Engaging the Bible in Mission Theology Scholarship: A Biblical Theology of Mission or a Missional Biblical Theology? 2. Christopher Wright and a Missional Biblical Hermeneutic
Engaging the Bible in Mission Theology
Scholarship: A Biblical Theology of Mission or a Missional Biblical Theology? 2.
Christopher Wright and a Missional Biblical Hermeneutic
Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God[1] is one of the most significant works written on missions from a
Biblical perspective. Thus my own study
will begin with his consideration of hermeneutical issues for engaging the
Bible in mission theology. Wright’s
first two chapters of The Mission of God need
to be read together in articulating a missional hermeneutic. There is a sense in which the first chapter
is a ‘missional hermeneutic’ for missions and the second chapter is a
‘missional hermeneutic’ for Scripture, but the distinction is not that
clear. While my own approach to the
subject will be quite different, Wright’s observations are helpful. The points listed here are my numbering, not Wright’s.
Chris Wright first argues that we
must go beyond present approaches to mission and search for a better missional
hermeneutic (ch. 1). We need to go
beyond simply looking for a Biblical foundation for missions, beyond
multicultural perspectives, beyond contextual theologies and advocacy readings,
and beyond postmodern hermeneutics. In
all this, he makes several points that might be listed as parts of his
missional hermeneutic, which is further developed in ch. 2.
Thus, Wright’s initial points for
a missional hermeneutic are:
1. Avoid building a mission theology on a single
text, such as the Great Commission (Mt. 28.18-20), or even several texts. Rather, explore a missional framework for
biblical theology itself (pp. 34-38).
2. The global Church, with its
multiple perspectives and contexts, helps us see that the meaning of a text has
a plurality of implications and significances (pp. 38-40).
3. The plurality of
interpretation is restricted by the coherence of the Bible itself. That coherence is Jesus himself, with the Old
Testament read messianically, as pointing to Christ, and the New Testament read
missionally, as leading on from Christ (pp. 40-41).
4. A missional hermeneutic
operates with an interest and advocacy of God’s mission. (This subsumes narrower, restricted
interests, such as liberation theologies.)[2]
5. Missional engagement and
reflection, like the Bible itself, involves articulating objective truth, or the story, in multiple contexts (pp.
41-47).
Wright offers two further points
for a missional hermeneutic of the Bible in ch. 2:
6. The Bible is missional in that
it is God’s self-revelation in his mission to wayward humanity (p. 48).
7. The processes by which
Biblical books came to be written were often missional, representing the
‘events or struggles or crises or conflicts’ of God’s people trying to live
according to ‘God’s revelation and redemptive action in the world’ (p. 49).
Put together, Wright says: ‘In
short, a missional hermeneutic proceeds from the assumption that the whole Bible renders to us the story of
God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the
sake of the whole of God’s creation’ (p. 51).
Wright then explores Biblical
authority as part of a missional hermeneutic.
Scripture does (1) command, but it also (2) authorizes. (In other words, do not try to talk about
missions in Scripture merely from a single passage, like the Great Commission,
or even several passages; rather, explore mission in numerous other ways—as
follows.) Its imperatives are typically
predicated upon the indicatives we read in Scripture about (a) this God, (b)
this story, and (c) this people, Israel, all brought together (d) in the person
of Jesus Christ. Thus the Great
Commission and the Great Commandment of love are both based on the Great
Communication in Scripture of identity and action in the world for all creation
(p. 60). This entails shifting our
understanding of mission first in terms of what we do to understanding mission as
first about God’s mission. Indeed, a
missional hermeneutic of the Bible will explore (1) God’s mission, (2)
humanity’s mission, (3) Israel’s mission, (4) Jesus’ mission, and (5) the
church’s mission (pp. 62-68). Aware that
not all the Bible will be explicated in these terms, Wright concludes by
suggesting that what this provides is a hermeneutical map that does not have
every detail but will nevertheless guide our reading of Scripture (pp. 68-69).
Looking ahead, I will suggest that a
hermeneutic for mission studies can best be discussed in terms of four tasks of
theology: the exegetical, the Biblical theological, the convictional, and the
pragmatic. The first two of these tasks
have to do with engaging the Bible in missions directly, and the second two
have to do with the authority and use of the Bible in the formation of
Christian convictions and practices.
Wright’s comments can be brought into this four-fold discussion of
hermeneutics.
[1] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s
Grand Narrative (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP, 2006).
[2] Wright approvingly quotes Carl Braaten: ‘Advocacy is what the
church is about, being God’s advocate in the world. The church must therefore begin its mission
with doxology, otherwise everything peters out into social activism and aimless
programs’ (p. 45). See Braaten, ‘The
Mission of the Gospel to the Nations,’ Dialog
30 (1991): 121.
Comments