Abstract
Theology
This admirable book will likely be of more value to Western missiologists, theologians, and seminary students than to overseas missionaries—partly because of its scholarly nature, but also because it reflects the increasing shift from “foreign” missions to activities of the missional church domestically.
Author Nikolajsen (b. 1978) earned his PhD from the Norwegian School of Theology in 2010 and became a faculty member of Lutheran School of Theology in Aarhus, Denmark, that year. This book is a revised edition of his doctoral dissertation and is a solid piece of scholarly work.
The author clearly states the purpose of his book: “to contribute to a better understanding of the role of the church in a post-Christendom society” (19). To that end, he meticulously presents the thinking of two prolific authors, of whom neither is Scandinavian or Lutheran: Church of Scotland missiologist Lesslie Newbigin and American Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder.
These were good choices. Newbigin was one of the premier missionaries/missiologists of the twentieth century. Nikolajsen is doubtlessly correct in saying that one of Newbigin’s fundamental presuppositions was that “the church is a distinct social entity, which is meant to embody the mission of God in the world” (52). The author also sufficiently presents core emphases of Yoder, the outstanding Mennonite scholar of the twentieth century who represents well his faith tradition’s anti-Constantinian stance and post-Christendom ecclesiology.
By necessity, every book is limited in scope, and two of the major lacunas in this book are the lack of references to the encounter of the church with non-Christian religions and the lack of reference to the church in non-Western countries. Perhaps that was unavoidable, though, as only Newbigin had extensive contact with adherents of other religious faiths in non-Western lands. Still, that makes this book more valuable for scholars and church workers in the West than in other parts of the world.
Another problem in the book is the same as seen in this reviewer’s preceding paragraph. The church is considered monolithically when, in fact, there is considerable diversity and disunion. Thus, the “distinctive identity of the church,” which is the central subject of the book, is used prescriptively mainly in reference to the church as represented primarily by the World Council of Churches. For those in that tradition, though, Nikolajsen’s book offers many valuable descriptions of the past, insights for the present, and challenges for the future.