Concerning A “Theology of Mission”

May 19, 2008 | Filed Under books, missiology, missional |

Is there, in the light of the present state of theology of the Old and New Testament, any occasion to speak of a separate “theology of mission”? One can maintain this, it seems to me, only if one misunderstands the Church as well as mission.

The Church which has been chosen out of the world is chosen for this end — that she performs for the world the service of giving witness to the Kingdom of God which has come and is coming in Jesus Christ. If theology is really theo-logia — a speaking about God, then she cannot do otherwise than speak of the God who is not a statue but an overflowing fountain of good.

The triune God who is involved with the world in the sending of the prophets, of Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, also sends the apostles and the Church. I think that it would be a “back-translation” into old and theologically abandoned categories, if one were to vindicate the “theology of mission” as a separate field of theology.

The unity between Church and mission, the unity, that is, between mission as a service of the Church and the Church as sent into the world, does not mean that there is no longer room for a basic reflection regarding the conditions and manner and extent of the service of the Church to the world.

But every separate “theology of mission” will make acute the old danger of the separation of things which God has joined together in His Word. This can be nothing but a source of difficulties and problems.

There is no other Church than the Church sent into the world, and there is no other mission than that of the Church of Christ. The consequence for theology, I think, is that a theological reflection of missionary service is possible and extremely necessary, but not a “theology of missions.”

– Johannes Blauw in The Missionary Nature of the Church