Christendom is facing a new crisis over foreign missions because missionary statesmen differ tellingly both over the definition of the Gospel and over the Christian approach to the pagan world religions.
This momentous crisis in Protestant Christianity has organizational as well as theological implications. Is the foreign missions enterprise to be totally and permanently integrated into the ecclesiastical framework and control of the World Council of Churches? Many churchmen expect a major move in this direction will occur November 17 to December 6, 1961, with the integration of WCC and the International Missionary Council at the New Delhi Assembly.
Underlying most of the dissatisfaction over ecumenical mergers is a theological protest. From the outset theological inclusivism has haunted the ecumenical venture. It has sheltered not only evangelical but liberal (and more latterly neo-orthodox) and for a season even humanist views with equal welcome.
Twice in the twentieth century the Christian missionary movement around the world has been shaken by theological controversies. First, echoes of W. E. Hocking’s Re-Thinking Missions (1932) resounded from the Alaskan wastes to the African jungles. Then Hendrik Kraemer’s The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (1938) framed the issues in a new albeit controversial setting.
This month an ecumenical symposium on The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed., McGraw-Hill, $5.95) may rock the Christian world missionary venture afresh. Although the new volume is not an official ecumenical document, it has had private encouragement and commendation from highly placed ecumenical leaders in missions. As a supplement to Dr. Anderson’s doctoral dissertation at Boston University on The Theology of Missions, 1928–1958, the volume sets in perspective, in somewhat loosely-related essays, the views of influential ecumenical spokesmen. Statements on the meaning of Christianity and its relation to the non-Christian religions by distinguished scholars (Barth, Bouquet, Cullmann, DeWolf, Kraemer, and Tillich among them) are likely to constitute this volume a center of debate for some time. Kraemer, former director of the Ecumenical Institute, who at first declined to participate in the symposium, wrote a short and sharp essay of indignation over current ecumenical missions trends.
Searching Questions Facing The Ecumenical Witness
A symposium like The Theology of the Christian Mission inevitably raises searching questions for the Protestant ecumenical movement:
Do these thinkers truly express the governing missionary philosophy of denominations identified with the World Council of Churches?
Will their views be determinative or influential in the International Missionary Council?
If not, why does ecumenical theology confer prestige upon these viewpoints and not upon others?
Will missionary executives in the major denominations explicitly reject non-evangelical points of view and instead affirm a biblical theology of missions? What of the theological outlook of the missionary task force and of missionary candidates?
Will the WCC-IMC merger be compromised from the outset by an inclusivistic theology or by an evasive silence that holds costly implications for the world-wide missionary venture?
Or will the New Delhi Assembly come down unequivocally on the side of a biblical philosophy of missions, and specifically reject humanistic, liberal, and dialectical speculations?
Answers to such questions will determine the vitality and harmony of Protestant missionary effort around the globe.
—ED.
Although this controversial work includes essays that are theologically disappointing, some even biblically objectionable, it contains also some first-rate biblical theology. The title ambitiously promises a statement of the theology of the Christian mission. Failure of movements like Evangelical Foreign Missions Association and Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association to produce evangelical statements of similar scope will elevate this volume into required reading and study material even for fundamentalist critics of an inclusive theology. (More than half the world missionary task force remains outside the WCC-IMC framework [the volume concedes that “one third of the total Protestant missionary endeavor is administered by agencies that … do not cooperate”].) The symposium’s ecumenical perspective criticizes missionary effort by American independent and nondenominational agencies (said to be mainly concentrated on neglected fields) as operating outside the churches. While the volume does incorporate the conservative exposition of Christian missions by Harold Lindsell of Fuller Theological Seminary, taken as a whole its statement of the biblical and historical basis of missionary theology is from the ecumenical perspective. As a noteworthy ecumenical thrust on the eve of the WCC-IMC merger, the book could significantly influence reformulation of missions 1. by its tenuous connection of the missionary task to a nebulous trinitarian theology (sometimes called “radical trinitarian theocentrism”); 2. by relating the ideal completion of mission to the WCC-IMC-identified Church; and 3. by viewing Christianity as the fulfillment (rather than antithesis) of pagan religions.
Hendrik Kraemer’S Complaint
Dr. Kraemer declares that while the ecumenical process reads and registers all views as particular opinions, missionary thinking and strategy actually continue unchanged, without new decisions and actions: “The ‘responsible agencies’ to which I appealed in 1938 for … practical measures to combat syncretism have not responded even to this day.… What I do hope and pray for is the awakening of the ‘responsible agencies’ to the fundamental necessities.”
WHAT OF NON-CHRISTIAH RELIGIONS?
Since the first Christian era, the critical question on the mission fronts of the world has been: Of what import is the Christian message to followers of the non-Christian religions? What of Hinduism and Buddhism? Of Mohammedanism? Of Judaism? Of Communism? The most distressing feature of the ecumenical symposium under review is its ambiguous, often disappointing, and sometimes apostate verdict on this important issue. Missions is the cutting edge of the Church; to dull the blade of evangelism is to doom Christianity.
In the background of essays relevant to this question stands the twentieth century clash over missions philosophy. This is recalled also as the conflict between the liberal theology of immanence (represented by Hocking) and the dialectical theology of transcendence (represented by Kraemer). The former view asserts the direct continuity of all religions (based on a supposed common religious essence), while the latter, at least in Barthian form, asserts the absolute discontinuity of Christianity from the non-Christian religions. The dialectical view, however, is not to be equated with the historic Christian view of the antithesis between Christianity and paganism; to do so would be a hasty misidentification, as we shall see.
Both Roman Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation asserted the fact of an antithesis. But Romanism stressed “Logos theology” (natural theology), while historic Protestantism emphasized the broken imago Dei and the priority of scriptural revelation.
In noting their emphasis on the inadequacy of non-Christian religions, even Lindsell’s exposition may give Kraemer and the 1938 Madras Conference too much credit. In common with dialectical thinkers, Kraemer considers apostolic Christianity to be under divine judgment no less than the non-Christian religions: “All historic religions in their concrete manifestations are syncretistic in different respects. This includes the three great religions which are basically antisyncretistic, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.” While Kraemer affirms the Christian revelation to be “absolute, incomparable and sui generis,” he nonetheless calls for “appreciation of the high values” in non-Christian religions. On the other hand, Lindsell (while not hesitating elsewhere to concede impurity and even apostasy in the historic development of the Church) insists on infallible apostolic writings, and declares that “at best … all non-Christian religions are counterfeits of the one true faith.” The inadequacy of the non-Christian religions lies, for Lindsell, in the circumstance that they, unlike revealed religion, are under the judgment of God and cannot provide salvation; their devotees are improperly related to God. Christianity alone leads to everlasting life. For a conservative philosophy of missions, as Lindsell puts it, “eclecticism has no part … and the exclusiveness of Christianity is assumed.”
Most of the essayists claim to support the absoluteness of the Christian religion. Tillich, one of the exceptions, is happier to assert “universality” rather than “absoluteness.” Even here, he states, there is no theoretical proof of the universal validity of Christianity, nor of the claim that Jesus is the Christ. It would be interesting indeed, in view of this, to know the Harvard theologian’s private reflections on a New Testament declaration such as 1 John 2:22, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?” (RSV). For Tillich the only “proof” is pragmatic, that is, the verdict of faith. But Floyd H. Ross waves aside Tillich’s attempt to salvage Christ’s universality rather than his absoluteness. Understanding the essential relativism of Tillich’s position, Ross bluntly declares his approval of Tillich’s and Berdyaev’s view that Christianity is neither final nor universal.
As a dominant trend the symposium essayists see Christianity as the fulfillment rather than the contradiction of the heathen religions, and emphasize “the good in all religions.” This mood sometimes includes regard even for atheistic communism as a constructive preparation for Christianity, or, on the other hand, abrogates the need, so clearly stressed in the New Testament, for evangelizing the Jews.
Although the fulfillment thesis is supported zealously by A. C. Bouquet, L. Harold DeWolf, Ernest Benz, Tillich, and Ross, their expositions lead along somewhat divergent roadways. Even F. N. Davey, whose essay on “The Gospel According to St. John and the Christian Mission” incorporates a generous measure of biblical theology, declares that “some men may find true discernment in a particular religion, however primitive, however crude.”
The neo-orthodox emphasis of Barth and Kraemer on “discontinuity” is quite swiftly set aside by most of the writers. Bouquet stresses that neither Nathan Söderblom nor William Temple held so dim a view of the non-Christian religions, and that B. F. Westcott regarded Christianity as bringing into balance the emphases that other religions exaggerate. DeWolf declares that “few missionaries today, except some from the extreme Fundamentalist sects,” now ask (as did most earlier Protestant missionaries) for “total rejection” and “radical displacement” of the pagan religions. He assails Kraemer’s assertion of the absoluteness of “the Christian revelation” (itself a compromise of the historic evangelical proclamation of the Christian religion). Asks DeWolf: Does not Kraemer’s interpretation of this revelation and its claim “constitute a part of religion …? On what ground,” he asks, “does Kraemer’s understanding of the Word escape the relativism of all religion?” This is sound internal criticism, since Kraemer brings all religious experience under divine judgment. But DeWolf follows the observation to lower rather than to higher ground.
For Bouquet and DeWolf the alternative to “discontinuity” is “fulfillment.” This DeWolf contrasts with “relativistic syncretism,” or a regard for all religions as paths to the same Reality. Both these scholars believe that devotees of the non-Christian religions are prepared thereby for the Gospel. Whether these thinkers successfully escape religious relativism (except in terms of semantic legerdemain) is best judged by a closer look at their views.
Bouquet’s View. The “fulfillment” thesis Bouquet spells out in his essay, “Revelation and the Divine Logos.” In respect to the Divine Logos, he argues, the author of the Fourth Gospel “certainly employed” the language-and-thought form of the Hellenistic Jewish and Gentile world, where the idea of the Self-Expression of Ultimate Divinity was familiar. Such (presumed) “indorsement” of this idea was either “a fundamental mistake” or “a sign of growing into truth under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” The latter option (which Bouquet supports) vindicates adoption of this pattern today in dealing with all non-Christian religious movements. John’s Prologue was “perhaps the first serious attempt” to relate “the Christian God-story to the religious beliefs of the Gentile world.” Bouquet therefore lightly waves aside the historic Protestant insistence that a Jewish rather than Gentile use stands behind the Logos passage. He even thinks it “not unreasonable” to find in this Prologue (in the second century A.D.!) an echo of the ancient teaching of Heraclitus. “The point to be emphasized is that some sort of incarnation of the Cosmic Logos, albeit usually a mythical one, was a familiar idea to many educated Gentiles at the time when the Johannine writings came to be composed.…” Bouquet, moreover, regards the Logos-insights of Gentile philosophers as “part of that growing into truth” which the Johannine Christ promises his disciples (cf. John 14:25, but note also 15:26). This universal Logos-approach Bouquet then applies also to Zarathustra, Buddha, and other pagan religious figures.
As a result of the finiteness and rebelliousness of human nature, Bouquet grants, “a good deal of philosophy … is not obedient to the Universal Logos, and … may therefore contradict the Concrete Logos.” But he holds that such disobedience characterizes Christianity too (presumably even within the so-called biblical norm). Bouquet’s criterion for judging whether a Christian sage or prophet “strives after” the truth and lives in tune with the Logos is “the same criterion” used by the first Christians, that is (according to Bouquet), “the unique and overwhelming personality of the historical Jesus, and … the spectacle of good and earnest teachers who were not Christians.” The complex, confusing, and highly subjective nature of Bouquet’s criterion seems obvious, and his exposition quickly destroys what special relevance he hopes to preserve for Christ. Although Bouquet insists Jesus was an historical figure of momentous importance (whose earthly career is “a supreme event in the life of the Eternal Deity, and an event in the spatiotemporal order by which something decisive for the human race was achieved”), he soon dissolves the scandal of the God-man. Philosophers are living according to the Logos, we are told, insofar as they strive after and believe that the universe is truly interpreted as the embodiment of a single spiritual and moral formula, “whether they accept Christ or not.”
The Logos doctrine, Bouquet contends, allows non-Christian sages to supply a theological background for converts to Christianity. It is not impossible, he thinks, to speak of “Christian Buddhists, Christian Moslems, Christian Vedantists, and Christian Confucians.” The names of these great sages, he adds, might be “preserved and revered, yet without the essence of Christian doctrine being contaminated.”
Bouquet’s emphasis on universally accessible facets of one Divine Truth permeating all religions comes in the last analysis to overwhelm his corollary emphasis on the supremacy of Jesus. He writes: “It would surely be foolish not to use … the witness of Svetasvatara Upanishad in the matter of theism, or the witness of an inspired teacher like Shinran to the doctrine of sola fide, even though the trust in merits of Amida is in itself only trust in a myth.” The least that one must say about Bouquet’s proposal is that it conceals the apostolic reliance on “the foolishness of preaching” a specially revealed God, and that, moreover, it would have required the apostles instead to have buttressed the case for theism by a reliance on those pagan Graeco-Roman philosophies and religions which they shunned like the black plague.
DeWolf’s View. In his essay “The Interpretation of Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions,” DeWolf notes that most Christian scholars regard their faith as a fulfillment rather than a radical displacement of Judaism. But what of its relation to other religions?
To begin with, DeWolf affirms “the unrivaled originality of Israel’s tradition.” But he also stresses the continuity of biblical with non-biblical religion in terms that seem still to reflect the now widely-discredited Wellhausen criticism of the nineteenth century: “Few Old Testament scholars would defend the doctrine that no other religions contributed to the religion of the ancient Hebrews.… Various scholars believe that they can find evidences in the ancient Old Testament religion of contributions from the Egyptians, Midianites, Canaanites, and Babylonians.” “The Christian teachings in the New Testament include contributions from other religions in addition to … Judaism,” such as Hellenistic philosophy, mystery religions, and Persian influence. As DeWolf sees it, “much in paganism” is similar to Christian doctrine and worship.
DeWolf appeals to four considerations in support of his thesis of the continuity of all religions and of their serviceability as a preparation for the Gospel. The first, curiously, is to “biblical testimony.” Even if we were to grant his disputable interpretation of the verses he cites (John 1:9; Acts 14:17), which we refuse, we must note that by his “biblical appeal” DeWolf, like so many liberal theologians, is hoisted by his own petard. These men appeal to the Bible when they think it suits their purpose, but they disallow evangelicals the same decisive appeal over against liberal speculations. In addition, DeWolf sketchily refers, in support of the dogma of the universal continuity of religions, to the Logos doctrine in patristic church history; the missionary’s “inevitable” use of meanings communicated by rival religions; and the doctrine of “the Trinity” (DeWolf downgrades Christological revelation and defers to the universal activity of the Holy Spirit).
Tillich’s View. Tillich contributes the essay “Missions and History.” Stated in religious-mythological language, Tillich tells us, the conflict of world history is a conflict between divine and demonic forces. As is well known, Tillich’s Systematic Theology denies the existence of an objectively real personal God.
In a profoundly unbiblical presentation which fails to grasp the crucial difference between the Church and the world, he affirms that the Church is “latently present” in paganism, humanism, and Judaism. “People are not outside of God; they are grasped by God on the level in which they can be grasped—in their experience of the Divine, in the realm of holiness in which they are living … even though the symbols in which the Holy is expressed may seem extremely primitive and idolatrous.” Christian mission aims, we are told, to transform this latency into existential reality. The Christian Church is the historical representative of the kingdom of God which, for Tillich, becomes a symbol for the unity of history in and above history.
Tillich boldly sets aside the finality of Jesus of Nazareth. The goal of history, he tells us, is “never actualized in history.” The “moment” in which the meaning of history becomes fully manifest, or the center of history, is “the New Being in Jesus as the Christ.” This center is not A.D. 1–30, but is existential: “Many people, even today, are living before the event of Jesus as the Christ.” The reader must not, therefore, confuse “the power of the New Being which is in the Christ” with Jesus of Nazareth. Although Tillich stresses only that his “New Being in Christ” (or Christ-abstraction, shall we say) judges Christianity as critically as non-Christian religions, he does not trouble to stress the fact that, in his speculative gnosis, this abstraction judges Jesus of Nazareth also.
It should surprise nobody that Tillich’s view eliminates the need for evangelizing the Jews. While Christians should be open to individual Jews wanting to become Christians, Tillich holds that “one should not try to convert them.” Rather, Christians should subject themselves to the criticism of Hebrew prophetic tradition. Here, again, Tillich misses the significance of special historical revelation objectively climaxed in Jesus Christ, and dilutes the essence of redemptive religion to a speculative idealism in which the scandal of the Cross is gone. Any reconstruction of Christianity which loses the New Testament compulsion to address “the Jew first,” by so much the more seems to us consistently foredoomed to surrender its redemptive concern for “the Gentiles also.”
Ross’ View. In his essay “The Christian Revelation in Larger Dimension,” Floyd H. Ross follows the “comparative religions” approach down the highway of religious relativism. He writes: “The Christian mission today involves bearing witness to a profound search for living truth which can never be confined within any language, theological or non-theological, Christian or non-Christian.” “God is known in relative ways only, even in those traditions that claim special revelation.…” “The Gospel is not … delivered from the relativities of history.…” It should be obvious that, given Ross’ assumptions, whatever he may say about “the Christian revelation” must involve his surrender of a faith “once for all delivered to the saints.” The once-for-all divine incarnation of God in Christ is also dissolved.
Since both religions affirm that “the ultimate invades history,” Ross asserts that “what is intended by the Hindu teaching of recurring incarnation is not as far removed from the Christian doctrine of incarnation as is sometimes claimed.”
Misguided Zeal?
The Christian must accept the possibility (we are told) that the early Christians “may have been overzealous” in affirming “there is no other name given under heaven” for the salvation of men. That the Christian finds God’s decisive act in the person and work of Jesus Christ “does not rule out entertaining the possibility that this decisive act may point to that which has been experienced as reality in other modes and under other names.”—Floyd H. Ross, in The Theology of the Christian Mission, p. 219.
One is tempted to range Paul’s declaration that the Gentiles are “haters of God” (Rom. 1:30) alongside Ross’ regard for “the human thirst for ultimate meaning … as universal,” and to set Jesus’ claim that “no man cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6) alongside Ross’ assertion that “I do not think evidence can be adduced to support the claim that only in Christianity can this thirst be satisfied.” Subjectivism so permeates the contributor’s viewpoint that one is struck by the implication of the universal validity of his own opinions. He writes: “A confession of faith always testifies to what has happened in my or our history, not in history as such.… The ‘language’ of religion is the language of myth and poetry.…”
We are informed that the early Christian claims for Jesus the Christ were “in the mythic dimension” and that all of these themes are … paralleled over and over again in the religions of mankind.”
The Dimension Of Myth?
“All of the early Christians’ affirmations about Jesus the Christ were in the mythic dimension. They believed that Christ was in some sense the ‘Messiah,’ or the ‘Son of Man,’ or the ‘Son of God.’ Some believed that he had a ‘virgin birth.’ All of these themes are ancient mythic themes, paralleled over and over again in the religions of mankind. That God ‘chose’ one race to be ‘his people,’ that Jesus was a preexistent ‘divine being’ whose coming marks the end of the ‘present age,’ that God let ‘His Son’ die on a cross in order that the ‘Son’s’ death might obtain ‘atonement for the sins of man,’ that through Christ’s ‘resurrection’ the demonic powers of the world have been robbed of their dominion, that Christ will return on the clouds in his glory to finish his work of destroying sin, suffering, and death, that ‘there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved’—all of this is mythic.”—Floyd H. Ross, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.), pp. 221 ff.
Those outside the circle of faith are needlessly confused when this mythic-confessional language is treated literally or historically, we are told. “When the mythic has been denied or repressed, Christians have taken refuge in sterile liberalisms, legalisms, fundamentalisms and brittle dogmatisms.” “In ordinary history it can be said that every event is unique or once-for-all; but in ‘sacred history’ once-for-allness refers to a dimension of meaning that is felt to be time-transcending and time-transforming.” “To identify faith with a particular expression of faith is to fall into idolatry.” “Christian myth is ‘truer’ than Christian history for those who believe, for myth has its vitality prior to either the proof or disproof of any specific event or series of events.” The mythic dimension invites man to live ever more deeply “by faith, not by fact.”
Ross’ non-historical mythic emphasis seems to dissolve belief both in an end-time of history and in the second coming of Christ; these concepts are attributed to mistaken historical expectations of the early Church. “The nonfulfillment of that literal expectation did not kill off the Church, very probably because that belief, like others, was rooted in the mythic depths of their lives and was not tied to historical ‘fact.’ ”
Benz’s View. Propounding “Ideas for a Theology of the History of Religion,” Ernest Benz rejects both dialectical theology’s assertion of absolute discontinuity between Christianity and non-Christian religions and Roman Catholicism’s affirmation of their continuity on the basis of “Logos theology.” This dual rejection is a good beginning, but Benz then moves, not toward an evangelical assessment, but rather toward a heightened emphasis on continuity. His dissatisfaction with the neo-orthodox and Romanist views springs specially from their limitation of salvation history before Christ to the Old Testament-related events, and from their closing of the history of religion with the appearance of Jesus Christ. Evangelical Christianity also requires this limitation. Against this, Benz pleads the case of the extra-biblical and the post-Christian religions. He proposes a reconstruction of the history of religion that relates other religions affirmatively to Christianity, rather than as heretical or as demonic independent movements.
The universal cosmic revelation of God, Benz asserts, not only opposes the thesis of absolute discontinuity, but it also disputes any declaration of absoluteness for Christianity alone. Benz assures us, however, that “an exclusive claim to absoluteness … is not the only self-evident and determinative attitude to be found in the New Testament.” The apostles of first century Christianity would have been shocked at this misunderstanding, for both the martyr spirit of Christian missions and the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth center in the question of the absoluteness of Christianity.
A Strange Gospel
“Jesus promises that even those who have never heard of him, heathen and non-Christians, who to their own surprise turn out to be Christians because they have fulfilled the command of love, will be received into the Kingdom of God and will sit at table there with him.… The criterion which determines the consignment of men to the Kingdom of God or to outer darkness is not a definite doctrine about Christ, not a recognition of the Christian claim to absoluteness, nor is it even a knowledge of the historical figure of Jesus.…”—Ernest Benz, in The Theology of The Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).
Benz points to those who have changed their faith to Christianity from non-Christian religions as vindicating a role for all religions within the context of “a universal and exclusive idea of religion.” He thinks Kagawa avoided relativizing religions—even though he surrendered “the traditional formulation of the Christian claim to absoluteness in its exclusive form.” Benz’s ambiguous closing verdict is that even though Christ alone leads to the summit, yet religions nonetheless differ from each other only in degree. We note how difficult it is to reconcile this position with Jesus’ own teaching (“I am the door.… All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers,” John 10:7 f.). Benz implies that no New Testament guidance exists for understanding extra-biblical and non-Christian religions. But does not the apostle Paul relate both the prehistoric past and the post-New Testament present to the Christian understanding of salvation history? Paul did not, of course, share these subjective philosophical assumptions which drive Benz to find a “mythological picture of history” in the Bible, and therefore to attack the assurance that in Christ the history of religion has “already found its fulfillment, its suspension and historical conclusion.” Indeed, for Paul the fact that Christ alone leads to the summit distinguishes Christianity in kind, not merely in degree, from the non-Christian religions.
Doi’s View. In his chapter on “The Nature of Encounter between Christianity and Other Religions as Witnessed on the Japanese Scene,” Masatoshi Doi treats Christianity merely as dialectical-existential encounter. He rejects the universal Logos as the criterion of truth, and scorns doctrinal Christianity. He insists nonetheless on truth in other religions.
Doi characterizes Christianity as a “distorted response” to divine revelation which “stands under judgment of God just as do all other religions.” Like other religions, Christianity for him is a synthesis of different cultural and religious elements, and therefore continuous with other religions.
Reporting on a survey of 52 “converts” to Christianity, Doi observes that 48 per cent viewed Christianity as “fulfillment” and 37 per cent as “total negation” of their former religion. Doi disparages the fundamentalist tendency to speak of “total negation,” dismissing it on the ground that its followers are “strongly indoctrinated with absolutist tenets.” But he commends those who speak in terms of “fulfillment” as “theological unbiased”!
Doi disparages Christianity as a unique religion of historical revelation and divinely revealed truths. Instead of a revelational center in Jesus of Nazareth, he postulates an existential center for spiritual life. Doi says “the central core of the religious experience, which is involved in the encounter between Christianity and other religions, is the existential commitment of a person, who has been brought up in a definite religious tradition, to God who revealed Himself in an historical event as the ultimately meaningful reality.… No historical event can be ultimately meaningful unless there is an experiencing subject who accepts it as ultimately meaningful.…”
Versus Pure Doctrine
“Faith is not bound by any particular system of dogmas or ideas.… As man’s free response to the divine act it has the freedom to choose between various doctrines, ideas and cultural patterns so that it may be able to create a new system of doctrines and ideas … in accord with the historical situation in which the believer stands.… If too much emphasis is laid upon criticism for the sake of purity of doctrine, Christianity tends to become abstract and to remain aloof from the religious and cultural situation in which it stands.”—Masatoshi Doi, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).
Devanandan’s View. In “The Resurgence of Non-Christian Religions” Paul D. Devanandan writes on modern man’s quest for understanding the real nature and significance of religion … underlying religions,” that is, on “the trend to discover a common formula of belief.” While religions have their doctrinal differences, he declares that “the dynamic of faith” undergirding these concepts, and the concern for man, is not peculiar to any one religion. He approves the existential notion that the line between unredeemed and redeemed runs not “between heathen and Christian”; rather, “the unredeemed ‘old man’ of the New Testament is to be found in me, a Christian … in exactly the same terms as … in the non-Christian.” “Christians should seriously heed” the invitation to “interreligious cooperation.” Christian evangelists should join with non-Christians against the secularists who disapprove of a resurgence of religions. Certain Christian truths, once borrowed, are now woven into the fabric of non-Christian religions, he contends. He doubts that the preaching of the Gospel is “directed to the total annihilation of all other religions than of Christianity.” The end-result of Devanandan’s approach, it would seem, is the surrender of any decisive Christian message to the non-Christian religions, and particularly the loss of the conviction that only they are saved who confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that he is risen from the dead (Rom. 10:9; cf. 10:12).
THE LONG SWEEP OF HISTORY
It would be manifestly unfair to imply that the views of most contributors to The Theology of the Christian Mission are objectionable. Some essays are mainly historical, others reflect points of view outside mainstream Protestant ecumenism, some chapters sparkle with sound biblical theology.
Alexander Schmemann writes of “The Missionary Imperative in the Orthodox Tradition,” and struggles against the charge that the Eastern Orthodox Church is nonmissionary, or that its missionary activity is a mere epiphenomenon of its sacramental, liturgical, mystical ethos. Andrew V. Seumois, tracing “The Evolution of Mission Theology Among Roman Catholics,” concedes that his communion has neglected the theology of mission, and that Romish works on the subject in the twentieth century have borrowed Protestant ideas. He calls for a systematic missiology based upon revelation and “the light of early tradition” and reports that Rome is already justifying lay missionaries by a theological framework. William Richey Hogg, surveying “The Rise of Protestant Missionary Concern, 1517–1914,” shows that Romanism’s traditional unconcern for missions sprang from its practice of Christian conquest en masse by the emperor’s forced rule and religion. But the Protestant Reformation, too, he notes, shaped no theology of missions, and had no concern for overseas non-Christians. Luther thought the Great Commission had been fulfilled by the apostles, and, in Post-Reformation Scholasticism, extreme Calvinism throttled missionary concern. Meanwhile the Anabaptists made the Great Commission binding on every believer. Protestant rationalism dissolved missionary passion by viewing Christianity as a development of universally immanent religion. Pietism kept alive the missionary burden. Mr. Hogg implies a link between the transformation of outlook in our century (by 1900 it was recognized that all churches and all believers have a missionary debt) and the emergence of the modern ecumenical movement. But it is surely clear, we think, that the preponderance of the missionary task force, even to this day, gains its inspiration and outlook more from biblical than from modern sources.
A ‘Post-Christian’ Age
“The impossibility of any longer assuming that missions proceed from a Christian West and take the Gospel and benefits of ‘Christian civilization’ to the non-Western, non-Christian world is a major key to the crisis of the Christian mission in the mid-twentieth century.”—William Richey Hogg, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).
In “The Free Church View of Missions,” Franklin H. Littell asserts that the real epoch of Christian universalism began with Pietism on the Continent and the Evangelical Awakening in Britain. With an eye on the broken identification of the Western civilization with the Christian religion, Littell traces to Hitler’s control of the old centers of Christian civilization the shift of missionary support and of manpower sources to the free churches in Britain and especially America. The younger churches of America, once provinces of European Christendom, have now become the source of missionary strength.
A Setting Of Hostility
“The ‘younger churches’ find themselves today in a period of Church history remarkably like that of the early Church. Mystery religions abound; Montanist and Gnostic sects are everywhere apparent; persecution of the Biblical faith is more widespread than ever before.… The political powers which so long served to suppress the opposition and support the Christian religion are either unfriendly or neutral. The ‘Constantian era’ is at an end.” Franklin H. Littell, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).
THE MOTIVATION OF MISSION
The crucial test of missionary philosophy is its view of the significance of Jesus Christ both for the Christian and for the non-Christian religions. The motivations that scholars adduce for the Christian mission in the world quickly reveal what significance is attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.
In a forceful essay Oscar Cullman recognizes that the Christian eschatological hope spurred (rather than paralyzed) the Church’s missionary impulse. Karl Barth’s warm exegetical study of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16–20) stresses the significance of Christ’s resurrection.
In his essay “Pauline Motives for the Christian Mission,” Donald G. Miller lists some of the moving forces for the Christian world-witness: the self-revelation of God; the nature of the Gospel as revealed world-news; the nature of the Church; and the predicament of man. In delineating the predicament of mankind, Miller’s emphasis falls on man’s self-separation from God; noticeably missing from his exposition is the Pauline stress on God’s final wrath and man’s utter condemnation in sin.
In general, the essayists hesitate to justify the missionary enterprise as the rescue of men otherwise doomed to hell and eternal punishment (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “The Theology of Evangelism,” August 3, 1959).
No ‘Absolute Message’?
“As Christians, we should go forth seeking converse with men of other faiths, not offering an absolute message.… He who feels he already ‘has’ the truth does not enter fully into dialogue.… As we learn to live more profoundly in faith, we talk less and less about ‘the only way’ even though we may nourish the hope that we may be ‘in the way.’ ”—Floyd H. Ross, “The Christian Mission in Larger Dimension,” in The Theology of the Christian Mission.
Paul Tillich most explicitly formulates the revolt against this biblical position: “One should not misunderstand missions as an attempt to save from eternal damnation as many individuals as possible among the nations of the world.” Such a view, thinks Tillich, is based on a theology “unworthy of the glory and of the love of God and must be rejected in the name of the true relationship of God to his world.” Only because Tillich substitutes his own arbitrary conceptions of the nature of deity for the New Testament revelation does he ignore the difficulties posed by such verses as Matthew 7:23; 18:18; 25:41, 46; John 3:36; 14:6; Acts 4:12; 2 Corinthians 5:11; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 2 Thessalonians 1:7; and Hebrews 10:31. Missions is not, Tillich thinks, “the attempt to save individual souls.… Rather, it is the attempt to transform the latent Church—which is present in the world religions, in paganism, Judaism, and humanism [italics ours]—into … the New Reality in Jesus and Christ.”
Max Warren, moreover, emphasizes “identification with” others; the Christian is urged to enter into the will of God for non-Christians by loving service in their problem-complex. Warren’s exposition of missionary-motive, as an extension of the incarnation-principle, taking manhood up into the Godhead, seems to this reviewer, to soften the scandal of the doctrine of the Cross.
In the main the symposium essayists avoid any grounding of missionary motivation in the authority of Scripture. In “The Rise of Protestant Missionary Concern, 1517–1914,” William Richey Hogg views the Reformation “emphasis on the Bible” as severely limiting the concern for unity and mission. On the other hand, Hogg admits that the Westminster Confession’s identification of the Bible with the Word of God (rather than merely with “the vehicle of the Word”) lifted the Great Commission to relevance, and he grants also that conservative forces paced Germany’s nineteenth century missionary outreach.
Although Lindsell’s essay on “Fundamentals for a Philosophy of the Christian Mission” does not clash head-on with blatant weaknesses of some essayists (none of the contributors read the others’ manuscripts), his survey of the premises undergirding conservative missionary endeavor is simple and direct, and proceeds from the historic evangelical emphasis on Scripture. As motivations he lists: 1. The Bible as the infallible Word of God, conveying propositional truths on the basis of divine disclosure. 2. The revealed Gospel, centering in Christ’s expiatory satisfaction for sin and bodily resurrection, which demands repentance and forgiveness. 3. Although original sin has not wholly destroyed the divine image, in sin man is lost, corrupt, guilty, and exposed to divine penalties, including permanent separation from God. 4. The non-Christian religions cannot provide salvation. 5. The Church is a redemptive fellowship which is not to identify itself with the world and the spirit of evil, but rather is to identify itself with lost mankind for the purpose of evangelization.
The motivation of “social action” emerges only incidentally in the symposium. When it does, its covering theme is usually “identification” with the world. Yet Lindsell sees the goal of identification (with sinners in distinction from the world) as evangelization. Medical missions and educational work gain approval not simply as social service (the level on which Hocking justified them) but as means to evangelistic ends. The conservative outlook distinguishes evangelization (which does not expect world transformation) from Christianization. It looks for Christ’s second advent as a necessary prerequisite to the ultimate triumph of God. An Eastern Orthodox contributor, Alexander Schmemann, stresses that his tradition does not regard evangelism as individualistic, but seeks through man to save and redeem the world; state, society, culture, and nature itself are the objects of mission. R. Pierce Beavan, writing for Protestantism on the “apostolic character” of the contemporary Church in its “ministry of reconciliation,” opposes restrictions of mission; for him witnessing includes also the transformation of social life, although this thesis remains undeveloped. Despite its broad focus on “Christian mission” rather than on missions in the traditional sense, the volume does not really clarify the nature of the Church’s social task. On the tenuous threshold of WCC-IMC merger, debate is thereby avoided over growing implications that ecumenism (or rather, some ecumenical leadership) serves as Christ’s earthly agent of political and socio-economic reconciliation. Extremists have been charged with dignifying their private social and political activities by appealing to the Holy Spirit.
THE TRINITY AND MISSION
The trinitarian theme, it should be noted, comes spectacularly into the ecumenical foreground through two recent developments. The New Delhi Assembly is scheduled both to assimilate IMC, whose leaders now propound a trinitarian basis of mission, and to act also on a committee recommendation that WCC adopt a trinitarian basis of faith. A soundly biblical trinitarian development in the ecumenical movement would hearten evangelicals. Such a move would clearly put Unitarians outside the Church of Christ (a step long overdue especially in America); it would reinstate neglected aspects of biblical theology in the Church’s life and mission; and it might recover for the missionary enterprise the undergirding dynamic of spiritual obedience. Accurate appraisal of any “trinitarian development” is therefore essential.
Wilhelm Andersen sets mission in the trinitarian context of the ecumenical perspective in his essay “Further Toward a Theology of Mission.” This essay supplements his 1955 study for IMC “Towards a Theology of Mission.” In preliminary theses Andersen summarizes four turning points of the 1952 international missionary conference in Willingen, Germany:
1. “Mission is the work of the triune God” who sent his Son to reconcile, and who continues to move toward man. Hence mission-theory must be God-centered rather than Church-centered.
2. The decisive act of God in fulfilling his missionary will is the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross therefore stands necessarily at the center of a theology of missions. (Willingen emphasized more than previous international missions conclaves the centrality of the death and resurrection of Christ, although interpretation was unfortunately colored more by modern dynamic than traditional theological categories.) God “has intervened in history through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to change the fate of the world.… Through the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has created realities in the course of this world which are immovable.”
3. After sending his Son and his Holy Spirit, God founded his Church, and began the task of missions. The Church is called and sent forth as God’s instrument. In summary, mission has its trinitarian source, its Christological realization, and its pneumatic fulfillment.
4. The final goal of the missio Dei is not the Church but the establishment of God’s kingdom. Preoccupation with organization and institution threatens this primary task. (Andersen urges recognition by the proposed IMC-WCC amalgam of this God-centered rather than “Church-centered” basis of mission.)
In his chapter “The Holy Spirit in the Christian Mission,” F. W. Dillistone stresses the Holy Spirit’s work of motivating missionary service in the world, and not simply the believer’s inner sanctification. Dillistone’s stimulating exposition is more fully indebted to biblical ideas than one might expect from his disappointing treatment of the Spirit in connection with Scripture. Trinitarian expositions of mission are coming from many ecumenical thinkers today but such theologizing is confused because they disown an authoritative Bible. Andersen, for example, assuredly tells us that “a theology of mission lives from studying the Bible” and thereby proves itself authentic. Moreover, he boldly declares that “the decisive missionary Kerygma to the world begins … with the report: ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3).” The reader must not mistake such statements for pious orthodoxy, for Andersen also asserts that “we cannot expect any theoretical instruction from the Holy Scriptures.” We are told that the salvation history to which the Scriptures “witness” is perceived only “when its vicarious character comes to our view.” This, we are told, does not allow us to develop “a theory of a special action of God in creation.” We must therefore conclude from Andersen’s remarks that, for him, the meaning of Scripture is located in something other than in its literal sense. Andersen continues: “The greatest task for a theology of mission is indeed not to communicate knowledge.… The theology of mission … at its goal … becomes adoration of the Triune God.” We must agree, of course, that service to God is ideally also worship of God. But agreement on this point hardly requires the anti-intellectualistic view of divine revelation that undergirds so much of today’s ecumenical speculation. The normative role of revealed truths or doctrines is thereby undermined; theology loses rational or intellectual status and becomes voluntaristic and pragmatic. This functional theology centers the Christian revelation, not in the mainstream of biblical truths and events, but rather in contemporary confrontation or encounter.
Sent Son And Sent Disciples
“At the Willingen Conference in 1952 the theological pre-suppositions of the whole missionary movement were clearly and forcefully expressed. This movement, it was affirmed, has its source in the Triune God Himself. He has sent forth one Saviour to seek and save all the lost, one Redeemer who by his death, resurrection, and ascension has accomplished a full and perfect atonement and created in himself one new humanity, the Body of which Christ is the exalted Head. This is followed by a fine statement … ‘There is no participation in Christ without participation in His mission to the world. That by which the Church receives its existence is that by which it is also given its world mission. “As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” ’ (‘A Statement on the Missionary Calling of the Church,’ in Missions Under the Cross, Norman Goodall, ed. [London: Edinburgh House Press, 1953], pp. 189–90. This statement arose out of the report of Group I on ‘The Missionary Obligation of the Church’ at Willingen).”—F. W. Dillistone, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.).
In this context the “trinitarian” emphasis, renewed by contemporary theology, becomes either a case of special pleading or a disappointing revival of modal trinitarianism. The historic Christian faith is that three divine persons co-exist eternally in the one divine essence. This orthodox view rests not merely on an inference made by the early Christians from their spiritual experience, profound and important as it was, but is drawn also from the authoritative teaching of Jesus and the apostles. Contemporary theologians who rebel against the premise of scripturally revealed truths are left to discriminate spiritual realities only as an inference from their religious experience. But can even regenerate men and women, on the basis of experience alone, distinguish the persons of the trinity? And can one distill simply from a present religious encounter (from God-in-relation-to-me) any sure conclusion about the timeless nature of God (God-in-himself)? Any theology mired in doubts over the permanent nature of ultimate religious reality, and able to issue pronouncements only on a medical bulletin basis, rests on insecure foundations. Does the widening emphasis on a trinitarian manifestation of the Godhead in subjective experience really carry ecumenical theology beyond the metaphysical skepticism of Schleiermacher and the modernists who shied from the discussion of God-in-himself, but emphasized that of God-in-relation-to-man? The basic issue in the Christian doctrine of God is not simply whether there is a plurality of manifestations or modes of the one God, but whether in the one Godhead there eternally exist three divine persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. Any missionary theology which evades this question is only superficially trinitarian.
CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM
The attitude of this symposium toward communism is especially important, since communism is no mere scheme of social revolution, but makes absolute claims, just as religion, and proclaims the sovereignty of the State.
Frank W. Price, in his chapter “Christian Presuppositions for the Encounter with Communism,” makes some pointed observations and criticisms. The twentieth century, he writes, is “the century of Communist power.” Not from other ancient faiths, but from communism, which challenges all living religions, Christianity today “finds its most militant opposition.” In a sense communism is, in fact, a call to repentance: “We must move … to a deeper appreciation of those neglected truths and forgotten emphases of our Judeo-Christian heritage to which Communism is impelling us.”
Three emphases in Price’s essay, however, call for critical scrutiny: 1. He welcomes “long-awaited social reforms” (without either particularizing these, or distinguishing them from revolutionary social patterns) brought about by communism. 2. He affirms that “God works through Communism” to bring about such changes. He seems untroubled by a direct divine use of atheism to implement the will of God. Despite violence and evils, Price tells us, these developments may be a necessary display of God’s creative power.) 3. He appeals to Christian love in the interest of reconciling Christianity and communism (without requiring Communists to place themselves under the same judgment as Christians). “We must free ourselves from the hard stance of our governments.…” “Perhaps in a few decades, or centuries, Christianity and Communism will face one another … different faiths and yet not intent each upon the destruction of the other.” Beneath these premises, soft toward communism, the evangelical reader will detect a sentimental theory of the love of God (“The cross reveals his infinite love …”) which deprives the Christian witness of any virile denunciation of atheism and state absolutism.
The idea of the divine inspiration of Karl Marx is explicitly found in Bouquet’s essay, as a direct consequence of asserting that the Logos energizes men universally. Astonishing as it seems, Bouquet applies Jesus’ promise, that the Spirit would lead his disciples into all truth, not simply to Zarathustra and Buddha, but to “the self-styled atheist Karl Marx himself, so like an Amos redivivas.” (Marx is said to come “very close to our Lord” in his tenderness for children, whereas his bitter hatred of opponents is ascribed to his “frequent affliction with carbuncles”! Job’s carbuncles, we must confess, seem to have been of another variety.)
BY WAY OF APPRAISAL
What may be said of the overall influence of this symposium on the strategic subject of the theology of the Christian mission?
First of all, it relates the Protestant missionary witness normatively to the coming WCC-IMC merger and to the continued dignity of vastly divergent theologies within ecumenical ranks. Despite the asserted rediscovery of a trinitarian theology of mission, this claim is vulnerably developed along experiential lines; in several influential essays it shades into contradiction on even such fundamental points as the centrality or even the relevance of Jesus of Nazareth.
Too, the symposium lessons the antithesis between Christianity and non-Christian religions. It minimizes also the loss of the Early Church’s either-or-message to the Jew; shrugs at the modern Church’s indecision if not softness in the face of communism. Absence of emphases on the sinner’s guilt and exposure to penal evils, and (inevitably alongside this) an inadequate message of atonement and salvation and an arbitrary view of divine love that erases the traditional doctrines of hell and final punishment further weaken the volume.
The serious student will surely sense the confused state of contemporary Protestant theology that developed from what, a generation ago, seemed a hopeful re-emphasis on divine confrontation. Characteristic of this so-called “theology of the Word of God” was its refusal to apply the term “Word of God” to Scripture. To reserve the phrase exclusively for Jesus Christ expressly inverted the example of the apostle Paul, who used “Word of God” for Scripture and for the gospel proclamation but not for Christ (cf. Rom. 9:6; 10:7; 1 Cor. 14:36; 2 Cor. 2:17; 4:2; Eph. 6:17; Col. 1:25; 1 Thess. 2:13; 1 Tim. 4:5; 2 Tim. 2:9; Titus 2:5). This is the precedent also of Luke-Acts (cf. Luke 3:2; 4:4; 5:1; 8:11, 21; Acts 4:31; 6:2, 7; 8:14; 11:1; 13:7, 44; 19:20). Although both Barth and Brunner disallowed natural theology, and Barth identified the in-breaking “Word of God” only with special revelation, their refusal to identify the Scriptures (in whole or part) with special revelation has now run its costly course. The emphasis of these symposium essays in the main is that the divine-human encounter is not authentically illuminated only by Semitic or biblical categories of interpretation. In simple words, confidence in the Hebrew-Christian religion as the one true and saving religion is being shattered; Christianity and the other world religions are viewed (through a renaissance of liberalism) as different in degree rather than in kind. From this development, if from nothing else, it should be apparent that the loss of the Bible as the inspired Word of God is the prelude also to the loss of Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnate Word of God.
Dreams And Symbols!
“Early Christians said such things as ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” and “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.’ These confessions of faith, evoked by a man who had a place in history and who had an incomparable faith in God, were drawn from the same deep recesses of the human spirit as the ancient Chinese symbolism of the Yin-Yang, the Shiva-Shakti symbolism of Hinduism, the Yah-Yum symbolism of Tibet. All these seem to root in the human dream of a reconciliation, of a return to the source of all. Symbols and their local interpretation may periodically fade away, but the mythic theme goes on being reborn anew in seers and poets and sages.”—Floyd H. Ross, in The Theology of the Christian Mission (Gerald H. Anderson, ed.), p. 227.
The mediating neo-orthodox theology of Barth and Brunner is now in retreat, and speculative philosophies like those of Bultmann and Tillich have come to the fore in interpreting the significance of the Christian religion. Already these cast their dark shadow over the entire Christian missionary enterprise. This threat is the more awesome in the twentieth century through two developments: the emergence of a world ecumenical community which intimately links almost half the missionary task force, and the emergence of literature which promotes theological nonconformity and gives world influence to an inclusive tolerance of theological deviations.
In the 1960s, the Christian religion is on the defensive almost everywhere throughout the world. Mission boards have the right and the duty to define the theology of their outreach in the world. Furthermore Christian believers sacrificially investing in the cause of missions have the right and the duty to know if the message they support shares or does not share the New Testament view of the finality, absoluteness, and uniqueness of Jesus Christ, over against the hopelessness of the pagan religions. If the new symposium clarifies these issues much will be gained. (See editorial, “Missions at Delhi,” p. 24).
