only on an event that is still
outstanding. The hope he talks about is hope only because of what God has already done. The
dualistic structure of Jewish apocalyptic thought has been profoundly modified (cf Beker 1980:143-
152; 1984:39-44). Even if salvation is, for Paul, unmistakably future (cf Zeller 1982:173; Senior and
Stuhlmueller 1983:177), it casts its powerful rays into the present. Now already Christians are “holy”
and challenged to (greater) sanctification (Rom 6:19, 22). Those who used to be in bondage (Gal 4:8)
have been set free from sin and from the present evil age and have become “slaves of righteousness”
or “of God” (Rom 6:18, 22; Gal 1:4; 5:1). Through the atonement they have been pronounced
righteous (dikaios); this means that they enjoy the eschatological gift of justification already, even
while living in the present age (cf Zeller 1982:188; Hultgren 1985:144). Paul never uses the notion of
“being born again” and rarely employs the verb “repent” (cf Koenig 1979:307; Beker 1980:6;
Gaventa 1986:3, 46). He says rather that people should acknowledge that, though living in the midst
of a world whose form is perishing and doomed to pass away, they have become part of God's new
creation (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15). The whole direction and content of their existence has undergone a
metamorphosis. They have “turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God” (1 Thes 1:10),
which means that they have passed from death to life, from darkness to light (cf Gaventa
1986:passim). They have been transformed and are enjoined to continue to “be transformed” (Rom
12:2—metamorphousthe, “submitto transformation”; cfKoenig 1979:307, 313). Paul's preaching has
engendered faith in their hearts (cf Rom 10:8-10, 14), which they confess through the Spirit (1 Cor
12:3). Indeed, the eschatological gift of the Spirit is powerfully at work in Paul and his converts. The
Spirit dwells in the believer, sealing him or her as a possession of Christ. The Spirit is alive and life-
giving, since it is the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead (Rom 8:9-11) (cf Minear
1961:45). This evidence of the Spirit's active presence guarantees for Paul that the messianic age has
dawned. In fact, “the Spirit is the agent of the future glory in the present; it is the first down payment
or guarantee of the endtime (Rom 8:23; 2 Cor 1:22)” (Beker 1984:46f; cf Senior and Stuhlmueller
1983:178).
To be reconciled to God, to be justified, to be transformed in the here and now, is not something
that happens to isolated individuals, however. Incorporation into the Christ-event moves the
individual believer into the community of believers. The church is the place where they celebrate
their new life in the present and stretch out to what is still to come. The church has an eschatological
horizon and is, as proleptic manifestation of God's reign, the beachhead of the new creation, the
vanguard of God's new world, and the sign of the dawning new age in the midst of the old (cf Beker
1980:313; 1984:41). At the same time it is precisely as these small and weak Pauline communities
gather in worship to celebrate the victory already won and to pray for the coming of their Lord
(“Marana tha !”), that they become aware of the terrible contradiction between what they believe on
the one hand and what they empirically see and experience on the other, and also of the tension in
which they live, the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” “Christ the first fruits” has
already risen from the dead (1 Cor 15:23) and the believers have been given the Spirit as “guarantee”
of what is to come (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5), but there does not seem to be much apart from these “first fruits”
and “pledge.” Like Abraham, they believe in hope against hope (Rom 4:18) and accept in faith the
Spirit's witness that they are children and heirs of God and therefore fellow heirs with Christ—
provided, says Paul, “we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom
8:17). God will triumph, notwithstanding our weakness and suffering, but also in the midst of and
because of and through our weakness and suffering (cf Beker 1980:364f). Faith is able to bear the
tension between the confession of God's ultimate triumph, and the empirical reality of this world, for
it knows that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom 8:37)
and that “in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his
purpose” (8:28). Nowhere has Paul portrayed this unbearable (and precisely for this reason
bearable!) tension more profoundly than in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted
in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

Our Christian life in this world thus involves an inescapable tension, oscillating between joy and
agony. Whereas, on the one hand, suffering and weakness become all the more intolerable and our
agonizing, because of the terrifying “not yet,” intensifies, we can, on the other hand, already “rejoice
in our sufferings” (Rom 5:2). This means that our life in this world must be cruciform; Paul bears on
his body “the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17; cf Col 1:24), he carries “in the body the death of Jesus,” and
while he lives he is “always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:10f) (cf also Beker
1980:145f, 366f; 1984:120).
Lesslie Newbigin suggests that nowhere in the New Testament is the essential character of the
church's mission set out more clearly than in the passage quoted above (2 Cor 4:7-10). “It ought to be
seen,” he says, “as the classic definition of mission” (Newbigin 1987:24). This passage, moreover,
clearly characterizes the Pauline mission as an eschatological event: only within the horizon of the
expectation of the end can the tension between suffering and glory be sustained. Apocalyptic groups
are usually sectarian, introverted, exclusivist, and jealous in guarding their boundaries; moreover, the
expectation of an imminent end leaves no room for any large-scale missionary enterprise. The Pauline
communities, although they are exclusive, are, however, not introverted and sectarian. There are, we
have said, gates in their boundaries (Meeks 1983:78, 105-107). Nor does the expectation of the
parousia in any way paralyze the zeal for mission.
There is another difference between Paul and most apocalyptic groups. Where such groups do get
involved in mission, such a venture is usually understood as a precondition for the end, as a means of
hastening or precipitating the parousia. Paul, however, can only proclaim the lordship of Christ, not
inaugurate it; it remains the prerogative of God himself to usher in the end (cf Zeller 1982:186; Beker
1984:52f). Paul only knows that the era between Christ's resurrection and the parousia is the time
allotted to him as apostle of the Gentiles, even if he has no guarantee that he himself will bring it to
completion; according to Philippians 1:21-24, for instance, he even contemplates the possibility of
his own death without any apparent anxiety about the completion of the missionary enterprise (cf
Zeller 1982:186, note 75).
The Nations’ Pilgrimage to Jerusalem
The apocalyptic context in which Paul sees his mission also emerges from his conviction that, for the
moment, the mission to Gentiles rather than to Jews has the highest priority. To Paul's most intense
disappointment the Jewish mission, for the present, proves to be a futile enterprise (cf Hengel
1983b:52; Steiger 1980:48). This does not, however, lead him to turning his back on his kinsfolk. He
is saying, rather, that God still intends to save Israel, but in a round-about way—via the mission to the
Gentiles! Two themes are employed in an effort to give expression to this conviction, and both once
again underscore the apocalyptic nature of the Pauline mission. First, there is the collection for the
poor Christians in Judea, to which Paul has committed himself (cf Gal 2:10) and to which he seems to
have devoted a great deal of his energy during the final years of his ministry (cf Rom 15:25f; 1 Cor
16:1; 2 Cor 8:9). It is possible that Paul and the Jerusalem leadership interpret the significance of the
collection differently (cf Brown 1980:209; Beker 1980:332; Meeks 1983:110). For Paul, it clearly
symbolizes the unity of the church made up of Jews and Gentiles (Meyer 1986:183f), and this is so
important to him that he risks everything in going to Jerusalem personally in order to deliver the gift
(it should be noted that this act led to Paul's arrest and the end of his public ministry).
More important, and this is the second theme, a whole retinue of representatives from a variety of
Gentile churches accompany him to Jerusalem. It is highly unlikely that Paul just wishes to impress
the Jerusalem leadership and prove to them that his mission has borne fruit. Some scholars have
therefore suggested that Paul is here taking up a traditional eschatological theme, particularly that of
the Gentiles carrying the people of Israel home from all the ends of the earth (cf Is 66:19-23). Paul,
however, completely reverses the contemporary Jewish interpretation of the Isaiah 66 prophecy and
combines it with another Old Testament prophecy, that of the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion; it is
not diaspora Jews, but representatives from all the Gentiles who will be gathered from the ends of
the earth and brought to Jerusalem. This explains, says Roger Aus, why Paul is so anxious about going
to Spain (Rom 15:24). Aus argues, in great detail, not only that Spain is undoubtedly the Tarshish of
the apocalyptic prophecy Isaiah 66:19, but also that it represents the farthest point in the West,
literally “the ends of the earth.” Only when the most distant of all the nations mentioned in Isaiah
66:19 also sends its representatives to Jerusalem will the “full number of the Gentiles” (Rom 11:25)
have arrived and the time for the parousia come (cf Aus 1979:passim). In this respect Aus also refers
to the “offering of the Gentiles” of Romans 15:16. This expression is to be understood not as the
money that the Gentiles are sending to Jerusalem; rather, the genitive construction should be translated
epexegetically as a genitive of apposition—the “offering of the Gentiles” is the Gentiles themselves
(Aus 1979:235-237).16
Paul thus blends the theme of the collection with that of the eschatological pilgrimage of the
nations to Jerusalem (cf also Bieder 1965:39; Stuhlmacher 1971:560f, 565; Zeller 1982:187; Hofius
1986:313; Kertelge 1987:372). He employs the Hebrew idea of representative universalism. The
Gentiles who do come to Jerusalem are the first fruits of redeemed humanity. They stand for the entire
crop and through them all the others share in the divine blessing (cf Aus 1979: 257-260; Hultgren
1985:135f).
The coming in of the “full number of the Gentiles” (Rom 11:25) is then linked intimately to the
salvation of Israel. Paul says that “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” (Rom 11:25), but
through the conversion of the Gentiles the Jews may become jealous and also accept Jesus as Messiah
(Rom 11:14). Paul cannot for a moment contemplate the possibility of Israel being eternally lost; so,
in an astoundingly bold fashion, he envisages the salvation of Israel after and as a result of the
conversion of the Gentiles. His mission to the Gentiles turns out to be “a colossal detour to the
salvation of Israel” (Käsemann 1969e:241). The fate of Israel hinges on the Gentile mission. By
“bringing in” the Gentiles, Paul will provoke Israel to repentance and so precipitate the final act in
the drama of salvation; the restitution of Israel will bring the completion of history (cf Zeller
1982:184f; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:183-185). The time of the Gentile mission is “only an
interval,” and the end can only come when Israel has been saved (Stuhlmacher 1971:565).
However, the Gentile mission as a “prelude” to the salvation of all Israel is, as it were, only one
side of the apocalyptic missionary coin. The apocalyptic motif includes the cosmic extension of God's
majesty and glory, and this implies a radical break with traditional Jewish soteriology. Jewish
apocalyptic certainly expected God's universal reign, but that expectation was firmly anchored in
Israel's self-awareness as a privileged people. Even where the Jews anticipated a pilgrimage of the
Gentile nations to Jerusalem, their thinking remained introverted and salvation subject to faithfulness
to the Law. This, says Beker, “marks Israel as a basically nonmissionary religion and accounts to a
large extent for the vengeance motif in its portrayal of the end-time” (1984:35). However, God's
intervention in Christ has profoundly modified the Jewish apocalyptic pattern; the Law has been
replaced with the crucified Messiah (cf Hengel 1983b:53). Through the death on the cross of Jesus
the Jew and in his subsequent exaltation through resurrection, all humanity is offered the possibility of
moving from death to life, from sin to God. Paul expounds this in detail in Romans 3:21-30: the
righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law, through faith in Jesus Christ. There is
no longer any distinction between Jew and Gentile. All have sinned and all are justified by God's
grace through Christ. God is, after all, the God not only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles. But
precisely because salvation is to be obtained only through Christ, it is intended for all humankind.
God allows himself to be found even by those who do not seek him (Rom 10:20). There can no longer
be any favorite-nation clause or claim to privilege. A mission that requires conversion to Judaism
(and all that this entails) on the part of the Gentiles is, in effect, a denial of the gospel itself. The
Messiah of Israel is the exalted Lord (Kyrios) of the whole cosmos, and this means that there is no
alternative to his claim to Lordship being addressed to all humankind. It is particularly in his letter to
the Romans where these cosmic dimensions of the Christian mission are developed. “Salvation for
all” may appropriately be termed the hermeneutical key to the entire letter (cf further Hahn 1965:99f;
Rütti 1972:117f; Mussner 1982:11; Zeller 1982: 171f, 177f; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:174-177;
Beker 1984:34-38; Legrand 1988:161-165).
Paul's Universalism
In this connection it is crucial to note that Paul's missionary message is not a negative one. He is not
charged with announcing an arbitrary apocalyptic blast to the world (Beker 1984:14, 58). He does
proclaim the wrath of God, but only as the dark foil of an eminently positive message—that God has
already come to us in his Son and will come again in glory. Mission means the announcement of
Christ's lordship over all reality and an invitation to submit to it; through his preaching Paul wishes to
evoke the confession “Jesus is Lord!” (Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; Phil 2:l1) (cf Zeller 1982:172f, 182).
The good news is that the reign of God, present in Jesus Christ, has brought us all together under
judgment and has in the same act brought us all together under grace. And yet, this does not mean that
the gospel is an invitation to mystical introspection or to the salvation of individual souls, climbing
out of a lost world into the safety of the church. Rather, it is the proclamation of a new state of affairs
that God has initiated in Christ, one that concerns the nations and all of creation and that climaxes in
the celebration of God's final glory (Beker 1980:7f, 354f; 1984:16). So the apostle is commissioned
to enlarge already in this world the domain of God's coming world (cf Beker 1984:34, 57).
Does this means that Paul is a “universalist” in the sense that he envisions the ultimate salvation of
all humankind? Some of his statements seem to affirm that only a part of the human community will be
saved; others seem to suggest that all will finally be saved.17 Eugene Boring recently published a
perceptive and thought-provoking article on this subject (1986; cf Sanders 1983:57, note 64). He
points out that a minority of scholars argue that Paul is really a universalist; they then subordinate the
particularistic texts to the universalistic ones. The majority appear to be going exactly the opposite
way: subordinating the universalistic passages to the particularistic ones they conclude that Paul is
really a particularist. Still others attempt to solve the problem by arguing that there is a progressive
development in Paul, from “particularism” to “universalism” (cf Boring 1986: 271f).
Boring concedes that there are conflicting statements in Paul and that it is virtually impossible to
harmonize them. However, the problem only remains insoluble if we pose the issue in terms of
conflicting statements or propositions, not if we regard them as divergent pictures. We should
therefore understand Paul as a coherent, but not a systematic, thinker; he can be heard as making
logically inconsistent, but not incoherent, statements (1986:288f, 292). In the issue under discussion
Paul operates with two seemingly opposing images. In the so-called particularistic passages the
encompassing picture is that of God-the-judge. In this image there are “winners” (those who are
saved) and “losers” (those who are lost, although even here Paul does not elaborate the fate of the
damned; Paul has no doctrine of hell [:275; 281]). In the “universalistic” passages, on the other hand,
the dominant motif is that of God-the-king. Where God-the judge separates, God-the-king unites all in
his kingly reign. The once-hostile powers have been overcome and now render homage to the
conqueror. God has replaced the reign of sin and death with the reign of righteousness and life; “every
knee” acknowledges this and bow willingly before him (Phil 2:l0f). This is the language of lordship
rather than of “salvation” (Boring 1986:280-284, 290f).
It is indefensible to fuse these two images into one; in fact, we could only do that by choosing
between “particularism” and “universalism,” and either choice would do an injustice to the delicate
nuances of Paul's thinking. Paul can, on the one hand, proclaim with absolute certainty that God will
be all in all and that every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord. At the same time he can insist on the
Christian mission as a duty that cannot be relinquished. People have to “transfer” from the old reality
to the new by an act of belief and commitment, since only Christ can save them (cf Sanders 1977:463-
472, 508f). Everybody is dependent on hearing the gospel of justification by faith (Rom 10:14f).
God's righteousness does not come into effect automatically, but is dependent upon being
appropriated by faith, which is only possible where people have had the gospel proclaimed to them.
God has already reconciled the world to himself; however, he does not overpower it, but stretches
out his hand in the preaching of his ambassadors who aim at evoking a positive response (cf Zeller
1982:167, 170-173). Thus Paul refrains from any unequivocal assertion of universal salvation; the
thrust toward such a notion is balanced by an emphasis on responsibility and obedience for those who
have heard the gospel. God's gift of righteousness is inseparable from God's claim on people (Beker
1984:35-37). The salvation offered by God is thus not universal in the sense that it makes human
response inconsequential; “Paul fuses ‘qualifiers’ onto his statements about salvation such as to those
‘who believe,’ those ‘who are in Christ,’ those ‘called’” (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983: 175). There
is no talk of surrendering the missionary mandate.
At the same time, the significance of Paul's missionary ministry is not exaggerated out of all
proportions. He can only announce Christ's lordship, not inaugurate it. And those who respond
positively, do not do so purely “voluntarily.” In retrospect their response is seen as a gift of God—
hence the language of election, calling, and predestination (cf Zeller 1982:172; Boring 1986:290f;
Gaventa 1986:44; Breytenbach 1986:19).
Apocalyptic and Ethics
One question remains in this respect: how does Paul's apocalyptic understanding of mission relate to
ethics? This is a crucial question, particularly in light of a charge such as Pixley's, that Paul's (and
John's) “spiritual message of individual salvation” may justly be characterized as “a religious opium
because it enables a suffering people to endure, by offering private dreams to compensate for an
intolerable public reality” (1981:100). What Pixley describes is, of course, true of much apocalyptic,
also in our own time. The dualism between “this age” and “the age to come” is often absolute, and
where this is the case, believers are not called to engage in working for peace, justice, and
reconciliation among people. Their exclusive focus on the parousia is an invitation to ethical
passivity and quietism. There is no concern for the here, only for the hereafter. Social conservatism
and apocalyptic enthusiasm go hand in hand. Waiting for God's imminent kingdom, people are drawn
out of society into the haven of the church, which is nothing but a lifeboat going round and round in a
hostile sea, picking up survivors of a shipwreck (cf Beker 1980:149, 305, 326; 1984:26, 111; Young
1988:6). Moreover, apocalyptic enthusiasts usually display a peculiar self-centeredness. They see
themselves as a favored elite. The world is the stage for their own striving for sanctification; the
dualism between spirit and body devaluates the created order to a testing ground for heaven—or to a
vale of tears. Where they do get involved with others, this usually happens in a condescending
manner. They practice an “ethic of excess,” in which the “have-nots” become the target for the charity
of the “haves” (cf Beker 1980:38, 109; 1984:37, 109).
Paul's apocalyptic is different. It is true that Paul judges the church to be engaged in a battle
against the world in view of the fact that “the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:31).
However, Paul perceives the church in a way that fundamentally modifies standard apocalyptic
thinking. The church already belongs to the redeemed world; it is that segment of the world that is
obedient to God (Käsemann 1969b:134). As such, it strains itself in all its activities to prepare the
world for its coming destiny. Precisely because of this the church is not preoccupied with self-
preservation; it serves the world in the sure hope of the world's transformation at the time of God's
final triumph. The small Pauline churches are so many “pockets” of an alternative lifestyle that
penetrates the mores of society around them. In the midst of a “crooked and perverse generation” the
Christians are to be “without blemish” and shining “as lights in the world” (Phil 2:15)—sober in
judgment, cheerful in performing acts of mercy, patient in tribulation, constant in prayer, practicing
hospitality, living in harmony with all, without conceit, serving those in distress (Rom 12). Passion
for the coming of God's reign goes hand in hand with compassion for a needy world.
In Paul's thinking, then, church and world are joined together in a bond of solidarity. The church,
as the already redeemed creation, cannot boast in a “realized eschatology” for itself over against the
world. It is placed, as a community of hope, in the context of the world and its power structures. And
it is as members of such a community that Christians “groan inwardly” together with the “whole
creation,” which is “groaning in travail” (Rom 8:22f). Paul thus resists a narrow individualistic piety
and a view that restricts salvation to the church. As long as the creation groans, Christians groan as
well; as long as any part of God's creation suffers, they cannot as yet participate in the eschatological
glory (cf Beker 1984:16, 36-38, 69).
The life and work of the Christian community are intimately bound up with God's cosmic-
historical plan for the redemption of the universe. It most certainly matters what Christians do and
how authentically they demonstrate the mind of Christ and the values of the reign of God in their daily
lives. Since the forces of the future are already at work in the world, Paul's apocalyptic is not an
invitation to ethical passivity, but to active participation in God's redemptive will. He is charged with
enlarging in this world the domain of God's coming world. Therefore, precisely because of his
concern for the “ultimate,” he is preoccupied with the “penultimate”; his involvement is in what is at
hand rather than in what will be. Authentic apocalyptic hope thus compels ethical seriousness. It is
impossible to believe in God's coming triumph without being agitators for God's kingdom here and
now, and without an ethic that strains and labors to move God's creation toward the realization of
God's promise in Christ. Opposing the false apocalypses of power politics, Christians strive for those
intimations of the good that already foreshadow God's ultimate triumph—even as they know that they
may never too easily identify God's will and power with their own will and power, and may never
overrate their own capabilities (cf Beker 1984:16, 57, 86f, 90, 110f, 119f).
The intimate link between apocalyptic and ethics is nowhere as pronounced as in Paul's view of
the church. Although (or rather, precisely because) he regards the church as the community of the
end-time, he views it as having tremendous significance for the here and now. Believers cannot
accept one another as members of a community of faith without this having consequences for their
day-today life and for the world. This becomes evident in the Antioch incident to which Paul refers in
Galatians 2. He feels compelled to oppose Peter “to his face,” an attitude prompted by “religious” as
well as “socio-political” reasons—“religious,” since Peter's action suggests the possibility of
salvation apart from Christ, “socio-political” since his conduct implies that it is conceivable that the
Christian community could present itself to the world as a divided body. Paul's vehement reaction
signifies that since Christ has accepted everybody unconditionally, it is preposterous even to
contemplate the possibility of Jews and Gentiles acting differently on the “horizontal” plane, that is,
not accepting one another unconditionally. There is, indeed, no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free,
male or female (Gal 3:28).
We may, however, ask whether Paul is as uncompromising with respect to slaves and free persons
and male and female as he is with respect to Jews and Greeks. Here we have to admit, I believe, that
the latter relationship clearly preoccupies him almost to the exclusion of the former two. This means,
again, that we have to read Paul in his context. Above all, he believes that the advent of Christ meant
that the barrier between Jews and other people, buttressed by a false understanding of the Law, has
been torn down; he is prepared to stake his entire ministry on this fundamental tenet of the Christian
faith. Since this conviction virtually consumes all his energy, it seems that other divisions are shunted
into secondary place. Could it be that he regards these differences as social rather than theological?
Be this as it may, recent studies have shown that women had a much higher profile in the Pauline
communities than they had in contemporary Judaism (cf Meeks 1983:81, 220 [Notes 107 and 108]
and especially Portefaix 1988:131173). The situation regarding slaves appears to be more complex.
Segundo says that Paul, as child of his times, probably glimpses the real, dehumanizing character of
the institution of slavery “only in a vague, remote way” (1986:180). At the same time, Paul is not
insensitive to the issue; nor is he an idealist, a utopian dreamer. He is faced with circumstances that
he cannot change (:165). Yet he does not endorse slavery, nor is he neutral on the issue. “(I)f in
Christ, there is no longer any difference between slave and free person, if each is to live and act on
behalf of others and not put obstacles of any sort in their way, then all that virtually implies the
abolition of slavery as a societal structure” (165; emphasis in the original). Paul therefore “opts to
humanize the slave from within” (:164); the status of slaves “need not prevent them from attaining
human maturity” (:180).
This is a helpful analysis. Still, I would suggest that it is possible to go beyond Segundo on Paul's
attitude to slavery. In an exhaustive study of Paul's letter to Philemon, Petersen (1985) argues—I
believe convincingly—that Paul does not leave open the issue of Philemon setting free his runaway
slave Onesimus (cf also Roberts 1983). With the aid of a perceptive analysis of the narrative
structure of this exquisitely composed short letter and of Paul's “symbolic universe,” Petersen reaches
the conclusion that Paul does not really allow Philemon the possibility not to set Onesimus free. The
letter contains a “thinly veiled command” that Philemon should do more than just receive back his
former slave (1985:288). While not denouncing the institution of slavery as such, Paul clearly
“attacks…the participation in it of a believing master and his believing slave” (:289). It is, after all,
“logically and socially impossible to relate to one and the same person as both one's inferior and
one's equal” (:289; cf Roberts 1983:64, 66). By writing not only to Philemon but also to the church
which regularly meets in his house, Paul places Philemon “between the proverbial rock and hard
place” (Petersen 1985:288). Up to now Philemon has led a comfortable double life in the domains of
both the world and the church. Now the worldly responsibility for acting as a master with his slave is
placed in conflict with the churchly responsibility for acting as a brother with a brother (:289). Paul
does not wish to force Philemon into setting Onesimus free, however; the decision must be
Philemon's, taken in freedom (Roberts 1983:65). Instead of bludgeoning Philemon into doing what he
wishes him to do, he chooses to reveal to Philemon a “more excellent way.” Philemon is shown that
the financial loss he might suffer by setting free his former slave is negligible compared to what he
stands to gain: he has lost a mere slave, he will receive back a dear brother. The “sacrifice” turns out
to be no sacrifice at all.
And yet Paul goes beyond such a “soft” approach, particularly toward the end of the letter. He
reminds Philemon of the latter's profound indebtedness to him (v 19). He adds: “If you consider me
your partner, then receive Onesimus as you would receive me” (v 17), and he is confident that
Philemon would do even more than he asks of him (v 21). Then, in the final sentence before he
concludes with the customary greetings, he asks Philemon to prepare a guest room for him, since he
hopes to visit Colossae soon (v 22). Philemon can now no longer have any doubts about Paul's
overall intention—he is coming to check and see how Philemon has handled this thorny question. If he
accedes to Paul's “appeal,” their meeting will be a very pleasant one; if not, he will confront Paul as
one who has publicly defaulted (Petersen 1985:293). So Philemon and the church in his house can no
longer be in doubt about the utmost seriousness of this matter, a matter so serious that Paul, contrary
to his custom, has devoted an entire letter to this one issue. Philemon (and, with him, the other slave
owners in the church in Colossae) is indeed between a rock and a hard place. In Petersen's words
Paul radically polarized the options open to Philemon and his church. By representing the polar opposites as acting either in
worldly or in properly churchly fashion, Paul forces Philemon and his church to think beyond narrow self-interest and local
sentiments to what being in Christ is all about (:301; cf Roberts 1983:64-66).

Of course, Paul is primarily interested in what happens within the community of faith. We would
demand too much if we wished him to spell out an ethic for society at large. Christians were a totally
negligible factor in the Greco-Roman context of the time. Therefore, given the odds against him and
the limitations of his situation, it would be preposterous for Paul (or any other first-generation
Christian, for that matter) to attempt to develop a program of liberation for the oppressed of the entire
Empire. His base is the church; his appeal is to those who have been incorporated into Christ through
baptism. At the same time he regards the church as constituting “pockets” of an alternative lifestyle
that penetrates the mores of society around it. Precisely because of this, Christians cannot celebrate
the advent of God's new world only within the church. Rather, the revolution that is taking place
within the church carries within it important seeds of revolution for the structures of society. In the
midst of a “crooked and perverse generation” the believers are to be “without blemish” and shining
“as lights in the world” (Phil 2:15). They may not withdraw into a sequestered cloister; rather, they
constitute a community of hope which groans and labors for the redemption of the entire world (cf
Beker 1980:318f; 1984:69). They cannot boast in a “realized eschatology” for themselves over
against the world. Church and world are joined together in a bond of solidarity.18
In summary Paul is convinced that in Christ God has reconciled the world to himself and that the
era between the resurrection of Christ and the parousia is the time allotted to him as apostle to usher
in the first stage of the in-gathering of the nations under the lordship of Christ (Hultgren 1985:145).
Our survey has revealed that Paul can simultaneously hold together two seemingly opposite realities:
a fervent longing for the breaking in of the future reign of God; and a preoccupation with missionary
outreach, the building up of communities of faith in a hostile world, and the practicing of a new
societal ethic.
Most Christian groups find it impossible to live creatively in this abiding tension between the
penultimate and the ultimate. Some succumb to dualism, turn their backs on this world, emphasize
“endurance” in the present, and simply wait for the end of suffering in God's glorious new age; where
this happens, Jesus tends to become a new prophet or lawgiver, “who merely announces what
eventually will come to pass and what must be done in the midst of a wholly unredeemed present”
(Beker 1980:346). Others find more sophisticated solutions to the problem of the lapse of time since
Christ's first coming, There are those who celebrate the ultimate coming of Christ only in the church,
particularly in the sacraments, and who tend to identify God's reign with the church (although we must
admit that this position is losing popularity today), and there are others who opt for one of several
existentialist positions, or for an almost unqualified participation in the world. In none of these latter
instances does it matter any more that time seems to go on interminably. The “delay” of the parousia
is no longer of any concern. There is a tendency to “over-celebrate” the present; any hope of a
fundamental change in the future is silenced and neutralized (cf Beker 1980:9, 345; 1984:61-77, 118).
Beker, who makes a strong case for rehabilitating apocalyptic, does not suggest that today's church
has to follow Paul's views slavishly. He points out that Paul himself sometimes makes adjustments in
his expectations (1984:49; he refers, in this respect, to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:15-
21; 2 Corinthians 5:1-10; Philippians 2:21-24). Paul does so, however, without surrendering his
expectation of God's triumphal intervention at the end. This is what we, too, must hold on to. And we
should do it by providing an answer, in the spirit of Paul's apocalyptic, to at least four fundamental
objections to much pedestrian apocalyptic: the obsolete character of the apocalyptic worldview, the
misleading “literal” language of apocalyptic for Christian spirituality, the argument that apocalyptic
has a purely symbolic significance, and the refutation of future apocalyptic by the ongoing process of
history (Beker 1984:79-121). A direct transfer of Paul's formulations of the gospel to our situation
cannot succeed (:105). Still, Paul's apocalyptic gospel may help us discern “that the triumph of God
is in his hands alone and…will transform all our present striving and sighing” (:17). It is precisely
the vision of the coming reality of God's glory that compels us to work patiently and courageously in
the present, unredeemed world in a manner dictated by the way of Christ. Involvement in the
structures of this world and attempts to change them and make them conform, if only to a very limited
degree, to the “blueprint” of God's reign, make sense precisely because of our hope for a
fundamentally new future. Paul can contemplate a universal mission and yet think in terms of
apocalyptic imminence; eschatology and missionary involvement do not contradict each other, since
the one does not invalidate the other. God's final triumph is already casting its rays into our present
world, however opaque these rays appear to be. Therefore Paul, responding to the inviting power of
the apocalyptic hour of righteousness and peace, prepares for that moment by going “to the ends of the
earth” and inviting people from all nations to become members of the community of the end-time (cf
Beker 1984:51f, 58, 117).

THE LAW, ISRAEL, AND THE GENTILES

I have argued above that Paul finds himself in a paradoxical situation. The Jewish mission appears,
for the present, to be a futile enterprise. The Gentile mission, on the other hand, is remarkably
successful and Paul now proposes that the salvation of the Jews can only be accomplished via a
vigorous missionary effort among Gentiles. I have maintained that this interpretation of his mission
only makes sense if we keep in mind that Paul sees himself, through his missionary engagement, as
responding to the inviting power of God's ultimate triumph. I now have to go one step further, and
relate Paul's apocalyptic mission to his understanding of the Jewish Law and of the relation between
Jews and Gentiles.
Paul and Judaism
H. J. Schoeps once called Paul's teaching on the Law “the most intricate doctrinal issue in his
theology” (reference in Moo 1987:305). The quest for a trustworthy interpretation of Paul's
understanding of the Law has not been made any easier by the vicissitudes of almost twenty centuries
of Jewish-Chrisiian relations. If we wish to understand Paul it is therefore of the utmost importance
that we attempt to gain as much information as possible on the Judaism of Paul's time and its attitude
toward the Law. Recent studies have indeed revealed great diversity within Judaism in the early
Roman Empire. This was particularly true of the Judaism of the period prior to the Jewish War; after
the war the situation changed to a considerable degree, as the Pharisees attempted to reorganize and
consolidate Jewish religious life at the same time as they introduced measures to make it impossible
for Jewish Christians to preserve links with the synagogue.
It was particularly the publication of E. P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) that
marked something like a watershed in Pauline studies (cf Moo 1987:287), although several earlier
studies have made proposals similar to those of Sanders. It is today widely held that Paul's teaching
on the Law cannot be understood solely within the framework of Luther's attempts to oppose a works-
oriented Roman Catholicism with the precept of justification by faith alone. Paul is now often seen as
having had a far more positive attitude toward Jews and Judaism in general and toward the Law in
particular.
One of the reasons for the new appreciation for the Jewishness of Paul is undoubtedly apologetic.
There is today a strong interest in Jewish-Christian dialogue, and since Paul has traditionally been
regarded by Jews as the great apostate (because of what he says about the Law, particularly in his
letter to the Galatians) and as the originator of anti-Judaism (not least because of what he wrote in 1
Thessalonians 2:14-16!), it is understandable that many Christians would do their best to make Paul
more amenable to their Jewish dialogue partners.
Apologetic is, however, not the only reason for the changed image of Paul. A rereading of both
Paul and the contemporary Jewish literature has also contributed to a new perception of the “apostle
of the Gentiles.” For one thing, the views expressed in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 must be seen within
the context of that letter (the very first one Paul has written) and may not be universalized (Räisänen
1983:262f, 264); in addition, it is clear, particularly from Romans, that the later Paul does not accuse
his kinsfolk of having killed Jesus and therefore deserving God's wrath “for ever” (cf Stendahl
1976:5; Steiger 1980:45-47; Mussner 1982:10; Sanders 1983:184). Second, it has been recognized
ever more clearly that the letter to the Galatians (“Paul's most hot-tempered letter”—Martyn
1985:309) was written with a specific polemical purpose, namely, to counteract the influence of the
Judaizers. Galatians should therefore not be interpreted as a systematic-theological treatise, but as a
document written for a very specific context (cf Beker 1980:37-58 and Lategan 1988). Third, Paul
shares many religious convictions with his Jewish contemporaries, such as their views on idolatry
and their attitude to the Hebrew scriptures (in which his own thought is firmly anchored). A new
scripture (a “new testament” contradistinguished from the “old”) is to Paul as inconceivable as it is to
most early Christians. He is not the “founder” of a new religion but the authoritative interpreter of the
old (cf Beker 1980:340f, 343). Fourth, as Sanders (1983:192) has pointed out, the fact that Paul
submits to the punishment meted out to him by the Jewish authorities (cf 2 Cor 11:24) shows that he
still considers himself (as the Jews who punish him consider him) a member of the Jewish people.
Punishment implies inclusion.
The Function of the Law
It is observations such as these, together with the increase in our knowledge of first-century Judaism,
that have prompted a scholar like E. P. Sanders to say that
on the point at which many have found the decisive contrast between Paul and Judaism—grace and works—Paul is in
agreement with Palestinian Judaism…salvation is by grace but judgment is according to works; works are the condition of
remaining “in,” but they do not earn salvation (1977:543-552).19

Sanders may, however, have overstated his case, as several scholars have since argued (cf, inter
alia, Moo 1987; Gundry 1987; and du Toit 1988). For one thing, first-century Judaism was not as
unified in its “pattern of religion” as Sanders contends (even if we recognize that our knowledge of
the Judaism of this period is limited, due to the fact that our sources are rather fragmentary; cf
Wilckens 1959; Meeks 1983:32; Moo 1987:292, 298).20 In addition, and partly in view of the paucity
of Jewish sources, it may be a sound policy to accept Paul's writings as part of our source material on
Judaism. If it is denied that at least some Jews at that time saw the Law as a way to salvation, Paul's
polemic against Judaizers and the like is left dangling in midair; we could then only deduce that Paul
has deliberately misunderstood or misrepresented his “opponents” (cf Moo 1987:291-293). So, even
if scholars such as Sanders, Räisäinen, and others have helped to put an end to some of the more
extreme legalistic assumptions about Judaism and to the image of Paul as the lonely genius who has
recognized that doing the Law is wrong in and of itself, many scholars still contend that “Paul and
Palestinian Judaism look materially different at the point of grace and works” (Gundry 1987:96; cf
Moo 1987:292, 298; and du Toit 1988).
I submit, then, that it cannot be denied that Paul experiences a fundamental problem with much of
the understanding of the Law in the Judaism of his time and that this has important consequences for
his interpretation of mission. It is in any case clear that he quite deliberately does not take the road of
many other first-generation Jewish (and Gentile; cf the letter to the Galatians) Christians who
experience no conflict between faith in Christ and upholding the Law (cf Wilckens 1959:278f; Beker
1980:248).
It is not easy to establish what precisely Paul's problem with the Law is.21 To begin with (and this
has often not been recognized), Paul sometimes is very positive about the Law. In Romans 9:4 he
writes about his kinsfolk: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the
covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.” In Romans 11:29 these assets are
referred to as the “gifts” (charismata) of God. And in Romans 15:8 he can even call Christ “a servant
to the circumcised.” Israel was meant to be a manifestation among the nations of a people living by
promise and grace, as the case of their forefather Abraham shows (Rom 4; Gal 4) (cf Beker
1980:336). It follows from this that the Law does not oppose the gospel but bears witness to it (Rom
3:21). It is, rather, the summation of all God has given to and done for his people, apart from anything
they could have achieved (cf also Räisänen 1987:408-410).
On the other hand, there are sayings in which Paul appears to be extremely negative about the Law,
and even more particularly about Jewish practices, above all circumcision, which the “Judaizers”
demand of the Gentile converts in Galatia.22 To accept this means, however, to embrace “a different
gospel” (Gal l:6) or a perversion of the gospel of Christ (1:7); it means being “severed” from Christ
and having “fallen away from grace” (5:4).
Why this vehement attack on the Law? There may be several reasons, and Paul does not set these
out logically. First, the demand of the “Judaizers” that the Gentile converts practice the “works of the
Law” suggests that they are taught to adhere to outward rituals rather than to what the Law is all about
(cf Räisänen 1987:406-408). Second (and this is, in a sense, comprised in the first), Paul's opposition
to the Law and its observance is contextual; he sees how Gentile Christians’ shallow interpretation of
the Law perverts the essence of the gospel of salvation in Christ, and nothing should be allowed to
compete with Christ. Third, however (and this may in the final analysis be the most important reason
for Paul's negative evaluation not just of the “practices” of the Law but of the Law itself), the Law
fosters Jewish exclusiveness and must therefore be abrogated. Since this last observation is
particularly germane to Paul's understanding of mission, I turn, briefly, to it.
Paul sees what no orthodox Jew really could see, even if he wished: whether Jews intend it or not,
the Law has become a badge of distinction, and therefore of non-solidarity, between Jew and Gentile.
It separates and therefore isolates groups from one another. It has become the embodiment of Jewish
particularism, introversion, and group identity, and the occasion for pride in being a select people.
The Jews have become ignorant of the fact that the Law really stands for “righteousness that comes
from God” and, since they have construed it as a domain of segregation from the rest of humankind,
they have turned it into their “own” righteousness (Rom 10:3). They misunderstand their own
scriptures (cf 2 Cor 3:15) and their role as people of God. The Law has provided the Jews with a
“charter of national privilege” (N. T. Wright, quoted by Moo 1987:294; cf also Beker 1980:335f,
344; Zeller 1982:177f). It is this inherently divisive quality of the Law that Paul rejects. Most
explicitly he repudiates any “judaizing” of Gentile converts. All differences of social status and
gender have fallen away; for Paul, however, the most important distinction that has been annulled is
the one between Jew and Gentile (cf Gal 3:28). The “dividing wall” of the Law has been broken
down (Eph 2:14) and it is inadmissible to rebuild what has been torn down (Gal 2:18) (cf Beker
1980:250; Zeller 1982:178; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:179; Meeks 1983:81).
All this can be formulated in yet another way. Sanders has suggested that Paul works out his
mission theology not from plight to solution but from solution to plight (1977:442-447). In other
words, it is not that Paul has, because of a particular predicament or plight he had experienced,
discovered the inadequacy of the Law and was then driven to Christ as the solution to his plight. It
happened the other way round. His encounter with Christ has compelled him to rethink everything
from the ground up. The “solution” (Christ) revealed to him his “plight” (the Law's insufficiency unto
salvation). For Paul, the real situation of Jews and Gentiles becomes manifest only in the light of the
gospel, in the light of the “solution” (Hahn 1965:102, note 1). This is another way of saying what has
been said above: no orthodox Jew could see the Law the way Paul sees it, unless he looked at it from
Paul's perspective. And Paul was granted this perspective when he met the risen Christ.24 He did not
receive it through any human intervention, nor was he taught it; it came to him as a “revelation” (Gal
1:12-17). That event convinced him that it was through Jesus, crucified and risen, that God was
offering salvation to all.
Unconditional Acceptance
Nothing in Jewish tradition has prepared Paul for this revolutionary perception. He now knows that it
is not through the Law given at Sinai, but through Christ that all humanity is offered the possibility of
moving from death to life, from sin to God. He therefore preaches “Christ crucified, a stumbling
block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23); he has decided, as he writes to the Corinthians, “to
know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (2 Cor 2:2) (cf Senior and
Stuhlmueller 1983:168f, 171, 174, 179, 187). Christ has superseded the Law. Paul's assertion that
Christ is the telos nomou (Rom 10:4) probably has to be understood in the sense that Christ is both
the “end” and the “goal” of the Law; he is both the substitution for the Law, and the Law's original
intention, “the surprising answer to Judaism's religious search” (Beker 1980:336, 341; cf Moo
1987:302-305). His substitutionary death on the cross, and that alone, has opened the way to
reconciliation with God. God himself accepts people unconditionally. This is the cornerstone of
Paul's mission theology.
From this fundamental cognition Paul draws a conclusion which to us may appear trite, but which
constitutes, in fact, a stupendous claim: there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. To begin
with, they are all “under the power of sin” (Rom 3:9), and all “fall short of the glory of God” (Rom
3:23). Everyone is under some “lordship” or other—of sin, of the Law, of the flesh, of false gods, etc
(cf Rom 1:18-3:20)—and are therefore equally guilty and equally lost; indeed, the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness (Rom 1:18) (cf Dahl 1977a:78; Walter
1979:438f; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983: 177; Stegemann 1984:302). No human wisdom, as
suggested by the Greeks, and no Law, as the Jews believe, can save from the “wrath to come” (1 Thes
1:10; Rom 3:20; 5:12-14). Since all have sinned, death has spread to all (Rom 7:12).
This negative verdict is, however, counterbalanced with a positive one: “Since all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption
which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:23f; cf Gal 2:15-17). The gospel is indeed “the power of God for
salvation, to everyone who has faith” (Rom 1:16). As God was “impartial” in his judgment, he is
“impartial” or, better, gracious to all alike (cf Rom 2:11). This is so because God is not only the God
of the Jews but the God of the Gentiles also, “since God is one” (Rom 3:29f) and his mercy concerns
all (cf 11:30-32; 15:9). After all, both Jews and Gentiles are Abraham's descendants. The line of
descent runs from Abraham via Christ to the Gentiles: “If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's
offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:29; cf 3:7). Jews and Gentiles together form “the
Israel of God” (Gal 6:16). There is “no distinction between Jew and Greek” (Rom 10:12); there is
“neither Jew nor Greek…for all are one in Christ” (Gal 3:28). The entrance requirement “faith in
Jesus Christ” applies to Gentiles and Jews alike (Sanders 1983:172). Only those who have “turned to
the Lord” (2 Cor 3:16), whether they are Jews or Gentiles, are inheritors of the promises of Abraham
(:174f).
The Problem of Unrepentant Israel
The Gentile mission was making rapid strides in Paul's time. Not so, however, the mission among
Jews. It was, for Paul, “the most depressing experience of his life that the majority of his kinsfolk had
closed themselves to the gospel” (Mussner 1982:11—my translation). This bitter experience prompts
him to write the deeply moving words of Romans 9:1-3,
I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying—my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow
and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my
brethren, my kinsmen by race.

Paul is the “apostle to the Gentiles” par excellence; at the same time he is, among all the New
Testament writers, the one most passionately concerned with Israel (Beker 1980:328). This means
that, unless one takes into account the question of the salvation of the people of the old covenant, any
portrayal of Paul's understanding of the Gentile mission remains fragmentary (Hahn 1965:105). It is
Paul's fundamental conviction that the destiny of all humankind will be decided by what happens to
Israel. The future of the Jews is, for Paul, not a matter of little consequence, nor is it a special
problem of his views on eschatology (Stegemann 1984:300). It hurts him deeply that the Jews are not
participating in the pilgrimage to the mountain of God in Jerusalem, “on which, to be sure, the cross
now stands” (Steiger 1980:48—my translation), and he can under no circumstances leave it at that.
So Paul falls back on the pledges of God in the Old Testament and on God's trustworthiness. He
writes: “Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way.
To begin with, the Jews are entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does
their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!” (Rom 3:1-4a). And again: “They are
Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship,
and the promises” (Rom 9:4).
Israel's salvation-historical priority thus remains valid and can never be ignored. The advantage of
the Jews is real, for it is to them that the promises were entrusted. The Christ-event is primarily an
answer to these promises. The gospel Paul proclaims is not a new religion but the answer to Israel's
longing for the messianic age (cf Beker 1980:343). “Therefore, eschatological fulfillment of God's
promise to Israel remains a lively hope; unless Israel will be saved, God's faithfulness to his
promises is invalidated” (:335). For, says Paul, “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Rom
11:29). If they were not, God's promises, also to the Gentiles, would remain forever ambiguous (cf
Stegemann 1984:300).
However, how can Paul maintain such a position in the face of the basic theological claim
undergirding his mission to the Gentiles; namely, that there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ (Gal
3:28), that it is the “children of the promise” rather than the “children of the flesh” who are
Abraham's descendants (Rom 9:8), that “true circumcision” is not something “external and physical”
but “a matter of the heart,” that all have equal access to God and are all alike justified by faith alone?
How can Paul hold two opposites at the same time? Senior and Stuhlmueller rightly remark, “Paul's
struggle with this dilemma is complex and never entirely resolved” (1983:180). And Räisänen
(1987:410) comments about Romans 9-11, where this entire issue comes to a head,
Romans 9-11 testifies in a moving way to Paul's wrestling with an impossible task, his attempting to “square the circle.” He tries
to hold together two incompatible convictions: 1) God has made with Israel an irrevocable covenant and given Israel his law
which invites the people to a certain kind of righteous life, and 2) this righteousness is not true righteousness, as it is not based on
faith in Jesus.

This entire dilemma is really a “dilemma about God,” arising, as it does, “from Paul's twin sets of
convictions, those native to him and those revealed.” Paul's problem is not just one of human anguish
evoked by the possibility of eternal judgment on his people whom he loves so profoundly; he also
worries “about God, his will, his constancy” (Sanders 1983:197). Paul's problem is indeed one of
“conflicting convictions,” which can be “better asserted than explained: salvation is by faith; God's
promise to Israel is irrevocable” (:198). So Paul desperately seeks a formula which would keep
God's promises to Israel intact, while insisting on faith in Christ (:199).
Romans 9-11
It is particularly in Romans 9-11 that Paul “asserts,” rather than “explains,” his convictions—to use
Sanders's expression. These three most difficult chapters are placed in the middle of the letter to the
Romans, the dominant theme of which is announced in 1:16, “The gospel…is the power of God for
salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” The chapters 9 to 11 form
the “real center of gravity in Romans” (Stendahl 1976:28) and constitute a “test case” for
understanding Paul and his perception of mission (Stuhlmacher 1971:555). The inner unity of Paul's
mission and theology is nowhere more obvious than in these chapters (Dahl 1977a:86). It is
important, however, to note that they have not been put in their present position at random, after the
first eight chapters. The letter to the Romans is not a theological treatise on the doctrine of
justification by faith in which the chapters 9 to 11 form a kind of “foreign body.” Neither can they be
attributed to the “speculative fantasy” of Paul, or termed “a kind of supplement,” which is not “an
integral part of the main argument” (Bultmann and F. W. Beare respectively, quoted in Beker
1980:63). This section is, rather, an important “history-of-missions document that points toward the
future”; and within this context, the section under discussion “elucidates, in particular, the purpose
and background of Paul's mission to the Gentiles” (Stuhlmacher 1971:555—my translation).
Chapter 11:25-27, as Luz rightly points out (1968:268; cf Hofius 1986:310f), constitutes the
essence of what Paul wishes to say, the culmination, as it were, of the argument of the three chapters:
Lest you be wise in your conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel,
until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved; as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

I have said that Paul, and particularly his mission, can only be understood against the background
of Old Testament prophecy and contemporary Jewish apocalyptic. This observation also applies to
Romans 9-11 and especially to chapter 11:25-27. Nowhere in his letters does Paul base his
argumentation more heavily on the Old Testament than in these three chapters (cf Aus 1979:232f;
Beker 1980:333). Luz (1968:286-300; cf also Rütti 1972:164x-169) has argued that the passage
quoted above should not be regarded as referring to chronological events and to any particular sequel
but that the references to chronology should rather be interpreted as affirmations about God's grace
and faithfulness. This is, however, a highly improbable interpretation. Paul employs the style of
apocalyptic revelation here and asserts that the Gentile mission is an enterprise during an interim
period only, that it will come to an end when the “full number of the Gentiles” has come in, after
which “all Israel” will be saved and the “Deliverer” (Christ at the parousia) will bring history to its
end (cf Stuhlmacher 1971:561, 564f; Hengel 1983b:50f; Mussner 1982:12; Hofius 1986:311-320).
All of this is described as the unfolding of an apocalyptic drama.
Paul develops his case from Romans 9:1 onward, in two successive arguments. The first runs from
Romans 9:6 to 11:10, the second from 11:11 to 11:32 (Hofius 1986:300-311). Chapter 11:25-27 then
forms the punch line, as it were. It delineates God's salvific “strategy” as a “surprising wavelike or
undulating dynamic” (Beker 1980:334) in three “acts”: Israel's hardening and opposition to Christ
gives rise to the Gentile mission which, finally, leads to Israel's salvation (cf 11:30f).
A “hardening” (porosis) has come “upon part of Israel,” says Paul. In 11:28 he even calls the Jews
“enemies of God.” At the same time he does not doubt their zeal and their good intentions, even if it is
“not enlightened” (Rom 10:2). Moreover, drawing on several Old Testament passages, he appears to
exculpate them, for he says in 11:8, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that should not see and
ears that should not hear, down to this very day” (cf Mussner 1976:248; Hofius 1986:303f). The
dominant motif, then, is that God has allowed Israel's hardening, for the sake of the Gentiles. This
introduces the “second act.” Through Israel's trespass “salvation has came to the Gentiles” (11:11);
indeed, “their (Israel's) failure means riches for the Gentiles” (11:12), “their rejection means the
reconciliation of the world” (11:15). “God shuts the eyes of Israel, so that the Gentiles may see the
glory which God has prepared also for them” (Stegemann 1984:306). The hardening that has come
upon part of Israel creates room for the Gentile mission and facilitates the coming in of their “full
number.”
This, then, sets the stage for the “third act”—the salvation of “all Israel.” When the “full number of
the Gentiles” enters (does Paul think of the representatives from all the Gentile churches who
accompany him to Jerusalem to hand over the collection?), the period of Israel's “hardening” will be
over; it will greet its “Deliverer” (11:26) and “receive mercy” (11:31). In a final sentence (11:32)
Paul then sums up everything (“For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy
upon all”), and breaks out into a doxology (11:3336).
How does Paul envisage the “salvation” of “all Israel”? Does he foresee the conversion of Israel
to its Messiah? In other words, will Israel embrace Christ in faith? Does Paul expect the salvation of
every Jew? And does he still see any need for a missionary proclamation to Jews? Scholars differ in
their answers to these and similar questions.
Some say that, according to Paul, “all” Israel will be saved through an act of God at the moment of
the parousia, sola gratia, when Israel will embrace Christ in faith (Stendahl 1976:4; Steiger 1980;
Mussner 1976, 1982; Sanders 1983:189198). Sanders, in particular, emphasizes that this does not
imply a kind of “two-covenant theology,” according to which Jews will be saved through faithfulness
to the Law and Gentiles through faith in Christ. Jews, too, are only saved through faith in Christ. The
only way to be part of the olive tree is by faith; Jews and Gentiles must be equal, both before and
after being grafted into the olive tree. There are no two economies of salvation. However, so Sanders
argues, Israel's coming to faith will not be the result of the apostolic mission; God, not human
ambassadors, will accomplish Israel's salvation. This is the “mystery” that has been revealed to Paul.
The original scheme has gone awry. God will save Israel not before but after the Gentiles have
entered (cf Rom 11:13-16), yet on the same condition as the Gentiles—faith in Christ.
 Like Sanders, others who adhere to the view that we should understand Romans 9-11 as saying
that “all” Israel will be saved through a divine act at the moment of the parousia are explicit in their
conviction that “Gentile” Christians have no mission of converting Jews (cf Beker 1980:334; Steiger
1980:49). They point out that our text says nothing about Israel's conversion, only about Israel's
salvation (Mussner 1976:249). Israel will hear the gospel from the mouth of the Christ of the
parousia himself, and then embrace him in faith; “all Israel” will come to faith in exactly the same
way Paul himself did—through an encounter with the risen Christ, without any human intervention
(Hofius 1986:319f). Any Christian attempt to convert the Jews is, since Paul, theologically and since
Auschwitz ethically impossible. In the case of Israel we have to distinguish strictly between missio
Dei and missio hominum (Steiger 1980:57; cf Mussner 1976:252f). The church cannot move Israel to
faith (Bieder 1964:27f). God alone will save Israel; the church's only involvement is “in the form
of…a prognosis” (Stuhlmacher 1971:566). The only other obligation the church has is to protect the
unbelieving Israel, since the Gentile Christians’ present salvation (reconciliation with God) as well
as their future salvation (the resurrection) depends on the destiny of the Jews (Steiger 1980:56).
Strictly speaking, Romans 9-11 does not contain an indictment of Israel but “a speech for the defence”
(:50).
There are indeed, in Romans 9-11, sayings that may lead the reader to interpretations such as the
ones just referred to. It is also remarkable that Paul does not use the expressly Christian term
ekklesia, “church,” in the letter to the Romans (with the exception of the greetings in chapter l6 [cf
Beker 1980:316]). Equally amazing is the fact that Paul writes the whole section of Romans 10:17 to
11:36 “without using the name of Christ. This includes the final doxology (11:33-36), the only such
doxology in his writings without any christological element” (Stendahl 1976:4—he obviously does
not understand the “Deliverer” in 11:26 as referring to Christ).
Other scholars judge that the conclusions referred to above are unwarranted. They argue that too
much weight is given to just one passage—in fact, just a few verses—and that what Paul says in
Romans 11:25-32 has to be seen within the context of what he writes elsewhere. It is also worth
noting that Paul includes “qualifiers” even within the argument of chapters 9 to 11. In 11:23, for
instance, where he alludes to the “unbelieving” Jews, he says that they, too, may be grafted into the
olive tree, “if they do not persist in their unbelief.” What he says about the salvation of “all Israel”
should therefore not be perceived to be in conflict with his statements elsewhere that obedience to the
Law, even at its very best, is inadequate (cf Rom 10:2), or with his fundamental thesis in Romans
1:16, namely that the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith” (cf also
Zeller 1982:184; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:180). Christian mission among Jews is therefore not
categorically excluded by Romans 9-11 (Kirk 1986).
We may be helped toward finding an answer to the vexing problem presented by Romans 9 to 11 if
we keep in mind that an important (perhaps the most important?) motif in these chapters is to warn
Paul's Gentile Christian readers in Rome against arrogance and boasting in view of Israel's
“hardening.” Utilizing the metaphor of the olive tree, Paul says that Gentile Christians might be
tempted to exclaim, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in!” (11:19). Paul grants that
this is indeed what has happened, but he reminds the Gentile Christians that they have been grafted in
“only through faith,” and he adds: “so do not became proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not
spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you” (11:20f). It is not they who support the root, but
the root that supports them (11:18). Gentiles, the “wild olive tree,” have been grafted into the
“cultivated” tree, Israel, “contrary to nature” (11:24). So they are warned not to be wise in their own
conceits (11:25). There is no room for any triumphalism. Only one attitude toward Israel is permitted,
indeed advocated, and that is that Gentile Christians, through faith, hope and love, give testimony to
Israel's God, and by so doing provoke the Jews to “jealousy.” So important is this motif to Paul that
he reiterates it in three different ways (Rom 10:19; 11:11; and 11:14), making sure that Gentile
Christians fully understand their proper posture toward Israel (cf Mussner 1976:254f; Stegemann
1984:306; Hofius 1986:308-310).
Paul's use of the expression “mystery” (mysterion), particularly in Romans 11:25, points in the
same direction. The mystery refers to the “interdependence” of God's dealings with Gentiles and with
Jews (Beker 1980:334), a process that runs from Gentile disobedience via Gentiles receiving mercy,
to Jewish disobedience, to mercy shown to Jews, and, finally, to God having mercy “upon all” (Rom
11:30-32). In Paul's view, then, “the fate of Israel, and therefore the final act in God's plan, hinged on
the completion of the Gentile mission” (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:185), and on the irrevocable
coordination of Jew and Gentile.
Romans 9-11 thus confirms, in yet another way, the dialectical interrelationship between Jews and
Gentiles in Paul's thinking. To the Jews he is saying that the missionary outreach to Gentiles is the
consequence of Israel's historical mission to the world in the new messianic era, which the Christ-
event has inaugurated (Beker 1980:333). “Israel must learn to extend God's promise of grace that she
has received to all the Gentiles without qualification” (:336f). The gospel is indeed directed to the
Jew first, but also to the Greek (cf Rom 1:16; 2:10). Christ has become a “servant to the circumcised”
(Rom 15:8) in order that Gentiles might “rejoice…with his people” (15:10) (cf Minear 1961:45). In
Abraham, forefather of the Jews, God has begun a history of promise which aims not only at Jews, but
at all people.
To Gentile Christians Paul is saying that they would be “wise in their own conceits” (11:25) if
they regarded their own existence as Christians in isolation from and severed from Israel (cf Bieder
1964:27). Paul never surrenders the continuity of God's story with Israel. The church cannot be the
people of God without its linkage with Israel. Paul's apostolate to the Gentiles is related to the
salvation of Israel and does not mean a turning away from Israel. The gospel means the extension of
the promise beyond Israel, not the displacement of Israel by a church made up of Gentiles (cf Beker
1980:317, 331, 333, 344). Paul therefore never (not even in Gal 6:16) explicitly says that the church
is the “new Israel,” as becomes customary from the second century onward, for instance in the
writings of Barnabas and Justin Martyr (cf Beker 1980:316f, 328, 336; Senior and Stuhlmueller
1983:173-180). Indeed, the church is not a new Israel, “but an enlarged Israel” (Kirk 1986:258). And
Gentile Christians should never lose sight of that.
Has Paul succeeded in “squaring the circle” (Räisänen 1987:410); that is, has he been able to
reconcile his views on God's irrevocable covenant with Israel with his conviction that God will save
only those who respond in faith to the gospel?
The answer to this question will depend, at least in part, on one's perspective. To the very end
these two equally firm beliefs remain in tension with each other, and it would probably be in conflict
with the spirit of Paul's ministry to press any of the two to its logical limits. Such logic would
ultimately conclude either that faith in Christ does not, in the final analysis, matter so much, or that
Israel is lost, in light of the fact that so few Jews have come to faith. Paul cannot bring himself to
make either of these two assertions.

THE CHURCH: THE INTERIM ESCHATOLOGICAL COMMUNITY

Ekklesia in Paul
Earlier in this chapter, when I discussed Paul's sense of responsibility as a dimension of his
missionary motivation, I briefly touched upon what Paul has to say about the believers’ attitude and
conduct toward “outsiders.” We need, however, to take a closer look at his understanding of the
church in the context of his theology of mission.
Sociologists have pointed out that any social organization, in order to persist, must have
boundaries, must maintain structural stability as well as flexibility, and must create a unique culture
(Marvin E. Olson, reference in Meeks 1983:84). In the case of an essentially religious organization
additional factors enter into the picture, such as those relating to what attracts people to a specific
religious persuasion, the changes that take place in their understanding of themselves and of the
world, and that which supports them in the new faith (Gaventa 1986:3).
If we wish to apply these criteria to the Pauline churches of the fifties of the first century AD, we
should keep in mind that these communities were anything but stable when Paul left them, “relatively
unorganized, fraught with distress, with only rudimentary instruction in the faith, and in tension with
the larger society” (Malherbe 1987:61; cf Lippert 1968:130f). These numerically small communities
assumed the name ekklesia, commonly used in the Septuagint as translation for the Hebrew kahal. In
contemporary Greek, ekklesia normally referred to the town meeting of free male citizens of a city of
Greek constitution. The Hellenistic-Jewish Christian communities (beginning, perhaps, with the
community in Antioch; cf Beker 1980:306) were the first to apply this term to themselves. Paul takes
it with him on his missionary travels.
Meeks has offered a careful comparison between the Pauline ekklesia and four contemporary
models: the Roman or Greek household; the voluntary association (clubs, guilds, and the like); the
Jewish synagogue; and the philosophical or rhetorical school (1983:75-84). Malherbe has perused
the major philosophical schools (particularly the Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics) and compared these
with Paul's understanding of the church (1987:passim). After careful consideration of the evidence,
both scholars come to the conclusion that, in spite of many remarkable similarities between the
ekklesia and the other groups, there can be no doubt that the ekklesia was a community sui generis.
Since its distinctive characteristics have an important bearing on the understanding of the church as a
missionary community, I now turn to these.
In Paul's thinking, the “righteousness of God” (cf Rom 3:21-31) is to be interpreted as gift to the
community, not to the individual (cf Luz 1968:168-171), for the individual believer does not exist in
isolation. This emerges particularly clearly in his two letters to the Corinthians, where some
believers interpret their freedom in Christ to mean that each is permitted to do as he or she pleases,
an understanding of the Christian life that Paul rejects again and again (cf Gaventa 1986:45). There is
indeed no place in the church for the isolated self or for the selfish (Beker 1984:37). When any
individual experiences “justification by faith,” he or she is moved into the community of believers.
“Members of the community of the last days do not live solitary lives” (Malherbe 1987:80). Indeed,
Christians “are a community of a special kind” (:94). They are called “saints,” the “elect,” those
“called,” “loved,” and “known” by God (for references, cf Meeks 1983:85). They have to conduct
themselves according to what they are in Christ. This manifests itself particularly in their mutual
relationships, they are to admonish those who threaten harmony in the community (:94), and display a
practical concern for the material needs of fellow-members (:102). This concern has to be extended
far beyond the borders of the local community for, although ekklesia in Paul usually refers to the local
church (cf Ollrog 1979:126; Beker 1980:314-316), the wider fellowship is always presupposed
(Meeks 1983:75, 80, 107-109). Hospitality therefore has to be offered to fellow-believers from other
regions as well, and Paul urges the Christians in Rome to “contribute to the needs of the saints” and
“practice hospitality” (Rom 12:13) (cf Meeks 1983:109f).
The relationship between believers is particularly clearly displayed in Paul's “language of
belonging” (Meeks 1983:85-94). His use of kinship terminology is highly important in this regard.
Terms such as “father,” “child”/“children,” and especially “brother”/“brethren” abound in his letters.
Such terms are found elsewhere in the New Testament as well, but both the number and intensity of
the affective phrases in the Pauline letters are extremely unusual. The local ekklesia clearly becomes
the primary group for its members. In his relatively short first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul calls
the Christians “brethren” no less than eighteen times (cf Meeks 1983:86-88; Malherbe 1983:39f;
1987:48-52). What Alfred Wifstrand (quoted by Malherbe 1983:39) wrote about the New Testament
in general is particularly applicable to the Pauline communities: “What is peculiar to the New
Testament is that God is nearer and one's fellowmen are nearer than they are to the Jews and Greeks,
the conception of community has quite another importance, the valuations are more intense, and for
that reason the emotionally tinged adjectives too are more frequent.”
Baptism and the Transcending of Barriers
The unity that prevails among believers has its basis in the fact that they are all, through baptism,
incorporated into Christ. I have indicated that Paul's preaching, indeed his entire theology, centers in
the death and resurrection of Christ. This also explains his understanding of baptism. The believers—
not as so many individuals but as a corporate body—are baptized into the death of Christ and are
likewise raised from the dead; they are crucified with Christ, have died with him, but now live with
him and are alive to God (Rom 6:3-11). They have “put on” Christ, crucified and risen, and have
been adopted as children of God (Gal 3:26f; cf Col 3:10).
It is this momentous event of the believers being baptized into Christ that motivates Paul to declare
so passionately and vehemently that all human barriers are transcended in the church. Baptism is “the
seal of membership in the eschatological people of God” (Käsemann 1969b:119). To the Corinthians
Paul says, “By one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” (1
Cor 12:13). To the Galatians he writes in similar vein: “For as many of you as were baptized into
Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is
neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ” (Gal 3:27f; cf also Eph 3:6).
Baptism thus consciously brings about a change in social relationships and in self-understanding
(Malherbe 1987:49). Faith in Christ makes fellowship possible. Because believers are one in Christ,
they belong to one another (cf Zeller 1982:180). The fellowship in Christ does not unite only Jews
and Gentiles, but people from different social backgrounds as well (I once again refer to Petersen
1985). The contemporary Greek and Roman associations tended to be rather homogeneous
sociologically (cf Malherbe 1983:86f; Meeks 1983:79), but Paul insists that divisions be
transcended. 1 Corinthians 10-11 offers a sustained argument in support of greater social integration
between the rich and the poor (and, by implication, between free citizens and slaves) within the
community's celebration of the Lord's Supper. The behavior of the rich collides with Paul's
understanding of the nature of community. The conduct of the well-to-do is not simply offensive to the
others’ sensibilities and cannot be put right just by applying proper etiquette; no, correct behavior in
these matters is indicative of the presence of genuine faith (1 Cor 11:19) (Malherbe 1983:79-84).
This explains the vehemence of Paul's reaction to Peter when the latter refused to eat with Gentiles
converts (Gal 2:11-21). To object to sharing the table of the Lord with fellow-believers is a denial of
one's being justified by faith (cf Räisäinen 1983:259). Where this happens, people are trusting in
some form of justification by works. The reconciliation with God is in jeopardy if Christians are not
reconciled to each other but continue to separate at meals. The unity of the church—no, the church
itself—is called in question when groups of Christians segregate themselves on the basis of such
dubious distinctives as race, ethnicity, sex, or social status. God in Christ has accepted us
unconditionally; we have to do likewise with regard to one another. On the basis of Paul's thinking, it
is inconceivable that, in a given locality, converts could comprise two congregations—one of Torah
observant Jewish Christians, and another of non-observant Gentile Christians (Sanders 1983:188). In
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ a new age has dawned, in which Jew and Gentile are joined
together without distinction in the one people of God. “Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor 1:13). That is
inconceivable! Segregation in the church destroys its internal life and denies its grounding in the
substitutionary death of Christ. Only Christ, not Paul or anybody else (cf 1 Cor 1:13), was crucified
so as to reconcile people with God (cf Breytenbach 1986:3f, 19). “One has died for all” (2 Cor
5:14). And Christ's work of reconciliation does not just bring two parties into the same room that they
may settle their differences; it leads to a new kind of body in which human relations are being
transformed. In a very real sense mission, in Paul's understanding, is saying to people from all
backgrounds, “Welcome to the new community, in which all are members of one family and bound
together by love” (cf also Beker 1980:319; Zeller 1982:178; Meeks 1983:81, 92; Hahn 1984:282f;
Hultgren 1985:141f; Kirk 1986:252).
For the Sake of the World
This is what the Pauline mission sets out to accomplish. The church is called to be a community of
those who glorify God by showing forth his nature and works and by making manifest the
reconciliation and redemption God has wrought through the death, resurrection, and reign of Christ (cf
1 Cor 5:18-20). It is true, of course, that the Pauline churches are intensely aware of what
distinguishes them from those outside and that Paul also continuously reminds them of their
uniqueness. At the same time, this awareness of being a distinctive group does not lead to any
encystation; precisely their sense of uniqueness encourages them to share with others. There is a
creative tension between being exclusive and practicing solidarity with others.
In Paul's understanding, the church is “the world in obedience to God,” the “redeemed…creation”
(Käsemann 1969b: 134). Its primary mission in the world is to be this new creation. Its very
existence should be for the sake of the glory of God. Yet precisely this has an effect on the
“outsiders.” Through their conduct, believers attract outsiders or put them off (cf Lippert 1968:166f).
Their lifestyle is either attractive or offensive. Where it is attractive, people are drawn to the church,
even if the church does not actively “go out” to evangelize them. Paul writes to the Thessalonians that
the word of the Lord has “sounded forth” from them in Macedonia and Achaia and that their faith “has
gone forth everywhere” (1 Thes 1:8). He reminds the Corinthians that they themselves are his “letter
of recommendation…to be known and read by all men” (2 Cor 3:2). Similarly, of the Christians in
Rome it is said that their faith “is proclaimed in all the world” (Rom 1:8) and their “obedience
known to all” (16:19). These comments probably do not suggest that the Thessalonian, Corinthian,
and Roman churches are actively involved in direct missionary outreach, but rather that they are
“missionary by their very nature,” through their unity, mutual love, exemplary conduct, and radiant
joy.
The church is not other-worldly. It is involved with the world, which means that it is missionary.
Christians are called to practice a messianic lifestyle within the church but also to exercise a
revolutionary impact on the values of the world. They do not withdraw into a cloister, barricaded
against the onslaughts of the world (Beker 1980:318f). For Paul, there is no dualism between the
human soul and the external world. “He places the human being in the context of the world and its
power structures” and emphasizes “a profound solidarity and interdependence” between the church
and the world (Beker 1984:36), which marks the church as a “community of hope while it groans and
labors for the redemption of the world” (:69). The church is the church in the world and for the world
(:37), which means that it has “an active vocation and mission to the created order and its
institutions” (Beker 1980:326f). The church is that community of people who are involved in creating
new relationships among themselves and in society at large and, in doing this, bearing witness to the
lordship of Christ. He is no private or individual Lord but always, as Lord of the church, also Lord of
the world.
The church is therefore very important to Paul. The believers to whom he addresses his letters are
not a “ragtag group of manual laborers formed by an itinerant preacher,” but a “community created
and loved by God,” which as such occupies “a special place in his redemptive scheme” (Malherbe
1987:79). Paul therefore not only founds churches but also sustains them amid all their burdens and
conflicts by writing letters and from time to time sending envoys to them. He refers, in this respect, to
the daily pressure upon him and to his anxiety for all the churches (2 Cor 11:28). The church is now
the eschatological people of God and a living witness of the ratification of God's promises to his
people Israel, precisely in its having a membership wider than the people of the old covenant. The
church is holy, Christ's body on earth, and when believers are insensitive to the needs and
circumstances of others, they actually “despise the church of God” (1 Cor 11:22).
In spite of its theological importance, however, the church is always and only a preliminary
community, en route to its self-surrender unto the kingdom of God. Paul never develops an
ecclesiology which can be divorced from christology and eschatology (Beker 1980:303f; 1984:67).
The church is a community of hope which groans and labors for the redemption of the world and for
its own consummation (cf Beker 1984:69). It is only the beginning of the new age. So Paul never
constructs a “doctrine of the church”; ekklesia remains, rather, a powerful image (Beker 1980:306f).
The church is a proleptic reality, the sign of the dawning of the new age in the midst of the old, and as
such the vanguard of God's new world. It is simultaneously acting as pledge of the sure hope of the
world's transformation at the time of God's final triumph and straining itself in all its activities to
prepare the world for its coming destiny (cf Beker 1980:313, 317-319, 326; 1984:41; Kertelge
1987:373). The church knows, after all, that “the form of this world is passing away” and that “the
appointed time has grown very short.” So,
from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning,
and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal
with the world as though they had no dealings with it (1 Cor 7:29-31).

THE PAULINE MISSIONARY PARADIGM

As in the preceding chapters, I shall now attempt to trace the outlines of Paul's paradigm of mission.
His importance for the understanding of the early Christian mission can hardly be exaggerated. In all
of the New Testament—yes, in all of the early church—he is unparalleled in the profound way in
which he presents a universal Christian missionary vision (cf Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:161).
There can be no doubt that Paul the theologian cannot be understood unless he is seen primarily as
Paul the missionary; any attempt at interpreting Paul must aim at regaining “the unity of theology and
evangelism, and of justification by faith and world mission” (Dahl 1977a:88).
Paul's thinking, truth to tell, is so complex that, at the end of a reflection like this, one has the
distinct feeling of still standing only at the beginning (cf also Haas 1971:119). There are many trailing
edges I have not pursued. It has been impossible to give more than a rough sketch of one way in
which Paul's understanding of mission may be explicated. I am well aware of the fact that, in several
respects, the “real Paul” may often have eluded me. This Paul remains for the most part, says
Käsemann (1969e:249), “unintelligible to posterity,” also to our own time, and I may, at best, have
underlined only some of the essential features of his theology.
“One aim of missiology,” writes Minear, “is a more adequate understanding of the apostolic task
of the Church. One aim of exegetical theology is a more adequate understanding of the mind of the
biblical writer.” Minear continues, “When, therefore, the exegete deals with the apostle Paul, and
when missiology accepts Paul's apostolic work as normative for the continuing mission of the Church,
then these two aims coalesce “(1961:42; emphasis added)”. This “coalescence” (H. G. Gadamer
would say this “fusion of horizons”) is a task fraught with danger. We are easily tempted to draw
hasty conclusions and apply these to our contemporary situation, forgetting that Paul developed his
missionary theology and strategy in a very specific context. The only way out of the dilemma is once
again, as has been suggested in previous chapters, to extrapolate from Paul, to allow him to “fertilize”
our imagination and, in dependence on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to prolong, in a creative way,
the logic of Paul's theology and mission amid historical circumstances that are in many respects very
different from his. We do not really “understand” Paul if we just “pin him down” in the first century
AD. Our quest is not just to establish what Paul's letters meant in the first century, but also what they
mean today. We have to bridge the gap between the then and the now. The process of interpretation is
basically a unified one in which historical and theological (more precisely, in this case, exegetical
and missiological) understandings ultimately blend (cf Beker 1984:63f). Naturally, this can only
succeed if we treat the authenticity of the original text with the utmost respect and do not sacrifice it
on the altar of “relevance.” What we are really called to do, in a nutshell, is “to be faithful to the old
text in a new situation” (:106). We have to read Paul historically—that means on his own terms (as
far as that is possible)—before we attempt any “application,” rather than proof-text him to buttress an
understanding to which we happen to be favorably disposed.
It has, hopefully, become clear in the preceding pages that there is more to Paul's “theology of
mission” than such an arbitrary (even if time-honored!) interpretation suggests. There may be another
problem, however; given the uniqueness of Paul, do we have the right to extrapolate from him? Is it
not true, as Hengel (1983b:52f) suggests, that Paul's missionary apostolate is so exceptional that it is
not possible to emulate him? Reading Paul's letters, one may indeed gain such an impression. Almost
single-handedly he takes on the entire Roman Empire. A “fateful necessity” (anangke) is laid upon
him (1 Cor 9:16). The labels with which he identifies his person and ministry are indeed awesome.
He compares his own call with that of Isaiah and Jeremiah (cf Rom 1:1; Gal 1:15). He portrays his
ministry as a “priestly act” and offers the Gentile Christians to God as a sacrifice acceptable to God
and sanctified by the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:16). Through Paul God is spreading the “fragrance of the
knowledge of him everywhere”; Paul identifies himself as “the aroma of Christ to God among those
who are being saved and among those who are perishing” (2 Cor 2:14f). He is Christ's ambassador,
through whom God is making his appeal (2 Cor 5:20). He has been made the minister of a new
covenant (2 Cor 3:6), even God's fellow-worker (1 Cor 3:9) (cf Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:182f).
In addition he is, as he states in a variety of ways in his letter to the Romans, indebted to both Jews
and Gentiles, because he is indebted to Christ (cf Minear 1961).
Dare we make such bold claims? Probably not. On the other hand, dare we today read Paul's
letters devotionally, dare we preach from them, unless we allow ourselves to be infected with the
missionary passion of Paul? And does not Paul himself extend his vision and image of mission to his
fellow-workers and to the churches he has founded? I have argued above that he does. Just as Paul is
indebted to Christ and to Jew and Gentile, Jewish and Gentile Christians are indebted to Christ and to
each other. A “triangular” interdependence is operative here (Minear 1961:44). If we are justified by
Christ, this change “will be most authentically indicated by the emergence of a radically new
indebtedness/thankfulness” (:48; cf Bieder 1965:30f). The Pauline churches manifest their “debt of
gratitude” first and foremost in their being different from others, by commanding the respect of
outsiders (1 Thes 4:12), by abstaining from every form of evil (1 Thes 5:22), by giving offense to
nobody (1 Cor 10:32), by being “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the
midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Phil 2:15), and by filling their thoughts with all that is
true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and gracious (Phil 4:8). The remarkable chapter 12 of the letter to
the Romans is particularly instructive in this regard. There can indeed be no doubt that Paul expects
his readers to emulate him.
In this spirit I shall now attempt to identify the characteristics of Paul's missionary paradigm.
1. The Church as New Community. The churches that have come into existence as a consequence
of Paul's mission find themselves in a world divided culturally (Greeks v barbarians), religiously
(Jews v Gentiles), economically (rich v poor), and socially (free v slave). In the fledgling churches
themselves (particularly the one in Corinth) there are factions, evidenced by disunity and bickering.
However, Paul never acquiesces in this. He finds it impossible to give up on the unity of the one
body, in spite of all differences. This motif is not just a strategic or pragmatic move against sectarian
fragmentation. Rather, it is undergirded by a theological principle: once people have been “baptized
into Christ” and have “put on Christ,” there can no longer be any separation between Jew and Gentile,
between slave and free, between male and female, between Greek and barbarian; now all are “one in
Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27f). We are now “understood in terms of our baptism and not in terms of our
birth” (Breytenbach 1986:21). Our unity is, indeed, non-negotiable. The church is the vanguard of the
new creation and has, of necessity, to reflect the values of God's coming world.
In light of this, any form of segregation in the church, whether racial, ethnic, social, or whatever, is
in Paul's understanding a denial of the gospel (cf Duff 1989:287-289). Reconciliation and
justification manifest themselves in interdependence and philadelphia between believers. Where this
is not the case, something is drastically wrong, and it is unthinkable for Paul to leave it at that. The
members of the new community find their identity in Jesus Christ rather than in their race, culture,
social class, or sex. Once again, how can it be different, if Gentiles and Jews have been made one by
Christ, if he has created “out of the two a single new humanity in himself,” and has reconciled them
“in a single body to God through the cross” (Eph 2:15f, NEB)?
2. A Mission to Jews? Paul's understanding of the relationship between the church and Israel is
related to the point just discussed but is also, from another perspective, a special case. Are the Jews
perhaps the only religious group in the world to whom the church has no mission of conversion? I
have mentioned that several scholars have come to this conclusion, particularly on the basis of their
exegesis of Romans 9-11. The church, says Steiger, has no other “mission” toward Jews than to
“protect the unbelieving Israel” and safeguard the peace of the Jew in the world (1980:56f; cf Beker
1980:338f).
Even if we grant that Romans 9-11 (and particularly 11:25-32) is to be interpreted in the sense that
Paul does not anticipate any further missionary activity among Jews, the conclusion of Steiger and
others remains problematic. For one thing, one has to ask whether actual events have not overtaken
Paul's expectations so passionately expressed here. And if this is so, would it not be anachronistic to
appeal to these verses as the final answer to today's questions (cf also Zeller 1982:189)? Second, do
we not perhaps run the risk of over-relying on one single passage, thereby ignoring other statements,
not only in the New Testament in general, but also in Paul himself (cf Kirk 1986:249)? Third, can it
be denied that much of the contemporary sensitivity to Jewish views and aspirations, along with
demands for recognizing “the sacred importance of Jewish survival” (J. T. Pawlikowski, quoted by
Kirk 1986:250), are to be attributed to the bad conscience of especially Western Christians after the
Holocaust?
In the light of these and similar questions, let me risk a few observations on the subject under
discussion.
First, Gentile Christians should never lose sight of the fact that Israel is the matrix of the
eschatological people of God; they should therefore never surrender the continuity of God's story with
Israel. The Christian faith is “an extension, or fresh interpretation, of what it meant to be Jewish in the
first century” (Kirk 1986:253). The church is not the new Israel (in the sense that God has switched
the covenant from unbelieving Jews to believing Gentiles); it is, rather, an enlarged Israel (:258). A
Gentile Christian existence may never be detached from Israel (Bieder 1964:27). Paul explains this
with the aid of a metaphor that defies every horticultural practice; the branches of the wild olive tree
are grafted, “contrary to nature,” into the cultivated olive tree (Rom 11:24).
Second, Gentile Christians have never really behaved like guests in the house of Israel. Rather, the
church inverted the order by which the two communities came together; the Jews were locked out of
the house and the key thrown away (Fr. Daniel, quoted in Kirk 1986:253). Generations of Gentile
Christians have ignored their dependence on the faith of Israel and, in brazen self-justification,
boasted of their faith over against “the Jews.” Actually, they went further. The relation of Christians
to Jews throughout Christian history has been a history of perversion, misunderstanding, hatred, and
persecution.
Third, a serious dialogue between Gentile Christians and Jews is of the utmost importance. And
yet, we do not meet in a vacuum, but in the shadow of a tragic history, more especially of the
Holocaust. However, in spite of the pain and tragedy, we should, in our dialogue, look beyond this
event to the fact that Christianity and Judaism share a common root and a common Scripture and yet
differ profoundly in the understanding of the revelation of their common God. The agelong history of
Christian oppression of Jews will be a silent partner in the dialogue; it should encourage empathy but
not lead to a watering down of the issues (cf Beker 1980:337f).
Fourth, any theological dialogue with and discussion about Israel should distinguish between
Israel's place in the covenant of God and the empirical modern state or nation of Israel. It is a
dangerous theological misconception to lay a direct connection between the unique position of Israel
as a theological entity and the survival of the Jews in a separate nation-state—quite apart from the
fact that events in recent years have shown that Israel behaves no differently from any other nation (cf
Kirk 1986:254-257).
Fifth, the issue of a continuing evangelistic mission to Jews remains an unfinished item on the
agenda of the church. What Paul says in Romans 9-11 remains sufficiently ambiguous at least to allow
the possibility of interpreting it in the sense of the necessity of a continuing mission to Jews. If Christ
is indeed “the surprising answer to Judaism's religious search,” if a “conflation of the Torah and
Christ” is inadmissible (cf Beker 1980:341, 347), if what matters is not Abraham's flesh but his faith
(Gal 3:7; Rom 4:11, 14, 16; 9:8), if zealous observance of religion does not bring salvation (Rom
10:2), if only those who “do not persist in their unbelief” will be grafted back into the olive tree
(Rom 11:23), does it not mean that Christians have a responsibility toward Jews beyond safeguarding
the peace of Jews in the world? Naturally, any Christian witness to Jews has to be borne in a spirit of
profound sensitivity and humility, in light, once again, of the history of the Christian treatment of
Jews.25
Lastly, Paul's reflections on “the church and Israel” show remarkable similarities with those of
Matthew and Luke. They all belong to the same general paradigm. There are, however, also
significant differences among the three authors. Paul's reflections, in particular, are characterized by
an almost unbearable and yet creative tension.
3. Mission in the Context of God's Imminent Triumph. I have given a fair amount of attention to
Paul's understanding of his mission within the horizon of Christ's parousia. However, more than
nineteen centuries have come and gone since Paul proclaimed the impending end of the world without
his expectation being fulfilled. Beker (1984:64) quotes James M. Robinson as an example of
widespread disillusionment with Paul in ecclesiastical and theological circles:
An imminent expectation can no longer be fulfilled, since our time is no longer near to that time. But all other modifications of the
time pattern are equally unfulfillable. Anyone who would try to claim that God's reign has already come, that is, that our world is
the kingdom of God deserves to be laughed or cried down. But he who seeks a position between those extremes—is also
refuted by the non-fulfillment of the consummation. For a thinking person today all temporal alternatives are equally invalid.

The problem is indeed a serious one. Down through the ages, and particularly in modern times,
scholars have tried their best to reinterpret or explain away this uncomfortable element in Paul's
theology (for examples, see Beker 1980:366; 1984:117). Outside “respectable” church and
theological circles the solution was (and still is) often found in exactly the opposite direction—by
holding on desperately to the form of Paul's apocalyptic, but without its substance, as evidenced by
the writings of Hal Lindsey and others.
Beker suggests an opposite approach, that of holding on to the substance of Paul's apocalyptic
eschatology without absolutizing its form. Attempts to make the chronological dimension of his
expectation absolutely decisive have yielded disastrous results and have acutely distorted the core of
Paul's gospel. Chronology is only a (necessary) byproduct of the primary foci of Paul's message—
which is not the same as saying that the urgency of (chronological) time can be swept aside in the
sense of 2 Peter 3:8 (“But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a
thousand years and a thousand years as one day.”). Still, we cannot simply take for granted
chronological time's unending and enduring character. Rather, we must continue to attend to the
beckoning power of God's coming triumph without losing ourselves either in chronological
speculations or in a denial of the coming actualization of God's promise. With Paul, we must expect
an ultimate resolution to the contradictions and sufferings of life in the coming triumph of God. Our
life as Christians is only real when it is anchored in the sure knowledge of God's victory: “If for this
life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). We know and
confess that God's triumph is in his hands alone and that it transcends our chronological speculations
and anticipations. And precisely because we move toward the dawn of God's indubitable victory we
refuse to be conformed to this world; rather, we allow our minds to be remade and our whole nature
thus transformed (Rom 12:2). Our mission in the world only makes sense if it is undertaken in the sure
knowledge that our puny “accomplishments” will one day be consummated by God (cf further Beker
1980:362-367; and particularly 1984:29-54, 79-121). Here and now believers have the first fruits of
the Spirit—not as substitute for eschatological hope but as the One who keeps that hope alive and
through whom we groan inwardly as we await redemption (Rom 8:23).
4. Mission and the Transformation of Society. A discussion of Paul's apocalyptic raises the issue
of the relationship between church and world and the question whether apocalyptic eschatology has
anything to say about the church's calling in society.
In reflecting on this, we must remind ourselves that, in Paul's time, the fledgling Christian
movement was peripheral to society, a totally negligible entity as far as size was concerned, and its
survival—humanly speaking—in jeopardy. These factors explain, at least to some extent, the absence
of any trenchant critique of unjust societal structures (such as slavery) in Paul, as well as his
basically positive attitude toward the Roman Empire (cf Rom 13).
This is, however, not the full story. One also has to view Paul as one who rejects two mutually
contradictory theological interpretations, namely, “pure” apocalyptic and enthusiasm. His reaction to
both these sentiments reveals the far-reaching societal implications of his gospel.
Jewish apocalyptic, as has been shown, tended to construct an absolute antithesis between this age
and the next. Such an understanding almost as a matter of course leads to a withdrawal from this
world and its vicissitudes. There can be no doubt that such a basically dualistic apocalyptic was
embraced by many firstcentury Christians. Since the turning of the ages has already begun Paul finds
this interpretation utterly impossible. We live now in that new space created by the powerful invasion
of Christ; therefore we can no longer tolerate Old Age distinctions in the social and political order
(cf Duff 1989:285f).
The enthusiasts (particularly those operating in Corinth), adopt essentially the opposite position. In
their excitement over what they have already received in Christ, the Corinthian enthusiasts jettison the
expectation of an imminent parousia and the hope for a future bodily resurrection of the dead. Christ's
resurrection is no longer regarded as harbinger of the universal redemption that is still being awaited,
nor the advent of the Holy Spirit as pledge of what is still to come; rather, through baptism and the
outpouring of the Spirit believers have already been transferred to the “resurrection” (cf Käsemann
1969b: 124-137; Rütti 1972:282-284). “Expectation of an imminent Parousia thus ceases to be
meaningful because everything which apocalyptic still hopes for has already been realized”
(Käsemann 1969b:131).
It is fascinating that this theological stance is just as little interested in the Christian's
responsibility in the world as the attitude adopted by the extreme apocalypticists. In the case of the
latter, the world is irredeemable and should therefore be shunned; only God will, at the end, put
everything right. The enthusiasts, on the other hand, disregard the world since it has already been
“overcome” and is no longer a factor to be taken into account; why would one do so, if one's hopes
have already been realized?
Paul opposes both postures of non-involvement in society, and he does it with the aid of a
radically reinterpreted apocalyptic. Precisely because of God's sure victory in the end Paul
emphasizes not ethical passivity but active participation in God's redemptive will in the here and
now. Faith in God's coming reign “compels an ethic that strains and labors to move God's creation
toward that future triumph of God” (Beker 1984:111; cf 16). The Christian life is not limited to
interior piety and cultic acts, as though salvation is restricted to the church;26 rather, believers, as a
corporate body, are charged to practice bodily obedience (cf Rom 12:1) and serve Christ in their
daily lives, “in the secularity of the world,” thus bearing witness—in the “penultimate”—to their faith
in Christ's ultimate victory (cf Käsemann 1969b:134-137; 1969e:250). Paul's ethics is not centered in
knowing what is good, but in knowing who is Lord, since the lordship of Christ declares all other
claims to lordship illegitimate (Duff 1989:283f).
At the same time, Paul is clearly hesitant about stressing too much participation in the world. This
undoubtedly is due, in part, to his context and his expectation of the imminent parousia as well as to
his conviction that human exertion will not usher in the new world. Any effort at accomplishing that is
a manifestation either of a “romantic illusion” or of a “constrictive demand,” “because it collapses
God's coming triumph in our present personal stance and will power” (Beker 1984:118). Unless our
involvement is a response to the “compelling and beckoning power of God's final theophany” (:109)
and “is viewed against the horizon of God's initiative in bringing about his kingdom, it threatens to
become a romantic exaggeration of the ethical capability of the Christian” (:86). Christian ethics may
not be based only “protologically” in what Christ has already accomplished, but also
“eschatologically” in what God will still do (cf Beker 1980:366). The church can neglect this dual
orientation only at its own peril. So Christians can combat the oppressive structures of the powers of
sin and death, which in our world cry out for God's world of justice and peace, as well as the false
apocalypses of power politics, which assert themselves on both the left and the right, only by
accounting for the hope that is in them (1 Pet 3:15) and by being agitators for God's coming reign; they
must erect, in the here and now and in the teeth of those structures, signs of God's new world.
5. Mission in Weakness. Paul does not permit his readers an illusory escape from the suffering,
weakness, and death of the present hour by means of the enthusiasts’ proclamation that Christ has
already won the ultimate victory. Nor may his readers, with the apocalypticists, interpret the pain and
misery they encounter as evidence of God's absence from the present evil age—which, fortunately,
will not last much longer (cf Rütti 1972:167). Rather, Paul's “revaluation of all values” (for this is
indeed what it is) has its roots elsewhere, in the creative tension of the Christian existence between
justification already bestowed and redemption ineluctably guaranteed.
I have argued that Paul's theology is bifocal in that it focuses both on God's past act in Christ and
God's future act (cf Duff 1989:286, following J. Louis Martyn). Paul's “near vision” helps him to see
that a war is raging between God and the powers of death; his “far vision” enables him to see and
already rejoice in the outcome of the battle (cf Rom 8:18).
It is particularly in his second letter to the Corinthians that Paul fleshes out the dialectical tension
between his far and near visions. He does this in an astounding way, by linking one set of ideas—
weakness (astheneia), service (diakonia), sorrow (lype), and affliction (thlipsis)—with a completely
opposite set—power (dynamis), joy (chara), and boasting (kauchesis).27 This dialectic runs through
the entire letter, but reaches a climax in chapter 12:9f,
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast
of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses,
insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

Similar contrasting connections are made elsewhere. In chapter 4:8f they are: afflicted—not
crushed; perplexed—not despairing; persecuted—not fors aken; struck down—not destroyed. Chapter
6:8-10 features another series of opposites: impostors, yet true; unknown, yet well-known; dying, yet
alive; punished, yet not killed; sorrowful, yet rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing,
yet possessing everything.
For Paul, suffering is not just something that has to be endured passively because of the onslaughts
and opposition of the powers of this world but also, and perhaps primarily, as an expression of the
church's active engagement with the world for the sake of the world's redemption (cf Beker 1984:41).
Suffering is therefore a mode of missionary involvement (cf Meyer 1986:111). Paul bears in his body
“the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17) he has acquired as servant of Christ (cf 2 Cor 11:23-28). He shares
in Christ's sufferings (2 Cor 1:5) and completes in his flesh “what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for
the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24). Yes, he carries in the body the death of Jesus;
death is at work in him, but life in those who have come to faith through him (2 Cor 4:9, 12). If he is
afflicted, then, it is for the sake of their salvation (2 Cor 1:6). Toward the end of 2 Corinthians he
says it in yet another way, “As for me, I will gladly spend what I have for you—yes, and spend myself
to the limit” (12:15, NEB).
6. The Aim of Mission. In the opening lines of his letter to the Romans Paul briefly formulates the
aims of his apostolate: he has been “set apart for the service of the gospel” by Jesus Christ, through
whom he has “received the privilege of a commission in his name to lead to faith and obedience men
in all nations” (Rom 1:1, 5, NEB) (cf Legrand 1988:156-158). He is sent to proclaim that God has
effected reconciliation with himself and also among people. This task carries him around the rim of
the Mediterranean world, where he refuses to build on the foundations of others because the time is
short and the task urgent (Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:182). Wherever he arrives he founds
ekklesiai, churches, which are expected to be manifestations of the new creation which is now
“restored to the state from which Adam fell” and in which the powers of the world, other than death,
no longer reign (Käsermann 1969b:134).
Important as the church is, it is, for Paul, not the ultimate aim of mission. The life and work of the
Christian community are intimately bound up with God's cosmic-historical plan for the redemption of
the world. In Christ, God has reconciled not only the church but the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19),
and this Paul is called to proclaim: “The universality of the gospel is matched by the universality of
the apostle's task, that is, to herald God's saving victory over His creation” (Beker 1980:7). Christ
has been exalted by God and given a name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, “in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil 2:9-11), because he has
been “declared Son of God by a mighty act in that he rose from the dead” (Rom 1:4, NEB). The
salvation of humankind thus finally issues into the praise of God in the mouths of all nations, indeed,
of all creation (cf Zeller 1982:186f).
The taproot of Paul's cosmic understanding of mission is a personal belief in Jesus Christ,
crucified and risen, as Savior of the world. To proclaim him may be “a stumbling block to Jews and
folly to Gentiles,” but “to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,” he is “the power of God and
the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:23f), into whose fellowship they have been called (1 Cor 1:9). Paul's
mission is conducted, as Sanders has demonstrated, on the basis of “solution,” not of “plight.” Only in
retrospect could he see what life without Christ meant. Only in light of the experience of the
unconditional love of God could he recognize the terrible abyss of darkness into which he would
have fallen without Christ. What he writes in 1 Thessalonians 1:4 and 10 (“For we know, brethren
beloved by God, that he has chosen you”; and “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come”) is a
confession of being saved by God's act in Jesus, not a pronouncement about others who do not
believe (cf Boring 1986:276f). So Paul does not dwell on the state of those outside the Christian fold.
That would be a case of beginning with “plight.” Rather, he knows, on the basis of the “solution” he
has found—better, which has found him—that the gospel he has to preach is one of unconditional love
and unmerited grace. His missionary gospel is therefore a positive one.
 Part 2

HISTORICAL PARADIGMS
OF MISSION
 Chapter 5

Paradigm Changes in Missiology

SIX EPOCHS
In the first part of this study I have attempted to introduce the reader to the ways in which three
important early Christian witnesses understood the event of Jesus Christ and, flowing from this, the
church's responsibility toward the world.
We have to go further, however. It is necessary to write about the meaning of mission for our own
time, keeping in mind that the present era is fundamentally different from the period in which
Matthew, Luke, and Paul wrote their gospels and letters for the first and second generations of
Christians. The profound dissimilarities between then and now imply that it will not do to appeal in a
direct manner to the words of the biblical authors and apply what they said on a one-to-one basis to
our own situation. We should, rather, with creative but responsible freedom, prolong the logic of the
ministry of Jesus and the early church in an imaginative and creative way to our own time and context.
One of the basic reasons for having to do this, lies in the fact that the Christian faith is a historical
faith. God communicates his revelation to people through human beings and through events, not by
means of abstract propositions. This is another way of saying that the biblical faith, both Old and
New Testament, is “incarnational,” the reality of God entering into human affairs.
The implications of acknowledging this will, hopefully, become clearer as I proceed. In
considering this, I propose first to reflect on what mission meant in successive periods up to the
present and then, in the final part of the book, to draw the contours, in broad strokes, of a
contemporary paradigm for mission.
In discussing the manner in which the Christian church has, through the ages, interpreted and
carried out its mission, I shall follow the historico-theological subdivisions suggested by Hans Küng
(1984:25; 1987:157). Küng submits that the entire history of Christianity can be subdivided into six
major “paradigms.” These are:

1. The apocalyptic paradigm of primitive Christianity.

2. The Hellenistic paradigm of the patristic period.
3. The medieval Roman Catholic paradigm.
4. The Protestant (Reformation) paradigm.
5. The modern Enlightenment paradigm.
6. The emerging ecumenical paradigm.

Each of these six periods, Küng suggests, reveals a peculiar understanding of the Christian faith.
To this I would add that each also offers a distinctive understanding of Christian mission.
I shall, in the following chapters, attempt to outline what mission meant in each of these periods,
beginning not with primitive Christianity (since the entire first part of this book was, in fact, devoted
to an effort at tracing the missionary paradigm operative in some major representatives of this period)
but with the Hellenistic period.
In each of these eras Christians, from within their own contexts, wrestled with the question of what
the Christian faith and, by implication, the Christian mission meant for them. Needless to say, all of
them believed and argued that their understanding of the faith and of the church's mission was faithful
to God's intent. This did not, however, mean that they all thought alike and came to the same
conclusions. There have, of course, always been Christians (and theologians!) who believed that their
understanding of the faith was “objectively” accurate and, in effect, the only authentic rendering of
Christianity. Such an attitude, however, rests on a dangerous illusion. Our views are always only
interpretations of what we consider to be divine revelation, not divine revelation itself (and these
interpretations are profoundly shaped by our self-understandings). I have argued in the preceding
chapters that not even the biblical books we have surveyed are, as such, records of divine revelation;
they are interpretations of that revelation. It is an illusion to believe that we can penetrate to a pure
gospel unaffected by any cultural and other human accretions. Even in the earliest Jesus tradition the
sayings of Jesus were already sayings about Jesus (cf Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:2). And if this
was true of the Christian faith in its pristine phase, it should be obvious that it would be even more
true of subsequent periods. Nobody receives the gospel passively; each one as a matter of course
reinterprets it. There is, truly, no knowledge in which the subjective dimension does not enter in some
way or other (Hiebert 1985a:7). Moreover, as will hopefully become clear in the course of my
argument, this circumstance is not something we should lament; it is an inherent feature of the
Christian faith, since it concerns the Word made flesh.
It is therefore appropriate not to talk about “Christian theology” but about “Christian theologies.”
Any individual Christian's understanding of God's revelation is conditioned by a great variety of
factors. These include the person's ecclesiastical tradition, personal context (sex, age, marital status,
education), social position (social “class,” profession, wealth, environment), personality, and culture
(worldview, language, etc). Traditionally we have recognized the existence (even if not the validity)
of only the first factor, that is, the differences caused by ecclesiastical traditions. In more recent years
we have begun to accept the role of culture in religion and religious experience. The other factors are,
however, equally (if not more) important. A black migrant worker in Johannesburg, for instance, may
have a perception of the Christian faith very different from that of a white civil servant in the same
city, even if both are members of the Dutch Reformed Church. A peasant in the Nicaragua of President
Somoza, as Ernesto Cardenal's The Gospel in Solentiname has illustrated so graphically, may
understand the gospel in a way that disagrees profoundly from that of a New York businessman, even
if they both happen to be Catholics. In each case the individual's self-understanding plays a crucial
role in his or her interpretation and experience of the faith.
There is yet another important—and related—factor which affects the ways people interpret and
experience the Christian faith: the general “frame of reference” with which they happen to have
grown up, their overall experience and understanding of reality and their place within the universe,
the historical epoch in which they happen to live and which to a very large extent has molded their
faith, experiences, and thought processes. The differences between the six subdivisions of the history
of Christianity listed by Küng have to do, to a very large extent, with differences in the overall frame
of reference between one era and the other, and only to a lesser extent with personal, confessional,
and social differences per se. The “world” of the Hellenistic Christianity of the second and
subsequent centuries was simply qualitatively different from the “world” of primitive Christianity,
which was still very deeply impregnated with the ethos of the Hebrew Old Testament. And there are
comparable disparities between the other epochs referred to above.
Küng's subdivision of the history of Christian thought into six major eras is, of course, not very
original. What is original is Küng's fashioning these subdivisions according to Thomas Kuhn's theory
of “paradigm shifts.” Each of these epochs, Küng suggests, reflects a theological “paradigm”
profoundly different from any of its predecessors. In each era the Christians of that period understood
and experienced their faith in ways only partially commensurable with the understanding and
experience of believers of other eras.
Küng's observations regarding theology in general have a profound effect on our understanding of
how Christians perceived the church's mission in the various epochs of the history of Christianity. We
therefore have to take a closer look at this entire issue. We do not do this for “archaeological”
purposes, that is, just to satisfy our curiosity about the way past generations perceived their
missionary responsibility. Rather, we do it also, and primarily, with a view to getting a deeper insight
into what mission might mean for us today. After all, every attempt at interpreting the past is indirectly
an attempt at understanding the present and the future. So, one important way for Christian theology to
explore its relevance for the present is to probe its own past, to allow its “self-definitions” to be
challenged by the “self-definitions” of the first Christians. It is in this respect that we may benefit by
turning to Kuhn's suggestions about paradigm changes.

THE PARADIGM THEORY OF THOMAS KUHN

This is not the place to enter into a detailed analysis and discussion of the views of Thomas Kuhn,
physicist and historian of science. I shall therefore summarize his thesis only insofar as it may have
some relevance for theology. I am aware of the fact that Kuhn himself limits his theories to the natural
sciences (which he calls “mature sciences”) and explicitly excludes references to the social sciences
(“proto-sciences” in his view). I am also aware of the extensive critique of his position, from both
natural and social scientists (for a brief summary of the criticisms of his views, cf Bernstein 1985:88-
93). These two factors alone should suffice to make one cautious about the possibility of applying any
of his ideas to theology. If I nevertheless invoke Kuhn in this context, I do it because of the catalytic
role he has played in recent years in the theory of scientific research, and I use his views only as a
kind of working hypothesis. I believe that Kuhn has, in a sense, uncovered and made explicit what
many knew implicitly.
In a nutshell, Kuhn's suggestion is that science does not really grow cumulatively (as if more and
more knowledge and research bring us ever closer to final solutions of problems), but rather by way
of “revolutions.” A few individuals begin to perceive reality in ways qualitatively different from
their predecessors and contemporaries, who are practicing “normal science.” The small group of
pioneers sense that the existing scientific model is riddled with anomalies and is unable to solve
emerging problems. They then begin to search for a new model or theoretical structure, or (Kuhn's
favorite term) a new “paradigm,” one that is, as it were, waiting in the wings, ready to replace the old
(Kuhn 1970:82f). No individual or group can actually “create” a new paradigm; rather, it grows and
ripens within the context of an extraordinary network of diverse social and scientific factors. As the
existing paradigm increasingly blurs, the new one begins to attract more and more scholars, until
eventually the original, problem-ridden paradigm is abandoned (:84).
This seldom happens without a struggle, however, since scientific communities are by nature
conservative and do not like their peace to be disturbed; the old paradigm's protagonists continue for
a long time to fight a rearguard action. This is, for instance, what happened in physics when the
Copernican paradigm was gradually replaced by the Newtonian and again when the latter gave way
to the Einsteinian. In the final analysis, Kuhn argues, the old paradigm and the new are
incommensurable; the perspectives of their respective champions are so different that one might even
say that they are responding to different realities. Even if the world in which they live is the same for
all, they respond to it as though they live in different worlds. Proponents of the old paradigm often
just cannot understand the arguments of the proponents of the new. Metaphorically speaking, the one is
playing chess and the other checkers on the same board (Hiebert 1985a:9).
It is understandable, says Kuhn, that to abandon one paradigm and embrace another is not simply a
matter of taking a rational, “scientific” step. Since there is no such thing as totally objective
knowledge, the person of the scholar is deeply involved in this shift from one framework to another.
Kuhn even uses religious language to describe what happens to the scientist who relinquishes one
paradigm for another. It is a case of “scales falling from the eyes,” of responding to “flashes of
intuition,” indeed, of “conversion” (1970:122, 123, 151; cf Capra 1987:520f). This explains why
defenders of the old order and champions of the new frequently argue at cross purposes. Protagonists
of the old paradigm, in particular, tend to immunize themselves against the arguments of the new. They
resist its challenges with deep emotional reactions, since those challenges threaten to destroy their
very perception and experience of reality, indeed their entire world (Hiebert 1985b:12). In Einstein's
words (cf Küng 1984:59), “It is more difficult to smash prejudices than atoms.”
The term “paradigm” is not without its problems. It is a slippery concept. Kuhn himself has been
charged with using the term in at least twenty-two senses in his major work! In the postscript to this
work he defines a paradigm as “the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on
shared by the members of a given community” (1970:175). Küng uses the concept in the sense of
“models of interpretation” (1987:163). T. F. Torrance refers to “frames of knowledge” (cf Martin
1987:372), van Huyssteen to “frames of reference” and “research traditions” (1986:66). Hiebert
(1985b:12) suggests the alternative concept of “belief systems,” even for the natural sciences, since
the personal attitude and commitment of the researcher cannot be expunged from his or her research.
The paradigm theory implies a fundamental break with preceding theories of science, particularly
logical positivism's emphasis on “verification” as well as Karl Popper's idea of “falsification” as
sure ways in which scientific research advances. It is widely accepted today, in all the sciences
(natural as well as social) that total objectivity is an illusion, and that knowledge belongs to a
community and is influenced by the dynamics operative in such a community. This means that not only
“scientific data” are tested, but also the researchers themselves.
Kuhn's theories have a particular relevance in our own time since, in virtually all disciplines,
there is a growing awareness that we live in an era of change from one way of understanding reality
to another. Capra suggests that worldviews (“macro-paradigms”) go through a period of fundamental
change every three to five hundred years (1987:519). It is abundantly clear that the twentieth century,
particularly after the Second World War, shows evidence of such a major shift in perceiving reality.
Since the seventeenth century the Enlightenment paradigm has reigned supreme in all disciplines,
including theology. Today there is a growing sense of disaffection with the Enlightenment and a quest
for a new approach to and understanding of reality. There is, on the one hand, a search under way for
a new paradigm; on the other hand, such a new paradigm is already presenting itself.

PARADIGM SHIFTS IN THEOLOGY

The idea of paradigm changes is of relevance for the study of theology generally and, within the
context of this book, for the study and understanding of mission in particular. This is not to suggest
that we should uncritically apply Kuhn's ideas to the area of theology (cf also Küng 1987:162–165).
To begin with, there are in this respect important differences between theology and the natural
sciences. In the natural sciences, for instance, the new paradigm usually replaces the old, definitely
and irreversibly. After the Newtonian revolution it is simply no longer possible to understand the
universe in Copernican, let alone Ptolemaean, categories. In theology (and, for that matter, in the arts;
cf Küng 1987:260–265) “old” paradigms can live on. Sometimes one may even have a revival of a
former, almost forgotten paradigm; this is evidenced, inter alia, in the “rediscovery” of Paul's letter
to the Romans by Augustine in the fourth century, Martin Luther in the sixteenth, and Karl Barth in the
twentieth (cf Küng 1987:193).
Also, in another sense, the “old” paradigm seldom disappears completely. In Küng's diagram of
paradigm shifts in theology (1984:25; 1987:157), he indicates that the Hellenistic paradigm of the
patristic period still lives on in parts of the Orthodox churches, the medieval Roman Catholic
paradigm in contemporary Roman Catholic traditionalism, the Protestant Reformation paradigm in
twentieth-century Protestant confessionalism, and the Enlightenment paradigm in liberal theology.
Brauer reminds us that in virtually all denominations today we find, side by side, fundamentalist,
conservative, moderate, liberal, and radical believers (1984:12). The matter is further complicated
by the fact that people are often committed to more than one paradigm at the same time. Martin Luther,
whose break with the preceding paradigm was exceptionally radical, in many respects still harbored
important elements of the paradigm he had abandoned. The same was true of Karl Barth. Likewise,
people who, by and large, still operate within the old paradigm may already embody significant
elements of the new. An excellent example of this was Luther's contemporary, Desiderius Erasmus
(14661536), who remained within the medieval Roman Catholic paradigm yet at the same time
heralded a new era (cf especially, Küng 1987:31–66).
One of the criticisms of the paradigm theory is that it fosters relativism, that there really are no
ultimate norms or values. Thomas Kuhn says, for instance, that each group “uses its own paradigm to
argue in that paradigm's defense,” that one can only accept a paradigm's validity if one has stepped
into its “circle,” and that it “cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those
who refuse to step into the circle.” Therefore, in paradigm choice “there is no standard higher than the
assent of the relevant community” (1970:94). All this indeed sounds rather relativistic! In his
“Postscript” Kuhn then responds to his critics’ accusations that his position amounts to total
relativism (:205–207). He qualifies his earlier position by stating that he is a “convinced believer in
scientific progress” and that later scientific theories indeed tend to be better than earlier ones.
Perhaps, however, the real point here is that one should in all research, whether in theology or the
natural or social sciences, never think in mutually exclusive categories of “absolute” and “relative.”
Our theologies are partial, and they are culturally and socially biased. They may never claim to be
absolutes. Yet this does not make them relativistic, as though one suggests that in theology—since we
really cannot ever know “absolutely”—anything goes. It is true that we see only in part, but we do see
(Hiebert 1985a:9). We are committed to our understanding of revelation, yet we also maintain a
critical distance to that understanding. In other words, we are in principle open to other views, an
attitude which does not, however, militate against complete commitment to our own understanding of
truth. We preface our remarks with “I believe…,” or “As I see it…” (Hiebert 1985a:9). It is
misleading to believe that commitment and a self-critical attitude are mutually exclusive.
Far from leading us into a morass of subjectivism and relativism, the approach I am advocating
actually fosters a creative tension between my ultimate faith commitment and my own theological
perception of faith. Instead of viewing my own interpretation as absolutely correct and all others by
definition as wrong, I recognize that different theological interpretations, including my own, reflect
different contexts, perspectives, and biases. This is not to say, however, that I regard all theological
positions as equally valid or that it does not matter what people believe; rather, I shall do my utmost
to share my understanding of the faith with others while granting them the right to do the same. I
realize that my theological approach is a “map,” and that a map is never the actual “territory” (cf
Hiebert 1985b:15; Martin 1987:373). Although I believe that my map is the best, I accept that there
are other types of maps and also that, at least in theory, one of those may be better than mine since I
can only know in part (cf 1 Cor 13:12).
For the Christian this means that any paradigm shift can only be carried out on the basis of the
gospel and because of the gospel, never, however, against the gospel (cf Küng 1987:194). Contrary to
the natural sciences, theology relates not only to the present and the future, but also to the past, to
tradition, to God's primary witness to humans (:191f). Theology must undoubtedly always be relevant
and contextual (:200–203), but this may never be pursued at the expense of God's revelation in and
through the history of Israel and, supremely, the event of Jesus Christ (:203–206). Christians take
seriously the epistemological priority of their classical text, the Scriptures.
I realize that, in stating the above, I have hardly solved any problems. Scripture comes to us in the
shape of human words, which are already “contextual” (in the sense of being written for very specific
historical contexts) and are, moreover, open to different interpretations. In making the affirmation
above I am, however, suggesting a “point of orientation” all Christians (should) share and on the
basis of which dialogue between them becomes possible. No individual or group has a monopoly
here. So, the Christian church should function as an “international hermeneutical community” (Hiebert
1985b: 16) in which Christians (and theologians) from different contexts challenge one another's
cultural, social, and ideological biases. This presupposes, however, that we see fellow-Christians not
as rivals or opponents but as partners (Küng 1987:198), even if we may be passionately convinced
that their views are in need of major corrections.1

PARADIGMS IN MISSIOLOGY
In the following chapters I shall follow, in broad outline, the subdivision of theology into the periods
suggested by Küng (1984:25; 1987:157): primitive Christianity (already discussed); the patristic
period; the Middle Ages; the Reformation; the Enlightenment; and the ecumenical era. It might also
have been possible to follow another division. James P. Martin (1987) divides the history of the
church and of theology into only three eras. Küng's second, third, and fourth epochs are grouped
together and referred to as “pre-critical,” “vitalisiic,” or “symbolic.” This is followed by the
Enlightenment as the second era, which is characterized as “critical,” “analytical” and “mechanistic.”
The third epoch, now emerging, is described as “post-critical,” “holistic,” and “ecumenical.”
Martin's classification has merit, particularly for an understanding of the development of biblical
interpretation. Küng's subdivisions will, however, in my view be a more appropriate tool in trying to
discern the evolution of the missionary idea.
Even Küng's categorization of the history of theology may, however, still be too general to do
justice to all kinds of theological nuances. He therefore rightly calls for a distinction between macro-,
meso-, and micro-paradigms (Küng 1984:21). The six historical epochs specified above would then
refer to macro- paradigms. Each new macro-paradigm represents a reconstruction of the entire field
of theology (cf van Huyssteen 1986:83). Within one macro-paradigm theologians indeed share, by and
large, one overall frame of reference and a commensurable perspective on God, humans, and the
world, even if such theologians do differ substantially from each other in many respects (cf Küng
1984:20f, and 1987:154f, where examples are given).
The transition from one paradigm to another is not abrupt. A new paradigm has its trailblazers,
who still operate in the old. Most contemporary theologians have grown up within the parameters of
the Enlightenment paradigm but find themselves today thinking and working in terms of two
paradigms at once (cf Martin 1987:375). This produces a kind of theological schizophrenia, which
we just have to put up with while at the same time groping our way toward greater clarity. Scholars in
all disciplines are overtaxed, and yet there is no way in which we can evade the demands made on us.
The point is simply that the Christian church in general and the Christian mission in particular are
today confronted with issues they have never even dreamt of and which are crying out for responses
that are both relevant to the times and in harmony with the essence of the Christian faith. The
contemporary church-in-mission is challenged by at least the following factors (cf also Küng
1987:214216, 240f):
1. The West, for more than a millennium the home of Christianity and in a very real sense created
by it, has lost its dominant position in the world. Peoples in all parts of the world strive for liberation
from what is experienced as the stranglehold of the West.
2. Unjust structures of oppression and exploitation are today challenged as never before in human
history. The struggles against racism and sexism are only two of several manifestations of this
challenge.
3. There is a profound feeling of ambiguity about Western technology and development, indeed,
about the very idea of progress itself. Progress, the god of the Enlightenment, proved to be a false god
after all.
4. More than ever before we know today that we live on a shrinking globe with only finite
resources. We now know that people and their environment are mutually interdependent. Capra
(1987:519) calls the emerging worldview ganzheitlich-ükologisch, “comprehensively ecological.”
5. We are today not only able to kill God's earth but also—again, for the first time in history—
capable of wiping out humankind. If the plight of the environment calls for an ecologically
appropriate response, the threat of a nuclear holocaust challenges us to reply by working for peace
with justice.
6. If the Bangkok meeting of the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism (1973) was
correct in stating that “culture shapes the human voice that answers the voice of Christ,” then it should
be clear that theologies designed and developed in Europe can claim no superiority over theologies
emerging in other parts of the world. This, too, is a new situation, since the supremacy of the theology
of the West was taken for granted for more than a thousand years.
7. Again, for many centuries the superiority of the Christian religion over all other faiths was
simply taken for granted (by Christians, that is). It was, as a matter of course, regarded as the only
true and only saving religion. Today most people agree that freedom of religion is a basic human
right. This factor, together with many others, forces Christians to reevaluate their attitude toward and
their understanding of other faiths.
Other factors might be added to the seven listed above. The point I am making is simply that, quite
literally, we live in a world fundamentally different from that of the nineteenth century, let alone
earlier times. The new situation challenges us, across the board, to an appropriate response. No
longer dare we, as we have often done, respond only piecemeal and ad hoc to single issues as they
confront us. The contemporary world challenges us to practice a “transformational hermeneutics”
(Martin 1987:378), a theological response which transforms us first before we involve ourselves in
mission to the world.
We could, conceivably, have moved directly from the primitive Christian paradigm sketched in the
first part of this book to the challenge of the contemporary scene. For several reasons this would,
however, not be an advisable procedure. The magnitude of today's challenge can really only be
appreciated if viewed against the backdrop of almost twenty centuries of church history. In addition,
we need the perspectives of the past in order to appreciate the scope of the present challenge and to
be able really to understand the world today and the Christian response to its predicament. Like the
Israelites of old—who needed to remind themselves, in every period of crisis, of their deliverance
from Egypt, their wanderings in the desert, and their ancient covenant with God—we too need to be
reminded of our roots, not only in order that we might have consolation but even more that we might
find direction (cf Niebuhr 1959:1). We reflect on the past not just for the past's own sake; rather, we
look upon it as a compass—and who would use a compass only to ascertain from where he or she has
come?2
 Chapter 6

The Missionary Paradigm

of the Eastern Church

“TO THE JEW FIRST BUT ALSO TO THE GREEK”

Within a very short time the new Christian faith—as it entered the Greco-Roman world—underwent a
significant transformation. This metamorphosis was, in scope and character, as profound as any other
in the subsequent history of the movement. Paul Knitter (1985:19) succinctly summarizes what
happened when Christianity changed from a Jewish into a Greco-Roman religion:
It was a transformation not only in the liturgical, sacramental life of the church and in the structures of its organization and
legislation, but also in its doctrine—that is, in the understanding of the revelation that had given birth to it. The early Christians
did not simply express in Greek thought what they already knew; rather, they discovered, through Greek religious and
philosophical insights, what had been revealed to them. The doctrines of the trinity and of the divinity of Christ…for example,
would not be what they are today if the church had not reassessed itself and its doctrines in the light of the new historical,
cultural situations during the third through the sixth centuries.

Naturally, the transition was not abrupt. Neither did it lead to any homogeneous new theology. Far
from it. Even so, it is possible to discern the contours of a single, coherent paradigm at least for the
Greek Patristic period. In spite of the many and important differences among theologians such as
Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Athanasius, and the three Cappadocians, they all shared a similar view of
God, humanity, and the world, and they all differed fundamentally from the apocalyptic-
eschatological pattern of primitive Christianity (cf Küng 1984:20; 1987:154). Needless to say, such
differences were bound to have a significant effect on the understanding of mission during this period.
It should not bother us that, during the epoch under discussion, the Christian faith was perceived
and experienced in new and different ways. The Christian faith is intrinsically incarnational;
therefore, unless the church chooses to remain a foreign entity, it will always enter into the context in
which it happens to find itself. And the context of the second and subsequent centuries of the Christian
era was almost in every respect different from that of the first. The shift from the Hebrew to the Greek
world was only one (if extremely important) element of the new setting. It had other decisively
different ingredients as well. For one thing, what began as a movement had, long before the end of the
first century, irrevocably turned into an institution.
As a matter of fact, as outlined in Chapters 1 to 4 of this book, there already was a notable shift
from the historical ministry of Jesus to the context of the first generations of Christians and the earliest
New Testament writings. Subsequent generations would perceive themselves as being even more
distant from the birth of the movement. Christianity was still in its infancy, still a minority faith in a
pluralistic world, still a religio illicita, despised if not always persecuted by the Roman authorities.
Yet it had, on the whole, lost much of its early fervor and distinctiveness; it was increasingly
resembling the world it wished to win for the faith. More specifically, it gradually lost its
apocalyptic-eschatological character, gave up the hope of an imminent parousia, and settled, even if
rather awkwardly, into this world. The change took place almost imperceptibly. It is, of course,
impossible to draw a hard line between what is sometimes called the New Testament period and the
ensuing era. Some of the traits which were to dominate in the second and subsequent centuries are
already discernible in some New Testament writings (cf, for instance, Käsemann 1969c).
It has often been claimed (for instance by Frend 1974:32; cf Holl 1974:3-11) that the office, if we
may call it thus, of the “itinerant preachef’ disappeared with the apostles, that there were, for many
centuries, no persons we may justifiably call “missionaries,” and that the early church had no
missionary method or program. While there is a grain of truth in this view, it falls short of doing
justice to the facts. As Kretschmar (1974:94-128) has shown, the significance for the early Christian
mission up to the third century of charismatic healer-missionaries, miracle workers, and itinerant
preachers should not be underestimated. From the fourth century onward, however, the monk would
gradually replace the itinerant preacher as missionary in as yet unevangelized areas (cf Adam
1974:86-93; Kretschmar 1974:99f).
Of far greater significance for mission than the ministry of the peripatetic preacher or the monk
was the conduct of early Christians, the “language of love” on their lips and in their lives (Harnack
1962:147-198, 366-368), their Propaganda der Tat (“propaganda of the deed”—Holl 1974:8). In the
final analysis it was not the miracles of itinerant evangelists and wandering monks that impressed the
populace—miracle workers were a familiar phenomenon in the ancient world—but the exemplary
lives of ordinary Christians (Kretschmar 1974:99). If the conduct of believers in New Testament
times had a distinctly missionary dimension (cf van Swigchem 1955), it was not different in the post-
apostolic period. In the contemporary Greek world it was Greek philosophy rather than Greek
religion which nurtured morality (cf Malherbe 1986). The Greek gods were frequently represented as
amoral if not immoral in their conduct. Strictly speaking, ethics was not regarded as a part of religion;
the gods did not insist on a total break with the past or on a renunciation of all that was wrong (cf
Green 1970: 144f). By contrast, the high moral standards of the Christian faith, like those of Judaism,
were clearly to be attributed to religious influences, and many non-Christians noticed this. Christians
were expected to belong, body and soul, to Christ, and this was to show in their conduct (:146).
In the general mood of the time such demeanor could not but be noticeable. Hellenism had long
passed its prime. The Marxist philosopher Vìteslav Gardavsky says that Rome was still powerful
politically and militarily; yet at the same time the “odor of decay” was in evidence everywhere
(quoted by Rosenkranz 1977:71). To this Rosenkranz adds,
In this macabre world, submerged in despair, perversity, and superstition, something new existed and grew: Christianity, bastion
of love for God and brother, of the Holy Spirit, and of hope for God's coming reign (:71—my translation).

The testimonies of enemies of the church (such as Celsus and Julian the Apostate) frequently
mentioned the extraordinary conduct of Christians, often with reference to the fact that this conduct
had been a factor in winning people over to the Christian faith. Michael Green perhaps gives too
romantic a picture of early Christians, and yet the elements of their lives which he reviews (their
example, fellowship, transformed characters, joy, endurance, and power) certainly were crucial
factors in the phenomenal growth of the new “superstition”1 during the first few centuries of the
Christian era (1970:178-193). And its growth was indeed spectacular; it is estimated that by AD 300
roughly half of the urban population in at least some of the provinces of the vast Roman Empire had
turned to the Christian faith (cf Harnack 1924:946-958; von Soden 1974:25). Outside the Empire it
was, with some notable exceptions, less successful, for reasons to which I shall return.

THE CHURCH AND ITS CONTEXT

After AD 85 Judaism had to distinguish itself clearly not only from paganism but also from the
church. Similarly, Christians had to battle on two fronts: against the synagogue and against Hellenistic
religions. In its early stages, Christianity was undoubtedly closer to Judaism; in its later stages it
would, in many respects, be closer to the Greek milieu, in spite of initial resistance from theologians
such as Tatian and Tertullian. The shift already becomes discernible in the terminology used.
Concepts originally typical of the cult of the emperor, the military, the Greek mystery religions, the
theater, and Platonic philosophy gradually became common in Christian worship and doctrine (cf van
der Aalst 1974:54).
The many parallels between pagan religions and Christianity were, in a real sense, a great help to
the church in its mission and defense of the faith. The message about God in human form, about
salvific sacrifices, the victory of resurrection, and new life, fell on ears that did not find it entirely
unfamiliar. It was easy to regard Christianity as the fulfillment of other religions. For the early
Christian faith it was not its dissimilarity with the religions of the environment that was the problem,
but its similarity (cf von Soden 1974:26). The new religion could easily slip into the mold of the old
without causing much more than a ripple on the surface. The Apologists, in particular, often went out
of their way in their efforts to emphasize the resemblance between the new and the old. Justin and
Clement adopted a friendly attitude toward the best in paganism and regarded Greek philosophy as a
“schoolmaster” leading pagans to Christ. The general spirit of the time was conducive to an almost
boundless syncretism of oriental and occidental religions—another factor which induced Christianity
to conform. That it did not, in the final analysis, conform, was due not only to its consciousness of
being fundamentally different from all other faiths, but to at least two other factors as well.
First, already in its early years the Christian faith had some success among the upper classes,
although the majority of Christians were simple folk with little education. The church was not a
bearer of culture. As a matter of fact, it was held in contempt by the vast majority of the cultured
citizens of the Empire. Celsus combined Platonic philosophical monotheism with Greco-Roman
polytheism in his effort to discredit Christianity. From the late second century on the picture gradually
began to change. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others introduced a new tradition, that of the
sophisticated Christian scholar who could match any pagan philosopher, particularly since they could
make use of the same type of argument as the Greek teachers did. In the course of time Christian
theologians also embraced the typical Hellenistic feelings of superiority, particularly toward the
barbaroi (cf Holl 1974:14). Even before the persecutions stopped and Christianity was declared the
sole legitimate religion in the Roman Empire, the church had begun to be a bearer of culture and a
civilizing presence in society. The advent of Constantine put a seal on this development. Henceforth
Christians and they alone would be upwardly mobile and cultured. They dominated life in the cities.
Non-Christians were now looked down upon as the unenlightened ones; they were “pagans” (pagani,
“those who lived in rural areas”) or “heathen” (“those whose homes were on the heath”). A Celsus
was now by definition unthinkable; after all, only Christians were civilized and educated. Mission
became a movement from the superior to the inferior. Non-Christian faiths were inferior to
Christianity, not—primarily—on theological grounds but for socio-cultural reasons (cf Holl 1974:
11f; von Soden 1974:29; Kahl 1978:22f).
Second, and related to the above, the pagan Empire was slowly disintegrating. I have mentioned
Gardavsky's reference to the “odor of decay” in evidence everywhere. Fatalism was widespread
among the populace, who attempted to find security against the vicissitudes and confusions of life by
resorting to magic and astrology (cf Rosenkranz 1977:44f). Christianity was ready to fill the vacuum
—and the citizens of the Empire responded. It has been argued that no mass movement into the
Christian faith has developed in a culture that was stable and rich in content, but always only in
societies which have lost their nerve and were disintegrating. This was true not only of the Greco-
Roman world in the fourth and subsequent centuries, but also elsewhere. E. A. Thompson has
advocated the view that the success of the Christian mission among the Goths was to be ascribed not
so much to the excellent mission work of Ulfilas, but rather to the devastating effect the Goths’
encounter with the Roman Empire had on their traditional way of life. He also contends that, apart
from the Suevi, no German tribe remained faithful to its traditional religion for longer than one
generation after it had invaded the Roman Empire; thus a major reason for the Germans’ conversion to
Christianity, sociologically speaking, was the disruption of social conditions caused by their
migrations (references to Thompson in Frend 1974:40).

THE CHURCH AND THE PHILOSOPHERS

If Christian theologians, by and large, tended to scorn pagan religions, they were far more positive
toward pagan philosophy. Like many Jews before them they, consciously or unconsciously,
appropriated material from the philosophers. Malherbe has recently published a source-book
containing excerpts from Greco-Roman moral philosophers; their writings reveal not only a
remarkable affinity with those of Christian authors, but have also undoubtedly influenced the latter
(Malherbe 1986). In his study on Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians Malherbe has shown that even
Paul's thinking was doubtless affected by several philosophical schools (Malherbe 1987). During
subsequent centuries their influence on Christian theologians was to become much more noticeable.
The major philosophical schools during the Hellenistic and Roman periods were the Platonic,
Stoic, Cynic, and Epicurean. It was the first-mentioned to whom Christians were most deeply
indebted. Platonic influence on Christian thinking manifested itself in at least two respects: the
relation between eternity and time, which preoccupied many theologians; and the Platonic distinction
between the true and the apparent, the reality and the shadow, which played a role particularly in
eucharistic theology (cf van der Aalst 1974:54; Beker 1980:360).
The pervasive impact of Greek philosophy on the infant Christian movement can, however, best be
observed in the ever-growing tendency to define the faith and systematize doctrine. The God of the
Old Testament and primitive Christianity came to be identified with the general idea of God of Greek
metaphysics; God is referred to as Supreme Being, substance, principle, unmoved mover. Ontology
(God's being) became more important than history (God's deeds) (cf van der Aalst 1974:110f). It
became more important to reflect on what God is in himself than to consider the relationship in which
people stand to God. Behind all of this lies the notion that the abstract idea is more real than the
historical. Therefore, what pagans were really in need of was an adequate doctrine of God.
For the Greeks the key concept was knowledge (gnosis or sophia) (cf Paul's remark in 1 Cor
1:22). In much of Christian theology this notion gradually replaced that of event. The theme,
“salvation is to be found in knowledge,” was presented in a great variety of ways, in which the
original idea of knowledge through experience was increasingly replaced by that of rational
knowledge (cf van der Aalst 1974:88f). The Holy Spirit became the “spirit of truth” or the “spirit of
wisdom,” where one's primary interest was in the Spirit's original being rather than activity in
history (:124f). God's revelation was no longer understood as God's self-communication in events,
but as the communication of truths about the being of God in three hypostases and the one person of
Christ in two natures. The various church councils were intent on producing definitive statements of
faith; their formulations were conclusive and final rather than references to the ineffable. The unity of
the church was regulated by scrutinizing people according to whether or not they subscribed to these
formulas. Those who did not were excluded by means of anathemas. A comparison between the
Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed confirms the point. The former outlines a mode of conduct
without any specific appeal to a set of precepts. The entire tenor of the Sermon is ethical; it is devoid
of metaphysical speculation. The latter, in contrast, is structured within a metaphysical framework,
makes a number of doctrinal statements, and says nothing about the believer's conduct. Van der Aalst
very appropriately summarizes the outcome of this entire development, “The message became
doctrine, the doctrine dogma, and this dogma was expounded in precepts which were expertly strung
together” (: 138—my translation). One effect of this shift was centuries-long debates on concepts like
ousia, physis, hypostasis, meritum, trans-substantiatio, etc (ibid).
Some years back it was popular to construct absolute contrasts between Hebrew and Greek
worldviews. Today it is widely agreed that the difference was over-emphasized. Many notions
regarded as typically Hebrew have been shown to exist in Greek thinking as well, and vice versa. It
is too easy to blame all aberrations on the Greeks (cf van der Aalst 1974:150-174, where many
similarities between “Hebrew” and “Greek” thinking are discussed; cf also Young 1988:302). Still,
an important difference in perspective does exist. I have already referred to the characteristic Greek
emphasis on knowledge or gnosis. To this we have to add the difference between an auditive and a
visual approach to reality. Even if the difference is far from absolute, one could say that we can
observe a visual rather than an auditive perspective among Greeks and, by the same token, a more
auditive than visual approach among Semites (cf van der Aalst 1974:92). For Jews, “faith comes
from what is heard” (Rom 10:17), and dabar (Hebrew for “word”) refers particularly to the spoken
word. Logos (Greek for “word”), by contrast, primarily alludes to knowledge-through-seeing (van
der Aalst 1974:98). Whereas Semites (including the Semitic Nestorian Christ ians) displayed an
aversion to plastic art, the Greeks excelled in this art form (:93f).
This has a bearing on the Orthodox understanding of mission. A nineteenth-century Greek
Orthodox patriarch underscored the value of images for preaching and added that “seeing more
readily guides to faith than hearing” (reference in van der Aalst 1974:99). The allusion is specifically
to the liturgy, which non-believers are invited to attend and observe (naturally they cannot
participate), and which in the Orthodox tradition is regarded as the main form of witness and mission
(cf Stamoolis 1986:85-102).

ESCHATOLOGY
There is probably no area in which the Hellenistic church differed so profoundly from primitive
Jewish Christianity as that of its eschatology and understanding of history.
The biblical story is the account of remembrance of encounters with God in real human history and
expectations of future encounters. The Christ event is not an isolated occurrence of a totally different
kind, but is rooted in God's history with Israel (cf Rütti 1972:95). The significance of Jesus can
therefore be grasped only on the basis of the Old Testament history of promise. His resurrection (in
which the apostolic mission to the world has its origin) can only be understood within the framework
of prophetic and apocalyptic expectation (:103). The proclamation of the reign of God does not
introduce a new creed or cult but is the announcement of an event in history, an event to which people
are challenged to respond by repenting and believing. In the coming of Jesus and in raising him from
the dead, God's eschatological act has already been inaugurated. It is, however, as yet incomplete.
Jesus’ resurrection and exaltation signify just the beginning of the universal fulfillment still to come,
of which the Spirit is a pledge. Only another future intervention by God will wipe out the
contradictions of the present. Therefore, in Paul's christology Christ is not so much the fulfillment of
God's promises as the guarantee and confirmation of those promises (cf Rom 4:16; 15:8). Christ has
not “fulfilled” the Old Testament, but “ratified” it (Beker 1980:345). The end is still to come.
All of this was to change profoundly in subsequent centuries. Apocalyptic expectations were
thwarted by the delay of the parousia. The freshness and ardor of the primitive Christian sense of
living in the last times dissipated and the perception of urgent and immediate crisis faded in the minds
of many believers (cf Lampe 1957:19f). Justin Martyr, living in the middle of the second century, still
held to the millennial scheme as part of the doctrine he had inherited, but he placed relatively little
emphasis on it. Elsewhere, too, apocalyptic ideas began to assume the role of inherited furniture,
handed down to believers and not to be discarded, but no longer treasured (:33). The Christian
message was in the process of being transformed from the announcement of God's imminent reign to
the proclamation of the only true and universal religion of humankind (cf Rütti 1972:128). Faith in
God's promises yet to be fulfilled was replaced by faith in the already consummated eternal kingdom
of Christ. His resurrection came to be viewed as a completed event, as the “climactic fulfillment of
all God's promises” (Beker 1984:85), and no longer as the “first fruits” of the resurrection of all
believers.
In this general mood it should come as no surprise that Paul was soon forgotten or even silenced.
Beker (1980:342f) points out that Papias, Hegesippus, Justin Martyr, and the other Apologists do not
appeal to Paul at all. Where Paul is accepted in the Hellenistic church, he is thoroughly domesticated.
Where he is quoted, this is always in terms of his moral injunctions, not of his apocalyptic
hermeneutic.
It was in line with this development that the historical continuity between the Old Testament and
the New was disregarded and the inherent historical-hermeneutical connection between the two
testaments ignored; the Old Testament was gradually dehistoricized and became an allegorical
prelude to the event of Christ (cf van der Aalst 1974:118; Beker 1980:359f). Allegory, a rare
exegetical method in Paul (cf Gal 4:21-26), became the dominant hermeneutical principle in the
Hellenistic church.
The eclipse of eschatology manifested itself in several other respects as well. Historical thinking
increasingly made way for metaphysical categories. Believers no longer thought in terms of the
distinction between “this age” and “the age to come,” but rather of a “vertical” relationship between
time and eternity (Lampe 1957:21; Beker 1980:360). People's expectations came to be focused on
heaven rather than on this world and God's involvement in history; instead of looking forward to the
future they looked up to eternity. The “low” christology of early Jewish Christians, who had put a
high premium on the historical Jesus, gave way to Hellenistic Christianity's preoccupation with the
exalted Christ, who became identified with the timeless Logos (cf van der Aalst 1974:115-118), an
approach which led to a radical spiritualization of the Christ event. The interest shifted from
eschatology to protology, to Christ's eternal pre-existence, his relation to God the Father, and the
nature of his incarnation (Beker 1980:357, 360; 1984: 108). It became more important to know
whence Christ came than why. The interest in his incarnation, so common in this period, therefore had
little to do with his entering a human form and identifying with the plight of humanity; rather, it was
moved to the level of metaphysics, where discussion centered on the nature of the incarnation and its
“pedagogical” significance (Irenaeus; cf further Greshake 1983:52–63).
The original eschatological expectation was further devitalized by mysticism, or perhaps more
accurately, by pneumatology, that is, by the notion that through the indwelling of the Spirit the soul
becomes spiritual and eventually progresses into the angelic order (Lampe 1957:19, 34; Beker
1984:107; cf van der Aalst 1974:144). “Let us become spiritual” (pneumatikoi), we read in chapter 4
of the Epistle of Barnabas. And Origen interpreted the reign of God in terms of the apprehension of a
spiritual reality, or as the seeds of truth implanted in the soul (for references, cf Lampe 1957:19; 34).
Preaching came to focus almost exclusively on the topic of God and the individual soul, without
having anything to say about the relation of the gospel to nature and the structures of this world; in the
process the cosmic expectation of “a new heaven and a new earth” was spiritualized away (Beker
1980:360; 1984:108).
Whereas the Hebrew conceptyasha, “to save,” primarily means “to save people from danger and
catastrophe,” or “to free captives” (that is, salvation for this world), the Greek concept soteria in the
period under discussion tended to refer to being rescued from one's bodily existence, being relieved
of the burden of a material existence (in other words, salvation from this world). Salvation came to
be understood exclusively in terms of “eternal life.” Sometimes (for instance in Basilides and
Marcion) it was said that the soul alone would be saved, to the exclusion of the body; according to
Justin Martyr, the soul can see God after its release from the body (cf Lampe 1957:18, 33). The
Christian religion saves from this earth; it does not change or renew the earth. Involvement in the
world took the form merely of charity. Increasingly the emphasis was laid on the immortality of the
soul, which Lactantius labelled “the greatest good.” The host of the Eucharist became a pharmakon
athanasias, a “medicine of (or unto) immortality.” The vindication of creation in the glory of God
made way for the idea of individual bliss and of the immortal heavenly status of the individual after
death. Through various degrees and stages of the spiritual life the soul progresses to perfect union
with God.
Most commonly, the attainment of salvation was defined in terms of “life.” Clement of Rome's list
of the gifts of God began with “life in incorruption”; Irenaeus wrote that communion with God
renders humans incorruptible. The salvation conferred on people was therefore really to be
understood in terms of their divinization (for references, see Lampe 1957:30f, 34).2
The abandoning of primitive Christian eschatology together with the idea of the soul gradually and
through various stages working its way up toward immortality and incorruptibility had another
serious consequence. The emphasis, instead of being on God's future intervention in history, was now
on rewards for those who did good and who would win heaven as a prize for their endurance
(references in Lampe 1957:20). To escape the perpetual threat of hell, many good deeds had to be
performed, many prayers poured forth, and the intercession of many saints invoked. Irenaeus, in
particular, portrayed the ascent of the soul in terms of a pedagogic process toward perfection.
Martyrdom, in particular, was a sure gateway to immortality. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp it is even
said that the martyrs were “purchasing at the cost of one hour a release from eternal punishment.”
Many other examples can be given of moralism “spreading itself like blight over Christianity's
expectation of the hereafter” (Rosenkranz 1977:61—my translation).
Much of this development is, of course, understandable. The Apologists, in particular, had to
combat a rabid fatalism and they did this by insisting very strongly on free will, repentance, reward,
and punishment (cf Lampe 1957: 32). Moreover, it would be misleading to suggest that the Greek
church jettisoned all eschatological views handed down to it. The church was, in the words of
Lampe,
in large measure kept true to the primitive eschatological convictions by being tied through the Sacraments…to the historical
events in which the Kingdom was manifested, is continually entering into the present order, and will in the future replace it
(1957:22).

In addition, elements of primitive eschatology lingered on longer in the thinking of some

theologians than they did in the case of others, even if eschatology tended to wilt into a rather one-
dimensional thing. In particular, “a realistic eschatology based on the notions of chiliasm, bodily
resurrection, and the reign of the saints with Christ” was upheld by those Christians who formed the
solid body of the church and contributed the majority of its martyrs (Lampe 1957:24). In times of
oppression and persecution, when the battle was proving difficult and casualties were heavy,
believers needed more than a teaching about the gradual ascent of the soul to heaven and immortality.
A vivid awareness of the reality of Antichrist likewise directed people's hopes to a final judgment of
evil and the cataclysmic inauguration of the reign of God (:26, 30f).
Mostly the church was prepared to tolerate this simple, realistic eschatology. Sometimes,
however, the protest against the church's inability to appreciate the validity of apocalyptic became so
powerful that a schism was unavoidable. This happened, for instance, around the middle of the
second century, when Montanus proclaimed a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the imminent
advent of the New Jerusalem. The movement he led revived in a most vigorous fashion the sense of
immediate urgency and crisis characteristic of primitive eschatology. Montanism was, however,
particularly in some of its weird excrescences, an aberration from primitive eschatology. After the
movement was practically excommunicated in AD 230 the church closed its doors even more
resolutely against apocalyptic in any form. It never completely succeeded in doing this, however, and
many apocalyptic elements survived, particularly in the monastic movement.

GNOSTICISM
The church had to combat heresy on at least two fronts. On the one hand there were people like
Montanus and others, whose teachings may perhaps be regarded as an excessive manifestation of
Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. It was, moreover, not unlike the kind of apocalyptic that is
flourishing in our own time. Here “linear” eschatology is pushed to the extreme; the present hour is
totally empty and people feverishly long for God to intervene in history. All emphasis is put on the
“not yet.” On the other hand there were those who stressed the reign of God as having already arrived
—in the church, in eternal life for the individual, in the guarantee of immortality. Here the stress
tended to be on the “already.”
The church successfully withstood the first of these two threats (temptations?) and actually
immunized itself against any form of apocalyptic. As far as the second danger was concerned the
church was more ambiguous. At one point, however, the church (again, only by and large) held firm:
in its rejection of Gnosticism. I have argued that, under the influence of popular philosophy, Christian
theology tended to put an ever greater emphasis on gnosis, knowledge. This may suggest that the
church in its entirety fell prey to the movement known as Gnosticism—which, of course, derived its
name from gnosis. On the whole, however, the philosophical schools were anti-gnostic, and so was
mainline theology. Even so, Gnosticism made deep inroads into the church and on several occasions
struck at its very heart.
In spite of its air of sophistication Gnosticism really was not a philosophy, but a quasi-philosophy,
one which despaired of human rationality. It reflected much of the fatalism and superstition of the
period. It gave people who felt themselves trapped in the world an excuse for withdrawal from the
hard decisions about life, at the same time imputing to them a sense of superiority, of belonging to a
special class. The knowledge (gnosis) it espoused was, however, not the rational knowledge of the
philosophical schools, but esoteric knowledge, special revelations, knowledge of the secrets of the
universe, exceptional passwords, a philosophy which had lost confidence in rationality (cf Young
1988:300f).
Gnosticism's most distinctive feature was an irreversible ontological dualism, an opposition
between a transcendent God and an obtuse “demiurge” who had created the material world. This
material creation was altogether evil and the transcendent God's irrevocable adversary. The world
was primarily seen as a threat, as a source of contagion. It follows from this that Gnosticism's
christology would be docetic: Christ was not a real human but simply appeared to be one. This
pervasive ontological dualism manifested itself in endless pairs of opposites: the temporal and the
eternal, the physical and the spiritual, the earthly and the heavenly, the here and the hereafter, the
“flesh below” and the “spirit above,” etc. Salvation could only mean liberation from the bonds of this
alien material world, and those thus saved could treat the material realities with indifference, if not
disdain.
Some of these gnostic elements penetrated the church so deeply that they are alive and well even
today. On the whole, however, and this is to the church's eternal credit, the church won this life and
death struggle. It rejected this extreme form of Hellenization of Christianity as it also rejected extreme
Semiticization. Had it not done the first, it would have gone the way of Marcion and Valentinus, and
ended in a totally other-worldly and irrelevant esoteric movement. Had it not done the second,
Christianity would eventually have retrogressed to an insipid Ebionitism (cf van der Aalst
1974:187f).
In its confrontation with Gnosticism the church, even if it often wavered, held on to the canonicity
of the Old Testament, the historical humanity of Jesus, and faith in the bodily resurrection. The result
was that, for a while, the church had to forfeit its opportunity for rapid growth; it devoted its time and
energy to finding clarity on crucial theological issues and to consolidating internally (cf von Soden
1974:26f).
In this life and death struggle against extreme views on the “right” and the “left,” philosophy
proved to be a fitting, even if ambivalent, ally. Frances Young may be overstating her case when she
says that there was “a genuine kinship between Jewish monotheism and the emerging consensus of the
philosophers,” and that “early Christianity justifiably claimed the inheritance of Jewish monotheism
and Greek rationalism” (1988:302, 304), but in essence she is right. Greek philosophy provided the
church with the tools (and more than just the tools) to analyze all kinds of aberrations, to pursue
awkward critical questions, to distinguish truth from fantasy, to repudiate magic, superstition,
fatalism, astrology, and idolatry, to grapple seriously with epistemological questions which produced
a fundamentally rational account of how human beings attain appropriate knowledge of God, and to
do all this with a combination of intellectual rigor and a deep faith commitment; in short, to be both
“critical” and “visionary” (cf the title of Young's essay).

THE CHURCH IN EASTERN THEOLOGY

There can be no doubt that, as early as the late first century, a shift in the understanding of the church
had set in. In fact, some of the New Testament texts already reflect a situation where the mobile
ministry of apostles, prophets, and evangelists was beginning to give way to the settled ministry of
bishops (elders) and deacons.
The creative tension between these two dynamics of the church's ministry gradually collapsed in
favor of the second. Whereas the writings of Luke introduced the Holy Spirit particularly as the Spirit
of mission, as the One who equipped the apostles (and Jesus) and guided them into missionary
situations, the Spirit's work was now seen almost exclusively as that of building up the church in
sanctity. The work of the Spirit was above all to purify and illumine every soul within the church. The
Holy Spirit was the Spirit of truth, of light, of life, of love, but there was hardly any consciousness of
the Spirit moving outward to bring good tidings to a wider world. The church filled the entire
horizon. Ecclesiology became so primary that both eschatology and pneumatology were subsumed
under it. Beker (1980:303f) puts it succinctly,
A mystical doctrine of the church catholic displaces the idea of the church as proleptic reality…(It) is now regarded as the
company of the spiritual elite, who with their endowment of the Spirit already actualize the kingdom of God in their soul…In this
setting, the preexistent status of the church, its ontological character, and its status as an imperishable body become the focal
concerns.

It was almost a forgone conclusion that in this kind of climate the missionary fervor of primitive
Christianity would subside. The first letter of Clemens (chapter 59) makes no mention of mission,
only that the Creator of the universe “may guard intact unto the end the number…of his elect
throughout the whole world.” In most of the Apostolic Fathers non-Christians appeared only as dark
foil to the church. It was not essentially different in many later theologians. According to Irenaeus, for
instance, the church was the bulwark of right doctrine against the heretics. Cyprian regarded the
world as in the process of collapse; there was, according to him, only one possibility of obtaining
salvation—membership of the church. Christians alone lived in the light of the Lord; he added, “What
do we care about pagans who are not yet enlightened, or about Jews, who have turned away from the
light and remained in darkness?” (for reference, see Rosenkranz 1977:66). The church had organized
itself into an institution for salvation. It was still expanding and enlarging. This was, however, hardly
mission in the Pauline sense; rather, it was Christian propaganda (:77). To the church paganism and
the absence of “civilization” were synonymous, and mission identical to the spread of culture.
Within this general climate the real bearer of the missionary ideal and practice was the monastic
movement, which began to flourish particularly during the last quarter of the third and the first quarter
of the fourth century and which would eventually lead to the total disintegration of rural paganism in
the entire Greco-Roman world (cf Frend 1974:43; Adam 1974). When Christianity became the
official religion of the Empire and persecutions ended, the monk succeeded the martyr as the
expression of unqualified witness and protest against worldliness. Since the fourth century the history
of the church on the move, particularly in the East, was essentially also the history of monasticism. In
fact, from the very beginning of monasticism, the most daring and most efficient missionaries were the
monks. But even the monk needed the official sanction and oversight of the bishop. Without that, no
monk or priest's missionary service could be legitimate; also, only the episcopal office guaranteed the
flow of sacramental grace (cf Kahl 1978:22). The missionaries were ambassadors of the bishops,
whose task was to incorporate converts into the church.
Until AD 313 (the year in which joint emperors Constantine and Licinius, meeting at Milan,
revised the Empire's two-century-old policy toward Christianity and declared that it would
henceforth be tolerated) Christians had always been at a disadvantage in the vast Roman Empire.
Even when they were not persecuted,3 Christians suffered discrimination in many ways; they were
almost always distrusted and suspected of disloyalty to the state, if not actually of being dangerous
politically. Many church leaders and theologians went out of their way in attempting to prove that the
church was interested only in spiritual matters; their success was, however, only limited.
After the so-called Edict of Milan the situation was to change drastically. Ostensibly the church
still professed sole allegiance to an other-worldly “heavenly Jerusalem”; in practice, however,
precisely this avowal implied a compromise to the political system of the day, which was given a
free hand in respect of everything not strictly religious. Whereas the church, on the whole, carefully
observed this “division of labor,” the state was less conscientious. It even happened that emperors
got personally involved in “mission” projects, in which religious and political aims were intertwined
(cf Frend 1974:38). The subtle compromise was hardly detectable, but manifested itself in various
indirect ways. The “high” christology of the church implied that Christ was increasingly depicted in
terms reminiscent of the emperor cult. The Council of Nicea, convened in AD 325 by Emperor
Constantine, tended—albeit unconsciously—to clothe Christ with the aid of the attributes and titles of
the emperor. “Christ became a majestic king who granted an audience in the liturgy, in a monumental
basilica the architecture and decorations of which gave expression to his glory” (van der Aalst
1974:120—my translation). The humanity of Christ was not denied; however, his humanness was
underexposed in Byzantine devotion, liturgy, and theology (:121f). What began in primitive
Christianity as a bold confession in the face of the emperor cult that Jesus was Lord (“Kyrios
Iesous!”), ended in a compromise where the emperor was to rule in “time” and Christ in “eternity.”

MISSION IN NON-ROMAN ASIA

So far in this chapter I have confined myself almost exclusively to theological developments in the
patristic period, that is, broadly speaking, to the church of the second to the sixth century. I have,
moreover, given more attention to the Greek than to the Latin branch of the church. In addition, my
focus was on the church inside rather than outside the Roman Empire, namely, that branch of the
church which passed as “orthodox” in doctrine, in contradistinction to groups branded as
“schismatic” or “heretic” by the main body. This was, incidentally, also the focus of the main church
body itself. Even at the time when it was at loggerheads with the empire, the church experienced and
viewed the empire as the primary sphere of its activities and expansion; the “world,” the “ecumene,”
was the Roman Empire. The church's “world mission” would be completed once it had reached the
empire's borders (cf Holl 1974:3; von Soden 1974:24). In the final analysis, the boundaries of the
empire, of “orthodoxy,” and of language would coincide (cf van der Aalst 1974:40).
There were, however, also Christian churches outside the borders of the Roman Empire; what is
more, these churches were often far more actively involved in mission than the increasingly
monolithic “main” church. Western Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) tend to give attention
only to the westward movement of the faith, from the primitive Semitic church, via the Greek church
to the Latin and other European churches and those which were founded through their missionary
efforts. It is high time that Western Christians took notice also of the missionary fervor and expansion
of the Nestorians and other groups further to the East. In the first centuries the church indeed spread
its arms widely. It did not incarnate itself only in the cultures and thought-forms of the Greeks and the
Romans but also expressed itself through the liturgies of other cultures: Coptic, Syriac, Maronite,
Armenian, Ethiopian, Indian, and even Chinese.
There was one fundamental difference between the overall situation of the churches of the East and
the church of the West. Whereas the latter (including the largest part of the Byzantine church and its
“daughter” churches) profited (at least outwardly) from the effect of the “Constantinian reversal” (that
is, the recognition of the main church of the West as state church), the churches of the East, at least in
their formative years, never experienced anything of the sort. L. E. Browne says about them, “In
Asia…never once until the thirteenth century was the favour of the state conferred upon the Church”
(quoted in Moffett 1987:481). Even then—in the thirteen century, when a Mongol emperor, son of a
Nestorian princess, sat on the throne of China—the respite the church was given was all too brief, for
soon these outposts of Christianity were wiped out. So the church in these parts never knew anything
like a “Constantinian reversal” of the fortunes of Christianity. The church in Asia was always a
minority group within its environment (in fact, it has, with the exception of the Philippines, remained
a minority in Asia to this day). Not only was it a minority, it was also always suspected of somehow
conniving with the empires of the “Christian” West. For example, in the fourth century King Sapor II
of the Sassanid Empire in Mesopotamia regarded the Aramaic Christians within the borders of his
state as a fifth column of the Roman Empire. “They live in our territory,” he said, “but they share the
sentiments of Caesar” (quoted in van der Aalst 1974:59).
This circumstance was both a liability and an asset. It was a liability in that the Christian church
always held a most tenuous position in these regions. In Persia, for instance, the church could, in the
long run, only survive in the ghetto. “It was a state within a state, a minority enclave of protected but
subjugated people…No Christian, not even the patriarch, had power except within his ghetto, and
even there his power was dependent upon the shah” (Moffett 1987:481, 482). As a result, the
Christian church always remained a foreign body, an increasingly idiosyncratic subculture, more and
more isolated from the population at large and less and less able to communicate with them (Hage
1978).
At the same time the absence of state support was an asset in that the church could be itself and
had little reason to attempt to please the powers that be. Its mission was also more credible, since
nobody could suspect it of wishing to curry favor with the authorities. The church therefore expanded
not only westward, as most Western textbooks would have it, but also eastward. By AD 225, less than
two centuries after the earthly ministry of Jesus, the Syrian church had carried the Christian faith
halfway across Asia to the edges of India and the western ranges of China (Moffett 1987:484). Its
ascetics-turned-missionaries, “homeless followers of the homeless Jesus on…ceaseless pilgrimage
through this world” (Robert Murray, quoted in Moffett 1987:483) healed the sick, fed the poor, and
preached the gospel.
Above all it was the Nestorians who were to become the major missionary force in non-Roman
Asia. When Nestorius was condemned by the Council of Ephesus (AD 431) and banished to Egypt,
his followers fled to Persia where a vital monasticism, an eminent theology (by the sixth century the
School of Nisibis had become the most famous center of learning in all Asia outside China; cf Moffett
1987:481), and an imposing missionary activity soon testified to the movement's strength. These three
dimensions of Nestorianism—monasticism, theology, and mission—were mutually interdependent,
and resulted in the Nestorian church becoming “the ‘missionary’ church par excellence in the overall
context of medieval Christianity” (Hage 1978:360). Its monasticism was rooted in its Syriac religious
ancestry and was, unlike Egyptian monasticism, missionary through and through. These eccentric
hermits may appear almost bizarre to us today, and yet they were the ones who time and again
combined the call to ascetic self-denial with the call to go and preach and serve. The Eastern Syrian
Nestorians, with missionaries like Alopen (A Lo Pen) may with justification be called the Irish monks
of the East (or, if one prefers, the Irish missionaries may be called the Nestorian monks of the West).
By the end of the fourteenth century, however, the Nestorian and other churches—which at one
time had dotted the landscape of all of Central and even parts of East Asia—were all but wiped out.
Isolated pockets of Christianity survived only in India. The religious victors on the vast Central Asian
mission field of the Nestorians were Islam and Buddhism; most of those Christian ghettos which did
not perish under the onslaught of one of these two vigorous faiths gradually succumbed to syncretism
(Hage 1978:391f). Thus, at the end of the day, it was not the missionary program of the Nestorians
and others in Asia that would put its indelible stamp on world and Christian history—this distinction
belongs to the Western church and its mission, to which I now return.

THE PATRISTIC AND ORTHODOX MISSIONARY PARADIGM

Ever since the fourth century, when Constantine the Great moved his headquarters from Rome to
Byzantium on the Bosporus (and renamed that city Constantinople) the empire had to deal with the
problem of having two rival capitals. The rivalry was not confined to the political scene; also
ecclesiastically Rome and Constantinople were slowly but irreversibly drifting apart, a process
which would come to a head with the Great Schism of 1054. After that, the two “wings” of the
church, one calling itself “Roman” and “Catholic,” the other “Byzantine” and “Orthodox,” would go
their separate ways. It was the Byzantine Church that would, in the course of many centuries, give
birth to and mold Eastern Orthodox theology and mission understanding as we know these today.
Since the Great Schism, the Orthodox churches were, for all practical purposes, isolated from
theological thinking and developments in the West, at least until very recent times. On the one side
Orthodoxy was hemmed in by the Western church; on the other side, it was blocked by the threatening
power and advances of Islam. The only area that remained for expansion lay to the north. From the
sixth century to the twelfth Orthodox missions advanced mainly among the Slavonian peoples and,
even more particularly, into the vast expanses of Russia and its hinterland (cf Hannick 1978).
As we shall see in the next chapter, the Roman Catholic (or Western) Church was almost always
compromised to the state. The same was true of the Byzantine Church, only much more so. Eusebius
of Caesarea, “herald of Byzantinism” and “founder of political theology” (van der Aalst 1974:59f),
constructed a system in which state and church were united in harmony. He combined various early
traditions about the divine origin and nature of kings into a new synthesis; monotheism and the
monarchy, he suggested, went hand in hand and presupposed each other. In a eulogy on Constantine he
became the first theologian who “clearly stated the political philosophy of the Christian Empire, that
philosophy of state which was consistently maintained throughout the millennium of Byzantine
absolutism” (H. Baynes, quoted in van der Aalst 1974:61f). Jewish monotheism conquered
polytheism; in like manner the Roman monarchy had routed earlier polyarchy. The Christian emperor,
Constantine, was now called to guide the world back to God. In the Byzantine Empire attempts would
time and again be made to let the unity of the empire coincide with the unity of the faith. The
Henotikon of Emperor Zenon (AD 482), the Ekthesis of Heraclius (AD 638), and the Typos of
Constantius II (AD 648) were all measures taken to assure the indissoluble unity of the interests of
church and state (cf :59-62).
In this kind of atmosphere it was to be expected that mission would be as much a concern of the
emperor as of the church. As “imitator of God” the emperor united in himself both religious and
political offices (Hannick 1978:354). The objectives of the state coincided with the objectives of the
church and vice versa, and this applied to mission as well (Stamoolis 1986:56-60). The practice of
direct royal involvement in the missionary enterprise would persist throughout the Middle Ages and,
in fact, into the modern era. The Russian Orthodox mission of the Kiev princes was a political project
and went hand in hand with colonialist expansion northward and northeastward into the interior of
Russia (Rosenkranz 1977:188). Evangelization became virtually coterminous with “Russification”
(Fisher 1982:22).
Does all this imply that we have to pass an altogether negative verdict on the missionary
endeavors of the Orthodox churches? This is frequently what happens, particularly in Western
Protestant circles (an example is Rosenkranz 1977:188-190, 242f). At other times one encounters the
view that there is, at least in modern times, no such thing as mission in Orthodoxy; these churches are,
in one word, non-missionary. Both the negative evaluation and the charge of being non-missionary
are, however, misplaced. Both are, rather, to be ascribed to the absolutization of a specific—in this
case, a Western—definition of what mission is. But it is possible to look at mission from a different
vantage-point. In recent years Christians in other traditions have been helped to appreciate Orthodox
mission thinking particularly by the writings of theologians such as Anastasios of Androussa (in
Greece), Bria (of Romania), and Stamoolis. The Eastern church's contribution to an understanding of
mission is indeed significant.
It is to the Greeks that we owe the intellectual discipline of theology and the classical
formulations of the faith. In the Bible and earliest Christian literature any form of systematization was
virtually absent. The Alexandrian theologian Origen (ca 185 to ca 254, AD) may well be called the
first “systematic theologian” and the first person in whom the Eastern theological paradigm clearly
manifested itself (cf Kannengieser 1984:154-156). Is this development, as well as the emergence of
Christian dogma, only cause for lament? This is what Harnack (1961:17, 21f) suggested when he
said, “Dogma in its conception and development is a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the
gospel.” I submit that this paradigm shift was unavoidable and had a very positive side to it. The
Greeks provided theology worldwide with the array of concepts which were necessary for the
unfolding of a more critical, systematic, and intellectually honest approach in matters of faith (cf van
der Aalst 1974:42). There is certainly a danger here—that of rationalization and intellectualization.
Origen and his colleagues were, however, not interested in intellect for intellect's sake. They held on
to the priority of faith over reason, and undertook rigorous intellectual pursuits precisely for the sake
of the faith. Tough-reasoned argument was necessary, for Christians had to understand their faith in a
pluralistic world. For Origen, then, faith was the reasoning of the religious mind (cf Young 1988:
306f). That Orthodoxy in subsequent centuries became increasingly inflexible, tended to put its
dogma, for all intents and purposes, on a par with biblical truth, and began to think of itself as the
(sole?) “defender of the faith” (cf Bria 1980:6), was indeed unfortunate but is not, in and of itself,
sufficient reason to reject the discipline of academic reflection and careful formulation. For this
legacy bequeathed to us by the Eastern church in its vigorous missionary engagement with the world
of its time we should remain forever grateful.
In Orthodox thinking mission is thoroughly church-centered (cf Nissiotis 1968:186-197;
Anastasios 1989:75, 81-83). This too has its roots in early Eastern theology, where an ever stronger
accent was put on ecclesiology. The conviction gradually grew that the church was the kingdom of
God on earth and that to be in the church was the same as being in the kingdom.
In Orthodoxy, then, the church is the dispenser of salvific light and the mediator of power for
renewal which produces life (cf Nissiotis 1968:195-197). The “ecclesial character” of mission
means “that the Church is the aim, the fulfilment of the Gospel, rather than an instrument or means of
mission.” The church is part of the message it proclaims (Bria 1975:245). Mission is not to be
regarded as a function of the church; the Orthodox reject “such instrumentali stic interpretations of the
Church.” Neither is mission the proclaiming of some “ethical truths or principles”; it is “calling
people to become members of the Christian community in a visible concrete form.” “The Church is
the aim of mission, not vice versa.” It is “ecclesiology which determines missiology” (Bria 1980:8).
For this reason the basic elements of an answer to the question about the Orthodox understanding of
mission must be looked for in its “doctrine and experience of the Church” (Schmemann 1961:251).
Mission is “part of the nature of the church”; it is not related exclusively to the church's
“apostolicity,” “but to all the notae of the church” (Bria 1986:12f; cf Stamoolis 1986:103–127).
Such views have far-reaching consequences not only for the understanding, but also for the
practice of mission. Under no circumstances may any individual, or group of individuals, embark
upon a missionary venture without being sent and supported by the church. If “the Church as such is
mission” (V. Spiller, quoted in Stamoolis 1986:116), then mission refers to a collective task. “Christ
must be preached within His historical reality, His Body in the Spirit, without which there is neither
Christ nor the Gospel. Outside the context of the Church, evangelism remains a humanism or a
temporary psychological enthusiasm” (N. A. Nissiotis, quoted in Bria 1975:245).
This leads us to the next crucial element in Orthodox missiology: the place of the liturgy in
mission. “Liturgy is the key to the Orthodox understanding of the Church, and therefore the importance
of liturgy for the Orthodox viewpoint on evangelism cannot be overemphasized” (Bria 1975:248).
Precisely because the church is part of the message, no evangelism or mission should take place
“without a definite reference to its spiritual and sacramental existence” (:245). The Orthodox thus
subscribe to a “eucharistic ecclesiology” (:247). In the words of K. Rose (1960:456f—my
translation),
As church of the Easter light and liturgy it sees its main task in enlightening the pagans who are to receive God's light through
the liturgy. The major manifestation of the missionary activity of the Orthodox church lies in its celebration of the liturgy. The
light of mercy that shines in the liturgy should act as center of attraction to those who still live in the darkness of paganism.

In the Orthodox perspective mission is thus centripetal rather than centrifugal, organic rather than
organized. It “proclaims” the gospel through doxology and liturgy. The witnessing community is the
community in worship; in fact, the worshiping community is in and of itself an act of witness (Bria
1980:9f). This is so, since the eucharistic liturgy has a basic missionary structure and purpose (cf
Stamoolis 1986:86-102) and is celebrated as a “missionary event” (Bria 1986: 17f).
If mission is a manifestation of the life and worship of the church, then mission and unity go
together. Unity and mission (or, for that matter, mission and unity), may never be regarded as two
successive stages; they belong inextricably together. In the words of Nissiotis:
“Mission and unity” mean that no missionary can proclaim the one gospel without being profoundly aware of the fact that he is
bringing the historical community of the church and without feeling driven to this witness by the Holy Spirit, on the basis of his
personal membership in the one apostolic church (quoted in Rosenkranz 1977:468—my translation).

For the Orthodox the Great Schism of 1054 had far-reaching consequences. Whereas the Catholic
Church continued with its missionary outreach without interruption, particularly after the fifteenth
century, and Protestant churches and mission agencies each embarked on their own outreach to those
who lived beyond the borders of historical Christendom, the Orthodox could not easily do the same.
When the unity was broken, “the Orthodox Church saw its mission altered from evangelism to a
search for Christian unity” (Stamoolis 1986:110, summarizing the views of Metropolitan James of
Melita). Other Orthodox spokespersons would adopt a less rigid view; instead of arguing that since
the Schism mission has become impossible, they would rather say that, in our time, unity is the goal of
mission (cf Voulgarakis 1965; Nissiotis 1968:199-201; Bria 1987). For the Orthodox, both unity and
mission are ecclesial acts, acts of the whole people of God; they form one ecclesiological reality. In
fact, catholicity is another name for mission in unity in the Orthodox perspective (Bria 1987:266).
Since the church is Christ's body, and there is only one body, the unity of the church is the unity of
Christ, by the Spirit, with the triune God. Any division of Christians is therefore “a scandal and an
impediment to the united witness of the church” (Bria 1986:69). Tragically, from the Orthodox point
of view, we only too often convert people not to this one church, the body of Christ, but to our own
denomination, at the same time imparting to them the “poison of division” (Nissiotis 1968:198).
In its deepest sense mission, in the Orthodox perspective, is founded on the love of God. If we
have to identify one text from Scripture that epitomizes the Orthodox position on mission, it would be
John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him
should not perish but have eternal life.” God's love manifests itself in kenosis, that is, in “inner,
voluntary self-denial which makes room to receive and embrace the other to whom one turns”
(Voulgarakis 1965:299-301). And if God's love, disclosed in sending Christ, is the “theological
starting-point” of mission (Yannoulatos 1965:281-284; cf Voulgarakis 1987:357f), the same love
should find expression in his emissaries; it is because they are motivated by love which, like God's
love in Christ, manifests itself in kenosis, that they go to those outside the Christian fold. God is not
regarded primarily, as he often is in Western theology, as the righteous One who judges the sinful and
unrighteous; it is his love rather than his justice that is highlighted. Because God loves humankind he
wrought his plan of redemption. “God is the seeking God, looking for the lost sheep; the loving
Father, awaiting the Prodigal's return” (Stamoolis 1986:10).
If the ground of mission in the perspective of the Eastern church is love, then the goal of mission is
life (Lampe 1957:30f). Like love, life is a Johannine theme (cf, once again, Jn 3:16). Eastern
Orthodox theology is clearly stamped more by the Johannine than by the Pauline tradition. Christ did
not come primarily to put away human sin, but to restore in humans the image of God and give them
life. The content of proclamation is “a word of life unto life” (Voulgarakis 1987:359f; cf Schmemann
1961:256). It is in this respect that the characteristic Orthodox doctrine of theosis acquires
missionary significance. People are not called simply to know Christ, to gather around him, or to
submit to his will; “they are called to participate in his glory” (Anastasios 1965:285). The “from one
degree of glory to anothef’ (2 Cor 3:18) “defines the process by which the faithful are sanctified
during the present life, until the Parousia” (:286). Theosis is union with God rather than deification;
it is “a continuing state of adoration, prayer, thanksgiving, worship, and intercession, as well as
meditation and contemplation of the triune God and God's infinite love” (Bria 1986:9). The formula
“heaven on earth,” familiar to every Orthodox, expresses the actualization in this world of the
eschaton, “the ultimate reality of salvation and redemption” (Schmemann 1961:252; cf Bria
1987:267). Theosis refers to the rescinding of the loss of the image of God and the transformation of
the old existence into a new creature, into new, eternal life (cf Rosenkranz 1977:243, 470; Lowe
1982:200-204; Greshake 1983:61-63). Where this takes place, mission has attained its end.
Salvation or life as the goal of mission is not restricted to human beings. It has a “cosmic
dimension” (Bria 1976:182; 1980:7; Anastasios 1989:83f)”. Not only humanity, but also the whole
universe “participates in the restoration and finds its orientation again in glorifying God.” The cross
“sanctifies the universe” (Anastasios 1965:286). God has not only reconciled individuals but also
“the world” to himself (2 Cor 5:19), even the cosmic forces (Col 1:20). The whole of creation is in
the process of becoming ekklesia, the church, the body of Christ (Bria 1980:7). This anakephalaiosis
or “recapitulation” of the universe has not taken place yet but is eagerly expected; it is, truly, an
eschatological reality (cf Anastasios 1965:286). For the mission of the church this means that there is,
now already, a “messianic movement outside the church,” which suggests “an urgent need for the
church to increase its understanding of those outside her influence” (Bria 1980:7). As Schmemann
puts it,
State, society, culture, nature itself, are real objects of mission and not a neutral “milieu” in which the only task of the Church is
to preserve its own inner freedom, to maintain its “religious life”…In the world of incarnation nothing “neutral” remains, nothing
can be taken away from the Son of Man (1961:256, 257).

The observations made in the previous paragraph may help to throw light on yet another aspect of
Orthodox missiology, namely, its understanding of mission as involvement in society. The Orthodox
are frequently viewed as a conservative and contemplative body who wish to escape the difficult
realities of history. Rose (1960:457) remarks that Orthodox mission has no “program for the world,
for civic life.” Viewing the Orthodox understanding of mission from the perspective of the activism of
Western Christianity it may indeed appear as though mission in this tradition has no relation
whatsoever to the realities of suffering and injustice in the world. Also, there certainly were periods
in Orthodox history when the church restricted itself, consciously or unconsciously, to “religious”
matters in the narrow sense of the word (Anastasios 1989:70).
On the whole, however, this interpretation of Orthodoxy rests on a misunderstanding of its
character; small wonder that, in recent years, Orthodox spokespersons have gone out of their way to
clarify their position on this matter. It is, however, crucial to recognize that the Orthodox churches’
involvement in society can never be divorced from the practice and experience of their worship.
There are two complementary movements in the eucharistic rite: the Eucharist begins as the
movement of ascension toward the throne of God, and it ends as the movement of return into the
world. “The Eucharist is always the End, the sacrament of the parousia, and yet, it is always the
beginning, the starting point: now the mission begins” (Schmemann 1961:255). In recent years it has
become customary in Orthodox circles to refer to this second movement as “the liturgy after the
Liturgy” (cf Bria 1980:66–71). Both forms may be termed liturgy, worship of God, because both are
different yet complementary ways of serving and following him. The mission of the church into the
world, the second liturgy, rests upon the radiating and transforming power of the Liturgy. The Liturgy
makes the liturgy possible. The eucharistic celebration therefore has to nourish the Christian life not
only in its private sphere, but also in the public and political realm; it is impossible to separate the
two. According to John Chrysostom (who shaped the order of the eucharistic liturgy usually
celebrated by the Orthodox) there is, in addition to the Eucharist, also “the sacrament of the brother,”
namely, the service which believers have to offer outside the place of worship, in public places, on
the altar of their neighbor's heart (:71).

THE FIRST PARADIGM SHIFT: AN INTERIM BALANCE

There can be little doubt that the Greek theology of the early centuries AD and its contemporary heir,
Eastern Orthodoxy, represent a paradigm very different from that of primitive Christianity. Origen, in
particular, was responsible for a renewal of theology which in many respects was on a par with what
Paul did in respect of the tradition he had received (Kannengieser 1984:162); in this respect Origen
paved the way for a truly innovative interaction between contemporary culture and Christian self-
understanding (:163). The Christian tradition was reworked from the bottom up, and the end result
was a way of theologizing that made sense to the Greek mind. In the course of time the Greeks would
impart this vision to many other peoples as well: Slavs, Russians, and various Asian groups (cf
Hannick 1978), but in such a manner that the essential Byzantine imprint would remain to this day.
In a very real sense this paradigm shift was inevitable. The fledgling Christian movement could
either remain within the confines of the small Jewish world or branch out into the ecumene. And
Hellenism was the cultural form of the world into which Christianity was first introduced. Therefore
Hellenization was equivalent to universalization (van der Aalst 1974:185). There was no real
alternative to it, if only because it offered the church a more spacious frame of reference (:188f). And
even if we may argue that the Hellenization of the faith went too far, we should be reminded of the
fact that the church resisted not only the extreme Semiticization of Christianity by the Ebionites,
Montanists, and others, but also extreme Hellenization. The “heretics” were often repudiated
precisely because they were more hellenistic than the “orthodox” (:188). This was eminently true of
Gnosticism. In its opposition to this mortal threat the church, as I have pointed out earlier, held on to
the most fundamental and inalienable elements of the Christian faith: the canonicity of the Old
Testament, the historicity of the humanity of Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The
church did this at a price. It could perhaps have advanced more rapidly throughout the Hellenistic
world by abandoning these convictions. However, it resisted being consumed wholly by the Greek
spirit (cf von Soden 1974:26f; Lampe 1957:18, 21f).
The monastic movement was another saving element in the patristic and later in the Orthodox
missionary tradition. Supremely, however, it has been the simple faith of thousands of ordinary
believers that, to this day, gives expression to an essentially missionary dimension in Orthodoxy. The
Letter to Diognetus 5f, written around AD 200, presents us with an illustration of this dimension at
an early stage of Hellenistic Christianity:
Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humankind either in locality or in speech or in customs. For they dwell not
somewhere in cities of their own, neither do they use some different language, nor practice an extraordinary kind of life…While
they dwell in cities of Greeks and barbarians…and follow the native custom in dress and food and the other arrangements of life,
yet the constitution of their own citizenship, which they set forth, is marvelous, and confessedly contradicts expectation. They
dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners…Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland is
foreign…They find themselves in the flesh and yet they live not after the flesh. Their existence is on earth, but their citizenship is
in heaven. They obey the established laws, and they surpass the laws in their own lives…War is waged against them as aliens
by the Jews, and persecution is carried on against them by the Greeks, and yet those who hate them cannot tell the reason for
their hostility. In a word, what the soul is in a body, this the Christians are in the world…(they) are kept in the world as in a
prison-house, and yet they themselves hold the world together.

The portrayal is admittedly a bit romantic, if not utopian, and yet it can hardly be doubted, even
from a secular history point of view, that it was the Christians who had “held the world together.”
Harnack's meticulous account of their “gospel of love and charity” (1962:147–198) offers an
unparalleled testimony to the remarkable witness of life of ordinary Christians in the first three
centuries. We shall never be able fully to fathom the significance of this dimension for the mission of
the church, yet there can be no doubt that it slowly but surely transformed the entire empire—
something Christianity was not able to do further to the East, in non-Roman Asia.
Against this background the characteristic elements of Byzantine and Orthodox mission, which I
tabulated above, may be appreciated. The vigorous intellectual discipline was necessary, precisely
for the sake of the mission of the church, in a society submerged in syncretism and relativism. The
church as sign, symbol, and sacrament of the divine in human life helped to lift people's hearts to God
in a world resigned to fatalism and the capriciousness of the gods. The eucharistic liturgy was the
place where the faithful were given nourishment which helped them cope with the vicissitudes of life
and also equipped them for the “liturgy after the Liturgy.” The unity of the church-in-mission not only
gave credibility to the church in the context of a divided society, but also signified—to a polytheistic
world—that God was one and sovereign. The grounding of mission in the love of God rather than in
his justice was a revolutionary message in a world where the gods were ultimately apathetic and
unconcerned. The identification of new life as the substance of salvation added an unprecedented
quality to the existence of Christians and also served to focus their eyes on what God was still going
to put into effect.
Protestants, in particular, are challenged by Orthodox missiology (cf Fueter 1976:passim). They
are challenged with respect to their overly pragmatic mission structures, their tendency to portray
mission almost exclusively in verbalist categories, and the absence of missionary spirituality in their
churches, which often drastically impoverishes all their commendable efforts in the area of social
justice.
Still, the Orthodox missionary paradigm is not without its difficulties. It went beyond mere
inculturation and contextualization of the faith. The church adapted to the existing world order,
resulting in church and society penetrating and permeating each other. The role of religion—any
religion—in society is that of both stabilizer and emancipator; it is both mythical and messianic. In
the Eastern tradition the church tended to express the former of each of these pairs rather than the
latter. The emphasis was on conservation and restoration, rather than on embarking on a journey into
the unknown. The key words were “tradition,” “orthodoxy,” and “the Fathers” (cf Küng 1984:20), and
the church became the bulwark of right doctrine. Orthodox churches tended to become ingrown,
excessively nationalistic, and without a concern for those outside (Anastasios 1989:77f).
In particular, Platonic categories of thought all but destroyed primitive Christian eschatology
(Beker 1984:107f). The church established itself in the world as an institute of almost exclusively
other-worldly salvation. Faith in the promises of Christ still to be fulfilled tended to make room for
faith in Christ's already accomplished eternal reign, which could henceforth be experienced and
manifested only in the cultic-sacramental context of the liturgy. The apocalyptic gospel, which had
fervently anticipated God's intervention in history, was replaced by a timeless gospel according to
which the delay of the parousia made no vital difference. The element of urgency and crisis was
wiped out by the idea of gradually drawing nearer to perfection, through various “pedagogical”
phases. Taking their cue from the incarnation of Christ, theologians such as Irenaeus, Clement of
Alexandria, and Origen described t\he believer's ascent from the moment of rebirth, through stages, up
to the final point where he or she sees God (cf Beinert 1983: 199–202; Küng 1984:53). When all is
said and done, this world and its history are not real; it is illusory (Rose 1960:457). The consequence
is that, even where believers do get involved in the contingencies of historical life, they do so with
reservations and often with a bad conscience (cf Anastasios 1989:69f).
 Chapter 7

The Medieval Roman Catholic

Missionary Paradigm

CHANGED CONTEXT
The above title refers to the medieval theological paradigm. However, although shaped during the
Middle Ages, this paradigm did not disappear after the sixteenth century; as a matter of fact, traces of
it can still be found in contemporary Catholicism. Even so, its heyday was the medieval period.
By and large, I shall use the term Middle Ages as referring to the period between 600 and 1500.
Broadly speaking, one might say that the epoch commenced with the papacy of Gregory the Great and
the emergence and early successes of Islam; it ended with the Muslim seizure of Constantinople
(1453) and the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery. The end of the Middle Ages also
signalled the era in which Europe had indisputably become Christian: a few centuries earlier, it had
only been outwardly Christian, just the “shadow of the Christian symbol” having been cast over it (cf
Baker 1970:17–28).
For at least three centuries the Christian church had been stamped almost exclusively by the Greek
spirit. Gradually, however, a new mode of Christianity, which bore another imprint, began to
develop. Here the dominant language was no longer Greek, but Latin. This external difference
concealed many others, which were not immediately apparent. A thousand years after the new
religion was first introduced, in 1054, those dissimilarities would lead to the great schism between
the churches of the East and the West.
In the Byzantine church—as has been argued in the previous chapter—redemption was a process
in which human nature, by means of a “pedagogical” progression, was taken up into the divine; in the
West, the emphasis was on the ravages of sin and the reparation of fallen humanity through a crisis
experience. The theology of the Eastern church was incarnational; its emphasis lay on the “origin” of
Christ, on his preexistence. The theology of the Western church was staurological (from stauros,
Greek for “cross”); it emphasized the substitutionary death of Christ for the sake of sinners (cf Beinert
1983:203–205).
These are only some areas in which each of the two segments of the church went its own way.
Given such dissimilarities in accent and interpretation it was only to be expected that the Western
mission would differ in many respects from its Eastern counterpart and develop a character of its
own. Naturally, there were also many similarities; in fact, these outweighed the differences. For one
thing, the Latin church, like the Greek and unlike the Hebrew, had a preference for the visual rather
than the auditive. It was interested in the correct formulation of doctrine and could match the
Byzantine fathers in their expertise at defining and redefining the tenets of the faith; the thirteen
“definitions” of the nature of God, agreed upon by the Fourth Lateran and First Vatican Councils
(1215 and 1870) give ample proof of this. The focus, throughout, was on conceptualizing and
systematizing doctrines handed down to the church, frequently in a completely a historical manner.1
Strictly speaking, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) preceded the Middle Ages, at least if one takes
this period to have begun around 600. Still, this “first truly Western man” (Stendahl 1976:16) may
indeed be regarded as the inaugurator of the medieval paradigm (Küng 1987:258) and the one who
placed an indelible stamp on the entire subsequent Western theological history, both Catholic and
Protestant. This is to be attributed not only to his genius, but also to his personal history and to the
political circumstances in which he found himself. The Christian movement scarcely had the
opportunity of adjusting itself to the new religio-political dispensation introduced by Constantine
(313) and the proscription of all religions except Christianity by Theodosius (380), when Alaric and
his Gothic hordes conquered and sacked Rome in 410. To the entire Mediterranean world Rome was
the symbol of civilization, order, and stability. To see it defeated by barbarians could not but create a
profound sense of despair and uncertainty. The man of the hour was Augustine who, with his
monumental De Civitate Dei, succeeded in showing a way forward.
In addition to the crisis the empire faced, Augustine had to respond to two other major crises
which were precipitated, respectively, by the Donatists in North Africa and an English monk,
Pelagius. These three circumstances and Augustine's reaction to them, influenced deeply by his own
personal history, were to shape both the theology and the understanding of mission of subsequent
centuries.

THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF SALVATION

I turn, first, to Augustine's refutation of Pelagianism, since this had the most far-reaching impact on
medieval mission and also reveals more clearly the basic difference between the Byzantine and Latin
branches of the church.
Pelagius, who was active in Rome at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, took a
decidedly optimistic view of human nature and of the human capacity to attain perfection. While God
gets the ultimate credit for having made us so that we are capable of doing what we should, “we have
the power of accomplishing every good thing by action, speech and thought.” Humanity did not need
redemption, only inspiration. This meant that Pelagius did not regard Christ as Savior who died for
the sins of humankind, but as master and model whom we are called to emulate. To this Augustine
responded with the doctrines of original sin and of predestination. The image of God, impaired by
human sin and weakness, could not—as Clement, Origen, and other Greek theologians had taught—be
restored by means of a drawn-out, upward pedagogical process culminating in theosis; rather, the
terrible reality of total human depravity demanded a radical conversion experience and an encounter
with the irresistible grace of God in Christ.
Augustine became the first Christian theologian to take Paul's teaching on justification by faith
seriously. Our sinful condition is so perilous that only God can change it, without any contribution
from us. We are, in this, totally powerless, delivered into Satan's hands, until we are ransomed from
his dominion. Since our dilemma is a human one, only a human can satisfy God's demands in this
respect; but since all human beings are themselves sinners, only somebody who is sinless and both
human and divine can meet this condition and satisfy God vicariously on behalf of other human
beings. This is in fact what Christ did, through his vicarious death on the cross. It happened once for
all, and now holds true objectively; all that remains is for individuals to appropriate this salvation
subjectively—something that only the elect can do. This is, however, not a gloomy or pessimistic
message, but one of indescribable joy; after all, only against the somber background of human
depravity can the light of God's grace shine truly brilliantly. So one can never talk about human guilt
and sin without referring simultaneously to forgiveness, renewal by Jesus Christ, and redemption (cf
Greshake 1983:19).
Essentially, Augustine wrestled with an anthropological rather than a theological problem: On
what basis does a person find salvation? It was through the lens of this question that he read Paul and
found in him the answer. Paul's grappling with the particular salvation-historical problem of Israel's
refusal to embrace Christ in faith—an issue so prominent in Romans and Galatians (cf Chapter 4
above)—was reapplied by Augustine to a more general and timeless human problem, that of the
individual wrestling with his or her conscience. One of the classic ways in which Augustine put this
was his saying, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” Elsewhere he wrote, “I
desire only to know God and my soul, nothing else.” The human soul is lost, therefore it is the human
soul that has to be saved. Seven centuries after Augustine, Anselm wrote Cur Deus Homo? (Why Did
God Become Human?), and his reply to this question was similar to Augustine's: God became human
in order to save human souls that are hurtling to destruction. Not the reconciliation of the universe but
the redemption of the soul stands in the center. This redemption is understood to be both otherworldly
and individualistic, in contrast not only to much of the Old and New Testament, but also of the
traditional religions of Europe, which were exclusively this-worldly and communal (cf Kahl
1978:33).
The theology of Augustine could not but spawn a dualistic view of reality, which became second
nature in Western Christianity—the tendency to regard salvation as a private matter and to ignore the
world (cf Greshake 1983:20, 69). The hope of the kingdom of God was transformed into a hope of
“heaven,” the place or state of life in which those who have done good will be rewarded and which
was to be won as a prize for endurance. To this end an ever more refined penitential practice was
developed. Believers were given guidance as to proper ways of conducting spiritual self-examination
so as to be better able to analyze their consciences and detect moral weaknesses in their spiritual
makeup. Positively, this development helped to give rise to a tradition of integrity and moral vitality
in Western Christianity.
Paradoxically, the spiritualization and introversion which began with Augustine also paved the
way for large-scale externalization. The cultic-institutional smothered the personal-ethical, since it
was the official church which not only sanctioned the penitential practice, but also defined exactly
which human thoughts and actions were sins; in addition, of course, only the church, through its
ministrations, could guarantee restitution. In this process soteriology tended to get divorced from
christology and to be subordinated to ecclesiology. Grace rendered itself autonomous as an ecclesial
sacrament. With this remark we are, however, already broaching the subject of Augustine's
controversy with the Donatists, to which I now turn.

THE ECCLESIASTICIZATION OF SALVATION

The Donatist movement originated in North Africa, where it had an extensive following during the
fourth and fifth centuries. The schism from the Catholic Church was precipitated by the consecration
of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage in 311/312. It was alleged that Philip, one of his consecrators, had
been a “traitor”2 during the persecutions under Diocletian, which had immediately preceded
Constantine's accession to the throne. Those who protested, called Donatists, stood in the tradition of
Tertullian, who had taught that the “seven deadly sins” (idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery,
fornication, false-witness, and fraud) were unforgivable; a church leader guilty of any of these should
therefore not be allowed to stay in office, let alone participate in the consecration of a bishop. His
participation could, in fact, render such a bishop's office invalid.
The Donatists thus expressed the anger and despair of those who saw an absolute contrast between
the gospel of Christ and the worldliness of the church; true believers should have nothing to do with
the world and with a church which allowed itself to become contaminated by the world. The true
church must keep itself totally unblemished and perfect; if this does not happen, the sins of individual
members and office-bearers will spread like an infection through the entire church. The Donatists
were theologically orthodox and, at least formally, stood more explicitly than Augustine in the ancient
tradition of strict moral discipline; they also insisted on an absolute separation of church and state (cf
Schindler 1987:296–298).3
Augustine passionately opposed the Donatists. In doing so, he did not attempt to declare the church
and its office-bearers free of any of the sins of which the Donatists accused it. One who enters the
church, he said in his Instructing the Unlearned, “is bound to see drunkards, misers, tricksters,
gamblers, adulterers, fornicators, people wearing amulets, assiduous clients of sorcerers,
astrologers…The same crowds that press into the churches on Christian festivals also fill the theatres
on pagan holidays.” In the final analysis the difference between Christians and others lies in one thing
only: the former are members of the church, the latter not.
There is an important positive side to Augustine's view on this issue, over against that of the
Donatists: Augustine insisted that the church was not a refuge from the world but existed for the sake
of a world that was hurting. All, including “good church people,” were sinners, and the self-
righteousness of the Donatists might be more vicious than the sins of others. There is, however, also a
more negative side to his stance: authority and holiness were regarded as adhering in the institutional
church whether or not these moral and theological qualities were in evidence. Since the worldwide
church, founded by the apostles, was the only true church, whoever left it was self-evidently wrong;
those who severed their links with the Catholic Church also severed their relationship with God.
Visible unity and salvation went hand in hand (cf Schindler 1987:297). As recent as 1919 Josef
Schmidlin, the father of Catholic missiology, could say that, for Catholics, the issue of the legitimacy
of mission is resolved “by the doctrine of the visible church and its hierarchical structure” (quoted in
Rosenkranz 1977:235—my translation). In the final analysis mission was based on the divinity,
holiness, and immutability of the church; in the classical Catholic view mission was, after all, the
“self-realization of the church” (cf Rütti 1974:229, 230).
This understanding of mission and the church has its roots in Cyprian's famous dictum, extra
ecclesiam nulla salus (“there is no salvation outside the [Catholic] church”). The phrase was born
during a particularly stormy conflict in the first half of the third century, in the same geographical area
where Augustine had to refute the claims of the Donatists two centuries later. Soon, however, the
contingent character of Cyprian's utterance was forgotten and the phrase applied universally to the
Roman Catholic Church. The papal bull Unam Sanctam of Pope Boniface VIII (1302), for instance,
endorsed Cyprian's phrase quite literally and closed with the assertion, “We declare, state, define,
and proclaim that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the
Roman pontiff.” In similar vein the Council of Florence (1441) stated, “Not only pagans but also
Jews, heretics, and schismatics will have no share in eternal life. They will go into the eternal fire
which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they become aggregated to the Catholic
Church before the end of their lives.” Even as recent as 1958 Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Ad
Apostolorum Principis, could say that the church of Christ is “one flock under one supreme shepherd.
This is the doctrine of the Catholic truth from which no one may digress without ruining his or her
faith as well as salvation.”
This naturally had important consequences for the understanding of mission. Pope Benedict XV—
addressing himself, in his encyclical Maximum Illud (1919), to the growth of Protestant missions—
wrote, “It would, after all, be a disgrace if, in this respect, the heralds of the truth would be defeated
by the servants of error.” The Catholic world should therefore not tolerate a situation in which
Catholic missions struggle financially, “whereas those who spread error have abundant financial
resources at their disposal.” In Rerum Ecclesiae (1926), Pope Pius XI likewise lamented the
“generosity of non-Catholics who liberally support those who spread their false teachings.” Again, in
the encyclical Evangelii Praecones (1951), Pius XII encouraged the work done in Catholic schools,
particularly their obligation to refute the errors of non-Catholics and Communists.4
Another important consequence of the ecclesiasticization of theology and mission in Cyprian,
Augustine, and others was the fundamental change in the understanding of baptism. Augustine himself
still emphasized the spiritual formation of converts and their careful preparation for baptism
(Rosenkranz 1977:118). In the subsequent period, however, the actual performance of the baptismal
rite often tended to become more important than the individual's personal appropriation of the faith.
The responsibility of the missionary was reduced to bringing the “convert” to the baptismal font as
soon as possible (cf Reuter 1980:76). Once baptized, the new Christian became an object of
ecclesiastical discipline; by means of the practice of penance and other rules he or she could
gradually be conformed to the Christian pattern.
Eventually Thomas of Aquinas would summarize this practice as one for which the sole condition
was “a simple, obedient acknowledgment of that which the church has always taught, even if any
more precise knowledge of this teaching is lacking” (quoted in Kahl 1978:49—my translation). Since
the act of baptism conferred a character indelibilis on the person baptized, nobody could ever undo
his or her baptism; even where somebody had resisted baptism, he or she became afidelis (believer).
Augustine applied this interpretation of baptism to the Donatists. They could not, even if they
wished, cancel their baptism. It would therefore be completely in order to “persuade” them to
surrender their erroneous beliefs and return to the Catholic Church. The charge cogite intrare
(“compel [people] to come in”—Lk 14:23) was applied to them and executed with the help of the
state. Augustine believed that state action against schismatics was not persecution but a just
disciplina (cf Erdmann 1977:9, 237; Rosenkranz 1977:139). By means of this disciplinary exercise
the Donatists were to be re-catholicized. Augustine had no qualms about applying pressure on them,
although he consistently refused to employ the same methods in respect of pagans (cf Erdmann
1977:9; Rosenkranz 1977:86). Eight centuries later his view on this matter would find its classical
expression in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (II-2, q.10, a.8):
Unbelievers who have never accepted the faith, Jews and pagans, should under no circumstances be coerced into becoming
believers; but heretics and apostates should be forced to fulfil what they have promised.

Even Raymond Lull, who rejected every attempt at forcing Muslims and pagans to convert to the
Catholic faith, supported the idea of a crusade, within the boundaries of Christendom, against heretics
(cf Rosenkranz 1977:136f).

MISSION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

We have to say more about the long-term effects of Augustine's teachings on the unfolding of the
missionary idea and practice during the Middle Ages and beyond. Here not only his controversy with
Pelagius and the Donatists, but also his monumental twenty-two volume work, De Civitate Dei (City
of God) is of crucial importance. It was written between 413 and 427 in the wake of the sacking of
Rome by the Goths (410). By this time the Roman Empire had been officially Christian for almost a
century. Christians tended to look upon the empire, and particularly its capital, as being as
unconquerable and permanent as the Catholic Church. They were therefore traumatized by the success
of the Goths. Jerome wailed, “If Rome can perish, what can be safe?” Adherents of Rome's
traditional religions, on the other hand, were quick to allege that the sacking of the city was the result
of the empire's acceptance of Christianity as official religion and its outlawing of Rome's ancient
religions. Augustine decided to respond to both the despondency of the Christians and the claims of
the pagans.
This is not the place to discuss, in any detail, Augustine's rather disorderly argumentation. Only
some aspects of the City of God, insofar as they have a bearing on mission, will be singled out.5 In
volume 15 of City of God he wrote:
I classify the human race into two branches: the one consists of those who live by human standards, the other of those who live
according to God's will…By these two cities I mean those two societies of human beings, one of which is predestined to reign
with God from all eternity, the other doomed to undergo eternal punishment with the Devil.

These two “societies” or “cities” exist simultaneously and side by side. The first, the civitas Dei
or city of God, endures forever. It will, however, never be realized fully on earth. It manifests itself in
this world as communio sanctorum (communion of saints), as a pilgrim people, en route to its
heavenly and eternal home.
It is important to note that Augustine did not identify the empirical church with the civitas Dei, the
reign or kingdom of God. In subsequent centuries, however, the idea of the “city of God” fused
virtually completely with that of the empirical Roman Catholic Church; the extension of the latter as a
matter of course meant the realization of the first. This inevitably led to an overemphasis on the
empirical church as a Roman institution with papal and curial selfhood and authority.
Augustine's view of the earthly city is, however, not entirely negative. Unlike the Donatists he did
not construct an absolute separation between the sacred and the profane. He neither regarded the
Roman Empire as God's instrument for salvation (as many of his naive contemporaries tended to do),
nor did he declare it to be totally demonic. He acknowledged that the citizens of the civitas terrena
were striving toward the ideal form of human society where perfect justice and peace might reign. At
the same time he was convinced that this ideal state would never be attained in the here and now, but
only in the coming kingdom of Christ.
More important, he declared the earthly city to be subservient to the city of God. It was the
spiritual society that was supreme; the other was subordinate. Where the earthly ruler was himself a
Christian, as was the case with the Roman Empire, this ministry of the earthly city to the heavenly
was, if not absolutely guaranteed, at least to be expected. The notion of the supremacy and
independence of the spiritual power over against the political authorities was herewith firmly
established and would, in subsequent centuries, find its organ of expression above all in the papacy.
In the superb intellectual edifice of Thomas Aquinas, reason was lower than faith, nature than grace,
philosophy than theology, and the state (emperor or king) than the church (the pope) (cf Küng
1987:223f). In his famous bull, Unam Sanctam (1302), Boniface VIII declared that both the
“temporal sword” and the “spiritual sword” had been entrusted to the church.
Theoretically, then, Augustine's magnum opus intended to safeguard, once and for all, the primacy
of the spiritual kingdom and to render it unassailable. In practice, however, Augustine compromised
the church to the state and to secular power, also in the church's understanding and practice of
mission, not least since the intimate link between throne and altar caused the Catholic Church to
become a privileged organization, the bulwark of culture and civilization, and extremely influential in
public affairs. The relationship between church and state was actually one of give and take. The
regime would be blessed by the church, in exchange for which the state guaranteed to protect and
support the church. Of special importance in this respect was the letter Charlemagne wrote to Pope
Leo III in 796. His task as emperor, wrote Charlemagne, was to defend the holy church of Christ
everywhere against the assault of pagans and the ravages of unbelievers. The pope's responsibility,
like that of Moses, was to intercede for the emperor and his military campaigns, “so that, through your
intercession and God's guidance and grace, the Christian people may always and everywhere be
victorious over the enemies of Christ's name” (cf Schneider 1978:227–248). The relationship
between emperor and pope, during the early Middle Ages, was never completely relaxed; there was
almost always a silent struggle for supremacy. At the same time each knew that he needed the other.
What was true at the highest level was true at the local level as well; every bishop or priest was
dependent on the goodwill and support of the authorities, every local ruler required the approval of
the church. The church's dependence upon the imperial power, also in its mission work, was both a
necessity and a burden (cf Löwe 1978:203, 218f).
An accompanying phenomenon was the tendency to lump together the enemies of the church and the
state. After 755 Pippin, and subsequently Charlemagne, often referred to their subjects as fideles Dei
et nostri (“those who are faithful to God and us”). Naturally, if loyalty to the state meant loyalty to the
church, the obverse was also true: opposition to the state was the same as opposition to the church. It
is therefore not strange that, from 776 onward, the annals of the empire regularly referred to
Charlemagne's Saxon enemies as those who were fighting adversus christianos (“against the
Christians”) (cf Schneider 1978: 234f).
Looking back, from our vantage-point today, on this entire development, we may wish to condemn
it unconditionally. How could the Christian church have allowed itself to become so compromised
over against the state? We might, however, do well to take note of Lesslie Newbigin's thoughts on the
subject:
Much has been written about the harm done to the cause of the gospel when Constantine accepted baptism, and it is not difficult
to expatiate on this theme. But could any other choice have been made? When the ancient classical world…ran out of spiritual
fuel and turned to the church as the one society that could hold a disintegrating world together, should the church have refused
the appeal and washed its hands of responsibility for the political order?…It is easy to see with hindsight how quickly the church
fell into the temptation of worldly power. It is easy to point…to the glaring contradiction between the Jesus of the Gospels and
his followers occupying the seats of power and wealth. And yet we have to ask, would God's purpose…have been better served
if the church had refused all political responsibility? (1986:100f).

What I have said above should therefore not be regarded as judgment on Augustine and his legacy.
Given the historical alternatives he and others had before them, they were the only choices that made
sense to them. And it is appropriate to ask whether our choices, in similar circumstances, would have
been any better, even if they were different. Let us keep this in mind as we move on to a matter that is,
from our perspective, even more controversial.

INDIRECT AND DIRECT “MISSIONARY WARS”

Given the circumstances, it was to be expected that, in the course of time, various methods of
coercion would be employed to facilitate conversion to the Catholic Church. I have already
mentioned that Augustine appeared to have had few scruples about sanctioning pressure in his
attempts at “re-catholicizing” Donatists. The procedure according to which those who had never been
Christians were to be converted unfolded in a different manner, however. At the outset Augustine
distinguished rigidly between the two categories of people: pagans were never subject to the
discipline of the church and could therefore not be regarded as apostates, who had to be returned to
the fold by force.
 It was not something entirely different when Gregory the Great encouraged the use of
blandishments rather than threats to persuade Jewish peasants on church lands to convert to
Christianity (cf Markus 1970:30f). The Franconian rulers of the eighth century were likewise
prepared to reward converts (cf Löwe 1978:223f; Schneider 1978:234f). “Encouragement” can,
however, take different forms, and increasingly it became customary to use miscellaneous forms of
coercion to induce people to embrace the Christian faith. Once again Augustine was the one who
paved the way for a new approach. He originally regarded coercive measures inadmissible, or at
least inappropriate. After 400, however, he gradually came to the conviction that external pressure
had a role to play. To provide the individual with the opportunity to flee eternal damnation could not
be wrong and certainly justified the use of pressure. We should, however, keep in mind that Augustine
confined coercive measures to fines, confiscation of property, exile and the like. The killing or
maiming of dissidents was out of the question (cf also Swift 1983:140–149).
In this mood Gregory the Great, two centuries after Augustine, admonished landowners in Sardinia
about the fact that their peasant laborers had not yet been baptized; he suggested that the peasants
were to be “so burdened with rent that the weight of this punitive exaction should make them hasten to
righteousness.” Those who would not listen to reason, if they were slaves, were “to be chastised by
beating and torture, whereby they might be brought to amendment.” Free men were to be jailed. All of
this, of course, was for the non-believers’ own good (cf Markus 1970:31–33).
Since its inception in the late Middle Ages, international law tended to deny non-Christians the
same rights as Christians. They only had “natural rights” as “creatures of God.” Once baptized,
however, they were granted the same political rights as their fellow Christians (cf Kahl 1978:60–62).
Once again the argument was that it was to their own advantage, also materially and politically, to
become Christians.
These developments paved the way for what Erdmann calls “indirect missionary war” (1977:10f,
105), and, in the course of time, also for direct missionary wars. During the first three centuries the
church did not sanction war. The issue then was not whether or not war might be justified, but
whether individual Christians might participate in any war—a question answered in the negative by
Tertullian, Origen, and others (cf Swift 1983:38–46, 52–60). The early Christians “knew only
profane wars, conducted for the good of the state, and doubted the propriety of participating in them”
(Erdmann 1977:5, following Harnack).
After Constantine the arguments began to change—first in the East, where the contradiction
between war and Christianity was soon no longer felt. In the Western church the evolution of a new
attitude to this issue was slower and more haphazard, partly because the Latin church never became
quite so dependent as the Greek upon the emperor; but here, too, a fundamental shift would manifest
itself in the course of time.
It was Augustine who began to charter the course of a Western ethic of war, and who exercised the
most lasting influence in shaping its complexities. He grappled with the socio-ethical problem of war
on a much more basic level. While stating that war was always evil, he argued that there was
nevertheless such a thing as “just waf’ (bellum justum); it could, however, be “just” only on one side,
and had to be conducted for self-defense. Augustine's teaching became the cornerstone of European
theory of war. For a millennium its validity was unquestioned, even if not faithfully adhered to.
Aggressive attitudes were condemned. The purpose of a just or defensive war was peace, not
conquest (cf Erdmann 1977:6–8).
Bellum justum was not at first a war of religion, but a moral war. However, it harbored the seeds
of the idea of a religious or holy war. Augustine's own attitude toward the Donatists and their forceful
reconversion already reveals the fundamental ambivalence of his position. In addition to “just war”
he spoke of “war sanctioned by God” (bellum Deo auctore), in which the two parties could not be
judged according to the same yardstick: one side fought for light, the other for darkness; one for
Christ, the other for the devil (Erdmann 1977:8–10).
Augustine did not yet envision the possibility of a religious war against nonChristians (cf Kahl
1978:62). It was Gregory the Great who moved Christian doctrine in this dubious direction, where
the defense of Christendom and, often, its extension were held to be the foremost duties of the ruler.
Now, for the first time, an aggressive war for the sake of the expansion of Christianity was both
justified and practiced. Even in his case, however, the principle involved was “only” that of the
indirect missionary war (Erdmann 1977:10–12, 105). The immediate aim of the war was the
subjugation of the pagans, which was regarded as the basis for subsequent missionary activity under
the protection of the state; peaceful proclamation of the gospel could now take place (:10; Rosenkranz
1977:62f).
The dividing line between “indirect” and “direct” missionary war was, however, very thin. It was
only a matter of time before the second would evolve from the first. Augustine's contrast of the city of
God and the city of the devil lingered on in people's minds; it was not long before it would be used to
characterize the combats of Christians against pagans. As for Augustine's sharp distinction of
offensive from defensive war, who was going to decide whether any given war was the one or the
other? And since Christian rulers were expected to defend Christendom, could they not also actively
further it by means of military campaigns? This is the way Charlemagne saw the situation in his time,
so he set out forcibly to subdue the Saxons to the Catholic Church.
There was, of course, another side to this as well, and for Charlemagne this was the more
important: in the climate of the time it was inconceivable for a Christian monarch to rule over pagan
people. Thus the enforced baptism of the Saxons was a natural consequence of their defeat at the
hands of Charlemagne. They had to be baptized, even against their will if they refused, because they
had been conquered. Subjection to the stronger God followed subjection to the victorious ruler as a
matter of course. Once baptized, the Saxons faced execution if they reverted to their traditional faith;
it was inconceivable that they could be politically loyal if their religious loyalty was doubted (cf
Schneider 1978:234, 242f). The same pattern would repeat itself elsewhere: Olav Tryggvason's
violent Christianization of Norway in the late tenth century, the subjugation, in the twelfth century, of
the Wends who lived east and north of the Elbe, and so forth (cf Rosenkranz 1977:110, 118).
Even so, these aggressive and frequently brutal “direct missionary wars” remained the exception.
The old ambiguity of the church's attitude toward war restrained it from encouraging this as a normal
practice (cf Erdmann 1977:4, 12, 97; Kahl 1978:58f, 68). Such a concept, Erdmann rightly notes,
suffered from an internal contradiction: the attitude needed in war against an opponent is so basically different from missionary
preaching that no army can ever be inspired by a vision of evangelical service (:11f).

In light of this, it is really impossible to regard the crusades of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries
as “missionary wars,” even if many ordinary Christians saw them in this light. Pope Urban II
however, had no thought of converting the Muslims by military action; rather, Islam was a menace that
had to be defeated before it overwhelmed the church (cf Kedar 1984:57–74, 99–116, who has traced
the medieval discussions on the relationship between the crusades and the possibility of a mission to
Muslims).
In the process, the precept that killing even in a just war occasioned guilt (a tenet that was basic to
Augustine's thinking) came increasingly under pressure (Erdmann 1977:238). One church leader after
another—Brun of Querfurt, Mane-gold of Lautenbach, Bernard of Constance, Bonizo of Sutri, and
others—who had persistently paved the way for the First Crusade (1096), differentiated less and less
between pagans on the one hand and heretics or apostates on the other. Anybody belonging to any of
these categories could be killed with impunity and, in Manegold's judgment, the one who killed such a
person would incur no guilt but rather deserved praise and honor. The killing of a heathen or apostate,
it was now suggested, was exceptionally pleasing to God (references in Erdmann 1977:12, 236, 238).
One person stood out above all those who prepared the theological climate for the crusades:
Anselm of Lucca. Far more subtle in his arguments than Brun, Bonizo, or Manegold, it was he who, in
the realm of theory, anticipated the crusades. None of his contemporaries supplied the Gregorian
practice of war with a more elevated theological justification, particularly since some of his
arguments sounded so genuinely “Christian,” for instance his rejection of revenge and of any joy over
the defeat of the enemy, and his suggestion that acting against the wicked was not really persecution
but an expression of love (cf Erdmann 1977:245–248). These and many other teachings irresistibly
led up to the announcement of the First Crusade by Urban II and the enthusiastic response of the
masses, who reportedly shouted in unison, “Deus vult!” (“God wills it!”).
By this time—the high Middle Ages—the structure of human society was finally and permanently
ordered and nobody was to tamper with it. Within the divinely constituted and sanctioned order of
reality, different social classes were to keep their places. God willed serfs to be serfs and lords to be
lords. An immutable, God-given “natural law” ruled over the world of people and things. Everybody
and everything was taken care of. All sensible persons were Catholic Christians, and the monopoly of
the church, also as regards secular affairs, was undisputed. No “pagan” groups remained in Europe,
although there were, here and there, isolated pockets of “heretics” or “schismatics.”
Jews constituted a special case. Due to the influence of Paul's and Augustine's theology they were
sometimes tolerated and even protected by law (cf Linder 1978:407–413). The scrupulous concern
for justice and humanity toward Jews, which characterized the pontificate of Gregory the Great, was
also remembered in some quarters (cf Markus 1970:30). Sometimes Jews, because of their erudition,
even aroused the admiration of Christians (Linder 1978:409). More often, however, they were held
responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus and persecuted. Insurrections were brutally quelled and
synagogues razed. Even where they were not explicitly persecuted, they were discriminated against
(:400–407). Prominent theologians, such as Chrysostom, held fiery sermons against them. Where they
were allowed to stay, they were generally subject to special rules and restrictions (:421–429, 432–
437).
In the early Middle Ages efforts at converting Jews were not dissimilar to those practiced in
respect of heretics. Those who refused were sometimes threatened with expulsion, or expropriation,
or even execution (Linder 1978:420). Gregory the Great pleaded for Jews to be brought to the
Christian faith “by mildness and generosity, by admonition and persuasion,” by the “sweetness of
preaching” and not by “threats and pressure” (quoted in Markus 1970:30; cf Linder 1978:420f). But
Gregory's practice and strategy remained the exception. Waves of forced conversions swept through
the Roman Empire from the fourth to the eleventh century (Linder 1978:414–420). Voluntary “group
conversions” to the Catholic faith also took place, however; a case in point was the conversion of
Jews in Crete in 431 (:414). Sometimes individual Jews also embraced Christianity (:420–439), a
step inordinately complicated by the fact that such Jewish Christians were often looked down upon by
other Christians and ostracized by fellow-Jews (:430f). By the late Middle Ages Jews were facing
unusual difficulties, as the church became increasingly impatient and intolerant; large communities of
European Jewry were forcibly resettled or pillaged (:441).
 COLONIALISM AND MISSION
During most of the Middle Ages Europe was, for all intents and purposes, a self-contained island, cut
off from the rest of the world by Islam. To the East, Islam had penetrated into Central Asia, from
where it formed an unbroken chain via Western Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa into Spain
and as far as the Pyrenees. Even the crusades did not succeed in breaching this barrier. And Islam
was, apparently, still in the ascendancy. In 1453 Constantinople, long the spiritual center of the
Eastern church, fell to the Muslims. In the meantime, however, an increasing restlessness made itself
felt in Europe, a restlessness which culminated in the Age of Discovery. Vasco da Gama opened a sea
route to India, thus outflanking the Muslims, and Columbus “discovered” the Americas. These events,
at the close of the fifteenth century, inaugurated a completely new period in world history: Europe's
colonization of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. This did not happen by accident. In
fact, it can be argued that the roots of the later conquistadores and the entire phenomenon of the
European colonization of the rest of the world lay in the medieval teachings on just war (Kahl 1978:
66). On closer inspection one might even say that colonization was the “modern continuation of the
Crusades” (Hoekendijk 1967a:317—my translation). In the words of M. W. Baldwin (quoted by
Fisher 1982:23), “Although Crusade projects failed, the Crusade mentality persisted.”
Of course, colonization of non-Christian peoples by Christian nations predated modern
colonialism by many centuries, but those exploits were launched by Europeans to Europeans, and in
each case the vanquished peoples soon embraced Christianity and were assimilated into the dominant
culture. Now, however, European Christians met people who were not only physically, but also
culturally and linguistically very different from them. One of the most appalling consequences of this
was the imposition of slavery on non-Western peoples. In the ancient Roman Empire as well as
medieval Europe slavery had little to do with race. After the “discovery” of the non-Western world
beyond the Muslim territories this changed; henceforth slaves could only be people of color. The fact
that they were different made it possible for the victorious Westerners to regard them as inferior.
Spain and Portugal introduced slavery and were soon emulated by other emerging colonial powers
(Protestant ones as well), who all claimed a share in the lucrative trade in human bodies. In 1537 the
pope authorized the opening of a slave market in Lisbon, where up to twelve thousand Africans were
sold annually for transportation to the West Indies. By the eighteenth century Britain had the lion's
share of the slave market. In the ten years between 1783 and 1793 a total of 880 slave ships left
Liverpool, carrying over three hundred thousand slaves to the Americas. It has been estimated that the
number of slaves sold to European colonies amounted to between twenty and forty million. And all
along the (assumed) superiority of Westerners over all others became more and more firmly
entrenched and regarded as axiomatic.
Perhaps rather incongruously, the colonial period also precipitated an unparalleled era of mission.
Christendom discovered with a shock that, fifteen centuries after the Christian church was founded,
there were still millions of people who knew nothing about salvation and who, since they were not
baptized, were all headed for eternal punishment. “Fortunately,” the first two colonial powers and
their rulers were stalwart champions of the Catholic faith and could be trusted to do their best to
bring the message of eternal redemption to all, even to the slaves. So, hard upon the discoveries of the
sea routes to India and the Americas, Pope Alexander VI (in the Papal Bull Inter Caetera Divinae)
divided the world outside of Europe between the kings of Portugal and Spain, granting them full
authority over all the territories they had already discovered as well as over those still to be
discovered. This bull (like its predecessor, Romanus Pontifex of Nicolas V [1454], which had dealt
with privileges granted to Portugal only) was based on the medieval assumption that the pope held
supreme authority over the entire globe, including the pagan world. Here lies the origin of the right of
patronage (patronato real in Spanish, padroado in Portuguese), according to which the rulers of the
two countries had dominion over their colonies, not only politically, but also ecclesiastically.
Colonialism and mission, as a matter of course, were interdependent; the right to have colonies
carried with it the duty to Christianize the colonized.
This right to “send” ecclesiastical agents to distant colonies was so decisive that the activities and
designation of the envoys were to derive their names from this action; their assignment came to be
called “mission” (a term first used in this sense by Ignatius of Loyola), and they themselves
“missionaries” (cf Seumois 1973:8–16). Thus far in this book I have used the word “mission” as
though it had always been the conventional designation for the activity of proclaiming and embodying
the gospel among those who had not yet embraced it. My use of the term has been, however,
anachronistic. The Latin word missio was an expression employed in the doctrine of the Trinity, to
denote the sending of the Son by the Father, and of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son. For
fifteen centuries the church used other terms to refer to what we subsequently came to call “mission”:
phrases such as “propagation of the faith,” “preaching of the gospel,” “apostolic proclamation,”
“promulgation of the gospel,” “augmenting the faith,” “expanding the church,” “planting the church,”
“propagation of the reign of Christ,” and “illuminating the nations” (cf Seumois 1973:18). The new
word, “mission,” is historically linked indissolubly with the colonial era and with the idea of a
magisterial commissioning. The term presupposes an established church in Europe which dispatched
delegates to convert overseas peoples and was as such an attendant phenomenon of European
expansion. The church was understood as a legal institution which had the right to entrust its
“mission” to secular powers and to a corps of “specialists”—priests or religious. “Mission” meant
the activities by which the Western ecclesiastical system was extended into the rest of the world. The
“missionary” was irrevocably tied to an institution in Europe, from which he or she derived the
mandate and power to confer salvation on those who accept certain tenets of the faith.
The ruling by which the kings of Spain and Portugal were made “patrons” of missionary expansion
in their colonies was not without its difficulties. The propagation of the faith and colonial policies
became so intertwined that it was often hard to distinguish the one from the other. The dioceses
founded in the colonies were given bishops approved by the civil authorities. These bishops were not
allowed to communicate directly with the pope; in addition, papal decrees had to be endorsed by the
king before they could be made public and acted upon in the colonies. The rulers of Spain and
Portugal soon regarded themselves not merely as representatives of the pope, but as immediate
deputies of God (cf Glazik 1979:144–146).
The church could not tolerate this indefinitely. The pope's response to the colonial missionary
policies of Spain and Portugal was the formation, in 1622, of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda
Fide (Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith). With the establishment of Propaganda
Fide, the Roman Catholic Church's entire ministry among non-Catholics was firmly and exclusively
assigned to the pope. During the entire preceding period mission was the responsibility of bishops or,
more generally, a task taken upon themselves by monastic communities (to which I shall return)—one
did not become a missionary on the basis of ecclesiastical authorization but “under the urge of the
Holy Spirit,” or (as Francis of Assisi formulated it in chapter 12 of his Rule) “on the basis of divine
inspiration.” All this had now changed, first by granting Spain and Portugal the right of patronage,
secondly by the creation of Propaganda Fide. “The privilege of evangelizing the newly-discovered
lands (became) the exclusive monopoly of the Roman See” (Geffré 1982:479). The diocesan bishops
in the “mission countries” were replaced by titular bishops who had to perform ecclesiastical
functions on behalf of the pope. They were therefore referred to as Vicarii Apostolici Domini, or
“vicars apostolic” (van Winsen 1973:9–11).
This meant, of course, that the colonial churches did not have the autonomy of the dioceses in the
“Christian world.” They were, in a sense, subsidiaries of Rome, “missions,” churches of the second
class, daughter churches, immature worshiping communities, frequently the objects of Western
paternalism. The vicars apostolic possessed only delegated authority, since the pope alone was the
real ordinary. He would, on the basis of the Jus commissionis (right of commissioning) “entrust” new
mission territories to a specific missionary order or congregation. In this way rivalries between
missionaries from different nations and orders were precluded (cf Glazik 1979:145–149).
As a matter of fact, this arrangement applied not only to the new colonial territories, but also to the
areas in Europe which Rome had recently “lost” to Protestantism. The activities of the Jesuit
settlements in the northern German Protestant region was, for instance, sometimes referred to as
“mission.” Another example: The Roman Catholic dioceses in Scandinavia were supervised by
Propaganda Fide until well into the twentieth century. The Propaganda's activities concerned not only
“pagans” but all “non-Catholics.” As recently as 1913, Theodor Grentrup advocated the view that
mission was “that part of ecclesiastical ministry which concerned itself with the planting of the
Catholic faith among non-Catholics” (quoted in Rzepkowski 1983:101—my translation). Another
way of putting it is to say that the activities of Propaganda Fide extended to wherever the Roman
Catholic Church was not yet or no longer the dominant confession and where its hierarchical
structures were not properly established. This is the view that surfaces clearly in a 1908 document on
the reorganization of Propaganda Fide. According to the document Sapienti Consilio, the main
distinction of a missionary situation is the absence of the hierarchy: “Where the sacred hierarchy has
not been constituted, a missionary condition persists” (quoted in Rzepkowski 1983:102—my
translation). This definition was taken over virtually unchanged in the 1917 Book of Canon Law. The
entire missionary enterprise was defined in terms of what Rütti calls a “dogmatic-institutional
arrangement” (1974:228). Rütti continues:
Generally speaking, we have here the principle of sacred-hierarchical mediation. Mission is understood as the mediation of faith
(or rather credal truths) and grace. The church as sacral-hierarchical institution is the real bearer and agent of this mediation.
Mission is therefore performed by means of a system of authorization and delegation. Juridical authority is the constitutive
element of the legitimacy and missionary quality of words and deeds. All other forms of Christian missionary activity are
reduced or subordinated to this pattern of authoritative commissioning…The mediatory structures of mission are therefore in
essence structures of reproduction and expansion; consequently mission manifests itself as the “self-realization of the church”…
The absence of the church or, alternatively, the various degrees of its presence, determines the primary criteria for the
missionary evaluation of a given historical situation (:228f—my translation).

THE MISSION OF MONASTICISM

The picture I have thus far painted of what I have termed the medieval missionary paradigm is, on the
whole, not a pleasant one. For more than a thousand years, says Hoekendijk, Europe played the
crusader by maneuvering itself ideologically into a very special position and lording it over the rest
of the world (1967a:317). And yet, an authentic Christian culture evolved not only in Europe but also
far beyond its borders. The Christian might say that, surely, this was due to the fact that God had
overwhelmed human selfishness, shortsightedness, bigotry, and arrogance. Still, it is important to
realize that, in spite of what meets the critical human eye, the missionary contribution of the Middle
Ages was not only something to lament. I refer again to Newbigin's remark quoted earlier in this
chapter. The point is that medieval Christians responded to the challenges they faced in the only way
that made sense to them. The interiorization and the ecclesiasticization of salvation, as we identified
these processes in Augustine, became vehicles of authentic evangelization and avenues along which
the gospel entered Europe and made sense to the European mind. In similar manner the missionary
wars, direct or indirect, and the entire project of Western colonization of the rest of the world were—
in spite of all the horrors that went with them and even if we, today, find them totally
incomprehensible and indefensible—expressions of a genuine concern for others, as Christians
understood their responsibility in those years.
Less ambivalent, however, was the monastic movement and its contribution to the Christianization
of Europe. We may perhaps even say that, humanly speaking, it was because of monasticism that so
much authentic Christianity evolved in the course of Europe's “dark ages” and beyond. Only
monasticism, says Niebuhr (1959:74) saved the medieval church from acquiescence, petrifacfion, and
the loss of its vision and truly revolutionary character.
For upward of seven hundred years, from the fifth century to the twelfth, the monastery was not
only the center of culture and civilization, but also of mission (cf Dawson 1950:47). In the midst of a
world ruled by the love of self, the monastic communities were a visible sign and preliminary
realization of a world ruled by the love of God. Therefore any study not only of medieval culture in
general but also of the evolution of the medieval missionary paradigm must give an important place to
the history of Western monasticism. Henceforth Europe—this “north-western prolongation of Asia”
(Dawson 1952:25)—would no longer simply be a geographical concept, but an idea, a historical
quality, “the West,” an entity steeped in Christianity, shaped and constituted by monasficism and the
Christian mission (cf Dawson 1952:passim; Kahl 1978:17f, 20).
Monasticism, as I have indicated in the previous chapter, has its origins in the Eastern church,
particularly in Egypt, where it flourished long before it really took root in the West. When it did
evolve in the West, it differed from Eastern monasticism in several respects. For one thing, Eastern
monasticism was, on the whole, an individual affair. The solitary ascetics of the desert often shunned
community life, and perhaps this was one of the reasons why so many of them were in the course of
time lost to Orthodoxy. Western monasticism, by contrast, was essentially communal and carefully
structured. The monastery was, preeminently, a “school of the service of the Lord.” This certainly had
to do, among other things, with the Roman penchant for order and discipline. A second, and
potentially even more important, difference lies in the fact that Eastern monasticism was very
dependent on the state, due to the monastic legislation of Justinian. Western monasticism, by contrast,
was far more independent of government interference, perhaps because, as Dawson (1950:51)
suggests, “the state was too weak and too barbarous to attempt to control the monasteries.” The great
legislators here were not, as in the East, the emperors, but monks like Benedict and Gregory the
Great.
At the first glance, the monastic movement appears to be a most unlikely agent of mission. The
communities were certainly not founded as launching pads for mission. They were not even created
out of a desire to get involved in society in their immediate environment. Rather, they regarded
society as corrupt and moribund, held together only by “the tenacity of custom.” Society was suffering
from the “slow fever of consumption,” but it was still powerful enough to “seduce and deprave”;
serious people should therefore do all they could “to escape from its presence and its sway”
(Newman 1970:374). So monasticism stood for the absolute renunciation of everything the ancient
world had prized. It was “flight from the world, and nothing else” (:375). Monasticism's one object,
immediate as well as ultimate, “was to live in purity and die in peace” (:452), and to avoid anything
that could “agitate, harass, depress, stimulate, weary, or intoxicate the soul” (:375).
 In light of the above it may therefore sound preposterous to suggest that monasticism was both a
primary agent of medieval mission and the main instrument in reforming European society. That this
was indeed what happened was due, first, to the high esteem in which monks were held by the general
populace. After the Constantinian era had commenced and the supreme test of martyrdom was no
longer demanded, the ascetics had come in the eyes of the Christian world to hold the position the
martyrs had previously occupied. The eighth century Irish Cambrai Homily refers to three types of
martyrdom—white, green, and red—which symbolized three stages of Christian perfection: white
martyrdom refers to asceticism, green to contrition and penance, whilst red martyrdom signified total
mortification for Christ's sake (cf McNally 1978:110); the monks in particular were regarded as the
expression of uncompromising Christian life and as the ones who “kept the walls” of the Christian
city and repelled the attacks of its spiritual enemies (Dawson 1950:48).
If monks had only been ascetic and eccentric in their behavior, however, they would not have won
the devotion and admiration of the people in the way they did. Thus, secondly, their exemplary
lifestyle made a profound impact, particularly on the peasants. Their conduct was epitomized in the
words of the Celtic monk Columban (543–615), “He who says he believes in Christ ought to walk as
Christ walked, poor and humble and always preaching the truth” (quoted in Baker 1970:28). The
monks were poor, and they worked incredibly hard; they plowed, hedged, drained morasses, cleared
away forests, did carpentry, thatched, and built roads and bridges. “They found a swamp, a moor, a
thicket, a rock, and they made an Eden in the wilderness” (Newman 1970:398). Even secular
historians acknowledge that the agricultural restoration of the largest part of Europe has to be
attributed to them (:399). Through their disciplined and tireless labor they turned the tide of
barbarism in Western Europe and brought back into cultivation the lands which had been deserted and
depopulated in the age of the invasions. More important, through their sanctifying work and poverty
they lifted the hearts of the poor and neglected peasants and inspired them while at the same time
revolutionizing the order of social values which had dominated the empire's slave-owning society (cf
Dawson 1950:56f).
Third, their monasteries were centers not only of hard manual labor, but also of culture and
education. After the existing educational institutions had been swept away by the barbarian invasions,
the old tradition of learning found a refuge in the monastery. In an age of insecurity, disorder, and
barbarism, the monastery embodied the ideal of spiritual order and disciplined moral activity which
in time permeated the entire church, indeed, the entire society. Each monastery was a vast complex of
buildings, churches, workshops, stores, and almshouses—a hive of activity for the benefit of the
entire surrounding community (cf Dawson 1950:50f, 55, 68f). The citizens of the heavenly city were
actively seeking the peace and good order of the earthly city.
There was a fourth way, less easily put into words, in which the monastic movement made a
lasting impression on the medieval world, particularly the peasants. I am referring to the monks’
patience, tenacity, and perseverance. Wave after wave of invasions swept over Europe, as one
warlike barbarian people after the other gained the upper hand. Saracens, Huns, Lombards, Tarfars,
Saxons, Danes—all of these attacked the unsuspecting peasants and destroyed the monasteries. But
monasticism possessed extraordinary resilience and recuperative power. Ninety-nine out of a hundred
monasteries could be burnt down and the monks killed or driven out, writes Dawson,
and yet the whole tradition could be reconstituted from the one survivor, and the desolate sites could be repeopled by fresh
supplies of monks who would take up again the broken tradition, following the same rule, singing the same liturgy, reading the
same books and thinking the same thoughts as their predecessors (1950:72; cf Newman 1970:410f).
 The monks knew that things took time, that instant gratification and a quick-fix mentality were an
illusion, and that an effort begun in one generation had to be carried on by generations yet to come, for
theirs was a “spirituality of the long haul” and not of instant success (Henry 1987:279f). Coupled
with this was their refusal to write off the world as a lost cause or to propose neat, no-loose-ends
answers to the problems of life, but rather to rebuild promptly, patiently, and cheerfully, “as if it were
by some law of nature that the restoration came” (Newman 1970:411).6
All these attitudes and activities were, in a profound sense of the word, missionary. Putting it
differently (and drawing on a distinction suggested by Newbigin 1958:21, 43f, and Gensichen
1971:80–95): Although the monastic communities were not intentionally missionary (in other words,
created for the purpose of mission), they were permeated by a missionary dimension. Even without
knowing it and without intending it, their conduct was missionary through and through. Small wonder
then that, increasingly, their implicitly missionary dimension began to spill over into explicit
missionary efforts.
To illustrate this point I turn, first, to Irish (or Celtic) monasticism (cf McNally 1978:91–115). In
some respects it was the Irish monks who contributed most to creating the tradition of monastic
learning and educational activity after the decline of the Byzantine Empire (cf Dawson 1950:58).
Columban (543–615), in particular, brought to new life the monasticism of the late Merovingian age,
and almost all the great monastic founders of the seventh century were his disciples or influenced by
him (:63). However, behind the founding of monasteries in far-away places (Irish monasteries
stretched from Skellig Michael, off the west coast of Ireland, right across continental Europe as far as
Kiev in Russia), lies something else—the Irish love of roaming. In Christian circles, this Wanderlust
manifested itself in novel ways. First, it became an expression of ascetic home-lessness. The monks
undertook journeys to distant places as part of their discipline of penance, and for the sake of their
own salvation. Irish monasticism tended to reveal a more austere and uncompromising spirit than its
English counterpart; for them peregrinatio, pilgrimage, became a way of pushing their renunciation to
extreme limits. But the pilgrim must help others he meets on their journeys, so that the concept of
pilgrimage often merged into that of mission—even if both pilgrimage and mission remained
subordinate to the spiritual perfection of the monk (cf Walker 1970:42; Rosenkranz 1977:93f, 102;
Prinz 1978:451–460).
Benedictine monasticism shared with its Celtic counterpart a strong eschatological emphasis, a
pronounced moral seriousness, and a profound interest in spiritual perfection. The Rule of St
Benedict was, however, much more down to earth, and in the course of time virtually replaced the
more austere rule of the Celtic monk, St Columban. Benedict (480–547) also put a greater emphasis
on the Christian life as being in the service of magnifying God's name. Manual labor was as much
religious ministry as prayer, and everything came under the heading U.I.O.G.D.: Ut in omnibus
glorificetur Deus (“That in all things God may be glorified”). “For St Benedict work was never an
end in itself. It must be fitted into the sublime over-all purpose of life: to attain to God by means of
the ‘Lord's service,’ by means of obedience” (Heufelder 1983:211). “To please God alone” (soli Deo
placere) was the ardent desire of this remarkable man, who lived in God velut naturaliter, “as it
were naturally” (:214, 215). The “ascent to God” evolved in twelve successive “degrees of humility”
(on these, cf Heufelder 1983:51–150), and the purpose of his Rule (as formulated by Benedict
himself in chapter 7) was to help the monk arrive
at that love of God which, being perfect, casts out fear; whereby he shall begin to keep, without labor, and as it were naturally
and by custom, all those precepts which he had hitherto observed through fear: no longer through dread of hell, but for the love
of Christ, and of a good habit and a delight in virtue.
 Precisely because of its profoundly spiritual yet at the same time eminently practical nature, the
Benedictine Rule has been “one of the most effective linkages of justice, unity and renewal the church
has ever known” (Henry 1987:274). The Benedictine monastery indeed became “a school for the
Lord's service.” For upward of six centuries these monasteries were the model on which all others
were designed and even to this day they exercise a profound influence. Seeking a life free from
corruption and free from distraction in its daily worship, in which each day, each hour, would have its
own completeness, Benedict introduced a tradition which had far-reaching and enduring
consequences. Few scholars have captured the genius and lasting contribution of Benedictine
monasticism the way the nineteenth century Cardinal Newman had, as the following lengthy quotation
illustrates:
(St Benedict) found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way, not of science, but of
nature, not as if setting about to do it, not professing to do it by any set time or by any rare specific or by any series of strokes,
but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often, till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration, rather
than a visitation, correction, or conversion. The new world he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men
were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing, and building; and other silent men, not seen, were
sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes, and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully deciphered and copied
and re-copied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one that “contended, or cried out,” or drew attention to what
was going on; but by degrees the wooded swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary,
a school of learning, and a city. Roads and bridges connected it with other abbeys and cities, which had similarly grown up; and
what the haughty Alaric or the fierce Attila had broken to pieces, these patient meditative men had brought together and made to
live again (Newman 1970:410).

Once again, this may appear at first glance to have little to do with mission. And yet it has, in a
profound way. The life and ministry of the Benedictine monasteries were, on closer inspection,
missionary through and through; a “missionary dimension” permeated everything the monks did. It
therefore should come as no surprise that the Benedictines also became involved in explicit
missionary enterprises, in an even more significant way than did the Celtic monks. It was Gregory the
Great, himself a Benedictine monk, who first conceived the idea of a planned “foreign mission,”
when he sent the monk Augustine from the heart of Benedictine monasticism in Italy to the kingdom of
Kent on the British isles to initiate a missionary venture among the pagan English. Within a century
after the arrival of Augustine at Canterbury the church was firmly established in England—not only
because of the Benedictine project, but also due to many pilgrimaging Celtic missionaries (cf
Schäferdiek 1978:178).
In the course of time, Benedictine and Celtic monks and their missionary traditions met—and
clashed—in Northumbria: It was the meeting of these two traditions which was to produce the
deepest and most lasting influence on Western culture (cf Dawson 1950:63–66). Out of the
coalescence of these two monastic cultures (in which the Benedictine strand proved to be more
enduring) there stepped forward a missionary-monk, Boniface of Crediton, who acquired the epithet
of “apostle of Germany” and who has been described as “a man who had a deeper influence on the
history of Europe than any Englishman who has ever lived” (Dawson 1952:185), indeed, as “the
greatest Englishman” (cf the title of Reuter 1980).
Boniface was not sent by anyone when he undertook his first journey to Frisia; it was a purely
personal enterprise, a response to an inward call to mission (Talbot 1970:45). And he was not alone.
Other Anglo-Saxon monks, such as Willibrod, Pirmin, and Alcuin of York, either preceded or
followed Boniface to the continent (cf Löwe 1978:192–226). All of them had the explicit conviction
that one should not remain in the monastery for one's own salvation, but save and serve others. For the
Celtic monks preaching and mission were unplanned appendages to their penitential roaming far from
home; for the Anglo-Saxons, however, peregrinatio (pilgrimage) was undertaken for the sake of
mission (Rosenkranz 1977:102). Their travels were not instigated by a penftential urge or a desire for
personal perfection; they were conceived solely as attempts to spread the gospel and bring pagans
within the bosom of the church. It was with this vision before him that Boniface entered his almost
limitless field of labor, the vast country east of the Rhine (cf Reuter 1980:71–94).
There was another respect in which Anglo-Saxon monasticism differed fundamentally from that of
the Irish. The latter was much less “ecclesiastical.” In Ireland, it was the abbot and not the bishop
who was the real source of authority; in fact, the bishop was often a subordinate member of the
monastic community. Anglo-Saxon monasticism and mission were, by contrast, explicitly and
intensely ecclesiastical. Boniface went to Germany with the full blessing and support of his bishop,
Daniel of Winchester, and also maintained his links with his home church (cf Löwe 1978:217). In
addition, he secured the backing of the pope in Rome and, in his later years, was able not only to
expand the Catholic Church through his missionary apostolate, but also, as the officially sanctioned
representative of the pope, to reform and reorganize the Frankish church (Reuter 1980:7686).
Boniface's example was followed by other Anglo-Saxon missionaries, who consciously acted as
emissaries of the pope and whose duty was to incorporate new converts into the only church that
guaranteed salvation (cf Rosenkranz 1977:102).
Rosenkranz aptly summarizes the differences between Celts and Anglo-Saxons in this regard:
“From itinerant preachers the Irish developed into missionaries; the Anglo-Saxons, however,
developed from missionaries into church organizers” (:103—my translation). It is precisely this
dimension of their ministry that brought the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, and indeed the entire
Benedictine and subsequent monastic tradition, into the field of force of the missionary paradigm that
characterized the medieval period and which I briefly described in the earlier part of this chapter.
Still, few of them endorsed any attempt at converting people by force. This was true not only of the
Benedictine (and, naturally, the Celtic) monks, but also of a Franciscan such as Raymond Lull (1232–
1316), who adopted an attitude to Muslims fundamentally different from that of the crusaders of his
time. It was true, supremely, of missionaries such as Antonio de Montesinos and Bartholomé de Las
Casas in the age of the Spanish conquista. Both these priests, and many other unknown ones, became
the champions of the Indians of Latin America, who were ruthlessly oppressed and exploited by the
conquistadores. Against the practice of a military conquest of non-Christians Las Casas posited the
idea of a conquista espiritual. In order to protect Indian converts against the brutality of the Spanish
conquerors, he gathered them into so-called reductions or reserves, where missionaries were the only
Europeans permitted to enter.

THE MEDIEVAL PARADIGM: AN APPRAISAL

I have said, in the previous chapter, that the missionary text of the Greek patristic paradigm was John
3:16. Perhaps one could say that the medieval Roman Catholic missionary paradigm drew, implicitly
or explicitly, on another text—Luke 14:23, “and compel them to come in.” We first encounter this text
in Augustine's controversy with the Donatists, where he argued that it meant that the Donatists had to
be forced to return to the Catholic fold (cf Erdmann 1977:9; Kahl 1978:55f, note 100). In the course
of the Middle Ages the text came to be applied also to the forced conversion (or at least baptism) of
pagans and Jews. Even where no explicit appeal was made to Luke 14:23, the idea as such was
present and operative (cf also Rosenkranz 1977:118).
That this mentality dominated missionary thinking for centuries is confirmed as late as the sixteenth
century, when Las Casas was challenged by opponents of his gentle and non-coercive missionary
approach to explain how he interpreted Luke 14:23. Compellere intrare (“Compel them to come in”),
he responded, did not refer to force but to persuasion; the Indians should be moved by the
proclamation of the word to embrace the faith, and not, proverbially speaking, at gunpoint (cf
Rosenkranz 1977:184). In subsequent centuries the explicit appeal to Luke 14:23 fell into disuse, but
the sentiment behind it persisted well into the twentieth century and some of its missionary
encyclicals. It could not really be otherwise, as long as one argued that there was no salvation outside
the formal membership of the Roman Catholic Church and that it was to people's own eternal
advantage if they could be made to join this body.
In the period under discussion in this chapter, the church underwent a series of profound changes.
It moved from being a small, persecuted minority to being a large and influential organization; it
changed from harassed sect to oppressor of sects; every link between Christianity and Judaism was
severed; an intimate relationship between throne and altar evolved; membership of the church became
a matter of course; the office of the believer was largely forgotten; the dogma was conclusively fixed
and finalized; the church had adjusted to the long postponement of Christ's return; the apocalyptic
missionary movement of the primitive church gave way to the expansion of Christendom (cf
Boerwinkel 1974:54–64).
Augustine embodied the beginning of this paradigm, Thomas Aquinas its climax (cf Küng
1987:258). In his theology the latter assigned everybody and everything in heaven and on earth a
place in the universe, in such a way that the whole constituted a perfect synthesis with no loose ends.
The key to it all was a double order of knowledge and being, the one natural, the other supernatural:
reason and faith, nature and grace, state and church, philosophy and theology, where the first of each
pair refers to the natural foundation, the second to the supernatural “second level.” This framework of
thinking put the seal on the development of the missionary idea in the high Middle Ages which, in
spite of the fact that it experienced several crises, remained essentially intact until the twentieth
century. Since the sixteenth century it manifested itself supremely within the context of the European
colonization of the non-Western world.
Still, our appraisal cannot only be a negative one. Was anything wrong with the idea of attempting
to create a Christian civilization, to shape laws consonant with biblical teaching, to place kings and
emperors under the explicit obligation of Christian discipleship (Newbigin 1986:129)? There can be
no doubt that the paradigm we are exploring in this chapter certainly had its dark side, and yet it had
its positive contributions as well. In addition, one has to realize that it was only logical that things
would develop the way they did after Constantine's victory; it was, moreover, and given the particular
circumstances, inevitable that they would. So, as we criticize our spiritual forebears, and do so
relentlessly, let us remind ourselves that we would not have done any better than they did.
Toward the end of the previous chapter I intimated that the Greek patristic missionary paradigm
has to a significant extent remained unchanged to the present day. The same is not true of the medieval
Roman Catholic paradigm. During the last three decades, in particular, Roman Catholic understanding
of mission has undergone a most profound change. The catalytic event was the Second Vatican
Council (1962–1965). Stransky is right when he says that in recent decades
no other world church or international confessional body has undergone such an intensive examination of consciousness and
conscience about mission as did the Roman Catholic Church during the four years of the Second Vatican Council…Each
Catholic, and the Catholic Church as a whole, was suddenly required to interiorize and carry out the Council's explicitly
theological, pastoral and missionary demands. In hindsight, too much came too soon for too many (1982:344).

Naturally, everything did not happen all of a sudden. The medieval Roman Catholic paradigm was,
in the course of time, succeeded by two others: those of the Protestant Reformation and the
Enlightenment (which will be discussed in the next two chapters). For several centuries, however, the
Catholic paradigm was only marginally affected by these two, so that Hans Küng (1984:23) may be
right when he says that Vatican II had to digest simultaneously not one but two paradigms.
Protestants have a saying, Roma semper eadem est (Rome will forever remain the same). In light
of what has happened in Catholicism since “good Pope John” convened the Second Vatican Council,
this aphorism, so it appears to me, has lost its validity. The current Roman Catholic missionary
paradigm is fundamentally different from the traditional one. I shall return to this in Chapters 11 and
12.
 Chapter 8

The Missionary Paradigm

of the Protestant Reformation

THE NATURE OF THE NEW MOVEMENT

The Roman Catholic paradigm experienced a crisis in the late Middle Ages; in time the forces of
change would usher in a new era (cf Oberman 1983:119-126; 1986:1-17). The person who became
the catalyst in introducing a new paradigm, was Martin Luther (1483-1546).1 Events in his personal
history, together with the climate in which he grew up and the places where he studied, slowly yet
inexorably prepared him for his fateful break with the Catholic Church and the launch of a new epoch.
These events included his attaching himself to the Nominalist school of William Occam, which was
promoted at the University of Erfurt (although he also became a severe critic of Nominalism [cf
Gerrish 1962: 49-113]); the catalytic role of a terrible thunderstorm in the year 1505; his decision to
become an Augustinian monk, the role his teachers played in his formation; his own theological and
scriptural studies; etc (cf Oberman 1983:126-138; 1986:52-80).
In spite of the fact that Luther had been an Augustinian since 1505, Augustine's writings at the time
played virtually no role in the monasteries of the Augustinian Friars. Luther himself stumbled on
Augustine's writings only some years after having joined the order. This helped him to break radically
with the entire edifice of Scholasticism and its total dependence on the philosophy of Aristotle with
the aid of which the Bible and ecclesiastical teachings were interpreted. Luther opposed Aristotle
with Augustine, without, however, capitulating to the latter's Neo-Platonism. What attracted him in
Augustine was the Church Father's genuinely theological approach to the Scriptures (cf Gerrish
1962:138152; Oberman 1983:169). He could therefore say, “The entire Aristotle relates to theology
as shade relates to light.”
The break with Aristotle signified a break with Thomas Aquinas's theological edifice and its two-
story structure, in which faith, grace, the church, and theology occupy the upper, and reason, nature,
the state, and philosophy the lower story. This magnificent synthesis was replaced with an emphasis
on tension, sometimes even opposition, between faith and reason (or grace and reason—cf Gerrish
1962), church and world, theology and philosophy, the Christianum and the humanum, a tension
which has characterized Protestantism, admittedly in a great variety of forms, ever since Luther (cf
Küng 1987:224, 230).
Augustine had rediscovered Paul for the fifth century; Luther rediscovered him for the sixteenth.
And he found the central thrust of Paul's theology in Romans 1:16, where “the gospel” is described as
“the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes,” and even more particularly in the next
verse which reads (in the King James Version), “For therein (that is, in the gospel) is the
righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”
If the “missionary text” of the Greek patristic period was John 3:16 and that of medieval
Catholicism Luke 14:23, then one may perhaps claim that Romans 1:16f is the “missionary text” of the
Protestant theological paradigm in all its many forms. The “rediscovery” of this text and its
significance came to Luther only gradually. His theological studies and particularly his time in the
Augustinian monastery had instilled in him the conviction that he had to placate an angry God by
means of self-mortification and the unceasing performance of good works. Only years later did he
realize that God's righteousness did not mean God's righteous punishment and wrath, but his gift of
grace and mercy, which the individual may appropriate in faith (cf Oberman 1983:135-138, 172-
174). We may not reduce Luther's entire theology to this one “discovery.” In the years 1513 to 1519
he made a whole series of theological breakthroughs. Still, his reinterpretation of Romans 1:16f
remained foundational and the cornerstone or focus of his entire life and theology (:175). He could
never again stop marvelling at the fact that God had accepted him, poor and wretched human being
that he was, mercifully and gratuitously. The last words he scribbled on his deathbed were, “We are
only beggars; that is true.”
It would be erroneous to argue that the Reformation broke with the medieval Catholic paradigm in
every respect. Some elements of Protestantism were in fact a continuation, even if in a new form, of
what typified the Catholic model also. For one thing Protestantism, like Catholicism (if not more so),
insisted on correct formulation of doctrine. It became important, particularly for subsequent
generations, to uphold the Reformation creeds in an absolutely unaltered and unalterable form,
ascribing to them comprehensive validity for all times and settings, and using them as much to exclude
certain groups as to include those considered to be orthodox in faith, while dismissing the possibility
of any future doctrinal development.
Second, the Reformation, except in its Anabaptist manifestation, did not really break with the
medieval understanding of the relationship between church and state. Since Constantine the idea of a
“Christian” state and of the interdependence between as well as the cooperation of church and state
was simply taken for granted. Catholic rulers soon lost their hegemony over certain parts of Europe,
which came to be governed, instead, by Lutheran, Reformed, or Anglican kings and princes. The only
difference was that Protestants seemed to have believed “that since the exercise of absolute power by
the papal church was wrong its exercise by the opponents of the papacy was right” (Niebuhr
1959:29). “Religious” wars were fought to establish which branch of the Christian faith was to be
supreme in a given area. A solution was only achieved at the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the Peace
of Westphalia (1648), where the famous rule cuius regio eius religio (freely translated, “each region
has to follow the religion of its ruler”) was promulgated and overt hostilities brought to an end.
In order to appreciate the Protestant Reformation's unique contribution to the understanding of
mission it is important to highlight the areas in which it differed from the Catholic paradigm. To these
I now turn, identifying five features which may help us to discern the contours of a “Protestant
theology of mission,” features which are to be found in all manifestations of sixteenth-century
Protestantism, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, Zwinglian, or Anabaptist.
1. It is beyond dispute that for the Protestant Reformation the article of justification by faith is the
starting point of theology. It is the article by which the church stands or falls (articulus stantis et
cadentis ecclesiae). This article expresses a basic conviction of the Reformation: there is an
awesome distance between God and his creation, but that God nevertheless, in his sovereignty and by
grace (sola gratia), took the initiative to forgive, justify, and save human beings. To emphasize this is
not to suggest that these convictions were absent in contemporary Catholicism. Rather, what “had
been habitually believed became a matter of urgent conviction; what had been taught as ancient and
accepted doctrine was realized as vital experience; what had been one truth among others became the
truth” (Niebuhr 1959:18). Thus the doctrine of justification became the one on which all other
doctrines hinged (cf Beinert 1983:208). The starting point of the Reformers was not what people
could and ought to do for their salvation but what God had already done in Christ.
 2. Intimately connected with the centrality of justification was the view that people were primarily
to be seen from the perspective of the Fall, as lost, unable to do anything about their condition. The
Reformation broke with Aquinas's view of the soundness and reliability of human reason; it was
corrupt through and through and prone to error. The world was evil, and individuals had to be
snatched from it like a brand from the fire. People had to be made conscious of their lost condition so
as to be brought to repentance and be released from their heavy load of sin. Whereas Catholicism
tended to concentrate on the many sins (plural) of individuals, Protestants emphasized sin (singular)
and the essential sinfulness of humanity (cf Gründel 1983:120). In Anabaptism this understanding of
human nature, which all Reformers shared, wás accentuated even more.
3. The Reformation stressed the subjective dimension of salvation. For Thomas Aquinas theology
was still scientia argumentativa (“reasoned science”); for Luther this was an impossible approach.
God was no longer to be regarded as God in himself (Gott an sich); he was God for me, for us, the
God who, for the sake of Christ, had justified us by grace (cf Beinert 1983:207f; Pfürtner 1984:174f).
Luther's personal history and his existential question, “Where do I find a merciful God?,” played a
role in this, as much as the fact that in the late Middle Ages the individual was beginning to emerge
from the collective. The Reformation “theologized” this development; the question about salvation
became the personal question of the individual. This emphasis would never again disappear; in a
thousand different forms believers would insist on the personal and subjective experience of a new
birth by the Holy Spirit, as well as on the responsibility of the individual over against the group
(Pfürtner 1984:181f).
4. The affirmation of the personal role and responsibility of the individual led to the rediscovery
of the priesthood of all believers (Holl 1928:238; Gensichen 1960:123). The believer stood in a
direct relationship with God, a relationship that existed independent of the church. It is true that in
Luther's own case, and because of the way in which the idea of the priesthood of all believers was
practiced by the Anabaptists, he was forced to fall back on to a more rigid understanding of office: he
denied the validity of any office that was not linked to the existence of geographically defined
parishes and rejected the idea of anybody appealing to the “Great Commission” for the justification of
an extraordinary and non-territorial ecclesiastical office (cf Schick 1943:15-17). Even so, in
reintroducing the concept of the priesthood of all believers he initiated something that could not again
be undone, something that has remained a feature of Protestantism to this day.
5. The “Protestant idea” found expression in the centrality of the Scriptures in the life of the
church. This meant, inter alia, that the word prevailed over the image, the ear over the eye. The
sacraments were drastically reduced, particularly in the Calvinist tradition, and made subordinate to
preaching; as a matter of fact, the sacrament was for Calvin yet another word, a verbum visibile, a
“visible word.” In many Protestant churches the liturgical center was rearranged; the altar (or
communion table) had to make way for the pulpit, which was granted center stage.
These five key features of Protestantism, to which several others could be added, had important
consequences for the understanding and development of mission, positively and negatively.
The first feature—emphasis on justification by faith—could, on the one hand, become an urgent
motive for involvement in mission; however, it could also, as sometimes happened, paralyze any
missionary effort. It could, after all, be argued that, since the initiative remains God's, and God is the
One who sovereignly elects those who will be saved, any human attempt at saving people would be
blasphemy.
Looking at humanity solely from the perspective of the Fall could, on the one hand, safeguard the
idea of the sovereignty of God and thus secure mission as, in the first and final analysis, God's own
work. A preoccupation with human depravity could however also promote such a pessimistic view of
humanity that humans could be regarded, in fatalistic terms, as mere pawns on a chessboard. This
could lead to acquiescence and non-involvement, since there was nothing humans could do to change
reality.
The emphasis on the subjective dimension of salvation could promote the idea of the worth of the
individual—a most important gain over against the Middle Ages in which the individual was often
sacrificed for the sake of the whole. At the same time an overemphasis on the individual could
estrange him or her from the group and destroy awareness of the fact that a human being is by
definition a being-in-community.
To talk about the priesthood of all believers was to reintroduce the idea of every Christian having
a calling and a responsibility to serve God, to be actively involved in God's work in the world, and
thus to break with the concept of “ordinary” believers being mere “minors” and immature “objects”
of the church's ministry. At the same time it carried within itself the seeds of schism, of different
believers interpreting God's will differently and then, in the absence of an ecclesiastical magisterium,
each going his or her separate way (cf Oberman 1986:285). To some extent, at least, the multiplying
of separate churches in Protestantism has to be seen as the running amuck of the principle of the
priesthood of all.
The centrality of the Scriptures as guide for life marked an important advance over the view that
all matters of faith and life are to be ruled, sometimes rather arbitrarily, by popes and councils. At the
same time it opened the way for a “paper pope” replacing the pope in Rome—hardly an advance over
the Middle Ages. Sometimes the Bible was hypostatized and almost regarded as though it was
working on its own. It is important, in this regard, to keep in mind that the Reformers did not yet teach
biblical inerrancy; they were interested, rather, in the cause which Scripture promotes (cf Küng
1987:71f). Luther could say, “God and the Bible are two different things, just as the Creator is
different from the creature” (cf Oberman 1983:234-239—my translation). Lutheran and Reformed
orthodoxy, and not the Reformers themselves, propagated the idea of the “doctrinal unity” of
Scripture, according to which we can deduce one doctrinal system from all biblical sayings (cf Küng
1987:92). This led to the dogma of the verbal inspiration of the Bible, which is found in many
branches of Protestantism. Indeed, in Hans Küng's words (:72f—my translation, emphasis in the
original),
biblicism has remained a permanent danger for Protestant theology. The real foundation of faith is then no longer the
Christian message, nor the proclaimed Christ himself, but the infallible biblical word. Just as many Catholics believe less in God
than in “their” church and “their” pope, many Protestants believe in “their” Bible. The apotheosis of the church corresponds to
the apotheosis of the Bible!

THE REFORMERS AND MISSION

It has often been pointed out that the Reformers were indifferent, if not hostile, to mission. Catholic
scholars in particular judged harshly in this respect. Already in the sixteenth century Robert Cardinal
Bellarmine said, with reference to the Reformers’ manifestly poor missionary record, “Heretics are
never said to have converted either pagans or Jews to the faith, but only to have perverted Christians”
(quoted in Neill 1966a:221).
Gustav Warneck, the father of missiology as a theological discipline, was one of the first
Protestant scholars who promoted this view. We miss in the Reformers not only missionary action, he
said, “but even the idea of missions, in the sense in which we understand them today.” This is so
“because fundamental theological views hindered them from giving their activity, and even their
thoughts, a missionary direction” (1906:9). Luther, for instance, never entered into a polemic against
foreign mission: he simply did not speak of it (:11). What was particularly sad, said Warneck, was
that no lament had been raised by the Reformers about their inability to go out into the world, no word
of either sorrow or excuse that circumstances hindered their discharge of missionary duty (:8f). And
Schick believes that a fundamental affirmation of the missionary duty of the church was simply absent
in the Reformers (1943:14).
More recently, however, several scholars have argued that a judgment such as Warneck's implies
summonsing the Reformers before the tribunal of the modern missionary movement and finding them
guilty for not having subscribed to a definition of mission which did not even exist in their own time.
The assumption here is that the “great missionary century” (the nineteenth) had a correct
understanding of mission; this definition is imposed on the Reformers, who then have to be judged
guilty for not having subscribed to it (Holl 1928; Holsten 1953; cf also Gensichen 1960 and 1961,
and Scherer 1987). Would it not be more appropriate, asks Holsten (1953:1f), to summons the
nineteenth-century missionary enterprise—victim of Humanism, Pietism, and Enlightenment, and child
of the modern mind—before the tribunal of the Reformation and then declare it guilty of perverting
the missionary idea? After all, mission does not only begin when somebody goes overseas; it is not an
“operational theory” (Betriebstheorie), nor is it dependent upon the existence of separate “mission
agencies” (:2, 6, 8).
To argue that the Reformers had no missionary vision, these scholars contend, is to misunderstand
the basic thrust of their theology and ministry. Luther, in particular, is to be regarded as “a creative
and original missionary thinker,” and we should allow ourselves to read the Bible “through the eyes
of Martin Luther the missiologist” (Scherer 1987:65, 66). In fact, he provided the church's missionary
enterprise with clear and important guidelines and principles (Holl 1928:237, 239). The starting
point of the Reformers’ theology was not what people could or should do for the salvation of the
world, but what God has already done in Christ. He visits the peoples of the earth with his light; he
furthers his word so that it may “run” and “increase” till the last day dawns. The church was created
by the verbum externum (God's word from outside humanity) and to the church this word has been
entrusted. One might even say that it is the gospel itself which “missionizes” and in this process
enlists human beings (Holsten 1953:11). In this respect scholars often quote Luther's metaphor of the
gospel being like a stone thrown into the water—it produces a series of circular waves which move
out from the center until they reach the furthest shore. In similar way the proclaimed word of God
moves out to the ends of the earth (cf Warneck 1906:14; Holl 1928:235; Holsten 1953:11; Gensichen
1960:122; Holsten 1961: 145). Throughout, then, the emphasis is on mission not being dependent on
human efforts. No preacher, no missionary, should ever dare to attribute to his or her own zeal what
is, in fact, God's own work (Gensichen 1960:120-122; 1961:5f).
This does not, however, suggest passivity and quietism. For Luther, faith was a living, restless
thing which could not remain inoperative. We are not saved by works, he said, yet added, “But if
there be no works, there must be something amiss with faith” (quoted in Gensichen 1960:123).
Elsewhere he wrote that if a Christian should find himself or herself in a place where there are no
other Christians, “he would be under the obligation to preach and teach the gospel to the erring
pagans or non-Christians because of the duty of brotherly love, even if no human being had called him
to do this” (quoted in Holsten 1961:145—my translation).
Other Lutheran theologians of the Reformation period were less clear on the missionary nature of
theology. Calvin, on the other hand, was more explicit, particularly since his theology was one which
took the believer's responsibility in the world more seriously than Luther's (cf Oberman 1986:235-
239). On the whole, then, there can be little doubt that at least Luther and Calvin as well as some of
their younger colleagues (such as Bucer) propounded an essentially missionary theology. It is also
noteworthy that they broke completely with any idea of using force in Christianizing people. The
emperor's sword, Luther said, had nothing to do with faith and no army may attack others under the
banner of Christ; in fact, if the pope were really the vicar of Christ on earth, he would preach the
gospel to the Turks instead of inciting secular rules to violent attack on them (for references, cf
Warneck 1906:11; Holsten 1953:12f). Coercion has its place in matters of secular power; the church,
however, which serves the reign of God, may not utilize it (Holl 1928:240f).
Still, in spite of what Holl, Holsten, Gensichen, Scherer, and others have identified as the
fundamentally missionary thrust of the Reformers’ theology, very little happened by way of a
missionary outreach during the first two centuries after the Reformation. There were, undoubtedly,
serious practical obstacles in this regard. To begin with, Protestants saw their principal task as that of
reforming the church of their time; this consumed all their energy. Second, Protestants had no
immediate contact with non-Christian peoples, whereas Spain and Portugal, both Catholic nations,
already had extensive colonial empires at the time. The only remaining pagan people in Europe were
the Lapps, and they were indeed evangelized by Swedish Lutherans in the sixteenth century. Third, the
churches of the Reformation were involved in a battle for sheer survival; only after the Peace of
Westphalia (1648) were they able to organize themselves properly. Fourth, in abandoning
monasticism the Reformers had denied themselves a very important missionary agency; it would take
centuries before anything remotely as competent and effective as the monastic missionary movement
would develop in Protestantism. Fifth, Protestants were themselves torn apart by internal strife and
dissipated their strength in reckless zeal and in endless dissensions and disputes; little energy was left
for turning to those outside the Christian fold.
All these factors also applied to the Anabaptists, and yet they were involved in a remarkable
program of missionary outreach (cf Schäufele 1966:passim). It may therefore be of some interest to
compare the two movements and their views on mission. The Anabaptists accepted and at the same
time radicalized Luther's idea of the universal priesthood of all believers. Whereas Luther still
adhered to the concept of territorially circumscribed parishes and of the ecclesiastical office
restricted to such a geographically delineated area, the Anabaptists jettisoned both the idea of any
special and exclusive office and of any Christian limited for his or her ministry to a given area. This
enabled them to regard all of Germany as well as the surrounding countries as mission fields, without
any consideration for boundaries of parishes and dioceses; preachers were, in fact, selected and
systematically sent to many parts of Europe (cf Schäufele 1966:74, 141-182; Littell 1972:119-123).
This “wandering” of Anabaptist evangelists infuriated the Reformers. Orderly ordination and calling
to the ministry were vigorously championed against the Anabaptists; whoever preached without an
appointment was considered a Schwärmer or enthusiast (Littell 1972:115). Likewise, whereas the
Reformers no longer considered the “Great Commission” as binding (cf Warneck 1906:14, 17f; Littell
1972:114-116), no biblical texts appear more frequently in the Anabaptist confessions of faith and
court testimonies than the Matthean and Markan versions of the “Great Commission,” along with
Psalm 24:1 (:109). They were among the first to make the commission mandatory for all believers.
Perhaps the most important difference between the two movements, if we look at them from the
perspective of their views on mission, lays in their conflicting attitudes toward civil authorities.
Anabaptists insisted on absolute separation between church and state and on nonparticipation in the
activities of government. This naturally meant that church and state could under no circumstances
whatsoever cooperate in mission. The Reformers, on the other hand, could not conceive of a
missionary outreach into countries in which there was no Protestant (Lutheran, Reformed, etc)
government. It is therefore significant that the only two missionary enterprises embarked upon by
“mainline” Protestants during the Reformation era were both undertaken in collaboration with civil
authorities. The aborted missionary project by French Protestants in Brazil, launched in 1555, was
backed by Admiral Gaspar de Coligny and was part of an effort at founding a colony on the South
American mainland. Likewise, the mission to the Lapps (begun in 1559) was promoted by King
Gustav Vasa of Sweden, “certainly not without ulterior political motives” (Gensichen 1961:7—my
translation; cf Warneck 1906:22-24).
It is sometimes argued that the absence of any practical mission efforts on the part of the
Reformers is to be ascribed to their fervent eschatological expectation. Luther, for instance, expected
the last day to come some time in the year 1558. In such a climate, so the argument goes, any “proper
missionary ideas” would be out of the question (cf Warneck 1906:15f; Schick 1943:17). It is,
however, striking that Luther's eschatology did not prevent him from vigorously promoting his work
of reformation. Apocalyptic expectations thus do not necessarily paralyze missionary efforts (as later
Protestant missions history also demonstrated). Even more significant is the fact that Luther's
contemporaries, the Anabaptists, adhered to eschatological views not essentially different from his,
yet in their case precisely these views inspired them to missionary involvement (cf Schäufele
1966:79-97). As in the case of Paul's missionary enterprise (see Chapter 4 above) mission itself was
considered and experienced as an apocalyptic event (Schäufele 1966:93).
We may indeed, I believe, accept the validity of the arguments concerning the fundamentally
missionary nature of the theology of the Reformers. At the same time, and particularly in light of a
comparison between the Reformers and the Anabaptists on this point, one may ask whether some of
the fierce attempts at exonerating the Reformers (and especially Luther) on this point, did not stem
from apologetic considerations. Holl (1928) and Holsten (1953 and 1961), in particular, conduct an
impassioned defense of Luther's views on mission and tend to make these normative for all
subsequent generations, employing arguments which do not always ring true.2
One reason why the Anabaptists subscribed to the “mandate” of the “Great Commission” and the
Reformers did not may be found in their contradictory readings of the realities of their time. The
Reformers, on the whole, did not deny that the Catholic Church still displayed vestiges of the true
church; this becomes evident, for instance, in the fact that they accepted the validity of baptism by
Catholic priests. Their concern was the reformation of the church, not its replacement. The
Anabaptists, by comparison, pushed aside with consistent logic every other manifestation of
Christianity to date; the entire world, including Catholic and Protestant church leaders and rulers,
consisted exclusively of pagans (Schäufele 1966:97). All of Christianity was apostate; all had
rejected God's truth. In addition, Catholics and Protestants alike had seduced humanity and introduced
a false religion. Europe was once again a mission field. As at the time of the apostles, the Christian
faith had to be introduced anew into a pagan environment (:55f). Their project was not the
reformation of the existing church but the restoration of the original early Christian community of true
believers (:57- 59, 71-73). In their understanding, there was no difference between mission in
“Christian” Europe and mission among non-Christians. The Reformers, however, could not really
bring themselves to such a view.
Still, the Reformation era knew of at least one champion of the idea that the “Great Commission”
continued to be binding on the church and had to be understood in the sense of going out to those
beyond the boundaries of Christendom: the Dutch theologian Adrian Saravia (1531-1613), a younger
contemporary of Calvin (cf Warneck 1906:20-22; Schick 1943:24-29). In 1590 Saravia published a
tract in which he argued in favor of the abiding validity of the “Great Commission”; he maintained
that we could only appropriate the promise of Jesus in Matthew 28:20 if we also obeyed the
commission of Matthew 28:19.3 Saravia's views were, however, fiercely opposed by Theodore Beza,
Calvin's successor in Geneva, as well as by the Lutheran Johann Gerhard.
Communication between Saravia and his opponents was compounded by the fact that he had based
his views regarding the continued validity of the “Great Commission” on the conviction that only
those bishops who indubitably stood in the apostolic succession were heirs to the commission to the
apostles. In a sense this issue was even more important to him than that of enkindling a renewed
interest in mission (cf Hess 1962:20). His views on apostolic succession later made him move to
England and join the Anglican Church.

LUTHERAN ORTHODOXY AND MISSION

By the time Saravia wrote his tract on the missionary calling of the church, the springtime of the
Reformation had already passed. In the German-speaking countries, in particular, efforts at the
renewal of the church made way for attempts at keeping it doctrinally pure. The Peace of Westphalia
(1648) practically marked the end of the Holy Roman Empire and finally ordered religious matters in
the various European territories according to the cuius regio eius religio principle. Henceforth
Catholicism would be the established religion in Catholic countries, Lutheranism in Lutheran
territories, and so on. Only the Anabaptists, the “stepchildren of the Reformation,” continued to defy
the territorial principle; yet, after having been persecuted ruthlessly during the Reformation century,
even they began to concentrate on maintenance rather than mission.
An important factor in this respect was the development in the Protestant understanding of the
church in the decades immediately following the Reformation (cf Neill 1968:71-77; Piet 1970:21-
29). When the Reformation shattered the ancient unity of the Western church, each of the fragments
into which it was now divided was obliged to define itself over against all other fragments. The most
famous of the sixteenth-century definitions of the church is the one to be found in the (Lutheran)
Augsburg Confession of 1530. Its Article VII describes the church according to two distinguishing
marks, namely as “the assembly of saints in which the gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are
administered rightly.” This forced the Church of Rome, in the Council of Trent (1545-1563), to
respond with its own description of the true church, which “consists in its unity” and which has one
invisible ruler, Christ, but also a visible one, namely “the legitimate successor of Peter, the Prince of
the Apostles,” who “occupies the See of Rome.” Other Protestant definitions followed, each forced to
be more precise than the former. The French Confession (1559) and the Belgic Confession (1561)
added a third mark of the true church to the two identified by the Augustana, namely, the exercise of
discipline.
Whereas the Catholic definitions of the church in this period tended to emphasize the external, the
legal, and the institutional, the Protestant descriptions concentrated on the correctness of teaching and
sacraments. Each confession understood the church in terms of what it believed its own adherents
possessed and the others lacked, so Catholics prided themselves in the unity and visibility of their
church, Protestants in their doctrinal impeccability. The Protestant preoccupation with right doctrine
soon meant that every group which seceded from the main body had to validate its action by
maintaining that it alone, and none of the others, adhered strictly to the “right preaching of the gospel.”
The Reformational descriptions of the church thus ended up accentuating differences rather than
similarities. Christians were taught to look divisively at other Christians. Eventually Lutherans
divided from Lutherans, Reformed separated from Reformed, each group justifying its action by
appealing to the marks of the true church, especially correct preaching (cf Piet 1970:26, 30, 58).
In all these instances the church was defined in terms of what happens inside its four walls, not in
terms of its calling in the world. The verbs used in the Augustana are all in the passive voice: the
church is a place where the gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are administered rightly. It is
a place where something is done, not a living organism doing something.
Neill (1968:75) gives a depiction of the situation in England at the time, a description which in
many respects applied to the church in every country of Europe as well. Such definitions of the
church, he says,
call up a vision of the typical English village of not more than 400 inhabitants, where all are baptized Christians, compelled to live
more or less Christian lives under the brooding eye of parson and squire. In such a context “evangelization” has hardly any
meaning, since all are in some sense already Christian, and need no more than to be safeguarded against error in religion and
viciousness in life.

The Reformation had come to its conclusion with the establishment of state churches, and of
systems of pure doctrine and conventionalized Christian conduct. The church of pure doctrine was,
however, a church without mission, and its theology more scholastic than apostolic (cf Niebuhr
1959:166; Braaten 1977:13).
The first theologian of the era of Lutheran orthodoxy who grappled with the issue of mission was
Philip Nicolai (1556-1608) (cf Hess 1962:passim). He is indeed exceptionally important for our
theme, not least since, as a transitional figure, his theology reveals the differences between earlier
and later orthodoxy. His views on mission—which, in a more extreme form, were to become typical
of orthodoxy—were developed especially in his Commentarius de regno Christi, published in 1597.
I turn to these as well as to the later developments in Protestant Orthodox missionary thinking:
1. Like most theologians of Lutheran orthodoxy Nicolai believed that the “Great Commission” had
been fulfilled by the apostles and was no longer binding on the church. Unlike later orthodoxy,
however, he did not believe that the church's missionary calling was thereby disposed of. His concern
was, rather, to safeguard the uniqueness of the apostles’ foundational work and distinguish it from
what the church did in later years. The apostles’ work he called missio, the subsequent extension of
the churchpropagatio. The latter expression had no negative overtones for Nicolai and simply served
to distinguish what was basic from what was secondary (cf Hess 1962:90-96).
Nicolai's proximity to the momentous events of the Reformation era enabled him to have an
essentially positive understanding of his own time. Astounding is, for instance, the fact that he
evaluated Roman Catholic missionary efforts in other countries very positively—despite his
identifying three great enemies of Christianity (read Lutheranism) in his day, namely the Turks, the
papacy, and Calvinism. His positive evaluation of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox missionary
efforts (as well as the existence of the Ethiopian church of Prester John and the Mar Thoma Christians
in India; details on these in Hess 1962:97159) may, therefore, not be interpreted as proof of his
essentially ecumenical perspective on mission (contra Hess). Rather, Nicolai believed that these
churches were, involuntarily and unintentionally, “Lutheranizing” the people to whom they went. Even
the Catholic missionary enterprise was a “Handlängerin” (assistant) in this. This was so because of
the power of the word of God, which works independently of what people might intend it to do (cf
Beyreuther 1961:5f).
Later generations of orthodox theologians would evaluate the mission work of Catholics and
others much more negatively than Nicolai did. Of his views on the “Great Commission” and his
distinction between the task of the apostles and that of subsequent missionaries they would retain only
the element that declared that present generations of Christians had no business to get involved in a
mission to the heathen, since the apostles had completed the task.
2. In opposition to Rome the Reformers emphasized that all initiative unto salvation lay with God
alone. This conviction lies at the root of Luther's teaching on justification through faith, by grace, and
of Calvin's doctrine of predestination. Luther and Calvin did not, however, interpret the emphasis on
God's initiative in any rigid way; God's action did not militate against human responsibility, which
was upheld very forcefully. Orthodoxy tended to give up the creative tension between the two and to
put all the emphasis on God's sovereignty and initiative.
The attitude was that no human being could undertake any mission work; God would, in his
sovereignty, see to this. For Nicolai this meant that we should not arbitrarily traverse the world
looking for a mission field. God does not chase us here and there. He confines us to the place where
we have grown up and calls us to serve the nearest neighbor to whom we do not have to travel more
than a thousand yards (cf Beyreuther 1961:6). In Nicolai's case this rather strict predestinationism
was, however, tempered by an exceptionally strong emphasis on love as the primary motive for
mission—God has loved us and we are called to love others (Hess 1962:81-85). This accent injected
a dynamic element in his missionary thinking which later orthodox theologians, particularly J. H.
Ursinus, lacked.
3. It was Nicolai's positive and optimistic disposition which enabled him to judge the Roman
Catholic overseas missionary enterprise as benevolently as he did. Any traces of optimism were,
however, soon expunged from orthodoxy. It was almost as if pastors and theologians feared that the
world might improve. At the same time they believed that there was little cause for such fear—the
power of sin and selfishness would see to it that any attempt at improvement was already doomed to
failure. This “practical heresy” (as Beyreuther 1961:3 calls it) led to profound pessimism and
neutralized any thought of an attempt at changing structures and conditions. It had a similar effect on
any talk about a missionary enterprise.
Pessimism and passivity had a yet deeper cause: the dark view of history in Lutheran orthodoxy.
Nicolai expected the parousia to take place around the year 1670. The urgency of the imminent end of
the world still acted as a motivation for mission in his case. In the course of the seventeenth century
this would change. The situation in the church became so lamentable, particularly in the eyes of
Gottfried Arnold (1666-1714), that the focus was no longer on the conviction that Christ and his reign
would be triumphant, but on the fearful question whether Christ, when he returned, would find any
faith on earth. This question destroyed all possibility of joyfully witnessing to Christ (cf Beyreuther
1961:38).
4. Lutheran orthodoxy could not free itself of the view that Lutheran mission could only be
undertaken where Lutheran authorities ruled. Nicolai envisaged direct missionary involvement solely
as the responsibility of Lutheran colonial masters if and when such colonies should come into
existence. Based on this premise, a Lutheran mission could be conducted only in Lappland (cf
Beyreuther 1961:6f). Nicolai's views in this respect were shared by virtually all Lutheran theologians
and universities of the seventeenth century. A case in point is the “Opinion” on the missionary
question released in 1652 by the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg. It denied that the
Lutheran church had any missionary calling; this responsibility rested solely with the state.
Significantly, the state's duty in this regard was argued from the Old Testament—the state had to
convert pagans jure belli (“through martial law”) if other means proved to be unsuccessful (cf
Warneck 1900:27f).
 5. The Wittenberg “Opinion” gave another reason why the church should abstain from any mission
to pagans: nobody could be excused before God by reason of ignorance, because God had revealed
himself to all people through nature as well as through the preaching of the apostles. We once again
encounter Nicolai's belief that the word of God had been proclaimed to all, even to the peoples of the
Americas. Prior to the Wittenberg “Opinion,” and following Nicolai, the great Jena theologian Johann
Gerhard (1582-1637) also supplied proof of the fact that all nations had long before been reached
with the gospel: the ancient Mexicans received Christianity from the Ethiopians, an unknown
missionary had gone to Brazil, the Peruvians, Brahmins, and others must also have been evangelized
centuries ago, since their religions reveal Christian elements, etc (cf Warneck 1906:28-31). If these
nations were still pagan, in spite of having been evangelized at one time or another, there could be
one explanation only—their heedlessness and ingratitude. Those who were still not Christians thus
had no excuse and should not be given a second chance.
This theme became particularly dominant in Ursinus’ refutation of the passionate plea for
missionary involvement published in three tracts (in 1663 and 1664) by the nobleman Justinian von
Welz (1621-1666).4 Welz believed that the “Great Commission” continued to have unqualified
validity, and severely censured the provincialism of the Lutheran church of his time. He wished to
reintroduce the office of hermit, but now specifically for the sake of mission. Such hermit-
missionaries should be people marked by holiness and personal piety and should be sent out under the
auspices of a “Jesus-Loving Society” (Scherer 1969:38-45; 62-68; 70-76). Welz was, however,
ahead of his time; much of what he stood for was to be brought to fruition only a generation later,
when Pietism irrupted on the Gernan Lutheran scene.
Ursinus’ refutation of Welz's proposal contains virtually all the features of orthodoxy's
interpretation of mission outlined above (cf Scherer 1969:97-108): obstacles to the conversion of
pagans are insurmountable and the task is impossible; God has already made himself known to all
nations, in various ways; the “Great Commission” was for the apostles only and it is presumption on
our part to arrogate it to ourselves; the pagan nations are, in addition, impervious to the gospel since
many of them are savages who have absolutely nothing human about them; Christian rulers should see
to it that no disgrace or vice goes unpunished; etc. As for Welz's “Jesus-Loving Society,” such an
agency is clearly unChristian and against God and our Savior, since Jesus “can tolerate no partners.”
All that is called for is for everyone to “mind his own door, and everything will be fine.” Dreams
about a coming golden age in which Christians multiply on earth are nothing but dangerous illusions.
Meanwhile, let us thank God “for preserving a small, insignificant people who trust his name.” They
should “work with fear and trembling that they may be saved, struggle to be silent, and do their part.”
The Lutheran church of his time had no faculty for appreciating and applying Welz's ideals. His
appeal for missionary volunteers fell on deaf ears. Driven by the passion of his convictions he left for
Surinam in South America in 1666 where he died, probably in that same year, “a sacrifice to orthodox
intransigence” (Scherer 1969:23). No trace was left of his missionary ministry.

THE PIETIST BREAKTHROUGH

With his tract, Behauptung der Hoffnung künftiger besserer Zeiten (“Affirming the Hope for Better
Times”), published in 1693, Philipp Jakob Spener broke radically with the melancholic view of
history that had characterized late orthodoxy (Beyreuther 1961:38). In the words of H. Frick (quoted
in Gensichen 1961:16): for orthodoxy the proclamation of the gospel to all nations was, at best, only
a Wunschziel (“desired aim”); for Pietism it became a Willensziel (“aim of the will”). The new
movement combined the joy of a personal experience of salvation with an eagerness to proclaim the
gospel of redemption to all. This was frequently associated with an almost unbearable impatience to
go to the ends of the earth. Already at the early age of fifteen Nikolaus von Zinzendorf (1700-1760),
the later founder of Moravianism who had been nurtured in the pietistic circles of Spener and Francke
in Halle, together with his childhood friend, Friedrich von Watteville, pioneered a “Compact for the
Conversion of Pagans.” The two boys mused that (hopefully!) not all pagans would be converted
before they had grown up; the remaining pagans they would then bring to the Savior!
In Pietism the formally correct, cold, and cerebral faith of orthodoxy gave way to a warm and
devout union with Christ. Concepts such as repentance, conversion, the new birth, and sanctification
received new meaning. A disciplined life rather than sound doctrine, subjective experience of the
individual rather than ecclesiastical authority, practice rather than theory—these were the hallmarks
of the new movement. In virtually every respect it would set itself against orthodoxy. B. Ziegenbalg,
the first missionary sent out under the banner of Pietism, attacked the teachers of orthodoxy because of
their view that the church had already been planted everywhere; that the office of apostle had
vanished; that God's grace no longer worked as powerfully as it did in the beginning; that those who
were still pagans were under a curse; that God, if he wished to convert them, would do so without
human effort, etc (cf Rosenkranz 1977:165). Such criticism of the orthodox position had been
expressed before, among others by Welz. What was new, was that the Pietists of Halle succeeded in
mustering support for their ideas among both ordinary church members and here and there even among
the leadership. What used to be the passionate concern of a few individuals had now become a
movement.
There was undoubtedly a certain narrowness about Pietism, particularly insofar as it tended to be
very prescriptive about the way individuals should become true believers. I am referring in particular
to Pietism's insistence on the need for a so-called Busskampf, a fierce, inward, penitential struggle.
The movement has to be praised, however, for having broken with the practice of merely formal
church membership and with the superficiality of conversion that characterized much of contemporary
Roman Catholic mission work (cf Warneck 1906:53, 57). In this respect it resembled Anabaptism and
the latter's idea of the believers’ church. Its emphasis on the individual rather than the group was both
its strength and its weakness. This emerges, inter alia, in Pietism's (and particularly Moravianism's)
view of the church.
Zinzendorf, in particular, opposed the idea of “group conversions” and emphasized individual
decisions (cf Warneck 1906:66; Beyreuther 1961:40). Likewise, he was not interested in the
formation of “churches” on the mission fields; to him, “church” by definition meant formality,
lifelessness, lack of commitment. It was therefore one of the greatest disappointments of his life
when, during his absence in North America, the community in Herrnhut organized itself into a
confessional church, thus refusing to be what he intended it to be, namely, a provisional guest house
(cf Beyreuther 1960:110). Mission was, for him, not an activity of the church, but of Christ himself,
through the Spirit (:74). In this, however, Christ made use of people of extraordinary faith and
courage, of daring energy and persistent endurance. Pietism thus introduced the principle of
“voluntarism” in mission (cf Warneck 1906:55f, 59f).5 It was not the church (ecclesia) that was the
bearer of mission, but the small, revived community inside the church, the ecclesiola in ecclesiae.
From here it was only one step toward mission becoming the hobby of special-interest groups, a
practice that militated against the idea of the priesthood of all believers (cf Scherer 1987:73).
The church was not the bearer of mission; neither was it the goal. Ziegenbalg and Plütschau, the
first Pietist missionaries sent out from Halle, arrived in Tranquebar in India without a clear idea of
what was to happen to those who might embrace their message; almost by accident “churches” were
formed among the converts. Zinzendorf, on the other hand, had a clearer purpose in mind for his small
bands of Moravian missionaries, sent out to the ends of the earth. Following the example of the
apostles, they should bring in only “first fruits,” who were not to be organized into national churches
as had happened in Europe. The missionaries should, rather, gather the small flocks of new believers
into pioneer “pilgrim houses,” or “emergency residences.” Typical of Zinzendorf's thinking was the
idea of improvising, of remaining open to the guidance of the Spirit and being willing to try something
novel or to move on to new challenges. Everything the Brethren did stood in the sign of being
provisional, of only inaugurating what was to come (cf Beyreuther 1960:102-113; 1961:41f;
Rosenkranz 1977: 174f).
Orthodoxy's insistence on a structural link between church and state meant that everybody in a
given territory would, at least nominally, have to be regarded as Christians. Pietists and Moravians
broke with this and emphasized personal decisions. Mission work could in no circumstances be
regarded as the obligation of the ruler, a view that was axiomatic in orthodoxy. This was an important
breakthrough, determinative for all subsequent understanding of mission, and another point of
similarity between Pietists and Anabaptists. Heralds of the gospel should go out under the direction
of Christ and the Spirit, and non-Christians should be won to faith in Christ irrespective of any
colonial or political interests.
Naturally, in the context of the time, compromises had to be made. This was true, for instance, in
the case of the very first overseas missionary enterprise of the Pietist movement, the Danish-Halle
mission in Tranquebar, India. The missionaries were sent to Tranquebar by the Danish king. In the
colony itself, however, the missionaries stood in almost constant tension with the local colonial
authorities (for a penetrating discussion of the issue, cf Nergaard 1988:passim).
Early Pietists were not only interested in people's souls. In 1701 Francke defined the goal of the
renewal movement as the “concrete improvement of all walks of life, in Germany, Europe, in all parts
of the world” (quoted in Gensichen 1975a: 156—my translation). Ziegenbalg declared that the Dienst
der Seelen (“service of souls”) and the Dienst des Leibes (“service of the body”) were
interdependent and that no ministry to souls could remain without an “exterior” side (:163; cf
Nergaard 1988:122). Neither did this remain at the level of talking. In Germany, Francke and other
pietists were involved extensively in “home missions,” ministering to the destitute and deprived
people of Halle and environs and founding a school for the poor, an orphanage, a hospital, a widows’
home, and other institutions.
It was this dynamic and comprehensive understanding of the reign of God in which salvation and
well-being, soul and body, conversion and development were not to be divorced one from the other—
which Ziegenbalg and Plütschau took with them to India. To give one example, before their arrival
schools were the prerogative only of Brahmins, and even then only for boys; the missionaries founded
schools for members of the other castes and for girls as well. Equally important: in these schools no
pressure to become a Christian was brought to bear on anybody and in some instances even non-
Christian teachers were appointed (Gensichen 1975a:164-170).
By the third decade of the eighteenth century, however, the theological climate of Pietism slowly
began to change. Subtle distinctions were now being made between the “civic” and the “religious”
sphere and, according to the directives from Copenhagen and Halle, the missionaries were to concern
themselves only with the latter (Gensichen 1975a:170-176). The importance of this change could
hardly be overestimated. It marked the beginning of the shift from early to later Pietism, with its
proclivity toward escapism and its construction of an absolute dualism between the sacred and the
profane. Undoubtedly the Enlightenment, then slowly emerging in Europe, had much to do with the
new development. Pietism was not able to hold its own against the new spirit of the age. The situation
was further compounded by the fact that Pietism, even before the Enlightenment, had not succeeded in
penetrating into the heart of the German churches. It remained a movement at the periphery, and thus
extremely vulnerable. Attacks intensified from the side of Lutheran orthodoxy which, perhaps rather
incongruously, and unintentionally, often made common cause with rationalism in disparaging the
missionary enterprise. Whereas orthodoxy denied Pietism's theological validity, rationalism emptied
faith of its mysteries. Soon the Pietistic circles in the state churches were decomposing and paralyzed
(cf Warneck 1906:56f, 66f).
Even so, Pietism had an abiding significance for the development of the Protestant missionary
idea. First, mission could no longer simply be regarded as the duty of colonial governments. In
addition, it was transformed from being a concern of rulers and church hierarchies to being an
enterprise with which ordinary Christians could not only identify but in which they could actively
participate. Third, Pietism ushered in the age of ecumenism in mission in that it aimed at a Christian
fellowship that transcended the boundaries of nations and confessions; the Moravian brethren, in
particular, were ecumenical through and through (cf Rosenkranz 1977:168f, 173). Fourth, for one
entire century, the eighteenth, Pietism caused Germany to be Protestantism's leading missionary
country. This was due in no small part to the leadership provided by people like Francke and
Zinzendorf. Last, Pietism demonstrated in a remarkable way what total dedication meant. Previously,
such total commitment was assumed to be found only in the Roman Catholic monastic movement and
even there only occasionally. Now ordinary men and women, most of them simple artisans, went
literally to the ends of the earth, devoted themselves for life to people often living in the most
degrading circumstances, identified with them, and lived the gospel in their midst. Once again it was
the Moravians who set the example. During the first three decades of the Brotherhood's existence
missionaries went to twenty-eight territories. In addition, these places were often selected because
their inhabitants were, more than those of other countries, deprived of privileges and opportunities.
Surely, this was Protestantism's “answer” to the very best there was in Catholic monasticism!

SECOND REFORMATION AND PURITANISM

Orthodoxy made deep inroads not only into Lutheranism, but also into Calvinism. Even so, Dutch and
Anglo-Saxon Calvinism appears to have succeeded in keeping alive a missionary spirit more
successfully than did Lutheranism. Dutch and English missionary endeavors, says Gensichen, pushed
Lutheran attempts into the background. In Lutheranism, the church's missionary calling remained a
theme for theological discussion; Reformed churches embarked on missionary action (Gensichen
1961:10, 11; cf Rosenkranz 1977:171). The decisive factors were theological as well as socio-
political. As regards the latter, Holland and England, both strongholds of Calvinism, belonged to the
rising maritime powers with numerous overseas colonies. In itself, however, this was not enough to
enkindle an interest in missions. An important theological factor therefore has to be taken into account
as well—the crucial role played by the “Second Reformation” (Nadere Reformatie) in Holland and
by Puritanism in England, Scotland, and the American colonies.
Calvin placed a special emphasis on pneumatology in both its aspects: the work of the Spirit in the
human soul, renewing the inner life, and the Spirit's activity of renewing the “face of the earth.” In the
early stages of the Second Reformation, in particular, Calvinism manifested itself as a remarkable
blend of soteriological and theocratic elements (van den Berg 1956:18). Richard Martus's
perspective on the difference between Luther and Calvin may help to explain how Calvinism
contrasted with Lutheranism at this point:
Luther never tried to make much of the present world, and a worldly age cannot make much of him. The Calvinists expected the
world to endure, and they believed themselves to be the instruments of God to convert it…Calvinism has implanted…a perpetual
dissatisfaction with our successes and a restlessness with the way things are (1976:32; cf. Oberman 1986:235-239).

For Calvin, the Christ who was exalted to God's right hand was preeminently the active Christ. In
a sense, Calvin subscribed to an eschatology in the process of being fulfilled. He used the term
regnum Christi (the reign of Christ) in this respect, viewing the church as intermediary between the
exalted Christ and—the secular order. Such a theological point of departure could not but give rise to
the idea of mission as “extending the reign of Christ,” both by the inward spiritual renewal of
individuals and by transforming the face of the earth through filling it with “the knowledge of the
Lord.” The relationship between these two dimensions, very inadequately dubbed the “vertical” and
the “horizontal,” was to characterize much of Calvinism during all subsequent centuries and exercise
a profound influence on the theory and practice of mission. In most of the early seventeenth century
Second Reformation theologians—G. Voetius, J. Heurnius, W. Teellinck, and others—the two
dimensions were held together in a creative tension.
Gisbertus Voetius (1588-1676) is of crucial importance in this respect. He was the first Protestant
to have developed a comprehensive “theology of mission.” Today his views on mission appear, on
the one hand, hopelessly outdated, on the other, surprisingly modern (cf Jongeneel 1989:146f). His
formulation of the threefold goal of mission has become widely known and is still unparalleled. The
immediate aim was conversio gentilium (conversion of the Gentiles), which was subordinate to the
second and more distant goal, plantatio ecclesiae (the planting of the church); the supreme and
ultimate aim of mission, however, and the one to which both the first two were subservient, was
gloria et manifestatio gratiae divinae (the glory and manifestation of divine grace).
Voetius regarded the foundation of mission to be primarily theological—flowing from the very
heart of God. He may therefore rightly be considered one of the first exponents of what in our own
time became known as missio Dei. Of equal significance is the fact that he defined mission in terms
that were much broader than those which became the vogue in subsequent centuries. He viewed
mission, inter alia, as aiming at the bringing together of churches that were on the brink of collapse or
had been scattered through persecutions; as the renewal of churches that had retrogressed
theologically; as the reunification of churches separated from each other; as supporting oppressed and
impoverished churches; and as striving toward the liberation of churches experiencing opposition
from the authorities (cf Jongeneel 1989:133, 147).
Voetius regarded the pope, bishops, religious orders, and congregations, as well as secular
authorities, as inappropriate agents of mission. Only the church could be the legitimate bearer of
mission since only the church could plant churches. From this it followed for Voetius that the newly
planted churches were in no way subject to the planting church; the “older” and the “younger” church
stood in the relationship of equals (cf Jongeneel 1989:126f, 136f).
Just as the “younger” church was not subordinated to the “older,” it could also not be subservient
to the government. Voetius rejected the contemporary Roman Catholic right of patronage, which
granted the kings of Portugal and Spain authority over the “younger” churches in their colonies. He
also dissociated himself, like the Pietists of a century afterward, from any coercion in matters
religious—adherents of other faiths should be free to refuse to become Christians (cf Jongeneel
1989:128).
The Puritan understanding of mission was not essentially different from that of Voetius, and there
was undoubtedly a degree of mutual influencing. The famous Synod of Dort (1618-1619), where
Voetius played a prominent role, was, for instance, attended by delegates from churches in England
and Scotland as well. Dutch overseas mission work began on Formosa (today's Taiwan) in 1627.
Shortly before that date, Alexander Whitaker had laid the foundations for mission work in the colony
of Virginia. The undisputed Protestant missionary pioneer, however, was the Puritan John Eliot
(1604-1690), who spent practically his entire ministry, from the 1640s until his death, among the
Indians of Massachusetts. In 1649 the New England Company was founded in England to underwrite
the missionary enterprise in the transatlantic colonies. It was the first Protestant society exclusively
devoted to missionary purposes (cf Chaney 1977:15).
Classical Puritanism lasted more or less until 1735, that is, until the beginning of the Great
Awakening. The theologians who helped to develop the missionary idea in this era were—in addition
to Eliot—Richard Sibbes, Richard Baxter, and Cotton Mather, while Jonathan Edwards was
something of a transitional figure (cf Rooy 1965). Drawing particularly on the excellent studies of
Niebuhr ([1937] 1959), van den Berg (1956), Rooy (1965), De Jong (1970), and Chaney (1976), I
shall now attempt to identify the salient features of Puritan mission theology.
1. A fundamental trait of Calvinism is the doctrine of predestination. This doctrine has frequently
been understood in extremely rigid terms: if God predestines individuals to salvation (and others to
perdition, as expressed by the idea of the predestinatio gemina or “double predestination”), then
Christians should leave it to him to save whom he wishes to save, according to his own pleasure.
Belief in predestination can, thus, paralyze the will to mission. Such a view was indeed held by some
Puritans, who regarded themselves as God's elect, sent to plant and cultivate a garden in the
wilderness of North America, where they were to advance God's kingdom by the displacement of the
native population. On occasion, a Puritan pastor could even thank God for having sent “a mortal
sickness among the Indians…which destroyed multitudes of them and made room for our Fathers”
(quoted in Beaver 1961:61). Yet when John Eliot and others embarked upon a mission among the
same Indians, they soon found ready support among the colonists, who began to accept that God's
reign was to be spread by the conversion rather than the extermination of the native population. The
sense of being elected by God was thus channelled into new avenues. Such a “shift” can be detected
time and again in Calvinist groups. The emphasis on predestination leads to active involvement in
mission; the elect of God cannot remain inactive.
2. For the Puritans the ultimate goal of mission remained, as it did for Voetius, the glory of God
(van den Berg 1956:29; Rooy 1965:64f; Warren 1965:53; Chaney 1976:17), which Beaver (quoted in
Chaney 1976:17) calls the “taproot” of the mission of the church. It was undoubtedly a potent motive
for missionary involvement in the first two centuries of Protestant mission. Like predestination, it was
a basic tenet of Calvinism. The Christian's entire life stood in the sign of magnifying God's name and
acknowledging his sovereignty over everything. God's sovereignty did not exclude God's grace,
though the first rather than the second was given the main emphasis in the seventeenth century. Only in
the eighteenth would there be shift from an overwhelming accent on God's sovereignty to a greater
preoccupation with his mercy (cf Niebuhr 1959:88f).
3. The glory or sovereignty of God could, however, not be conceived in isolation from his grace
and unfathomable mercy. The Puritans were “constrained by Jesus’ love” (cf the title of van den Berg
1956). The love of Jesus was understood in a twofold manner: his love as experienced by the
believer, and his love for unredeemed humanity. John Wesley, for instance, talked about Christ's love
for the forgiven sinner which “sweetly constrains him to love every child of man” (quoted in van den
Berg 1956:99). In the course of time this soteriological motif almost became the dominant one (cf van
den Berg 1956:29; Beaver 1961:60; Rooy 1965:64f, 240, 310, 316f; Warren 1965:47, 52f). It
constitutes the most important point of similarity between Pietism and Puritanism (van den Berg
1956:25).
4. Calvinist mission enterprises, whether those of representatives of the Dutch “Second
Reformation” or of English Puritans, were all undertaken within the framework of colonialist
expansion. In the next chapter the intimate relationship between colonialism and mission will be
explored more fully. Here I wish to refer only to the colonial idea as it manifested itself in the
seventeenth and early eighteenth century and its relationship to Protestant missions. In order to
appreciate this relationship it is important to understand that the corpus Christianum or Christendom
idea was still completely intact in the period under discussion and would only come under fire during
the Enlightenment. During the seventeenth century it was still self-evident that Europe was Christian
(even if there were different “branches” of Christianity—Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, etc),
and it was therefore a matter of course that the same should apply to the overseas “possessions” of
European nations.
In the case of Calvinism, another dimension was added, that of theocracy. Wherever Calvinist
missions were launched, the purpose was to establish in the “wilderness” a socio-political system in
which God himself would be the real ruler. The missionary efforts of John Eliot clearly give evidence
of this motif, particularly his “Praying Towns,” a total of fourteen settlements in Massachusetts in
which Indian converts were gathered and where the entire life of the community was organized
according to the guidelines of Exodus 18. In similar fashion the Puritan colonies in North America
were to be a manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth. Christ's rule was to be made visible in
both society and church. The state bore a divine calling to function as an auxiliary agent. A perfect
harmony between church and state was envisioned. In the mother country the same ideal was pursued,
at least in the 1640s and 1650s, when Oliver Cromwell and others were dreaming of transforming
England into a theocracy; an integration of religion and politics was intended to reflect the will of
God for church and nation (cf van den Berg 1956:21-29; Rooy 1965:280).
The Enlightenment would shatter the theocratic ideal. Religion would be banished to the private
sphere, leaving the public sphere to reason. The Enlightenment would thus make it impossible still to
conceive of mission as building a theocracy on earth. And yet, as we shall see in the next chapter, the
idea of a unity between society and religion, between state and church, would never completely die;
in various ways it would continue to manifest itself, even after having been dealt a crippling blow by
the Enlightenment.
5. The theocratic ideal was intimately linked to the way in which early Calvinists understood the
connection between mission and eschatology. The sharp distinction between premillennialism and
postmillennialism which would characterize later times (particularly the late nineteenth as well as the
twentieth century) was still absent. De Jong summarizes the period well when he says that, from 1640
until, in fact, the dawn of the nineteenth century,
millennial hopes oscillated between a highly complex chiliasm or premillennialism with adventist tendencies and a low-keyed
postmillennialism with its belief in the gradual improvement of human conditions through Christian benevolent and educational
programs (1970:22).

Eschatology, more than any other area of the Christian faith, has always been a field where
religious fantasies have the opportunity of running free. In light of this it would be unrealistic to
expect all Puritans to have thought alike. There were indeed differences. And yet there was an
astounding degree of agreement here, since all shared the same theocratic vision. Their view of the
relationship between mission and eschatology embraced, in essence, four elements: the anticipation
of the downfall of Rome; the subsequent large-scale influx of Jews and Gentiles into the true church;
the evolution of an era of true faith and material blessing among all people; and the firm conviction
that Engl and was divinely mandated to guide history to its appointed end in these matters (de Jong
1970:77; cf also Rooy 1965:241). The first three motifs were also evident in Dutch missionary
circles of this period, among others in W. Teellinck and J. Heurnius (cf van den Berg 1956:20f).
Such thoughts were therefore, as it were, in the air during the seventeenth century and beyond. At
the same time they reflect a shift away from Calvin's understanding of eschatology. He had postulated
a tri-epochal progression of the time of the church. The first period was that of the apostles, when the
gospel was offered to the whole inhabited world. Then followed the second period, when Antichrist
held sway and in which Calvin himself lived; he therefore wrote a theology for the church under the
cross. The final period would be that of the great expansion of the church. The Puritans accepted
Calvin's scheme of history. They believed, however, that they were living at the end of the second
period and at the very dawn of the third (cf Chaney 1976:32f). This explains why they were far more
optimistic and confident than Calvin had been. They were convinced that they were already living in
the last days. Slowly but surely the conviction grew that God's last and eminently successful attack on
the forces of Antichrist would be launched from the shores of North America and that the Puritan
saints would play a key role in this final drama of history (cf Hutchison 1987:38, 41).
6. Cultural uplift as an aim of mission was still relatively undeveloped in the “Second
Reformation” and Puritan period. Western Christians believed that their culture was superior to those
of non-Western nations, but they did not isolate cultural uplift as a goal of mission. It was simply
assumed that people would live a better life once God's rule was established over their respective
societies. In John Eliot's words (quoted by Hutchison 1987:27), it was “absolutely necessary to carry
on civility with religion.” Some decades later Cotton Mather (16631728) would formulate it even
less unequivocally, “The best thing we can do for our Indians is to Anglicize them” (quoted by
Hutchison 1987:29). In the subsequent period, as I shall illustrate in the following chapter, this view
would sometimes be so dominant that it was hard to distinguish between mission and
“Westernization.”
7. Given the prominence of the “Great Commission” in missionary debates since the end of the
eighteenth century, it is surprising that it played virtually no role in the discussions of the seventeenth
century (cf Rooy 1965:319f). Perhaps the main reason for the absence of this motif is that the validity
of the commission was not disputed and that the Puritans did not have to appeal to a command to
justify what they were doing.

AMBIVALENCES IN THE REFORMATION PARADIGM

During the first two centuries of Protestantism the missionary paradigm tended to fluctuate between
various extremes:
1. An emphasis on the sovereignty of God sometimes exercised a paralyzing influence on even the
idea of missionary involvement; at other times divine sovereignty and human accountability were held
in creative tension.
2. Sometimes people were seen almost exclusively in terms of the Fall—obdurate sinners en route
to perdition. At other times it was Christ's love for lost humans that was emphasized—people were
judged to be redeemable and worthy of redemption.
3. Protestant orthodoxy was inclined to put all emphasis on the objective nature of faith and to
leave little room for a personal experience of salvation. Pietism went to the other extreme and
overemphasized the subjective and experiential side of religion. Others, however, managed to uphold,
to a degree, the indissoluble unity between the objective and subjective dimensions of faith.
4. By and large, the Protestants of the first two centuries still operated within the framework of a
close liaison between church and state, and this was true also with respect to mission. Exceptions to
this rule were found among the Anabaptists, the Pietists, and some exponents of the Second
Reformation and Puritanism.
5. Because of its theocratic features the Calvinist branch of the Reformation put a greater emphasis
than Lutheranism on the rule of Christ in society at large; this distinction also manifested itself in
Calvinist missionary practice.
Other Reformation influences on missionary thinking could be identified, but these are perhaps the
most important ones. None of these elements would, however, remain unaffected during the
subsequent era, as the influence of the Enlightenment slowly but inexorably spread through society
and church. To this we now turn.
 Chapter 9

Mission in the Wake of

the Enlightenment

CONTOURS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT WORLDVIEW

This chapter continues my review of the Protestant missionary paradigm. At first glance it may appear
strange to write two separate chapters on the Protestant understanding of mission. Such a procedure
is, however, justified in light of the profound influence the Enlightenment had on Protestantism. This
is not to suggest that Catholicism remained unaffected by it. It can, however, hardly be denied that, on
the whole, Catholic theology and the Catholic Church withstood Enlightenment influences more
effectively than did Protestantism and succeeded longer than the latter to remain intact. Catholicism,
in effect, “postponed” its response to the Enlightenment until the Second Vatican Council. The result
has been, as Hans Küng (1984:23) has suggested, that Catholicism had to effect simultaneously two
paradigm shifts in the twentieth century (shifts which for Protestantism lay centuries apart), namely, in
respect to both the Enlightenment and the postmodern period. In the case of Protestantism, by contrast,
virtually everything that happened since the eighteenth century was, in one way or another, profoundly
influenced by the Enlightenment. It goes without saying that much of this rubbed off on Catholic
theology and the Catholic Church, even if fundamental differences between the two confessions
remain in this respect. Most of my references will therefore be to events in Protestantism, although
Catholic developments will feature occasionally.
This is not the place to discuss the Enlightenment in any detail. I shall only highlight some aspects
of the movement insofar as these may contribute to a better understanding of what was happening in
missionary thinking and practice during the past three centuries or so. The “modern” or Enlightenment
era only began in the seventeenth century, although indications that the medieval world and
worldview were beginning to disintegrate could be observed as early as the fourteenth (cf Oberman
1986:1–17).
Medieval cosmology had been structured more or less along the following lines (cf Nida
1968:48–57):

One was not to tamper with this structure. Within the divinely constituted order of things,
individual human beings as well as communities had to keep their proper places in relation to God,
the church, and royalty. God willed serfs to be serfs and lords to be lords. However, through a whole
series of events—the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation (which destroyed the centuries-old
unity and therefore power of the Western church), and the like—the church was gradually eliminated
as a factor for validating the structure of society. Validation now passed directly from God to the king,
and from there to the people. During the Age of Revolution (primarily in the eighteenth century) the
real power of kings and nobles was also destroyed. The ordinary people now saw themselves as
being, in some measure, related to God directly, no longer by way of king or nobility and church. We
find here the early stirrings of democracy. Again, in the Age of Science, God was largely eliminated
from society's validation structure. People discovered, somewhat to their surprise at first, that they
could ignore God and the church, yet be none the worse for it. With all the “supernatural” sanctions
(God, church, and royalty) gone, people now began to look to the subhuman level of existence, to
animals, plants, and objects, to find authentication and validation for life. Humanity derived its
existence and validity from “below” and no longer from “above.”
I am not suggesting that this entire process unfolded in so many clearly identifiable separate
stages. Neither were people always consciously aware of what was happening. We can, however, say
that, gradually, Western people began to subscribe to a new way of thinking introduced by Nicholas
Copernicus (1473–1543), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), René
Descartes (1596–1650), and others. A generation or two later, when John Locke (16321704), Baruch
Spinoza (1632–1677), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646–1716), and Isaac Newton (1642–1717)
appeared on the scene, the Enlightenment world-view was firmly established. Two scientific
approaches characterized the Enlightenment tradition: the Empiricism of Bacon (set out, inter alia, in
his Novum Organon) and the Rationalism of Descartes (who published his Discourse sur la méthode
in 1637 and posited the famous precept “Cogito, ergo sum [“I think, therefore I am”]). Both these
approaches operated on the premise that human reason had a certain degree of autonomy. However,
neither Bacon nor Descartes saw their theories on scientific progress as in any sense jeopardizing the
Christian faith. Bacon, in particular, operated completely within the Puritan paradigm and presumed a
complete harmony between science and the Christian faith (cf Mouton 1983:101–122; 1987:43–50).
Still, in the period following their pioneering work science was increasingly regarded as being in
opposition to faith.
Let me now attempt—in just a few paragraphs and therefore, once again, dangerously
oversimplifying—to draw the contours of the Enlightenment paradigm before I proceed to discuss its
impact on the understanding of the Christian mission. The elements I am identifying should really not
be treated separately since they all impinge on each other. I am nevertheless (in true Enlightenment
fashion!) going to consider them one by one.
The Enlightenment was, preeminently, the Age of Reason. In the course of time, Descartes’ Cogito,
ergo sum came to mean that the human mind was viewed as the indubitable point of departure for all
knowing. Human reason was “natural,” that is, it was derived from the order of nature, and therefore
independent of the norms of tradition or presupposition. Reason represented a heritage that belonged
not only to “believers,” but to all human beings in equal measure.
The Enlightenment, secondly, operated with a subject-object scheme. This meant that it separated
humans from their environment and enabled them to examine the animal and mineral world from the
vantage-point of scientific objectivity. The res cogitans (humanity and the human mind) could
research the res extensa (the entire non-human world). Nature ceased to be “creation” and was no
longer people's teacher, but the object of their analysis. The emphasis was no longer on the whole, but
on the parts, which were assigned priority over the whole. Even human beings were no longer
regarded as whole entities but could be looked at and studied from a variety of perspectives: as
thinking beings (philosophy), as social beings (sociology), as religious beings (religious studies), as
physical beings (biology, physiology, anatomy, and related sciences), as cultural beings (cultural
anthropology), and so forth. In this way even the res cogitans could become res extensa and as such
the object of analysis.
In principle, then, the res cogitans set no limits. The whole earth could be occupied and subdued
with boldness. Oceans and continents were “discovered” and the system of colonies was introduced.
It was as if previously unknown powers were unleashed. A tremendous confidence pervaded people;
they felt that what was “real” was only now beginning to manifest itself, as if everything of the past
was only a preparation or perhaps even an impediment. The physical world could be manipulated and
exploited. And as scientific and technological knowledge advanced this became more and more
possible. In his paper before the 1966 Church and Society conference in Geneva, Mesthene could
therefore say:
We are the first…to have enough of that power actually at hand to create new possibilities almost at will. By massive physical
changes deliberately induced, we can literally pry new alternatives from nature. The ancient tyranny of matter has been broken,
and we know it…. We can change it (the physical world) and shape it to suit our purposes…. By creating new possibilities, we
give ourselves more choices. With more choices, we have more opportunities. With more opportunities, we can have more
freedom, and with more freedom we can be more human. That, I think, is what is new about our age…. We are recognizing that
our technical prowess literally bursts with the promise of new freedom, enhanced human dignity, and unfettered aspiration
(1967:484f).

Linked with the above is a third characteristic of the Enlightenment: the elimination of purpose
from science and the introduction of direct causality as the clue to the understanding of reality.
Ancient Greek and medieval scientific reflection believed in an animated causality and took purpose
as a category of explanation in physics. This dimension of teleology was vital to the ancients. From
the seventeenth century on, however, science has been avowedly non-teleological. It cannot answer
the question by whom and for what purpose the universe came into being (cf Newbigin 1986:14); it is
not even interested in the question. Instead, it operates on the assumption of a simple, mechanistic,
billiard-ball-type causality. The cause determines the effect. The effect thus becomes explicable, if
not predictable. Modern science tends to be completely deterministic, since unchanging and
mathematically stable laws guarantee the desired outcome. All that is needed, is complete knowledge
of these laws of cause and effect. The human mind becomes the master and initiator which
meticulously plans ahead for every eventuality and all processes can be fully comprehended and
controlled. Conception, birth, illness, and death lost their quality of mystery; they turned into mere
biological-sociological processes (cf Guardini 1950:101f).
This manifests itself especially in a fourth element of the Enlightenment: its belief in progress. For
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Ulysses’ plans to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of
Gibraltar) into the open sea was blasphemy (reference in Guardini 1950:42); for the Enlightenment
generation the idea was enticing and provocative. People now expressed joy and excitement at the
possibility of traversing the earth and “discovering” new territories, of seeing a new day dawn over a
dark world. With boldness Western nations took possession of the earth and introduced the system of
colonies. An intractable confidence filled them as they prepared for their tomorrow. They were
masters of their fate—a belief that was nourished from childhood by the history they studied (cf West
1971:52; Hegel 1975). They were convinced that they had both the ability and the will to remake the
world in their own image.
The idea of progress expressed itself, preeminently, in the “development programs” Western
nations were undertaking in the countries of the so-called Third World. The leitmotif of all these
projects was that of the Western technological development model, which found its expression
primarily in categories of material possession, consumerism, and economic advance. The model was
based, in addition, on the ideal of modernization. The theorists assumed that development was an
inevitable, unilinear process that would operate naturally in every culture. A further premise was that
the benefits of development, thus defined, would trickle down to the poorest of the poor, in the course
of time giving each one a fair share in the wealth that had been generated (cf Nürnberger 1982:240–
254; Bragg 1987:23f). In this paradigm the opposite of modernism was backwardness, a condition
“undeveloped” peoples should overcome and leave behind.
What was new in this model was the desire to spread wealth also among the less-privileged. It
turned out to be a rather ambivalent matter, however. One study after the other, published during the
last twenty-five years, has exposed the flaws in the Western development concept. The rhetoric
referred to progress and affluence for all, increased security, and benefits; in the final analysis,
however, the issue was neither advantages nor affluence for all, but power, since selfishness called
the tune. And since religion no longer governed the right use of power it could be employed for the
common good, but equally easily for the good of the already privileged. Of course, injustice had been
perpetrated in the pre-En-lightenment period also, and yet, as Guardini (1950:39) argues, people then
had a bad conscience about it. Now, in true Machiavellian style, expediency became more important
than morality, and people could exploit others with impunity. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
propounded a theory of the state which declared it to be the absolute lord and judge of human life, a
theory which would, in the end, lead to Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and the Gulag Archipelago.
All along, however—and this is the fifth characteristic of the Enlightenment—it was contended
that scientific knowledge was factual, value-free, and neutral. What makes a belief true, says
Bertrand Russell (1970:75), “is a fact, and this fact does not…in any way involve the mind of the
person who has the belief” (:75). A belief is true when there is a corresponding fact and false when
there is no such corresponding fact (:78f). Facts have a life of their own, independent of the observer.
They are “objectively” true. Thus Karl Popper (1979:109) defines “knowledge or thought in an
objective sense” as follows (the italics are his): “(It)…is totally independent of anybody's claim to
know; it is also independent of anybody's belief…Knowledge in the objective sense is knowledge
without a knower; it is knowledge without a knowing subject.”
Over against facts there are values, based not on knowledge, but on opinion, on belief. Facts
cannot be disputed; values, on the other hand, are a matter of preference and choice. Religion was
assigned to this realm of values since it rested on subjective notions and could not be proved correct.
It was relegated to the private world of opinion and divorced from the public world of facts.
Sixth, in the Enlightenment paradigm all problems were in principle solvable. Of course, many
problems were still unsolved, but this was simply due to the fact that we had not yet mastered all the
relevant facts. Everything could be explained or at least made explicable. No gaps or mysteries
would permanently resist the emancipated and probing human mind. The horizon was limitless.
Science was regarded as cumulative and all-encompassing. Its growth was continuous, ever onward
and upward, as the fund of observational data was increased. Through the spectacles of positivism
the history of intellectual life was viewed as having passed “through the dark ages of theological,
metaphysical, and philosophical speculation, only to emerge in the triumph of the positive sciences”
(Bernstein 1985:5). Not that there were no major advances in earlier epochs. But, says Mesthene
(1967:484), “inventions in the past were few, rare, exceptional, and marvelous”; today they are
“many, frequent, planned, and increasingly taken for granted.” For the exuberant Mesthene the
demonic, external power of nature was at last surrendering to human planning and reason, thus
enabling humans to remake the world in their own image and according to their own design.
Lastly, the Enlightenment regarded people as emancipated, autonomous individuals. In the
Middle Ages community took priority over the individual, although, as I have argued earlier, the
emphasis on the individual was discernible in Western theology at least since the time of Augustine.
In Augustine and Luther the individual was, however, never emancipated and autonomous but was
regarded, first and foremost, as standing in a relationship to God and the church. Now individuals
became important and interesting in and to themselves (cf Guardini 1950:42, 47, 64–79).
A central creed of the Enlightenment, therefore, was faith in humankind. Its progress was assured
by the free competition of individuals pursuing their happiness. The free and “natural” human being
was infinitely perfectible and should be allowed to evolve along the lines of his or her own choice.
From the earliest beginnings of liberal thought, then, there was a tendency in the direction of
indiscriminate freedom. The insatiable appetite for freedom to live as one pleases developed into a
virtually inviolable right in the Western “democracies.” The self-sufficiency of the individual over
social responsibilities was exalted to a sacred creed. “There are no absolutes; freedom is absolute”
(Bloom 1987:28).
The corollary of this view was that each individual should also allow all other individuals to think
and act as they please. According to this philosophy, “the true believer is the real danger”; there is
“no enemy other than the man who is not open to anything” (Bloom 1987:26, 27). So
indiscriminateness was elevated to the level of a moral imperative, because its opposite was
discrimination (:30).
The individual experienced himself or herself as liberated from the tutelage of God and church,
who were no longer needed to legitimize specific titles, classes, and prerogatives. There were, in
principle, no longer any privileged persons and classes. All were born equal and had equal rights.
These were, however, not derived from religion, but from “nature.” Thus human beings were, on the
one hand, more important than God; on the other hand, however, they were not fundamentally different
from animals and plants (cf Guardini 1950:53f). Individuals could therefore also be degraded to
machines, manipulated, and exploited by those who sought to use them for their own purposes. Both
capitalism and Marxism, says Newbigin (1986:118), derive from this Enlightenment vision of human
beings as autonomous individuals without any supernatural reference.

ENLIGHTENMENT AND CHRISTIAN FAITH

The dominant characteristic of the modern era is its radical anthropocentrism. Prior to the
Enlightenment life in all its stratifications and ramifications was pervaded with religion. Legislation,
the social order, private as well as public ethos, philosophical thinking, art—all these were, in one
way or another, stamped religiously. I am not suggesting that the Middle Ages were, as historical
epoch, simply Christian and that what followed was, equally unequivocally, un-Christian. There was
faith and unbelief both before and after the Enlightenment (cf Guardini 1950:98f, 110f). It can,
however, not be denied that the Enlightenment provided people with a new “plausibility structure,”
that the Christian faith (or any other faith for that matter) no longer functioned in any direct way in
informing scientific thinking. What distinguishes our culture from all cultures that have preceded it,
then, is that it is in its public philosophy, atheist (cf Newbigin 1986:54, 65).
So, even though the Christian faith continued to be practiced after the Enlightenment, it had lost its
quiet self-evidence; it became strained and tended to overemphasize itself, for it felt itself to be
operating in an alien and even hostile world (Guardini 1950:51). How can God reign sovereignly if
people understand themselves to be free? Is God still active in a world in which it is believed that
people take the initiative to create whatever they need? Can God still be the God of providence and
of grace? Can he establish an institute—the church—which addresses the human world with divine
authority? These are only some of the many questions with which modern believers are confronted.
The unshaken massive and collective certitude of the Middle Ages has indeed vanished entirely. The
Christian faith is severely questioned, contemptuously repudiated, or studiously ignored. Revelation,
which used to be the matrix and fountainhead of human existence, now has to prove its claim to truth
and validity. A new theological discipline began to emerge: Christian apologetics (:51–55).
As I shall argue below, the Enlightenment on the whole did not deny religion a place under the sun.
It did, however, radically relativize the exclusivist claims of Christianity. For centuries the word
“religion” was used in the sense of “devoutness” or “piety.” During the Middle Ages non-Christian
faiths were never referred to as “religions.” In the seventeenth century, however, “religion” came to
mean “a system of beliefs and practices.” The word could now also be used in the plural, and the
Christian faith became just one among several “religions.” In essence, it was considered to be the
same as any other. Its superiority over other religions was, at best, relative. This fundamental
levelling of all religions also meant that the church's traditional vocabulary lost its theological
content. To give one example, in its secularized form sin was perceived exclusively in moralistic
terms; it referred to transgressing or failing to obey instructions. The inherent sinfulness of human
nature was denied, and a remarkably optimistic view of humanity as essentially good was
propagated; since evil had no inherent power over them, people would “naturally” do the right thing
if left to themselves (cf Braaten 1977:18; Gründel 1983:105).
Of course, Christianity did not disappear after the Enlightenment; on the contrary, it has since
spread across the entire globe. I shall return to the reasons for this and the way it happened. For the
moment I just wish to argue that Christianity after the advent of the Enlightenment was different from
what it had been before. Even where it resisted the Enlightenment mentality it was profoundly
influenced by it. It may perhaps be of some help to plot its influence on Christianity and Christian
theology by referring to the seven characteristics of the Enlightenment paradigm listed above:
First, reason became supremely important also in Christian theology. This is not to suggest that in
earlier times reason played no role. Frances Young (1988:307) has shown how important it was, for
instance, in the patristic period, where “spirituality and rationality went hand in hand,” since “faith is
the reasoning of the religious mind.” However, faith had priority over reason; the mind was below
truth, not above it. Or, to put it differently, the contrast between faith and reason was really a contrast
between two modes of rationality (:308).
Since the Enlightenment a different mode of rationality began to predominate. Reason supplanted
faith as point of departure. Theology now differed from other academic disciplines only in its
“object,” not in its method or point of departure. It was basically comparable with other disciplines.
In the course of time scientists were to find it increasingly difficult to allow room for God in their
systems (except, perhaps, for “practical” reasons, as Kant suggested). Previously, it was believed that
humans derived their existence from God. Now the opposite was proclaimed—God owed his
existence to humans. Freud declared religion to be nothing but an illusion. Marx saw it as something
evil, the “opiate of the people.” Emile Durkheim suggested that every religious community was,
really, only worshiping itself. Others were slightly more magnanimous. They conceded that there had
been a time when belief in God made sense. Now, however, humans had become mature and no
longer needed God. So, even if religion had at one time made sense, this prehistorical residue had no
role to play in the modern world. The emergence of true humanity, which had been held in check by
prejudice, superstition, and arbitrary authority, had at long last become a possibility (West 1971:73,
summarizing the views of Voltaire and others).
In a thoroughly anthropocentric world there was no room left for God. It was self-evident that
politics, science, the social order, economy, art, philosophy, education, etc, would have to evolve
only according to their own immanent criteria. Humans still had faith…in themselves and in reason.
No longer was a strong god needed to save them from their weakness. The inevitable consequence
was that religion would gradually wither away.
Church and theology responded to this challenge in a variety of (often overlapping) ways. The first
response (propagated or practiced by Schleiermacher, Pietism, and the evangelical awakenings) was
to divorce religion from reason, locate it in human feeling and experience, and thus protect it from
any possible attacks by the Enlightenment's tendency toward “objectifying consciousness” (cf Braaten
1977:22–25; Gerrish 1984:196; Newbigin 1986:44).
A second response consisted in the privatization of religion. It would carve out for itself a small
domain in public life and for the rest remain a personal matter and leave the “public square” “naked”
(cf Neuhaus 1984).
A third response was to declare theology itself a science, in the Enlightenment sense of the term.
Thus, for some nineteenth-century Princeton theologians, theology was “the science of God,” “the
greatest of the sciences,” “the science of the sciences,” superior, precisely is science, to any other
science (for references, cf Hiebert 1985a:5).
A fourth response was for religion to attempt to establish its hegemony by creating a” Christian
society “in which Christianity would be the official religion and public officers as well as
government would have to adhere to religious principles and precepts.”
A last response to the challenge of the supremacy of reason was to embrace the secular society.
Humans have now come of age and should, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's words, act “as if there were no
God” (etsi Deus non daretur). A catalytic event in this regard seems to have been the World Student
Christian Federation conference held in Strasbourg in 1960 where Johannes Hoekendijk urged
participants to begin radically to desacralize the church and ecclesial activities. North American
theologians began to espouse a theology of the “death of God.” D. L. Munby in The Idea of a Secular
Society (1963) stated that it was the peculiar glory of Western Christianity to have permitted the
development of a society which explicitly refused to commit itself to any particular view. Arend van
Leeuwen in Christianity and World History (1964) suggested that secularization, which was inspired
by the gospel, was the wave of the future. Harvey Cox baptized the secular society in The Secular
City. Many others joined in the chorus. This response was, in a sense, a modern updating of
seventeenth century Deism which, using the classical illustration of God as a clock-maker, stated that
God gave the world its initial impetus and then left it to run its course. This view certainly satisfied
rationalists much more than did the approaches of those who tried to turn the Bible into the first book
of science (third response).
Second, the Enlightenment's strict separation between subject and object in the natural sciences
was also applied to theology. This was particularly the case as scholars increasingly became aware
of the historical differences between their own time and those of the biblical records; in G. E.
Lessing's words, a “garstiger Graben” (an “ugly ditch”) separated us from the past. This “ditch”
became evident particularly in the field of biblical scholarship, where the relationship between the
biblical texts then and the interpretation of those texts now has been a central issue at least since the
end of the eighteenth century. By emphasizing biblical inerrancy, Protestant orthodoxy had attempted
to protect the objective truth of “pure doctrine.” This was followed by Pietism with its
individualization of the Word, then by idealism with its rationalization, and finally by liberalism
which tended to relativize the Word as purely historical, as a document from a distant past to which
modern people hardly had any relationship (cf Niebuhr 1959:37). The preoccupation with
hermeneutics since Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) underlines the distance that has developed
between the ancient text and the context shaped by the Enlightenment (cf Tracy 1984:95).
It is important, however, to realize that for most theologians their historical interests were
subsidiary to their theological concerns. They practiced their theology for the sake of the life of the
church, seeking to bridge the “ugly ditch” caused by the many centuries which had moved in between
the events concerning Jesus of Nazareth and the present. They realized that they could no longer, as
their predecessors were prone to do, ignore the “ditch” and enjoy direct access to the biblical story.
They believed, rather, that their task was to re-create, as far as possible, the original story and—glean
a message from it for today's church. In doing this, however, they increasingly ran the risk of
capitulating to the Enlightenment view of history and historical research and to treat the biblical
tradition as a mere object. The scholar examined the text but was not necessarily examined by it.
The elimination of purpose from science and the replacement of purpose by direct causality as
the clue to the understanding of reality was another dimension of Enlightenment thinking that made
deep inroads into theological thinking. The Christian faith is fundamentally interested in teleology, in
the wherefore? question. It is the ultimate aim of our activities and the purpose of our existence that
assign meaning to our lives. In the Newtonian paradigm, however, the world was increasingly
governed not by purpose but by the closed cycle of cause and effect. Human planning took the place
of trust in God. Little room was left for the element of surprise, for the humanly unpredictable.
Perhaps the optimism of the Enlightenment's philosophy of progress is the element more clearly
recognizable in modern theology and the contemporary church than any of the elements listed so far.
The idea of the imminent this-worldly global triumph of Christianity is a recent phenomenon and
intimately related to the modern spirit. Sometimes it manifested itself as the belief that the entire
world would soon be converted to the Christian faith; at other times Christianity was regarded as an
irresistible power in the process of reforming the world, eradicating poverty, and restoring justice for
all. This latter program was pursued particularly in circles where God was seen as a benevolent
Creator, people as intrinsically capable of moral betterment, and the kingdom of God as the crown of
the steady progression of Christianity. The spread of “Christian knowledge “would suffice in
achieving these aims.” Leibnitz, for instance, defined the church's task in the world as propagatio
fidei per scientiam (the propagation of Christianity through science or knowledge). The name of the
Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, founded in 1699, betrays a similar sentiment. It
saw its task as erecting libraries and schools and distributing Christian literature. Through knowledge
and education benevolence and charity would be spread far and wide. God's kingdom became
increasingly aligned with the culture and civilization of the West.
Equally far-reaching for theology was the Enlightenment's distinction between fact and value. The
tolerant Enlightenment paradigm magnanimously allowed individuals to select whatever values they
preferred from a wide range of options, all of which were on a par. Newbigin summarizes:
In the physics classroom the student learns what the “facts” are and is expected in the end to believe the truth of what he has
learned. In the religious education classroom he is invited to choose what he likes best (1986:39).

The logical outcome of this course was, naturally, that Christianity was reduced to one province of
the wide empire of religion. Different religions merely represented different values; each was part of
a great mosaic. Two different “truths” or “facts,” two different views of the same “reality,” cannot
coexist; two different values, however, can.
 Interestingly enough, there was some room left for religion in this edifice, but then only for
tolerant religion, especially religion which had been advised by “a little philosophy” (Bertrand
Russell, quoted in Polanyi 1958:271) through which one's values could, if necessary, be adjusted
from time to time. Above all, the role of religion was to oppose any form of sectarianism,
superstition, and fanaticism and to cultivate moral fiber in its adherents, thereby reinforcing human
reason. Religion should, however, under no circumstances challenge the dominant worldview.
Religion could exist alongside science, but without the first ever impinging on the latter.
The religious reaction to this dichotomy between fact and value took different forms which were
sometimes but not always mutually exclusive. One reaction was to endorse the Enlightenment
paradigm by turning it upside down: the tenets of the Christian faith were proclaimed to belong to the
category of “facts” and not of “values.” The nineteenth-century Princeton theologians provide an
excellent example (cf Marsden 1980:109–118). Charles Hedge, in the introduction to his Systematic
Theology, published in 1874, stated, “If natural science be concerned with the facts and laws of
nature, theology is concerned with the facts and the principles of the Bible” (quoted in Marsden
1980:112). And Francis Turretin, the seventeenth-century theologian whose Latin text was used at
Princeton, could say, “The Scriptures are so perspicuous in things pertaining to salvation that they can
be understood by believers without (any) external help” (quoted in Marsden 1980:110f; cf 115). This
view gave rise to the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture which found its classic expression in an
1881 publication by A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, and which taught “the truth to fact of every
statement of Scripture”; indeed, as Hodge said elsewhere, “The Bible…is a store-house of facts”
(quoted in Marsden 1980:113).
Another response to the modern dichotomy between fact and value was, in a sense, exactly the
opposite of the one just mentioned, but was also predicated on Enlightenment assumptions. In this
case the believer accepted that religious matters were concerned with values rather than facts. So
facts and values were dutifully separated into non-overlapping domains; science and religion were
assigned to two different realms. And in true Platonic fashion supremacy was ascribed to the
transcendent, spiritual, and eternal reality over against the natural, the tangible, and the transitory. A
purely scientific science was outranked by a purely religious religion. Indeed, facts and values had
nothing to do with each other. One cheerfully accepted the modern scientific worldview and declared
that the essence of faith belonged to a world for which neither science nor history could have anything
to say (cf Newbigin 1986:49). In the process, however, faith and everything related to it became
something entirely otherworldly. The kingdom of God in Jesus’ ministry was “purely religious,
supernational, future-oriented, predominantly spiritual and inward”; it had “no political, national or
earthly design” (Ohm 1962:247—my translation).
The Enlightenment tenet that all problems were in principle solvable had an equally far-reaching
effect on theology and the church. This dogma ruled out miracles and every other form of inexplicable
events. Galileo regarded the physical world as a perfect machine whose future manifestations could
be both predicted and controlled by somebody who had full knowledge of how it worked. All one
needed was sufficient knowledge in order to understand, plan, and control events and developments.
Where God was still used as a hypothesis he had become the “God of the gaps.” We needed him only
for exigencies such as cancer and similar incurable diseases. Step by step, however, our knowledge
was expanding; the gaps were being closed. God was pushed further and further back and was
becoming more and more redundant.
Similar sentiments were voiced in theological circles. I have already referred to the enthusiastic
endorsement by many theologians of secularization during the 1960s (cf van Leeuwen 1964:419f).
Whereas van Leeuwen, however, still warns against the “suicidal implications of future technological
progress” (:408), Mesthene is much less ambivalent. He admits that technology may destroy “some
values,” and that this is “upsetting” since it “complicates the world,” but he plays down human fear of
the unknown by calling it “reminiscent of the long-time prisoner who may shrink from the
responsibility of freedom in preference for the false security of his accustomed cell” (1967:487).
The last Enlightenment precept I have identified was that everyone was an emancipated,
autonomous individual. Its most immediately recognizable effect on Christianity was the rampant
individualism which soon pervaded Protestantism in particular. Its influence went further, however.
The church became peripheral, since each individual not only had the right but also the ability to
know God's revealed will. And because individuals were liberated and independent, they could make
their own decisions about what they believed.

In discussing the impact of the Enlightenment paradigm on human life as a whole, not only
religious life, it is of course important to realize that this view of reality did not remain unchanged
and unchallenged during recent centuries. In a variety of ways the walls that so carefully divided
subject from object, value from fact, ideology from science, etc, began to crack. Rationalism and
empiricism increasingly proved incapable of supplying convincing answers to all the questions
asked. In our next chapter the break-up of the Enlightenment paradigm will be discussed briefly. For
the moment I just want to point out that all reactions to this paradigm were, until very recently, in the
final analysis conditioned and even dictated by it. In each case the operative plausibility structure
remained that of the Enlightenment.
Such reactions, in addition, illustrate another given: it is futile to attempt nostalgically to return to
a pre-Enlightenment worldview. It is not possible to “un-know” what we have learned. To attempt to
do this is, moreover, unnecessary. The “light” in the Enlightenment was real light and should not
simply be discarded. What is needed, rather, is to realize that the Enlightenment paradigm has served
its purpose; we should now move beyond it, taking what is valuable in it—with the necessary caution
and critique—along with us into a new paradigm (cf Newbigin 1986:43). The point is that the
Enlightenment has not solved all our problems. It has in fact created unprecedented new problems,
most of which we have only begun to be aware of during the last two decades or so. The
Enlightenment was supposed to create a world in which all people were equal, in which the
soundness of human reason would show the way to happiness and abundance for all. This did not
materialize. Instead, people have become the victims of fear and frustrations as never before. As far
back as 1950 Romano Guardini, in his book on “the end of the modern era,” again and again pointed
to this legacy of the Enlightenment. The terms he used to describe it included fear, disenchantment,
threat, a feeling of being abandoned, doubt, danger, alienation, and anxiety (:43, 55f, 61, 84, 94f). He
summarizes,
All monsters of the wilderness, all horrors of darkness have reappeared. The human person again stands before the chaos; and
all of this is so much more terrible, since the majority do not recognize it: after all, everywhere scientifically educated people are
communicating with one another, machines are running smoothly, and bureaucracies are functioning well (:96—my translation).

MISSION IN THE MIRROR OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Church and State
It was inevitable that the Enlightenment would profoundly influence mission thinking and practice, the
more so since the entire modern missionary enterprise is, to a very real extent, a child of the
Enlightenment. It was, after all, the new expansionist worldview which pushed Europe's horizons
beyond the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean and thus paved the way for a worldwide
Christian missionary outreach. In the previous chapter I have shown that the very term used for this
ecclesiastical and cultural expansion, namely “mission,” was conceived as a concomitant of Western
imperial outreach.
I shall now attempt to trace the ways in which the missionary idea has unfolded in Protestantism
since the eighteenth century onward. I shall do it by means of examining the major forces and motifs
that characterized Protestant mission during this period. First, however, I shall attempt to identify and
delineate the major events of this period insofar as they have affected the evolution of the missionary
idea.
I begin by turning to the modified relationship between church and state. Since the time of
Constantine there was a symbiotic relationship between church and state, manifested during the
Middle Ages in the interdependence between the pope and the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Even
where pope and emperor were at loggerheads, they both continued to operate within the framework of
interdependence and of the Christian faith—in other words, within the framework of “Christendom”
or the corpus Christianum. The Reformation dealt a severe blow to this symbiosis, since the Western
church was now no longer one. Meanwhile the Holy Roman Empire had also begun to disintegrate
into several nation-states. The idea of Christendom remained intact, however; in each European
country the church was “established” as state church—Anglican in England, Presbyterian in Scotland,
Reformed in the Netherlands, Lutheran in Scandinavia and some of the German territories, Roman
Catholic in most of Southern Europe, etc. It was difficult to differentiate between political, cultural,
and religious elements and activities, since they all merged into one. This made it completely natural
for the first European colonizing powers, Portugal and Spain, to assume that they, as Christian
monarchs, had the divine right to subdue pagan peoples (cf Chapter 7) and that therefore colonization
and Christianization not only went hand in hand but were two sides of the same coin.
It was not essentially different when Protestant powers began to enter the race for the acquisition
of colonies. The original inhabitants of North America, because they were “pagans,” had no rights
and were without further ado assumed to be subjects of the British throne. To subdue them and take
their land was regarded as a divine duty similar to the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan; on occasion 1
Samuel 15:3 could be applied directly to the colonists’ conflict with the Indians—“Now go and smite
Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have” (reference in Blanke 1966:105). When, later, the
Puritans embarked upon a mission to Native Americans (cf Beaver 1961:61), this was not because of
a change of framework; it was, in a sense, just another way of affirming the hegemony of Christianity
and the symbiosis of church and state.
In the Enlightenment paradigm, however, the alliance between church and state increasingly came
under pressure: in the long run it could not but find such a union unacceptable. Paradoxically,
Cromwell's Commonwealth (1649–1660), which sought a revival of the theocratic ideal, also set a
time-bomb under the notion of the divine right of kings. It was only a matter of time before religion
and politics would go their separate ways. This came sooner in England than on the European
continent, yet at the same time the separation was milder than it would be in France, the Netherlands,
and elsewhere, perhaps because the parties concerned were more inclined to compromise than those
on the continent. The monarchy was restored in 1660 but remained under stress. Eventually, in 1689,
a settlement was reached between Parliament and King William III. A Bill of Rights was adopted
which, on the one hand, guaranteed the survival of the monarchy, yet at the same time curtailed royal
power. The idea of an established church was not discarded, but it was brought into the sphere of
practical convenience. Henceforth, theocratic dreams would belong to the past; colonial and ecclesial
expansion were to be two separate things (cf van den Berg 1956:33).
On the continent events evolved differently. There the final separation between state and church
came a century later than in Britain, yet when it came, it had more far-reaching consequences. The
French Revolution of 1789 is the best-known example of this development but comparable, though
less violent, occurrences were in evidence in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Enlightenment ideas,
bottled up for more than a century, exploded onto the scene and changed the entire face of Europe
within a decade or two. In France, the tie between state and church was summarily severed. In the
Netherlands the proclamation of the Batavian Republic in 1795 also terminated a centuries-old union.
This also meant the end of state-mission cooperation in the overseas colonies.
In Britain's colonies, however, developments were not dissimilar to those in the colonies of
Holland, Denmark, and other continental powers. In the case of the American colonies the empire
continued to expand its western frontier—no longer, however, as part of a comprehensive religio-
cultural-political program, but for imperialistic purposes and in order to thwart French aspirations in
the area. In the East, notably in India, the empire's interests were chiefly mercantile. Thus the
“secular” and the “religious” were clearly going their separate ways, even if it would still take a long
time before the full implications of the new situation would manifest itself (cf van den Berg 1956:33).
The corpus Christianum, particularly in the case of Britain, was not going to disappear in one fell
swoop. The idea lingered on. From time to time in subsequent centuries colonial policies would
again acquire religious overtones, especially in the first part of the nineteenth century (van den Berg
1956:33, 146, 170f, 190; I shall return to this).
The separation between the “secular” and the “religious” was particularly striking in the case of
Pietism. In the previous chapter I pointed out that the first Danish-Halle missionaries, Ziegenbalg and
Plütschau, succeeded in holding together “service to souls” and “service to the body” (Gensichen
1975a: “Dienst der Seelen” and “Dienst des Leibes”; cf Nergaard 1988:34–40). This holistic
approach could, however, not survive the onslaught of the Enlightenment on the European continent.
A. H. Francke, one of the founders of the Pietist movement and spiritual father of the Danish-Halle
mission, was fundamentally opposed to Rationalism and the teachings of Leibnitz, a circumstance
which put Pietism (together with the pietistic missionary enterprise) and the Enlightenment at
loggerheads right from the start (van den Berg 1956:42f). The battle was an unequal one. Pietism
could only survive by withdrawing into a spiritual cocoon and leaving the “world” outside the scope
of its ministry. Pressure was soon exerted upon the missionaries in Tranquebar to concern themselves
only with the souls of Indians. By 1727 the home board had reached the point where it distinguished
categorically between the “civil” and the “religious” spheres; only the second was to be a concern of
the church (Gensichen 1975a:174).
The continental churches, in contrast to those of the English-speaking world, increasingly
succumbed to the Enlightenment ethos. In the course of time, Rationalism gained the upper hand in
theological and ecclesiastical circles. By the end of the eighteenth century it had almost completely
paralyzed the will to mission (Gensichen 1961:18). Francke and Zinzendorf, the great German
missionary leaders who had towered above their contemporaries in the early part of the century (cf
Warneck 1906:67), were now largely forgotten or discredited. The missionary enterprise had all but
collapsed under the flood-tide of Rationalism (Warneck 1906:66f; van den Berg 1956:123).
In Britain, the influence of Francke and Leibnitz arrived on the scene more or less simultaneously.
This led to a sort of marriage between Rationalism and Pietism (cf Gensichen 1961:31; van den Berg
1956:44; Chaney 1977:31). The dominant ecclesiastical party in the Anglican Church,
Latitudinarianism,1 was milder than the rationalism which had invaded continental churches and
theology in that period; also, British evangelicalism was not as narrow as German Pietism (:124).
The SPCK and the SPG (founded, respectively, in 1699 and 1701), for instance, reflected much of the
“distinctly synthetic character” (:124) of British spiritual life which resists mutually exclusive
extremes. Thus, what the Awakenings brought and proclaimed when they burst upon the British and
American scenes from the early eighteenth century onward, was not regarded as alien to and in
conflict with the ideas of the Enlightenment or with those of a warm experiential faith.
Forces of Renewal
In the event three factors converged to effect a spiritual change in the English-speaking world, a
change that was to have a profound influence on missionary developments to the present day. These
were the Great Awakening in the American colonies, the birth of Methodism, and the evangelical
revival in Anglicanism (cf van den Berg 1956:73–78), none of which was felt to be implacably
opposed to the emerging scientific age. I now turn to these forces of renewal and their impact on
missionary thinking and practice.
Historians distinguish between the Great Awakening, a series of revivals in the American colonies
between 1726 and 1760, and a second movement, which lasted from approximately 1787 to 1825,
and which in England was called the Evangelical Revival. In the United States of America, however,
it became known as the Second Great Awakening. Each of these movements exercised a profound
influence on mission.
The Great Awakening began in Dutch Reformed congregations (which had been influenced by the
Dutch “Second Reformation”), in the Raritan Valley of New Jersey. From these it spread to other
denominations, mostly along the Atlantic seaboard, where the Presbyterian Jonathan Edwards soon
became the leading figure. For America, says Niebuhr, the Great Awakening was a new beginning, “it
was our national conversion” (1959:126). And it was mainly through Edwards that the Awakening
succeeded in stemming the tide of shallow Rationalism, breaking the fetters of petrified Puritanism,
and thus restoring dynamic to the Christian church (:172). Edwards's thought was the great intellectual
and spiritual vein from which missionary theology in the period was mined (Chaney 1976:57; cf 74).
This was so primarily because of the solid theological basis he had laid and because of his personal
example and commitment. Orthodoxy emphasized the objective criterion of what God had done and
what the Bible taught; Pietist and separatist groups stressed the subjective criterion of personal
spiritual experience. Edwards and the Awakening, however, combined the two principles; they knew
that Scripture without experience was empty, and experience without Scripture blind (Niebuhr
1959:109).
Edwards's eschatology—which was to be influential in North American missionary thinking into
the twentieth century (cf Chaney 1976:65)—was postmillennial. It was not, however, the relaxed
postmillennialism of Latitudinarianism; there was a sparkle of excitement in his eschatology, in that
he believed that the Awakening really heralded the beginning of the latter days (de Jong 1970:157f).
This fervent eschatological expectation was linked to the proclamation of a gospel of repentance and
faith, not of inducing people to do good works. Rather than whipping up the wills of their listeners by
admonitions, threats, and promises, the preachers of the Awakening guided them toward cleansing the
fountains of life through an encounter with the living and present Lord. Those touched by the
Awakening were characterized by a burning seriousness with regard to the ultimate issues of life. The
diary of David Brainerd, Edwards's young friend, perhaps reflects better than any publication from
the period the true spirit of the Awakening; it was permeated with a consuming passion for God's
glory and the salvation of the lost, but also with an overpowering self-analysis (cf van den Berg
1956:78, 92; Niebuhr 1959:118f).
Robert E. Thompson's judgment (quoted in Chaney 1976:49 and 1977:20) that the Great
Awakening “terminated the Puritan and inaugurated the Pietist or Methodist age of American church
history,” though having some validity, is only partially correct. It is probably more appropriate to
describe it as a mixture of Puritanism and Pietism ground together in the crucible of the American
experience (Chaney 1976:49). It was perceived as a “great effusion” (de Jong's chapter title for the
period 1735 to 1776), and it launched a new era in the evolution of the American mind (Alan
Heimert, reference in Chaney 1977:20). It also represented, to use Niebuhr's term, the shift from a
primary emphasis on God's sovereignty to God's grace (1959:88–126).
The first Awakening did not, however, give birth directly to missionary activities, although it did
lay the foundations for them.
About the time of Edwards's revival preaching in New England, in 1735, John Wesley (1703–
1791) and his brother Charles (1707–1788) were sent to Georgia by the SPG. They appeared to have
had no contact with the Awakening; rather, the spiritual renewal the Wesleys experienced resulted
from contacts with Moravians. From 1739 onward they were, together with George Whitefield,
conducting revival meetings in Britain. From these a new denomination, Methodism, evolved in the
course of time. More clearly than the Great Awakening in the American colonies Methodism revealed
the influence of the Enlightenment. Methodists could see no real difference between nominal
Christians and pagans and could not, by implication, distinguish between “home” and “foreign”
missions. The corpus Christianum was breaking up. The whole world was a mission field; hence
John Wesley's famous adage, “The world is my parish” (van den Berg 1956:84f). The Wesleyan
revival also meant that secular and spiritual interests had parted company; Methodists were
concentrating on the salvation of souls (:170). Societal change was viewed as a result rather than an
accompaniment of soul-saving.2
The Anglican Church was not unaffected by the Methodist revival. In particular, Methodism
exercised a fertilizing influence on evangelical Anglicans who differed from Methodists mainly in
that they remained loyal to the Anglican Church and wished to renew it from within. Methodism thus
acted as a catalyst in helping evangelical Anglicans shake off the stranglehold of the rather anemic
Latitudinarianism of the period (van den Berg 1956:70, 113, 116f, 131) and thus usher in the
Evangelical Revival. Much of the renewal spilled over into non-established churches as well,
particularly Presbyterian.
The Second Awakening
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Great Awakening had more or less run out of steam.
The churches of the religious establishment reached their nadir in the revolutionary generation. At the
time of independence (1776) only about five percent of the population of the new nation were church
members (Hogg 1977:201). In the words of Charles Chaney:
In general, rationalism had invaded the…schools and colleges, and slipped quietly into many of the churches. An unobtrusive
Deism describes the religious commitment of the most influential men of the period…The overarching interests of Americans
had changed since the Great Awakening. The Enlightenment had come to the new American nation (1976:97f).

All this was soon to change, dramatically and fundamentally. Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian
churches began to experience marked growth in the wake of the American Revolution (Chaney
1977:20–24). By the year 1800 the percentage of church membership had almost doubled; it has
steadily increased ever since then, reaching a peak of about sixty percent in 1970 (Hogg 1977:361).
The dramatic rise after 1776 is to be attributed almost solely to the Second Great Awakening. It was,
unlike the first Awakening, not a new beginning for North America (as it was, to an extent, for
Britain); rather, it could profit substantially from the first Awakening, refer back to it, learn from its
failures and shortcomings, consolidate its gains, and channel the unprecedented effusion of newly
released energy into a great variety of ministries, particularly domestic and foreign missions. By
1797 the awakening had reached a peak in the United States. Chaney captures the mood of the period:
Defense turned to offense. Optimism gripped Evangelicals. Infidelity was no longer the fearsome enemy against which bulwarks
must be raised but rather a vulnerable enemy against which the churches could be rallied (1976:155).

Above all, the new mood spawned a missionary spirit. By 1817 the missionary cause had become
the great passion of the American churches (Chaney 1976:174). Indeed, “foreign missions had
become the new orthodoxy” (J. A. Andrew, quoted by Hutchison 1987:60).
It was not very different in Britain. Carey's famous slogan, “Expect great things from God, attempt
great things for God!” expressed the prevailing mood well. And it can hardly be doubted that the
Enlightenment had reinforced this mood and helped to bring the entire world within reach of the
gospel. Just prior to the period under discussion, James Cook had circumnavigated the earth. His
story was widely read and contributed to the widening of people's horizons, in particular Carey's.
Many believed that, through the explorations of Cook and others (now purely secular and mercantile
enterprises and no longer intimately linked to the church and the spreading of the gospel) God in his
providence was opening a way for missions also.
One of the most significant products of the Evangelical Awakening, in both Britain and North
America (and, in fact, also in continental Europe and the British colonies) was the founding of
societies specifically devoted to foreign mission. I shall return to the theological and missiological
significance of these societies. For the moment I just wish to point out that they represent a new mood
in Protestantism. The constitutive word was “voluntarism.” Those touched by the awakening were no
longer willing to sit back and wait for the official churches to take the initiative. Rather, individual
Christians, frequently belonging to different churches, banded together for the sake of world mission.
It has become customary to hail William Carey—the Northamptonshire Baptist who in 1793 went
to Serampore in India as the first missionary of the newly constituted “Particular Baptist Society for
Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen”—as the architect of modern missions. Whilst there is
some validity to thus singling him out, it has to be remembered that he was only one of many similar
figures from this period and as much a product as a shaper of the spirit of the time. Church renewal
and mission were simply in the air. It is also noteworthy that Jonathan Edwards's An Humble Attempt
to Promote an Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People, in Extraordinary Prayer for
the Revival of Religion, and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom in the Earth, would only really
be heeded more than four decades after it was first published in 1748, and become a catalyst for
mission in a variety of denominations on both sides of the Atlantic (cf van den Berg 1956:93, 115,
122f, 129).
Meanwhile, on the European continent, the Enlightenment spirit succeeded in thwarting any church
renewal on a scale remotely comparable to the Awakenings in Britain and North America. Political
circumstances of this period also seriously inhibited renewal. It should be remembered that this was
the era of the French Revolution, followed by the Napoleonic wars, which ravaged large parts of the
continent. Even so, revival influences soon spilled over from England to Holland, where J. Th. van
der Kemp became the catalytic figure in furthering the cause of both renewal and mission (Enklaar
1981:16–20; 1988:passim). In the German-speaking countries the situation was less promising.
Pietism, which had barely survived the massive onslaught of Rationalism, was confined to small
groups and was without a vision. Two men, however, Samuel Urlsperger (16851772) and his son
Johann August (1728–1806), exerted themselves to keep alive and encourage these small and widely
scattered groups. In 1780 the younger Urlsperger founded the Deutsche Christentumsgesellschaft
(German Society for Christianity), the purpose of which was to promote “pure doctrine and true
piety.” In the course of time this society was to become the launching pad for German mission
societies (cf Schick 1943:188–306).
It is important to note that evangelicals—whether in the United States, Britain, or the continent,
and whether Anglicans, Lutherans, or members of non-established churches—were nonconformists in
the true sense of the word. The “official” churches were, by and large, indifferent; they showed little
interest in the predicament of the poor in their own countries or the detrimental effect of colonial
policies on the inhabitants of Europe's overseas colonies. It was those touched by the Awakenings
who were moved to compassion by the plight of people exposed to the degrading conditions in slums
and prisons, in coal-mining districts, on the American frontier, in West Indian plantations, and
elsewhere (cf van den Berg 1956:67–70; Bradley 1976:passim). William Wilberforce, who launched
a frontal attack on the practice of slavery in the British Empire, was an avowed evangelical. William
Carey protested against sugar imports from West Indian plantations cultivated by slaves. Christian
Blumhardt, one of the founding fathers of the Basel Mission, challenged the first group of Basel
missionaries never to forget “how arrogant and scandalous the poor Black people were for
centuries…treated by people who called themselves Christians” (quoted in Rennstich 1982a:546).
Many, many more similar examples could be added. Small wonder that the chartered companies
administering the colonies did everything in their power to keep the missionaries out (cf van den Berg
1956:108, 146; Blanke 1966:109)! At the same time these evangelicals had no doubt that
soteriological emphases had to take precedence, that they were not proclaiming mere temporal
improvement of conditions, but new life in the fullest sense of the word. As such the burgeoning
evangelical movement, particularly if compared with the bulk of Western Christianity and ecclesial
life which by and large had succumbed to the spirit of Rationalism, represented a fairly effective
opposition, in some respects even an alternative, to the Enlightenment frame of mind.
The Nineteenth Century
At the same time it could not be denied that a subtle shift had taken place between the first Awakening
and the second. By and large the theocratic ideal, still basic to Edwards's thinking, lay outside of the
horizon of the evangelicals of the Second Awakening. They were seeing people primarily as
individuals, capable of making decisions on their own (van den Berg 1956:82). Their interest was
also more narrowly soteriological than Edwards's was. The Enlightenment had steadily but
relentlessly whittled away the once so broad range of the church's interests in all of life and society.
Admittedly, there was something of an upsurge of theocratic interests toward the end of the
Napoleonic wars, but this was fundamentally different from the older theocracy. In Britain the new
theocracy was more secular, more intimately tied to patriotism. Protestant Britain's victory over
Catholic France was haled naively as the beginning of the fall of Antichrist but also as confirmation
of Britain's providential destiny in world history.
Thus a religious note was again added to history, but in such a way that it tended to serve narrow
nationalistic interests rather than the broad sweep of God's reign. The first generation of British
evangelical missionaries, of all denominations, often fell foul of the colonial authorities. But as
Victorian England sought to regain its religious dimension the second and subsequent generations of
missionaries experienced less and less tension between working for God's kingdom and for the
interests of the empire. Gradually, evangelicals became a respected power in the state, and
missionaries, whether they intended to or not, became promoters of Western imperial expansion (cf
van den Berg 1956:146, 170f). Ian Bradley, in his study on their impact on the Victorians (1976),
explains how evangelicals succeeded in putting their stamp on all aspects of British life. Much of this
was undoubtedly for the good of the entire community. Unfortunately, however, evangelical leaders
were not free of paternalism and snobbery, which was one of the reasons why so much of Victorian
England revealed two “faces”—a public face which spoke of high moral standards, and a private
face where vices of many kinds abounded. Much of the vital religion of the Evangelical Awakening
had been solidified into lifeless moral codes. The Victorian Age was undoubtedly an age of
seriousness (cf the title of Bradley 1976), and in some of its expressions the seriousness was really
all that remained.
Comparable developments took place in North America. The mood there, however, in the land of
opportunities and hope, was more optimistic. In keeping with this the dominant theological position in
virtually all Protestant denominations was explicitly postmillennialist. Chaney (1976:269) remarks,
with reference to this period, “Not a single sermon or missionary report can be discovered that does
not stress eschatological considerations.” The events of the time brought the remote possibility of the
millennium tantalizingly near. God's kingdom would not, however, invade history as catastrophe, but
would unfold gradually and mature in an organic way. It was the old Puritan ideal in a revived form.
The theology of the day, however, was no longer that of Edwards; it was the modified Calvinism of
Samuel Hopkins. Evil passions would gradually fade away. Licentiousness and injustice would
disappear. Strife and dissension would be wiped out. There would be no more war, famine,
oppression, or slavery, neither in the United States nor on the mission fields (Niebuhr 1959:144–
146). Americans saw themselves as inaugurators of a new order for the ages, an order conceived of
as a return to a pristine human condition (Marsden 1980:224). At the same time the “horizontalist”
interpretation of the dawning millennium was paving the way for an increasingly secularized
understanding of God's reign.
By the fourth decade of the nineteenth century the impact of the Second Great Awakening was
waning. Yet another revival period, this time under the able leadership of Charles G. Finney (1792–
1875), simply served to underscore the fact that awakenings are apparently not destined to last; they
all run out of steam and need to be revivified. The uniqueness of the renewal experience, still sensed
in the first two Awakenings, was lost. Awakenings—or “revivals,” as they increasingly came to be
called—were becoming routine. They deteriorated into a technique for maintaining Christian
America; they became “the great divine hoe, for keeping the garden clean” (Chaney 1976:295).
On the surface, however, “mainline” church life in the United States was, in spite of an ever-
widening rift between the North and the South on the issue of slavery, still fairly monolithic
theologically. The traumatic experience of the Civil War (1862–1865) was to change all of that. The
cessation of hostilities did not usher in a golden age of the reign of righteousness, as some had
predicted. The evangelical unity forged by the Awakenings—an evangelicalism in which a
“commitment to social reform was a corollary of the inherited enthusiasm for revival” (Marsden
1980:12)—was about to disintegrate; “the broad river of classical evangelicalism divided into a
delta, with shallower streams emphasizing ecumenism and social renewal on the left and confessional
orthodoxy and evangelism on the right” (Lovelace 1981:298). By the beginning of the twentieth
century the first had evolved into the social gospel, the second into Fundamentalism.
Behind the two movements lay two different eschatologies. Before the Civil War most American
churches were postmillennialist—more correctly, premillennialism and postmillennialism did not
fundamentally differ from each other; the proponents of the two views disagreed primarily over
whether Christ would return before or after the millennium. Both groups saw history as controlled by
a cosmic struggle and both expected a visible and literal parousia of Christ (cf Marsden 1980:51).
In the nineteenth-century United States, Christianity was very much an establishment religion. The
virulent anticlericalism that was in evidence in many European countries at the time was absent. Little
tension was felt between progress and the gospel. Rather, scientific advance was regarded in a rather
simplistic way as heralding the advent of the kingdom of God. The manifestations of secularism, such
as materialism and capitalism, were blessed with Christian symbolism. As evils like slavery,
oppression, and war receded, science, technology, and learning would advance to undreamed of
accomplishments. Gradually, mainline theologians began to abandon the dramatically supernatural
aspects of the traditional postmillennial view of history. The idea of history as a cosmic struggle
between God and Satan was discarded, as was belief in the physical return of Christ. The kingdom
was not future or other-worldly, but “here and now”; it was, in fact, already taking shape in the
dramatic technical advances of North America (Marsden 1980:48–50). The entire development was
further distinguished by a lack of urgency about evangelism. On the one hand, it was no longer
believed that those untouched by the gospel would go straight to hell; on the other, it was increasingly
thought that the overseas mission of the American churches consisted in sharing the benefits of the
American civilization and way of life with the deprived peoples of the world (cf Hutchison
1982:169).
The Twentieth Century
By the first decade of the twentieth century the transition from Reformed post-millennialism to the
Social Gospel had been completed. Sin became identified with ignorance and it was believed that
knowledge and compassion would produce uplift as people rose to meet their potentials.
The other branch of North American “mainline” Protestantism held on to the supernatural elements
of the Christian faith. In order to uphold these it increasingly turned to premillennialisrn. This switch
was not unrelated to the psychological mood of the day. The devastation of the Civil War and the
many problems it left unsolved gave birth to a feeling of despondency in many circles. Many
Christians did not share the optimism and progress-mindedness of the “liberals.” Only Christ's return
in glory could really change conditions fundamentally and permanently. Until that happened, the world
was doomed to becoming increasingly worse; the best one could hope for was to contain a little bit of
the evil which seemed to be spreading like wildfire. In these circles evangelism was given the highest
priority; increasingly people shied away from virtually any form of social involvement.
A profound and far-reaching change had taken place in North American Protestantism. This wing
of the Christian church succeeded for a longer time than did European Protestantism in keeping at bay
the hounds of the Enlightenment. Powerful remnants of the wholeness of life, as manifested in pre-
Enlightenment Puritanism, survived in mainline North American Protestantism well into the nineteenth
century, long after such remnants had lost respectability in Europe and had been confined to small and
marginal groups at the edges of the established churches. The Civil War, however, in principle
destroyed the belief that one could be both an evangelist and an abolitionist (as Finney had been),
both postmillennialist and upholder of the belief in a supernatural kingdom of God, and define sin as
both public (or structural) and private (or individual). The Enlightenment had caught up with North
American churches (cf Visser ‘t Hooft 1928:102–125). Having originated in Puritanism and having
come to full bloom in postmillennial evangelicalism, North American Protestantism split. The one
wing opted for premillennialism, which developed into fundamentalism; it had learnt to tolerate
corruption and injustice, to expect and even welcome them as signs of Christ's imminent return (cf
Lovelace 1981:297). The other wing formally remained postmillennial, but their millennium
gradually became almost completely this-worldly; it consisted, to a large extent, in an uncritical
affirmation of American values and blessings, and the conviction that these had to be exported to and
shared with people worldwide.
From the 1930s onward the picture would begin to change. That story, however, and its
significance for mission, belongs to our next chapter.

MISSIONARY MOTIFS IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT ERA

In the preceding section the contours were drawn of ecclesial and other developments from the
eighteenth to the twentieth century. My approach was diachronic. In the present section I wish to
follow a different approach, attempting to identify and briefly analyze some of the most important
missionary motifs of the period. This is a hazardous undertaking. To begin with, such motifs did not
operate in isolation from the general flow of historical events. Perhaps more important, it is really
impossible to disentangle motifs and isolate them from each other. Any one motif is, in a sense, just
the opposite side of another (cf van den Berg 1956:21, 38, 186–188). If I nevertheless proceed in this
way, I do so simply so as to get a handle on a very complex and at the same time crucial historical
period. Also, it will not be possible to discuss in detail all missionary motives and motifs3 of the
period; only those I regard as particularly important will be identified and made to pass in revue.
In addition, my purpose will be to show to what extent these motives and motifs have been
influenced by the Enlightenment frame of mind. It was a period in which centrifugal forces were at
work. It is therefore both pointless and impossible to try to identify a completely unified and coherent
pattern of thinking and action in this era. The Enlightenment macro-paradigm remains elusive and
manifests itself, at best, in a variety of sub-paradigms, some of which appear to be in tension, even
conflict, with others. Still, in this entire epoch, virtually everybody operated within the framework
generated by the Enlightenment.
I will not attempt any exhaustive treatment but merely endeavor to show how missionary motifs
since the eighteenth century related to earlier ones. In my survey I shall pay more attention to motifs in
the English-speaking world than to those on the European continent. The reasons are twofold. First, it
is a fact of history that during the past two centuries the English-speaking world has provided more
non-Roman Catholic missionaries than any other group (Neill 1966a:261). This fact alone makes a
study of Anglophone missions a high priority. Why is it that, after the continent seemed to have taken
the lead in the eighteenth century, the tide changed so dramatically toward the end of that century?
Second, the constituent elements of missions emanating from the English-speaking world have been
researched more extensively than others. One can therefore identify and discuss these with more
accuracy. The most important study on the subject, even if it really only covers the period up to 1815,
remains Johannes van den Berg's Constrained by Jesus ‘Love (1956). In recent years several
additional studies have, however, been published, particularly on missionary developments during
and in response to the colonial expansion of the West. Still, much more has to be done in this field.
The Glory of God
In classical Calvinist missionary thinking, from Voetius to Edwards, the emphasis was on God's
sovereignty over everything and on the conviction that God and God alone could take the initiative in
saving people. This belief in God taking the initiative found expression in the doctrine of
predestination. It is God who forgives and saves, not humans; it is God who reveals the truth and the
life, not human reason. Believers stood in awe of the majesty of God, the Wholly Other. In Protestant
orthodoxy, however, the emphasis on God's initiative became wooden and rigid; people were taught
to wait in complete passivity upon the saving work of God in their souls (cf van den Berg 1956:73).
In the period we are surveying here, by contrast, there was a growing awareness that God's
initiative did not exclude human endeavor and that his majesty was really the other side of his grace
and love reaching out to humankind. In the wake of the Great Awakening, then, the motif of the glory
of God became wedded to other motifs, in particular that of compassion. Still, even where the glory
of God was not explicitly mentioned, it continued to constitute the silent background motif during
virtually all of the eighteenth century.
In the subsequent era it began to wane. Its gradual decline is, to a significant extent, to be
attributed to the influence of the Enlightenment. Theocratic ideals and the notion of the glory of God
can only operate within the context of a theology deeply conscious of the unity of life and the royal
dominion of Christ over every sphere of life (van den Berg 1956:185). The Enlightenment put humans
rather than God in the center; all of reality had to be reshaped according to human dreams and
schemes. Even in Christian circles human needs and aspirations, although originally couched in
purely religious terms, began to take precedence over God's glory. So, in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century the emphasis shifted to the love of Christ; still later the accent was on salvation of
the perishing heathen and in the early twentieth century on the social gospel.
Still, the manifestation of God's glory as a motive for mission never disappeared completely.
Since the middle of the twentieth century, in particular, it has once again risen to prominence.
“Constrained by Jesus’ Love”?
Johannes van den Berg has chosen the words from 2 Corinthians 5:14 as the title for his excellent
inquiry into the motives of the missionary awakening in Great Britain in the period between 1698 and
1815. It is therefore appropriate that we reflect briefly on the role of this motif during the period
under investigation in this chapter. We meet references to the theme of love again and again.
In actual missionary motivation, promotion, and practice, this theme turned out to be a rather
ambivalent one. It manifested itself in both positive and negative ways. I turn, first, to its positive
expression.
In the missionary awakening love became a powerful incentive—love as gratitude for God's love
in Christ and as devotion to him who “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” This
love, together with the desire to promote the “spiritual benefit of others” gradually became the
dominant motif (cf van den Berg 1956:98–102, 156–159, 172–176; Warren 1965:52f). There was,
among the Christians touched by the Awakening, a tremendous sense of gratitude for what they had
received and an urgent desire to share with others, both at home and abroad, the blessings so freely
shed upon them.
In conflict with the dominant views of the time, the missionaries regarded as brothers and sisters
the people to whom they felt God was sending them. When the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions (commonly known as the American Board) commissioned its first overseas
missionaries, it was done in the conviction that distant Burma was “composed of our brethren,
descended from the same common parents, involved in the consequences of the same fatal apostasy
from God, and inhabiting the same world” (quoted in Hutchison 1987: 47). The principal theme was
that of empathy and solidarity, which found expression in compassion for others whose plight should
evoke the Christian's “tenderest affections” as well as a yearning for both their temporal comfort and
their immortal happiness (:48f). Though the missionaries viewed both themselves and those they
considered pagans as “children of wrath,” this was not where they put the emphasis; the primary
accent, rather, was on the fact that all people were, first of all, objects of God's love and therefore
worthy of being saved. John Wesley, in particular, was very conscious of the fact that God was above
all a God of mercy. And even if, partly under the influence of the Enlightenment, there was a subtle
shift away from the sovereignty of God's grace toward the view that people were inherently capable
of responding to the offer of salvation, not least because all were creatures of reason, the fact that all
were seen as fundamentally equal and therefore precious in the eyes of God, was something to be
applauded. The missionaries were never to forget this, said Christian Blumhardt to the first
missionaries of the Basel Mission sent out in 1827; therefore, in their intercourse with the people of
Africa, they should be “friendly, humble, patient,…never boastful nor conceited, nor rude, never
selfish, not quick to take offense” (quoted by Rennstich 1982a:94f).
Love for Christ and people often manifested itself in a remarkable degree of commitment and
dedication. Once again the Moravians stood out as an exceptionally clear example. Zinzendorf's
motto was “Wherever at the moment there is most to do for the Saviour, that is our home” (quoted in
Warneck 1906:59). The Moravians made it a matter of principle to go to those most deprived and
marginalized. They identified with the indigenous peoples and lived and dressed the way they did,
mostly to the utter disgust of the European colonizers. Often the fury of the colonial authorities was
vented on them. During a short span of forty years the Moravian missions among the American Indians
in North America had to vacate their mission stations no fewer than seventeen times, because of
interference from the colonial authorities (Blanke 1966:109).
Such boundless dedication to their missionary task and to the people they believed were entrusted
to them was, however, not limited to the Moravians. Many similar examples from other societies
could be cited. One only will have to suffice. In 1823 the Church Missionary Society sent twelve
missionaries to Sierra Leone; within eighteen months ten of them had died of fever. Yet the CMS did
not abandon Sierra Leone; for every one who fell there was always another willing to take his or her
place (Warren 1965:29). There can, I believe, be no doubt that a primary motive of most missionaries
was a genuine feeling of concern for others; they knew that the love of God had been shed abroad in
their hearts and they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of him who had died for them
(cf Warren 1965:28, 44).
Sometimes this motif of love and utter dedication blended with another—that of asceticism. In
Chapter 7, I suggested that much of the asceticism of the monastic movement was not immediately
related to mission; the monk was intent on saving his own soul and in order to achieve this, he would
start an abbey—which, however, gradually and almost by accident, would develop into a center for
mission. Sometimes the emphasis on self-denial took on overtones of the meritoriousness of good
works; a sacrificial life in mission would surely make the missionary more acceptable in God's sight!
Like Catholics, Protestant missionaries were not always completely free from this sentiment. John
and Charles Wesley, for instance, first went to the Indians in Georgia in the conviction that the
arduous and lonely work among these primitive people would help the Wesleys themselves toward
attaining true holiness and righteousness. This was, however, only a passing phase in their lives (cf
van den Berg 1956:95f, 180). The validity of their attitude lies therein that they sensed that mission
work was impossible without an element of sacrifice, self-denial, and preparedness to suffer for
Christ (:202).
 There can be no doubt that, for those touched by the Awakenings, the soteriological interest
remained paramount. Their love expressed itself as a desire to bring “everlasting felicity” to non-
Christians; the saving of souls was more important than the planting of churches or the improvement
of temporal conditions (cf van den Berg 1956:101, 158; Beaver 1961:60). This was so because most
Christians firmly believed that without being converted to the Christian faith people would perish
eternally.
Even so, little separation between the soteriological and the humanitarian motifs was in evidence
during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The missionaries persisted in the pre-
Enlightenment tradition of the indissoluble unity of “evangelization” and “humanization” (cf van der
Linde 1973), of “service to the soul” and “service to the body” (Nergaard 1988:34–40), of
proclaiming the gospel and spreading a “beneficent civilization” (Rennstich 1982a, 1982b). For
Blumhardt of the Basel Mission this clearly included “reparation for injustice committed by
Europeans, so that to some extent the thousand bleeding wounds could be healed which were caused
by the Europeans since centuries through their most dirty greediness and most cruel deceitfulness”
(quoted by Rennstich 1982a:95; cf 1982b:546). And Henry Venn, famous General Secretary of the
British CMS, urged missionaries to take their stand between the oppressor and the oppressed,
between the tyranny of the system and the morally and physically threatened masses of the people to
whom they went (cf Rennstich 1982b:545).
Thus far our survey of the influence of the motive of love in Protestant missions has to be judged
positively, by and large. There was, however, also a negative side to this motive.
It manifested itself, rather incongruously, in a curious mixture of both an optimistic and a
pessimistic view of humans. The first was bolstered by the emerging romanticism of the late
eighteenth century, both a result of and a reaction to the Enlightenment. J.-J. Rousseau, in particular,
depicted the inhabitants of distant countries who were still untouched by Western influences as “noble
savages.” The descriptions of the natives of the South Sea islands by Captain Cook and others as the
“sum of all earthly charm and beauty” clearly betray their indebtedness to Rousseau's views (van den
Berg 1956:97f, 106, 110, 153). Such language was not, however, evidence of the fact that Westerners
regarded others as their equals. Rather, the “noble savage” of Rousseau was a charming child, a
tabula rasa, unspoiled by civilization and as yet innocent and unable to perpetrate evil. Small
wonder then that this ostensibly optimistic view of humans was never far removed from its corollary,
namely, a condescending attitude toward those “innocents.” And this attitude could, again, easily
spawn a rather pessimistic view of non-Westerners. So, by the early nineteenth century, the views of
the typical evangelical concerning the pagan world, particularly with respect to its spiritual
condition, began to vacillate between pessimism and romanticism. Soon pessimism was the stronger
sentiment.
Furthermore, those to be saved were primarily seen as individuals. This approach reflected
conditions on the missionaries’ “home front,” where the old, sheltering influence of life in a
community permeated by Christian ideals was shattered by the Enlightenment worldview and
“revival” consequently deteriorated to appeals made to individuals in isolation from the communities
and contexts in which they lived (cf van den Berg 1956:82). The revivalists felt personally
responsible for the salvation of the lost and believed that those who heard the message were,
likewise, individually responsible for accepting the message; the comprehensiveness of the reign of
God, which characterized the early Puritan tradition, made way for the idea of the salvation of
individual souls (:186). And the same individualism was imposed upon the “objects” of Western
mission on the “mission fields.” In the course of the nineteenth-century it became ever more powerful
and all-pervasive in mission thinking. The individual responsibility of missionaries to proclaim
salvation to individuals became the hallmark of nineteenth-century missions. By the end of the century
missionaries were pouring in the thousands into Africa and Asia, confident that they had something to
offer to the deprived peoples of those continents and convinced that Africans and Asians were
eagerly waiting to embrace what they had to offer.
With some justification one could say that the missionary text of the period was Acts 16:9, Paul's
vision of the Macedonian man who beseeched him and said, “Come over…and help us.” The first
seal of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts depicted an Indian from whose mouth a banner with the
words from Acts 16:9 unfolded (Blanke 1966:105; Hutchison 1987:10). The seal of the SPG, founded
in 1701, carried the same text in Latin: Transiens adjuva nos. By the nineteenth century, as Enklaar
has demonstrated in a fine study of the subject (1981:5–15), the man from Macedonia became the
archetype of non-Christians imploring Christ's messengers to come to their aid. The cover of the
program for a Dutch mission festival in 1870 depicted the “Macedonian man” crying out to the
missionaries on the opposite shore (:6). Various issues of the monthly of the North German
Missionary Society carried a similar illustration (:7). In Holland, in particular, many missionary
hymns referred explicitly to the significance of Paul's vision for their own time (for examples, see
Enklaar 1981:8–12). A general missions magazine, founded in Holland in 1883, even had as title De
Macedoniër (:9). The titles of several books and pamphlets likewise alluded to this figure (:12f). The
cover illustration for the Missionary Review of the World of May 1920 carried the picture of an
Asian toddler and the words “Come over into Asia and help us” (Hutchison 1987:11). It is clear, says
van den Berg (1956:193f), “that in this period the thought was current that the heathen in their
helplessness and poverty were calling upon the benevolent help of the Christian nations.”
Evidently, then, a not-so-subtle shift had occurred in the original love motive; compassion and
solidarity had been replaced by pity and condescension. In most of the hymns, magazines, and books
of the early nineteenth century, heathen life was painted in the darkest colors, as a life of permanent
unrest and unhappiness, as life in the shackles of terrible sins. Africa was the “dark” continent; there,
as well as in India, on the islands of the Pacific, and elsewhere, lived only savages, cultural and
spiritual have-nots, the dregs of humanity, people totally depraved and deprived of the benefits of the
“Christian” world, “piteously lost souls in the thrall of the Devil and his ingenious systems”
(Hutchison 1987:48), plunged into bodily and spiritual misery.
Small wonder that, particularly in the nineteenth century, the adjective “poor” was increasingly
used to qualify the noun “heathen.” It appears times without number in the literature of the period (van
den Berg 1956:193). The patent needs of the “poor heathen” became one of the strongest arguments in
favor of mission. The glory of God as missionary motive had first been superseded by the emphasis
on his love. Now there was yet another shift in motivation—from the depth of God's love to the depth
of fallen humanity's pitiable state (: 175; Chaney 1976:225–239). Love had deteriorated into
patronizing charity.
This attitude was adopted not only toward non-Christians but also toward members of the younger
churches, the “fruit” of the West's missionary labors. Almost imperceptibly the constraining love of
Christ (2 Cor 5:14) deteriorated into feelings of spiritual superiority among Western missionaries and
an attitude of condescending benevolence to Christians from other cultures. The hearts of many of
these became “the scene of a warfare between gratitude, politeness and resentment” (Paton 1953:66).
Third-World Christians were regarded as minors, under the tutelage of missionaries from the West. It
was only to be expected that the relationship between mission agencies and the leadership of the
young churches would, in Kraemer's words, gradually become that of “controlling benefactors to
irritated recipients of charity” (1947:426).
In A Treatise on the Millennium (1793), Samuel Hopkins still tried to escape a too
anthropocentric missionary motivation by introducing the concept of “disinterested benevolence”
(van den Berg 1956:101; Hutchison 1987:49–51). In the course of time, however, the “disinterested”
was sometimes subtly changed into “condescending.” After all, the haves—the beati possidentes—
were morally obliged to share their spiritual wealth with others; they and they alone were equipped
with power from on high and had help to offer to those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death (cf
Enklaar 1981:5). The pagans’ pitiable state became the dominant motive for mission, not the
conviction that they were objects of the love of Christ.
It is clear that, in theory as well as in practice, much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
missionary philanthropy remained below the measure of Paul's being “constrained by Jesus’ love.”
The purity of that motive sullied. Its fountain-head, surely, is to be looked for in the spiritual
experience of a personal encounter with the living and present Lord and in a deeply personal
understanding of sin and grace; but its on the whole sound origins and genuinely Christian ingredients
were unable, in the long run, to hold out against the spirit of the age.
The Gospel and Culture
The major compromises of the Christian mission across the centuries, says Eugene L. Smith
(1968:72f), “have occurred in four relationships: with the state, with culture, with disunity in the
church, with money.” It is the compromise with culture that will be the theme of this section. This
compromise was less pronounced in the eighteenth century than in the nineteenth. It was only after the
Second World War that large-scale uneasiness began to manifest itself in this regard.
In the previous section I argued that, during the past few centuries, Christians did not, on the
whole, have any doubt concerning the superiority of their own faith over all others. It was therefore,
perhaps, to be expected that their feelings of religious superiority would spawn beliefs about
cultural superiority. In itself this is no new phenomenon. The ancient Greeks called other nations
barbaroi. Romans and members of other great “civilizations” likewise looked down upon others.
More often than not, such feelings of superiority were from the powerful and dominant toward the
weak and dominated. In the case of Western feelings of preeminence it was no different. There was,
however, at least one fundamental difference between Western cultural, military, and political
dominance of the Third World and the dominance of Greeks, Romans, etc, over other nations and
cultures in the more distant past. In those instances the relationship of dominance was, at least in
theory, reversible; the vanquished could, at a given moment, revolt and overpower their former
masters, if not militarily, then at least culturally. The point is that, in the final analysis, both groups
had at their disposal similar means and weapons and were therefore, in essence, a match for one
another. All the great military and cultural empires of the world—the Assyrian, the Persian, the
Macedonian, the Roman, the Mongolian, and the Turkish, to mention but a few—succumbed to forces
which, in the final analysis, were their equals, since the difference between their means of obtaining
and maintaining dominance and the means at the disposal of those dominated by them (again, both
military and cultural) were, in the long run, only minimal.
The Enlightenment, however, together with the scientific and technological advances that followed
in its wake, put the West at an unparalleled advantage over the rest of the world. Suddenly a limited
number of nations had at their disposal “tools” and know-how vastly superior to those of others. The
West could thus establish itself as master of all others in virtually every field. It was only logical that
this feeling of superiority would also rub off on the “religion of the West,” Christianity. As a matter of
fact, in most cases there was no attempt to distinguish between religious and cultural supremacy—
what applied to the one, applied equally axiomatically to the other. In the early years of its existence,
the American Board distinguished between darkness, blindness, superstition, and ignorance among
pagan nations, on the one hand, and light, vision, enlightenment, and knowledge in the West on the
other (cf Chaney1976:183). And it is virtually impossible, in this statement, to determine which of
these depictions referred to the West's culture and which to its religion. The one set of
characterizations presupposed the other (cf van den Berg 1956:157).
Just as the West's religion was predestined to be spread around the globe, the West's culture was to
be victorious over all others. A century and a half ago G. W. F. Hegel argued that world history
moved from East to West, from “childhood” in China, via India, Persia, Greece, and Rome to
“adulthood” in Western Europe. He concluded, “Europe is the absolute end of history, just as Asia is
the beginning” (1975:197). This understanding of the “course of world history” (:124–151) or of the
“geographical basis of world history” (:152–196) is argued with complete candor and with a total
absence of any fear of contradiction; it should be clear to everybody who has eyes to see. Even so,
Hegel attempted to maintain the semblance of fairness, and with great detail surveyed one continent
after the other, assessed its culture (or lack of it: “Chile and Peru are narrow coastal territories, and
they have no culture of their own” [:157]; “Africa is characterised by concentrated sensuality,
immediacy of the will, absolute inflexibility, and an inability to develop” [:215]), and in the light of
his “objective” findings established the indisputable and self-evident superiority of the West.
Hegel was, of course, a child of his time (as we are of ours). Scholars of a later era—Christopher
Dawson, Arnold Toynbee and others—would voice their prejudices in a more guarded fashion, but
would nevertheless give pride of place to Western culture in the scheme of world development. In
fact, until fairly recently virtually all Westerners (and, in many cases, non-Westerners) took it for
granted that the reshaping of the entire world in the image of the West was a foregone conclusion. It
was only marginally different in missionary circles. The famous Laymen's Foreign Missions Enquiry,
published in 1932 under the title Re-Thinking Missions, had little doubt not only that every nation
was en route to one world culture and that this culture would be essentially Western, but also that this
was a development all should applaud. Like all other Westerners in the Third World, missionaries
were to be conscious propagandists of this culture.
In the early stages of modern missions all this still happened in a rather guileless manner. That the
“Christian West” had the “right” to impose its views on others, displayed a “consensus so
fundamental that it operated mainly at an unconscious, presuppositional level” (Hutchison 1982:174).
In the spirit of John Eliot and Cotton Mather (cf previous chapter), Samuel Worcester, in 1816,
described the objectives of the American Board with respect to American Indians as making “the
whole tribe English in their language, civilized in their habits, and Christian in their religion”
(references in Hutchison 1987:15, 29, 65). Likewise, in 1922 a brochure was published with the title
Le rôle civilisateur des missions. In similar fashion, Julius Richter, the German historian of missions,
writing in 1927, viewed “Protestant missions as an integral part of the cultural expansion of Euro-
American peoples” (references in Spindler 1967:25, 26). In virtually each of these cases there was a
total absence of even the suggestion that the perceptions of others must or could be consulted; they
were simply not taken seriously so that there was a general “unwillingness to grant exotic cultures the
kind of hearing automatically expected for Christian and Western values” (Hutchison 1987:113; cf
168f).
Naturally, this was not viewed as an imposition. “It is certainly not by accident that it is the
Christian nations which have become the bearers of culture and the leaders of world history,” said
Gustav Warneck (quoted by Schärer 1944:24—my translation). It was the gospel which had made the
Western nations strong and great; it would do the same for other nations. The missionaries’ concern
therefore was the uplift of peoples deprived of the privileges they themselves were enjoying.
Culturally impoverished peoples would, in this way, be elevated to a higher level (J. Schmidlin,
reference in Schärer 1944:9f; cf Spindler 1967:26). The effect of the gospel on a nation was to
“soften their manners, purify their social intercourse, and rapidly lead them into the habits of civilized
life” (John Abeel in 1801: reference in Chaney 1976:249). In the period following the First World
War, one of the most popular missionary texts was the words of Jesus in John 10:10, “I came that they
may have life, and have it abundantly,” and, says New-bigin (1978:103), “‘abundant life’ was
interpreted as the abundance of the good things that modern education, healing, and agriculture would
provide for the deprived peoples of the world.”
Mission writers and speakers, then, had little doubt about the depravity of life in non-Western
societies. Some of them, particularly around the transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth,
excelled in portraying the depravity of pagan life from which “Christian civilization” could rescue
people. Johannes Warneck, for instance, detailed the elements of unreliability, fear, selfishness,
immorality, and this-worldliness in “animistic heathenism” (1908:70–127). It was, however, the
American Presbyterian, James Dennis, who, in his three massive volumes on Christian Missions and
Social Progress, outdid all his contemporaries in his portrayal of the cultural defects of the peoples
of Asia and Africa (Dennis 1897, 1899, 1906). The largest part of his first volume (1897:71–401)
was devoted to a detailed analysis and enumeration of the “social evils of the non-Christian world.”
These were neatly arranged according to their effects on seven human categories—the individual, the
family, the tribe, the social group, the nation, the commercial group, and the religious group—and
included minutiae concerning cultural imperfections such as gambling, immorality, idleness,
polygamy, child marriage, human sacrifice, brutalities, witchcraft, cruel customs, lack of public spirit,
caste, corruption and bribery, commercial deceit and fraud, idolatry, superstition, and many more.
From the inexhaustible treasure house of his vocabulary he hauled ever new depictions of the
degrading cultural conditions that prevailed in heathen societies. He culled most of his examples from
responses to a circular sent out to missionaries, whom he identified as people who had at their
disposal the best knowledge “of the social condition and spiritual history of distant peoples” and
whose testimony was “true and unimpeachable” (:viii).
It is against this background, and of course also many milder depictions of non-Western life, that
one may get an understanding of the benefits which, according to missionary spokespersons, would
accrue to those who embrace the Christian gospel. Dennis is once again the one who wrote most
profusely on the subject. The largest part of his second volume (1899:103–486) and all of the third
(1906) were devoted to a detailed account of “the contribution of Christian mission to social
progress.” He used the same seven categories he had used in his first volume; in minute detail he
elaborated on the blessings the Christian mission had bestowed upon the non-Western races. And the
accomplishments in this regard were indeed impressive. Smith summarizes some of them:
The missionary movement made a prime contribution to the abolition of slavery; spread better methods of agriculture; established
and maintained unnumbered schools; gave medical care to millions; elevated the status of women; created bonds between
people of different countries, which war could not sever; trained a significant segment of the leadership of the nations now
newly independent (1968:71).

Among American mission advocates, the importance of the improvement in the position of women
was always first and foremost (cf Forman 1982:55), usually followed by accounts of advancement in
the areas of education and medicine. These achievements could indeed not be denied and have to be
applauded. There is, however, also a negative side to this picture. The most seriously negative aspect
was perhaps not the inordinate pride many speakers took in these accomplishments (once again
Dennis is a prime example), but the almost total absence of any ability to be critical about their own
culture or to appreciate foreign cultures.
The problem was that the advocates of mission were blind to their own ethnocentrism. They
confused their middle-class ideals and values with the tenets of Christianity. Their views about
morality, respectability, order, efficiency, individualism, professionalism, work, and technological
progress, having been baptized long before, were without compunction exported to the ends of the
earth. They were, therefore, predisposed not to appreciate the cultures of the people to whom they
went—the unity of living and learning; the interdependence between individual, community, culture,
and industry; the profundity of folk wisdom; the proprieties of traditional societies—all these were
swept aside by a mentality shaped by the Enlightenment which tended to turn people into objects,
reshaping the entire world into the image of the West, separating humans from nature and from one
another, and “developing” them according to Western standards and suppositions (cf Sundermeier
1986:72–82).
In this process, “Western theology” was transmitted unchanged to the burgeoning Christian
churches in other parts of the world. Certain concessions were made, of course. In Roman Catholic
missions the term commonly used in this respect was “accommodation”; Protestants preferred to
speak of “indigenization.” By and large, however, Catholicism endorsed the principle that a
“missionary church” must reflect in every detail the Roman custom of the moment. Protestants were
hardly more progressive in this regard, not least because of the Calvinist doctrine of the total
depravity of human nature, which Westerners tended to recognize more easily in the peoples of Asia
and Africa than in themselves. Still, “indigenization” was official missionary policy in virtually every
Protestant mission organization, even if it was usually taken for granted that it was the missionaries,
not the members of the young churches, who would determine the limits of indigenization.
In theory, Protestant missions aimed at the establishment of “independent” younger churches. The
pervasive attitude of benevolent paternalism, however, often militated against this declared goal. The
enthusiastic discussions about “self-governing, self-expanding, and self-supporting churches,” so
prominent around the middle of the nineteenth century, were, for all practical purposes, shelved by the
beginning of the twentieth. The younger churches had, almost unnoticed, been demoted from churches
in their own right to mere “agents” of the missionary societies. At the Edinburgh World Missionary
Conference (1910), the missionary societies were hailed as “standard-bearers of the churches as they
advance with the gospel of Christ for the conquest of the world”; the church in the “mission field,”
however, was merely an “evangelistic agency” or “instrument” (references in van ‘t Hof 1972:39).
They were churches, yes, but of a lesser order than those in the West, and they needed benevolent
control and guidance, like children not yet come of age.
Part of the difficulty had to do with what Smith (1968:92–97) refers to as a compromise in respect
to money. This took at least two forms. First, there was the problem that early converts often came
from the fringes of society and were the poorest of the poor. So the missionaries had to develop
industries in order to make converts economically independent. The Basel Mission excelled in this.
Neill (1966a:278) remarks that “Basel Mission tiles and Basel Mission textiles were famous
throughout South India.” A similar situation obtained in Ghana and elsewhere. There is, of course, a
potential dilemma here. In Neill's words, “a mission which becomes a commercial concern may end
by ceasing to be a mission.” More important, such a policy makes the missionary an employer and the
Indian or African Christian an employee, and easily destroys awareness of the fact that they are, first
and foremost, sisters and brothers to each other. In 1880 Otto Schott (a Basel Mission director), had
to complain that the missionaries controlled the industries even to the smallest detail, that they
distrusted the Indians, and that the local Christians had become “slaves and pliable members” of the
church who could easily be dismissed from their work (cf Rennstich 1982a:97).
The second difficulty lay in the fact that the churches on the “mission field” were structured on
exactly the same lines as those on the missionaries’ home front, where a completely different socio-
economic system obtained. The results were often disastrous. A study group which visited India in
1920 declared, “We have created conditions and methods of work which can only be maintained by
European wealth” (quoted by Gilhuis 1955:60). J. Merle Davis (1947:108) remarked that the
“Western Church has made the mistake of girding the Eastern David in Saul's armor and putting Saul's
sword into his hands.” A report submitted to the Tambaram Conference of the IMC (1938), stated
unequivocally:
An enterprise, calling for expensive buildings, western-trained leadership and a duplication of much of the equipment,
paraphernalia and supplementary activities that characterise the Church in the West, is beyond the supporting power of the
average Asiatic community.4

Many more similar examples could be quoted, but these few should suffice to make the point that
the Western church, because of its benevolent paternalism, had created conditions under which the
younger churches just could not reach maturity, at least not according to Western church standards.
Willynilly the Western mission agencies taught their converts to feel helpless without money.
Surveying the great variety of ways in which Western cultural norms were, implicitly or explicitly,
imposed upon converts in other parts of the world, it is of some significance to note that both liberals
and conservatives shared the assumption that Christianity was the only basis for a healthy civilization;
this was a form of consensus so fundamental that it operated mainly on an unconscious, presup-
positional level (Hutchison 1982:174). On the surface this did not appear to be essentially different
from the early Reformation or Puritan position. However, a decisive shift had occurred since those
days. For the Puritans, culture was subsumed under religion; now, under the sway of the
Enlightenment, culture really had become the dominant entity and religion one of its expressions (cf
van den Berg 1956:61). The question now asked by liberal and conservative alike, and one that was
really unthinkable before the Enlightenment, was this: Must one educate and civilize before
evangelism can be effective, or should one concentrate on evangelism, confident that civilization will
follow (cf Hutchison 1987:12)?
During the eighteenth and early nineteenth century the question was still not clearly articulated.
William Wilberforce, who spent three decades campaigning for the abolition of slavery in the British
Empire, was also keenly interested in evangelism; both Wilberforce and Carey bracketed together
“civilization” and the “spread of the gospel” (cf van den Berg 1956:192). When the Basel Mission
was founded in 1816, it formulated its aim both as proclaiming the “gospel of peace” and as
spreading a “beneficent civilization” (cf Gensichen 1982:185). In that same year, Samuel Worcester
described the American Board's objectives as “civilizing and christianizing” (cf Hutchison 1987:65).
By the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, and even more explicitly in the twentieth, the
lines were more clearly drawn and the problem of priorities more specifically stated.
On the one side there were those, like John R. Mott, who emphasized “personal evangelism” as a
first priority, but really only as “a means to the mighty and inspiring object of enthroning Christ in
individual life, in family life, in social life, in national life” (quoted by Hutchison 1982:172). Here,
then, the gospel was viewed primarily as a remedy for the disorders and miseries of the world.
Others pursued a different strategy. To civilize was a sine qua non for spiritual results; the forces of
civilization are certainly not themselves evangelizing the world, but they open the way for those that
do (for examples, cf Hutchison 1987:99, 116). A most interesting illustration of this approach is the
policy followed in Namibia by the Rhenish missionary, Hugo Hahn (1818–1895). Evangelism, he
argued, presupposed a certain degree of cultivation of mind and manners. Without this, there is
practically no point of contact for the gospel. The conditions for preaching the gospel have to be
created first. The missionaries therefore have to introduce a higher culture, which would, in the
course of time, facilitate the acceptance of the higher religion—Christianity (for details, see
Sundermeier 1962:109–115).
By the end of the nineteenth century the rift between conservative (or fundamentalist) mission
advocates on the one hand and liberals (or social gospellers) on the other was becoming ever wider.
Still, representatives of both groups could argue that evangelism preceded civilization, while other
spokespersons—again of both persuasions—could plead equally convincingly for introducing
civilization as a precondition for evangelism. They therefore did not necessarily differ about strategy
in this respect, for the simple reason that all of them, whether liberal or conservative,
postmillennialist or premillennialist, were committed to the culture of the West, which they
propagated equally vigorously. Where they did, however, increasingly differ was about the overall
aim of mission. Whereas some insisted that the grand object of mission was not to bring pagans into
an ordered and cultured society but to bring them to Christ and eternal salvation, others were more
concerned about the creation of a gospel-centered civilization and the benefits this could bring to all
nations than about doctrine and people's eternal destiny (cf Hutchison 1987:99, 107f; Anderson
1988:100).
Looking back upon the intertwinement of the Christian gospel with Western culture, as outlined
above, a few qualifications are in order.
First, the gospel always comes to people in cultural robes. There is no such thing as a “pure”
gospel, isolated from culture. It was therefore inevitable that Western missionaries would not only
introduce “Christ” to Africa and Asia, but also “civilization.” Robert Speer put this succinctly in
1910:
We cannot go into the non-Christian world as other than we are or with anything else than that which we have. Even when we
have done our best to disentangle the universal truth from the Western form…we know that we have not done it (quoted in
Hutchison 1987:121).

Second, there is no point in denying the fact that the Western missionaries’ culture has also had a
positive contribution to other societies.
Third, there have always been those who realized, if sometimes only vaguely, that something was
wrong somewhere and who did their best not to impose Western cultural patterns on other peoples. A
persistent minority of missionaries and mission advocates questioned the right to impose on others
one's own cultural forms, “however God-given and glorious” (Hutchison 1987:12). Some also were
deeply aware of the West's guilt because of what it had done to other societies, particularly in respect
of the horrors of the slave trade, and they attempted to make reparation (cf van den Berg 1956:151f).
Still others propagated the creation of self-reliant Christian communities on the “mission field.” A
prominent advocate of this view was Rufus Anderson, who served as Senior Secretary of the
American Board between 1832 and 1866. The missionary, he said, was first and foremost a planter
only; the harvest was up to God. What missions and missionaries had often exported, was their idea
of the gospel that they had mistakenly associated with the gospel itself. The result of Presbyterian
mission work among Syrian students had been “on the whole…to make them foreign in their manners,
foreign in their habits, foreign in their sympathies.” The explicit policy of the mission should
therefore not be to control the course of the gospel but to trust the gospel and “let go.” The West has
no edge on the type of Christianity that should be spread throughout the world (cf Hutchison 1987:80–
82).
These arguments in mitigation should carry at least some weight. And yet, when all has been said
and done, a dismal picture of (admittedly well-intended) imposition and manipulation remains.
Missionary advocates were, on the whole, unaware of the pagan flaws in their own culture. Too often
they were on the defensive against those at home who suspected their project, and they lacked self-
criticism; they were unable to appreciate the element of validity in a statement such as Herman
Melville's concerning the church's programs among American Indians, namely, that “the small remnant
of the natives [have] been civilised into draught horses, and evangelised into beasts of burden”
(quoted by Hutchison 1987:76). They were unconscious of the inroads the Enlightenment had made
into their thinking and of the fact that, because of this, the old unity of “Christianity” and “civilization”
had broken asunder.
In addition, as the nineteenth century advanced and the twentieth approached, the missionaries and
mission advocates were not sufficiently sensitive to a subtle yet fundamental shift in the mentality of
Western nations; that is, its being permeated, slowly but inexorably, by the notion of Western nations’
“manifest destiny.” To this I now turn.
Mission and Manifest Destiny
The Western missionary enterprise of the period under discussion proceeded not only from the
assumption of the superiority of Western culture over all other cultures, but also from the conviction
that God, in his providence, had chosen the Western nations, because of their unique qualities, to be
the standard-bearers of his cause even to the uttermost ends of the world. This conviction, commonly
referred to as the notion of “manifest destiny,” was only barely identifiable during the early decades
of the nineteenth century but gradually deepened and reached its most pronounced expression during
the period 1880–1920. This was also the era known as the “heyday of colonialism” (Neill 1966a:
322–396; Neill actually dates the period as running from 1858 to 1914). There is undoubtedly an
organic link between Western colonial expansion and the notion of manifest destiny. Still, it is valid
to treat the latter as a separate motif, since it did not always express itself in colonialism (see the next
section).
“Manifest destiny” is a product of nationalism which, at least in the form we know it today, is only
a recent phenomenon. Although Niccolè Machiavelli may be regarded as perhaps the earliest
exponent of nationalism (cf Kohn 1945:127129), the term “nationalism” was only coined in 1798
(Kamenka 1976:8). Until about 1700, neither nation nor tribe commanded the supreme loyalty and
patriotism of Europe's inhabitants (:5). People found their mutual coherence primarily in their
religion and their ruler. It was only after the revolution in the Western worldview precipitated by the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment that the emphasis could be moved from God or king to the
consciousness of a people as an organic entity (Kohn 1945:215–220). The catalytic event in this
regard, profoundly permeated with Enlightenment ideas, was the French Revolution, which for the
first time asserted the principle of national self-determination as the basis for a new political order
(:3f; Kamenka 1976:7–11, 17f). It substituted for the king and feudal lords the notion of the people as
the ultimate source of authority. The Revolution's Declaration of Human Rights formulated this in the
following words, “The principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation: no body of men, no
individual, can exercise authority that does not emanate expressly from it.” Through the philosophical
school of Romanticism, which was as much a reaction to as a consequence of the Enlightenment, these
ideas were popularized in Germany and beyond. J. G. Herder submitted that it was particularly
through a common language that a nation identified itself and developed its moral and political
character. The concept Volk, infinitely vaguer and at the same time much more powerful than
“citizenship,” was utilized by Herder and the Romanticists (Kohn 1945:331–334, 427–441). The
nation-state had replaced the holy church and the holy empire.
In the course of time, these ideas were wedded to the Old Testament concept of the chosen people.
The result of this was that, at one point or another in recent history, virtually every white nation
regarded itself as being chosen for a particular destiny and as having a unique charisma: the Germans,
the French, the Russians, the British, the Americans, the Afrikaners, the Dutch. It was only to be
expected that the nationalistic spirit would, in due time, be absorbed into missionary ideology, and
Christians of a specific nation would develop the conviction that they had an exceptional role to play
in the advancement of the kingdom of God through the missionary enterprise.
On the whole such notions were absent among the missionaries of the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Most of the early British missionaries had no high education; they belonged to
the “aristocracy of labor” and hailed from lower middle class or working-class stock (cf Warren
1967:36–57). William Carey, it will be remembered, was a cobbler by trade. A similar situation
obtained in Germany. That few German missionaries at the time regarded their missionary labor as a
service to the German national cause may be deduced from the fact that the very first German
missionaries worked in Tranquebar under Danish supervision and that, a century later, some seventy
German missionaries served in the (British) CMS. Their spiritual allegiance was to the Halle Pietist
tradition, not to Germany (cf Gensichen 1982:181f).
Still, there was evidence, here and there, of impulses toward a naive German national pride even
before the 1870s. Karl Graul (1814–1864), founder of the Leipzig Mission Society, became the main
protagonist for a policy that emphasized the planting of autochthonous churches, a task for which, so
he argued, Germans were particularly suited (cf Gensichen 1983:258–260). A generation later Gustav
Warneck would formulate this view much more explicitly: “It is a special charisma of the Germans to
respect foreign nationalities and thus to enter selflessly, without prejudice and with consideration,
into the peculiar qualities of other peoples”; and again: “If the missionary is no longer capable of
appreciating his own Volkstum [peculiar national character], he cannot be expected to appreciate the
foreign Volkstum which he is supposed to cultivate in his converts” (quoted in Gensichen 1982:188;
cf also Moritzen 1982:55f and Gensichen 1985:201f).
Among Anglo-Saxons the notion of “manifest destiny” arose much earlier than among continental
Protestants. In this case the notion was at a profound level linked to millennial expectations; the
Puritans believed that the AngloSaxon race was divinely mandated to guide history to its end and
usher in the millennium (cf van den Berg 1956:21; de Jong 1970:77; Hutchison 1987:8; Moorhead
1988:26). In North America the Puritan ethos lasted much longer and in a much more virile form than
it did in the mother country, Britain. Since the earliest period statements were echoing and re-echoing
that God had sifted a whole people in order that he might choose the best grain for New England
(Niebuhr 1959:8). A key word, heard again and again, was “divine providence,” which ordained that,
of all peoples, it was English Puritans who were sent to cultivate a garden in the wilderness.
After the American colonies had shaken off the British yoke in 1776, these ideas began to be
ventilated much more generally and confidently, gradually hardening into the notion of “manifest
destiny” (cf Chaney 1976:187, 204, 295). Following, as it did, in the wake of the Revivals, it was
only natural that it acquired very clear religious overtones and also that it would soon be wedded to
the foreign missionary enterprise. The American Board, founded in 1810, attempted to enlist into the
missionary cause not only “Christians” but also those identified as “patriots” (:249). In the early
years of the nineteenth century a sense of “American exceptionalism” (Hutchison 1987:39) waxed
strongly and even if the “bedrock reality” remained a demand laid upon the church rather than upon
Americans, it was evident to all that American Christians were better equipped for the task than were
others (:42). In the context of the rising tide of postmillennialism more and more spokespersons
became convinced that the millennium would commence in the New World, most probably
somewhere in New England (:56f). In 1800 Nathaniel Emmons could muse that God was about “to
transfer the empire of the world from Europe to America, where he has planted his peculiar people”;
he added, “This is probably the last peculiar people which (God) means to form…before the
kingdoms of this world are absorbed into the kingdom of Christ” (quoted in Hutchison 1987:61).
It is worth recognizing that, after the first gush of enthusiasm for overseas missions at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, interest waned after about 1845 (Chaney 1976:282). For most of the next
thirty-five years the focus remained on North America, rather than on the whole world. The Monroe
Doctrine of 1823, focusing on hemispheric rather than global hegemony for America, had a powerful
influence also in church circles. Vast territories had been annexed in the West and Southwest of the
North American continent and five new states added around the middle of the nineteenth century;
Christians living on the densely populated Eastern seaboard turned their eyes westward rather than to
countries beyond the continent's shores (cf Chaney 1976:281). Interdenominational mission agencies
such as the American Board, which were operating outside denominational structures, had a fairly
pronounced interest in overseas missions, but denominations tended to concentrate heavily on the
continental United States. In 1874 the Missionary Society of the (Northern) Methodist Episcopal
Church supported some three thousand missionaries within the borders of the country, but had only
145 overseas missionaries (Anderson 1988:98).
It was only in the late 1870s and particularly after 1885 that missions would be taken to the bosom
of ecclesial Protestantism (Chaney 1976:282 [the date 1770 which he mentions should read 1870];
see also Hutchison 1987:43). This was the period of high imperialism, when German, Belgian,
British, and French colonial empires expanded dramatically and the churches and mission
organizations of those countries showed a correspondingly dramatic increase. The United States was
not involved in the scramble for colonies; missions, however, provided Americans with an important
“moral equivalent” for imperialism. Americans were inordinately proud of themselves for having
avoided colonial entanglement and for being involved, rather, in the “fine spiritual imperialism” of
proclaiming Christ's dominion over the nations (cf Hutchison 1982:167–177; 1987:91–124). Was
their motivation nationalist, or was it religious? Little debate was conducted on this question, since
most contemporaries saw no need for a choice. “Christian obligation and American obligation were
fundamentally harmonious” (Hutchison 1987:44; cf Moorhead 1988:25).
As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, the confidence and optimism that marked the
American ethos of the period increasingly expressed itself in foreign missionary involvement. “The
spirit of the time was expansive, vigorous, and, in one of its favorite words, ‘forward-looking.’ This
was the ‘age of energy,’ a time for great enterprise…Foreign missions matched the national mood”
(Forman 1982:54). “The impatient generation” (V Rabe, quoted by Hutchison 1987:91) was hoping
for the evangelization of the world in its own time. So, in its heyday (about 1880–1930), the foreign
missionary enterprise involved thousands of Americans overseas and millions at home (:1). The
missionary efforts prior to 1880 were dwarfed by developments during the next half century. From
relatively small numbers before 1880, the American overseas missionary force increased to 2,716 in
1890, to 4,159 in 1900, to 7,219 in 1910, and to over 9,000 in 1915 (Anderson 1988:102). The
interest in missions among American students was particularly spectacular. The Student Volunteer
Movement (SVM) was formed in 1886; within two years it had recruited almost three thousand
students for foreign missions (cf Forman 1982:54; Anderson 1988:99).
Missionary enthusiasm reached a peak with the massive New York Ecumenical Missionary
Conference of 1900. It was, by any standard, “the largest missionary conference that has ever been
held” (W. R. Hogg, quoted by Anderson 1988:102), with two hundred missionary societies
participating and nearly two-hundred thousand people attending the various sessions! In the spirit of
the period, it was the most natural thing that political figures would participate in the program.
Former president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, was honorary president of the conference
and chaired several sessions. Incumbent president, William McKinley, opened the conference (and
spoke of the missionary effort having wrought “such wonderful triumphs for civilization”), and was
followed by Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of the state of New York and subsequently president
of the United States (cf Forman 1982:54; Anderson 1988:102). In fact, all United States presidents of
the early twentieth century, from McKinley to Wilson, spoke in praise of foreign missions, which
were seen as a manifestation of “national altruism” (cf Forman 1982:54). These were the terms in
which McKinley, in particular, also saw the United States “involvement” in the Philippines (cf
Anderson 1988:100f).
There is both continuity and discontinuity between Samuel Hopkins's “disinterested benevolence”
and early twentieth-century views of foreign missions as expression of American “national altruism.”
Both reveal the element of “manifest destiny”; the latter, however, betrays a much clearer
consciousness of “sacrifice.” “Disinterested benevolence” flowed, to some extent, from the
privileged Christian nations’ awareness of the debt they owed those who still dwelt “in darkness and
the shadow of death.” In “national altruism” the “white man's debt” had become the “white man's
burden”—a burden which he gladly carried, but in the hope that this would be widely acknowledged
and appreciated. The new mood was not free from paternalism. Forgotten were the pleas of Rufus
Anderson and others for allowing younger churches and “new” nations to stand on their own and
develop along lines of their own choice. More generally than was the case in the previous century,
missionaries from the West viewed peoples of the Third World as inferior to themselves and not
really to be trusted with the future of the church.
Looking back upon the entire phenomenon of “manifest destiny” and mission, in North America
and elsewhere, one has to beware of facile deductions. Both those who insist (as some mission
apologists still do) that the missionary flame's ignition was purely religious, and those who, for
whichever reasons, contend that it was merely a matter of national identity or expansiveness, miss the
point that, only too often, the religious and the national impulses were fundamentally not separable (cf
Hutchison 1987:44f). That the phenomenon we have reviewed here owed its very existence to the
spirit of the Enlightenment can, however, not be doubted.
Mission and Colonialism
The “colonial idea” is a very old one and antedates the Christian era (Neill 1966b:11–22). The
modern expression of this idea is, however, intimately linked to the global expansion of Western
Christian nations. In Chapter 7 of this study attention was given to the intertwinement of colonialism
and mission at the dawn of the modern era, particularly as this pertained to Catholicism and the royal
patronage granted by the pope to the kings of Portugal and Spain. It was pointed out that the very
origin of the term “mission,” as we still tend to use it today, presupposes the ambience of the West's
colonization of overseas territories and its subjugation of their inhabitants. Therefore, since the
sixteenth century, if one said “mission,” one in a sense also said “colonialism.” Modern missions
originated in the context of modern Western colonialism (cf Rütti 1974:301).
During the fifteenth to the seventeenth century both Roman Catholics and Protestants were,
admittedly in very different ways, still dedicated to the theocratic ideal of the unity of church and
state. No Catholic or Protestant ruler of the period could imagine that, in acquiring overseas
possessions, he was advancing only his political hegemony: it was taken for granted that the
conquered nations would also have to submit to the Western ruler's religion. The king missionized as
he colonized (Blanke 1966:91). The settlers who, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
arrived in the Americas, the Cape of Good Hope, and elsewhere, were charged not only to subdue the
indigenous population, but also to evangelize them (:105).
Already in the seventeenth century a shift was detectable. The theocratic ideal was gradually, and
at first certainly unconsciously, pushed back. When the Danes founded their first colony in Tranquebar
on the southeastern coast of India, their considerations were primarily mercantile (Norgaard
1988:11). The same applied to the Dutch when they founded a “half-way station” to the Far East at the
Cape of Good Hope in 1652—in spite of lip service paid to the Calvinist notion that this territory
was also to be evangelized. The various British expeditions to North America, Asia, and elsewhere
were prompted by similar interests. The fact that, in most of these cases, it was mercantile companies
rather than the governments of the respective European nations which took the initiative in acquiring
overseas possessions, already reveals the difference with the earlier Portuguese and Spanish
expeditions. The dissimilarity between the two enterprises is further highlighted by the fact that,
contrary to the situation that obtained in Catholic colonies, the Dutch, British, and Danish trading
companies, at least in the early stages, usually refused to allow any missionaries in the territories
under their jurisdiction since they saw them as a threat to their commercial interests (cf Blanke
1966:109).
By and large, then, the colonial expansion of the Western Protestant nations was thoroughly
secular. Curiously enough, in the nineteenth century colonial expansion would once again acquire
religious overtones and also be intimately linked with mission! There came a time when the
authorities enthusiastically welcomed missionaries into their territories. From the point of view of the
colonial government the missionaries were indeed ideal allies. They lived among the local people,
knew their languages, and understood their customs. Who was better equipped than these missionaries
to persuade unwilling “natives” to submit to the pax Britannica or the pax Teutonica? And, once the
authorities had awakened to their “sacred duty” regarding the uplift of the people “entrusted” to them,
who could be more reliable educators, health officers, or agricultural instructors than the dedicated
missionary force, provided the government granted adequate subsidies? What better agents of its
cultural, political, and economic influence could a Western government hope to have than
missionaries (cf van den Berg 1956:144; Spindler 1967:23)?
As it became customary for British missionaries to labor in British colonies, French missionaries
in French colonies, and German missionaries in German colonies, it was only natural for these
missionaries to be regarded as both vanguard and rearguard for the colonial powers (cf Glazik
1979:150). Whether they liked it or not, the missionaries became pioneers of Western imperialistic
expansion. As far as Britain (the major colonial power of the modern period) was concerned, it was
particularly during the Victorian era that there was a growing consciousness among colonial officials
of the value and significance mission work had for the empire.5 Other colonial powers were equally
well aware of the contribution missionaries could make in their overseas territories. German
Chancellor von Caprivi stated publicly in 1890, “We should begin by establishing a few stations in
the interior, from which both the merchant and the missionary can operate; gun and Bible should go
hand in hand” (quoted in Bade 1982:xiii—my translation).
It should therefore come as no surprise that, during the entire “high imperial era” (1880–1920),
examples abounded of government spokespersons praising the work of missions or missionaries.
Even long after this period such statements can be found. One such place was South Africa which,
although not a colonial power in the classical sense of the word, used the same kind of language in its
propagation of the policy of “separate development” and also regarded missionaries as government
allies in executing its political blueprint. As recently as 1958 a cabinet minister, M. D. C. de W. Nel,
could say that “one of the reasons why so many people are still indifferent to mission” was their
inability to grasp “the political significance of mission work.” Only if and when “we” succeed in
incorporating blacks into the Protestant churches, “will the white nation and all other population
groups in South Africa have a hope for the future” (1958:7). If this does not happen, “our policy, our
program of legislation, and all our plans will be doomed to failure” (:25). Therefore, “every boy and
girl who loves South Africa, should commit him- and herself to active mission work, because mission
work is not only God's work, it is also work for the sake of the nation!” (:8; emphasis in the
original); it is “the most wonderful opportunity for serving God, but also the most glorious
opportunity for serving the fatherland” (:25—my translation).
If it was understandable for politicians to recognize the value of mission work for their colonies,
it is less understandable why missionaries often gave expression to almost identical views. When the
famous French Cardinal Lavigerie (1825–1892) sent out his “White Fathers” to Africa, he reminded
them, “Nous travaillons aussi pour la France” (“We are working for France [as well as for the
kingdom of God]”; cf Neill 1966b:349). And in a volume commemorating two centuries of (British)
SPG work (1701–1900), one reads the following statement in the Preface: “It seems fitting at a time
when there has been so much rejoicing over the expansion of the Empire, that the spiritual side of the
Imperial shield should be presented, showing what has been done towards the building of that Empire
‘on the best and surest foundations’” (Pascoe 1901:ix).
In light of such sentiments it should come as no surprise that missionaries sometimes petitioned the
government of their home country to extend its protectorate to areas where they, the missionaries,
were working, often with the argument that unless this happened, a rival colonial power might annex
the territory. This was done, to mention only two of many examples, by Scottish missionaries in
Malawi (Walls 1982a: 164) and by German missionaries in Namibia (Gründer 1982:68).
In virtually all instances where missionaries became advocates for colonial expansion, they
genuinely believed that their own country's rule would be more beneficent than the alternative—either
the maintenance of the status quo, or some other form of European power. By and large, then,
missionaries tended to welcome the advent of colonial rule since it would be to the advantage of the
“natives.” Sometimes, however, the modern reader gets the impression that the missionary actually
meant that mission served the interests of empire rather than that colonialism served the cause of
mission. John Philip, superintendent of the London Missionary Society at the Cape of Good Hope
from 1819 onward—in spite of the fact that he went down in history as an indefatigable champion of
the oppressed colored peoples of the colony and often clashed with colonial officials about their
policies—never doubted the validity and legitimacy of British colonialism and could say astounding
things about the services missions might render to the stability of the Cape Colony. He wrote, inter
alia,
While our missionaries…are everywhere scattering the seeds of civilization, social order, happiness, they are, by the most
unexceptionable means, extending British interests, British influence, and the British empire. Wherever the missionary places his
standard among a savage tribe, their prejudices against the colonial government give way (1828a:ixf).

And again,
Missionary stations are the most efficient agents which can be employed to promote the internal strength of our colonies, and the
cheapest and best military posts that a wise government can employ to defend its frontier against the predatory incursions of
savage tribes (1828b:227).

Statements such as these (and many more could be added—for examples regarding Germany, cf
Moritzen 1982:60), reflect the role of what has become known as the “three C's” of colonialism:
Christianity, commerce, and civilization (or, in French, the “three M's”: militaires blancs,
mercenaires blancs, missionnaires blancs; cf Spindler 1967:23).
In supporting the colonial enterprise, not everybody would go as far as the Rhenish missionary C.
H. Hahn did, who said in 1857, “Even when the Whites subjugate and enslave other peoples, they
still offer them so incomparably much that even the harshest fate the enslaved have to endure may
often be called a fortuitous turn of events” (quoted in Sundermeier 1962:111—my translation).6 Most,
however, would probably have agreed with Carl Mirbt, who wrote in 1910, “Mission and
colonialism belong together, and we have reason to hope that something positive will develop for our
colonies from this alliance” (quoted in Rosenkranz 1977:226—my translation). With reference to the
statement, “To colonize is to missionize” (by the German Colonial Secretary, Dr W. H. Solf), the
Catholic missiologist, J. Schmidlin, wrote in 1913:
It is the mission that subdues our colonies spiritually and assimilates them inwardly…The state may indeed incorporate the
protectorates outwardly; it is, however, the mission which must assist in securing the deeper aim of colonial policy, the inner
colonization. The state can enforce physical obedience with the aid of punishment and laws; but it is the mission which secures
the inward servility and devotion of the natives. We may therefore turn Dr Solf's…recent statement that “to colonize is to
missionize” into “to missionize is to colonize” (quoted in Bade 1982:xiii—my translation).

Blanke (1966:126) quotes Ernst Langhans as referring to the involvement of the mission agencies
with the colonial enterprise as their “indirect guilt.” But, Langhans added, there was also a “direct
guilt”: they witnessed the atrocities committed by the colonial authorities but remained silent about
them. They did not comprehend that, in their attempts at playing the mediator between colonial
government and local population, they were—simply by accepting the presence of the colonial lords
as incontrovertible reality—actually serving the interests of the colonizers. The best they could do in
the circumstances was meekly to plead with the governments to be more careful in the selection of
colonial officials and to choose “practical, moral men” who would know how to treat the indigenous
population “mildly and with appreciation for the people's peculiar characteristics” (references in
Engel 1982:151). Few mission advocates, however, fundamentally challenged the attitude prevalent
among Western Christians of the period, namely, where their power went there was the place to send
their missionaries, or the corollary, where they have sent their missionaries there their power should
also go—if only because it would offer protection to their missionaries.
It may be helpful, at this juncture, to dwell for a moment on the similarities and differences
between mission and colonialism in British colonies and the same phenomena in German colonies.
It is important to reiterate that, on the whole, the British colonial venture, which goes back to the
early seventeenth century, started primarily for trading purposes. It is only in the course of time that
imperialist motives began to enter into the picture. There is therefore some truth in J. R. Sealey's
saying that the British Empire was acquired in fits of absentmindedness. The Napoleonic wars and
Britain's gaining the naval ascendancy over the world seas certainly had something to do with this.
And once started on this course, there was almost no way of stopping the process of acquiring ever
more territories. Commerce remained the primary purpose for a long time, however, and during this
period missionaries were not welcomed. The fact that Christian spokespersons such as William Pitt,
Edmund Burke, William Wilberforce, and William Carey voiced stringent criticisms of the policies of
the overseas trading companies made missionaries even less acceptable in those territories (cf van
den Berg 1956: 107f).
By the second decade of the nineteenth century things began to change. In 1813 Parliament opened
the door for “the introduction of useful knowledge, and religious and moral improvement” in India
(and subsequently also in other colonies). This was, in effect, the beginning of what later became
known as “benevolent colonialism,” which meant that the colonial power consciously took
responsibility for the welfare of the inhabitants of its colonies. It also meant that missionaries were
henceforth allowed to operate more or less freely.
At first the newly arrived missionaries, most of whom hailed from the evangelical wing, tried to
keep their distance from the colonial authorities. The LMS in the Cape Colony and particularly the
ministry of John Philip are a case in point (cf Philip 1828a:253–359; 1828b:23–77; Ross 1986). In
the course of the nineteenth century, however, the situation changed fundamentally; evangelicalism
became a respected power in a state that tried to regain its religious aspect (van den Berg 1956:146).
In practice this meant that evangelicals (and evangelical missionaries), as they got to be more
respected, also became increasingly compromised to the colonial system.
With the advent of the high imperial era, after 1880, there could no longer be any doubt about the
complicity of mission agencies in the colonial venture. Parallels between the high imperial and the
high missionary developments became more and more obvious. The period also saw a phenomenal
increase in missionary recruitment. During the first ninety years of its existence, 1799–1879, the CMS
had sent out 991 missionaries; in the next twenty-six years it sent out 1,478. Similar developments
took place in other societies. And several new mission agencies were founded. It would be wrong,
however, simply to attribute the rise in missionary recruitment to an increased commitment to the
cause of the empire. Many other factors, not least the revival movements of 1859–1860, also played a
role. But these tended to dovetail with and feed on the new awareness of being sent to remake the
world in the image of Britain. Also, a new kind of missionary now arrived on the scene. The
universities, Cambridge above all, produced vast numbers of missionary volunteers—university-
educated “gentlemen” who began to replace the previous generation of missionaries from humble
backgrounds. Hundreds of women also volunteered for mission work (Walls 1982a:159–162).
The new missionary force, conscious of its assets and imbued with the desire to save the world, as
a matter of course took charge wherever it went. A generation earlier, when Henry Venn propagated
self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating churches (the so-called three selfs), there had
simply not been enough missionaries available. Now there were many eager young missionaries with
very clear ideas about what was best for the “young” churches, and although the three-selfs policy
was never formally abandoned, it was simply forgotten. It is not unlikely that this development went
hand in hand with a lower esteem of “native” talents and capabilities than had been evident in the
mid-nineteenth century and earlier. There were more traces of racism in the high imperial era than
there had been before (cf Walls 1982a:162–164). It was, par excellence, the age of the “white man's
burden”; colonial officials and missionaries alike gladly but consciously took it upon themselves to
be the guardians of the less-developed races. The peoples of Africa and Asia were wards dependent
upon the wise guidance of their white patrons who would gradually educate them to maturity (cf
Warren 1965:50–52).
In Germany the intertwinement between mission and colonialism evolved differently. There were
basic dissimilarities between British and German nationalism. The former always put a great
emphasis upon the individual and upon the human community as transcending all national divisions
(Kohn 1945:178). German nationalism, by contrast, had as one of its main foundations J. G. Herder's
Volk concept (although Herder himself remained deeply steeped in the idea of a universal
civilization), which was then fecundated by two other movements: the Enlightenment and Prussianism
(:354–363). Within the ambience of German nationalism, particularly as it began to reveal itself after
the German Empire was created in 1871, there was much less room for the independent individual
than was the case in British (or American) nationalism. This factor would also influence the
relationship between German colonialism and mission.
Furthermore, German colonialism is considerably younger than its British counterpart. It only
became a reality in 1885 and lasted merely three decades. It was not something which started on a
small scale and gradually matured. Rather, it exploded onto the scene within the short spell of a few
years and disappeared as suddenly in the conflagration of the First World War.
The entire period of German Protestant missions until shortly before the 1880s may, with reference
to the issue of “mission and colonialism,” be called a period of innocence. Mission, steeped in the
Pietist tradition, was the hobby of rather simple and unsophisticated people on the margins of the
established church; the rank-and-file church membership had difficulty in grasping “what had
persuaded these peculiarly enthusiastic children of God to concern themselves with the salvation of
the souls of pagans” (Gensichen 1983:258—my translation). Any link between “colonialism and
mission” was outside of their purview. Even as late as 1875 T. Christlieb could still state
categorically, “We are no world-conquering nation and do not wish to become one. We have no
colonies and do not wish to have any” (quoted in Moritzen 1982:55-my translation).
This pristine innocence would, however, disappear almost completely after the Berlin Conference
of 1884, when Germany joined the scramble for colonies. If we have to single out one person who
contributed most to the German colonial idea, that person, by common consent, would have to be
Friedrich Fabri (18241891), since 1857 director of the Rhenish Mission Society, a person who with
good reason may be called the “father of the German colonial movement” (Gründer 1985:34). In
1879 he published a brochure entitled Bedarf Deutschland der Kolonien? (“Does Germany Need
Colonies?”). It caused quite a stir, not least since Bismarck, at that stage, opposed the idea of
Germany entering the race for overseas colonies. Fabri, however, was determined and propagated his
ideas widely. Colonies would solve many of Germany's financial and social ills; since Germany was
experiencing unusual population pressure at the time, Fabri pleaded for the founding of colonies
where the country's surplus population could settle. In addition, German colonial rule would offer
protection to German missionaries. In Namibia, in particular, missionaries were exposed to many
dangers, because of the unsettled political conditions. From June of 1880 Fabri campaigned
forcefully for the annexation of the territory, until he succeeded in persuading the authorities to
implement his plans (cf Gründer 1982:69; Bade 1982: 109). At the Continental Missionary
Conference held in Bremen in 1884, Fabri spoke on “The Significance of Orderly Political
Circumstances for the Development of Mission.” In that same year he was forced to resign as director
of the Rhenish Mission; his complicity with German colonial expansion had become an
embarrassment. The remaining years of his life he dedicated virtually exclusively to the colonial
cause (Bade 1982:136).
The German colonial empire consisted of German Southwest Africa (Namibia), Togo, the
Cameroon, German East Africa, some islands in the Pacific Ocean, and Kiao-Chao in China (Gründer
1985:111–211). In all of these areas German missions, Protestant or Catholic, played a prominent
role, often with appeal to the slogan “Only German missionaries for German colonies!” (cf Moritzen
1982:56; Gensichen 1985:195). The German charisma for mission was now widely taken for granted
and used as argument in favor of explicitly sending German missionaries to these territories. Only in
this way would “proper” results be guaranteed. The thesis of the Bavarian pastor Ittamaier—“We
must rear German Christians in Cameroon”—found widespread acceptance. In addition, twelve new
German mission societies were formed in the colonial period, most with the explicit purpose of
working in German colonies (Moritzen 1982:62; Gründer 1982:68). The most notorious of these was
a society formed for East Africa, immediately after Germany acquired Tanganyika as a colony. Carl
Peters, the moving force behind the new venture, wished mission to understand itself as “German
work” which should serve both “church and fatherland.” It must become “mission in a
nationalGerman sense” and help to educate the colony's “Negro material” into an efficient work force
(references in Gensichen 1985:196).
The barely camouflaged racism in the views of Peters just referred to was, of course, not confined
to German missionaries and mission advocates. Far from it. So, if I take most of my examples from
German missions history I am not suggesting that Germans were more inclined to racism than
missionaries from other countries. My reason is, rather, that, after the horror of the Second World
War, German mission scholars have perhaps done more than others to expose racist attitudes in their
past.
It may be of interest to refer, in this respect, to the attempts of the Hermannsburg Mission in Natal
and Transvaal (and, to a lesser extent, of the Rhenish Mission in Namibia) at founding “mission
colonies” according to the model of early medieval monastic missions in Europe. Ludwig Harms,
founder of the Hermannsburg Mission, believed that a missionary community should be sent out and
new converts incorporated into it (Sundermeier 1962:103–107). Harms's attitude witnesses to a
profound confidence in and concern for the mission's future African converts. He had no doubt that
only one Lutheran church would be established in each territory and that whites and blacks alike
would be members. He passionately defended the blacks against the treatment meted out to them by,
among others, the white (Afrikaner) settlers, whom he called “a wild and fierce people who have
permitted themselves every possible injustice and violence against the poor pagans” (quoted in
Hasselhorn 1988:33—my translation). He admonished his missionaries in no uncertain terms about
the attitude required of them: “I do not believe,” he said, “that you will convert pagans if you go to
them as lords and gentlemen, but only if you go as faithful teachers and have a deep concern for them”
(:36).
Harms's “experiment” foundered, however. Instead of only one Lutheran church, two different
congregations developed around each mission station, one white, one black. This is not the place to
investigate the merit of Harms's project as such or to pursue the question whether something that
worked well in Europe in the early Middle Ages could succeed in the totally different circumstances
of a European mission venture in nineteenth-century Africa. All I would like to highlight is the fact
that Harms and others like him in German church and missionary circles of the mid-nineteenth century
had been so free of racist ideas that they could conceive a project like this. Within a very few
decades, with the advent of the high imperialist era, no Western missionary serving in Africa would
even have dreamt of such a scheme. “Manifest destiny” and colonial domination activated the
missionaries’ latent racism and made them extremely skeptical of the aptitudes of blacks. The
missionaries who went to South Africa after 1884 “were brought up in the consciousness of the
superiority of the white race in general and the German people in particular” (Hasselhorn 1988:139
—my translation). Since blacks were the “descendants of the accursed Ham,” equality with them was
out of the question.7
The picture drawn in the preceding pages is a bleak one. It is a portrait of the Western missionary
enterprise's compromise with and complicity in imperialism and colonial expansion. It is, however,
not the whole picture, and it is simply inadequate to contend that mission was nothing other than the
spiritual side of imperialism and always the faithful servant of the latter. Reality was more
ambivalent. In addition, it is easy, and therefore cheap, to counsel, theorize, and dogmatize from a
safe distance about what went wrong and how mission agencies and missionaries should have
behaved. So let us remember, to use John Higham's distinction (quoted by Hutchison 1987:14), that
retrospective criticism is in order but retrospective judging probably is not.
Such an attitude is in order also in view of the fact that, throughout the history of mission, there has
always been a persistent minority which, admittedly within limits, withstood the political imposition
of the West on the rest of the world. Within the crucible of Latin America's colonial history the name
of Bartolomé de Las Casas will always be a shining example of a missionary who was, until the
bitter end, a champion of the oppressed. Protestant missionary history tells us of comparable
examples. Some of these are totally forgotten; others are known in various degrees. I have already
mentioned the tensions the first two Danish-Halle missionaries, Ziegenbalg and Plütschau,
experienced with the colonial authorities in Tranquebar from the moment of their arrival there in 1706
(cf Nergaard 1988:17–52). And South African history informs us about the selfless service of the first
LMS missionary, J. Th. van der Kemp (1747–1811) (cf Enklaar 1988:110–189), of the indefatigable
labors of John Philip (1775–1851) on behalf of the autochthonous population (cf Ross 1986:77–228),
and of many others, such as J. W. Colenso.
Individuals like these, and the agencies in which service they stood, were often the only ones to
intervene on behalf of the indigenous people in a given colonial situation. To quote a French governor
of Madagascar again: “What we want, is to prepare the indigenous population for manual labor; you
turn them into people” (cf Spindler 1967:24f). The missionaries did this in many ways. They became
friends of the local people, they visited them in their homes. They proclaimed to them that God loved
them so much that he sent his only Son for their salvation. They convinced them that, in spite of the
way they were being treated by other whites, they had infinite worth in the eyes of the Almighty. They
demonstrated this by going out of their way to heal their sick and by offering education to both their
boys and their girls. They studied the local languages and in this way proved that they respected the
speakers of those languages. In summary, they empowered people who had been weakened and
marginalized by the imposition of an alien system.
Even during the high imperial era (and particularly in its early stages), some missionaries and
mission societies were very skeptical about an alliance between nation and mission. After Fabri left
the Rhenish Mission and on the eve of the commencement of Germany's colonial empire, the Home
Board issued an instruction to all its missionaries in Namibia; this document (as quoted by Gensichen
1982:183) stated, “Nowhere has a European colony come into being without grave injustice.
Portuguese and Spaniards, Dutchmen and Britishers have been more or less alike in this respect. The
Germans will hardly be any better.”
A year later, at the Continental Missionary Conference in Bremen, many delegates dissociated
themselves from Fabri's paper, “The Significance for Mission of Orderly Political Circumstances”
(Moritzen 1982:56). A. Reichel argued that mission was incompatible with colonialism. J. Hesse,
reporting on the conference, wrote, “Mission and colonialism are as far apart from one another as
heaven and earth” (quoted in Rennstich 1982a:99). After the Herero Rebellion of 1904 in Namibia,
when the German press accused the missionaries of collusion with the Africans and portrayed the
latter as beasts, demons, and vermin, the Rhenish Mission took the side of the Africans and mentioned
the causes of the rebellion by name: the colonial system, which was inherently exploitative; and the
business practices by which blacks were defrauded. The mission agency insisted that, in their own
country, blacks should be entitled to more that just being “labor slaves deprived of rights and
unpropertied proletarians” (Engel 1982:151–152—my translation).
At one stage or another virtually every mission agency made comparable statements. Of American
missionary involvement in the Philippines, Charles Forman says, “Once American rule had been
established, missionaries spent more time challenging the government to adhere to the high purposes
that they had assigned to it than they did in praising its accomplishments” (1982:55). It is therefore
simply not true, as Ernst Langhans claimed in 1864, that “Protestant missions have launched no
protest against the rapaciousness of the colonial powers and have remained silent in the face of the
malevolence perpetrated by the conquerors” (quoted in Blanke 1966:136—my translation).
The considerations above are submitted not so as to exculpate the missionaries completely. The
problem was that, even where they launched stringent criticisms against the colonial administration,
they never really doubted the legitimacy of colonialism; they assumed, virtually without question, that
colonialism was an inexorable force and that all they were required to do was somehow to try to
tame it (cf Neill 1966b:413–415; Hutchison 1987:92). In the early stages, when the missionary idea
had caught the imagination only of those on the periphery of the churches and the men and women who
went to the ends of the earth to proclaim the gospel were regarded as freaks, it was still different.
However, when the missionary idea was adopted by the establishment and mission agencies became
respected organizations in Western society, the situation changed and the road of compromise could
hardly be resisted. Willy-nilly, missions became bearers and advocates of Western imperialism, the
“hounds of imperialism,” set on or whistled back as it pleased “Caesar” (Engel 1982:151; Bade
1982:xiii). So, even where a mission agency criticized the authorities, it would immediately proceed
to reavow its own and its missionaries’ patriotic loyalty (cf Engel 1982:152). The mission agencies
and the missionaries were simply not able to see reality in any other way—not until the friendly
“protective umbrella” of colonialism had been abruptly withdrawn from them.
We have to probe deeper still, however. The issue is more serious than just that of the
demonstrable collusion of mission with the colonial powers. If we were to define it merely in these
terms we might easily be persuaded to believe that the colonialist traits of Western mission belonged
only to a particular historical period, that they were merely exterior and could easily be discarded
again (cf Rütti 1974:301). We would then be tempted to treat the issue too narrowly as simply a
matter of the relation of mission to colonialism and overlook the fact that this relationship is but an
integral part of the much wider and much more serious project of the advance of Western
technological civilization. Furthermore, such a narrowness of perspective may fail to do justice to the
implications of neocolonialism, which is only a continuing and more subtle form of Western
dominance (cf Knapp 1977:153f). We would miss the point that, with the Enlightenment, a
fundamentally new element had entered into the issue of relations between people. Whereas in earlier
centuries the essential factor that divided people was religious, people were now divided according
to the levels of civilization (as interpreted by the West). This led to the next criterion of division
—ethnicity or race—now interpreted as the matrix out of which civilization (or the lack of it) was
born. The “civilized,” however, not only felt superior to the “uncivilized,” but also responsible for
them. In the words of D. Schellong, “Since the Enlightenment, ‘good’ means to know what is ‘good’
for others, and to impose it on them” (quoted by Sundermeier 1986:64—my translation). This was
also true of Western missionary “expansion.” The fact that missionaries were sent not to educate and
guide others but to be in their midst in a spirit of true self-surrender tended to take a back seat. A
“potent blend of Providence, piety, politics, and patriotism” (Anderson 1988:100) made it hard for
the missionary enterprise to be what it was called to be.
Mission and the Millennium
During the past three or more centuries Protestant missions have always revealed strong millenarian
elements. It remains notoriously difficult, however, to define precisely what is meant by
millennialism. Some scholars appear to use the term as a synonym for “eschatology” or
“apocalypticism,” and of course it cannot be divorced from these concepts. Still, it is different from
either. James Moorhead suggests the following minimum definition: millennialism, he says, refers to
“the biblical vision of a final golden age within history” (1988:30). This is the definition I shall also
use.
The Latin term millennium derives from the reference in Revelation 20 to a thousand years reign
of Christ. This passage has intrigued Christians since the earliest centuries of the Christian era. It
became particularly prominent during the Reformation period, when various “sectarian” elements
seized upon it and attempted to inaugurate Christ's reign on earth. Although the mainline Reformation
reacted negatively to what it regarded as extremist manifestations of eschatological hope, Reformers
such as Luther and Calvin were themselves not free from millenarian tendencies. Calvin, in
particular, was looking forward to the third and final stage of history, during which the church would
expand greatly (cf Chaney 1976:32f).
When the Puritans left for the New World, they took Calvin's tri-epochal scheme (see previous
chapter) with them. In the course of time, and especially after the Great Awakening, millennial
expectations became the common property of virtually all American Protestants. It is difficult to
pinpoint precisely what they entailed. The language of Revelation 20, being “simultaneously
canonical and obscure” (Moorhead 1988:28), allows for a great variety of interpretations. Still, some
common features began to emerge. One of these was a much greater optimism and confidence about
the ultimate success of God's cause than had been in evidence in Calvin's theology. The Puritans were
in no doubt that they were well into Calvin's third epoch and on the verge of extending Christ's
kingdom to the ends of the earth. It therefore became quite respectable to venture some calculations
about the date of the commencement of the millennium. Samuel Hopkins, in his Treatise on the
Millennium (published 1793—it was one of the first American works to focus sustained attention on
the theme), wrote that the golden age would probably not begin until another seventy years or perhaps
even two centuries had elapsed (cf Moorhead 1988:23). Hopkins wrote during the period of the
Napoleonic wars and the general social and political upheaval in Europe; these events certainly
spawned high-strung apocalyptic expectations.
In spite of the burgeoning spirit of certainty about the almost imminent arrival of the millennium,
all agreed that there were certain preconditions to be met. These included, since the earliest days of
the Puritans, such elements as the conversion of the Jews and the “fullness of the Gentiles” being
brought into the church (cf Chaney 1976:271–274). There were, at most, some minor differences
about the question which should come first, the conversion of the Jews, or the great ingathering of the
Gentiles (:38).
From the beginning there was an intimate correlation between mission and millennial expectations.
It was, after all, only through the church's global missionary effort that the knowledge of Christ could
be universally established. Originally, the vision was limited to North America; the Puritans were
sent to cultivate a garden in a howling wilderness, not to move beyond the wilderness. However, as
soon as it seemed that this goal was being achieved, the horizon was extended. Errand to the
wilderness became “errand to the world” (cf the title of Hutchison 1987). The vision comprehended
the whole of the human race. The objective was to reclaim all the nations of the world for Christ; only
the renovation of the whole world corresponded to the designs of divine redemption (Chaney
1976:241). By 1820 the “missionary endeavor had become the most celebrated cause of the American
churches” (:256). Every prayer for revival or for the kingdom assumed, in this period, an immediate
missionary dimension (cf de Jong 1970:157). Already in 1813 the American Board stated that,
whereas other times “have been times of preparation, the present age is emphatically the age of
action. Shall we remain idle in this harvest time of the world?” (reference in Chaney 1976:257). God
was about to bring his work of redemption to its glorious consummation. The prophecy of Revelation
14 was being fulfilled before the eyes of the faithful; the angel preaching the everlasting gospel to the
whole earth had begun to fly (:271). The missionary movement became impatient; its word was
“now.” Christ's reign was not just a wish, a dream, a plan, an ideal. It was on the verge of being
inaugurated—through the church's far-flung missionary efforts (cf Niebuhr 1959:26, 46). In a
remarkable way millennial convictions were not just a summons to conversion activity; mission work
itself became a sure sign of the dawn of the millennium (van den Berg 1956:161; Hutchison
1987:38).
America's role (even more particularly, New England's role) in the unfolding drama was
reasonably clear. It should therefore come as no surprise if the millennium is pictured in terms of the
consummation of traits already in evidence in the Massachusetts commonwealth. This was the case
particularly in Hopkins's Treatise on the Millennium which, in the minutest details, delineated the
characteristics of the coming golden age. It would be a time of “the greatest temporal prosperity,”
when people would have “sufficient leisure to pursue and acquire learning of every kind.” Universal
peace and happiness would reign, not least because there would be “great improvement in the
mechanical arts” through which people would be enabled to produce utensils “with much less labor”
than they used now. Because of people's “benevolence and fervent charity,” all worldly things would
be abundantly available to all (cf Niebuhr 1959:145f).
In this vision the reign of God had been transformed into the extension of American institutions to
all the world; it would come about through a democratic revolution, the culmination of tendencies
already established (Niebuhr 1959:183). It goes without saying that, in this paradigm, the millennium
would not irrupt through a cataclysmic event. It would wax gradually and would be inaugurated
through the church's ordinary missionary labors—a perfection and extension of trends already
underway in history (cf van den Berg 1956:121, 162, 183; de Jong 1970:225; Chaney 1976:270, 272;
Moorhead 1988:30).
Until the early nineteenth century there was a spirit of cooperation among denominations and no
clear dividing line between pre- and postmillennialists. The accent fell, rather, on the responsibility
of all believers in the present and on united action. After 1830, however, the united evangelical front
disintegrated. A fierce spirit of competition arose among the various Protestant denominations in
North America. Differences rather than similarities were emphasized during the new “era of
controversy.” As it became necessary, more and more, to be explicit about what one believed, the
latent divergences between pre- and postmillennialists (the terms were not coined until the 1840s)
began to surface.
These differences manifested themselves not only in the realm of eschatology, but across the entire
spectrum, particularly in the area of the relationship between “soteriology” and “humanization.”
Henceforth some would put the major emphasis on “service to the body” and on the gradual
improvement of society toward the dawn of the millennium, whilst others would lay stress on
“service to the soul” and the gradual deterioration of the world until Christ would return to usher in
the millennium. These two schools of thought have impregnated Protestant missionary thinking ever
since. Both of them, in more or less opposite ways, give evidence to the church's inability to respond
appropriately to the challenge presented by the Enlightenment.
Premillennialism. I turn, first, to the group broadly identifiable as premillennialist and its
significance for the development of the missionary idea in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. This is by no means a homogeneous category and among at least some of them the element
of premillennialism was only weakly accentuated. All of them, however, in varying degrees, began to
dissociate themselves from the postmillennialism which dominated the American scene until the
middle of the century, and even much more from the later Social Gospel.
The premillennialist movement sprang from “complex and tangled roots in the nineteenth-century
traditions of revivalism, evangelicalism, pietism, Americanism, and variant orthodoxies” (Marsden
1980:201). It spawned a variety of subspecies: adventism, the holiness movement, pentecostalism,
fundamentalism, and conservative evangelicalism. All of these, without exception, have become
astonishingly active in missionary projects worldwide. And although they may sometimes differ
significantly from each other, they also share a variety of common characteristics. I shall identify
some of these, particularly insofar as they will help us to appreciate the movement's contribution to
the understanding of mission and also illuminate the indebtedness of the movement—certainly
contrary to its own intentions—to the Enlightenment. Naturally, not all of these characteristics are
found to the same degree in each of the subspecies.
As far as hermeneutics was concerned, the new movement adhered to two positions which, even if
its advocates did not realize it, were in essence irreconcilable. The first was the principle,
classically formulated at the launching of the (British) Evangelical Alliance in 1846, of “the right and
duty of private judgment in the interpretation of Holy Scriptures” (emphasis added). This principle
was an expression of the “modern” desire not to be told by ecclesial bodies what to believe, but for
each believer to come to a personal understanding of faith and a personal commitment. Such a
conviction, however, could not but stand in tension with another, namely, the doctrine of biblical
inerrancy—of the Bible as “a repertory of facts, a revelation of doctrines, and a standard of appeal
upon all questions to which it bears any relation” (R. G. Ingersoll, quoted in Hopkins 1940:15), as
containing propositional truths which can be determined by anyone who looks at it “with impartiality”
(cf Marsden 1980:112–115; cf Johnston 1978:50), and as being literally true in what it affirms. In
each subgroup there was a set of non-negotiable dogmas used as shibboleths to demarcate the borders
between themselves and others, and for each of these a direct appeal was made to Scripture.
A common theme in premillennialist circles was the return of Christ. This idea was, of course,
also operative among postmillennialists, but they tended to put more emphasis on what still had to be
done before Christ came. Since the 1830s, however, more and more people began to talk about the
imminence of the parousia. William Miller (1782–1849) confidently predicted Christ's return and the
beginning of the millennium for 1843 or 1844. Within a short period up to 100,000 people joined the
Millerite movement. When Miller's prophecies did not come true, the movement experienced a crisis
but subsequently grew significantly; today it is a worldwide fellowship known as Seventh-Day
Adventism.
Also outside of Adventist circles one encounters a strong emphasis on the return of Christ,
particularly as a motive for mission. Both Karl Gützlaff (18031851), a German missionary to China,
and J. Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), founder of the China Inland Mission, were motivated by
eschatological expectations. Taylor, in particular, campaigned for the evangelization of China's
millions in great haste, before Christ returned. During the second half of the nineteenth century several
missionary leaders and the mission organizations they founded (such as Grattan Guinness, Regions
Beyond Missionary Union; A. B. Simpson, Christian and Missionary Alliance; and Fredrik Franson,
The Evangelical Alliance Mission) began to use Matthew 24:14 as the major “missionary text.”
Christ's return was now understood as being dependent upon the successful completion of the
missionary task; the preaching of the gospel was “a condition to be fulfilled before the end comes”
(Capp 1987:113; cf Pocock 1988:441–444). This meant, by implication, that the “coming of the day
of the Lord” could also be hastened (cf 2 Pet 3:12) through a concerted missionary effort. A. T.
Pierson estimated the number of pennies and the number of right-hearted evangelists required to bring
the millennium (cf Hutchison 1987:164). And if all tried hard, this goal could be reached before the
dawn of the twentieth century (Johnson 1988 has traced the influence of Pierson on the development
of the idea of the evangelization of the world before the year 1900). Here, the preaching of the
message about God's future reign had become a prerequisite for its coming. Views like these persist
to this day in some evangelical circles. The goal of “biblical evangelism,” says Johnston (1978:52),
echoing a sentiment expressed by A. B. Simpson almost a century ago (cf Hutchison 1987:118), is to
“bring back the King” (cf also Capp 1987 and Pocock 1988).
Premillennialists tended to have an even more melancholy view of nonChristians than had
prevailed among their predecessors; sometimes this view was applied even to those who professed
to be Christians but clearly had a different understanding of the gospel. All reality was, in essentially
Manichean categories, divided into neat antitheses: good and evil, the saved and the lost, the true and
the false (cf Marsden 1980:211). “In this dichotomized worldview, ambiguity was rare” (:225).
Conversion was a crisis experience, a transfer from absolute darkness to absolute light. The millions
on their way to perdition should therefore be snatched from the jaws of hell as soon as possible.
Missionary motivation shifted gradually from emphasizing the depth of God's love to concentrating on
the imminence and horror of divine judgment.
In this whole approach it was the individual's choices that were decisive. The church was no
longer regarded primarily as a body but was made up of free individuals who had freely chosen to
join this specific denomination (cf Marsden 1980:224). Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899), the principal
North American evangelist of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, rose to fame in the heyday of
individualism and his thought was pervaded by its assumptions. He preached a message that viewed
the sinner as standing alone before God. Also, the Holy Spirit was understood as working only in the
hearts of individuals and was known primarily through personal experience (:37, 88).
Moreover, the response to Moody's preaching of the “message of salvation” was essentially a
decision each person was able to make. A typical exhortation of Moody was, “Whatever the sin is,
make up your mind that you will gain victory over it” (quoted in Marsden 1980:37). In this he
adopted John Wesley's Arminianism (which in any case, in the democratic America of his time, was
beginning to replace the inherited Calvinism), as well as Wesley's concept of sin as a “voluntary act
of the will”; in the process, however, Moody distorted both to something essentially different from
what Wesley, in a very different era, meant by them (cf Marsden 1980:73f).
This revealed yet another feature of the period and a typical element of Moody's “theology”:
pragmatism. Moody often tested doctrines for their suitability to evangelism and judged his own
sermons by whether they were “fit to convert sinners with.” This self-test kept his message simple
and positive. The “three R's” adequately summarized his central doctrines: “ruin by sin, redemption
by Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost” (for references, cf Marsden 1980:35). His pragmatism
made him averse to any doctrinal controversy. As an example of this he suggested, shortly before his
death, “Couldn't they [the critics] agree to a truce, and for ten years bring out no fresh views, just to
let us get on with the practical work of the kingdom?” (:33).
 It was, in part, his dislike of controversy that made Moody concentrate on personal rather than
structural sins in his evangelistic sermons. He stressed sins involving only the victims themselves
and members of their families: the theater and other “worldly amusements” such as dancing, disregard
of the Sabbath, Sunday newspapers, Free Masonry, drunkenness, the use of “narcotic poisons”
(mainly tobacco), divorce, the “lusts of the body,” and the like. All these together made up a rather
stereotyped set of notorious vices, thoroughly familiar to revivalist audiences (cf Marsden 1980:31–
37, 66).
Thus, as revivalism and evangelicalism slowly adopted premillennialism the emphasis shifted
away from social involvement to exclusively verbal evangelism. In the course of time virtually “all
progressive social concern, whether political or private, became suspect among revivalist
evangelicals and was relegated to a very minor role” (Marsden 1980:86; cf 120). By the 1920s “the
Great Reversal” (as Timothy Smith calls it) had been completed; the evangelicals’ interest in social
concerns had, for all practical purposes, been obliterated. This attitude was already in evidence in
Moody's ministry (:36f).
Moody and others were, nevertheless, sure that evangelism had definite social consequences.
Unwittingly these revivalists bought into the Enlightenment model of cause and effect; once people
were evangelized and converted, moral uplift inevitably followed. So individual conversions (the
“root”) would eventually produce social reform (the “fruit”). This kind of metaphor was used
increasingly (cf Hutchison 1987:115, 141) and is still popular in evangelical circles. Most
premillennialists, however, saw little hope for society before Christ returned to set up his kingdom
(cf Marsden 1980:31). As a matter of fact, a firm conviction, particularly in dispensationalist circles,
was that “things on earth will get progressively worse and will culminate in a unique time of terrible
tribulation” (Pocock 1988:438). Moody's most quoted statement, which summarized his entire
philosophy of evangelism, was, “I look upon this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a
lifeboat and said to me, ‘Moody, save all you can’” (:38). Salvation meant being saved from the
world. This was, no doubt, an important departure from the dominant tradition of American
evangelicalism, which had a much more positive view of the reformability of society (cf Marsden
1980:38).
Curiously, however, the separation from the world propagated by Moody and other
premillennialists was not a radically outward separation (as it was, for instance, in the Anabaptist
tradition) but rather (only) inward. There was no appeal to people to “abandon most of the standards
of respectable American middle-class way of life. It was to these standards, in fact, that people were
to be converted” (Marsden 1980:38). The values the revivalists espoused, albeit unintentionally,
were those of middle-class American culture: materialism, capitalism, patriotism, respectability (:32,
49, 207). Premillennialist churches and agencies were run in the same businesslike manner as those
of their arch-rivals, the proponents of the social gospel; nobody saw any incongruence in preaching
withdrawal from the world while at the same time managing the church as if it were a secular
corporation. Everybody worshiped at the shrine of the cult of efficiency (cf Moorhead 1984:75; see
also the penetrating study of Knapp 1977 on the relationship between mission [whether ecumenical or
evangelical] and modernization).
In light of this it should not come as too great a surprise to discover that these same world-denying
premillennialists were not really apolitical. In order to appreciate such an apparently incongruous
phenomenon, it may help to keep in mind that, from the time of Moody's ministry in the late nineteenth
century through the fundamentalist controversies of the 1920s, the constituency of the “revivalist
evangelical movements appears to have been the predominantly white, aspiring middle class of
Protestant heritage” (Marsden 1980:91). The lingering conviction, even in these circles, that God's
kingdom would indeed be inaugurated in America, also played a part in this (:211).
After the First World War political conservatism, until then latent rather than manifest, gained a
much clearer profile. In the wake of the Russian Revolution anti-socialism, a trend in
premillennialism at least since the late nineteenth century, was propagated much more vigorously than
before. Communism was, however, not seen in isolation; it was simply the ugly contemporary
expression of everything that threatened the American middle-class value system. By the end of the
Second World War this attitude had consolidated itself in the fundamentalist hyper-American patriotic
anticommunism of Carl McIntire and others (Marsden 1980:210). This development, in turn, spawned
the so-called New Religious Right. Those adhering to its philosophy are not necessarily all
premillennialists, but they are all politically conservative and, on the whole, theologically
fundamentalist, often propagating legislation in order to enforce their views. An extreme example of
this trend is the circle around the Texas-based Journal of Christian Reconstruction. Unrelated to it
and more overtly premillennialist, is the so-called Prosperity Gospel of Kenneth Hagin and others; it
is, however, an expression of a similar ethos. It is attractive to the upwardly mobile to listen to a
gospel which blesses their aspirations and achievements and relieves them of guilt feelings, while at
the same time preaching their message of virtuous wealth as a commendable example to the poor.
The advent of the Social Gospel both confirmed the worst fears of the evangelicals and proved to
them that they had been correct in severing all links with the apostate church. Their—predictable—
reaction was to embrace an ever more absolute antithesis between evangelism and social concern,
oblivious of the fact that, in adopting this attitude, they were in reality succumbing to the very spirit of
the Enlightenment they thought they were combatting. Almost every author of the twelve famous (or
notorious) volumes published from 1910 to 1915 in the series The Fundamentals, was making use of
the rationalist framework of the Enlightenment paradigm (cf Marsden 1980:118–123).
Postmillennialism and Amillennialism. Around the middle of the nineteenth century an
uncompromising premillennialist position was to be found only among religiously and socially
marginal groups in the United States. In 1859 a theological journal could state, with confidence, that
postmillennialism was the “commonly received doctrine” among American Protestants (cf Moorhead
1984: 61). The postmillennialism of the period was still, by and large, a continuation of the earlier
teachings of Edwards, Hopkins, and others, embracing a compromise between an apocalyptic and an
evolutionary view of time. Nobody doubted that history would eventually come to a cataclysmic end,
but few cared to elaborate on this aspect; attention was focused, rather, on what should be done now
by way of “building the kingdom.” Throughout, a hard residue of apocalypticism persisted in
postmillennialist circles (:61f). In the latter half of the century, however, this residue came under
fierce attack. The reasons were diverse.
First, the bizarre apocalypticism of some of the recent premillennial groups such as the Shakers
and the Millerites—regarded as crackpots or fools in “respectable” circles—caused any form of
apocalyptic vision to be suspect.
Second, the Civil War, contrary to earlier expectations, was followed by a period of malaise. In
the decades preceding the war the issues were clear-cut; most “mainline” Christians (the majority of
whom were evangelicals) agreed that slavery was a scourge that had to be eradicated. Many were
convinced that, once slavery was abolished, justice and equity would be the order of the day. The war
turned out to be much more drawn out and much more brutal than either side had anticipated. Perhaps
even worse—the end of the war did not usher in the expected utopia. People became aware of the fact
that social problems had increased rather than decreased.
 Third, unprecedented technological developments—the kind predicted a century or more ago by
Edwards and Hopkins!—were taking place and were catching people's imagination. Factories sprang
up around the nation, and tens of thousands of rural North Americans and immigrants from Europe
moved to the cities to work in the factories. In their enthusiastic optimism Edwards and Hopkins did
not, however, anticipate the social ills that would accompany the new technological advances. All of
a sudden the churches were faced with societal problems previously unknown, and they did not know
how to respond. The entire fabric of the nation was changing and the familiar theological certainties
and solutions from the past seemed unable to provide the much-needed guidance.
Fourth, for the first time American theological schools were exposed on a large scale to the
historical critical method in biblical studies, which had been dominant in German theological schools
since at least a century before. Scholars now argued that the Bible did not propound only one
“canonical” view on eschatology. And it was suggested that the books of Daniel and Revelation, long
the mainstays of millennial speculations, were of a later origin than had always been assumed and
were therefore less reliable than had been thought. This state of affairs meant, at the very least, a
complete reinterpretation of apocalyptic; at best, it was the “shell” of a great truth, and instead of
concentrating on the shell, people should search for its abiding spiritual message (cf Moorhead
1984:63–66).
The inevitable victim of the new era was millennialism in any form, whether pre or post. It was
not rejected outright; it simply ebbed away (cf Moorhead 1984:61). The earlier expectations that the
millennium was “only” about two hundred years away now elicited little excitement. Little room was
left for the “great eschatological event Christians had long awaited, namely, the Second Coming”
(:67). Belief in Christ's return on the clouds was superseded by the idea of God's kingdom in this
world, which would be introduced step by step through successful labors in missionary endeavor
abroad and through creating an egalitarian society at home. Along with the prominent nineteenth
century German theologian, Albrecht Ritschl, the proponents of the American Social Gospel
perceived God's kingdom as a present ethical reality rather than a dominion to be introduced in the
future (:66).8 In 1870, Samuel Harris of Andover Theological Seminary delivered a series of lectures
characteristically entitled The Kingdom of God on Earth, by which he meant the developments then
taking place in North America (cf Hopkins 1940:21). By 1917 Walter Rauschenbusch, major
exponent of the Social Gospel, could confidently declare that the doctrine of the kingdom of God was
“itself the social gospel” (:20). This meant, in effect, the discarding of all supernatural features.
Reality was entirely inner-worldly, anthropocentric, and naturalistic. “Is anything in the whole
universe of God, when rightly understood, supernatural?” asked W. B. Brown in 1900 (quoted by
Moorhead 1984:66). The miraculous was eliminated and superseded by professionalism, efficiency,
and scientific planning.
The key ideas of the new mood were natural continuity and social progress. Optimism was in the
air. The generator was the old postmillennialism, now, however, wedded to the Darwinian theory of
evolution. The belief in natural continuity meant that no crisis was really expected. Coupled with this
was the worship of the same cult of efficiency and pragmatism we have already encouniered in
premillennialism, only now in the service of an antithetical set of values. Here, too, and with less
qualms than was the case in premillennialist circles, churches and religious organizations were run
like businesses. The building of God's kingdom had become as much a matter of technique and
program as religious piety and devotion.
The Social Gospel's romantic, evolutionary conception of God's kingdom involved “no
discontinuities, no crises, no tragedies or sacrifices, no loss of all things, no cross and resurrection”
(Niebuhr 1959:191). It was all “fulfillment of promise without judgment,” so that “no great crisis
needed to intervene between the order of grace and the order of glory” (:193). An indulgent God
admitted “souls” to his “heaven” on the recommendation of his kindly son (:135). The coming
kingdom was not regarded as involving “both death and resurrection, both crisis and promise, but
only as the completion of tendencies now established” (:183).
The Puritans’ understanding of the kingdom was radically different: no human plan or organization
could be identified with it “since every such plan was product of a relative, self-interested and
therefore corrupted reason” (Niebuhr 1959:23). Their understanding of God was also different. They
indeed knew God as a God of love, but only against the dark backdrop of his awe-inspiring majesty
and his wrath over sin and evil. In the Social Gospel movement, however, God was a loving and
benevolent being, little more than the embodiment of all ideal human attributes, “the God who exists
for the sake of human life and morality,” “the synthetic unity of goodness, truth, and beauty” (Niebuhr
1988:121). God and humans were reconciled by deifying the latter and humanizing the former
(Niebuhr 1959:191; cf Visser ‘t Hooft 1928:169–180).
All these convictions found their classical expression in the new doctrine of the fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of all people. It was only natural that, in this climate, the traditional
soteriological perception of Jesus would disappear. Christ the Redeemer became Jesus the
benevolent and wise teacher, or the spiritual genius in whom the religious capacities of humankind
were fully developed (Niebuhr 1959:192; cf Barton 1925). “The sympathizing Jesus…replaced the
Christ of Calvary” (Hopkins 1940:19; cf Visser ‘t Hooft 1928:38–51; Niebuhr 1988:116).
For the Christian missionary enterprise these developments had critical consequences. During this
entire period, spanning the years from the middle of the nineteenth century to the Second World War,
overseas missions were still predominantly a project of “mainline” churches and agencies. It was
therefore only to be expected that the theological views prevailing on the home front would also be
disseminated in the younger overseas churches. Basing his views on two articles published in 1915,
Gerald Anderson (1988:104) concludes that, in the course of the preceding decades, four major shifts
had taken place in missionary thinking: (1) other religions were no longer thought to be entirely false;
(2) mission work meant less preaching and a broader range of transformational activities; (3) the
accent was now on salvation for life in the present world; and (4) the emphasis in mission had shifted
from the individual to society.
The conviction that other religions were not intrinsically evil did not necessarily mean the end of
missions. James Dennis's voluminous writings referred to earlier (cf Dennis 1897, 1899, 1906)
demonstrated convincingly that, although these religions were not regarded as wicked, they were
undoubtedly viewed as vastly inferior to (Western) Christianity. At the World's Parliament of
Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, Western Christians fraternized freely with adherents of other
faiths, but not without condescension. The new view was that Christ did not come to destroy other
religions but to fulfill them. Jesus, said George Gordon two years after the Chicago event, “must
prove himself a better ruler to Japan, a nobler Confucius to China, a diviner Gautama to India…He
must come as the consummation of the ideals of every nation under heaven” (quoted in Hutchison
1982:170f). Meanwhile, adherents to these faiths were not eternally lost. The theology of the earlier
postmillennialists had already steadily been depopulating hell. With the virtual demise of
premillennialism in liberal circles, hell was in even more rapid decline; a benevolent God would in
any case not be able to tolerate the idea of such hideous punishment (Moorhead 1984:70). This meant,
inevitably, that liberals not only abhorred revivalism but also lacked enthusiasm for direct
evangelism, whether at home or abroad. Their emphasis was on a permeative rather than a narrowly
conversionist form of Christian influence.
The shift from the primacy of evangelism to the primacy of social involvement was a gradual one
and developed a clear profile only by the 1890s (Marsden 1980:84; Hutchison 1987:107). At the
beginning of his series of lectures at Princeton Seminary, James Dennis said that the evangelistic aim
was “still” first, “as it ever will be, and unimpeachable in its import and dignity.” This was,
however, little more than a perfunctory bow of courtesy toward the “evangelistic mandate,” for
Dennis immediately continued, “but a new significance has been given to missions as a factor in the
social regeneration of the world” (1897:23)—and it is to this that his three volumes were devoted.
An aspect of this shift is highlighted by the history of the Student Volunteer Movement, which was
formed in 1886 and had as watchword “The evangelization of the world in this generation.” At its
launch, “evangelization” was still understood in traditional terms, as leading people to saving faith in
God through Christ. In the first half-century of its existence, nearly thirteen thousand volunteers sailed
from North America for overseas missionary service. By the second decade of the twentieth century
the movement was, however, already in decline and the watchword losing its influence. At a
conference held in 1917 the primary question was no longer “the evangelization of the world,” but
“Does Christ offer an adequate solution for the burning social and international questions of the day?”
Subsequent conventions pushed further the radical reorientation of the SVM (cf Anderson 1988:106).
The move from evangelism to social concern had, as its natural corollary, a shift of interest from
individual to society. The new secular social disciplines revealed that each individual was
profoundly influenced and shaped by her or his environment and that it made little sense to attempt to
change individuals yet leave their context untouched. Dennis applied these insights forcefully to the
overseas missionary scene. “The religion of Jesus Christ,” he said, “can never enter non-Christian
society and be content to leave things as they are” (1897:47). In fact, “Christian missions represent…
accelerated social revolution” (:44f). It was the old Reformed and Puritan conviction that Christ laid
claim to the whole of reality, but now in a secular garb—the fruit of the insights of sociology. Dennis
argued that the fabric of “pagan” societies was almost totally unsuitable and a new fabric had to be
woven. The approach of conservatives and premillennialists, namely, that of concentrating on
individual regeneration, was discredited totally—if not theologically, then at least sociologically. Sin
and evil reigned not only, and not even primarily, in the individual heart. Rauschenbusch and others
called attention to society's corporate sins and to “the superpersonal forces of evil” (Hopkins
1940:321f).
In the course of time Social Gospel advocates such as George Davis Herron and Walter
Rauschenbusch became convinced that these “superpersonal forces of evil” were somehow inherent
in the capitalist system since it militated, in principle, against the creation of a social, economic, and
political egalitarianism. The unbridled competition of Capitalism, “the law of tooth and nail,” was
the absolute antithesis of the Christian gospel of love and gravely inhibited the workers’ opportunities
to engage in collective bargaining. Profits should not be made at the cost of human welfare, and the
workers were entitled to economic justice rather than charity or paternalistic magnanimity. Laissez
faire economics, in particular, was castigated severely (cf Hopkins 1940:323–325). Still, the Social
Gospel hardly addressed the problems of war, imperialism, race, or the use of force (:319); these
really only began to receive serious and sustained attention from the 1960s onward.
The seed-bed in which the ideological roots of the Social Gospel found themselves most at home
was Unitarianism. This movement, which evolved from elements of Congregationalism and
Presbyterianism, emphasized reason and the “primary facts of human experience” rather than faith, as
well as the intrinsic goodness of human nature rather than the Fall, the Atonement, and the possibility
of eternal punishment. Its essentially optimistic, rational, and humanitarian character accounts for its
growing proclivity toward social Christianity. The Divine remained in this system “only to give lift to
the imagination”; otherwise it was a thoroughgoing “religion of humanity” (cf Hopkins 1940:4, 22,
56–61, 318).
Social Christianity did not evolve only from Unitarianism, however. Many Christian leaders,
particularly postmillennialists who espoused what might perhaps be called progressive orthodoxy (cf
Hopkins 1940:61–63), also slowly gravitated toward a position which ascribed primacy to social
change, without, however, discarding the supernatural elements of the faith and traditional doctrines.
This was particularly true of those evangelicals who felt called to one or other form of foreign
missionary involvement. Their position was not enviable. They were under suspicion from both the
conservative premillennialists and the thoroughgoing social gospellers. In addition, they often lacked
theological sophistication, a circumstance which made them appear to be vacillating between two
mutually irreconcilable positions. Still, because they refused to surrender to either manifestation of
the dominant paradigm, they kept the missionary idea alive in mainstream Christianity while at the
same time maintaining theological dialogue with the premillennialist wing.
In the heyday of the Social Gospel on the one hand and fundamentalism on the other, these
mediators included Robert P. Wilder (1863–1938), John R. Mott (1865–1955), Robert E. Speer
(1867–1947), and J. H. Oldham (1874–1969). Each of them could look back upon a profound
religious experience, a factor which might have caused him to be at odds with some of the more
radical elements of the Social Gospel, but each also elected to stay within “mainline” American
church life, which often made him suspect in fundamentalist and other extreme premillennialist
circles. Frequently, however, their stature and personal integrity helped them bridge gaps where no
communication appeared possible. The result was that the movements they helped to create or in
which they participated, succeeded in winning the loyalty and support of groups at both ends of the
spectrum—movements such as the WSCF, the SVM, and the IMC, to mention only a few. Each of
these organizations embraced both social gospellers and premillennialists. They thus succeeded in
keeping alive something of the holistic understanding of the Christian faith which dated back to the
times before the assault of rationalism split the Christian community into two warring factions.
Sometimes Mott and his co-workers succeeded in keeping the new and fragile ecumenical boat afloat
with the aid of fortuitous or unintentional ambiguities. The watchword of the SVM was one of these.
There were interminable debates about what precisely “the evangelization of the world in this
generation” meant, but in the end each person was both able and allowed to assign to it the
interpretation he or she preferred. Another example was the World Missionary Conference held in
Edinburgh in 1910. It was a curious mix of post- and premillennialism, social gospellers and soul-
savers, “mainline” and evangelical mission agencies.9
The Inadequacies of Pre-, Post-, and Amillennialism. Inexorably, so it appears, the drift in those
circles traditionally supporting the overseas missionary project was away from evangelicalism
toward a more secular and innerworldly liberalism. The heritage of evangelical faith with which the
social gospellers started was gradually being used up. “The liberal children of liberal fathers,” says
Niebuhr (1959:194), “needed to operate with ever diminishing capital.” Of Horace Bushnell (1802–
1876) he says, “Bushnell protested against the faith he had learned, but he had learned it nevertheless
and his protest was significant in part because it arose out of an inner tension between the old and the
new” (:195). Others no longer knew this tension.
Fundamental to all the American exponents of social Christianity was the conviction that the social
salvation the world stood in need of would come via Western techniques and culture. Curiously
enough, it was not really different among premillennialists. In Hutchison's words, “Cultural faith…
united liberals and premillennialists more strongly than their ideologies divided them” (1987: 172);
all of them “shared a vision of the essential rightness of Western civilization and the near-inevitability
of its triumph” (:95). James Dennis’ painstaking and ponderous chronicling of all the shortcomings of
non-Western civilizations, coupled with an unbridled enthusiasm for the Western church's mission of
civilizing the rest of the world, did not really differ from the views expressed by premillennialists
such as A. B. Simpson and A. T. Pierson (cf Hutchison 1987:107110, 115–118).
Both strains were, in several respects, more Western than Christian. They were, in opposite ways,
expressions of the triumph of the Enlightenment in Western Christianity. The Enlightenment reached its
zenith in the nineteenth century, manifesting itself in rationalism, evolutionism, pragmatism,
secularism, and optimism. All these “isms” impregnated the Western churches and were exported
overseas by foreign missionary agencies. Even where the proponents of pre-, post-, and
amillennialism disagreed fiercely about missionary programs and priorities, they did so on the shared
assumptions of the Enlightenment frame of mind.
This could not last, however. The premillennialists faced an insurmountable crisis during what has
become known as the fundamentalist controversy. The very presuppositions on which fundamentalism
had operated simply ceased to obtain. If an intractable fundamentalism persisted in some church and
missionary circles, this should not be taken as an indication that it continued to be viable as a
theological movement but as evidence of the fact that an organism often survives long after the climate
in which it has first flourished no longer prevails.
But the Social Gospel also faced an insuperable crisis. Born in the late nineteenth century, it
ceased to make sense in the early twentieth. The First World War and the malaise that followed it
shattered to pieces the confidence that was an indispensable ingredient of the Social Gospel
movement. When Walter Rauschenbusch, in 1917, presented his mature thought at Yale in his lecture
series entitled A Theology for the Social Gospel, the entire movement was already outmoded (cf
Hopkins 1940:327). This did not mean the demise of the movement, however. Far from it! The
resounding victory liberal theology won over fundamentalism in the 1920s gave it a new lease of life
and caused it to believe that its ultimate triumph was guaranteed. It was a Pyrrhic victory, however,
and when the IMC held its first plenary assembly on the Mount of Olives in 1928, many American
delegates had begun to have grave misgivings about the rise of secularism and the fact that, by and
large, this was what the Western missions were exporting.
The remedy, so W. E. Hocking and others believed, did not, however, lie in disavowing the ethos
that had given rise to secularism, but in redefining mission as “preparation for world unity in
civilization.” The Laymen's Foreign Missionary Enquiry, which convened under Hocking's leadership
and in 1932 published its findings in the report Re-Thinking Missions, believed that this could be
achieved by joining hands with other religions, discovering the common foundation of religiosity
shared by all, and espousing this in the teeth of secularism. What the authors were trying to do,
however, was to exorcise one nineteenth-century demon with the help of another. They sought to
substitute nineteenth-century romanticism for its rationalism, little realizing that the two depended and
fed on each other. John A. Mackay was one of the few to grasp this with remarkable clarity. He
commented (1933:177f) that the report totally ignored the fact that a revolution had broken out in the
romantic theological playground of the nineteenth century whose spirit the report perpetuated, and
described it as the requiem of a dying day rather than the trumpet of dawn of a day that is coming.
By a peculiar twist, the very secularism so maligned by the Laymen's Report made a forceful
comeback in the remarkable “secular sixties.” Admittedly, it was no longer exactly the same thing, at
least not on the surface. One now distinguished carefully between “secularism,” which one rejected,
and “secularization,” which one welcomed and propagated. After the devastation of two world wars,
the optimism of the nineteenth century and of the Social Gospel had reemerged. It was heralded first
by the Strasbourg Conference of the World Student Christian Federation in 1960, where J. Hoekendijk
urged the students “to begin radically to desacralize the church” and to recognize that Christianity was
“a secular movement” not “some sort of religion” (cf Anderson 1988:109). In 1968 the WCC held its
third general assembly, in Uppsala, where it was boldly proclaimed that “the world provides the
agenda for the church.” The terminology of the Social Gospel had been dropped; one now talked
about “development” rather than “civilization” as the task of mission, but the dynamics remained the
same. In an almost convulsive fashion the church was going to remake the world, once again in the
image of the West. It was hard to define exactly how mission differed from the ethos and activities of
the Peace Corps. Small wonder that, in this same year (1968), R. Pierce Beaver, respected North
American theologian of mission, reported that “students are now cold, even hostile, to overseas
missions” (quoted in Anderson 1988:112).10
In 1968 the Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops met in Medellin, an event that
provided the setting and stimulus for the emergence of Latin American liberation theology, which
finally ended the hegemony of Western mission's cultural and ideological assumptions (cf Gutiérrez
1988:xvii, xx-xxv).
Still, recent developments in missionary thinking only really make sense if we see them as being
both a reaction to and a result of the evolution of ideas discussed in this section, that is, of the various
manifestations of both premillennialism and social Christianity. The Social Gospel, in particular, has
been “America's most unique contribution to the great ongoing stream of Christianity” (Hopkins
1940:3), “the first expression of American religious life which is truly born in America itself’ (Visser
‘t Hooft 1928:186). Because North American Protestantism at the time had been contributing the
lion's share to the international missionary enterprise, the influence of the Social Gospel reverberated
around the world and made itself felt not only in Third-World Christianity, but far beyond.
Voluntarism
One of the most remarkable phenomena of the Enlightenment era is the emergence of missionary
societies: some denominational, some interdenominational, some nondenominational, and some even
anti-denominational. They first appeared on the scene haltingly, extremely apologetic about their
existence and very uncertain about their nature and future. By the end of the eighteenth century,
however, the situation had changed dramatically. New missionary societies exploded on to the scene
in all traditional Protestant countries: Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the
Scandinavian countries, and the United States. In the 1880s, with the advent of the high imperial era, a
second wave of new societies was in evidence; once again the entire Protestant world was involved,
but by now it was clear that the United States was edging its way ahead of others, not only in the
numbers of missionaries sent abroad but also in the numbers of new societies formed. The end of the
Second World War saw yet another wave of missionary enthusiasm and the formation of new
societies. Prior to the year 1900, a total of eighty-one mission agencies were founded in North
America. During the subsequent four decades, 1900–1939, another 147 were formed. The next
decade, 1940–1949, recorded the creation of eighty-three societies, followed by no fewer than 113
new agencies during the decade 1950–1959, 132 in the period 19601969, and another 150 in the next
ten years (cf Wilson and Siewert 1986:81–314, 593f).
It is not easy to explain this astonishing phenomenon in Protestantism. Most certainly a variety of
factors would have to be taken into consideration here, but it can hardly be denied that the spirit of
enterprise and initiative spawned by the Enlightenment played an important role first in the genesis of
the idea of missionary societies and then in their amazing proliferation. The fact is that, for more than
a century after the Reformation, the mere idea of forming such “voluntary societies” next to the church
was anathema in Protestantism. The institutional church, tightly controlled by the clergy, remained the
only divine instrument on earth. Voetius spoke for the Reformed tradition when he said that, if there
were to be any talk about mission (which there usually was not), only the institutional church—local
church council, presbytery, or synod—could act as sending agency (cf Jongeneel 1989:126).
By the end of the seventeenth century, however, a new mood was beginning to develop. The
Reformation principle of the right of private judgment in interpreting Scripture was rekindled. An
extension of this was that like-minded individuals could band together in order to promote a common
cause. A plethora of new societies was the result. Many stood in the religious mainstream and were
promoting a great variety of religious and societal concerns: antislavery, prison reform, temperance,
Sabbath observance, the “reform of manners,” and other charitable causes (cf Bradley 1976). An
increasing number of new societies, however, championed the cause of foreign missions. Basically,
the societies were all organized on the voluntary principle and dependent on their members’
contribution of time, energy, and money.
The ideology behind the societies was that of the social and political egalitarianism of the
emerging democracies (Gensichen 1975b:50; cf Moorhead 1984:73). Networks of auxiliary
associations were organized in outlying districts, sent their contributions to the central office, and
were fed with information from there. People of the most modest position and income became donors
and prayer supporters of projects many thousands of miles away. Women also came along, to play a
leading role in various agencies, “far earlier than they could decently appear in most other walks of
life” (Walls 1988:151). Their involvement in mission constituted “the first feminist movement in
North America” (cf the subtitle of Beaver 1980), and certainly not only there. They went out, literally
to the ends of the earth, no longer just as the wives of missionaries but as missionaries in their own
right. At home, women's missionary organizations undergirded the missionary movement with prayer,
study, financial support, and dissemination of information. By the year 1900 there were forty-one
American women's agencies supporting twelve hundred single women missionaries (cf Anderson
1988:102).
This was the Reformation principle of the office of the believer, wedded to the Enlightenment's
optimistic view of the world and of humanity: people were able to do something, not only about their
own circumstances, but also about the circumstances of others. The increasingly dominant
postmillennialism of the period further stirred people into action. The saints saw themselves, through
their many goal-oriented communities, as God's co-workers in ushering in God's kingdom (cf
Moorhead 1984:73).
It has in recent years become customary to devote an enormous amount of energy to theological
discussions about whether missionary societies are legitimate agents of mission. Is mission not rather
to be regarded as an expression of the church? Without denying the merit there is in such a discussion
I would like to suggest that, within the framework of the paradigm spawned by the Enlightenment,
there was not much to choose between the organized church as bearer of mission and the mission
societies. The point is that, in Western Protestantism, the church was increasingly fractured into a
great variety of denominations which, phenomenologically speaking, were not decisively different
from missionary and other religious societies. Denominations, too, were organized on the voluntary
principle of like-minded individuals banding together. They were, in a sense, parachurch
organizations.
In those countries where there were established churches the situation only appeared to be
different. The mere emergence and existence of “free” churches (sometimes called “non-conformist”
churches or “dissenters”) next to or in opposition to the established church, suggested that, even if
there was some pressure on people to stay members of the established church, individuals were free
to follow their conscience and join churches of their liking. Where there was no established church—
for instance in the United States where all churches were treated equally before the law—a
bewildering variety of denominations soon emerged.
It is important to note that the very possibility of a dispensation in which there was no established
or state church was a fruit of the Enlightenment; it was only when religious belief was removed from
the realm of “fact” to that of “value,” about which individuals were free to differ, that a societal
system could evolve in which a multiplicity of denominations could exist side by side and have equal
rights. Newbigin says:
It is the common observation of sociologists of religion that denominationalism is the religious aspect of secularization. It is the
form that religion takes in a culture controlled by the ideology of the Enlightenment. It is the social form in which the privatization
of religion is expressed (1986:145).

The Enlightenment was not the sole reason for denominationalism. North American denominations,
for instance, were “the product of a combination of European churchly traditions, ethnic loyalties,
pietism, sectarianism, and American free enterprise” (Marsden 1980:70). It was only natural that in
such a climate, “free” churches would thrive. I have mentioned that magisterial Protestantism was at
its lowest ebb during the two decades immediately following the American Revolution; by contrast,
Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists were expanding rapidly in these years (cf Chaney 1977:31).
They were the product of a marriage between rationalism and pietism and, as “revivalist” churches,
benefited greatly from the Awakenings. None of the many Protestant denominations even dreamt of
upholding the medieval idea of the identification of the empirical church with the kingdom of God.
For some five decades after Independence, a remarkable ecumenical spirit prevailed in the United
States. The same obtained, by and large, in Great Britain and continental Europe (although the
bewildering multiplicity of denominations which characterized the United States was unknown there).
This ecumenicity was certainly to be attributed, to a large degree, to the Awakenings which were, by
nature, “ecumenical.” These years also saw the blossoming of interdenominational mission societies.
Some of the most remarkable of these were the London Missionary Society (founded in 1795), the
American Board (1810), and the Basel Mission (1816). The LMS stated its “fundamental principle”
in the following terms:
Our design is not to send Presbyterianism, Independency, Episcopacy, or any other form of Church Order and Government…but
the Glorious Gospel of the blessed God to the Heathen (quoted by Walls 1988:149).

A “denominational” society was, of course, formed three years earlier than the LMS. I am
referring to the “Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen,” founded
under William Carey's leadership in 1792. It is, however, important to note that Carey advanced no
theological arguments in favor of a denominational society. His arguments were purely pragmatic: “In
the present divided state of Christendom, it would be more likely for good to be done by each
denomination engaging separately in the work” (quoted by Walls 1988:148). As a matter of fact,
Carey's pragmatic reasons for initiating a denominational society were almost identical to those of the
founding fathers of the nondenominational LMS three years later.
 There was something businesslike, something distinctly modern, about the launching of the new
societies, whether denominational or not. Carey took his analogy neither from Scripture nor from
theological tradition, but from the contemporary commercial world—the organization of an overseas
trading company, which carefully studied all the relevant information, selected its stock, ships and
crews, and was willing to brave dangerous seas and unfriendly climates in order to achieve its
objective. Carey proposed that, in similar fashion, a company of serious Christians might be formed
with the objective of evangeli zing distant peoples. It should be an “instrumental” society, that is, a
society established with a clearly defined purpose along explicitly formulated lines. So, the
organizing of such a society was something like floating a mercantile company (cf Walls 1988:145f).
The new societies, even those which were consciously denominational, such as Carey's Baptist
Society and the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society (founded in 1799), had nothing exclusivist or
confessionalist about them. The CMS, for instance, experienced no difficulty in recognizing the
validity of the office of missionaries not ordained in an Episcopal church (cf van den Berg
1956:159f). In fact, most of its first missionaries were German Lutherans.
By the fourth decade of the nineteenth century the “ecumenical” climate was, however, on the
decline. In an attempt to counteract the influence of rationalism and liberalism, confessionalism was
revived. The SPG became more doctrinaire and rejected any form of missionary cooperation with
other societies, even with fellow-Anglicans in the low-church CMS. Writing about North America,
Niebuhr says that the denominations
confused themselves with their cause and began to promote themselves, identifying the kingdom of Christ with the practices and
doctrines prevalent in the group…The missionary enterprise, home and foreign, was divided along denominational lines; every
religious society became intent upon promoting its own peculiar type of work in religious education, in the evangelization of the
youth, in the printing and distribution of religious literature…The more attention was concentrated upon the church the greater
became the tendency toward schism (1959:177f).

Likewise, in Germany, Lutheran confessionalism (revivified, inter alia, by the third-centenary

celebrations in 1830 of the adoption the Augsburg Confession) contributed to a new consciousness
among Lutherans of being different from other Protestants. This manifested itself also in the foreign
missionary enterprise (a development traced carefully and in great detail by Aagaard 1967). Several
societies that were consciously transconfessional had been operating from the German-speaking
world during the early decades of the nineteenth century, the most important of these being the Basel,
Rhenish, and North-German Mission Societies (cf Aagaard 1967:182–306, 401–473). They were,
however, not permitted to continue operating unchallenged. Tensions between Reformed and Lutheran
supporters of the Basel Mission precipitated the formation, in 1836, of an exclusively Lutheran
missionary society, later known as the Leipzig Mission (Aagaard 1967:357–381). Similar
developments were soon to follow in other parts of Germany (:526–705).
Events in North America were only marginally different from those in Great Britain and Germany.
After 1850 various churches “became markedly less willing to leave foreign missions to
pandenominational or nondenominational associations” (Hutchison 1987:95) and began to sponsor
denominational mission projects. Eventually even the nondenominational American Board, for a half-
century the largest of all American societies (Hutchison 1987:45), became “denominational”; it
evolved into the missionary arm of Congregationalism. In Britain the same happened to the LMS, and
under similar circumstances.
During the heyday of nondenominational mission societies, mission had been understood
predominantly as conversio gentilium—the conversion of individual persons. It was only natural that
in the subsequent defensive reaction of denominationalism to the relativizing tendencies of the
Enlightenment, mission would again, as was the case in the medieval Catholic paradigm, be defined
as plantatio ecclesiae, church planting. The nondenominational societies, heavily influenced by the
Evangelical Awakenings, had been preaching “a Gospel without a Church” (S. C. Carpenter, quoted
by van den Berg 1956:159; cf Scherer 1987:75); this was now regarded as inadequate and amends
had to be made. The remedy was the planting of distinctly confessional churches on the “mission
field.” The new slogan was the establishment of “self-governing,” “self-supporting,” and “self-
propagating” (or “self-extending”) younger churches. The two main personalities in this regard were
the general secretaries of the two largest Protestant missionary societies of the mid-nineteenth
century, Rufus Anderson of the American Board and Henry Venn of the British CMS.
One should immediately add, however, that the intentions of the two men were noble. Great strides
toward church independency were indeed made in this period, not least because they were putting
greater trust in the integrity of their black and brown converts than most of their contemporaries did. It
should also not be forgotten that both men—but Anderson, the Congregationalist, more clearly than
Venn, the Anglican—were imbued with the rising mid-nineteenth-century spirit of democracy
(Hutchison 1987:77).
In spite of the admirable ideals of Anderson and Venn, things did not turn out as expected, in part
because their plans were often subverted by their own missionaries. Yet, quite apart from this, one
has to say that there was something incongruous about the heavy emphasis on church planting as the
goal of missions. The medieval missionary policy of plantatio ecclesiae had still operated on the
assumption that, one day, all the world would be put under the sway of the church. By the middle of
the nineteenth century such an ideal was no longer deemed possible, at least not in Protestant circles.
It was subconsciously assumed that the secularizing and rationalizing impact of the Enlightenment
could not be undone. So the Protestant variant of plantatio ecclesiae was the carving out of small,
exclusive “territories” of Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, and the like. The “advance of
the gospel” was measured by counting tangible things such as the number of baptisms, confessions,
and communions, and the opening of new mission stations or outposts.
The church had, in a sense, ceased to point to God or to the future; instead, it was pointing to itself.
Mission was the road from the institutional church to the church that still had to be instituted. It was
the activity of professional agents of organized societies operating on the “horizontal” plane. The
relationship of these churches to society and to the wider ecumenical and eschatological horizons was
largely ignored. What Scherer says about the Lutheran missions of the time could, by and large, also
be said of the projects of other confessional groupings,
The kingdom of God was reduced to a strategy by which Lutheran mission agencies planted Lutheran churches around the
world. Questions were seldom asked at this time about the relationship of these churches to the kingdom of God. Their very
existence appeared to be its own justification, and no further discussion of mission goals was required (1987:77).

By the end of the nineteenth century the pendulum once again swung toward societal mission and a
more ecumenical spirit. This was, at the same time, a reaffirmation of the principle of voluntarism. A
plethora of new voluntarist missionary agencies have been formed in the course of the last hundred
years or so. But precisely as expression of the spirit of voluntarism, they have also been illustrations
of the modern Western mood of activism, do-goodism, and manifest destiny. The eager young
missionary recruits’ “crusading spirit,” says Anderson (1988:98), was fuelled by “duty, compassion,
confidence, optimism, evangelical revivalism, and premillennialist urgency.”
Many of the newer type of Protestant missionary agencies belong to the category usually referred
to as “faith missions.” The pioneer and prototype of all these societies, and still the most famous, was
the China Inland Mission, founded in 1865 by J. Hudson Taylor. The new societies represented an
adaptation of the late eighteenth-century voluntary society, rather than a totally new departure (Walls
1988:154). Here the eschatological motif dominated. An urgent appeal was made to young men and
women to sacrifice themselves without reservation so as to save the millions of China and other
distant countries before the last judgment.
At the same time the new societies represented a radicalization of the voluntary principle. People
were challenged to go without any financial guarantees, simply trusting that the Lord of mission
would provide. In the eyes of some they were heroes of the faith; in the eyes of others they were
fools; in their own eyes they were but “fools for Christ's sake.” No time was left for timorous or
carefully prepared advances into pagan territory, nor for the laborious building up of “autonomous”
churches on the “mission field.” The gospel had to be proclaimed to all with the greatest speed, and
for this there could never be enough missionaries. It also meant that there was neither time nor need
for drawn-out preparation for missionary service. Many who went out had very little education or
training, although the recruits also included well-educated persons such as C. T. Studd and the other
members of the famous “Cambridge Seven.”
The weaknesses of the faith mission movement are obvious: the romantic notion of the freedom of
the individual to make his or her own choices, an almost convulsive preoccupation with saving
people's souls before Judgment Day, a limited knowledge of the cultures and religions of the people
to whom the missionaries went, virtually no interest in the societal dimension of the Christian gospel,
almost exclusive dependence on the charismatic personality of the founder, a very low view of the
church, etc. The movement also had its strengths, however, particularly in the pristine form it took in
Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission. The “home base” of the mission agency would no
longer be in London, Berlin, Basel, or New York, but in China, India, or Thailand. The missionaries
were not to live on “mission stations,” isolated from the population, but in the very midst of the
people they were trying to reach, eating the food they ate and wearing the clothes they wore. The
emphasis was not on doctrinal distinctives and confessional divisions but on the simple gospel of
salvation through Jesus Christ.
Some of the elements listed above, both negative and positive, became the common heritage of the
modern evangelical missionary movement. There is still, among many Christians, an impatience with
the cumbersome machinery of the institutional church, which tends to thwart any new initiatives.
Many young people are leaving the “mainline” churches and offering their services to any one of an
incredible variety of evangelical mission agencies. Today's evangelical world is full of itinerant
evangelists, of magazines and Bible schools and fellowships of churches. But here, too, we notice the
same curious ambiguity we identified earlier with respect to the phenomenon of denominationalism.
On the one hand, evangelical groups reveal an amazing tolerance toward each other and a rejection of
any doctrinal rigidity or inflexibility in favor of the free, creative adventure of serving God together.
On the other hand, an equally astonishing bigotry is sometimes the order of the day, coupled with an
emphasis on the exclusiveness of a given group because of its doctrinal distinctives. The “voluntary
principle” appears to have an inherent predisposition to either tolerance of others or the
absolutization of one's own views.
Wherever the “voluntary principle” became constitutive in Protestant missions—in
nondenominational or denominational societies, in well-organized and well-prepared projects or in
faith missions, in ecumenical or evangelical circles—the operative presuppositions were those of
Western democracy and the free-enterprise system. It proceeded from the assumption that the
missionary traffic would move in one direction only, from the West to the East or the South. It
spawned an enterprise in which the one party would do all the giving and the other all the receiving.
This was so because the one group was, in its own eyes, evidently privileged and the other, equally
evidently, disadvantaged.
Missionary Fervor, Optimism, and Pragmatism
In spite of the fact that missionary circles in the West, on the whole, reacted rather negatively to the
Enlightenment, there can be no doubt that this movement unleashed an enormous amount of Christian
energy which was, in part, channelled into overseas missionary efforts. More than in any preceding
period Christians of this era believed that the future of the world and of God's cause depended on
them.
In this respect the Enlightenment era represented a significant shift away from two other
developments—the one cultural, the other ecclesiastical—that preceded it. I am referring to the
Renaissance and to Protestant orthodoxy, both of which were oriented backward rather than forward.
The Enlightenment's orientation, by contrast, was decidedly forward and optimistic. Under its
influence, the churches tended to view God as benevolent Creator, humans as intrinsically capable of
moral improvement, and the kingdom of God as the crown of the steady progression of Christianity.
The idea of progress became prominent in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth it extended
into all walks of life and all disciplines. It reached its zenith in the nineteenth and early twentieth
century (cf Küng 1987:17f). Protestant missions could not escape its optimism and its orientation
toward the future. It found its classical expression in Kenneth Scott Latourette's famous seven-volume
A History of the Expansion of Christianity, which exercised a profound influence in missionary
circles, especially in the English-speaking world. Latourette portrayed seven major periods of
Christian expansion since the first century. The pattern of expansion, he suggested, had been like
seven successive waves of an incoming tide. The crest of each wave was higher than the crest that
had preceded it, and the trough of each wave receded less than the one before it. Changing the
metaphor slightly, Latourette wrote that, throughout its history, Christianity “has gone forward by
major pulsations. Each advance has carried it further than the one before it. Of the alternating
recessions, each has been briefer and less marked than the one which preceded it” (Latourette [1945]
1971:494).
Latourette penned down these words in 1944, toward the end of World War II, somewhere down
the line of the seventh period whose outcome was, humanly speaking, still uncertain. According to
Latourette this era, which he designated “Advance through Storm,” started with World War I in 1914.
In spite of the devastation of two world wars he remained essentially optimistic, however, and could
say that “never had any faith been so rooted among so many people as was Christianity in AD 1944”;
it was affecting “more deeply more different nations and cultures than ever before” (:494). When
Latourette's seven-volume work was republished in 1971, Ralph Winter, still operating wholly within
the Latourette paradigm, added a chapter in which he surveyed developments since 1944. He called it
“The Twenty-Five Unbelievable Years, 1945–1969” (Winter, in Latourette 1971:507–533). It is an
excellent perusal of secular and religious developments and ends with the same “optimistic realism”
(:533) that characterized Latourette's own thinking and writing.
The roots of Latourette's and Winter's optimism and pragmatism lay in the late eighteenth century.
It was a period of spectacular political upheaval, which had an adverse effect especially on
traditional Roman Catholic countries such as France. In Protestant circles people grew enthusiastic
about the prospect of the decline of the papacy and the large-scale conversion of Jews, in the wake of
their being granted full citizenship in France and elsewhere. In Britain this period was characterized
by an almost apocalyptic enthusiasm (van den Berg 1956:121). Much of it spilled over to the
continent and, more especially, to the United States of America. By the second decade of the
nineteenth century, the missionary cause had an importance and glory “unspeakably greater” than at
any previous period in Protestantism (Chaney 1976:174, 256). It was “the harvest time of the world,”
during which the kingdon of Satan was overturning and the reign of Jesus rising in its ruins. It was not
an age to be idle (:257). Any Christian who dared raise questions about the validity of conversionist
foreign missions was somehow not a genuine believer (Hutchison 1987:60). In 1818 Gordon Hall and
Samuel Newell published a book entitled The Conversion of the World, in which they espoused the
idea of the “ability and duty of the churches” to “respect” the claims of “six hundred million of
heathen,” suggesting that the Western churches could convert the world within twenty years (Chaney
1976:180; Johnson 1988:2f).
Indeed, the nineteenth-century envoys of the gospel, while sharing the Puritans’ confidence in
Protestantism's ability to renovate the world, far exceeded their spiritual forebears in their certitude
that they represented a society in which this was already being realized (Hutchison 1987:9). A charter
and battle plan for Christianity's final conquest of the world were called for (:51). It was not to be
achieved by means of miracles, but by means of “industry and zeal” (Chaney 1976:257, 269). The
“principles of reason” and the “dictates of common sense” blended happily with the “directions of
scripture” and the “obvious designs of providence” (:258). The building of the kingdom of God had
become as much a matter of technique and program as it was of conversion and religious piety
(Moorhead 1984:75). The gospel was viewed as an instrument for producing a vital transformation
in the total human situation, a “weapon” that alleviated woes, a “divine medicament” and “antidote,”
a “remedy” and “appointed means of civilizing the heathen” (Chaney 1976:240–242). The gospel was
a “tool,” along with all the many new tools and implements Western technology was beginning to
invent. It joined the three great gods of the modern era—science, technology, and industrialization
(Kuschel 1984:235)—and was harnessed with them to serve the spread of the gospel and of Christian
values.
After the 1880s, that is, during the high imperial era, activism and pragmatism were propounded
with renewed vigor. They were now more clearly identified as an expression of North American
missions, but were by no means restricted to them. It was the “age of energy” and a time for great
enterprises. In words reminiscent of the language later to be used by Latourette, Pierson said that “the
influence of Jesus Christ was never so widespread and so penetrating and so transforming” as it was
in his day (quoted by Forman 1982:54).
Pierson is also the person credited with formulating the watchword, “The evangelization of the
world in this generation,” adopted by the Student Volunteer Movement in 1889 (cf Anderson 1988:99;
Johnson 1988). The watchword both reflected and gave birth to the scintillating missionary optimism
of the period. More than anything else, it epitomized the Protestant missionary mood of the period:
pragmatic, purposeful, activist, impatient, self-confident, single-minded, triumphant. It found tangible
expression in the mammoth Ecumenical Missionary Conference, held in New York in 1900. Nobody
could still doubt that “the cause of Christ” was soon going to be victorious. Surely, says Hutchison
(1987:100), statistics such as these, together with a comparison of the “mission statistics” of the year
1800 with those of the year 1900, were such that they could lead one “to understand the sense of
momentum and divine inevitability that gripped the souls of this generation, and that enabled perfectly
sane people to talk of speedy world evangelization.” William Dodge expressed a common conviction
when he said, “We are going into a century more full of hope, and promise, and opportunity than any
period in the world's history” (quoted by Anderson 1988:102).
 Americans were probably not more activistic than most others. What was happening, rather, “was
that Americans were doing more of everything”; amid the general enthusiasm for conquering the
world for Christ or Christian civilization, “Americans were proclaiming this intention with a louder
voice and a loftier idealism” than others (Hutchison 1987:93f). This frequently called forth reactions
and even scathing attacks from the more “sober” continental Europeans, especially the Germans. In
the course of time “both the astonishment at the Americans’ zeal and efficiency, and the doubts about
their haste and religious superficiality, grew exponentially” (Hutchison 1987:131). Europeans were
particularly suspicious of the New York conference. G. Warneck pointed out that the missionary
command “bids us ‘go’ into all the world, not ‘fly,’ “and that Jesus likened God's kingdom to a
farmer's field, not to a hothouse (references in Hutchison 1987:133f)”.
Warneck's lifelong friend, Martin Kähler, had similar reservations, this time about the 1910
Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. The conference went ahead as planned, however,
structured largely on guidelines provided by North American assumptions. This remarkable
“ecumenical evangelical” conference had no difficulty in praising, in one breath, both the salvation
wrought in Christ and the astonishing progress of “secular” science. The latter was naively lauded as
manifestation of God's providence for the sake of the church's worldwide mission (cf Knapp 1977).
The tone of the conference was already set by Mott in his 1900 book (revised in 1902), The
Evangelization of the World in this Generation. Chapter 5 was entitled “The Possibility of
Evangelizing the World in This Generation11 in View of Some Modern Missionary Achievements”
(1902:79–101). It was in the next chapter, however—entitled “The Possibilities of Evangelizing the
World in This Generation in View of the Opportunities, Facilities and Resources of the Church”
(:103–129)—that Mott really succeeded, in a masterful way, in combining his faith in God's
revelation in Christ with his faith in the “providential” achievements of modern science. The whole
world was now open to the church, thanks to the “marvelous orderings of Providence during the
nineteenth century” (:106).
Equally important were the facilities the church now had at its disposal. It had acquired a vast
knowledge “of the social, moral and spiritual condition and need of all races” and could avail itself
of “greatly enlarged and improved means of communication” (Mott 1902:109). These included
railways, steamships, cable and telegraph systems, news agencies, the Universal Postal Union, and
the printing press (:109–113). The “influence and protection of Christian governments” was likewise
“an immense help to the work of missions” (:114f). Medical knowledge and skills, and the methods
and results of science and of other branches of Western learning were at the disposal of the
missionary effort (:115). Then there was the vast array of resources the church possessed. Its growing
membership in the Western world provided a sure base for a worldwide mission. Its “money power”
was enormous and giving to foreign missions was steadily increasing. The many missionary societies
were among “the greatest resources of the Church.” The Bible societies were providing bibles in
ever more languages. Christian colleges were being erected in many Asian and African countries. The
Christian student movement was a particularly formidable force for mission. The Sunday School
movement, in some respects still “the largest undeveloped missionary resource,” had incalculable
potentialities for mission (: 116–126). The “native Church” was the human resource which afforded
the “largest promise for the evangelization of the world.” In the year 1900 there were already
seventy-seven thousand native evangelists, pastors, teachers, catechists, medical workers, and other
helpers working full-time in this area (:126f). Of course, the “divine resource of the Church”
remained “immeasurably more powerful and important than all others” (:127), but they were not
essentially different from the ones just listed, as becomes evident when Mott continues and
summarizes (:127–129 [the two quotations in the following paragraph are from The Student
Volunteer and Calvin W. Mateer]),
Why has God made the whole world known and accessible to our generation? Why has He provided us with such wonderful
agencies? Not that the forces of evil might utilize them…Such vast preparations must have been made to further some mighty
and beneficent purpose. Every one of these wonderful facilities has been intended primarily to serve as a handmaid to the
sublime enterprise of extending and building up the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in all the world. The hand of God in opening door
after door among the nations of mankind, in unlocking the secrets of nature and in bringing to light invention after invention, is
beckoning the Church of our day to larger achievements. If the Church, instead of theorizing and speculating, will improve her
opportunities, resources and facilities, it seems entirely possible to fill the earth with the knowledge of Christ before the present
generation passes away. With literal truth it may be said that ours is an age of unparalleled opportunity. “Providence and
revelation combine to call the Church afresh to go in and take possession of the world for Christ…Now steam and electricity
have brought the world together. The Church of God is in the ascendant. She has well within her control the power, the wealth,
and the learning of the world. She is like a strong and well-appointed army in the presence of the foe…The victory may not be
easy, but it is sure.”

I have quoted extensively from Mott's famous booklet since, more than any other publication, it
conveys the spirit of optimism and confidence that characterized Western, especially North American,
missionary circles at the beginning of our century. It was this spirit that prevailed also at the
Edinburgh Conference. Edinburgh represented the all-time highwater mark in Western missionary
enthusiasm, the zenith of the optimistic and pragmatist approach to missions.
The mood at Edinburgh was futurist rather than eschatological. The future was primarily seen as
an extension of the present; as such it could be inaugurated through human efforts (van ‘t Hof
1972:34). Mott's earlier views were reventilated and at the same time expanded. Entire tribes on the
“mission field” were being converted. Reports from the “field” pleaded desperately with home
churches for more laborers to “gather in the harvest.” The fact that the geographical base of mission
was in the West and that the movement of missionaries was in one direction only did not yet present a
problem. Western mission was an undisputed power. Mission stood in the sign of world conquest.
Missionaries were referred to as “soldiers,” as Christian “forces.” References were made to
missionary strategies and tactical plans. Military metaphors such as “army,” “crusade,” “council of
war,” “conquest,” “advance,” “resources,” and “marching orders” abounded (:27–29). All
circumstances added up to the recognition of the fact that the present moment was a mandate for
mission; it was “an opportune time,” “a critical time,” “a testing time for the church,” “a decisive
hour for the Christian mission” (:34).12
In continental Europe this optimistic mood was shattered by World War I. Max Warren once
referred to the experience of the abyss, which more surely divides continental from Anglo-Saxon
theological thinking (1961:161). In North America then, and to a lesser extent in Britain, the
optimistic mood continued throughout the 1950s. The world was being rebuilt feverishly and the
Christian church had a decisive role to play in this. The upsurge in missionary interest during this
period was astounding. Both ecumenical and evangelical mission agencies got involved on an
unprecedented scale, although the former's emphasis had shifted to cooperation with the younger
churches rather than unilaterally undertaking missionary, educational, and other projects.
The decade of the sixties brought with it the last, even if convulsive, attempts at reasserting the
philosophy of Western programs proffering a panacea for the world's ills. There was a firm
conviction that the churches were able to respond positively, adequately, and efficiently to the world's
needs. Ecumenicals and evangelicals, drawing respectively on the ideas of progressive Capitalism
and egalitarian Socialism, were equally convinced that they could remake the world into their
respective images. Ecumenicals thought that they were equipped to penetrate the power structures of
politics, economics, technology, science, and the mass media and being about an effective change in
their substance and direction. Evangelicals rallied around a revival of the SVM watchword about
“the total evangelization of the world…in this generation”; a congress of the Interdenominational
Foreign Missions Association, held in Chicago in 1960, issued a call for eighteen thousand additional
missionaries (cf Anderson 1988:110; on plans for world evangelization during the second half of the
twentieth century, cf Barrett and Reapsome 1988).
Both these groups resolutely followed a soteriological vision, even if their definitions of
“salvation” increasingly differed.
The belief in progress and success that transpired from all these missions and visions, from the
seventeenth century to the twentieth, were made possible by the advent of the Enlightenment, but also
involved a subtle shift of emphasis from grace to works. Christians burdened themselves with a
wide-ranging and comprehensive mission of renewing the face of the earth; the possibilities for
realizing this were inherent in the present order. This entire development was, in a sense, inevitable.
It was unthinkable that Christians after the advent of the Enlightenment could be the same as they had
been before.
The Biblical Motif
I have indicated that in every period since the early church there was a tendency to take one specific
biblical verse as the missionary text. Such a text was not necessarily quoted frequently. Still, even
where it was hardly referred to, it somehow embodied the missionary paradigm of the period.
I have suggested that John 3:16 may be looked upon as the one verse giving expression to the
patristic understanding of mission. During the medieval Roman Catholic missionary period, Luke
14:23 played a somewhat similar role. Again, the missionary text of the Protestant Reformation was
Romans 1:16f.
Moving on to the missionary paradigm of the Enlightenment era, the situation becomes more
ambiguous. This certainly has to do with the fact that during this period mission was much more
diverse and multifaceted than ever before. It would therefore be virtually impossible to identify only
one missionary text for this epoch. We may have to distinguish among several. Three of these have
already been alluded to in this chapter. First, Paul's vision of the Macedonian man, beseeching him
and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9), was especially prominent in the
period when Western Christians viewed peoples of other races and religions as living in darkness
and deep despair and as imploring Westerners to come to their aid. Second, premillennialists were,
and still are, fond of appealing to Matthew 24:14, since this verse clearly embodies their
understanding of mission. Third, Newbigin (1978:103) has drawn attention to the fact that, in those
circles indebted to the legacy of the Social Gospel, one of the most popular missionary texts was the
words of Jesus in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”—abundant life
being interpreted “as the abundance of the good things that modern education, healing, and agriculture
would provide for the deprived peoples of the world.”
A fourth text has to be added, however, one that certainly was the most widely used during the
entire period discussed in this chapter—the “Great Commission” of Matthew 28:18–20. Although the
“Great Commission” also featured during the Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy, the person really
to be credited with putting it on the map, so to speak, was William Carey in his 1792 tract entitled An
Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen, in
which he, with the aid of a simple yet powerful argumentation, demolished the conventional
interpretation of Matthew 28:18–20.
 Since Carey, the appeal to Matthew 28:18–20 has always been prominent in Protestant (more
especially evangelical Anglo-Saxon) missions. Chaney (1976: 259) suggests that, in the United
States, it became the major motive for engaging in missions after 1810. Harry Boer (1961:26) lists
several early American missionaries, among them such famous figures as Robert Morrison (1792–
1834) and Adoniram Judson (1788–1850), who explicitly stated that it was primarily because of
obedience to Christ's command that they had gone to the mission field. Still, the appeal to the “Great
Commission” in missionary sermons of the period appeared to be more or less stereotypical; since
nobody doubted that the words were Christ's own, and in fact his last command, it was only natural
that every preacher on mission would refer to it in every sermon, even if the text played no integral
role in the overall argument. Obedience to the “Great Commission” could therefore, sometimes,
appear rather far down the list of reasons for getting involved in mission (cf Hutchison 1987:48).
Johannes van den Berg is therefore much more on target when he says that the “Great
Commission,” at least in the early part of the nineteenth century, “was never the one and only motive,
dominant in isolation,” that “it never functioned as a separate stimulus,” but “was always connected
with other motives” (1956: 165; cf 177).
This was to change, however. The spirit of rationalism, secularism, humanism, and relativism
increasingly invaded the church and began subtly to undermine the very idea of preaching a message
of eternal salvation to people who would otherwise be doomed. This provoked conservative, and
particularly premillennialist, circles to appeal, in an almost convulsive manner, to the “Great
Commission.” It became a kind of last line of defense, as if the protagonists of mission were saying,
“How can you oppose mission to the heathen if Christ himself has commanded it?”
In the course of time the theme of obedience to the “Great Commission” indeed tended to drown
all other motifs. This happened, for instance, at the famous Mt. Hermon student conference of 1886,
which was to be the beginning of the Student Volunteer Movement. William Ashmore concluded his
presentation to the students with the challenge, “Show, if you can, why you should not obey the last
command of Jesus Christ!” (cf Boer 1961:26). In the same year, A. T. Pierson began his most
significant book on mission with the statement that Christ's command “makes all other motives
comparatively unnecessary” (quoted in Hutchison 1987:113). Mott added, some years later, that
Jesus’ “final charges,” reported in all the gospels and the Book of Acts, “define the first and most
important part of our missionary obligation” (1902:5).
In continental Europe and Britain, too, mission was under attack from the side of the prevalent
liberal theology. Here, also, the defense of the missionary cause took the form of a direct appeal to
the commission of Jesus. By the end of the nineteenth century Matthew 28:18–20 had completely
superseded other verses from Scripture as principal “mission text.” Now the emphasis was
unequivocally on obedience. The great Dutch theologian of the period, Abraham Kuyper, stated, “All
mission flows from God's sovereignty, not from God's love or compassion.” Elsewhere he insisted,
“All mission is, formally, obedience to God's command; materially, the message is not an invitation,
but an order, a burden. The Lord sends his command, ‘Repent and believe!’, not as a recommendation
or an admonition, but as a decree” (references in van ‘t Hof 1980:45—my translation). Johannes
Warneck, though using less absolutist language than Kuyper, believed, like Kuyper, that “the impulse
to mission only arose where the missionary idea was laid upon people's consciences as a compelling
command of the Lord” (1913:16—my translation).
In the period after World War II, when evangelicals became more confident of having a peculiar
role to play in world missions, appeals of this nature were heard ever more frequently, as many
“sought to reinstate the Great Commission as a leading, or even as an entirely sufficient, justification
for missions” (Hutchison 1987:191).
There can be no doubt that this kind of appeal to the “Great Commission” has succeeded in
mobilizing and bolstering evangelical missionary “forces.”13 Still, grave concerns about such an
appeal have to voiced. First, it is almost always polemical, an attack on what is regarded as the
watered-down understanding of mission in “ecumenical” circles. Second, it is usually couched in a
most simplistic form of biblical literalism and proof-texting, with hardly any attempt at understanding
the commission from within the context in which it appears in Scripture.14 Most important, it removes
the church's involvement in mission from the domain of gospel to that of law.

MODERN MISSIONARY MOTIVES AND MOTIFS—A PROFILE

Looking back at the many and varied motifs discussed in this chapter, one cannot help feeling
overwhelmed. No single motif appeared to have dominated in any given period or tradition. In
addition, the powerfully centrifugal forces at work frequently resulted in virtually each motif
operating in two opposing ways. In the previous period there had been less discord. Several motifs—
the glory of God, a sense of urgency because of the imminent millennium, the love of Christ,
compassion for those considered eternally lost, a sense of duty, the awareness of cultural superiority,
and competition with Catholic missionary efforts—had blended together to form a mosaic (cf Rooy
1965:282–284). Now, however, there was virtually no trace of a unified pattern of thought and
practice. Sometimes Christians responded in widely divergent ways to the challenge posed to the
Christian mission by the Enlightenment, as a careful study of each of the nine missionary motifs listed
above would show.
The fact of the matter is that each of these motifs, as they shaped missionary thinking since the
middle of the eighteenth century, betrayed the features of the Enlightenment discussed earlier in this
chapter: the undisputed primacy of reason, the separation between subject and object, the substitution
of the cause-effect scheme for belief in purpose, the infatuation with progress, the unsolved tension
between “fact” and “value,” the confidence that every problem and puzzle could be solved, and the
idea of the emancipated, autonomous individual.
Since all human beings were creatures of reason, a very optimistic anthropology replaced the
somber view of humans which had predominated in medieval Catholicism and the Protestant
Reformation era. Only, in spite of lip-service paid to the “rationality” of every human being, Western
superiority feelings saw to it that, in practice, Westerners were credited with more rationality than
others. There was, on this score, not much difference between evangelicals and social gospellers.
The subject-object dichotomy meant that, in admittedly very opposite ways, the Bible and, in fact,
the Christian faith as such, became objectified. Liberals sovereignly placed themselves above the
biblical text, extracting ethical codes from it, while fundamentalists tended to turn the Bible into a
fetish and apply it mechanically to every context, particularly as regards the “Great Commission.”
Each group, in its own way, celebrated the precept that each person was able to understand the Bible
unaided by others. But also, representatives of both groups—because of their inveterate belief in their
own “manifest destiny”—often tended to treat peoples of other cultures as objects rather than brothers
and sisters.
The elimination of purpose implied that, as long as people succeeded in creating the right
conditions, the success of their missionary enterprise was guaranteed. This was the overall thrust of
James Dennis's three-volume treatise on Christian missions and social progress (1897, 1899, 1906).
But ardent evangelicals could subscribe to the same philosophy: improved social conditions would
guarantee an open ear for the gospel of eternal redemption or, alternatively, effective evangelism
would, as a matter of course, lead to social betterment. In either case the Enlightenment tenet of a
direct and causal relationship between “seed” and “fruit” reigned supreme.
The foundational Enlightenment belief in the assured victory of progress was perhaps more
explicitly recognizable in the Christian missionary enterprise than any other element of the age. There
was a widespread and practically unchallengeable confidence in the ability of Western Christians to
offer a cure-all for the ills of the world and guarantee progress to all—whether through the spread of
“knowledge” or of “the gospel.” The gradual secularization of the idea of the millennium (which was,
incongruously, also evident among conservatives, particularly those within the ranks of the “Religious
Right”) turned out to be one of the most sustained manifestations of the doctrine of progress.
The distinction between facts and values meant that Christian missionaries tried, in two radically
different ways, to defend the “scientific” nature of their enterprise. Some, particularly in the more
extreme manifestations of the Social Gospel, put all emphasis on tangible, demonstrable and
calculable this-worldly achievements; others declared only other-worldly realities to be really real
and put all emphasis on the salvation of souls.
To some extent the belief that, in principle, everything was solvable, underlay the eruption of
voluntarist missionary agencies as early as the end of the eighteenth century and also accounted for
the incredible upsurge of optimism a century later. It was hardly accidental that this upsurge was,
time-wise, framed by the Berlin Conference of 1885 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914;
it was the high imperial epoch, characterized by the conviction that it was the West and the Christians
of the West who would solve the ills of the entire world, primarily by means of the program of
colonialism and the planting of Western-type churches in all parts of the world.
The Enlightenment doctrine that individuals were to be free, emancipated, and autonomous meant
that, implicitly or explicitly (in Protestantism at least) God and humans were felt to be rivals. If the
aim of mission was viewed as giving glory to God, this was interpreted as slighting the value and
contribution of humans; if the inherent capability of human beings to make the right choices and act
ethically was emphasized, this was seen as a refusal to give all credit to God. In the course of time,
however, it was the latter of these two equations that triumphed. It manifested itself in the gradual
“Arminianization” of Protestantism, evidenced not only by the rapid growth of (Arminian) Methodist
and Baptist churches in the United States, but also in significant shifts toward an Arminian position in
Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, and Anglican circles.
I have, in this chapter, paid more attention to the views of missionary spokespersons than to those
of missionaries themselves. Perhaps there was no great discrepancy between the two sets of views.
Ultimately, however, it is more important to know what it was that made individuals go to the ends of
the earth than to reflect on the opinions and predilections of those who sent them. Certainly, all the
motifs discussed above, and more, were embodied in those missionaries. They were children of their
time, but no ordinary children. Shorter writes about them wistfully and almost nostalgically,
If the early missionaries had not been spiritual giants they would not have got away with what they did, but they were holy men,
of immense courage and personality. Their goodness was transparent, and their intolerance though completely baffling to non-
Christians, was nevertheless forgiven (1972:24).

Only very few of those missionaries, however, managed to escape the spell cast over them by the
worldview of the Enlightenment, and even then only partially. They remained indebted, even in their
“best” moments, to a world shaped by a most peculiar constellation of events and creeds. Even when
they, in the words of the title of van den Berg (1956), were “constrained by Jesus’ love,” they could
never communicate that love in its pristine form since it was always mixed with extraneous elements.
The entire Western missionary movement of the past three centuries emerged from the matrix of the
Enlightenment. On the one hand, it spawned an attitude of tolerance to all people and a relativistic
attitude toward belief of any kind; on the other, it gave birth to Western superiority feelings and
prejudice. It is not always possible to divide these sentiments neatly between “liberals” and
“evangelicals.” Moreover, and only seemingly incongruously, tolerance as well as intolerance,
relativism as well as bigotry could often be found side by side in the same person or group.
The Western missionary enterprise of the late eighteenth to the twentieth century remained, in spite
of valid criticism which may be aimed at it, a most remarkable exercise. The influence of the
Enlightenment on it was, moreover, not only negative and there is no point in trying to imagine how
things might have developed had there been no Enlightenment. The entire phenomenon, in all its
ramifications, was a child of Christianity and—given the overall constellation of facts and events—
truly inevitable. Within the ambience of the movement Western Christians—in their emerging
relationship with people of other cultures—did the only thing that made sense to them—they brought
them the gospel as they understood it. For this we owe them respect and gratitude.
In our own time, however, the Christian missionary enterprise is, slowly but irrevocably, moving
away from the shadow of the Enlightenment. The factors that have contributed to this are legion; in the
next chapter some, and only some, of them will be identified. In the new paradigm mission will have
—in spite of all elements of continuity with the past—to be different from what it was during the
heyday of the Enlightenment. Some would go further and argue that the entire modern missionary
enterprise is to such a profound degree an integral element and manifestation of the expanding
Western world and Enlightenment spirit of the past three or four centuries that it is really impossible
to salvage it as that world collapses in ruins (cf Rütti 1974:301). We shall have to reflect seriously
on whether this is really required.
Few sincere Christians would be prepared to jettison the missionary idea and ideal as such. They
believe that the Christian faith is intrinsically missionary. But they may be prepared for a revision of
missionary theology and practice, for a missiological paradigm shift. In an article first published in
1959 Kraemer (1970:73) suggested that such a revision was needed (cf the introduction of the present
book). A few years later Keith Bridston also reflected on the future and its implications for the nature
of mission. The latter half of the twentieth century may prove, he said, “to be as radical in its
implications for the missionary outlook of the Christian church as the Copernican revolution was for
the scientific cosmology of its day” (1965:12f). A total transformation was needed, he added, the
implications of which were only beginning to dawn on us (:16). The traditional forms of mission
embodied a response to a world that no longer existed, and even if we do not have to negate the
traditional mission response as such, we are challenged to respond in a very different way today
(:17). The only ultimately effective solution to the widespread missionary malaise of today, which is
sometimes hidden from our eyes because of our apparent missionary “successes,” is a “radical
transformation of the whole life of the church” (:19).
 Part 3

TOWARD A RELEVANT
MISSIOLOGY
 Chapter 10

The Emergence of a
Postmodern Paradigm

THE END OF THE MODERN ERA

In the preceding chapters of this study I have attempted to trace the development of the theology of the
Christian mission from New Testament times up to the modern era. It has become abundantly clear
that in each historical epoch of the past two millennia the missionary idea has bxeen profoundly
influenced by the overall context in which Christians lived and worked.
In Chapter 5 I suggested that the “modern” or “Enlightenment” era would not be the last epoch of
world history to exercise an influence on the thought and practice of mission. One more paradigm
would follow, which, for the moment, I am calling the “postmodern”1 paradigm. All the other epochs
discussed here, even the “modern” one, belong to the past; we could therefore, in a sense, look back
upon them. The situation with the postmodern paradigm is fundamentally different. New paradigms do
not establish themselves overnight. They take decades, sometimes even centuries, to develop
distinctive contours. The new paradigm is therefore still emerging and it is, as yet, not clear which
shape it will eventually adopt. For the most part we are, at the moment, thinking and working in terms
of two paradigms.
A time of paradigm shift is a time of deep uncertainty—and such uncertainty appears to be one of
the few constants of the contemporary era and one of the factors that engender strong reactions in
favor of hanging on to the Enlightenment paradigm, in spite of signs from all quarters that it is
breaking up.
It will be impossible to trace the developments that led to the break-up of the Enlightenment
paradigm in any detail. A few broad and very general strokes will have to suffice.
Descartes, widely acclaimed as the father of the Enlightenment, employed the principle of radical
doubt as the crux of his method. Only doubt, he believed, would purge the human mind of all opinions
held merely on trust and open it to knowledge firmly grounded in reason (for a penetrating discussion
of the “doctrine of doubt,” cf Polanyi 1958:269–298). With this epistemological postulate Descartes
set the tone for virtually all subsequent developments in science, philosophy, theology, etc. Naturally,
many scholars moved beyond Descartes's position, but without altering it fundamentally. What
happened, rather, was that the principle of doubt and the tenet of the supremacy of reason were
increasingly refined as they were restated. Descartes himself emphasized a rational and deductive (or
“mathematical”) method in science. His slightly older contemporary, Francis Bacon (1561–1626),
advocated an inductive approach, whereas Isaac Newton (1642–1717) was the first to introduce a
blend of both methods (cf Capra 1983:65). The two approaches never blended completely, however,
and remained, at best, two complementary models of doing science (cf Bernstein 1985:5). Twentieth-
century Logical Positivism, for instance, tended to reflect the inductive trend, whereas Karl Popper's
falsification theory may be viewed as continuation of the deductive tradition.
In both traditions, then, the premise of the preeminence of reason remained unassailable.
Rationalism made such superb sense, particularly since its achievements in science and technology
were so manifest, that it appeared absurd to question it. Small wonder then that its presuppositions
were soon adopted by the human sciences as well (including theology). The very word “science”
came to mean accurate knowledge, absolutely reliable data, etc. Theologians and other scholars of the
humanities embraced this vision and applied it meticulously to their discipline—as much of
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theology, in all subdisciplines, attests.
Today this entire edifice is being challenged. The first fundamental assault on it did not (as one
might have expected) come from the side of the human sciences. It came, quite surprisingly, from the
very discipline where the Cartesian and Newtonian canons appeared totally inviolable: the field of
physics, where scholars such as Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr introduced a revolution in thinking,
so much so that Werner Heisenberg could say that the very foundations of science have started to
move and that there was almost a need to start all over again (reference in Capra 1983:77). In the
course of time it was only natural that similar upheavals would follow in other disciplines, including
the humanities.
Events in world history, in particular two devastating global wars (1914–1918; 1939–1945) and
everything that followed in their wake, also contributed to the steady erosion of the “naive realism”
of the conventional paradigm. In theology Karl Barth, with his “theology of crisis,” was the first to
break fundamentally with the liberal theological tradition and to inaugurate a new theological
paradigm. It was not really different in other disciplines. It became clear that the West together with
its inherited understanding of reality was in trouble. Between the First and the Second World War
philosophers of history like Oswald Spengler and Ptirim Sorokin attempted to trace the fundamental
changes that were beginning to occur in Western culture.2
What was still only implicit in Spengler and Sorokin was made explicit in Guardini's Das Ende
der Neuzeit, first published in 1950: the “modern era”—and, with it, the entire worldview on which
it was built—was collapsing. Emerging from the same crucible as Guardini's book, namely the horror
of the Second World War and of Nazism, was Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947) by two of the leading
representatives of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Like Guardini, the
authors still did not discern the way forward out of the present impasse. They presented their views,
for the time being, only as “fragments” (cf the book's subtitle). They recognized that science itself, as
practiced according to the Enlightenment paradigm, had become questionable (:5) and that the
Enlightenment was destroying itself (:7). Progress was turning into regress (:10). Their concern
remained, however, a salvage operation—they wished to rescue the Enlightenment from self-
destruction and “irrationalism” (:10f). The problem, as Jürgen Habermas (a junior colleague of the
authors of Dialektik der Aufklärung) has pointed out, was that they refused (or were unable) to
relinquish the view that reason and reason alone, in its traditional form, enables us to make normative
statements—although they admitted that reason, in the Enlightenment's understanding thereof, was
fundamentally corrupted.
Clearly, a more fundamental critique of the Enlightenment paradigm was called for. This came
when researchers began to take more seriously the role of history, the human subject, and the social
group. Two pioneering publications in this respect were Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge
(1958) and Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ([1962] 1970). The opening
sentence of Kuhn's book documents the influence of history and context on all human knowledge:
“History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive
transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed” (1970:1).
In spite of differences between them, it could be argued that there is a degree of convergence
between the theories propounded by Kuhn and those espoused by Polanyi. Habermas, Paul Ricoeur,
and more recently John Thompson and Charles Taylor, have worked out similar ideas (cf Nel 1988).
In all these views scientific theory, history, sociology, and hermeneutics go hand in hand (cf Küng
1987:162). A new vision is emerging, and it affects all the sciences, both human and natural.
Habermas contends that, in addition to the Enlightenment's “instrumental” reason, we should create
room for what he calls “communicative” reason. And Kuhn argues that scientific knowledge is not the
outcome of objective, “instrumental” or “mechanistic” research but the product of historical
circumstances and of intersubjective communication. In this way he challenges the Enlightenment's
thesis of the priority of thought to being and of reason to action (cf Lugg 1987:176).

THE CHALLENGE TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT

After this all-too-brief survey of recent developments in the theory of science, I now wish to pick up,
once again, the seven major characteristics of the Enlightenment referred to in Chapter 9 and reflect
briefly on the way in which each of them has been challenged by the most recent paradigm shift. I
will, at this stage, not attempt to spell out in any detail the implications of this shift for missionary
thinking and practice (this will follow in the next chapter); the considerations offered here are,
however, important for what follows.
The Expansion of Rationality
In the previous chapter I outlined five theological “responses” to the Enlightenment's elevation of
reason as the only faculty by means of which humans can arrive at knowledge and insight. All five of
these responses have been tried in the missionary program of the Christian church, particularly during
the twentieth century: Christianity was propagated as a unique religious experience; as something for
private life alone; as more rational than science; as a rule for all of society; and as humanity's
liberator from every redundant religious attachment. In various forms all these models are still being
advocated in missionary thinking and practice. Furthermore, there appears to be a basic anxiety,
shared by all five approaches, that, in spite of all the attempts either to fend off the attack of reason or
make common cause with it, the future of religion is in jeopardy. Because of this, each of these
approaches somehow comes across as being a kind of rearguard action. There is a widespread belief,
anticipated with glee by some, with apprehension by others, that religion will sooner or later die out.
The very opposite now appears to be the case, however. Not religion itself but the belief that
predicted its demise proved to be an illusion (cf Lübbe 1986:14; Küng 1987:23). “Non-Christian”
religions did not die out, as J. Warneck (1909) suggested. The twentieth century saw a powerful
resurgence of the so-called world religions: Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The same is true of
Christianity, and much of this has taken place precisely in communities where the Enlightenment has
reigned for centuries, as a glimpse at David Barrett's World Christian Encyclopedia (1982) shows.
At the dawn of the twentieth century a novel and virile version of Christianity, the Pentecostal
movement, made its appearance and has since grown to become the largest single category in
Protestantism, outstripping the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican communions (Barrett 1982:838).
Despite the often brutal suppression of religion in the Soviet Union and China, it is now becoming
increasingly clear that Christianity is expanding rather than waning in these and similar countries. In
Poland, despite almost half a century of Marxist rule, the Roman Catholic Church appears to have
more support from the population than at any time in recent history. In Latin America, where (it is
claimed) the christianization of the population was rather superficial,3 there appears to be an
undreamt-of vigor in Catholicism, manifested, inter alia, in the comunidades ecclesiales de base
(base ecclesial communities). Predictions about the numerical growth of Christianity in Africa have
to be revised often, since they are soon shown to have been too modest.
It is not easy to find an adequate explanation for this phenomenon. Much of it undoubtedly has to
be judged rather negatively, as evidence of an inability to cope with the pressures of society which
then results in a flight into religion (or pseudo-religion), in an individualization or privatization of
faith (often producing a kind of à la carte or do-it-yourself religion) or, alternatively, in utilizing
religion as buttress for a society which appears to be crumbling.
There is, however, more to the resurgence of religion than this. A fundamental reason lies in the
fact that the narrow Enlightenment perception of rationality has, at long last, been found to be an
inadequate cornerstone on which to build one's life. The objectivist framework imposed on
rationality has had a crippling effect on human inquiry; it has led to disastrous reductionism and hence
to stunted human growth.
Rationality has to be expanded. One way of expanding it is to recognize that language cannot be
absolutely accurate, that it is impossible finally to “define” either scientific laws or theological
truths. To speak with Gregory Bateson, neither science nor theology “proves”; rather, they “probe.”
This recognition has led to a reevaluation of the role of metaphor, myth, analogy, and the like, and to
the rediscovery of the sense of mystery and enchantment. In this respect N. Frye's The Great Code
(1983) is of special importance for theology (and in particular for missiology, in view of the entire
new field of inculturation and contextualization of the gospel). The central doctrines of traditional
Christianity, Frye says, can be expressed only in the form of metaphor; every attempt to go beyond
that and “explain” doctrines has about it “a strong smell of intellectual mortality” (1983:55). In fact,
when idolatry is condemned in the Bible, it “is often regarded as a ‘literal’ projection into the
external world of an image that might be quite acceptable as a poetic metaphor” (:61). Frances Young
(1988:308) argues along similar lines; that is, the early Fathers of the church, and particularly
Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 330–389), often declared as heretics precisely those people who had
claimed “to have mastered God by the powers of human reason.”
Metaphor, symbol, ritual, sign, and myth, long maligned by those interested only in “exact”
expressions of rationality, are today being rehabilitated; they create forms that “synthesize and evoke
the integration of mind and will”; they “not only touch the mind and its conceptions, and evoke action
with a purpose, but compel the heart” (Stackhouse 1988:104). So we see an upsurge of interest,
especially in Third-World churches, in “narrative theology,” “theology as story,” and other
nonconceptual forms of theologizing.
It is important to recognize that these modes of thinking and expression are not irrational or
antirational. The problem with scientism is that it fetters human thought as cruelly as any authoritarian
belief system has ever done, that it “offers no scope for our most vital beliefs and…forces us to
disguise them in farcically inadequate terms” (Polanyi 1958:265). The best theologian, according to
Gregory of Nazianzus, is not the one who can give a complete logical account of his subject, but the
one who “assembles more of Truth's image and shadow” and thus moves beyond the confines of
“pure” rationality (cf Young 1988:308). True rationality thus also includes experience. This is where
the significance of Schleier-macher's theological approach lies, as well as the validity of the
Pentecostal movement, the Charismatic Renewal (cf Lederle 1988), and many other manifestations of
“experiential” religion.
I am therefore not suggesting the abandoning of rationality. We need to take the best of modern
science, philosophy, literary criticism, historical method, and social analysis, and “constantly think
through and rethink our theological under-standing in the light of it all” (Young 1988:311). We should,
indeed, retain and defend the critical power of the Enlightenment, but we should reject its
reductionism. We are called to re-conceive rationality by expanding it to include much more than the
res cogitans. This means that the religious dimension has to be incorporated into our overall vision of
reality. It is, paradoxically, the only way in which the Enlightenment itself can be saved (cf Lübbe
1986:18). Without the religious element, says Guardini (1950:113), life is like an engine running
without oil—it seizes up. When religion “falls apart or dries up, not only do people suffer
meaninglessness but the civilization crumbles” (Stackhouse 1988:82). The human soul abhors a
vacuum. If faith in God falls away, its place is taken by other gods: “the powers of Nature, Reason,
Science, History, Evolution, Democracy, Individual Freedom, and Technology…” (West 1971:99), or
other manifestations of secular religion, such as ideology.
Postmodern developments have shown that science is not inherently inimical to the Christian faith.
This observation should not, however, lead us to postulate that there is no longer any tension between
faith and reason, between religion and the world of science. This is what Fritjof Capra does, from a
New Age perspective, particularly in The Turning Point (1983) and The Tao of Physics ([1976]
1984). In Capra's thinking, religion and science have embraced each other and are in perfect,
tensionless harmony. It is significant, however, that Capra does not turn to the Christian faith in his
attempt to argue his point, but to the Eastern religions, particularly Taoism and Buddhism. He finds
the Chinese concept of yin and yang and their mutual relationship particularly amenable to his thesis.
Such views are immensely attractive, particularly in light of the long animosity between science
and religion. Now that we are shaking off the shackles of rationalist thinking and are moving into the
postmodern period, so it appears, the two can make peace and forever live in perfect harmony!
Josuttis (1988) sounds a warning note, however, at least insofar as the Christian faith is concerned.
With the easy integration of religion into its system, the postmodern paradigm has swallowed a
poison which it will find difficult to digest (:16). Authentic religion imperils the emerging
worldview, as it did for all earlier ones (:17). Whoever truly involves himself or herself with the
Christian faith, with the biblical texts, and the ecclesial tradition, will encounter phenomena that are
much more awkward and resistant than expected. The Christian faith has always designated as evil
whatever destroys life. It has never affirmed its trust in God without challenging the power of anti-
gods. It has concerned itself with the victims of society, but not without calling to repentance the
perpetrators of injustice (:19; cf Daecke 1988).
Small wonder, then, that in those societies where structural injustice prevails and various
theologies of protest are developing, there appears to be little enthusiasm for Capra's integrationism
and avoidance of conflict. So, even if one can today say with confidence that many of the old battles
between science and religion have become pointless and that religion can indeed look forward to
playing a more vital role in society than was possible when the Enlightenment paradigm still reigned
supreme, one has to recognize that the tensions will remain and that religion's role in the future will
be a diffuse one (cf Küng 1987:26). There is no longer any room for the massive affirmations of faith
which characterized the missionary enterprise of earlier times, only for a chastened and humble
witness to the ultimacy of God in Jesus Christ.
Beyond the Subject-Object Scheme
The dominance over and objectification of nature and the subjecting of the physical world to the
human mind and will—as championed by the Enlightenment—had disastrous consequences. It
resulted in a world that was “closed, essentially completed and unchanging…simple and shallow, and
fundamentally unmysterious—a rigidly programed machine” (H. Schilling, quoted in Hiebert
1985b:13).
 At the same time, and paradoxically, instead of liberating humans it has enslaved them. First the
machine replaced the human slave, then humans were turned into slaves of the machine. Production
became the highest goal of being human, resulting in humans having to worship at the altar of the
autonomy of technology.
A further disastrous consequence of the Cartesian model is found in what we today refer to as the
ecological crisis. We have degraded the earth by treating it as an insensitive object; now it is dying
under our very hands. We have damaged the ozone layer, and may thereby have signed our own death
warrant. We are the first generation which with the help of nuclear power can destroy itself.
Enlightenment culture—science, philosophy, education, sociology, literature, technology—has
misinterpreted both humanity and nature, not only in some respects, but fundamentally and totally.
A basic reorientation is thus called for. One should, again, see oneself as a child of Mother Earth
and as sister and brother to other human beings. One should think holistically, rather than analytically,
emphasize togetherness rather than distance, break through the dualism of mind and body, subject and
object, and emphasize “symbiosis.”4
For the church's missionary existence in the world all this has profound and far-reaching
consequences. It implies that nature and especially people may not be viewed as mere objects,
manipulable and exploitable by others. Such a new epistemology for mission means, also, that
technology must be confronted with a reality outside itself which does not depend on its canons of
rationality and which therefore will not be subservient to its deterministic power. This reality may be
identified as the reign of God, which stands in polemical tension with the closed system of this world.
Rediscovery of the Teleological Dimension
The elimination of purpose and the sustained linear causal reasoning of the Enlightenment paradigm
ultimately rendered the universe meaningless. Humans cannot, however, continue living without
meaning, purpose, and hope. Perhaps nineteenth-century Europe and North America, at least as far as
the privileged classes were concerned, could afford to live in this manner. They could look at the
forces inherent in the universe which guaranteed progress and improvement and could embrace the
Darwinian evolution theory which suggested that, following biological laws inherent in nature,
societies and individuals would gradually improve themselves; in this way the privileged could look
forward to more solutions to riddles, subdue nature and, in fact, the entire world, and expect ever
more privileges. In theological circles this meant, inter alia, that one could think in exclusively
postmillennial categories, according to which the world would systematically be changed for the
better until, almost imperceptibly, the kingdom of God would dawn on earth.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, and more distinctly in the twentieth, there
occurred a radical shift from non-eschatological to eschatological theology (cf Martin 1987:373f).
This means a fundamental break with the idea that everything has to be the predictable or contrived
consequence of some law, some immutable given. The category of contingency and unpredictability
has been reintroduced. The notion of change—the belief that things can be different, that it is not
necessary to live by old and established patterns, that everything does not operate according to
unchanging laws of cause and effect—has again been recognized as both a theological and
sociological category, and is creating almost boundless hope in the hearts of millions, particularly
among the less privileged. The notions of repentance and conversion, of vision, of responsibility, of
revision of earlier realities and positions, long submerged by the suffocating logic of rigid cause and
effect thinking, have surfaced again and are inspiring people who have long lost all hope (:373f, 384),
at the same time giving a new relevance to the Christian mission.
The Challenge to Progress Thinking
It was, to a large extent, the progress thinking of the Enlightenment that had given rise to the project of
colonial expansion. The policy of “benevolent colonialism,” however, was spawned, in part, by the
Christian missionary enterprise. The same was true of the project of “development.” It reflected, as
far as Christian missions were concerned, a distinct evolution beyond earlier approaches.
Originally, the mission societies’ involvement with people's daily needs was almost exclusively
on the level of charity: disaster aid, care for orphans, the provision of rudimentary health care, and
the like. During the third decade of this century, and particularly at the Jerusalem Conference of the
International Missionary Council (1928), the idea of a “comprehensive approach” was propagated.
The church should do more than just provide an “ambulance service”; it should get involved in “rural
reconstruction,” in the solution of “industrial problems,” etc. After the Second World War the
“comprehensive approach” philosophy was revamped and replaced with the notion of
“development.” Roman Catholics and Protestants alike joined enthusiastically in the new project.
It should therefore come as no surprise if we are told that the 1960s—the “decade of the
secular”—was also the period of feverishly executed development plans, both governmental and
ecclesial. A veritable deluge of pamphlets, books, and articles on the subject flooded the market.
Development was going to solve the problems of the Third World! Optimism was in the air. Gutiérrez
(1988:xvii) quotes the Medellín document of the Latin American conference of bishops (1968) which,
although it had in some respects broken with the modernization model, nevertheless believed that
Latin America was “on the threshold of a new epoch,” which would lead people “progressively to an
even greater control of nature.” Such statements are reminiscent of those propounded two years
earlier at the WCC Church and Society Conference in Geneva, where Mesthene (1967:484)
applauded the new “massive physical changes deliberately induced,” by means of which people
could “literally pry new alternatives out of nature” and “create new possibilities almost at will.”
The consequences of the development model were, however, contrary to what had been expected.
The rich countries became richer and the poor still poorer. Within the poor countries those already
privileged appeared to have benefited most from the programs. Socially and ecologically the results
were often little short of disastrous (cf Bragg 1987:25–27). In retrospect the reasons are becoming
clear. It has become apparent that the application of technology is not merely a technical matter, but
that it is deeply influenced by the social and religious dispositions which lie behind it (Nürnberger
1982:240–248).
The process was further compounded by the fact that humans have often been regarded as mere
objects in a network of planning, transfer of commodities, and logistic coordination in which the
development agent was the initiator, planner, and master. Even more important was the entire area of
power. It became clear that, deep down, this was the real issue, and that authentic development could
not take place without the transfer of power. The Western developers appeared, however, to be either
unwilling or unable to transfer power to poor third-world peoples.
Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the West was both unwilling and unable. The theory
was that the Third World would be empowered without the West having to give up any of its power
and privilege; however, even if the West had intended to relinquish power in favor of the Third
World, it would have been impossible, given the contemporary asymmetrical relationship between the
North and the South (for a detailed discussion, cf Nürnberger 1987a:passim). Because of the
technological developments that had taken place during the past two or three centuries and the way
these developments reshaped Western people, the West (and this includes both the capitalist and the
socialist West) had a head start which made it virtually impossible for other countries ever to catch
up. As a matter of fact, development projects often resulted in precisely the opposite of what they had
intended: the Western developers became even more powerful than they had been and the “power
gap” between the North and the South, instead of narrowing, actually widened.
Small wonder, then, that more and more Third-World countries have rejected the entire
development concept and its Enlightenment presuppositions. Desarrollismo (“developmentalism”) is
used in a pejorative sense in Latin America; development did not attack the roots of the prevailing
evil and merely caused confusion and frustration (Gutiérrez 1988:16f). Its obsession with
“rationality” and its belief in effectiveness and evolution blinded it to the integral powers of culture
and humanhood in the Third World. Development was not, as Paul VI had hoped, a new word for
peace, but another word for exploitation. Underdevelopment was not a preliminary stage toward
development but its consequence. The outcome of this approach was not just sobering; it was
catastrophic. The “technological humanists” (as West [1971] calls those Westerners who believed in
the ability of development to modernize the South) were wrong. The enemy was not nature or
ignorance about technological know-how, but one structure of human power which exploited and
destroyed the humanity of others (:32). The law of history is not development but revolution (West
1971:113, interpreting Karl Marx).
Thus a new model was propounded. The problem was not the relationship between backwardness
and modernity, as those steeped in the thinking of the Enlightenment had thought, but the relationship
between dependency and liberation (cf Nürnberger 1982:292–349; Bragg 1987:28–31; Gutiérrez
1988:13–25). Equity would not be reached via a “trickle down” of wealth from the rich to the poor,
but via the overthrow of the present international system. The industrial nations accumulated their
wealth by exploiting the non-Western countries during the colonial period. Indeed, there is poverty
because there is wealth (Gutiérrez).
This is not the place to subject the liberation model to criticism. It will be done at a later stage in
this study. For the moment, however, I just wish to suggest that the liberation model is not completely
free from some of the debilitating influences of the Enlightenment from which the modernization
model suffers. Even if the liberation model is eminently justified, given the sad history of Western
dominance, expansion, and exploitation, it is still to a large extent built on the Enlightenment
presuppositions of the innate good in (some) human beings who, once power has been transferred to
them, will serve only the common good. One should, however, never forget that the Reign of Terror in
France was instituted by the very people who had supported the French Enlightenment philosophers’
conviction that the revolution would usher in the true humanity which prejudice, superstition, and
arbitrary authority had held in check (cf West 1971:73) and that this history has repeated itself several
times since then, not only in the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Stalinist era, but also in other
cases.
A Fiduciary Framework
Fundamental to the Enlightenment paradigm was the radical distinction between facts and values.
This entire construction has, however, collapsed. The walls which Positivism and Empiricism
erected between subject and object and between value and fact have begun to crumble (cf Lamb
1984:124f). It has been discovered that it is not possible to observe reality without, in a sense,
altering what one sees. Every act of knowing, says Polanyi (1958:17), includes an appraisal.
The entire issue has been immensely compounded by the circumstance that modern science has
released into human hands previously undreamt-of powers—powers that can no longer be regarded
as neutral or value-free and for which humans are totally unprepared (cf Guardini 1950:94). The last
illusions of scientific innocence, says M. Wartofsky, have been blown away by the radioactive winds
over Hiroshima and Nagasaki (reference in Lamb 1984:123). Indeed, the factvalue distinction of
science turned out to be the suicide of science (cf Bloom 1987:38f). “Objectivism,” says Polanyi
(1958:286), “has totally falsified our conception of truth.”
It was not only the monsters created and then let loose by science that have helped Enlightenment
science to come to its senses. Spokespersons from the Third World also began to challenge the
neutrality of science by asking whose interests it was serving. They pointed out that science, far from
being unbiased, was built on the cultural and imperialist assumptions of the West, that it was, in
particular, a tool of exploitation and should be investigated in relation to the praxis out of which it
comes.
We now know, then, that there are no “brute facts” but only interpreted facts and that interpretation
is conditioned by the scientist's plausibility structure, which is largely socially and culturally
produced. A case in point is the role ideology has played in the West. The great ideologies of the
twentieth century—Marxism, Capitalism, Fascism, and National Socialism—were only made
possible by Enlightenment scientism. It belongs to the nature of ideology to parade itself in the guise
of science and to appeal to objective reason. Lübbe argues that ideologies are employing all the
techniques of science in an effort to convince everybody that they are objectively true (1986:54).
In spite of (or, perhaps, because of) their professed scientific base ideologies are, however, for all
practical purposes, functioning as religions (cf Lübbe 1986:53–73). More precisely, they are ersatz
religions—substitutes for religion (:57)—and tend to take on explicitly religious forms and even
rituals (:58f, 62).5 They are, in the words of Raymond Aron, “the opiate of the intellectuals”
(reference in Lübbe 1986:63).
All these—physics since Einstein, the discovery of the ambiguity of power, the relentless critique
of the Third World on traditionally sacrosanct assumptions of science, the way in which ideologies
have usurped the place traditionally occupied by religion—underline the crisis in which the
Enlightenment got itself. Objectivity, as usually attributed to the “exact” sciences, has proved to be a
delusion and, in fact, a false ideal (Polanyi 1958:18). The objectivist framework has imposed
crippling mutilations on the human mind (:381). So Polanyi (:266) advocates the view that we should
once again recognize belief as the source of all knowledge and consciously embrace a “fiduciary
framework.” “All truth,” he says (:286), “is but the external pole of belief, and to destroy belief
would be to deny all truth.” Polanyi then promotes (:266), as a point of departure for scientific
research, Augustine's adage: nisi credideritis, non intelligitis (unless you believe, you shall not
understand).6
In this way Polanyi hopes to re-equip us with the faculties which centuries of critical thought have
taught us to distrust (1958:381). He advocates the primacy of commitment, of “tacit” or “personal”
knowledge (cf the title of his book) over “objective” knowledge, knowledge without a knowing
subject (Popper 1979:109). A commitment may, of course, change; one may convert from one
commitment to another. But the point is that nobody (and certainly not the Enlightenment scientist) is
really completely without a commitment. As long as one lives and thinks within the pattern of a given
paradigm, that paradigm provides one with a plausibility structure according to which all reality is
interpreted. The paradigm may be a particular scientific worldview, or a religion, or an ideology; in
each case the conceptual framework has almost all-embracing interpretative powers. It is only when
one loses faith in a plausibility structure that one senses that its powers were excessive and specious
(Polanyi 1958:288). In this respect Polanyi quotes Arthur Koestler who, only after he had ceased to
be a Marxist, was able to write: “My party education had equipped my mind with such elaborate
shockabsorbing buffers and elastic defenses that everything seen and heard became automatically
transformed to fit a preconceived pattern.” The point Polanyi is making is that the worldview one
embraces may not be “true.” It may, in fact, be the Big Lie. Still, it remains “irresistibly persuasive,
since it sweeps away all existing criteria of validity and resets them in its own support” (:318).
Does this not mean that we have just jumped from the frying pan into the fire, that, having (rightly)
rejected the myth of objectivity, we have now fallen prey to uncontrolled subjectivism? On the
surface this indeed appears to be the case, particularly if someone like Kuhn (1970:94), in his
eagerness to repudiate the objectivist thinking of Positivism and its heirs, states, “As in political
revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant
community,” and if he further argues (:103) that a new paradigm “is not only incompatible but often
actually incommensurable with that which has gone before.” Are these not examples of total
relativism?
The alternative to objectivism or absolutism does not, however, have to be subjectivism or
relativism. Kuhn himself later qualified his original position, which had suggested extreme
subjectivism (cf Kuhn 1970:205–207). And Polanyi has argued that accepting a “fiduciary
framework” does not suggest the adoption of an irrational position. It should therefore come as no
great surprise that, after the early near-intoxication with the historicist or relativist position in the
1960s and 1970s, the next years witnessed to a return to a (modified) realist position in which
concepts like truth and rationality are again being upheld. It is a tempered realism, however, one that
remains aware of the contextuality of convictions, and operates in all disciplines. It may be a case of
holding on to “unproven beliefs” (Polanyi 1958:268) and of taking “chances” (:318), but it is not a
case of acting irrationally. Rather, the authentic Christian position in this respect is one of humility
and self-criticism. After the Enlightenment it would be irresponsible not to subject our “fiduciary
framework” to severe criticism, or not to continue pondering the possibility that Truth may indeed
differ from what we have thought it to be. Whether we are aware of it or not, the developments of the
past three centuries have greatly enhanced our critical powers, and we cannot go back to our earlier
innocence. Polanyi expresses it as follows:
[Our critical powers] have endowed our mind with a capacity for self transcendence of which we can never again divest
ourselves. We have plucked from the Tree a second apple which has for ever imperilled our knowledge of Good and Evil, and
we must learn to know these qualities henceforth in the blinding light of our new analytical powers (1958:268).

And yet, even as we are “humbly acknowledging the uncertainty of our own conclusions”
(Polanyi:271), for a “fiduciary philosophy does not eliminate doubt” (:318), the Christian continues
to hold on to unproven beliefs. It is precisely such a self-critical posture of faith which may protect us
against the “blind and deceptive” nature of a “creed inverted into a science” (:268). A post-
Enlightenment self-critical Christian stance may, in the modern world, be the only means of
neutralizing the ideologies; it is the only vehicle that can save us from self-deception and free us from
dependence on utopian dreams (cf Lübbe 1986:63).
Since we now know that no so-called facts are really neutral or value-free, and that the line that
used to divide facts from values has worn thin, we stand much more exposed than we used to. We
also know, better than before, that while the future remains open and invites us to freedom, we are
cautioned against new tyrannies and are facing new anxieties. At the same time we are conscious of
the fact that it was precisely the prolonged attacks on religion made by rationalists that forced us to
renew the grounds of the Christian faith (Polanyi 1958:286). This awareness is of critical importance
for the Christian mission's and missionary's attitude to people of other faiths.
Chastened Optimism
Like other elements of the Enlightenment worldview, the belief that all problems are, in principle,
solvable is also coming under increasing pressure. The West's grand schemes, at home and in the
Third World, have virtually all failed dismally. The dream of a unified world in which all would
enjoy peace, liberty, and justice, has turned into a nightmare of conflict, bondage, and injustice. The
disappointment is so fundamental and pervasive that it cannot possibly be ignored or suppressed.
The uncritical acclamation of every manifestation of renewal, change, and liberation, so called,
during the sixties and early seventies (WSCF conference, 1960; Church and Society Conference,
1966; Uppsala Assembly of the WCC, 1968; Catholic Bishops Conference in Medellín, 1968;
CWME Conference in Bangkok, 1973) was the last almost convulsive illustration of the West's
inability to believe that an era, the era of its hegemony, had passed. Since the seventies the horizon
has progressively darkened. People are again becoming conscious of the reality of evil—in human
beings and in the structures of society. The horizon is no longer limitless. We again realize, as did our
forebears, that we cannot know more than a fraction of reality. It was in vain that humankind had burnt
itself out in its attempt to build the tower of Babel.
All this does not, however, suggest that we should capitulate to pessimism and despair. All around
us people are looking for new meaning in life. This is the moment where the Christian church and the
Christian mission may once again, humbly yet resolutely, present the vision of the reign of God—not
as a pie in the sky, but as an eschatological reality which casts its rays, however opaque, into the
dismal present, illuminates it, and confers meaning on it. It is a road beyond Enlightenment optimism
and anti-Enlightenment pessimism.
Toward Interdependence
The Enlightenment creed taught that every individual was free to pursue his or her own happiness,
irrespective of what others thought or said.
This entire approach had disastrous consequences. The so-called openness of modern liberalism
really means that people do not take others seriously—indeed, that they do not need others (Bloom
1987:34). It follows that individuals can no longer take themselves seriously and that, in spite of the
fact that they now have the liberty to believe and do as they like, many do not believe in anything any
more, and all spend their lives “in frenzied work and frenzied play so as not to face the fact, not to
look into the abyss” (Bloom 1987:143, drawing on Nietzsche). Too self-confident to acknowledge or
draw on their religious roots, too urbane to be duped by the lure of some irrational ideologies, all that
remains in the end is the embrace of nihilism. Free to use their power any way they wish, modern
humans have no referent outside themselves, no guarantee that they will use their freedom responsibly
and for the sake of the common good. The autonomy of the individual, so much flaunted in recent
decades, has ended in heteronomy; the freedom to believe whatever one chooses to believe has ended
in no belief at all; the refusal to risk interdependence has ended in alienation also from oneself.
Two things are needed in order to break the grip of the spurious doctrine of autonomy and retrieve
what is essentially human. First, we must reaffirm the in-dispensableness of conviction and
commitment. In the long term, nobody can really survive without them. What is called for is the
willingness to take a stand, even if it is unpopular—or even dangerous. Tolerance is not an
unambiguous virtue, especially the “I'm ok, you're ok” kind which leaves no room for challenging one
another.
Secondly, we need to retrieve togetherness, interdependence, “symbiosis” (cf Sundermeier
1986:passim). The individual is not a monad, but part of an organism. We live in one world, in which
the rescue of some at the expense of others is not possible. Only together is there salvation and
survival. This includes not only a new relationship to nature, but also among humans. The
“psychology of separateness” has to make way for an “epistemology of participation.” The “me
generation” has to be superseded by the “us generation.” The “instrumental” reason of the
Enlightenment has to be supplemented with “communicative” reason (Habermas), since human
existence is by definition intersubjective existence. Here lies the pertinence of the rediscovery of the
church as Body of Christ and of the Christian mission as building a community of those who share a
common destiny.
 Chapter 11

Mission in a Time of Testing

Never before in the history of humankind have scholars in all disciplines (including theology) been so
preoccupied as they are today, not with the study of their disciplines themselves, but with the
metaquestions concerning these disciplines (cf Lübbe 1986:22). This state of affairs in itself is
indicative of the presence of a crisis of major proportions or, to put it in Kuhnian terms, of the advent
of a significant “paradigm shift” in all branches of science. And since all the modern academic
disciplines are essentially Western phenomena and products, it is only to be expected that it is above
all the West that finds itself in the midst of a crisis of gigantic proportions. It is becoming increasingly
evident that the modern gods of the West—science, technology, and industrialization—have lost their
magic (Kuschel 1984:235). Events of world history have shaken Western civilization to the core: two
devastating world wars; the Russian and Chinese revolutions; the horrors perpetrated by the rulers of
countries committed to National Socialism, Fascism, communism, and capitalism; the collapse of the
great Western colonial empires; the rapid secularization not only of the West but also of large parts of
the rest of the world; the increasing gap, worldwide, between the rich and the poor; the realization
that we are heading for an ecological disaster on a cosmic scale and that progress was, in effect, a
false god.
It was unthinkable that the Christian church, theology, and mission would remain unscathed. On the
one hand the results of a variety of other disciplines—the natural and social sciences, philosophy,
history, etc—have had a profound and lasting influence on theological thinking. On the other hand
developments within church, mission, and theology (often precipitated, no doubt, by the momentous
events and revolutions in other disciplines) have had equally far-reaching consequences. Theological
elements which had for centuries been absent from the churches or have found a home in marginal
Christian movements have once again surfaced in mainline Christianity and have, in a sense, effected
a return to a pre-Constantinian position (cf Boerwinkel 1974:50-81). Adventists recovered the long
neglected expectation of the parousia. Pentecostal and charismatic groups protested the loss of the
gifts of the Spirit in mainline Christianity. The Brethren developed a church model without
institutionalized or hierarchical offices. Baptist groups rejected infant baptism because this suggested
the idea of automatic church membership and the absence of personal decision. Mennonites and
Quakers distanced themselves from the church's support for violence and war. Marxism (to a
significant extent a Christian “heresy”) challenged the church's sanctioning of class differences and its
tendency to be on the side of the rich and the powerful. And today many of these elements, initiated by
protest movements on the fringes of the “official” church, have been embraced by the latter, even if
not to the exclusion of other elements.
The church has also lost its position of privilege. In many parts of the world, even in regions
where the church had been established as a powerful factor for more than a millennium, it is today a
liability rather than an asset to be a Christian. The once-so-close relationship between “throne” and
“altar” (for instance in the entire project of Western colonial expansion) has, in some instances, given
way to an ever-increasing tension between the church and secular authorities. And the one-time
persecutor (or, at least, conniver in the persecution) of Jews, Christian “sects,” and adherents of other
faiths has now taken up dialogue with these groups. Likewise, the tendency of one denomination to
shun contact with other denominations (and in some cases even anathematize their members or regard
them as objects of mission) has been replaced by ecumenical contact and cooperation.
In the traditional “mission fields” the position of Western mission agencies and missionaries has
undergone a fundamental revision. No longer do missionaries go as ambassadors or representatives
of the powerful West to territories subject to white, “Christian” nations. They now go to countries
frequently hostile to Christian missions. David Barrett has calculated that countries are being closed
to foreign missionary personnel at an average rate of two or three a year. The great religions of the
world, once considered moribund, have become even more aggressively missionary than Christianity
has ever been. Islam, in particular, is now a formidable force in many parts of the world and more
resistant to Christian influences than ever before. And within the framework of the current mood of
dialogue with people of other faiths, more and more missionaries are wondering whether there is still
any point in going to the ends of the earth for the sake of the Christian gospel. Why, indeed, should
one “suffer the pangs of exile and the stings of mosquitoes” (Power 1970:8) if people will be saved
anyway? It is, after all, “bad enough to have a difficult job to do, but much worse when one is left
wondering if the difficult job is worth doing” (:4).
Then there are the new relations with the “younger churches.” Where Western missionaries are
still welcomed (or tolerated), they go as “fraternal workers” in the service of already established
autonomous churches. The rugged heroes of the faith of an earlier era, who “brought” the “gospel” to
the uttermost ends of the earth and almost single-handedly (at least in their own estimation) built up
new communities of faith, have evolved into “partners” who are often looked upon as expendable
“spare tires.” It has become clear that the missionary is not central to the life and the future of the
younger churches; in country after country (and especially in China) it has been demonstrated that the
missionary is not only not central but may in fact be an embarrassment and a liability. Many of the
grand institutions erected by mission agencies, often at great cost and with tremendous dedication—
hospitals, schools, colleges, printing houses, and the like—have turned out to be impediments rather
than assets to the life and growth of the younger churches.
In the course of this century the missionary enterprise and the missionary idea have undergone
some profound modifications. These came about, partly, as a response to the recognition of the fact
that the church is indeed not only the recipient of God's merciful grace but sometimes also of his
wrath (Paton 1953:17), that good intentions are not enough, that each of us is, in Luther's famous
formulation, always simul justus et peccator (“at the same time justified as well as sinner”).
Missionaries, perhaps more than others, have tended to regard themselves as immune to the
weaknesses and sins of “ordinary” Christians; it took them a long time to discover that they were no
different than the churches from which they had come, that, in the words of Stephen Neill (1960:222),
they “have on the whole been a feeble folk, not very wise, not very holy, not very patient. They have
broken most of the commandments and fallen into every conceivable mistake.” Indeed, in many parts
of the world, including its traditional home base, the Christian mission appears to be the object not of
God's grace and blessing, but of God's judgment (cf the title of Paton 1953).
Writing after the Communist revolution in China, Paton makes bold to say, “When a disaster has
occurred, nothing is really wise, or even kind, save ruthless examination of the causes” (1953:34).
From this premise some, including many Christians, have drawn the conclusion that the Christian
mission and everything it stood for now belong to a bygone era. It should be eulogized and then
buried; it was an episode, not more, in the history of Christianity and may now be safely banished to
the archives. Such views are expressed in many Christian circles, but especially among Roman
Catholics and those Protestants often referred to as “ecumenical.” Gómez (1986:28) writes that, in the
wake of Vatican II, priests and religious have defected, vocations died out, venerable traditions have
been demolished in a frenzy, and the dirty linen of Catholic mission history washed in public, with
masochistic delight; mission became a non-issue for the masses and a nonsense in intellectual, even
clerical circles.
Others, by contrast, have argued that the Christian church “is missionary by its very nature” (cf AG
9) and that it is therefore totally impossible to abandon the idea and practice of mission in some form
or another. To repent of past mistakes is not the same as relinquishing the essence of what one has
been doing; in Paton's words (1953:75), “A call to repentance is not a call to drop important work,
but to do it otherwise. The Mission of the Church abides.”
How can the church repent of past mistakes? How can it try to rediscover the essence of its
missionary nature and calling? Has it only to be on the defensive? Does it have to capitulate to the
pressures of a world radically different from the one into which it first ventured to reach out
missionally? Or can it respond creatively to the challenges it is encountering? These are some of the
questions and issues to which we are called to hazard a response.
Repentance has to begin with a bold recognition of the fact that the church-in-mission is today
facing a world fundamentally different from anything it faced before. This in itself calls for a new
understanding of mission. We live in a period of transition, on the borderline between a paradigm that
no longer satisfies and one that is, to a large extent, still amorphous and opaque. A time of paradigm
change is, by nature, a time of crisis—and crisis, we remind ourselves, is the point where danger and
opportunity meet (Koyama). It is a time when several “answers” are pressing themselves upon us,
when many voices clamor for our attention.
The thesis of this study is that, in the field of religion, a paradigm shift always means both
continuity and change, both faithfulness to the past and boldness to engage the future, both constancy
and contingency, both tradition and transformation. This has been true of each of the five paradigm
changes traced so far: they were both evolutionary and revolutionary. Of course, at the occasion of
virtually each paradigm change—particularly those introduced in a more dramatic fashion, such as the
early Christian paradigm and the Protestant Reformation—there was always the tendency to respond
in two completely opposite ways. Some tried to oppose or at least neutralize the change that seemed
to be irrupting all around them; others tended to overreact, to make a clean break with the past and
deny continuity with their ancestry. During the formative years of the early church the first response
was manifested, inter alia, in the movement known as Ebionitism, in which Jesus was viewed as just
another prophet; the second response may be seen in Gnosticism, a heresy which scorned the Old
Testament as well as much of the story of Jesus. Similarly, during the Reformation era much of the
official Catholic response to Martin Luther's efforts was expressed in terms of counter-reformation
rather than reformation; conversely, some extremist sects attempted to push aside fifteen centuries of
Christian history, start with a completely clean slate, and inaugurate the reign of God without any
delay.
It would be strange if the present period of uncertainty did not also throw up candidates which
propagate either a convulsive clinging to the past or an even more extreme “conservative” backlash
(such as some current manifestations of fundamentalism), or, contrarily, a kind of “clean slate”
approach, for instance by offering alternatives to the Christian faith as the only way of responding
effectively to the challenges before us. One candidate for the latter approach is the New Age
Movement with its cocktail of myth and magic and its proclivity toward Eastern religions and systems
of thought. In his writings, Capra has become one of the major protagonists of a paradigm shift away
from the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview, but also away from the Christian worldview, toward a
Taoist or Buddhist understanding of reality. He propagates a view in which all opposites are
cancelled out, all barriers wiped out, all dualism superseded and all individualism dissolved into a
universal, undifferentiated, and pantheistic unity.
Neither extreme reactionary nor excessively revolutionary approaches, so it seems to me, will
help the Christian church and mission to arrive at greater clarity or to serve God's cause in a better
way. The kind of paradigm shift discussed in this study suggests a fundamentally different model. In
the case of each paradigm change reviewed so far, there remained a creative tension between the new
and the old. The agenda was always—consciously or unconsciously—one of reform, not of
replacement. The same will be true of my reflections on the emerging ecumenical paradigm. There
will be no attempt at propagating a complete substitution of the previous paradigm, at casting it aside
as utterly worthless. Rather, the argument will be that—in light of a fundamentally new situation and
precisely so as to remain faithful to the true nature of mission—mission must be understood and
undertaken in an imaginatively new manner today. In the words of John XXIII, spoken in 1963, shortly
before his death, “Today's world, the needs made plain in the last fifty years, and a deeper
understanding of doctrine have brought us to a new situation…It is not that the Gospel has changed;
it is that we have begun to understand it better” (quoted in Gutiérrez 1988:xlv—emphasis added).
This means that both the centrifugal and the centripetal forces in the emerging paradigm—diversity
versus unity, divergence versus integration, pluralism versus holism—will have to be taken into
account throughout. A crucial notion in this regard will be that of creative tension: it is only within
the force field of apparent opposites that we shall begin to approximate a way of theologizing for our
own time in a meaningful way.
In what follows, I shall attempt to highlight some of the elements of an emerging pattern of
mission. Throughout, my reflections will remain tentative, suggesting rather than defining the contours
of a new model. Does the emerging postmodern paradigm proclaim a vision of unity or of diversity?
Does it emphasize integration or divergence? Is it holistic or pluralistic? Is it characterized by a
return to a religious consensus or by a philosophy according to which a supermarket of religions will
display its wares to self-service customers (cf Daecke 1988)? Clearly, in a period of transition it is
dangerous to use apodictic language. We shall, at best, succeed, in outlining the direction in which we
ought to be moving and in identifying the overall thrust of the emerging paradigm.
 Chapter 12

Elements of an Emerging Ecumenical Missionary Paradigm

With the qualifications mentioned in the previous chapter, I now turn to the elements which the
emerging missionary paradigm comprises. Yet another warning is still in order. The elements
discussed below should by no means be seen as so many distinct and isolated components of a new
model; they are all intimately interrelated. This means that in discussing a specific element each other
element is always somewhere in the background. The emphasis throughout should therefore be on the
wholeness and indivisibility of the paradigm, rather than on its separated ingredients. As we focus
our torchlight on one element at a time, all the other elements will also be present and visible just
outside the center of the beam of light.
I begin with some reflections on the role of the church in mission. This section will be longer than
the others, mainly because all the issues that will emerge in subsequent sections are, in one sense or
another, already present here. Once we have discussed the place of the church in mission, we can be
briefer on the other elements of the emerging paradigm.

MISSION AS THE CHURCH-WITH-OTHERS

Church and Mission
In a perceptive study Avery Dulles (1976) has identified five major ecclesial types. The church, he
suggests, can be viewed as institution, as mystical Body of Christ, as sacrament, as herald, or as
servant. Each of these implies a different interpretation of the relationship between church and
mission.
Catholics have always had a high view of the church. This explains why the first two of Dulles's
models have tended to predominate in Catholic ecclesiology. Highlighting the first of these, Neill
(1968:74; cf Hastings 1968:28–31) says that, from the Counter-Reformation until the second half of
the nineteenth century, the prevailing emphasis was on the external, the legal, and the institutional, In
the course of the twentieth century the tenor of statements about the church gradually began to change.
The church was now seen as the Body of Christ rather than, primarily, as a divine institution. This
development culminated in the promulgation of the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi in 1943. It
did not, however, break with the ecclesiology that preceded it; the encyclical betrayed an
unconditional identification of Christ's mystical body with the empirical Roman Catholic Church. It
further strengthened the tendency to absolutize and divinize the church and hold it up as a societas
perfecta (cf Haight 1976:623; Michiels 1989:90). The encyclical served as the main expression,
indeed the definition of the church, until Vatican II (Michiels 1989:90). Other models of the church
were rejected (:91). This did not mean, however, that the church was understood to be missionary by
nature (cf Neill 1968:71–74). As van Winsen (1973:3–12; cf also Gómez 1986:46) has shown, and as
was spelt out in the old Code of Canon Law, “the universal care of missions to non-Catholics (was)
reserved exclusively to the Apostolic See.” The pope's agents in this task were the missionary orders
and congregations.
The situation was not essentially different in Eastern Orthodoxy. Protestants, on the other hand
(except “High Church” Anglicans and some Lutherans), tended toward a low view of the church.
Often one distinguished between the “true church”—the ecclesiola or little church—within the
ecclesia, the large and nominal church; this ecclesiola, not the official church, tended to be viewed as
the true bearer of mission. Here there was even less appreciation for the idea of the church as the
bearer of mission. The “voluntary principle” (discussed in chapter 9 above) was widely followed.
Groups of individuals—sometimes members of one denomination, sometimes devout believers from a
variety of denominations—banded together in missionary societies which they regarded as the
bearers of mission.
Gradually, however, a fundamental shift emerged in the perception of the relationship between
church and mission, in both Catholicism and Protestantism, so much so that Moltmann (1977:7) can
say, “Today one of the strongest impulses towards the renewal of the theological concept of the
church comes from the theology of mission.”
Shifts in Missionary Thinking
For an understanding of the shifts in Protestant thinking regarding the relationship between church and
mission, the contributions of the world missionary conferences are of primary importance (cf, for
instance, Günther 1970, who surveys the “ecclesiological reflections” of the missionary conferences
from Edinburgh 1910 to Mexico City 1963). In Edinburgh, a major concern was the absence of
missionary enthusiasm in the churches of the West; the theological question of the relationship
between church and mission was hardly touched (cf Günther 1970:24–26). At the Jerusalem
Conference of the IMC (1928), however, the relationship between “older” and “younger” churches
received a considerable amount of attention and became a prominent issue, even if the subdivision of
the world into two large geographical areas—the one Christian, the other “non-Christian”—remained
unchallenged (:35–42).
Tambaram (1938) discussed the relationships between church and mission as well as between
“older” and “younger” churches in a more theological manner. The distinction between Christian and
non-Christian countries was in principle abandoned. This meant that Europe and North America, too,
had to be regarded as mission fields. The dividing lines no longer ran between “Christianity” and
“paganism,” between the church and the world, but through the church as well. We are all, at best,
“Christopagans.” In a Europe traumatized by the First World War and challenged by the rise of
totalitarian ideologies like National Socialism, Fascism and Marxism, the anthropocentric theology of
liberal Protestantism, epitomized in the views of Adolf Harnack and Ernst Troeltsch, was found
wanting. Words like sin, alienation, and judgment, like conversion, forgiveness, regeneration, and
righteousness, again surfaced promtnently in missionary and other discussions (cf Scherer 1968:34–
37; van ‘t Hof 1972:108f).
This could not but have a profound impact on the perception of church and mission. For the first
time the recognition that church and mission belong together indissolubly began to dawn in a way that
could no longer be overlooked. And even if the famous E. Stanley Jones said that Tambaram had
missed the way because it had used the church instead of the kingdom of God as its starting point
(reference in Anderson 1988:107; cf also Günther 1970:64–66), it cannot be denied that Tambaram
registered a significant advance over earlier positions.
The Willingen meeting of 1952, convened in the aftermath of World War II and the missionary
“debacle” in China (cf Paton 1953:50), took up the same theme. In the preceding years there has been
an almost imperceptible shift from an emphasis on a church-centered mission (Tambaram) to a
mission-centered church. In 1948 the World Council of Churches was formed, and soon the incon-
gruence of a council of churches and a missionary council existing side by side was making itself felt.
Willingen began to flesh out a new model. It recognized that the church could be neither the starting
point nor the goal of mission. God's salvific work precedes both church and mission. We should not
subordinate mission to the church nor the church to mission; both should, rather, be taken up into the
missio Dei, which now became the overarching concept. The missio Dei institutes the missiones
ecclesiae. The church changes from being the sender to being the one sent (cf Günther 1970:105–
114). The new mood found expression in the opening words of the Statement received by the next
assembly of the IMC, which met in Achimota, Ghana, in 1958: “The Christian world mission is
Christ's, not ours.” In a pamphlet published soon after the Ghana Assembly, Newbigin summarized the
consensus that had by now been reached: (1) “the church is the mission,” which means that it is
illegitimate to talk about the one without at the same time talking about the other; (2) “the home base
is everywhere,” which means that every Christian community is in a missionary situation; and (3)
“mission in partnership,” which means the end of every form of guardianship of one church over
another (1958:25–38).
By this time the decision to integrate the WCC and the IMC had already been taken. It took place at
the New Delhi meeting of the WCC (1961). The Assembly's Commission and Division of World
Mission and Evangelism used the following words to express its views on the integration of the
missionary concern into the Structures of the WCC:
This spiritual heritage must not be dissipated; it must remain, ever renewed in the hidden life of prayer and adoration, at the heart
of the World Council of Churches. Without it the ecumenical movement would petrify. Integration must mean that the World
Council of Churches takes the missionary task to the very heart of its life (WCC 1961:249f; cf Neill 1968:108f).

This entire evolution indeed meant a momentous shift in the understanding of church and mission.
But before we review its elements in some detail, let us have a brief look at developments in
Catholicism.
The missionary encyclicals of the twentieth century prior to the Second Vatican Council—
especially Maximum Illud (1919), Rerum Ecclesiae (1926), Evangelii Praecones (1951), and Fidei
Donum (1957)—registered the first hesitant steps toward a missionary understanding of the church
(cf also Auf der Maur 1970:82–84). On the eve of the Council the situation was, however, rather
confused; salvationist (School of Münster), ecclesiocentric (School of Louvain), sacramentalist (M.-
J. le Guillou), and eschatological (Y. Congar) interpretations of mission remained unintegrated (cf
Dapper 1979:63–66). Contributions of French theologians—such as Yves Congar, who was building
on Godin and Daniel 1943—became catalytic in opening the way toward a fundamentally new
understanding of church and mission. Of primary importance in this regard was a new interest in the
New Testament and, more particularly, the Pauline view of the church (cf Power 1970:17–27; Dapper
1979:66–70).
The event of the Council itself was crucial. For the first time a truly global council, not only a
Western one, had convened. The affirmation that the “Church of Christ is really present in all
legitimately organized local groups of the faithful” (LG 26) and that “it is in these and formed out of
them that the one and unique Catholic Church exists” (LG 23), suggested an important break with the
exclusively papal-centered understanding of the church of Vatican I (1870). This was to lead to a
rediscovery of a missionary ecclesiology of the local church and to the institution of episcopal
conferences (LG 37f) as well as bishops’ synods (cf Fries 1986:755; Gómez 1986:38). It did not
come about without a struggle. The early drafts of the Decree on Mission were prepared by
representatives of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide and revealed a very traditional posture. To
this the African and Asian bishops objected; they would rather go without a decree on mission than
subscribe to one that refused to break new ground (cf Hastings 1968:204-209; Glazik 1984b:50–56).
Consequently the decree was completely rewritten.
Even so, the real breakthrough in respect to mission occurred not in the missionary decree but in
Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church). Right at the outset, LG dissociates itself
from traditional ecclesiology. The church is no longer described as a societal entity on a par with
other societal structures like the state, but as the mystery of God's presence in the world, “in the
nature of” a sacrament, sign, and instrument of community with God and unity among people. The
whole tenor of the argument is new. The church is not presenting itself imperiously and proudly but
humbly; it does not define itself in legal categories or as an elite of exalted souls, but as a servant
community. LG's ecclesiology is missionary through and through (cf Power 1970:15f; Auf der Maur
1970:88f; Glazik 1979:153–155).
Vatican II also reflects a convergence in Catholic and Protestant views on the missionary nature of
the church, even if one has to add immediately that the Catholic documents show far greater
consistency and lucidity than those produced by Protestant conferences. Michiels (1989:89) suggests
that modern ecclesiologies (Catholic and Protestant) employ seven main metaphorical expressions for
the church, each of them implying a peculiar perspective on the understanding of mission. These are:
the church as “sacrament of salvation,” “assembly of God,” “people of God,” “kingdom of God,”
“Body of Christ,” “temple of the Holy Spirit,” and “community of the faithful” (cf also Dulles 1976).
I would like to examine some aspects of these in an attempt to trace the characteristics of an emerging
missionary ecclesiology.
“Missionary by Its Very Nature”
In the emerging ecclesiology, the church is seen as essentially missionary. The biblical model
behind this conviction, which finds its classical expression in AG 9 (“The pilgrim church is
missionary by its very nature”), is the one we find in 1 Peter 2:9. Here the church is not the sender but
the one sent. Its mission (its “being sent”) is not secondary to its being; the church exists in being sent
and in building up itself for the sake of its mission (Barth 1956:725—I am here following the German
original rather than the English translation). Ecclesiology therefore does not precede missiology (cf
Hoedemaker 1988:169f, 178f). Mission is not “a fringe activity of a strongly established Church, a
pious cause that [may] be attended to when the home fires [are] first brightly burning…Missionary
activity is not so much the work of the church as simply the Church at work” (Power 1970:41,42; cf
van Engelen 1975:298; Stransky 1982:345; Glazik 1984b:51f; Köster 1984:166–170). It is a duty
“which pertains to the whole Church” (AG 23). Since God is a missionary God (as will be argued in
the section on the missio Dei), God's people are a missionary people. The question, “Why still
mission?” evokes a further question, “Why still church?” (Glazik 1979:158). It has become
impossible to talk about the church without at the same time talking about mission. One can no longer
talk about church and mission, only about the mission of the church (Glazik 1984b:52). One could
even say, with Schumacher (1970:183), “The inverse of the thesis ‘the church is essentially
missionary’ is ‘Mission is essentially ecclesial’” (my translation). Because church and mission
belong together from the beginning, “a church without mission or a mission without the church are
both contradictions. Such things do exist, but only as pseudostructures” (Braaten 1977:55). These
perspectives have implications for our understanding of the church's catholicity. Without mission, the
church cannot be called catholic (cf Glazik 1979:154; Berkouwer 1979:105–109).
All this does not suggest that the church is always and everywhere overtly involved in missionary
projects. Newbigin (1958:21, 43) has introduced the helpful distinction between the church's
missionary dimension and its missionary intention: the church is both “missionary” and
“missionizing” (cf also Gensichen 1971:80–95, 168–186; Mitterhöfer 1974:93, 97). The missionary
dimension of a local church's life manifests itself, among other ways, when it is truly a worshipping
community; it is able to welcome outsiders and make them feel at home; it is a church in which the
pastor does not have the monopoly and the members are not merely objects of pastoral care; its
members are equipped for their calling in society; it is structurally pliable and innovative; and it does
not defend the privileges of a select group (cf Gensichen 1971:170–172). However, the church's
missionary dimension evokes intentional, that is direct involvement in society; it actually moves
beyond the walls of the church and engages in missionary “points of concentration” (Newbigin) such
as evangelism and work for justice and peace.
At least one theologian has developed his entire ecclesiology in terms of the observations above:
Karl Barth. Johannes Aagaard (1965:238) calls him “the decisive Protestant missiologist in this
generation.” In light of Barth's magnificent and consistent missionary ecclesiology there may indeed
be some justification for such a claim. Under the overarching rubric of soteriology, Barth develops
his ecclesiology in three phases. His reflections on soteriology as justification (1956:514–642) are
followed by a section on “The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Christian Community” (:643–
749). His exposition on soteriology as sanctification (1958:499–613) leads to a discourse on “The
Holy Spirit and the Up-building of the Christian Community” (:614–726). And his discussion of
soteriology as vocation (1962:481–680) is followed by a treatise on “The Holy Spirit and the
Sending of the Christian Community” (:681–901). From three perspectives, then, the entire field of
ecclesiology is surveyed; each of these perspectives evokes, presupposes, and illuminates the other
two (cf Blei 1980:19f).
God's Pilgrim People
The church is viewed as the people of God and, by implication then, as a pilgrim church. In
contemporary Protestantism, this idea first surfaced clearly in the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (cf
Lochman 1986:58f) and at the 1952 Willingen Conference of the IMC (cf van ‘t Hof 1972:167). In the
case of Catholicism, the notion has been promoted by Yves Congar since 1937 (cf Power 1970:17)
but found little favor with the hierarchy in the preconciliar period. The classical conciliar references
are LG 48–51 and AG 9; in fact, the church as the people of God may be viewed as the conciliar
church model (cf Michiels 1989:90–92).
The biblical archetype here is that of the wandering people of God, which is so prominent in the
letter to the Hebrews. The church is a pilgrim not simply for the practical reason that in the modern
age it no longer calls the tune and is everywhere finding itself in a diaspora situation; rather, to be a
pilgrim in the world belongs intrinsically to the church's ex-centric position. It is ek-klesia, “called
out” of the world, and sent back into the world. Foreignness is an element of its constitution (Braaten
1977:56).
God's pilgrim people need only two things: support for the road, and a destination at the end of it
(Power 1970:28). It has no fixed abode here; it is a paroikia, a temporary residence. It is permanently
underway, toward the ends of the world and the end of time (cf Hoekendijk 1967b:30–38). Even if
there is an unbridgeable difference between the church and its destination—the reign of God—it is
called to flesh out, already in the here and now, something of the conditions which are to prevail in
God's reign. Proclaiming its own transience the church pilgrimages toward God's future (cf Kohler
1974:475; Collet 1984:264–266).
Sacrament, Sign, and Instrument
In contemporary ecclesiology the church is increasingly perceived as sacrament, sign, and instrument
(cf Dulles 1976:58–70). In Chapter 4 of this study it has been shown that Paul saw his own mission
as “priestly service of the gospel” (Rom 15:16) and challenged the Christian community to offer itself
as a “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). The New Testament books list many
gifts conferred on individuals for the benefit of all: teaching, healing, apostleship, etc. The gift of
priesthood is never mentioned, however; instead (cf 1 Pet 2:9), God entrusted this gift to the
community as a whole (cf Piet 1970:64). Other New Testament images of the church which represent
the same idea are salt, light, yeast, servant, and prophet. In subsequent centuries, however, these
notions disappeared almost without a trace. Only to our own time did they surface again and give
birth to the idea of the church as sacrament, sign, and instrument.
The new terminology is, perhaps understandably, used more extensively in Catholicism than in
Protestantism. Once again Vatican II was the catalyst. In its first paragraph, LG calls the church “a
kind of sacrament—a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and unity among all
people.” Elsewhere the church is called “the visible sacrament of…saving unity” (LG 9) and even
“the universal sacrament of salvation” (LG 48). Subsequent Catholic documents continued along the
same lines. The 1975 Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi, asserts, “While the church is
proclaiming the kingdom of God and building it up, it is establishing itself in the midst of the world as
the sign and instrument of this kingdom” (EN S9, emphasis added). At a consultation held in Rome
in 1982, “the concrete Christian community (koinonia) in its everyday life” was identified as sign and
instrument of salvation (Memorandum 1982:462).
Gassmann (1986) has shown that the same terminology is increasingly being used in Protestant
circles as well, particularly in the Commission for Faith and Order (FO). This has been happening
notably since the Uppsala Assembly of the WCC (1968), although rudimentary references can already
be found in the 1927 FO meeting in Lausanne and the 1937 meeting in Oxford (:3). The key
formulation, often quoted, is the one drafted at Uppsala: “The Church is bold in speaking of itself as
the sign of the coming unity of mankind.” Subsequent FO conferences and documents attempted to
clarify what was meant by this terminology (:4–7). Two of the section reports of the Melbourne
CWME Conference (1980) also referred to the church in these terms: as sacrament, sign, or
instrument of the kingdom (:10f). Gassmann concludes:
The remarkably wide reception of the ecclesiological use of the terms sacrament, sign and instrument in ecumenical debate
suggests that this terminology is found to be helpful in describing the place and vocation of the church and its unity in God's plan
of salvation (:13).

These images gave articulation to the idea, so well formulated by Archbishop William Temple (cf
Neill 1968:76), that the church is the only society in the world which exists for the sake of those who
are not members of it. The classical expression of this perception of the church was the phrase “the
church for others.” Its architect was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote the following sentences from a
Nazi prison in 1944 (1971:382f), “The church is the church only when it exists for others…The
church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and
serving.”
“The church for others” was a powerful and extremely attractive phrase and was embraced widely
and enthusiastically (cf Sundermeier 1986:62), not least since it so clearly echoed the New Testament
picture of Jesus, particularly as the one who washed the feet of his disciples (cf also Kohler
1974:473). West (1971:262) and Sundermeier (1986:62–65) have, however, alerted us to the fact that
such enthusiasm for the Bonhoeffer formula may hide from us the reality that its background is the
typical liberal-humanist bourgeois climate in which Bonhoeffer had grown up, particularly the idea
that Western Christians know what is best for others and, hence, that they tend to proclaim themselves
the guardians of others. This helper syndrome of “pro-existence,” says Sundermeier, jeopardizes the
possibility of true coexistence. Instead of talking about “the church for others,” we should rather
speak of “the church with others.”
Sundermeier's observations show that the language of “the church for others,” “the church as
sacrament,” etc, is indeed not free from hazard. At an FO conference held in Salamanca, Spain, in
1973, Ernst Käsemann (1974) criticized the terminology. In light of the absence of intercommunion
among Christians, he finds it “almost frivolous” to call the church a sacrament (:125f). This
“dangerous expression” does not advance dialogue and should be avoided (:126). Käsemann fears, in
addition, that this kind of terminology may blur the abiding difference between Christ and the church
(:127). To call the church a sign is also problematic since there can be no doubt that the only
legitimate sign of the church is the cross of Christ (:130).
Käsemann's objections have to be taken seriously. Thus, if we continue to employ this terminology,
some important qualifications are in order. As the FO meeting at Louvain (1971) put it: “The
church…is a sign. But it is also no more than a sign. The mystery of the love of God is not exhausted
through this sign, but, at best, just hinted from afar”; and it added, “This sign of oneness is broken by
the tensions and divisions in which the churches are living” (quoted in Gassmann l986:4). A study
paper for the 1973 Salamanca meeting stated that the church dares make the claim to be a sign “or
even sacrament” of the coming unity of humankind “only by virtue of its relationship with Christ,”
who is the real sign of unity. Words like “sacrament” are, moreover, not attributes the church
arrogates to itself: “God himself has chosen (the church) to be in Christ the sign or sacrament of the
unity in his kingdom” (:5). Furthermore, in some sense these terms in fact help to avoid total
identification of the church with Christ (:13): all three expressions clearly point beyond themselves.
Likewise, they forcefully evoke the question of what correspondence there is between Christ and
those who declare themselves his followers. Christianity purports to be a religion of grace, but then it
should be remembered that a religion of grace is more vulnerable than a religion of law. In the words
of John Baker:
The more we emphasize, in our description of the essential nature of the church, the divine sacramental and sanctifying life
within the community, the more legitimate it becomes for the world to demand discernible results…It is no use composing in-
house descriptions of the church, however faithful they may be to scripture and tradition, if within the church they have the fatal
effect of giving believers a warm illusion that all is well, and when read by humankind outside the church they seem to have
parted company with reality (1986:155,158).

When the church, in its mission, risks referring to itself as sacrament, sign, or instrument of
salvation, it is therefore not holding up itself as model to be emulated. Its members are not
proclaiming, “Come to us!” but “Let us follow him!”
Church and World
The understanding of the church as sacrament, sign, and instrument led to a new perception of the
relationship between the church and the world. Mission is viewed as “God's turning to the world” (cf
the title of Schmitz 1971). This represents a fundamentally new approach in theology (W. Kasper—
reference in Kramm 1979:226; cf Hoedemaker 1988:168).
For centuries a static conception of the church had prevailed; the world outside the church was
perceived as a hostile power (Berkhof 1979:411). Reading theological treatises from earlier
centuries, one gets the impression that there was only church, no world. Put differently, the church
was a world on its own. Outside the church there was only the “false church.” Christian ministry and
life was defined exclusively in terms of preaching, public worship, the past orate, and charity.
“Practicing” Christians were (and often still are!) defined as regular church-goers (Schmitz
1971:52f). The church filled the whole horizon. Those outside were, at most, “prospects” to be won
(Snyder 1983:132). Mission was a process of reproducing churches, and once these had been
reproduced, all energy was spent on maintenance. Barth asks, “Has not the work of this divine
messenger and ambassador (Christ) actually ceased in the blind alley of the Church as an institution
of salvation for those who belong to it?” (1962:767).
Slowly, however, a change began to take effect. Karl Barth (1961:18) sees this as a restoration of
the doctrine of the prophetic office of Christ and the church. He traces six phases of this shift in the
history of Protestantism (:18–38). It was, however, only after the Second World War that the essential
orientation of the church toward the world was being embraced more widely in Protestantism. The
church as conqueror of the world (Edinburgh 1910) became the church in solidarity with the world
(Whitby 1947; cf van ‘t Hof 1972:140f). The Dutch “theology of the apostolate,” which developed in
the late forties and early fifties, also began to perceive the church primarily in terms of its
relationship to the world (cf Berkhof 1979:411–413). Just as one could not speak of the church
without speaking of its mission, it was impossible to think of the church without thinking, in the same
breath, of the world to which it is sent (cf Glazik 1984b:53). It was rediscovered that ekklesia was,
from the very beginning, a “theo-political category” (Hoekendijk 1967a:349).
In Catholicism the real breakthrough in respect of the relationship between the church and the
world came with Vatican II. The theological foundations were laid in LG. However, the full extent of
the shift in Catholic thinking on this relationship only becomes apparent once one peruses Gaudium et
Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. In its opening sentence it
recognizes an intimate link—which goes far beyond evangelism and church planting—between the
church and the world of humanity: “The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the people of our time,
especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of
the followers of Christ as well.”
Subsequent developments reveal a convergence of Catholic and conciliar Protestant views on the
inescapable connection between the church and the world as well as a recognition of God's activities
in the world outside the church (cf, for instance, Evangelii Nuntiandi [1975] and Mission and
Evangelism [1982]).
How is the new view to be understood?
First, it suggests that, if the church cannot be viewed as the ground of mission, it cannot be
considered the goal of mission either—certainly not the only goal. The church should continually—be
aware of its provisional character. “The church's final word is not ‘church’ but the glory of the Father
and the Son in the Spirit of liberty” (Moltmann 1977:19).
Second, the church is not the kingdom of God. The church “is, on earth, the seed and the beginning
of that kingdom” (LG 5), “the sign and instrument of the reign of God that is to come” (EN 59). The
church can be a credible sacrament of salvation for the world only when it displays to humanity a
glimmer of God's imminent reign—a kingdom of reconciliation, peace, and new life (cf Schmitz
1971:58). In the here and now, that reign comes wherever Christ overcomes the power of evil. This
happens (or should happen!) most visibly in the church. But it also happens in society, since Christ is
Lord of the world as well.
Third, the church's missionary involvement suggests more than calling individuals into the church
as a waiting room for the hereafter. Those to be evangelized are, with other human beings, subject to
social, economic, and political conditions in this world. There is, therefore, a “convergence”
between liberating individuals and peoples in history and proclaiming the final coming of God's reign
(Geffré 1982:491). In this perspective, the church is “the people of God in world-occurrence” (Barth
1962:681–762) and the “community for the world” (:762–795).
Fourth, the church is to be viewed pneumatologically, as “a dwelling place of God in the Spirit”
(Eph 2:22), as movement of the Spirit toward the world en route to the future (Memorandum
1982:461f). When we view the church as “community of the Holy Spirit” we identify it preeminently
as missionary community, since the Spirit is the “go-between God” (Taylor 1972; cf Boer 1961).
Fifth, if the church attempts to sever itself from involvement in the world and if its structures are
such that they thwart any possibility of rendering a relevant service to the world, such structures have
to be recognized as heretical. The church's offices, orders, and institutions should be organized in
such a manner that they serve society and do not separate the believer from the historical (Hoekendijk
1967a:349; Rütti 1972:311–315). Its life and work are intimately bound up with God's cosmic-
historical plan for the salvation of the world. We are called, therefore, to be “kingdom people,” not
“church people,” says Snyder (1983:11). He continues:
Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice,
mercy and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the
church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church
change the world.

Last, because of its integral relatedness to the world, the church may never function as a fearful
border guard, but always as one who brings good tidings (Berkouwer 1979:162). Its life-in-mission
vis-à-vis the world is a privilege (cf Rom 1:5).
Rediscovering the Local Church
The church-in-mission is, primarily, the local church everywhere in the world. This perspective, as
well as the supposition that no local church should stand in a position of authority over against
another local church, both fundamental to the New Testament (cf Acts 13:1–3 and the Pauline letters),
was for all practical purposes ignored during much of Christian history. In Catholicism, church as
well as mission became ever more clearly pope-centered. On the surface, at least, the Protestant
“Three-Selfs” formula (self-government, self-support, and self-propagation) appeared to be more
sound; soon “younger” churches would in all respects be the equals of “older” churches. Reality
turned out to be different, however. The younger churches continued to be looked down upon and to
be regarded as immature and utterly dependent upon the wisdom, experience, and help of the older
churches or mission societies. The process toward independence was a pedagogical one; in the end,
the self-appointed guardian would decide whether or not the moment for “home rule” had come.
Churches and mission agencies in the West understood themselves as churches for others.
The first person to have attacked this entire edifice head-on was Roland Allen ([1912] 1956). He
alerted his readers to the glaring differences between Paul's missionary methods and those of
contemporary mission agencies. Perhaps, Allen suggested (:107), the basic difference was that Paul
had founded “churches” whilst we founded “missions” in the sense of dependent organizations. Paul
wrote the first of his letters to the church in Thessalonica—where he had spent a mere five months or
so—only about a year after he had left there, and he wrote it not to a mission but to a church (:90; cf
also Chapter 4 of this study). At no point did the sending church, Antioch, have any authority over the
fledgling faith communities in Ephesus, Corinth, and elsewhere. From the very first moment these
were complete churches, with the Word and the sacraments—which were all they needed in order
truly to be the church of Christ. Paul's success, Allen suggested, was due to the fact that he trusted
both the Lord and the people to whom he had gone. In both these respects, modern missionaries were
blatantly different from Paul ([1912] 1956:183–190).
Gradually a shift began to take place in Protestant missions. The Jerusalem and Tambaram
conferences of the IMC (1928 and 1938) began to recognize the younger churches as equals. The
Whitby Conference (1947) coined the phrase “Partnership in Obedience” in an attempt to give
expression to the conviction that it was theologically preposterous to distinguish between
“autonomous” and “dependent” churches. The Ghana Conference of the IMC (1958) appropriately
concluded “that the distinction between ‘older’ and ‘younger’ churches, whatever may have been its
usefulness in earlier years, is no longer valid or helpful” (in Orchard 1958:12). And even if, in all
this, practice still fell far short of theory, there could be no doubt that the die had been cast and that a
change of momentous importance had begun to take place. The church-for-others was slowly turning
into the church-with-others; pro-existence was changing into coexistence (cf Sundermeier 1986:65).
Mission could no longer be viewed as one-way traffic, from the West to the Third World; every
church, everywhere, was understood to be in a state of mission.
In Catholicism developments have been even more marked and dramatic. For many centuries
“local churches” did not exist, neither in Europe nor on the “mission fields.” What one had, at best,
were affiliates of the universal church. The “mission churches,” in particular, had to resemble the
church in Rome in almost every detail; they “were ‘missions,’ Churches of the second class, daughter
churches, immature children, apostolic vicariates, and not yet autonomous dioceses” (Bühlmann
1977:45).
In the wake of World War I, however, the local church was discovered. Maximum Illud (1919)
and Rerum Ecclesiae (1926) paved the way for a new understanding, but it was only Fidei Donum
(1957) that constituted a true turning point (van Winsen 1973:77, 81–83) on which Vatican II was
able to build. Even this council was, however, still very much run on the presuppositions of the
traditional Western church. It was, in fact, only at the series of Synods of Bishops—an ecclesial
structure that originated after the Council—that the bishops of local churches1 in the Third World
really began to influence Catholic thinking in a profound way.
The fundamentally innovative feature of the new development was the discovery that the universal
church actually finds its true existence in the local churches; that these, and not the universal church,
are the pristine expression of church (cf LG 26); that this was the primary understanding of church in
the New Testament and also the way in which, during the early centuries of our era, the church was
perceived; that the pope, too, was in the first place the pastor of the local church in Rome; that a
universal church viewed as preceding local churches was a pure abstraction since the universal
church exists only where there are local churches; that the church is the church because of what
happens in the local church's martyria, leitourgia, koinonia, and diakonia; that the church is an event
among people rather than an authority addressing them or an institution possessed of the elements of
salvation, of doctrines, and offices (cf van Engelen 1975:298f; Glazik 1979:155f; Köster 1984:169,
176–184; Fries 1986:755f; Michiels 1989:100f).
At the same time it has to be said that Catholics tend to appreciate, more clearly than Protestants
do, the essential interrelatedness between the universal church and local churches. The church is,
really, a family of local churches in which each should be open to the needs of the others and to
sharing its spiritual and material goods with them. It is through the mutual ministry of mission that the
church is realized, in communion with and as local concretization of the church universal (Stransky
1982:349; Fries 1986:756).
 The rediscovery of the local church as the primary agent of mission has led to a fundamentally new
interpretation of the purpose and role of missionaries and mission agencies. In 1969 Pope Paul VI
told Christians in Kampala, Uganda, “You are missionaries to yourselves!” And in 1985 John Paul II
said to believers in places as far apart and as different as Cameroon and Sardinia, “Like the entire
Church, you are in a state of mission” (cf Gómez 1986:47f). It is in light of this new reality and
realization that the Catholic Church has abolished the ius commissionis; no longer may foreign
missionary orders and societies dictate the pattern of evangelism in the Third World. The whole
world is a mission field, and the distinction between sending and receiving churches is becoming
pointless. Every church is either still in a diaspora situation or has returned to it (AG 37). And
churches everywhere need each other (cf Bühlmann 1977:383–394).
In the midst of these new circumstances and relationships there is still room for and need of
individual missionaries, but only insofar as all recognize that their task is one that pertains to the
whole church (cf AG 26) and insofar as missionaries appreciate that they are sent as ambassadors of
one local church to another local church (where such a local church already exists), as witnesses of
solidarity and partnership, and as expressions of mutual encounter, exchange, and enrichment.2
Much of what has been outlined above is undoubtedly still ideal rather than reality. In both
confessions a donor syndrome is still very much in evidence in the affluent churches of the West and a
dependency syndrome in the churches of the Third World. The Congregation for the Evangelization of
Peoples (the new name for the restructured Congregatio de Propaganda Fide) still exercises
authority over churches in Africa and elsewhere (cf Rosenkranz 1977:431–434). A quarter of a
century after Vatican II, the Catholic Church in Africa has not yet held an Episcopal Conference (on
this, cf Shorter 1989:349–352). It is not very different in the Protestant world. In spite of all the fine
and friendly ecumenical language, it seems the final decisions are still taken in the churches and cities
of the West, not least since this is where many of the subsidies needed for “running” Third-World
churches come from. Even so, the fundamental change in favor of the local church, everywhere, as the
agent of mission both in its own environment and further afield, cannot be gainsaid and constitutes a
decisive advance over positions that had been in vogue for many centuries.
Creative Tension
The new paradigm has led to an abiding tension between two views of the church which appear to be
fundamentally irreconcilable. At one end of the spectrum, the church perceives itself to be the sole
bearer of a message of salvation on which it has a monopoly; at the other end, the church views itself,
at most, as an illustration—in word and deed—of God's involvement with the world. Where one
chooses the first model, the church is seen as a partial realization of God's reign on earth, and mission
as that activity through which individual converts are transferred from eternal death to life. Where
one opts for the alternative perception, the church is, at best, only a pointer to the way God acts in
respect of the world, and mission is viewed as a contribution toward the humanization of society—a
process in which the church may perhaps be involved in the role of consciousnessraiser (cf Dunn
1980:83–103; Hoedemaker 1988:170f).
The question is whether these two images of the church have to be mutually exclusive. A few
reflections on this subject may be in order. The problem, so it would seem, occurs where one is
unable to integrate the two visions in such a way that the tension between them becomes creative
rather than destructive. Such an integration is seldom achieved. Catholic scholars have, in this
respect, referred to the inability of Ad Gentes to keep alive the constructive tension that was so
evident in Lumen Gentium (cf van Engelen 1975:299–309; Weber 1978:87; Kramm 1979:36f; Dunn
1980:58–64; Glazik 1984b:54–56). Having started with a dynamic and fresh view of the church, AG
made a somersault in Article 6 and proceeded to espouse a pre-Vatican II perception of church and
mission: mission was again one-way traffic from West to East, and the overriding aim of mission
remained plantatio ecclesiae.
In much of contemporary Catholicism and Protestantism, then, many of the old images live on,
almost unchallenged. Traditional sending agencies—whether societies or denominational structures—
are being absolutized and seduced into serving as agents or legitimizers of the status quo. This is
further exacerbated by the preoccupation with numerical church growth in some circles. Donald Mc-
Gavran, for instance, wishes to lift up church growth as a “chief and irreplaceable goal of mission”
(1980:24). He believes that “the numerical approach is essential to understanding church growth,”
since the church “is made up of countable people” (:93). He defines church growth as “the sum of
many baptized believers” (:147) and declares that “the student of church growth…cares little whether
a Church is credible; he asks how much it has grown” (:159).
In this model, “achievement” in the area of mission or evangelism is frequently measured
exclusively in terms of “religious” or otherworldly activities or of conduct at the micro-ethical level,
such as abstinence from tobacco or profane speech. Often this also signifies a departure from
engagement with the dominant social issues in a given community. Where this happens, an explosion
in the numbers of converts may, in fact, be a veiled form of escapism and thus make a mockery of the
true claims of the Christian faith. However, the content of a gospel without demands in respect of
justice, peace, and equity suggests
a conscience-soothing Jesus, with an unscandalous cross, an otherworldly kingdom, a private, inwardly limited spirit, a pocket
God, a spiritualized Bible, and an escapist church. Its goal is a happy, comfortable, and successful life, obtainable through the
forgiveness of an abstract sinfulness by faith in an unhistorical Christ (Costas 1982:80).

The first pattern, then, robs the gospel of its ethical thrust; the second, however, robs it of its
soteriological depth (Costas 1982:80). This second pattern manifests itself in one of two ways: an
almost complete identification of the church with the world and its agenda, or, in extreme cases, a
virtually complete writing off of the church. Both these patterns—which were also mutually
dependent—were in vogue particularly during the 1960s and early 1970s and reflect an extremely
optimistic evaluation of the world and of humankind. Let us look briefly at these two strategies.
The idea of the world providing the agenda for the church and of the church having to identify
completely with this agenda first surfaced clearly at the 1960 Strasbourg Conference of the WSCF.
Speakers like D. T. Niles, Newbigin, Barth, and Visser ‘t Hooft appeared unable to speak to and for
the students; only Hoekendijk, with his emphasis on the secular calling and role of Christianity,
elicited applause (cf Bassham 1979:47f). Three years later, at the Mexico City Conference of
CWME, it was said that Christians must “discover a shape of Christian obedience being written for
them by what God is already actively doing in the structures of the city's life outside the Church”
(quoted in Bassham 1979:65; this sentence was not, however, as Bassham seems to imply, part of the
conference Message).
In 1961 the New Delhi Assembly of the WCC authorized a study project on “the Missionary
Structure of the Congregation.” Wieser edited an interim report on the project in 1966. A year later,
and in time for the Uppsala Assembly, the final two-part report, prepared respectively by the Western
European Working Group and the North American Working Group, was published (WCC 1967). Both
reports (which, in the end, had precious little to say about the “missionary structure of the
congregation”) profoundly influenced the Uppsala meeting. The goal of mission was identified as
shalom by the European team and as humanization by the North Americans. Hoekendijk called
shalom a secularized concept, a social happening, an event in inter-human relations (in Wieser
1966:43). “What else can the churches do than recognize and proclaim what God is doing in the
world?” asked the European group (WCC 1967:15), since “it is the world that must be allowed to
provide the agenda for the churches” (:20). Conversion was something that happened on the corporate
level in the form of social change, rather than on the individual-personal level. All this culminates in
the following statement in the North American report:
We have lifted up humanization as the goal of mission because we believe that more than others it communicates in our period of
history the meaning of the messianic goal. In another time the goal of God's redemptive work might best have been described in
terms of man turning towards God…The fundamental question was that of the true God, and the church responded to that
question by pointing to him. It was assuming that the purpose of mission was Christianization, bringing man to God through Christ
and his church. Today the fundamental question is much more that of true man, and the dominant concern of the missionary
congregation must therefore be to point to the humanity in Christ as the goal of mission (:78).

By and large, the Uppsala assembly endorsed this theology. The Hoekendijk approach had become
the “received view” in WCC circles. Mission became an umbrella term for health and welfare
services, youth projects, activities of political interest groups, projects for economic and social
development, the constructive application of violence, etc. Mission was “the comprehensive term for
all conceivable ways in which people may cooperate with God in respect of this world” (Rütti
1972:307—my translation). The distinction between church and world has, for all intents and
purposes, been dropped completely. In the words of J. B. Metz, “The abstract differentiation between
church and world is, in the final analysis, meaningless” (quoted in Rütti 1972:274).
One can appreciate this preoccupation with the world during the 1960s and the optimism about
what might be achieved soon by way of completely restructuring socio-political realities and attempts
at identifying the “signs of the times.” Former colonies of the West were becoming independent at a
truly astonishing rate (in the year 1960 alone, eighteen African countries gained their independence).
Imaginative development programs were being launched, and it was believed that, soon, these would
permanently change the fate of the developing countries (although some, like Richard Shaull at the
1966 Church and Society Conference in Geneva, suggested that not the technologists, but the
revolutionaries would introduce the desired restructuring of the socio-political and economic reality;
cf Shaull 1967 and Dunn 1980:183–193). In church and mission circles the integration of the IMC
into the WCC at New Delhi (1961) seemed to promise a completely new deal for relationships
between older and younger churches. And, as far as Catholics were concerned, these were the years
following Vatican II (1962–1965); many hailed “the new Pentecost, the downpouring of hope, the
open windows and rejuvenation of the Church” (Gómez 1986:26).
Fact of the matter was, however, that mission—in its new definition—was overtaxed, that too
much was expected of the church and its influence, that much of the euphoria sprang from human
optimism rather than faith. The church was a kind of spiritual gas station from which all and sundry
could draw the energy for a great variety of worthwhile projects. Sometimes the church had to supply
the incentive behind grandiose development projects; sometimes it had to become a source of
dissatisfaction and disruption.
It was perhaps only to be expected that the almost complete identification of the church and its
calling with the world and its agenda would eventually lead to such embarrassment and frustration
with the inability of the church to carry out the world's agenda that many people despaired of the
church and regarded it as expendable. This view—in varying degrees—has been advocated by
Hoekendijk, Aring, and Rütti (although Rütti, contrary to much of the overall thrust of his argument,
admits that a “Christianity completely devoid of an institutionary nature cannot offer any true
alternative” [1972:343—my translation]). For Hoekendijk, in particular, the church has little more
than the character of an “intermezzo” between God and the world. Others echoed him. The church is
“a reality of secondary importance,” says Rütti (:280), and to call people to become church members
is “a form of proselytism” (WCC 1967:75). The world rather than the church is “the locus of the
continuing encounter between God and humanity” (Aring 1971:83). And God is being made present in
the world through people who do not know him and cannot be regarded as members of the “church”
(Rütti 1971:281).
The embarrassment with the church, and particularly with the local congregation, reached crisis
proportions at the Uppsala and Bangkok conferences (1968 and 1973). Hoekendijk called the parish
system immobile, self-centered, and introverted, “an invention of the Middle Ages” (quoted in
Hutchison 1987:185). The classical Catholic adage, extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the church
no salvation”) seemed to have been turned into its opposite—inside the church there was no
salvation. Reflecting on the theme of the Bangkok CWME meeting, “Salvation Today,” a Canadian
study group asked, “Is the Church not arrogant in thinking it can offer man salvation?” (quoted in
Wieser 1973:176). At both meetings the church came in for unsparing criticism. Scherer (1974:139)
summarizes the mood that prevailed at Bangkok: “The church must justify itself through participation
in the messianic salvation scheme, or it becomes irrelevant.” The church itself needed to be saved,
said Bangkok, else it cannot become a saving community: “Without the salvation of the churches from
their captivity in the interests of dominating classes, races and nations there can be no saving church”
(WCC 1973:89). Churches were in need of “conversion from parochial self-absorption to an
awareness of what God is doing for the salvation of men in the life of the world”(:100).
At both conferences there were delegates who supported the Hoekendijkian position, not because
they subscribed to its more extreme nuances, but because they wished to give expression to their
frustration with the bourgeois nature of the church as well as to their conviction that a new
understanding and praxis of mission would lead to the renewal of the church itself. In light of the
terrible conditions under which millions of starving, oppressed, and exploited people were living,
Uppsala and Bangkok revealed a holy impatience with any complacency on the part of the church. For
the first time a world Christian body squarely faced structural evil and made no attempt at
spiritualizing away its responsibilities by seeking refuge in a sacrosanct institution.
There could be no doubt—it had become fashionable to disparage the churches-as-they-exist-in-
history. People lost confidence in the church. After Vatican II the Catholic Church experienced
defections of priests, a drying up of vocations, and a frenzy of demolishing venerable institutions. The
missionary enterprise, in particular, was attacked, often with masochistic delight (Gómez 1986:28).
Visser ‘t Hooft (1980:393) remarks, however, that such ridicule is a form of ingratitude. Paul, who
knew so much about the weaknesses of the churches to which he wrote his letters, began nearly every
time by thanking God for their existence, their faith, their loyalty.
Thus one has to say that the attacks on the institutional church, launched by Hoekendijk and others,
are pertinent only insofar as they express a theological ideal raised to the level of prophetic judgment
(Haight 1976:633). On closer inspection, however, they represent a view that leads to absurdity. It is
impossible to talk about the church's involvement in the world if its very right to exist is disputed a
priori (cf Gensichen 1971:168). A “purely apostolary approach to the church is untenable” (Berkhof
1979:413).
By the mid-1970s the euphoria that had characterized the 1960s had evaporated completely. There
has been something of a turning of the tide. Many of the same theologians who criticize the empirical
church now hold firmly to the view that it is impossible to talk about mission as responsibility toward
and solidarity with the world unless such mission is understood also in ecclesial categories (cf
Schumacher 1970:183; Mitterhöfer 1974:81f; van Engelen 1975: 309). The Christian mission is
always christological and pneumatological, but the New Testament knows of no christology or
pneumatology which is not ecclesial (cf Kramm 1979:212, 218; Memorandum 1982:461). Mission is
moored to the church's worship, to its gathering around the Word and the sacraments. “‘The visible
coming together of visible people in a special place to do something particular’ (Otto Weber) stands
at the centre of the church. Without the actual, visible procedure of meeting together there is no
church” (Moltmann 1977:334).
One may, therefore, perceive the church as an ellipse with two foci (Crum 1973:288f). In and
around the first it acknowledges and enjoys the source of its life; this is where worship and prayer are
emphasized. From and through the second focus the church engages and challenges the world. This is
a forth-going and self-spending focus, where service, mission and evangelism are stressed (cf also
Gensichen 1971:210; Bria 1975; Stransky 1982:349). Neither focus should ever be at the expense of
the other; rather, they stand in each other's service. The church's identity sustains its relevance and
involvement (Moltmann 1975:1–4). The 1952 Lund FO meeting put it well: “The church is always
and at the same time called out of the world and sent into the world.” Preaching and the celebration of
the sacraments call people to repentance, to baptism, to membership of the church, and to
participation in God's activity in and with the world (Mitterhöfer 1974:88). The church gathers to
praise God, to enjoy fellowship and receive spiritual sustenance, and disperses to serve God
wherever its members are. It is called to hold in “redemptive tension” (Snyder 1983:29) its dual
orientation. The report of the Vancouver Assembly Issue Group on “Taking Steps Towards Unity”
expressed the conviction that
the Church is called to be a prophetic “sign,” a prophetic community through which and by which the transformation of the world
can take place. It is only a church which goes out from its eucharistic centre, strengthened by word and sacrament and thus
strengthened in its own identity, that can take the world on to its agenda. There will never be a time when the world, with all its
political, social and economic issues, ceases to be the agenda of the Church. At the same time, the Church can go out to the
edges of society, not fearful of being distorted or confused by the world's agenda, but confident and capable of recognizing that
God is already there (WCC 1983:50).

It follows that the church can be missionary only if its being-in-the-world is, at the same time, a
being-different-from-the-world (Berkhof 1979:415—I am following the Dutch original here, rather
than the English translation). Precisely for the sake of the world the church has to be unique, in the
world without being of the world (cf van ‘t Hof 1972:206f). Christ's body, his own “earthly-historical
form of existence,” is “the one holy catholic and apostolic church” and as such “the provisional
representation of the whole world of humanity justified in Him” (Barth 1956:643), “the experimental
garden of the new humanity” (Berkhof 1979:415). There is, thus, a legitimate concern for the
inalienable identity of the church and there should not be any premature amalgamation and confusion
between it and the world. A witnessing and serving church “can only exist when she is intensely
driven by the Spirit. She can give only in the measure that she herself receives” (:413f). It is therefore
striking that even Hoekendijk, who throughout his entire life relentlessly castigated the church and
argued that there was no room for an “ecclesiology,” found it impossible to turn his back on it. He
chastised the church, but for its own sake. He could, for instance, say that “the church is (nothing
more, but also nothing less!) a means in God's hands to establish shalom in this world” (1967b:22—
emphasis added; cf also Blei 1980:5–7).
This does not mean that we simply accept the concrete community of faith positivistically and
resign ourselves to its actual mode of life (cf also Lochman 1986:71). We know today—what many of
our spiritual forebears would have found difficult to accept—that the empirical church will always
be imperfect. Every church member who loves the church will also be deeply pained by it. This does
not, however, call for discarding the church, but for reforming and renewing it. The church is itself an
object of the missio Dei, in constant need of repentance and conversion; indeed, all traditions today
subscribe to the adage ecclesia semper reformanda est (cf Rickenbach 1970:70; Memorandum
1982:462). The cross which the church proclaims also judges the church and censures every
manifestation of complacency about its “achievements.” A church that pats itself on the shoulder
frustrates the power of the cross in its life and ministry.
Still, the cross conveys a message not only of judgment but of forgiveness and hope as well, also
for the church. It is therefore incorrect for the church to allow itself constantly to be goaded into
action, as though it has to prove itself, has to earn its credibility through its own imposing schemes
and in this way secure its own salvation. To flagellate itself and relentlessly prod itself to accomplish
more and more simply intensifies guilt, frustration, and despair. If the injunction to repent does not go
hand in hand with the free offer of forgiveness and new life, we have law without gospel, judgment
without mercy, and works without grace. There is an abiding tension between the Christian
community for which we long and the Christian community as it actually is. However, the dream or
ideal and the factual community belong together. In the words of Bonhoeffer, “He who loves the
dream of a Christian community more than the community itself, often does great damage to that
community, no matter how well-intentioned he might be” (quoted in Michiels 1989:84).
There is another side to this. Sometimes, when Christians announce what they think they should
accomplish by way of transforming the world, they run the risk of exceeding the competence of the
church, of talking and acting pretentiously on matters about which Christians have no more expertise
than the world outside the church has (cf Rickenbach 1970:78). There is therefore something both
captivating and problematic in Christians endeavoring to distinguish the “signs of the times” and
thereby verifying where precisely God is at work in history.3 We should be constantly aware of the
risks we are taking and refrain from glibly stating, “Thus sayeth the Lord!” Even if secular history and
the history of salvation are inseparable they are not identical, and the building of the world does not
directly lead to the reign of God; as M. D. Chenu says, “Grace is grace, and history is not the source
of salvation” (quoted in Geffré 1982:490).
Another way of saying this is to affirm that the church, since it is an eschatological community,
may not commit itself without reservation to any social, political, or economic project. As first fruits
of the reign of God it anticipates that reign in the here and now. It is the knowledge of this that gives it
confidence to work for the advance of God's reign in the world, even if it does so with modesty and
without claiming to have all the answers. Even if oppressive and sinful circumstances are not wiped
away as if by magic, Christians confess that these circumstances have already been brought into the
force field of God's reign, relativized, and robbed of their ultimate validity (Lochman 1986:67). It is
this knowledge that grants us the certainty that we are no longer prisoners of an omnipotent fate. The
“church in the power of the Spirit” is not yet the reign of God; it is blundering and often unfaithful,
and yet it is the anticipation of that reign in history. Christianity is not yet the new creation, but it is
the working of the Spirit of the new creation; it is not yet the new humankind, but it is its vanguard (cf
Moltmann 1977:196; Collet 1984:262f).
The perception of the church as an entity completely separate from the human community—which,
for instance, still dominated the deliberations of the 1952 Willingen Conference of the IMC—has
been shown to be false and untenable. The church exists only as an organic and integral part of the
human community. As soon as it tries to view its own life as meaningful in independence from the
total human community it betrays the major purpose of its existence (Baker 1986:159). Similarly, the
tendency either to debunk the church as completely irrelevant, or to erase every difference between
the church and its agenda on the one hand and the world and its agenda on the other, appears to be on
the decline; the church has to remain identifiably different from the world, else it will cease to be
able to minister to it.
For mainline Protestantism it was the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC (1975) which first clearly
registered a mood about the church different from that of previous meetings. Many were now
prepared to admit that reality was more complex and nuanced than delegates to previous conferences
had imagined. The tone of the meeting was more subdued and the discussions more sober than those
which characterized Strasbourg (1960), Geneva (1966), Uppsala (1968), and Bangkok (1973).
Perhaps this is why Nairobi's message took the form of a prayer for the churches rather than a
summons to the world (Vischer 1976:10,61,63). The church was again criticized, but not as haughtily
as in Bangkok. The prevailing notion was rather the biblical idea that the time had come “for
judgment to begin with the household of God” (1 Pet 4:17). The church had to be cleansed so as to
serve the world in a more relevant way. Indeed, the cataclysmic changes taking place in the world
demanded the conversion of the church (Vischer 1976:27; cf also the title of his book). So the abiding
validity of the church was reaffirmed at Nairobi; the assembly's agenda was supplied by the church
rather than by the world (as had happened in Uppsala).
Also at the Melbourne meeting of CWME (1980) the church was taken more seriously than had
been the case previously. It appeared to have been rehabilitated in WCC circles as an instrument of
mission (Scherer 1987:44). This did not, however, suggest a return to the earlier position (roughly
from Tambaram 1938 to Willingen 1952), when the integration of church and mission, in effect, had
bolstered the institutional nature of mission rather than impregnated the church with a missionary
character. Instead, Melbourne (in spite of Orthodox protests) distinguished carefully between the
church and the kingdom of God. Section III's theme for instance, was “The Church Witnesses to the
Kingdom.” The section report (III.1) states, “The whole church of God, in every place and time, is a
sacrament of the kingdom which came in the person of Jesus Christ and will come in its fulness
when he returns in glory” (WCC 1980:193—emphasis added). Again, Section II.13 refers to the
church as “a sign of the kingdom of God” and as being called “to be an instrument of the kingdom by
continuing Christ's mission to the world” (:193f—emphasis added). Uppsala and Bangkok had tended
to regard the churches as belonging to the court of Pharaoh; at least Sections Ill and IV at Melbourne
viewed them, despite many defects, as essentially belonging to the camp of Moses. The church, by the
grace of God capable of repenting, of being renewed and equipped for missionary service, attained
its rightful place not as final expression of God's reign, but as its servant and herald (Scherer
1987:144).
The same tone is echoed in the 1982 WCC document, Mission and Evangelism. It unequivocally
affirms the centrality of the church in God's divine economy; the unity of the church is deemed
indispensable (ME 20–27), not only, but certainly also for the sake of “mission in six continents”
(ME 37–40). A year later the Vancouver Assembly of the WCC endorsed the new ecumenical
consensus on the crucial importance of the church in mission. This emerges, among other ways, in the
subtle differences between its language and that of Uppsala 1968 (cf WCC 1983:50). The
deliberations at the San Antonio Meeting of CWME (1989) followed a similar pattern, particularly in
Section I.
We now recognize that the church is both a theological and a sociological entity, an inseparable
union of the divine and the dusty. Looking at itself through the eyes of the world, the church realizes
that it is disreputable and shabby, susceptible to all human frailties; looking at itself through the eyes
of the believers, it perceives itself as a mystery, as the incorruptible Body of Christ on earth. We can
be utterly disgusted, at times, with the earthliness of the church, yet we can also be transformed, at
times, with the awareness of the divine in the church (Smith 1968:61). It is this church, ambiguous in
the extreme, which is “missionary by its very nature,” the pilgrim people of God, “in the nature of” a
sacrament, sign, and instrument (LG 1), and “a most sure seed of unity, hope and salvation for the
whole human race” (LG 9).

MISSION AS MISSIO DEI

During the past half a century or so there has been a subtle but nevertheless decisive shift toward
understanding mission as God's mission. During preceding centuries mission was understood in a
variety of ways. Sometimes it was interpreted primarily in soteriological terms: as saving individuals
from eternal damnation. Or it was understood in cultural terms: as introducing people from the East
and the South to the blessings and privileges of the Christian West. Often it was perceived in
ecclesiastical categories: as the expansion of the church (or of a specific denomination). Sometimes it
was defined salvation-historically: as the process by which the world—evolutionary or by means of
a cataclysmic event—would be transformed into the kingdom of God. In all these instances, and in
various, frequently conflicting ways, the intrinsic interrelationship between christology, soteriology,
and the doctrine of the Trinity, so important for the early church, was gradually displaced by one of
several versions of the doctrine of grace (cf Beinert 1983:208).
After the First World War, however, missiologists began to take note of recent developments in
biblical and systematic theology. In a paper read at the Brandenburg Missionary Conference in 1932,
Karl Barth ([1932] 1957) became one of the first theologians to articulate mission as an activity of
God himself. In Die Mission als theologisches Problem (1933), Karl Hartenstein gave expression to
a similar conviction. A few years later, at the Tambaram meeting of the IMC (1938), a statement by
the German delegation became another catalyst in the development of a new understanding of mission.
The delegation confessed that only “through a creative act of God His Kingdom will be consummated
in the final establishment of a New Heaven and a New Earth,” and “We are convinced that only this
eschatological attitude can prevent the Church from becoming secularised.”4
Throughout, the Barthian influence was crucial. Indeed, Barth may be called the first clear
exponent of a new theological paradigm which broke radically with an Enlightenment approach to
theology (cf Küng 1987:229). His influence on missionary thinking reached a peak at the Willingen
Conference of the IMC (1952). It was here that the idea (not the exact term) missio Dei first surfaced
clearly. Mission was understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It was thus put in the
context of the doctrine of the Trinity, not of ecclesiology or soteriology. The classical doctrine on the
missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit was
expanded to include yet another “movement”: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the church into the
world. As far as missionary thinking was concerned, this linking with the doctrine of the Trinity
constituted an important innovation (Aagaard 1974:420). Willingen's image of mission was mission
as participating in the sending of God. Our mission has no life of its own: only in the hands of the
sending God can it truly be called mission, not least since the missionary initiative comes from God
alone (cf van ‘t Hof 1972:158f). Mission was not seen in triumphalist categories, though. Willingen
recognized a close relationship between the missio Dei and mission as solidarity with the incarnate
and crucified Christ. Whereas the Willingen meeting was convened under the theme “The Missionary
Obligation of the Church,” the addresses delivered at the meeting were published under the title
Missions Under the Cross (1953). Thus, next to the affirmation that the mission was God's, the
emphasis on the cross prevented every possibility of missionary complacency (van ‘t Hof 1972:160f;
cf Dapper 1979:27).
In attempting to flesh out the missio Dei concept, the following could be said: In the new image
mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God (cf
Aagaard 1973:11–15; 1974:421). “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfil in the
world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church”
(Moltmann 1977:64). Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is
viewed as an instrument for that mission (Aagaard 1973:13). There is church because there is
mission, not vice versa (Aagaard 1974:423). To participate in mission is to participate in the
movement of God's love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love.
Since Willingen, the understanding of mission as missio Dei has been embraced by virtually all
Christian persuasions—first by conciliar Protestantism (cf Bosch 1980:179f, 239–248; LWF 1988:5–
10), but subsequently also by other ecclesial groupings, such as the Eastern Orthodox (cf Anastasios
1989:79–81, 89) and many evangelicals (cf Costas 1989:71–87). It was also endorsed in Catholic
mission theology, notably in some of the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) (cf
Aagaard 1974). After having stated that the church is missionary by its very nature, since “it has its
origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit,” the Council's Decree on Mission defines
missionary activity as “nothing else, and nothing less, than the manifestation of God's plan, its
epiphany and realization in the world and in history” (AG 2, 9). Mission is here defined in trinitarian,
christological, pneumatological, and ecclesiological terms (Schumacher 1970:182f; cf Snijders
1977:171f; Fries 1986:761; Gómez 1986:31).
For the missiones ecclesiae (the missionary activities of the church) the missio Dei has important
consequences. “Mission,” singular, remains primary; “missions,” in the plural, constitutes a
derivative. With reference to the post-Willingen period, Neill (1966a:572) boldly proclaims, “The
age of missions is at an end; the age of mission has begun.” It follows that we have to distinguish
between mission and missions. We cannot without ado claim that what we do is identical to the
missio Dei; our missionary activities are only authentic insofar as they reflect participation in the
mission of God. “The church stands in the service of God's turning to the world” (Schmitz 1971:25—
my translation). The primary purpose of the missiones ecclesiae can therefore not simply be the
planting of churches or the saving of souls; rather, it has to be service to the missio Dei, representing
God in and over against the world, pointing to God, holding up the God-child before the eyes of the
world in a ceaseless celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany. In its mission, the church witnesses to
the fullness of the promise of God's reign and participates in the ongoing struggle between that reign
and the powers of darkness and evil (Scherer 1987:84).
After Willingen (and, already at Willingen, in the American report) the missio Dei concept
gradually underwent a modification—a process traced in great detail by Rosin (1972). Since God's
concern is for the entire world, this should also be the scope of the missio Dei. It affects all people in
all aspects of their existence. Mission is God's turning to the world in respect of creation, care,
redemption, and consummation (Kramm 1979:210). It takes place in ordinary human history, not
exclusively in and through the church. “God's own mission is larger than the mission of the church”
(LWF 1988:8). The missio Dei is God's activity, which embraces both the church and the world, and
in which the church may be privileged to participate.
 In Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II's “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” this
wider understanding of mission is expounded pneumatologically rather than christologically (cf
Aagaard 1973:17f; 1974:429–433). The history of the world is not only a history of evil but also of
love, a history in which the reign of God is being advanced through the work of the Spirit. Thus, in its
missionary activity, the church encounters a humanity and a world in which God's salvation has
already been operative secretly, through the Spirit. This may, by the grace of God, issue in a more
humane world which, however, may never be seen as a purely human product—the real author of this
humanized history is the Holy Spirit. So Gaudium et Spes 26 can say, with reference to the social
order and its development toward service to the common good, “The Spirit of God, who, with
wondrous providence, directs the course of time and renews the faith of the earth, assists at this
development.” And even if paragraph 39 sounds a warning that “we must be careful to distinguish
earthly progress clearly from the increase of the kingdom of God,” it adds that “such progress is of
vital concern to the kingdom of God, in so far as it can contribute to the better ordering of human
society.”
There can be little doubt that this wider understanding of the scope of the missio Dei meant a
development contrary to the intentions of Barth and also of Hartenstein, who first used the term. By
introducing the phrase, Hartenstein had hoped to protect mission against secularization and
horizontalization, and to reserve it exclusively for God. This did not happen. Others, following in the
footsteps of Barth and Hartenstein, were equally upset by subsequent developments. Rosin (1972:26)
calls missio Dei a “Trojan horse through which the (unassimilated) ‘American’ vision was fetched
into the well-guarded walls of the ecumenical theology of mission.”5
Those who supported the wider understanding of the concept tended to radicalize the view that the
missio Dei was larger than the mission of the church, even to the point of suggesting that it excluded
the church's involvement—as we have seen in the previous section. In the volume prepared by a
WCC study committee on “The Missionary Structure of the Congregation” (Wieser 1966), it could,
for instance, be said, “The church serves the missio Dei in the world…(when) it points to God at
work in world history and name him there” (:52). It appeared that God was primarily “working out
his purpose in the midst of the world and its historical processes” (:53). The influence of Hoekendijk
is clearly discernible in formulations like these. Hoekendijkian sentiments also characterize the
theological position of Aring (1971). It seems the church has become unnecessary for the missio Dei:
“We have no business in ‘articulating’ God. In the final analysis, ‘missio Dei’ means that God
articulates himself, without any need of assisting him through our missionary efforts in this respect”
(:88—my translation). In fact, it is unnecessary for the world “to become what it already is since
Easter: the reconciled world of God” (:28). It therefore does not stand in any need of the missionary
contribution of Christians. After all, God is not imaginable without the reconciled world, neither the
world without God's dynamic presence (:24).
Developments like these have prompted Hoedemaker (1988:171–173) to challenge the usefulness
of the missio Dei concept. It can, he argues, be used by people who subscribe to mutually exclusive
theological positions. Hoedemaker may be right—to some extent at least. On the other hand, it cannot
be denied that the missio Dei notion has helped to articulate the conviction that neither the church nor
any other human agent can ever be considered the author or bearer of mission. Mission is, primarily
and ultimately, the work of the Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, for the sake of the
world, a ministry in which the church is privileged to participate (cf LWF 1988:6–10). Mission has
its origin in the heart of God. God is a fountain of sending love. This is the deepest source of mission.
It is impossible to penetrate deeper still; there is mission because God loves people.
 The recognition that mission is God's mission represents a crucial breakthrough in respect of the
preceding centuries (van ‘t Hof 1972:177). It is inconceivable that we could again revert to a narrow,
ecclesiocentric view of mission.

MISSION AS MEDIATING SALVATION6

Traditional Interpretations of Salvation
Some years ago, the Catholic journal Studia Missionalia devoted two consecutive volumes (vol 29,
1980, and vol 30, 1981) to the theme “salvation in world religions.” Salvation is indeed a
fundamental concern of every religion. For Christians, the conviction that God has decisively wrought
salvation for all in and through Jesus Christ stands at the very center of their lives. After all, the very
name Jesus means “Savior” (cf Wiederkehr 1976:9f; 1982:329f; Beinert 1983:217f; Greshake
1983:15).
It follows from this conviction that the Christian missionary movement has been motivated,
throughout its history, by the desire to mediate salvation to all. The “soteriological motif” may indeed
be termed the “throbbing heart of missiology” since it concerns the “deepest and most fundamental
question of humanity” (Gort 1988:203—my translation). It therefore makes sense that international
missionary conferences would be devoted in their entirety to this theme. One may think, for instance,
of the 1973 Bangkok Conference of CWME, the theme of which was “Salvation Today.” More
recently, in October 1988, the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples,
meeting at the Urban University in Rome, devoted a week-long consultation to the same subject.7 That
these were missionary consultations makes eminent sense, since one's theology of mission is always
closely dependent on one's theology of salvation; it would therefore be correct to say that the scope of
salvation—however we define salvation—determines the scope of the missionary enterprise.
Just as there have been paradigm shifts in respect of the understanding of the relationship between
church and mission, there have also been shifts in the understanding of the nature of the salvation the
church had to mediate in its mission. Our reflections on mission in the early church has revealed that
salvation was interpreted in comprehensive terms. This is not to suggest that all New Testament
authors have exactly the same understanding in this respect. Luke, for instance, uses “salvation
language” in respect of a very wide spectrum of human circumstances—the termination of poverty,
discrimination, illness, demon possession, sin, and so forth—or as Scheffler (1988) puts it, in respect
of economic, social, political, physical, psychological, and spiritual suffering. Moreover, for Luke
salvation is, above all, something that realizes itself in this life, today (see, in particular, Jesus’
sayings recorded in 4:21; 19:9; 23:43). For Luke, salvation is present salvation (cf Stanley
1980:74f).
In Paul the accent appears to be elsewhere; he puts a greater emphasis on the inchoative nature of
salvation—it only begins in this life (cf Stanley 1980:63–69). Salvation is a process, initiated by
one's encounter with the living Christ, but complete salvation is still outstanding. The Holy Spirit is
only God's first gift to us (Rom 8:23). We are saved in hope (Rom 8:24). Reconciliation (a key
concept in Paul) indeed occurs here and now, but Paul normally refers to salvation in the future tense:
“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God…much more, now that we are
reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Rom 5:10). These delicate nuances certainly have to do
with the fact that Paul thinks in apocalyptic categories and wishes to emphasize that comprehensive
salvation is reserved for the coming triumph of God (Beker 1984). For the moment, Paul still awaits
Jesus Christ as Savior (Phil 3:20). This does not, however, detract from the reality of radical renewal
—both personal and social—which the believer may already experience in the here and now (cf Rom
8:14f and 2 Cor 5:17). Neither does this only hold good for the believer's “religious” life. The
experience of reconciliation with God and the new birth has far-reaching social (cf Paul's letter to
Philemon) and political consequences (Christ is called Kyrios and Soter in the face of the public
confession that Caesar is lord and savior). But all of this remains within the framework of a fervent
eschatological expectation.
In the Greek Patristic period, however, the eschatological expectation waned. Salvation now took
the form of paideia, of a gradual “uplift” of believers to a divine status (the theosis). The emphasis
was on the “origin” of Christ. The incarnation stood at the center, as instrument of the divinepaideia
(cf Lowe 1982:200; Beinert 1983:204).
Whereas salvation was understood as a “pedagogical” progression in the Byzantine church, the
West (Catholic and Protestant) stressed the devastating effect of sin as well as the restoration of the
fallen individual by means of a crisis experience mediated by the church. Not Christ's preexistence
and incarnation, but his substitutionary death on the cross (a doctrine perfected in Anselm's theory of
the satisfactio vicaria) now stood at the center (cf Beinert 1983:203–205). Salvation was the
redemption of individual souls in the hereafter, which would take effect at the occasion of the
miniature apocalypse of the death of the individual believer.
In this design, the “person” and “work” of Christ were increasingly separated from each other.
Eventually christology was made subservient to soteriology (Lowe 1982:219; Greshake 1983:72f;
Beinert 1983:202, 205, 208). By the same process, God's “salvific” activities were distinguished
more and more from his “providential” activities in respect of the well-being of individuals and
society. Thus even if—throughout all the centuries of Christian missionary history—remarkable
service has always been rendered in respect of the care of the sick, the poor, orphans, and other
victims of society, as well as in respect of education, agricultural instruction, and the like, these
ministries were almost always viewed as “auxiliary services” and not as missionary in their own
right. Their purpose was to dispose people favorably toward the gospel, “soften them up,” and
thereby prepare the way for the work of the real missionary, namely, the one who proclaimed God's
word about eternal salvation. In most cases, then, a strict distinction was maintained between
“horizontal” and “external” emphases (charity, education, medical help) on the one hand and the
“vertical” or “spiritual” elements of the missionary agenda (such as preaching, the sacraments, church
attendance) on the other. Only the latter had a bearing on the appropriation of salvation.
This attenuated definition of salvation inevitably led to a preoccupation with narrowly defined
ecclesiastical activities, which, for their part, severely complicated the believers’ involvement in
society since such involvement had nothing to do with salvation except to draw people toward the
church where they might get access to salvation proper.
Salvation in the Modern Paradigm
The theological constellation just outlined could only survive unscathed as long as people continued
to live in the context of Christendom and felt themselves to be completely dependent on the
comprehensive, transcendent activity of God as the sole explanation for everything that happened in
the world. With the advent of the Enlightenment this entire interpretation of salvation came under
severe pressure, with the result that traditional soteriology was increasingly challenged. The idea of
salvation coming from outside, from God, totally out of reach of human power and capability, became
extremely problematic (cf Wiederkehr 1976:77–122; 1982:331–336; Beinert 1983:209; Greshake
1983:26,74; see also Chapter 9 of this study).
 The modern critique of religion took its point of departure here. Religion as expression of total
dependence upon God and as eternal salvation in the hereafter was an anachronism and remnant of
humankind's period of childhood. Salvation now meant liberation from religious superstition,
attention to human welfare, and the moral improvement of humanity. An alternative soteriology
emerged, an understanding of salvation in which humans were active and responsible agents who
utilized science and technology in order to effect material improvements and induce socio-political
change in the present. In this respect, the critique of religion became, in essence, the critique of
soteriology (Wiederkehr 1982:331–333). Salvation remained the motivating force in the life of
modern people, but it was redefined radically.
The reaction of church and mission to the challenge of modernism was—very generally put—
twofold. The first reaction—in both Catholic and Protestant circles—was for people to continue to
define salvation in traditional terms, ignoring, as it were, the challenges of the Enlightenment, and
proceeding as if nothing had changed.
The second reaction was to attempt to take the challenges of modernism seriously, also with
respect to its understanding of salvation. One way in which Christianity was “salvaged” was by
rejecting the view according to which Jesus died a substitutionary death for humankind and thereby
propitiated God. Jesus was, rather, the ideal human being, an example to emulate, a moral teacher.
Here not the person of Jesus was at the center but the cause of Jesus; the ideal, not the One who
embodied the ideal; the teaching (particularly the Sermon on the Mount), not the Teacher; the
kingdom of God, but without the King (cf Greshake 1983:76).
In this paradigm, then, guilt and salvation no longer primarily divide and unite God and humans,
but humans among themselves. Luther's cry, “Where do I find a merciful God?” is changed to “How
can we be merciful neighbors to each other?” God's “vertical” coming into this world manifests itself
in changed, felicitous, “horizontal” relationships: the saving relationship of the human with God is
made concrete in a person's conversion to his or her brother and sister. Sin is—in categories
borrowed from Marx—alienation between humans. Salvation does not come through change in
individuals but through the termination of perverted and unjust structures (cf Greshake 1983:26–29;
Gründel 1983:113–115, 122). The apocalyptic pessimism of fundamentalism is refuted with the aid of
evolutionary optimism. It is believed that people will soon be freed from every form of servitude to
ignorance, hunger, misery, and oppression. The “paradise of the future” is being painted in vivid
utopian colors, particularly in the American “Social Gospel.” Salvation, defined in the American
way, had to be exported to the “mission fields” (cf Dennis 1897, 1899, 1906). In this paradigm, sin is
defined preeminently as ignorance. People only had to be informed about what was in their own
interest. The Western mission was the great educator, which would mediate salvation to the
unenlightened.
After the “Barthian interlude” (the 1920s to the 1950s) caused an interruption in this general trend,
a new era of optimism dawned in the 1960s. For Johannes Hoekendijk, shalom was a more
comprehensive notion than salvation, and if one had to choose, it was by no means self-evident that
one would choose salvation. After all, we impose an antiquated anthropology upon our
contemporaries if we continue to act as if they have to be on the lookout for a merciful God who
could forgive their sins (Hoekendijk 1967a:348).
At the Geneva Conference on Church and Society (1966), both Emmanuel Mesthene and Richard
Shaull utilized Hoekendijkian categories of salvation, even though they did so in very different ways.
Both agreed that this world was the main arena of God's activity and the (only?) place where
salvation could be effected. Where Mesthene's frame of reference was the modern industrialized and
secularized West, and where he saw the solutions to the world's problems in technological progress,
Shaull's frame of reference was the Third World, more particularly its experience of injustice,
exploitation, and poverty. Mesthene's theology attempted to respond to the challenges of the
Enlightenment, Shaull's to the challenges of Karl Marx and colonial exploitation. For Mesthene,
salvation meant the large-scale expansion of technological development so that all may get a share in
the wealth of the West; for Shaull, salvation meant liberation, which could be achieved only by
overthrowing the existing order.
The Uppsala Assembly of the WCC (1968) attempted, in a sense, to reconcile these two positions,
as the two reports on the “Structures for Missionary Congregations” demonstrated (WCC 1967). It
was, however, left to the next conference of CWME (Bangkok, 1973, with the theme “Salvation
Today”) to attempt to determine, once and for all, what salvation was. The “spirit” of the conference,
it seems, emerges where salvation is defined exclusively in this-worldly terms. Section II depicts
salvation in four dimensions. It manifests itself in the struggle for (1) economic justice against
exploitation; (2) for human dignity against oppression; (3) for solidarity against alienation; and (4) for
hope against despair in personal life (WCC 1973:98). In the “process of salvation,” we must relate
(only?) these four dimensions to each other (:90).
Catholic missionary thinking on salvation parallelled that of Protestantism, particularly after Pope
John XXIII announced the Second Vatican Council in 1959. As in Protestantism, it was believed that
salvation could not be defined only in “religious” (or “ecclesial”) terms but also in terms of what
happened elsewhere. Gaudium et Spes devoted particular attention to this (e.g. in paragraph 4). It
was, furthermore, especially in Roman Catholic liberation theology that a wider interpretation of
salvation emerged.
There can be no doubt that the interpretation of salvation that has emerged in recent missionary
thinking and practice has introduced elements into the definition of salvation without which it would
be dangerously narrow and anemic. In a world in which people are dependent on each other and
every individual exists within a web of inter-human relationships, it is totally untenable to limit
salvation to the individual and his or her personal relationship with God. Hatred, injustice,
oppression, war, and other forms of violence are manifestations of evil; concern for humaneness, for
the conquering of famine, illness, and meaninglessness is part of the salvation for which we hope and
labor. Christians pray that the reign of God should come and God's will be done on earth as it is in
heaven (Mt 6:10); it follows from this that the earth is the locus of the Christian's calling and
sanctification.
Crisis in the Modern Understanding of Salvation
In the course of the 1970s, however, the “secularist” as well as the “liberationist” definitions of
salvation came under pressure. I have already referred to the more sober atmosphere that has
characterized WCC meetings since the Nairobi Assembly (1975). Much the same has been true of
Catholicism since the 1974 Bishops’ Synod and the publication of Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975). It has
gradually become clear that the “horizontalist” model was riddled with inconsistencies, both
theological and practical. It was self-deception to begin to think and act as if salvation lay in our
grasp, was at our disposal, or was something we could bring about. We began to realize once again
that, in spite of the deeply rooted heretic conviction that we can bring about salvation through our
own good works, even Christians have no ready-made answers to the needs of society. Christians
promised themselves too much, for instance at Uppsala and Medellín (both in 1968), when statements
were made to the effect that within the foreseeable future all injustice, all poverty, and every form of
servitude would be something of the past and that salvation was just around the corner. Thomas
Wieser, the WCC staff member responsible for coordinating the “Salvation Today” project, sounds
the following sobering warning:
The task of identifying God's saving purpose in the midst of historical events requires solid theological criteria on the basis of
which critical judgments can be made. Here an important task remains to be undertaken in order to ensure that the Church's
credibility will not again be lost in a dash for short-lived “relevance” (1973:177).

Indeed, the euphoric sense of a breakthrough which the delegates to the Bangkok Assembly had
experienced at the time was deceptive. The ringing statements about the meaning of salvation actually
raised more questions than they answered. This was further underscored when, during the past two
decades, we have become conscious of the “limits of growth.” Unchecked technological development
has become nonsensical, since earth's nonrenewable resources are being exhausted, while the rich
become richer and the poor poorer. Even if humans could live by bread alone, there is simply no
longer enough bread for all because of structures which appear to be unalterable. We have, in
addition, become conscious of the real possibility that our technological and scientific know-how
may lead to our irreversibly ruining the ecosystem. We are, reluctantly, arriving at the conclusion that
not everything that is technologically possible should be manufactured. The modern story of success
tends toward becoming a story of catastrophe, and some people even try to withdraw into an illusory
pre-technological world. Meanwhile the dreams about the “paradise of the future” are disappearing
in the smoke of interminable wars and, much worse, in the radioactive winds of nuclear explosions
which threaten to destroy all life on earth. The optimism and euphoria of the sixties are no longer part
of our experience.
Christians are, in addition, forced to ask whether the tendency to allow theology and mission to be
submerged in social ethics must not unavoidably lead to a relativizing of the person of Jesus Christ.
Beinert rightly remarks, “The indispensable christological element of soteriology is not (always)
made sufficiently cleaf” (1983:215—my translation). The inescapable result of much of the modern
paradigm is that the world's needs and solutions are being portrayed in terms which, to an extent, are
independent of Jesus Christ (Lowe 1982:220). The church, however, is called in its mission to give
witness to what God has “once for all, absolutely new, unrepeatably and finally done in Jesus Christ
for the sake of the salvation of the world” (Glazik 1979:160—my translation). It is Jesus Christ who
“accomplishes all salvation. No one can complete his work if he does not achieve it himself”
(Memorandum 1982:459).
To summarize, salvation and well-being, even if they are closely interlocked, do not coincide
completely. The Christian faith is a critical factor, the reign of God a critical category, and the
Christian gospel not identical with the agenda of modern emancipation and liberation movements (cf
Beinert 1983:214f; Gort 1988:213f).
We cannot, however, simply return to the classical interpretation of salvation, even if that position
upholds and defends elements which remain indispensable for a Christian understanding of salvation.
Its problem lies, first, in the fact that it dangerously narrows the meaning of salvation, as if it
comprises only escape from the wrath of God and the redemption of the individual soul in the
hereafter and, second, in that it tends to make an absolute distinction between creation and new
creation, between well-being and salvation. This is, for instance, what Donald McGavran does when
he writes
Salvation is a vertical relationship…which issues in horizontal relationships…The vertical must not be displaced by the horizontal.
Desirable as social ameliorations are, working for them must not be substituted for the biblical requirements of/for “salvation”
 (1973:31).

Over against this kind of approach we have to affirm that redemption is never salvation out of this
world (salus e mundo) but always salvation of this world (salus mundi) (Aagaard 1974:429–431).
Salvation in Christ is salvation in the context of human society en route to a whole and healed world.
Toward Comprehensive Salvation
The challenges of the modern world to the mission of the church in respect of the interpretation of
salvation cannot simply be ignored. New challenges call for new responses. We are forced by
circumstances to reflect anew on this entire matter. Perhaps a rereading of the biblical notions of
salvation, done from the perspective of the realization that both the traditional and modern
interpretations of salvation have proved inadequate, will help us here.
For its understanding of salvation the first model—that of the Greek Patristic mission—was
oriented to the origin and beginning of Jesus’ life—his preexistence and incarnation. The orientation
of Western mission was toward the end of Jesus’ life—his death on the cross (formulated classically
in the Anselmian satisfaction theory). In both instances salvation was located on the edges of the life
of Jesus (Wiederkehr 1976:34; Beinert 1983:211). The third model, that is, the ethical interpretation
of salvation, was oriented to Jesus’ earthly life and ministry. It admittedly introduced a more
dynamic element into our understanding of salvation, but in such a way that, in the final analysis, it
made Christ himself redundant.
We stand in need of an interpretation of salvation which operates within a comprehensive
christological framework, which makes the totus Christus—his incarnation, earthly life, death,
resurrection, and parousia—indispensable for church and theology. All these christological elements
taken together constitute the praxis of Jesus, the One who both inaugurated salvation and provided us
with a model to emulate (cf Wiederkehr 1976:39–43).
It therefore makes sense that in missionary circles today, but elsewhere as well, the mediating of
“comprehensive,” “integral,” “total,” or “universal” salvation is increasingly identified as the
purpose of mission, in this way overcoming the inherent dualism in the traditional and more recent
models (cf, for instance, the titles of Waldenfels 1977, Müller 1978, and Weber 1978).8 Missionary
literature, but also missionary practice, emphasize that we should find a way beyond every
schizophrenic position and minister to people in their total need, that we should involve individual as
well as society, soul and body, present and future in our ministry of salvation.
Never before in history has people's social distress been as extensive as it is in the twentieth
century. But never before have Christians been in a better position than they are today to do something
about this need. Poverty, misery, sickness, criminality, and social chaos have assumed unheard-of
proportions. On an unprecedented scale people have become the victims of other people; homo
homini lupus (“The human being is a wolf to other human beings”). Marginalized groups in many
countries of the world lack every form of active and even passive participation in society; inter-
human relationships are disintegrating; people are in the grip of a pattern of life from which they
cannot possibly wrench themselves free; marginality characterizes every aspect of their existence (cf
Müller 1978:90). To introduce change, as Christians, into all of this, is to mediate salvation; after all
—to quote GS 1 again—“the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men of our time, especially of
those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the
followers of Christ as well.” Precisely because our concern is salvation, we may no longer regard
ourselves or others as prisoners of an omnipotent fate; in its mission the church constitutes a
resistance movement against every manifestation of fatalism and quietism.
 On the other hand, since we may never overrate our own or others’ capabilities, we have to ask
critical questions in respect to all current theories of human self-redemption. Final salvation will not
be wrought by human hands, not even by Christian hands. The Christian's eschatological vision of
salvation will not be realized in history. For this reason Christians should never identify any specific
project with the fullness of the reign of God. We are, at best, erecting bridgeheads for the reign of
God (cf Geffré 1982:490; Beinert 1983:215, 218; Beker 1984:86f; Gort 1988:213). We therefore
hold on to the transcendent character of salvation also, and to the need of calling people to faith in
God through Christ. Salvation does not come but along the route of repentance and personal faith
commitment (cf Wiederkehr 1982:334).
The integral character of salvation demands that the scope of the church's mission be more
comprehensive than has traditionally been the case. Salvation is as coherent, broad, and deep as the
needs and exigencies of human existence. Mission therefore means being involved in the ongoing
dialogue between God, who offers his salvation, and the world, which—enmeshed in all kinds of evil
—craves that salvation (Gort 1988:209). “Mission means being sent to proclaim in deed and word
that Christ died and rose for the life of the world, that he lives to transform human lives (Rom 8:2)
and to overcome death” (Memorandum 1982:459). From the tension between the “already” and the
“not yet” of the reign of God, from the tension between the salvation indicative (salvation is already a
reality!) and the salvation subjunctive (comprehensive salvation is yet to come!) there emerges the
salvation imperative—get involved in the ministry of salvation! (Gort 1988:214). Those who know
that God will one day wipe away all tears will not accept with resignation the tears of those who
suffer and are oppressed now. Anyone who knows that one day there will be no more disease can and
must actively anticipate the conquest of disease in individuals and society now. And anyone who
believes that the enemy of God and humans will be vanquished will already oppose him now in his
machinations in family and society. For all of this has to do with salvation.

MISSION AS THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE

The Legacy of History
In our next section (on evangelism) it will be argued that although evangelism may never simply be
equated with labor for justice, it may also never be divorced from it. The relationship between the
evangelistic and the societal dimensions of the Christian mission constitutes one of the thorniest areas
in the theology and practice of mission. In subsequent sections we shall return to it again and again.
There can be no doubt that social justice was at the very heart of the prophetic tradition of the Old
Testament. Since most of Israel's kings at least professed to believe in Yahweh, prophets like Amos
and Jeremiah could, in the name of God, challenge them insofar as they had tolerated or perpetrated
injustice in their kingdoms. The socio-political context in which the early church began to engage in
mission was, however, fundamentally different. Christianity was a religio illicita in the Roman
Empire. It was, at best, tolerated; at worst, it was persecuted. No Christian could address the
authorities on the basis of a shared faith. This circumstance has led many Christians of later
generations to the erroneous view that the New Testament is more “spiritual” than the Old and is,
because of this, superior to it. At the same time the innate justice dimension of the Christian faith has
often been overlooked, mainly because it was—in the prevailing circumstances—couched in terms
which differed substantially from those we encounter in the Old Testament (cf also chapters 2 to 4 of
this study).
During the reign of Constantine Christianity not only became a religio licita, it actually soon was
the only legitimate religion in the empire. The situation was similar to that which prevailed in certain
periods of the history of Israel as an independent nation. As had happened then, so also now the new
situation led to compromises. And frequently the compromise was in the area of social justice, the
“court prophets” finding it either impossible or imprudent to criticize the authorities when the latter
had connived and even colluded in injustice. Still, since the membership of church and state for all
practical purposes overlapped during the entire period from Constantine to the dawn of the modern
era, and since the rulers explicitly acknowledged that they were as much responsible for the religious
and moral life of their subjects as they were for politics, the realms of religion and politics were,
somehow, held together.
As early as Augustine, however, there was a trend to divide reality starkly into two irreconcilable
opposites, spelled out forcefully in The City of God, book 4 chapter 28 (cf also Chapter 6 of this
study). In spite of counter-currents (in late medieval Catholicism the name of Thomas Aquinas may be
mentioned) there has always, since Augustine, been a tendency to construe a contrast “between the…
radiance of divine holiness and the darkness of the world” (Niebuhr 1960:69). This legacy was
passed on from Catholicism to Protestantism in all its forms (though it manifested itself more clearly
in the Lutheran and Anabaptist traditions than in Calvinism). The world was evil and unredeemable,
and changing its structures did not really fall within the sphere of the church's responsibilities.
With the advent of the Enlightenment and its thoroughgoing differentiation between the public
world of facts and the private world of ideas, politics and the state were assigned to the former,
religion and morals to the latter. The organic link between church and state had been severed and the
church could no longer appeal to the state on the basis of a shared faith commitment. The church's
ministry—outside its walls—was by and large limited to charity and development. To challenge
unjust societal structures fell outside of its purview and would also have been totally unacceptable to
the political rulers. When, in 1926, a group of ten bishops (one of whom was William Temple, later
Archbishop of Canterbury) attempted to mediate in a dispute between coal miners, coal-owners, and
the British government, an irate Stanley Baldwin, then prime minister, asked how the bishops would
like it if he were to refer to the Iron and Steel Federation the revision of the Athanasian Creed (cf
Temple 1976:30)!
The “interference” of the bishops with politics was one of the earliest manifestations of an
“established” church breaking out of the mold of harmony and neat division of labor between church
and state.9 Much of the convolution in church-state relationships in the twentieth century flowed from
attempts at redefining this relationship.
The Tension between Justice and Love
In order to appreciate the issues involved, it may help to highlight an observation made by Reinhold
Niebuhr (1960). A rational ethic, Niebuhr suggests, aims at justice, whereas a religious ethic makes
love the ideal (:57). The latter ideal is supported by viewing the soul of one's fellow human being
“from the absolute and transcendent perspective” (:58). This leads to the presence—in every vital
religion—of a millennial hope for a society in which the ideal of love and equity will be fully
realized (:60f). However, this is complicated by the fact that, within the religious ideal, a “mystical”
emphasis exists side by side with a “prophetic” emphasis (:64). The mystical dimension tends to
make an individual or a group withdraw from the world, devalue history, claim that one's true home is
not here but in heaven, and seek communion with God without attending to one's neighbor (cf Haight
1976:623). The prophetic dimension prompts the believer to get involved in society for the sake of
the neighbor.
 Attempts to deal with this unresolved tension in the Christian ethic have, by and large, taken two
different forms.
In the Protestant ecumenical movement, and to a lesser extent in contemporary Catholicism, it
seems it is the prophetic motif that predominates. In some manifestations of ecumenicalism, however,
it seems that the rational ethic, which aims at justice, is more powerful than the religious ethic of
love. The Social Gospel, for instance—particularly after the year 1900—“emphasized social concern
in an exclusivistic way which seemed to undercut the relevance of the message of eternal salvation”
(Marsden 1980:92), thereby, seemingly, jettisoning completely any idea of transcendence in
Christianity. The same appeared to be true, by and large, of much of what was said and done in
“mainline” Christianity during the “secular sixties.” The Geneva Church and Society Conference
(1966), the WCC Uppsala Assembly (1968), and the CWME meeting in Bangkok (1973) again come
to mind as manifestations of the trend to give “a blanket endorsement of any political movement”
(Wieser 1973:177) without adequately identifying criteria for judging whether it truly belonged to the
mission of God (cf Bassham 1979:94). The religious ethic of love, says Niebuhr (1960:80f), will
always aim at leavening the idea of justice with the ideal of love; it will prevent it from becoming
purely political, with the ethical element washed out. Love demands more than justice (:75). The
“ultra-rational hopes” in religion provide courage and keep love alive.
This is what EN 27 has in mind when it warns against reducing the mission of the church “to the
dimensions of a simple temporal project.” In similar vein Bonhoeffer ([1932] 1977) refers to the
“secularist temptation” of identifying the reign of God, consciously or unconsciously, with some
earthly goal, of trying to be the architects not only of our own future but also of God's. Here the
“eschatological reservation” has almost completely disappeared. However, Bonhoeffer also refers to
the other extreme where—in the pious radiance of otherworldly realities—earth pales into
insignificance and ultimately becomes meaningless. This is the danger in the evangelical position on
the church's calling in respect to justice in society. The problem, says Niebuhr (1960:74) is that the
religious ideal tends to be more interested in the perfect motive of the believer than in fleshing out the
consequences of love. Such a preoccupation with motive—which has its own virtues—is perilous to
society. As the institution of slavery has shown, sincere Christians, motivated by love, might not move
vigorously against the social injustices in the larger society, which they know to be in conflict with
their religious and moral ideals (:77f). The consistent God-world, spirit-body dualism, inherited from
Augustine and the Greeks and reinforced by the Enlightenment mind-set, defeats the ideal of love.
The Two Mandates
One attempt to solve the enigma of the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility is to
distinguish between two different mandates, the one spiritual, the other social. The first refers to the
commission to announce the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ; the second calls Christians
to responsible participation in human society, including working for human well-being and justice (cf
Bassham 1979:343). Perhaps this distinction—as far as North American Protestantism is concerned
—goes back to Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). According to Edwards, God's work of redemption
has two facets. One consists in the converting, sanctifying, and glorifying of individuals; the other
pertains to God's grand design in creation, history, and providence (cf Chaney 1976:217). Still, for
Edwards these two “mandates” were inseparable. The same was true of those who had been touched
by the Evangelical Awakenings. The evangelical commitment to social reform was a corollary of the
enthusiasm for revival (Marsden 1980:12).
Gradually, however, a subtle shift toward the primacy of the “evangelistic mandate” was
discernible. This coincided with the rise of premillennialism in what later became known as
fundamentalism and the latter's growing protest against the this-worldliness of the Social Gospel.
Between 1865 and 1900 interest in social and political action diminished, though it was not
completely discontinued, among revivalist evangelicals. Between 1900 and 1930, however, all
progressive social concern became suspect among them and disappeared dramatically (Marsden
1980:86–90). The broad sweep of the involvement and interest of the eighteenth-and nineteenth-
century Awakenings had shrivelled to narrow and intolerant sectarianism. The “Great Reversal”
(Timothy Smith—cf Marsden 1980:85) had set in. The Awakening, says Lovelace (1981), had never
been completed.
Much of this mentality still prevails in fundamentalist circles around the world. In the main body
of evangelicalism, however, a change began to set in. Catalytic in this respect was Carl F. H. Henry's
The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947). He wrote (quoted in Bassham
1979:176):
Whereas once the redemptive gospel was a world-changing message, now it was narrowed to a world-resisting message…
Fundamentalism in revolting against the Social Gospel seemed also to revolt against the Christian social imperative…It does not
challenge the injustices of the totalitarianisms, the secularisms of modern education, the evils of racial hatred, the wrongs of
current labor-management relations, and inadequate bases of international dealings.

Henry concludes, “There is no room…for a gospel that is indifferent to the needs of the total man
nor of the global man.” It took some time for this perspective to begin to filter through, not least
because much evangelical energy at the time was dissipated in attempts to attack the young and
energetic WCC. The “Wheaton Declaration” (produced by an evangelical conference which
convened in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1966) conceded that evangelicals in the eighteenth and nineteenth
century had led in social concern and stressed the importance of ministering to physical and social
needs, but stated that this should happen “without minimizing the priority of preaching the gospel of
individual salvation” (Lindsell 1966:234). Henceforth, whenever the “social mandate” was
emphasized in evangelicalism, it would always be accompanied by a statement about the primacy of
evangelism. The Berlin Congress, also held in 1966, a few months after the Wheaton Congress,
reaffirmed the participants’ “unswerving determination to carry out the supreme mission of the
Church” (Henry and Mooneyham 1967a:5). In his address, Billy Graham spoke for many evangelicals
when he included a social dimension within evangelism but then added that improved social
conditions were a result of successful evangelism (:28),
I am convinced if the Church went back to its main task of proclaiming the Gospel and getting people converted to Christ, it
would have a far greater impact on the social, moral and psychological needs of men than any other thing it could possibly do.
Some of the greatest social movements of history have come about as the result of men being converted to Christ.

By this definition evangelism relates to social responsibility as seed relates to fruit; evangelism
remains primary (the church's “main task”) but it generates social involvement and improved social
conditions among those who have been evangelized (cf McGavran 1973:31).
 All these and similar interpretations of the relationship between evangelism and social
responsibility could not but increasingly come under tremendous pressure. Several evangelical
scholars began to reflect anew on the issues, building on nineteenth-century social ethics and taking
up some of the challenges articulated by Henry in his 1947 book.10 So-called radical evangelicals—
Mennonites and others—began to move out of their centuries-old self-imposed isolation from
mainstream Christianity and made vital contributions to social thinking and practice among
evangelicals (cf Yoder 1972). So by 1974, when the International Congress on World Evangelization
met in Lausanne, many evangelicals, particularly those from the Third World, were ready for a new
advance. John Stott, in a book published soon after the Lausanne conference, candidly confessed that
he had changed his mind on the interpretation of the “Great Commission”: at Berlin 1966 he had
interpreted it exclusively in term of evangelism (in Henry and Mooneyham 1967a:37–56). Now he
would prefer to express himself differently:
I now see more clearly that not only the consequences of the commission but the actual commission itself must be understood to
include social as well as evangelistic responsibility, unless we are to be guilty of distorting the words of Jesus (Stott 1975:23).

It was in line with this new understanding that the LC 5 affirmed that

(evangelism and socio-political) involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our
doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbor and our obedience to Jesus Christ.

However, both the Congress and the Covenant continued to operate in terms of the two-mandate
approach and to uphold the priority of evangelism. It affirmed that “in the church's mission of
sacrificial service evangelism is primary.” It was also explicitly stated that “reconciliation with man
is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation.”
In spite of the advantages of this approach over the one-mandate strategy (“evangelism only”) that
dominated evangelicalism for so long, Stott's understanding of mission as “evangelism plus social
responsibility” was under pressure from the very beginning. The moment one regards mission as
consisting of two separate components one has, in principle, conceded that each of the two has a life
of its own. One is then by implication saying that it is possible to have evangelism without a social
dimension and Christian social involvement without an evangelistic dimension. What is more, if one
suggests that one component is primary and the other secondary, one implies that the one is essential,
the other optional. This is precisely what happened. The Thailand Statement, released by the Pattaya
conference of LCWE (1980), affirmed the movement's commitment to LC's emphasis on both
evangelism and social action but went on to say that “nothing contained in the Lausanne Covenant is
beyond our concern, so long as it is clearly related to world evangelization” (emphasis added). The
significance of this sentence lies in what it does not say—that nothing in LC is beyond our concern,
so long as it clearly fosters Christian involvement in society.
In 1982, two years after the Pattaya conference, some forty scholars met in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, at a “Consultation on the Relationship Between Evangelism and Social Responsibility”
(CRESR), sponsored by LCWE and the WEF. The consultation's report conceded that some
participants “felt uncomfortable” about LC's stand on the primacy of evangelism and attempted to
explain that its priority may not always be chronologically prior to social engagement. It continued,
Seldom if ever should we have to choose between satisfying physical hunger and spiritual hunger, or between healing bodies and
saving souls, since an authentic love for our neighbor will lead us to serve him or her as a whole person. Nevertheless, if we
must choose, then we have to say that the supreme and ultimate need of all humankind is the saving grace of Jesus
Christ, and that therefore a person's eternal, spiritual salvation is of greater importance than his or her temporal and material
well-being (CRESR 1982:25, emphasis added).
 The dichotomy was thus upheld at CRESR. The official evangelical position remained:
evangelism is primary, and where it has been successful, it has led to “fruits” in the form of social
justice. In fact, this cause-effect thinking (a legacy of the Enlightenment?) still remains powerful
within evangelicalism. The greatest single step the church can take toward creating a new world
order, says McGavran (1983:21), is to multiply in society “cells of the redeemed.” Once this has
happened, God “inevitably…causes them to seek a better social order” (:28).
The question is whether this cause-effect thinking can really be maintained. Apart from the fact that
it could be argued, on empirical grounds, that converted individuals do not “inevitably” (McGavran's
word) get involved in restructuring society, one has to ask whether this approach is theologically
tenable. It is of interest to note that this question is increasingly asked by evangelicals themselves.
Already at the Lausanne Congress several hundred delegates sided with a statement called A
Response to Lausanne, in which LC was criticized on this point. The response states, among other
things, that
there is no biblical dichotomy between the word spoken and the word made visible in the lives of God's people. Men will look as
they listen and what they see must be at one with what they hear…There are times when our communication may be by attitude
and action only, and times when the spoken word will stand alone: but we must repudiate as demonic the attempt to drive a
wedge between evangelism and social concern.

This powerful response found an echo at the Pattaya 1980 meeting of LCWE when some two
hundred participants signed a “Statement of Concern on the Future of the LCWE,” in which the
conference leadership was criticized in no uncertain terms for the way in which it had emphasized the
evangelistic mandate to the almost total exclusion of the church's calling in the area of justice and
peace. In the same year, and shortly before the Pattaya Conference, the WEF unit on Ethics and
Society held two meetings at High Leigh near London, one on development, one on lifestyle.11 Both
consultations moved beyond the themes and scope which characterized evangelical meetings in the
1960s and 1970s, not least because of the strong Third-World representation. Scherer comments on
the second of the two consultations,
The actual content of the London consultation went far beyond simple living, stewardship, or benevolence, and touched precisely
on God's preferential option for the poor, divine judgment on oppressors, the pattern of Christ's own identification with the poor,
the risk of suffering for Christ's sake, and Christian support for changes in the political structures—themes seldom articulated
with such passion in evangelical mission circles (1987:180).

In 1983 another significant step forward was taken at a WEF consultation in Wheaton devoted to
“The Church in Response to Human Need.”12 For the first time in an official statement emanating from
an international evangelical conference the perennial dichotomy was overcome. Without ascribing
priority to either evangelism or social involvement, the Wheaton ‘83 Statement, paragraph 26,
declared,
Evil is not only in the human heart but also in social structures…. The mission of the church includes both the proclamation of
the Gospel and its demonstration. We must therefore evangelize, respond to immediate human needs, and press for social
transformation.

By the early 1980s, then, it seemed that a new spirit was establishing itself in mainstream
evangelicalism. Regional evangelical groupings followed suit. One of the most remarkable documents
in this respect was the Evangelical Witness in South Africa, produced by a group of “Concerned
Evangelicals” in 1986.13 In the context of the apartheid system and the experience of repression and
police brutality during a state of emergency, evangelicals felt forced to respond and articulate their
views on evangelism, mission, structural evil, and the church's responsibility with respect to justice
in society. They had no doubt that they were called to a ministry of proclaiming Christ as Savior and
of inviting people to put their trust in him, but they were equally convinced that sin was both personal
and structural, that life was of a piece, that dualism was contrary to the gospel, and that their ministry
had to be broadened as well as deepened. This represents an important shift in evangelicalism and
not simply a return to a nineteenth-century position. At that time, and due to the prevalent optimistic
mood, Christians tended to believe in a “natural” and evolutionary improvement of societal
conditions. Today both evangelicals and ecumenicals grasp in a more profound manner than ever
before something of the depth of evil in the world, the inability of human beings to usher in God's
reign, and the need for both personal renewal by God's Spirit and resolute commitment to challenging
and transforming the structures of society.14
A Convergence of Convictions
In many respects, then, an important segment of evangelicalism appears poised to reverse the “Great
Reversal” and embody anew a full-orbed gospel of the irrupting reign of God not only in individual
lives but also in society. A similar turning of the tide, but in the opposite direction, has been in
evidence in ecumenical circles since the middle of the 1970s, more particularly since the Nairobi
Assembly of the WCC (1975). This is particularly in evidence in the 1982 Mission and Evangelism
document. It states, among other things:
There is no evangelism without solidarity; there is no Christian solidarity that does not involve sharing the knowledge of the
kingdom which is God's promise to the poor of the earth. There is here a double credibility test: A proclamation that does not
hold forth the promises of the justice of the kingdom to the poor of the earth is a caricature of the Gospel; but Christian
participation in the struggles for justice which does not point towards the promises of the kingdom also makes a caricature of a
Christian understanding of justice (para 34).

A similar convergence of ideas is witnessed in Catholicism. Evangelii Nuntiandi, in particular,

underscores the important advance in Catholic thinking that took place since Vatican II. Refusing to
limit the church's ministry to the dimensions of economics, politics, or cultural life, the pope
nevertheless does not allow a return to a preconciliar position, maintaining that salvation most
certainly begins in this life to find its fulfillment in eternity (EN 27; cf also Snijders 1977:172f).
Many ambiguities remain and much still has to be done in sorting out the nature of the church's
involvement in society, not least because of “the general failure of theologians to deal adequately
with this problem” (Snijders 1977:173). And yet, churches—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—are
learning afresh “to overcome the old dichotomies between evangelism and social action. The
‘spiritual Gospel’ and ‘material Gospel’ were in Jesus one Gospel” (ME 33). The alternative
“between evangelization and humanization, between interior conversion and improvement of
conditions, or between the vertical dimension of faith and the horizontal dimension of love” is
untenable (Moltmann 1975:4). Speaking to the Uppsala Assembly, Visser ‘t Hooft lamented the
“rather primitive oscillating movement of going from one extreme to the other,” and added,
A Christianity which has lost its vertical dimension has lost its salt and is not only insipid in itself, but useless to the world. But a
Christianity which would use the vertical preoccupation as a means to escape from its responsibility for and in the common life
of man is a denial of the incarnation (WCC 1968:318).

MISSION AS EVANGELISM15
Evangelism: A Plethora of Definitions
Our discussion on the meaning and scope of salvation and on the church's mission in respect to social
justice leads us, almost as a matter of course, to reflections on the nature of evangelism. The concept
“to evangelize” and its derivatives have actually been around much longer than the word “mission”
and, of course, also occur fairly frequently in the New Testament (euangelizein [or euangelizesthai]
and euangelion). However, these terms fell into almost complete disuse during the Middle Ages
(Barrett 1987:21f). Even today they are hardly ever used in English Bible translations; euangelion is
usually translated “gospel” and euangelizesthai/euangelizein “preach the gospel.” Since the early
nineteenth century the verb “evangelize” and its derivatives “evangelism” and “evangelization” were,
however, rehabilitated in church and mission circles. They became particularly prominent around the
turn of the century because of the slogan “The evangelization of the world in this generation” (:30).
After a temporary lull in usage, from the 1920s to the 1960s, the terms again became very
prominent and have been widely used since 1970 in Protestant (ecumenical and evangelical) as well
as Catholic circles (Barrett 1987:60–66). An “epochal watershed” (:66) in this respect was the
publication, in 1975, of Pope Paul VI's Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi; equally
significant were the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC in the same month that EN was released and the
publication, in 1982, of Mission and Evangelism—An Ecumenical Affirmation (ME). In fact, these
meetings and documents mark a significant revival in Catholic and Protestant interest in evangelism
(cf Gómez 1986:35).
As far as the noun is concerned, it is worth noting that the Protestant evangelical movement as well
as Roman Catholics appear to prefer “evangelization,” whereas Protestant ecumenicals favor
“evangelism.” I shall use “evangelism” to refer to (a) the activities involved in spreading the gospel
(however we may wish to define these; see below), or (b) theological reflection on these activities.
“Evangelization” will be used to refer to (a) the process of spreading the gospel, or (b) the extent to
which it has been spread (for instance in the expression “the evangelization of the world has not yet
been completed”) (cf also Barrett 1982:826; 1987:25f; Watson 1983b:7).
It remains difficult, however, to determine precisely what authors mean by evangelism or
evangelization. Barrett (1987:42–45) lists seventy-nine definitions, to which many more could be
added. Broadly speaking, controversy prevails in two areas: the differences (if any) between
“evangelism” and “mission,” and the scope or range of evangelism. These issues are, moreover,
intimately interrelated.
First, some suggest that “mission” has to do with ministry to people (particularly those in the Third
World) who are not yet Christians and “evangelism” with ministry to those (particularly in the West)
who are no longer Christians. The existence of such “no longer’ Christians reflects a new situation.
Prior to the Enlightenment and the Age of Discovery all people outside the West were “pagans,”
whereas everybody in the West was considered Christian. Now there are “non-believers” in the West
also. It is argued, however, that a difference in terminology is needed when referring to the church's
work among these two groups. Mission, it is suggested, is concerned with first conversion, with
Christianization, with vocare, with a first beginning, with the stranger far away; evangelism has to do
with re-conversion, re-Christianization, revocare, a new beginning, the estranged neighbor (cf Barth
1957). Within (Western) Christendom, then, evangelism is in order, not mission. “Home Missions”
(evangelism) is judged to be theologically distinct from (foreign) mission. The differentiation is, at
the same time, geographical. In the words of Margull, “The distinctive feature of foreign mission is
to proclaim the gospel where no church as yet exists, where the Lordship of God has never yet—
historically—been proclaimed, where pagans are the object of concern” (1962:275). Mission, then,
takes place in a pre-Christian milieu. Over against this, Margull defines evangelism, which he also
distinguishes sharply from the church's “regular” preachi ng to its members, as the proclamation of the
gospel among those who have left the church or those living in a post-Christian milieu, such as
Eastern Europe (1962:277f).
Margull reflects a wide consensus in Roman Catholic and Protestant circles (cf Barth 1962:872–
874; Ohm 1962:53–58; Ad Gentes; Verkuyl 1978b:passim). At the same time, Margull argues
(1962:275–277) that “evangelism” should never have a life of its own, since it is derived from the
reality of the foreign mission and must always be seen in close relationship to it. “Mission” remains
primary, “evangelism” secondary. One reason for such a “synchronizing” of mission and evangelism
(:274) lies in the fact that the distinction between work among “not yet Christians” (“mission”) and
“no longer Christians” (“evangelism”) is increasingly breaking down; there are now also “not yet
Christians” (people who are not only alienated from the church but who have never had any link
whatsoever with it) in the West, just as there are “no longer Christians” (people who were once
Christians but have become alienated from the church) in the traditional “mission” territories (cf also
Gensichen 1971:237–240; Verkuyl 1978b:72–74).
Second, and in addition to the distinction just identified, there has often been a tendency to define
“evangelism” more narrowly than “mission.” And as Roman Catholics and ecumenical Protestants
increasingly tended to use the word “mission” for an ever-widening range of ecclesial activities (this
happened particularly at the Uppsala Meeting of the WCC), evangelicals began to avoid the term
“mission” and to use only “evangelism,” also for the “foreign” enterprise. This polemic use of
“evangelism” by evangelicals suggested that, in their view, the WCC had wrongfully broadened the
scope of the original enterprise to what it is today. Johnston (1978:18), for instance, claims,
“Historically the mission of the church is evangelism alone” (cf McGavran 1983:17—“Theologically
mission was evangelism by every means possible”). The more “inclusive” understanding of the
enterprise, Johnston says (1978:36) actually began with the Edinburgh Conference of 1910.
Third, there has been, over the last four decades or so, a trend to understand “mission” and
“evangelism” as synonyms. The church's task—whether in the West or the Third World—is one, and
it is immaterial whether we call it “mission” or “evangelism.” As far as evangelicals are concerned
this already emerges in the definitions of Johnston and McGavran just quoted.16 In WCC and Roman
Catholic circles there is a similar tendency. The formation of the Commission for World Mission and
Evangelism after the WCC New Delhi Assembly (1961) attests to this; Philip Potter was therefore
correct when he said that, in ecumenical literature, “mission,” “evangelism,” and “witness” are, as a
rule, interchangeable concepts. And a Roman Catholic memorandum claims, “Mission,
evangelization and witness are nowadays often used by Catholics as synonymous” (Memorandum
1982:460).
Further confusion was added when, fourth, the term “evangelism” or “evangelization” began to
replace “mission” in recent years, not only in conservative evangelical circles but also among Roman
Catholics and ecumenical Protestants. In the case of the latter grouping, “evangelism” or
“evangelization,” understood to be identical with “mission,” was deemed more acceptable than
“mission” because of the colonialist overtones still associated with the latter term (cf Geffré
1982:479; Gómez 1986:36). The most thoroughgoing example of “evangelization” supplanting
mission is to be found in EN. The document shuns the word “mission” and, in its English translation,
uses “evangelization” and its cognates no less than 214 times (Barrett 1987:66). “Evangelization” is
understood as an umbrella concept embracing the whole activity of the church sent into the world:
“One single term—evangelization—defines the whole of Christ's office and mandate” (EN 6; cf
Snijders 1977:172; Geffré 1982:489; Scherer 1987:205). In like manner, Geijbels (1978:73–82)
understands evangelization to include proclamation, translation, dialogue, service, and presence. And
Walsh (1982:92) states that “human development, liberation, justice, and peace are integral parts of
the ministry of evangelization.”
In the case of evangelicals, “evangelism” (or, more commonly, “evangelization”) is often
preferred to “mission” because of what evangelicals believe ecumenicals to understand by “mission”
(or because of the way “mission” had been “reconceptualized” at Uppsala 1968 and “implemented”
as “new mission” at Bangkok 1973 [Hoekstra 1979:63–109]). Thus, if Johnston (1978) writes about
“the battle for world evangelism” and Hoekstra (1979) of “the demise of evangelism” in the WCC,
they reveal a preference for the term “evangelism” as opposed to the term “mission.”
Toward a Constructive Understanding of Evangelism
Convolutions in meaning such as the ones identified above are symptomatic of the prevailing state of
flux in missionary thinking and of the period of transition in which we find ourselves. In what follows
I shall attempt to outline an understanding of evangelism which will, hopefully, contribute to the kind
of mission that will be relevant to the present hour. Basic to my considerations is the conviction that
mission and evangelism are not synonyms but, nevertheless, indissolubly linked together and
inextricably interwoven in theology and praxis.
1. I perceive mission to be wider than evangelism. “Evangelization is mission, but mission is not
merely evangelization” (Moltmann 1977:10; cf Geffré 1982:478f). Mission denotes the total task God
has set the church for the salvation of the world, but always related to a specific context of evil,
despair, and lostness (as Jesus defined his “mission” according to Luke 4:18f—cf also Chapter 3 of
this study). It “embraces all activities that serve to liberate man from his slavery in the presence of
the coming God, slavery which extends from economic necessity to Godforsakenness” (Moltmann
1977:10). Mission is the church sent into the world, to love, to serve, to preach, to teach, to heal, to
liberate.
2. Evangelism should therefore not be equated with mission. Where this happens, the need arises
to supplement “evangelism” with neologisms like “preevangelization” and “re-evangelization” (cf
Rahner 1966:52f; Gómez 1986:36), in an attempt to introduce elements which may otherwise be lost.
It is therefore better to uphold the distinctiveness of evangelism within the wider mission of the
church. It is, however, impossible to dissociate it from the church's wider mission (Geffré 1982:480).
Evangelism is integral to mission, “sufficiently distinct and yet not separate from mission” (Löffler
1977a:341). One may never isolate it and treat it as a completely separate activity of the church. “If it
is not related to everything the church does, then the church is suspect” (Spong 1982:15). Authentic
evangelism is imbedded in the total mission of the church, “our opening up of the mystery of God's
love to all people inside that mission” (Castro 1977:10). ME's holding together both mission (ME 1–
5) and evangelism (ME 6–8) rightly makes it impossible to choose between mission and evangelism.
3. Evangelism may be viewed as an essential “dimension of the total activity of the Church”
(1954 Evanston Assembly of the WCC, quoted in Löffler 1977b:8), the heart or core of the church's
mission (Löffler 1977a:341). If we accept this, we would have to rule out the idea, propounded by
Stott (1975) and the Lausanne Covenant, that evangelism is one of two segments or components of
mission (the other one being social action). Evangelism may never be given a life of its own, in
isolation from the rest of the life and ministry of the church (cf Castro 1978:88). In light of this, and of
the apparent absence of conspicuous programs of evangelism in WCC member churches, it is perhaps
rash to talk about the “demise” of evangelism in the WCC (Hoekstra 1979).
4. Evangelism involves witnessing to what God has done, is doing, and will do. This is the way
Jesus began his evangelistic ministry according to the synoptic gospels: “The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk 1:15). Evangelism is announcing that God, Creator and Lord of the
universe, has personally intervened in human history and has done so supremely through the person
and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth who is the Lord of history, Savior and Liberator. In this Jesus,
incarnate, crucified and risen, the reign of God has been inaugurated (cf ME 6, 8). Evangelism thus
includes the “gospel events” (Stott 1975:44f). 1t is, essentially, not a call to put something into effect,
as if God's reign would be inaugurated by our response or thwarted by the absence of such a response
(cf Kramm 1979:220). It is a response to what God has already put into effect. In light of this,
evangelism cannot be defined in terms of its results or effectiveness, as though evangelism has only
occurred where there are “converts.” Rather, evangelism should be perceived in terms of its nature,
as mediating the good news of God's love in Christ that transforms life, proclaiming, by word and
action, that Christ has set us free (cf Gutiérrez 1988:xxxvii, xli).
5. Even so, evangelism does aim at a response. On the basis of the reality of the fullness of time
and the irruption of God's reign, Jesus summons his listeners, “Repent, and believe the gospel.” “The
calling is to specific changes, to renounce evidences of the domination of sin in our lives and to
accept responsibilities in terms of God's love for our neighbour” (ME 11); after all, metanoia
involves the “total transformation of our attitudes and styles of life” (ME 12; cf Costas 1989:112–
130). To dispense with the centrality of repentance and faith is to divest the gospel of its significance.
Conversion “involves a turning from and a turning to”—“from a life characterized by sin, separation
from God, submission to evil and the unfulfilled potential of God's image, to a new life characterized
by the forgiveness of sins, obedience…renewed fellowship with God in Trinity” (ME 12).
Conversion is, moreover, an ongoing, lifelong process (cf Löffler 1977b:8).
6. Evangelism is always invitation (Löffler 1977a:341; Sundermeier 1986:72, 92). To evangelize
is to communicate joy (Gutiérrez 1988:xxxvii). It conveys a positive message; it is hope we are
holding out to the world (Margull 1962:280). Evangelism should never deteriorate into coaxing, much
less into threat. It is not the same as (1) offering a psychological panacea for people's frustrations and
disappointments, (2) inculcating guilt feelings so that people (in despair, as it were) may turn to
Christ, or (3) scaring people into repentance and conversion with stories about the horrors of hell.
People should turn to God because they are drawn by God's love, not because they are pushed to God
for fear of hell. It is only in the light of our experience of the grace of God in Christ “that we know the
terrible abyss of darkness into which we must fall if we put our trust anywhere but in that grace” (cf
Newbigin 1982:151). As was explained in Chapter 4, it is the “solution” in Christ that reveals to us
the “plight” from which we have been saved.
7. The one who evangelizes is a witness not a judge. This has important consequences for the
way we evaluate our own evangelistic ministry and often facilely divide people into the “saved” and
the “lost.” As Newbigin formulates it,
I can never be so confident of the purity and authenticity of my witness that I can know that the person who rejects my witness
has rejected Jesus. I am witness to him who is both utterly holy and utterly gracious. His holiness and his grace are as far above
my comprehension as they are above that of my hearer (1982:151).

8. Even though we ought to be modest about the character and effectiveness of our witness,
evangelism remains an indispensable ministry. It is not an optional extra but a sacred duty,
“incumbent on (the church)…This message is indeed necessary. It is unique. It cannot be replaced”
(EN 5). It cannot be assumed that the evangelistic dimension of the church's mission is included in all
that the church says and does; it has to be made explicit (Watson 1983a:68f). “Each person is entitled
to hear the Good News” (ME 10).
9. Evangelism is only possible when the community that evangelizes—the church—is a radiant
manifestation of the Christian faith and exhibits an attractive lifestyle. “The medium is the
message” (Marshall McLuhan). In the words of the (British) Nationwide Initiative in Evangelism:
“What we are and do is no less important in this respect than what we say” (NIE 1980:3). If the
church is to impart to the world a message of hope and love, of faith, justice and peace, something of
this should become visible, audible, and tangible in the church itself (cf Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–35). The
witness of life of the believing community prepares the way for the gospel (cf EN 59–61; see also,
once again, the criteria for a missionary church identified by Gensichen 1971:170–172). Where this
is absent the credibility of our evangelism is dangerously impaired. “How many of the millions of
people in the world who are not confessing Jesus Christ have rejected him because of what they saw
in the lives of Christians! Thus the call to conversion should begin with the repentance of those
who do the calling, who issue the invitation” (ME 13—emphasis in the original). These words are
particularly pertinent where a Christian community fails to demonstrate the fact that in Christ God has
shattered all the barriers that divide the human family. In this respect, in particular, the very being of
the church has an evangelistic significance, either positively or negatively (cf Barth 1956:676f, 706f).
10. Evangelism offers people salvation as a present gift and with it assurance of eternal bliss.
People are, even without realizing it, desperately searching for a meaning to life and history; this
impels them to look for a sign of hope amid the widespread fear of global catastrophe and
meaninglessness. We may, through our evangelism, mediate to them “a transcendent and
eschatological salvation, which indeed has its beginning in this life but which is fulfilled in eternity”
(EN 27; cf Memorandum 1982:463).
However, if the offer of all this gets center-stage attention in our evangelism, the gospel is
degraded to a consumer product. It has to be emphasized, therefore, that the personal enjoyment of
salvation never becomes the central theme in biblical conversion stories (cf Barth 1962:561–614).
Where Christians perceive themselves as those enjoying an indescribably magnificent private good
fortune (:567f), Christ is easily reduced to little more than the “Disposer and Distributor” of special
blessings (:595f) and evangelism to an enterprise that fosters the pursuit of pious self-centeredness
(:572). Not that the enjoyment of salvation is wrong, unimportant, or unbiblical; even so, it is almost
incidental and secondary (:572, 593). It is not simply to receive life that people are called to become
Christians, but rather to give life.
11. Evangelism is not proselytism (cf Löffler 1977a:340). At the founding of the Sacra
Congregatio de Propaganda Fidei (1622) it was explicitly stated that the interest of the new
organization would be focused, not on “non-Christians,” but on “non-Catholics”; indeed, until around
1830 its spotlight was on Protestant Europe (Glazik 1984a:29f). Only too often, then, evangelism has
been used as means of reconquering lost ecclesiastical influence, in Catholicism and Protestantism.
Particularly in contexts where the church (or “denomination”) is viewed as made up of individuals
who have made a free choice to join it, there is an implicit (and sometimes explicit) suggestion that
competition is necessary. Thus people in the surrounding community, whether they belong to other
churches or not, are perceived as “prospects” to be won. Much of this reflects the tendency toward
empire-building—the church “cannot resist the temptation to open yet another branch office in an area
that looks promising” (Spong 1982:13). Whether intended or not, this mentality suggests that it is not
by grace, but by becoming adherents of our denomination, that people will be saved.
12. Evangelism is not the same as church extension. During the period that the adage “no
salvation outside the (Catholic) Church” was in vogue, this was the quintessence of evangelism. It is
the view that lies behind the encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae of Pope Pius XI (1926). Evangelism meant
“adding to the Catholic Church the greatest number of newly-baptized”; this happened in stages, via
the catechumenate, the probation period, and the introduction to the liturgical life of the church.
Evangelism became the expansion of the church through increased membership. Conversion was a
numerical affair. Success in evangelism was measured by counting the numbers of baptisms, of
confessions, and of communions (Shorter 1972:2).
Also in Protestantism evangelism was, by and large, understood as church extension. In recent
years this has been true especially of the Church Growth Movement. McGavran pleads for “gospel-
proclaiming, sinner-converting, church-multiplying evangelism” (1983:71; cf 21). Moreover, the
purpose of church growth is further church growth. Those who have become church members should
win others for church membership; this is a main thrust, perhaps the main thrust of the New Testament
(McGavran 1980:426). A “theology of harvest” has to take priority over a “theology of seed-sowing”
(:26–30). Numerical or quantitative growth should have first priority in a world where three billion
people are not Christian. “Resistant” populations constitute a problem for this approach, of course.
Still, McGavran does not plead for complete withdrawal from fields of low receptivity; he adds,
however, that these fields should be occupied lightly and that evangelists should concentrate on
“winnable” populations (:262).
This kind of thinking distorts evangelism, however, not least since reasons why people join the
church may vary greatly and may often have little to do with commitment to what the church is
supposed to stand for. A talk-alike, think-alike, look-alike congregation (Armstrong 1981:26) may
reflect the prevailing culture and be a club for religious folklore rather than an alternative community
in a hostile or compromised environment. This emerges particularly in situations where church
membership is declining and the church, reluctantly, decides that, if it is to stay in business, it had
better resign itself to an evangelistic campaign. The focus in evangelism should, however, not be on
the church but on the irrupting reign of God (cf Snyder 1983:11, 29).
13. To distinguish between evangelism and membership recruitment is not to suggest, though,
that they are disconnected (Watson 1983a:71). After all, “it is at the heart of the Christian mission to
foster the multiplication of local congregations in every human situation” (ME 25). We cannot be
indifferent to numbers, for God is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach
repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). AG 6 therefore rightly includes church planting and growth in its definition
of the goal of mission. The monomaniac rejection of the empirical church in Hoekendijkian and
similar theologies is totally inappropriate. Without the church there can be no evangelism or mission.
Still, as a measure of how effectively and how responsibly a church has evangelized, membership
statistics are less helpful (Watson 1983a:73). As a matter of fact, authentic and costly evangelism may
cause a church's membership to decline rather than increase. Numerical growth is, therefore, in a
sense nothing more than a byproduct when the church is true to its deepest calling. Of greater
importance is organic and incarnational growth.
14. In evangelism, “only people can be addressed and only people can respond,” as WCC
moderator M. M. Thomas said in Nairobi (in WCC 1976:233). Authent ic evangelism thus doubtless
has a personal dimension. The gospel is “the announcement of a personal encounter, mediated by the
Holy Spirit, with the living Christ, receiving his forgiveness and making a personal acceptance of the
call to discipleship” (ME 10). It is inaccurate to argue—as often happens—that individualism is
simply an “invention” of the West. Rather, the Christian gospel of necessity emphasizes personal
responsibility and personal decision; therefore individualism in Western culture is primarily a fruit of
the Christian mission. Rosenkranz (1977:407, drawing on E. E. Hölscher and H. Gollwitzer) argues
that this constitutes the only real revolution in the structure of human nature, since it introduced the
doctrine of the individual worth of every human being; thus, if people today think and act as free and
responsible individuals—a way of thinking that diametrically opposes ancient thought and practice—
it is because of the influence of the gospel.
Since only persons—individuals—can respond to the gospel, it is confusing the issue to talk of
“prophetic evangelism” as the calling of “societies and nations to repentance and conversion”
(Watson 1983b:7) or to say that the “call to conversion, as a call to repentance and obedience, should
also be addressed to nations, groups and families” (ME 12). Principalities and powers, governments
and nations cannot come to faith—only individuals can. So, even if this ministry is necessary and is
an integral part of mission, it is not, strictly speaking, evangelism.
Even so, the gospel is not individualistic. Modern individualism is, to a large extent, a perversion
of the Christian faith's understanding of the centrality and responsibility of the individual. In the wake
of the Enlightenment, and because of its teachings, individuals have become isolated from the
community which gave them birth. In evangelism, this trend has been prominent particularly since the
ministry of D. L. Moody (1837–1899). For him, sin was exclusively an individual affair, with the
sinner standing alone before God—a sinner who, in the democratic United States of Moody's time,
was perfectly able to make up his or her mind and gain victory over sin (cf Marsden 1980:37). Since
the individual was understood to be the basic unit in the work of salvation, the emphasis,
increasingly, was on the saving of individual souls. And biblical sayings such as Matthew 16:26,
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (King James
Version) were interpreted as pointing in this direction. People are, however, never isolated
individuals. They are social beings, who can never be severed from the network of relationships in
which they exist. And the individual's conversion touches all these relationships. Christian Keysser
(1980) recognized this when, during his years in Papua New Guinea, he always emphasized the need
for the social group to be involved in the conversion of every individual.
15. Authentic evangelism is always contextual (Costas 1989:passim). An evangelism which
separates people from their context views the world not as a challenge but as a hindrance, devalues
history, and has eyes only for the “spiritual” or “nonmaterial aspects of life” (H. Lindsell, quoted in
Scott 1980:94), is spurious. The same is true of an evangelism which couches conversion only in
micro-ethical terms, such as regular church attendance, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, and
daily bible reading and prayer (cf Wagner 1979:3; for a critique of this view, cf Scott 1980:156f,
220–222), or limits the evangelistic message to an offer of release from loneliness, peace of mind,
and success in what we undertake (cf Scott 1980:208f). In fact, much so-called evangelism, it
appears, aims at satisfying rather than transforming people. In the West (at least in the past)
Christianity used to be identified with social respectability. Churches had public prestige going for
them. In this, evangelism came to their aid: “Dominant community pressure made church membership
not only a necessity but also the mark of civilization, good manners and decent living” (Spong
1982:12). Much of this mentality had been exported to Africa and other parts of the Third World. The
church was for the upwardly mobile; to become a Christian meant to identify with the ethos and value
system of the aspiring middle class.
All of this is a far cry from authentic evangelism. It led to a conversion to the predominant culture,
not to the Christ of the gospels. In much of the “electronic church” materialism is baptized. The Jesus
of revivalism appears to have more in common with the Chamber of Commerce and the entertainment
world than with a simple cave in Bethlehem or a rugged cross on a barren hill (Armstrong 1981:22,
41, 49). Preachers steer clear of controversial social issues and concentrate on those personal sins of
which most of their enthusiastic listeners are not guilty. However, what criterion decides that racism
and structural injust ice are social issues but pornography and abortion personal? Why is politics
shunned and declared to fall outside of the competence of the evangelist, except when it favors the
position of the privileged in society? How is it that preachers who appear to have an interest only in
the otherworldly destiny of their listeners can be so thoroughly worldly in their ethos and methods?
Of course, to those who are experiencing personal tragedy, emptiness, loneliness, estrangement,
and meaninglessness the gospel does come as peace, comfort, fullness, and joy. But the gospel offers
this only within the context of it being a word about the lordship of Christ in all realms of life, an
authoritative word of hope that the world as we know it will not always be the way it is.
16. Because of this, evangelism cannot be divorced from the preaching and practicing of
justice. This is the flaw in the view according to which evangelism is given absolute priority over
social involvement, or where evangelism is separated from justice, even if it is maintained that,
together with social justice, it constitutes “mission.” If we understand evangelism not just as
recruiting church members, not just as offering individual souls eternal salvation, and not as seeking
to hasten the return of Christ, it cannot be divorced from the larger mission of the church. And even if
we include recruiting of new members and offering eternal salvation in the aim of mission, the
question remains: What are people becoming church members for? What are individuals being saved
for?
In our reflections on Matthew's use of the term “disciple” (Chapter 2), it has been suggested that to
become a disciple of Jesus includes a whole range of commitments. Primarily, it means accepting a
commitment to Jesus and to God's reign. At its heart, Jesus’ invitation to people to follow him and
become his disciples is asking people whom they want to serve. Evangelism is, therefore, a call to
service. This is not to be contrasted with the blessings—including eternal blessings—which the new
convert will receive; as a matter of fact, it is pointless to play the one perspective out against the
other. Still, since it is the perspective on eternal bliss that has usually been emphasized, it is high time
that the perspective of service to the kingdom be stressed as forcefully. An evangelistic invitation
oriented toward discipleship, says Scott,
will include a call to join the living Lord in the work of his kingdom. It will direct attention to the aspirations of ordinary men and
women in society, their dreams of justice, security, full stomachs, human dignity, and opportunities for their children. It will
forthrightly name the “principalities and powers” opposed to the Kingdom (1980:212).

Evangelism, then, means enlisting people for the reign of God, liberating them from themselves,
their sins, and their entanglements, so that they will be free for God and neighbor. It calls individuals
to a life of openness, vulnerability, wholeness, and love (cf Spong 1982:15; Snyder 1983:146). To
win people to Jesus is to win their allegiance to God's priorities. God wills not only that we be
rescued from hell and redeemed for heaven, but also that within us—and through our ministry also in
society around us—the “fullness of Christ” be re-created, the image of God be restored in our lives
and relationships. LC 4 puts it well:
In issuing the gospel invitation we have no liberty to conceal the cost of discipleship. Jesus still calls all who would follow him to
deny themselves, take up their cross, and identify themselves with his new community.

Evangelism, then, is calling people to mission.

17. Evangelism is not a mechanism to hasten the return of Christ, as some suggest (for example
Johnston 1978:52). The ushering in of the eschaton has been an important missionary motif since the
last decades of the nineteenth century. Agencies like the China Inland Mission (Hudson Taylor) and
the Regions Beyond Missionary Union (Grattan Guinness) were formed because their founders
believed—on the basis of a biblicist interpretation of Matthew 24:14—that the return of Christ was
dependent on the completion of the proclamation of the gospel to all people worldwide (cf Beaver
1961). Johnson (1988) traces the waxing enthusiasm, particularly between 1887 and 1893, for the
idea of the evangelization of the entire world before the year 1900 (:24–44), but also the decline after
1893, when it had become clear that the goal was unattainable (:45–50). Most of the leading figures
in the movement, such as A. T. Pierson, A. B. Simpson, and H. Grattan Guinness, defined evangelism
strictly in individualistic and verbalistic categories and shunned any idea of missionaries getting
involved in other projects or in the structures of society (:53–55). The mere preaching of the word, it
was believed, would bring the world's millions into the fold of the redeemed and hasten Christ's
second coming.
Barrett and Reapsome (1988) calculate that there have, in fact, been 788 “global plans” to
evangelize the world since the beginning of the Christian era, and that most of these were intimately
linked to eschatological expectations. The slogan, “the evangelization of the world in this
generation,” popularized by John R. Mott around the beginning of the twentieth century, did not
specifically interpret evangelism as ushering in the parousia, but certainly had apocalyptic overtones.
Of the almost 800 plans identified by Barrett and Reapsome, only some 250 were still alive as of
1988. But as the third millennium draws nearer, more and more new plans are being launched, and
virtually all of them link evangelism with the parousia. Frequently expectations are expressed in
premillennialist terms. Contemporary evangelical literature vibrates with contributions on “world
evangelization before the year 2000.” Modern technologies, notably computers, are utilized not only
to assess the gigantic dimensions of the task, but also to devise effective strategies. One such plan,
DAWN (Discipling A Whole Nation), proceeds from the premise that we need a church for every
thousand people in order to evangelize the world effectively; since there will be about seven billion
people by the year 2000, the DAWN strategy is to facilitate the planting of churches so as to reach a
total of seven million by the end of the century (Montgomery 1989). Various conferences devote their
attention to a similar goal. In 1980 a “World Consultation on Frontier Missions” was held in
Edinburgh; it formulated its goal as “A Church for Every People by the Year 2000.” A similar
conference was held in Sao Paulo in 1987, with a focus largely, but not exclusively, on Latin
America. In January 1989 a “Global Consultation on World Evangelization by AD 2000 and Beyond”
convened in Singapore. And the program of Lausanne II, the conference of the Lausanne Committee
for World Evangelization held in Manila in July 1989, included an “AD 2000 Track.”17
As Glasser (1989) has argued, however, this entire project, and its fascination with the year 2000,
is highly questionable. It proceeds from the doubtful assumptions that the world economy will
become ever more buoyant, that para-church income will skyrocket, and that the main bearers of
mission in the coming decades will still be Western-type mission agencies (:6). More important,
however, are the theological flaws in this philosophy, particularly that this kind of evangelism
appears deliberately to ignore the growing poverty and injustice in the world.
18. Evangelism is not only verbal proclamation (as Watson 1983b:6f suggests; cf McGavran
1983:190). Even so, evangelism does have an inescapable verbal dimension. In a society marked by
relativism and agnosticism it is necessary to name the Name of the One in whom we believe.
Christians are challenged to give an account of the hope that is in them (cf 1 Pet 3:15); their lives are
not sufficiently transparent for others to be able to recognize whence that hope comes.
There is no single way to witness to Christ, however. The word may therefore never be divorced
from the deed, the example, the “Christian presence,” the witness of life. It is the “Word made flesh”
that is the gospel. The deed without the word is dumb; the word without the deed is empty. Words
interpret deeds and deeds validate words, which does not mean that every deed must have a word
attached to it, nor every word a deed (Newbigin 1982:146–149; Jongeneel 1986:8).
If we now, finally, attempt a definition of evangelism, it is important that we should not delineate
the content of our evangelism too sharply, too precisely, and too self-confidently (R. Jones, in NIE
1980:28). We cannot capture the evangel and package it in four or five “principles.” There is no
universally applicable master plan for evangelism, no definitive list of truths people only have to
embrace in order to be saved. We may never limit the gospel to our understanding of God and of
salvation. We can only witness in humble boldness and bold humility to our understanding of that
gospel. Still, “as we humbly but joyfully reflect God's reconciling love for all humanity, in friendship
and mutual respect, the Holy Spirit uses our witness and service to make God known” (NIE 1980:3).
In awareness of the essentially preliminary nature of our evangelistic ministry, yet at the same time
conscious of the inescapable necessity to be involved in this ministry, we may, then, summarize
evangelism as that dimension and activity of the church's mission which, by word and deed and in the
light of particular conditions and a particular context, offers every person and community,
everywhere, a valid opportunity to be directly challenged to a radical reorientation of their lives, a
reorientation which involves such things as deliverance from slavery to the word and its powers;
embracing Christ as Savior and Lord; becoming a living member of his community, the church; being
enlisted into his service of reconciliation, peace, and justice on earth; and being committed to God's
purpose of placing all things under the rule of Christ.

MISSION AS CONTEXTUALIZATION
The Genesis of Contextual Theology
The word “contextualization” was first coined in the early 1970s, in the circles of the Theological
Education Fund, with a view particularly to the task of the education and formation of people for the
church's ministry (cf Ukpong 1987:163). It soon caught on and became a blanket term for a variety of
theological models. Ukpong (1987:163–168; cf Schreiter 1985:6–16; Waldenfels 1987) identifies
two major types of contextual theology, namely, the indigenization model and the socio-economic
model. Each of these can again be divided into two subtypes: the indigenization motif presents itself
either as a translation or as an inculturation model; the socio-economic pattern of contextualization
can be evolutionary (political theology and the theology of development) or revolutionary (liberation
theology, black theology, feminist theology, etc). In what follows, this broad definition of contextual
theology will be used and its nature and qualities as manifestation of a new paradigm highlighted. I
shall, however, qualify Ukpong's categorization somewhat. In my view, only the inculturation model
in the first type and only the revolutionary model in the second qualify as contextual theologies
proper. In two subsequent sections liberation theology and inculturation will be reviewed.
A basic argument of this book has been that, from the very beginning, the missionary message of
the Christian church incarnated itself in the life and world of those who had embraced it. It is,
however, only fairly recently that this essentially contextual nature of the faith has been recognized.
For many centuries every deviation from what any group declared to be the orthodox faith was
viewed in terms of heterodoxy, even heresy. This was the case particularly after the Christian church
became established in the Roman Empire. Arianism, Donatism, Pelagianism, Nestorianism,
Monophysitism, and numerous similar movements were all regarded as doctrinally heterodox and
their adherents excommunicated, persecuted, or banned. The role of cultural, political, and social
factors in the genesis of such movements was not recognized. The same happened at the occasion of
the Great Schism in the year 1054; henceforth, the Eastern and Western churches would declare each
other to be theologically unorthodox. History repeated itself in the sixteenth century when, after the
Reformation, Protestants and Catholics denied each other the epithet “Christian.” In subsequent
centuries the formulations of the Council of Trent and the various Protestant confessions were
employed as shibboleths to determine the difference between acceptable and unacceptable creedal
formulations.
Under the influence of the Greek spirit ideas and principles were considered to be prior to and
more important than their “application.” Such an application was both a second and a secondary step
and served to confirm and legitimize the idea or principle, which was understood to be both
suprahistorical and supracultural. Churches arrogated to themselves the right to determine what the
“objective” truth of the Bible was and to direct the application of this timeless truth to the everyday
life of believers. With the advent of the Enlightenment this approach received a new lease of life. In
the Kantian paradigm, for instance, “pure” or “theoretical” reason was superior to “practical reason.”
The Baconian view gave birth to a complementary approach. Here, the earlier deductive thinking
made way for an inductive or empirical method in science. Instead of starting from classically
derived principles and theories one now started with observation. In ecclesial and theological circles
where this method was adopted (and which, in the course of time, was termed liberal) creeds and
dogmas were no longer judged on the basis of their conformity to eternal truth but in terms of their
usefulness (cf Stackhouse 1988:92f). “Churches,” in the sense of bodies which claim an ultimate and
uncontestable correspondence between their own teachings and the divine revelation, became
“denominations,” bodies of like-minded individuals, each of which magnanimously conceded to
others the right to exist and practice its faith in the way it chooses. Denominations coexisted
peacefully with one another. Debates no longer centered around what was true, but around what were
practically (more specifically, pragmatically) the right things to do. The Christian faith was
preferred not because it was the only true religion, but because it was manifestly the best (cf Dennis
1897, 1899, 1906).
Both these approaches were, each in its own way, attempts at salvaging theology as “science.” For
both, theology remained rational knowledge. Both were responses to the challenge of the
Enlightenment and, more particularly, to the growing awareness of the “ugly ditch” (G. E. Lessing)
that had opened between the time and culture of the Bible and the fundamentally different modern
world. Each experienced ongoing history as a threat, since the distance between the then and the now
was increasingly becoming unbridgeable. At the same time, no effort was spared to bridge the “ugly
ditch.” Indefatigably biblical scholars researched the ancient texts in an attempt to uncover the mind
of the author and, in this way, put the modern reader in the immediate company of the original author,
as it were, so that he or she may hear the author unhampered by the events of the intervening history.
In true Enlightenment fashion, science was understood to be cumulative; if scholars could only persist
hard enough and amass more and more data, they would reach the point where the original text and the
intention of the original author would be established beyond any reasonable doubt.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) was one of the first theologians to realize that something
was fundamentally wrong with this entire modus operandi. He interpreted the Protestant Reformation
not as an attempt at restoring the primitive or apostolic church. What has once been cannot simply be
brought back in a later period. The Christian church is always in the process of becoming; the church
of the present is both the product of the past and the seed of the future. For this reason, theology must
not be pursued as an attempt at reconstructing the pristine past and its truths; rather, theology is a
reflection on the church's own life and experience (for references, cf Gerrish 1984:194–196, 201).
Thus Schleiermacher pioneered the view that all theology was influenced, if not determined, by
the context in which it had evolved. There never was a “pure” message, supracultural and
suprahistorical. It was impossible to penetrate to a residue of Christian faith that was not already, in a
sense, interpretation. Every text, it was now recognized, had a peculiar Sitz im Leben, which the
scholar had to determine, particularly with the aid of form criticism. During the nineteenth century
and, more particularly, in the twentieth, the recognition of the way in which theology was conditioned
by its environment became the received view in critical theological circles. Chapters 1 to 4 of this
study have shown that this was true even of the earliest New Testament writings themselves.
Neither Schleiermacher nor the form critics, such as Bultmann, were able to execute the next step,
however. They did not realize that their own interpretations were as parochial and as conditioned by
their context as those they were criticizing. Their explications of the biblical texts thus,
unconsciously, served to legitimize predetermined views and positions. Martin (1987:379f) explains
the problem in respect to professional theologians such as those who are members of the Society for
New Testament Studies. In conducting its “business,” the SNTS preserves a fair degree of
equilibrium, with only minor fluctuations, and is happy with the academic standards it is maintaining.
This is so mainly because of its composition: its membership is predominantly male and white. If,
however, the SNTS would admit to its ranks a large membership of feminist interpreters, of Jewish
scholars, or of liberation theology exponents, this would gradually introduce a major flux in the
system.
Where this state of affairs is recognized, scholars may succeed in moving beyond the important
accomplishments of the historical-critical method and of the form and redaction critics of the middle
twentieth century. Paul Ricoeur and other recent literary critics have, in a great variety of ways,
advanced the view that every text is an interpreted text and that, in a sense, the reader “creates” the
text when she or he reads it. The text is not only “out there,” waiting to be interpreted; the text
“becomes” as we engage with it. And yet, even this new hermeneutic approach is not going far
enough. Interpreting a text is not only a literary exercise; it is also a social, economic, and political
exercise. Our entire context comes into play when we interpret a biblical text. One therefore has to
concede that all theology (or sociology, political theory, etc) is, by its very nature, contextual.
The real breakthrough in this respect came with the birth of Third-World theologies in their
various forms. This was perceived to be so pivotal an event that Segundo (1976) referred to it as “the
liberation of theology.” Contextual theology truly represents a paradigm shift in theological thinking
(cf Frostin 1988:1–26).
The Epistemological Break
Contextual theologies claim that they constitute an epistemological break when compared with
traditional theologies. Whereas, at least since the time of Constantine, theology was conducted from
above as an elitist enterprise (except in the case of minority Christian communities, commonly
referred to as sects), its main source (apart from Scripture and tradition) was philosophy, and its
main interlocutor the educated non-believer, contextual theology is theology “from below,” “from the
underside of history,” its main source (apart from Scripture and tradition) is the social sciences, and
its main interlocutor the poor or the culturally marginalized (cf also Frostin 1988:6f).
Equally important in the new epistemology is the emphasis on the priority of praxis. Theology,
says Gutiérrez, is “critical reflection on Christian praxis in the light of the word of God” (1988:xxix)
or “critical reflection on the word of God received in the church” (:xxxiii). Sergio Torres explains the
difference between the traditional Western epistemology and the emerging epistemology in the
following way:
The traditional way of knowing considers the truth as the conformity of the mind to a given object, a part of Greek influence in
the western philosophical tradition. Such a concept of truth only conforms to and legitimizes the world as it now exists. But there
is another way of knowing the truth—a dialectical one. In this case, the world is not a static object that the human mind
confronts and attempts to understand; rather, the world is an unfinished project being built. Knowledge is not the conformity of
the mind to the given, but an immersion in this process of transformation and construction of a new world (in Appiah-Kubi &
Torres 1979:5).

The following features of the new epistemology emerge from the above programmatic statement:
First, there is a profound suspicion that not only Western science and Western philosophy, but also
Western theology, whether conservative or liberal, in spite of (or because of?) their claim that
knowledge was neutral, were actually designed to serve the interests of the West, more particularly to
legitimize “the world as it now exists.” Nietzsche's “hermeneutics of suspicion” is here radicalized
and applied particularly to Western scholarship in all its forms since it has developed into a rationale
for imperialistic domination (cf Segundo 1976). Even where this has happened unintentionally, or
“innocently,” it is time to say farewell to this kind of innocence (cf the title of Boesak 1977), since it
is nothing but pseudoinnocence (see also Frostin 1988:151–169).
Second, the new epistemology refuses to endorse the idea of the world as a static object which
only has to be explained. Like Marx, it says, “The philosophers have only tried to interpret the world;
the point, however, is to change it.” It is history and the human and physical world that have to be
taken seriously, not metahistory or metaphysics.
Implicit in Torres's statement, and worked out in great detail by many contextual theologians is,
third, an emphasis on commitment as “the first act of theology” (Torres and Fabella 1978:269)—
more specifically, commitment to the poor and marginalized. The point of departure is therefore
orthopraxis, not orthodoxy. Orthopraxis, says Lamb,
aims at transforming human history, redeeming it through a knowledge born of subject-empowering, life-giving love, which heals
the biases needlessly victimizing millions of our brothers and sisters. Vox victimarum vox Dei. The cries of the victims are the
voice of God. To the extent that those cries are not heard above the din of our political, cultural, economic, social, and ecclesial
celebrations or bickerings, we have already begun a descent into hell (1982:22f).

Fourth, in this paradigm the theologian can no longer be “a lonely bird on the rooftop” (Barth
1933:40), who surveys and evaluates this world and its agony; he or she can only theologize credibly
if it is done with those who suffer.
Fifth, then, the emphasis is on doing theology. The universal claim of the hermeneutic of language
has to be challenged by a hermeneutic of the deed, since doing is more important than knowing or
speaking. In the Scriptures it is the doers who are blessed (cf Míguez Bonino 1975:27–41). There is,
in fact, “no knowledge except in action itself, in the process of transforming the world through
participation in history” (:88).
Last, these priorities are worked out in contextual theology by means of a hermeneutical circle (or,
better, circulation) (cf Segundo l976:7–38). The circulation begins with experience, with praxis,
which, in the case of most people in the Third World or those on the periphery of power in the First
World and the Second World, is an experience of marginalization. Allan Boesak says, “The black
experience provides the framework within which blacks understand the revelation of God in Jesus
Christ. No more, no less” (1977:16). The Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians
(EATWOT) concurs: “The experience of the Third World as a source of theology must be taken
seriously” (Fabella and Torres 1983:200).
From praxis or experience the hermeneutic circulation proceeds to reflection as a second (not a
secondary—cf Gutiérrez 1988:xxxiii) act of theology. The traditional sequence, in which theoria is
elevated over praxis, is here turned upside down. This does not, of course, imply a rejection of
theoria. Ideally, there should be a dialectic relationship between theory and praxis. “Faith and the
concrete, historical mission of the church are mutually dependent” (Rütti 1972:240—my translation).
The relationship between theory and praxis is not one of subject to object, but one of intersubjectivity
(cf Nel 1988:184). Where this occurs, contextual theology is a clear example of the paradigm that is
emerging in all disciplines. Traditionally, thought and reason were firmly placed on the one side and
being and action on the other. But, as Kuhn (1970) has argued, in the new paradigm thought is no
longer conceived to be prior to being or reason to action; rather, they stand and fall together (cf Lugg
1987:179–181). In the best of contextual theologies it is therefore no longer possible to juxtapose
theory and praxis, orthodoxy and orthopraxis: “Orthopraxis and orthodoxy need one another, and each
is adversely affected when sight is lost of the other” (Gutiérrez 1988:xxxiv). Or as Samuel Rayan puts
it: “In our methodology, practice and theory, action and reflection, discussion and prayer, movement
and silence, social analysis and religious hermeneutics, involvement and contemplation, constitute a
single process” (quoted in Fabella and Torres 1983:xvii).
The Ambiguities of Contextualization
There can be no doubt that the contextualization project is essentially legitimate, given the situation in
which many contextual theologians find themselves. “The theologians of liberation,” says Dapper
(1979:92—my translation), “live in an emergency situation. They are involved in mission, speak,
preach, and act in an emergency situation. They no longer have any need of deliberating what should
happen in case of an emergency.” In light of this, “there is no socially and politically neutral theology;
in the struggle for life and against death, theology must take sides” (Míguez Bonino 1980:1155).
Still, some ambiguities remain, particularly insofar as there is a tendency in contextual theology to
overreact in one of the two manners identified in Chapter 11 of this study—in this case, to make a
clean break with the past and deny continuity with one's theological and ecclesial ancestry. Let me try
to explain.
1. Mission as contextualization is an affirmation that God has turned toward the world (cf the
title of Schmitz 1971). As soon as we talk about God, the world as theater of his activity is already
included in the discussion (Hoekendijk 1967a:344). The historical world situation is not merely an
exterior condition for the church's mission; rather, it ought to be incorporated as a constitutive element
into our understanding of mission, its aim and its organization (Rütti 1972:231). Such a posture is in
full accord with Jesus’ understanding of his mission, as reflected in our gospels; he did not soar off
into heavenly heights but immersed himself into the altogether real circumstances of the poor, the
captives, the blind, the oppressed (cf Lk 4:18f). Today, too, Christ is where the hungry and the sick
are, the exploited and the marginalized. The power of his resurrection propels human history toward
the end, under the banner “Behold, I make all things new!” (Rev 21:5). Like its Lord, the church-in-
mission must take sides, for life and against death, for justice and against oppression.
We therefore have to adopt a firm stand against every attempt at a non-or under-contextualized
approach in mission. As Manfred Linz (1964) has illustrated in his investigation into German sermons
on four so-called “missionary texts,” many sermons ignore the world completely, even where the
biblical text clearly centers on the world. The sermons only serve to strengthen the faith of the
listeners and create in them some interest for a mission understood as calling people out of the world.
Sin and evil in the world render the situation so hopeless that all we can do is build dikes against
them and their destructive effects. But this kind of thinking spawns pious self-sufficiency, hypocrisy, a
retreat from responsibility toward other people and toward society, and a condescending offer of the
salvation we already possess to the “poor, benighted heathen” (cf Günther 1967:21f).
To see an antithesis between the glorification of God and the search for a truly human life on earth
is, however, contrary to the gospel. Much talk about “leaving everything to God” is nothing but an
escape from our responsibilities in the world. Here, a docetic Christology reigns supreme. Christ's
incarnation is not taken seriously. The humanity of Christ is a cloak behind which the hidden God
alone deals with us (Wiedenmann 1965:199).
This does not mean that God is to be identified with the historical process. Where this happens,
God's will and power too easily become identified with the will and power of Christians and with
the social processes they initiate. It is difficult, however, if not impossible, says Niebuhr (1959:9f) to
fit Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus, and others into a system determined by social factors; there is in
Christianity a revolutionary and creative strain which does not allow it to be reduced to a human,
albeit Christian, project. The “new creation” Paul talks about irrupts not so much because of
Christian involvement in history; it comes about through Christ's work of reconciliation (cf 2 Cor
5:17), that is, primarily through God's intervention (see also Günther 1967:20). Some duality between
God and the world remains. Precisely this creates the “identity-involvement dilemma” to which
Moltmann (1975:1; cf also Küng 1984:70–75) refers; it is of the essence of the Christian faith that,
from its birth, it again and again had to seek, on the one hand, how to be relevant to and involved in
the world and, on the other, how to maintain its identity in Christ. These two are never unrelated;
neither are they the same. Christians find their identity in the cross of Christ, which separates them
from superstition and unbelief but also from every other religion and ideology; they find their
relevance in the hope for the reign of the Crucified One by taking their stand resolutely with those
who suffer and are oppressed and by mediating hope for liberation and salvation to them (Moltmann
1975:4).
2. Mission as contextualization involves the construction of a variety of “local theologies” (cf
Schreiter 1985). Hiebert (1987:104–106) refers to the period from 1800 to 1950 as the “era of
noncontextualization” as far as Protestant missions are concerned. It was hardly any different in
Catholic missions. In each case theology (singular) had been defined once and for all and now simply
had to be “indigenized” in Third-World cultures, without, however, surrendering any of its essence.
Western theology had universal validity, not least since it was the dominant theology (cf Frostin
1985:141; 1988:23; Nolan 1988:15). The Christian faith was based on eternal, unalterable truth,
which had already been stated in its final form, for instance in ecclesiastical confessions and
policies. Ostensibly, of course, Protestants did not ascribe the same status to their traditions and
creeds as they did to Scripture. Even so, the sixteenth-century Protestant confessions were soon
treated as universals, valid in all times and settings and, through the missionary enterprise, exported
in their unaltered—and unalterable—forms to the younger churches in the Third World (cf Conn
1983:17).
Contextualization, on the other hand, suggests the experimental and contingent nature of all
theology. Contextual theologians therefore, rightly, refrain from writing “systematic theologies” where
everything fits into an all-encompassing and eternally valid system (cf Míguez Bonino 1980:1154).
We need an experimental theology in which an ongoing dialogue is taking place between text and
context, a theology which, in the nature of the case, remains provisional and hypothetical (Rütti
1972:244–249).
 This should not, however, lead to an uncritical celebration of an infinite number of contextual and
often mutually exclusive theologies. This danger—the danger of relativism—is present not only in the
Third World but also, for instance, in Western historical-critical biblical scholarship, where one
sometimes gets the impression that each scriptural text is viewed as being so deeply shaped by its
context that it actually constitutes an isolated theological world in itself. Such historicism and
unbridled relativism, however, is inadmissible. There are faith traditions which all Christians share
and which should be respected and preserved. We therefore—along with affirming the essentially
contextual nature of all theology—also have to affirm the universal and context-transcending
dimensions of theology. The purely contingent perspectives in theology need to be counterbalanced by
an emphasis on the metatheological perspectives (for a discussion of the difference between and
interrelatedness of these perspectives in theology and culture, cf Kraft 1981:291–300).
The best contextual theologies indeed hold on to this dialectic relationship. In the new introduction
to A Theology of Liberation, Gutiérrez not only stresses his union with and allegiance to the Catholic
Church worldwide, but also emphasizes that particularity does not mean isolation and that any
theology is a discourse about a universal message (1988:xxxvi). Every theologia localis should
therefore challenge and fecundate the theologia oecumenica, and the latter, similarly, enrich and
broaden the perspective of the former. Naturally, this does not only mean that Third-World Christians
should study Western theology, but also that First-World Christians should study Third-World
theologies. The former has always been taken for granted; the latter, however, not. Still, this is
changing (even if it is happening too slowly—cf Frostin 1988:24). A generation or so ago, no
theological institution in the West would have deemed it necessary to offer courses on theological
developments in the Third World; today more and more of them have integrated such courses into
their curricula—not as interesting oddities but as an essential dimension of theological education.
3. There is not only the danger of relativism, where each context forges its own theology, tailor-
made for that specific context, but also the danger of absolutism of contextualism. This is, in fact,
what has happened in Western missionary outreach where theology, contextualized in the West, was in
essence elevated to gospel status and exported to other continents as a package deal. Contextualism
thus means universalizing one's own theological position, making it applicable to everybody and
demanding that others submit to it. If Western theology has not been immune to this tendency, neither
are Third-World contextual theologies. A new imperialism in theology then simply replaces the old.
During the Melbourne Conference of CWME (1980), for instance, Latin American spokespersons
were inclined to promulgate their peculiar brand of contextual theology as having universal validity.
Delegates from other Third-World situations did not always take kindly to this. The Christian
Conference of Asia, for instance, argued that it would be inappropriate if Latin American liberation
theology were simply to
take the place of western theology in Asia. Not because we do not stand in need of liberation. Simply because the liberation we
must have is from our captivities, and for such liberation we need other perspectives and other sensitivities.18

4. We have to look at this entire issue from yet another angle, that of “reading the signs of the
times,” an expression that has invaded contemporary ecclesiastical language (cf Gómez
1989:365). There can be no doubt that such an enterprise has profound validity. Like the other Semitic
religions, it is innate to Christianity to take history seriously as the arena of God's activity—as has
also been argued above. Such an affirmation then begs the question how we are to interpret God's
action in history and so learn to commit ourselves to participation in this. Which are the signs in
human history that reveal God's will and God's presence? How do we identify God's vestigia, God's
footprints in the world? This is an enterprise fraught with danger on all sides, but one of which we
cannot absolve ourselves (cf Berkhof 1966:197–205; Gómez 1989:passim).
The first and perhaps most vexing problem is that, with the benefit of hindsight, we can now
establish that the signs of the times have often been misread in the past. There was a time when the
“benevolent colonialism” of the West was widely viewed—to some extent even by the colonized—as
a sign of God's providential intervention in history. For many decades the policy of separate
development—apartheid—was hailed by serious Christians in South Africa as a just and God-willed
solution to that country's problems. The same was true of Nationalism Socialism in Germany, where
the Deutsche Wende (“German turning point”) of 1933 was applauded unreservedly by many
Christians as proof of divine intervention and favor. In the 1960s secularism was similarly embraced
by Mesthene, Harvey Cox, van Leeuwen, and many others. Again, many Christians saw political
events and developments in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and other socialist countries as divine
signs of the times (one may, for instance, refer to the fascination with Cuba among members of a
Nicaraguan community of campesinos, as it emerges from Cardenal 1976:49, 64). Today, all of these
signs of the times have been discredited, to the point of being an acute embarrassment to those who
hailed them so enthusiastically. Compassion and commitment, apparently, are no guarantee that one
will not produce bad sociology, practice poor politics, and pursue debatable historical analysis (cf
Stackhouse 1988:95).
The problem seems to be that Christians tend to sacralize “the sociological forces of history that
are dominant at any particular time, regarding them as inexorable works of providence and even of
redemption” (Knapp 1977:161). Examples abound. Speaking at the CWME Conference in Melbourne
(1980), Julia Esquivel saw in the victory of the people of Nicaragua a “glorious experience of the
resurrection of Christ”; Israel en route from Egyptian slavery “may for us today mean Zimbabwe, El
Salvador, Nicaragua or Guatemala.” Again, at the San Antonio Meeting of CWME (1989), it was
stated without qualification in Section II.6: “The rising up of the people against injustice is the
creative power of God for the people and for the whole world…The acts of the people become God's
mission for justice through creative power” (WCC 1990:40). Albert Nolan (1988:166) writes in
similar vein about the struggle of the South African people against an oppressive system: “The power
of the people that is manifested in the struggle is indeed the power of God…What the system is up
against now is not ‘flesh and blood’ but the almighty power of God.”19
The situation is further compounded when exponents of contextualization claim a special or
privileged knowledge about God's will and declare those who do not agree with them as suffering
from “false consciousness.” Their own clairvoyance, on the other hand, equips them with the ability
to know exactly not only what God's will is, but also what will happen in the future. With reference to
South Africa, for instance, Nolan (1988:144; cf 184) avers “that we can be quite sure that our future
will not be oppressive and alienating.” The one thing South Africans need not fear “is the kind of
take-over whereby another group of people simply replaces the present rulers and maintains the same
type of system…That possibility is gone forever.”
Contextual theology is right in stressing the need for a “hermeneutic of suspicion,” particularly as
concerns the religion of the ruling classes. The danger in this is, however, “that suspecting tends to
become an end in itself” (Martin 1987:381). Where this happens, theological conversation becomes
“less and less a dialogue about the most important questions and more and more a power struggle
about who is to be allowed to speak” (Stackhouse 1988:22f). Only those who have access to
“privileged knowledge” may interpret the context and are able to say what the gospel for the context
is. In this paradigm, anything “non-victims” think is irremediably tainted; if they do not immediately
endorse a particular orthopraxis, they are unofficially excommunicated (because of their “false
consciousness”) and judged to be beyond the pale of God's justice (:102f, 186).
This approach ends up having a low view of the importance of text, as coming from outside the
context (Stackhouse 1988:38). The very idea that texts can judge contexts is, in fact, methodically
doubted (:27). The message of the gospel is not viewed as something that we bring to contexts but as
something that we derive from contexts (:81). “You do not incarnate good news into a situation, good
news arises out of the situation,” writes Nolan (1988:27); after all, “the prophets did not ‘apply’ their
prophetic message to their times, they had it revealed to them through the signs of the times.”
The problem, however, is that “facts” always remain ambiguous. It isn't the facts of history that
reveal where God is at work, but the facts illuminated by the gospel. According to GS 4, the church,
in reading the signs of the times, is to interpret them in the light of the gospel (cf Waldenfels
1987:227). In all major ecclesial traditions—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—people look not
only at where they are at the present moment, but also at where they come from. They look for a real,
reliable, and universal guide to the truth and justice of God, to apply as criterion in evaluating the
context. This means that it is the gospel which is the norma normans, the “norming norm.” Our
reading of the context is also a norm, but in a derived sense; it is the norma normata, the “normed
norm” (Küng 1987:151). Of course, the gospel can only be read from and make sense in our present
context, and yet to posit it as criterion means that it may, and often does, critique the context and our
reading of it.
There is no doubt, then. We have to interpret the “signs of the times.” Our interpretations of the
signs only have relative validity, however, and they involve tremendous risks. Matthew's parables of
the reign of God emphasize the need for watching (Mt 25). Watching flows from not knowing; at the
same time, however, watching is a form of interpreting signs (Berkhof 1966:187f), at the risk of
interpreting them incorrectly. Our initial assumptions may be erroneous; we could have asked
completely inappropriate questions and looked for the wrong clues. And yet, we are not without a
compass. We are given some crucial guidelines, some lodestars which indicate God's will and
presence in the context. Where people are experiencing and working for justice, freedom, community,
reconciliation, unity, and truth, in a spirit of love and selflessness, we may dare to see God at work.
Wherever people are being enslaved, enmity between humans is fanned, and mutual accountability is
denied in a spirit of individual or communal self-centrism, we may identify the counter-forces of
God's reign at work (cf Rütti 1972:231, 241; Lochman 1986:71). This enables us to take courage and
make decisions, even if they remain relative in nature (Berkhof 1966:204), since our judgments do not
coincide with God's final judgment (:199f). Even if we are not equipped to decide between absolute
right and absolute wrong, we should be able to distinguish between shades of grey and to choose “for
the light grey and against the dark grey” (:200).
5. In spite of the undeniably crucial nature and role of the context, then, it is not to be taken as
the sole and basic authority for theological reflection (cf also Stackhouse 1988:26). Praxis can
mean too many things (:91). So, even if it may be very bad form in some circles today to raise any
questions about the absolute priority of praxis (:96), the fact of the matter is that there is no praxis
without theory, even where the theory is not spelled out.
For this reason, praxis needs the critical control of theory—in our case, a critical theology of
mission, which is dependent upon the context without, however, elevating operational effectiveness to
the highest norm. The dynamics of particular contexts always involve “abstract” issues of truth and
justice, “abstract” metaphysical-moral visions, and “theoretical” questions of epistemology
(Stackhouse 1988:11). All praxis is dependent on “a quite specific, highly schematized and synthetic,
social and historical dogma” and demands “a previous, and a rather elaborate, theoria about what is
true and just” (:96; cf 103). The issue, therefore, is less one of the primacy of praxis over theory than
it is one of “which theoria is sufficiently true and just that praxis ought to be carried out in its
service” (:98). There is a legitimate suspicion today of the positing of a doctrinally “orthodox”
position and an immutable depositum fidei; still, where some such agreed-upon faith tradition is
completely absent, contextualization just spawns new sects of fideist politics (:103) and renders
theological discourse utterly useless (:102f).
6. Stackhouse has argued that we are distorting the entire contextualization debate if we
interpret it only as a problem of the relationship between praxis and theory. We also need the
dimension of poiesis, which he defines as the “imaginative creation or representation of evocative
images” (1988:85; cf 104). People do not only need truth (theory) and justice (praxis); they also need
beauty, the rich resources of symbol, piety, worship, love, awe, and mystery. Only too often, in the
tug-of-war between the priority of truth and the priority of justice, this dimension gets lost. In a
profound sense, Niebuhr (1960:75) is correct: “Love demands more than justice”; indeed, it signifies
more than truth. Of faith, hope, and love, love is the greatest—but, of course, it may never be
divorced from the other two.
7. The best models of contextual theology succeed in holding together in creative tension
theoria, praxis, andpoiesis—or, if one wishes, faith, hope, and love. This is another way of defining
the missionary nature of the Christian faith, which seeks to combine the three dimensions. Like the
other great missionary religions of the world, says Stackhouse, Christianity holds
to some great “unveiling” of ultimate truth believed to be of universal import. This “unveiling” induces a passion for transcendent
justice; it frees adherents from localistic practices, from the absolute claims of contextual loyalties, and from conventional social
conditions. It induces a certain “homelessness,” a divine alienation—a willingness to adopt practices that are more just than what
may be found at home, an eagerness to bring all other individuals into contact with this new truth, a desire to carry the universal
message to peoples and nations who do not yet know of it and to transform personal identity and whole societies on the basis of
its justice (1988:189).

It goes without saying that not every manifestation of contextual theology is guilty of any or all of
the overreactions discussed above. Still, they all remain a constant danger to every (legitimate!)
attempt at allowing the context to determine the nature and content of theology for that context. With
this in mind, we now turn, consecutively, to liberation theology and to inculturation.

MISSION AS LIBERATION
From Development to Liberation
In this section I will continue my reflections on mission as contextualization, sharpening the focus to
explore the nature of liberation theology as one of the most dramatic illustrations of the fundamental
paradigm shift that is currently taking place in mission thinking and practice.
The theology of liberation is a multifaceted phenomenon, manifesting itself as black, Hispanic, and
Amerindian theologies in the United States, as Latin American theology, and as feminist theology,
South African black theology, and various analogous theological movements in other parts of Africa,
Asia, and the South Pacific. One could certainly also categorize the various theologies of
inculturation as liberation theologies; at the same time, the movements we are discussing here are
sufficiently different from the theologies of inculturation, which will be surveyed in the following
section, to warrant separate treatment.
For all intents and purposes, all theologies of liberation and of inculturation, except some feminist
theologies, are Third-World theologies or theologies of the Third World within the First World. They
have their primary focus in EATWOT (the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians),
which was founded in Dar es Salaam in 1976. The label Third World was consciously chosen; it
expresses the experience of those who feel that they are being treated as third-class people and
exploited by the powers of the First and Second Worlds. Most EATWOT members would therefore
reject the term “Two-Thirds World,” increasingly common in evangelical circles, since it only
reflects the geographical size and population of the Third World, not its political and socioeconomic
position at the “underside of history” (cf Fabella and Torres 1983:xii).
To a significant extent, theologies of liberation, particularly the classical Latin American variety,
evolved in protest against the inability in Western church and missionary circles, both Catholic and
Protestant, to grapple with the problems of systemic injustice. Not that there was no concern for
liberation in missionary circles prior to the 1960s! One could, for instance, refer to some individuals
and mission agencies mentioned in the earlier parts of this study: Bartolomé de Las Casas; the early
Pietist, Basel, and CMS missionaries; and William Wilberforce. By and large, however, churches
tended to claim a sort of “extra-territoriality,” a position above the flux and conflicts of history,
merely spelling out gospel principles (cf Míguez Bonino 1981:369). It was agreed that social ills had
to be remedied, but without challenging societal and political macrostructures. The 1937 conference
on “Church, Community, and State,” held at Oxford, could still claim that the church's task was
supranational, supraclass and supraracial.
Confronted by Nazism in the 1930s, the church in Germany slowly began to realize that it had
deluded itself in thinking that the principalities and powers were just “in the heavens”; they were
incarnate on earth, as demonic forces within societal structures. As far as the Protestant mission was
concerned, it was not until the Tambaram meeting of the IMC (1938), however, that there was a clear
focus on the wider structures and a conviction that improvement was not enough; what was called for,
was radical renewal (cf van ‘t Hof 1972:119–123). Since Tambaram, the church's prophetic voice
would be heard ever more clearly.
Even so, Tambaram did not usher in an era of intense confrontation with unjust societal and
political structure in the Third World. For thirty years or so after the first Church and Society
Conference (Stockholm 1925) the focus of the ecumenical movement remained on the social problems
of the West and the (Marxist) East, particularly those caused by the tension between Socialism and
free enterprise. In 1955, however, the study project on Christian responsibility toward areas of rapid
social change was introduced. The axis had begun to tilt: henceforth North-South relationships would
grow in importance (cf Nürnberger 1987a:passim).
In missionary circles it was recognized that neither the traditional charity model nor the model of
the “comprehensive approach” (which was initiated in the 1920s and concentrated, in particular, on
education, health ministries, and agricultural training) was adequate. A more fundamental strategy
was needed. The concept which gave expression to the contemporary challenge was development.
Governments of the First and the Second Worlds were going to contribute to the solution of the
problem of Third-World poverty by pouring their resources into ambitious development projects.
Hurriedly, Western churches and mission agencies got onto the bandwagon as well.
For the West, development meant modernization (cf Bragg 1987:22–28). The entire project was,
however, based on several flawed assumptions: it supposed that what was good for the West would
be good for the Third World also (in this respect, then, it was culturally insensitive); it operated on
the Enlightenment presupposition of the absolute distinction between the human subject and the
material object and believed that all the Third World stood in need of was technological expertise; it
assumed one-way traffic without any reciprocity—development aid and skills moved from Western
“donors” to Third-World “recipients” who had often not even been consulted; and it operated on the
assumption that nothing in the rich North needed to change (cf also Nürnberger 1982:233–391;
Sundermeier 1986:63f; 72–80; Bragg 1987:23–25). By and large, the project miscarried disastrously.
A small elite benefited; the majority of the population found themselves in an even more desperate
plight. The rich got richer, the poor poorer. Smith (1968:44) mentions that, before World War II, a
Brazilian could buy a Ford car for five sacks of coffee; now (1968) two hundred and six sacks were
needed. In spite of (because of?) billions of dollars of development aid, the socioeconomic situation
in many Third-World countries was getting more desperate by the day. It was not recognized that
poverty was not just the result of ignorance, lack of skills, or moral and cultural factors, but rather
that it had to do with global structural relationships.
In the 1960s, however—because of the infatuation with secularization and technology—it was
virtually impossible to convince Western churches and their leadership that the development model
was riddled with inconsistencies. At the Geneva Church and Society Conference (1966) Mesthene
and other “technological humanists” could not believe that the salvation of the poor could lie
anywhere but in helping them to catch up with the West through modern technology. As late as 1968,
the Uppsala WCC Assembly—in spite of its radical political stance on many issues—could devote an
entire section (III) to “World Economic and Social Development” and produce a report (cf WCC
1968:45–55) which appears to be almost oblivious of the fact that the entire development philosophy
had been challenged fundamentally.
Even in 1973 the German Protestant churches would still produce a memorandum which spoke in
glowing terms of the exciting prospects in store for humankind and of the technological possibilities
which may help to make the dreams of the whole world come true (reference in Sundermeier
1986:72f). Utopian language was characteristic of the development philosophy. “Development,” said
Pope Paul VI in Populorum Progressio 76 (1967), was “the new name for peace.” The
underdeveloped nations were just late in the race toward welfare; if only they could be helped to run
faster and learn quicker the techniques of the advanced countries, the end to their misery was just
around the next corner (cf Gómez 1986:37).
Since the 1950s, however, the mood had been changing in Third-World countries themselves,
particularly in Latin America. Socio-politically, development was replaced by revolution;
ecclesiastically and theologically by liberation theology. By the time the term “liberation theology”
was coined (in 1968, just before Medellín—cf Gutiérrez 1988:xviii), its main themes had already
been around for almost a decade (:xxix; cf Segundo 1986:222, note 243). Soon “liberation” was
cropping up everywhere in the ecclesiastical landscape. The opposites we were dealing with were
not development and underdevelopment, but domination and dependence, rich and poor, Capitalism
and Socialism, oppressors and oppressed (cf Waldenfels 1987:226f; Frostin 1988:7f). Poverty would
not be uprooted by pouring technological know-how into the poor countries but by removing the root
causes of injustice; and since the West was reluctant to endorse such a project, Third-World peoples
had to take their destiny into their own hands and liberate themselves through a revolution.
Development implied evolutionary continuity with the past; liberation implied a clean break, a new
beginning.
“God's Preferential Option for the Poor”
Modern capitalism, building on the philosophy of Adam Smith, has created a world totally different
from anything known before. Two hundred years after the Enlightenment, says Newbigin (1986:110),
“we live in a world in which millions of people enjoy a standard of material wealth that few kings
and queens could match then.” As their wealth accumulated, rich Christians increasingly tended to
interpret the biblical sayings on poverty metaphorically. The poor were the “poor in spirit,” the ones
who recognized their utter dependence upon God. In this sense, then, the rich could also be poor—
they could arrogate all biblical promises to themselves.
Gradually, however, the faces of the poor forced themselves on to the attention of the rich
Christians of the West in a way that could no longer be ignored or allegorized. The Mexico City
meeting of CWME began to notice these faces, but was still too preoccupied with secularization to
draw theological consequences from this (cf Dapper 1979:39). After the Geneva Conference of 1966
the climate changed. In its “Message,” the Uppsala Assembly stated:
We heard the cry of those who long for peace; of the hungry and exploited who demand bread and justice; of the victims of
discrimination who claim human justice; and of the increasing millions who seek for the meaning of life (WCC 1968:5).

Dapper writes, “Nobody can doubt that these are new tones in the World Council; there is no
longer any attempt to evade the cry by resorting to metaphorical speech” (1979:45—my translation).
Bangkok (1973) confirmed the new emphasis: terms like “salvation” were now translated as
“liberation,” “fellowship” as “solidarity” (cf Dapper 1979:53). At Melbourne (1980) the poor were
put in the very center of missiological reflection; indeed, the conference made “an unalloyed
affirmation that solidarity with these is today a central and crucial priority of Christian mission”
(Gort 1980a:11f). In a sense, the poor became the dominant hermeneutical category at Melbourne. In
at least three of the four sections (I, II, and IV) the poor were prominent. Reflecting after the
conference, Emilio Castro (1985:151) suggested that, at Melbourne, the affirmation of the poor was
the “missiological principle par excellence” and the church's relation to the poor “the missionary
yardstick.”
Even more dramatic was the “discovery of the poor” in Roman Catholic circles, particularly as
this was demonstrated at the Second and Third General Conferences of Latin American Bishops at
Medellín, Colombia (CELAM II, 1968) and at Puebla, Mexico (CELAM III, 1979). It was at Puebla
that the phrase “preferential option for the poor” was coined. And as Gutiérrez has explained
(1988:xxvf), the very word “preference” denies all exclusiveness, as though God would be interested
only in the poor, whilst the word “option” should not be understood to mean “optional.” The point is
rather that the poor are the first, though not the only ones, on which God's attention focuses and that,
therefore, the church has no choice but to demonstrate solidarity with the poor. The poor have an
“epistemological privilege” (Hugo Assmann, quoted in Frostin 1988:6); they are the new
interlocutors of theology (Frostin 1988:6f), its new hermeneutical locus.
The danger in all of this, of course, is that one may again easily fall into the trap of “the church for
others” instead of “the church with others,” “the church for the poor” rather than “the church of the
poor.” Melbourne helped to move away from the traditional condescending attitude of the (rich)
church toward the poor; it was not so much a case of the poor needing the church, but of the church
needing the poor—if it wished to stay close to its poor Lord. The poor were beginning to discover
and- affirm themselves. Just as, in their reaction to the development model, the poor “refused to
dream by order” (Ivan Illich, quoted in Dapper 1979:91—my translation), they now refused to be
defined by the West, the rich, or the whites. The poor were no longer merely the objects of mission;
they had become its agents and bearers (cf Section IV. 21 of Melbourne—WCC 1980:219). And this
mission is, above all, one of liberation. Gutiérrez even defines liberation theology as “an expression
of the right of the poor to think out their own faith” (1988:xxi). Once the church was the “voice of the
voiceless”; now the voiceless are making their own voices heard (Castro 1985:32).
During the past two decades or so numerous studies have appeared on who the poor are and on
how they have traditionally been viewed and treated by the church. There can be no doubt that both in
the Old Testament and in the ministry of Jesus there was a significant focus on the poor and their
plight (cf Chapter 3 of this study, and De Santa Ana 1977:1–35). “The entire Bible, beginning with
the story of Cain and Abel, mirrors God's predilection for the weak and abused of human history”
(Gutiérrez 1988:xxvii). Much of this ethos was preserved during the first centuries of the Christian
church (De Santa Ana 1977:36–64). After Constantine, and as the church got richer and more
privileged, the poor were increasingly neglected or treated condescendingly. Yet even then powerful
voices, particularly from the circles of the monastic movement, continued to stress the Christian's
inescapable responsibility in this regard. Basil the Great, in particular, was an indefatigable
champion of the poor (:67–71). In a sense, then, the rediscovery of the poor in our own time is also a
reaffirmation of an ancient theological tradition.
Being poor is quite incontrovertibly a material reality. We may, however, not think of the poor in
modern socio-economic categories only. In my reflections on Luke (Chapter 3) I have shown that,
whenever Luke recorded words of Jesus about those who suffered, he either put the poor at the head
or at the very end of the list. This seems to suggest that the poor were an all-embracing category for
those who were the victims of society. Liberation theology interpretations of the poor follow a
similar hermeneutic. The poor are the marginalized, those who lack every active or even passive
participation in society; it is a marginality that comprises all spheres of life and is often so extensive
that people feel that they have no resources to do anything about it (Müller 1978:80, drawing from
Hugo Kramer). It is a “subhuman condition” (Gutiérrez 1988:164), “an evil, scandalous condition”
(:168), “a total system of death” (Míguez Bonino 1980:1155).
From this perspective, then, the “preferential option for the poor” does not apply to Latin America
only, as is sometimes suggested. The practice of racism is a form of poverty inflicted on people (and,
of course, those racially discriminated against are often also materially poor). In this respect, black
theology—as the North American and South African rendition of liberation theology—is a situational
application of the “preferential option for the poor” (cf Kritzinger 1988: 172–236).
Traditionally, in Western theology, one's relationship with the poor has been understood only as a
question of ethics, not of theology proper or of epistemology (Frostin 1985:136; 1988:6). “Political
action in our view has its place in Christian ethics, not in soteriology,” says Brakemeier (1988:219).
This position is today being challenged, not only from the side of liberation theology but also in
Catholic, Reformed, and other circles elsewhere. Gort (1980b:52, 58) affirms that, in the Reformed
position, theology and ethics belong together. Ethics is the hands and feet and face of theology, and
theology the vital organs, the soul of ethics.
Such a position, of course, has tremendous consequences for our understanding of mission. In this
model, liberation and black theologies become “a challenge to mission” (cf the title of Kritzinger
1988). This was the model that predominated at Melbourne (1980); solidarity with the poor and the
oppressed was a central and crucial priority in Christian mission (cf Gort 1980a:12). Once we
recognize the identification of Jesus with the poor, we cannot any longer consider our own relation to
the poor as a social ethics question; it is a gospel question (Castro 1985:32; cf Sider 1980:318). Or,
to put it in the words of Nicholas Berdyaev: While the problem of my own bread is a material issue,
the problem of my neighbor's bread is a spiritual issue.
This does not preclude God's love for the non-poor. In their case, however, a different kind of
conversion is called for, which would include admitting complicity in the oppression of the poor and
a turning from the idols of money, race, and self-interest (cf Kritzinger 1988:274–297). This is
needed, not only because they have been acting unethically, but because they have, through their
“pseudoinnocence” (Boesak) actually denied themselves access to knowledge.
It seems we have, in this respect, an increasingly unified theological perspective. The Orthodox
churches, many of which have for many centuries lived in situations where the church was persecuted
or at least marginalized, have always held to this intrinsic link between theology and ethics as regards
the church's attitude to the poor. Catholics and ecumenical Protestants today also subscribe to this
position. And evangelicals, after the “Great Reversal” during the first decades of this century, have
likewise gradually begun to see the indissoluble connection between theology and social ethics.
Today many evangelicals, such as Ronald J. Sider, speak in a very candid manner on the church and
the poor. Sider accepts the “doctrine” that God is on the side of the oppressed (1980:314). And if the
privileged are really the people of God, they, too, would be on the side of the poor; indeed, those
who neglect the needy are not really God's people at all, no matter how frequent their religious rituals
are (:317f). Jesus will not be our Savior if we persistently reject him as Lord of our total life. In
similar vein a consultation on simple lifestyle, co-sponsored by the Lausanne Committee for World
Evangelization and the World Evangelical Fellowship (1980), went far beyond simple living and
touched precisely on God's preferential option for the poor, divine judgment on oppressors, and the
pattern of Jesus’ own identification with the poor (cf Scherer 1987:180).
Liberal Theology and Liberation Theology
It is often contended that the theology of liberation is merely a variant of what may broadly be termed
liberal theology—the classical liberal theology of the nineteenth century, the Social Gospel, the
secular theologies of the 1960s, or European political theology (cf, among others, Braaten 1977:139–
148, 153; Knapp 1977:160f). And there are indeed some important similarities. Like most liberal
theologies, the theology of liberation has a strong social concern and rejects both the tendency to
interpret the Christian faith in otherworldly categories and excessive individualism. In spite of its
critique of the West and Western theology, liberation theology is also committed to the motif of earthly
prosperity via the modernization model (Sundermeier 1986:76). Both theological tributaries appear
to be anthropocentric rather than theocentric; like those Western theologies, liberation theology is
accused of immanentism and “an evaporation of faith” (cf Frostin 1988:12, 193).
If these assessments of liberation theology were true in their entirety, it would hardly have moved
out of the shadow of the Enlightenment into a new paradigm. There are, however, two general areas
in which the two projects differ rather fundamentally.
1. All the Western theologies alluded to grapple primarily with the reality of modernity, of
secularism, that is, with the question whether it still makes sense to talk about God in a secular age.
Their response is to affirm the basic tenets of secularism whilst trying to salvage something of their
religious heritage in the process. They often do this by jettisoning evangelism as a call to personal
faith and by replacing mission with “humanization.” They claim that the discovery of the political,
societal, and economic dimensions of life have rendered the subjectivist, individualist, and
existentialist reduction of theology obsolete (cf Daecke 1988:631). They assert that the entire world
is moving toward one global culture, which is irreversible, which will be shaped in the image of the
West, and where religious faith in its traditional form will lose its “sacralizing relevance” (cf Fierro
1977:265–267). A “restoration of the sacred” is futile (:339–348); we should embrace the secular
(:348–341). In true Enlightenment fashion, these “technological humanists” assume a separation
between fact and value and believe that the human being, as detached rational subject, is capable of
delivering reliable information and of making the necessary adaptations (also on the socio-political
level) intelligible (and therefore acceptable) to fellow rational human beings (cf West 1971:26f).
Westerners, including Western theologians, says West (:51), are by instinct technological humanists;
the history they study and the assumptions of each science they absorb generate in them an instinctive
faith in reason (:52), which is only to be enlightened by revelation (:63).
Liberation theologians, in contrast, tend to be almost naively religious, sometimes even biblicist
(cf the critique of Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak by fellow-liberationist Mosala 1989:26–42). The
cross of Jesus, an embarrassment to the Social Gospel, is at the very center of liberation theology.
The “practice of Jesus” (Echegaray 1984) includes the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. There is
an avowal that “theology must remain theology through and through” and refuse “to dissolve its
fundamental epistemological principle” (Míguez Bonino 1980:1156). In his study of Paul, Segundo
refers again and again to the “transcendent data” (1986:152, 157, and elsewhere), which may in no
circumstances be relinquished. Liberation theology's question is not knowing whether God exists, but
knowing on which side God is (Fabella and Torres 1983:190). And this is a postmodern question.
2. Western progressive theologies tend to be evolutionary in their philosophy and are therefore all,
in the final analysis, oriented toward an upholding of the status quo, even if in an adapted form (cf
Lamb 1984:138). Even where they are committed to a form of socialism this tends to be a Fabian
socialism (cf Hopkins 1940:323). Their view of society is often romantic, utopian, naive, and
sentimental (:323, 325). Even the radical statements of Uppsala 1968 revealed little more than, “on
the whole, a chastened technological rationalism and a sober liberal optimism laced with moral
urging” (West 1971:33, note 10). As such, progressive theologies reflect the language of the
privileged. It is theology “from above.”
Liberation theology, however, is theology “from below.” It is counter-hegemonic (Frostin
1988:192). It believes that the law of history is not development, but revolution—“an inexorable law
that molds but is not subject to the human will” (West 1971:113). The enemy of humanity is not nature
(as is the case in technological humanism), but one structure of human power which exploits and
destroys the powerless (:32).
In light of the above, and in spite of the undeniable similarities between these two genres of
theology, it would therefore be facile to regard them as mirror images of one another. Liberation
theology is not just the radical, political wing of European progressive theology (Gutiérrez
1988:xxix). There is a difference here so basic that each side must misinterpret the other in order to
make sense (cf West 1971:32). Both may indeed be termed “signs of the times” theologies but, as I
have argued above, we have no alternative but to try and interpret the signs of the times, even if this
remains an extremely hazardous venture. We cannot escape this responsibility; after all, what is worth
doing is also worth doing badly. Rather than being a simple logical extension of the Social Gospel
and the secularist theologies of the 1960s, various forms of liberation theology stand in the tradition
of the evangelical awakenings, of Reformed theology (cf the centrality of the Reformed tradition in
Boesak 1977) and of the theological breakthrough associated with the name of Karl Barth (note the
way in which James Cone and Míguez Bonino extrapolate their theologies from their Barthian roots;
cf also Lamb 1984:129).
The Marxist Connection
Contextual and liberation theologies are often accused of having surrendered the Christian gospel to
Marxist ideology. In itself, this is to be expected, given the fact that both Marxism and liberation
theology reject the capitalist model (cf, for instance, Míguez Bonino 1976). It is also understandable
in light of the bourgeois nature of most Western churches and their complicity with colonialism and
capitalism. The status quo orientation of much of Christianity and the conventional interpretation of
Christian social involvement as not going beyond charity and relief has been eloquently expressed in
Dom Hélder Câmara's oft-quoted words: “When I build houses for the poor, they call me a saint. But
when I try to help the poor by calling by name the injustices which have made them poor, they call me
subversive, a Marxist.” There are, thus, sound reasons for Third-World theologians to resort to a
Marxist critique of traditional Christianity. Marx himself was consumed by the desire to bring an end
to the exploitation and oppression of the poor, and this can hardly be faulted.
It is, however, not always recognized that liberation theology's use of Marxism and Marxist
categories is selective and critical. Liberation theologians tend to use Marxist analysis as an
instrument of critique rather than in a prescriptive way. Even somebody as outspokenly Marxist as
José P. Miranda (whose book Communism in the Bible opens with a chapter entitled “Christianity Is
Communism”) criticizes many revolutionaries who call themselves Marxists and makes critical use of
Marxist categories.
Moreover, it would seem that, as far as Latin American liberation theology is concerned, there has
in recent years been a move away from Marxist analysis. This is particularly true in respect to the
Marxist critique of religion. Segundo, for instance, criticizes Marxism's inability to take into account
the reality of “Christian transcendent data.” His problem, he says, is with Marxism's “simplistic,
mistaken eschatology, which raises false hopes and hence in the long run will only intensify people's
desperation and despair” (1986:179), and with the “paralyzing utopia” which has crept into
liberation theology because of this alliance. Also Míguez Bonino (1976:118–132) is careful to point
to crucial flaws in Marxism, such as its abuse of power, its arbitrariness, its personality cults, and its
bureaucratic cliques. The alliance with Marxism thus has both “promise” and “limits.”
At the same time, whereas Marxist analysis appears to be on the decline in Latin America, it has
been introduced more vigorously into South African Black Theology since about 1981—again for
very obvious reasons, given the situation of repression and disenfranchisement of Blacks in South
Africa. In a sense, then, a reverse development has taken place in South Africa, compared to Latin
America. The “first phase” of Black Theology (1970–1980) was almost completely free of Marxist
influences; theologians of the “second phase,” however, after 1980, are using Marxist categories
much more consciously and consistently (for the two “phases,” cf Kritzinger 1988:58–84).
There can hardly be any problem with using Marxist theory as a tool in social analysis. As such, it
certainly can be of tremendous value. The question is, however, whether some proponents of
liberation theology have not adopted Marxist ideology as well, and whether this can be deemed
compatible with the Christian faith. In attempting to respond to this question, one may point out, first,
that Marxism shares, with Capitalism, the presuppositions of the Enlightenment paradigm, particularly
in respect to its subject-object thinking, its utopianism, and its belief in modernization and in human
beings as autonomous and innately good. Newbigin, with some justification, calls it “Capitalism's
rebellious twin sister”; the two are “the twin products of the apostasy of the European intellectuals of
the eighteenth century” (1986:8). The difference may perhaps only be that the one pursues freedom at
the cost of equality and the other equality at the cost of freedom (:118).
Second, Christianity, as a religion, proceeds from the premise that there is another reality behind
and above the visible and tangible reality around us; its reference is not only to this world. Marxism,
by contrast, is an ideology, which means that it lacks any reference to a trans-empirical reality (which
does not preclude it from having founders, sacred scriptures, martyrs, official creeds, an eschatology,
heretics, and soon; for a superb summary of the “religious elements in Marxism,” cf Nürnberger
1987b:105–109). In the classical Marxist model, religion is an illusion and the opiate of the people.
It is important to note that this thoroughgoing atheistic dimension of Marxism is increasingly rejected
by liberation theologians. In this respect, secularist theologians are actually closer to the classical
Marxist premise than liberation theologians are. By and large, the latter refuse to jettison what
Segundo calls the “transcendent data.” For Gutiérrez, salvation “embraces every aspect of humanity:
body and spirit, individual and society, person and cosmos, time and eternity” (1988:85)—a
statement no Marxist can assent to. Leonardo Boff likewise distinguishes between “partial liberation”
and “integral liberation” (1984:14–66; cf Boff 1983). Only the latter deserves to be called salvation
and has to do with “the eschatological condition of the human being” (1984:56–58). Salvation and
liberation may never be divorced from each other (as so often happens in conventional theology);
neither, however, should they be confused (:58–60).
Third, there is the matter of violence. Support for violence is intrinsic to Marxism. Without
condoning the violence of the status quo and Christians’ blessing of it (which is actually the bigger
problem), one has to express concern about the support for revolutionary violence (which is actually
the lesser problem, since it is really a response to the violence of the system) in some branches of
liberation theology. It becomes especially problematic when the Marxist idea of a continual
revolution is adopted by theologians, in the sense of Albert Camus’ philosophy, “I rebel, therefore we
are,” or Ché Guevara's slogan, “The duty of a revolutionary is to make a revolution.” In this kind of
approach revolutionary action is raised almost to the level of a sacred liturgy, conflict becomes an
all-embracing hermeneutical key, and the mobilization of hatred and demagogy an inescapable duty.
At the same time, it perpetuates the fixation on the “opponent” as the implacable enemy and imputes
the blame for every misery on others (cf Sundermeier 1986:67, 76), while condoning everything the
oppressed may choose to do in trying to rid themselves of the shackles of oppression.
In spite of the fact that some liberationists unequivocally support violence (such as Shaull 1967)
whilst others appear to be equivocal on the issue (for instance, the Kairos Document), the majority
are committed to nonviolence (for instance, Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak). In this vein, the
Melbourne CWME Conference asserts that “Jesus of Nazareth rejected coercive power as a way of
changing the world” (Section IV.3; WCC 1980:209) whilst EN 37 declares, “Violence is not in
accord with the gospel.” The “spiral of violence” (Cámara) is an all too well-known specter in many
parts of the world. This alone makes nonviolent strategies such as those of Ghandi and Martin Luther
King worthy of serious consideration. Human power has its limits; it can coerce, but it can hardly
heal (West 1971:230). Christians should always remain open to the “possible impossibility” that the
“enemy” may change into a friend and that the oppressor may be persuaded to pursue another course
(de Gruchy 1987:242). To the chagrin of many, the gospels tell us that Jesus ate with sinners and
righteous ones, with exploiters and the exploited, and that both Levi the collaborator and Simon the
Zealot were among his disciples (unless, of course, our hermeneutics of suspicion prompts us
radically to doubt the entire gospel tradition on these and similar points, as Mosala 1989 seems to
suggest). And since Christians believe that the decisive battle has already been won by Christ, they
may believe in the possibility of forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation. In view of the harsh
realities of oppression and exploitation such reconciliation will be costly. It is “utterly destructive of
human continuities, of theories of progress, of the old self and the old society, because it leads also to
the affirmation of the adversary” (West 1971:47; cf de Gruchy 1987:241f). In this sense, then, the
element of conflictual analysis in liberation theology should not be an alternative to reconciliation but
an intrinsic dimension of restoring community between those who are now the privileged and the
underprivileged (Frostin 1988:180).
Integral Liberation
Liberation theology has helped the church to rediscover its ancient faith in Yahweh, whose
outstanding qualification—which made him the Wholly Other—was founded on his involvement in
history as the God of righteousness and justice who championed the cause of the weak and the
oppressed (cf Deut 4:32, 34f; Ps 82). It has helped us to understand the Holy Spirit afresh, in
particular his ability to change inert things into living things, to bring people back from death to life,
to empower the weak, and to recognize the Spirit's presence not only in people's hearts but also in the
workaday world of history and culture (cf Krass 1977:11). It has rekindled faith in the great renewal
of history that had been inaugurated in the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ and
reawakened the confidence that nothing need to remain the way it is: Christians may assume a critical
stance vis-à-vis the authorities, traditions, and institutions of this world and match the age-old adage,
ecclesia semper reformanda, with its corollary, societas semper reformanda (cf Gort 1980b:54).
This applies especially to the conditions of the poor and the lowly. They deserve preference not
because they are morally or religiously better than others, but because God is God, in whose eyes
“the last are first”; or, in the words of Las Casas, “God has the freshest and keenest memory of the
least and most forgotten” (quoted in Gutiérrez 1988:xxvii).
Since faith and life are inseparable (Gutiérrez 1988:xix), this is a liberation that is to be effected
at three different levels: from social situations of oppression and marginalization, from every kind of
personal servitude, and from sin, which is the breaking of friendship with God and with other human
beings (:xxxviii, 24f; cf Brakemeier 1988:216). Orthodoxy and orthopraxy need each other, and each
is adversely affected if sight is lost of the other; we mutilate the message of Jesus if we choose where
no choice is possible (Gutiérrez 1988:xxxiv). And we are liberated by our participation in the new
life bestowed upon us through the gratuitousness of God (:xxxviiif).
The three levels are intimately interconnected but they are not the same. The tendency in some
quarters to elevate the political to a position of indisputable primacy is therefore to be challenged. In
his study on the humanist christology of Paul, Segundo has some important reflections on this theme.
The Yahwist faith of Israel, he says, had political liberation as one, but only one, of its dimensions
(1986:169f). Liberation theologians, however, have tended either to read the whole Bible—even the
seemingly most apolitical parts—with the aid of the political key, or to slight those parts which could
not be read in this way (:169–171). This happened because they were trying to glean ready-made
answers from Scripture, looking for an immediate pragmatic connection between the problems arising
on their own horizon and the message of the Bible (:172f). He then proposes a rereading of Paul,
understanding him within his own context where socio-political freedom is not everything and
extrapolating from there to today. Paul shows us that there are indeed aspects of being human that are
not reducible to the socio-political.
Segundo then addresses the question of who the real bearers of the idea of the theology of
liberation are. There is a tendency in liberation theology, he says, to blur the distinction between the
church and “the people” or “the poor,” and to sacrifice the church as a distinct community. This
tendency is found also outside the strict confines of liberation theology. At the Melbourne CWME
Conference, for instance, a messianic quality was often conferred on the poor, as though the poor and
the church were completely synonymous. A suggestion to say that the poor are blessed insofar as they
are longing for justice was defeated in Section I. The report now asserts (emphasis added), “The
poor are ‘blessed’ because of their longing for justice and their hope of liberation. They accept the
promise that God has come to their rescue” (I.2; WCC 1980:172). Segundo warns against this kind of
discourse and says that there is much empty rhetoric in superficially dazzling formulas, for instance
that people should put themselves “under the discipleship of the poor,” for (according to Gutiérrez), it
is only to the poor that the grace of receiving and understanding the kingdom has been granted, so that
there can be no authentic theology of liberation until it is created by “the People” (in Segundo
1986:182, 224, note 257; cf 226, note 262).
Segundo, however, pleads that our overarching theological category should be the church rather
than “the People.” The praxis of liberation theology presupposes justification by grace through faith.
“The People,” however, is a sociological category and may not be turned into a theological term and
treated as a synonym for church. All liberation must pass by way of the judgment of the cross of
Christ (cf Brakemeier 1988:217–221). In the Kairos Document, too, the line between the church and
the political movements gets blurred (cf de Gruchy 1987:241). Lamb's conviction, quoted earlier, that
“the voice of the victims is the voice of God” (1982:23), is an immensely powerful and moving
statement, but it suffers from the same blurring of categories. To say that God hears and responds to
the cries of the oppressed is one thing; to say that these cries are the voice of God is another. Bishop
Alpheus Zulu once said, “The statement, ‘God is on the side of the oppressed’ cannot simply be
turned round: ‘The oppressed are on the side of God.’” Segundo's admonitions in this respect need to
be heeded. And it seems Gutiérrez is indeed beginning to heed him. In the new introduction to A
Theology of Liberation he warns against “the facile enthusiasms that have interpreted [the theology of
liberation] in a simplistic and erroneous way by ignoring the integral demands of the Christian faith
as lived in the communion of the church” (1988:xviii; cf xlii).
There is yet another side to this: humankind's innate optimism. In this respect liberation theology—
at least in its early manifestation—shared the optimism of the secularist theologians, the
“technological humanists.” Both located sin in the structures of society rather than in the human heart.
Both were inherently optimistic about the future and about humankind and were, for this, indebted to
the Enlightenment worldview. The difference was perhaps only that, whereas the technological
humanists considered all people to be essentially good, liberation theology tended to believe that
only the poor and the oppressed were innately good—the rich and the oppressors, however, were
evil.
The optimism of the 1960s and of the early stage of liberation theology was almost tangible.
Gutiérrez (1988:xvii) quotes a paragraph from the CELAM II document (Medellín 1968, where Latin
American liberation theology was first officially sanctioned) which epitomizes this:
Latin America is obviously under the sign of transformation…It appears to be a time of zeal for full emancipation, of liberation
from every form of servitude, of personal maturity and collective integration…We cannot fail to see in this gigantic effort toward
a rapid transformation and development an obvious sign of the Spirit who leads the history of humankind and of the peoples
toward their vocation. We cannot but discover in this force, daily more insistent and impatient for transformation, vestiges of the
image of God in human nature as a powerful incentive.

At the time, Gutiérrez himself shared this excitement and endorsed the optimism. What really
makes utopian thought viable and highlights its wealth of possibilities is the revolutionary experience
of our times (1988:135)—indeed, authentic utopian thought postulates, enriches, and supplies new
goals for political action (:136).
This sort of language was indicative of the euphoria of the mid-1960s. Israel's liberation from
slavery in Egypt was the undisputed theological paradigm for liberation theology (Segundo
1986:169). Medellín fanned the enthusiasm and inspired the church and the people of Latin America.
And there were indeed many promising events. The capitalist system, so it appeared, was under
severe pressure, in Chile and elsewhere. The socialist golden age was just around the corner. By the
mid-1970s, however, much of this had disappeared. Hopes for a social and political transformation
were dashed to pieces in Chile, in Uruguay, in Argentina, and in Bolivia. Brutal regimes inspired by
“national security” ideology had imposed their police repression and economic policies on much of
the continent (cf Míguez Bonino 1980:1154). Also where socialist regimes were introduced, the
situation hardly changed. Repression just took on new forms. And it became even more difficult to
attack the morality of it all, since the socialist rulers claimed to have the backing of the people for
what they were doing. Often, then, people were liberated without becoming free…
In this climate, the triumphalist elements began to disappear from the liberation theology
discourse. Segundo (1986:224, note 254) criticizes Gutiérrez's The Power of the Poor in History,
and asks, “What ‘power’ is he talking about? Where has this ‘power’ been hiding for the past four
centuries, since the days of European colonialism?” Elsewhere he reflects on the darkening of the
horizon:
It seems that everything has been tried, every possible approach used, yet the result is the same. By some inflexible law, more
keenly felt as time passes, we find it impossible to be even partially free, to choose the kind of societal life we want, to even
discuss it much less fight for it. Every day we see a road closing to us that seemed open the day before (:175).

In the new introduction to his book, Gutiérrez also takes cognizance of these changed
circumstances. Often, he says, the theology of liberation has “stirred facile enthusiasms” (1988:xviii).
The second phase of Latin American liberation theology thus appears to be more modest, more sober,
than the first. For Segundo (1986:157–180) this means, among other things, a “deutero-reading” of
Paul, particularly his sayings about slaves. Paul calculates the energy costs entailed in various social
situations (:222, note 240). With respect to the institution of slavery—a form of being dominated by
Sin—Paul realizes that he, and the Christian slaves, are faced with a limited option, a problem of
efficacy, an energy calculus; if the preoccupation of the slave is to win civil liberation, and the slave
invests all his or her energy in doing that, Paul thinks that the cost is too high. So Paul makes a choice,
a choice which, of course, has its limitations; that is, Paul opts to humanize the slave from within
(:164). In the circumstances that he faces, he postpones commitment to the concrete socio-political
cause of liberating the slaves (:165). But this does not paralyze him, for faith sees what we ourselves
cannot see; faith represents a change in our (and the slave's) epistemological premises (:159). We
now have a new way of interpreting events, so that Paul can even say (Rom 8:28), “Everything works
together for the good of those who love God” (:221, note 237).
We cannot simply apply Paul to our present situation. Still, we have to allow ourselves to be
informed by Paul's spirituality and ask what his “energy calculus” might mean in a given context. And
what is true of Paul is also true of Jesus. 1t is hard to imagine Jesus being silent in the face of the
reality we must live through today, says Segundo (1986:173), but it is equally difficult to picture him
challenging the established power over us in a totally unrealistic way and merely for the sake of
principle. Paul, and Jesus, were not escaping to the “private” sector; they were simply stressing that
the dehumanizing status of slaves need not prevent them from attaining human maturity. This they
could do by adhering to faith in Christ and to the “transcendent data” brought by him (:180). In the
circumstances, this was the only way in which Jesus or Paul could humanize the slave. It is the way in
which the Christian can triumph qualitatively even if he or she does not escape the quantitative
victory of Sin (:160).
Segundo is pioneering a new course within liberation theology. The Christian can triumph, even
where circumstances do not change, even where liberation does not come. Liberation and salvation
overlap with each other to a significant degree, but they do not overlap totally. We should not deceive
ourselves into believing that everything lies in our grasp and that we can bring it about, now; we
would then, also, diminish “the importance and decisive character of the next generation” (Segundo
1986:160). Paul's (and Segundo's) is a “spirituality for the long haul” (Robert Bilheimer, reference in
Henry 1987:279f), not that of a Pelagius, who believed that “we have the power of accomplishing
every good thing by action, speech, and thought” (Pelagius, quoted in Henry 1987:272). For the
Pelagian, true justice and true unity can coalesce fully in this world if we just try hard enough (:274;
cf Gründel 1983:122). But the hope that human beings can shoulder the burdens of the world is an
illusion that leads them through anxiety to despair (cf Duff 1956:146, summarizing a report of the
Advisory Committee on the theme of the WCC Evanston Assembly). It simply heightens our guilt
feelings and leads to increasing self-flagellation because of our inability to achieve what we
convinced ourselves we ought to accomplish. We are then trapped into the belief that justice must be
our justice, that we can and must cancel our guilt by restitution, overcome our frustration by more
action, and relentlessly drive ourselves from one “involvement” to the other. In addition, it is easy for
those whose cause is just to blur the line between what they are working for and their own reputation
and glory. Work for justice can easily slip into a kind of ideological dogmatism, with the result that
we may be perpetrating injustice while fighting for justice (Henry 1987:279).
[Segundo wishes to break this vicious circle of frustration, from which liberation theology is by no
means exempt. We should recognize, however, that Segundo's position does not reflect a compromise
or a pragmatic adjustment to and reconciliation with “realities.” That would be contrary to the heart
of liberation theology. And Segundo remains firmly committed to the agenda of liberation. If
Christianity would lose its counter-cultural and world-transforming role, other forces would take its
place. We need a vision to direct our action within history. Indifference to this vision is a denial of
the God who links his presence to the elimination of all exploitation, pain, and poverty. As soon as
our hope is compromised, as soon as we stop expecting the wholesale transformations within history
that the Scriptures talk about, we kill that vision (cf Krass 1977:21). We have to turn our backs
resolutely on our traditional dualistic thinking, of setting up alternatives between the body and the
soul, society and the church, the eschaton and the present, and rekindle an all-embracing faith, hope,
and love in the ultimate triumph of God casting its rays into the present.
The theology of liberation is often misunderstood, attacked, and vilified. I believe that one such
case of misunderstanding, one that had far-reaching consequences, was the Instruction on Certain
Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation,” released by the Vatican in 1984 and aimed rather
particularly at Leonardo Boff. I have not intended to whitewash liberation theology in these
paragraphs, nor to “put the record straight.” I have simply attempted to point out that this movement,
in spite of its flaws (and there are several) represents “a new stage, closely connected with earlier
ones, in the theological reflection that began with the apostolic tradition” (John Paul II, in an April
1986 letter to Brazilian bishops, quoted in Gutiérrez 1988:xliv; emphasis added). The pope put it
well. It is not a “new theology” but a new stage in theologizing, and as such both continuous and
discontinuous with the theologizing of earlier epochs. It is not a fad but a serious attempt to let the
faith make sense to the postmodern age. Precisely for this reason it will never be a finished product.
At every stage, says Gutiérrez, “we must refine, improve, and possibly correct earlier formulations if
we want to use language that is understandable and faithful both to the integral Christian message and
to the reality we experience” (:xviii).

MISSION AS INCULTURATION
The Vicissitudes of Accommodation and Indigenization
Inculturation represents a second important model of contextualizing theology (cf Ukpong 1987) and
is, like liberation theology, of recent origin—even though it is not without precedent in Christian
history. Inculturation is one of the patterns in which the pluriform character of contemporary
Christianity manifests itself. Even the term is new. Pierre Charles introduced the concept
“enculturation,” at home in cultural anthropology circles, into missiology, but it was J. Masson who
first coined the phrase Catholicisme inculturé (“inculturated Catholicism”) in 1962. It soon gained
currency among Jesuits, in the form of “inculturation.” In 1977 the Jesuit superior-general, P. Arrupe,
introduced the term to the Synod of Bishops; the Apostolic Exhortation, Catechesi Tradendae (CT),
which flowed from this synod, took it up and gave it universal currency (cf Müller 1986:134;
1987:178). It was soon also accepted in Protestant circles and is today one of the most widely used
concepts to missiological circles.
The Christian faith never exists except as “translated” into a culture. This circumstance, which
was an integral feature of Christianity from the very beginning, has hopefully been made abundantly
clear in the course of this study. Lamin Sanneh rightly says (cf Stackhouse 1988:58) that the early
church, “in straddling the Jewish-Gentile worlds, was born in a cross-cultural milieu with translation
as its birthmark.”20 It should therefore come as no surprise that in the Pauline churches Jews, Greeks,
barbarians, Thracians, Egyptians, and Romans were able to feel at home (cf Köster 1984:172). The
same was true of the post-apostolic church. The faith was inculturated in a great variety of liturgies
and contexts—Syriac, Greek, Roman, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Maronite, and so forth.
Moreover, during this early period the emphasis was on the local church rather than the church
universal in its monarchical form.
After Constantine, when the erstwhile religio illicita became the religion of the establishment, the
church became the bearer of culture. Its missionary outreach thus meant a movement from the
civilized to “savages” and from a “superior” culture to “inferior” cultures—a process in which the
latter had to be subdued, if not eradicated. Thus Christian mission, as a matter of course, presupposed
the disintegration of the cultures into which it penetrated. Where such disintegration did not take
place, mission had only limited success (as in the case of some Asian cultures—cf Gensichen
1985:122; Pieris 1986).
In Chapter 9 of this study, and elsewhere as well, I have stressed the decisive influence Western
colonialism, cultural superiority feelings, and “manifest destiny” exercised on the Western missionary
enterprise and the extent to which this compromised the gospel. Without repeating what has been said
there, let me just mention some ways in which these circumstances have affected the subject under
discussion here.
By the time the large-scale Western colonial expansion began, Western Christians were
unconscious of the fact that their theology was culturally conditioned; they simply assumed that it was
supracultural and universally valid. And since Western culture was implicitly regarded as Christian,
it was equally self-evident that this culture had to be exported together with the Christian faith. Still,
it was soon acknowledged that, in order to expedite the conversion process, some adjustments were
necessary. The strategy by which these were to be put into effect was variously called adaptation or
accommodation (in Catholicism) or indigenization (in Protestantism). It was often, however, limited
to accidental matters, such as liturgical vestments, non-sacramental rites, art, literature, architecture,
and music (cf Thauren 1927:37–46).
The ramifications were manifold. First, accommodation never included modifying the
“prefabricated” Western theology. Second, it was actually understood as a concession that Third-
World Christians would now be allowed to use some elements of their culture in order to give
expression to their new faith. Third, only those cultural elements which were manifestly “neutral” and
naturally good, that is, not “contaminated” by pagan religious values, could be employed (cf Thauren
1927:25–33; Luzbetak 1988:67). Fourth, the word “elements” further implied that cultures were not
regarded as indivisible wholes but, in Enlightenment fashion, as separate components that could be
put together or disassembled at will; it would thus be perfectly in order if one were to isolate some
components and employ them in the service of the Christian church. Fifth, it went without saying that
indigenization or accommodation was a problem only for the “young” churches. In the Western church
indigenization had for many centuries been a fait accompli; the gospel was perfectly at home in the
West but still foreign elsewhere (cf Song 1977:2). Sixth, a term like “adaptation” could not help but
convey the idea of an activity that was peripheral and therefore nonessential, even superficial, as far
as the essence of the Christian mission was concerned; it was something optional and, in any case,
only a matter of method, of form rather than content (cf Shorter 1977:150). The philosophy behind all
of this was that of a division between “kernel” and “husk.” The faith, as understood and canonized in
the Western church—in other words, the depositum fidei—was the unalloyed kernel, the cultural
accoutrements of the people to whom the missionaries went were the expendable husk. In the
accommodation process, the kernel had to remain intact but adapted to the forms of the new culture; at
the same time, these cultures had to be adapted to the “kernel” (cf Fries 1986:760). Seventh, this
entire project suggested, implicitly and often also explicitly, that the younger churches needed the
older churches, but that the latter were in no respect dependent on what they might receive from the
former; the traffic was decidedly one-way. Last, often the initiative in respect of indigenization did
not come from the newly converted but from missionaries with a sentimental interest in exotic
cultures, who insisted on the “otherness” of the young churches and treated them as something that had
to be preserved in their pristine form.
Still, Catholic missionaries, in particular early Jesuits like de Nobili and Ricci, tried to move
beyond the kernel-husk model in their accommodation of the faith to the peoples of India and China.
So, in fact, did Propaganda Fide (founded 1622). In an extraordinary policy statement in 1659 it
advised its missionaries not to force people to change their customs, as long as these were not
opposed to religion or morality. The statement went on to say:
What could be more absurd than to carry France, Spain, or Italy, or any part of Europe into China? It is not this sort of things you
are to bring but rather the Faith, which does not reject or damage any people's rites and customs, provided these are not
depraved.

In spite of this instruction (which was remarkably similar to a directive of Pope Gregory the Great
more than a thousand years earlier—cf Markus 1970), the Jesuits soon ran into difficulties,
particularly because of what became known as the “Rites Controversy,” in both China and India. In
1704 the papal envoy, T. M. de Tournon, released a decree in which he condemned the Jesuit praxis
in sixteen points. The pope sided with de Tournon—two papal decrees (1707 and 1715) sanctioned
de Tournon's ruling. The controversy continued until 1742, when another decree, Ex quo singulari,
endorsed the earlier rulings. A papal bull of 1744, Omnium sollicitudinum, forbade all but the most
trivial concessions to local custom and ordered an oath of submission, which was to be taken by all
missioners; also forbidden was any further discussion of the issue (cf Thauren 1927:131–145; Shorter
1988:157–160). In 1773 the Society of Jesus was suppressed. Soon after, all Jesuit missionaries
were recalled. Not until 1814 were they restored by papal decree. The oath introduced in 1744 was
not repealed until 1938.
 Protestant missions only appeared to be different; instead of subordinating the expression of the
faith to magisterial authority as in Catholicism, Protestants unwittingly subordinated it to the
presuppositions of Euro-American culture. Protestants were, on the whole, even more suspicious of
“non-Christian” cultures than Catholics, not least because of their emphasis on humankind's total
depravity (Müller 1987:177). They allowed some freedom but in the main worked for an exact
reproduction of European models. This could even be seen in cases where they deliberately set out to
encourage indigenization, as in the celebrated case of the “three-selfs” as the aim of mission (self-
government, self-support, and self-propagation), formulated classically by Rufus Anderson and Henry
Venn almost a century and a half ago. These notae ecclesiae were derived from the Western idea of a
living community, which was one which could support, extend, and manage itself; these, then, were
the criteria according to which the younger churches were judged. The Western churches, which had
long ago achieved these aims, represented the “higher” form, the others, struggling to rise up to these
expectations, the “lower.” In both Catholicism and Protestantism, then, the prevailing image was a
pedagogical one—over an extended period of time and along a laborious route the younger churches
were to be educated and trained in order to reach selfhood or “maturity,” measured in terms of the
“three-selfs.” In practice, however, the younger churches, like Peter Pan, never “grew up,” at least not
in the eyes of the older ones. Most of them could only survive, and thereby also please their founders,
if they resolutely segregated themselves from the surrounding culture and existed as foreign bodies.
Twentieth-Century Developments
The “rigid system” of accommodation (Thauren 1927:130) could not last interminably. Forces that
contributed to the breakdown of the model included the emergence, already in the nineteenth century,
of nationalism in the Third World; the rise of anthropological thought, which gradually revealed the
relativity and contextuality of all cultures (including those of the West); and—of particular importance
for our purpose—the maturation of the younger churches, which frequently went hand in hand with the
founding of independent churches free from any missionary control. In spite of the flaws inherent in
the “three-selfs” model, it did help to inspire subjugated peoples to seek independence also in areas
other than the strictly ecclesiastical. Even somebody as fiercely critical of the entire Western
missionary enterprise as Hoekendijk had to admit that, in this respect, the church really was ahead of
the world (1967a:321). Around 1860 the autonomy of the young churches could be seen in large print
on every sensible missionary program, long before anybody in the West even dreamt about other kinds
of autonomy for colonized countries. There certainly were more sensitivities in this respect in
Western missionary circles than there were in the various colonial offices.
Pope Benedict XV, particularly in his encyclical Maximum Illud (1919), was one of the first to
promote the right of the “mission churches” to cease being ecclesiastical colonies under foreign
control and to have their own clergy and bishops. Rerum Ecclesiae (Pius XI, 1926) and Evangelii
Praecones (Pius XII, 1951) elaborated further along similar lines (cf Shorter 1988:179–186). Since
then, local hierarchies have been introduced everywhere. Bühlmann (1977) describes the new
development as “the coming of the third church,” a reality which he elsewhere calls “the epoch-
making event of current church history” (quoted in Anderson 1988:114). The new reality also finds
expression in the fact that there are today (according to the calculations of Barrett 1990:27) many
more Christians outside than inside the traditional missionary-sending countries—914 million
compared to 597 million—and that many of these younger churches have themselves begun to send
out missionaries.
In the period immediately after World War II a host of adjustments had to be made in both Catholic
and Protestant circles. For our purpose, two are of special importance. First, there were the events in
China, culminating in the victory of the Communists in 1949—an event which symbolized, in a
special way, the breakup of the entire old missionary order. Then there was the circumstance that—in
spite of the war during which they had been “orphaned”—many fledgling Third-World churches had
not only survived, but some had actually grown spectacularly during the years of the missionaries’
absence. Whitby's slogan (1947) “Partnership in Obedience” and the formation of the WCC as a
council of autonomous churches from all corners of the globe, were two ways of giving recognition to
the new reality and to the need for a new relationship. This found expression in the idea of “mission
as reciprocal assistance” and in such ecumenical projects as “Interchurch Aid,” “Ecumenical Sharing
of Personnel,” and “Joint Action for Mission” (cf Jansen Schoonhoven 1977; for the Catholic scene,
cf van Winsen 1973).
Mission as interchurch assistance was, however, a transitional phenomenon (cf van Engelen
1975:294). By the late 1960s it became evident that a decisive shift had taken place, even in the mind
of Westerners, from a Europe-centered world to a humankind-centered world. Henceforth the
churches of the West would increasingly take cognizance of the views of and developments in the
younger churches. Yet even at the Second Vatican Council the voices of Third-World church leaders
were still muffled, as they were in Protestant ecumenical gatherings of the time. Only since the
Catholic Synods of Bishops and, in Protestantism, since the Bangkok CWME meeting (1973), has it
become clear that global ecclesiastical leadership is inexorably passing toward Third-World
Christians. The “rediscovery” of the local church, during and after Vatican II, contributed
tremendously to the new sense of maturing of relationships. The birth of basic Christian communities,
first in Latin America and then elsewhere, meant much to the self-image of local Christian
communities in the Third World, so much so that Leonardo Boff (1986) refers to it as
“ecclesiogenesis,” or as “reinventing” the church.
It was now also high time that a “fourth self” be added to the classical “three-selfs”—self-
theologizing, an aspect about which the missionary theorists of the nineteenth century never thought
(cf Hiebert 1985b:16). Of course a lot of self-theologizing had already been taking place, often
unnoticed or clandestine, more frequently outside of the “mission churches” and thus of the purview
of missionaries—to whom much of this was at any rate unacceptable since it was deemed to be
syncretistic.21 Since the 1930s, however, Asian (especially Indian) theologians from “mission
churches” had begun consciously and publicly to chart new ways theologically. In Africa, such
developments only rose above the surface after World War II. In 1956 a group of African priests from
Francophone countries published Des prêtres noirs s'interrogent, a book that was to have wide
influence in Catholic circles. Shortly afterward, Tharcisse Tshibangu, a student at the Catholic
Theological Faculty in Kinshasa, began to challenge his Belgian mentors’ ideas about a universally
valid theology. In 1965 he published his Théologie positive et théologie speculative. These and other
developments were the first steps toward remedying a situation which John Mbiti once described as
follows: “[The church in Africa] is a church without a theology, without theologians, and without a
theological concern” (1972:51). The stage was set for the vigorous development of autochthonous
African theology.
Toward Inculturation
The developments outlined above paved the way for what was later to be known as “inculturation.” It
was finally recognized that a plurality of cultures presupposes a plurality of theologies and therefore,
for Third-World churches, a farewell to a Eurocentric approach (cf Fries 1986:760; Waldenfels
1987:227f). The Christian faith must be rethought, reformulated and lived anew in each human culture
(Memorandum 1982:465), and this must be done in a vital way, in depth and right to the cultures’
roots (EN 20). Such a project is even more needed in light of the way in which the West has raped the
cultures of the Third World, inflicting on them what has been termed “anthropological poverty” (cf
Frostin 1988:15).
At first, the Western church leadership embraced the new development only reluctantly. Snijders
(1977:173f) has shown how Paul VI, for instance, wavered between embracing and rejecting the
inculturation idea—much the way an earlier pope, Gregory the Great, wavered with respect to
missionary accommodation in the sixth century (cf Markus 1970). In the end, however, Paul VI
resolutely chose in favor of inculturation, as did John Paul II, particularly in CT. The latter's
commitment to the project was further underscored when he founded the Pontifical Council for
Culture in 1982 (cf Shorter 1988:230f). A similar evolution can be observed in Protestantism. Here,
evangelicals were often in the forefront (perhaps because ecumenical Protestants revealed a greater
interest in mission as liberation rather than in mission as inculturation?). A landmark event was the
Consultation on Gospel and Culture, sponsored by the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization
and held in 1978 in Willowbank, Bermuda (cf Stott and Coote 1980). The Willowbank Report (:311–
339) was widely acclaimed (cf Gensichen 1985:112–129). By and large, Willowbank opted for the
“dynamic equivalence” model of inculturation (Stott and Coote 1980:330f), thus following in the
steps of the pioneering work done by Eugene Nida and, more recently, Charles Kraft. “Dynamic
equivalence,” a variation of the “translation model,” is, however, only one of several current
inculturation patterns. Others include the anthropological, praxis, synthetic, and semiotic models. An
excellent example of the last is Schreiter's Constructing Local Theologies (1985). It is clear, then,
that inculturation does not necessarily mean the same to everybody. Still, there are some basic traits
all these models share and which set them off against the earlier accommodation, indigenization, and
similar approaches.
In which respects does inculturation differ from its predecessors?
First, it differs in respect of the agents. In all earlier models it was the Western missionary who
either induced or benevolently supervised the way in which the encounter between the Christian faith
and the local cultures was to unfold. The very terms “accommodation,” “adaptation,” etc, suggested
this. The process was one-sided, in that the local faith community was not the primary agent. In
inculturation, however, the two primary agents are the Holy Spirit and the local community,
particularly the laity (cf Luzbetak 1988:66). Neither the missionary, nor the hierarchy, nor the
magisterium controls the process. This does not mean that the missionary and the theologian are
excluded. Schreiter even regards their participation as indispensable; to ignore the resources of the
professional theologian “is to prefer ignorance to knowledge” (1985:18). Missionaries no longer go
with a kind of Peace Corps mentality for the purpose of “doing good,” however. They no longer
participate as the ones who have all the answers but are learners like everybody else. The padre
becomes a compadre. Inculturation only becomes possible if all practice convivência, “life together”
(Sundermeier 1986).
Second, the emphasis is truly on the local situation. “The universal word only speaks dialect” (P.
Casaldáliga, quoted in Sundermeier 1986:93). Vatican II's new emphasis on the local church already
pointed in this direction. The one, universal church finds its true existence in the particular churches
(LG 23, 26)—something Third-World churches take much more seriously than the church in the West
(cf Glazik 1984b:64). At this local level, inculturation comprises much more than culture in the
traditional or anthropological sense of the term. It involves the entire context: social, economic,
political, religious, educational, etc.
Inculturation is, however, not only a local event. It also has a regional or macrocontextual and
macrocultural manifestation. To a significant extent the various paradigms I have traced in the earlier
part of this study evolved because each time the Christian faith entered another macrocultural context
—the Greek, Slavic, Latin, or Germanic worlds. The theological disputes which arose in this process
should be attributed at least as much to cultural as to genuine doctrinal differences. Looked at from
this perspective, it could be argued that the Protestant Reformation was a case of the (overdue?)
inculturation of the faith among Germanic and related peoples. The same is true of many regional
differences today. The decisive consideration may, then, not be whether a church is Roman Catholic,
Anglican, Presbyterian, or Lutheran, but whether it has its home in Africa, Asia, or Europe. Regional
differences tend to become more decisive than confessional ones. It is noteworthy, for instance, that
black Americans, after having been assaulted by an alien culture for several centuries, still retain a
unique religiocultural identity. In part, then, these differences on the macro-level explain why, in Latin
America, inculturation takes the form of solidarity with and among the poor; in Africa it may be
solidarity and communion within and across autonomous cultures; and in Asia the search for identity
amid the density of religious pluralism. In various regions of the world we thus observe the
burgeoning of autochthonous ecclesiologies, christologies, and the like.
Fourth, inculturation consciously follows the model of the incarnation (cf John Paul II, quoted in
ITC 1989:143). The Willowbank Report refers specifically to John 17:18, 20:21, and Philippians 2
(cf Stott and Coote 1980:323). In fact, the kenotic and incarnational dimension of authentic
inculturation is mentioned again and again in all theological traditions (cf Bühlmann 1977:287; Stott
and Coote 1980:323f; Geffré 1982:480–482; Gensichen 1985:123–126; Müller 1986:134; 1987:177;
cf also CT 53 and ME 26, 28). This incarnational dimension, of the gospel being “en-fleshed,” “em-
bodied” in a people and its culture, of a “kind of ongoing incarnation” (P. Divarkar, quoted in Müller
1986:134—my translation) is very different from any model that had been in vogue for over a
thousand years. In this paradigm, it is not so much a case of the church being expanded, but of the
church being born anew in each new context and culture.
In the fifth place, and following directly from the previous point, the earlier models did indeed
suggest an interaction between gospel and culture, but one in which the theological content of the
interaction remained obscure. The coordination of gospel and culture should, however, be structured
christologically (Gensichen 1985:124). Still, the missionaries do not just set out to “take Christ” to
other people and cultures, but also to allow the faith the chance to start a history of its own in each
people and its experience of Christ. Inculturation suggests a double movement: there is at once
inculturation of Christianity and Christianization of culture. The gospel must remain Good News
while becoming, up to a certain point, a cultural phenomenon (Geffré 1982:482), while it takes into
account the meaning systems already present in the context (cf Schreiter 1985:12f). On the one hand,
it offers the cultures “the knowledge of the divine mystery,” while on the other it helps them “to bring
forth from their own living tradition original expressions of Christian life, celebration and thought”
(CT 53). This approach breaks radically with the idea of the faith as “kernel” and the culture as
“husk”—which in any case is, to a large extent, an illustration of the Western scientific tradition's
distinction between “content” and “form.” In many non-Western cultures such distinctions do not
operate at all (cf Hiebert 1987:108, who refers to Mary Douglas). A more appropriate metaphor may
therefore be that of the flowering of a seed implanted into the soil of a particular culture. This is also
the metaphor AG 22 employs (without, of course, explicitly using the term “inculturation”).
Sixth, since culture is an all-embracing reality, inculturation is also all-embracing. EN 20 could
still state that the reign of God makes use only of “certain elements of human culture and cultures.” It
is now, however, recognized that it is impossible to isolate elements and customs and “christianize”
these. Where this is being done the encounter between gospel and culture does not take place at a
meaningful level (cf Gensichen 1985:124f). Only where the encounter is inclusive will this
experience be a force animating and renewing the culture from within (cf Müller 1987:178).
The Limits of Inculturation
Inculturation also has a critical dimension. The faith and its cultural expression—even if it is neither
possible nor prudent to dislodge the one from the other—are never completely coterminous.
Inculturation does not mean that culture is to be destroyed and something new built up on its ruins;
neither, however, does it suggest that a particular culture is merely to be endorsed in its present form
(cf Gensichen 1985:125f). The philosophy that “anything goes” as long as it seems to make sense to
people can be catastrophic.
Of course, the churches of the West have to say this first to themselves, before they dare say it to
and of others. Often in the West the inculturation process has been so “successful” that Christianity
has become nothing but the religious dimension of the culture—listening to the church, society hears
only the sound of its own music. The West has often domesticated the gospel in its own culture while
making it unnecessarily foreign to other cultures. In a very real sense, however, the gospel is foreign
to every culture. It will always be a sign of contradiction. But when it is in conflict with a particular
culture, for instance of the Third World, it is important to establish whether the tension stems from the
gospel itself or from the circumstance that the gospel has been too closely associated with the culture
through which the missionary message was mediated at this point in time (cf Geffré 1982:482).
There are two principles at work here, says Walls (1982b), and they operate simultaneously. On
the one hand there is the “indigenizing” principle, which affirms that the gospel is at home in every
culture and every culture is at home with the gospel. But then there is the “pilgrim” principle, which
warns us that the gospel will put us out of step with society—“for that society never existed, in East
or West, ancient time or modern, which could absorb the word of Christ painlessly into its system”
(:99). Authentic inculturation may indeed view the gospel as the liberator of culture; the gospel can,
however, also become culture's prisoner (cf Walls 1982b).
Inculturation's concern, says Pedro Arrupe, is to become “a principle that animates, directs, and
unifies the culture, transforming it and remaking it so as to bring about a ‘new creation”’ (quoted in
Shorter 1988:11; cf ITC 1989:143, 155). The focus, then, is on the “new creation,” on the
transformation of the old, on the plant which, having flowered from its seed, is at the same time
something fundamentally new when compared with that seed.
Interculturation
In the nature of the case inculturation can never be a fait accompli. One may never use the term
“inculturated.” Inculturation remains a tentative and continuing process (cf Memorandum 1982:466),
not only because cultures are not static but also because the church may be led to discover previously
unknown mysteries of the faith. The relationship between the Christian message and culture is a
creative and dynamic one, and full of surprises. There is no eternal theology, no theologia perennis
which may play the referee over “local theologies.” In the past, Western theology arrogated to itself
the right to be such an arbitrator in respect to Third-World theologies. It implicitly viewed itself as
fully indigenized, inculturated, a finished product. We are beginning to realize that this was
inappropriate, that Western theologies (plural!)—just as much as all the others—were theologies in
the making, theologies in the process of being contextualized and indigenized.
 This insight has important consequences. We are beginning to realize that all theologies, including
those in the West, need one another; they influence, challenge, enrich, and invigorate each other—not
least so that Western theologies may be liberated from the “Babylonian captivity” of many centuries.
In a very real sense, then, what we are involved in is not just inculturation, but “interculturation”
(Joseph Blomjous—cf Shorter 1988:13–16). We need an “exchange of theologies” (Beinert
1983:219), in which Third-World students continue (as they have been doing for a long time) to study
in the West but in which Western students also go to study in Third-World contexts, in which one-way
traffic, from the West to the East and the South, is superseded, first by bilateral and then by
multilateral relationships.22 Where this happens, the old dichotomies are transcended and the
churches of the West discover, to their amazement, that they are not simply benefactors and those of
the South and the East not merely beneficiaries, but that all are, at the same time, giving and receiving,
that a kind of osmosis is taking place (cf Jansen Schoonhoven 1977:172–194; Bühlmann 1977:383–
394). This calls for a new disposition, particularly on the part of the West and Western missionaries
(and perhaps increasingly also on the part of missionaries from the South to the West!), who have to
rethink the necessity and blessedness of receiving, of being genuinely teachable. The missionary,
Daniel Fleming said almost seventy years ago, must realize that he or she is “temporary, secondary
and advisory” (quoted in Hutchison 1987:151). This does not make missionaries redundant or
unimportant. They will remain, also in the future, living symbols of the universality of the church as a
body that transcends all boundaries, cultures, and languages. But they will, far more than has been the
case in the past, be ambassadors sent from one church to the other, a living embodiment of mutual
solidarity and partnership.
Interculturation assumes, furthermore, that local incarnations of the faith should not be too local.
On the one hand, a “homogeneous unit” church can become so ingrown that it finds it impossible to
communicate with other churches and believes that its perspective on the gospel is the only legitimate
one. The church must be a place to feel at home; but if only we feel at home in our particular church,
and all others are either excluded or made unwelcome or feel themselves completely alienated,
something has gone wrong (cf Walls 1982b). On the other hand, we may be tempted to over-celebrate
an infinite number of differences in the emergence of pluralistic local theologies and claim that not
just each local worshiping community but even each pastor and church member may develop her or
his own “local theology” (cf Stackhouse 1988:23, 115f). Over against these positions it has to be said
that our churches and worshiping communities also have to be de-provincialized (:116). This can
only happen if vital contact with the wider church is nurtured. While acting locally we have to think
globally, in terms of the una sancta, combining a micro-with a macro-perspective. It is true that the
church exists primarily in particular churches (LG 23), but it is also true that it is in virtue of the
church's catholicity (cf LG 13) that the particular churches exist—and this holds true not only for the
Roman Catholic Church as an international ecclesiastical structure, but for all those communities that
call themselves “Christian.” If the church is the Body of Christ it can only be one. In this sense, then
—and not as an idealistic supra-cultural entity—the church is a kind of “universal hermeneutical
community, in which Christians and theologians from different lands check one another's cultural
biases” (Hiebert 1985b: 16). Particularity does not mean isolation; so, even if we may celebrate our
various local theologies, let us remember that it is equally true that “any theology is a discourse about
a universal message” (Gutiérrez 1988:xxxvi). This discourse certainly leads to tension, but it can be a
creative tension if we pursue the model of “unity within reconciled diversity” (H. Meyer, reference in
Sundermeier 1986:98). If we follow this road, our understanding of mission and church will indeed
be qualitatively different from all earlier models, while we will at the same time experience vital
communion with those former epochs.

MISSION AS COMMON WITNESS

The (Re)birth of the Ecumenical Idea in Mission
I have called the emerging theological paradigm “ecumenical” (see the title of this chapter). This
leitmotif has been implicit throughout this entire chapter. It is now necessary to make it more explicit.
As far as Protestantism is concerned, the ecumenical idea was a direct result of the various
awakenings and the subsequent involvement of churches from the West in the worldwide missionary
enterprise. The first clear example of this was the emergence of the Pietist movement at the beginning
of the eighteenth century. Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans in Germany, Scandinavia, the
Netherlands, and Britain experienced a newfound unity of Christians, which transcended
denominational differences, and felt urged to involve themselves in a new, trans-denominational
missionary movement (cf Rosenkranz 1977:168). The ecumenical spirit manifested itself, for
example, in the bible societies and, at the end of the nineteenth century, in youth movements such as
the YMCA, YWCA, and WSCF. But it was especially in the foreign missionary movement that the
ecumenical idea thrived. Several of the earliest mission societies were non- or trans-denominational.
One may, for instance, think of the LMS, the American Board, the Basel and the Barmen Missionary
Societies. Others, such as the Berlin Missionary Society, were only mildly confessional (cf
Rosenkranz 1977:198).
By the third decade of the nineteenth century, however, the fervor for both mission and cooperation
had declined. A new and often fierce denominationalism took its place. The signals were, in fact,
there almost from the beginning of the Awakenings. The LMS (1795) was deliberately formed as a
nondenominational society, but only four years later the Anglicans withdrew to found the
(denominational) CMS. The LMS itself also gradually evolved into a denominational society (of the
Congregational Church), as did the American Board on the other side of the Atlantic. On the
continent, Lutherans increasingly experienced difficulties with the “mixed” nature of the Basel
Mission Society; in 1836 the Leipzig Mission Society was formed on a confessional Lutheran basis,
as an alternative to the Basel society (cf Chapter 9).
This meant, of course, that it was no longer only “the Glorious Gospel of the blessed God” (one of
the “fundamental principles” of the LMS) that was exported to other lands, but Lutheranism,
Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, and the like. On the “mission fields” it inevitably led to rivalry and
competition, often on a large scale. This was particularly evident in China, traditionally the “darling
of Protestant missions.” Already in 1855 twenty Protestant societies were working in China's six port
cities. By 1925 there were 130 societies operating in all of China (Rosenkranz 1977:210). It was
only to be expected that such a state of affairs would have very negative effects and lead to incredible
confusion. As recently as 1953 Beaver could still write: “The non Roman-Catholic missionary
enterprise appears as a chaotic conglomeration of unrelated, overlapping, often competing units
seemingly incapable of common planning and action” (quoted in Hoekendijk 1967a:332f, note 66).
Prior to the last quarter of the nineteenth century the only new form of ecumenism evolving in
Protestantism was that of global confessional alliances, for such churches as the Lutheran,
Presbyterian, Methodist, and Anglican. On the mission fields, however, a degree of mutual
acceptance began to develop. This led to so-called comity agreements, according to which the areas
to be evangelized were subdivided among different mission agencies. A kind of denominationalism
by geography resulted. Of course, this only worked in the case of those denominations willing to
waive their claim to absoluteness and usually excluded any agreement with Roman Catholics and
Anglicans. The aims were laudable, but purely pragmatic—to avoid competition, to realize better
stewardship of resources, and to provide more effective witness to non-Christians (cf Anderson
1988:102). This was also the purpose of the first conferences, on the mission fields, of
representatives from various mission agencies.
In the course of time these pragmatic considerations, quite unintentionally, led to the rediscovery
of a basic theological datum: the oneness of the church of Christ. In the last two decades of the
nineteenth century, then, the scene changed dramatically, with the emergence first of the international
student movement, then of the international missionary movement and, early in the twentieth century,
with the first hesitant steps toward a global and inclusive ecumenical movement. The most important
milestone in this regard was the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. Because of its
pragmatic agenda (it was essentially a “how to” conference), Edinburgh succeeded to a remarkable
degree in transcending denominational differences (cf Scherer 1968:20).
In spite of its pragmatic nature, Karl Barth (1961:37f) hailed the movement that began at
Edinburgh as a fundamental ecclesiological breakthrough. Earlier, church unity had been understood
as the result of reaching doctrinal consensus via theological debate, but the world was ignored; in the
new style, the interest in church unity was motivated by a concern for the world. Still, “ecumenism
new style” was present only in embryo at Edinburgh. Martin Kähler was one of the first to grasp the
theological significance of unity; he regarded church unity as an expression of faith and disunity as a
manifestation of unbelief. In a letter to John Mott, Kähler ([1910] 1971:259) referred to the strife
between churches as a “Zerrissenheit’ (“disruption”) on a par with that caused by the absence of
faith. Two years earlier ([1908] 1971:179) he had commented that the deficit of unity in mission was
far more pressing than any financial deficits the societies might be experiencing. And as early as 1899
he had written—almost with melancholy—that Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21 had not yet been
answered: “So far the Lord has not led his people on this road toward the victory of faith” ([1899]
1971:462—my translation).
Edinburgh 1910 suggested, without spelling it out, that authentic unity could not be had without
authentic mission, without an open window toward the world. In the course of time those first halting
steps toward unity in mission and mission in unity would lead to the conviction that it is impossible to
choose in favor either of unity or of mission: “The only possible choice for the Church, or any part of
the Church, is for or against both” (Saayman 1984:127—emphasis in original).
The International Missionary Council, founded in 1921, which provided the non-Roman Catholic
world with its first organ of international and interconfessional cooperation (cf Neill 1968:107), was
the first tangible expression of the new paradigm. It was soon to be followed by two other
movements, which could also trace their origins to Edinburgh 1910: Faith and Order and Life and
Work. The latter two merged in 1948 to form the World Council of Churches. The dichotomy between
unity and mission—epitomized in the existence, side by side, of the WCC (a council of churches) and
the IMC (a council of societies)—increasingly came under pressure. A WCC Central Committee
meeting at Rolle in Switzerland (1951) reflected on “the calling of the church to mission and to unity”
(cf Saayman 1984:14f). It recognized that it was inconceivable to divorce the obligation of the church
to take the gospel to the whole world from its obligation to draw all Christ's people together; both
were viewed as essential to the being of the church and the fulfillment of its function as the Body of
Christ. It was also urged that the word “ecumenical” should be used “to describe everything that
relates to the whole task of the whole Church to bring the Gospel to the whole world.”
The dichotomy—on the global structural level—between unity and mission was overcome only at
the WCC's New Delhi assembly (1961), where the IMC integrated with the WCC. Whatever criticism
one might have about the way the integration took place, there can be no doubt that a crucial
theological point was made: unity and mission belong together. The rediscovery of the essentially
missionary nature of the church could not but lead to the discovery that the Christian mission could
only be truly called Christian if it was borne by the one church of Christ. This “discovery” confirms
an age-old tenet of (Eastern) Orthodoxy. Since mission and unity belong together, we may not view
them as consecutive stages; if this is not consistently kept in mind, we would only be converting
people to our own “denomination” while at the same time administering to them the poison of
division (Nissiotis 1968:198). It is through the universality of the gospel it proclaims that the church
becomes missionary (Frazier 1987:13). To say that the church is catholic is another way of saying that
it is essentially missionary (cf Berkouwer 1979:105–107). Therefore, to claim—as some do—that
the ecumenical age has now taken the place of the age of mission, is to misunderstand both; and to
neglect one of the two is to lose both (Linz 1974:4f).
It was this theological perspective that stood behind the decision of the WCC New Delhi
Assembly (1961) to integrate the IMC with the WCC. Newbigin, speaking to the Assembly, said, “For
the churches which constitute the World Council this means the acknowledgment that the missionary
task is no less central to the life of the church than the pursuit of renewal and unity” (WCC 1961:4). In
keeping with the new insight, New Delhi amended the WCC's “basis.” Originally, it had identified
itself as “a fellowship of churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior.” At New
Delhi, “accept” was changed to “confess.” At the same time the words “and therefore seek to fulfil
together their common calling to the glory of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit” were added (cf
WCC 1961:152–159). The “common calling” was understood to refer to “confess” and thus had a
clear missionary thrust, something that was absent in the original basis (cf also WCC 1961:116, 121,
257). Neill (1968:108) calls this decision “a revolutionary moment in Church history.” He adds,
More than two hundred Church bodies in all parts of the world…had solemnly declared themselves in the presence of God to be
responsible as Churches for the evangelization of the whole world. Such an event had never taken place in the history of the
Church since Pentecost (:108f).

The Nairobi Assembly (1975) endorsed the New Delhi perspective. The Section Report, “What
Unity Requires,” formulated this as follows: “The purpose for which we are called to unity is ‘that
the world may believe.’ A quest for unity which is not set in the context of Christ's promise to draw
all people to himself would be false” (WCC 197:64).
ME 1 also makes mention of the “inextricable relationship between Christian unity and missionary
calling, between ecumenism and evangelization.” The San Antonio CWME meeting (1989) took up
the same theme and interpreted, “Christian mission is the humble involvement of the one body of
Christ in liberating and suffering love” (Section I.10; WCC 1990:27), and “To be called to unity in
mission involves becoming a community that transcends in its life the barriers and brokenness in the
world, and living as a sign of at-one-ment under the cross” (I.11; WCC 1990:28):
Whether the vision of New Delhi, Nairobi, ME, and San Antonio is being realized is a question
that cannot be pursued here. The goal of structural church unity (“in one faith and in one eucharistic
fellowship” [Vancouver—cf WCC 1983:43–52]), it would appear, has in recent years been put on the
back burner. Also, many would say that the ecumenical movement and many member churches of the
WCC have virtually lost their missionary vision (depending, of course, on how one defines
“mission”). This may be true, or partially true. Even so, there can be little doubt that the WCC and its
member churches are giving expression to a notion that is fundamental to the Christian faith: the
indissoluble link between unity and mission (cf Saayman 1984:112–116, 127).
Many evangelical agencies withdrew from the wider ecumenical movement after the New Delhi
integration of the IMC into the WCC. And few evangelical denominations have joined the WCC. This
does not mean that all evangelicals are anti-ecumenical. It simply means that the ecumenical
movement is wider than the WCC. There is today an evangelical ecumenical movement which
operates in its own right and which runs from Wheaton 1966 and Berlin 1966 via Lausanne 1974 to
Manila 1989. The evangelical emphasis on unity differs in a significant respect from the ecumenical
understanding, however. Evangelicals tend to regard unity as something almost exclusively spiritual
and as an attribute of the invisible church. Where “visible” unity is mentioned it tends to be stressed
only for the sake of more effective evangelism and not as non-negotiable theological premise. LC 7,
for instance, states: “Evangelism also summons us to unity, because our oneness strengthens our
witness, just as our disunity undermines our gospel of reconciliation.” The concern is for a pragmatic
unity, involving planning, mutual encouragement, and the sharing of resources and experiences. It is
further circumscribed by a heavy emphasis on doctrinal purity. At the Pattaya Conference (1980) of
the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, for instance, a suggestion that the LCWE should
be open to fraternal relationship with anybody “in sympathy” with the Lausanne Covenant was
amended to read “in full support of” the Covenant. Such a mentality easily leads to the situation
where instead of witnessing to people who are not Christians, one witnesses against Christians whose
priorities differ from one's own. By and large, then, the paradigm shift which is in evidence in the
ecumenical movement is absent among evangelicals.
Catholics, Mission, and Ecumenism
Developments in Catholicism have—if anything—been even more dramatic than in Protestantism.
This is illustrated, for example, by the change in the way official Roman Catholic documents refer to
Protestants. From being called “children of Satan” and “heretics” or “schismatics,” the appellations
for Protestants have been modified to refer to “dissenters,” “separated brethren,” and eventually,
“brothers and sisters in Christ” (cf Auf der Maur 1970:88f; van der Aalst 1974:197). The foundations
for the earlier position had been laid firmly at the Council of Trent. The restoration of Catholicism
manifested itself as Counter-Reformation. The very word “mission” had an anti-Protestant ring to it;
not least since the term “mission” in the sense of “propagation of the faith” first surfaced as
designation for the Jesuit settlements in northern Germany, where their task was to reconvert
Protestants (Glazik 1984b:29). After the founding of Propaganda Fide (1622), and, in fact, until
about 1830, the main focus of the Propaganda was on calling Protestants back to the true faith. And
the missionary encyclicals of the twentieth century, from Maximum Illud (1919) to Fidei Donum
(1957), were unashamedly anti-Protestant (cf Auf der Maur 1970:83f). Rerum Ecclesiae (1926), for
instance, referred to the importance of calling “the separated brethren back to the unity of the church”
and of “tearing away non-Catholics from their errors” (:85). Even the joint praying of the Lord's
Prayer, for instance, was proscribed for Catholics until 1949. Because of the paradigm shift from
Catholicism to Protestantism—says Pfürtner (1984:179)—two different “linguistic communities”
came into existence; their followers, even where they used the same words, no longer meant the same
by them.
Against this background the events of Vatican II were little short of a miracle. A new spirit
permeated virtually all the proceedings and documents of the Council. It is true that the use of the term
“church” remains ambiguous (sometimes it clearly refers to the Roman Catholic Church; sometimes,
however, it seems to have a wider reference), but there can be no doubt that Vatican II spoke about the
church in a manner very different from what had been customary. LG 15 states categorically that those
“who are sealed by baptism which unites them to Christ…are indeed in some real way joined to us in
the Holy Spirit.” In light of the guidelines of AG 15 it has, furthermore, become impossible to
continue to regard non-Catholic Christians as objects of mission.
It was, however, especially the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) that spoke in clear
language about the need for improved relations and mutual acceptance. Crumley describes its
adoption by the Council as “the most import ant single event in the somewhat checkered history of the
ecumenical movement” (1989:146). In its first paragraph it describes “the restoration of unity among
all Christians” as one of the principal concerns of the Council and states that division among
Christians “contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages that most holy cause,
the preaching of the Gospel to every creature.” AG 6 takes up the same theme and intimately links the
unity of the church to its mission. All baptized people are called upon to come together in one flock,
that they might bear unanimous witness to Christ their Lord before the nations. The Decree goes on to
say, “And if they cannot yet fully bear witness to one faith, they should at least be imbued with mutual
respect and love.” Frequently (in paragraphs 3 and 19 to 23), the Decree on Ecumenism has subtly
changed the (already less judgmental) “separated brethren” to “the brethren divided (or separated)
from us,” drawing attention to the fact that the separation had been mutual (cf Auf der Maur 1970:89).
The Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) and Pope John XXIII's
creating the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity set the seal on this entire development, which
was also welcomed by the WCC (cf Meeking 1987:5–7).
Vatican II together with recent developments in Protestantism hailed the advent of a new era (cf
Saayman 1984:33–67). After the Council the Catholic Church proceeded further on its new road
(:67–70). EN 77 (published 1975) insists on “a collaboration marked by a greater commitment to the
Christian brethren with whom we are not yet united in perfect unity” (emphasis added). Dialogue
projects between the Catholic Church and various other confessional communities, including
evangelicals, are today part and parcel of the ecclesial scene. In 1980 John Paul II called Martin
Luther “a witness to the message of faith and justification.” On December 11, 1983, he praised Luther
in a Lutheran Church. The two “linguistic communities” (Pfürtner) were at long last beginning to
understand and even speak each other's language. Controversy and confrontation have made room for
ecumenical encounter. And the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone is no longer
regarded as ground for separation (cf Pfürtner 1984:168; Crumley 1989:147).
The new term, which enunciates the ideas of both unity and mission and which found expression in
various study documents, is “common witness” (cf Common Witness 1984; see also Meeking 1987
and Spindler 1987). The impulse to a common witness, it is claimed, does not flow from any strategy;
rather, “awareness of the communion with Christ and with each other generates the dynamism that
impels Christians to give a visible witness together” (Common Witness 1). The renewal the Holy
Spirit spawns in Christians and in their communities “centres in Christ and calls forth a new
obedience and a new way of life which is itself a witnessing communion” (Common Witness 13). The
“striking and clear convergences” on evangelism which emerged from Bangkok (1973), the Lausanne
Congress (1974), and Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975) are applauded (Common Witness 11). Spindler
(1987:20; cf Meeking 1987:9–17) rightly makes mention of “the tremendous reality” and “emerging
tradition” of common witness. Not that the idea is without problems. Common witness is still
extremely rare in the area of evangelism, and particularly insofar as mission is defined almost
exclusively as “church planting” (cf Auf der Maur 1970:97; Spindler 1987:21, 25). Also, what is
written in church documents or joint statements is not necessarily practiced at the local level, where it
really matters. In addition, ecumenism seems to have lost much of its momentum. In light of all this we
are at the moment, at best, involved in “intermediate ecumenism” (Spindler 1987:26f).
Unity in Mission; Mission in Unity
At his enthronement as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1942, William Temple referred to the existence
of a worldwide Christianity as “the great new fact of our time” (quoted in Neill 1966a:15). Intimately
related to this, says Jansen Schoonhoven, is a second “great new fact of our time”: the ecumenical
movement, in all its forms. It was a Roman Catholic, W. H. van de Pol, who, in 1948, alluded to the
formation of the WCC as “something absolutely new in history.” In 1960 another Catholic, M. J. le
Guillou, called the WCC “a community of a fundamentally new type, without precedent in history”
(references in Jansen Schoonhoven 1974b:7f—my translation).
Since Vatican II much the same can be said about Catholicism. It has become impossible to say
“church” without at the same time saying “mission”; by the same token it has become impossible to
say “church” or “mission” without at the same time talking about the one mission of the one church.
This represents a paradigm shift of momentous proportions. It did not come about because of the
accumulation of new (and better!) insights, but because of a new self-understanding (cf Pfürtner
1984:184). It is part of the new search for wholeness and unity and for overcoming dualism and
dividedness (Daecke 1988:630f). It is not the result of lazy tolerance, indifference, and relativism but
of a new grasp of what being Christians in the world is all about. For this reason, all the unions of
churches that have been taking place since the 1920s and all the national “councils of churches” that
have been formed during the past half century or so, only make sense if they serve the missio Dei.
Ecumenism is not a passive and semi-reluctant coming together but an active and deliberate living
and working together. It is not merely the replacement of hostility by correct but noncommittal
politeness.
Let me now attempt to draw some of the contours of the new paradigm.
First, the mutual coordination of mission and unity is non-negotiable. It is not simply derived from
the new world situation or from changed circumstances, but from God's gift of unity in the one Body
of Christ. God's people is one; Christ's Body is one. It is therefore, strictly speaking, an anomaly to
refer to the “unity of churches”; one can only talk about the “unity of the church.” As H. de Lubac
puts it:
The Church is not catholic because she is spread abroad over the whole of the earth and can reckon on a large number of
members. She was already catholic on the morning of Pentecost, when all her members could be contained in a small room…
For fundamentally catholicity has nothing to do with geography or statistics…Like sanctity, catholicity is primarily an intrinsic
feature of the Church (quoted in Frazier 1987:47).

In light of this, we are creating a false dichotomy if we play truth out against unity. A hallmark of
Paul's theology was his refusal to entertain the possibility of a disjunction between the truth of the
gospel and the divinely willed unity of the church; for him the supreme value was indissolubly this
unity and this truth (cf Beker 1980:130; Meyer 1986:169f, note 12).
Second, holding onto both mission and unity and to both truth and unity presupposes tension. It
does not presume uniformity. The aim is not a levelling out of differences, a shallow reductionism, a
kind of ecumenical broth. Our differences are genuine and have to be treated as such. Whenever the
church takes seriously its mission in respect to the various human communities which stand in conflict
with one another—whether these conflicts are doctrinal, social, or cultural in nature, or due to
different life situations and experiences—there is an inner tension which cannot be disregarded.
Rather, this tension calls us to repentance. Mission in unity and unity in mission are impossible
without a self-critical attitude, particularly where Christians meet with others, fellow-believers or
non-believers, who, by human standards, should be their enemies. But this is what the church is for
—“to take up the deepest conflicts of the world into itself and to confront both sides there with the
forgiving, transforming power which breaks and remakes them into a new community, with a new
hope and a new calling” (West 1971:270). Ecumenism is only possible where people accept each
other despite differences. Our goal is not a fellowship exempt from conflict, but one which is
characterized by unity in reconciled diversity. The modern paradigm, says Daecke (1988:631)
suggested that the choice is between diversity without unity or unity without diversity; the postmodern
paradigm manifests itself as unity which preserves diversity and diversity which strives after unity.
Divergences are not a matter of regret, but part of the struggle within the church to become what God
wants it to be (cf NIE 1980:12; Crumley 1989:147).
In the midst of all diversity, however, there is a center: Jesus Christ. When John XXIII opened the
Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, he spoke on what had remained unaltered after almost
two thousand years; namely, that Jesus Christ was still the center of the community and of life. It is
this common foundation, this point of orientation, which enables us to engage in joint service and
united witness in the world (cf Verstraelen 1988:433). Unity in mission is no lost cause as long as the
Bible, which witnesses to this Christ, is opened, read, and proclaimed in all Christian churches (cf de
Groot 1988:155). Listening to God's word and listening to each other belong together, however; we
can have the first only if we are also prepared to have the second (:163; cf also Küng 1987:81–84).
Third, a united church-in-mission is essential in light of the fact that the church's mission will
never come to an end. There was an age when it was believed in all sincerity that it was only a
matter of time before we would actually complete the missionary task. Much nineteenth-century
missionary policy was built on this premise. Today we know that we shall never reach the stage
where we can say “mission accomplished!” We know that the world can no longer be subdivided into
“sending” and “receiving” countries, between “home base” and “mission field.” The home base is
everywhere, and so is the mission field. This was the shocking message of Godin and Daniel (1943):
France, the “eldest daughter of the church,” had again become a mission field. A new “Age of
Discovery” had begun for the churches in Europe—not the exploration of new lands overseas, but of
the worlds of atheism, secularism, and superstition, of the “new pagans” of Europe (cf Köster
1984:156f). Everywhere the church is in the diaspora, in a situation of mission.
Fourth, mission in unity means an end to the distinction between “sending” and “receiving”
churches—something for which John Mott called as early as the Jerusalem Conference of 1928 (cf
Hutchison 1987:180). Ten years later, Kraemer found it necessary to remind the delegates to the
Tambaram Conference that the “younger” churches are the fruit of missionary labor, not the
possession of mission societies ([1938] 1947:426). Many phrases and slogans were conceived to
give expression to the need for new relationships: “three-selfs,” “partnership in obedience,” “living
as comrades,” “equality,” “cooperation,” “a fifty-fifty basis,” “solidarity.” Marvellous phrases! The
younger churches, however, experienced most of them as hollow and meaningless. Alluding to the
Whitby (1947) slogan, an Indonesian pastor once trenchantly remarked to a Dutch professor: “Yes,
partnership for you, but obedience for us!” (Jansen Schoonhoven 1977:48). It is, however, useless to
talk about the “autonomy of the younger churches” (quite apart from the question whether one may
ever refer to any church's “autonomy”!) while leaving existing structural patterns intact. No
superficial modernization of missionary policies or adaptation to the current practices and techniques
of the West will effect any fundamental changes (cf Rütti 1974:291). This applies not only to
Protestants but also to Catholics; there, too, the relationship between the churches in the West and
those in the Third World is often still shot through with paternalism (cf Rosenkranz 1977:431–434).
For the sake of unity and of mission, we need new relationships, mutual responsibility, accountability,
and interdependence (not independence!)—not just because the Western church is now operating in
the context of a world in which the West's dominance, numerically and otherwise, appears to have
ended definitely, but rather because there can be no “highef” or “lower” in the Body of Christ.
Fifth, if we accept the validity of mission-in-unity we cannot but take a stand against the
proliferation of new churches, which are often formed on the basis of extremely questionable
distinctions. This Protestant virus may no longer be tolerated as though it is the most natural thing in
the world for a group of people to start their own church, which mirrors their foibles, fears, and
suspicions, nurtures their prejudices, and makes them feel comfortable and relaxed. If Wagner (1979)
is praised (on the dust cover of his book) for having transformed “the statement that ‘11 A.M. on
Sunday is the most segregated hour in America’ from a millstone around Christian necks into a
dynamic tool for assuring Christian growth,” then something is drastically wrong. The apostle Paul
sought to build communities in which, right from the start, Jew and Greek, slave and free, poor and
rich, would worship together, learn to love one another, and learn to deal with difficulties arising out
of their diverse social, cultural, religious, and economic backgrounds. This belongs to the essence of
the church. By contrast, the essence of heresy, says Hoekendijk, is the “fundamental refusal to
participate in a common history” (1967a:348). There is a tendency in Protestantism to stress the
vertical relationship between God and the individual in such a way that it is distinct from the
horizontal relationship between people; however, the “vertical line” is also a covenant line with the
community (cf Samuel and Sugden 1986:195). Theologically—and practically—this means that
christology is incomplete without ecclesiology (:192f) and without Pneumatology (cf Kramm
1979:218f; Memorandum 1982:461). We cannot speak about Christ, the Lord and Savior, without
speaking about his Body—his liberated and saved community. By the same token, the Spirit, in the
New Testament dispensation, is not given to individuals, but to the community. If our mission is to be
christological and pneumatological, it also has to be ecclesial, in the sense of being the one mission
of the one church.
Sixth, ultimately unity in mission and mission in unity do not merely serve the church but, through
the church, stand in the service of humankind and seek to manifest the cosmic rule of Christ (cf
Saayman 1984:21–55). The church (but only insofar as it is the one church) is “the sign of the coming
unity of mankind” (Uppsala, Section I.20—WCC 1968:17). The 1989 San Antonio Conference of
CWME concurs: “The church is called again and again to be a prophetic sign and foretaste of the
unity and renewal of the human family as envisioned in God's promised reign” (Section I.11; WCC
1990:28). The reign of God is not only the church's final fulfillment but also the world's future
(Limouris 1986:169).
Lastly, we have to confess that the loss of ecclesial unity is not just a vexation but a sin. Unity is
not an optional extra. It is, in Christ, already a fact, a given. At the same time it is a command: “Be
one!” We are called to be one as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one, and we should never tire
of striving toward that day when Christians in every place may gather to share the One Bread and the
One Cup (cf Crumley 1989:146, 149). At the moment, this appears to be nothing more than an
eschatological lightning on a distant horizon. Both the “world church” and the “unity of humankind”
are, in a sense, fictions. But both fictions are indispensable if we wish to do justice to what it means
to be church and to live creatively and missionally in the face of the eschatological tension which
belongs to our very being as Christians (cf Hoedemaker 1988:174).
 MISSION AS MINISTRY BY THE WHOLE PEOPLE OF GOD
The Evolution of the Ordained Ministry
The movement away from ministry as the monopoly of ordained men to ministry as the responsibility
of the whole people of God, ordained as well as non-ordained, is one of the most dramatic shifts
taking place in the church today. Boerwinkel (1974:54–64) has identified the “institutionalization of
church offices” as one of the characteristics of the Constantinian dispensation and the contemporary
“laicization” of the church as indicative of the end of Constantinianism. Moltmann (1975:11), in
addressing the task of church and theology in our time, formulates six theses, one of which reads:
“Christian theology…will no longer be simply a theology for priests and pastors, but also a theology
for the laity in their callings in the world.”
The crisis we are facing in respect to ministry is part and parcel of the crisis church and mission
face in this time of paradigm shifts, when virtually every traditional element of faith and polity is
under severe pressure. For almost nineteen centuries and in virtually all ecclesiastical traditions
ministry has been understood almost exclusively in terms of the service of ordained ministers. In
order to grasp something of the magnitude of the shift that is now taking place and its significance for
the mission of the church today, it will be necessary to survey, very briefly, the developments that
have led to the present impasse.
There can be no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth broke with the entire Jewish tradition when he chose
his disciples not from among the priestly class, but from among fisherfolk, tax-collectors, and the like.
This was part of his “wineskin-breaking ministry,” of the “reversal” feature in Jesus’ teaching, of
turning the proprieties of the time upside down by going contrary to normal human expectations (cf
Burrows 1981:44f). I have argued, in Chapter 1 of this study, that the Jesus movement began as a
renewal movement within Judaism, not as a separate religion. This may be the reason why the
terminology used for the movement and its members was borrowed neither from Jewish nor (after the
movement consciously began to recruit non-Jews) from Greek religious culture. The main word for
the community, ekklesia, was a term from the secular sphere. Meeks (1983:81) draws attention to the
fact that the Pauline churches are not called “synagogues.” Neither, in fact, are they called thiasoi, the
common Greek word for cultic or religious meetings. The believers simply “gather” (cf 1 Cor 11:17,
18, 20, 33, 34; 14:23, 26), mostly in private homes (cf Beker 1980:319). Indeed, the household may
be regarded as the basic unit in the establishment of Christianity in any city (Meeks 1983:29). The
church has offices—if we wish to call them that—particularly those of episkopos, presbyteros, and
diakonos (all of them secular terms). But, first, these offices are always understood as existing within
the community of faith, as never being prior to, independent of, or above the local church (cf de
Gruchy 1987:27), and, second, it would be grossly inaccurate simply to plug these terms into a later
sacral-juridical understanding of ecclesiastical office (Burrows 1981:77, drawing upon H. von
Campenhausen and H. Conzelmann). Most of the “leaders” in the early church are charismatic figures,
natural leaders, both men and women.
By the eighties of the first century AD it was, however, clear that Christianity had become a new
religion and could no longer be contained within Judaism. This also meant that the terminology used
by adherents of the new faith was increasingly understood in a strictly religious sense. The church
now had to cope with heresy from without and a hollowing-out of faith from within. In these
circumstances the most reliable antidote appeared to have been to encourage believers to follow the
directives of the clergy, in particular the bishops, who soon—particularly because of the writings and
influence of Ignatius and Cyprian—were regarded as the sole guarantors of the apostolic tradition and
the ones endowed with full authority in matters ecclesiastical. Henceforth the ordained minister
would hold a dominant and undisputed posit ion in church life, a situation that was further bolstered
by the doctrines of apostolic succession, the “indelible character” conferred on priests in the rite of
ordination, and the infallibility of the pope.
The clericalizing of the church went hand in hand with the sacerdotalizing of the clergy. Apart
from a questionable reference in Ignatius, the term “priest” was not applied to Christian clergy until
around the year 200. After that the term, and the theology behind it, was the “received view,”
strengthened by an elaborate “sacrament of holy orders,” which gave the ordinand the power to
represent sacramentally the sacrifice of Christ and brought about a mystical and ontological change in
the soul of the priest (cf Burrows 1981:61). At the same time it cut off the priest from the community,
putting him over against it as a mediation figure and as a kind of alter Christus (“another Christ”)
(:60, 88), The priest had active power to consecrate, forgive sins, and bless; “ordinary” Christians,
enabled thereto by their baptism, had only a passive role to play, namely, to receive grace (:105). The
church consisted of two clearly distinct categories of people: the clergy and the laity (from laos,
“people [of God]”), the latter understood as immature, not come of age, and utterly dependent on the
clergy in matters religious.
It was inevitable that, in this arrangement, it would be believed that the church's sole business was
the sacred (even if clergy, in particular bishops, often wielded secular power!). In reviewing the five
models of the church identified by Dulles (1976), Burrows (1981:38) points out that all of them (the
church as institution, mystical communion, sacrament, herald, and servant) actually understand the
church almost exclusively as a means of communicating grace and thus reinforce the sacerdotal
picture of the church. The church is a community mainly concerned with mediating eternal salvation to
individuals. The ordained ministry is the primary vehicle for that work, so the shape of the church is
built around it (:61f).
As the hegemony of the Catholic Church was not disputed in medieval Europe, it became
customary for the church to understand itself as the actual kingdom of God on earth. The simple
sociological fact at work here is that any dominant religion tends to adopt this sort of position. In this
case, the Catholic Church viewed itself as stocked with a supply of heavenly graces which the
clerical proprietors could disburse to customers. When, in the sixteenth century, its supremacy was
challenged by the Protestant Reformation, it reacted (in the Council of Trent) by dismissing the
Protestant claims out of hand. At the same time it embarked on “mission,” an activity of a corps of
“specialists,” priests, and religious, authorized by the pope to extend the church's hegemony to other
parts of the world. In those countries, ecclesiastical structures identical to those on the “home front”
were erected and an analogous leadership cadre installed.
The question is whether Protestants have really done any better. It is true that Luther is to be
credited with the rediscovery of the notion of the “priesthood of all believers.” In his thesis that “the
Christian…congregation has the right and power to judge all teaching and to call, install and dismiss
teachers” (quoted in Pfürtner 1984:184—my translation), Luther most certainly broke with the
dominant paradigm. However, when Luther's understanding of church and theology was under assault
from Anabaptists (some of whom had jettisoned the idea of an ordained ministry altogether) and
Catholics alike, he reverted to the inherited paradigm. In the end, he still had the clergyman at the
center of his church, endowed with considerable authority (cf Burrows 1981:104).
The other Reformers and their heirs followed Luther in this. To be sure, they rejected
Catholicism's sanctioning of the form of the priesthood as it had stood at the end of the fourth century
and settled, instead, for the shape the offices had taken at the close of the formation of the New
Testament. The key to this was the “threefold office of Christ”—King, Prophet, and Priest—which, in
the Protestant view, had clearly crystallized in the three offices of pastor, elder, and deacon. Instead
of showing appreciation for the fact that, in the early stages, these offices had evolved only to a
rudimentary degree, they took them to be explicitly instated by Christ and therefore immutable. In
practice, most denominations in mainline Protestantism today are muddling along with an
understanding of the ordained ministry vacillating between the traditional Reformation definition and
a view closer to that of Catholicism. On the other hand, many evangelical denominations, which tend
to follow a congregationalist polity, are struggling to avoid one of two pitfalls: either the minister
becomes a little pope whose word is law, or the congregation regards him as their employee who has
to dance to their tune.
The net result was not fundamentally different from the dominant Catholic view. The church
remained a strictly sacral society run by an in-house personnel. Only, the focus for the “cure of souls”
was not, as in Catholicism, the sacraments but the proclamation of the word of God (cf de Gruchy
1987:18, on Bonhoeffer). For the rest, what Protestants and Catholics shared regarding the role of the
ordained ministry was far more significant than their disagreements—in both traditions the
clergyman-priest, enshrined in a privileged and central position, remained the linchpin of the church
(cf Burrows 1981:61, 74). With the increasing specialization of theological training, the elitist
character of the “clerical paradigm” was further reinforced (cf Farley 1983:85–88). Like Catholic
missions, Protestant missions as a matter of course exported their dominant clergy pattern to the
“mission fields,” imposing it on others as the only legitimate and appropriate model, clothing David
in Saul's armor, and making it impossible for the young church either to execute its particular ministry
or to survive without help from outside.
It was highly unlikely that any change would appear in the dominant pattern until a transformation
of profound proportions would manifest itself in both church and society. This is what has begun to
happen in our time, in respect of the rediscovery of the “apostolate of the laity” or the “priesthood of
all believers.”
The Apostolate of the Laity
Catholic missions have always had a significant lay involvement. Their participation in the
missionary enterprise was, however, clearly auxiliary and firmly under the control and jurisdiction of
the clergy. In Protestant missions the prospects were more auspicious, particularly as the “voluntary
principle” (see Chapter 9) gained momentum.
Actually, from the very beginning Protestant missions were, to a significant extent, a lay
movement. The voluntary societies were not restricted to ecclesiastics. Normally there were clergy
involved in the founding of mission societies but they were often, as in the case of the CMS, clerical
nobodies, who usually cooperated closely with prominent laypersons (Walls 1988:150). Walls (:142)
describes the societies as free, open, responsible, embracing all classes, both sexes, all ages, the
masses of the people—a truly democratic and anti-authoritarian movement, to some extent also anti-
clergy and anti-establishment. North American societies, in particular, attracted large numbers of
women. In some instances, women founded their own mission societies (by 1890 there were thirty-
four of these in North America alone) and periodicals, and raised their own support (cf Anderson
1988:102f). On the “mission fields,” even in the case of societies run by men, women were soon the
majority (cf Hutchison 1987:101). And they did all the things men used to do, including preaching
(excluding the administering of the sacraments, of course).
After World War II the “home front” slowly began to catch up. It dawned upon the churches, both
Catholic and Protestant, that the traditional monolithic models of church office no longer matched
realities. The theological aggiornamento in both main Western confessions discovered again that
apostolicity was an attribute of the entire church and that the ordained ministry could be understood
only as existing within the community of faith.
In various ways Vatican II gave expression to the new theological and societal mood and to a new
awareness about the central role of the laity in the church, particularly in respect to the church's
missionary calling. The mood was, in this respect, fundamentally different from that of several earlier
councils. Y. Congar has noted that words repeatedly used in Vatican II had never been used by Vatican
I—words like amor (“love”) 113 times, and laicus (“layperson”) 200 times (quoted in Gómez
1986:57). LG 33 states: “The apostolate of the laity is a sharing in the salvific mission of the Church.
Through Baptism and Confirmation all are appointed to this apostolate by the Lord himself.” It adds
that the laity have “the exalted duty of working for the ever greater spread of the divine plan of
salvation to all people of every epoch and all over the earth.” AG 28 (cf LG 12) urges every member
of the church “to collaborate in the work of the Gospel, each according to his opportunity, ability,
charism and ministry.” It even states categorically (AG 21), “The Church is not truly established and
does not fully live, nor is it a perfect sign of Christ unless there is a genuine laity existing and
working alongside the hierarchy.” The Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops defines bishops
primarily as pastors, not as “holders of the fullness of priestly power” (cf Burrows 1981:109). Most
important, however, Vatican II produced Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Decree on the Apostolate of
Lay People, a document which describes the laity preeminently in terms of the church's mission,
having the “right and duty to be apostles” (paragraph 3).
Not that all problems were suddenly solved. Far from it! Vatican II still refers to laypersons as
“auxiliaries” of the “sacred ministries” (cf Gómez 1986:51). Also in other respects the old dichotomy
between clergy and laity seems to be firmly upheld, so much so that Boff (1986:30) maintains that, in
spite of Vatican II, the participation of the faithful in decision-making is totally mutilated. It seems, in
fact, as if the tension between the “top” and the “base” has been increasing rather than decreasing in
recent years, as more and more base communities, so-called “ecclesias,” “critical congregations,”
and the like are being formed within the Catholic Church (cf Blei 1980:1). There is, on the part of the
hierarchy, a certain apprehension about the consequences of according a larger role to the laity, a fear
of what N. Lash (quoted in de Gruchy 1987:35) has called “the rediscovery of the ‘congregationalist’
element in Catholicism” (cf also Burrows 1981:39f; Michiels 1989:106f).
In respect to the laity, post-Vatican Catholicism thus reveals both old and new versions of
ecclesiology. It is not essentially different in Protestantism. This is understandable if one keeps in
mind the almost two millennia during which the ordained clergy model persisted unchallenged. The
watertight division between the “teaching” church and the “learning” church (the ecclesia docens and
the ecclesia discens), between the active mediating of grace and the passive receiving of grace, is too
deep-seated to be expunged without some ado.
Even so, an unmistakable shift is taking place. Laypersons are no longer just the scouts who,
returning from the “outside world” with eyewitness accounts and perhaps some bunches of grapes,
report to the “operational basis”; they are the operational basis from which the missio Dei proceeds.
It is, in fact, not they who have to “accompany” those who hold “special offices” in the latter's
mission in the world. Rather, it is the office bearers who have to accompany the laity, the people of
God (cf Hoekendijk 1967a:350). In the New Testament dispensation the Spirit (just as the priesthood)
has been given to the whole people of God, not to select individuals.” The clergy, then, come from
the community, guide it, and act in Christ's name “(Moltmann 1977:303)”.
 For it is the community that is the primary bearer of mission. The project on the “missionary
structure of the congregation,” launched by the WCC's New Delhi Assembly in 1961 (a project
which, however, to a large extent aborted), together with the rediscovery of the local church in
Catholicism, are perhaps—from a missiological perspective—the most far-reaching contributions of
the WCC and Vatican II. Mission does not proceed primarily from the pope, nor from a missionary
order, society, or synod, but from a community gathered around the word and the sacraments and sent
into the world. Therefore the ordained leadership's role cannot possibly be the all-determining factor;
it is only one part of the community's total life (Burrows 1981:62). Gradually, churches are beginning
to adjust to the new theological insight. The vertical, linear model, running from the pope via the
bishop and the priest to the faithful (a model which has its parallels in Protestantism) is gradually
being replaced by one in which all are directly involved (cf Boff 1986:30–33).
It goes without saying that a new model of church is of great significance for the entire debate
about the ordination of women (cf, among other examples, Burrows 1981:134–137; Boff 1986:76–
97). Their ordination is, however, only one component of the issue involved, as is the notion of
authorizing laypersons to be directly involved in the celebration of the Lord's Supper (cf Boff
1986:70–75). The problem with this undoubtedly legitimate and crucial debate is that it still suggests
that some form of ordained ministry and some form of authority to celebrate the sacraments is the be-
all and end-all of what the church is all about.
Forms of Ministry
If it is true, as has been argued throughout this study, that the entire life of the church is missionary, it
follows that we desperately need a theology of the laity—something of which only the first rudiments
are now emerging. But also, such a theology is only now becoming possible again, as we are moving
out of the massive shadow of the Enlightenment. For a theology of the laity presupposes a break with
the notion, so fundamental to the Enlightenment, that the private sphere of life has to be separated
from the public (cf also Newbigin 1986:142f). Moltmann, in his thesis that the theology of the future
will no longer be simply a theology for priests and pastors but also for the laity, goes on to say:
It will be directed not only toward divine service in the church, but also toward divine service in the everyday life of the world.
Its practical implementation will include preaching and worship, pastoral duties, and Christian community, but also socialization,
democratization, education toward self-reliance and political life (1975:11).

One must therefore say, emphatically, that a theology of the laity does not mean that the laity should
be trained to become “mini-pastors.” Their ministry (or perhaps we should say their “service,” for
“ministry” has come to be such a churchy word—cf Burrows 1981:55f) is offered in the form of the
ongoing life of the Christian community “in shops, villages, farms, cities, classrooms, homes, law
offices, in counselling, politics, statecraft, and recreation” (:66f). The contingent form this ministry
will take must be recognized—as we should, in fact, recognize the contingent shape of the ordained
ministry. It will not be the same for every age, context, and culture. In some parts of the Third World,
in particular, the ministry of both laity and ordained will be much more extensive than it is in the
West. Its wider scope may be occasioned by the circumstance that in a developing country the
church's efforts may be more comprehensive than those of the government (:72) or, in a country like
South Africa—which is going through a painful process of democratization—by the fact that, where
the voices of political and community leaders have been silenced, the church is left as almost the only
voice of the voiceless. In most such cases, it will be a combined ministry of clergy and laity, to the
extent that it becomes impossible to distinguish who is doing what.
A striking example of lay ministry is to be found in the phenomenon of “base” or “small” Christian
communities which, having begun in Latin America,23 are today spreading across the entire globe,
even in the West. It takes many forms: house church groups in the West, African independent churches,
clandestine gatherings in countries where Christianity is proscribed, etc. The movement is, as far as
Catholicism is concerned, so exceptional that scholars are easily tempted to become too starry-eyed
in their evaluation (cf, for instance, Boff 1986:1, 4). Still, it is a development of momentous
significance. Bühlmann (1977:157) even ventures to say that these “experiments” are more significant
than the theology of liberation and can, with better reason, be taken as the contribution offered by
Latin America to the universal church. And their significance lies particularly in the fact that here the
laity have come of age and are missionally involved in an imaginative way.
It took a very long time before the Christian church discovered that Christ, who had turned upside
down the hallowed forms of ministry of the Jewish establishment of his time, might perhaps also
challenge the established “theology of ministry” of the Christian church (cf Burrows 1981:31f). But,
as always, Christ is not intent on destroying, but in fulfilling. This applies also to the ordained
ministry. Nothing will be gained by abolishing it. Boff (1986:32), in spite of all his criticism of the
structures of the Catholic Church and all his enthusiasm for the base communities, repudiates any
attempt at “despoiling the bishop and priest of their function in a sham liberation process.” Indeed,
clericalism is not overcome by rejecting an ordained ministry or by downplaying its significance and
task. De Gruchy (1987:26) quotes E. Schillebeeckx in this respect: “If there is no specialized
concentration of what is important to everyone, in the long run the community suffers as a result.”
Therefore, Hoekendijk's tendency to regard church offices merely as functional and therefore, in
the final analysis, as contingent (cf also Rütti 1972:311315) leads us nowhere. Some form of
ordained ministry is indeed essential and constitutive (see also Moltmann 1977:288–314), not as
guarantor of the validity of the church's claim to be the dispenser of God's grace, but, at most, as
guardian, to help keep the community faithful to the teaching and practice of apostolic Christianity (cf
Burrows 1981:83,112). The clergy do not do this alone and off their own bat, so to speak, but
together with the whole people of God, for all have received the Holy Spirit, who guides the church
in all truth. The priesthood of the ordained ministry is to enable, not to remove, the priesthood of the
whole church (Newbigin 1987:30). The clergy are not prior to or independent of or over against the
church; rather, with the rest of God's people, they are the church, sent into the world. In order to flesh
out this vision, then, we need a more organic, less sacral ecclesiology of the whole people of God.

MISSION AS WITNESS TO PEOPLE OF OTHER LIVING FAITHS24

The Shifting Scene
The theologia religionum, the “theology of religions,” is a discipline that has evolved only since the
1960s. The same impetus that made Christians of a given theological denomination ask, “Who are
these Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Orthodox?” also led to the question, “Who are these
people of other faiths, these Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims?” At least in this formal sense, then,
there is a relationship between ecumenism and the theology of religions.
The issue of the attitude Christians and Christian missions should adopt to (adherents of) other
faiths is, of course, an ancient one, with roots in the Old Testament. For many centuries, however, this
was hardly ever debated. Emperor Theodosius’ decrees of 380 (which demanded that all citizens of
the Roman Empire be Christians) and 391 (which proscribed all non-Christians cults), inexorably
paved the way for Pope Boniface's bull, Unam Sanctam (1302), which proclaimed that the Catholic
Church was the only institution guaranteeing salvation; for the Council of Florence (1442), which
assigned to the everlasting fire of hell everyone not attached to the Catholic Church; and for the
Cathechismus Romanus (1566), which taught the infallibility of the Catholic Church. In the context of
this model it was unthinkable that people should be allowed to believe as they chose; as late as 1832
Gregory XVI rejected the demand for freedom of religion not only as error, but as deliramentum,
“insanity” (reference in Fries 1986:759). Protestants, it is true, did not have anything comparable to
papal bulls. Still, their mentality often hardly differed from that of Rome; where the Catholic model
insisted on “outside the church no salvation,” the Protestant model adhered to “outside the word, no
salvation” (Knitter 1985:135).
In both these models mission essentially meant conquest and displacement. Christianity was
understood to be unique, exclusive, superior, definitive, normative, and absolute (cf Knitter 1985:18),
the only religion which had the divine right to exist and extend itself. For most of the Middle Ages,
Christianity's archenemy was Islam. Mohammed was a “second Arius”; Islam was a post-Christian
imitatio diaboli, a menace that had to be crushed before it crushed the church. Hence the crusades
which, on the whole, miscarried. This did not change the Christian attitude toward Islam, however (cf
Erdmann 1977; Kedar 1984).
Given the circumstances and the general climate of the time, one can hardly blame the church for
the attitude it adopted. This makes the exceptions to the rule so much more remarkable, however—
people like Raymond Lull in the fourteenth century and Las Casas in the sixteenth. And half a century
before Las Casas there was the German cardinal, Nicholas of Cusa, who—tired of the religious wars
between Christians and Muslims—hoped for the day when all would recognize the one religion in the
plurality of religious rites (religio una in rituum varietate). Even Nicholas did not for a moment,
however, doubt the absolute superiority of Christianity over Islam (cf Gensichen 1989:196f), just as
Las Casas assumed, as a matter of course, that the “superstitions” of the American Indians were
infinitely inferior to the Christian faith.
The unshaken, massive, and collective certitude of the Middle Ages, which existed until the
eighteenth century, has, however, vanished. Christianity, says Kraemer (1961:21) is severely
questioned, repudiated, or condescendingly ignored. A major factor in this breakdown was, of course,
the Enlightenment. As far as the world of values (to which religion was assigned) was concerned, the
Enlightenment in principle adopted a relativistic attitude. In the course of time this would erode
hitherto unshakable Christian certainties and slowly make the church aware of the existence of a
dilemma it had never needed to recognize. With the collapse of colonialism it lost its hegemony—
even in the West, its traditional home—and today has to compete for allegiance on the open market of
religions and ideologies. There are no longer oceans separating Christ ians from other religionists. In
Western countries Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists rub shoulders on every street.
Serious Christians have also discovered that those “other” religions are, incongruously, both more
different from and more similar to Christianity than they had thought.
In the Enlightenment paradigm it was expected that religion would eventually disappear as people
discovered that facts were all they needed to survive, and that the world of values—to which religion
belongs—would lose its grip on them. And much indeed seemed to point in this direction. Marxism
dismissed religion as the “opiate of the people” and propagated a world in which it would have no
place. Even outside the Communist world, religion—Christianity in particular—appeared to be in
decline. Arnold Toynbee (1969:327) says that in his student days in Oxford, during the first decade of
our century, he and his fellow-students believed that religions had no future and would disappear. At
the IMC Jerusalem Conference (1928) John Macmurray put forward the thesis that religions would
disappear with the rise of scientific thinking—although he did not believe that Christianity, too,
would vanish (cf Newbigin 1969:31). Still, in a 1948 poll, thirty-four percent of France's population
declared themselves “atheist” (cf Gómez 1986:30), thus corroborating the thesis of Godin and Daniel
(1943). With the “secular sixties,” so it seemed, the final hour for religion had arrived; the only way
of securing the survival of Christianity was to turn it into a thoroughly secular religion.
Strangely, however, religion, did not perish. Quite the contrary! We are discovering today the
indisputable reality of “religion after the Enlightenment” (cf the title of Lübbe 1986). Human nature,
said the octogenarian Toynbee in 1969 (:322), abhors a vacuum; so, if one religion goes, another
takes it place; contrary to his earlier view that religions were moribund (:327), he now held that they
had an enduring role to play (:328). Apparently Bonhoeffer's idea of the nonreligious human being
and of the “worldly world” was a misconception. Since the “secular sixties” more and more scholars
have been writing on the resurgence of a transcendent longing that is both open to spiritual insight and
critical of science as an adequate means of knowing the whole truth; one may think, for instance, of
Peter Berger's A Rumor of Angels (1970), Theodore Roszak's Where the Wasteland Ends (1972), and
Harvey Cox's The Seduction of the Spirit (in which, incidentally, he adopts a stance rather different
from his The Secular City, but which differs significantly from Roszak and others).
The revival of religion is not only a Christian phenomenon, however. On the contrary, it would
seem that it is especially the other religions that are experiencing revitalization. Warneck (1909) has
been proved wrong—it is impossible simply to juxtapose “the living Christ” with “dying
heathenism.” Already in 1933 H. W. Schomerus published a study on Das Eindringen Indiens in das
Herrschaftsgebiet des Christentums (“India's Infiltration Into the Domain of Christianity”). In some
instances (particularly in the case of Islam) the revitalization of traditional religions has been
intimately linked to burgeoning nationalism and projects of nation building and the like. Often these
religions are involved in far more aggressive “evangelism” than the Christian churches are. Hinduism
is not only self-assertive at home, but its sects are proselytizing with success in the West. Buddhism
has become militant in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Whereas the number of Christians has increased
threefold since the beginning of the century, the number of Muslims has increased fourfold (cf Barrett
1990:27). In Western countries freedom of religion has a high premium, which enables all faiths to
propagate their beliefs freely; in several Islamic countries, however, the propagation of the Christian
faith is prohibited—with important consequences for Christian mission (cf Gensichen 1989:199–
201). Indeed, Christians in the West have been jolted out of their complacency.
All these circumstances cause the Christian church of today to be faced with totally unprecedented
challenges. It would probably be correct to say that we have reached the point where there can be
little doubt that the two largest unsolved problems for the Christian church are its relationship (1) to
world views which offer this-worldly salvation, and (2) to other faiths. On the first page of On
Being a Christian, Hans Küng (1977:25) says that, in the face of this twofold challenge of the world
religions and of modern humanism, today's Christian is confronted with the question whether
Christianity is indeed something essentially different, something special. Sharpe (1974:14) believes
the challenge of the religions to be even more important than that of secular ideologies—although
matters such as the relationship between mission and the world, mission and politics, mission and
social action, are important, it is the theologia religionum which is the epitome of mission theology.
The question is whether the Christian church and mission are equipped to respond to the challenge
emanating from the religions. After the Tambaram Meeting of the IMC in 1938, Karl Hartenstein
declared, “We have no theology with which we could even begin to take up the challenge presented to
Christianity by Buddhism and Hinduism” (quoted in Gensichen 1989:195—my translation). During
the past half-century little seems to have changed in this respect. The recent Dutch introduction to
missiology (Oecumenische inleiding 1988: 475f) suggests that much confusion and uncertainty still
prevails in this area and that, as we approach the twenty-first century, much new ground still has to be
broken, since we are totally unprepared for facing the challenge before us. If these scholars are
correct, one may appreciate the frustration and distress of Cracknell and Lamb (1986:10–16) who,
surveying the British scene, find that the theology of religions (indeed, the entire area of missiology)
is either virtually unknown in theological institutions or relegated to the position of an unimportant
subsection of pastoral theology.
Postmodern Responses?
Since the 1960s few themes have dominated missiological (and, indeed, general theological
literature) the way the entire area of the theology of religions has done. A deluge of books and articles
have been published and no end to this torrent appears to be in sight. There can be little doubt that the
contemporary world situation and the increasing exchange of ideas between peoples and religions
have created an unprecedented situation. Before an attempt is made to order the ideas in some
manner, it may be of importance to point out that much of the current interest in our theme has to do
with the fact that, by and large, Christianity has not been very successful among those peoples who
are adherents to what often (perhaps incorrectly) is termed the great religions—Islam, Hinduism,
Buddhism, etc. Many explanations for this failure have been put forward in the course of history. In
light of what I have written on contextualization and inculturation earlier in this chapter it may,
however, be illuminating to refer to one such explanation, that of A. Pieris (1986). He argues that
these models proceed from Latin Christianity's practice of separating religion from culture. What is
really called for, however, is not just inculturation but “inreligionization” (1986:83). Song, using the
example of the spread of Buddhism in Asia, says essentially the same. No sooner did Buddhism leave
the land of its birth than it became Chinese Buddhism, Thai Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism (1977:5;
cf Pieris 1986:85), intrinsic to the soil and the people of each of these countries. This, Song claims,
was truly a mission of enfleshment. Christian mission, by contrast, was a mission of disembodiment
(1977:54). We should never have transplanted Christianity to Asia without breaking the pot in which
the plant came, says Pieris. He calls the “inculturation-fever” a desperate last-moment bid to give an
Asian facade to a church which has failed to strike roots in Asian soil, because no one dares to break
the Greco-Roman pot in which, for centuries, it has been existing like a stunted bonsai (1986:84).
Maybe, says Pieris (:85), Christianity has missed its chance because it arrived too late on the Asian
scene, except perhaps in the Philippines. Now its only hope lies not in trying to create (for instance)
just an Indian Christianity, but—as M. Amaladoss, R. Panikkar, and others are suggesting—a Hindu
Christianity (:83).
I have mentioned the thesis of Pieris (and Song) simply to highlight the fact that, all around, there
is today a new urgency to grapple with the entire issue of a Christian theologia religionum and a
sometimes almost desperate attempt to make up for earlier shortsightedness. The bewildering
diversity of these attempts (Nürnberger 1970:42f lists no fewer than twenty-seven varieties!) is an
indication that, thus far, no clear direction seems to be emerging. Nürnberger subdivides the twenty-
seven types into three broad categories which he terms relativistic, dialectical, and antithetical.
Perhaps, however, Küng's subdivision into four “fundamental positions” (1987:278–285) is more
helpful for our present purposes. The first position, that of atheism (“no religion is true” or “all
religions are equally untrue”) can be ignored for our purposes since it is not a view entertained by
any branch of the Christian theology of religions. The other three are (my terms): exclusivism,
fulfillment, and relativism. Each of these carries within itself elements of both the modern and the
postmodern paradigm. It will not be possible to display the three views in any detail; only those
dimensions which reveal the elements within each of them which, unconsciously, strives to move
beyond the modern position will be touched upon.
1. Exclusivism: The traditional Western Catholic and Protestant exclusivist attitude in respect to
other religions was decidedly premodern or (in some of its manifestations) modern. The same is, by
and large, true of the contemporary evangelical position. Still, there is one important example of an
exclusivist posit ion which reveals clearly postmodern elements—the theology of religions of Karl
Barth (in this respect, then, it is erroneous on the part of Knitter [1985:80–87] to introduce Barth as a
representative of the conservative evangelical position).
Barth discusses this theme in volume I/2 of his Church Dogmatics. Radicalizing and outbidding
Luther and Calvin—his two main interlocutors—and turning consciously against the Enlightenment's
evolutionary optimism and endorsement of the autonomous human being, Barth declares religion to be
unbelief—a concern, indeed, the one great concern of godless human beings. This statement is,
however, directed primarily not at the other religions, but at Christianity (a view which, in fact,
brings Barth close to Feuerbach—on this score, at least). The human being, says Barth (1978:302),
quoting Calvin, is an idolorum fabrica, an “idol factory,” and the idol thus manufactured is religion,
Christian or otherwise. He goes on to contrast, in an absolute manner, religion as a human fabrication
with revelation, which is something totally new, coming directly from God (:301f). There is no point
of contact between religion and God's revelation. If God speaks to humans (which he does) and is
being understood, this does not occur on the basis of something innate to humanity, but because of a
divine creatio ex nihilo. This also explains why we, with fear and trembling and in spite of what has
been said, may refer to Christianity as becoming “true religion.” We say this, not because of
something intrinsic to the Christian religion, but because God creates, elects, justifies, and sanctifies
it (:325–361). Like the justified human being, true religion is a creature of grace (:326).
There can be no doubt that Barth's was a bold, innovative, and radical attempt at solving an age-
old problem. This is particularly true of the way in which he refused to take refuge in the age-old
stratagem of blithely contrasting the Christian religion as true with all others as untrue.
2. Fulfillment: One could argue that the idea of Christianity as the fulfillment of other religions
was already present in the concepts adaptation, accommodation, and indigenization (see “Mission As
Inculturation” above). When Xavier, de Nobili, and Ricci attempted to accommodate Indian, Chinese,
and Japanese religio-cultural values, they ascribed some worth to those cultures and religions and
broke, in principle, with the dualistic view of reality sanctioned by Augustine's theology. It was,
however, not until the arrival on the scene of the theory of evolution in the nineteenth century, the rise
of liberal theology, and the birth of the new discipline of comparative religion, that the stage was set
for an approach according to which religions could be compared and graded in an ascending scale. In
the Western world there was no doubt, however, about which religion stood at the pinnacle. In almost
every respect every other religion—even if it might be termed a praeparatio evangelica—was
deficient when compared with Christianity, as Dennis illustrated so ably and amply in his three-
volume study (1897, 1899, 1906).
The new discipline was brought to the attention of the general public on the occasion of the
“World's Parliament of Religions,” which met in Chicago in 1893 as part of the Columbian
Exposition commemorating Christopher Columbus's “discovery” of the Americas (cf Barrows 1893).
In the heyday of theological liberalism and under the banner of the “fatherhood of God” and the
“universal brotherhood of men,” the Christian organizers magnanimously invited to Chicago
representatives from all the great religions.
 At the parliament and in the decades that followed, Christians could indeed afford to be
magnanimous. The ultimate triumph of Christianity, most likely before the end of the twentieth century,
was assured—as Dahle's calculations so convincingly illustrated (cf Sundkler 1968:121). On the eve
of the new century an American theological journal gave expression to this belief by changing its
name to The Christian Century. The liberal theology of the day accepted the validity of other
religions but believed that Christianity was still the best and was sure to outlive them. Other religions
could prepare the way for Christianity, but it remained the “crown,” as J. N. Farquhar argued in his
famous study on The Crown of Hinduism (1913).
It was this view that also dominated at the Jerusalem Conference of the IMC (1928), particularly
because of the role played by W. E. Hocking. The “Council Statement,” released by the Conference,
affirmed, among other things:25
We recognize as part of the one Truth that sense of the Majesty of God and the consequent reverence in worship, which are
conspicuous in Islam, the deep sympathy for the world's sorrow and unselfish search for the way of escape, which are at the
heart of Buddhism; the desire for contact with ultimate reality conceived as spiritual, which is prominent in Hinduism; the belief
in a moral order of the universe and consequent insistence on moral conduct, which are inculcated by Confucianism.

On the surface, this statement sounds relativistic and belongs in the next category. However, the
“one Truth” to which Jerusalem referred was the Chris tian faith. In a sense, then, the other religions
were all subsumed under Christianity. This was also the thrust of the report of the (North American)
Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry (1932). We were all en route to one world culture and needed one
world religion—undoubtedly based, largely, on Western Christian suppositions. Christian love,
Hocking suggested, was the element especially needed for the spiritual rejuvenation of the world (cf
Hutchison 1987:161).
This entire approach was thoroughly stamped by the assumptions of the Enlightenment. To some
extent the same was still true even of Vatican II's contribution to the theology of religions. Its point of
departure (spelled out in LG 16) is God's universal salvific will (cf 1 Tim 2:4)26 and the
acknowledgment of the presence of “good or truth” in the lives of people. LG 16 sees the “plan of
salvation” at work in those who “acknowledge the Creator,” who seek the unknown God “in shadows
and images,” and who “not without grace, strive to lead a good life.” Nostra Aetate (the Council's
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions), elaborates further from
these premises. It emphasizes what people have in common and what tends to promote fellowship,
and regards religions as that which provides answers to life's unsolved riddles (NA 1). It adds that
the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in other religions, not least since these
“often reflect a ray” of the church's own truth (NA 2). What is striking about most of this is that the
Council's reflections are still based on a general theory of religion. The arguments are sociological
and philosophical rather than theological.
A more explicitly postmodern approach began to surface with the shift from ecclesiocentrism to
christocentrism. Much of this shift was in evidence in several documents of Vatican II—not,
however, in NA. Protestants, on the other hand, had always claimed to be christocentric rather than
ecclesiocentric. Their christology was, however, exclusive as far as other religions were concerned.
At the WCC assembly in New Delhi (1961), Joseph Sittler, a Lutheran—drawing from the Greek
Patristic tradition rather than Augustine—introduced the idea of the cosmic Christ. Referring to the
notion of anakephalaiosis (“recapitulation” or “uniting under one head”) in Ephesians 1:10 (cf
Colossians 1:15–20), Sittler argued in favor of a cosmic christology and the uniting of humankind
under the one new Head, the cosmic Christ.
 Independent of developments in ecumenical Protestant circles, Karl Rahner and others also began
to plead for a shift from an ecclesiocentric to a christocentric approach to the theology of religions. It
is important to take cognizance of the fact that Rahner's point of departure, when discussing other
religions and their possible salvific value, is christology. He never abandons the idea of Christianity
as the absolute religion and of salvation having to come only through Christ. But he recognizes
supernatural elements of grace in other religions which, he posits, have been given to human beings
through Christ. There is saving grace within other religions but this grace is Christ's. This makes
people of other faiths into “anonymous Christians” and accords their religions a positive place in
God's salvific plan. They are “ordinary ways of salvation,” independent of the special way of
salvation of Israel and the church. It is in the latter that they find fulfillment.
Rahner's thesis has been modified in several respects by H. R. Schlette, R. Panikkar, A. Camps,
and others (cf Camps 1983; Knitter 1985:125–135) and may perhaps, with some reservations, be
termed the dominant current Catholic perspective on the theology of religions. Camps's idea of
practicing a “maieutic method” in this respect (which includes an attempt on the part of Christianity to
divest itself of its Western garb) is particularly intriguing (cf Camps 1983:7, 84, 91, 155).
3. Relativism: I have argued that both exclusivism and fulfillment manifest themselves in some
models which are clearly premodern and modern and others which show traces of a postmodern
paradigm. The same is true of relativism.
Philosophers like G. E. Lessing, A. Schopenhauer, G. W. Leibnitz, and Herbert of Cherbury, all
deeply imbued with the Enlightenment spirit, represented a decidedly modern understanding of
religion. In their view, the reality (if there is such a reality) to which the various religions refer is the
same for all. They just use different names for it, like the six blind Indian men who fingered an
elephant and called it—depending on the part of the anatomy they had touched—a snake, a sword, a
fan, a wall, a pillar, and a rope. The question in each instance is the same, only the answers differ.
Thus, along their different paths the various religions guide us toward an identical spiritual summit
(Toynbee 1969:328). After all, despite their amazing differences, the religions turn out to be more
complementary than contradictory (Knitter 1985:220).
This extreme relativism of the Enlightenment is today hardly ever found in Christian circles.
Instead, modifications are the order of the day, such as the suggestion that the various religions are
historically conditioned. One of the first theologians to have used this approach was Ernst Troeltsch
(1865–1923). An exponent of the history of religions school he had, throughout his life, grappled with
the issue of the so-called absoluteness of Christianity. He held onto a modified claim to absoluteness
until, toward the end of his life, he underwent a shift in his thinking. In his Der Historismus und seine
überwindung (1923) he argued for an intimate bond between a given religion and its own culture.
Christianity, then, still held final and unconditional validity for Westerners, but only for them. For
other peoples and cultures their traditional religions hold equally unconditional validity.
Troeltsch's thesis, often modified, is still being subscribed to by several scholars. John Hick, for
instance (reference in Knitter 1985:147), combines Troeltsch's idea with the notion that all religions
are different human answers to the one divine Reality and says that they embody different perceptions
which have been formed in different historical and cultural circumstances. Knitter (:173–175) goes
one step further and expresses his doubts about the reliability of much of the Christian tradition,
notably its christology, arguing that it is a later accretion and not in keeping with Jesus’ own self-
understanding, which was theocentric. This interpretation, then, enables him to dispense with
christocentrism, even for Christians; it becomes the basis for his central thesis that they, too, should
move from christocentrism to theocentrism. He finds that Rahner and those who have proceeded
beyond the Rahner tradition present us with an inadequate view, precisely because, in the final
analysis, they regard faith in Christ as the definitive Savior (and thereby the Christian faith itself) as
non-negotiable (:133). Knitter himself would rather identify with theologians like John Hick, R.
Panikkar, and Stanley Samartha, who are clearly and seriously questioning the finality and the
definitive normativity of Christ and of Christianity (:146–159).
Knitter then posits his notion of “unitive pluralism,” which, he claims, is a new understanding of
religious unity and should not be confused with the old, rationalistic idea of “one world religion.”
The new vision, he claims, is neither syncretism nor an example of lazy tolerance (1985:9). With
Hick, he refers to the new view as a “paradigm shift” (:147). All religions are equally valid and other
revealers and saviors may be as important as Jesus Christ. Knitter does not advocate the idea of a
world faith embracing all religions, as Hocking did. Rather, he advances the notion of a wider
ecumenism (:166). He thus consciously opts for religious plurality, but without either mutually
exclusive claims or indifference. Interreligious encounter should be based on personal religious
experience and firm truth-claims (:207) but without suggesting that any partner in the encounter
possesses the final, definitive, irreformable truth (:211).
From this position, Knitter then also ventures a few words on Christian mission. What he says
about this (:222) turns out to be a rehash of what Swami Vivekananda said at the World's Parliament
of Religions a century ago:
Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would become Christian?
God forbid…The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each
must assimilate the others and yet preserve its individuality and grow according to its own law of growth (in Barrows 1893:170
[vol I]).

So, Knitter's model appears to be less original than he claims. It is close to Vivekananda's
position, as it is to Toynbee's (1969:328), who envisions the historic religions reappearing above our
horizon in a spirit of mutual charity. For the rest, Knitter would redefine mission in more or less
pragmatic terms, as John Macquarrie does, who also advocates a “global ecumenism” (1977:446)
and suggests that Christian mission is to restrict itself to the humanitarian fields of health, education,
and the like (:445). In particular, it should not aim at converting adherents of the so-called higher
religions in which God's saving grace is already recognizably at work (:445f). Rival truth-claims are
simply part of the larger religious mosaic and should be treated as such.
Dialogue and Mission
I now turn to the interrelationship between dialogue and mission. In discussing this I shall, more
implicitly than explicitly, critique the three models just outlined from the perspective of a postmodern
missionary paradigm. At the outset, I would like to posit my belief that we are in need of a theology
of religions characterized by creative tension, which reaches beyond the sterile alternative between a
comfortable claim to absoluteness and arbitrary pluralism (cf Kuschel 1984:238; Küng 1986:xvii-
xix). And perhaps it is precisely in this respect that the various models discussed above are found
wanting. They are all too neat. They all work out too well. In the end everything—and everyone!—is
accounted for. There are no loose ends, no room left for surprises and unsolved puzzles. Even before
the dialogue begins, all the crucial issues have been settled. The various models seem to leave no
room for embracing the abiding paradox of asserting both ultimate commitment to one's own religion
and genuine openness to another's, of constantly vacillating between certainty and doubt. Each time—
in all these approaches—the tension snaps.
Perhaps the theology of religions is preeminently an area which we should explore with the aid of
poiesis rather than of theoria (cf Stackhouse 1988 for a discussion of these). This is the route Klaus
Klostermaier follows in his captivating Hindu and Christian in Vrindaban (1969). For both dialogue
and mission manifest themselves in a meeting of hearts rather than of minds. We are dealing with a
mystery.
The first perspective called for—and this is already a decision of the heart rather than the intellect
—is to accept the coexistence of different faiths and to do so not grudgingly but willingly. This is
what the British Council of Churches did in 1977, in light of the multifaith situation in Britain (cf
Cracknell and Lamb 1986:7). We cannot possibly dialogue with or witness to people if we resent
their presence or the views they hold. Macquarrie (1977:4–18) has identified six “formative factors
in theology”: experience, revelation, Scripture, tradition, culture, and reason. R. Pape (in Cracknell
and Lamb 1986:77)—rightly, I believe—adds a seventh formative factor—another religion. Today
few Christians anywhere in the world find themselves in a situation where coexistence with other
religionists is not part and parcel of their daily life. More than has ever been the case since
Constantine's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in AD 312, Christian theology is a
theology of dialogue. It needs dialogue, also for its own sake (cf Moltmann 1975:12f). One-way,
monological travel is out, as is militancy in any form.
Apparently, even in this day and age, it takes time for the essentially dialogical nature of the
Christian faith to sink in and take root. The evolution of themes in a series of WCC consultations may
illustrate my point. The CWME Mexico City Conference (1963) used the formulation “The Witness of
Christians to Men of Other Faiths.” A year later, at an East Asia Christian Conference meeting in
Bangkok the theme was “The Christian Encounter With Men of Other Beliefs.” Three years later, in
Sri Lanka, the word “dialogue” surfaced; now the theme was “Christians in Dialogue With Men of
Other Faiths.” Throughout, the major participants were still identified as Christians who dial ogue
about or with others. Only in Ajaltoun (Lebanon) in 1970 was the mutuality of dialogue recognized;
the theme was “Dialogue Between Men of Living Faiths” (the women were apparently still outside of
the dialoguers’ field of vision!). In 1977, then, in Chiang Mai (Thailand), the subject was “Dialogue
in Community.”
Second, true dialogue presupposes commitment. It does not imply sacrificing one's own position
—it would then be superfluous. An “unprejudiced” approach is not merely impossible but would
actually subvert dialogue. As the WCC Guidelines on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and
Ideologies puts it: Dialogue means witnessing to our deepest convictions, whilst listening to those of
our neighbors (WCC 1979:16). Without my commitment to the gospel, dialogue becomes a mere
chatter; without the authentic presence of the neighbor it becomes arrogant and worthless. It is a false
construct to suggest that a commitment to dialogue is incompatible with a confessional position (cf A.
Wingate in Crack-nell and Lamb 1986:65).
Third, dialogue (and, for that matter, mission) is only possible if we proceed from the belief that—
as D. T. Niles, Max Warren, and Kenneth Cragg have insisted—we are not moving into a void, that
we go expecting to meet the God who has preceded us and has been preparing people within the
context of their own cultures and convictions (cf Sharpe 1974:15f). God has already removed the
barriers; his Spirit is constantly at work in ways that pass human understanding (cf ME 43). We do
not have him in our pocket, so to speak, and do not just “take him” to the others; he accompanies us
and also comes toward us. We are not the “haves,” the beati possidentes, standing over against
spiritual “have nots,” the massa damnata. We are all recipients of the same mercy, sharing in the
same mystery. We thus approach every other faith and its adherents reverently, taking off our shoes, as
the place we are approaching is holy (Max Warren, in Cragg 1959:9f). The undialectical nature of
Barth's position, particularly his definition of religion as unbelief and his view that mission means
going into a void, is therefore unacceptable (cf Kraemer 1961:356–358, who criticizes Barth, “the
initiator of dialectical thinking,” for his undialectical and rationalistic arguments).
It follows from the above, fourth, that both dialogue and mission can be conducted only in an
attitude of humility. For Christians, this should be a matter of course, for two reasons: the Christian
faith is a religion of grace (which is freely received) and it finds its center, to a significant extent, in
the cross (which judges the Christian also). It is the abiding value of Barth's theology that it has taught
us that the lines dividing truth from untruth and justice from injustice run not only between Christianity
and other faiths but through Christianity as well. There is therefore something authentically Christian
in an attitude of humility in the presence of other faiths (cf Cragg 1959:142f; Newbigin 1969:15;
Margull 1974:passim; Baker 1986:156f). This is so not only as an expression of repentance for the
poor track record of Christians (for instance, the vicious intolerance Christians have often unleashed
on adherents of other faiths), but because such an attitude of humility is intrinsic to an authentic
Christian faith. And, after all, it is when we are weak that we are strong. So, the word that perhaps
best characterizes the Christian church in its encounter with other faiths is vulnerability (Margull
1974). We cannot approach people when we are confident and at ease but only when we are
contradicted and at a loss. N.-P. Moritzen puts it as follows:
Nobody denies that Jesus did much good, but that in no way saved him from being crucified. It belongs to the essence (of the
Christian faith) that it needs the weak witness, the powerless representative of the message. The people who are to be won and
saved should, as it were, always have the possibility of crucifying the witness of the gospel (quoted in Aring 1971:143—my
translation).

A qualification is in order, however. The point of our humility and our repentance is not to indulge
masochistically in a bout of self-flagellation or to use our penitence as a new lever to manipulate
others (cf Cracknell and Lamb 1986:9). That would be to adopt a sub-Christian position. True
repentance and humility are cleansing experiences which lead to renewal and renewed commitment.
Humility also means showing respect for our forebears in the faith, for what they have handed down
to us, even if we have reason to be acutely embarrassed by their racist, sexist, and imperialist bias.
The point is that we have no guarantees that we shall do any better than they did (cf Stackhouse
1988:215). We delude ourselves if we believe that we can be respectful to other faiths only if we
disparage our own.
Fifth, both dialogue and mission should recognize that religions are worlds in themselves, with
their own axes and structures; they face in different directions and ask fundamentally different
questions (cf Kraemer 1961:76f; Newbigin 1969:28, 43f; Gensichen 1989:197). This means, among
other things, that the Christian gospel relates differently to Islam than it does to Hinduism, Buddhism,
etc (Ratschow 1987:496). In this respect both the fulfillment and the relativist models still reflect the
modern paradigm, which tends to slight these differences. They are levelled down and harmonized as
happened, classically, in the World's Parliament of Religions (cf Barrows 1893). What usually
happens is that—consciously or unconsciously—Christianity is taken as point of departure. The
“elements” of the Christian religion are generalized until they fit the phenomena of other religions and
thus produce a kind of reduced copy of Christianity (cf Rütti 1972:106). This turns other religions
into little more than echoes of Christianity's own voice (cf U. Schoen, reference in Gensichen
1989:197) and shows little appreciation for the fact that they are putting their own questions to
Christianity (Ratschow 1987:498f, drawing on H. Bürkle; see also Gensichen 1989:passim).
This view is particularly dominant where Christianity is regarded as the fulfillment of other
religions, for instance, in Rahner's notion of “anonymous Christians.” It is also exhibited in the
encyclical Suam Ecclesiam of Paul VI (1964), which creates the impression of other religions being
arranged in concentric circles around the Catholic Church, which forms the center. What constitutes a
nonChristian religion, in this model, is its “distance” in relation to Christianity—more particularly, to
the Catholic Church. Christ is seen as working mystically, cosmically, and anonymously in other
faiths, in varying degrees, yet always and ultimately as the fulfillment of those religions. Küng's
trenchant criticism of this entire construct is worth noting. The notion of anonymous Christianity, he
says, attempts to sweep the whole of good-willed humanity into the back door of the “holy Roman
Church,” thereby preserving the idea of “no salvation outside the church.” Meanwhile, however,
Jews, Muslims, and people of other faiths know only too well that they are “unanonymous.” So Küng
dismisses the entire notion as a pseudo-solution (1977:98).
It would seem that Knitter, Hick, and others are at least more honest in that they explicitly debunk
the idea of any need for Christ and the church. Yet Knitter's “unitive pluralism” and his postulate that
the world's religions are “more complementary than contradictory” (1985:220), as attractive a
hypothesis as it is, is an ahistorical one and, in the final analysis, not really different from the views
expressed by the Enlightenment philosophers (cf the summary in Nürnberger 1970:42). The
compatibility of different religions is a thoroughly rationalistic construct, as is Knitter's idea of
“theocentrism.” From another perspective his striving after holism in religion may indeed be seen as
postmodern. It is, however, significant that, since 1985, Knitter has felt obliged to discard even his
emphasis on theocentrism. He now recognizes only “a shared locus of religious experience”
(1987:186) and opts for “soteriocentrism” instead of theocentrism (:187). What will prevent him
from moving even further and ending up in close proximity to the New Age movement?
An extreme postmodern paradigm may opt for an excessive holism, for a modern version of the
World's Parliament of Religions (in the style of Capra, for instance). Alternatively, it may consciously
choose the path of pluralism, where rival truth claims are simply part of the mosaic, where there is no
longer such a thing as orthodoxy, where we are all heretics in the original sense of the word (cf
Newbigin 1986:16). In either case we would opt for a completely instrumentalist view of religion—
the various faiths are either culture bound, or irrationally and arbitrarily selected, or put together in a
do-it-yourself manner. However, when everything is equally valid nothing really matters any longer.
Where this happens, we can no longer seriously talk about a legitimate paradigm shift; the creative
tension with tradition—so basic to the idea of paradigm shifts—has disappeared. The question of
truth has been completely trivialized and life itself robbed of its ultimate seriousness (cf Küng
1986:xviii; see also Bloom 1987). Authentic religion is, however, too unwieldy to fit into such a
constellation (cf Josuttis 1988; Daecke 1988:629f).
In the sixth place, dialogue is neither a substitute nor a subterfuge for mission (cf Scherer
1987:162). They are neither to be viewed as identical nor as irrevocably opposed to each other. It is
fallacious to suggest that, for dialogue to be “in,” mission has to be “out,” that commitment to
dialogue is incompatible with commitment to evangelism. The San Antonio CWME Meeting put it as
follows: “We affirm that witness does not preclude dialogue but invites it, and that dialogue does not
preclude witness but extends and deepens it” (I.27; WCC 1990:32).
The correspondence between dialogue and mission is indeed striking (cf also WCC 1979:11).
Both have, in the course of time, registered a shift “from ignorance through arrogance to tolerance”
(Küng 1986:20–24). Neither dialogue nor mission is moving along a one-way street; neither is
stubbornly dogmatic, bigoted, or manipulative. In both, faith commitment goes hand-in-hand with
respect for others. Neither presupposes a “completely open mind”—which, in any case, is an
impossibility. In both cases we are witnessing to our deepest convictions whilst listening to those of
our neighbors (cf WCC 1979:16). In both cases we are taken “out of the security of (our) own
prisons” (Klostermaier 1969:103).
The dissimilarities between dialogue and witness are, however, equally fundamental. If Knitter
(1985:222) says that the goal of mission has been achieved when announcing the gospel has made the
Christian a better Christian and the Buddhist a better Buddhist, he may be describing one of the goals
of dialogue, but certainly not of mission. It is true that Christianity has—belatedly—redis-covered its
integrally dialogical nature; this rediscovery should, however, not be at the expense of its
fundamentally missionary nature. Today all major world Christian bodies and denominations affirm
this innate missionary nature of Christianity. AG 2’s famous words to this effect have been quoted
frequently already. But even a “so-called anti-missionary document” (Gómez 1986:32) like Nostra
Aetate can say (paragraph 2), “(The church) proclaims and is in duty bound to proclaim without fail,
Christ who is the way, the truth and the life (Jn 14:6).”
Similar voices are heard from the ranks of the WCC. Its Guidelines on Dialogue (WCC 1979)
almost leans over backward to establish, once and for all, the legitimacy of dialogue; yet even here
there is no doubt about the church's being called to witness about life in Christ. Section I.1 of the
1975 Nairobi Assembly states, for example, “We boldly confess Christ alone as Saviour and Lord”
and expresses “confident trust”…“in the power of the gospel” (WCC 1976:43). It is in ME, however,
that the commitment of the WCC to mission is unequivocally asserted. In ME 6 we read, “At the very
heart of the Church's vocation in the world is the proclamation of the kingdom of God inaugurated in
Jesus the Lord, crucified and risen.” Again, ME 42 states that “Christians owe the message of God's
salvation in Jesus Christ to every person and to every people.” The San Antonio Conference built on
these affirmation, declaring that “the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a God in mission, the
source and sustainer of the church's mission” (I.1; WCC 1990:25). Elsewhere (I.26) it asserts, “We
cannot point to any other way of salvation than Jesus Christ” (WCC 1990:32).
It is necessary to highlight such affirmations today, in a climate in which, on the one hand,
familiarity has robbed us of the freshness and vitality of the gospel, leaving us only a dogged loyalty
to it (cf C. Lamb in Cracknell and Lamb 1986:130), or where, on the other hand, Christians are being
advised, even by fellow-Christians, that it is improper to invite adherents of other faiths or of no faith
to put their trust in God through Christ. The Christian faith cannot surrender the conviction that God,
in sending Jesus Christ into our midst, has taken a definitive and eschatological course of action and
is extending to human beings forgiveness, justification, and a new life of joy and servanthood, which,
in turn, calls for a human response in the form of conversion. These inalienable elements of mission
became abundantly clear in our chapters on the missionary character of the early church.
In the seventh place, however, what has just been suggested should not be construed in the sense of
“business as usual,” as though all we have to do is continue to preach the “old, old story.” Rather, the
preceding remarks should be understood within the entire framework of this section. To that some
more has to be added, picking up observations made earlier in this chapter, particularly in the
sections on “Mission as the Church-With-Others” and “Mission as Mediating Salvation.”
Much of the debate about the relationship between the Christian faith and other faiths has been
confounded by the perennial question whether other religions also “save.” As the question is usually
put, it refers solely to something which happens to an individual after death and suggests that people
join a specific religion in order to be guaranteed this salvation, that religions expand geographically
and numerically in order to ensure such salvation to ever greater numbers of people. I repudiate the
notion, however, that this is all religion is about, that this is the only reason why people (should)
become Christians. Such an ahistorical and otherworldly perception of salvation is spurious,
particularly if one adds that all people have to do to attain it, is to subscribe to a set system of
dogmas, rites, and institutions.
Conversion is, however, not the joining of a community in order to procure “eternal salvation”; it
is, rather, a change in allegiance in which Christ is accepted as Lord and center of one's life. A
Christian is not simply somebody who stands a better chance of being “saved,” but a person who
accepts the responsibility to serve God in this life and promote God's reign in all its forms.
Conversion involves personal cleansing, forgiveness, reconciliation, and renewal in order to become
a participant in the mighty works of God (cf Cragg 1959:142f; Newbigin 1969:111f). The believer is,
after all, a member of the church, which is a sign of God's reign, sacramentum mundi, symbol of
God's new world, and anticipation of what God intends all creation to be.
I come to my last observation on dialogue and witness in a new paradigm. This observation is
really a question: How do we maintain the tension between being both missionary and dialogical?
How do we combine faith in God as revealed uniquely in Jesus Christ with the confession that God
has not left himself without a witness? If we are honest, also with ourselves, we encounter this
tension whichever way we turn. We observe it in the Vatican II documents, for instance. Two
affirmations, which seem to be mutually incompatible, speak to us from these documents—God's
universal salvific will and the possibility of salvation outside the church versus the necessity of the
church and of missionary activity. The same unresolved tension emerges from ME, which states, on
the one hand, that the proclamation of God's reign in Christ is at the very heart of the church's
vocation in the world (ME 6) and, on the other hand, that “the Spirit of God is constantly at work in
ways that pass human understanding and in places that to us are least expected” (ME 43). It emerges
more clearly still from Section I at San Antonio, where two convictions are immediately juxtaposed:
“We cannot point to any other way of salvation than Jesus Christ; at the same time we cannot set limits
to the saving power of God” (I.26; WCC 1990:32). The report proceeds by publicly acknowledging
that there is a tension here and states: “We appreciate this tension, and do not attempt to resolve it”
(I.29; WCC 1990:33).
Such language boils down to an admission that we do not have all the answers and are prepared to
live within the framework of penultimate knowledge, that we regard our involvement in dialogue and
mission as an adventure, are prepared to take risks, and are anticipating surprises as the Spirit guides
us into fuller understanding. This is not opting for agnosticism, but for humility. It is, however, a bold
humility—or a humble boldness. We know only in part, but we do know. And we believe that the faith
we profess is both true and just, and should be proclaimed. We do this, however, not as judges or
lawyers, but as witnesses; not as soldiers, but as envoys of peace; not as high-pressure salespersons,
but as ambassadors of the Servant Lord.

MISSION AS THEOLOGY27
Mission Marginalized
In the first chapters of this study I have attempted to demonstrate that it is impossible to read the New
Testament without taking into account that most of it was consciously written within a missionary
context. I have, for example, referred to Martin Kähler's suggestion ([1908]1971:189f) that, in the
first century, theology was not a luxury of the world-conquering church but was generated by the
emergency situation in which the missionizing church found itself. In this situation, mission became
the “mother of theology.” However, as Europe became christianized and Christianity became the
established religion in the Roman Empire and beyond, theology lost its missionary dimension.
In the entire premodern period, theology was understood primarily in two senses (cf Farley
1983:31). First, it was the term for an actual, individual cognition of God and things related to God.
In this sense it was a habitus, a habit of the human soul. Second, it was the term for a discipline, a
self-conscious scholarly enterprise. For many centuries there was only one discipline of theology,
without subdivisions. There were, of course, distinctions, but they all referred back to the one
“habit”—theology, the knowledge of God and the things of God (:77). Under the impact of the
Enlightenment, however, this one discipline first subdivided into two areas: theology as practical
know-how necessary for clerical work, and theology as one technical and scholarly enterprise among
others, or, if one wishes, theology as practice and as theory (:39). From here, theology gradually
evolved into what Farley (:74–80; 99–149) calls the “fourfold pattern”: the disciplines of Bible
(text), church history (history), systematic theology (truth), and practical theology (application). Each
of these had its parallels in the secular sciences. Under the influence of Schleiermacher, this pattern
became firmly established, not only in Germany but elsewhere as well; in fact, it became virtually
universal for Protestant theological schools and seminaries and for theological education in Europe,
North America, and elsewhere (:101).
“Practical” theology became a mechanism to keep the church going, whilst the other disciplines
were examples of “pure” science. The two elements were held together by what Farley (1983:85–88)
calls the “clergy paradigm.” The horizon of theology, in both cases, was the church or, at most,
Christendom. And theology was, by and large, thoroughly unmissionary. This was true even after the
fifteenth century, when the Catholic Church embarked on a vigorous foreign mission program. In
Protestantism the situation was even more deplorable. A case in point is the statement in 1652 of the
Lutheran theological faculty in Wittenberg (quoted in Schick 1943:46) that the church had no
missionary duty or calling at all. In the Reformed world, Voetius was the first to develop a
comprehensive “theology of mission” (cf Jongeneel 1989), but it had little lasting effect on
subsequent generations. Mission was something completely on the periphery of the church and did not
evoke any theological interest worth mentioning. The “theoretical” aspect of theology had to do
almost exclusively with the reality of the divine revelation or with assent in the act of faith which
students had to imbibe; the “practical” component concentrated on the idea of ministry as service to
the institutional church. In both modes it remained thoroughly parochial and domesticated. This was
true even in the case of the new seminaries established in the Third World for the training of native
clergy. Since the “daughter church” had to imitate the “mother church” in the minutest details and had
to have the same structure of congregations, dioceses, clergy, and the like, it went without saying that
the theology taught there would be a carbon copy of European theology. The focus was, once again,
on conceptualizing and systematizing the faith along the lines that had been laid down once and for
all.
As the missionary enterprise expanded and the reality of mission and of the existence of young
churches in the “mission territories” more and more impressed itself upon the “home” church, it
became necessary to make amends. Since the “fourfold pattern” was sacrosanct, however, other ways
and means of accommodating the missionary idea had to be found. The most natural solution was to
append the study of mission to one of the existing four disciplines, usually practical theology. In this
respect (as in so many others) Schleiermacher was the pioneering spirit (cf Myklebust 1955:84–89).
He appended missiology to practical theology and thus created a model which is still followed in
some circles. Typical is, for instance, the view of Karl Rahner, who defines practical theology as the
“theological, normative discipline of the self-realization of the church in all its dimensions”
(1966:50). In this view, then, missiology—being one of these dimensions—becomes the study of the
self-realization of the church in missionary situations (that is, of the self-expanding church) and
practical theology proper the study of the self-realization of the existing church (that is, of the church
building up itself). The object of missiology's theological reflection is therefore essentially the same
as that of practical theology (for reflections on this view, see also Rütti 1974:292–296). Like Rahner,
A. Seumois differentiates mission from those areas in which the church is already “constituted
normally”—practical theology has to do with the pastorate of the church, missiology with the
church's apostolate—but in such a way that the apostolate is clearly tending toward the pastorate
(reference in Kramm 1979:47, 49).
A second strategy was to advocate the introduction of missiology as a theological discipline in its
own right (cf Myklebust 1961:335–338). This, of course, flew in the teeth of the “fourfold pattern” (a
problem encountered by other “new” theological disciplines as well, notably, theological ethics,
ecumenical studies, and science of religion), but nevertheless gained ground rapidly. Charles
Breckenridge was the first person to be appointed specifically to teach missionary instruction (at
Princeton Theological Seminary, in 1836), although he was, at the same time, professor of pastoral
theology (cf Myklebust 1955:146–151). Not so, however, with Alexander Duff's chair of evangelistic
theology (as it was then called), established in Edinburgh in 1867; here missiology was taught as an
independent subject in its own right (cf Myklebust 1955:19–24, 158–230). It was, however, mainly
due to the indefatigable efforts of Gustav Warneck—who taught at the University of Halle (1896–
1910)—that missiology was eventually established as a discipline in its own right, not just as a guest
but as having the right of domicile in theology, as Warneck himself put it (quoted in Myklebust
1955:280).
Warneck's monumental contribution elicited responses not only in Protestant but also in Catholic
circles. The founding of the first chair of missiology at a Catholic institution—in 1910, at the
University of Münster (cf Müller 1989:67–74)—was undoubtedly influenced by developments in
Protestantism and, more specifically, by Warneck's contribution. The first incumbent of the chair,
Josef Schmidlin, freely acknowledged his indebtedness to Warneck, while at the same time always
emphasizing the differences between him and Warneck (cf Müller 1989:177–186). The examples of
Warneck and Schmidlin were soon followed elsewhere, particularly because of the tremendous
impact the 1910 World Missionary Conference of Edinburgh had (Myklebust 1957:passim). In the
course of time, some chairs of missiology were converted into chairs for world Christianity,
comparative theology, ecumenical theology, and the like; however, many new chairs—specifically for
missiology—have also been established, not only in the West but also in the Third World, particularly
Africa and Asia, so there are more missiology chairs and departments today than there have ever been
(cf Myklebust 1989).
This entire development turned out to be, at best, a mixed blessing. It gave no guarantee that
missiology now had legal domicile in theology. Chairs were established not because theology was
understood to be intrinsically missionary, but because of pressure from missionary societies, or
(particularly in the United States) from students, or in some instances even from a government (as
happened in the case of the chair at Münster which, at least in part, came into being because the
German Ministry of Culture urged the theological faculty to attend to the “colonial system,” and
particularly to missions in the German protectorates, in its lectures [cf Müller 1989:69; in fact,
Schmidlin's first major publication, after he took up the chair in Münster, was entitled Die
katholischen Missionen in den deutschen Schutzgebieten, 1913]). All of this had serious
consequences. Missiology became the theological institution's “department of foreign affairs,”
dealing with the exotic but at the same time peripheral. Other theologians often regarded their
missiological colleagues with aloofness, if not condescension, particularly since they frequently
happened to be retired ex-missionaries who had worked in “Tahiti, Teheran, or Timbuktu” (Sundkler
1968:114). At the same time, it meant that other teachers regarded themselves as being absolved of
any responsibility to reflect on the missionary nature of theology (cf Mitterhöfer 1974:65).
All of this was further compounded when missiologists began to design their own encyclopedia of
theology, naturally modelled on the “fourfold pattern” (cf Linz 1964:44f; Rütti 1974:292).
“Missionary foundations” paralleled the biblical subjects, “missions theory” paralleled systematic
theology, missions history had its counterpart in church history, and missionary practice in practical
theology. For the rest, missiology continued to exist in splendid isolation. By duplicating the entire
field of theology, it confirmed its image as a dispensable addendum; it was a science of the
missionary, for the missionary.
A third approach, followed mainly in Britain—and usually dubbed integration—was to abandon
the teaching of missiology as a separate subject and expect other theological disciplines to
incorporate the missionary dimension into the entire field of theology. It sounds like a good solution,
but has several serious defects. For instance, the teachers of other subjects usually are not sufficiently
aware of the innate missionary dimension of all theology; neither do they have the knowledge to pay
due attention to this dimension (cf Myklebust 1961:330335). The study by Cracknell and Lamb
(1986) illustrates the deficiencies in this model well.
From a Theology of Mission to a Missionary Theology
None of the three models—incorporation into an existing discipline, independence, or integration—
succeeded (although one has to add that, at least in theory, the third model was theologically the
soundest; cf, however, Cracknell and Lamb 1986:26). The basic problem, of course, was not with
what missiology was but with what mission was. Where mission was defined virtually exclusively in
terms of saving souls or of church extension, missiology could only be the science of and for the
missionary, a practical (if not pragmatic) subject which responded to the question “How are we to
execute our task?” But since the church was not understood as being “missionary by its very nature,”
mission and, by implication, missiology, remained an expendable extra.
By the sixth decade of this century, however, it was generally accepted, in all confessional
families, that mission belongs to the essence of the church. For Protestants, the crucial dates are the
Tambaram and Willingen meetings of the IMC (1938 and 1952) and the New Delhi assembly of the
WCC, at which the IMC integrated with the WCC. For Catholics, Vatican II marked the occasion of
mission ceasing to be a prerogative of the pope (who might delegate that responsibility to missionary
orders and congregations) and becoming an intrinsic dimension of the church everywhere. Naturally,
this had a profound bearing on the understanding of mission and missiology. The church was no
longer perceived primarily as being over against the world but rather as sent into the world and
existing for the sake of the world. Mission was no longer merely an activity of the church, but an
expression of the very being of the church. All of this was now undisputed. At the Mexico City
Conference of CWME (1963) W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft spoke on mission as a test of faith for the church.
One could no longer think of the church except as being both called out of the world and sent forth
into the world. The world could no longer be divided into “missionizing” and “missionary”
territories. The whole world was a mission field, which meant that Western theology, too, had to be
practiced in a missionary situation.
Only laboriously did theology begin to incorporate the new insight. Karl Barth succeeded in doing
this better than most other systematic theologians (cf, for instance, Barth 1956:725). The outcome of it
all was a real advance over the traditional position. In poetic language Ivan Illich gives expression to
this. After defining mission as “the growth of the One Church but also the growth of the humanly ever
new Church” (1974:5), he proceeds to define missiology as
the science about the Word of God as the Church in her becoming; the Word as the Church in her borderline situations; the
Church as a surprise and a puzzle; the Church in her growth; the Church when her historical appearance is so new that she has
to strain herself to recognize her past in the mirror of the present; the Church where she is pregnant of new revelations for a
people in which she dawns…. Missiology studies the growth of the Church into new peoples, the birth of the Church beyond its
social boundaries; beyond the linguistic barriers within which she feels at home; beyond the poetic images in which she taught
her children…. Missiology therefore is the study of the Church as surprise (:6f).

We can no longer go back to the earlier position, when mission was peripheral to the life and
being of the church. It is for the sake of its mission that the church has been elected, for the sake of its
calling that it has been made “God's own people” (1 Pet 2:9; cf Linz 1964:33). So mission cannot be
defined only in terms of the church—even of the church which is mission by its very nature. Mission
goes beyond the church. Illich is therefore correct when he also calls mission “the social continuation
of the Incarnation,” “the social dawning of the mystery,” “the social flowering of the Word into an
ever changing present” (1974:5). To say that the church is essentially missionary does not mean that
mission is church-centered. It is missio Dei. It is trinitarian. It is mediating the love of God the Father
who is the Parent of all people, whoever and wherever they may be. It is epiphany, the making present
in the world of God the Son (cf AG 9). It is mediating the presence of God the Spirit, who blows
where he wishes, without us knowing whence he comes and whither he goes (Jn 3:8). Mission is “the
expression of the life of the Holy Spirit who has been set no limits” (G. van der Leeuw, quoted in
Rosenkranz 1977:14). So mission concerns the world also beyond the boundaries of the church. It is
the world God loves and for the sake of which the Christian community is called to be the salt and the
light (Jn 3:16; Mt 5:13; cf Linz 1964:33f; Neill 1968:76). The symbol “mission” should therefore not
be confused with or confined to the term “missionary”; the church's missionary movement is only one
form of the outward-oriented nature of the love of God (cf Haight 1976:640). Mission means serving,
healing, and reconciling a divided, wounded humanity.
For our theologizing this has far-reaching consequences. Just as the church ceases to be church if it
is not missionary, theology ceases to be theology if it loses its missionary character (cf Andersen
1955:60). The crucial question, then, is not simply or only or largely what church is or what mission
is; it is also what theology is and is about (Conn 1983:7). We are in need of a missiological agenda
for theology rather than just a theological agenda for mission (:13); for theology, rightly understood,
has no reason to exist other than critically to accompany the missio Dei. So mission should be “the
theme of all theology” (Gensichen 1971:250). Missiology may be termed the “synoptic discipline”
within the wider encyclopedia of theology. It is not a case of theology occupying itself with the
missionary enterprise as and when it seems to it appropriate to do so; it is rather a case of mission
being that subject with which theology is to deal. For theology it is a matter of life and death that it
should be in direct contact with mission and the missionary enterprise (cf Andersen 1955:60f; Meyer
1958:224; Schmidt 1973:193f).
Cracknell and Lamb (1986:2) remark that, in the first edition of their study (1980) they would not
have dared to suggest that every curriculum should find some place for the study of missiology; now,
however, they would insist that all theological questions should be thought about from the point of
view of the theology of mission. Only in this way can a “better teaching” of every subject come about
(:25f). In similar vein, a curriculum revision committee of Andover Newton Theological School
identified an “almost universal corporate desire to widen our perspective to one of world concern”
(Stackhouse 1988:25). One of the committee's key recommendations was to relate “each discipline
specifically to a theology of mission” (:25; cf 49).
Within the broad framework of theology, missiology has a dual function. The first has to do with
what Newbigin and Gensichen have termed the “dimensional aspect” (cf Gensichen 1971:80–95,
251f). Here missiology's task, in free partnership with other disciplines, is to highlight theology's
reference to the world. Theoretically, then—and from the dimensional perspective—one might
dispense with a separate subject called missiology. It is to permeate all disciplines and is not
primarily one “sector” of the theological encyclopedia (cf Linz 1964:34f; Mitterhöfer 1974:103). The
missionary idea is a retrieval of the universality that resides in the depth of the Good News; as such it
is to infuse the entire curriculum rather than provide subject matter for a special course (Frazier
1987:47). Still it is, even if only for practical reasons, advisable to have a separate subject called
missiology, for without it the other disciplines are not constantly reminded of their missionary nature.
Missiology, then, accompanies the other theological subjects in their work; it puts questions to them
and lets them put questions to it; it needs dialogue with them for their and for its own sake (cf Meyer
1958:224; Linz 1964:35; Schmidt 1973:195). It is in terms of its dimensional aspect that missiology
challenges and responds to the challenges of specific disciplines (cf Andersen 1955:59–62; Meyer
1958:221–224; Sundkler 1968:113–115; Gensichen 1971: 252f; Schmidt 1973:196–198).
After what has already been said in the early chapters of this study, it would be superfluous to
argue for the missionary dimension of Old and New Testament studies. The same would be true of the
discipline of church history. The church has a history only because God has granted it the privilege of
participating in the missio Dei. Gerhard Ebeling has suggested that church history is the history of the
exegesis of Scripture; but would it not be equally appropriate to view it as the history of the sending
of God? Instead, we have turned it into a series of denominational histories, where each
denomination simply writes its own chronicles, carving the faces of its own fathers into its “private
totem-pole” (Hoekendijk 1967a:349). Looked at from the perspective of mission, however, church
history asks fundamentally different questions concerning issues such as the failure of the early church
to accommodate the Jewish people; the attitude to “heretics” after Constantine, both inside and
outside the Roman Empire; the disappearance, almost without trace, of the church in once highly
christianized North Africa, Arabia, and the Near East, and the ensuing virtual immunization of Islam
against the gospel; the official attitude of the church concerning the enslavement of nonChristians; the
complicity of the church in colonialism and in the subjugation and exploitation of other races; the
paternalism and imperialism that appear to be almost endemic in Western Christians; the
identification of the “official” church with the elite rather than with the marginalized classes in
nineteenth-century Europe; and so forth. Is it not because it has not looked at these and related issues
from a missiological viewpoint that the Western church still is—in the words of M. Austin (quoted in
Cracknell and Lamb 1986:87)—a nineteenth-century middle-class church struggling to come to terms
with the twentieth century on the eve of the twenty-first?
Similar questions may be put in respect to systematic theology. For more than a millennium and a
half systematic theology's only dialogue partner was philosophy. How can it, however, in the
contemporary world, afford to ignore the social sciences? Even more important, how can it afford to
disregard anti-Christian ideologies and the beliefs of people of other faiths? Equally critical, how can
Western systematic theology continue to act as if it is universally valid and dismiss the indispensable
contribution to theological thinking coming out of Third-World situations? Indeed, how can systematic
theology be blind to its own innate missionary character? If it ignores the question “Why mission?” it
implicitly also ignores the questions, “Why the church?” and “Why even the gospel?”
Then there is the missionary dimension of practical theology. Without this dimension, practical
theology becomes myopic, occupying itself only with the study of the self-realization of the church in
respect of its preaching, catechesis, liturgy, teaching ministry, pastorate, and diaconate, instead of
having its eyes opened to ministry in the world outside the walls of the church, of developing a
hermeneutic of missionary activity, of alerting a domesticated theology and church to the world out
there which is aching and which God loves.
In addition to the dimensional aspect, missiology has to attend to the intentional aspect of mission.
This does not just mean that missiology is to introduce the church in the West to the Third World and
prepare “specialists” to go and work there. Rütti (1974:304) is correct when he says that church and
mission in the West should overcome its inbred “tiers-mondisme,” which immediately thinks of what
it can do for the “less fortunate.” It should discover that inculturation, liberation, dialogue,
development, poverty, absence of faith, and the like are not only problems for Third-World churches,
but also challenges to itself in its own context. But it should recognize that it is impossible to reflect
theologically and practically about these challenges if it does not, simultaneously, alert itself and its
“clientele” to the realities of the Third World. And essentially the same applies to those practicing
theology in the Third World. For the entire Christian community—First-, Second-, and Third-World
churches—missiology means globalization. But in order to achieve globalization, it needs specificity,
concretization. It is only by means of a missiologia in loco that we can render service to the
missiologia oecumenica (cf Jansen Schoonhoven 1974a:21; cf Mitterhöfer 1974:102f).
What Missiology Can and Cannot Do
Missiology, then, has a twofold task: in respect to theology and in respect to the missionary praxis.
This can be elucidated in yet another way.
As regards the first, within the context of theological disciplines, missiology performs a critical
function by continuously challenging theology to be theologia viatorum; that is, in its reflecting on the
faith theology is to accompany the gospel on its journey through the nations and through the times
(Jansen Schoonhoven 1974a:14; Mitterhöfer 1974:101). In this role, missiology acts as a gadfly in the
house of theology, creating unrest and resisting complacency, opposing every ecclesiastical impulse
to self-preservation, every desire to stay what we are, every inclination toward provincialism and
parochialism, every fragmentation of humanity into regional or ideological blocs, every exploitation
of some sectors of humanity by the powerful, every religious, ideological, or cultural imperialism,
and every exaltation of the self-sufficiency of the individual over other people or over other parts of
creation (cf Linz 1964:42; Gort 1980a:60).
Missiology's task, furthermore, is critically to accompany the missionary enterprise, to scrutinize
its foundations, its aims, attitude, message, and methods—not from the safe distance of an onlooker,
but in a spirit of co-responsibility and of service to the church of Christ (Barth 1957:112f).
Missiological reflection is therefore a vital element in Christian mission—it may help to strengthen
and purify it (cf Castro 1978:87). Since mission has to do with the dynamic relation between God and
humankind, missiology consciously pursues its task from a faith perspective. Within the broad field of
missiology every viewpoint is debatable; the faith perspective, however, is not negotiable (cf
Oecumenische inleiding 1988:19f).
The faith perspective does not mean that the missiologist can, through careful exegesis of
Scripture, get access to biblical “laws” of mission which determine, in detail, how mission has to be
performed. It is improper to treat the present and the future simply as extension of what the “laws” of
mission, revealed in Scripture or tradition, have once and for all ordained mission should be (cf Nel
1988:182f; 187). This traditional approach treats the missionary praxis as mute, as being subject to
“remote control,” as being allowed only to respond to stimuli coming from far back in history, as
“application” of what has been established since all eternity.
This brings us, second, to the responsibility missiology has in respect of interacting with the
missionary praxis. Mission is an intersubjective reality in which missiologists, missionaries, and the
people among whom they labor are all partners (Nel 1988:187). This reality of the missionary praxis
stands in creative tension with mission's origins, with the biblical text, and the history of the church's
missionary involvement. It is, however, inappropriate to construe the divine origins of mission and its
historical realization as opponents or competitors (:188). Rather, “faith and concrete-historical
mission, theory and praxis determine each other” (Rütti 1972:240—my translation) and are dependent
on each other. Present-day missiology's concern will be a contextual elucidation of the relationship
between God, God's world, and God's church (Verstraelen 1988:438). It is, if one wishes, a
“dialogue” between God, God's world, and God's church, between what we affirm to be the divine
origin of mission and the praxis we encounter today.
In this dynamic tension text and context remain separate. We may neither, in a fundamentalist
manner, force the context into the straitjacket of what we perceive the text to say, nor treat the text,
Rorschach-like, as a normless blob into which we project our context-derived interpretations of what
mission should be (cf Stackhouse 1988:217f). Traditionally, the first danger was the greater one.
Nowadays the second danger is more real. It is the danger of contextualism, already discussed in the
section on “Mission as Contextualization.” We may not, however, without ado convert the context into
the text. Missiology's task is not a purely pragmatic one. Its task is not simply maintenance of the
missionary operation. Its primary goal is not recruiting candidates for missionary service or
sanctioning existing missionary projects—our cherished “missions and missionlets” (Hoekendijk
1967a:299). This is indeed the way missiology and the role of the missiologist have often been
viewed; the latter was appointed to the faculty mainly to generate interest in the “missionary idea”
and, where necessary, to try and reverse the waning tide of interest in mission. And since this was the
missiologist's main responsibility, missiology could make do with a minimal theological basis, just
enough to keep the concern going (cf Mitterhöfer 1974:99). Where this happens, however,
missiologists should not be surprised to discover that the really relevant missionary issues are being
addressed outside rather than inside the department of missiology (cf Hoekendijk 1967a:299; Rütti
1972:227). Theology (and this, naturally, includes missiology), however, is not in itself proclamation
of the message, but reflection on that message and on its proclamation. It does not in itself mediate the
missionary vision; it critically examines it (cf Barth 1957:102–104). Missiology cannot, as such,
issue in missionary involvement (:111). In short, a missionary vision is caught, not taught (Scherer
1971:149).
A shift to a subjectivistic basis for mission, then, will end in complete relativism. There are
criteria by means of which we can assess and critique the context. It may not be easy to find criteria
on which all can agree, but we must try. Stackhouse (1988:9) suggests that, since we can have some
prospect of knowing something reliable about God, truth, and justice in sufficient degree to recognize
it in views and practices of others, we should judge every context by establishing what is and what is
not divine, true, and just in that context. Stackhouse hesitates to take the context as the basic authority
(:26). This seems to me to be correct; it is Scripture (and, if we wish, tradition) that relates us and
our context to the church and mission of all ages, and we cannot do without this. But equally, we
cannot do without grounding our faith and our mission in a concrete, local context. So perhaps, as a
strategy (if nothing else), we might give up all talk about what has priority, text or context, and
concentrate on the intersubjective nature of the missionary enterprise and of missiological reflection
on it.
Perhaps van Engelen's formulation sums it up best. He says that the challenge to missiology is “to
link the always-relevant Jesus event of twenty centuries ago to the future of the promised reign of God
for the sake of meaningful initiatives in the present” (1975:310—my translation). In this way, new
discussions on soteriology, christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, creation, and ethics will be
initiated, and missiology will be granted the opportunity to make its own unique contribution (cf
Oecumenische inleiding 1988:474).
This remains a hazardous undertaking. Every branch of theology—including missiology—remains
piecework, fragile, and preliminary. There is no such thing as missiology, period. There is only
missiology in draft. Missiologia semper reformanda est. Only in this way can missiology become,
not only ancilla theo-logiae, “the handmaiden of theology” (cf Scherer 1971:153), but also ancilla
Dei mundi, “handmaiden of God's world.”

MISSION AS ACTION IN HOPE

The “Eschatology Office” Closed
Ernst Troeltsch once said of nineteenth-century (liberal) theology: “The eschatology office is mostly
closed” (quoted in Wiedenmann 1965:11—my translation). One of the most striking characteristics of
twentieth-century theology is the rediscovery of eschatology, first in Protestantism, then in
Catholicism. In our century the “eschatology office” has been working overtime.
It should come as no surprise that the recovery of the eschatological dimension is manifested
particularly clearly in missionary circles. From the very beginning of the Christian church there
appeared to have been a peculiar affinity between the missionary enterprise and expectations of a
fundamental change in the future of humankind.
Only in our own time, however, have we begun to rediscover the fundamentally historical nature
of biblical faith and eschatology. Chapters 1 through 4 of this study have attempted to trace this
notion. It certainly does not begin with Jesus of Nazareth, however. In Chapter 1, we referred to G. E.
Wright, who argues that it belongs to the essence of the biblical faith, Old and New Testament, to
perceive God primarily as a God acting in history (1952:22). “Revelation” does not mean making
known what used to be hidden (this is what the Greek word apokalypsis primarily means); nor does it
refer to the disclosing of God's will which was previously kept secret. Rather, revelation is the word
for God making himself known in historical acts (:23, 25). The question, “Who is God?,” was
answered with a reference to history—He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the story of
Jesus of Nazareth is part of that history, unintelligible without it (:32).
The recovery of eschatology as ingredient of religion is a phenomenon thoroughly at variance with
the Newtonian views of time and space as these were assumed in the classical historical-critical
method of the “mechanical paradigm” (cf Martin 1987:373f). Eschatology stands for the hope element
in religion. Even a Marxist philosopher like Ernst Bloch can say, “Where there is hope, there is
religion” (quoted in Moltmann 1975:15). The Enlightenment has, for all intents and purposes,
destroyed the category of hope. It discarded teleology and operated only in terms of cause and effect,
not of purpose. “The god of physics gives us what we wish. But he does not tell us what we should
wish,” said George Santayana (quoted in Moltmann 1975:24). Only religion can tell us that.
Religion's answer to this question is twofold, however. One answer has been classically
formulated by Mircea Eliade as “the myth of the eternal return”—what we hope for is what was but
has been lost. At the beginning stood a paradise, a tension-free state of bliss, which we lost; salvation
means the regaining of paradise. The Jewish and Christian answers differ from this. The future we
hope for is not simply a repetition of or a return to the origin. Rather, the future is open toward a new
beginning that will surpass the first beginning. The exodus, says Moltmann (1975:18), was
understood in the Old Testament not as a mythical event of the origin but as a historic event which
pointed beyond itself to a greater future of God. In Greek and Oriental mythology, the past is made
present as a perpetual origin; in the Israelite perspective, the past is a promise of the future. As we
can see in the constant controversy between Yahweh and the baalim in Canaan, the God of the future
sets himself against the gods of the origin, of the cycle of nature, of the “eternal return.”
This is—admittedly extremely oversimplified—also the way Jesus of Nazareth and the early
church understood what God was doing in their time. Much of the New Testament gives evidence to a
vibrant expectation that what has begun in Jesus is only the beginning of a new era—in which God
will no longer be dealing only with Israel. In spite of the fact that the early Christians were convinced
that, in Christ, history has entered into an unprecedented rapid, that, in fact, the future has now already
invaded the present, they looked forward to events even greater than those they had experienced—
those who believe in this Jesus would not only do the works he had done, but even “greater works
than these” (Jn 14:12).
The Blurring of the Eschatological Horizon
Our study has, however, illustrated that the Christian church found it impossible to hold on to the
eschatological-historical character of the faith. Christian proclamation shifted from announcement of
the reign of God to introducing to people the only true and universal religion (cf Rütti 1972:128). In
this development it was only natural that the Old Testament would be underplayed, even neglected.
Compared to Christianity as the true and universal religion it was, at best, provisional but now
largely antiquated (:95).
To a significant extent this was the result of the hellenization of the Christian faith. In the Greek
culture even historians—such as Herodotus and Thucydides—understood history as a continuing
circle. Philosophers likewise interpreted events in human history mainly as adumbrations of what
was to come, as prototypes of the return to the origin. History—events in human life—became above
all a manual for moral philosophy, a mirror for human use, illustration material for right conduct (cf
van der Aalst 1974:143). This thinking made deep inroads into Christianity. The Logos was
interpreted not so much as reference to the historical incarnation but was painted in purely
metaphysical colors derived from Platonism. Origen's doctrine of the apokatastasis reintroduced the
cyclical element into Christian theology. And even if this doctrine was not sanctioned; it did
contribute to a growing ahistorical trend in Christianity (:144). Attention was transferred from
eschatology to protology, a development which became abundantly clear in the trinitarian and
christological controversies of the patristic period; discussions about the “origin” of Christ, his
preexi stence, dominated the theological agenda (cf Beker 1984:108).
During subsequent centuries eschatological expectations were channelled, largely, into two
avenues (which were not, however, mutually exclusive). First, there was the tendency toward what
may, very inadequately, be called the mystical. It took several forms, for instance theosis in the
Eastern church and salvation as individual bliss in the Western church. Second, there was the
tendency toward ecclesiocentrism. In this model the church is the extension of the incarnation and the
logical fulfillment of Jesus’ preaching about the coming reign of God. Braaten (1977:50) rightly calls
this “the most conservative possible model of eschatology”—the church only has to sit on its past and
raise up leaders to function as guardians of the heavenly treasure entrusted to it. Of course, neither of
these models surrendered the belief in the return of Christ; this would, however, only be an unveiling
of what, at the moment, is hidden from unbelievers because of their hardness of heart.
The two models predominated in all three major branches of Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic, and
Protestant. The onslaught of the Enlightenment on the Western church merely reinforced the prevailing
trends. Being banished from the public sphere of facts to the private sphere of values and opinion,
religion found refuge in the metahistory of mysticism, the eternal, suprahistorical redemption of the
soul, or the safe enclave of the empirical church. Protestant missions gradually moved from the first:
Pietism with its emphasis on the redemption of souls, to the second: the planting of self-governing,
self-supporting, and self-expanding churches.
Better than most other branches of Protestantism, Puritanism succeeded in keeping alive a form of
eschatological hope which was not merely individual or ecclesial (cf Chapters 8 and 9 of this study).
Increasingly, this hope was expressed in millennial categories. Authors like Jonathan Edwards and
Samuel Hopkins fanned missionary enthusiasm and stimulated the dispersion of North American
missionaries across the globe; the garden they had planted in the howling wilderness of North
America produced seeds in abundance, enough for the whole world. The dominant theology, at least
between the American Revolution and the Civil War, was postmillennial (Marsden 1980:49). More
and more, however, it was a very domesticated postmillennialism, optimistic in the extreme, and
concentrating on earthly happiness and prosperity. The primary assumption was the immanence of
God—a conception derived from the influence of science, in particular Darwinian evolution theory,
upon Protestant theology: the indwelling God was working out his purposes in the world of people,
here and now. Only in premillennial circles did the original Puritan idea of a cataclysmic overthrow
of the existing order survive—but then, in the late nineleenth and early twentieth century
premillennialists were completely marginalized.
Developments on the European continent were similar—only there premil-lennialists were even
more marginal to the mainstream. For liberal theology, the eschatology of the New Testament was an
expendable husk, and in any case an embarrassment. In the theology of Warneck—even if it
distinguished itself from the prevailing liberal theology—eschatology played no role (cf Wiedenmann
1965:187). In this respect, then, liberal and conservative theology, both European and Anglo-Saxon,
were of one mind. Eschatological thinking was, for instance, hardly in evidence at the 1910 World
Missionary Conference (cf van ‘t Hof 1972:48). Mission consisted, to a large extent, in the
christianizing and civilizing of nations via church planting, to which German missiology further added
that the emerging church had to be adapted to a particular people's Volkstum (cf Hoekendijk 1967a).
And all of this was interpreted in terms of organic growth toward maturity.
The “Eschatology Office” Reopened
At the turn of the century New Testament scholars like Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer argued
that—contrary to the tenets of liberal theology—eschatology was not an expendable husk for Jesus
and the early church, but integral to their entire life and ministry. Still, neither Weiss nor Schweitzer
knew what to do with their discovery (cf Käsemann, quoted in Beker 1980:361). It was only the
trauma of two world wars that created a climate in which eschatological thinking once again began to
make sense in mainline church and theology circles. This happened sooner in continental theology
than in the Anglo-Saxon world, as the conferences of the IMC at Jerusalem (1928) and Tambaram
(1938) demonstrated.28 At Tambaram, Kraemer's book ([1938] 1947) reflected the vision of only a
minority of delegates, mostly those from the European continent, as the so-called “German
Eschatological Declaration” (which was, however, not signed only by Germans) illustrated. Only
after World War II, at the occasion of the Willingen Conference of the IMC (1952), can one in more
general terms refer to the “entrance of the eschatological foundation of mission into the ecumenical
discussion” (Margull, quoted in van ‘t Hof 1972:173).
The “new eschatology” was, however, far from uniform. Wiedenmann (1965:26–49, 55–91, 131–
178) distinguishes four major eschatological “schools” in German Protestantism, each of which had a
significant impact on missionary thinking. These are the dialectical eschatology of the younger Barth
(which influenced missiologists like Paul Schütz, the younger Karl Hartenstein, Hans Schärer, and
Hendrik Kraemer), the existential eschatology of R. Bultmann (which was applied missiologically by
Walter Holsten), the actualized eschalology of Paul Althaus (which inspired Gerhard Rosenkranz),
and the salvation-historical eschatology of Oscar Cullmann (traces of which may be detected in the
missiological thinking of Walter Freytag and the older Hartenstein).
In the first model, the absolute transcendence of God and his being totally separate from the world
are stressed. God is in heaven; we are on the earth. The only link between God and humans is God's
intervention in judgment and grace. In Barth's terminology, this divine intervention is eschatological
through and through. In the 1921 edition of his Römerbrief he writes, “Christianity which is not totally
and altogether eschatology has nothing at all to do with Christ” (quoted in Jansen Schoonhoven
1974a:34—my translation). In this tradition, “eschatology” simply becomes a hermeneutical term for
what is ultimate and transcendent, an expression with which to repel even the slightest hint at human
collaboration in bringing in the end. Barth holds onto the future coming of the reign of God in its
fullness, but views it as being inaugurated solely by God, at the end of history.
The second model, associated primarily with the name of Bultmann, has some affinities with the
first and stems from the same root. Radicalizing the Lutheran statement that “the Word alone will do
it,” Bultmann views eschatology as the event which unfolds itself between the proclaimed word—the
kerygma—and the individual human being. Holsten applies this missiologically in his Das Kerygma
und der Mensch (1953). Mission is limited to the offer of the possibility of a decision and of a new
self-understanding in light of the kerygma. Wiedenmann, who throughout his study censures
Protestantism for its low view of the church and of the societal dimension of the Christian faith, finds
in Holsten the climax of “modern Protestant singularism, occasionalism and actualism” (1965:168—
my translation). This eschatology had no ethic for public life and left the church helpless in the face of
the demons of power-politics, particularly the challenge presented by National Socialism. Neither
was there room for any expectation of a different future, of the irruption of the reign of God. All that
remained was the “private apocalypse” occurring in the life of the individual, The third model,
Althaus's “actualized” eschatology, shows some resemblance to C. H. Dodd's “realized” eschatology
(although Althaus would prefer to talk about “eschatology in the process of being realized”). Since
the world has in principle its end in the judgment of the kingdom in Christ, every moment in history,
and likewise history as a whole, is end-time, always equally close to the end (Beker 1980:361,
summarizing Althaus's position). The early Christian confession that the Lord is at hand is as
applicable today as it was then. The parousia is not to be looked forward to as an historical event, but
is the suspension of all history. Therefore it is immaterial whether the end is “chronologically” close
or distant—it is “essentially” always near. Rosenkranz, taking up the Althaus theme, interprets
mission as the proclamation of a kingdom already present but yet hidden.
Wiedenmann judges all three of these interpretations to be examples of ahistorical eschatologies.
Only the fourth model, the salvation-historical school, takes history seriously. It became increasingly
clear, since the 1930s, that the dialectical eschatology of the early Barth as well as the views on
eschatology of the schools of Bultmann and Althaus were leaving people helpless in the face of the
challenges of the modern world.
The fourth approach distinguishes itself from the other three in several respects. First, it puts a
special emphasis on the reign of God as a hermeneutical key. Equally fundamental to it is the idea of
the reign of God as both present and future. Israel looked to the future for salvation, but now that
future was split in two. The new age has begun; the old has not yet ended. We live between the times,
between Christ's first and his second coming; this is the time of the Spirit, which means that it is the
time for mission. As a matter of fact, mission is the most important characteristic of and activity
during this interim period. It fills the present and keeps the walls of history apart—as even
Hoekendijk could still put it in 1948 (the German translation [1967a:232] conceals the powerful
metaphor and only says, “History is kept open by mission”). It is a preparation for the end and—in
Cullmann's earlier writings—even a precondition. In keeping with this he interprets the reference to
ho katechon and to katechon (“the one who restrains,” “that which restrains”) in 2 Thessalonians
2:6,7 as references to mission. Until the missionary task is completed, it is “holding up” the end.
Cullmann thus interprets mission in radically salvation-historical terms. At the same time he lends
academic respectability to a view widely held in rank-and-file missionary circles and which again,
as we approach the end of the second millennium, fans enthusiasm for efforts aimed at the
evangelization of the entire world before the year 2000.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, however, the salvation-historical school of mission is turning out
to be much less homogeneous than one might expect. As a matter of fact, one could make a case for
the view that practically all contemporary schools of eschatology and of missionary thinking, in one
way or another, are offshoots of the salvation-history approach—even if some of them might prefer to
deny this ancestry.29 Beker's reading of Paul as standing in the apocalyptic tradition and the
significance of this for Christian mission (1980, 1984) also reveals some parallels with Cullmann (cf
Cullmann 1965:225–245). Salvation-history thinking has, furthermore, inspired both conservative
evangelical missionary scholars and liberation theologians—José Míguez Bonino, for instance,
contributed to a Festschrift in Cullmann's honor in 1967.
It is also important to note that Cullmann has—from the first articles on the subject, published in
the 1930s, through his Christ and Time (first German edition 1945) to his Salvation as History (first
German edition 1965)—refined and redefined his own understanding of the relationship between
eschatology and mission. In this development he has put more and more emphasis on the world-
historical dimension of mission. I would therefore suggest that—barring some of Cullmann's rather
crude formulations, particularly in his earlier writings, and his preoccupation with attempts to
delineate salvation history as something entirely different from world history—the salvation history
approach, broadly speaking, constitutes the most significant advance over earlier positions, both
Catholic and Protestant (cf also Wiedenmann 1965:194–196), and the soundest base for an
understanding of the eschatological nature of mission from a postmodern perspective. Still, it remains
a hazardous enterprise to trace the contours of a reasonably reliable model of the eschatological
nature of mission, as the following two sections will show.
Extreme Eschatologization of Mission
Throughout its history there were periods when Christianity was running a high eschatological fever.
Our own time also seems to be such a period. Once again, predictions about the future are pouring in
and, as we near the end of the second Christian millennium, we may expect the fever to reach an even
higher pitch. Christian eschatology, in particular, seems to lend itself to becomi ng a playground for
fanatical curiosity, as the writings of Hal Lindsey and others witness. At the same time, it would not
do simply to label all millenarians as crackpots. The validity of their views lies in the anger and
protest they voice against the complacency of the main Christian body, and against an understanding
of history as a crisscrossing of chance impulses, an accidental flow of bodies tumbling over the
cataract of time to their destruction (cf Braaten 1977:97–99).
In the past (and certainly also in Lindsey's writings) the preoccupation with the end has led to a
paralysis in respect of mission, to an absence of missionary involvement. This was true of much of
seventeenth-century Protestant orthodoxy. Its philosophy appeared to have been not that all must be
saved but that most must be damned. It was only with the advent of Pietism that the time before the
end was viewed not as a season of waiting but as time allowed for witness and for bringing in as
many of the lost as possible.
Protestant orthodoxy, Pietism and much of their spiritual offspring shared one sentiment, however:
boundless pessimism about the world. In his analysis of almost a century of German preaching on
missions, Linz (1964) has shown that, in most of these sermons, the world was understood as totally
forsaken by God or, alternatively, as having resolutely turned its back on God (:179). The world
needs the church if it wishes to be saved, but the church does not need the world in order to be church
(:136). The only positive remark we can still make about the world and about history is that they
make mission possible as long as God's patience lasts (:178; cf Freytag 1961:213f). All the good lies
in the past and the future. In this essentially Manichean view history is a conspiracy, set in motion by
demonic forces. As was true of the Qumran community of the first century AD, Christian conversion
means that individuals should separate themselves from the masses, who are on their way to eternal
damnation.
Sometimes, however, this pessimism about the world may go hand in hand with great optimism
about the missionary enterprise. This was already true of much of Pietism but is also in evidence in
some contemporary evangelical circles. At the LCWE Consultation held in Pattaya (Thailand) in
1980, the key notion was opportunities—the world was waiting for the gospel of eternal redemption
and people were ready to respond positively to the invitation to become Christians. McGavran often
exudes a similar confidence about the opportunities awaiting the church-in-evangelism (cf 1980:49).
The only real history is the history of missions (Linz 1964:136, 178); it is the hand on the clock of the
world, telling us what time it is and when we may expect Christ's second coming (:132). The
overriding purpose of mission is the preparation of people for the hereafter, ensuring for each a safe
passage to heaven. At best, history is a prologue, a preparation, a provisional stage. At worst, it is the
believer's enemy, an abiding threat, and a possible source of contagion, since the continuation of
history only increases the “distance” between the dreary present and the glorious future.
It is to be expected that such a pessimistic understanding of history would discourage virtually
every attempt at reforming the world and human conditions. For Freytag, progress in world history
consists, at most, in an increase of catastrophes (1961:216). The New Testament knows no other
progress in history than that the end is drawing near (:215). Human history, meanwhile, stands under
the sign of the advance of the demonic (:189). Our task is not to build up God's kingdom in this world,
to christianize society, or to change structures (:200). There are limits set to what we can and should
do, and we should not anticipate now what will only become visible at the arrival of the new creation
(:96f).
Freytag must be understood in his context, however. He wrote against the immediate background
of the catastrophe of World War II; he had seen what human “achievements” can produce and wished
his readers to be modest about their abilities. Referring to Freytag's missiology, Warren (1961:161)
says that it was the experience of the abyss which divided continental from Anglo-Saxon thinking
about almost every subject, and not least about mission. In this respect Freytag was decidedly
postmodern and very different from those today who, judged on the surface, are saying more or less
the same as he did, Freytag was pleading that we should abandon our incurable success-thinking, that
we should do what has to be done regardless of the results (cf Freytag 1961:222). He also criticized
those missionaries and mission agencies which were blind to service in and for the sake of this
world, for whom the reign of God was an exclusively otherworldly entity (:211), and who sometimes
even appeared to welcome the decay of society as a sure sign of the imminence of the parousia.
Freytag supported the entire comprehensive missionary program of his time as well as the activities
of the ecumenical movement. By contrast, many who appear to stand in the Freytag tradition are
actually victims of an insidious dualism, where the emphasis on being saved for the next life alienates
and separates the individual from involvement in this world, even if they may magnanimously state,
“Social service is of course important, but our task is evangelism.” If, in addition, their refusal to
challenge unjust societal structures is rooted in a view about the inviolability of the “orders of
creation,” they cannot appeal to Freytag or, for that matter, to Cullmann, who states that the “already”
of the reign of God outweighs its “not yet” (1965:164).
The validity of the views of Freytag and Cullmann lies in their unflagging insistence that there is
no authentic mission without a fundamental eschatological disposition. For Freytag, in particular, this
finds expression in his ever recurring references to the basileia, the reign of God as the substance and
goal of mission. It was therefore fitting that the Festschrift published in his honor should bear the title
Basileia. God's reign remains, essentially, a gift; we can never identify it with an empirical structure.
And yet, even if Freytag would add that God's reign is not only gift but also challenge, his emphasis
on waiting can easily lead to quietism. We may become guilty of the sin of temerity, confusing God's
reign with what we have achieved in this world; we may, however, also become guilty of the sin of
timidity, hoping for less than has been promised. This world may indeed be enemy-occupied territory,
but the enemy has no property rights in it (cf Warren 1948:53). He is a usurper. We are not called to
act as God's fifth columnists, carrying out commando raids and snatching lost souls from the “prince
of this world.” Rather, we are to claim this entire world for God, as part of God's reign. God's future
reign impinges upon the present; in Christ, the future has been brought drastically closer to the
present. A fixation on the parousia at the end simply means that we are evading our responsibilities in
the here and now. Submitting to Christ as Savior is inseparable from submitting to him as Lord not
only our personal lives but also political and economic systems in the corporate life of society.
History as Salvation
As intimated above, the salvation-history school has not only given rise to an extreme
eschatologization of mission, but also to an entirely this-worldly interpretation of the eschatological
character of mission. One can, after all, either interpret salvation history as something completely
separate from and untouched by world history, or one can take the opposite course; that is, secularize
salvation history and thus, by implication, sacralize world history (cf Beyerhaus 1969:49). This
happens where one abandons any idea of the uniqueness of the church and concentrates, rather, on the
uniqueness of what happens in the world outside the church. Instead of talking about “salvation as
history” (cf the title of Cullmann 1965), one then talks about “history as salvation.” History is not
only the “context” of mission, but its “text” (Rütti 1972:232).
Usually, this is not done with the help of purely secular terminology. Rather, one continues to use
religious, even ecclesiastical, language. History needs a “spiritual base.” So the incarnation of Christ
becomes the symbol of the world-historical salvation process that emerges progressively and
immanently through cultural, moral, social, political, and even revolutionary enlightenment (cf
Braaten 1977:50). Having become impatient with the slowness of the coming of God's reign, we take
things into our own hands, redefine the kingdom, and seek to build it with instant techniques, while
continuing to use the name of Christ to endorse our party or program of self-improvement and world
betterment (:101). Then the kingdom of God, in the words of W. Rauschenbusch (quoted in West
1971:77), is “the energy of God realizing itself in human life,” in the form of whatever happens to be
the socio-political ideals of the age or of the group in question. “Mission” and “missionary” merely
become shorthand for the discharge of societal responsibilities, since there is no human activity for
the sake of the world which is not in itself mission (Linz 1964:206). The question, after all—as it
was put at the Uppsala meeting of the WCC (1968)—is not nearly so much what God has spoken in
the Bible as what God is doing in the world today. The “divine” is to be experienced only in
historical risk and engagement, since God is only God insofar as he is acting in the world. Thus
Christians can recognize their mission only in the midst of worldly processes (Rütti 1972:232f).
Where liberation to true humanity has taken place, we may conclude that the missio Dei has reached
its goal (Hoekendijk 1967a:347). All people already belong to the new humanity, constituted in
Christ, whether they are aware of it or not.
However, if one rejects the extreme eschatologization of mission, one also has to reject its twin—
the extreme historicization of mission. The world, once it has been emancipated, cannot but dictate
the conditions under which it would be prepared to accept a “missionary” encounter with itself (cf
Gensichen 1986:116). It will decide, on its own terms, which kind of political ideology or praxis is
kosher. But where this happens, the gospel gets converted into law. Our incurable tendency to spoil
everything we touch and our inveterate drive to self-seeking then become the ultimate arbiters of what
action is appropriate. Far from being the climax of our ideals, however, the reign of God passes a
sovereign judgment on them; it remains a critical category and often goes against the grain of our
history (cf Lochman 1986:63). It is this focus on the reign of God, both present and future, that may
grant us some appropriate perspective on our mission in the world. Without this eschatological
dimension our “gospel” becomes reduced to ethics (cf Braaten 1977:39, 152).
Eschatology and Mission in Creative Tension
There is some validity to Aagaard's observation (1965:256) that, generally speaking, and until the
sixth decade of the twentieth century, the stricter eschatological perspective was evidenced in
continental European missionary circles, with the North Americans emphasizing social involvement.
Since then, the scene has become blurred, so that it is no longer possible to distinguish in this manner.
In every Christian tradition and in every continent we are still in the midst of a movement to
reformulate a theology of mission in the light of an authentic eschatology (cf Braaten 1977:36).
Meanwhile, we can say that there is today widespread agreement that eschatology determines the
horizon of all Christian understanding, even if we are still groping for its precise meaning. It has
become clear, however, that neither the eschatologization nor the historicization of mission satisfies.
In its fixation on the parousia, the first has neglected the problems of this world and thereby crippled
Christian mission. In its preoccupation with this world to the exclusion of the transcendent dimension,
the second has robbed people of ultimate meaning and of a teleological dimension without which
nobody can survive (cf Moltmann 1975:20–24).
We need a way beyond both. We need an eschatology for mission which is both future-directed and
oriented to the here and now. It must be an eschatology that holds in creative and redemptive tension
the already and the not yet; the world of sin and rebellion, and the world God loves; the new age that
has already begun and the old that has not yet ended (Manson 1953:370f); justice as well as
justification; the gospel of liberation and the gospel of salvation. Christian hope does not spring from
despair about the present. We hope because of what we have already experienced. Christian hope is
both possession and yearning, repose and activity, arrival and being on the way. Since God's victory
is certain, believers can work both patiently and enthusiastically, blending careful planning with
urgent obedience (:149), motivated by the patient impatience of the Christian hope. The disciples’
being sent to the uttermost ends of the earth (Acts 1:8) is the only reply they get to their question about
when God's reign would be inaugurated in its fullness.
There is no choice, then, between becoming involved in either salvation history or profane
history. Salvation history is not a separate history, a separate thread unfolding itself inside secular
history. There are not two histories, but there are two ways of understanding history. The distinction
therefore only has noetic significance. The Christian is not preoccupied with a different set of
historical facts, but uses a different perspective. The secular historian will turn salvation history into
profane history, whilst the believer will see the hand of God also in secular history. Not that history
(either salvation or secular history) will always be transparent to the believer. There are paradoxes,
gaps, discontinuities, riddles, and mysteries in all history (cf Braaten 1977:95f). Thus the history of
salvation is, for the Christian, both revealed and hidden, both transparent and opaque (cf Blaser
1978:35–42).
Christian eschatology, then, moves in all three times: past, present, and future. The reign of God
has already come, is coming, and will come in fullness. It is because God already rules and because
we await the public manifestation of his rule that we may, in the here and now, be ambassadors of his
kingdom. Christians can never be people of the status quo. They pray, “Your kingdom come…on earth
as in heaven!” and interpret this both as a petition to God and as a challenge to themselves to attack
evil structures around them (Käsemann 1980:67). The fullness of the reign of God is still coming, but
precisely the vision of that coming kingdom translates itself into a radical concern for the
“penultimate” rather than a preoccupation with the “ultimate,” into a concern for “what is at hand”
rather than for “what will be” (cf Beker 1984:90). In Christ's death and resurrection the new age has
irreversibly begun and the future is guaranteed; living in the force-field of the assurance of salvation
already received and the final victory already secured, the believer gets involved in the urgency of
the task at hand. In this sense, eschatology is taking place right now.
Looked at from this perspective we have to agree with Cullmann (1965:164) that the “already”
outweighs the “not yet.” This, in a nutshell, is what the postmodern paradigm proclaims in respect to
eschatology, particularly since the 1938 Tambaram meeting of the IMC (cf van ‘t Hof 1972:119;
Bassham 1979:24). The new perspective is not merely a variation on an earlier position but
something fundamentally different (cf Rütti 1972:73 [note 38], 76). Instead of seeking to know God's
future world plan, we ask about the Christian's involvement in the world (:221). The world is no
longer viewed as a hindrance, but as a challenge. Christ has risen, and nothing can remain the way it
used to be. It was a stupendous victory of the evil one to have made us believe that structures and
conditions in this world will not or need not really change, to have considered political and societal
powers and other vested interests inviolable, to have acquiesced in conditions of injustice and
oppression, to have tempered our expectation to the point of compromise, to have given up the hope
for a wholesale transformation of the status quo, to have been blind to our own responsibility for and
involvement in a world en route to its fulfillment. In assuming a critical stance vis-a-vis the
authorities, prescriptions, traditions, institutions, and ideological predilections of the existing world
order, we are to become a ferment of God's new world (cf Gort 1980b:54).
Without taking back anything just said and without again pleading for some degree of moderation
or compromise, a note of warning is nevertheless in order. By nature, we are all romantics and
Pelagians (which amounts to the same thing—cf Henry 1987:275), confident that we have both the
will and the power to usher in a new world. We too easily identify God's will and power with ours.
In essence, however, Weiss's and Schweitzer's studies should already a century ago have sounded the
death knell to any immanental, progressivistic, evolutionary, and ethical concept of the reign of God
as a human product (cf Braaten 1977:40). We will never realize our blueprint for a societal and
political order that will match the will and rule of God. In fact, it belongs to the essence of Christian
teleology that it doubts that the eschatological vision can be fully realized in history (Stackhouse
1988:206). God's transformation is different from human innovations. God takes us by surprise. God
is always before us, his coming triumph bidding us to follow—as Beker (1980, 1984) has so lucidly
illustrated in respect of Paul's theology (see chapter 4 above). From this perspective, then, the future
holds the primacy. The ultimate triumph remains uniquely God's gift. It is God who makes all things
new (Rev 21:5). If we turn off the lighthouse of eschatology we can only grope around in darkness
and despair.
The two affirmations made in the previous two paragraphs are not to be seen as mutually
exclusive, however. On the contrary. The transcendent message of God's sure triumph gives us the
necessary distance and sobriety in respect to this world as well as the motivation to involve
ourselves in the transformation of the status quo. Precisely the vision of God's triumph makes it
impossible to look for sanctuary in quietism, neutrality, or withdrawal from the field of action. We
may never overrate our own capabilities; and yet, we may have confidence about the direction into
which history moves, for we are not, like Sartre, peering into the abyss of nothingness, nauseated by
the emptiness of our freedom, leaping into a future which only confirms the meaninglessness of the
present moment (cf Braaten 1977:98).
We do distinguish between hope for the ultimate and perfect on the one hand, and hope for the
penultimate and approximate, on the other. We make this distinction under protest, with pain, and at
the same time with realism. We know that our mission—like the church itself—belongs only to this
age, not to the next. We perform this mission in hope. So, if Margull (1962) was correct in referring to
the evangelism dimension of our missionary calling as “hope in action,” it may be correct to label
our entire, comprehensive mission in the context of our eschatological expectation as “action in
hope” (cf also Sundermeier 1986:60f). But then we must define our mission—with due humility—as
participation in the missio Dei. Witnessing to the gospel of present salvation and future hope we then
identify with the awesome birthpangs of God's new creation.
 Chapter 13

Mission in Many Modes

IS EVERYTHING MISSION?
There can be no doubt that the last decades have seen a surprising escalation in the usage of the term
“mission”—surprising, that is, in light of the fact that these decades have also witnessed unparalleled
criticism of the missionary enterprise. The inflation of the concept has both positive and negative
implications. One of the negative results has been the tendency to define mission too broadly—which
prompted Neill (1959:81) to formulate his famous adage, “If everything is mission, nothing is
mission,” and Freytag (1961:94) to refer to “the spectre of pan-missionism.” Even if these warnings
have to be taken seriously, it remains extraordinarily difficult to determine what mission is. This
entire study has evolved from the assumption that the definition of mission is a continual process of
sifting, testing, reformulating, and discarding. Transforming mission means both that mission is to be
understood as an activity that transforms reality and that there is a constant need for mission itself to
be transformed.
Attempts to define mission are of recent vintage. The early Christian church undertook no such
attempts—at least not consciously. And yet, our surveys of the “mission theology” of Matthew, Luke,
and Paul have shown that their writings may be interpreted as sustained endeavors at defining and
redefining what the church was called to do in the world of their day. More recently, however, it has
become necessary to design definitions of mission in a more conscious and explicit manner. Since the
nineteenth century such attempts have been legion.
Around the time of the Jerusalem Conference of the IMC (1928) it became clear that most
definitions were hopelessly inadequate. Jerusalem coined the notion “Comprehensive Approach,”
which marked a significant advance over all earlier definitions of mission. The Whitby Meeting of the
IMC (1947) then used the terms kerygma and koinonia to summarize its understanding of mission. In
a famous paper, first published in 1950, Hoekendijk (1967b:23) added a third element: diakonia. The
Willingen Conference (1952) made the expanded formula its own, adding the notion of “witness,”
martyria, as the overarching concept: “This witness is given by proclamation, fellowship and
service” (quoted in Margull 1962:175). For the next three decades the expression dominated
missiological discussions as the most appropriate and comprehensive portrayal of what mission is or
is supposed to be. One encounters it in almost every book on the theology of mission after 1952.
There are, naturally, some variations in the definitions. Sometimes martyria and kerygma are treated
interchangeably and as synonyms (cf Snyder 1983:267). Others add leitourgia, “liturgy,” as a further
element (cf Bosch 1980:227–229).
The formula, even in adapted form, has severe limitations, however. Rütti (1972:244) concedes
that it has served to lead mission out of the straitjacket of defining it only in terms of proclamation or
church planting and that, here and there, it may still serve some purpose. However, he laments the fact
that, in the final analysis, it only helps to illuminate traditional ideas and activities. I tend to agree
with Rütti. We do need a more radical and comprehensive hermeneutic of mission. In attempting to do
this we may perhaps move close to viewing everything as mission, but this is a risk we will have to
take. Mission is a multifaceted ministry, in respect of witness, service, justice, healing,
reconciliation, liberation, peace, evangelism, fellowship, church planting, contextualization, and
much more. And yet, even the attempt to list some dimensions of mission is fraught with danger,
because it again suggests that we can define what is infinite. Whoever we are, we are tempted to
incarcerate the missio Dei in the narrow confines of our own predilections, thereby of necessity
reverting to one-sidedness and reductionism. We should beware of any attempt at delineating mission
too sharply. And perhaps one cannot really do this by means of theoria (which involves “observation,
reporting, interpretation, and critical evaluation”) but only by means of poiesis (which involves
“imaginative creation or representation of evocative images”) (Stackhouse 1988:85).

FACES OF THE CHURCH-IN-MISSION

Our mission has to be multidimensional in order to be credible and faithful to its origins and
character. So as to give some idea of the nature and quality of such multidimensional mission, we
might appeal to images, metaphors, events, and pictures rather than to logic or analysis. I therefore
suggest that one way of giving a profile to what mission is and entails might be to look at it in terms of
six major “salvific events” portrayed in the New Testament: the incarnation of Christ, his death on the
cross, his resurrection on the third day, his ascension, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost,
and the parousia.
1. The Incarnation: Protestant churches, by and large, have an underdeveloped theology of the
incarnation. The churches of the East, Roman Catholics, and Anglicans have always taken the
incarnation far more seriously—albeit the Eastern church tends to concentrate on the incarnation
within the context of the preexistence, the “origin,” of Christ. In recent years it has, however, been
liberation theology which, far more explicitly than has hitherto been the case, viewed the Christian
mission in terms of the incarnate Christ, the human Jesus of Nazareth who wearily trod the dusty
roads of Palestine where he took compassion on those who were marginalized. He is also the one
who today sides with those who suffer in the favelas of Brazil and with the discarded people in South
Africa's resettlement areas. In this model, one is not interested in a Christ who offers only eternal
salvation, but in a Christ who agonizes and sweats and bleeds with the victims of oppression. One
criticizes the bourgeois church of the West, which leans toward docetism and for which Jesus’
humanness is only a veil hiding his divinity. This bourgeois church has an idealist understanding of
itself, refuses to take sides, and believes that it offers a home for masters as well as slaves, rich and
poor, oppressor and oppressed. Because it refuses to practice “solidarity with victims” (Lamb 1982),
such a church has lost its relevance. Having peeled off the social and political dimensions of the
gospel, it has denatured it completely.
Our survey of the early church's (and particularly Luke's) understanding of mission has proved the
validity of this perspective. The Western church has been tempted to read the gospels—in Kähler's
famous phrase—as “passion histories with extensive introductions.” The recent emphasis on the
significance of the incarnation—which has been accepted into the ecumenical movement at least since
the 1980 Melbourne CWME Conference—is calling our attention precisely to these “extensive
introductions” and their significance for our mission. Melbourne concentrated, to a large extent, on
“the earthly Jesus, the Jew, the Nazarene, who lived as a simple Galilean man, suffered and was
executed, dying on the cross” (J. Matthey in WCC 1980:ix). The “practice of Jesus” (Echegaray
1984) has indeed much to say about the nature and content of mission today.
2. The Cross: Kähler's phrase, just quoted, betrays the preoccupation of the Western church—
Catholic and Protestant—with the passion and crucifixion of Jesus. To the question, What is the
essence of the gospel?, most Western Christians would probably reply, “It is that Christ died for my
sins on the cross.” Without embarking on a discussion of the doctrine of the atonement, let it suffice to
say that it would seem that such a view indeed has a biblical basis; according to sayings such as Mark
10:45 and several utterances of Paul, one may conclude that, for many in the early church, Christ was
the new “place of expiation” which replaced the temple (cf Pesch 1982:41f). Those who accept him
as Savior have their sins forgiven. This opens to them the way to become members of a new, saved
community, called church, a unique body of those with whom God has a special relationship.
Jesus’ death on the cross should not, however, be isolated from his life. The “extensive
introductions” to the gospels are themselves already passion stories. Jesus’ kenosis, his self-
emptying, began at his birth. And it was because of his identification with those on the periphery and
his refusal to act according to the conventions of the day that he was crucified. But there is more to it
than this. The cross of Jesus is, uniquely, the badge of distinction of the Christian faith (cf Moltmann
1975:4). And when the risen Christ commissioned his disciples to go on the same mission that he had
received from the Father, it was the scars of his passion that revealed to them who he was (Jn 20:20).
Without the cross, Christianity would be a religion of cheap grace (cf Koyama 1984:256–261). The
cross goes against the grain of any human being. It is not natural. And if, in the postmodern era, it may
seem as if religion is once again acceptable and natural—as Capra and others argue—it has to be
pointed out that a religion of the cross cannot be natural; the cross constitutes a permanent danger to
any religiosity (Josuttis 1988; cf Koyama 1984:240–261).
The scars of the risen Lord do not only prove Jesus’ identity, however; they also constitute a model
to be emulated by those whom he commissions: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn
20:21). It's a mission of self-emptying, of humble service—herein lies the abiding validity of
Bonhoeffer's idea of the “church for others.” In the series of international missionary conferences it
was especially Jerusalem (1928) and Willingen (1952) which stood in the sign of a theology of the
cross. Willingen convened under the theme “The Missionary Obligation of the Church”; its report
was, however, published as Missions Under the Cross. All mission, said Hartenstein with respect to
Willingen, is ministry to truth in humility (quoted in van ‘t Hof 1972:160). In the presence of the cross
the church-in-mission has to repent before it engages in mission. In the words of Käsemann, in his
address to the Melbourne conference, “Churches that do not repent deny their reality and reject the
Lord who also had to die for them. They fail to stand under the cross where all our sins come to light
and where we in our humanity are crucified with him” (WCC 1980:69). Paul discovered that it was
not in spite of but because of the death he found himself dying every day that he was an apostle, a
missionary (cf 1 Cor 15:31; 2 Cor 12:10). “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,”
wrote Bonhoeffer in the midst of the German church struggle (quoted in West 1971:223). Herein lies
the missionary significance of the cross. “Suffering is the divine mode of activity in history…The
church's mission in the world, too, is suffering…is participation in God's existence in the world”
(Schütz 1930:245—my translation).
The cross also stands for reconciliation between estranged individuals and groups, between
oppressor and oppressed. Reconciliation does not, of course, mean a mere sentimental harmonizing of
conflicting groups. It demands sacrifice, in very different but also in very real ways, from both
oppressor and oppressed. It demands the end to oppression and injustice and commitment to a new
life of mutuality, justice, and peace. And yet, without taking away anything from this assertion, it has
to be added that there may be wrongs that cannot be repaired by human means, that we should not
allow ourselves to be trapped in “helpless, desperate guilt feelings” or in the idea “that justice must
be our justice, that we can and must cancel our guilt by restitution, or…overcome our frustration by
mere action” (H. Bortnowska, in WCC 1980:150).
 Among the moral teachers of the world Christ alone does not make everything depend on moral
success. In addition to reconciliation, then, the cross—missiologically speaking—also means a
ministry of love of enemies, of forgiveness. It is an assertion “that loving is worthwhile, whatever it
may cost in self-giving and even death” (Segundo 1986:152—emphasis in original). It was for this
above all, says Baker (1986:162), that Jesus gave his life. He adds a quotation from the Staretz
Silouan: “Without love of enemies there is no following of Christ.” This is a hard saying, for it spells
the absolute end to any form of self-righteousness. So the cross is also a critical category. It tells us
that mission cannot be realized when we are powerful and confident but only when we are weak and
at a loss. Nothing we do is exempt from the judgment of the cross. There is no righteous action which
does not also need to be forgiven, not least since the power which works for justice today may be
unjust tomorrow (cf West 1971:229; Henry 1987:279).
3. The Resurrection: In the Eastern churches it is the resurrection of Christ which is God's salvific
event par excellence. The planners of the Melbourne conference (1980) had assigned to Section IV
the theme “The Crucified Christ Challenges Human Power.” Orthodox participants, however,
criticized the formulation. So the theme was rephrased and changed to “Christ—Crucified and Risen
—Challenges Human Power.” The Orthodox intervention was appropriate. Jesus’ death on the cross
remains meaningless without the resurrection. Early Christians viewed the Easter event as the
vindication of Jesus. Cross and resurrection are not in balance with each other; the resurrection has
the ascendancy and victory over the cross (Berkhof 1966:180). The most common summary of the
early church's missionary message was that it was witnessing to the resurrection of Christ. It was a
message of joy, hope, and victory, the first fruit of God's ultimate triumph over the enemy. And in this
joy and victory believers may already share. This is, among other things, what the Eastern church
gives expression to in its doctrine of theosis, of divinization; it is the beginning of “life in
incorruption” (Clement of Rome). In the resurrection of Christ the forces of the future already stream
into the present and transform it, even if everything that meets the eye appears to be unchanged. The
Christian's life continues on two planes, as it were (cf Segundo 1986:159). God's promise and our
hope are already full reality in Christ, before they are fully realized in human history; in Christ
eternity has entered time, life has conquered death (Memorandum 1982: 463).
Missiologically this means, first, that the central theme of our missionary message is that Christ is
risen, and that, secondly and consequently, the church is called to live the resurrection life in the here
and now and to be a sign of contradiction against the forces of death and destruction—that it is called
to unmask modern idols and false absolutes (Memorandum 1982:463).
4. The Ascension: The Calvinist tradition, one could say, focuses on the ascension. For John
Calvin, Christians live between the ascension and the parousia; from that position they seek to
comprehend what their mission is (cf Krass 1977:1). The ascension is, preeminently, the symbol of
the enthronement of the crucified and risen Christ—he now reigns as King. And it is from the
perspective of the present reign of Christ that we look back to the cross and the empty tomb and
forward to the consummation of everything. Christian faith is marked by an inaugurated eschatology
(:10). This is true not only of the church—as if the church is the present embodiment of God's reign—
but also of society, of history, which is the arena of God's activity (:8). Salvation history is not
opposed to profane history, nor grace to nature. Therefore, to opt out of civil society and set up little
Christian islands is to subscribe to a truncated and disjunctive understanding of God's workings (:5).
In the Calvinist tradition there is, therefore, a positive attitude toward what may be achieved in human
and world history.
Together with the emphasis on the incarnation, one may say that this theological tradition more than
any other has exercised a profound influence on the ecumenical movement. It is committed to the view
that Christ's order of life already forcefully progresses throughout the world (Berkhof 1966:170).
Mission from this perspective means that it should be natural for Christians to be committed to justice
and peace in the social realm. God's reign is real, though as yet incomplete. We will not inaugurate it,
but we can help make it more visible, more tangible. Within this unjust world, we are called to be a
community of those committed to the values of God's reign, concern ourselves with the victims of
society and proclaim God's judgment on those who continue to worship the gods of power and self-
love. In the words of Section IV.3 of the Melbourne conference, “The proclamation of God's reign is
the announcement of a new order which challenges those powers and structures that have become
demonic in a world corrupted by sin against God” (WCC 1980:210).
The glory of the ascension remains intimately linked to the agony of the cross, however. The same
paragraph from Melbourne (Section IV.3) refers to “the most striking image…of a sacrificed lamb,
slaughtered but yet living, sharing the throne…with the living God himself.” Likewise, the words of
Jesus in John 12:32—“When I am lifted up from the earth”—have traditionally been interpreted as
reference both to his being “lifted up” on the cross and to his ascension. The Lord we proclaim in
mission remains the suffering Servant. “The principle of self-sacrificing love is…enthroned at the
very centre of the reality of the universe” (WCC 1980:210). And this principle has to be transparent
in our missionary praxis. It is thus not strange that Melbourne was the conference at which both the
weakness of the incarnate Jesus and the power of the ascended Christ were celebrated. Käsemann, in
particular (in WCC 1980:61–71), stressed the identity of the Crucified with the Kyrios.
5. Pentecost: The Pentecostal and charismatic movements tend to view the Pentecost event as
God's deed par excellence. Some would even say that, after an era in church history in which the
emphasis was on God the Father, followed by the era of the Son, we have now—particularly since
the beginning of the twentieth century—entered into the era of the Spirit. In this new dispensation we
strive after the total wealth of heaven and unceasing ecstasy now. So one encounters in these circles
claims about the occurrence of miraculous events and the exhilaration of an unbroken chain of
mountaintop experiences.
Without denying the element of validity in this interpretation of Pentecost, I wish to suggest that,
from a missiological viewpoint, there is more to say. First, when the risen Christ was asked by his
disciples about the restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6), he replied by promising them the
Spirit of witness. Our study of Luke's writings, in particular, has revealed the Holy Spirit as the Spirit
of boldness (parresia) in the face of adversity and opposition. So “the Church continues Christ's
mission in the power of his spirit” (Memorandum 1982:461).
The era of the Spirit is, furthermore, the era of the church. And the church in the power of the
Spirit (Moltmann 1977) is itself part of the message it proclaims. It is a fellowship, a koinonia,
which actualizes God's love in its everyday life and in which justice and righteousness are made
present and operative. We cannot ignore this community, indeed are forbidden to do so (Lochman
1986:70). It is a distinct community, but not a club, not a ghetto society. The Spirit may not be held
hostage by the church, as if his sole task were to maintain it and protect it from the outside world
(:71). The church exists only as an organic and integral part of the entire human community, “for as
soon as it tries to understand its own life as meaningful in independence from the total human
community it betrays the only purpose which can justify its existence” (Baker 1986:159).
Even its worship, its celebration of the Eucharist, does not fall outside this frame of reference. The
Orthodox churches teach us that the Eucharist is the most missionary of all the activities of the church
(cf Bria 1975:248). On the one hand it is a celebration and anticipation of the coming triumph of God
(Moltmann 1977:191f, 196, 242–275); on the other hand it is, each time we celebrate it, an invitation
to share our bread with the hungry (cf Melbourne, Section III.31 [WCC 1980:206]; Memorandum
1982:462).
6. The Parousia: Ever since the first century there have been adventist groups whose central focus
was on the second coming of Christ. They have tended to regard the reign of God as an exclusively
future reality and this world as a vale of tears, in the grip of the evil one. In this model the church is
merely a waiting room for eternity. The eyes of the faithful are fixed on the distant horizon and on the
clouds, whence Christ will return as Lord, to change everything in the twinkling of an eye.
The validity in this view is that, in the Christian faith, the future indeed holds the primacy. Mission
can be understood only when the risen Christ himself has still a future, a universal future for the
nations (Moltmann 1967:83). This has emerged, particularly, from our survey of Paul's missionary
theology; mission, for him, was a response to the vision of the coming triumph of God. Segundo
(1986:179) recognizes the fidelity of Paul's eschatology to the thrust of Jesus and describes it as “the
only kind (of eschatology) capable of giving real meaning to human history.” In an authentic
eschatology the vision of God's ultimate reign of justice and peace serves as a powerful magnet—not
because the present is empty, but precisely because God's future has already invaded it.
The church is not the world, because God's reign is already present in it. So, the unity between
church and world can only be recognized and practiced dialectically in hope—that is, in the light of
God's reign (cf Lochman 1986:68). But also, the church is not God's reign. It has no monopoly on
God's reign, may not claim it for itself, may not present itself as the realized kingdom of God over
against the world (:69). The kingdom will never be fully present in the church. Still, it is in the church
that the renewal of the human community begins (:70). But precisely as vanguard of God's reign, of
the new earth and the new humankind, the church should neither try to provoke the irruption of the end
nor just preserve itself for the end. The place of both these is taken by the mission of the church
(Moltmann 1967:83; 1977:196). In its mission, the church affirms its own preliminariness and
contingency (cf Küng 1987:122). Practicing “expectant evangelism” (Warren 1948:133–145), it
always anticipates its own abrogation. Aware of its provisional character, it lives and ministers as
that force within humanity through which the renewal and community of all people is served
(“Report” in Limouris 1986:167).

WHITHER MISSION?
The six christological salvific events may never be viewed in isolation from one another. In our
mission, we proclaim the incarnate, crucified, resurrected, ascended Christ, present among us in the
Spirit and taking us into his future as “captives in his triumphal procession” (2 Cor 5:14, NEB). Each
of these events impinges on all the others. Unless we hold on to this, we will communicate to the
world a truncated gospel. The shadow of the man of Nazareth, crucified under Pontius Pilate, falls on
the glory of his resurrection and ascension, the coming of his Spirit, and his parousia. It is the Jesus
who walked with his disciples who lives as Spirit in his church (cf Eph 2:20); it is the Crucified One
who rose from the dead; it is the One who had been lifted up on the cross who has been lifted up to
heaven; it is the Lamb slaughtered yet living who will consummate history.
But who, which church, which human body of people, is equal to such a calling? (cf 2 Cor 2:16).
This was the question Mott put to Kähler just before the Edinburgh Conference: “Do you consider that
we now have on the home field a type of Christianity which should be propagated all over the
world?” (in Kähler 1971:258). Today we would not phrase the question as naively as Mott. But it
continues to nag us. From all sides the Christian mission is under attack, even from within its own
ranks. For Rütti (1972, 1974), the entire modern missionary enterprise is so polluted by its origins in
and close association with Western colonialism that it is irredeemable; we have to find an entirely
new image today. Speaking at a consultation in Kuala Lumpur in February, 1971, Emerito Nacpil
(1971:78) depicts mission as “a symbol of the universality of Western imperialism among the rising
generations of the Third World.” In the missionary, the people of Asia do not see the face of the
suffering Christ but a benevolent monster. So he concludes, “The present structure of modern mission
is dead. And the first thing we ought to do is to eulogize it and then bury it.” Mission appears to be the
greatest enemy of the gospel. Indeed, “the most missionary service a missionary under the present
system can do today to Asia is to go home!” (:79). In the same year John Gatu of Kenya, speaking first
to an audience in New York, then to a meeting of the American Reformed Church in Milwaukee,
suggested a moratorium on Western missionary involvement in Africa. Much earlier, in May 1944,
Bonhoeffer, writing from a Gestapo prison and reflecting on the German church as he had come to
know it, wrote:
Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable
of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose
their force and cease, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men
(1971:300).

Bonhoeffer probably also viewed the church's foreign missionary enterprise as a fight for self-
preservation. With less reserve than Bonhoeffer, James Heissig (1981) has termed Christian mission
“the selfish war.”
Contrary to what some of these authors might suggest, they are not describing a new phenomenon.
Throughout most of the church's history its empirical state has been deplorable. This was already true
of Jesus’ first circle of disciples and has not really changed since. We may have been fairly good at
orthodoxy, at “faith,” but we have been poor in respect of orthopraxis, of love. Van der Aalst
(1974:196) reminds us that there have been countless councils on right believing; yet no council has
ever been called to work out the implications of the greatest commandment—to love one another. One
may therefore, with some justification, ask whether there has ever been a time when the church had
the “right” to do mission work. What Neill says about missionaries has been true of missionaries of
all times, from the great apostle who boasted in his weakness to those who still call themselves
“missionaries”: “(They) have on the whole been a feeble folk, not very wise, not very holy, not very
patient. They have broken most of the commandments and fallen into every conceivable mistake”
(1960:222).
The critics of mission have usually proceeded from the supposition that mission was only what
Western missionaries were doing by way of saving souls, planting churches, and imposing their ways
and wills on others. We may, however, never limit mission exclusively to this empirical project; it
has always been greater than the observable missionary enterprise. Neither, to be sure, should it be
completely divorced from it. Rather, mission is missio Dei, which seeks to subsume into itself the
missiones ecclesiae, the missionary programs of the church. It is not the church which “undertakes”
mission; it is the missio Dei which constitutes the church. The mission of the church needs constantly
to be renewed and re-conceived. Mission is not competition with other religions, not a conversion
activity, not expanding the faith, not building up the kingdom of God; neither is it social, economic, or
political activity. And yet, there is merit in all these projects. So, the church's concern is conversion,
church growth, the reign of God, economy, society and politics—but in a different manner (cf Kohler
1974:472)! The missio Dei purifies the church. It sets it under the cross—the only place where it is
ever safe. The cross is the place of humiliation and judgment, but it is also the place of refreshment
and new birth (cf Neill 1960:223). As community of the cross the church then constitutes the
fellowship of the kingdom, not just “church members”; as community of the exodus, not as a
“religious institution,” it invites people to the feast without end (Moltmann 1977:75).
Looked at from this perspective mission is, quite simply, the participation of Christians in the
liberating mission of Jesus (Hering 1980:78), wagering on a future that verifiable experience seems
to belie. It is the good news of God's love, incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of
the world.
 Conclusion to the Anniversary Edition

The Continuing Transformation

of Mission: David J. Bosch's
Living Legacy: 1991–2011
MARTIN REPPENHAGEN AND DARRELL L. GUDER

Shortly after David J. Bosch's Transforming Mission appeared in 1991, its rapid and positive
reception as the basic textbook for the study of contemporary missiology was documented by
appreciative reviews from all quarters of the globe. Robert Schreiter, speaking for hundreds of
teachers and scholars of mission, called it “a milestone in late twentieth-century missiological
thought” (1991:180). Others ranked Bosch with Hendrik Kraemer and Kenneth Scott Latourette
(Scherer 1991:153), calling him “the most complete missiologist of our generation, perhaps of the
whole century” (Walls 2002:273), and making Transforming Mission “the point of departure for any
future work in the same field” (Yung 1992:323). Almost twenty years after its initial publication, one
scholar selected Transforming Mission as the first among five picks of “essential theology books of
the past 25 years” (Vanhoozer 2010:37). Christianity Today included it in a list of the one hundred
best religious books of the twentieth century (April 24, 2000). Its translation and publication in a
growing number of languages testifies to the significance of what Lesslie Newbigin called a “Summa
Missiologica” which had become “one of the most influential missiological textbooks worldwide”
(Kritzinger & Saayman 2011:xi). By 2011, the original English edition is still in print and is
distributed not only in countries in which English is the mother tongue, but also in India, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Myanmar. Orbis Books reports that, as of August 2011,
65,000 copies of the North American edition are in print. The book has been translated and is
available in Chinese, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Slovak, and
Spanish. Contracts have been signed for translations in Czech, Polish, and Turkish. The French and
Russian editions are currently out of print. The first edition of the German translation is scheduled to
appear in 2012.
It is no exaggeration to claim that Transforming Mission has transformed the teaching of mission
in many ways. It is a common experience of the teacher of mission that students respond to the book
with comments such as, “It is demanding to read, but no theological book integrates my theology so
clearly and constructively as does this one.” A cursory search on line will reveal numerous course
syllabi in which the volume serves as the major text—as taught in an impressive diversity of
institutions. In 1995, Norman Thomas edited and published a companion volume to Transforming
Mission, Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, in which he provides the reader the full
texts of the major documents cited by Bosch with introductory comments. Out of a concern that
Bosch's magisterial book should not be restricted to the academy but become a resource for lay
formation, especially in congregational contexts, Stanley Nussbaum published A Reader's Guide to
Transforming Mission: A Concise, Accessible Companion to David Bosch's Classic Book (2005).
The appearance in 2012 of the German edition is the catalyst for this supplemental chapter that
attempts to survey the impact of Bosch's magisterial work on the study and research in the field of
missiology and to track trajectories that are clearly influenced by his work. It is the authors’ hope that
the inclusion of this chapter in further editions of the various translations will stimulate the
constructive and necessarily critical engagement with Bosch's proposal for the engagement of mission
that works biblically, historically, and theologically, and which seeks to integrate theological
reflection and the praxis of mission in a mutually provocative way (Kritzinger & Saayman 1990;
Saayman & Kritzinger 1996; Livingstone 1999; Ahonen 2004; Yates 2009; Kritzinger & Saayman
2011).

THE WORK AND LIFE OF DAVID JACOBUS BOSCH

In their very personal work on the life and work of David J. Bosch, his South Africa colleagues,
Klippies Kritzinger and Willem Saayman, report that “a significant feature of Bosch's sense of agency
in God’ mission is that he always thought of himself as together with his wife and children”
(2011:134). What may be said about his sense of family identity is also characteristic of his
missiological activity and the modesty with which he went about his work. He was a “‘visionary
intermediary’…mediating between God and groups of divided Christians in a crisis situation” (2). As
a student of contextualization in mission, he was profoundly aware of his own contextual formation
and the “creative tension” that defined Christian identity in the South Africa of the apartheid era.
Bosch was born in 1929 in South Africa's Cape Province and grew up on a traditional Afrikaaner
farm. Following his theological studies, he went to Europe for doctoral studies and in 1956
completed his doctorate in New Testament under the guidance of Oscar Cullmann. The theme was
“Gentile Mission in Jesus’ Vision of the Future”; the work was written in German and published in
Switzerland (Bosch 1959). During his years in Switzerland, he also came under the influence of Karl
Barth, whose focus upon mission in his dogmatic project converged with Bosch's biblical approach
to mission theology. It was also during the years in Basel that David and Annemie Bosch became
good friends of John Howard Yoder. That friendship is reflected in Bosch's reception of Anabaptist
thought and practice in his theological work. As residents in the famous Missionshaus of the Basel
Mission, the Bosches experienced the Ecumenical Movement in a particularly exciting and
stimulating passage symbolized by the merger of the International Missionary Council into the World
Council of Churches at New Delhi in 1961. Bosch shared Lesslie Newbigin's hope that this merger
would ensure that mission would define the purpose and practice of the emerging ecumenical church.
While in Basel, David J. Bosch began to question the Afrikaaner ideology of apartheid and
especially his church's theological support of it. Although he was an “Afrikaaner through and through”
(Kritzinger & Saayman 2011:69), and remained faithful to his church throughout his life, he came to
reject his church's racist theology—and was marginalized by the Dutch Reformed Church of South
Africa as a result. The transparency and integrity of his personal struggle with the issue, and the
distinctive ways in which he went about it, resulted in conflict with both the proponents and the
opponents of apartheid. From 1957 to 1967 he served as a missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church,
working with the Xhosa in the Transkei, where he became fluent in isiXhosa. He then served on the
faculty of the Theological Seminary in Decoligny, where he instructed black pastors. In 1972, he was
called to the first chair in missiology at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Pretoria, where he
served until his untimely death in a traffic accident in 1992. He began to receive international
attention because of the constant flow of essays and articles in the field of missiology that appeared in
diverse journals (Livingstone 1999:27-28). During his academic tenure at UNISA, he received calls
to chairs in missiology at Leiden University in 1974 and at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1985
and 1987. He responded appreciatively but made it very clear that both his sense of call and his
commitment were to the mission of the church in South Africa and to the development of South
African missiology. The crowning achievement of his rigorous work as a theologian of mission was
the publication of Transforming Mission.
Shaped by the classical tradition of European theological studies, David J. Bosch linked theory
and practice with his “devotion to South Africa…combined with a world Christian citizenship”
(Walls 2004:276). He played a major role in the development of mission theology in South Africa,
not only in the university instruction he pioneered, but also the formation and growth of the South
African Missiological Society (SAMS), which he served as the editor of its journal Missionalia from
1973 until his death. He regarded the process of rigorous missiological investigation and debate to be
an essential component of Christian mission. In 1979, he presided over the South African Christian
Leadership Assembly, an event that was especially important for the relationships between black and
white Christians as well as among diverse churches. As a “missiologist of the road” (Walls 2004)
Bosch was acknowledged and respected in both ecumenical and evangelical circles and devoted
considerable effort to overcoming the polarity between these approaches (we shall return to this
point). He felt that both currents were in danger of neglecting the fullness of the gospel, which could
result, on the one hand, in a “diluted gospel” with a one-sided focus upon sociopolitical change
processes and, on the other hand, with an “emaciated gospel” that emphasized individual salvation at
the cost of the Kingdom message (Bosch 1980:202ff, 212ff). Quoting Jürgen Moltmann, Bosch
described this situation as “a wrong alternative, a suicidal polarization” (32). A strong sense of the
intense connectedness and concrete reconciliation of both individuals and theological positions
characterized Bosch's approach, in that for him faithful witness to the fullness of the gospel and the
future of the new creation required the visible community of reconciled Christians. This commitment
can also be seen in his diverse missiological publications, in which he received the broad spectrum
of Christian traditions and positions and engaged them in dialogue with each other. He was and
remained “a person of the church. The church was central in his thought” (Livingstone 1999:28).

BEYOND BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MISSION

By the time Transforming Mission appeared, Bosch had, as a New Testament scholar, devoted
considerable attention to the crucial significance of the Bible for the theology of mission (Bosch
1978, 1980, 1982a, 1986). His work is part of a growing scholarly consensus regarding the
importance of biblical foundations for mission (e.g., Senior & Stuhlmueller 1983). He builds his
classic treatment of mission theology upon the foundation of Scripture: the first third of Transforming
Mission is devoted to the “New Testament Models of Mission.” But in doing so, he moves beyond the
understanding of the Bible as foundational to an engagement of the authoritative and dynamic role of
scripture as continuously formative of the church. The role of scripture for mission theology is not
expounded by referring to various biblical texts that deal with mission. Instead, he works through
major New Testament “models” of mission (Matthew, Luke-Acts, Paul) and demonstrates how these
written witnesses, as diverse “mission theologies,” actually formed ecclesial communities for their
missionary vocation.
The relationship between the biblical witness and contemporary mission is necessarily much more
complex than merely the inductive formulation of mission strategies from selected texts (Bosch
1991a:15f, 20ff). Thus the New Testament as a whole should be understood as a missionary
document, offering its diverse models of mission for the continuing formation of witnessing
communities. Developing a “critical hermeneutics” for his task, Bosch brings the missional thought of
the biblical models into dialogue with the contemporary church as it addresses the challenge of living
out its missionary vocation in very different contexts from the first century world. But the governing
presupposition of his exposition is that the events of Jesus both constitute the initiation of the
Christian witness and define how that witness is to continue. “It is the events at the origin of the
Christian community—the ‘agenda’ set by Jesus’ living, dying, and rising from the dead—that
basically and primarily established the distinctiveness of that community, and to those events we too
have to orientate ourselves” (22).
This leads Bosch to recognize the significance of the processes of translation and contextualization
that are already visible in the New Testament writers. In these processes, the missionary intention of
the movement Jesus inaugurated is being implemented. The basic strategy of the apostolic mission is
the founding of communities whose purpose is to continue the witness that brought them into being.
The biblical witness emerges as the instrument of God's Spirit for that continuing formation. The
Bible is thus not only foundational in terms of the initiation of the Christian movement but continues to
serve as the Spirit's instrument for the ongoing sending of Christian communities as they are formed in
“Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Bosch's exposition, in the first third of
Transforming Mission, of the New Testament texts as essentially missionary has converged with
similar approaches on the part of diverse New Testament scholars, leading to a growing
concentration upon the development of what some have begun to call a “missional hermeneutics” (see
Brownson 1998; Bauckham 2003; Wright 2006; Goheen 2008, 2011; Wagner 2009).
Bosch's exposition of the missional interpretation of Scripture has not been without its critics.
Some have found the minimal amount of attention given to the Old Testament in Transforming
Mission to be surprising, criticizing his concurrence with Rzepkoski's view that “the decisive
difference between the Old and the New Testament is mission” (Bosch 1991a:17; Bekele 2011:155f).
As a contrast with his approach in Transforming Mission, his discussion of the Old Testament in the
earlier work, Witness to the World (Bosch 1980), is more extensive. Others have criticized the
omission of the Johannine literature in his discussion of New Testament models of mission (Towner
1995). There are, in the meantime, growing numbers of resources on missional hermeneutics which,
while often building on Bosch, also address the gaps in his argument. In these last years, a discussion
of missional hermeneutics has become an ongoing part of the program of the Society of Biblical
Literature, now formalized as an affiliated program under the title “Gospel and Culture Forum.”
There is among many teachers of mission who use Transforming Mission a growing awareness that
future church leaders need thorough equipping in the missional interpretation of scripture, if their
congregations are to be enabled to carry out their witness in the world in ways “worthy of their
calling” (Eph. 4:1). This growing consensus about the importance of missional hermeneutics also
points to the urgent need, in diverse cultural contexts, for useful exegetical literature that will assist
pastors and teachers with the exposition of the Bible in ways that are genuinely formative of
witnessing congregations.

THEOLOGY OF MISSION AS THE MISSION OF THEOLOGY

Bosch's major contribution to missiology is without doubt in the area of mission theology. If the
option were between a mission theology as a theological discipline and a mission of theology, Bosch
would clearly choose the latter. For, “the theologian must not forget that the early Christian mission
was the progenitor of theology; that the church by circumstance was forced to theologize; that
theology, biblically understood, has no reason to exist other than critically to accompany the church in
its mission to the world” (Bosch 1982a:27; 1991a:494; cf Kirk 1997). For “theology ceases to be
theology if it loses its missionary character” (Bosch 1991a:494). The goal is to move away from a
missiological science that functions as a “department of foreign affairs” toward the missional
penetration of all of theology (492). For Bosch, theology is a public event relating to the academic
world, the church, and society, an event comprising three dimensions: theoria, poiesis and praxis
(1992). To do this, the theological task must integrate biblical, historical, and doctrinal content and
interpretation.
In the second third of Transforming Mission, Bosch surveys the diversity of ways that mission has
been understood theologically over the course of Christian history. To do this, he adopts the concept
of paradigm shift, derived from Thomas Kuhn and guided especially by Hans Küng and his division
of (Western) church history into six paradigms. In contrast to the more descriptive approach adopted
in Latourette's magisterial history of mission (1937–1945), Bosch interprets the movement of mission
through Christian history as a theological process. He emphasizes that in this process “different
theologies of mission do not necessarily exclude each other; they form a multicolored mosaic of
complementary and mutually enriching as well as mutually challenging frames of reference. Instead of
trying to formulate one uniform view of mission we should attempt to chart the contours of a
‘pluriverse of missiology in a universe of mission’” (Bosch 1991a:8). Paradigms can exist next to
each other and change very slowly (cf Bosch 1991a:186). The approach taken in Transforming
Mission focuses upon Western Christendom (Eastern Orthodoxy is treated as the first paradigm
[181189]), but the insights unpacked in this survey are of importance to the global church, both to
interpret the role of Western Christendom in the globalization of the Christian movement and to
identify ways in which variations of these paradigms constantly surface in diverse cultural contexts
beyond the boundaries of Western Christendom.
Bosch's analysis of these historical paradigms in all their complexity continues to inform the
missiological process as it grapples today with the realities of global Christianity and struggles to
relate the local and the global to each other appropriately. There is a perceivable consensus among
church historians that their discipline needs to be globally defined, revised and pursued, as evidenced
by a project like Irvin and Sunquist's History of the World Christian Movement (2001; see also
González 2002). One must, however, also take Robert Schreiter's critical comment to heart: “caution
must be taken not to see a paradigm shift in every change” (1991:180f). Kirsten Kim goes somewhat
further when she describes Transforming Mission as a “retrospective” “that documents what has
already been resolved, not the debates of today” (2000:173). The importance of Bosch's survey and
analysis of the historical paradigms of mission may well lie in the insights gained into the ongoing
importance of “what has already been resolved” for the “debates of today.” As one church historian
said in an informal conversation, it is becoming clear “that all church history must be read as mission
history.” Mission historiography is proving to be an essential part of mission theology (cf Sunquist
2009).
Bosch's discussion of the “Emerging Ecumenical Missionary Paradigm” constitutes the last third
of Transforming Mission, and presents in its treatment of thirteen thematic dimensions a
comprehensive review of the salient doctrinal challenges with which mission theology must contend
in today's rapidly changing world (368–510; 1985:76ff). Here he develops and documents his
dominant theme of the essential theological interrelationship of mission and church. As he sees it,
mission theology does not come out of ecclesiology, but rather mission precedes and is the
presupposition for the doctrine of the church. “It is not the church which ‘undertakes’ mission; it is the
missio Dei which constitutes the church. The mission of the church needs constantly to be renewed
and reconceived…. As community of the cross the church then constitutes the fellowship of the
kingdom, not just ‘church members’; as community of the exodus, not as a ‘religious institution,’ it
invites people to the feast without end” (Bosch 1991a:519). The church can only exist as the church
of Jesus Christ when it understands itself as a part of God's mission and lives out that understanding.
The consensus that emerged in the missiological discussions of the twentieth century found its
classical formulation and validation in the oft quoted statement of the Second Vatican Council: “The
pilgrim church is missionary by its very nature” (Ad Gentes 9, cited in Bosch 1991a:372).
Thus the church is not merely the outcome of mission but the medium of mission. He makes it clear
that this approach is significant not only for the understanding of the church but of mission itself, for
“the inverse of the thesis ‘the church is essentially missionary’ is ‘mission is essentially ecclesial’”
(Bosch 1991a:372). This also underlines that, for Bosch's understanding, the particular or local
community must be the focal point of theological consideration. Mission is concretely anchored in the
worship community. “The church-in-mission is primarily the local church everywhere in the world”
(378, 385, 431). Bosch can, however, also observe that the missionary renewal of the church often
takes place “outside Christianity or in groups outside the historical churches, or, alternatively, in the
non-traditional activities of these churches” (1995:45). Yet even with that insight (whose relevance
grows as new forms of church constantly proliferate, particularly in the post-Christendom west), he
does not diminish the emphasis upon the community gathered under Word and Sacrament. It is
significant that Bosch's discussion of the elements of a missionary ecclesiology begins with his
detailed study entitled “mission as the church with others” (1991a:368). As the first element of the
“emerging ecumenical missionary paradigm,” it is foundational for what follows, just as it draws
together major aspects of the twentieth-century missiological discussion that moved from an
ecclesiocentric to a Trinitarian missiocentric approach. His thinking was thus congruent with Theo
Sundermeier's argument against an understanding of the church as “church-for-others” (cf
Sundermeier 1995). Christian witness can only happen in solidarity with humanity.
Bosch's understanding of the church also discloses clear Anabaptist influences, which are the
result of, among other things, his long years of contact with John Howard Yoder. This emphasis is
readily recognized in Bosch's frequent engagement of the theme, “The Church as the ‘Alternative
Community’” (1975, 1982b; Kritzinger & Saayman 2011:75ff). This view of the church as a
community called out of the world would become, in light of the controversies surrounding resistance
to apartheid, the theme of some criticism. Some alleged that, in this approach, the uniqueness of the
church were more important than its prophetic task in society. Thus, the argument goes, Bosch never
really acknowledged the epistemological priority of the poor (cf Balcomb 1993). Chris Sugden, along
the same critical lines, raised questions about apparent thematic gaps in Bosch's “description of the
mission scene,” especially with regard the pressing challenges in the two-thirds world. He was also
not satisfied with Bosch's approach, focusing upon the “alternative community,” to the relation of the
church and politics. Closely linked to that large and complex theme was his critique of Bosch's
arguments against extremism (Sugden 1996). It is certainly clear that Bosch did not endorse the
revolutionary overthrowing of unjust regimes. For him, social renewal was a profoundly spiritual and
ecclesial challenge. His multi-layered critique of apartheid was unequivocal, but so was his criticism
of Western and traditional African views of the human person. He expected that a radically Christian
anthropology would serve as the basis for a democratic South Africa. Such an approach resulted in
his rejecting the idea that any particular human grouping should be granted priority or preference,
since this could lead in its way to yet another kind of apartheid and would contradict the universality
of the Gospel (Bosch 1991b).
The issues continue to be relevant and urgent, but more recent commentators, especially from the
ranks of Bosch's close colleagues in South Africa, provide an informed and balanced assessment of
the distinctive ways in which Bosch did indeed struggle with the pressing issues confronting the
Christian movement on diverse fronts. For Bosch, “creative tension” often characterized the reality
with which the witnessing church must deal. The assessment of Bosch's “prophetic” role will also
require a tolerance for creative tension and a certain caution about the making of final judgments
(Kritzinger & Saayman 2011:186-189). Shaped by the Reformed tradition, Bosch's understanding of
the church was dialectical in nature. The church as an alternative society lives in this world with
others, with whom it is bound in solidarity and yet simultaneously from whom it differentiates itself
(Bosch 1980:222).
It is precisely in this dialectic that the significance of the church for the world becomes clear. “The
church has tremendous significance for society precisely because it is…a uniquely separate
community…. We have to work consistently at the renewal of the church—the alternative community
—and precisely in that way at the renewal of society…. It is not a concentration on the church merely
for the sake of the church, but rather for the sake of the world” (Bosch 1982b:8f). It was only in this
way that false worldly standards could be overcome, as he continued to insist in the controversy over
apartheid in South Africa. “The mutual solidarity within this community is not prescribed by the
loyalties and prejudices of kinship, race, people, language, culture, class, political convictions,
religious affinities, common interest or profession. It transcends all these differences” (Bosch
1980:223). This is not, however, to be misunderstood as a “flight into a contrast society” (Huber
1999:100f). “To opt out of civil society and set up little Christian islands is to subscribe to a
truncated and disjunctive understanding of God's workings…. In the Calvinist tradition there is,
therefore, a positive attitude toward what may be achieved in human and world history” (Bosch
1991a:595f). God's intention for his mission and church is the new creation of humanity (Bosch
1988:139). One may surmise that Bosch's intensive engagement of Karl Barth's missional
ecclesiology (see below) will also have shaped his thinking about the engagement of the church in the
world, especially as emphasized by Barth's insistence that the church be seen and interpreted as
God's people fully and concretely engaged in the ongoing currents of human history and affairs
(Weltgeschehen, which is not very helpfully translated as “world-occurrence”; Barth 1959:780–872;
1962:681–762).
Proceeding from the eschatological determination of the entire creation, it is the church's purpose
now to represent within itself the unity and fellowship of the entire creation as it will be perfected in
the eschaton (Bosch 1991a:361f). Thus the church can be regarded as “God's experimental garden.”
Founded upon the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, it is the sign of the future
world (Bosch 1980:65, 225). His eschatological perspective led Bosch to identify the unity of the
church with the new creation in eternity (Bosch 1980:81ff). Thus the church and the world are viewed
together as a result of their eschatological determination (Bosch 1988:139f). “Due to the influence of
Andrew Murray's pietism, Oscar Cullmann's Heilsgeschichte, Karl Barth's aversion to ‘natural
theology’, John Yoder's ‘politics of Jesus’ and his own resistance to apartheid policies in South
Africa, Bosch had developed a cross-centered theology that called for an alternative community
living God's future in the present” (Kritzinger & Saayman 2011:149).
It is important to note here that as early as the 1970s Bosch was distancing himself from an
understanding of mission purely defined by redemptive history (Heilsgeschichte) while he gave more
attention to the formulation of a soteriology that was “comprehensive” (1991a:393–408). The
influence of Oscar Cullmann in the relationship between mission and eschatology continues, but with
reference to Jürgen Moltmann Bosch can also state, “In the authentic apostolic ministry the eschaton
has become a present reality. It ceases to be merely a future reality toward which we are on the way;
it has invaded and permeated our earthly historical existence and is in the process of transforming it”
(1979:85). Justice is “what Christians are for” (Bosch 1995:34, 37). Thus he can claim that God is at
work when “people are experiencing and working for justice, freedom, community, reconciliation,
unity, and trust, in a spirit of love and selflessness” (Bosch 1991a:430f). Later Robert Schreiter and
others focused on “Reconciliation and Healing” as a new model for understanding Christian mission
(2005). Bosch would have readily joined them. Yet neither Bosch nor Schreiter and most others could
ever equate mission with a project for the humanization of the world. Mission is and remains the
“work of the Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier” in which the church participates (Bosch
1991a:392). It arises out of “God's concern with the world for the salvation of man” (Bosch
1980:45). The Christian faith is, after all, a “religion of mercy and compassion” (57).
Bosch emphatically insists upon evangelization as the invitational element of Christian mission.
“Evangelism may be defined as that dimension and activity of the church's mission which seeks to
offer every person, everywhere, a valid opportunity to be directly challenged by the gospel of explicit
faith in Jesus Christ, with a view to embracing him as Savior, becoming a living member of his
community, and being enlisted in his service of reconciliation, peace, and justice on earth”
(1987:103; cf also Bosch 1985:80ff). Evangelization is, however, not to be equated with mission but
is rather a dimension of mission that stands in “creative tension” with other dimensions such as
striving for social justice or inter-religious dialogue (Bosch 1985:76ff). For “mission is more than
and different from recruitment to our brand of religion; it is alerting people to the universal reign of
God” (Bosch 1995:33; also Bosch 1997:153). This is a further example of Bosch's dialectical
understanding of mission in “a bold humility—or a humble boldness” (1991a:489). With these terms
Bosch relates vulnerability, “conviction and commitment” to each other as characteristics that became
essential for him in the encounter with adherents of other faiths and for the work of Christian mission
in general (1988:139ff; cf Margull 1974).

AFRICA AND OTHER CONTEXTS

Precisely because Transforming Mission was written by a South African mission theologian it may
seem somewhat surprising that there is so little attention given to emerging Christian movements and
indigenous theologies in Africa. “Bosch does not dialogue adequately with the mission concerns of
those who now make up the majority and the centre of gravity of the world church in the Two-Thirds
World” (Sugden 1996:330), so the criticism goes. It is claimed that Bosch showed no interest in the
forms of contextualization, in “indigenous spiritualities” or “spiritualities of indigenous people” and
that he had no understanding of creation theology nor of a comprehensive pneumatology (cf Kim
2000:172ff). There are, then, no references to the burgeoning Pentecostal movement worldwide
(Saymann 1996:51). His mission theology stood rather in the “from above” tradition of Karl Barth
(Verstraelen 1996). Yates, however, demonstrates that Bosch did seek “to reflect on the meaning and
communication of the Gospel in Africa” and that he “revealed a surprisingly comprehensive
familiarity with African theologians and movements” (1999:28, 31n23). Most of his published
research on these themes was in Afrikaans in South African publications and thus perhaps less known
outside South Africa (but see Bosch 1974).
Bosch certainly does take note of the diverse “shifts in gravity” (1991a:351, 451, 476), but he
does not assign particular significance to them because statistics and mission success are not
theologically important for the development of mission theology. Instead Bosch advocates a mission
theology that is not prepared “to accept reality as it is” precisely because mission “aims at changing
it” (1991a:xv). This is closely related to his rejection of any form of a theology of history and his
clear reserve when it comes to identifying historical events with divine activity. Such events have at
best a “relative validity” for him, since they can only be interpreted in terms of the Gospel (Bosch
1991a:428ff). Thus, for example, in an essay already composed in 1948–49 he referred to the great
numbers of diverse African religions (Bosch 1979); one can certainly assert that he had a
“comprehensive familiarity with African theologians and movements” (Livingstone 1999:28; cf
Verstraelen 1996). One discovers, nevertheless, in Bosch's understandings of contextualization a
certain dialectic between the universality of the Gospel and the concrete context in which the priority
is given to the former. “Culture and context are the servants of the Gospel. As such they are
adiaphora, non-essentials, variable” (Bosch 1982b:10).
In her dissertation, Tiina Ahonen defines this understanding as the synthetic model, referring to the
system of contextualization models proposed by Stephen Bevans and Robert Schreiter. It is
dialectical, dialogical and analogical in that it maintains a “creative tension” of Gospel and context
(Ahonen 2003:39; Bevans 2002:88ff). The synthetic model assumes “that the gospel transcends every
culture and cannot be domesticated by any one of them” (Schreiter 1994:74). The Gospel is ranked
before and above every context, which is so important for Bosch's understanding of the universality of
the Gospel. Following Robert Schreiter, this model develops a theology that takes up the contextual
categories and concerns “yet looks like Western theology and is relatively easily understood by
Westerners. Moreover, it makes dialogue between North Atlantic and other churches much easier,
since fundamentally similar frameworks are in use” (2008:10). This demonstrates the notable
“creative tension” in David J. Bosch's mission theology. Although he was born in South Africa, he
was linked to and shaped by the Western theological tradition, and especially the strong discipline of
missiology developed in Dutch Reformed theology in the twentieth century. As a result Transforming
Mission should certainly be regarded as a Western work that lives in and interprets that legacy from a
stance of “creative tension.” And yet it is remarkable that it has been translated and become a major
resource in many non-Western contexts.

AFTER CHRISTENDOM: MISSION TO THE WEST AND THE EMERGENCE OF

“MISSIONAL THEOLOGY”
Certainly by 1935 Karl Barth discerned that the age of Western Christendom was ending, although his
awareness of its decline had been growing since the breakthrough of the Romans Commentary in 1919
(1935; Busch 2004:424ff). Barth saw no reason to lament this development, because it really meant a
new freedom for the world as well as a new freedom for the Gospel in the world. He was not alone
with this appraisal of the changing situation in the West that was leading to a new kind of post-
Christendom society, which was at the same time the emergence of a new missionary situation. “It
seems to be the case that around 1930 there was a decisive strand of theological thought in the
Ecumenical Movement which regarded the situation of the Western culture as a deeply missionary
situation” (Ustorf 1992:78f). Already during World War I Gerhard Hilbert described Germany as a
mission field and said that the established church (Volkskirche) could be nothing other than a mission
church, picking up on the tradition of “inner mission” initiated by Johann Hinrich Wichern in the early
nineteenth century (Heinrichs 1917:4f). And as the French Catholics Henri Godin and Yvan Daniel
raised the question in 1943 in the title of their book, “La France: Pays de Mission?” (“France—A
Mission Country?”), the question of West as a zone for ministry work cannot be avoided; Godin &
Yvan 1943). This growing awareness of a new situation for the church in society was leading to the
discernment on the part of some (not all) that the church had a missionary responsibility not just
abroad but within its own Western context. “The Churches of old Christendom, conscious of the
paganism of their lands, are painfully struggling back to the truth that mission is the task of the Church,
and that a Church which is not a mission is not a Church” (Newbigin 1948:10f; Goheen 2000:23ff).
Building upon these and other similar voices, a new movement began to coalesce in the last
decades of the twentieth century that focused upon the need for a missionary ecclesiology for the
Western church. Bosch's insistence that mission was the fundamental and essential theological
challenge facing the church converged with the growing awareness in the West that a post-
Christendom paradigm was emerging. Thus, from the moment it appeared, Transforming Mission was
a formative influence in this process. The obvious factors in this search were the declining numbers
of members in the established churches of the West and the rapidly changing relationships between
these churches and modern societies, especially in the North Atlantic countries. This “paradigm shift”
of “secularization” has been much discussed and analyzed, and there is a spectrum of interpretation of
what secularization might actually consist of—if it in fact is an accurate and usable concept at all
(Joas & Wiegandt 2007; Martin 2005). One of the most important aspects of this complex process is,
however, the fact that there is no longer a single religion or ideology that bears the responsibility of
serving as the collective memory of society (Hervieu-Léger 1998:31, 38). Religious interactions in
the affected societies have become progressively more diverse with a growing number of those who
self-define as non-religious or post-religious. Whether the new situation is described as “believing
without belonging” or “vicarious faith” (Grace Davie), “minimal religion” (Mikhail Epstein), “the
death of Christian Britain” (Callum Brown), homo areligiosus (Eberhard Tiefensee), or lacking a
religious “collective memory of society” (Danièle Hervieu-Léger), the long maintained alliance of
state and church in which the “Republic secures the freedom of the churches; and the churches sustain
the Godly ethos which the Republic requires” (Taylor 2007:453) is undergoing severe interrogation if
it is not already a thing of the past. This has resulted in the “emergence of subcultures,” “a
fragmentation of spiritualities” (Martin 2005:117f), and, at the same time, a proliferation of many new
forms of post-Christendom churches (Gibbs & Bolger 2005). A concrete indicator of the rapid
advance of this paradigm shift is the fact that in the spring of 2011, the Free University of Amsterdam
inaugurated its first Bavinck Professor for Church Planting and Church Renewal!
While the process of secularization in Europe has created remarkable changes in a short period of
time and there are notable differences between the cultures on either side of the North Atlantic, what
can be said about Europe can also be said about the North American and other Western contexts.
Coming from the tradition of a “nation with the soul of a church” (Sidney E. Mead; cf Bellah
2004:45) or a “functional Christendom” (Craig Van Gelder; cf Guder 1998:47ff), for example, the
mainline churches in the United States “can no longer speak for America in the way they sought to do
throughout much of the nation's history. Their voice is now one of many.” (Wuthnow 2002:17). The
Western world has become a “pluralist world, in which many forms of belief and unbelief jostle, and
hence fragilize each other. It is a world in which belief has lost many of the social matrices which
made it seem ‘obvious’ and unchallengeable” (Taylor 2007:531). The “dilemma for religious faith is
that pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability” (Hunter
2010:203), which means the end of the hegemony of the church that exists in name of that God. Thus
“the end of the Constantinian era” (cf Hall 1996:210) has come, and “its period of Western
dominance is over” (Hall 1995:1ff, 7ff). At the same time, as Philip Jenkins’ various publications
document, the shape of world Christianity has radically shifted with its center of gravity now in
Africa and its growth and vitality most evident in the global south (Jenkins 2006, 2007).
The theological consequence of the widely supported consensus that the West has entered into the
post-Christendom era is that the Western church is, or should be, asking about its missionary
responsibility. In the process, the absence of mission from Western theological thought is becoming
obvious (Flett, 2010:72–76). Theologians are making statements that have little precedent in the
history of Western theology. For example, Eberhard Jüngel speaks of mission and evangelism as the
“beating heart” of the church. “But if mission and evangelism are not, or do not once again become,
the affairs of the whole church, then there is something wrong with the church's heartbeat” (Jüngel
2000:203; cf Kohl 2006:3–21). Or to put it in the words of Michael Herbst, “We have to show that
evangelism is a permanent dimension of a local church that is open and inviting, that loves to give a
warm welcome to seekers, and that longs to give unchurched people as many opportunities as
possible to experience the gospel” (2007:265f). The Church of England is seeking to foster the
innovative formation of a “mission-shaped church,” and the Catholics in France are asking how to
“proposer la foi dans la Societé actuelle” (“propose faith in modern society”; Cray 2004; Lettres
1997).
Perhaps the most important theological work addressing the urgency of mission for the church in
the West is embedded in the volumes of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. Although recognized by
relatively few scholars, Barth's theological project is shaped, as pointed out above, by his
discernment of the end of Christendom and his insistence that God's mission defines the church's
purpose and action. David J. Bosch is one of the small number of theologians who recognized and
acknowledged this emphasis in Barth. In his discussion in Transforming Mission of the twentieth-
century claim that the church is “missionary by its very nature” (Ad Gentes), he states,
At least one theologian has developed his entire ecclesiology in terms of the observations above [the missionary nature of the
church]: Karl Barth. Johannes Aagard…calls him “the decisive Protestant missiologist in this generation.” In light of Barth's
magnificent and consistent missionary ecclesiology there may indeed be some justification for such a claim. Under the
overarching rubric of soteriology, Barth develops his ecclesiology in three phases. His reflections on soteriology as
justification…are followed by a section on “The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Christian community.”…His exposition
on soteriology as sanctification…leads to a discourse on “The Holy Spirit and the Upbuilding of the Christian community.”…
And his discussion of soteriology as vocation…is followed by a treatise on “The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian
Community.”…From three perspectives, the entire field of ecclesiology is surveyed; each of these perspectives evokes,
presupposes, and illuminates the other two. (Bosch 1991a:373)

This “missionary ecclesiology” proposed by Barth includes an emphatic redefinition of the

identity of the Christian person, setting aside the “classic definition” in terms of the benefits that
accrue to the person who follows Christ and replacing it with the vocation of the Christian to be a
witness to Christ (Guder 2000:97–141). That emphasis upon “witness” becomes then a pervasive
theme in Bosch's treatment of the “elements of an emerging ecumenical missionary paradigm.”
In response, then, to the rapidly expanding post-Christendom context of the West, there is a
growing appeal for the development of “ecclesiologies at the margin” (De Roest 2008) rooted in the
conviction that “mission needs to drive our understanding of ecclesiology” (Bliese 2006:239). One
scholar (whose discipline is tellingly defined as “domestic missiologist”) anticipated the Anglican
strategy when in 1992 he called for a shift from “church-shaped mission” to “mission-shaped church”
(Van Gelder 1992:374ff). In 1998 a missiological study appeared with the title Missional Church,
which provided language for the emerging and energetic struggle with the challenges of the changing
Western context (Guder 1998). The neologism “missional church,” rarely used before 1998,
describes a paradigm shift that is breaking with the traditional understanding of mission as a church
enterprise among others and focuses on mission as the esse of the church and not merely the bene
esse. The investigation of the “missional church” has been especially driven by the work of the
Gospel and Our Culture Network in North America (GOCN), which is a continuation on the Western
side of the Atlantic Ocean of the Gospel and Culture movement in Great Britain, for which Lesslie
Newbigin was the prophetic missiological mentor. The book Missional Church seeks to answer
Newbigin's frequently uttered question, “How shall the Western church become a missionary church
since its context has become a mission field” (1984: 22, 31f ) by suggesting the major trajectories of
a missional ecclesiology, specifically for North America. The researchers in the GOCN project
defined their project with this question: “What would an understanding of the church (an
ecclesiology) look like if it were truly missional in design and definition?” (Guder 1998:7). The
research team intended to stimulate a conversation about such an ecclesiology, making no claim to
having provided it (for a detailed study of the genesis of the “missional church” discussion, see
Reppenhagen 2011).
The discussion that has ensued since publication in 1998 has made clear that the issue is a burning
one. It has also become clear that the term “missional church” has rapidly degenerated into a cliché
that can mean everything and nothing. If Lesslie Newbigin has clearly been the missiological mentor
of this process, it can be claimed that David J. Bosch and especially Transforming Mission have
served the emerging discussion by setting the standard for theological integrity and
comprehensiveness. His definition of the “mission of God” (missio Dei) is often cited and establishes
the theological framework for the missional church discussion:
Mission [is] understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It [is] thus put in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity,
not of ecclesiology or soteriology. The classical doctrine of the missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the
Father and the Son sending Spirit [is] expanded to include yet another “movement”: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the
church into the world (Bosch, 19a:390).

Fundamental for the development of a truly missional theology and ecclesial praxis is the
recognition of the impact of the establishment of Christianity upon mission within the tradition of
Western Christendom. This investigation, strongly shaped by Bosch's exposition of the historical
paradigms of mission theology, seeks to understand the inherited structures of Christendom, in order
to ask “what kind of structures would enable the church in North America to carry out its missionary
calling?…What structures, patterns, and forms of ministry are needed to enable the church to be
faithful to its call to continue the mission of Christ?” (Goheen 2002:479f, 482). Using Bosch's
historical overview, the corollary question is obviously this: what “structures, patterns, and forms of
ministry” shaped by and inherited from Western Christendom are an obstacle to the missional
faithfulness of the church today in its changing context? The entire enterprise was described early on
as “running the Newbigin gauntlet,” a process that requires a theological analysis shaped by the triad
Gospel/Culture/Church, with all of their interactions and contradictions. Only by undertaking such a
challenge can a truly relevant and faithful “domestic missiology” for the West be formulated. “We run
the gauntlet between a failed Christendom and a false privatization, in pursuit of new ways of running
it” (Hunsberger 1991:394; Hunsberger & Van Gelder 1996:3-25).
The missional encounter with post-Christendom cultures calls for multiple paradigm shifts
affecting all the classic doctrinal themes, but it has its special importance in the discipline of
ecclesiology. “The church of Jesus Christ is not the purpose or goal of the gospel, but rather its
instrument and witness…It defines the church as God's sent people” (Guder 1998:5f). The GOCN
process constantly emphasizes that the basic issues are biblical and theological before they are
strategic, methodological, or institutional. Here, Bosch's insistence on mission as theology and the
mission of theology is obviously influential. But the question of translation into ecclesial practice has
consistently surfaced since Missional Church appeared. In a subsequent study (Barrett 2004), which
attempted to describe what the re-orientation of the church to its missional vocation might look like in
actual practice, the following formulation of an understanding of the missional church that merges
theology and praxis was proposed:
A missional church is a church that is shaped by participating in God's mission, which is to set things right in a broken, sinful
world, to redeem it, and to restore it to what God has always intended for the world. Missional churches see themselves not so
much sending, as being sent. A missional congregation lets God's mission permeate everything that the congregation does—from
worship to witness to training members for discipleship. It bridges the gap between outreach and congregational life, since, in its
life together the church is to embody God's mission. (Barrett 2004: x)

There is a constant emphasis in the missional church discussion upon the corporate identity of the
church in mission. This often is framed as a critique of the pervasive individualism which is the
lasting legacy of the Enlightenment, which, as Bosch describes it, has profoundly shaped both modern
Western Christianity and the global missionary movement that it generated (1991a:262–345;
Newbigin 1986). That emphasis upon the corporate character of the People of God reflects especially
Paul's exposition of the church as the “Body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians—which Barth repeatedly
affirms with his description of the witnessing community as Christ's “own earthly-historical form of
existence” (e.g., 1959:780; 1962:681). Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Son carries out God's mission in
the world for all creation, and he forms a particular people to be the instruments and agents of that
mission: “Mission is this living, divine, and human fellowship which actively reaches out, sharing in
God's reconciliation of the world and thus with God's own life from all eternity” (Flett 2009:15).
There are many ways, theologically, to describe the ways in which the called and gathered people
serves God's healing mission. One can use the dynamic interaction of discipleship and apostolate as
described in the Gospels. Jesus’ calling and formation of his disciples is not an end in itself but rather
the process that results in apostolate, in “sentness” to continue his mission. Without the intensive
formation that happens in intimate communion with the risen Lord in the gathered life of the church,
there can be no witness in the world, no going out to “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of
the earth” (Acts 1:8). The disciples learn from and with Jesus in order to continue as his witnesses:
“As my Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). One can also speak of this dynamic process
as the church's “inhaling” and “exhaling,” or with Barth, “diastole” and “systole” (Flett 2010:286), or
to cite other imagery developed by Barth, as the church's “gathering, upbuilding, and sending”.
The Dutch scholar Johannes Blauw, in a treatise written as a mandate of the World Council of
Churches for the study of congregations in mission, used the imagery of “centrifugal” and
“centripetal” to describe the missional pilgrimage of God's people (1962). Blauw applied this
imagery to the movement from the centered vocation of Israel in the Holy Land, the Holy City, the
Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies, to the sent-out vocation of the New Testament communities,
whose mission was to witness to God's love in Christ to all the world. One can also use this pattern
of movement to describe the gathered congregation. A missional community has its own centrifugal
dynamics as it radiates the love of God to the world through its outwardly directed witness, which
interacts with its centripetal movement of gathering for worship, for encouragement and correction,
leading to its sending. As the gathered, centripetal community, it is still the witnessing community as it
practices the hospitality of God's love and learns together how to “lead its life worthy of the calling
with which it has been called” (Eph. 4:1; Arias 2008:424–435). “It is the calling of the community, to
which each Christian's vocation is integrally related, to be sent into the world, to participate in the
course of human affairs and events as the evidence that God's redeeming work in Christ has
happened, is in effect, and may be responded to and known” (Guder 2008:19). With this incarnational
approach the missional church seeks to overcome what Charles Taylor has called the “‘excarnation,’
a transfer out of embodied, ‘enfleshed’ forms of religious life, to those which are more in the head” of
Christianity (2007:771).
With its strong emphasis upon corporate vocation and witness, the missional church approach
stresses mission in the singular as the over-arching and integrative purpose of the called community.
This leads to a question that is represented implicitly in many of the “elements of an emerging
ecumenical missionary paradigm” that constitute the last third of Transforming Mission: How is the
mission of God, in which the church stands and for which it is being sent, related to the missions
(plural), the different mission activities of the church and of individual Christians. How are the
missio Dei and the missiones ecclesiae related to each other? In the exploration of this many-faceted
question the missiological discussion can build upon Bosch's discussion but needs to push further and
deeper into the areas of concrete challenge which the church confronts.
Another major indicator of the emergence of missional ecclesiology is the focus upon the reign of
God. In his discussion of the “New Testament Models of Mission,” Bosch emphasizes that Jesus’
frequent reference to the reign of God was a “salient feature of [His] person and ministry”
(1991a:31–35, 70–73). In Missional Church, the decades of discussion of the theme and
interpretation of the Kingdom were summarized and focused in George Hunsberger's discussion of
“Missional Vocation: Called and Sent to Represent the Reign of God” (Hunsberger in Guder
1998:77–109) while Lois Barrett addressed the same basic thematic from an Anabaptist perspective
in her discussion of “Missional Witness: The Church as Apostle to the World” (Barrett in Guder
1998:110–141). Hunsberger's discussion shows the particular importance of the Kingdom theme in
Lesslie Newbigin's work (1980). He summarizes Newbigin's argument: “The church represents the
reign of God” as “its sign and foretaste…. As a sign represents something else and as a foretaste
represents something yet to come, the church points away from itself to what God is going to
complete.” The church is considered to be the “agent and instrument of the reign of God representing
God's new world to the world now” (Hunsberger in Guder 1998:100ff).
It is interesting to note that this Kingdom understanding of the church corresponds to the “kingdom
test,” which mission historian Kenneth Scott Latourette (1884–1968) proposed and applied in his
seven-volume History of the Expansion of Christianity (1937–1945). Beside the “sign of the
church” and the “sign of the gospel,” kingdom movements are a specific indicator for the spread of
the Christian church. “They sprout and stir up, they produce a more radical Christian discipleship”
(Walls 2002:14ff). Bosch's openness to Anabaptist influence and his continuing discussion with John
Howard Yoder have significantly influenced the formation of missional ecclesiology with the focus
upon radical discipleship. There is in the ongoing development of missional theology a pronounced
concern for the “worthiness” of the church's public life, challenging dominant consumerism as one of
the many form of cultural captivity that betray the legacy of Constantinian establishment. Where
Western churches continue to define themselves in terms of the benefits they provide their members, it
is no wonder that church shopping and market-driven churchly activism are such dominant
characteristics of Christian communities. It is then truly counter-cultural when the missional
community stresses its vocation to be a fellowship of witnessing Christians who gather to be
“discipled,” to be equipped and formed for their sending, their apostolate in and with the world. This
kingdom focus is a difficult shift for many late Christendom congregations; the resistance to change is
strong, and the patterns of self-centered church and piety are deeply engrained. It is not an
exaggeration to speak of the need for the “conversion of the church” to its missional, kingdom
vocation (Guder 2000). Such a re-orientation or conversion of the church virtually always challenges
the dominant individualism of Western modernity (Percy 2005:53), as discussed above. “When
evangelization is divided from the incarnational witness of God's people in community, the danger is
very great that the gospel will be reduced to the minimum of personal salvation and private faith”
(Guder 2000:191).
Stephen B. Bevans concludes, then, that “if the gospel is to truly take root within a people's
context, it needs to challenge and purify that context…. some contexts are simply antithetical to the
gospel and need to be challenged by the gospel's liberating and healing power” (Bevans 2002:117f).
The missional church here takes up the understanding of the church as a contrast society that lives out
“nonconformity to the world…and conformity to Christ” (cf Barrett 2004:80). Many of the proponents
of missional ecclesiology share Bosch's appreciation of the legacy of the Radical Reformation,
affirming that it has “an important contribution to make for the formation of a missional ecclesiology
in a Post-Christendom context” (Barrett in Guder 1998:124). It is obvious that the theological work of
John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas come most readily to mind, but significant guidance for
the church as a “contrast community” is also to be found, for example, in the work of Roman Catholic
New Testament scholar Gerhard Lohfink (e.g., 1984).
These scholars are representative of a diverse and growing fellowship of theologians who see the
church as a contrast or alternative community in its various contexts—which necessarily implies a
critical tension with that context, especially when it is shaped by the establishment of Christianity.
Bosch clearly and articulately unpacked the understanding of the church as “alternative community” in
both his theological scholarship and its translation for the life and work of the church (1982b;
Livingstone 1999:30). This more radical view is offset, although not rejected, by others who see “the
missional church's vocation as public companion: as such, the emerging missional church
acknowledges a conviction that it participates in the Triune God's ongoing creative work; in civil
society the missional church exhibits a compassionate commitment to other institutions and their
predicaments.” As “public companion,” the missional church is part of civil society “to create and
strengthen the fabrics that fashion a life-giving and life-accountable world” (Simpson 2007: 93) As a
particularly germane example of the “creative tension” that Bosch consistently invokes, the counter-
cultural approach should interact with an intra-cultural stance, because “the gospel exists not to
alienate but to invigorate and transform. It conflicts only and avoidably with idolatries of race, nation,
and power” (Sanneh 2008: 56). However, as David Martin has remarked, “So the more devout
Christianity you have the more difficult any attempt at any general re-Christianization of society
becomes. In its self-understanding Christianity returns to what it originally aspired to be: the leaven
in the lump, the salt that has not lost its savour” (Martin 2005:119). To carry out that mandate, the
missional church concentrates on the “threefold call to follow, witness, and serve as the marks of
faithful discipleship,” which in their dynamic interaction constitute “the measure of mission in a post-
everything world” (Kirk 2006:219).

TRANSFORMING THE STUDY AND TEACHING OF MISSION

It is a commonplace among academic missiologists that their discipline is a thoroughly integrative
enterprise. It involves the classical biblical, historical, and doctrinal disciplines, as well as engaging
a broad range of social sciences from anthropology and sociology to the various ethnologies and
cultural studies. More recently, it has broadened to include the theology of religions and world
Christianity. Its integrative character is to be provocative when one tries to decide where it belongs
in the theological canon. One finds that chairs of missiology are located in theology departments,
history departments, and practical theology departments. Missiology is often partnered with
“evangelism” as an academic concentration, but it can also be linked with “ecumenics” or “global
Christianity.” Bosch's Transforming Mission is an example of the integrative character of mission as
a discipline of research and teaching, but as the reception of the book since 1991 demonstrates, it is
more than an example. Bosch's way of going about this integrative discipline has substantially refined
its scope and practice by broadening and deepening the understanding of mission and its importance
for the entire enterprise of Christian theology.
There are many aspects of this process of broadening and deepening the understanding of mission
that influence Bosch's own work, and that he in turn, both through his publications and his students,
continues to influence. There is, in the late twentieth century, a convergence of theological and
ecclesial energies that reflects the sweeping nature of the paradigm shifts through which the Christian
movement is passing globally. These energies and forces, as their impact is represented in Bosch's
work, can only be briefly summarized here—with the cautionary note that it is risky, in a liminal
passage, to claim to explain too much of what is currently going on. The risk must be taken, however,
because describing and understanding the character of the paradigm shift in which the global
Christian movement finds itself is a central task of contemporary missiological work. Transforming
Mission is a major resource and stimulus for that undertaking.
There is, as has already been noted, a constant refrain in Bosch's discussion in Transforming
Mission: “creative tension.” The phrase reflects realistically the complexity of both the church's
missionary vocation and the contemporary cultural contexts in which that mission is carried out.
Bosch demonstrates how fundamental it is for Christian theology to proceed dialectically, illustrating
how Barth's dialectical approach translates into every aspect of doctrinal reflection and the formation
of praxis. The reality of creative tension surfaces immediately in Transforming Mission when Bosch
provides the reader an “interim definition of mission” in thirteen points (1991a:8–13). Embedded in
that discussion is his constant effort to overcome false dichotomies and to mediate theological
positions that demonstrate the fullness of the gospel. The difficulty of defining mission does not
diminish but expands as he pursues his project. The more comprehensive and formative the
understanding of mission is (and must be) for the enterprise of Christian theology, the more
challenging it is to define it. This challenge is reflected in the emergence and evolution of the
theology of the missio Dei with all of its accompanying controversies (Bosch 1991a:389–393; Guder
2007; Flett 2010:1–77). For Bosch, the real challenge of dealing with “creative tension” on so many
fronts is to find ways to move beyond the rigidity of narrowly defined options and to look for
theological approaches that aim at “comprehensiveness.” The seventeen theses with which he
develops his definition of “mission as evangelism” serve as an example of his commitment and
attempt to arrive at a greater “comprehensiveness” of understanding (Bosch 1991a:409–420). The
fact that he must address the “creative tension” of thirteen different “elements of an emerging
ecumenical missionary paradigm” in order to do justice to the meaning and scope of the Christian
mission is a further demonstration of the struggle for “comprehensiveness.” Each of these elements
could serve as the pivotal emphasis for the understanding of mission, and all of them need to be
brought into interaction with each other if anything like a comprehensive understanding of mission is
to be possible. In his exposition of a “comprehensive understanding of salvation” he eloquently
demonstrated how to articulate a soteriology that overcomes the false dichotomies and polarities that
hinder faithful witness (Bosch 1989, 1991a:393–399). Those dichotomies often have to do with the
problematic distinction between “evangelism” and “social justice.”
Closely linked to Bosch's emphasis upon “creative tension” and “comprehensiveness” is his
commitment to ecumenical practice. His biography reveals that commitment, ranging from his
leadership in the Transkei Council of Churches to his work in the World Council of Churches, the
Lausanne Movement, and the World Evangelical Fellowship. As has been noted above, he was
especially concerned about the “evangelical-ecumenical debate in mission” and how its damaging
divisiveness could be overcome. Livingstone notes that Bosch's “1980 book Witness to the World
was, in large part, an attempt to describe this debilitating fracture in modern Protestantism and its
missionary outreach and to propose a way forward” (1999:28f; Bosch 1980). His former colleagues
in South Africa described him as “a practical ecumenist” (Kritzinger & Saayman 2011:116–127),
who shared with Lesslie Newbigin a passion for the unity of the church that would be evidenced in
the actual practices and organizational life of Christian communities.
What is abundantly clear is that the call for Christian unity for [Bosch] is not some optional extra or added luxury; it is nothing
but a Gospel requirement. If Christian unity is nothing less than a gospel imperative, Bosch argued, one's ecclesiology had to be
uncompromising in its statement and understanding of church unity. Any schism in the Christian community, any separation
between various groups, was most probably based on a defective ecclesiology. Furthermore, Christian unity had a very specific
goal: witness. (Kritzinger & Saayman 2011:126)

This passion for unity and commitment to the ecumenical church is also reflected in the ecumenical
reception which Transforming Mission has received. It is a remarkable aspect of the missiological
guild (at least in North America) that it draws together Protestant Ecumenical, Roman Catholic, and
Protestant Evangelical scholars in ways that tangibly illustrate the integrative power of mission. One
of the most notable missiological publications since the appearance of Transforming Mission has
been Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder's book Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for
Today (2004). This book, published by Orbis Books, appeared as volume 30 in the same series in
which Transforming Mission appeared as volume 16—the American Society of Missiology Series.
Bevans and Schroeder constantly refer appreciatively to Transforming Mission, which they describe
as “David Bosch's monumental work” (195). Their incorporation of a great deal of Roman Catholic
missiological and historical content is an important and complementary expansion of Bosch's
integrative approach, moving the discussion significantly further towards the comprehensiveness that
was Bosch's goal.
The discussion of Bosch and his work in the missiological literature constantly stresses the
integrity with which he went about the task of researching, writing, teaching, and practicing mission.
He was and continues to be a model of the “doctor of the church” who serves in such a way that both
the outcomes of his work and the ways in which he does that work are congruent with the gospel and
themselves a witness to it. Kritzinger and Saayman eloquently captured the incar-national character of
Bosch's life and work with the descriptive phrases, “prophetic integrity” and “cruciform praxis”
(2011). Transforming Mission has not been superseded by anything that has been published since it
appeared so much as it has been built upon, critically engaged, and creatively expanded. It continues
to be a challenging text that transforms both the subject of mission and its students as it is read,
discussed, and analyzed.
As we conclude the writing of this supplementary chapter, we have received a course
announcement from the Central European Centre for Mission Studies in Prague, which functions in
cooperation with the Theological Faculty of the Charles University (cf
http://www.missioncentre.edu). They are offering a course entitled “Transforming Mission: An
Introduction to Contextual Missiology according to D. J. Bosch,” to be taught by Dr. Pavol Bargár.
The course description summarizes the ongoing significance of the book and its author for the
missionary work of the church and the formation of its servant leaders:
The course will introduce the student to the thought and work of one of the most significant Christian missiologists of the 20th
 century, David J. Bosch, paying particular attention to his ground-breaking Transforming Mission (1991). The focus of the
course will be in discussing the New Testament models for mission as identified in Matthew, Luke and Paul, the historical models
of Christian mission, and the outline of a model for mission in the ecumenical/postmodern period as suggested by Bosch himself.
The aim of the course will be not only to understand and reflect upon Bosch's work, but also to interpret these models for
contemporary missiology as well as to think about their relevance for the missionary work of today's churches. Discussing and
assessing Bosch's work, its reception in current missiology will also be considered.

Based on what has happened with this book in the twenty years since it was first published, it may
be assumed that its “reception in current missiology” will continue to be appreciative as well as
critical and that subsequent generations will learn from it how mission does, in fact, integrate all
theological learning around the church's primary vocation to be a faithful witness to Jesus Christ,
living its life worthy of the calling with which it has been called. The English title, Transforming
Mission, can be interpreted in more than one way, which might be difficult to capture in other
languages. Mission, as expounded in this book, is a truly transformed theme. It no longer refers only
to the activities of the church beyond the boundaries of its culture. It is no longer a sub-theme of
ecclesiology or practical theology. It is no longer the study of Western outreach to non-Western
cultures, “sharing the benefits of the gospel and Western civilization.” As a result of the remarkable
events and developments of the twentieth century, mission must now be understood far more
comprehensively and integratively than has been realized up until now. Bosch's book marks the
advance of the study and interpretation of mission to this new level of meaning and relevance. But, at
the same time, mission as expounded in Bosch's book is itself a transforming reality. It fundamentally
re-orients the ways in which we study and interpret Scripture, the history of the Christian movement,
and virtually all of the doctrines that comprise the formal disciple of theology. It requires that the
person called to be a servant of Jesus Christ understand her-or himself as Christ's witness. It requires
that the church understand itself to be the Body of Christ present and acting in the world. The task is
not merely to acknowledge that “the pilgrim church is missionary by its very nature,” but that this
church translate that purpose comprehensively into all that it is, does, and says.
 Notes
1. REFLECTIONS ON THE NEW TESTAMENT
AS A MISSIONARY DOCUMENT

1. In more recent times Ernst Käsemann has advocated the thesis that apocalyptic was “the mother of theology” (1969a:102;
1969b:137). This is undoubtedly true, particularly in regard to Paul (see below, Chapter 4). In a sense, the assertions of Kähler and
Käsemann actually complement each other.
2. A “proselyte” (from the Greek: proselytos) was, literally, “one who has come over” or “one who has come in” (from a “pagan”
religion to Judaism, rather than one who has been won for the Jewish faith through the active involvement of Jewish “missionaries.”
3. The “God-fearers” (Greek: sebomenoi or phoboumenoi ton Theon) were more numerous than the actual proselytes (cf K. G.
Kuhn, art proselytos in Theological Dictionary to the New Testament, vol VI) and were generally of a higher social standing than
proselytes (cf Malherbe 1983:77). Whereas the dominant Jewish attitude toward the “God-fearers” was negative, it was more
ambivalent toward proselytes (cf Kuhn, op cit).
4. On entering the community, a new member had to swear to love only the members of his own community and to hate all “children
of darkness,” that is, all non-members (cf 1QS 1:9–11).
5. Q, from “Quelle” (the German word for “source”) was a collection of sayings of Jesus that Matthew and Luke drew upon, in
addition to the use they made of Mark's gospel, when they wrote their gospels (though both also had access to other minor sources). As
far as can be established Q consisted almost exclusively of sayings of Jesus (hence the name Logia, “words”).
6. In recent years several scholars (notably Gerd Theissen) have argued that the Logia were used especially by wandering
preachers or “prophets” who had confined their ministry to Israel. I draw particularly on Schottroff and Stegemann (1986:38-66) for my
interpretation of the missionary thrust of the ministry of the Q prophets. Much of what is said about Q remains extremely hypothetical,
particular the existence of a group of wandering prophets who—in the decades following Jesus’ earthly ministry—roamed the Jewish
land, preaching to all and sundry. If in what follows I refer to them (with Theissen, Schottroff and others) as a distinct and identifiable
body of preachers, I do this as a kind of imaginative extrapolation from the tradition rather than as an attempt to make a historical point.
Such an approach may assist us in appreciating the unique character of this body of the early Christian tradition.
7. The term basileia is, however, only prominent in the synoptic gospels. Perhaps one can say that “(eternal) life” in the fourth
gospel intends essentially the same reality as “God's reign” in the synoptic gospels, as does dikaiosyne Theou in Paul (cf Lohfink
1988:2).
8. Schweitzer (1952:368f) describes Jesus’ futile attempt at precipitating the irruption of the reign of God in a moving way: “In the
knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man, He lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to
bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself on it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of
bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably
great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging
upon it still.”
9. In a recent article Gerhard Lohfink (1988) has, however, argued passionately for the present character of God's reign in Jesus’
coming. Lohfink's views are not simply to be equated with the traditional “realized eschatology” position.
10. In the 1960s several scholars (particularly S. G. F. Brandon in Jesus and the Zealots [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1967]) described Jesus as a kind of proto-Zealot. In more recent years New Testament scholars have, on the whole, agreed that Jesus
differed fundamentally from the (later) Zealots and their ethos (cf, for instance, Hengel 1971). Even so, as late as 1981 George Pixley
still put forward the thesis that the Jesus movement differed from the Zealots only in strategy: Jesus first wanted to put an end to the
“temple domination” before taking on the Roman oppressors; only the latter were the concern of the Zealots (1981:64-87).
11. Lapide (1986:41-48) takes issue with Christian theologians who argue that Jesus abrogated the Law. In his attempt to explain
Jesus consistently from within contemporary Judaism Lapide, however, tends to overstate his case. Still, his warnings against the
tendency of many Christians completely to “dejudaize” Jesus have to be taken seriously.
12. The same is true of modern apocalyptic movements (cf Beker 1984:19-28). I shall return to this issue in more detail when I
discuss Paul's understanding of mission (see below, Chapter 4). Cf also Lohfink 1988.
13. The exact situation with Jamnia Pharisaism toward the end of the first century AD remains obscure, however. It went through a
long period of development before it reached its more or less final form. One should therefore be careful not to read attitudes and views
which were typical of Pharisaism after the Bar Kochba revolt (which was squashed around AD 135) into the period when our gospels
were written. It is, among other things, impossible to reconstruct either the exact wording or precise meaning of the Eighteen
Benedictions in the decades immediately after the end of the Jewish War.

2. MATTHEW: MISSION AS DISCIPLE-MAKING

 1. For a detailed discussion of dikaiosyne in Matthew, see further Giessen 1982:79112,122–146,166–194. Giessen also compares
dikaiosyne in Matthew and Paul (:237-263). See further Michael H. Crosby, House of Disciples: Church, Economics and Justice in
Matthew (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), pp145–195.
2. For the meaning of the participle “go” (poreuthentes), I refer to what I have written elsewhere (cf Bosch 1980:68f; 1983:229f).
Suffice it to say here that I do not believe that geographical distance (going from one locality to another) is of any particular significance
here.
3. Naturally, I am not thinking of this author as a lone theological giant who on his own has set out to construct an original “theology
of mission” or “local theology.” I am assuming, rather, that Matthew reflects many of the views and convictions that were alive in his
community. Perhaps we should see him, at best, as a kind of catalyst who regarded it as his task to bring everything together into some
kind of coherent whole.

3. LUKE-ACTS: PRACTICING FORGIVENESS

AND SOLIDARITY WITH THE POOR

1. In another recent essay on the understanding of mission in Luke's gospel, I have followed an approach which differed quite
significantly from the procedure followed here (cf D. J. Bosch, Mission in Jesus’ Way: A Perspective from Luke's Gospel, Missionalia
vol 17, 1989, pp3–21). I have suggested there that Jesus’ mission, according to Luke, consisted of three thrusts: empowering the weak
and the lowly, healing the sick, and saving the lost. The views expressed there may be seen as complementing those articulated here.
2. The “religious” nature of some of the English words in the RSV may cause us some difficulty in understanding Luke's
terminology. We could, however, translate paraklesis in 2:25 as “restoration” (RSV: “consolation”); soterion in 2:30 as “deliverance”
(RSV: “salvation”) and lytrosis in 2:38 as “liberation” (RSV: “redemption”).
3. I am aware that there is wide disagreement on Luke's attitude to and appreciation of the Jewish people. A recent symposium
volume, to which eight scholars (including Jervell, Tiede, J. T. Sanders, and Tannehill) have contributed, gives a fair reflection of the
spectrum of opinions on the subject. See Joseph B. Tyson, ed., Luke-Acts and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988).
4. Luke has, however, omitted the reference to the poor we always have with us (Mk 14:7; Mt 26:11; see also Jn 12:8), probably
because the saying had already in his time been interpreted to mean that, since the poor will always be with us, we need not do anything
about their circumstances.
5. The RSV translates apolyo in Luke 6:37 with “forgive,” which is a secondary meaning of the verb. The context, however, calls
for a translation in terms of the word's primary meaning, “release,” “acquit,” or “pardon” (cf Schottroff and Stegemann 1986:115).
6. Walaskay (1983) proposes that we should regard Luke's two volumes as an elaborate apology for the Roman Empire. He argues
that Luke (almost?) always goes out of his way in his attempt to present the Empire in a favorable light. In particular, he does his best to
emphasize the positive aspects of Roman involvement in the early history of the church. God is at work in the world, not only through the
church but through the secular realm as well. From a Black Liberation Theology perspective, Mosala (1989:173-179) presents a more
radical version of this assessment of Luke and suggests that, in the process, Luke may have destroyed the raison d’ê;tre of the very
movement he was trying to save (:177).
7. Walaskay (1983) certainly goes too far when he suggests that Luke wrote his two-volume work as an apology for the Roman
Empire. Talbert (1984:107-109) may be more on target when he says that the Lukan Jesus and the Luke of Acts were indifferent to the
political rulers. From this point of view, the church does not make the state's cause its own, nor does it “attack the social structure of
society directly, as one power group among others, but indirectly, by embodying in its life a transcendent reality” (:109).
8. Holmberg (1978) provides an excellent study of the authority structures in the primitive church, also insofar as they pertain to
missionary outreach.

4. MISSION IN PAUL: INVITATION TO JOIN

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL COMMUNITY

1. We should therefore, perhaps, have put this chapter before those on Matthew and Luke (which is what Senior and Stuhlmueller
1983 do). However, the gospels cover events which took place long before Paul's ministry, so there may be some justification for
examining their understanding of mission before we study Paul's.
2. Sometimes, however, and particularly in his letters to the Galatians and the Corinthians (cf Gal 1:11-16; 1 Cor 9:1), there is an
element of apologetic in Paul's claim that his encounter with Jesus and his apostolic commissioning coincided completely. He has to
defend his apostleship (cf also Wilckens 1959:275). For a detailed discussion of the issues involved, cf Lategan 1988.
3. A careful rereading of Galatians has led Martyn (1985:307-324) to postulate the existence of a well-organized, Law-observant
Christian mission to Gentiles, perhaps even before and certainly in opposition to Paul's missionary venture.
4. The essential reason for this re-conception, to which I shall return in a slightly different context, lies in the fact that Paul
increasingly understands his mission in es-chatological terms. For a long time there was, in Judaism, the expectation of the Gentiles
flocking to Zion at the end of the ages; in Paul's judgment that moment has now arrived.
5. I have developed these ideas in greater detail in A Spirituality of the Road (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1979), a booklet in
which I tried to draw the contours of a missionary spirituality based on Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. See also Horst Baum, Mut
zum Schwachsein—in Christi Kraft (St Augustin: Steyler Verlag, 1977).
6. It should, however, be remembered that, for Paul, the word ethne does not as such carry a negative connotation, as do the terms
“pagans” or “heathens” in our own time. Paul uses ethne primarily in the sense of “non-Jews” and can therefore also apply it to non-
Jewish Christians. For this reason the translation “Gentiles” for ethne is to be preferred (cf Kertelge 1987:371).
7. Paul does not accept the Stoic view that all people have an innate capacity to know God, which must be developed through reason
(cf Malherbe 1987:31-33). The higher echelons of Hellenistic society (to which most of the “God-fearers” also belonged) tended to be
monotheistic, but this was not a monotheism that conflicted with syncretism; even a “monotheist” could participate in the cults of other
gods. For an enlightened pagan the idea of a “jealous” God, who requires exclusive allegiance, was an absurd notion (moria, “folly”—1
Cor 1:23). On this whole matter, see Dahl 1977b:178-191; Walter 1979:422442; Grant 1986:45-53.
8. From Paul's letters we can deduce little about the actual sermons he preached to Gentile audiences, but we can assume that the
elements just indicated formed a regular component of those sermons, which certainly must have been presented with much passion.
Their thrust would have been to convict rather than to inform (cf Malherbe 1987:32). For the possible form and content of Paul's
missionary sermons, cf Haas 1971:94-98; Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:185-187; Malherbe 1987:28-33; and particularly Bussmann
1971:passim.
9. Kerdaino is a “technical missionary term” (cf van Swigchem 1955:141-143; Bieder 1965:34; Sanders 1983:177). For its Jewish
background and its significance as a conversion term (also in the sense of calling sinners back to faith), see David Daube, “A Missionary
Term,” in The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (New York: Arno Press, 1973 [reprint of 1956 edition]), pp352–361.
10. Van Swigchem suggests that idiotai (the “uninstructed” or “ignorant”; the RSV translates “outsiders”), a term Paul uses a few
times in 1 Corinthians, refers not to outsiders proper (as hoi exo does), but to inquirers, people who attend meetings regularly but have
not yet taken the final step of embracing the Christian faith (1955:189-192).
11. Not so, however, in 1 Peter! It is interesting that van Swigchem (1955), who inquired into the missionary character of the church
according to the letters of Paul and Peter, found most of the explicitly “missionizing” references not in Paul's letters but in the very short
first letter of Peter (cf also Lippert 1968).
12. In Greek literature, katallassein is a completely profane concept, employed in the diplomatic sphere and normally meaning “to
exchange hostility for friendship.” Until Paul, it is never used theologically. Paul, however, and the New Testament authors dependent on
him, use it in the sense of God reconciling Jews and Gentiles to himself through the substitutionary death of Christ. Cf Breytenbach
1986:3-6,19–22. (In addition to this essay, Breytenbach has provided a detailed treatment of the subject in a monograph entitled
Katallage: Eine Studie zur paulinischen Soteriologie [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1986]).
13. In this respect Beker refers to the exclusion of apocalyptic literature not only from the Old Testament but also from the New
Testament canon, the repudiation of millennial apocalyptic at the Council of Ephesus (AD 432), and its condemnation by the Reformers
(for instance in the Augsburg Confession) (Beker 1984:61).
14. Cf also Stendahl's altercation with Bornkamm and Käsemann on this matter, and his argument that to declare justification by faith
as the key to Paul is to miss the point about the historical nature of Paul's arguments and to read him through the eyes of Augustine and
Luther (Stendahl 1976:127-133; cf Beker 1980:17). Kraemer (1961:198f) criticizes the Lutheran missiologist, Walter Holsten, in similar
fashion for declaring the doctrine of justification to be the be-all and end-all of biblical and Pauline theology. Kraemer calls this a
“Procrustean theology,” which “overlooks the fact that the apostolic kerygma is a full orchestra and not a single flute” (:199). Needless
to say, justification by faith is indeed a fundamental Pauline theme (acknowledged today by Protestants and Catholics alike—cf Pfürtner
1984:168-192), which is, however, not the same as saying that it is the overriding motif in Paul. Beker (1984:56) is right when he says,
“Key terms like the righteousness of God, justification, redemption, or reconciliation are not to be measured over against each other as if
one term is the permanent key to which all others are subservient.” Cf also Beker 1988.
15. De Boer (1989) prefers to use the term “apocalyptic eschatology” when interpreting Paul's theology.
16. This interpretation of prosphora ton ethnon is, in fact, widely accepted; cf, inter alia, Dahl 1977a:87; Beker 1980:332; Senior
and Stuhlmueller 1983:183; Sanders 1983:171–173; Hultgren 1985:133-135. Luz (1968:391) proposes a different interpretation, but it
should be kept in mind that he denies any connection between mission and the parousia in Paul's thinking (:390f).
17. The question whether Paul teaches that all Israel will be saved will be addressed below. For the moment my concern is with
universalism as regards the Gentiles.
18. For a different (and more comprehensive) discussion of this entire subject, cf D. J. Bosch, “Paul on Human Hopes,” Journal of
Theology in Southern Africa 67 (June 1989), pp3–16.
19. Cf also Räisänen: “I join the ranks of those who doubt the assertion that post-Biblical Judaism was a man-centred achievement
religion which invited its adherents to earn the favour of God by doing meritorious works of the law…An average Jew observed the law
because he held it to embody God's will” (1987:411).
20. De Boer (1989:172-180) argues that it is necessary to distinguish between two major “tracks” in Jewish apocalyptic before AD
70, namely, “cosmological apocalyptic eschatology” (where “this age” will be replaced by “the age to come” after a cosmic confrontation
between God and the evil angelic powers) and “forensic apocalyptic eschatology” (according to which God has given the Law as a
remedy and human accountability to God is stressed). Evidence indicates that Track 2 completely overtook and displaced Track 1 after
the disaster of AD 70.
21. Räisänen (1983:16-198) has contended that Paul lacks a coherent theology of the Law. In a subsequent work (The Torah and
Christ [Helsinki: Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 45, 1986]), he has refined and moderated his views somewhat. Cf also
Räisänen 1987. De Boer (1989) suggests that, in Paul's letter to the Romans, sometimes cosmological apocalyptic eschatology dominates,
and at other times forensic apocalyptic eschatology.
22. It is significant that only in his letter to the Galatians does Paul use the expressions Ioudaismos, Ioudaikos, and ioudaizein (all
derivatives of Ioudaios, “Jew”).
23. Martyn (1985:316) summarizes the “major point” in the preaching of the Law-observant missionaries: “They necessarily view
God's Christ in the light of God's Law, rather than the Law in the light of Christ, and this means that Christ is secondary to the Law.”
24. I am not suggesting that Paul's theology was ready-made at the moment of his conversion. There certainly was development in
his thinking, particularly as regards his interpretation of the Law (his earliest letter, 1 Thessalonians, contains virtually no references to
this) and certainly also because of his contact with Hellenistic Jewish Christians. See also Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983:169 and
Räisänen 1987:416.
25. At the same time, we should not lose sight of the need of similar humble and sensitive missionary approaches in other situations
as well. In light of the way whites have treated blacks in Southern Africa and the United States—to mention only these two examples—
white Christians are challenged to witness to blacks primarily by means of practicing justice and solidarity, and not only by means of
verbal witness.
26. Pixley (1981:90-96) totally misinterprets Paul when he says that Paul's message was exclusively “individually-centered” and “did
not extend to the real social relations in the public world,” that he preached only a “spiritual religion” and conceived of the kingdom of
God merely as a “spiritual reality” and as “the end of history, to be entered by purified persons.”
27. See further my Spirituality of the Road (Scottdale, Pa: Herald Press, 1979), particularly pp74–90. Cf also Michael Prior, “Paul
on ‘Power and Weakness,’” The Month 1451 (Nov 1988), pp939–944.

5. PARADIGM CHANGES IN MISSIOLOGY

1. The epistemological approach I am advocating here is sometimes referred to as critical hermeneutics (cf Nel 1988). To practice
this approach means that I accept that I am open to change and to the reexamination of my existing convictions. In the case of theology,
critical hermeneutics recognizes that Christians will disagree in their understandings of Scripture and the Christian faith, but that they
share a commitment to the same Lord.
2. I devoted a major section of Witness to the World to the theology of mission through the ages (cf Bosch 1980:85-195). I have no
intention of repeating here what I did there, although some degree of overlap is, in the nature of the case, unavoidable.

6. THE MISSIONARY PARADIGM

OF THE EASTERN CHURCH

1. This is the way Pliny the Younger and others often referred to Christianity. To call it a superstitio was to classify it as “a non-
Roman worship of non-Roman gods” (W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire Before AD 170 [London: Hodder &
Stoughton, no date], p 206). Pliny actually called Christianity a superstitioprava immodica, a degrading and improper superstition.
2. The Orthodox doctrine of theosis, union with God or divinization, has its roots here. In the words of Athanasius, “God became
human, so that we might become God.” Stamoolis (1986:9) suggests that this view is similar to the Western Christian doctrine of the
believer's union with Christ, but that theosis is far more central in Orthodoxy than its counterpart is in Western theology and church life.
It expresses “in essence the Eastern understanding of the purpose of the incarnation and the ultimate end of humankind” (:10; cf also
Bria 1986:9).
3. Contrary to popular opinion, Christians were persecuted only during short periods. Most emperors showed no particular eagerness
to wipe out the new religion by force. Empire-wide persecutions were extremely rare; in most cases persecutions were sporadic and
confined to specific regions. The most widespread, bloody, and long-lasting persecution broke out under Emperor Diocletian in AD 303
and lasted until AD 311. For a concise and reliable discussion, cf Jacques Moreau, Die Christenverfolgung im Römischen Reich
(Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1961).

7. THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN CATHOLIC

MISSIONARY PARADIGM

1. As I shall argue in the next chapter, the Protestant theological paradigm was not going to be decisively different on this point. In
this respect, then, Protestantism, like Catholicism, betrays continuity with Greek patristic theology.
2. The Latin word used by the Donatists, traditor, literally meant somebody who had committed traditio, or the “surrender” of the
Scriptures during the recent persecutions, and thus “betrayed” (that is, had become a traitor to) the Christian cause.
3. In recent years several scholars have argued that the Donatists may truthfully be regarded as the first “African Independent
Church.” There can be little doubt that the Catholic Church, by and large, represented the Latin element in North Africa, and the
Donatists the indigenous African (Berber) element.
 4. It should, of course, be remembered that, since the sixteenth century, many Protestants adopted exactly the same attitude to
Catholics and often even to fellow-Protestants.
5. It is, in any case, important not to regard the work—as has often been done—as an attempt at presenting a “Christian philosophy
of history.” The problem with such an approach to the City of God is that it is read against the background of the intellectual and cultural
development of the seventeenth and subsequent centuries. For a careful refutation of this view, cf Ernst A. Schmidt, “Augustins
Geschichtsverständnis,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, vol 34 (1987), pp361–378.
6. As I shall argue below, it was in particular the Benedictines who revealed the qualities I have enumerated. Their unswerving
dedication to selfless service and to virtue equipped them for the task of recreating society and shaping a Christian civilization. Coupled
with their awareness that things take time and that we have to persevere faithfully and doggedly in what we have set out to do, they
provide an example which particularly in our own day is worth emulating. In his perceptive analysis of the malaise of our contemporary
society, entitled After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), Alasdair MacIntyre insists that it is of the very character of virtue that it be
exercised without regard to consequences, that we should practice virtues irrespective of whether in any particular set of contingent
circumstances they produce any rewards (:185). This is consonant with the Benedictine view of virtue. On the final pages of his
monograph, MacIntyre refers to the impact of monasticism on Europe during the Middle Ages, when new forms of community were
constructed within which the moral life could be sustained, “so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism
and darkness” (:244). With reference to our own time, he concludes: “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of
community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.
And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This
time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontier; they have already been governing us for some time. And it is our lack
of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very
different—St Benedict” (:245).

8. THE MISSIONARY PARADIGM

OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

1. Protestants tend to see the late Middle Ages only in terms of decay, theologically and morally. This is doubtless a dangerous
oversimplification. Cf, for instance, H. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967 [revised edition]).
Oberman write s, inter alia, “The later Middle Ages are marked by a lively and at times bitter debate regarding the doctrine of
justification, intimately connected with the interpretation of the works of Augustine on the relation of nature and grace” (p 427). In light
of this, some would prefer to see the Protestant Reformation paradigm as a subdivision of a wider “Western Christian” paradigm, as an
important chapter in the medieval period, not as something essentially new. I believe, however, that there is justification for treating the
Reformation paradigm as a theological model in its own right, as a break with both Scholasticism and the via moderna of Occam and
others (cf Gerrish 1962).
2. Holl's tendentiousness reveals itself, inter alia, in his statement that “the German mission may pride itself in the fact that, unlike
churches from other nations, it has never been guilty of harboring any ulterior political motives and that, in this, it had remained faithful to
Luther's principles” (1928:241—my translation). Cf, however, the section on colonialism and mission in the next chapter.
3. It is therefore incorrect to argue, as still happens frequently, that William Carey's 1792 tract was the first example of a Protestant
promoting mission with an explicit appeal to the “Great Commission.” Saravia did this more than two centuries before Carey, as did the
Dutchman J. Heurnius in 1648 and the Lutheran nobleman Justinian von Welz in 1664.
4. Some years ago J. A. Scherer republished Welz's plea, together with Ursinus's reply, and provided it with an introduction (Scherer
1969; cf also Schick 1943:44-66).
5. I shall return to this important principle in Protestant missions in the next chapter.

9. MISSION IN THE WAKE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

1. This term signifies a theological temper rather than a set of doctrines. The Latitudinarians or “Broad Churchmen” were people of
the middle road who opposed both rationalistic Deism and Puritanism.
2. I am aware that this rather summary statement needs some qualifications. John Wesley himself was adamant that the church's
service to people's souls could not be divorced from its service to their bodies. This side of Wesley's ministry has only recently become
the object of serious and sustained research. A fine guide to the “social Wesley” is L. D. Hulley's To Be and to Do (Pretoria: University
of South Africa, 1988). Of particular importance is Wesley's attack on the institution of slavery, long before William Wilberforce (1759-
1833) and others began to address this issue. He published his Thoughts upon Slavery in 1744. On this entire subject, cf W. T. Smith,
John Wesley and Slavery (Nashville: Abingdon Press, l986), in which the third edition of Wesley's brochure is reproduced (pp121–148).
3. Although I shall concentrate on motifs (the dominant missionary themes or ideas of the period), I shall also pay some attention to
motives (the reasons for people's getting involved in mission). It is not always possible to separate motifs from motives.
4. The Tambaram Conference is, to my knowledge, the only large international missionary meeting to have paid extensive attention to
the issue I am discussing here. The entire fifth volume (633 pages) of the Tambaram Series is devoted to “The Economic Basis of the
Church.” The quotation above comes from p 155. Cf also Davis 1947:73-182, and Gilhuis 1955:98-157.
5. For Britain, the Victorian era was a highly religious age as much as it was a national age without parallel. This no doubt has to
do with the fact that English nationalism has always been “closer to the religious matrix from which it arose” (Kohn 1945:178), a
circumstance which again points to a factor previously referred to—in Britain the Enlightenment did not, as it did on the continent,
completely break asunder “religious” and “secular” life.
6. A similar attitude is recorded by Hasselhorn (1988:138). The occasion this time was the Bambatha Rebellion in Zululand in 1906
and the effects it had on the Hermannsburg Mission in Natal. Before the rebellion broke out, Missions Director Harms remarked, “The
Kaffirs are arrogant, since the government is weak. (Because of the authorities’) current lax attitude, the (black) people will go to wrack
and ruin. A black man is not much upset by an injustice—he easily overcomes that—but he can absolutely not stand it to be treated
weakly” (my translation).
7. British missionaries, let me reiterate, were as racist as Germans, not least because of the influence of “social Darwinism” (cf
Cochrane 1987:19f; Villa-Vicencio 1988:54-64). And those from other Western countries were hardly any better. Racism in South Africa
presents us, in a sense, with a special case, not least because racism there became entrenched through legislation. So much has been and
is still being written about this peculiar brand of racism that I find it unnecessary to cover the ground in detail. In addition, the theme of
this section is racial prejudice in missionary circles, and although South African missionaries, including those hailing from the white
Afrikaans-speaking churches, were certainly as racist as other white missionaries, the particular phenomenon of racism and its role in
Afrikaner missionary circles has not yet been studied in much detail. See further J. W. de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South
Africa (Cape Town: David Philip, 1979), pp1–85; J. W. de Gruchy and C. Villa-Vicencio, eds., Apartheid is a Heresy (Cape Town:
David Philip, 1983), in particular the contributions by Chris Loff, “The History of a Heresy,” pp10–23, and David Bosch, “Nothing but a
Heresy,” pp24–28; and Villa-Vicencio 1988:22-30,145–150.
8. The Social Gospel was fecundated by European theological ideas, particularly those of theologians such as Albrecht Ritschl,
Richard Rothe, Ernst Troeltsch, and Adolf Harnack. The differences between the American Social Gospel and the Germans, however,
should not be ignored (cf Niebuhr 1988:116). The Social Gospel remained a peculiarly American phenomenon.
9. The ambiguous character of Edinburgh is revealed, inter alia, in the fact that two plenary addresses were devoted to the subject
of “Christianity the Final and Universal Religion,” the one on Christianity as religion of redemption (by W. Paterson), the other on
Christianity as an ethical ideal (by Henry Sloan Coffin).
10. This was, of course, only one side of the equation; the other side was the astonishing upsurge in missionary enthusiasm and
involvement—admittedly defined in terms very different from those of the Uppsala Assembly—in conservative evangelical circles during
this same period.
11. One should keep in mind that Mott never understood the watchword of the SVM as suggesting that the whole world would be
converted in a single generation. He interpreted it in the sense of “reaching the whole world with the gospel,” of “offering each person a
valid opportunity to accept Christ as Savior.”
12. Immediately after the Edinburgh Conference Mott published another book, entitled The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions
(London: Young People's Missionary Movement, 1910). It reflected the same spirit as the conference and Mott's earlier book. The
selection of the photograph facing the title page—the caption of which read, “Railway penetrating the old wall of Peking”—may surprise
the modern reader, but made perfect sense to Mott since it portrayed the “advance” of the gospel.
13. At the same time we should be reminded of the fact that the “Great Commission,” in its various forms, is also the most often
quoted text in the documents of Vatican II (cf Gómez 1986:32); one should therefore not regard its use as restricted to Protestant
evangelicals.
14. As such, it is a manifestation of fundamentalism and the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, both of which betray the influence of the
Enlightenment (as argued in the early part of this chapter). In Chapter 2 of this study an attempt has been made to interpret the “Great
Commission” within the overall context of the Gospel of Matthew.

10. THE EMERGENCE OF A POSTMODERN PARADIGM

1. It should be noted that the preposition “post” in no sense suggests a value judgment. “Postmodern” does not signify “antimodern”
(as Jürgen Habermas interprets it). I use it, rather, in the sense Küng also uses it (1987:16-27), namely as a heuristic notion, as a search
concept. The term “post” looks backward and forward at the same time and “does not mean a simple return to precritical, premodern,
preliberal discourse, but a ‘provolution’ toward an emerging new…paradigm” (Martin 1987:370). It is, nevertheless, an awkward term,
which I shall later replace with the notion “ecumenical.”
2. Cf Spengler, The Decline of the West (London: Allen & Unwin, no date; the title of the German original, Der Untergang des
Abendlandes, carried numinous undertones absent in the English translation) and Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1941—a summary of his four-volume work, Social and Cultural Dynamics, 19371941).
3. A cardinal (quoted in Bühlmann 1977:154) once said during the pontificate of Pius XII, “When the Pope thinks of Latin America in
the evening, he cannot sleep that night”!
4. A penetrating exposition, from a theological perspective, of such symbiosis, such living together, is found in Sundermeier 1986. The
title of his essay, translated into English, would be “Symbiosis [literally, life together] as Fundamental Structure of Ecumenical Existence
Today.”
5. For a perceptive summary of Marxist eschatology and its similarities with classical Christian eschatology, cf K. Nürnberger, “The
Eschatology of Marxism,” Missionalia vol 15 (1987), pp105–109.
6. The more commonly known version of this adage is Credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order to understand”; cf also Anselm's
Fides quaerens intellectum, “Faith seeking understanding.”

12. ELEMENTS OF AN EMERGING ECUMENICAL

MISSIONARY PARADIGM

1. It should be noted that, in contemporary Catholicism (as in Anglicanism), a “local church” is understood as a diocese and not as a
local parish or congregation. In a given diocese all parishes together share one pastor, the bishop.
2. One of the most exciting developments in this respect, in both Catholic and Protestant circles, is the new wave of Third-World
missionaries. For Protestantism, cf Lawrence E. Keyes, The Last Age of Missions: A Study of Third World Missionary Societies
(Pasadena: Wm Carey Library, 1983) and Larry D. Pate, From Every People: A Study of Third World Missionary Societies
(Pasadena: Wm Carey Library, 1989); for Catholicism, see Omer Degrijse, CICM, Going Forth: Missionary Consciousness in Third
World Catholic Churches (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books 1984).
3. This notion, introduced into contemporary theological discussion by Pope John XXIII just before Vatican II, has found an echo in
several theological traditions (cf Gómez 1989:365f). For a Catholic bibliography on the notion, cf Kroeger 1989:191-196. (I shall return to
this notion in the section on “Mission as Contextualization.”)
4. Tambaram Series, vol I: The Authority of the Faith (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), p 183, 184.
5. Aagaard (1965:251f) is therefore correct in saying that while Willingen may be considered the consummation of the Barthian
impact on missionary thinking, it was at the same time the beginning of the end of the Barthian influence as the decisive and unifying
force. Cf also Hoedemaker 1988:172.
6. For a more comprehensive discussion of this theme, cf my contribution entitled “Salvation: A Missiological Perspective,” Ex
Auditu, vol 6 (1989), pp.139–157.
7. The papers presented at this consultation have been published under the title La salvezzia oggi (Rome: Urban University Press,
1989).
8. In a sense, of course, it is tautological to add any adjective to the noun “salvation”; salvation is, in the nature of the case,
comprehensive and integral—or it is not salvation.
9. It is certainly not the earliest example. Throughout the history of missions (as has been pointed out in this study) there have been
courageous individuals like Bartolomé de Las Casas and hundreds of others who have spoken out against the injustices perpetrated by
colonial governments in “their” colonies. They were, however, mostly peripheral to the church and hardly spoke for the official church.
What makes this example unique is that in this case a very prominent official body of church representatives was involved.
10. Cf, for instance, Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (New
York: Harper & Row, 1957); David O. Moberg, Inasmuch: Christian Social Responsibility in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1965); Sherwood E. Wirt, The Social Conscience of the Evangelical (London: Scripture Union, 1968); David O. Moberg,
The Great Reversal: Evangelism and Social Concern (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co, 1972, 1977); and Neuhaus & Cromartie 1987.
11. The proceedings of both conferences were edited by Ronald Sider and published by Paternoster Press in Exeter. They are
Evangelicals and Development: Toward a Theology of Social Change (1981), and Lifestyle in the Eighties: An Evangelical
Commitment to Simple Lifestyle (1982).
12. This was one of three parallel “tracks” of a conference which met under the overall theme of “The Nature and Mission of the
Church.” Samuel and Sugden (1987) contains all the papers presented at the consultation as well as The Wheaton ‘83 Statement.
13. The document was reprinted in Transformation 4 (1987) pp17–30.
14. It goes without saying that all of this is by no means true of all evangelicals. There are those identified with the political far right
(cf Jerry Falwell and Jeffrey K. Hadden in Neuhaus and Cromartie 1987:109-123;379–394); there are those who continue to put an
exclusive emphasis on evangelism and church planting alone (cf Donald A. McGavran, “Missiology Faces the Lion,” Missiology 17
[1989], pp335–341); and there are countless other groups who call themselves evangelical, fundamentalist, or charismatic, who are not
interested in relationships of any sort with other groups of believers.
15. In several publications I have addressed the theological issues concerning the understanding of evangelism, as well as the
relationship between evangelism and mission: “Evangelism,” Mission Focus vol. 9 (1981), pp65–74; “Mission and Evangelism—
Clarifying the Concepts,” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft 68 (1984), pp161–191; “Evangelism:
Theological Currents and Crosscurrents Today,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 11 (1987), pp98–103; “Toward
Evangelism in Context,” in Samuel and Sugden 1987:180-192; “Evangelisation, Evangelisierung,” in Müller and Sundermeier 1987,
pp102–105.
16. This trend is also attested by the fact that North American evangelical agencies have been sending thousands of “missionaries”
(not “evangelists”) to Europe. For that matter, in evangelical parlance the term “evangelist” is usually reserved for an itinerant preacher.
17. In passing, it may be of interest to point out that similar projects are operative in Catholicism. In response to Pope John Paul II's
call for a “New Evangelization,” a worldwide effort called Evangelization 2000 was launched to promote a “Decade of Evangelization”
from Christmas 1990 to Christmas 2000. A major difference between this project and the evangelical plans referred to is that
Evangelization 2000 is essentially a prayer campaign. Nearly four thousand contemplative houses and fourteen hundred intercessory
groups and individuals were approached in this respect in 1988 only. A booklet, Praying for a New Evangelization, has been made
available in various languages.
18. CCA News, 15, no. 6 (June 1980), p 6.
19. It is immensely instructive, in this respect, to read the open letter Paul Tillich wrote to Emanuel Hirsch in 1934 (the English
translation, “Open Letter to Emanuel Hirsch,” is published in J. L. Adams, W. Pauck, and R. L. Shinn, eds., The Thought of Paul Tillich
[San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985], pp353–388), just after Hirsch had published his Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel
philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung: Akademische Vorlesungen zum Verständnis des deutschen Jahres 1933 (Göttingen:
Van-denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934). Tillich quotes Hirsch as writing that the events in Germany (particularly Hitler's rise to power) were
“to be perceived as the work of the Almighty Lord, whose instruments we essentially must be” (1985:364). He accuses Hirsch of having
“perverted the prophetic, eschatologtcally conceived Kairos doctrine into a sacerdotal-sacramental consecration of a current event”
(:363). Hirsch did this by drawing “a theological and therefore absotute value judgement” from specific historical events (:365), thereby
absolutizing “a finite possibility” (:366). In doing this, Hirsch turned current history into “a source of revelation alongside the biblical
documents” (:371). (For the reference to Tillich I am indebted to Stackhouse 1988:97, who observes that “many of the terms used in the
analysis of modern society and history celebrated by praxis-based liberation thought today were present in Hirsch's work.”)
20. In this respect, Sanneh adds, Christianity is fundamentally different from Islam. The notion that the Qur'an contains the very
thoughts of Allah since they were directly dictated to the Prophet in Arabic, limits Islam's capacity to contextualize in ways that other
faiths have. (Of course, the same notion is present in excessively fundamentalist quarters in Christianity).
21. In this respect, the African Independent Churches have to be mentioned specifically. Since Bengt Sundkler's pioneering Bantu
Prophets in South Africa (1948), a large body of literature on this exciting archetype of self-theologizing has been built up. Pride of
place has in this regard to be given to M. L Daneel's multivolume series, Old and New in Southern Shona Independent Churches.
Three volumes have been published thus far: Volume I on “Background and Rise of the Major Movements” (The Hague: Mouton, 1971);
Volume II on “Church Growth—Causative Factors and Recruitment Techniques” (Mouton, 1974); and Volume III on “Leadership and
Fission Dynamics” (Gweru [Zimbabwe]: Mambo Press, 1988). Two more volumes are anticipated, one of which will be devoted in
particular to the emerging theology of the movement.
22. For instance in the Communauté Evangélique d’Action Apostolique, a fellowship of forty-six churches worldwide, which has
replaced the former Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, or the Council for World Mission, which is a structure consisting of some thirty
churches, which have “resulted” from the work of the London Missionary Society.
23. The best missiological study of the Latin American movement, written from a Protestant viewpoint, is Guillermo Cook, The
Expectation of the Poor: Latin American Basic Ecclesial Communities in Protestant Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
1985). For a Catholic evaluation, cf Boff 1986.
24. Cf D. J. Bosch, “The Church-in-Dialogue: From Self-Delusion to Vulnerability,” Missiology, 16 (1988), pp131–147, for a
complementary discussion of this theme.
25. Cf The Christian Life and Message in Relation to Non-Christian Systems: Report of the Jerusalem Meeting of the IMC,
vol I (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p 491.
26. Spindler (1988:147) draws attention to a striking discrepancy in the way 1 Timothy 2:4 is used in LG 16 and in AG 7 (and 42).
AG 7 quotes the entire verse, as well as the following one, and thereby clearly limits God's saving activity to those who embrace Christ,
the Mediator, in faith. LG 16 quotes only the first half of 1 Timothy 2:4 (“The Savior wills all to be saved”) and uses it to support the idea
that those who do not know the gospel but live exemplary lives may also achieve eternal salvation.
27. Cf also D. J. Bosch, “Theological Education in Missionary Perspective,” Missiology vol. 10 (1982), pp13–34.
28. As late as 1965, Cullmann (:207) still complains about the “almost excessive fear” among Anglo-Saxon exegetes to attribute to
Jesus sayings concerning “a cosmic endevent.”
29. Outside the specific field of mission studies one may, for instance, think of the approaches to history and eschatology of scholars
as different from each other and from Cullmann as Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann. The latter, in particular, emphasizes “that
eschatology without the future of the eschaton is not eschatology at all, but only axiology or mysticism” (Braaten 1977:36). I have—in
some detail—discussed both the similarities and the differences between Cullmann's and Moltmann's views on eschatology and mission
(making use, particularly, of Moltmann's Theology of Hope, the first German issue of which appeared in 1964) in my “Heilsgeschichte
und Mission” (Oikonomia: Heilsgeschichte als Thema der Theologie [Oscar Cullmann zum 65. Geburtstag gewidmet]. Hamburg:
Herbert Reich, 1967, pp386–394). It is equally worth noting that Cullmann has had a significant influence on contemporary Roman
Catholic thinking. One may, in this respect, refer to AG 9.
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