Joining in with the Spirit in the 21st Century: A Response to Dana Robert

I am extremely grateful and honoured to participate in this volume that marks the closure of the Edinburgh 2010 Regnum Mission Series, an incredible scholarly production with missiological views from all Christian traditions. In almost all these mission documents a new paradigm in Christian mission is manifested that radically changed in a positive way the route of our Christian witness to the world.

I would like to express my sincere appreciation of Prof. Dana Robert’s paper for the remarkable overview of the modern era of global Christian mission. Needless to say, I fully endorse almost all her points, as well as “the lessons of our recent missiological pilgrimage”, summarized in her closing remarks: “Walking and eating together, common witness, testimony, worship and celebration in the Spirit—and yes, even the ecumenism of blood as we witness to the one Christ among the nations”.

These remarks of hers – together with her special emphasis on the importance of unity as the sine qua non of all contemporary missionary efforts – perfectly summarize our present situation. My short response from an Orthodox perspective will limit itself to some specific information and focuses, not fully highlighted in her keynote address. And first of all I would like to remind you that the present situation in global mission is what the Orthodox expected would be the very first step of the ecumenical movement, even before the 1910 Edinburgh mission conference, considered in the West as the beginning of the ecumenical era. ¹ The famous Encyclical Letters of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1902, 1904, and later in 1920, to all Christian Churches insisted that social and other practical activities of the Churches should not be postponed until a complete doctrinal agreement is achieved. Only through cooperation in social issues and joint commitment in the name of Christ for the sake of humanity, the encyclicals went on, can a visible unity of the Church be accomplished. ²

This is what all Orthodox committed to ecumenism expect from Global Christian Mission. In one of the last Messages of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches it was clearly stated that:

Orthodox Christians share responsibility for the contemporary crisis of this planet with other people, whether they are people of faith or not, because they have tolerated and indiscriminately compromised on extreme human choices, without credibly challenging these choices with the word of faith. Therefore, they also have a major obligation to contribute to overcoming the divisions of the world. ³

The most urgent missionary task of the Orthodox has to do with the most revered statement in modern culture, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human rights, the Orthodox insist, are awfully ineffective, if they are not accompanied by “human responsibilities”. The struggle to promote such a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities, of course along with the Human Rights, is not just a diplomatic initiative aiming at introducing in the world agenda moral values at the expense of the values of modernity and the democratic achievements of the Enlightenment. It came out of pressure from prophetic and charismatic figures and theological movements for social and ecological justice from a faith perspective.

The Orthodox Primates clearly affirmed that:

the gap between rich and poor is growing dramatically due to the financial crisis, usually the result of manic profiteering by economic factors and corrupt financial activity, which, by lacking an anthropological dimension and sensitivity, does not ultimately serve the real needs of mankind. A viable economy is that which combines efficacy with justice and social solidarity. ⁴

On a theoretical level, however, the most significant and crucial decision was the conviction that from a Christian faith perspective, economy and ecology cannot be dealt with in isolation from each other. Global Christian Mission came to the conclusion that “Far-reaching market liberalization, deregulation, and unrestrained privatisation of goods and services are exploiting the whole Creation and dismantling social programs and services and opening up economies across borders to seemingly limitless growth of production”. ⁵

This is something that was painfully felt in Greece by the majority of its citizens during the recent economic crisis. I have argued elsewhere ⁶ that Orthodoxy and Mission are two terms that at first glance seem quite incompatible, at least to the western historians of mission, even to this very day. ⁷ When in 1910 the historic gathering of missionaries across denominational boundaries took place in Edinburgh, in order to launch an inter-denominational missionary co-operation, Orthodoxy was completely marginal. In their deliberations there were only references to the Oriental (sic) or Greek churches, always within the framework of western (mainly Protestant) mission. Even in the following generation no article on the importance of mission was written by Orthodox theologians. ⁸ The initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at the dawn of the 20th century, I mentioned before, were only later brought to the attention of ecumenical mission. ⁹

Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos, former CWME moderator, and the late Prof. Fr. Ion Bria, to mention just two Orthodox missiologists, made significant contributions to the development of the contemporary mission theology. The martyria dimension of mission in the place of an offensive and sometimes arrogant mission, the Trinitarian importance of the missio Dei theology, the liturgical aspect of the Christian witness in the form of the Liturgy after the liturgy, are only a few illustrations of the “Orthodox” contribution to the new ecumenical understanding of mission in the 20th and 21st centuries.

During the last 50 years, i.e. from the time of the full integration into the world mission of all the Orthodox Churches, there have been three statements on mission and evangelism: The 1982 “Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation”, the 2000 “Mission and Evangelism in Unity”, and the 2012 new mission statement, entitled “Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes” (TTL).

Both the 1982 and the 2000 mission statements came up short with regard to adapting to the rapidly changing landscapes. The third millennium required concrete affirmations as regards the emerging new challenges, especially with regard to the growing pluralistic situation and the immoral world economic system, and a renewed philosophy and language.

TTL and many books in the Regnum Mission Series fulfil some of the expectations of the Orthodox, especially in areas of crucial theological importance. And first of all, the Trinitarian, i.e. Pneumatological, basis (§ 1ff.).

The Trinitarian theology points to the fact that God’s involvement in history aims at drawing humanity and creation in general into this communion with God’s very life. The implications of this assertion for understanding mission are very important: mission does not aim primarily at the propagation or transmission of intellectual convictions, doctrines, moral commands etc., but at the transmission of the life of communion that exists in God. ¹⁰

One could also add some further points: the ecclesial dimension of mission, the implicit liturgical aspect, the explicit environmental and inter-faith consequences of an authentic Christian witness, and the clear connection between mission and unity ¹¹ are all profound theological aspects, very familiar to the Orthodox tradition.

The strong spiritual dimension that permeates TTL and most of the Regnum series is yet another positive point the Orthodox can immediately endorse. For generations, even centuries, the triumphant character in doing mission overwhelmed the quintessence of the Christian message and attitude, the Pauline affirmation that “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor 1:21).

I will end my short intervention by underlining one more specific characteristic of the Orthodox theology of mission. Without losing sight of the fundamental conviction that Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), most Orthodox missiologists insist that the Church is not but a simple servant in the “mission” of God. Basing their theology on “the economy of the Spirit” (side by side of course with the “economy of Christ/the Word”), they argue that God uses not only the Church, but many other powers of the world for the salvation of humankind and the entire creation. After all, it is the Holy Spirit, the “Spirit of Truth,” that leads us to the “whole truth,” (Jn 16:13) and “blows wherever He/She wills” (Jn 3:8), thus embracing the whole of cosmos.

This “ecclesiological” and “pneumatological” understanding of mission is also reinforced by a peculiar theology, which in the Orthodox East is expressed by such terms as theosis or deification. Whereas in the post-Augustinian Christianity a clearly static dichotomy of ‘nature’-‘grace’ was developed, in the East a more inclusive and dynamic theology was elaborated with significant consequences for mission. Human nature was never considered as a closed, autonomous, and static entity; its very existence was always determined by its relationship to God. Guided, therefore, by a vision of how to “know” God, and “participate” in His life, Christian witness is closely connected with the notion of a synergetic theology of theosis or deification. Human beings are called to salvation neither by an extrinsic action of God (as e.g. the “irresistible grace” of Augustine), nor through the rational cognition of propositional truths (cf. the scholastic theology of Thomas Aquinas), but by “becoming God”. This was the primary and permanent task of any authentic Christian witness: to make people achieve God’s “likeness” (kath’ omoiosin), restoring in this way the human “nature” to its original status. Rooted in the normative biblical (Pauline) expressions of life “in Christ” and “in communion with the Holy Spirit”, and inextricably connected with Christology, as it was first articulated by St. Athanasius (“Christ became human, so that we may become Gods”), this later Orthodox understanding of mission in terms of theosis is not to be confused with the neo-platonic return to an impersonal One. It is a true continuation of the so-called “social” (Cappadocian) understanding of the Holy Trinity. ¹²

This relational and synergetic theology may have been the cause of a much more inclusive understanding of mission than the conventional exclusivist one that has generally developed in the West. And this is something that needs to be more fully integrated in contemporary World mission.