Abstract
Building on the work of mission theologians in the twentieth century like David Bosch, Harvie Conn and Leslie Newbigin, the contributors to the essays in this book present us with their rationale for insisting missional hermeneutics should be taken seriously within the fields of biblical and theological studies. The book is laid out in five sections. The first examines what a missional hermeneutic is and does. The second and third sections demonstrate what a missional reading of the Old and New Testaments respectively, might look like. The fourth section explains how such a reading might positively reform the task of preaching and the fifth suggests how the same might reshape the current paradigms of training for pastoral ministry.
The authors of these essays work from a number of premises. Two negative premises are that a missional reading (MR) does not interpret the Bible as a call to readers to get involved in mission, nor is it a manual with instructions on good mission practice. Positively speaking, a missional reading of the Bible works from the premise that the meta-narrative of the Bible is the redemptive mission of God to the world, through Israel, which climaxes in Jesus Christ and continues through the church. Israel and church live out their existence within the larger story of the mission of God and, through their obedience to law and gospel, live ‘missionally’ before the nations. Mission is the identity, not a task, for Israel and church. This angle on Israel’s existence is particularly well presented in Mark Glanville’s essay on a MR of Deuteronomy (Chapter 7), a book which he defines as a ‘covenant charter for a contrast society.’ Israel’s very uniqueness would be its message to neighbouring nations, demonstrating the good news of God’s rule through a nation that was transforming, not expansionist.
Another vital premise is that the books of Scripture are more than just records of God’s mission to the nations. Each book was written from within a missional context and with a missional purpose, i.e., to equip communities of faith to live out the implications of the law and gospel in their time and place. Chapters in which this principle is illustrated, by application to specific bible books, are particularly refreshing reads.
A shortcoming of the book is the lack of diversity among the authors. It is ironic that in a book where one writer declares that we need the ‘mutually correcting and enriching voices of Christians from other settings’ if our theologies are not to become parochial and idolatrous (p. 306), the contributors are all from the West, based in academic institutions or churches in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.