Further Toward a Theology of Mission

Further Toward a Theology of Mission

by Wilhelm Andersen

300The theme of this essay refers to the theological discussion which took place in connection with the World Missionary Conference in Willingen, Germany (1952) and which is still continuing.’ Willingen took a decisive step further on the way toward a reformulation of the theology of mission. Recognitions were expressed ‘there that are valid for the missionary activity of all of Christianity. Therefore they must not be left forgotten in the past, but they must be thought through and discussed again and again so that they bear fruit in the life of the Church and for her service in the world.

The special formulation of the theme, “Further Toward a Theology of Mission,” directs our thoughts, however, at the same time in another direction. We must go forward on the way which Willingen started. Many questions remained unanswered there. This may be because there was not enough time for discussing them. On the other hand it must be taken into account that there was not yet any unanimity for answering them. The precondition for further fruitful work on these remaining open questions is that all the churches and missions that participated in the conference at 301Willingen remain concerned with the matter and in contact with one another. Remaining concerned with the matter means that the results of Willingen must be recognized and assimilated. The contact between the various churches and confessions must be maintained so that they can mutually help one another to go the way which the living God through his Holy Spirit wants to lead the Church in the world. For the following exposition there is then a double task. We will recall once again the result of Willingen. In the second part we will attempt to indicate some milestones along the future way.

I

The basic and decisive recognition for a theology of missions consists in this: Mission has its source in the Triune God.

Out of the depths of his love for us, the Father has sent forth his own beloved Son to reconcile all things to himself, that we and all men might, through the Spirit, be made one in him with the Father in that perfect love which is the very nature of God.?

The sentence “Mission is the work of the Triune God” must not be understood, however, as an abstract, timeless truth. Mission is as missio Dei,’ the original and at the same time the continually new working of the Triune God who turns to man and to the world. God is the living God, who is Himself Light and Life. As such, He is also a movement toward man and the world, spreading light and life.

It should not be forgotten that this sentence also contains a certain criticism of the theme of Willingen, which was “The Missionary Obligation of the Church.” But it is a constructive criticism and, therefore, one which leads further. The proclamation of “the missionary obligation of the Church” should in no way be revoked. It is valid and urgent. But it is decisive that it be understood in the right relationship and in the context which is valid for it. The admonition of J. C. Hoekendijk that “Every Church-centered theory of mission is bound to go astray because it revolves around 302an illegitimate center,” will always remain connected with the conference in Willingen. Willingen has taught us to see mission, “the missionary obligation of the Church,” from the standpoint where it is valid: from the Triune God, whose creation and instrument in the world is the Church of Jesus Christ.

If this recognition is rightly respected and thought through in its consequences, it can be effective in opening up the way for the future. This is particularly true for the proposed integration of the International Missionary Council with the World Council of Churches. There must be no opportunity for human claims to rule or for attempts at guardianship. Mission is the work of God and takes place only under God’s guardianship. There must be room in the Church only for that striving which calls for submission in obedience to God’s working.

The sentence which characterizes mission as the work of the Triune God was interpreted at Willingen in an important way: the decisive act of God, the fulfillment of His missionary will, is the Cross of Jesus Christ. The center of a theology of mission is, therefore, faith in the crucified and risen Christ. The address of Canon Max A. C. Warren on “The Christian Mission and the Cross” was one of the high points of the Willingen Conference. At no other of the earlier international conferences on missions did the Cross of Jesus Christ stand so very much in the center as at Willingen. If we want to recognize mission as the work of God and if we want to let it be true and valid, then we must learn ever anew to see it from the standpoint of the Cross. Karl Hartenstein, one of the German participants, expressed what this means in a report on Willingen shortly before his death: 303These two sentences, “Mission is missio Dei” and “The Cross of Jesus Christ is the center of mission,” belong indissolubly together. They mutually explain and interpret each other. If the second sentence does not follow the first, there exists the danger of making a timeless speculation out of the truth of missio Dei. The Cross stands in the middle of history and calls us to take and accept history seriously. We can only talk about the source of mission in the Triune God because He has intervened in history through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to change the fate of the world. And thereby He has allowed faith to look into His heart.

The Cross is the illuminating center of the mystery of God’s redemptive purpose. It is there that we begin to look into the heart of God, begin to believe that some understanding is possible, even for us, of the mystery of redemption. And it is by way of the Cross that we are compelled to see both the necessity for showing forth that redemption and also the manner of the showing.⁸

For a theology of mission, then, the limits are set. Mission is completely and fully the work of God. It is His work that He has carried out and is carrying out in our world. It is directed to us men and allows no one the possibility of neutrality. It is above all the work for which the Triune God alone is responsible. He guarantees its final success. Through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ God has created realities in the course of this world which are immovable. After God followed the sending of His Son with the sending of His Holy Spirit, He began with the founding of the Church to free and claim men for His coming kingdom. Therefore all the mission work of the Church lives in a certainty which can be shaken neither by human omission nor guilt, neither by any earthly failure: He will gloriously carry out His work. It is one of the happy tasks of a theology of mission to communicate to the work of the world mission something of the confidence with which the Apostle Paul embraces the way and the future of God’s people (Rom. 11). God remains true to Himself; He has founded His covenant (Rom. 11:27). He cannot” revoke His gifts nor His call (Rom. 11:29). “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).

304But mission is at the same time the work of God in the world which He shares with men as His instruments. Not as if God needed a human counselor or a human assistant. It is rather much more a sign of His greatness which condescends to man, when God not only wins men for His kingdom, but even takes them into His service, bestowing upon them and honoring them with His Spirit to be His fellow workers (1 Cor. 3:9).

Here in a theology of mission is the context in which one must speak about the Church. The Church is both a coming together and a sending forth (Sammlung und Sendung). As the people of God which have been assembled among the peoples of the earth for the coming kingdom, we may speak—with reservation—of the Church as the goal of mission. In her services of worship, where the praise of God is already being sung, we see that for which God wishes to redeem creation. The final and real goal of the missio Dei, however, is not the Church, but the establishment of God’s kingdom, to which the Church as ecclesia viatorem is on its way. Therefore, the Church does not understand herself and misses the meaning of her existence if she is not at the same time a sending forth. She is God’s summons in the world, the company of followers who assemble around the flag of Christ, whom they believe and confess as the real Lord among lords and King of kings. She is—not out of her own strength but in the authority of the Holy Spirit—His mouthpiece in the world, through which He himself wishes to speak; His instrument through which He carries out His work. And in this sense it is essential to speak of the missionary obligation of the Church, because it pleases God through the Church to lead His mission to its goal.

Thus the theology of mission is presented with its other task. It must be for the thought and life of the Church the same thing that movement is for the works of a clock. The Church of Jesus Christ lives only in movement. She stops being what she through the will of God is and should be if she no longer lives in sending forth and no longer carries out mission. She herself lives from the fact—and only from this fact—that she is on her way with the Word which God has entrusted to her and which addresses the world and which presses its way through to all peoples.

Not only do the present organized churches need such a service through a theology of mission, but also the institutions, societies, and officials which have in times past taken up the cause of mission. 305Bishop L. Newbigin in his essay, “One Body, One Gospel, One World,” 7 has pointed to this with great emphasis and seriousness: “There is a very natural human desire that things should always remain unchanged.” From this desire no human society or organization is excepted. “But to succumb to this is death.” This must be considered above all in regard to the planned integration of the International Missionary Council with the World Council of Churches. Here is presented—we dare to say, here God Himself presents—a great chance for the Church and mission. But here also lurk grave dangers.

There is a real danger that the discussion of the proposal for integration should become entirely absorbed in the details of organization, and that the larger questions concerning the Church’s faithfulness to its

missionary calling should be forgotten.®

It certainly does not lie in the power of man to avoid these threatening temptations. If God Himself were not active here, and if we could no longer have the certainty that God Himself comes closest to His goal through the Church and mission which have existed in history, we would stand before a hopeless undertaking. But this confidence is assured us. And therefore the theology of mission has now in the time before us a task full of promise.

II

After having discussed mainly the results of Willingen in the first part of this essay, we now turn our attention in another direction. The theme “Further Toward a Theology of Mission” reminds us that we cannot look back to the theology of mission as to a task that has in every aspect been completed. That will never be the case, or only when we have come from believing to seeing, when our understanding is no longer in part, but when we understand as we are understood (1 Cor. 13:12). The theology of mission is, like all theological thinking, a kind of reflection (Nachdenken), a miserable sketching of the ways of God which is never fully adequate nor directly to the point. But God has bid us do it and God does not let it take place without His promise.

We agree with Bishop L. Newbigin when he says that a theology 306of mission lives from studying the Bible. It must continually carry on this study and thereby prove itself authentic. “In every age we have to go back to God’s revelation of Himself to learn afresh, by the guiding of the Spirit, what is our duty for today.”¹¹ That, naturally, cannot mean that the trinitarian source, the Christological realization, nor the pneumatic fulfillment of mission, i.e., the foundations of mission, must continually be theologically questioned. This foundation has been laid; it rests in the power of God. And as surely as the Bible is the witness to the speaking and acting of the Triune God, so surely does the study of the Scriptures—and this above everything else—help us to perceive that this foundation alone is firm and sturdy.

But it is still the task of a theology of mission to assist in building upon this foundation in obedience to the Spirit; or, to speak with another metaphor, to see that the road which has been prepared is traveled. Dr. Norman Goodall, in his report on Willingen, has named several problems which this conference did not solve and to which a theology of mission should turn its attention.¹² This must be done now for the sake of the missionary enterprise of the Church. The theology of mission wishes to serve the obedient fulfillment of mission. But this service has beyond itself yet another significance. There are a number of problems by which the Church in general is confronted and which can be solved meaningfully only by a theology of mission. This appears to us to be true for two of those problems named by Dr. Goodall with which we wish to deal: the question of the relation between history and salvation-history (Geschichte und Heilsgeschichte), and the question of eschatology.

The importance of these two themes becomes apparent in the recent history of the ecumenical movement. At the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1954 eschatology was a central point in the discussions. And the theological preparations for the next plenary session of the World Council, which—God willing—will bring about the integration of the World Council and the International Missionary Council, have already shown that the problem of history and salvation-history forces itself more and more into the foreground. It is true that missionary thinking shows the way both problems can be overcome.

307We will begin with the first problem named by Dr. Goodall, which will lead us then to the second problem. What relationship and what difference exist between history and salvation-history? We will not deal with this in general, but will specify it as the question of the relation between God’s act in creation and God’s act in redemption. In my report on Willingen I have already indicated how the two lurking dangers here (i.e., an identification of the act of creation with the act of redemption on one hand, or the assumption of a juxtaposition more or less without any relation, on the other hand) are encountered by a theology of mission which is grounded in the Trinity and made concrete in Christ.1! But it became clear at the conference in Willingen that there are still unanswered questions here among the churches and missions. It is, therefore, understandable when these questions call for attention in the work of the preparation for the coming conference at New Delhi in 1961. For whoever asks about the Lordship of Christ over the world and the Church cannot escape the question: “How is God’s act of creation related to His act of redemption?”

The ecumenical study document on this matter rightly points out that questions are touched here which are closely associated with the various traditional positions and with confessional decisions that have already been made.!* This makes them difficult, but promising. The various churches have entered into conversation with one another with such an intensity as has never before been the case. This clarification must be carried on theologically. In their discussions the various confessional partners in the conversation are mutually responsible for giving insight into the theological recognitions which they have won and into the spiritual experiences which they have had. If this discussion results in a coming together which is determined by a readiness to learn from one another, then the whole Church can penetrate more deeply into the perception of Truth and, thereby, be led further on the way of Truth.

The assertion of an overlapping unity of God’s action upon and in the world can be variously motivated. It is characteristic of the Anglican position and is theologically grounded in the Incarnation. Naturally, such an opinion is schematic and generalized. 308But for a clarification of positions such a simplification is hardly to be avoided. We must, therefore, be concerned to recognize the intention of the respective positions so that we do them justice.

It is a very impressive conception when from the standpoint of the Incarnation, which is understood as the declaration of God’s solidarity with the world, the solidarity of the Church with the world is claimed and secular history itself is evaluated as salvation-history. The Church, thereby, becomes in a certain sense a continuation of the Incarnation of Christ. The Church and the kingdom of God draw close together. For in Christ the kingdom has drawn near, he is the

The significant lecture by Max A. C. Warren, “The Christian Mission and the Cross,” shows the fruitfulness of such thinking for a theology of mission. For Warren, however, something else is characteristic. And this may be helpful in the ecumenical conversation. He sees the Incarnation closely related to the Cross. The Incarnation as declaration of God’s solidarity with man has become valid through the power of His oneness with sinners, established and upheld by Christ in his obedience to death on the Cross. One can speak of a solidarity of the Church with the world, and, therefore, of an indissoluble connection between salvation-history and secular history, only in looking at the Cross. The Cross is to be seen as “the place of judgment and of grace, where both the world and the Church are judged and receive forgiveness.”

Let it be suggested that a one-sided incarnational theology can conjure up dangerous misunderstandings. The attempt to understand history through the theology of mission should not lead to a general philosophy of history. We believe in the missio Dei as the meaning and motive of history, but this truth cannot be illuminated by the ways of philosophy. In Warren’s thinking, through his strong emphasis on the Cross, such dangerous reflections are subdued but are not completely shut out. Incarnational theology can also lead to shallowness. That takes place when the fact of the Cross of Jesus Christ has only a marginal significance. Mission, which has at its very center the testimony to the act of God in the Cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is reduced to a general human declaration of solidarity with the world. It becomes social. gospel and falls victim to the secularization against which Warren so emphatically warns us.

In the deliberations at Willingen still another position made its 309appearance. It was presented by J. C. Hoekendijk, who strongly criticized Anglican mission theology, which is thought out from the standpoint of the Church and the Incarnation. In his opinion a decisive dimension is overlooked, or limited in a way that is inadmissible by the Church: the eschatological dimension of the kingdom of God. According to Hoekendijk, mission means that the Gospel of the kingdom must be proclaimed to the world. This confrontation of the world with the kingdom of God, according to Hoekendijk for a reason different from the Anglican position, leaves no room for a distinction between God’s act in creation and redemption. Certainly, the God who lets His kingdom break in upon us with the resurrection of the Crucified is the Creator of the world. He reclaims the world for Himself and for His kingdom with the victory of Christ over sin, death, and the devil. Since the coming of Christ, however, a distinction between history and salvation-history, between the act of creation and the act of redemption, is unreal.:

When we attempt to evaluate these respective positions, we perceive a difference of emphasis in Christology. On the one side (in Warren’s position, to be sure, wisely corrected), the Incarnation, God’s declaration of solidarity with the world in His becoming man in Christ, is evaluated as God’s decisive act. Thus the assumption of a continuity of God’s action in the world is made possible, which is basic for the Anglican doctrine of Church and Order. At least one component of the doctrine of the historic episcopacy can be seen here. On the other side, all that happened in Christ is interpreted from the standpoint of Easter and the Ascension. This makes necessary an emphatic accentuation of discontinuity. The kingdom of God is breaking in. It calls forth its own witnesses and will succeed in itself through the power of God. But it is the great eschatological factor which corresponds to nothing that is already in the world. The other doctrine of Church and Order which comes from this position is obvious.

If this theological evaluation of the differences is correct, then the way is indicated by which they can be overcome or consolidated. Because Jesus Christ is both the Incarnate Word of God and the Lord who has been raised from the dead and elevated to the right hand of God, both of these positions have the same point of reference. This point of reference, however, is no idea, but the real Jesus Christ. As long as he is considered on both sides, the assur310ance is given that in the witness to him through the preaching of the Gospel and in the administration of the sacraments the mission of God will continue in the world.

This is a valid consolation. But it does not relieve us of the task of attacking theologically the discrepancy which is apparent here. The theological and missionary insights which were achieved at Willingen can point the way. But they necessitate, on the basis of their trinitarian affirmation, a stronger differentiation in God’s action than can be perceived in the two positions sketched above. The endeavor to distinguish correctly between history and salvation-history or between the act of God in creation and in redemption (the two questions, although closely related, are by no means synonymous) has an element of truth in it which cannot be relinquished.

At first it must be said that we cannot expect any theoretical instruction from the Holy Scriptures. The history of God’s dealings with men, to which the Scriptures witness, is salvation from the very beginnings which are known to us. God is the Saviour and Redeemer of the people whom He has chosen to be partner in covenant. That is the dominating point of view in the New Testament as well as in the Old Testament.’ But this very history is only then perceived in its special significance when its vicarious character comes to our view.'* We see this already in the way in which Genesis 12 explains the beginnings of God’s history with Abraham. God called him out of his homeland, away from his friends, out of his father’s house, and that means at the same time out of his heathen environment, because He wanted to begin with him a history that would bring about the salvation of all peoples. This history has the character of vicariousness. God is the Creator of heaven and of the earth. Nothing happens without His will. “And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries 311of their habitation” (Acts 17:26). The meaning of the story (or history) of Noah is to testify to the will of God that He wants to spare man his creaturely life in spite of man’s evil heart and disobedience against his Creator. This expression of God’s will, of course, does not empower us to develop an independent theology of history or a theory of a special action of God in creation. This is not what is meant by the distinction at which Goodall is aiming. The Bible is not interested in this. Whoever asks in such a manner is using false criteria.

But we cannot get around the actuality of a distinction. The history of God with Israel, which reached its culmination and goal in Jesus Christ, is salvation-history in distinction from the history of other peoples, which we believe also to be originally and finally determined by God. It has in its basic structure and in its point of culmination a vicarious character. For, according to the will of God, it documents that the Creator and Lord of all the world has accomplished His salvation through reconciliation.

Thereby we come in another way to the fact to which the above positions were related: the reality of Jesus Christ. But our way points us to the very center, to the Cross. What takes place here cannot be expressed without the help of the concepts of vicariousness and reconciliation. The decisive missionary kerygma to the world begins, then, with the report: died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3).

Now a healthy theology of mission will not commit the error of isolating the view of the Cross from the Incarnation on the one side, nor from the Resurrection on the other side. Only when it does not do that does it have any hope of overcoming the antitheses which we mentioned. A theology formed from the whole Christ—the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected—offers a place for the just concern of the first position. It not only empowers but it obliges the Church to declare her solidarity with the world. The Church knows that she is the salt of the earth and the light of the world. She knows this not because she considers herself to be the continuation of the Incarnation, but because she believes on the elevated Lord who is present in her midst. She lives from his declaration of solidarity with the sinner. And it is his solidarity to which she testifies.

This is certainly no chance solidarity. It is true and real. But it is true and real in such a way that one cannot forget that the Church 312is indeed in the world, but not of the world (Jn. 17:11, 16). Therefore the nature of the Church and the nature of mission, in whose service the Church is used, cannot be described without giving full due to that which is the particular in God’s act of redemption. The Church is no institution which is supposed to make the life of man on earth more bearable and livable. She is the measure which God has taken to serve the accomplishment of His final will for salvation. Let no one misinterpret this consciously one-sided sentence as a disparagement of social and welfare work of Christian love. This has its place in the Church. The Church would not be the Church of the God who has mercy on His whole creation if her secular environment did not experience the love which lives in her. She makes a place on earth where once again life becomes worth living. But the Church is primarily and ultimately the people whom God has won for His kingdom and is leading to His coming kingdom.

We are now already at the point where it becomes clear that the first problem mentioned by Goodall is closely connected with the second one of mission and eschatology. The solution of the one contains the solution of the other. A theology of mission that is determined from the standpoint of the whole Christ does justice to the eschatological dimension. Thus we have turned our attention to the other side. But here also we cannot be uncritical. We believe that we must warn against Hoekendijk’s eschatological leveling of Church and world. The Church is not only that which is sent forth (Sendung) to the world, but also, without ceasing to be that which is sent forth, that which is gathered together (Sammlung) in the world. She is the people of God gathered from all peoples. She participates in the structure of the people of Israel. Even in the New Covenant she remains the wandering people of God, that is on the way toward God’s goal. God has claimed her for His work of redemption which will come to its goal and conclusion.

The question of mission and eschatology is connected closely with the theme of Evanston (1954). This is further proof of how important the participation of the theology of mission is in the general theological reflection of all of Christianity in the whole world. And it can contribute decisively to this reflection specifically in this problem. Perhaps this contribution does not consist primarily in a deepening of theological perception. This must necessarily remain piecemeal. The eschatological dimension has two 313components: the already and the not yet. The kingdom of God has come in Christ, but we nevertheless are waiting for its appearance in glory. We cannot escape this tension as long as it is certain that Christ is and was and is to come. The conference in Evanston made this clear. In this it did not lead beyond Willingen. But the greatest task for a theology of mission is indeed not to communicate knowledge. Instead, it should be the great agitation in the life of the Church. The Church should never become fixed at any one place in the world. She must be on her way to the ends of the earth in the certainty that His time is pressing. In this manner mission calls forth the end, the coming of the Lord himself. The theology of mission is then, also, at its goal. Then it also becomes adoration of the Triune God.

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