Mission and the priority of the gospel

Chapter One

The nations and mission in Jonah

Nearly every book or article written on Jonah will deal to some degree with the question of mission, and for good reason: almost everyone recognizes that the events described in the book have some relation to God’s plan to bless the world through the seed of Abram (Gen. 12:1–3), a plan that runs like a thread through the OT. James Ware’s statement is typical of most views of the OT’s consistency on this point: ‘the Hebrew Scriptures reveal a fundamental, widespread and intense interest in Gentiles and their conversion to the God of Israel’ (Ware 2005: 90). But not everyone agrees on exactly where Jonah’s teaching on mission fits into the line that runs at least from Abraham to the NT church and its global mission.

A key question that divides interpreters is whether the OT merely presents a universal horizon for God’s future work of blessing the Gentiles savingly (i.e. universalism), or whether it also inculcates mission on Israel’s part, which we can tentatively define as transmission of God’s self-revelation to others with a view toward their conversion. Another point of contention is how we ought to define the term ‘mission’ itself. Is the OT simply describing what God will do through Israel’s behaviour, which is to exhibit God’s character and serve as the focus of his actions (Deut. 4:6; 28:9–10), or is the OT also on occasion prescribing what Israelites are to do above and beyond their national existence, then and there, for the salvation of the nations around them (Ps. 9:11)? As we set out to follow Jonah’s voyages and God’s actions in and through them, we need to define mission as clearly as possible, recognizing that the word itself does not appear in Scripture, but that it refers to a concept that is there in a variety of ways. To do so, we will begin with the general question of Israel’s relationship to the nations, and then narrow our focus to her responsibility toward them as God’s representative.

Universalism

Here, at least, there is consensus: God’s plan of redemption has, in his mercy, always been global in scope. God’s first action after eliciting confessions of guilt from Adam and Eve after they had eaten from the forbidden tree was to promise his unsolicited aid in reconciling humankind to himself (Gen. 3:14–15). Addressed to the first human couple, this promise also presents in very brief scope God’s plan to work through a portion of humanity in order to defeat the serpent, which embodied and symbolized evil and opposition to God and his will. The immediately preceding context of Genesis 3:15 makes clear that the root problem is that humanity is condemned to death because of its sin and consequent unrighteousness. Thus the problem that the seed is going to fix is clear and implies certain criteria for the one fixing the problem, without specifying who he is or how he will do so. The context is suggestive, however, in that as Adam has just sinned, another (sinless) Adam-figure is needed to provide renewed access to life and rest.

The perspective widens even further in the Noahic covenant, which establishes the global stage on which God’s redemptive actions will be realized. When God’s promise later focuses on Abram in Genesis 12, it still explicitly includes in its scope ‘all the families of the earth’ (Gen. 12:3). Likewise the Sinai covenant, though it continues the focus on ethnic Israel (now a newly constituted nation) that began with the covenant with Abram, also includes the nations in the fundamental calling of Israel to act as a ‘kingdom of priests’ in Exodus 19:4–6.

A closer look at Exodus 19:4–6

This last passage is significant because of its programmatic nature, and so obliges a closer look. A number of studies have been devoted to the expressions used in 19:5–6 to describe Israel’s status as God’s ‘special possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation’. In order to understand better this unique group of phrases, we need to take into account its literary context and the very similar expressions found in the covenant ratification ceremony in Exodus 24:1–11 and the priestly ordination in Exodus 29 (cf. also Lev. 8; 14). Following is the central portion of God’s initial address to Israel:

Now, if you will truly listen to my voice, and keep my covenant, then you will be to me a treasured possession from among all the peoples, though all the earth is mine, and you will be a nation of priests and a holy nation. (Exod. 19:5–6a)

The context of Exodus 19:4–6 is the announcement of God’s intention to establish a covenant with Israel. This unique relationship will be formalized, first, in establishing her status as Yahweh’s ‘special treasure’. Israel is to be unique with respect to ‘all the other peoples’ (19:5b) and to the world itself. This emphasis on Israel’s distinctiveness is reinforced by the placement of a personal pronoun that is unnecessary in Hebrew syntax at the beginning of verse 6, so that the passage could be translated, ‘you will be my special treasure from among all the peoples, though all the earth is mine. You, however, will be. . .’

Durham’s extensive survey of the next phrase, ‘nation of priests’, shows the wide range of understandings advanced for it as of the 1980s, and since then still more have appeared. If the text is taken as is, with ‘nation’ as a noun in construct with ‘priests’, the general sense is clear: Israel is a kingdom that is priestly in nature. If she fulfils the terms of the covenant (note the ‘if’ at the beginning of 19:5), she will consequently become priestly in function. But what does ‘priestly’ mean in this context?

The best way to determine what Israel’s national priesthood might look like is to consider the Levitical priesthood, since it is the closest context that explains ‘priesthood’, and since the Levitical priesthood serves as a model for the nation (cf. Exod. 28 – 29; Lev. 8 – 9). Even though not every Israelite was a Levitical priest (cf. Num. 16), ‘the Levitical priesthood as portrayed in Exodus is seen not as diminishing or supplanting the collective royal priesthood, but as providing a visual model of that vocation, and secondly as facilitating it’ (J. A. Davies 2002: 158–159). R. K. Duke summarizes the Levitical priests’ responsibilities as custodians of the cult (including teaching Torah and interpreting cultic boundaries in the spheres of time, space and status), agents of divine blessing, holiness and purity (as purifiers of sin and uncleanness, spokespersons for God, judges and participants in warfare), and supervisors of cult objects (moving, guarding and administrating cultic paraphernalia and practices). If one transfers those functions to the national level, it appears that although the vast majority of Israelites had no priestly function in the nation’s cult, they could convey to the nations around them through its operation the essence of their religion, especially Yahweh’s holy character and his gracious provision of atonement for sin.

Israel could also demonstrate to the nations around her the goodness of life in covenant with God and the unparalleled excellence of his law (Deut. 4:6). This constitutes the last description of her calling, to be a ‘holy nation’. We can even see these two elements of her calling (priestly function and holiness) as interrelated. Israel’s relational holiness, in which she is set apart by and for Yahweh at Sinai (Exod. 19:4), serves as the basis for God’s call for her to obey him by living in ethical holiness (Exod. 19:5), which is an indicative– imperative pair (what one is, and what one is to do in consequence of that identity) quite similar to that in the NT’s epistles. The ethical holiness that God required of Israel, in turn, was central and even necessary to her calling as a kingdom of priests, since the nations were to see God’s law and character in her behaviour.

Any attempt to define Israel’s relationship to the nations solely on the basis of Exodus 19:4–6 is bound to cause problems, however. Not only is the text quite brief, but major themes like Israel’s relationship to the other nations come to full expression only across the entirety of the OT. For the moment it is hard to be more precise than to say that Israel’s role as a nation of priests presupposed her ethical holiness, had a bearing on the nations around her and was bound up with God’s plan to bring redemption to all the nations through her. Further clarity must come from elsewhere.

The nations

Since an adequate understanding of Israel’s priestly role among the nations requires more content than Exodus 19 alone can provide, we have to adopt a wider perspective on the nature of her relationship with them. In doing so we will come to see that several aspects of the historical relationship between the people of God and non-Israelites in the OT are interrelated. The first, which is initially predominant in Israel’s history, is God’s conflict with the fallen world, symbolized especially by ‘the nations’ as distinct from, and indeed opposed to, Israel. Significantly, this conflict appears even before Israel exists, in the Garden of Eden, once humanity falls into sin. There the two conflicting parties are the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, an opposition somewhat clarified when Cain kills Abel, and again when Seth is born as ‘another seed’ (Gen. 4:25) and his line continues through the flood in the family of Noah. Noah’s blessing of Shem once again narrows the focus of redemptive expectation (Gen. 9:26), and it is to Abram, a descendent of Shem, that God reveals in more detail his plan to re-establish his righteousness while demonstrating his grace in astounding ways, beginning in Genesis 12.

God and the nations at odds

Once God singles out Abram and his seed, the enmity announced in Genesis 3 appears in Abram’s interaction with foreign rulers (Gen. 14, 20) and becomes characteristic of Israel’s life among the nations. From Egypt in Moses’ day (Exod. 12:12), to the Canaanites some decades later, and to the Assyrians and Babylonians of the first millennium, only on rare occasions (and mainly during Solomon’s reign) is national Israel at peace with the nations around her. Furthermore, in the context of the Davidic covenant this peace is legitimate only in so far as the nations submit to Yahweh’s righteous king (Pss 2; 72; 110).

After Israel’s united monarchy ends in 930 bc, it is not long before both kingdoms are violently subjugated by the great powers of their day, Israel by Assyria in 722 and Judah by Babylon in 587. For those actions and many more like them, Israel’s prophets often write or speak about the judgment that awaits the nations, typically presenting them as Israel’s enemies (among many such passages, see Ezek. 25 – 32; Amos 1 – 2; Hab. 2; Joel 3). While in the OT this polarity is not absolute, one can still conclude that in the history recounted in the OT the nations play a fairly consistent role as God’s adversary in his conflict with evil.

God and his people at odds

One important point requires us to modify this pattern. While God is always the enemy of evil, and although that evil is often attached to the nations in the OT, he is no less its enemy when it appears in his own people. This divine commitment to exercise righteousness irrespective of the distinction between Israel and the Gentile nations is strikingly illustrated in the conquest of Canaan.

The conquest is in the first place God’s judgment on the sinful nations living there. God had promised to Abraham that his descendents would leave Egypt and take possession of Canaan once the iniquity of the Amorites was full (Gen. 15:16), and he gives success to Israel’s initial steps toward that goal (Josh. 24:12–13). In this way the conquest demonstrates God’s might to ‘all the peoples of the earth’ (Josh. 4:24), and closely resembles the flood, even echoing in Joshua 10:40, 11:11, 14 its language that ‘everything that breathed’ died (cf. Gen. 7:22).

But even though the conquest is the parade example of God’s using Israel to punish the sin of the nations, the same account makes clear that while Israel is in a unique covenant relationship with Yahweh, he will treat her as he did the Canaanites if she is unfaithful to him (Josh. 24:20, Lev. 26:33–39 and Deut. 28:32–57 give the covenantal basis for this). This threat is realized as early as Joshua 7 (after just one Canaanite city had fallen to Israel), when Achan and his household, condemned for transgressing the ban by stealing what belonged to Yahweh, were condemned by God through Joshua and punished with death by God’s direct order.

An important distinction

The national–individual distinction that appears in the punishment of Achan is also evident in Israel’s relation to individual Gentiles (as opposed to Gentile nations), whom she is commanded to love and care for (e.g. Exod. 22:21; 23:9; Lev. 19:10, 33; 23:22; 24:22; 25:35; Deut. 10:19; 24:14, 17, 19–21). When Israel does not enjoy the basic necessities that enable her to accommodate foreigners, as in the post-exilic period when Jerusalem and its religious infrastructure were for some time incomplete and therefore vulnerable, Israel as a corporate body can properly take a more defensive posture. But the gracious and compassionate behaviour of individual Israelites toward individual Gentiles is never optional, and its violation entails a variety of punishments (Exod. 22:23; Deut. 14:29; 24:19). This individual– corporate distinction, which applies to both Israelites and Gentiles, appears consistently throughout the OT and eventually becomes part of the NT’s elimination of the ethnically based corporate distinction between the two groups.

God at odds with Israel and the nations in the Old Testament

God’s commitment to his people and his opposition to the nations, neither of which excludes his opposition to sinners within ethnic Israel, come together in a complex way over the course of Israel’s history. Almost from the beginning, Israel’s sin leads to her punishment by the nations, and over time her sin and its punishment become progressively worse. The initial possession of the land of Canaan is made difficult because of Israel’s failure to obey Yahweh (Judg. 1:1 – 2:5), something the book of Judges underlines by repeating the cycle of sinful Israel’s being punished by non-Israelites, her calling to God for help, being delivered and then enjoying temporary peace. Later, Solomon anticipates the deportation or exile of Israelites in his dedicatory prayer for the first temple (1 Kgs 8:46–53), and the nations serve as goads to Israel throughout the book of Kings until both Israel and Judah are exiled and their existence as nations comes to an end. Israel’s sin over these centuries progressively erodes her identity as God’s people, until she is literally absorbed into the nations. This partial effacing of her identity makes the ‘remnant’ a very prominent concept in the prophets as they foresee a radically new future for the people of God.

This significant erosion of the distinction between the descendants of Abraham and the Gentiles as the result of Israel’s sin indicates that ethnicity is not an absolute indicator of righteousness or religious privilege in the OT. While the fact that obviously wicked nations sometimes punished Israel and Judah led to consternation even on the part of the faithful (e.g. Habakkuk), it appears fre-quently enough in the OT that it cannot be exceptional or inexplicable. Further, this inchoate redefinition of Israel across her history is complemented by various eschatological passages in the OT that foretell the completion of this redefinition in the resolution of God’s conflict not with the nations per se (an ethnically determined category), but with the forces of unrighteousness that they represent (an anthropological or theological category). Depending on the context, this can mean either that not all of Israel is genuinely part of God’s people (Hos. 1:9–10; 2:23), or that non-Israelites are (Jer. 48:47, 49:6, 39 for Moab, Ammon and Elam, respectively). It is especially powerful when both concepts appear together, as in Amos 9.

The anticipation in prophetic eschatology that both Israel and the nations will come under God’s judgment, and that the nations will share in the salvation that comes to Israel, makes a simple opposition between the two categories increasingly difficult to maintain as the history of redemption unfolds. It is very clear in Amos, for example, that the relativizing of Israel’s national election was already well underway by the time of the earliest writing prophets, and it remains prominent through the exilic and post-exilic periods.

The resolution of God’s conflict with evil in the New Testament

In the NT this shift away from ethnic categories (i.e. a reconstitution of the people of God) comes to completion. For example, we see that the immediate benefits of Christ’s cross-work explored in Romans 1 – 5 incontrovertibly establish the priority of the categories of non-righteous/righteous over Jew/Gentile in soteriology (things relating to salvation). This redefinition of the people of God is paralleled by a similar redefinition of the nations in the NT: ‘the advent of Christ has brought a change in the relationship between Satan and the nations’, with Satan’s reign over them ended and the gospel announced to them directly without requiring their conversion to Judaism or membership in Israel as proselytes (Acts 14:15; 17:30) (Hughes 1976: 109–112). This shift is not limited to the events of the first century, but becomes permanent and lasts throughout the NT era and into Christ’s second coming. The depictions in the book of Revelation of the ultimate results of redemption from sin, or condemnation because of it, carefully define God’s people and the nations in supra-ethnic categories: the ‘nations’ that are punished, like those in Daniel 7, oppose not Israel but the ‘saints of God’.

Israel between universalism and mission

Centripetal

Returning to the historical presentation of the OT, we are faced with the complicated picture of an increasingly sinful Israel failing to witness to the nations around her. At the same time, we are told with increasing clarity that God’s eschatological judgment and salvation will redefine her and see the Gentiles grafted into her. And there is a further complication: even within Israel’s history, her relation to the nations contains both centrifugal–active and centripetal–passive aspects.

It is nearly certain that in the Sinai covenant God’s people corporately considered were called to maintain only an exemplary and attracting posture (‘centripetal’ mission) in regard to the nations around them (Exod. 19:5–6; Deut. 4:6; 28:9–10; 29:24). The biblical storyline bears out the very limited effectiveness of this centripetal approach, limited not simply because of the nations’ antipathy for Israel’s God but also because of Israel’s failure to act in accord with the covenant (recall the ‘if’ of Exod. 19:5). One convert made by this means, Rahab, heard (probably in summary form) that Yahweh’s exclusive claim to deity had been demonstrated in Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea and the conquest of the Amorite kings (Josh. 2:9–11) and came to faith on the basis of that knowledge, as demonstrated by her sending the spies home another way (Jas 2:25).

More numerous are examples of a more general (non-saving) blessing coming to the Gentiles through Israel. In the book of Genesis we find ‘multiple examples of the families of the earth being blessed directly through the mediation of the patriarchs and their looking to them as embodiments of divine blessing and as pointers to God’. Joseph is the vehicle for God’s blessing of Potiphar’s household (Gen. 39:5) and Jacob’s interview with the Pharaoh is framed by his surprisingly proactive blessing of him (Gen. 47:7–10). Moving forward in time, one notes the mixed crowd that left Egyptian slavery with Abraham’s descendants (Exod. 12:38), the widow of Zarephath in Sidon (1 Kgs 17; cf. Luke 4:26) and the generic foreigner mentioned in Solomon’s prayer at the temple dedication (1 Kgs 8:41–43). These examples show that Abraham’s descendants were used by God to bring blessing to the Gentiles, even if the reception of this blessing did not result in their conversion (cf. Gal. 3:14).

A complementary aspect of this centripetal transmission, meaning national Israel’s passive rather than active role in transmitting her knowledge of God, is the nature of Israel’s religious structure itself. Not only was Israel’s behaviour intended in itself to attract the nations to Israel so that they could learn of her God, but the result of their conversion would normally be to remain in Israel. This was due to the connection between Israelite faith and the Jerusalem temple (and consequently between Israel and the land of Canaan), where Yahweh manifested his presence in a special way and where all Israelite males were to worship three times a year (Deut. 16:16). While there are exceptions to this rule (Naaman being a notable one), the general trend in the OT sets Jerusalem up as ‘the gate of heaven for the whole world’.

This variety of messages, messengers and results prompts us to dig deeper into OT Israel’s role with respect to the nations. It is clear that she never corporately pursued what we would call missionary endeavours by sending messengers to other nations. In other words, while Israel’s centripetal role was corporate, there was no corresponding corporate responsibility to spread the good news of Yahweh among the nations (centrifugally and verbally). Yet we cannot ignore the historical instances in which Israel verbally conveys, or is commanded to convey, the news of Yahweh’s person and work to Gentiles. In what follows we will survey instances of written or oral transmission of Israel’s knowledge of Yahweh to Gentiles that are historical and so cannot be restricted to Israel’s eschatological future. Furthermore, given that they consist of communication, these speech acts cannot be described as passive, since in speaking or writing the speaker or author is doing something. Because the author intends to do something in communicating, the possibility of apprehending his meaning exists. Israel’s speech acts may, however, be centripetal if they are uttered within Israel (centripetal in performance) or if they call for the recipient to join Israel (centripetal in terms of the religious structure they propose; this corresponds roughly to the element of intention). In rare cases it is possible that Gentiles were themselves in Israelite or Judahite territory, and so would have heard more directly prophetic or other speech.

Centrifugal

Though it could have been introduced earlier, in the light of its development later in Scripture we will briefly look at God’s com-mission of and promise to Abram in Genesis 12:1–3 as the basis for Israel’s proactive centrifugal (outward-moving) mission to the nations. This passage forms the foundation for the covenant with Abraham and his descendants that is later ratified in Genesis 15 and 17, but our interest in mission justifies a closer focus on this first promise.

Coming after the ‘Table of Nations’ in Genesis 10 and the dispersal of the sinfully autonomous human race in Genesis 11, the section entitled ‘the account of Terah’ (Gen. 11:27 – 25:11) introduces a number of positive elements that chart the rapid development of God’s commitment to deal with human sin in justice and mercy. The direction that these gracious divine overtures will follow is set by the opening episode of the account of Abraham, in which God makes a very detailed promise to the patriarch (Gen. 12:2–3):

I will make you a great nation,

And I will bless you,

And I will make your name great,

And you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

But those who lightly esteem you I will curse.

So in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

The strong emphasis on blessing in this short section is a reminder of God’s commitment to undo the effects of sin that had already entailed a curse, and here God reveals that this blessing is to come through Abram’s line. How this is to happen is not immediately clear, since the verb that ends verse 2 is sometimes translated as an imperative (‘be a blessing’), other times as a simple future (‘you will be a blessing’), and the verb that ends 12:3 is sometimes translated as passive (‘will be blessed’), other times as reflexive (‘will bless themselves’). But these details are not so complex as to cloud the meaning of the passage. As C. J. H. Wright has noted (2006: 201), the difference in 12:2 between an imperative and a simple future is negligible in the light of the preceding divine commitments: Abram’s role as an instrument of blessing is the result of God’s actions first of all, so that the human element in the equation is decidedly secondary. Similarly, although the type of verb used in the closing element in 12:3 (niphal) can be passive, reflexive or middle, the context’s focus on divine agency again argues for blessing coming to the nations through the God who has revealed himself to Abram. We have good reason to say, therefore, that this blessing will deal with sin’s consequences and will be extended globally, affecting ‘all the families of the earth’ for good.

This passage is relevant both to the preceding discussion of Israel’s centripetal or passive role and to her proactive, centrifugal calling among the nations. Subsequent to this foundational passage in Genesis 12, we begin to see Abraham’s descendants verbalizing ‘to others the reality of Yahweh that they have experienced in their lives’, even if the reception of this message did not in every case result in their conversion. Sometimes (though hardly always), this testimony is received in a general way by those to whom the patriarchs bear witness, including Laban (Gen. 24:31, 50; 31:50, 53) and an Egyptian Pharaoh (41:39; cf. 40:8; 41:25–33). Some centuries later, Ruth makes Yahweh her only God after hearing of him through Israelites who temporarily left the land due to a famine (Ruth 1:16– 17; 2:11–12). Since in the ancient Near East ‘nations tended to be identified with their own distinctive patron deity’, Ruth’s affirmation to the Israelite Naomi that ‘Your people will be my people and your God my God’ shows her abandoning her gods and putting her trust in Yahweh alone. Still later, Naaman comes to revere Yahweh (2 Kgs 5:1–14; cf. Luke 4:27) through the testimony of a servant girl captured in Syrian raids and a subsequent prophetic miracle (2 Kgs 5:1–19). Though his non-observance of indigenous Aramean cults would probably be noticed unfavourably, Naaman twice commits to worshipping Yahweh exclusively (2 Kgs 5:15, 17) and probably takes Israelite soil with him in order to construct his own altar to Yahweh in Aram (cf. Exod. 20:24). Given the distinct ethnic and national identity that Israel was to maintain, it is not surprising that in all the examples just given this communication took place outside Israelite territory. It is also notable that this knowledge about Yahweh was transmitted by individual Israelites.

There appears to have been an element in Israel’s theology that found this type of communication normal and necessary, as these isolated passages, and especially the book of Psalms, show. The psalter contains a surprising number of imperatives to make Yahweh and his deeds known among the nations. There are also a smaller number of resolutions to do so (e.g. Ps. 57:10) and of wishes that it be so (e.g. Ps. 33:8). Additionally, several psalms address themselves to the nations (e.g. Ps. 66:1) or express the desire that the nations should hear of Yahweh’s works, but stop short of inculcating the centrifugal transmission of that message.

While other passages in the OT that describe Israel’s centrifugal missionary role are clearly eschatological (e.g. Isa. 56:3–8; 66:18–24), the presence in the psalter of obligation (in imperative verbs), desire (in jussive verbs) and intention (in future verbs) to communicate Yahweh’s glory to the nations, as well as occasional outright address to the nations, prevent us from limiting the import of these passages by saying they are merely liturgical. On the contrary, these passages describe Israelites ‘in real time’ and express existing realities, not eschatological anticipation. Thus in Psalm 18:49 // 2 Samuel 22:50, for example, David commits to giving thanks to God and singing praises to him among the Gentiles out of gratitude for God’s giving him superiority over both the nations and his enemies in Israel, Saul in particular. Similarly, in Psalm 96 Israel is commanded (with two imperatives, vv. 3, 10) to spread the news of God’s work among the nations.

Communication directed to non-Israelites also appears in the ‘oracles against the nations’, speeches in the prophetic books that address the sins of Gentile nations. Although at first glance it may seem odd to include oracles against the nations in a study of centrifugal mission in the OT, these oracles do more than announce the coming judgment of God on those ethnic groups who characteristically oppose him. Oracles against the nations also intend to persuade their audience that they ‘cannot escape Yahweh’s judgement by relying on their own resources’ (Raabe 1995: 248). Jeremiah 18:7–8 makes clear that threats of judgment could have the effect of creating repentance, and even after punishment a nation might ‘swear allegiance to Yahweh of Hosts’ (Isa. 19:18). Oracles against non-Israelite nations that are not clearly unconditional do not simply pronounce their doom without exception and without hope – they can open the door to repentance and deliverance, though whether this deliverance comes before or after the announced judgment is another question (this paradoxical reality is possible thanks to the biblical pattern of salvation coming through judgment). Only God’s historical acts of judgment against the ungodly cannot be construed as having a salvific aspect, but their place in redemptive history is essentially not in, but after, the gospel, if we understand the flood, conquest and similar events typologically.

We should also notice that Jonah is not the only example of a prophet who actually speaks his message to a non-Israelite audience. Andersen and Freedman remind us that ‘the prophets, from Elisha (2 Kgs 9) to Jeremiah (27:3 – which lists four of the six nations charged by Amos) delivered oracles to, not just about, other nations’ (Andersen and Freedman 1989: 232). How this happened in every case is not clear, but there is biblical evidence that the nations or individual Gentiles occasionally heard first-hand, from Israelites, of God’s person and work as it related to them. Raabe summarizes the relevant points by noting that Jeremiah 18:7–8 ‘logically implies the notion of a prior hearing of the prophetic oracle by the targeted nation’; that prophetic journeys beyond Israelite borders are biblically attested (2 Kgs 8:7–15); that Jeremiah transmitted the message he was given to the envoys from Edom, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon (Jer. 27:1–11), as did Isaiah to emissaries from Philistia (Isa. 14:32), Seir (Isa. 21:11–12) and perhaps Cush (Isa. 18:2); and that Nebuchadnezzar and his general Nebuzaradan knew of Jeremiah and his message (Jer. 39; 40). These points demonstrate that alongside her centripetal role, Israel’s centrifugal communication of God’s self-revelation to the nations was important in her theology and experience at numerous points throughout her history.

Conclusions

The history of Israel’s relationship to the nations as recorded in the OT resists our efforts to separate it into neatly separated redemptive-historical stages. The fact that individual Israelites were commanded to transmit knowledge of God to Gentiles, and the historical attestation in Israel’s Scriptures that they occasionally did so, make it impossible to insist that her role was only centripetal. The shifting identity of the term ‘Israel’ in the historical and prophetic books (e.g. Jer. 25:15–26, which lists Israel alongside the nations as the object of God’s wrath) and the gradual disappearance of Israel’s moral distinctiveness also complicate descriptions of Israel’s mission in purely ethnic terms. Indeed, we will see that neither the centripetal–centrifugal polarity nor ethnic categories are sufficient to do justice to what the book of Jonah says about mission. As a result, a definition of mission suitable for use in the OT has to show a good deal of nuance and flexibility (Köstenberger and O’Brien 2001: 21–22). Because these questions derive from our desire to relate mission in the OT to something similar but not identical in the NT, the best way forward is to compare and contrast those two manifestations of the same concept.

A definition of mission in the Old Testament

The key characteristics that differentiate mission in the OT from its NT counterpart are as follows:

With these points in mind, a definition of mission that suits the OT will resemble the following: the transmission of testimony regarding God’s person and works of salvation and judgment, usually for the intended purpose of producing faith in his promises of salvation and judgment and conformity to his character and will. This definition leaves open whether mission is initiated by the believer or the audience, whether it is more verbal or behavioral, whether an individual or a community is responsible for this transmission, whether access to God’s presence and the means of maintaining one’s relationship with him are accessible everywhere or are localized, how much of God’s plan of salvation has been accomplished (hence the prominence of the element of promise), whether the witness is intentional on the part of the human participant, and how much the one testifying knows of God. While substantial, these qualifications bear out Köstenberger’s contention (1997b: 359) that ‘tracing of mission in the entire Bible requires flexibility concerning the definition of mission’.

Mission in Jonah?

Was Jonah a missionary?

We can hardly avoid wondering, in the light of the definition developed above, whether Jonah the prophet even qualifies as a missionary. Apart from the qualification about his intention, perhaps not – he surely did not imagine he would facilitate the conversion of the sailors when he spoke to them of Yahweh. And when he conveyed God’s message to Nineveh, he did so with the fear (not the hope) that Nineveh would repent. But the qualification regarding the speaker’s intention seems well justified (and in many cases we cannot establish it with certainty), and Jonah did intentionally transmit God’s message to the Ninevites even though he feared it would entail their deliverance. All this, of course, Jonah did only after fleeing his prophetic commission and being constrained by God himself to change course.

But the book of Jonah cannot for that reason be said to lack any missionary material, or to consist only of negative examples, mainly because it shows God’s fulfilling the role of missionary when no one else wants to, sending Jonah to Nineveh for the express purpose of seeing its beliefs and morals changed (ch. 3) and showing it mercy (4:11). While below I will argue for a clear distinction between divine and human mission, it is important to note that in Jonah’s case God’s actions spill over into the human sphere rather than vice versa. There is no theological difficulty with God’s acting in ways that can in biblical parlance be described as missionary activity, as when he reveals himself to Abraham apart from any intermediary (Gen. 12; 15; 17; 22). Indeed, the incarnation culminates the process (primarily verbal before) of God’s direct self-revelation for the purpose of salvation.

Generally speaking, however, while divine initiative is essential to the missionary enterprise, the latter typically does not involve God’s unmediated making of disciples (in addition to Christ’s own calling of his disciples, Paul’s conversion is a notable exception from the NT). Distinction without separation is a useful way of seeing how legitimate human mission relates to God’s actions of the same sort. Thus, after Christ’s ascension, the mission that began as a divine initiative in the incarnation continues through the Lord’s chosen representatives and under the unprecedented guidance and motivation of the Spirit.

Did Jonah proclaim a missionary message?

While consideration of the message that Jonah brought to Nineveh must await treatment in a later chapter, at least one point should be made here. We can (and probably should) infer from the Ninevites’ reaction that Jonah’s message to the city consisted of more than the bare threat ‘Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown’ (a mere five words in Hebrew). When these Assyrians respond with belief in God (Jon. 3:5), fasting (3:5, 7) and self-condemnation in the light of their violence (3:8), it is clear that a number of prominent blanks have been filled in, particularly regarding the character and will of Jonah’s God. Whether Jonah said a good deal more of his own accord, or whether the fearful Assyrians interrogated him as to how they ought to respond (both are plausible), one is forced to conclude that the Ninevites gained a basic knowledge of God during Jonah’s sojourn with them.

God’s involvement in the Ninevites’ deliverance (not to mention that of the sailors), and the partial revelation of his character and will to them through Jonah, corroborate my earlier conclusion that there is indeed mission in Jonah. God’s message, like his transmission of it, is based on his holy, sovereign and gracious character, and calls Nineveh to obey his will. But in order for us to understand more completely Jonah’s contribution to a biblical theology of mission, we need to sketch more fully some of the NT’s teaching on the topic.

Mission from Pentecost onward

In the context of the NT we can dispense with the qualifications that accompanied the definition of OT mission developed above. The redemptive-historical turning point that permits this major change, Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, followed naturally by the commission of his apostles, his ascension and their later empowerment by the Spirit at Pentecost, will be explored in the course of the discussion.

Evaluating contemporary approaches to mission

Ferdinando (2008) has identified four primary (and competing) definitions of mission that currently hold various degrees of sway among interpreters of the Bible: missio Dei (i.e. God’s mission), cultural mandate, social action and making disciples of all nations. Given our interest in biblical theology and our goal of understanding the book of Jonah on its own terms, we will give priority to a concept of NT mission that is broad enough to include all that the Bible says about the church’s proclamation of God’s person and work in Jesus Christ to those who have not heard it for the purpose of facilitating their religious conversion and incorporation into the church, yet narrow enough to exclude things that the gospel produces after it has been believed.

God’s mission

Although Ferdinando represents these various understandings of Christian mission as concentric circles, with the centre being the proclamation of God’s word of grace and promise, some of the approaches to mission that he analyses move the centre elsewhere, as he observes. Take, for example, the broadest definition of mission, which includes ‘all that God is doing in this world’ (missio Dei). No believer would object to the relevance of God’s will and plan for mission, but is it wise to define the term so broadly? If one tries to do so, a number of thorny questions appear: does God use the same agents and means for the various tasks that constitute his mission? Apart from things that clearly lie beyond human capacity (providence etc.), does the Bible show that God’s people are responsible and equipped in the same way for exercising dominion over the earth (Scripture’s earliest divine ordinance, Gen. 1:26), suffering persecution (Revelation, among many possible references) and for making disciples of all nations (Jesus’ parting charge to his disciples)? Moreover, since God is active everywhere and providentially oversees all human existence, if human mission is identical to what he does through human beings, one cannot even restrict mission to the activities of believers: anything good (meaning, anything that God wanted to happen), even if performed by unbelievers, constitutes part of mission (e.g. the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus, Acts 2:23). In the light of these problems, C. J. H. Wright carefully qualifies his definition of mission as God’s mission by stating that human participation in it is ‘at God’s invitation and command’, but this simply proves that human mission can be more narrowly defined.

Cultural mandate

The cultural mandate and social action definitions of mission narrow their scope to human activity (as C. J. H. Wright did with his qualifications), defining mission as gospel proclamation and various other imperatives that cover vast spheres of human action. Cultural mandate mission, in the words of M. Goheen and C. Bartholomew, ‘is as wide as creation itself’ (Goheen and Bartholomew 2008: 5–6). As Ferdinando observes, this understanding of mission moves in the right direction by restricting itself to human activity, specifically that of the church. But given the comprehensiveness of the NT’s ethic, which covers the spheres of church, family, marriage and citizenship, this definition is not fully satisfying, since it does not separate the task of transmitting the gospel from the rest of the church’s calling and so simply amounts to the idea of obedience to Christ in all things.

Social action

Similar levelling occurs when social action is put on a par with the proclamation of the gospel, and so John Stott (an advocate of social action on the part of Christians) has worked hard to integrate social action into missiology while respecting Scripture’s emphases on these points. As with the critique given in the preceding section, my attention to this issue should not be mistaken for a theoretical fascination with a nicely nuanced definition of mission, for excessive emphasis on the spheres that properly belong to the gospel’s effects can have serious consequences that go beyond the theoretical to impact the church’s behaviour and fidelity to the gospel.

As an example, it is possible that a too-inclusive definition of mission, in which the putting into practice of the gospel holds the same place as its proclamation, would obscure the primordial importance of one’s relationship with God (meaning being estranged due to sin, and thus exposed to his judgment apart from salvation in Christ) precisely by putting it on a par with social, ecological or other concerns. To avoid this danger the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization’s Covenant, published in 1974, affirms that ‘evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty’ (Article 5) but then explicitly subordinates ‘Christian social responsibility’ to evangelism (Article 6). This approach to the question accords admirably with the biblical data, which insist that properly motivated and well-directed action in all spheres of life (social, political etc.) flows naturally from the reception of the gospel but does not constitute the gospel itself (Ps. 103:6; Prov. 19:17; Jer. 9:24; Mic. 6:6–8; Matt. 5:43–47; Rom. 13:8–10; 15:2–4; Gal. 5:14; 1 Tim. 2:1–2). The gospel and its effects can and should be distinguished without being separated.

Mission and the priority of the gospel

These theoretical concerns, though tied to Scripture at various points, can be refined and clarified by our turning to explicit descriptions of what the apostles were to do, and did, in fulfilment of Jesus’ command. First in line are the post-resurrection commissions, recorded in Matthew 28:18–20; Luke 24:46–49; John 20:21; Acts 1:8. Schnabel contends that it is hardly incidental that the disciples met with the risen Christ, since this predicted the focus of their message: ‘the missionary message of the disciples focuses, not by accident, on the Risen One, who had been crucified but whom God had raised from the dead’ (Schnabel 2004: 381). The risen Christ makes this focus explicit when he commissions the disciples to be ‘my witnesses’ (Acts 1:8), a construction that (unconventionally in Greek) puts the adjective before the noun to underline further the Christological and soteriological content of their message (Schnabel 2004: 371). Luke records Jesus’ stating that ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem’ (Luke 24:47), and Matthew joins the imperative to ‘make disciples’ with Christ’s kingly authority and unique prophetic standing (Matt. 28:18–20). The same is true of Paul, who, while seeing missionary significance in all that he did (1 Cor. 9:19– 24), stopped short of equating his lifestyle with the witness that he was to bear to Christ (Gal. 1:15–16; 10:13–14; Acts 9:15; 22:14–15; 26:16–18). His self-understanding as an ‘envoy’ of Christ (1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11) lays additional emphasis on the verbal nature of his commission and on his obligation to fulfil it.

The first three approaches to mission surveyed above (missio Dei, cultural mandate and social action) put on a par with this central concern elements that are all consequences, fruits or complements of it. This is unnecessary, however, because the Christ-event, central to biblical revelation by all counts, naturally and inevitably works itself out in believers by virtue of their Spirit-constituted union with the risen Christ in their progressive personal sanctification. It is for this reason that the indicative-imperative structure of NT theology in particular is so pervasive. On the basis of what God has done in Jesus Christ, men and women are called to submit to his saving lordship and grow increasingly into his image through the work of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18). This includes, of course, their interaction with the world around them, which they preserve as salt and benefit as light (Matt. 5:13–16). But it would be a mistake to suppose that the ‘cultural mandate’, as Kuyperian thought refers to Christians’ duty to ‘witness to Christ’s lordship in every area of human life and culture’, is of the same importance as personal salvation.

The issue here is once again the definition of mission and the centrality of the gospel in it. The ultimate resolution of the problems that are ever inherent in fallen human culture, like those in human individuals, will come not through human activity (to which Scripture does not attach ‘redemption’ language anyway), but through God’s final intervention at the end of human history. Thus we must distinguish the gospel from its implications or fruits on a personal level, and between what God does and what his people are charged to do on a cultural and, indeed, cosmic level. Just as our salvation itself is not fully complete apart from Christ’s second coming (Rom. 5:9–10), so too God’s final punishment of sin and the establishment of perfect, divine righteousness on a cosmic scale are the only means by which the full expression of human nature (including culture) can be brought into conformity to his will (Rom. 5:21; Matt. 25:31–46; Rev. 20 – 22). Consequently, mission goes astray when it substitutes another centre or when it assigns to humanity activities what God reserves for himself.

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