Mission after Pentecost (Mission in Global Community): The Witness of the Spirit from Genesis to Revelation

By Amos Yong

Bringing Pentecostal theology into the Bible and mission conversation, Amos Yong identifies the role of the divine spirit in God's mission to redeem the world. As he works through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, Yong emphasizes the global missiological imperative: "People of all nations reaching out to people of all nations." Sidebars include voices from around the globe who help the author put the biblical text into conversation with twenty-first-century questions, offering the church a fresh understanding of its mission and how to pursue it in the decades to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781493419920

Amos Yong

Amos Yong (PhD, Boston University) is professor of theology and mission and director of the Center for Missiological Research at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He is the author or editor of over two dozen books, including Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace, Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture (coedited with Estrelda Alexander), Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences (coedited with James K. A. Smith) and The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Yong is a member of the the American Academy of Religion, the Christian Theological Research Fellowship, and the Society for Pentecostal Studies. He is also a licensed minister with the General Council of the Assemblies of God.

Book preview

SCOTT W. SUNQUIST

AND AMOS YONG,

SERIES EDITORS

The Mission in Global Community series is designed to reach college students and those interested in learning more about responsible mission involvement. Written by faculty and graduates from Fuller Theological Seminary, the series is designed as a global conversation with stories and perspectives from around the world.

© 2019 by Amos Yong

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-1992-0

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016

Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Dedicated to

Sue and Tony Richie,

kindred spirits in the missio Dei

Contents

Cover    i

Series Page    ii

Title Page    iii

Copyright Page    iv

Dedication    v

Expanded Table of Contents    ix

Series Preface    xiii

Preface    xv

Abbreviations    xix

Introduction: On the Pneumatological and Missiological Interpretation of Scripture    1

Part 1: Divine Wind and the Old Testament: Ruahic Witness across Ancient Israel    23

1. Torah and the Missio Spiritus: The Winds of Creational Mission    25

2. The Spirits of Ancient Israel: Ambiguity in Mission    57

3. The Postexilic Ruah: Rewriting and Renewing Mission    87

4. The Breath of the (Writing) Prophets: Centripetal and Centrifugal Witness    113

Part 2: Divine Breath and the Christian Scriptures: Pneumatic Witness after Pentecost    153

5. The Witness of the Evangelistic Spirit: Gospel Mission    155

6. Pauline Testimony in the Spirit: Apostolic Mission    181

7. The Witness of the Eternal Spirit: Catholic Mission    227

8. Johannine Paraclete and Eschatological Spirit: Mission for and against the World    249

Concluding Late Modern Prescript: Missio Spiritus—Triune Witness in a Post-Mission World    273

Scripture Index    285

Subject Index    292

Back Cover    301

Expanded Table of Contents

Series Preface    xiii

Preface    xv

Abbreviations    xix

Introduction: On the Pneumatological and Missiological Interpretation of Scripture    1

Are We in a Post-Mission Era?    2

Reimagining Mission Theology in the Twenty-First Century? Scriptural and Pneumatic Threads    6

Mission after Pentecost: Toward a Biblical-Canonical and Triune Missio Dei    10

Outline of the Book and Other Important Matters    15

Part 1: Divine Wind and the Old Testament: Ruahic Witness across Ancient Israel    23

1. Torah and the Missio Spiritus: The Winds of Creational Mission    25

Introduction    25

1.1 Genesis, Part 1—The Life-Giving Spirit: Creation and Fall    27

1.2 Genesis, Part 2—Joseph and the Spirit: The Mission of God through the Patriarchs    32

1.3 Exodus, Part 1—The Wind and Breath of Yahweh: Liberation and Mission    35

1.4 Exodus, Part 2—The Crafts of the Spirit: A Missional Vocation    40

1.5 Numbers, Part 1—The Spirit’s Dangerous Answer to Prayer: Intercessory Mission    43

1.6 Numbers, Part 2—Spirit outside the Camp: Mission and Divination outside the Covenant    46

1.7 Numbers and Deuteronomy—Leadership in the Spirit? From Conquest to the Renewal of Mission    50

2. The Spirits of Ancient Israel: Ambiguity in Mission    57

Introduction    57

2.1 Judges, Part 1—The Wind of Yahweh: Defensive Mission?    60

2.2 Judges, Part 2—Spirit and Strength: Diffusing Mission?    65

2.3 1 Samuel—Saul among the Prophetic Spirits? Decentering Our Mission    69

2.4 1–2 Samuel—David’s Messianic Anointing: Denationalizing Mission?    74

2.5 1–2 Kings—Not Knowing Where the Wind Blows, Except against Baal: Recalibrating Mission    78

2.6 1 Kings 22:24—Which Way Did the Spirit Go? Depoliticizing the Prophetic, Demilitarizing Mission    82

3. The Postexilic Ruah: Rewriting and Renewing Mission    87

Introduction    87

3.1 1–2 Chronicles—Spirit Speaking: Renewing the Call    89

3.2 Nehemiah—The Spirit from Persia: Reverse Mission?    93

3.3 Job—The Breath of Life: Anticipating Cosmic Renewal    99

3.4 Psalms—Singing amid and to the Nations: The Soul of Mission    102

3.5 Ecclesiastes—Expiring Breath and Ephemeral Mission?    107

4. The Breath of the (Writing) Prophets: Centripetal and Centrifugal Witness    113

Introduction    113

4.1 Isaiah, Part 1—The Justice of the Spirit: Witness amid International Threat    116

4.2 Isaiah, Part 2—The Comfort(s) of the Spirit: Witness in a Far Country    120

4.3 Isaiah, Part 3—The Present Promise of the Spirit: Witness Betwixt and Between    126

4.4 Ezekiel, Part 1—Transported by the Spirit: Witness Crossing Borders    130

4.5 Ezekiel, Part 2—Transformed by the Spirit: The Heart of Witness    135

4.6 Daniel—The Spirit of Babylon: The Witness of Babel    138

4.7 The Book of the Twelve, Part 1—The Spirit of Yahweh: Prophetic Witness in Joel and Micah    142

4.8 The Book of the Twelve, Part 2—The Spirit of/from the Second Temple: The Transnational Witness of Haggai and Zechariah    146

Part 2: Divine Breath and the Christian Scriptures: Pneumatic Witness after Pentecost    153

5. The Witness of the Evangelistic Spirit: Gospel Mission    155

Introduction    155

5.1 Matthew—The Spirit of the (First) Gospel: The Messianic Mission to the Nations    157

5.2 Mark—The Spirits against the (Second) Gospel: Deliverance Mission amid Empire    162

5.3 Luke—The Spirit Empowering the (Third) Gospel: Jubilee Mission among the Oppressed    167

5.4 Acts, Part 1—Pentecost and Mission: From the Ends of the Earth    171

5.5 Acts, Part 2—Mission after Pentecost: To the Ends of the Earth    176

6. Pauline Testimony in the Spirit: Apostolic Mission    181

Introduction    181

6.1 Romans—From Jerusalem and as Far Around as Illyricum: The Breadth and Depth of the Spirit’s Mission    184

6.2 1 Corinthians—With a Demonstration of the Spirit and of Power: Charismatic Mission in the Flesh    189

6.3 2 Corinthians—Written . . . with the Spirit of the Living God: The Mission of Weak Apologetics    194

6.4 Galatians—Having Started with the Spirit: The Beginning and End of Mission    197

6.5 Ephesians—Both of Us Have Access in One Spirit: The Mystery of Mission    202

6.6 Philippians—Standing in the Spirit: Mission in Chains    206

6.7 Colossians—Loving in the Spirit: Epaphras’s Mission within the Mission    210

6.8 1–2 Thessalonians—Rejoicing in the Spirit: Mission, Sanctification, and Hope    214

6.9 1–2 Timothy—Admonition by the Spirit: Retrospect and Prospect in Mission    218

6.10 Titus—Renewal in the Spirit: The Crete-ability of Mission    222

7. The Witness of the Eternal Spirit: Catholic Mission    227

Introduction    227

7.1 Hebrews—The Spirit Witnesses: Sustaining Mission outside the Gate    229

7.2 James—Redeeming the Missionary Spirit: Wisdom-Work-Witness    233

7.3 1 Peter—Sanctifying the Suffering Spirit: Mission in Diaspora    237

7.4 2 Peter—Prophetic Spirit: Mission between the Times    241

7.5 Jude—Apocalyptic Spirit: The Mission before the Mission    244

8. Johannine Paraclete and Eschatological Spirit: Mission for and against the World    249

Introduction    249

8.1 John, Part 1—The Wind Blows Where It Chooses: The Breath and Mission of God    252

8.2 John, Part 2—If You Forgive the Sins of Any, They Are Forgiven: Paracletic Mission    255

8.3 1 John—Discerning Missionary Spirit(s): Incarnational Mission    260

8.4 Revelation, Part 1—What the Spirit Is Saying to the Churches: Asian Mission(s)    263

8.5 Revelation, Part 2—The Spirit and the Bride Say, ‘Come’: Doxological Mission Back to Jerusalem    267

Concluding Late Modern Prescript: Missio Spiritus—Triune Witness in a Post-Mission World    273

The Mission of the Spirit    273

Missio Dei: Triune Participation    276

The Beginning of Mission: A New Witness Praxis for the Third Millennium    280

Scripture Index    285

Subject Index    292

Series Preface

A mission leader in 1965, not too long ago, could not have foreseen what mission looks like today. In 1965 nations in the non-Western world were gaining their independence after centuries of Western colonialism. Mission societies from Europe and North America were trying to adjust to the new global realities where Muslim nations, once dominated by the West, no longer granted missionary visas. The largest mission field, China, was closed. Decolonization, it seemed, was bringing a decline to missionary work in Africa and Asia.

On the home front, Western churches were in decline, and the traditional missionary factories—mainline churches in the West—were struggling with their own identities. Membership was then—and remains—in decline, and missionary vocations were following the same pattern. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches began to surpass mainline churches in mission, and then, just when we thought we understood the new missionary patterns, Brazilians began to go to Pakistan and Malaysians began to evangelize Vietnam and Cambodia. Africans (highly educated and strongly Christian) began to move in great numbers to Europe and North America. Countries that had been closed began to see conversions to Christ, without the aid of traditional mission societies. And in the midst of this rapid transformation of missionary work, the alarm rang out that most Christians in the world were now in Asia, Latin America, and Africa rather than in the West.

What does it mean to be involved in mission in this new world where Christianity has been turned upside down in less than a century?

This series is directed at this new global context for mission. Fuller Theological Seminary, particularly through its School of Intercultural Studies (formerly School of World Mission), has been attentive to trends in global mission for over half a century. In fact, much innovation in mission thinking and practice has emanated from Fuller since Donald McGavran moved from Oregon to California—as the first and founding dean of the then School of World Mission—to apply lessons about church growth learned in India to other areas of the world. Since that time many creative mission professors have provided global leadership in mission thinking: Ralph Winter (unreached people groups), Paul Hiebert (anthropology for mission), Charles Kraft (mission and spiritual dynamics), and Dudley Woodberry (Islamics), among others.

This series provides the most recent global scholarship on key themes in mission, written for a general audience of Christians committed to God’s mission. Designed to be student, user, and textbook friendly, each volume contains voices from around the world speaking about the theme, and each chapter concludes with discussion questions so the books can be used for group studies. As the fields of mission are changing, shifting, or shrinking, the discussions connect the church and the world, East and West, North and South, the developed and developing worlds, each crossing cultural, political, social, and religious boundaries in its own way and knitting together people living and serving in various communities, both of faith and of other commitments—this is the contemporary landscape of the mission of God. Enjoy the challenges of each volume and find ways to live into God’s mission.

Scott W. Sunquist

Amos Yong

Preface

It has taken me almost four years to write this book, working on and off, around teaching, administrative work, and other writing assignments. When I came to Fuller Seminary as professor of theology and mission and director of the Center for Missiological Research at the School of Intercultural Studies (SIS) in the summer of 2014, I said to myself: I now need to write a full-fledged missiology. As I set out to work on such a book, I built most immediately off work I had been doing in theological interpretation of scripture, with the result being perhaps more appropriately considered pneumato-missiological interpretation of scripture. Yet the book you hold in your hands could only have come about because of the welcome afforded to me by Fuller Seminary as a whole and by my colleagues in the SIS more specifically. It has been a wonderful learning experience working in the field of missiology, and I have learned a great deal about mission theology and mission studies from my faculty colleagues and students. As the manuscript goes to press, I am doubly welcomed—and honored—now to have been invited to serve as dean of the SIS and its sister, the School of Theology (SOT).

This dual decanal appointment is also a source of trepidation. Not only am I out of my element as systematician turned mission theologian, I am now wading into the field of biblical studies. Hence, this has turned out to be one of the most challenging books I have written so far, not least because the Old Testament canon spans almost two millennia and there has been no hope for me to digest the vast scholarship in the field, much less the detailed treatments of the texts that my own focused approached has identified for comment. I have learned a great deal about the world of ancient Israel through these last few years but surely still not enough to avoid what I am sure will appear to scholars who work in this arena—now including my new SOT colleagues, indeed!—as very naive statements. In any case, I am extremely grateful to Rick Wadholm for reading a previous draft of my manuscript, as he helped save me from many egregious errors of scriptural interpretation, especially in the Old Testament. Thanks also to the sixteen interlocutors whose comments grace these pages, and especially to Federico Roth, Amelia Rebecca Basdeo-Hill, and Bitrus Sarma, who each went the additional mile to provide corrective perspective on various chapters of my text. The book is greatly improved as a result of these colleagues’ perspicacious and insightful contributions.

I appreciate also Scott W. Sunquist’s friendship and constant decanal prayer (as preceding dean of the SIS) for me and our faculty colleagues here, as well as his comradeship in coediting the book series in which this volume is published. Jim Kinney and the Baker staff, especially Eric Salo, have also been enthusiastic about this project and professional all along the publication way. Ryan Davis in particular did yeoman’s labor in his detailed copyediting of the manuscript that made it more readable, correcting misplaced references and smoothing over many other mistakes. All the persisting interpretation and factual foibles are not to be charged to those named above but remain my responsibility.

My graduate assistants Jeremy Bone and, previously, Hoon Jung, Nok Kam, and Ryan Seow have helped at various stages of this four-year-long writing project, getting research materials and indexing the book (Bone). Gail Frederick, Alice Song, and others at Fuller’s David Allen Hubbard Library have helped with the acquisitions of books I have consulted.

My wife, Alma, is a constant supportive and loving presence by my side. Over the last few years here in Southern California, we have lived with almost a full household at various points (with our children, their spouses, and granddaughters all present). She nevertheless accompanies me regularly on dinner dates, just the two of us, and her smiles, conversation, prayers, and exhortations give me the encouragement to keep pressing into the vocation of scholarship that has been our path now for the last three decades plus. To say Thank you, Alma! insufficiently expresses the gratefulness I have to God for such a caring life confidant.

I dedicate this book to Sue and Tony Richie. From what I can tell, Sue is to Tony as Alma is to me: a continual source of love, joy, and strength for her husband. And as our wives are to us as life companions, so Tony has been walking with me as a fellow pentecostal theologian for at least the last fifteen years. He first came upon my early work on pentecostal theology of religions, saw the need, and joined me in what at that time was and still in many respects remains a lonely journey, developing inimitably along the way his own pentecostally inspired testimonial theology of interfaith dialogue. What is unique to his accomplishments is Tony’s location at the heart of the Holiness-Pentecostal Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, group of churches, which is relatively classically pentecostal in its orientation. That he has been able to lead denominational conversations about intra-Christian ecumenism and interfaith relations at a high level speaks to his own gifts as a pentecostal scholar, minister, and leader. In all these respects, and many more beyond his own groundbreaking contributions to pentecostal theology, Tony is a missionary in crossing established borders, breaking long-held conventions, and exploring new territory for the gospel’s unfolding. I am grateful for such a colleague and friend, recalling with special fondness when the Richies have extended the warmest of Southern hospitality to the Yong family, including allowing us time away at their lakeshore cabin, with the gift of laughter as I tried to navigate their boat across the lake. Thank you, Sue and Tony. May your missionary journey from Knoxville, Tennessee, to the ends of the earth continue to be led and blessed by the divine spirit!

Abbreviations

Introduction

On the Pneumatological and Missiological Interpretation of Scripture

This is an ambitious book that attempts to triangulate around three scholarly domains: theological interpretation of scripture, pneumatology and pneumatological theology, and missiology or mission studies. Our overarching objective is to contribute to theology of mission discussions and do so via a reading of scriptural references to the divine spirit. Our secondary goals are to develop pneumatological theology in a missiological venue and to enrich theological interpretation of scripture initiatives from pneumatological and missiological perspectives. Such a complex and complicated triadic and tri-directional thesis nevertheless considers the two ancillary aspirations—in pneumatology and theological hermeneutics—in effect as the two hands that drive the broader venture in missiology and missional theology.1

This introductory discussion situates our efforts along three registers: the contemporary mission predicament, recent developments signaling the revitalization of theology of mission as a subfield of missiology, and the emergence of what I am calling pneumatological interpretation of scripture as a resource for mission theology today. A fourth and final section will introduce the method and argumentative trajectory of the two parts of the book. This introduction outlines the current historical-missiological-theological context both in the hopes that the crisis of mission2 that many now experience also may be felt through the reading of this book and so that the missiological proposals sketched throughout and summarized at the end can also be more adequately appreciated in the present historical moment.

Are We in a Post-Mission Era?

Since John Gatu, the general secretary of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, called for a moratorium on foreign missionaries and funds in 1971,3 the crisis of modern mission has only intensified rather than alleviated over the last almost half century. We have no space here to provide any exhaustive analysis, so I will delineate the issues in terms of the passing away of the classical mission paradigm and reality, and the emergence of something new, the precise nature of which remains to be understood and hence adequately articulated. For our purposes, then, and in order also to be provocative in an appropriately pedagogical sense, I will simply call ours a post-mission era and sketch its primary features along three lines.

First, ours is a postcolonial reality.4 Yes, we are a long way from complete equality among nations in the present globalizing context, and it does appear that even with the European nations giving way to national self-governance, new global powers (e.g., China) have arisen while the emergence of the neoliberal economic world order portends new imperial pressures and constraints. Nevertheless, the postcolonial turn means not just that people are (putatively) self-governing but also that sociopolitical, cultural, and ethnic voices across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are no longer presumed to be subservient to those of the (former) Euro-American masters. Indeed, the postcolonial resurgence signals what might be called the color-ing of the global conversation in that the dominance of white (European and Anglo-Saxon) peoples is giving way—imperceptibly slowly in some contexts and not without a fight in all others—to reds, yellows, browns, and blacks, and these in variously hybridized forms. To the degree that the modern mission movement—like the modern theological academe—was forged from the colonial enterprise, it was a project of white supremacy and normativity.5 In our postcolonial context, then, the interrogation of whiteness includes with it the questioning of Christian mission and its complicity in the subjugation of the peoples of the earth for the benefit of Euro-American Westerners (whites). If the postcolonial moment is in quest of the end of whiteness, does that not also mean that a mission paradigm facilitated by whiteness is coming to an end, if not already finished?

At another parallel level, ours is also a post-Western and post-Enlightenment reality.6 Here I am distinguishing European colonialism as a socioeconomic and political project from the Western Enlightenment as an epistemological discovery and foundational construct. Although both the political and the epistemological projects presume and support each other, I focus here on the latter because of its, in a sense, ironic interface with the theological sphere.7 If the Enlightenment rationality was the climax of the intellectual quest for certainty punctured variously in the early modern period by Descartes and his successors (e.g., Leibniz and Kant on the Continent; Berkeley, Locke, and Hume in England), then this contributed to an even more radical dualism in the field of theology, given its commitments to understanding the world as composed of both material and spiritual dimensions. The problem was and remains that these theological convictions were marginalized as private belief (fit only for religious adherents) by the Enlightenment-based intellectualistic and scientific (scientistic, actually) paradigm that claimed to be the basis for public and verifiable knowledge. Yet the result in both directions remains problematic in our late modern situation. On the one side, Enlightenment rationalism, logocentrism, and conceptualism were taken over by scientistic positivism, and this combination began to show its limitations with the two world wars in the West during the first half of the twentieth century, and its so-called iron cage of rationality has since further unraveled with the emergence of the postmodern and its affective, embodied, and interrelational modalities of knowing. On the other side, theological dualism, forced into this position by Enlightenment rules, has proffered an otherworldly sensibility that has functioned for a while to preserve the political, economic, and religious status quo with its promise of rewards in an afterlife, but this alignment is becoming largely ineffective when measured against the resurgence of indigenous religious traditions that see no bifurcation between the material and the spiritual orders of the world. In other words, classical Christian mission, initially allied with Enlightenment reason against the perceived irrationalities of the non-European and non-Western world, now finds itself being the nonrational outsider on multiple fronts: too spiritual for Enlightenment goods on the one side and too otherworldly for traditional Christian or any other good on the other side. In this case, then, the epistemological underpinnings of modern Christian mission have begun to evaporate and are in need of reconstruction if the enterprise is to be salvaged.8 Hence, to reiterate in another key, if the post-Western and post-Enlightenment condition has overturned the rationalist and scientistic hegemony, does that also mean that a mission paradigm facilitated by that kind of ordering of the cosmos is also expiring, if not already extinguished?

Alongside the postcolonial and the post-Western/post-Enlightenment arc is the post-Christendom arc.9 Here my focus is not just on how Christian mission abetted developments in the political and epistemological spheres but on how Christian faith itself has been decentered from the public square in almost every meaningful measure.10 And it is not just that Christianity has been decentered but that the so-called naked public sphere has been filled in now by multiple spirits: those of many cultures (multiculturalism) and those of many religions (religious pluralism), just for starters. So the anxiety some feel derives from a loss of Christian vitality and authority in the public domain and simultaneously an overcrowding of this same space by many other voices and powers. Some Christians are therefore now motivated to restore the glory and power of the Christian message to such a pluralistic world, but the problem is that they do not recognize that the plausibility structures undergirding such argumentative forms no longer hold in this post-everything world. More exactly, the nature of the Christian or Christianity itself might mean something different, so that mission or witness in the way of Christ will no longer be as if from a self-obviously recognizable church and related institutions and organizations to the world, understood in terms of other realities needing redemption. Thus, some have called for a mission from or at the margins, while others have acknowledged that after the dissolution of Christendom, mission proceeds not from the West to the Rest but from everywhere to anywhere.11 To return to our point, then: if the post-Christendom era is in quest of the end of Christian hegemony, does that also mean that a mission paradigm facilitated by such sociopolitical-economic power is eroding, if not already passé?

Yet amid all the discussion that we live in a kind of post-age, we are also still very much grappling with the legacies, technologies, and achievements of the modern West, indeed in many ways even benefiting from these. Hence, my own preferences in this regard are to refer to ours as a late modern rather than postmodern context,12 not least because the latter designates negatively and vacuously rather than positively. Recognizing our late modern situation allows us to see that the postcolonial, post-Enlightenment, and post-Christendom forces that today raise serious questions about classical Christian mission are real, even if dynamically fluid, phenomena. Part of the question that this book seeks to grapple with is how to buttress, even galvanize, the Christian mission enterprise when it is being assailed from so many sides. The way forward, however, might be to bury a modernist project, even one that bears the name of Christian mission, in order that something new may arise out of its throes.

Reimagining Mission Theology in the Twenty-First Century? Scriptural and Pneumatic Threads

So Christian mission, if it is to survive at all in whatever comes after late modernity, will look very different and perhaps have to go by a different name. Almost thirty years ago, David Bosch attempted to chart some of the ways forward in his book Transforming Mission, with his own emerging ecumenical missionary paradigm tracking along thirteen distinct, even if interrelated, fronts.13 Interestingly, Bosch came to the field of missiology as a New Testament scholar and devoted a large portion of his book—the entire first part, consisting of 165 pages—to early Christian perspectives on a mission theology. As a systematician myself, I see the need both for ongoing theological reflection and for further scriptural consideration. Yes, there is a sense in which, as Martin Kähler opined over a hundred years ago, mission became the ‘mother of theology,’14 but there is also an ongoing need for sound theological reflection to provide perspective on the swiftly changing nature of the missional undertaking. Scriptural engagement remains key to this important missiological-theological task since there are few reliable places Christians can turn to for guidance in faithful discipleship in times of rapid change.

It may be deemed fortunate, then, that the subfield of mission theology has exploded with scripture studies. There are now many full-length formulations of what we might call biblical theologies of mission,15 even as there are emerging efforts specifically in the Old Testament and mission more particularly.16 The latter are especially of interest since a question has persisted about Israel’s witness to the nations, particularly whether there was ever a more centrifugal aspect of this mission in which Israel actively sought to reach out to its neighbors, or whether much of it was centripetal, nurtured by the expectation that Yahweh would draw the nations to his people and his temple within Israel.17 We will take up this question in part 1 of this book, even if our own compass will treat it from different angles and in response to different concerns. Simultaneously, more recent New Testament scholarship in this area has explored more accurately the nature of early Christian mission and developed constructive mission-theological ideas in intensive dialogue with these documents.18 There are now also specific book studies amid the larger testamental considerations that probe missiological aspects of these early Christian materials.19 The important point to be made is that there is an abundance of scriptural interrogation in the present context.

Yet my own sense is that much of this work is motivated by an effort to recall the glory days of modern mission, even if there is a realization that we ought not to retrieve the worst elements of the colonial enterprise. If this is close to being true, then rereading the Bible from the perspectives of bygone days is probably not the prognosis for imagining a different future since the worry is that any missiological takeaway in that case will only perpetuate what is now a failed missionary enterprise. New approaches are thus needed for new times, even in the activity of missiological interpretation of scripture. For instance, perhaps we might need to reread the story of ancient Israel and the earliest Christians less from a modern missions point of view than from either a political or an ethnic/racial perspective, both of which are at least in part culturally produced.20 The former political register is important both since the relationship between Israel and other nations is central to the drama of the Old Testament,21 and since at the heart of the Christian missional undertaking in the twenty-first century is the issue of transnational relations between countries deemed at least formerly Christian (if not also still associated with the Christian religion) and those that have other religious affiliations if not commitments. The latter ethnic/racial site is particularly salient both since we need new understandings of the particularity of Israel as the chosen people of God and of the church as being grafted into that people, and since we now realize how deeply divided modern Christians are ethnically and racially and how modern Christianity is constituted by such divisions.22 So, just along these two trajectories, considerations of ancient Israel living under the shadow of imperial Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia and of early Jewish-Christian relations unfolding within the Pax Romana are much more than mere historical curiosities. Because they are important for contemporary constructive missiology, especially given our own imperial times and racialized circumstances, both parts of this book will engage specifically with such scholarship for our missiological purposes.

Another line of mission-theological development, however, is consistent with and undergirds some of these mission trajectories outlined and may also provide pointers for next steps. Here I am referring specifically to pneumatological mission theologies, including my own extensive work in the arena of pneumatology over the decades.23 More specifically, there are two interrelated fronts: first, the literature generated from the arena of pentecostal studies, and also that related to biblical theologies of mission.24 The emergence of pentecostal studies in academia during the past generation has brought with it pentecostal missiological formulations, much of it pneumatologically oriented.25 It might be anticipated that such perspectives will continue to expand given pentecostal mission commitments and their further theological development. These proposals have come alongside and invigorated previously existing and parallel developments in the wider missiological sphere. Although the proposals were practically unheard of until more recently,26 the last few decades have seen the gathering of momentum at the interface of pneumatology and mission theology, including but not limited to work in the area of spirituality and mission, ministry and mission praxis, and spiritual warfare and mission, among other related topics.27 Some of this ferment has derived from charismatic renewal in the mainline Protestant churches and the resulting reconsideration of familiar topics from the perspective of the person and work of the divine spirit.28 Understandably, these trends in what might be called the charismatization of mission theology are parallel and oftentimes convergent with pentecostal missiological efforts. Although some of these proposals have proceeded from classical missiological assumptions, the pentecostal and pneumatological perspectives informing these inquiries are also opening up new vistas and contributing to the implosion of the older paradigm.

Behind the feverishness of this pneumatological activity in mission theologies lies a more steady stream of pneumatological reflection in relation to work in the biblical theology of mission. This current was initiated in the first half of the twentieth century by English missionary-theologian Roland Allen (1868–1947). Two of Allen’s books can be read as precursors to the present volume. His Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours focuses on a range of Pauline mission strategies, not the least of which include the role of signs and wonders and engagement with the principalities and powers, while his Pentecost and the World: The Revelation of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles explores further the work of God’s spirit for Christian history and missionary undertaking.29 Allen was a classically modern missionary in many respects, so what is being recalled here is less the what of his mission-theological prescriptions than the pneumatological elements of his missiological thinking and the how with which he attempted to discern such. In particular, Allen was led back to an engagement with scripture and with the works of the divine spirit in relation to mission amid the early twentieth-century period within which he was wrestling with next steps for the missionary enterprise from the West to the Rest. How might a reengagement with scripture today from such a day of Pentecost starting point and pneumatological perspective generate next steps for Christian mission in our late modern context?30

Mission after Pentecost: Toward a Biblical-Canonical and Triune Missio Dei

Although I am not a biblical scholar, I consider this book, as well as a growing portion of my efforts as a theologian, to be part and parcel of what is now an established track in biblical studies called theological interpretation of scripture. In brief, theological interpretation of scripture insists that while modernist approaches to the biblical canon (e.g., historical, grammatical, and textual criticism) have their place, the church or believing community as the people of God has never only read their sacred texts from such objective vantage points but always engaged these documents from a faith perspective expecting to hear God (not just know about God) in the process.31 To be sure, this does not collapse into an extreme form of late modern reader-response hermeneutic in which we simply allow our subjectivities to dictate how to understand and apply ancient texts to present life circumstances. Instead, the theological reading of scripture is traditioned by the reception history of these texts, creedal in some respects (i.e., according to the Nicene confession, except in non-creedal communities), and ecclesial or confessional in being shaped by specific communities of faith (e.g., Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or, among Protestants, the various Reformation and post-Reformation confessions or statements of faith). The point is that while some in the biblical studies guild might approach these ancient texts from a critical outsider’s perspective, others, while benefiting from existing biblical scholarship in its many forms, can and do read scripture also from a theological posture of faith that invites interaction with biblical content as communicating God’s word for human benefit.

My own journey into theological interpretation of scripture began from my specifically pentecostal location. Hence, much of my earlier work in interfaith encounter, disability, science, and political theology is done from an explicitly pentecostal perspective. This meant for me both taking into account what pentecostal churches and even traditions (pentecostal believers don’t like to admit they are part of a tradition) believed and thought about these matters and also returning particularly to the pentecostal canon-within-the-canon, the book of Acts, for fresh scriptural reconsideration in topics that pentecostal Christians had not explored much before.32 It ought to be observed that while I have my own notions of what such a pentecostal interpretation of scripture might or ought to look like, there are many versions of such, not just one,33 but this also is consistent with other ecclesial and denominational traditions (e.g., there is not one mode of Wesleyan interpretation of scripture either).34

Along the way, however, I have begun to realize that while my own reading of Acts, and increasingly the Gospel of Luke with it,35 was informed by my pentecostal spirituality and traditioning, these texts are owned neither by my pentecostal denomination nor even the global movement as a whole. Instead, these are Christian books that belong to the church ecumenical. Yes, my pentecostal situatedness was prompting retrievals of these texts in perhaps some unique senses, but nevertheless, to the degree that I worked as a systematic theologian seeking to think faithfully for the church catholic and not just for my pentecostal community, my self-identified pentecostal hermeneutic was not copyrighted by my fellowship or movement (as we like to envision ourselves, against those other so-called denominations perceived to be static) but was constituted by the New Testament itself, especially Luke and his book about the acts of the divine wind poured out on the day of Pentecost. From this perspective, then, what is pentecostal is less a late modern phenomenon related to those churches and movements that see their genesis as the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in the early twentieth century, as sizable and vital as such is across the world Christian landscape a century later. Rather, pentecostal denotes connections to and energies unleashed by the outpouring of God’s spirit on all flesh on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17).

In other words, I have moved from a pentecostal interpretation of scripture to a theological but even more explicitly pneumatological and day of Pentecost approach to scriptural interpretation.36 The proposal is that Christians, at least—those who are followers of Jesus the Messiah, meaning those also filled with the same spirit that anointed Jesus—can read scripture only after Pentecost. The controlling Christian vision therefore is Jesus the Christ, the Messiah anointed by the divine spirit, including his life, death, resurrection, ascension, and then giving of his spirit (Acts 2:33), not just to the church institutionally conceived (and effectively controlled in many cases), but to all flesh understood as the people of God gathered from every tongue, tribe, and nation (cf. Rev. 5:9 and 7:9).37 Perhaps pentecostal Christians might gravitate instinctively toward such a pneumatological stance and toward the interpretation of scripture (I did!), but not all do, even as many other Christians, filled with the same spirit of God, if not manifest in quite the same ways, have also advocated for some kind of related pneumatological hermeneutic and thereby demonstrated that one does not have to carry denominational credentials in any particular movement in order to embrace such a post- or after-Pentecost interpretive stance.38

In this book, then, I spring off such a Pentecost-inspired and spirit-initiated approach to theological interpretation of scripture to ask missiological questions. I note, of course, that, as Roland Allen himself presumed and urged, the Pentecost narrative is itself essentially a missiological account, concerned as it is with the gift or economy of the spirit as enabling messianic witness from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth (which would be Rome, considered from a Jerusalem-centric perspective). This is what Acts 1:8 says, being the effective table of contents for the book of Acts, also known historically as the acts of the holy spirit.39 In other words, while there are human characters—human missionaries—galore in the Acts account (e.g., Stephen, Peter, Paul, and others), the central missionary is divine. The spirit is sent out from heaven and sends out Jesus’s disciples and followers to bear witness to the Father in the name of his Son (see §§5.4–5.5 below). If Acts is therefore also the birth of the church as the witnessing or missionary people of God, then it is this account that established the foundation for the entire New Testament as a witness to what happens in and through the divine spirit after Pentecost. Hence, the rest of the Christian testament does not just unfold out of the Pentecost event, but we know about these developments through the writings that appeared after and were inspired by and through that outpouring. And if for the moment we assume that the divine breath loosed at Pentecost is also the divine wind spoken of in the Old Testament,40 then in that case we might also assume that the ruah Elohim (sixteen times in Hebrew and five in Aramaic) or ruah Yahweh (twenty-seven times in the Hebrew) in the Old Testament is also a manifestation, before the incarnation and Pentecost, of the missionary deity breathing among, within, and through ancient Israel. In short, a pentecostal or pneumatological perspective on mission helps us recognize across the scriptural traditions what we might call a missio spiritus.41 This is a biblical, missional Spirit theology, as another scholar puts it,42 a theological vision of the missionary God expressed in and through the work of the divine wind, whose witness blows from Genesis to Revelation.43

There is one more point to be made along these lines. The person of the holy spirit has been traditionally known also as the shy or hidden member of the Trinity, in large part because, as the scriptures themselves also declare, the divine wind calls attention not to itself but to the person of Jesus and the God he worshiped.44 From that perspective, any pneumatological interpretation of scripture cannot be for its own sake but must be for the sake of understanding the