CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3
The Mission of the Triune God
TO THE question of authority the first answer is, as we have seen, "in the name of Jesus." It is by this name that Paul introduces himself in his letters: he is a messenger sent by Jesus, called and sent by one greater than himself. There is no authority beyond that to which he can appeal.
But that answer necessarily prompts the next question: Who is Jesus? How is that question to be answered? The first and most natural answer finds its model in the first answer to Jesus' question "Who do men say that I am?" He is "one of the prophets." This, as Jesus suggests. is the natural answer of "flesh and blood" (Matt. 16:17). For the Hindu he is one of the jeevnnmuuktas, who have attained in this life the full realization of the divine. For the Muslim lie is one of the messengers of Allah. For the man of modern Western society he is one of the world religious leaders to whom one will find reference (along with Buddha, Muhammed, Moses, and Guru Nanak) in the "Religion" section of Tillie but not in the "World Affairs" section. He is one of an acknowledged class. His introduction does not disturb the structure of ideas of which this classification is a facet.
This, as I have said, is the "natural" answer. As a first step it is unavoidable. As a missionary in India I often shared in evangelistic preaching in villages where the name "Jesus" had no more meaning than any other strange name. I have heard speakers use many different Tamil words to explain who he is. He is Swam.v ("Lord"). Or he is Satguru ("the true teacher"). He is Avatar ("incarnation of God"). Or he is Kadaval ("the transcendent God") who has become man. What all these words have in common is that they necessarily place Jesus within a world of ideas that is formed by the Hindu tradition and that is embodied in the language of the people. Swamv is usually translated "Lord," but it does not have the meaning that the word Kurios had for a Greek-speaking Jew. It denotes not Yahweh, the Lord of the Old Testament, but one of the myriad gods who fill the pages of the Hindu epics. Avatar is usually translated "incarnation," but there have been many avatars and there will be many more. To announce a new avatar is not to announce any radical change in the nature of things. Even to use the word kadavul will only provoke the question "If Jesus is kadavul, who is the one to whom he prays?"
The example that I have taken from personal experience is simply a reminder of the fact that one cannot begin to answer the question "Who is Jesus?" without using a language -- and therefore a structure of thought - that is shaped by the pre-Christian experience of the one who asks the question. There is no way of avoiding this necessity. And yet the introduction of the name of Jesus places the structure under a strain that it cannot bear without breaking. Jesus is now not just Lord, not just avatar but unique avatar The word kadavul can no longer refer to a monad: it must refer to a reality, within which there is a relationship of hearing and answering.
The event by which the old structure is broken is not a natural happening. Jesus tells Peter that the confession "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God" is not the work of "flesh and blood" but a gift of the Father (Matt. 16-17). It is not a human achievement but a gift from above. It is the primary work of the Spirit of God himself (I Cor. 12:1-3; I John 4:1-3). It is the action of God by which he chooses and anoints the messengers of his reign. It is the work of the sovereign Spirit to enable men and women in new situations and in new cultural forms to find the ways in which the confession of Jesus as Lord may be made in the language of their own culture. The mission of the church is in fact the church's obedient participation in that action of the Spirit by which the confession of Jesus as Lord becomes the authentic confession of every new people, each in its own tongue.
But how do we begin to say who Jesus is? As the first generation of Christians moved out of the culture of Judaism into the cosmopolitan culture of the Greco-Roman world, it had to develop a way of doing this. The way it developed is embodied in the new style of literature of which Mark's Gospel is our earliest exemplar. Here a story is told in such a way as to provide not a biography in the modern style, but an answer to the question "Who is Jesus'?"
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the Prophet,
"Behold, I send nay messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, "After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved son; with thee I am well pleased."
The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:1-15)
In this brief introductory paragraph Jesus is introduced as the one who announces the coming of the reign of God, the one who is acknowledged as the Son of God and is anointed by the Spirit of God.
1. He announces the reign of God. God was known already in Israel as one who reins. He had made known his sovereignty in deliverL, ing Israel out of the slavery of Egypt. He was indeed sovereign over all the earth, though the nations did not know it. In age after age Israel had been summoned to "say among the nations" that "the Lord reigns" (Ps. 96:10). Through centuries of crushing defeat and humiliation a remnant in Israel had kept alive the faith that the sovereign Lord would in the end reveal his hidden kingship, tear aside the illusions behind which evil carries on its work, dethrone the idols, and come to reign in justice over the nations.
Jesus announces that that day has dawned. But the announcement is also a call to a radical reversal of normal attitudes. Israel has been eagerly awaiting the coming of the Lord's rule but looking for it in the wrong direction. The announcement is therefore at the same time a call to turn around and look the other way - to repent. Only as part of such a radical turnabout can Israel receive the gift of faith - faith to believe that the reign of God is indeed present, faith to know the secret of the kingdom of God (Acts 4:11). This secret is the "good news" that the church publishes, the "gospel."
Jesus is thus not the initiator or founder of the kingdom. It is God's kingdom. Jesus is the one who is sent as herald and bearer of the kingdom.
2. Jesus is acknowledged as the Son of God. The most characteristic word on the lips of Jesus seems to have been the Aramaic word Abba, a word used as the most informal and intimate mode of speech from a son to his father. It was not, apparently, a word that was ever used in prayer to God. But it seems to have been so much the characteristic way in which Jesus prayed that it was carried over into the language of the Greek-speaking church. Paul can speak of it as the sign of our sonship given to us by the Spirit (Rom. 8:12-17). Jesus' characteristic use of this word points to the deepest secret of his being. He was "the Son." In the fourth Gospel this is very specially emphasized and we are told that the glory that his disciples saw in him was "glory as of the only Son from the Father" (John I:14). Though Jesus is the bearer of the kingdom, he is yet at the same time the obedient Son. The sovereignty that he brings and that puts to flight the demonic powers (Mark 1:27) is not exercised in his own name but in the name of the Father. It is exercised by one who looks up in loving obedience as a son to a father.
3. Jesus is anointed by the Spirit. In the Old Testament the Spirit is the living active power of God, giving life to all and empowering men to perform special service or to receive special revelation. It is the "breath of the Lord," and the life and power of the Lord are in it. In many passages of the Old Testament the promise is made that the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon the one whom he sends to be the agent of his justice. The voice that Jesus heard at his baptism echoes the words of Isaiah 42:1: "Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights: I have put my spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations." And according to Luke's Gospel Jesus interprets the words of Isaiah 61:1-2 as foreshadowing his ministry. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted, he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound: to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18-19).
The acknowledgment of Jesus as Son and his anointing by the Spirit took place, according to the record, at his baptism by John in the Jordan, the event that is described as "the beginning of the gospel." John's baptism seems to have been a symbolic action in the tradition of the prophets of Israel. Jeremiah had smashed an earthenware pot as a vivid and impending judgment on Jerusalem, and Isaiah had gone naked and barefoot as a sign of the coming calamities in Egypt and Ethiopia. Other examples can be cited. The message of John was one of impending judgment; God was coming to purge his people with fire, to cut down the barren trees (Matt. 3:10; cf. Isa. 5), and to sift the wheat from the chaff (Matt. 3:12). John called people to repentance in order that they might escape the coming judgment. The baptism in the Jordan was a symbolic action that affirmed the call to a radical new beginning for Israel, and the acceptance of baptism was a symbol that the call had been heard and accepted. But it was only a symbol. The real thing, when it came, would not be water but a devouring fire, the very breath of the Lord (Mark 1:8; cf. Luke 3:16-17).
Jesus was one of those who heard and accepted the call. His first appearance in the story was as one of a crowd of unnamed men and women who had been convicted of sin and had heard and accepted the call to repentance. As one of them Jesus was baptized. He took his place as part of sinful humanity. And in that action he received the anointing of the Spirit. At the same moment the word of God spoken through Isaiah sounded in his ears. He is the beloved Son, anointed by the Spirit to bring forth justice to the nations.
The baptism in the Jordan was only a beginning. It had to be completed by a crowded ministry in which Jesus acted out his identification with sin-burdened humanity (Matt. 8:17). It had to be consummated on Calvary, where his baptism was complete (Luke 12:50; Mark 10:38). And that consummation of his baptism opened the way for the whole company of his chosen apostles to receive the same anointing of the Spirit, to be acknowledged as children of God, and to be sent out to bring God's justice to the nations.
Here, then, is the first answer to the question "Who is Jesus'?" He is the Son, sent by the Father and anointed by the Spirit to be the bearer of God's kingdom to the nations. This is the Jesus who was proclaimed by the first Christians to the world of their time.
Any missionary, in fact anyone engaged in the business of communication, knows very well that what is spoken and what is heard are by no means always the same. What is heard is necessarily shaped by the thought-world of the hearer. What was it that was heard when the story about Jesus was spoken into the first two centuries'?
To attempt to describe that thought-world in a few paragraphs would be absurd. But what can be said, simply and truthfully, is that it was a world controlled by presuppositions radically different from those that governed the thought-world of the Judaism of which Jesus was a part. Fundamental among these presuppositions was that the really real, the ultimate source of all being, must be beyond and above the ordinary world which we see and hear, taste, and handle. It must be beyond time, for time implies change and change implies imperfection. It must be beyond space, for space is the arena of our sense experience, which can never give us absolute truth. No particular event in history, therefore. can be more than an illustration or symbol of the timeless, changeless, passionless, purely spiritual entity that is ultimate being.
This meant that all thinking was controlled by certain inescapable dichotomies. In science there was the dichotomy between the intelligent world and the sensible world, between that which can be known of pure being by the rational and spiritual powers of the mind and that which can be experienced through the five senses, which can never give access to being itself. In history there was the dichotomy between virtue and fortune. The world of external happenings is not under the undisputed control of pure reason. It is the sphere either of the purely irrational or of fate. Human history is the story of the conflict between this and whatever equipment of intelligence, skill, and courage can he brought to the conflict.
Within such a worldview there is room for, and in fact necessity for, a whole range of intermediate entities to bridge the gap between the pure being, which is essentially unknowable and unapproachable. and the ordinary world of things and events. As in the similar thoughtworld of India, it was natural to place Jesus somewhere in this intermediate range. Jesus, an actual man with a place in history. could not be identified with the One who is beyond all change and all multiplicity. That would be simple nonsense. But the very name "Son" implies subordination, and therefore Jesus could be understood either as some kind of emanation from the One, or even as among the first of creatures. Or else he could be understood as a man who had been brought into an exceptionally or even uniquely close relationship with the One -- in Indian terns, a jeevanmukta. The story of the first three centuries of the Christian era furnishes a rich variety of variations on these themes. What they have in common is that they leave intact the classical thoughtworld. They leave unhealed its dichotomies. Above all they leave it with a God finally uninvolved in human history.
Against this the mind of the church fought a long, stubborn, often confused but finally successful battle. It did so because at the very heart of its life, its thought, and its worship was the figure of the one who had died on the cross and had been raised from the dead - "the Son of God," as Paul says, "who loved me and gave himself up for me." A famous graffito in Rome depicts a man lifting up his hands in worship before a figure with an ass's head stretched out on a cross. Underneath is written "Anexamenos worships his god." Presumably some pagan slave was mocking his Christian fellow slave. The picture vividly suggests both the stubborn strength of the Christians' insistence on the deity of Christ and the horror and contempt that this aroused in that classical world. The absolutely crucial point was this: in the man Jesus God had actually suffered for the sin of the world. For that assurance Christians were ready to go to the lions. If it was true, the whole classical worldview was false and had to be replaced by something radically different.
In his book Christianity and Classical Culture, C. N. Cochrane tells the story of the development of classical thought from its brilliant restoration under Augustus to its disintegration in the fifth century. By that time a new way of understanding the whole human situation had been developed, and it was the work of Augustine to build on this foundation the beginnings of the new worldview that would shape the thought of Western Christendom for a thousand years. This new way of understanding was embodied in the doctrine of the Trinity. As we have seen, this doctrine is already implicit in our earliest written answer to the question "Who is Jesus"" - implicit but not yet fully thought out. It was the work of the great theologians of the first three centuries, especially of Athanasius, to develop this implicit understanding into a model that would replace the classical axioms with a new set of axioms. The ultimate reality, according to this new view, is not to be understood as a timeless, passionless monad beyond all human knowing, but as a trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit. This understanding is not the result of speculative thought. It has been given by revelation in the actual historical life and work of the Son.
Accepted thus by faith it becomes the starting point for a new way of understanding the world. It cannot be understood, and much less can it be verified, by reference to the assumed axioms of classical thought. It is verified only by the action of the Holy Spirit present in the witness of the martyrs. But accepted by faith it becomes the basis of a new way of making sense of the world, not just by speculative science, but by practical wisdom.
Thus, on this new basis the dichotomy between the sensible and the intelligible worlds is healed. for God himself has actually been made flesh. The Son who offered the perfect sacrifice of loving obedience to the Father on the cross is not the Father, but he is truly God as the Father is God. The being of God himself is involved in the suffering of history. And through the Spirit the Christian can share this suffering, knowing that in doing so he is in touch with the very being of God himself (Rom. 8:18-27).
Likewise the dichotomy between virtue and fortune is healed, for the Christian who thus shares in the travail of history also knows that God works everything for good to those who love him (Rom. 8:28). His life here in the midst of history is thus not a hopeless battle against fate, but the faithful following of Jesus along the way of the cross in loving obedience to the Father, whose rule is over all. A wholly new way is opened up to accomplish what classical science and philosophy could not accomplish - a way of grasping and dealing with the reality of human life as part of a meaningful history within a world created and sustained by God, who had revealed himself in Jesus and who continued by his Spirit to guide the followers of Jesus into the fullness of the truth.
The language in which this trinitarian faith was wrought out was necessarily the language of that time and place. The crucial word upon which the central conflict turned was the word hanousios, a word that expressed in the language of contemporary philosophy the conviction that the being of the Son and the being of the Spirit are the very being of the Godhead and are not something intermediate between a remote and ultimately unapproachable Supreme Being and the known world of nature and history. On the firm maintenance of that conviction everything depended. In that sense the church can never go back on what was then decided. But it is also true that it is not enough for the church to go on repeating in different cultural situations the same words and phrases. New ways have to be found of stating the essential Trinitarian faith, and for this the church in each new cultural situation has to go back to the original biblical sources of this faith in order to lay hold on it afresh and to state it afresh in contemporary terms.
It has been said that the question of the Trinity is the one theological question that has been really settled. It would. I think, be nearer to the truth to say that the Nicene formula has been so devoutly hallowed that it is effectively put out of circulation. It has been treated like the talent that was buried for safekeeping rather than risked in the commerce of discussion. The church continues to repeat the Trinitarian formula but - unless I am greatly mistaken - the ordinary Christian in the Western world who hears or reads the word "God" does not immediately and inevitably think of the Triune Being - Father, Son, and Spirit. He thinks of' a supreme monad. Not many preachers, I suspect, look forward eagerly to Trinity Sunday. The working concept of God for most ordinary Christians is - if one may venture a hold guess - shaped more by the combination of Greek philosophy and Islamic theology that was powerfully injected into the thought of Christendom at the beginning of the High Middle Ages than by the thought of the fathers of the first four centuries.
If, as I have argued, we are forced to answer the question of authority by the words "In the name of Jesus," and if we then have to answer the question "Who is Jesus?" we shall only be able to answer that question in terms that embody the Trinitarian faith. Like the earliest Christians we shall have to expand our first answer so that it runs, "In the name of the Father. the Son, and the Holy Spirit." And this means that, like them, we shall be offering a model for understanding human life -a model that cannot be verified by reference to the axioms of our culture but that is offered on the authority of revelation and with the claim that it does provide the possibility of a practical wisdom to grasp and deal with human life as it really is.
I have been encouraged to think that this is a fruitful approach to the subject of this book by reading the parallel that Michael Polanyi has drawn between our time and the time for which Augustine wrote. At the crucial turning point of his great book, Personal Knowledge, Polanyi writes:
The critical movement, which seems to be nearing the end of its course today, was perhaps the most fruitful effort ever sustained by the human mind. The past four or five centuries, which have gradually destroyed or overshadowed the whole medieval cosmos, have enriched us mentally and morally to an extent unrivalled by any period of similar duration. But its incandescence had fed on the combustion of the Christian heritage in the oxygen of Greek rationalism, and when this fuel was exhausted the critical framework itself burnt away.
Modern man is unprecedented: yet we must now go back to St. Augustine to restore the balance of our cognitive powers. In the fourth century All. St. Augustine brought the history of Greek philosophy to a close by inaugurating for the first time a post-critical philosophy. He taught that all knowledge was a gift of grace, for which we must strive under the guidance of antecedent belief: nisi credideritis, non intelligitis.
1. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 265.
Polanyi's plea is for a "post-critical philosophy" without which he believes science must destroy itself. In developing his reference to Augustine, Polanyi insists that "the process of examining any topic is both an exploration of the topic, and an exegesis of our fundamental beliefs in the light of which we approach it; a dialectical combination of exploration and exegesis. Our fundamental beliefs are continuously reconsidered in the course of such a process, but only within the scope of their own basic premisses." 2
The fundamental belief is embodied in the affirmation that God has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Spirit. I shall therefore begin by looking at the Christian mission in three ways - as proclaiming the kingdom of the Father, as sharing the life of the Son, and as bearing the witness of the Spirit. From this I shall go on to look at contemporary issues in mission from the point of view of this Trinitarian faith.