Abstract
“Should we stop using the term ‘Mission’?” asked Klauspeter Blaser in his 1987 article. The crisis in mission in the second half of the 20th century, well accounted by historians of missions, had led to what Lamin Sanneh famously called “the Western guilt complex” about missions. Reviewing the conceptual development of the missionary enterprise, this article makes some historical-theological interpretations of the missionary enterprise since the later half of the 20th century and argues that the concept and practice of mission have changed and we are in a new day of missiological renewal. Arguably, missiology can now be seen as providing a hub of global theological trends, especially in the light of the theology behind missio Dei and the emerging contextual theologies at the dawn of world Christianity.
Keywords
Introduction
The enterprise we come to call “Christian mission” in modern times has always been contentious.
1
Among the Protestants, whether the Reformers themselves consciously supported Christian missions was contentious from the beginning. German Lutheran pioneer historian of missions, Gustav Warneck, wrote, We miss in the Reformers not only missionary actions, even the idea of missions, in the sense in which we understand them to-day. And this is not only because the newly discovered heathen world across the sea lay almost wholly beyond the range of their vision, though that reason had some weight, but because fundamental theological views hindered them from giving their activity, and even their thoughts, a missionary direction.
2
The Catholic Church pioneered modern missions with maritime colonial endeavors of Portugal and Spain from the late 15th century. In fact, the very meaning of Christian mission as an endeavor to spread the Christian faith outside Christian communities was credited to the Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola around this time. Unlike Protestants, the contentions in Catholic missions were not so much about the theological validity of missions, but about valid methods of missions. Whereas missions’ association with colonialism was scandalized much later, the disagreements within Catholic mission circles were centered on how Christians approach people of other cultures and religions. Be it the campaign against the cruelty and abuse of the native people of the Americas by Bartolomé de Las Casas 5 and the Dominicans or the Jesuits’ “accommodational missionary approach” in Asia, the issues concerned methods. 6 As much as the founding of the Society of Jesus was hailed as “of singular importance in the success of the Catholic reform” of the 16th century, the Jesuits’ missionary openness to other cultures and religions became so controversial as displayed in the Rite Controversy that it contributed to the dissolution of the order in 1773. 7 After enjoying tremendous growth in the 19th century, the modern missionary movement faced a major crisis in the middle of the 20th century.
From crisis to constructive theology of mission
David Bosch began his magnum opus Transforming Mission with an introductory chapter titled “The Contemporary Crisis” of mission. 8 Mission’s popularity and progress among the Protestant Churches seemed to be reaching its zenith in the first three decades of the 20th century. Driven largely by the zeal for missionary outreach, the world church was being internationalized and unified in the first half of the century amidst the throes of wars and conflicts.9,10 Even as it seemingly reached its high time, missions came to face a situation where its very reason for existence was attacked and its accomplishments questioned. It first may seem only as though the wider world crisis was reining in on mission, but when doubts about the very concept of mission fell on its advocates, the core of mission came to be shaken. Missions as understood and practiced came to be attacked both from without and within. Major changes in the world order including the rise of Communism, the decolonization and independence of former colonized nations, resurgence of non-Christian religions together with new pride in their national and cultural identities, had their share in bringing the crisis of Christian missions. By the third quarter of the 20th century, public perceptions had largely conflated missions with colonialism by seeing the entire enterprise as meant to exterminate the native religions of the colonized nations. The ensuing moral guilt that gripped mainline Protestant churches and liberal Christians in the West greatly crippled the missionary enterprise. To quote Lamin Sanneh, “Much of the Western scholarship on Christian missions proceeds by looking at the motives of individual missionaries and concludes by faulting the entire missionary enterprise as being part of the machinery of western cultural imperialism.” 11
Secularization of Western society and the decline in Christian beliefs and commitments have a large share in the missionary crisis. Post-war moral predicament led to humanistic secularism. Human rights consciousness enshrined in and fostered through the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights after World War II became a game changer in global moral consciousness. Seen in the light of the new moral norms, not only were colonial rules condemned, their continuation even for the sake of the colonized became unjustifiable. The blame game on colonialism easily occupied some quarters of world politics as it reverberated through discussion on the global market economy under the rubric of neo-colonialism. A more sober analytical consideration is being given under “postcolonial studies,” first in literature studies, which has expanded to other fields, including theology.
Conflation of missions and colonialism by non-Christians can somewhat be understandable. But when the same perception entered Christian communities leading to what Lamin Sanneh calls a “guilt complex,” it resulted in a decline of missionary supports, and a devastating downfall of the missionary movement, especially among the mainline churches.
12
It is true that many non-Western Christians are vocal in their resistance to Western dominance and the cultural superiority complex, but they are not deterred from Christianity. Missions perceived as cultural imperialism and its accompanying guilt complex seem to prevent many Christians from seeing the many good and exemplary contributions missions had made in history. Despite positive theological development in recent years, to be discussed hereafter, liberal Christianity in the West has not recovered from its missionary malaise as it continues to hold the missionary enterprise in contempt. As Hans Ucko states, many including Christians continue to view mission almost as unredeemably corrupt: Mission does not have a good pedigree. More often than not concepts such as racism, colonialism and militarism are mentioned as bedfellows of mission. And the concept of mission looks as if it is beyond redemption at least in the minds of people of other faiths and people outside the periphery of the church and sometimes, if only implicitly also by Christians themselves.
13
David Bosch, in his aforementioned book, does not deal with the story of the missionary crisis or how it came into being. He, however, emphatically identifies the “positive side” of the crisis and saw creative reconstruction of mission resulting from “a fundamental paradigm shift, not only in mission or theology, but in the experience and thinking of the whole world.” 17 Other historians have narrated the story of the crisis and the subsequent diverging and converging theological development of mission in the 20th century. 18 Lutheran historian James Scherer wrote a comprehensive historical account of the theological developments to the mid-1980s. 19 Scherer first traced the transition from the “old” missionary era to the “new” missionary era, and located the emergence of the “theology of mission” at the transitory point between the old and the new era of mission, describing the new era as a period marked by serious theological consideration and renewal of mission as a global enterprise. 20 Thus, the late 20th century saw theological creativity in relation to mission produced by the missionary crisis. This new era of theological consideration of mission has led to a rewriting of the meaning of mission in the life and theology of the church. To Bosch, the theological creativity that followed the crisis of missions marked a shift to a new paradigm he calls the “postmodern paradigm.” Bosch brilliantly elucidates the complex transformation of mission in the late 20th century. This constructive theological development of mission continues into the 21st century. More than ten years after Bosch, Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder reviewed the continuing development of theological creativity, which they saw as converging toward an integrative missiology they named “prophetic dialogue.” 21
Christian mission reconceptualized
The degree of change is so significant and the level of transformation so deep that David Bosch borrowed a term from Thomas Kuhn to characterizes it: “a paradigm shift.” Paradigm shift does not mean gradual change brought about by cumulative growth in knowledge, but a major theoretical shift when the old way of thinking is replaced by a new theoretical structure or model of thinking. 22 In such a shift the parting of the old and new is clear as it was with the “new” era of theology of mission. James Scherer vividly describes the historical parting of the new from the old. “Before 1950 the study of the ‘theology of mission’ in today’s sense hardly existed. The discipline was not considered necessary.” 23 What may be the first comprehensive publication on the theology of mission was the collection of essays edited by Gerald H. Anderson in 1961. 24 Charles Van Engen calls it “the first text of the discipline.” 25 The book contains contributions from well-known scholars of different theological disciplines on the different aspects of mission which are systematically arranged. It also shows the necessary interdisciplinary nature of what was to become missiology.
Two key components of the new emerging theology of mission, which serves to define the new theoretical structure of missiology are identifiable. The first one that jolted the entire enterprise of mission by its theological reconceptualization is the missio Dei concept. The other, resulting from theology’s interaction with diverse world cultures and societies, is what we broadly call contextual theology. By contextual theology, we refer both to the expanding and distinguishing contents of theology and the new procedures (or method) of doing theology in context. I identify these two for their crucial role in transforming the theological understanding of mission, for their mutual enhancement, and for their impact on the larger theological discipline. In some ways, they represent the metaphysical and empirical dimensions essential to every theological construction. The implications of the theological reconceptualization of mission through these two themes may be going further than what their early proponents would have imagined.
Missio Dei
Missio Dei as a theological concept of mission surfaced publicly among Protestants first at the 1952 meeting of the International Missionary Council in Willingen, Germany. The inner tension of the missionary enterprise burst open, so to speak, at the Willingen meeting through a deep disagreement within the group that was dealing with the theological statement of the conference theme “the Missionary Obligation of the Church.” The group failed to produce the theme statement as intended. One can surmise a deep dissatisfaction with missions as understood and practiced among some participants of the meeting. Ironically, a substitute statement was produced which became foundational for the development of theology of mission in the ensuing period. In Lesslie Newbigin’s words, “This meeting was widely thought at the time to have failed in its major task. But subsequent history has shown that it was in fact one of the most significant in the series of world missionary conferences.” 26 Although the Willingen conference did not use the term missio Dei, its clear statement on the trinitarian source of mission implied the concept, and thus, the meeting is considered the birthplace of the missio Dei concept. 27 The opening sentence of section two of its statement on the missionary calling of the church says, “The missionary movement of which we are apart has its source in the Triune God himself.” 28 The closing sentence of the section obligates the church to its very missionary nature by saying, “There is no participation in Christ without participation in his mission.” 29 It is fair to say that the significance of these statement-sentences is realized later in the ensuing discussion. The term, “participation,” was to become important to understanding how the church does mission.
The idea of missio Dei was muted prior to Willingen 1952 in such writings as Karl Barth’s and Karl Hartenstein’s, as has been shown by scholars, it is clear that the idea was not developed yet. The concept gained popular traction quite quickly in the Protestant conciliar circles after the conference. With this concept, missionary thinkers of the mid-20th century connected the Christian missionary enterprise with the redemptive and reconciliatory mission of the triune God. Two contesting approaches became apparent quickly. One is a world-centered understanding provocatively propounded by the Euro-American groups in their study on “The Missionary Structure of the Congregation.” 30 The other, a more traditional view, which gave a central place to the church in God’s mission, was upheld by several leaders and thinkers, including Lesslie Newbigin 31 and George Vicedom. 32
The line of development we are tracing is centered on development in the Protestant circles. Catholics and Orthodox churches are equally engaged on the theme. An ecclesial-centered and Eucharist-driven understanding of mission by the Orthodox Churches has been sidelined as “nonmissionary” 33 during the modern missionary movement. Yet the distinct missiological understanding and missionary contributions of the Orthodox Churches have been explicated, which trace back their missionary impulse to their trinitarian theology. Because its salvation concept is captured in theosis (or deification), its missionary understanding is centripetally God-centered. 34 The entry of Orthodox Churches into the modern ecumenical movement and their meaningful participation in theological discussions on the doctrine of the Trinity have helped to underscore their contributions to the missio Dei. Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder identified the origin of the concept of missio Dei among the Catholics in Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution of the Church), which redefined the church “as ‘the people made one in the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’ (LG4).” 35 Vatican II’s document on missionary activity (Ad Gentes) was based on this trinitarian conception of the church. Various theological sources, including the church’s doctrinal development since St. Augustine and the ongoing Protestant discussions, influenced the understanding developed by Catholic theologians. 36
With missio Dei, a new door is being opened to theologize mission creatively and biblically. Its introduction helps to recover classical discussion on the Trinity in relation to, and for the sake of, the church’s mission. The discussion has been related to, and furthered by, the recent “trinitarian renaissance,” to use Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s term. 37 Debate on the sufficiency of the Trinity theology of Augustine of Hippo, the most influential theologian of the Western church, together with the invocation of the Eastern Cappadocian Fathers’ theology, has dominated the new scene. In its existence as a missiological theme for about five decades, John Flett rightly opines that the missio Dei concept has not tapped into trinitarian theology as much as it should. 38 Meanwhile, some work has been done on the Trinity in relation to religious pluralism, which is outside the scope of this article.
Studies on Trinity in the past especially from Augustine of Hippo had helpfully differentiated the nature of the triune God in himself: his essential being (immanent Trinity) on the one hand, and the triune God in his action, movement or becoming (economic Trinity) on the other hand. 39 Thomas Aquinas used the term “mission” in connection with the sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit 40 in the economic Trinity in distinction from the immanent Trinity. 41 This distinction seems to have precluded the trinitarian doctrine from impacting Christian mission when the concept was introduced centuries later. Thus, when the term “mission” was “reintroduced” by Ignatius Loyola as a Christian enterprise of sending missionaries to proclaim the gospel to non-Christians, the two uses of the same term within the Christian corpus were never connected until the missio Dei concept came about. 42 The Trinity and missio Dei met in the 20th century in the missiological arena. It is fair to say that we are still figuring out the meaning and implications of this meeting.
One fortunate development in the doctrinal study of the Trinity in the 20th century is the bridging of the gap between the immanent and economic Trinity. The two most influential thinkers on the Trinity in the 20th century, Karl Barth and Karl Rahner, rejected the distinction of immanent and economic Trinity in their own ways. Rahner bluntly stated as a “basic thesis” that “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity.” 43 As puzzling as his theology may be for Christian missions, Karl Barth’s insistence that “God is who he is in his act” 44 conceptually conjoins immanent and economic Trinity in God’s work of salvation, which serves a deeper connection of the Trinity and the church’s mission. Not compromising God’s discontinuity with humanity, Barth’s dialectical theology refuses to separate God’s self-disclosure in the divine economy with his being in Himself. The God who is distantly “other” is also the God who discloses himself in his economy of salvation. He is far and yet near. In the light of this oneness of God in his eternal being and his act of salvation, the missio Dei is firmly rooted in God’s wholeness. The Cappadocian Fathers’ “ontological innovation,” which explains the three Persons as God’s being in and for himself as communion, not only connect the economic and immanent but also conceives salvation (theosis) as participation in the divine communion of the Trinity.
The basic theological point I am making in relating trinitarian theology with missio Dei is that in God’s being and in his coming for the salvation of the world, God is missionary through and through. Mission is not an appendage to divine nature nor is it possessed only by a part of or some Persons in the triune God. God is missionary in his very being. By saying God is missionary by nature, we refer to God’s essential being as missionary. This new foundational theology of mission is at the heart of the entire corpus of theology (systematic, historical, philosophical, contextual, etc.). As much as theology is “talking about God” 45 or the “process” of thoughts about God, 46 at the heart of Christian theology is the Christian faith in who God is in God-self. The faith that God is a God who graciously acts for the salvation of the world cannot but conclude that God is a God of redemptive mission. This fundamental theological conception makes theology missional at its most basic level.
One historical outcome of the reformulation of mission in missio Dei is the conceptual movement we may call “missional church” in the West. 47 Based on the pioneering work of the North American “Gospel and Our Culture Network” of reconceiving Christian mission (as missio Dei) as the essential identity of the church, this ecclesiological understanding reinvigorates a new missiological ecclesiology. 48 An important hermeneutical outcome called “missional hermeneutic” is impacting the field of theology and biblical studies. Some recent publications have shown the result of this new hermeneutic, for example: Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God, 49 Michael Goheen’s A Light to the Nations, 50 Dean Flemming’s Why Mission?, 51 and Michael Gorman’s Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission. 52 The richness of this new hermeneutic is shown by George Hunsberger who drew four streams of thought in the discussion from the fields of biblical studies and missiology. 53
These missional approaches to biblical interpretation by biblical scholars and theologians not only acknowledge the missionary context of the Scriptures, but also recognize mission as the essence of the Scriptures. They also testify the essential place missiology came to occupy in biblical theology. Similar to the crucial role played by the theology of mission in the theological discourse on the Trinity I discussed above, the indispensable role of missional theology of the Bible is being recognized.
Theologizing in context
The other structural component of a theology of mission that reshapes the enterprise of theology is the new consideration of contexts in theological works. It emerged as a missionary endeavor to make sense of the gospel in new contexts and led to a new recognition and acknowledgement of the role of local contexts in any genuine theological encounter. First as a way of communicating the gospel meaningfully to those hearing the gospel for the first time, then as a creative way to root the gospel in the cultural contexts of the people, missionaries have been engaging for centuries to indigenize Christianity. This they did by way of accommodating local religious and cultural symbols (as done by the Jesuits in Asia in the 16th century), by making native converts to own the church and its ministries as their own (by Henry Venn, Rufus Anderson, et al. in the 19th century), and indigenize or inculturate the gospel in the local cultures (a 20th-century venture most popularly in Asia and Africa). When the endeavor to inculturate or indigenize the gospel to each particular culture was felt to be not forward-looking enough to serve the changing world because such endeavors target traditional cultures, a new term was invented in the early 1970s. This new concept is called “contextualization” and meant to address both traditional cultures and the inherent social changes experienced in a globalizing world.
Although contextualization and contextual theologies are often used synonymously, there can be a difference in what they emphasize. While “contextualization” tends to emphasize connecting a given message to a context meaningfully, and thus the contextualizing dimension, “contextual theologies” tend to emphasize the theologizing aspect. 54 Without minimizing the importance of the former, our interest falls larger on the second, namely contextual theologies. European theologians in the 19th and early 20th centuries had discovered the significance of the historical context of Scripture in understanding the text. The German phrase Sitz im Leben (or life-setting) became key to recognize the context of the scriptural texts in interpretations. But the interpreter’s context (or Sitz im Leben) seemed to have been considered universally understood and relevant. The European theologies, which were genuinely contextual and significantly related to their historical period, were then imposed as universal theologies to be relevant and meaningful to all people at all times. Not only was it their time-driven nature that became problematic, but their context-limitation also came to be recognized as a problem as Christianity became a worldwide religion. Stephen Bevans has rightly stated that “every authentic theology has been very much rooted in a particular context in some implicit or real way.” 55 The new enterprise we call contextual theology both particularizes theology by authenticating its sociocultural roots and universalizes it by making theology an enterprise for every context of the world. Douglas John Hall is right in saying, “No theological province of the oikuměně can be independent of the others. Every theological community, however, must work out its witness in dialogue with the particularities of its own sociohistorical situation … Contextualization … is the sine qua non of all genuine theological thought, as it always has been.” 56
Missiologists and theologians have dealt with contextual theologies helpfully in different ways. Robert Schreiter gave an early comprehensive treatment under the title of Constructing Local Theologies. He mapped out a complex system of how communities lived out their spirituality at the intersection of the church tradition and their cultures from which emerged a contextual (local) tradition in the form of a series of local theologies. 57 It seems that the emergent tradition or local theologies may sometimes arise spontaneously while theologians have also intentionally constructed such theologies. David Bosch considered inculturation and revolutionary liberation theology as “contextual theologies proper,” and the larger part of his discussion rests on the liberation model. 58 The breakthrough of contextual theologies happened, Bosch said, at the birth of “Third World theologies” with the epistemological break they claim to have made. But this epistemological break is largely limited to liberation theology. 59
A comprehensive and useful discussion, especially from a methodological viewpoint, is Stephen Bevans’s Models of Contextual Theology. 60 One of the hardest exercises in contextual theology is to deal with different understandings and use of contextualization. By bringing order to “the sometimes bewildering array of contextual theologies today,” Bevans has done us a great service to map out the necessarily complex contextual theologies. 61 Locating different forms of contextual theologies between “Experience of the Past” context and “Experience of the Present” context, he outlined the different models based on their orientation either to the past or the present experience. 62 Scripture and church tradition represent the past experience, and the present context is formed by the personal or communal experience of culture, social change, and social location. 63
Ranging from an “anthropological model” that seeks to establish and preserve the cultural identity of a Christian 64 on the extreme end of the present context to a “translation model” that focuses on the Christian identity to preserve Christian traditions and a “Countercultural model” that seeks to “challenge and purify the context” 65 (at the end of the spectrum on the side of present context), Bevans identifies six representative models. They are anthropological, transcendental, praxis, synthetic, translation, and countercultural. Bevans succeeds in comprehensively capturing the multifarious contextual theology and outlines them meaningfully. Yet, it is also ripe for misuse on the part of readers. One of the dangers, that Bevans himself tried to escape yet is still present, is a problem we face in any kind of modeling, namely the tendency to compartmentalize each one exclusively. Furthermore, one may also remember that a named model such as “anthropological” need not represent all anthropologists.
If Bosch, Schreiter, and Bevans try to capture how contextual theologies have been done in the history of Christianity, Dean Flemming tries to see what the New Testament did to contextualize the gospel. In an attempt to see how the various families of New Testament writings use contextualization, Flemming proposes “The Jesus model” in which Jesus “explained or exegeted (exēgēsato) the Father to us.” 66 Flemming saw the pattern played out in the various families of New Testament writings. He also acknowledges the transformative dimension of Jesus’ ministry, saying, “But at the same time, Jesus came to transform the human institutions he entered, and as a result the incarnation retained a universal significance.” 67 A reader of Flemming’s book may see the transformational aspect of the incarnation as secondary as he apparently tries to extract the gems of contextualization by mining the New Testament texts.
Bevans’s roadmap of what has been done on contextual theologies, Schreiter’s intricate pattern of interaction between gospel and culture, Bosch’s discussion of revolutionary epistemological break in contextual theology, and Flemming’s extrapolation of contextualization from the New Testament, all show the composite functions of contextualization. They all illustrate, in their varying ways, what we may call intentional contextual theological engagements. By this, I mean that theologians either intentionally construct contextually relevant theologies or that they are calculated in seeing the relevance of the contexts in the texts or theologies. In response, I’d like to assert that communities of faith have also engaged in contextual theology spontaneously and informally as they lived out the gospel in their contextual realities. This kind of contextual theologizing is spontaneous (as against intentional), communal or corporate in the engagements (as against individually constructed or interpreted), and informal in contrast to formal academic works. In pointing out this kind of theological construction, I do not mean to supplant the intellectually driven intentional contextual theological works of theologians and exegetes. Spontaneous contextualization of the gospel by communities of faith is a common story in many non-Western Christian churches today. Even as Christianity was introduced to these societies as a change agent, a transformer, or a stranger, the connecting links are the contextual meaningfulness in communicating the gospel. The connecting links to the people’s heart include both traditional culture and contemporary social realities. Once the native people truly own Christianity, they spontaneously transform Christianity in their context to make it their own. In a few of my studies on how my people, the Mizos, came to interact with Christian faith, I have shown how they subconsciously indigenize the revival movement that first came to them from Wales (the Welsh Revival of 1904) and utilized it to make Christianity their own, 68 how their spirituality conjoins the new religion with their traditional worldview and ethos, and how their traditional religious framework and religiosity helped to form their faith in the core Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and salvation through the process of change and continuity. 69
Second, I suggest that the transformative aspect of theology is part and parcel of contextual theology in that the metaphysical dimension (or the beyond-ness) of theology is as essential as the empirical (or the here-and-now) dimension in contextual theology. In much of the discussion on contextual theologies, I suspect a tendency to suspend the transcendence or otherness of God for the sake of the immanence or relevance of God. Such imbalanced constructions cannot be theologically justified. Contextual theology is not about one aspect of theology. It is a genuinely integral and comprehensive theology that takes into consideration both the essence and economy of theology. It is not, and should not be, a half-way theology; it should be constructed as a full theology. It rests on God’s immanence and economic being, on a holistic Christology that recognizes Christ as fully God and fully human, to use the Chalcedonian definition. In other words, missio Dei is not outside the realm of contextual theology nor is contextual theology outside missio Dei. Both the strange and the familiar, the pilgrim Christ and the indigenized Christ, are essential in contextual theology. 70
Conclusion
“Is the contentious ‘mission’ salvageable for our day and for the days ahead?” In responding to the question with a decisive “yes,” I have made the case that the developing theology of mission has refined the concept, giving reason to affirm not only the continuation of the concept and practice of Christian mission in its refined form, but also a recognition of its contribution to the larger field of theological studies. Between the two crucial missiological themes of missio Dei and contextual theology, we contend that the concept of mission has developed comprehensively to become an essential part of the discipline of theology. The discovery of a sound theological affirmation of mission also has honed missionary thoughts and practices, and has the potential to undergird the concept from falling into disrepute. If mission, as it has come to be conceived theologically, is about God’s redemptive and reconciliatory mission, we see no reason for Christians to be hesitant about mission. Yet, we also recognize that not all agree in the justification of the concept of mission theologically. As mentioned, opponents of missions continue to grossly conflate mission and colonialism. For those who relate colonialism closely to mission, the theological refinement of mission may seem doubtful.
In addition to refining the concept of mission, developments in the theology of mission, particularly contextual theology and missional hermeneutics, have made significant inroads into other fields of theological studies. Missional hermeneutics does not belong exclusively to missiology anymore. It is a biblical hermeneutics now utilized creatively and incisively by biblical scholars and missiologists. Similarly, contextual theology penetrates the field of theological studies to be owned by the larger theological discipline. Not only are the social and cultural contexts invoked in the developing contextual theologizing exercises, but others, including such fields as science and technology, have become the context of doing theology. 71
Footnotes
1
An earlier version of this article was presented under the title “Saving the World and Salvaging the Word: Conceptual Journey of the Christian Missionary Enterprise” at World Mission Institute, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, April 7, 2016.
2
Gustav Warneck, Outline of the History of Protestant Missions from the Reformation to the Present Time: A Contribution to Modern Church History (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901), 9.
3
Ibid., 20.
4
Ibid.
5
See Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, edited and trans. Stafford Poole (DeKalb: Northern Illinois, 1974).
6
Stephen B. Bevans and Roger Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), 184.
7
Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church, revised and expanded edn. (New York: Image, 1990), 220.
8
David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 1–4.
9
See Dana Robert, “The First Globalization: The Internationalization of the Protestant Movement between the World Wars,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26:2 (April 2002): 50–66.
10
World Missionary Conference, 1910 in Edinburgh was a major unifying achievement which led to ecclesial and missional uniting movements, including Faith and Order, Life and Work, and the International Missionary Councils. See Kenneth Scott LaTourette, “Ecumenical Bearings of the Missionary Movement and the International Missionary Council,” Tissington Tatlow, “The World Conference on Faith and Order,” Nils Karlström, “Movements for International Friendship and Life and Work, 1910–1925,” Nils Ehrenström, “Movements for International Friendship and Life and Work, 1925–1948,” and Willem Adolf Visser ‘t Hooft, “The Genesis of the World Council of Churches,” in A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1968, ed. Ruth Rouse and Stephen C. Neill, fourth edn. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1993), 353–402, 405–41, 509–42, 545–96, 697–724, respectively.
11
Lamin Sanneh, “Christian Missions and the Western Guilt Complex,” The Christian Century 104:11 (April 7, 1987): 331.
12
According to one study, for instance, the number of mainline full-time missionaries from the United States dropped from about 8700 in 1968 to 2900 missionaries in 1996. Then there was an increase to about 3500 in 2002. See Robert T. Coote, “Shift in North American Protestant Full-Time Missionary Community,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 29:1 (2005): 12–13.
13
Hans Ucko, “Protestant Perspectives: Christian Mission among Other Faiths,” in Witnessing to Christ in a Pluralistic Age: Christian Mission among Other Faiths, ed. Lalsangkima Pachuau and Knud Jørgensen (Oxford: Regnum, 2011), 38.
14
Klauspeter Blaser, “Should We Stop Using the Term ‘Mission’?” International Review of Mission 76, No. 301 (January 1987): 68–71.
15
Ibid., 68.
16
Ibid., 70.
17
Ibid., 4.
18
See, inter alia, Rodger C. Bassham, Mission Theology, 1948–1975: Years of Worldwide Creative Tension—Ecumenical, Evangelical, and Roman Catholic (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1979); and James Scherer, Gospel, Church, & Kingdom: Comparative Studies in World Mission Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1987).
19
Scherer, Gospel, Church, & Kingdom.
20
Ibid., 35–36.
21
Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 284, 348–95.
22
See Bosch, Transforming Mission, 184, on his summary of Thomas Kuhn’s theory.
23
Scherer, Gospel, Church, & Kingdom, 35.
24
Gerald H. Anderson, ed., The Theology of the Christian Mission (Nashville: Abingdon, 1961).
25
Charles Van Engen, Mission on the Way: Issues in Mission Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1996), 18.
26
Lesslie Newbigin, “Mission to Six Continents,” in The Ecumenical Advance: A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Vol. 2, ed. Harold Fey, 3rd edn. (Geneva: WCC, 1993), 178.
27
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 369.
28
“A Statement on the Missionary Calling of the Church,” International Review of Mission 92, No. 367 (October, 2003): 607. This is an excerpt from the Minutes of the Enlarged Meeting and the Committee of the International Missionary Council, Willingen, Germany, July 5th to 21st, 1952, pp. 533–56.
29
Ibid.
30
This was a study project of the Department on Studies in Evangelism of the WCC. The final reports of the study were published as The Church for Others and the Church for the World: A Quest for Structures of Missionary Congregations (Geneva: WCC, 1968).
31
See Lesslie Newbigin, The Relevance of Trinitarian Doctrine for Today’s Mission ([London]: Edinburgh House Press for the WCC, Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, 1963); Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, revised edn. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 19–65.
32
Georg F. Vicedom, The Mission of God: An Introduction to a Theology of Mission (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1965).
33
Alexander Schmemann, “The Missionary Imperative in the Orthodox Tradition,” in The Theology of the Christian Mission, ed. G.H. Anderson, 250.
34
See “Go Forth in Peace: Orthodox Perspectives on Mission,” in New Directions in Mission & Evangelization 1: Basic Statements, 1974–1991, ed. James A. Scherer and Stephen B. Bevans (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992), 203–31.
35
Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 286.
36
Ibid., 289–90.
37
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “The Trajectories of Contemporary ‘Trinitarian Renaissance’ in Different Contexts,” Journal of Reformed Theology 3 (2009): 7–21.
38
John Flett, The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth, and the Nature of Christian Community (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 77.
39
Colin Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 2nd edn. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 4.
40
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, Q43, Art 1–8 (entitled “The Mission of the Divine Persons”). I drew the point from a discussion by John F. Hoffmeyer. See Hoffmeyer, “The Missional Trinity,” dialog: A Journal of Theology 40:2 (2001): 108.
41
Hoffmeyer, “The Missional Trinity,” 108.
42
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 1.
43
Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (London: Burns and Oates, 1970), 21–22.
44
John Flett on Barth’s position. See Flett, The Witness of God, 2.
45
Alister McGrath, Theology: The Basics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), xi.
46
Stephen B. Bevans, An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2009), 1.
47
Though developed in the West, the concept is at home among most churches in the global South and East. Being “mission churches” (either negatively or positively construed), churches in the South and East readily affirm the concept.
48
The seminal work on missional ecclesiology is Darrell L. Guder, ed. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). On the growth of the perspective, see Craig Van Gelder and Dwight J. Zscheile, The Missional Church Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011).
49
Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006).
50
Michael W. Goheen, A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011).
51
Dean Flemming, Why Mission? (Nashville: Abingdon, 2015).
52
Michael J. Gorman, Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015).
53
George R. Hunsberger, “Proposal for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping a Conversation,” Missiology: An International Review 39:3 (2011): 309–21.
54
The best works on this dimension are done by missiological anthropologists and communication theorists. For a good discussion on the ongoing development in this realm, especially in the American context, see Charles van Engen, Darrell Whiteman, and J. Dudley Woodberry, eds., Paradigm Shifts in Christian Witness: Insights from Anthropology, Communication, and Spiritual Power: Essays in Honor of Charles H. Kraft (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008).
55
Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, revised and expanded edn. (Maryknoll, NY: Books, 2002), 7.
56
Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1989), 21.
57
Robert J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985), 24–36.
58
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 421.
59
Ibid., 423–25.
60
Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology.
61
Robert J. Schreiter, foreword to Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, x.
62
Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, 7.
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid., 54.
65
Ibid., 117.
66
Dean Flemming, Contextualization in the New Testament: Patterns for Theology and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 20.
67
Ibid., 21.
68
Lalsangkima Pachuau, Ethnic Identity and Christianity: A Socio-Historical and Missiological Study of Christianity in Northeast India with Special Reference to Mizoram (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002), 111–43.
69
Lalsangkima Pachuau, “Mizo ‘Sakhua’ in Transition: Change and Continuity from Primal Religion to Christianity,” Missiology: An International Review 36:1 (2006): 41–57; L. Pachuau, “Primal Spirituality as the Substructure of Christian Spirituality: The Case of Mizo Christianity in India,” Journal of African Christian Thought 11:2 (2008): 9–14.
70
Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), 7–9.
71
For instance, John Polkinghorne, Theology in the Context of Science (New Haven: Yale University, 2009).