Abstract
Mission after Pentecost is one of Yong’s most ambitious contributions to the field of missiology to date and is well worthy of its selection as one of IBMR’s “Ten Outstanding Books in Mission Studies, World Christianity, and Intercultural Theology for 2019” (vol. 44, no. 2 [2020]: 200). As Yong’s version of a “full-fledged missiology” (xv), the book combines the theological interpretation of Scripture, missiology, and pneumatology to explore what biblical mission looks like in a “post-mission” (2) world defined by postcolonialism, post-Enlightenment, and post-Christendom realities.
The first section of the book explores the more ambiguous missiological dimensions of the ruach Elohim as it appears throughout the Old Testament. In the Torah, the liberation of Israel demonstrated the role of the ruach in establishing Israel’s priestly vocation and the unavoidable interconnection between the creative and destructive cosmic power of the ruach. The Tanakh, likewise, offers up a complex picture. While the divine wind was responsible for “building up the household of faith” (60), the ruach also operated outside of Israel and demonstrated that “the mission of God’s breath cannot finally be routinized” (86). In the Former Prophets, Yong describes how the divine spirit enabled “sendings” (89) of various sorts as it transitioned the priestly vocation of Israel to be “not just to but amid and with the nations” (89). In the Latter Prophets, he continues this trajectory by examining how the “otherness of the nations surrounding Israel” (115) is dealt with through the metaphors of centripetal and centrifugal mission.
The second section moves on to the New Testament and missiologically focuses on passages in which references to the pneuma invite “fresh consideration of others” (156). In the Gospels, Yong explores the various pneumatic dimensions of the Messiah’s ministry and draws out its holistic, international, and politically subversive elements. Looking at the work of Paul, a “mission pneumatologian par excellence” (182), Yong focuses on the role of the pneuma in breaking down the alienness between Jew and Gentile and in preserving the distinctive witness of the Christian community. Along similar lines, the creative section on the Catholic Epistles frames the practical concerns of the letters within their multireligious context. Through the Johannine corpus, Yong examines the role of the pneuma in sustaining the witnessing community as it stands in contrast to the world, as well as the role of the pneuma in reconciling that same world to God.
The canonical approach of the book can at times make it hard to trace the connections that run throughout the book. Though each chapter has discussion questions at the end, concluding points could have helped the more novice reader trace the inter-connected themes. That said, the concluding chapter provides a helpful overview and places the book’s themes back into the “post-mission” context that the book began with. To be sure, Yong’s more dialogical conclusions might rankle those who want to revivify “the glory days of modern missions” (7). For others, Mission after Pentecost offers fresh and much-needed missiological perspectives for our contemporary context.