Hi all,
I’m new to all of this, so please forgive me if I say anything untoward. I’ve just read your ‘rules of engagement’, and I’m a bit puzzled by the sentence that ‘Biblical and theological scholarship will have to subordinate itself to the missiological imperative’.
My problems’ this: If we do subordinate everything to this imperative, then I think we end up with an unending loop that makes it impossible to understand who we are or what mission is.
If theology is the intellectual expression of the community, and if theology is subordinate to mission, then the community is subordinate to mission. But then, if mission is about bringing people into the community, that would mean that everything in the community is subordinate to bringing people into the community.
But I don’t think this can be right. For if then I ask ‘Why does the community do mission?’, then the answer must be ‘to bring people into the community’. But if the community is to be primarily defined in terms of mission, then ‘to bring people into the community’ means primarily ‘to get them to do mission’. But then the answer to the question ‘Why does the community do mission?’ must be ‘to get more people to do mission’. Which is to say: we do mission to bring about more mission to bring about more mission to bring about more mission … ad infinitum.
But then, who are we? - The people that do mission. - But what is mission? - What we do to make people like us. - But what does ‘like us’ mean? - It means to be people who do mission.
On such an understanding, we can make sense neither of the community nor of its mission.
But, of course, we can in fact make sense of mission and of the community. Surely then there has to be something in the community which is more fundamental than mission, and to which mission is subordinate, or which mission reflects. And surely this has to be worship, thanksgiving and communion with God and with each other (‘communion’ meant here as authentic being-together, not as magic). Surely mission must then be a reflection of the characteristic openness and hospitality of this being-together, an openness and hospitality which reflects the being of God for us?
But if mission is subordinate to (or a manifestation of) this being-together, then theology about this being-together cannot be subordinate to a missiological imperative, but in fact must have a priority over it?
It seems to me that theological understanding of who we are (together) has to have priority over theological understanding of mission to the world?
In ICXC,
M
What is mission
I’m glad we could find our point of disagreement so easily. :) I would not say that mission is to bring people into the community. That is a community-focused understanding of mission, and is ultimately selfish - we are doing this for the sake of our community, for ourselves.
Neither is it to make people more like us, unless we have in some sense "arrived". I don’t know about you, but I’m very aware that I’m still travelling. If someone wants to be like me, they’re on a fool’s errand. I want them to be like Jesus, and if they want, we can try getting there together.
Mission has to be God-focused. I believe you have to start with the understanding that mission is not our thing, it is God’s thing. Chris Wright’s latest Grove note on missiological reading of Scripture is big on this. (And I look forward rather eagerly to his forthcoming book on the subject!)
Mission is what God has been doing since creation to bring people not into some gated community but into communion with Himself. We are merely privileged to be instruments in what He’s doing and how He is doing it. The fellowship that comes through mission is a nice side-effect, but it’s not the goal of mission.
The goal of mission is the feedback loop between God and the world, which opens with His imperative in reaching out to the world, and closes with the world’s response to His reaching out.
I’m in favour of subordinating everything to a missiological imperative. It’s what God’s doing, after all… :)
Re: What is mission
hmmm… still not sure.
I agree that mission’s not about bringing people into a ‘gated community’ (a good phrase!), and certainly agree absolutely with the opposition of that sort of community to communion.
But I’m not sure about the way you’re using the word ‘community’. When you speak about mission being not community-focused but God-focused, and speak about a community-focus as being (selfishly) focused on us and not on God, or when you oppose community to communion and align community with ‘fellowship’ then I’m a bit uncomfortable.
Communion with God surely is at the same time communion with each other - how can I be in communion with God and alienated from my brother? When I’m talking about ‘community’ I mean the social expression of this communion with God and each other. So community in my sense entails precisely the absence of self-enclosing ‘gates’ - the sociologically-apparent ‘limits’ of the community are not drawn from within the community. So I can’t accept any of these oppositions.
So also then, in speaking about mission, I didn’t mean that the purpose of mission is to bring people into a ‘gated community’, but rather - speaking in terms of unity - that it is precisely the active seeking of unity with people with whom we are at present separated.
And that is not about trying to coerce people to share our faults and defects; it is about being one with them in communion (authentic being-together). Or, if one were to use the language of ‘journey’, I’d be saying that mission is about bringing people to see the fundamental need of making the journey from alienation from to union with him, and that we all make this journey together - even though we are all at different stages, it is the same journey, and I don’t need to have arrived at the destination to want others to travel the same journey as I am.
But I’m not sure that beyond that we’re disagreeing about anything other than terminology. When you say that the ‘goal of mission’ is the ‘feedback loop’ between God and the world, then - although it’s maybe not the way I’d put it - I’m perfectly happy to agree. Because then mission for something which is not the same thing as mission. Like saying the purpose of driving a car is to get to the destination, so that the driving of the car is not the same thing as the destination, so mission is not the same thing as the feedback loop which is what it is done for.
But that would bring me back to my initial query. For the goal of a journey is the destination, so that it is from the destination that the journey gets its meaning, so that the journey is secondary to the destination. Likewise, on this understanding, the goal of mission is the feedback loop, so that it is from the feedback loop that mission has its meaning, so that mission is secondary to the feedback loop. So then theology about the feedback loop can’t properly be subordinated to missiology. In fact, quite the reverse.
But if, OTOH, you identify mission with the ‘feedback loop’, then I think my point still stands. For then it seems to me that you’re identifying ‘mission’ with the whole divine economy. But then you can’t subordinate theology to missiology, because then theology will just be missiology (if theology is a community-activity and not a speculative metaphysic). And then I don’t see how theology and missiology can be legitimately distinguished. But it was on the presupposition that there was a legitimate distinction between them that I raised my query.
In ICXC,
M
Re: What is mission
Maximus, in the original statement in the Rules of Engagement (which are probably in need of updating anyway) it was not ‘everything’ or ‘theology’ that I suggested should be subordinated to the ‘missiological imperative’ but scholarship:
It may well be that the point is overstated, but the issue here has to do with the nature and degree of interaction between scholarship and ordinary (or ‘popular’) Christian discourse. My suggestion was a quite straightforward one - that we will do a better job of integrating theology vertically if we keep our eyes on the ‘practical purpose’ of theology. By ‘missiological imperative’ I mean something like the ‘vocation’ of the church to be God’s people in the fullest sense, embracing its orientation towards both God and the world.
Perhaps ‘missiological’ is a confusing word to use here, but it is valuable nevertheless as a corrective to the narcissism, navel-gazing, nit-picking and nervousness that were infecting many parts of the church in the West.
To address the broader issue that is raised in these comments, we could argue - in postmodern fashion - for a contextual or contingent subordination of theology to mission, without making this an absolute theoretical arrangement.
Re: What is mission
Dear Andrew,
From what you say, I think perhaps I have misread your original comment (taking ‘theological scholarship’ to mean ‘theology’ simpliciter).
I agree with your position vis-a-vis avoiding any sort of disengaged scholastic or textbook theology - theology has to remain true to its being, which it has only in the Church, which exists in its outward-facing orientation to the world within the divine economy (or something like that).
In ICXC,
M
Re: What is mission
Maybe we are disagreeing on terminology, and this is obscuring the main point that I was trying to make! Let me start with a (rather controversial) definition: mission is (a) what God does in reaching out to the world, (which is everything that God does!) and secondarily (b) what we are privileged to participlate in by reaching out to the world in His name. (If you want a justification for such a definition, you can grab that Chris Wright note or David Bosch’s "Transforming Mission")
With this definition you must subordinate theology to missiology, because we understand the missionary God through the ways He has reached out to us. This makes sense, if you think about it - we experience God not in a vacuum as an object on which to perform experiments, but through our interaction with Him, and that interaction is mission.
So this means that Biblical theology, for instance, is the understanding of the record of God’s reaching out to the world; systematic theology is a way to arrange the revelations of God that we have experienced through His missionary behaviour toward us; and so on.
The important part is that it takes the focus off of us and onto God - which, I hope, is where you’d agree it ought to be.
Re: What is mission
I think if you can speak about the immanent processions of the Son and Holy Spirit as being ‘missions’, then you can speak of the creating and saving activity of God in the world as ‘mission’ too, just as long as the clear distinction between these differing sorts of ‘mission’ is maintained.
But I still don’t agree about your subordination of theology to missiology.
In general, the fact that we know X by Y does not entail that the discourse which properly concerns X must be subordinate to the discourse that properly concerns Y. The fact, for example, that we know about physical being through sensory experience does not mean that all physics is a sub-branch of human biology. For different discourses are demarcated by their subject-matter, not the means by which we know that subject-matter. Accordingly they are ranked by the relation of their subject-matters, not by the means by which these subject-matters are known.
And since God in himself is ontologically prior to his ‘mission’ to the world - on the grounds that mission is not necessary for the divine being but rather flows from the divine being - that means that missiology is subordinate to theology, not vice versa.
More specifically, if God makes himself known in his ‘mission’, and if this is the only way we know God, then theology is not subordinate to ‘missiology’; rather, ‘theology’ IS ‘missiology’ (or, at least, a branch of it). And a discourse cannot be subordinate to itself.
Alternatively, if God does not make himself known, but makes known that from which we can infer his own being, then theology is not subordinate to missiology either, but rather transcends missiology, since it argues from missiological premises to conclusions whose domain lies beyond the bounds of missiology (namely God-in-himself).
I don’t know if we’re really disagreeing materially here about theological content (although I think we do disagree about how to discriminate and order discourses). But I just don’t think that using the word ‘mission’ in this way is helpful. It is a non-standard usage in English and in theology, and I can’t see how it helps by talking like this.
Lastly, you say that the focus should be off ourselves and onto God. I don’t agree with that either. For surely it is very important that we come to understand ourselves and the world around us in the light of Christ. Part of living a Christian life is precisely paying attention to how we are living ourselves and in deliberately acting in a Christian manner, and seeking, in the Spirit, to conform ourselves to the image of Christ. Here it is not a question of either/or - of focusing on ourselves OR God - but of focusing on God AND on ourselves and the world in God.
In ICXC,
M
Re: What is mission
You all might appreciate a good laugh.
Here’s a link to a really funny article. It is at subversiveminds.com this week.