Feb 02, 2007
"The
A Book
Review by Michael Kruse
What is
our mission in the World? Christopher J. H. Wright writes in the introduction
to The
Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative:
Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed
and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s
invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world
for the redemption of creation. (22-23)
That observation pushes us to ask a more profound
question: What is God’s mission in the world? Wright endeavors to answer that
question. After briefly reviewing the relationship between hermeneutics and
mission in the past, Wright declares his project for his book:
What we have to offer, I contend, is a missional
hermeneutic of the Bible. The Bible got there before postmodernity
was dreamed of – the Bible which glories in diversity
and celebrates multiple human cultures,
the Bible which builds its most elevated theological claims on utterly particular and sometimes very local events, the Bible which sees
everything in relational, not
abstract, terms, and the Bible which does the bulk of its work through the
medium of stories. (47)
Wright is the director of international ministries for the
Langham Partnership International. He formerly taught
Old Testament, and served as principal of
Most studies of missions begin with New Testament passages
like the Great Commission and investigate what it means to take the gospel to
all nations. The Old Testament is barely a footnote in these studies. What
Wright masterfully does is show us how the Bible unfolds God’s mission to us
from Chapter 1 of Genesis. He helps recover the importance of the biblical
narrative in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. For instance, Chapter 11 of
Genesis tells us the story of the
Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city,
and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves;
otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
Genesis 11:4 (NRSV)
The people sought renown. In defiance of God, they refused
to fill the earth and united against Him as one. God confused and scattered the
people, the tower project ended and people were scattered across the earth.
But then at the beginning of Genesis 12 calls out for
Himself a people with these words:
1 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country
and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 I
will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name
great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and
the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth
shall be blessed." Genesis 12:1-3 (NRSV)
It is a reversal of
Wright goes on through the course of the book to show how
God had called out for himself a particular people in a particular place. He
called them out to be his instrument for gathering all people to himself. If
the land was the stage and the people were the actors, then the nations of the
world were the audience to witness God’s relationship with his people. While
the Israelites tended to pervert there selection into haughty pride they soon
learned that being God’s people meant experiencing his blessing when they loved
and worshiped and Him, and the withdraw of that
blessing when they refused. That was part of the witness God gave to the
nations.
The New Testament expands how “the people of God” are
understood and they are no longer confined to a place and a temple. They are
the living temple. Apostles are sent out to gather the nations in and reveal
God for who He is.
I am distilling a treasure trove of theological insights
from 535 pages into this simple review. It is Wright’s detailed investigation
of passage after passage that truly makes the missional narrative come alive.
Wright concludes the book by describing the transformative impact a missional
hermeneutic has on those who adopt it:
- We ask, “Where does
God fit into the story of my life?” when the real question is where does
my little life fit into the great story of God’s mission.
- We want to be driven
by a purpose that has been tailored just right for our own individual
lives (which is of course infinitely preferable to living aimlessly), when
we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up
in the great mission of God for the whole of creation.
- We talk about the
problems of “applying the Bible to our life,” which often means modifying
the Bible somewhat adjectivally to fit into the assumed “reality” of the
life we live “in the real world.” What would it mean to apply our lives to
the Bible instead, assuming the
Bible to be the reality – the real story – to which we are called to conform
ourselves?
- We wrestle with the
question of how we can “make the gospel relevant to the world” (again at
least that is clearly preferable to treating it as irrelevant). But in this Story, God is about the
business of transforming the world to fit the shape of the gospel.
- We wonder whether
and how the care of creation, for example, might fit into our concept and practice of
mission, when this Story
challenges us to ask whether our lives, lived on God’s earth and under
God’s gaze, are aligned with, or horrendously misaligned with, God’s
mission that stretches from creation to cosmic transformation and the
arrival of a new heaven and new earth.
- We argue about what
can legitimately be included in the mission God expects from the church,
when we should ask what kind of church God expects for his mission in all
its comprehensive fullness.
- I may wonder what
kind of mission God has for me,
when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission. (533-534)
The book really is a wonder travelogue through the
narrative God has given us in the Bible. It accomplishes its “mission” to give
a missional hermeneutic. It is published under the Baker Academic label but it
is well written and accessible to a general audience. As noted, it is lengthy
and the subject matter is not something you can just breeze through. I found
this to be an exceptionally helpful book. This is going on my reference shelf
and I have no question it will be accessed many times in the days ahead. I
highly recommend this book!
Posted in the