Mission as Misso Dei

David J. Bosch
Transforming Mission
pp. 389-393
 Introduction
• In 1950’s, there has been a shift toward
understanding of mission as God’s mission.
• During preceding centuries, mission was
understood in a variety of ways.
Various understandings of mission
• Soteriological terms: Saving individuals from eternal
damnation
• Cultural terms: introducing people from the East and
the South to the blessings and privilege of Christian
West.
• Ecclesiastical categories: the expansion of the church
(or of a specific denomination)
• Salvation-Historically: the process by which the world
would be transformed into the kingdom of God.
 Changing understanding in Mission

• The intrinsic interrelationship between

christology, soteriology, and the doctrine of
the Trinity was gradually displaced by one of
several versions of the doctrine of grace.
• (cf. Wolfgang Beinert. 1983:208)
 Advocates of “Missio Dei”
• Karl Barth- one of the first theologian to
articulate mission as an activity of God himself
in a paper read at the Brandenburg Missionary
Conference (1932)
• Karl Hartenstein gave expression to a similar
conviction (1933)
• German delegation- Statement in Tambaram
meeting of the IMC (1938)
 Statement by the delegation
• “only through a creative act of God His
Kingdom will be consummated in the final
establishment of a New Heaven and a New
Earth,” and “We are convinced that only this
eschatological attitude can prevent the Church
from becoming secularised.”
Willingen Conference of the IMC (1952)

• Theme: The Missionary Obligation of the

Church
• Publication: Mission Under the Cross (1953)
• The idea (not the exact term) of Missio Dei
first surfaced clearly
• “Mission as participating in the sending of
God”
 Classical doctrine of Missio Dei
• God the Father sending the Son, and God the
Father and the Son sending the Spirit
• Father, Son and Holy Spirit sending the church
into the world
• Our mission has no life of its own: only in the
hands of the sending God can it truly be called
mission, not least since the missionary
initiative comes from God alone.
 Missio Dei Concept
• Mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an
attribute of God. God is a missionary God. (Aagaard, 1973, 1974)
• It is not the church that has a mission of salvation fulfil in the
world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the
Father that includes the church. (Moltmann, 1977)
• Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world;
the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission.
(Aagaard, 1973)
• There is church because there is mission, not vice versa
(Aagaard, 1974)
• To participate in mission is to participate in the movement of
God’s love toward people, since God is a fountain of sending
love.
 Spreading the idea of Missio Dei
• Since Willingen, the understanding of mission
as Missio Dei has been embraced by all
Christian persuasion:
• 1. Conciliar Protestantism
• 2. Eastern Orthodox
• 3. Many evangelicals
• 4. Catholic mission theology
 Second Vatican Council 1962-65
• The church is missionary by its very nature, since
“it has its origin in the mission of the Son and the
Holy Spirit.”
• Council’s decree on mission defines missionary
activity as “nothing else, and nothing less, than
the manifestation of God’s plan, its epiphany and
realization in the world and in history (AG 2,9)
• Mission is defined in trinitarian, christological,
pneumatological, and ecclesiological terms.
 Consequences of Missio Dei
• For the missionary activities of the church, “mission,”
singular remains primary; “missions”, in the plural
constitutes a derivative.
• “The age of missions is at an end; the age of mission has
begun.” (Neill, 1966)
• We have to distinguish between mission and missions. (not
identical)
• Our missionary activities are only authentic insofar as they
reflect participation in the mission of God. The church
stands in the service of God’s turning to the world.
(Schmitz, 1971)
 Primary purpose of church’s mission
• Not simply be planting churches or the saving of
souls; rather, it has to be service to the missio
Dei, representing God in and over against the
world, pointing to God, holding up the God-child
before the eyes of the world (Feast of Epiphany)
• The church witnesses to the fullness of the
promise of God’s reign and participates in the
ongoing struggle between that reign and the
powers of darkness and evil (Scherer, 1987)
Modification of missio Dei concept
• God’s concern for the entire world should be the scope
of missio Dei.
• It affects all people in all aspects of their existence.
• Mission is God’s turning to the world in respect of
creation, care, redemption and consummation.
(Kramm, 1979)
• It takes place in ordinary human history, not exclusively
in and through the church.
• God’s own mission is larger than the mission of the
church.
 What is Missio Dei
• The missio Dei is God’s activity, which
embraces both the church and the world, and
in which the church may be privileged to
participate.
 The Role of Spirit in Mission
• Vatican II’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World”- wider understanding of mission is
expounded pneumatologically rather than christologically.
• The world history is not only evil but also of love, in which
the reign of God is being advanced through the work of the
Spirit.
• The church encounters a humanity and a world in which
God’s salvation has already been operative secretly, through
the Spirit.
• The real author of this hammanized history is the Holy
Spirit.
 Social development as service to the
common good
• The Spirit of God, who, with wondrous
providence, directs the course of time and renews
the faith of the earth, assists at this development.
• We must be careful to distinguish earthly progress
from the increase of the Kingdom of God.
• Such progress is of vital concern to the kingdom of
God, as it can contribute to the better ordering of
human society.
 Missio Dei vs. Development
• The wider understanding of missio Dei meant a
development contrary to the intension of
Barth and Hartenstein, who hoped to protect
mission against secularization and reserve
exclusively to God.
• Trojan horse through which the “American”
vision was fetched into the well-guarded walls
of the ecumenical theology of mission (Rosin,
1972)
 Argument
• Missio Dei was larger than the mission of the
church, even to suggest the exclusion of the
church’s involvement.
• The church serves the missio Dei in the world
points to God at work in world history and
name him there.
• God was working out his purpose in the midst
of the world and its historical processes.
Missio Dei and the Role of Church
• The church has become unnecessary for the missio
Dei.
• We have no business in articulating God. Missio Dei
means that God articulates himself, without any
need of assisting him through our missionary efforts
in this respect (Aring, 1971)
• It is unnecessary for the world to become what is
already is since Easter: the reconciled world of God.
It does not need the missionary contribution of
Christians. (Aring, 1971)
 Challenge
• Development challenges the usefulness of the
missio Dei concept.
• Missio Dei concept can be used by people who
subscribe to mutually exclusive theological
positions (Hoedemaker, 1988)
• The recognition that mission is God’s mission
represents a crucial breakthrough that we could
again revert to a narrow, ecclesiocentric view of
mission.
 Conclusion
• Missio Dei notion has helped to articulate the conviction
that neither the church nor any other human agent can
ever be considered the author or bearer of mission.
• Mission is the work of the Triune God, Creator,
Redeemer, and Sanctifier, for the sake of the world, a
ministry in which the church is privileged to participate.
• Mission has its origin in the heart of God.
• God is a fountain of sending love, the deepest source of
mission.
• There is mission because God loves people.