SCM Studyguide: Christian Mission. Stephen Spencer

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СКАЧАТЬ of God came first, and the Church was created as a response to that. So the Church is a product of mission, rather than the other way round. As Emil Brunner reputedly put it, ‘the Church exists by mission just as fire exists by burning’. Mission, as Bosch writes, ‘is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission . . . To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending love’ (Bosch 1991, p. 390).

      What does this imply for the work of the Church? Bosch writes that Christian missionary activity

      can not simply be the planting of churches or the saving of souls; rather, it has to be service of the missio Dei, representing God in and over against the world, pointing to God, holding up the God-child before the eyes of the world in a ceaseless celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany. In its mission, the church witnesses to the fullness of the promise of God’s reign and participates in the ongoing struggle between that reign and the powers of darkness and evil. (1991, p. 391)

      During the 1960s and 1970s there was further development in this understanding. These years saw a growing realization that the missio Dei should not be restricted to the Church’s sphere of influence.

      Since God’s concern is for the entire world, this should also be the scope of the missio Dei. It affects all people in all aspects of their existence. Mission is God’s turning to the world in respect of creation, care, redemption and consummation . . . It takes place in ordinary human history, not exclusively in and through the church . . . The missio Dei is God’s activity, which embraces both the church and the world, and in which the church may be privileged to participate. (Bosch 1991, p. 391)

      Vatican II

      The Second Vatican Council, the reforming and modernizing council of all the Roman Catholic bishops that met in Rome between 1962 and 1965, brought this thinking into the heart of the Roman Catholic Church. In its rousing decree on the Church’s missionary activity (Ad Gentes), a key document of the Council, it stated that

      The church on earth is by its very nature missionary since, according to the Father, it has its origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This plan flows from ‘fountain-like love,’ the love of God the Father . . . Missionary activity is nothing else, and nothing less, than the manifestation of God’s plan, its epiphany and realization in the world and in history; that by which God, through mission, clearly brings to its conclusion the history of salvation. Through preaching and the celebration of the sacraments, of which the holy Eucharist is the centre and summit, missionary activity makes Christ present, who is the author of salvation. (Ad Gentes 2, 9, in Vatican Council II, pp. 444, 453)

      But mission is not restricted to the Church: God’s saving activity is at work in the world as well as the Church, especially through the secret moving of the Spirit in human beings, advancing the salvation of people through love. And such secretive work may, by the grace of God, issue in a more humane world. So Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s ‘Pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world’, speaks of human progress in creating a more just social order in the modern world. It then declares,

      The Spirit of God, who, with wondrous providence, directs the course of time and renews the faith of the earth, assists at this development . . . such progress is of vital concern to the kingdom of God, in so far as it can contribute to the better ordering of human society. (Gaudium et Spes 26, 39, in Vatican Council II, pp. 192, 204; quoted in Bosch 1991, p. 392)

      Conclusion

      The recognition that mission is God’s mission represents a crucial breakthrough in respect of the preceding centuries (Bosch 1991, p. 393). It transforms the whole way in which mission is viewed and liberates the Church from trying to depend upon its own limited resources. It is the starting point for the explorations of this Studyguide. It also allows us to return to the quotation which began this section of the book, from the poem ‘The Night’ by the Welsh poet Henry Vaughan (1622–95), which spoke of a ‘deep, but dazzling darkness’ where ‘not all [was] clear’. These words were quoted because they describe well the contemporary crisis of understanding over mission in the churches. But Vaughan’s verse goes on to welcome this night time because it allows him to enter into union with God:

      O for that Night! Where I in Him

      Might live invisible and dim!

      The churches, now, might welcome the night of crisis for mission because it has allowed them to rediscover the way authentic mission springs from God himself. They now know they are fundamentally dependent on life ‘in him’ and that this Trinitarian life can liberate them from having to rely upon their own weak resources.

Discussion questions Can you detect the Spirit of God at work in the secular world? Describe some examples. How do these signs of the missio Dei develop or change your understanding of the mission of the Church?

      Further reading

      Avis, Paul (2005), A Ministry Shaped by Mission, T & T Clark

      Bosch, David J. (1991), Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Orbis

      Evans, G. R., and J. Robert Wright (1991), The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources, SPCK

      Moltmann, Jürgen (1977), The Church in the Power of the Spirit, SCM Press

      Neill, Stephen (1964), A History of Christian Missions, Penguin

      Thomas, Norman, ed. (1995), Readings in World Mission, SPCK

      Vatican Council II: The Basic Sixteen Documents (1996), ed. Austin Flannery OP, Dominican Publications

      3. Digging Deeper Mission as Participation in the Trinity

      The walker who is lost in the fells will not only look back along the route they have come. They will also consult their map, a human document of abstract symbols that represents the key features of the hills and valleys all around. In a similar way, as we seek to get our bearings on the nature of mission, it is worthwhile consulting the maps that have been produced by the Christian community, as it were, because they can direct our attention to the key features of God’s mission in the world.

      The last chapter established that the Willengen Conference, under the influence of Karl Barth, marked a rediscovery of one very significant map for mission, the doctrine of the Trinity. Since then a number of theologians have explored and interpreted the meaning of this map and drawn out its implications for Christian mission, and to them we now turn.

      Background

      The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, articulated in the pronouncements of the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), states that God is three hypostases (Greek) / personae (Latin) / persons (English), in one ousia (Greek) / substantia (Latin) / being (English). This doctrine has always been at the heart of belief in the Eastern Orthodox churches but was down-played in the Western Church for many centuries. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), the great German Reformed theologian who is often described as ‘the father of modern theology’, placed the doctrine at the end of his systematic presentation of the Christian faith, almost as an afterword. But theologians over the last 80 years have rediscovered its centrality in a significant way. Karl Barth, whom we have seen to be a pioneer in these matters, argued for the foundational importance of the doctrine of the Trinity to all Christian thinking. He famously placed discussion of the Trinity at the start of his Church Dogmatics, reminding the churches that because God has revealed himself as inherently three in one, all theology, ethics, and pastoral work must begin, and end, here.

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