However, the Lord’s second coming is promised to us (Acts 1:11) and we are told to await it, expect it, and hasten it as our “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). The Old and New Testaments both end with a promise of the Lord’s coming.

Malachi 3:1– “I am about to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me; and suddenly the Lord, whom you seek, will come…”

Revelation 22:20– “He who testifies these things says, Yes, I come quickly.”

Suddenly? Quickly? The Lord seems to have a different definition of these words. It was 400 years after Malachi that the Lord came the first time, and it’s been 2,000 years since John and the Lord has still delayed coming the second time.

How do we maintain hope? Watchman Nee once said, “He who sees, endures.” Seeing how God works, knowing His ways and not just His acts (Psa. 103:7), can buttress our hope.

I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God: first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done. –Hudson Taylor

Impossibility is never a good benchmark when you’re dealing with God. What seems impossible today, is only two steps away from being done. This should fill us with hope. Also, we should realize where our front is. Where are we placing our resources? As Christians, we are here to do the impossible. We’re not merely saving a few souls and tidying up society until we escape to heaven. We are not battling to reform society “from below”. We are here to turn the age and bring in God’s kingdom to earth. For this, the pivotal battle is the building up of the church, and the practical way to fight is to prophesy (1 Cor. 14:8).

Our prophesying, and seeing others prophesy, brings great encouragement and consolation because it builds up the church and hastens the coming of our blessed hope.

Unsolvable

This word crashes onto the shore of human ingenuity like a wall of water. We humans solve everything. We have an intractable ambition to master our environment, overcome what stands in our way, and remake the world in our own image. The Enlightenment taught us to believe in progress, that all problems are solvable. Potential, progress, and pragmatism are the Western, secular trinity. This is faith in humanity.

And the problems of modern existence that are still pending are never abandoned in despair. We don’t admit defeat. We may endure temporary set backs and delays, but in our mind there are always solutions forthcoming. The advances in science, medicine, technology, industry, communication, and culture have promised us a better future of equality, prosperity, freedom, and happiness. Jules Verne and the early generation of futurologists would be shocked to see us eclipsing their most audacious fantasies.

However, right alongside this notable track record of progress are alarming discrepancies. Postmodernism recognizes that the Enlightenment paradigm has run its course. Fear, disenchantment, vulnerability, pollution, oppression, war have not disappeared. “The earth is polluted under the weight of its inhabitants” (Isa. 24:5). Romans 8 is an apropos description of the spiritual vacuum in postmodern society- vanity, slavery, corruption, groaning, and travail. We have not mastered our own sinful nature, and this is the source of our enduring Catch-22.

All the monsters of the wilderness, all the horrors of darkness have reappeared. The human person again stands before the chaos; and all of this is so much more terrible, since the majority do not recognize it: after all, everywhere scientifically educated people are communicating with one another, machines are running smoothly, and bureaucracies are functioning well.

–Romano Guardini

Psalm 72

Psalm 72 identifies some of these “monsters”, implying seven problems on earth that cannot be solved by man:

1. Ecological problems–v.6
2. Territorial problems–v.7-8
3. Racial problems–v.10-11
4. Political problems–v.11
5. Economic problems–v.12-13
6. Social justice problems–v.14
7. Violence and crime related problems–v.14

Because these problems are unsolvable, we need a Savior. Here human nature is overtaxed. This psalm reveals that in His second coming, Christ will solve all these problems and take possession of the earth. “He will drop like rain upon mown grass, like abundant showers dripping on the earth” (Psa. 72:6). In His first coming, He mainly dealt with sin, accomplished redemption, and released the divine life. In His second coming, He will renew the earth, solve the problems of society, and bring in God’s kingdom. We are accustomed to preaching the gospel of His first coming, but His second coming is equally part of the gospel. I think it’s time to start preaching it, expecting it, and hastening it (2 Pet. 3:12).

The first coming of the Lord made the “fish” no longer “salty.” His second coming will make the “sea” no longer “salty.” In His first coming, the Lord saved us individually one by one. In His second coming, He will save the world as well… Today all of us who are saved through His first coming have a new life. When He comes again, we will inherit a new environment to match our new life within.

–Watchman Nee

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In On Being a Christian, Hans Küng has a section called “The God with a Human Face” that indicates how ‘human’ our prayerful contact of God can be:

Israel’s and Jesus’ understanding of God is not to be optimistically trivialized. There is no empty jubilation in the Old Testament. Besides praise there is always complaint. Modern man’s anxieties about God–His absence, incomprehensibility, inactivity–are also to be found in the Old Testament. The suffering both of the nation and of the individual–that great counterargument against God and His goodness–is continually present and often cries to heaven. When the earliest Gospel gives us Jesus’ last words to His God in the form of an inarticulate cry (Mark 15:37), there is in it the echo of all the crying of a constantly suffering and oppressed and also guilt-laden people. They cried to God in Egypt when they scarcely knew Him. The people cried to Him and individuals cried, when they had settled in the promised land, then in the Babylonian exile and finally under the alien Roman power–in all possible situations of distress and sin. The fact that one can cry to Him in every situation amounts almost to a definition of this God. (p.298)

From the first to the last page of the Bible there is talk not only of and about God, but constantly also to and with God, praising and complaining, begging and protesting… From first to last the Bible means by God a true partner, friendly to man and absolutely reliable: not an object, not a silent infinite, not an empty unechoing universe, not an indefinable, nameless depth in a Gnostic sense, not a dark, indeterminate void interchangeable with nothingness, least of all an anonymous, interpersonal something which could easily be confused with man and his (so very fragile) love. No. Where others perceived only an infinite silence, Israel heard a voice. Israel was permitted to discover that the one God can be heard and addressed, that He comes among men as one who says “I” and makes Himself “Thou” for them: a “Thou” who talks to them and to whom they can talk. (p. 304)

Suffering makes it clear how essentially stationary is the history of mankind. -Hans Küng

The Boston Marathon bombing is a cruel reminder that despite all progress in our society, we are getting nowhere. School shootings and public bombings are perennial occurrences now. Beyond the grief, there’s a deep rooted, numbing familiarity; a growing accustomed to. The shock of the news is, incredulously, lessened now by the just slightly perceptible recognition of a pattern. That subtle lie may even start to work on us- “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue in this way from the beginning of creation (2 Pet. 3:4).”

What Can We Do?

What can we do to get beyond our stationary history? How can we make sure things don’t continue in this way? What is the next step in the cycle of: tragedy, media coverage, grief, healing? Tragedies should not be reduced to media events. The continuous coverage informs us but fails to transform us. The looping video footage becomes a conversation piece. “Did you see the video?” But even the deepest impressions fade fairly quickly for those of us not directly impacted. We talk about healing and finding the strength to carry on. It seems that our resilience, our ability to adapt and carry on, to make progress is our Achilles tendon. At the Newtown prayer vigil,  President Obama said “We’re not doing enough.” So we do more. We enact legislation and tighten security checkpoints- all of which has produced a great deal of change but little improvement. There has been little change in us. For this we need to break out of the ‘one-dimensionality’ of our solutions, the horizontal and purely human. We need a vertical solution, a solution from above, a Savior.

Good News

The good news is that things have NOT always continued in this way. The first coming of Christ was an unprecedented rebuttal to that claim. His first coming gives us hope that, just as surely, He will come again (Titus 2:13). In His first coming He solved the problem of sin individually. In His second coming He will solve the problem of society at large. We need to pray for Boston, we need to pray for the victims and we need to pray for the Lord to come (Isa. 64:1).

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The resurrection of Jesus poses a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the natural mind. When Paul was announcing Jesus and the resurrection as the gospel in the philosophical milieu of ancient Athens, the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers dismissed him as a babbler. In Corinth, the Greek mind had infiltrated the church and produced devastating skepticism toward resurrection. Therefore, Paul devoted the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 15 to the matter, showing that resurrection is the life-pulse of God’s economy.

People today scoff at the empty tomb and question the validity of personal testimony. However, the historical enigma of the emergence of Christianity as an immediate, explosive move poses counter-questions.

How did a new beginning come about after such a disastrous end? How did this Jesus movement come into existence after Jesus’ death, with such important consequences for the further destiny of the world? How did a community emerge in the name of a crucified man, how did that community take shape as a Christian “Church”?

After leaving this man to die in complete isolation, how did it come about that his followers not only clung to his message under the impact of his “personality,” his words and deeds, not only summoned up their courage some time after the catastrophe to continue to proclaim his message of the kingdom and the will of God… but immediately made this person himself the essential content of the message?

How did they come to proclaim, therefore, not only the Gospel of Jesus, but Jesus himself as the Gospel, unintentionally turning the proclaimer himself into the content of the proclamation, the message of the kingdom of God into the message of Jesus as the Christ of God?

What is the explanation of the fact that this Jesus, the man who was hanged, not despite his death but precisely because of it, became himself the main content of their proclamation? Was not his whole claim hopelessly compromised by his death? Did he not want the greatest things and yet hopelessly failed to get what he wanted? And, in the religio-political situation at the time, could a greater psychological and social impediment to the continuance of his cause have been devised than this disastrous end in public shame and infamy?

Why was it possible then to link any sort of hope with such a hopeless end, to proclaim as God’s Messiah the one judge by God, to explain the shameful gallows as a sign of salvation and to turn the obvious bankruptcy of the movement into its phenomenal new emergence? Had they not given up his cause as lost, since his cause was bound up with his person?

Where did they get their strength from: these men who came forward as his apostles so soon after such a breakdown, the complete failure of his plans; who spared no efforts, feared neither adversity nor death, in order to spread this “good” news among men, even to the outposts of the Empire?

Why did there arise that bond to the Master which is so very different from the bonds of other movements to the personalities of their founders, as for instance of Marxists to Marx or enthusiastic Freudians to Freud? Why is Jesus not merely venerated, studied and followed as the founder and teacher who lived years ago, but—especially in the worshiping congregation—proclaimed as alive and known as the one who is active at the present time? How did the extraordinary idea arise that he himself leads his followers, his community, through his Spirit?

–Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, pp. 344-345

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“It is true that we see only in part, but we do see. We are committed to our understanding of revelation, yet we also maintain a critical distance to that understanding. In other words, we are in principle open to other views, an attitude which does not, however, militate against complete commitment to our own understanding of truth… Far from leading us into a morass of subjectivism and relativism, the approach I am advocating actually fosters a creative tension between my ultimate faith commitment and my own theological perception of faith. Instead of viewing my own interpretation as absolutely correct and all others by definition as wrong, I recognize that different theological interpretations, including my own, reflect different contexts, perspectives, and biases. This is not to say, however, that I regard all theological positions as equally valid or that it does not matter what people believe; rather, I shall do my utmost to share my understanding of the faith with others while granting them the right to do the same. I realize that my theological approach is a “map”, and that a map is never the actual “territory”. Although I believe that my map is the best, I accept that there are other types of maps and also that, at least in theory, one of those may be better than mine since I can only know in part (1 Cor. 13:12)… This presupposes, however, that we see fellow-Christians not as rivals or opponents but as partners, even if we may be passionately convinced that their views are in need of major corrections.”

–David J Bosch, Transforming Mission, p. 186-187

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For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

David J Bosch (obviously) identifies this passage as THE paradigmatic text that embodies the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther’s rediscovery of this truth was a beacon of light in the obscure soteriology of the time. 2 Peter 1:19 is an apt description of what was going on. It’s not that justification by faith was completely absent from Roman Catholic theology, but it was obscured by auxiliary stipulations- charity, self-mortification, good works.

‘Smashing prejudices is more difficult than smashing atoms’, said Albert Einstein on one occasion. I would add that, once they are smashed, they release forces that can perhaps move mountains.

–Hans Küng

Like the slip of built-up pressure in an earthquake, new paradigms come through crisis, revolution, a breakthrough insight, hermeneutical innovation, or even “hermeneutical shock”. The paradigm may gradually shift, but there is often a concrete event that triggers the rupture. And yet there is never a total break. We are still dealing with the same facts just in new relations.

What had been habitually believed became a matter of urgent conviction; what had been taught as ancient and accepted doctrine was realized as vital experience; what had been one truth among others became the truth.

–H. Richard Niebuhr

The theological underpinnings of the Reformation and the immediate situation the Reformers found themselves in, had a major effect on mission during that time.

As Greg Dutcher pointed out recently in his book, Killing Calvinism, the sovereignty of God, if taken wrongly, can become a major excuse for missional inactivity. After all, if God is sovereign and accomplishes everything in salvation for His glory, what difference does it make if we are zealous or not? Can man’s indifference or lack or relevance trump God’s sovereignty? If this is the case, as John Welsey famously reasoned against George Whitefield, the devil’s temptation is as useless as our evangelization.

Besides the theological emphasis behind the Reformation, more immediate concerns complicated and stifled the Reformers missionary endeavors.

First and foremost, the Reformers were tied up trying to reform the church. However, when the Reformers ultimately split from the Catholic church, they were obligated to redefine the marks of the true church to justify their departure. These definitions are embedded in the confessions and councils of the 16th century- the Augsburg Confession, the Council of Trent, the French Confession, and the Belgic Confession.

Each confession understood the church in terms of what it believed its own adherents possessed and the others lacked, so Catholics prided themselves in the unity and visibility of their church, Protestants in their doctrinal impeccability… The Reformational descriptions of the church thus ended up accentuating differences rather than similarities. Christians were taught to look divisively at other Christians.

–David J Bosch

Finally, in all the confessions and councils, the church was defined in passive terms, as a place “where something is done, not a living organism doing something.” All this became a major deterrent to both aspects of mission, activity (Matt. 28:19) and testimony (John 17:21). It wasn’t until Pietism that there was another breakthrough.

We’ve all read that Adam is a type of Christ, but some of us may still be wondering how. The differences between the Old and New Testaments should’t be emphasized to the point of conflict. They are the product of the same divine mind and interface at an organic level. This is more than evident in the connection between Adam and Christ.Below is a list that shows just how much a type of Christ Adam actually is. The list partly comes from Mark Driscoll’s current series on Ephesians and Watchman Nee’s classic The Glorious Church.

Adam… who is a type of Him who was to come.
-Romans 5:14

• The first Adam turned from the Father in the garden of Eden; the last Adam turned to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane.
• The first Adam was naked & unashamed in the garden; the last Adam was naked & bore our shame on the cross.
• The first Adam’s sin brought us thorns; the last Adam wore a crown of thorns.
• The first Adam substituted himself for God; the last Adam was God substituting Himself for us.
• The first Adam sinned at a tree; the last Adam bore our sins on a tree.
• The first Adam died as a sinner; the last Adam died for sinners.
• The first Adam lost the tree of life; the last Adam is the tree of life.
• The first Adam was the head of the old creation; the last Adam is the head of the new creation.
• The first Adam was created in God’s image; the last Adam is God’s image.
• The first Adam was to reign over all the earth; the last Adam will reign over all the earth forever and ever.
• The first Adam was the first husband; the last Adam will be the ultimate, eternal husband.
• The first Adam was alone & needed a counterpart; the last Adam is alone & needs a counterpart.
• The first Adam was seeking a wife; the last Adam is seeking a wife.
• The first Adam was put to sleep to produce Eve; the last Adam was put to death to produce the church.
• The first Adam came out from the ground; the last Adam fell into the ground.
• The first Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.
• The first Adam died & returned to the ground; the last Adam died & returned to heaven.
• The first Adam’s side was opened; the last Adam’s side was pierced.
• Eve was taken out of the first Adam; the church was taken out of the last Adam.
• Eve was built with the first Adam’s rib; the church is being built with the last Adam’s life.
• Eve was brought to the first Adam without sin; the church will be presented to the last Adam without sin.
• Eve was the same as the first Adam in life, nature, & expression; the church is the same as the last Adam in life, nature, & expression.
• The first Adam & Eve became one flesh; the last Adam & the church have become one spirit.

As long as this list is, I’m sure it isn’t exhaustive. Feel free to add to it in the comments.

Figurative Portraits

The Bible often juxtaposes dichotomous characters to convey a message. Cain and Abel, Abraham and Lot, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, David and Saul, the Pharisees and tax collectors, etc.

The Bible teaches by explicitly saying, but also by figuratively portraying. This is a major difference between the Old and New Testaments- poetic reflection versus doctrinal precision. It’s a beautiful combination that accommodates the left and right-brained alike.

Victor Hugo imbues substantial spiritual meaning in his characters in Les Misérables. And, as any Proust reader would acknowledge, character development itself can spin a meaningful narrative quite apart from plot. A similar, deceptively concise summary as, “Marcel becomes a writer“, can be ascribed to the second half of Genesis- “Jacob becomes Israel.” The real plot here concerns, not events, but character development.

The Power of Parables

In the characters of a story, we may see truths more readily, or perhaps be impressed more lastingly. We see in them those elusive bits of ourselves that are impossible to articulate.

Does not even modern man (and his mass media) live not only by arguments but also by stories, not only by concepts but also by images- often very primitive images- and dos he not always need valid images and stories that can be retold?

As if men had only ears and not eyes…

As if Christian faith were merely a matter of intellect and did not have to stir the whole man.

As if being stirred could ever be replaced by intellectual comprehension…

The possibility certainly cannot be excluded that in any particular situation an apparently vague image or simple narrative may be able to say more of what is ultimately ineffable and lay bare more of the depth structure of reality than the apparently so precise and for that very reason so fixed, inflexible, restricted concept, than the supposedly clear and definite and for that very reason so one-sided and colorless argumentation or documentation. Just so does poetry occasionally come closer to the mystery of nature and of man than the most accurate description or photograph.

-Hans Küng, On Being a Christian p. 413-414

Paul relied upon this method of pedagogy in 1 Corinthians and Galatians:

Now these things, brothers, I have transferred in figure to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us the matter… –1 Corinthians 4:6

These things are spoken allegorically, for these women are two covenants, one from Mount Sinai, bringing forth children unto slavery, which is Hagar. — Galatians 4:24

The Lord Jesus Himself taught through parables that juxtaposed characters with spiritual meaning. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14 is a great example and expresses a motif common to Les Misérables- righteousness, prayer, justification. The short story of the Pharisee and the tax collector makes a deeper impression on us than the concluding aphorism.

In the introduction to The Normal Christian Life, Watchman Nee explains further:

Christianity is not only built upon precepts, but also upon examples… God has not only directed His people by means of abstract principles and objective regulations, but by concrete examples and subjective experience… He worked in [others'] lives, producing in them what He Himself desired, and He bids us look at them, so that we may know what He is after.

We learn more readily by what we see than by what we hear, and the impression upon us is deeper. That is why God has given us so much history in the Old Testament, and the Acts of the Apostles in the New. He knows we learn more easily by example than by precept. Examples have greater value than precepts, because precepts are abstract, while examples are precepts carried into effect. By looking at them, we not only know what God’s precepts are, but we have a tangible demonstration of their outworking.

In Les Misérables the principles of law and grace are transferred in figure to Javert and Jean Valjean. Through their story we can receive a deep and lasting impression of what Paul meant when he said, “But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested (Rom. 3:21).”

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Despite a few bogus prophetic tremors the eschatological landscape remains intact. 2012 brought no upheavals or continental shifts. The only thing that may be drifting is public confidence in prophecies in general. The “boy who cried wolf” effect kicks in pretty fast after a few false alarms.

But it’s precisely at times like this that I’m reminded of 2 Peter 3:12.

Expecting and hastening the coming of the day of God…

Everyone’s expecting. Who’s hastening? The fever of expectation has been embraced by Hollywood and commercialized. There’s always a market for end of the world stuff. And I suspect that’s true because of a latent suspicion within people that the world will actually end one day (“end of the world” isn’t really accurate, but that’s for another time). The only question is when. Not 2012, that’s for sure.

Public excitement about these kinds of things are like blips on the radar- vanishing as quickly as they appeared. And then it’s back to the mundane continuum of life – planting, building, buying, selling, marrying, being given in marriage.

These cycles of peaked curiosity in the end, mask the real situation. The need is not to know a future date, but to make a present decision.

In whatever direction mankind as a whole evolves, rising or declining, God is there. He is there as the first and last reality.

What does this mean for man? That he cannot take existing things in this world and society as definitive. That for him neither the world nor he himself can be the first and last. That the world and he himself simply as such are utterly relative, uncertain and unstable. That he is therefore living in a critical situation, however much he likes to close his eyes to it. He is pressed to make a final decision, to accept the offer to commit himself to the reality of God, which is ahead of him. It is a decision in which everything is at stake: an either-or, for or against God.

Despite the submergence of the apocalyptic horizon, the appeal has lost none of its urgency. A conversion is peremptorily thrust upon him. A new way of thinking and acting is urgently required. This is an absolutely final choice: a reinterpretation of life, a new attitude to life, a new life as a whole. Anyone who asks how much time he has left to live without God, to postpone conversion, is missing the future and the present, because by missing God he misses also himself. The hour of the finally definitive decision is here and now, not at an end-time–calculable or incalculable–of man or of mankind. And it is wholly personal for each and every one. The individual cannot be content–as he often can be in psychoanalysis–without enlightenment about his behavior, without having to face any moral demands. Nor can he shift the decision and the responsibilty to society, its defective structures and corrupt insitutions. He himself is pressed here to commit himself, to give himself. In metaphorical terms the question of the precious pearl, the treasure in the field, becomes wholly personal for him.

-Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, p. 225

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 27,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

My top five posts of 2012 were:

1.

John 3:16- the greatest verse?

2.

Beauty and Reality in Art

3.

The Divine Romance- a Diagram

4.

Why You Need to go to Christian Conferences

5.

Reflecting on my Experience with Christians on Campus

Click here to see the complete report.

And the master said to the slave, Go out into the roads and hedges and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.

–Luke 14:23

The interpretation of this text underwent a particular and fateful development, due mainly to the Donatist controversy, the fall of Rome in 410, and Augustine’s City of God. Bosch echoes Stendhal in identifying Augustine as the harbinger of the medieval paradigm.

Circumstances, like plate tectonics, are powerful forces that can reshape continents.

Augustine wrote his oceanic, twenty-two volume work as a sort of “literary tombstone” and critical response to the downfall of Rome . It ended up shaping the whole of the Middle Ages.

Marriage of Church and State

Since the conversion of Constantine, the empire and Christianity were inextricably wed and from then on conceived of as a composite whole. When Rome fell to the Goths, the stability of the church was questioned. The City of God was intended as a defense to safeguard the primacy and endurance of the heavenly city despite what may happen to its earthly analogue. What it led to in practice though was homogenization and the emergence of the church as a Roman institution. This begins to explain the rationale for the Crusades- the extension of Rome meant naturally the extension of the kingdom of God.

Missionary Wars

In the case of the Donatists, invoking Luke 14:23 was the logical development of Cyprian’s earlier doctrine of “no salvation outside the church.” Those who had left the Catholic church (like the Donatists) were apostates who should be compelled to return. Eventually, this mentality was generalized to include both apostates (those who left the church) and pagans (those who had not yet been subject to the church).

The language of this missionary enterprise became increasingly more severe- persuade, compel, force, conquer. “Just discipline” on apostates took the form of fines, increase of rent, confiscation of property, jail time, and exile. However, the theological kaleidoscope was turning fast and by the time of Charlemagne (772) just discipline had expanded to direct missionary war against pagans (the Saxons in this case). And since the state was the extension of the church, the mechanism of mission became the empire conquering under the pope’s blessing. Those conquered by Rome were simultaneously conquered by heaven and were therefore baptized, often against their will.

Colonial Expansion

The medieval missional paradigm, once fully ripened, provided the theological justification for the First Crusade to break forth in 1096. And when the Crusades had failed the spirit of this paradigm was reincarnated as Colonialism.

The roots of the later conquistadors and the entire phenomenon of the European colonization of the rest of the world lay in the medieval teachings on just war. On closer inspection one might even say that colonization was the “modern continuation of the Crusades”. In the words of M. W. Baldwin, “Although Crusade projects failed, the Crusade mentality persisted”.

–David J Bosch

The turbulent history of the church in this thousand year period shows how powerful a paradigm can be. It also shows that a whole lot of people can be using a defective interpretive model to make sense of Christianity.

In Orthodox thinking mission is thoroughly church-centered.

“The church is the aim of mission, not vice versa” (Bria 1980:8).

The “ecclesial character” of mission means “that the Church is the aim, the fulfillment of the Gospel, rather than an instrument or means of mission.” The church is part of the message it proclaims. (Bria 1975:245).

In the Orthodox perspective mission is thus centripetal rather than centrifugal, organic rather than organized.

If mission is a manifestation of the life and worship of the church, then mission and unity go together… For the Orthodox the Great Schism of 1054 had far-reaching consequences. Whereas the Catholic Church continued with its missionary outreach without interruption, particularly after the fifteenth century, and Protestant churches and mission agencies each embarked on their own outreach to those who lived beyond the borders of historical Christendom, the Orthodox could not easily do the same. When the unity was broken, “the Orthodox Church saw its mission altered from evangelism to a search for Christian unity” (Stamoolis 1986:110)… Since the church is Christ’s body, and there is only one body, the unity of the church is the unity of Christ, by the Spirit, with the triune God. Any division of Christians is therefore “a scandal and an impediment to the united witness of the church” (Bria 1986:69). Tragically, from the Orthodox point of view, we only too often convert people not to this one church, the body of Christ, but to our own denomination, at the same time imparting to them the “poison of division” (Nissiotis 1968:198).

–David J Borsch, Transforming Mission, p. 207-208

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