Another View of “the Story”

The value of seeing the theological big picture is well illustrated at the practical level in James Choung’s evangelistic presentation, True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In. In my theology classes I have often assigned students to write their own view of Christian story in 200 words or less (which generally elicits a few frustrated responses). In a second stage, I have them revise the story in a smaller collaborative group (still keeping it at the 200 word limit); this helps to illustrate some aspects of the communal nature of theology. Finally, in a third stage I ask them to rework their narrative in some kind of creative and practical way (e.g., with a PowerPoint presentation, art work, or by converting thei narrative into some type of specific application). While one might quibble about details, James Choung’s napkin sketch would have earned an A+.  The book is published by InterVarsity Press, and was recently reviewed in Christianity Today.

The Trinitarian Story in 100 Words or Less

From the Triune God comes a narrative centering on Christ, God’s incarnate Son, and supernaturally recorded in Scripture. This story begins with creation, reports humanity’s fall, Israel’s history, and God’s redemption in Jesus, the Messiah. People, who by the Spirit’s power repent and believe this good news, experience salvation: deliverance from sin, Satan, and death. United with the crucified and resurrected Lord, believers participate in Christ’s Body, the eschatological community that worships God, serves a needy world, and provisionally embodies God’s coming Kingdom. This blessing is for the whole creation, which will soon be judged and renewed for God’s glory.

The Mission of God

Chris Wright has written a magisterial work on biblical theology – and from a missional perspective.  His full title is:  The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Any danger that a Christ Centered Trinitarian theology might fade into a reductionistic christomonism is warded off by a faithfully Trinitarian focus, and the organic way in which God’s mission in Christ becomes the focus of YHWH’s redemptive self-revelation.  Such a balance is enriched by this thoroughly canonical and missional treatment of biblical theology. 

Christian theology is at its core both mission and ethics.  Along the way Wright wisely treats the ethical nature of God’s mission (see his earlier work on OT ethics).  Surely this book will become a mainstay in missional theology. 

Missio Dei

The value of consciously functioning within a Christ centered trinitarian matrix is, in part, its utility for disrupting fossilized theological systems.  It stimulates a kind of healthy "strategic chaos,"  which encourages lateral thinking about what really matters in the Christian confession.  At the same time it can be fruitfully (and faithfully) creative within concrete historical and social contexts.  Exploring the features of this matrix is the task before us.

We have been saying much about the Trinity.  But it must be emphasized that we are advocating a Christ-centered trinitarian model.  This is critical.  A theology whose christology cuts loose from its trinitarian moorings quickly sails away from Orthodoxy.   But a trinitarian approach that is not sensitive to the primary historical, redemptive and revelatory function of the Son,  runs the risk of being an abstraction.  The faithful Christian confession must be both christocentric AND trinitarian. 

The christological focus keeps us close to the missio Dei, and thus to the heart of things.  Those theologians who are moving towards a "missional" theology, and the churchmen [/women] who follow in their trail, are to be celebrated.  Perhaps it is time to critically and prayerfully reread David J. Bosch's monumental work, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission.

In his closing section ("Whither Mission?"), Bosch writes, "The missio Dei purifies the church.  It sets it under the cross — the only place where it is ever safe.  The cross is the place of humiliation and judgment, but it is also the place of refreshment and new birth" (p. 519).  May the Lord purify the church today!

Nexus Mysteriorum

The observation that there has been a lack of trinitarian imagination in Western theology, a kind of trinitarian forgetfulness, is painfully close to the mark.  Many, while confessing the Trinity at the formal level, live their everyday lives as though God were a bare monad.  How do we faithfully bare witness to the gospel, if our speech and thoughts are nearly Unitarian?  How, at this critical hour, does the church  give a certain sound before Dar Al Islam, if the Christian community is confused and forgetful about it's own confession?  Therefore we ought to listen to those who help us remember, and who stimulate us to biblically faithful trinitarian imaginations. 

Such voices are coming from many directions.  Anne Hunt, an Austrailian Roman Catholic writer, recently published a book simply entitled The Trinity. While the careful non-Catholic reader will filter her labor through his or her own tradition, Anne has much to offer. 

The full title of this useful volume is Trinity: Nexus of the Mysteries of the Christian Faith.  The thesis is that the Trinity is the nexus mysteriorum, i.e., that which provides the interconnection of all the doctrines.  [The Catholic use of the term "mystery" here is not to be confused with the NT usage of "mysterion," which has a special redemptive historical sense.]  

Anne's aim in her own words is "to awaken the trinitarian intuition and to foster an explicitly trinitarian imagination that extends and enriches the entire theological enterprise" (p. 4). 

This is a worthy goal.