Review
Christopher J. H. Wright
Reviewed By Rev. Mark R. Kreitzer, DMiss., PhD.
Visiting Professor,
Reformed Theological
Published in Global
Missiology, Review & Preview, April 2009, www.globalmissiology.net
Christopher J. H.
Wright has given us another masterpiece.
It is beyond peer in my opinion, by far the most comprehensive and
up-to-date theology of Christian mission in print. As a well-respected OT scholar with a PhD.
from
Beginning in the OT, Wright first develops the missional hermeneutic found in Lk. 24 that springs directly from our Lord’s own summary of the “messianic centering of the Old Testament Scriptures” and their “missional thrust” (Wright 2006, 29; see e.g., Lk. 24:25-27,44-48). He adds that Christians throughout history have been excellent in their discoveries of messianic passages in Scripture but have been almost blind to the obvious missional characteristics of the Messiah! The missional nature of Messiah as Suffering Servant flows out of the whole Grand Narrative of Scripture. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah must suffer . . . and that repentance resulting in forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the peoples” (Lk. 24:26,46-47). The doctrines of the pre-existent triune God, his creation, man’s Fall in Adam, the redemption in Christ, and the coming consummation are all inextricably missional, Wright shows. God has called his people to be a missional people, who participate in God’s very own mission. The Lord has planned that all the clans and peoples of earth will be impacted and transformed by God’s very own mission, in which his people participate.
Grounded upon this perspective, Wright traces how all of Scripture gives believers a rock-solid foundation for holistic mission.[1] “Fundamentally,” he writes, “our mission . . . means our committed participation as God’s people, at God invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation” (Wright 2007, 22-23, emphasis in the original). God’s mission thus is not dualistic that is it is not merely spiritual, leading to a merely personal salvation. Salvation that God’s mission brings is totally comprehensive just as the Fall of Adam brought a totally comprehensive ruin to all creation. God’s mission then is to restore both the whole human creation and the whole of the non-human creation. Because Adam was the head over all creation, his Fall affected the whole of creation. Hence redemption in King Jesus must apply to all creation since He is the Second Adam. God’s people, in the second Adam, have a designated role to play in that redemptive mission.
This (w)holism
leads to the interpretative key, which can discover mission in the totality of
Scripture: “My major concern has been to develop an approach to biblical
hermeneutics that sees the mission of God (and the participation in it of God's
people) as a framework within which we can read the whole Bible. Mission is, in
my view, a major key that unlock[s] the whole grand narrative of the canon of
Scripture” (Wright 2007, 17). The whole
story, not as Geschichte (saga, myth,
or legend) but Historie (a true
account of what actually occurred in time and space), gives a metanarrative
provided by the Master storyteller himself.
Christ himself provides this “whole-Bible perspective” (Wright 2007,
41), giving “hermeneutical coherence” to the whole Bible. In the Old Testament, then, Jesus reveals his
Father’s mission. The Father chose Abraham’s
family—the people of
This then leads
directly to the second section of Wright’s book: “The God of Christian Mission
“(Chapters 4 and 5). This God reveals
himself graciously and salvifically by calling his people out of
“Part III: The
People of Mission” discusses how this missional God grants his family—his
chosen people—the Abramic blessing found in Genesis 12:1-3. This blessing, which Wright penetratingly
exegetes, counters
Even though I
disagree with Wright’s analysis at this point, the remaining chapters of this
section are so outstanding that they cannot be neglected. Wright discusses the comprehensive political,
economic, social, and spiritual implications of the “model of redemption: The
Exodus.” Here, he engages with
liberation theology and develops a much more balanced application of this theme
than that of his Marxian-based interlocutors.
My great regret is that he does not equally engage with the libertarian
influenced neo-puritan rivals as I stated in my review of his volume on OT
ethics (e.g., Schaeffer, Rushdoony, Nash, Perks, North, and Beissner). Wright, common with many
Next, Wright deals with the testy area of the
Jubilee legislation. He analyzes the
familial and kinship aspect of the system (The Social Angle), the economic
aspect of land tenure, the theological angle that God is ultimate owner of all
land and man is merely a tenant though with real property rights under God, and
the practical aspects. Wright is fairly balanced
and does not go to the extremes of social-democratic redistribution that Ronald
Sider and Wallis offer.[3] The Jubilee is not about such things as a
socialist progressive income tax and welfare net as many social relevant
evangelicals propose but about a fair distribution of land. God desires a vast majority of citizens
owning freehold rights on land and vehemently rejects a landed aristocracy with
an enserved populous. This has definite implications for
The next two sections are especially valuable to covenantal Christians as the author traces mission through the Noahic, Abraham, Sinaiatic, Davidic, and New Covenants. My only regret is that he does not go back to the original creation, its Dominion Covenant (Cultural Mandate) and then onto an exposition of the Fall. In no way does he deny the Fall but he has no systematic exposition of the Fall. His short exposition on 429-430 is excellent but much too brief and too late in the volume. This is a huge lacuna and a glaring weakness of this otherwise excellent book. Without a comprehensive exposition at the beginning of the volume of the very good creation, the comprehensive deprivation of the Fall, and its all-encompassing curse, the people of God are hard pressed to understand a comprehensive doctrine of redemption such as he so manifestly desires to develop. I only hope that he will remedy this in a subsequent edition.
Going back to the legal creation covenant would demonstrate that mission was intimately involved in Adam and Eve’s task before the Fall (prelapsarian), not was not merely given post-Fall. In fact, Wright does not unequivocally mention that Adam and Eve were literal persons specially created “in the beginning” as our Lord states (see e.g., Mk. 10:6; Mt. 19:4; note small section on page 195 and compare 326, 334, 398). I must grant that he seems to presuppose their literal existence but this could be in his view merely a literary device in a Barthian sense for a generalized fall of humankind. He does mention that the creation was pronounced “good” by the Scripture, an essential element in a redemptive and restorative view of mission (see 398). This is well and good. But the literalness of the creation and the Fall accounts and the creation’s literal goodness before the Fall affects how we see present sickness, animal predation, and such natural evils as tornadoes and hurricanes. With billions of years of animal death, nature “red in tooth and claw,” the survival of the fittest, the strong tearing and destroying the weak, and the bigger crushing the smallest, God’s wisdom, goodness, and glory are vastly diminished, if not destroyed.
The God of Scripture, on the other hand, reveals himself as a Being of totally different character. He is the God who always supports the weak, defends the helpless, and is Helper and Servant to his creation (Ps. 146). He has compassion upon even his tiniest creatures and does not delight in their suffering. In fact, he delights in letting the first be last and the last first. To me, these two views of divinity are irreconcilable and antithetical. I pray that Wright would adopt a literal creation view but I fear not. Most British evangelicalism rejects such a view, emasculating the Gospel’s comprehensive power unto a complete salvation, in my view. Therefore, the remedy in Christ is also spayed. This redemptive restoration irrupts into the present age with the power of the future Resurrection Age by means of the Spirit working through Messiah and his community (e.g., Mt. 12:28
Second, going back to a literal, good creation and a literal Fall at the beginning of earth history demonstrates that mission has always been comprehensive (i.e., (w)holistic). After the Fall, the redemptive element must be added as well as the priority of the message of repentance and conversion without neglecting all other aspects of God’s mission. If Wright had gone back in his exposition to the literal creation and Adam’s lapse at the beginning as I am recommending, then the definition of the missio Dei before the Fall would be something along these lines. “The Trinitarian movement of God to create, then enter into fellowship with the man and woman he created, in order to form their emerging culture into the likeness of His culture within the Trinitarian community of the Godhead, to His ultimate glory.” The priority here was upon culture formation under the Lordship of the Creator. Only after the Fall did the missio Dei become conversion-redemptive in priority, but not in final goal. I would propose the following changes in the definition of the missio Dei after the Fall. “The Trinitarian movement of God to redemptively re-enter into fellowship with fallen mankind in order to transform their fallen ethno-cultures into the likeness of His unified-yet-diverse culture within the Godhead, to His ultimate glory.”
Wright seems to waver on the concept of such a priority though he does include an excellent section on the centrality of the cross before his discussion of “Priority or Ultimacy” (316). “The cross is the unavoidable center of our mission. All Christian mission flows from the cross—as its source, its power, and that which defines its scope” (Wright 2006, 314; emphasis in the original). To this he adds his “passionate conviction that holistic mission must have a holistic theology of the cross” by which he means that the cross must be the very center of “social engagement . . . [and] evangelism” (Wright 2006, 315). He then adds these remarkable words: “There is no other power, no other resource, no other name through which we can offer the whole Gospel to the whole person and the whole world than Jesus Christ crucified and risen” (Wright 2006, 315-316). Amen!
He states further that he has great sympathy to those who hold to comprehensive mission with the emphasis upon the priority of church planting and evangelism as I do. He states that he desire to provide a “few gentle questions” to those holding this priority rather than a “severe critique” (Wright 2006, 317). I believe his conclusions after these questions are very appropriate. I agree substantially with him if evangelism and church planting remain the top normal priority for resources and time. Donald McGavran’s works—ever timely—constantly re-emphasized how resources and time are always eaten up by non-priority missional works. Historically, evangelism and church planting almost always end up being put on the far back burner with few resources and personnel being allocated to these priority tasks.
Having said this, however, hear Professor Wright with some of my commentary. “Almost any starting point can be appropriate, depending possibly on what is the most pressing or obvious need” (Wright 2006, 319). I agree but note that any person’s eternal relationship with the Father is always the most pressing need. Food, literacy, or medical care may temporally come first because, for example, a terrible famine is occurring or a Muslim or totalitarian state may not allow any other first step. But proclamation of the cross leading to repentance is commanded by our King as his number one priority without ever neglecting all other aspects of (w)holistic mission (see Mt. 28:17-20; Lk. 24:46-48; Mk. 16:15; Jn. 20:21; Acts 1:8, 22:21, 26:17-18, etc.). He continues:
We can enter the circle of mission response at any point on the circle of
human need. But ultimately we must not
rest content until we have included without own missional response the
wholeness of God’s missional response to the human predicament—and that of
course includes the good news of Christ, the cross and resurrection, the
forgiveness of sin, the gift of eternal life that is offered to men and women
through our witness to the gospel of the hope of God’s new creation. That is why I speak of ultimacy rather than
primacy.
The last section, “Part IV: The Arena of Mission” demonstrates how our Triune God desires that the whole creation (e.g., physical, social, economic, legal, and spiritual) would partake in the restorative aspects of Christ’s redemption. Wright builds his case through careful exegesis of passages throughout the whole of the Scripture demonstrating that there is continuity between covenants in each of the areas he covers. First, he deals with earth keeping as part of our missional responsibility. He next has an important and very relevant section on the image of God in man, how it affects humankind in rebellion against God, with further implications for his judgment. He asks important questions about our missional responsibility in the HIV/AIDS epidemic and how this relevant discussion interfaces with judgment, the image of God, and disasters in general.
A very relevant discussion of ethnicity in Scripture follows (“God and the Nations in Old Testament Vision” and “God and the Nations in New Testament Vision”). This is a special, decades long interest of mine and the subject of a recent volume just published.[4] I strongly agree with his thesis: “It is God’s mission in relation to the nations, arguably more than any other single theme, that provides the key that unlocks the biblical grand narrative” (Wright 2006, 455). Contrary to classic medieval thought, he states categorically that “the Bible does not imply that ethnic or national diversity is in itself sinful or the product of the Fall. . . . He created them in the first place” (Wright 2006, 455-456). The goal of the new creation, he continues, is not “a homogenized mass or . . . a single global culture. . . . The Bible’s portrait of the nations is not a melting pot . . . but a salad bowl. . . . The mission of God is not merely the salvation of innumerable souls but specifically the healing of the nations” (Wright 2006, 456).
He then goes on the echo several other themes of my own research. First, God deals with ethnies and nations “as
wholes” (457).
Next, Wright adds two very optimistic biblical themes utterly neglected
and often rejected in the last 150 years in Anglo-American evangelicalism: “The
nations as Beneficiaries of Israel’s Blessings” (Wright 2006, 474) and “The
Nations Will Worship
This section,
however, consists of many strengths but also several weaknesses, some more
important than others. First, as I have
mentioned, Wright emphatically believes that
Second, Wright
states that there were no instructions in the OT for centrifugal mission. Psalm 96 again gives such instruction: An
imperative, a message (YHWH reigns and judges while all the gods are non-existent)
and an invitation (“come to the temple”).
This actually is more complete than the NT’s Great Commission. Third, Wright states that there is no
“explicit condemnation in the prophets for
Last, Wright’s
excellent volume has a few other minor weaknesses that by no means destroy the
value of the book but could be improved in future editions. For example, Wright accepts “global warming”
theory, which is far from established scientific truth. There are many very able skeptics who have
impeccable scientific credentials.
Sadly, this shows a naivete that I find too often among many
Wright concludes with a challenging statement: “If, then, it is in Christ crucified and risen that we find the focal point of the whole Bible’s grand narrative, and therein also the focal point of the whole mission of God, our response is surely clear” (535). Since the mission of the triune God mission is the complete—wholistic—redemption of all mankind because of King Jesus’ death and resurrection, the only proper response of the redeemed to it join him as the Suffering Servant and his people in he missio Dei. Hear again, Dr. Wright concluding words:
When we grasp that the whole Bible constitutes the coherent revelation of the mission of God, when we see this as the key that unlocks the driving purposefulness of the whole grand narrative (to cite our subtitle), then we find our whole world view impacted by this vision. As has been well documented, every human worldview is an outworking of some narrative. We live out of the story or stories we believe to be true, the story of stories that ‘tell it like it is,’ we think. So what does it mean to live out of this story? Here is The Story, the grand universal narrative that stretches from creation to new creation, and accounts for everything in between. This is The Story that tells us where we have come from, how we got to be here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we are ultimately going. And the whole story is predicated on the reality of this God and the mission of this God. He is the originator of the story, the teller of the story, the prime actor in the story, the planner and guide of the story’s plot, the meaning of the story and its ultimate completion. He is its beginning, end and center. It is the story of the mission of God, of this God and no other. (Wright 2006. 533)
All in all, this is a very deep and thought-provoking volume with many useful tables and diagrams. I appreciate his own personal translations of classic passages such as Genesis 12:1-3. He is judicious in his use of careful scholars and he always engages with them graciously whether he disagrees or agrees. I find the indexes excellent but the outline pages at the beginning, unfortunately, do not provide page numbers, making it a bit more difficult to locate key sections. Last, I believe that actually a key purpose of this volume is principally Chris Wright’s delight in declaring the nature and character of the triune God of mission and his joy in describing how God’s mission becomes our mission. Only as we all share that same joy and delight can we impact the totality of the world’s ethno-cultures with the Gospel. The goal of the mission of God is that all peoples become joyous and delighted worshippers of our Father through Christ our Lord.
[1]I prefer the spellings “wholistic” and “wholism.” Holism is an evolutionary term derived from a modern form of neo-Platonism, which teaches that all things are evolving to an ever-greater oneness. Ultimately holism denies Trinitarian doctrine.
[2]“In
my view (which is not agreed on by all),
[3]See
e.g., Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the
Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (
David Chilton, Productive Christians in An Age of Guilt Manipulators A Biblical Response to Ronald Sider (Tyler, TX: Institute of Christian Economics, 1981—now desperately in need of updating, and Stephen Perks, The Political Economy of a Christian Society (Taunton, Somerset, UK: Kuyper Foundation, 2001).
[4]See note 2. Two other fine works on the subject, though not as comprehensive, are J. Daniel Hays, From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003 and Dewi Hughes, Castrating Culture: A Christian Perspective on Ethnic Identity from the Margins (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2001).
[5]I discuss this extensively in The Concept of Ethnicity in the Bible: A Theological Analysis (see note 2).