Missio Dei Trinitatis and Missio Ecclesiae: A Public Theological Perspective

In this article I address the mission of the triune God (missio Dei trinitatis) and the mission of the church (missio ecclesiae) that participates in the mission of God the Trinity, particularly from the perspective of public theology. First, I investigate that the concept of the missio Dei trinitatis so expanded our understanding of mission that the church‐centred view of mission was replaced by the public mission taking place in the midst of the world. Second, from the public theological perspective I argue for the need of the diakonia mission in order to realize the reign of God in the world. Third, I insist that the mission of the church participating in the mission of the triune God ought to appropriate the post‐colonial hermeneutics of suspicion and develop a post‐post‐colonial public mission theology for the sake of a mature democratic civil society. Fourth, I suggest that the mission of the church participating in God's mission should develop a transcultural‐indigenous public hermeneutics of mission in such a way as to encourage different stories through transcultural‐indigenous interpretations of the biblical narrative.     

God's Triunity and Self-Determination: A Conversation with Karl Barth, Bruce McCormack and Paul Molnar

Abstract: A recent disagreement between Bruce McCormack and Paul Molnar highlights some of the issues involved in discussing the relationship between God's triunity and determination to be God‐with‐us. Can we say that God's determination to be with us is the basis of God's triunity? Must we identify the Son's being as eternally toward‐incarnation? How does God's freedom relate to God's eternal decision to be God‐with‐humanity? In this article I argue (contra McCormack) that God's triunity logically precedes God's determination to be with us, but (contra Molnar) that this logical precedence entails neither that the pre‐incarnate Son is utterly unknown to us nor that God retains some freedom to be God‐without‐humanity.     

God's Transforming Spirit

God's transforming Spirit takes us where theology matters most: how we speak of the life of God in a way that speaks to the life of the world. The following reflections undertake this especially in the context of the pre‐eminent crisis in the world's life today, the pollution and unrepentant exploitation of the earth. In some senses, these reflections flow from an environmental liberation theology, trying to address issues of creation, mission and spirituality from the perspective of earth's hurt and her Creator's pain. They even aim to come from a new “below”, lifting up the complex, diverse non‐human life of the planet to be understood as partner and agent in God's mission. Informed by injustices of human exploitation of the earth, this study is, nevertheless, inspired by hope in the earth's Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. While rooted in a deeply trinitarian notion of God, it sees a new and exciting route into these issues via the particular life of the Trinity expressed in the ru'ach Spirit. There is a wide spectrum of terms for the Spirit. This document allies itself with an eco‐feminist perspective on the Spirit as ru'ach. This signals an identification with the eco‐feminist perspective as an essential corrective to the androcentric perspective that has been so exploitative. It also opens the way to invite fresh insights from Indigenous Peoples that also inform the characterization of the Spirit in this text. But the fundamental character of the Spirit in this text is transformational. This makes the Spirit dynamic within and beyond Creation and with and without humanity. This dynamic is often recognized in the text as a spiral. This describes the Spirit's movement and is also a metaphor for the spirit as life. “The ru'ach is a force for life, a sign of God's deep compassion embracing all life. Such love calls forth more love in answer and response. We meet her compassion with our care and commitment and find ourselves accountable to each other. The flow of love spirals forth and the gift of life is renewed and transformed”. And further: “This spiralling life force relates, gathers, empowers and sends us into relationship, into gathering, into empowerment as the means by which we witness that all are related, all Connected within Creation and between Creation and Creator”. God's transforming Spirit not only creates and empowers life in general, she also agitates and ferments life into partnership with God's mission. This is the further transformation she brings. She is not a deist Spirit, content to let individual lives exist in isolation but embroils herself in Creation's life, inviting fresh communities turned towards the vision of life she exudes. This study offers a spirituality and praxis for mission that seeks to live in harness with this.

相似文献   

From body to body: A post‐gender politics for the cosmic homo1

This article engages in establishing some common ground, some human and humane politics for the global Luther, in contradistinction to the focus in much recent scholarship on difference/s as an almost hegemonic way of understanding human life. The aim is to move beyond feminist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories to a post‐gender politics by employing Judith Butler's concepts of performativity and “abject” bodies. Homo, the human being, will be the hermeneutical key for examining Luther's understanding of God's creation and incarnation as well as of baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the church. The aim is that of searching out Luther's differing performances of body, from the carnal body of the incarnate Christ and the human body to the spiritual body of church and community, and how these matter, materialize and intersect in the body of Christ as one body/homo.     

The “Strange Acts of God:”The Hermeneutics of Concealment and Revelation in Luther and Shakespeare

Abstract: Martin Luther called himself “God's court‐jester”. He saw history as one of the “masks of God,” and he understood God as hiding Godself often behind the mask of the Devil. Luther developed a paradoxical theology, a theology of the cross, that is surprisingly compatible in certain respects with the paradoxical artistic vision of Shakespeare, especially in Hamlet, King Lear and Measure for Measure. Crucial motifs of Luther's theology—the hidden God, indirect revelation, revelation by concealment, revelation under the opposite, the “strange acts of God,” God's “rearward parts”(posteriora), and suffering (Anfechtungen and melancholy)—resonate with certain latent, even if at times blasphemeous, theological motifs and themes in Shakespeare. They also resonate with the experience of the Lutheran church in Hungary both in its past under communism and today in post‐communist Hungary.     

Speaking of Possibilities: The Theistic Actualism of Anselm's Divine Locutio

In his Monologion, Anselm represents God's knowledge of his creative possibilities, not in the intellectualist and Platonic terms of Augustine's divine ideas, but in the linguistic, poetic, and semi‐Stoic terms of a divine “utterance” or “expression” (locutio). Through his shift in theological metaphor, Anselm makes a subtle yet significant departure from the prevailing, “possibilist” model of divine possibility in western theology—according to which God's possibilities are known prior to and independently of any act or intention to create—towards a radically alternate, analogical and “actualist” appreciation of God as the sovereign speaker and inventor of his own possibilities.     

A Catholic Missiological and Ecumenical Appreciation of Together towards Life

The new mission statement Together towards Life does not so much propose new teachings about mission as point out pertinent reminders and reconfirmations of some of our beliefs and convictions about God's mission (missio Dei) in and for the world. The author suggests that among the many challenges expressed in the statement, three merit special attention: (1) the proposal to shift the mission concept from “mission to the margins” to “mission from the margins”; (2) the necessity to underline the intrinsic link between humanity and creation; and (3) the temptation to consider “mission” as at the service of the interests and aggrandizement of individual churches instead of the contrary. He concludes that this statement is an invitation to walk “together towards life” for the benefit of both humanity and the whole of God's creation, and that the urgent challenge is to forge concrete means to make this dream a reality, even in the face of paying the “cost of discipleship.”     

A Lutheran Reflection on The One Mediator,The Saints,and Mary1 in Relation to the Question: How Do Lutherans Understand Prayer for Other People?2

Abstract : In this article, the author offers a critical, appreciative appraisal of The One Mediator, The Saints, and Mary (1992), which was the publication that emerged from the eighth round of the U.S. Lutheran‐Catholic Dialogue. Writing from a Lutheran perspective and using the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ, October 31, 1999) as a critical hermeneutical lens, the author points to Luther's theological conviction concerning how Mary—the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ—and departed saints are to be regarded. Luther's emphasis on Christ the only Mediator was highlighted. Reflection on this text was done in light of the theme of the dialogue's eleventh round, “The Hope of Eternal Life.” Prayer is always in and through Jesus Christ.     

Missiological Framework in Africa

This article has three parts. First, it deals with the understanding of mission in the context of Namibia. Second, it offers a profile of African spirituality and its politico‐socio‐economic implications, or with the missionary orthopraxis, in light of the African parable of the awakening giant. And third, it focuses on the African missional church and its missionary praxis. The paper argues that the triune God creates the church and sustains it through the gifts of word and sacrament by the power of the Spirit. Such a missional church understands its participation in God's mission (missio Dei) as contextual by addressing faithfully the challenges in a comprehensive and holistic way.     

Deep Symbols and Mythic Imagination in the Hermeneutics of Creation Texts

This article reflects on creation through the lens of different traditions of Christian scholarship, and argues for a returning of the theology of creation to its rightful place at the centre of theological discourse about God's relationship with the world—intrinsically linked to the economy of salvation and not in opposition to it. It posits a necessary re-visioning of the relationship between humanity and other-than-human creation via a re-evaluation of the epistemological function of symbol and myth, and a re-examining of the governing principles within myth typologies and their implicit axioms within creation theology. The hermeneutical insights of philosopher Paul Ricoeur and biblical exegete Claus Westermann are brought into conversation. Building on the Ricoeurian epistemological axiom that ‘the symbol gives rise to thought’, the article avers the creation imaginary as a deep and formative symbol of God's free and loving purposes enacted through different and even contesting cultures and traditions and within the whole cosmos. In imaginative dialogical rereading, the community of faith can be open to God's free and loving relationship with all creation, thus also participating in the divine work of renewing the face of the earth.     

Missionary Discipleship as the Innovation of the Church in Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium

Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium talks about discipleship in a framework of mission and evangelization. Rather than concentrating on the discipleship as such, it uses as a lens the spiritual commitment of conversion to missionary discipleship, challenging all Christians and the whole Church, including institutional structures, to this conversion. In common with the World Council of Churches’ document Together towards Life, Evangelii Gaudium emphasizes a need for Christians to focus on the heart of the Gospel, the love of the trinitarian God, in order to find trustful, dynamic, and transformative mission for the “changing landscapes” of today's global and local phenomena. This article deals with the concept of missionary discipleship in Evangelii Gaudium. To this end it discusses discipleship and its underlying structure of continual conversion as it is represented in both Evangelii Gaudium and the WCC's mission document Together towards Life.     

The Church as Mission in Its Very Life

Is there a relation between Church and mission? And if there is, how are mission and Church related? Does the Church have a mission or even several missions? Or is the Church essentially mission? Is it mission in its very life? These are the core questions of the following study text 1 that constitutes the contribution of the Working Group on Mission and Ecclesiology of CWME, from which the new Mission Statement's chapter on the Church drew. To address these questions means to embark on a twofold agenda: It means to approach mission from the angle of the life of and the reflection on the Church, and it also means to tackle ecumenical ecclesiology from a mission perspective. The present text grew out of further reflections on the study paper on theme 8 of the Edinburgh 2010 study process “Towards Common Witness to Christ Today: Mission and Visible Unity of the Church” (published in IRM 99.1 [2010] 86–106). The insights gathered in the following paper are part of an ongoing process that seeks to take into account the constantly changing contexts of mission and Church. Already on the face of it, the macro‐context shows two opposing trends: on the one hand, an increasing secularization of society, and at the same time, on the other, the emerging of new and rapidly growing religious movements. The present text limits itself to stating and briefly analyzing some factors of the continuously changing ecclesial landscape that is created by these trends of the macro‐context. This approach presumes that the Church is not merely a free‐floating, ultra‐mundane entity. It is of an “incarnational” nature. It exists in the midst of differing particular contexts in this world. The methodological option of starting from the contemporary contexts and challenges to world Christianity today and of evaluating the impacts they have on contemporary mission offers a fresh view on long‐debated issues in missiology and ecclesiology. In its search for solutions to these contemporary challenges, the text argues that theologically it is impossible to separate Church and mission. The missio Dei concept, which affirms the priority of the triune God's sending activity, continues to provide the fundamental basis for both, an ecumenical missiology and an ecclesiology from a mission point of view. “The missionary intention of God is the raison d'être of the Church,” the text states in no. 32. This Church (with a capital C) is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church we confess in the creed. The Church can also be called “apostolic” in the sense that Christians are “sent”, since they are invited by God to become “part‐takers” in God's mission (nos. 24 and 26). The second chapter is therefore called “Common Witness: That the World May Believe”. It addresses the insight that a lack of unity is detrimental to the witness and mission of the Church. This insight, which is already highlighted in John 17:21, was prophetically spelled out for the modern ecumenical movement by the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. From an ecclesiological point of view, the core question is how our confessional churches embody this one Church or how they are otherwise related to it. From a mission point of view, the witness of the one Church of Jesus Christ in the world needs to be a common witness despite the divisions and fractions that split the Church and hinder mission. This common witness stipulates criteria of discernment. And a mission‐centred ecclesiology has to ask: What structures and features in our churches further our common witness to God's mission? What features and structures hinder it? When answering these questions, the role of the Holy Spirit in mediating between unity and diversity needs to be taken into account. At the same time, the goal of full visible unity is reaffirmed by asking, How does unity become visible? Is this only and exclusively possible by common structures, or can it also, and perhaps more genuinely, be achieved by common service and witness to the mission of God? The third and last chapter addresses “Visions and Hopes” in the light of God's mission of healing, reconciliation and hope. Hope pervades the new missionary spirituality. Hope also motivates conversion as turning together to God. This new concentration on the aspect of hope accounts for the fact that, in view of the constantly changing ecclesial landscape and the flowing contexts of mission, it is impossible to name just one overall solution that would last at least for some of the coming decades. But “hope” stands for the confidence that, with the help of God for the Church, there will never be a lack of ingenious solutions in the time to come and that God's vineyard will never be without workers who will happily join in the common witness to God's mission. Annemarie C. MAYER     

Word of God or Dialog with Science? Overcoming a False Dilemma Through Missional Encounter

Abstract : Why would a theology grounded in God's word engage with the sciences? After laying out two alternative approaches to revelation—constructive theology (general revelation) and Logos theology (special revelation)—I advocate an evangel theology grounded in mission, worship and the gospel of Jesus Christ. This approach engages both culture (including science and technology) and God's word from a critical missional basis. An evangel theology engages the sciences through apologetics, cultural critique, hermeneutics, and the cooperative task of developing a Christian worldview.     

DEMOCRATIC VIRTUE, COMPARATIVE ETHICS, AND CONTEMPORARY ISLAM

This essay illustrates the kind of moral analysis Jeffrey Stout advocates in Democracy and Tradition by way of examining a conversation among Muslims that took place between June and December 2002. Their debate centers on al‐Qaída's legitimacy as God's chosen defender of Islam, which is called into question due to the tension between al‐Qaída's military tactics and the concepts of honorable combat held within the Islamic tradition. This giving and taking of reasons in both defense and detraction of al‐Qaída's tactics demonstrates the living reality of Islamic tradition—the ongoing process of striving to discern God's will in light of communal agreements about the authority of certain texts and the validity of established rules for interpreting them.     

Theology's Need for a New Interpretation of Nature: Correlate of the Doctrine of Grace

Abstract : Important aspects of contemporary life—from increasing dependence on technology to climate change, from changing views of human nature to global interactions among varied cultures and religions—demand that theologians consider the best understandings of the world that the sciences can offer. To help support a fully relational trinitarian concept of God, namely, one that offers a richer interpretation of God's relationship with the world, theology needs truth about the world, humans, and our place in relation to the rest of nature. Lutheran theological foci have a built‐in thirst that only dialogue with science can quench. Too narrow an approach to anthropology and justification by faith focuses on God's activity on behalf of humans as if apart from nature. We need a more comprehensive vision of God's activity in creation, redemption and sanctification by grace. To explicate this, we turn to Luther's emphasis on God's incarnation in human flesh and blood—thus also in the cells, molecules, and subatomic activity of the world; the communication of attributes; and the indwelling Christ. For a deeper understanding of God as triune and of redemption, we need a renewed emphasis on the connection between creation, incarnation and redemption, and between nature and grace. An increased knowledge of science contributes to a healthier approach to the church's mission by giving a theological basis for ethical action in relation to the (natural) world.     

God's Mission as Word Event in an Age of World Christianity: An Asian Linguistic‐Transcultural Model

Christian community lives according to the Word of God, inspiring the church to be in ecumenical fellowship and to be amenable to the act of God's speech in an age of world Christianity. The Word of God is able to be translated transculturally in different times and places, while keeping the transversal, irregular horizon of God's discourse. In view of the rise of world Christianity much has been said about the indigenization of the Christian narrative that challenges the western concept of missio Dei. To renew God's mission in an East Asian configuration, a linguistic‐transcultural model is proposed for a public theology of mission that promotes the full humanity of those on the underside of history and acknowledges religious outsiders. A public mission of God's narrative takes seriously the project of interculturation and emancipation in the post‐western Christian era.     

The Livingness of God; or,the Place of Substance and Dynamism in a Theology of the Divine Perfections

Theological reflection on the divine character is serviceable to the extent that it prevents the livingness of the triune God – and so the subject matter of theology – from disappearing behind rigorous consideration of the perfections themselves. The topic of God's livingness, in other words, informs the locus de Deo as a whole. The present article begins with a biblical‐dogmatic proposal for the form and content of this livingness: God's life in and for the world, it is proposed, is at every point rooted in the life which God has from himself as Father, Son and Spirit. Two clarifications are subsequently offered. An appeal to the livingness of God should be distinguished both from an abstract rejection of ‘substance’ language and from a conceptualization of reality under a general theory of the forward advancement of the world process.     

Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence

In science-fiction literature and film, human beings simultaneously feel fear and allure in the presence of intelligent machines, an experience that approximates the numinous experience as described in 1917 by Rudolph Otto. Otto believed that two chief elements characterize the numinous experience: the mysterium tremendum and the fascinans. Briefly, the mysterium tremendum is the fear of God's wholly other nature and the fascinans is the allure of God's saving grace. Science-fiction representations of robots and artificially intelligent computers follow this logic of threatening otherness and soteriological promise. Science fiction offers empirical support for Anne Foerst's claim that human beings experience fear and fascination in the presence of advanced robots from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AI Lab. The human reaction to intelligent machines shows that human beings in many respects have elevated those machines to divine status. This machine apotheosis, an interesting cultural event for the history of religions, may—despite Foerst's rosy interpretation—threaten traditional Christian theologies.     

Evangelism as Discipleship

This article gives attention to the challenges that the missional and conversational relationship of the church poses in the intercourse between evangelism, discipleship, theological education and leadership formation in its ministry and mission. This multi‐faceted and complex process brings together competing interests with different agendas that, in a number of contexts, have resulted in mis‐evangelization. This has called into question issues about human dignity and respect and the need for reciprocity to inform all missional response of the churches. The article argues that an appropriate model of theological education is needed to equip leaders for effective witness to the gospel. This necessitates the recruitment and mentoring of emerging leaders who have had a life‐changing encounter with the life‐giving Spirit of Jesus that controls their identity, vocation and witness. Some experiences of formal and informal theological education and formation within the Anglo‐Caribbean context were identified that disconnected and disorientated leaders from the Church's missional task of bearing effective witness to the gospel. This article calls for an overhaul of seminary‐ and university‐based theological education careerism, because they serve as an encumbrance to nurturing effective contextual witness of churches. The article argues that if Jesus calls and makes us into his disciples, then faithfulness in discipleship necessitates that (1) authentic evangelism must be grounded in humility and respect for all, (2) leadership formation must be infectiously relational, and (3) the gospel must be communicated through genuine interpersonal and community‐affirming relationships. The article ends with an invitation to all churches to embrace a missional model of witnessing that invests in living with, learning from and sharing with people in communities depending on the Spirit of God in Christ to lead and bear fruit in God's time.