MISSION, PROSELYTISM AND THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT
(published
in
El.Voulgarakis et.a. (eds.),"ÐïñåõèÝíôåò...". ×áñéóôÞñéïò
ôüìïò ðñïò ôéìÞí ôïõ Áñ÷éåðéóêüðïõ
Áëâáíßáò Áíáóôáóßïõ (ÃéáííïõëÜôïõ), Áthens,
1997,
pp.
77-97.
Archbishop
Anastasios Yannoulatos, to whom this contribution is dedicated on the occasion
of his 40 years of active missionary activity and
upon the fifth aniversary of his elevation to the throne of of the
Primate of the Orthodox Church of Albania - perhaps the field
of Christian Mission par excellence -
is the theologian and ecclesiastical figure, who more than any other else
in the Orthodox world has enormously contributed to the field of Christian
Mission. He not only devoted his entire concious life to Christian witness, the
most important but at the same time most neglected area in the Orthodox Church;
he has also been pioneer in the academic discipline of Orthodox
Missiology, to the extent that one can fairly say that he has been the scholar
who practically introduced the course to the curricula of the Orthodox
Theological Schools and Seminaries, more particularly in Greece.[1]
To
honor such a distinguished figure, one would not dare think of a scholarly
contribution other than a missiological one. And on my part
I will deal with the burning (on both sides, Orthodox and ecumenical)
issue of Proselytism in its ecumenical perspective.
My point of departure will be my Orthodox conciousness, but my approach
to the subject will be neither strictly historical,[2]
nor purely confessional, but theological
and ecumenical, i.e. critical and sometimes even self-critical.[3]
After all, the real function of “theology” is to be the critical conscience
of the Church. I addition, I will not to refer in detail to the various agreed
ecumenical statements on Proselytism, the various arguments of both sides, and
the various legitimate and justified complaints by the Orthodox Church, the most
affected in the last two centuries by this caricature of authentic evangelism.[4]
On the contrary I will reflect on what one can describe as a new understanding
of “Mission, Proselytism and the Ecumenical Movement” as we approach the
third Christian millenium.
A
In
order to properly tackle the issue of Mission and Proselytism within the
context of ecumenism,[5]
one needs to examine a variety of terms and notions involved in current
ecumenical discussions, expressed by such words as mission, conversion,
evangelism or evangelization, christianization, witness
or martyria. Of
these terms only the last two have been widely adopted in “ecumenical”
circles as the more appropriate for a genuine and authentic Christian mission[6],
whereas the imperative validity of all the other have been retained as the sine
qua non of the Christian
identity of those belonging to the “evangelical” stream of our Christian
tradition.[7]
Martin
Goodman in his recent book Mission and Conversion. Proselytizing in the
Religious History of the Roman Empire, has
discerned four different uses of the word “mission” in modern scholarship of
the history of religions, and consequently four different understandings of what
has come to be labeled as “Christian mission”:
(i)
The informative mission. The missionaries of this type feel “that they
had a general message which they wished to impart to others. Such disseminators
of information may have had no clear idea of the reaction they desired from
their auditors...(The aim of this attitude) was to tell people something, rather
than to change their behavior or status.”[8]
Of this type was the mission of the first evangelist women who announced the
Good News of Christ’s resurrection, the prime event of the Christian faith.
(ii)
The educational mission. “Some missionaries did intent to change
recipients of their message by making them more moral or contented...Such a
mission to educate is easily distinguished from a desire to win converts.”[9]
The first monastic, no matter out of what motivation they began their movement,
exercised this type of mission.
(iii)
The apologetic mission. “Some missionaries requested recognition by
others of the power of a particular divinity without expecting their audience to
devote themselves to his or her worship. Such a mission was essentially
apologetic. Its aim was to protect the cult and beliefs of the missionary.”[10]
Obviously, the early Christian apologists belonged to this type of missionaries.
Finally,
(iv)
The proselytizing mission. According to Goodman, “information,
education, and apologetic might or might not coexist within any one religious
system, but all three can individually be distinguished from what may best be
described a proselytizing...(the aim of which was) to encourage outsiders not
only to change their way of life but also to be incorporated within their group.”[11]
No doubt, this last type of mission, for which the terms “conversion” and
“christianization” seem to apply better, was the ideal behind the universal
proselytizing mission of modern times. The origins of this type of mission
can be traced back to St. Paul (though in scholarly circles this is still
debated), and to the dominical saying recorded in St. Matthew’s Gospel
(28:18b-20).
This
pluralistic understanding of Christian mission in the history of the early
Church, apostolic and post-apostolic alike, has undoubtedly given its place more
or less to auniversalistic understanding,
a universal proselytizing mission, which during the Constantinian period became
dominant through its theological validation by the great Church historian
Eusebius. However, it never became entirely dormant in the undivided Church,[12]
at least in the Eastern Orthodox Church, with very few exceptions of course.
Whether
this understanding of universal proselytizing mission is to be explained on
theological grounds, i.e. as a straight forward result of the high christology
of the early
Christian (pauline) recapitulation-in-Christ theory, or on grounds of
cultural anthropology, i.e. as a legitimate demand within the Roman empire after
Constantine the Great of the ideal of “uniformity within a given society”,
will not concerns us here. It will suffice to note that the eventual
christianization of the Roman empire had inevitably
a significant effect in the future of our western world, and to a
considerable degree it has also determined the shaping in later times of the
western theology of mission, Catholic and Protestant alike.[13]
The issue of a universal proselytizing mission in Western Christianity, in fact,
was given fresh life by the discovery of the New World, and by the prospect of
christianizing the entire inhabited earth. It reached its peak with the African
and Asian missions during the last century.[14]
This concept of “Christendom”, however, carried
with it other non Christian elements to such an extent that eventually
industrialized development in Europe and America of the bourgeois society as
well as colonialism walked hand by hand with Christian mission.
Konrad
Raiser in his fascinating book Ecumenism in Transition. A Paradigm Shift in
the Ecumenical Movement, has
rightly underlined that Christians at the “old ecumenical paradigm” felt
that they were called
“to
convey to the rest of humanity the blessings of Western (i.e. bourgeois)
Christian civilization...The slogan “the evangelization of the world in this
generation” emphasizes the missionary consciousness of this early movement, in
which genuine missionary and evangelistic motives were inextricably combined
with cultural and social motives”.[15]
Raiser,
however, suggested for the future of ecumenism and of Christian mission a
radical shift to a “new paradigm,” away from the “Christocentric
universalism” and towards a “Trinitarian” understanding of the divine
reality and towards an “Oikoumene” as the one household of life.[16]
For the understanding of mission, these mean the abandonment of any effort of
proselytizing, not only among Christians of other denominations, but even among
peoples of other religions. Dialogue is the new term which now runs parallel to, and in some cases
in place of, the old missiological terminology.[17]
This development, of course, does not by any means imply that there has been a
shift in Christian soteriology from the slogan “No salvation but through
Christ”[18]-
overcoming the classical catholic view “extra ecclesiam salus non est”,
first expressed by Cyprian of Carthage and later misinterpreted to exclusively
meaning the “institutional” (Catholic?) Church - to a novel one “No
salvation but through God”.[19]
Rather it is a radical reinterpretation of Christology through Pneumatology,[20]
through the rediscovery of the forgotten Trinitarian
theology[21]
of the undivided Church.
In
ecumenical circles, therefore, the understanding of mission on theological
grounds is moving away from the “universal proselytizing mission” concept.
And this is due not only to the failure to convert the entire inhabited world,
or to the disillusion and disappointment caused by the end of the China mission,
the most ambitious missionary enterprise in modern Christian missionary history.
It was rather the rediscovery of the authentic identity of the Church through
the invaluable help of the theological treasures of Orthodoxy. More particularly
it was the result of the reinforcement of Pneumatology into the ecumenical
reflections.[22]
It is my firm conviction, that the
revival of proselytism by certain evangelical groups both outside, but also
within, the WCC is not so much the
result of historical circumstances (collapse of totaliterian regimes, in
particular in Central and Eastern Europe etc.); it is rather a conscious
reaction to the “openness” of the Church to the outside world, especially
after the latest developments in the ecumenical movement by the more
“traditional” - some may label them even “funtamentalist” - segments of
Christianity. These segments, of course, mainly belong to Protestantism, but
they can also be found in Catholicism (cf. e.g. the issue of Uniatism, or the
very narrow interpretation of the Bishops’ recent appeal for
“re-evangelization” of Europe), and undoubtedly even within Orthodoxy (the
Old Calendarists and other traditional groups e.g. are the most active in
proselytizing among western Christian Churches and denominations, and the most
reacting against the inter-faith dialogue). To some extent it is also due to the
still unresolved tension within the WCC with regard to its stance toward the
other religions. If this is so, and the revival of proselytism is an attempt to
reverse the understanding, and of course practice, of Christian mission, then
the problem of proselytism is to be addressed by a thorough reconsideration of
the discipline of mission, perhaps through an widely agreed new charter.[23]
Since,
however, most of the argument, especially by those of the evangelical stream of
our Christian tradition, is still elaborated through the fundamental classical
biblical references, I will now turn to them. Through a theological reflection
on the basic biblical references I will try to tackle our subject with my
limited resources as thoroughly as possible[24].
B
For
hundreds of years the European churches have
based their mission on our Lord’s demand at the very end of his earthly
ministry, as this demand was written down in the well known Matthaean passage:
«All authority in heaven and
on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
The
centrality of this passage in the theological foundation of the European
churches’ mission was to some extent due - at least in my view - to the over
estimation during the pre-critical era of the Gospel of Matthew - which was for
some time considered the Gospel of the Church - at the expense of the
‘tetramorphon’ Gospel. On the other hand, the place of this important
missionary statement at the very end of Jesus’ earthly ministry was
interpreted as inaugurating the close of one era, that of Jesus’ mission, and
the start of another, that of human mission. Only under such or similar
circumstances can one explain the widely accepted, but at the same time one-sided,
consideration of this otherwise important biblical passage. As a consequence, an
undue emphasis was given to the individualistic and antropocentric understanding
of ‘making disciples’. As a result, our Christian mission adopted an
expansionist attitude in the past and, in some places, imperialistic tendencies
found their way in, thus eroding the spiritual character of the Churches’
mission. In addition, our scandalous divisions have resulted in a denominational
antagonism, which in turn led to proselytistic attitudes transplanting the old-fashioned
theological debates and practices from Europe to non-European missionary areas.
However,
it would have been otherwise, had the trinitarian dimension of the
Church’s mission been emphasised. The making of disciples is meaningless
without a reference to ‘baptising in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit’. After all, the call of the Church to mission is
rooted in the fact that Christ himself was sent by the Father, in the Holy
Spirit. ‘As the Father sent me so I send you...Receive the Holy Spirit’.
(John 20:21-22). And going a little further: the sending of Christ was the
inevitable consequence of the inner dynamics of the Holy Trinity. In fact, the
justification of Christian mission can only be founded if we conceive our
missionary task as the projection in human terms of the life of communion that
exists within the Holy Trinity. That is why the subject of mission is not
the individual believer, the missionary or even the Church as an impersonal
corporate entity, but the Triune God. Humanity enters into the missionary field
only within the framework of the synergia. This greatly emphasised
patristic idea does not mean that we are equal partners with God himself, or
that he cannot act independently of mankind, even in the form of the ‘little
flock’; it rather means that our
Triune God in his divine economy has consiously decided to work through us.
According to Ion Bria,
“Trinitarian
theology points to the fact that God is in God’s own self a life of communion
and that God’s involvement in history aims at drawing humanity and creation in
general into this communion with God’s very life. The implications of this
assertion for understanding mission are very important: mission does not aim
primarily at the propagation or transmission of intellectual convictions,
doctrines, moral commands, etc., but at the transmission of the life of
communion, that exists in God”.[25]
Coming
back to our Matthaean passage it is necessary to make the following remarks:
(i)
The entire scene of Jesus’ sending out his disciples is clearly set within the
framework of the resurrection event. This obvious setting is repeatedly
emphasised in our biblical commentaries: its consequences, however, have
scarcely been drawn to the extent it deserves. We are called to give our
evangelistic witness to the world not as a continuation of the Kerygma of Jesus
of Nazareth, but out of a deep understanding and experience, and in the light,
of the resurrection of Christ. Our vocation, therefore, is not to propagate
religious ideas or to establish religious sects, but to reveal Jesus Christ as
the Lord and to introduce into the world the reality of his Kingdom. It is for
this reason that every Sunday, when we meet to workship Christ in the
eucharistic gathering, we celebrate the day of resurrection. If we now conceive
this eucharistic liturgy as we should, not only as the springboard for mission,
but as the missionary event par excellence;
not only as the true expression of the divine revelation, but also as a
living anticipation of the kingdom to come; not only as a means of perfection of
individuals, but also and primarily as a means of the transformation of the
Church as a community into an authentic image of the Kingdom of God, and through
the Church of the entire cosmos, “so that (by our light
shining before others the world) may see (our) good words and give glory
to (our) Father in heaven” (Mt
5,16); then it becomes quite apparent what the task which lies in front of our
Churches, at least within the WCC, really is.
(ii)
The sending out of Jesus’ disciples is preceded in our text by a solemn
declaration that the resurrected Christ in invested with full authority. “All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”. Throughout the
history of patristic interpretation this verse was understood against the
background of the incarnation (cf. for example, Basil the Great). Actually the
authority that Jesus Christ acquired was not bestowed but recovered (âðáíáäñïìÞ,
âðáíÜëçøéò according to Cyril of Alexandria). This means that
there is perfect harmony between the Lordship of Christ and his presence in the
world. From the biblical and the apostolic period and throughout the history of
the undivided Church, our forefathers (and silently our foremothers too)
constantly fought against any overemphasis of either the divinity or the
humanity of Christ. The meaning of the Church´s resistance against docetism,
gnosticism and all the heresies, theological issues that were settled in the
Ecumenical Councils, was her conviction that Christ remains wholly transcedent
to, but at the same time immanent and present in, the world. The
Matthaean passage which we have discussed presents this truth in a perfect way.
Alongside the reference to Christ’s transcedent authority we read his
assurance: “and Io, I am with you always”. Thus, the transcedent and
resurrected Christ is made the motive force of mission in the world.
Transcendence without immanence leads with mathematical precision to
secularisation of the world, depriving the world of its holiness, acquired
through the creation, incarnation and re-creation (àíáäçìéïõñãßá),
and reducing it to its purely material aspect. We are led to a similar
distortion if we emphasise Jesus’ immanence without due attention to his
trascedence. The consequences of such a Christology will result in the
impoverishment of the prophetic meaning of the Church reducing her to a mere
social movement. In addition, therefore, to the resurrectional aspect, the incarnational
one is of greatest importance for the Church’s mission.
(iii)
Recent historical-critical research has almost unanimously reached the
conclusion that our Lord’s demand “go forth and make disciples of all
nations” at the end of St.
Matthew’s Gospel is a later product which came out of the resurrectional and
pentecostal experience of the early Christian community. It represents the ideal
of universal mission which was the result of the success of the Gentile mission,
also expressed in other indirect references of the synoptic tradition (Mk 13:10,
14:9 etc.), which, nevertheless, contradicts the exclusive mission to the Jews
practised in the earthly ministry of Jesus (cf. Mt 15:24). This seeming
differentiation from our Lord’s mission is nevertheless misleading. For it is
quite apparent that the missionary statements and discourses of Jesus in the
earliest strata of the Gospel tradition (Mk 6:7ff; Mt 9:37ff; Lk 9:1ff; 10:1ff)
have a clear eschatological meaning. The ‘harvest time’ metaphor,
which is so often alluded to in the Gospels, is in fact in accordance with, or
more precisely a re-interpretation of, the Old Testament and later apocalyptic
eschatological pictures (cf. Joel 4:13 LXX; Mic 4:12f; Is 27:12; 2 Apoc. Bar.
70:2, 4 Ezra 4:28ff). In all New Testament contexts the overall mission is,
therefore, an “eschatological” event and should be viewed and practised as
such by the Church.
It
is not accidental that St. Paul, the greatest missionary of all, was waiting for
the Kingdom to appear in the near future, yet he made and accomplished far-reaching
plans for evangelizing the entire Greco-Roman world. This eschatological
perspective, implicity or explicity considering the eschaton as an imminent
event or fully projected into the present, is dominant to a greater or lesser
degree throughout the entire New Testament. And this is clearly echoed in the
concluding reference to “the close of this age” of our Matthaean
passage (28:20). If we, therefore, consider the word “nation”, in
such an eschatological perspective, the thorny question of the relationship
between Gospel and culture becomes in effect marginal. The multiplicity of
ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious etc. diversities of the world is valued
and accepted as such; to a much greater degree, of course, the plurality of
Christian expressions of faith; [26]
provided that the final target always remains the transfiguration of the
entire cosmos, humankind and nature alike, into the original beauty and harmony,
which not only existed before the Fall, but to a much greater degree it will be
acquired at the eschata. This is the real meaning of the Lordship of Christ, who
at the End “will place himself under God, who placed all things under him;
and God will rule completely over all” (1 Cor 15:28
“i{na h\/ oJ qeo;" ta; pavnta ejn pa'sin”).
(iv)
The meaning, therefore, of the universal mission
assigned by Christ to his disciples by virtue of his unlimited authority
as we described it above, i.e. as a projection of the communion of the Holy
Trinity takes the form of two distinct, but at the same time interrelated,
actions: (a) of “baptising” the world, in fact each one personally, “in
the name” of the Triune God; (b) of “teaching” them “to
observe” all Christ’s commandments. Both actions point to the
Kingdom of God. Baptism is a rite of initation; more precisely it is the
sacramental act of entering into the Church, the little flock which will
transform the entire world into the Kingdom of God, exactly as “a little
bit of yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise”’(1 Cor 5:6). In a
similar way “teaching all Christ’s commandments”
does not aim at establishing a new Law by transmission of doctrinal
or moral values, but primarily of a New Covenant. The phrase “teaching them
to observe all that I have commanded you”
echoes St Matthew’s habitual presentation of Jesus as the new Moses
of the new Israel. Even in the Old Testament (especially in Deuteronomy) God’s
commandments are inextricably bound with, in fact they stand as, a consequence
of the Covenant that God himself in his initiative established with his chosen
people.[27]
It
is not accidental that in the Lord’s Prayer the petition ‘Thy will be
done” follows the previous fundamental petition: “Thy Kingdom come”.
In the New Testament, therefore, God’s will for his Church, the New Israel, is
related to God’s New Covenant, being in fact identified with the realisation
and manifestation of the Kingdom of God. And for the Church there can be no
other will of God than the coming of his Kingdom, no universal proselytizing
mission but proleptic manifestations of God’s coming kingdom, beyond cultural,
confessional, or even religious boundaries. In one of my contributions to the
preparation of the last World Mission Conference in San Antonio,1989,[28]
I concluded with St. Chrysostom’s following
comment:
“(Christ)
did not say ’Your will be done’ in me, or in us, but everywhere on earth, so
that error may be destroyed, and truth implanted, and all wickedness cast out,
and virtue return, and no difference in this respect be henceforth between
heaven and earth”.[29]
These
sacramental and covenantal aspects, which both point to the Kingdom of God,
should never be lost from the missionary perspectives of the
Church. After all, true evangelism is not aiming at bringing the nations
to our religious ‘enclosure’, but to ‘let’ the Holy Spirit use both us
and those to whom we bear witness to bring about the Kingdom of God. This means
that in the Church’s mission priority should definitely be given not to
‘quantity’ conversions, but to the ‘quality’ and exclusiveness of the Kingdom of
God - or to use K.Raiser’s new paradigm - of the household (oikos) of God.[30]
C
After
the great schism and the eventual split between Eastern and Western Christianity,
which seriously wounded the ‘oneness’ of the Church, European theology
developed a scholastic system in isolation from its trinitarian basis and
developed, perhaps unconsciously, a distorted notion of christocentricity. This
was the case, for example, with soteriology, whether it goes back to the
anselmian ‘satisfaction theory’ or not. Its classical expression with the extra
nos - pro nobis formula, which resulted in the passive role the European
churches have played in the socio-politico-economic developments, leaving thus
an indelible mark on western civilisation and culture, was in fact due to the
transference of the decisive point of salvation from incarnation and the whole
of divine economy to the specific moment of Jesus’ death on the cross. As a
consequence, soteriology - as all the other ‘-ologies’ of Christian theology,
including missiology - gradually shifted away from christology, viewed always
within a trinitarian perspective, and eventually became a separate chapter of (denominational
of course and not ecclesial) dogmatic theology. However, this was not the way
the early undivided Church used to consider soteriology. Our Church fathers
answered the question of salvation in close relation to - in fact as a
consequence of - the Christian doctrine of the nature, essence and energies of
the second person of the Holy Trinity.
By
losing the trinitarian dimension in the understanding of Christian mission, we
lost the holistic and cosmic dimension of salvation which is clearly implied in
the advanced christological statement of the corpus paulinum:
“For
in him (Christ) all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to
reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by
the blood of his cross”.
(Col 1:19f).
Only
a few remarks need to be made on this passage:
(i)
In all religions, except Christianity, the concept of deity is an abstract one;
God is the great unknown, whom noone has ever seen face to face. He cannot,
therefore, be classified with existing things, because he is above existence
itself. Christianity, on the other hand, believes that God revealed himself to
the world through Christ, the means of revelation being Christ’s incarnation,
namely the act of his flesh-taking. Christ is, therefore, the actual door
through which human beings enter in to the knowledge of God (“he who has
seen me has seen the Father,” John 14:9). He is the authentic “image
of the invisible God’, the Father - Col1:15; “for in him all the
fullness of God was pleased to dwell’. This truth, is perfectly
demonstrated by the Greek letters «ï ùí» in
the orthodox icons of Christ. In the Christian East the icon of Christ is an
icon of God. By seeing the image we are aware of what is revealed. Without
denying the historical-critical views on the origin of the Greek word ðëÞñùìá
(fullness) we must remind ourselves of its identification in the patristic
exegetical tradition ‘to the essence and not to a certain energy of God’ (Theophylact).
Even Theodoret’s view (who on the basis of Eph 1:23 parallel and not of the
more relevant Col 2:9 has related the fullness to the Church) has something to
say: the fullness of God in Christ is shared with the Church, thus affecting the
whole creation.
(ii)
The reference to ‘reconciliation...by the blood of his cross’ has, no
doubt, soteriological connotations. Recent New Testament scholarship has almost
unanimously agreed that St. Paul’s understanding of salvation was not an
evolution ex nihilio but a development and re-interpretation of the early
(pre-Pauline) Church’s considerable variety of attempts to give a theological
interpretation to Jesus’ death. Our great apostle preserves, and to a certain
extent accepts all the traditional interpretations,
but without showing his preference for any of them. A quick glance at the
terminology used by him shows his real contribution to early Christian
soteriology. There may be some objections as to the real meaning of the ransom
terminology (cf. àðïëýôñùóéí
in Col 1:20), the concilliatory (cf. àðïêáôáëëÜîáé
in Col 1:20), or the juridical (äßêáéïò, äéêáéïÜí
etc.) terminology, with which the mystery of salvation is expressed in
the Pauline epistles, comes from St Paul himself or expresses the faith of the
first Christian community. What no one can deny is that the theological meaning
attached to óôáõñüò (cross) and its cognates constitutes one of
the most characteristic features of St Paul’s theology. The ‘word of the
cross’ becáme for St Paul the decisive parameter which gave new
perspective to the traditional understanding of Jesus’ death. And this new
perspective is determined by the meaning this capital punishment had in the pre-Christian
era. It was St Paul who transformed this most terrible, disgracing and
humiliating symbol of Roman society into the most significant element in the
divine economy. More precisely, while accepting the traditional pluralistic
interpretation of this greatest event of the earthly ministry of our Lord, any
time his opponents challenged his Gospel, he re-interpreted the significance of
Jesus’ death on the basis of his theologia crucis with all the socio-political
consequences this humiliating symbol connoted in contemporary Roman society.
If
St Paul’s soteriology, the quintessence of our Christian dogmatic theology,
has such sociological connotations, we realise what the task of our mission must
be. Such an understanding of Christian soteriology would never allow us to be
trapped in dilemmas between faith and science in a world facing the ecological
extinction and genetic manipulation; or between individualistic spirituality and
social responsibility in a society controlled by an unjust global economic
system, and facing a nuclear panic and AIDS epidemic. It teaches us that the
Christian Church should never lose its social and cosmic dimension and become a
‘privatised’ religion of individual or even denominational interest.
(c)
Of similar importance is the use in our passage of the hapax-legomenon åŒñçíïðïéÞóáò
(making peace).
It expresses the consequence of the cosmic effect of God’s power working in
Christ and in his ‘body’, the Church. It is neither a stoic idea, according
to which peace can be restored if one achieves harmony with his/her inner nature,
nor a political idea of the type of the externally forced Pax Romana. It is
Christ’s sovereignty over the entire cosmos, the cause, source and
manifestation (in concrete actions of his body, the Church) of real peace. As is
clearly shown in our passage, there is also a sharp contrast with its
contemporary Jewish apocalyptic view that shalom (peace) will only be
restored at the eschata. Unlike the apocalyptic literature, in the New Testament,
especially in the Apocalypse, peace and final salvation are not envisaged at the
once-and-for-all event of the cosmic transformation at the eschata, but in the
specific historical event of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God and the
subsequent efforts of the Church as the authentic manifestation of that Kingdom
to overthrow all contemporary faithlessness and injustice. It is firmly believed
that God’s people, despite all difficulties, at the end “will reign on
earth” (Apoc 5:10).
This
is not naive millenarianism, but an affirmation of the Church´s eschatological,
i.e. historical, perspective and an attempt to prevent the christian
understanding of salvation fron becoming an illusion or being limited only to
the spiritual life, as the Gnostics
attempted to do (cf. the Gospel of Thomas). Only when Satan and his concrete
expressions in history no longer rule on earth, giving their place to the reign
of the Lamb, is salvation accomplished. What is essential in Christian theology
is not the expectation of salvation of the world, but its completion with the
final elimination of evil. There is no dilemma, therefore, between the present
world and the world of the future, which has so often led to dread, despair and
resignation.
(d)
Christ is the “first-born of all creation”
(Col1:5); “in him were created all things” (1:16); “in
him all things hold together” (1,17); but he is also “the first-born
of the resurrection” (1:18); and through him God reconciled “all
things...whether on earth or in heaven” (1:20). What makes this passage
unique for its soteriological significance, is unquestionably the use of
the word ðÜíôá (all
things), a word that occurs no less than nine times (!) in the christological
hymn proper (Col 1:15-20). Christ has wrought salvation not only for all
humankind, but also for the entire cosmos, the whole creation. Here the emphasis
is not just on God’s immanence, but on the cosmic effect of God’s power
working in Christ and his ‘body’ the Church.
There
was a prevalent Jewish belief that after the fall the entire cosmos, man and
nature alike, fell into a state of alienation; in man by reason of sin and in
all creation by the loss of unity, harmony and beaty. As result God’s creation
fell into the captivity of intermediary (angelic) powers. Christ redeemed the
world and took away the control these angelic powers exercised upon humanity.
According to various New Testament texts (most notably Rom 8:20ff) this
redemption is not limited to liberation of individuals from sin, death and the
satanic powers; is not even extended to liberation from alienation, oppression
and injustice; it goes even beyond: it is expected to cover the restoration of
the whole creation. The uniqueness of the Colossians passage lies in the fact
that this state of cosmic restoration to its original harmony is already a
persene reality. And according to the neglected Marcan
Passage (Mark 16:15) this truth is the primary object in Christian
mission and evangelism; for the disciples of Christ are sent to proclaim the
good news to the entire creation (ðÀóÖè
ôÖÖƒ ëôÝóåé).
This
doctrine is nowhere better presented than in Orthodox iconography. Icons in the
original Byzantine art do not express a de-materialisation of the depicted
scenery, as was wrongly believed in the past. What they actually express is the
reverse process, i.e. the transfiguration, and consequently sanctification, of
matter. It is not only the holy
figures which are treated with this tranfigural technique, but nature too. The
material and cosmic elements which surround the holy figures are also
transformed and flooded by grace. The icon reveals how the entire creation,
humans and nature alike, can and will be transformed to the harmony and beauty,
which not only they originally possessed before the Fall, but will also aquire
to a much greater extent at the eschata. It was firmly believed that not just
humankind, but the cosmos in its entirety
participates in God’s redemption in Christ. The same conviction lies even
behind the fundamental orthodox teaching of theosis; for the notion of
deification, far from implying disregard of matter, mainly refers to the
body’s redemption and the restoration to the glory wich the whole creation
possessed before the Fall, but will also acquire in its fullness at the eschata
.
D
There
has been an edless debate in the history of our Christian theology as to the
relationship in terms of priority between faith and love, between dogma and
ethics, between orthodoxia and orthopraxia, even between ‘Faith
and order’ on the one hand, and ‘Mission and evangelism’ on the other. It
is very often argued that love (praxis) comes only as a consequence of faith (theory);
or that the former is the ultimate virtue, the achievement of which presupposes
all the other virtues, including faith (St John of the Ladder). On the other
hand, there is much truth in the argument that Christian theology would never
have reached its climax, when the final articulation of the Trinitarian dogma
took place, had a communal life full of love preceded in the early Church.
‘See how these Christians love one another’, an ancient Christian apologist
pointed out; and St John Chrysostom insisted that church members’ behaviour
and their mutual love among themselves was the only effective missionary method.
If,
however, we make the suppeme axiomatic definition of our trinitarian theology
our starting point, we never enter into the vicious circle of the above dilemmas
and we never fall into the trap of such tragic
and schizophrenic dichotomy. All fundamental christian dogmas: the
creation of the entire cosmos by God, the redemption in Christ and salvation
through the Church, but beyond her boundaries, in the Holy Spirit; all are
conceived as the inevitable consequence of the inner communion and love of the
Holy Trinity. There can be no other expression of faith than communion and love.
This perfectly demonstrated in the Johannine passage:
“A
new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved
you, that you also love one another.
By this all human beings will know
that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John
13:34f).
I
will very briefly commend on how this trinitarian love was understood in our
past (apostolic and post-apostolic) and present (ecumenical) history and has
been projected: (a) in our self-understanding (ecclesiology); (b) in our
evengelistic witness (missiology); and (c) in our social but at the same time
cosmic responsibility (socio-cosmology).
(i)
By its nature the Church cannot reflect the worldly image of a secular
organisation, which is normally based on power and domination, but
the kenotic image of the Holy Trinity, which is based on love and
communion. This image is nowhere expressed better than in the early (apostolic
and postapostolic) Church’s self-understanding.
In
the first two decades after Pentecost the early Christian community understood
its existence as the perfect and genuine expression of the people of God. With a
series of terms taken from the Old Testament the early Christian community
believed that it was the”Israel of God” (Gal 6:16), the ”saints” (Acts
9:32, 41; 26:10; Rom1:7; 8:27; 12:13; 15:25), “the elect” (Rom 8:33; Col
3:12 etc), “the chosen race” (1 Pe 2:9 ), “the royal priesthood” (ibid)
etc; namely the holy people of God (ëáüò ôïõ Èåïõ), for whom
all the promises of the Bible were to be fulfilled at the eschata. During this
constructive period the concept in which the early Church understood herself was
that of a people and not of an organisation. An examination of both the
Old and the New Testament terminology makes this quite clear. The chosen people
of God were an ‘am (in Hebrew, especially in the prophets) or a ëáüò
(in Greek), whereas the people of the outside world were designated by the
Hebrew term goim and the Greek one Ýèíç
( cf. Acts
15:14)
This
conciousness that when God created a new community, he created a people,
distinguished the Christian Church from those guilds, clubs or religious
societes so typical of the Greco-Roman period. It is quite significant that the
first Christian community used the term âêêëçóßá in the Old
Testament meaning; it is not accidental that this term (ecclesia) in the
Septuagint, corresponds to the Hebrew qâhâl , i.e. to a term
denoting the congregation of God’s people. The Saptuagint never translates as
åêêëçóßá the Hebrew ‘edhah,
the usual translation of which is óõíáãùãÞ. In this primitive
period ; therefore, the members of the Christian community do not just belong
to the Church; i.e. they are not simply members of an organisation; they
are the Church.
The
second generation after Pentecost is certainly characterised by the great
theological contribution of St.Paul. The apostle takes over the above
charismatic notion of the Church, but he gives it in addition a universal and
ecumenical character. To the Church belong all human beings, Jews and Gentiles;
for the latter have been joined to the same tree of the people of God
(Rom11:13ff). The Church, as the new Israel, is thus no longer constituted on
grounds of external criteria (circumcision etc.), but of her faith to Jesus
Christ (cf.
Rom 9:6 ). The
term, however, with which St. Paul reminds the reader of the charismatic
understanding of the Church is óùìá
Xñéóôïõ
(body
of Christ). With this metaphorical expression St. Paul was able to express the
charismatic nature of the Church by means of the semitic concept of corporate
personality. He emphasised that in the Church there exist a variety of ÷áñßóìáôá,
exercised by the individual members of the community, and necessary for the
building up (oéêïäïìÞ) and
the nutrition of this body, Christ alone being its only head and authority.
The
Johannine figure of the vine (John 15:1- 8) is equally impressive . As with the
pauline term óùìá, the double scheme aìðåëïò-
êëÞìáôá (vine-branches)
indicates the special relationship existing between people and Christ, which
reveals the inner basis of ecclesial life. The other N. T. figures for the
Church , “household of faith” (Eph 2:11ff), “fellowship” (1 Cor 1:9 etc),
“bride of Christ” (Eph 1:31f ; Rev 21:9), “little flock” (Lk 12:32 etc)
, “family of Christ” etc, all point to the same direction: namely that the
new community is a people, bound together by love and the Spirit provided
by God in Christ, and not by external structure.
The
whole ecclesiological process from the eschatological kerygma of Jesus of
Nazareth, announcing the coming of the kingdom of God in his mission, to the
understanding by the first apostles of their mission to evangelize the world as
a sign of the eschata, and further down to the Ignatian episcopocentric concept
of the Church as a eucharistic community, reveals that it was the eschatological,
and not the hierarchical (and therfore authoritative) nature of the Church that
was stressed. The early Christian community understood itself as portraying the
kingdom of God on earth; and the primary consern of the great theologians of the
apostolic and post-apostolic period was to maintain clearly the vision of that
kingdom before the eyes of the people of God .
The
ecclesiological problem, therefore, for our Churches, which is so important an
issue in our ecumenical discussions, is a matter not so much of organisation and
structure, but of eschatological orientation. And there is no better way to
rediscover our eschatological self-consciousness than through the Eucharist as
the sacrament of love, communion, sacrifice and sharing.[31]
(ii)
All churches within the ecumenical movement have eventually realised, following
the kenotic example of Christ, that
love in fact means that they leave for a while their selfish theological
preoccupations and proceed to a “common” evangelistic witness.[32]
They realised that, according to the Matthaean discourse of our Lord on the Last
Judgement (Mt 25:31ff), what really matters is not so much accepting, and
believing in, the abundant love of
our Triune God (confessional, religious exclusiveness), but exemplifying it to
the world through witness (ecclesial inclusiveness). Not because they are
conscious of their share of responsibility, no matter to what extent, for the
scandalous division of the one body of Christ, and for that reason they feel the
burden of the contribution to the
work of the Holy Spirit for the restoration of the broken unity of the Church
lying on their shoulders; not even because common witness is the only visivle
sign that gives credibility to the Church in the eyes of the outside world,
until the blessed moment comes when we all around the same eucharistic table of
Church unity and share the same eucharistic cup and bread; not even because only
in this way can our churches overcome the temptation of exercising among
themselves proselytism - that terrible caricature of evangelism, a kind of
“counter-witness - and rediscover the catholicity of the Church;[33]
but mainly because the ultimate goal and the raison d’ être of
the Church goes far beyond
denominational boundaries, beyond Christian limitations, even beyond the
religious sphere in the conventional sense: it is the manifestation of the
kingdom of God, the restoration of God’s “household” (ïrêïò) of God,[34]
in its majestic eschatological splendour; in other words the projection of the
inner dynamics (love, communion, sharing etc.) of the Holy Trinity into the
world and cosmic realities.
(iii)
Quite a number of theologians have argued that in St.Paul’s epistles the
importance of faith for salvation is stressed, whereas in the Johannine
writings it is mainly love the
sine qua non of Christian life that is constantly emphasised. The great
majority of academic theologians, especially since the time of Reformation,
regardless of their denominational tradition, have examined St.Paul’s theology
exclusively on grounds of the old sola fide justification theory. This
theory, significant as it it, has in effect pushed into the background the
incarnational/ socio- cosmic aspects of his teaching. As a result, this great
thinker and father of Christian theology has been accused from various quarters
of de-radicalising the words of the historical Jesus and/ or of the kerygma of
the early Church.
I
will focus only on St.Paul’s collection project, this most
representative side of his multifarious missionary praxis, which can serve as a
test case showing how unjust the above accusation is. The project occupied a
much greater part in the early Church’s activity than that presupposed in Acts;
for St.Paul’s entire third missionary trip was almost exclusively devoted to
the transfer of the collection to the Jerusalem Mother Church. Whatever the
origin (Half Shekel Temple tax ) or its connections (Antiochean
collection in Acts 11:27ff , 12:25) may be, it was St. Paul who attached special
theological significance to the collection project. Beyond its ecumenical,
ecclesiological and eschatological characteristic, its ultimate goal, according
to St. Paul’s thinking - mainly presented in 2 Corinthians 8- 9 - was the
ideal of the equal distribution and communion of material wealth. Using a
wide variety of terms to describe the collection project , terms such as “charis”,
“koinonia”, “diakonia”, “leitourgia”, “eucharistia” etc, St.
Paul understood the collection as the social response of the body of Christ to
God’s will. For him, and the rest of the Christian community, this act was not
an social-ethical one, but the inevitable response to the kingdom of God
inaugurated in Christ.[35]
E
I
the light of all the above I would like to conclude with some practical remarks
and relevant recommendations:
(i)
Orthodoxy needs reafirm its commitment to ecumenism, if it expects a lasting
solution to this most painful in present circumstances issue of Proselytism. I
stress this, because it is a widespread conviction that nowadays ecumenism has
entered into a delicate and crucial stage, with clearly evident the signs of a
decline. The tragic events we experienced since the great changes in Europe -
with Churches not in solidarity with, but fighting or undermining, each other;
and with the nations and the peoples not desiring to live peacefully with the
"others", but wishing to cleanse them -
are just a few indications that the titanic ecumenical efforts of the
past definitely need re-orientation.
(ii)
The thorny issue of Proselytism can only be solved with a profound
theological reconsideration of the notion of Christian mission combined
with ecclesiology (unity[36])
and social ethics (costly unity[37]),
with the involvement and active participation also of non WCC member groups.
Gospel, evangelism, mission are not for inner consumption of the Church. They
are primarily aimed at the world. Theology in the Church has always tried to
have common language with the world, in order to explain the Gospel in terms of
a given culture. The problem in today’s “post-christian era” lies on the
fact that there is no more common language with the outside world.
(iii)
The reasons of not solving the problem of proselytism within the ecumenical
movement after so many efforts and
joint statements are to be traced in some inherent unresolved problems in the
ecumenical movement. These are: (a) The Toronto Statement (1950) with its
neutral ecclesiology which allows every member Church to have their basic
beliefs (and for some Protestant groups universal proselytizing mission
constitutes the core of their doctrine);[38]
(b) The consideration of the issue of proselytism always in relation to - in
fact as the unquestionable consequence of - the
“religious liberty”, which is in fact a by-product of the western
ideal of human rights and above all of individualism, which is incompatible with
koinonia, the heart of eastern orthodoxy.[39]
(iv)
Orthodoxy to be consistent with its outright condemnation of proselytism, should
abandon also any kind of similar activities in the West. There was a fine ethos,
which is now fading away, not to consecrate for the diaspora Orthodox
communities any Bishop to a place belonging to the West, thus respecting the
jurisdiction of the Church of Rome, and consequently of western Christianity, of
the ancient undivided Holy Catholic Church.
[1]When Prof. Dr. Anastasios Yannoulatos eventually occupied the chair of Comparative Religion at the Theological School of Athens, the chair of Missiology was successfuly occupied by Prof. Dr. Elias Voulgarakis, another distinguished Orthodox missiologist. The course of Missiology is also being taught for more than ten years now in the Department of Theology of the University of Thessaloniki by the present writer in an explicitly ecumenical - “common christian witness” - direction, and in the Department of Pastoralia of the same University by Prof. Dr. Christos Vantsos.
[2]This, of course, does not mean that I will discard the historical or exegetical critical approach; on the contrary I will build upon them. Actually the angle from which I propose to tackle the issue, mainly because of my academic speciality, will be the biblical one.
[3]Cf. my “Unity-Ecumenicity-Cosmic and Social Dimension of Orthodoxy (A Comment on the Message of the Orthodox Churches),” Lex Orandi. Studies of Liturgical Theology, Thessaloniki 1994 (EKO 9), pp. 157-166, originally published in Kath’Odon 2 (1992), pp. 119-125, where despite my general positive appraisal I made a few critical remarks, among which to its understanding of mission and proselytism (pp. 160f.).
[4]See a recent paper circulated by G.Lemopoulos and entitled “Threats and Hopes for our Ecumenical Credibility. An Orthodox Reflection on ‘Proselytism’ and ‘Common Witness’,” with a substantial number of referrences and bibliography.
[5]For a thorough examination of the issue from the Orthodox side see (Metropolitan of Ephesus) Ch.Konstantinidis, “Proselytism, the Ecumenical Movement and the Orthodox Church,” Orthodoxoi Katopseis IV, Katerini, 1991, pp. 45-134; also Leon Zander, “Ecumenism and Proselytism,” IRM 3 (1951), pp.259ff.
[6]Cf. the most important documents and books on the issue: e.g. Common Witness. A Joint Document of the Working Group of the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC, WCC Mission Series, Geneva 1982; the relevant to our subject document Common Witness and Proselytism; also I.Bria (ed.), Martyria-Mission, WCC Publications Geneva, 1980. Even the Mission and Evangelism-An Ecumenical Affirmation, Geneva 1982, WCC Mission Series ²1985 , is an attempt to correctly interpret the classical missionary terminology. Cf. also the most recent agreed statement of the Dorfweil/Germany Consultation of KEK with the European Baptist Federation and the European Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (12-13 June 1995) with the title: “Aspects of Mission and Evangelization in Europe Today”.
[7]Cf. the tension in the recent history of the world christian mission, which resulted in the tragic separation and the eventual formation of the Lausanne Movement for World Evangelization.
[8]M.Goodman,Mission and Conversion. Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1994, p.3.
[9]Ibid.
[10]Ibid.., p. 4
[11]Ibid.
[12]Ibid.., p. 7.
[13]Quite recently D.J.Bosch (Transforming Mission. Paradigm Schifts in Theology of Mission, New York, 1991) has discribed through the “Paradigm-Shift-theory” the development of Christian understanding of mission down to the most recent ecumenical era.
[14]On the recent history of Christian mission see J.Verkuyl, Contemporary Missiology: An Introduction, engl. transl. Grand Rapids Michigan 1978.
[15]K.Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition. A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement, WCC Publications Geneva 1991 (translated with modifications from the Germen original Ökumene im Übergang, C.Kaiser Verlag München 1989), p.34.
[16]Ibid., pp.79ff.
[17]For an early survey by an orthodox see (Archbishop of Albania) Anastasios Yannoulatos, Various Christian Approaches to the Other Religions (A Historical Outline), Athens 1971.
[18]This comes from the famous passage in Acts 4:12 “êáé ïõê åóôéí åí Üëëù ïõäåíß ç óùôçñßá, ïõäÝ ãáñ üíïìá åóôéí Ýôåñïí ...åí ù äåé óùèÞíáé çìÜò”.
[19]For the relation of mission to dialogue, as well as the repeatedly expressed concern over “syncretism” see Ibid., pp. 55ff; also the partizan work from the “old paradigm” by W.A.Visser’t Hooft, No Other Name: The Choice between Syncretism and Christian Universalism, SCM London, 1963.
[20]Cf. (Metropolitan of Pergamon) John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, SVS Press New York 1985.
[21]Cf. A.I.C.Herton (ed.), The Forgotten Trinity, London, 1991.
[22]Cf. Metropolitan George Khodre,“Christianity in a Pluralistic World-The Economy of the Holy Spirit,” ER 23 (1971, pp. 118-28.
[23]Cf. T.F.Best-G.Gassmann (eds.), On the Way to Fuller Koinonia: Official Report of the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, Faith and Order Paper No 166, WCC Publications, Geneva 1994, pp. 256f. Also C.M.Robeck Jr’ s paper on “Evangelization, Proselytizing and Common Witness: A Pentecostal Perspective,” p.5.
[24]Most of what follows in sections B,C,and D is a slightly revised version of a previous article of mine “Biblical Aspects of Mission,” The Mission of the Churches in a Secularised Europe, KEK Geneva 1989 (Occasional Paper No 19), pp.26-33; also in Greek, in Ion Bria-P.Vassiliadis, Orthodox Christian Witness, Katerini 1989 (EKO 1), pp. 119-140.
[25]I. Bria (ed.), Go fourth in Peace, WCC Mission Series, Geneva, 1986, p. 3
[26]Cf. N.Nissiotis, “The Witness and the Service of the Eastern Orthodoxy to the One Undivided Church,” ER 14 (1962) , pp.. 192-202´also in C.Patelos (ed.), The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement, WCC Geneva, 1978, pp.231-41, which was his keynote address to the III WCC Assembly at New Delhi in 1961.
[27]Cf. my “God’s Will for His People: Deut 6:20-25,” IRM 77 (1988) , pp.179-184.
[28]P.Vassiliadis, “Your Will be Done: Reflections from St. Paul,” IRM 75 (1986) , pp. 376-382.
[29]“Homily XIX to St. Matthew’s Gospel,” PG 57 col. 280.
[30]K.Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition, pp. 102ff.
[31]More on this in my article “New Testament Ecclesiological Perspectives on Laity,” EEÈÓÈ 29 (1988), pp. 333-356, in which the final document of the Orthodox Seminar on Laity and Renewal, Prague Czechoslovakia, 21-27 Nov. 1988, was appended.
[32]Cf. among other important contributions L.Newbegin, “Common Witness and Unity,”, IRM 69 (1980), pp. 160ff.
[33]G.Lemopoulos rightly suggests that it is now time to move beyond the idea of “common witness” and explore the need for a “common mission” (“Threats and Hopes...,” p. 14); this of course presupposing the above eucharistic and trinitarian analysis, and not as a return to a christocentric universalism, which is not only an undesired return to the “old mission paradigm”, but it will also require a “common ecclesiology”, which is still a desideratum.
[34]K.Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition, pp. 102ff.
[35]It is time, I think for our churches to revive this very significant project, which in today’s ecclesiastical practice (both Eastern and Western) has been degenerated into an underemphasised institution, without the social and ecumenical dimensions St. Paul gave it. This is, perhaps, a more authentic evangelistic act than the old fashioned universal proselytizing mission, especially in the narrow confessional perspective.
[36]Cf. T.F.Best-G.Gassmann (eds.), On the Way to Fuller Koinonia, WCC Geneva 1994.
[37]Cf. the WCC booklet on Costly Unity, WCC Geneva 1992.
[38]Cf. ER 13 (1960) pp.85ff.
[39]More on this in J.Zizioulas, “Communion and Otherness,” SVTQ 34 (1994), pp. 347-361. Cf. however, a more positive evaluation from an Orthodox perspective in Kostas Delikostantis, Human Rights. A Western Ideology or an Ecumenical Ethos?, Thessaloniki, 1995 (in Greek).