Re-thinking Mission - Part 4

I want to conclude this series of posts on the missional movement with what I see as one of its major theological weaknesses, namely the tendency toward Universalism or Inclusivism.  However much I appreciate Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin and the "Gospel and Our Culture Network" which they have influenced, I cannot follow them when it comes to their Christological re-working of election.

For Calvin, Luther and the magisterial Reformers, the decree of predestination stands separate from the decree to elect Christ for the task of redemption.  Although the second person of the Trinity was intimately involved with the Father and the Spirit in the decree of election and predestination, the revelation of this decree lies hidden and shrouded in mystery in the decretum absolutum.   This line of thinking was openly rejected by Karl Barth and many of the neo-orthodox theologians who followed in his footsteps.  Barth felt that any notion of election apart from Christ could only lead to fear, uncertainty and loss of assurance.  Both Calvin and the Puritans were well aware of this, which is why the latter group spent so much effort their sermons giving various biblical proofs by which men and women could "make their calling and election sure" (2 Peter 1).  In contrast to the earlier Reformed tradition, Barth asserted that Jesus Christ  is the electing God as well as the elect man.  Because in Jesus Christ we see the divine Son, fully God and fully human, suffering on the cross for sinful humanity, all doubts as to God's "Yes" to his human creation necessarily disappear.  In the election of Christ, and through His self-identification with His human creation, Barth concludes on the basis of Ephesians 1:4 that all of humanity is elect in Christ.   Not only is Jesus the "elect" man, He is for Barth the only "reprobate" man - (this is Barth's Christological version of "double predestination").  No longer must humanity fear Calvin's decretum horribile (the terrible decree), says Barth, for there is only one reprobate man – Jesus of Nazareth who faced the rejection on the cross and suffered vicariously for sinners.   There's only one little problem with this line of reasoning... if all of humanity is elect in Christ before the foundation of the world, it logically follows that all of humanity will ultimately be saved whether or not they trust in Christ - a view which cannot possibly be squared with the clear testimony of Scripture.

So was Karl Barth a universalist??  The answer to this question is both "yes" and "no".  If you follow Barth's doctrine of election to its logical conclusion you will end up with universalism.  But the surprising fact is that Barth himself explicitly denied that he was a universalist!  This is one of the frustrating things about Barth's theology- as a dialectical theologian he is willing to live with unresolved tensions and to affirm what certainly appear to be contradictions.  The same is true of Lesslie Newbigin.  For example, in The Open Secret Newbigin writes the following:  "The choosing is "in Christ" and not otherwise. There is no election apart from Christ, as some theologies have seemed to suggest."  In true Barthian style, Newbigin leaves his audience with unresolved tension: "The exposition given so far of the doctrine of election may seem to lead straight to universalism, that is, to the doctrine that there can be no possibility of final exclusion from God's salvation… I believe it is essential to hold firmly together both the universalist perspective of the Bible and the clear teaching about judgment and the possibility of rejection." 

 

I am personally of the opinion that Barth's doctrine of election has negative consequences for evangelism and mission.  If you accept the teaching that humanity (and therefore every human being) is elect in Christ, evangelism simply becomes the announcement of a fait accompli.  According to Emil Brunner, Barth has presented a picture of election which can be compared to a group of sailors who find themselves shipwrecked at sea.  Although they greatly fear that they will drown in the sea, they don't realize that the water is too shallow for that to ever happen!  Of course Barth wanted people to repent of sin and follow Jesus as Lord, but if you follow the logic of his theology, it doesn't really matter whether people respond or not because the grace of God has ultimately triumphed over unbelief.  

 

Re-thinking Mission - Part 3

Today I'm going to tackle another major (and highly controversial) idea that is very central for many missional writers - the issue of bounded set thinking vs. centred set-thinking.  This particular idea has gained quite a bit of traction within the emergent church, but it actually originated on the mission field.  The late Dr. Paul Hiebert who taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for many years was a missionary to India during the early 1960s.  As a cross-cultural missionary, Hiebert noticed that much of the missionary practice coming from the West represented what he called "bounded-set" thinking, whereas he felt that a "centred-set" approach was more biblical and culturally appropriate.

 

The traditional Western worldview which is rooted in "modernism" tends to prefer "bounded-set" thinking.  We like to be able to distinguish clearly between different groups of people based on who's in and who's out and therefore tend to make a very sharp distinction between Christians and non-Christians.  In this kind of cultural context, conversion is usually thought of as an event that we can pinpoint, often with the precision of date and time.  A lot of our evangelistic strategies in the West reflect a "bounded set" mentality - our goal is to get a person to assent to certain truths about the gospel, then pray to receive Christ.  For example, conservative Protestants believe very strongly that a person is saved by faith alone (sola fide), and would set this belief as a boundary.  A Roman Catholic who doesn't accept sola fide is generally considered to be outside of the boundary and thus is probably unsaved. Bounded-set thinking generally focuses on the question "what do you believe?"

The centred-set approach recommended by Hiebert defines a Christian as someone who has made Christ the centre of their life and is moving toward the centre.  The main question here is not "what do you believe?", but "who is your centre?"  This view requires that a person change direction by repenting of sin and turning toward Christ in faith, but does not demand that a person assent to a list of very clear doctrinal distinctives before being accepted into the Christian community.  According to this view, a conservative Protestant who believes strongly in sola fide might view a Roman Catholic as a brother or sister in Christ who simply has a significant doctrinal flaw.  The main issue would be whether they have repented and believed in Jesus, not whether they have pristine Evangelical theology.  (For that matter, I would argue that a large number of self-professing Evangelicals have a semi-Pelagian view of salvation and a modalist view of the Trinity).  This centred-set approach has obvious advantages for cross-cultural missions, where syncretism is always a huge challenge.  ('Syncretism' simply defined is the mixing of Christian beliefs with elements of pagan culture).  If cross-cultural missionaries waited for new converts to have perfect theology (at least as we define it in the West), it might take years to baptize a new convert or to entrust a person with any position of leadership within the local church.  For this reason, we've tended to hold two standards, a high standard of doctrinal purity for the average North American who converts to Christianity, and a much lower standard of doctrinal purity for everyone else in the  non-Western world.  Most missional thinkers also like to point out the fact that we've failed to recognize the extent to which Western Christianity has been affected by syncretism over the past 1600 years.  We tend to assume that the Western expression of Christianity is the standard against which we ought to measure everything else.  This was a particular problem in 19th and 20th century missions endeavours as the Western church exported certain cultural distinctives in addition to the gospel message.  Missions in many cases was an expression of Colonialism and Western superiority, even if the missionaries were well intentioned.

Missional thinkers contend that we now live in a "post-Christian" age in the West, when Christendom no longer holds a privileged position in society.  Fifty years ago, most non-believers in North America bought into the Judeo-Christian worldview, even if they rejected Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Most North Americans believed in the God of the Bible and accepted Biblical morality as the normative pattern for society.  With the advent of "post-modernism" and relativism, all of this is changing - if you don't believe me, come to Montreal and we'll talk with some students together!!  We can no longer assume that the people around us share our basic worldview.  This means that we North American Christians are now cross-cultural missionaries in our own society, and as such, will deal increasingly with the challenge of syncretism in our ministries. Most missional thinkers believe that the centred-set approach which is now generally accepted on the mission field, ought to be used here in North America too given the dramatic cultural shifts we are currently experiencing.  In other words, the dichotomy between "evangelism" here in the so-called "Christian West" and "missions" somewhere far away among the heathen is no longer valid.  We must all begin viewing ourselves as cross-cultural missionaries.

Before you come to the conclusion that I've gone "emergent" and joined ranks with Brian McClaren and Rob Bell, I want to alleviate your concerns.  I'm simply wrestling with some of these ideas and haven't come to any definite conclusions.  I'm also not trying to say that doctrine isn't important- anyone who knows me well knows where I stand on this issue!  I believe we are living in a time where sound doctrine is more important than ever!   I'm very curious to know what other people think about some of the ideas I've raised in these blogs, so please feel free to comment, push back or add your own thoughts.

Happy Reformation Day!

The Reformation Day Polka 

(tune of Superkalifragelistikespialidocius)

When I was just ein junger Mann I studied canon law;
While Erfurt was a challenge, it was just to please my Pa.
Then came the storm, the lightning struck, I called upon Saint Anne,
I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augustinian! Oh…

Chorus:
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let’s start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!


When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St. Peter’s profits soared,
I wrote a little notice for the All Saints’ Bull’tin board:
“You cannot purchase merits, 'cause we’re justified by grace!
Here’s 95 more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!” Oh…

Chorus:
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let’s start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!


They loved my tracts, adored my wit, all were exempleror;
The Pope, however, hauled me up before the Emperor.
“Are these your books? Do you recant?” King Charles did demand,
“I will not change my Diet, Sir, God help me here I stand!” Oh…

Chorus:
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation -
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let’s start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!
 
Duke Frederick took the Wise approach, responding to my words,
By knighting “George” as hostage in the Kingdom of the Birds.
Use Brother Martin’s model if the languages you seek,
Stay locked inside a castle with your Hebrew and your Greek! Oh…

Chorus:
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation -
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let’s start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

Let’s raise our steins and Concord Books while gathered in this place,
And spread the word that ‘catholic’ is spelled with lower case;
The Word remains unfettered when the Spirit gets his chance,
So come on, Katy, drop your lute, and join us in our dance! Oh…

Chorus:
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation -
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let’s start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

The Responsibility of Christian Parents

Its official now.... there will soon be another little Bellingham running around our apartment - only this one has two X chromosomes :)  The ultrasound confirmed what both Les and I were both hoping for - a healthy little girl who is due to arrive sometime in March.

The joy of parenthood always brings with it the weight of responsibility since parenthood is a sacred stewardship from the Lord.  I was reminded of this truth a couple weeks ago as I re-read the preface to the Westminster Confession of Faith which was addressed to Christian parents and written by one of my favorite  Puritan pastors - Thomas Manton.   The Puritan ideal was for the family to function as a little 'church' with the father ministering as the pastor:  "Families are societies that must be sancitifed to God as well as Churches; and the governors of them have as truly a charge of the souls that are therein, as pastors have of the Churches."   In the seventeenth-century Christian families didn't have the luxury of delegating their responsibilities to the local church - there was no Sunday School, no Children's Church, no Awana and no Pioneer Clubs.  The primary responsibility for Christian nurture and Christian Education fell squarely on the shoulders of mom and dad.  On this point Manton is crystal clear: "A family is the seminary of Church and State; and if children be not well principled there, all miscarrieth:  a fault in the first concoction is not mended in the second; if youth be bred ill in the family, they prove ill in Church and Commonwealth."  Recognizing the critical importance of the family, Manton lamented the fact that many Christian parents did not take their family duties seriously: "But while negligent ministers are (deservedly) cast out of their places, the negligent masters of families take themselves to be almost blameless...This covenant-breaking with God, and betraying the souls of their children to the devil, must lie heavy on them here or hereafter.  They beget children, and keep families, merely for the world and the flesh:  but little consider what a charge is committed to them, and what it is to bring up a child for God, and govern a family as a sanctified society."  It may be surprising to us today, but Confessional Statements and Catechisms, which hardly see the light of day in most Evangelical churches, were written in large part for the benefit of parents so that they could instruct themselves in basic systematic theology and in turn instruct their children.  Manton goes on to write:  "I do therefore desire, that all masters of families would first study well [this Confession] themselves, and then teach it their children and servants, according to their several capacities.  And, if they once understand these grounds of religion, they will be able to read other books more understandingly, and hear sermons more profitably, and confer more judiciously, and hold fast the doctrine of Christ more firmly , than ever you are like to do by any other course." 

Of course the idea of teaching theology to our children didn't originate with the Puritans - it was God's command to the children of Israel before they entered the promised land:  "Hear therefore  O Israel:  The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  You shall love the LORD your God  with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  Your shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise."  Deut 6:4-7.   The Bible is full of pithy confessional statements which were memorized and passed down from generation to generation.  Perhaps the most profound theological statement on the character of God in the entire Bible was first revealed in Deut 34:6 and recurs again and again, most notably in the last chapter of Jonah:  "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness".   What a treasure God has given us to pass on to the next generation!

Although there is certainly no one right way to teach spiritual truth to children, Leslie and I have found a Catechism to be a helpful tool as we've been working with Daniel.  Reformed Baptists, like Presbyterians have a Confessional heritage that goes back to the seventeenth-century.  To be sure Catechisms and Confessions are not inspired or inerrant and should never take the place of Scripture in our homes.  If you'd like to try using a Catechism with your kids, I'd recommend the following which has been edited by Dr. Tom Nettles (currently a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) and is based on Benjamin Keach's Baptist Catechism.  Click Here  

Re-thinking Mission - Part 2

In my first post on this subject I gave ashort introduction to the contemporary Missional Movement which contends that 'mission' is primarily an attribute of God rather than a task delegated to the Church.  The late South African missiologist David Bosch summarized the paradigm shift well when he wrote: "There is church because there is mission, not vis versa".  This expanded view of mission is commonly referred to as the missio Dei, which simply means the "mission of God".  The God of the Bible is a missional God who has called into existence a community composed of redeemed individuals to join Him in His mission.  The missio Dei finds its primary Scriptural basis in John 20:21 where Jesus says to His disciples: "As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you".  Just as the Father sent the Son to redeem and the Father and Son sent the Spirit to indwell and empower, so the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have called out a community composed of redeemed individuals and sent them to bear witness to the Kingdom of God which has come in the person and work of Jesus Christ and is still coming in greater fullness.  If mission is an essential attribute of God and by extension, an essential attribute of the called-out community, then it cannot be a "temporary necessity" as John Piper has argued.  The Church will continue to be a missional and 'evangelizing' community in the eschaton just as God will continue to be missional indefinitely.

If you're anything like me, that last sentence will probably sound a bit confusing.  How can there possibly be mission and evangelism once the final judgment has fallen?  How can God be 'missional' once the Great Commission has been fulfilled and we are reigning with Christ in the New Jerusalem?  I've been wrestling with questions like these as I've engaged with Barth and some of the more contemporary missional literature over the past few months. According to missiologist Darrell L. Guder, the confusion arises because we Evangelicals have by and large minimized and reduced the gospel message to matters of personal salvation, felt needs, and life after death.  Most of us who have grown up in Conservative circles have been trained to think of the 'gospel' as a message that needs to be shared with non-believers.  In most Evangelical churches and para-church ministries the question "did you share the gospel?" usually means "did you make it clear for the non-believer how they could be saved and have eternal life?"  A "gospel presentation" is therefore defined very narrowly as a verbal declaration consisting of three or four truth propositions followed by an altar call or an invitation to "receive Christ".  Guder has challenged my own thinking on this particular topic in his book The Continuing Conversion of the Church:  "If the Christian community is to carry out its mission of gospel witness, then its evangelization will be directed both to itself and to the world into which it is sent.  We need to free our language and our thinking from the idea that evangelistic ministry is only directed to nonbelievers… Evangelizing churches are churches that are being evangelized." (p. 26)  If the 'gospel' is simply a matter of personal salvation and its benefits then John Piper is right on target – mission is indeed a temporary necessity that will one day pass away.  But if we define the gospel more broadly, taking into account its cosmic scope (cf. Col 1:20) and using the Kingdom terminology which permeates the New Testament  (but is conspicuously missing from nearly all of our evangelistic materials!), then perhaps we also need to broaden our concept of evangelism and mission.

Proponents of the Missional Movement are not suggesting that we stop proclaiming the message of salvation to non-believers. On the contrary, Barth is very strong on this point!  What they are suggesting, however, is that there is a need for us to expand (and possibly to correct) our definition of the gospel and our conception of mission and evangelism.

C.H. Spurgeon and Isaac Watts on 2 Tim 2:3

 "Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.  No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him"  2 Tim 2:3

 "Paul does not appear to have pictured true believers as sluggards sound asleep upon the downiest beds; his description of a Christian in the text is that of a soldier, and that means something very far different either from a religious fop, whose best delight is music and millinery, or a theological critic who makes a man an offender for a word, or a spiritual glutton who cares for nothing but a lifelong enjoyment of the fat things full of marrow, or an ecclesiastical slumberer who longs only for peace for himself. He represents him as a soldier and that, I say, is quite another thing. For what is a soldier? A soldier is a practical man, a man who has work to do, and hard, stern work. He may sometimes when he is at his ease wear the fineries of war, but when he comes to real warfare he cares little enough for them; the dust and the smoke, and the garments rolled in blood, these are for those who go a soldiering; and swords all hacked, and dented armor, and bruised shields, these are the things that mark the good, the practical soldier. Truly to serve God, really to exhibit Christian graces, fully to achieve a life-work for Christ, actually to win souls, this is to bear fruit worthy of a Christian. A soldier is a man of deeds, and not of words. He has to contend and fight. In war times his life knows little of luxurious ease. In the dead of night perhaps the trumpet sounds to boot and saddle, just at the time when he is most weary, and he must away to the attack just when he would best prefer to take his rest in sleep. The Christian is a soldier in an enemy’s country always needing to stand on his watchtower, constantly to be contending, though not with flesh and blood, with far worse foes, namely, with spiritual wickedness in high places."

C.H. Spurgeon (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol 16, 1870)
 

Am I a Soldier of the Cross?  - Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

1. Am I a soldier of the cross,
 a follower of the Lamb,
 and shall I fear to own his cause,
 or blush to speak his name?

2. Must I be carried to the skies
 on flowery beds of ease,
 while others fought to win the prize,
 and sailed through bloody seas?

3. Are there no foes for me to face?
 Must I not stem the flood?
 Is this vile world a friend to grace,
 to help me on to God?

4. Sure I must fight, if I would reign;
 increase my courage, Lord.
 I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
 supported by thy word.

5. Thy saints in all this glorious war
 shall conquer though they die;
 they see the triumph from afar,
 by faith they bring it nigh.

6. When that illustrious day shall rise,
 and all thy armies shine
 in robes of victory through the skies,
 the glory shall be thine.

Re-thinking Mission - Part 1

Back in May, one of my profs suggested that I read a few books on the more recent trends in missiology before resuming campus ministry in Montreal.  I took him up on the challenge and have been working my way through a number of books written from scholars and ministry practitioners from within the contemporary "missional movement". Although I would never have chosen to read these books on my own, they have really challenged and stimulated my thinking about missions and evangelism. I was also fascinated to discover that these contemporary discussions about mission have been fueled by the 20th century Swiss theologian Karl Barth.  Barth has been a personal interest of mine for the past couple years even though I strongly disagree with him on a number of points (ie. his doctrine of Scripture and his Christological reworking of the doctrine of election).  In my own opinion, its unfortunate that so many North American Evangelicals have thrown the baby out with the bathwater by either ignoring Barth altogether or by writing him off as a liberal wolf in sheep's clothing.  In spite of Barth's cool reception in America, he has been enormously influential among the Evangelical community worldwide.

Barth, who was trained in the classical Liberal tradition, turned the theological world upside down with the publication of his commentary on Romans just after WWI.  Fed up with the anthropomorphic theology coming from Schleiermacher and 19th century higher critics, he reasserted in no uncertain terms the transcendence of God - ie. the fact that God is "wholly other".  Barth agreed with the conclusions of the German anthropologist (and atheist) Ludwig Feuerbach who saw the God of the Liberals as nothing more than the outward projection of man's inward nature.  For Feuerbach, the God of the Liberals was man and man was God. Barth was determined to distance himself from the humanistic theology described by Feuerbach and to chart a new course in a conservative direction.  This theological movement has come to be labeled as "Neo-Orthodoxy" although the mature Barth openly described his theology as 'Evangelical'.  As his career progressed and his theology matured, Barth vigourously opposed all forms of natural or general revelation and insisted above all that we cannot know God apart from His Word - the second person of the Trinity.  This is the central theme of all of Barth's writing and the key to understanding him- "Who and what God is in truth, and who and what humanity, we have not to explore and construct by roving freely far and near, but to read it where the truth about both dwells, in the fullness of their union, their covenant, that  fullness which manifests itself in Jesus Christ." ('The Humanity of God')  To boil down the essence of Barth's theology in a single sentence:  If you want to know who God is and what He is like, look no further than Jesus Christ, the living Word of God.

So what in the world does this have to do with mission??  Well, the mission of Jesus during His earthly ministry gives us insight into the nature of the Triune God ad intra (from within Himself).  To state the matter more formally, we need to begin with the 'economic Trinity' as revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ and  work backward to the 'ontological Trinity'. Mission, in this paradigm, is not simply an activity God wants the Church to do, but it is more fundamentally a description of who He is in His very nature or essence. The God of the Bible was, is and always will be a 'missionary God'.  For most of Church history "missions" has been thought of as a subset of ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church).  Most of us in the Evangelical community still think of mission this way, viz. as a task to be completed by the Church rather than as an attribute of God Himself.  Contemporary Evangelical missiologists following in the footsteps of Barth are challenging this paradigm by placing "missions" within a distinctly Trinitarian framework.  This is a radical shift in the way that we conceive of mission:  the Church exists because of mission and not the other way around.

So is mission simply a means to an end and a 'temporary necessity' as John Piper has argued in his book Let the Nations be Glad??   In a very popular quotation on missions Piper writes: "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church.  Worship is.  Missions exists because worship doesn't.  Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.  When this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more.  It is a temporary necessity.  But worship abides forever."   The problem with this quotation according to one Evangelical missiologist I spoke with last week, is that Piper (and Evangelicals like me who like to quote him on this topic) are still treating missions as a "task" to be completed by the Church rather than as part of the essential nature of God.  

I'll continue this discussion in my next few posts.