Jürgen Moltmann’s
Ecclesiology and Missiology in The Church
in the Power of the Spirit: The Missionary Church, The Trinity, and Religions
Introduction
Wherever there is Christ, there is the
church. In the theology of Jürgen Moltmann, the
church does not exist for herself. Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology develops
from Christology. “Where this Christ makes himself present, the church comes
into being and also exists. But this sentence cannot be turned the other way
round.”[1]
This is the foundation for Moltmann’s ecclesiology through which we can grasp a
hold of Moltmann’s missiology in light of his understanding of the relationship
between Jesus Christ and his church. The church exists for Christ and
participates in the mission of Christ in the power of the Spirit. As Moltmann
writes, “The church participates in Christ’s messianic mission and in the
creative mission of the Spirit.”[2]
The mission of the church derives from her relationship with Jesus Christ and
the Holy Spirit.
For Moltmann, the church does not merely
participate in the mission of Christ and the Spirit. In particular, the church
actively engages in the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world.
As Moltman notes, “Without understanding of the particular church in the
framework of the universal history of God’s dealings with the world,
ecclesiology remains abstract and the church’s self-understanding blind.”[3]
According to Moltmann, the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world
means that “the livingness of God which has moved out of itself, which cannot
be fixed by any definition, but can only be understood through participating
and engaged knowledge.”[4]
God’s constant engagement with the world is actualized through the sending of
the Son and the Spirit who proceeded from the Father and the Son. In other
words, the sending of the Son and the Spirit by the Father means that the
Trinity is open for humanity and the world out of his divine, self-giving love.
We will discuss the missiological implications of Moltmann’s economic Trinity,
which is an open Trinity, for the mission of the church.
The mission of the church is
christologically found and eschatologically oriented.[5]
The mission of the church participates in the mission of God. The mission of
God is vividly displayed through the mission of the sent Son. The person and
mission of the sending God is the center of the church of Jesus Christ. For
Moltmann, the closer the church gets to this center, the wider the church
extends outside of herself. In other words, “There cannot be any Christological
concentration unless we simultaneous knowledge of the furthest horizon for
which this centre is the centre.”[6]
Moltmann’s missiology is christological because the mission of the church can
only be developed from her relationship with the head of the church, Jesus
Christ. The horizon of the church is measured by how much the church wants
Christ to be the center of the existence of the church on earth. In this sense,
preaching the gospel to the end of the earth is not a task, but a relational
responsibility. At the end, we will explore how this relational responsibility
of the church must be understood in the context of dialogue among other
religions as an act of relational eschatology.
In the following, we will discuss
Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology, understanding of the Trinity, and the
mission of the church. We will use Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic
Ecclesiology, as a major text to develop his missiology, trinitarian
thinking, ecclesiology, and theology of religions. At the end, we will try to
come up with some missiological implications of Moltmann’s theology for the
contemporary church.
The Missionary
Church
Relational Ecclesiology
Moltmann writes, “Ecclesiology can only
be developed from Christology.”[7]
Apart from Jesus Christ, the church is nothing. The church does not exist on
its own. As the church of Christ, it is ‘a christologically founded and
eschatologically directed.”[8]
Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology is understood in the sense that the church
can only be the church of Jesus Christ and the church must subject to the
lordship of Jesus Christ as the head of the church. Thus, Moltmann’s messianic
relationality of the church does not merely point inward to the church, but
also participates in Christ’s mission as a “‘messianic fellowship’ orientated
in mission towards the coming kingdom of God.”[9]
The church as a messianic fellowship is graciously invited by God in Christ’s
mission in the service of the kingdom of God in the world. Thus, the mission of
the church is firmly grounded in the person and mission of Christ Jesus and
driven outward to the universal future of Christ in the world.
For Moltmann, the resurrection of
Christ, which is the event of eschatological promise, sets in motion “a
historical process of movement towards the coming kingdom, a process in which
the promise already affects the world and moves it in the direction of its
future transformation.”[10]
Christian hope for the future of the world as grounded and anticipated in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ motivates the church of Jesus Christ to
participate in Christ’s mission on the way to the future as promised by the God
of hope. Thus, the eschatological mission of the church is to anticipate the
coming God who is on the move and coming towards the world and to be actively
involved with the world with hope.[11]
Pneumatology also plays a dispensable
role in Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology. To put Moltmann’s ecclesiology in
the framework of the trinitarian history of God, his ecclesiology is
pneumatological ecclesiology. As Moltmann notes, “The Holy Spirit is the divine
subject of the history of Jesus. For that reason the Son of God is also present
in and through the Spirit in his church, and beyond it is at work in creation.
Pneumatological Christology leads to a charismatic ecclesiology.”[12]
The future reign of Christ is mediated through the Holy Spirit “who mediates
the eschatological future to us as the church lives between the history of
Jesus and the anticipation of the coming of the kingdom….In that sense, the
church participates in the mission of the Spirit.”[13]Moltmann
writes that the church “lives in the experience and practice of the Spirit from
the eschatological anticipation of the kingdom…The experiences and powers of
the Spirit mediate the presence of the history of Christ and the future of the
new creation…As the church of Christ it is the church of the Holy Spirit.”[14]
For Moltmann, the church of Christ is also the church of the Spirit. The church
that participates in Christ’s mission to the world in the power of the Spirit
is a missionary church. “It is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through
the Father that includes the church, creating a church as it goes on its way.”[15]
Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology is
christologically founded and pneumatologically driven. In other words, Jesus
Christ is the foundation of the church; the Holy Spirit is the energizing force
for the church to participate in the mission of God. The nature of its
relationality is mission-oriented, for the church exists for others: God and
the world. As Veli-Matti Karkkainen summarizes Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology,
“there is a theological foundation
for Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology: everything, including God, only exists
in relationships.”[16]
The Missionary Nature of the Church
In The
Church in the Power of the Spirit, Moltmann writes in the beginning, “At
every period the church has a duty to be clear about its commission, its
situation and its goal.”[17]
This statement reflects that Moltmann’s theology is very concerned about the
identity and relevance of the church. The mission of the church must not exist
on its own. The church exists for others: God and the world. The mission of the
church to the world is possible only because the church is invited to
participate in God’s dealings with the world—the trinitarian history of God’s
dealings with the world.
Moltmann’s theology of the church is
open to God and to the world, for “theology is in the service of the church’s
mission to the world.”[18]
But the mission of the church does not come from the church itself. Moltmann
says:
What we have to learn from them is not
that the church ‘has’ a mission, but the very reverse: that the mission of
Christ creates its own church. Mission does not come from the church; it is
from mission and in the light of mission that the church has to be understood.[19]
The mission of the church is not created
by the church. The church is created by the mission of Christ sent by the God
of sending in the power of the Spirit. The missionary nature of the church must
derive from the mission of the Trinity in and through which the church is
formed and entrusted with the missionary responsibility to the world until
Christ comes again. The missionary nature of the church, according to Moltmann,
ought to be understood in the context of the missio Dei. The church not only proclaims the gospel of the kingdom
to the world, but also liberates the world from any form of bondage through
missionary activities.
To grasp the missionary church
theologically in a world-wide context means understanding it in the context of
the missio Dei. Mission comprehends the whole of the church, not only parts of
it…To proclaim the gospel of the dawning kingdom is the first and most
important element in the mission of the church, the mission of the Spirit, and
the mission of the church; but it is not the only one. Mission embraces all
activities that serve to liberate man from his slavery in the presence of the
coming God, slavery which extends from economic necessity to Godforsakenness.[20]
The missionary church participates in
the missio Dei in which “the church
understands its world-wide mission in the trinitarian history of God’s dealings
with the world.”[21]
For Moltmann, the Trinity is not a closed circle, but an open Trinity to the
world. The Father’s sending of the Son to the world indicates the mission of
God in history. The church understands its nature, mission, and purpose in the
light of this trinitarian framework of God’s dealings with the world. As
Moltmann notes, “If the church sees itself to be sent in the same framework as
the Father’s sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit, then it also sees itself
in the framework of God’s history with the world and discovers its place and
function within this history.”[22]
The trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world leads the church of
Christ to be open to the world in the trinitarian mission. For Moltmann, the
Trinity is open to the world. The church created by the triune God is also open
to the world. Thus, the open relationality of the Trinity shapes the missionary
nature of the church to the Trinity and the world.
Do not ask what the church is, but where Christ is
For Moltmann, the church can only
participate in a place where Christ is at work. The church of Jesus Christ is
the church that follows Jesus Christ as the Lord. Wherever Christ is present as
he promised, the church is to be found. “The question what the church is, is not the same as the question where it is…The true church is to be
found where Christ is present.”[23]
It is crucial not to reverse the order of knowing the relationship between
Christ and the church. The church always follows Christ; Christ always precedes
the church. When we start with the church, the mission of the church becomes
purely abstract. And abstraction is what Moltmann is against in his theology. Rather, Moltmann’s theology is for the principle of concreteness. The
theology of Moltmann starts with raising the crucified Jesus from dead by God.
This divine act of God becomes an eschatological promise to the church.
Moltmann notes:
We cannot start from the concept of the
church in order to discover the happening of Christ’s presence; we have to
start from the event of Christ’s presence in order to find the church…Where,
then, is Christ? The simple answer is: Christ, as the crucified and risen one,
is only there where he promised to be present—but there he truly is present.[24]
Christ is present where he has promised
to be. According to Moltmann, the presence of Christ is expected to be found in
the so-called “three modes of promised presence”:[25]
Christ’s presence in the apostolate, Christ’s presence in the poor, and
Christ’s presence in the parousia. When the church faithfully participates in
the presence of Christ as he has promised, there the church is—ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia (Where Christ
is, there the church is).This is Moltmann’s missiological formula for the
mission of the church.[26]
Where Christ is, the Spirit is
In The
Church in the Power of the Spirit, Moltmann fully develops his contemporary
doctrine of the church, especially from a pneumatological perspective. In his
earlier work, Theology of Hope, he
briefly mentioned the relationship between the church and the work of the
Spirit. Moltmann did speak about the creation of the missionary church through
the resurrection of Christ in the power of the Spirit. The missionary church is
a church of “dialectical hope” because the church follows the Christ who was
crucified (separated from God) and raised from the dead (united with God). The
resurrection of Christ triumphs the evil of the world and its ultimate
consequence—death. Therefore, on the one hand, the church does not fantasize
the mission work and expect no obstacles because of the reality of the cross.
On the other hand, the church does not lose heart in engaging with the mission
work in the world due to Christ’s resurrection by the power of God in the
Spirit.[27]
Richard Bauckham comments on Moltmann’s pneumatology: “Moltmann’s pneumatology
in The Church in the Power of the Spirit
is Christological in the sense that the mission of the Spirit follows from that
of the Son and the history of the Spirit fulfills the eschatological purpose
and direction of the history of Christ.”[28]
As Moltmann says, “The teleological interpretation of the history of Christ
coincides with the pneumatological interpretation of the fulfillment of that
history’s meaning.”[29]
The Trinity: The
Trinitarian History of God’s Dealings with the World
Moltmann is fond of the trinitarian
thinking of God, for God is a triune God. However, he is not interested in the
speculation of the Trinity, especially the tri-unity of God. He agrees that the
doctrine of the Trinity ought to be the starting point for the mission of the
church. But the church has not been able to understand, articulate, and apply
the doctrine of the Trinity into the mission of the church properly due to the
limitation of the traditional approach, which is, to start with the ontological
nature of the tri-unity of God. This approach is to start with the unity of the
immanent Trinity. And the possible consequence of this approach is that,
according to Karl Rahner, “Christians are in their practical life, almost mere
‘monotheists.’[30]
As Klaus Detlev Schulz notes, “Naturally, classical Christianity is categorized
as a monotheistic form of belief, but if it is not careful, warns Rahner,
Christianity’s monotheistic form of belief could become its Achilles’ heel.”[31]
What it means is that there is a danger to speculate the doctrine of tri-unity
as a matter of interest in Western Christendom. The East, however, sees the
unity only from the Father who has the freedom and privilege in the divinity.
“Both of the above presentations have their shortcomings: that of trying to
derive the Trinity from the person of the Father, or the unity of the divine
substance.”[32] The missiological implication of this
approach to the Trinity leads to a weak missional ecclesiology.
Another approach starts with the Trinity
as the economic Trinity (or God-in-salvation). It first focuses on the triune
God getting involved with the redemptive history distinctively and yet without
forsaking his oneness. “In the economy of salvation, moreover, the persons do
not function as mere modes of being but actually as centers of action. They
present a concrete and intrinsically differentiated life within the unity but
never beyond its essence.”[33]
The sending God sent the send son into the world through the saving agent, the
Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Trinity involved with the entire
redemptive plan from the beginning to the end. And the church is called to
participate in this divine drama unfolded in history. As Stanley J. Grenz
notes, “In Moltmann’s estimation, the genesis of trinitarian theology lies in
history, above all, in the history of Jesus the Son.”[34]
In other words, the church begins with the Trinity as the divine engagement
with the world through the revelation of Jesus Christ. This model of
Trinitarian understanding has significant missiological implications for the
missionary nature of the church. In agreement with the latter approach,
Moltmann comments:
God’s history
with the world is a trinitarian history. All three Persons of the Trinity are
always involved, whether the Father creates the world through the Son in the
energies of the Holy Spirit, and preserves it for the coming of his kingdom,
whether the Son is sent into the world by the Father through the Holy Spirit,
then in his turn sending the Holy Spirit from the Father into the world, or
whether the Holy Spirit glorifies the Son and the Father and leads the world
into the eternal life of the Trinity.”[35]
By
nature, Moltmann’s understanding of the triune God is an open Trinity. It is
not only open to each other within the triune self, but also open themselves
“in creation, reconciliation and redemption for the other being of finite, contradictory and mortal creatures” outside
of the triune self.[36]
God is love. For Moltmann, this kind of love is not selfish love, but
self-giving love. This self-giving love joins the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit together. It is also through this self-giving love that the triune God
go beyond themselves and reach out to others.
This
self-giving love is fully shown in the sending of the Son by the Father. The
sending of the Son reflects the sender’s heart, mind, and soul. The passion of
the sender is concretely manifested through the sent Son in history. For
Moltmann, the outward sending of the Son points humanity to the inward
experience of the Trinity. The origin of the Trinity is revealed through the
Son. Moltmann writes, “The missio ad
intra is the foundation for the missio
ad extra. Thus theological reflection moves inevitably from the
contemplation of the sending of Jesus from the Father to the God himself.”[37]
Because of the outward sending of the Son, we can go back to the Trinity in the
origin, in God himself. As a result, we can get a glimpse of God’s own
revelation through the mission of the Son. The mission of the sent Son reveals
the will of the sending God Thus, the mission
ad extra points towards the world and all women and men, but also towards
the inner unity of the Trinity. For Moltmann, then, the starting point of
interpreting the Trinity is the cross of Jesus Christ.
Besides
the sending of the Son, the sending of the Spirit also reveals the Trinity in
the origin. Paul puts the sending of the Son in parallel with the sending of
the Spirit in Galatians 4:4, 6—“When the time had fully come, God sent forth
his Son…Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son.”[38]
John 14:26 and 15:26 also reveals the Spirit sent by the Son and proceeded from
the Father. For Moltmann, the experience of the Spirit as a whole ought to be
viewed in the light of the Trinity in the origin. “The experience of the Spirit
in the light of his divine sending to his eternal procession within the
Trinity, from the Father, or from the Father and the Son” is part of the mission ad extra that reveals the mission ad intra.
It
is important to understand the trinitarian history of God in the light of the
sending of the Son and the Spirit by the Father. On the one hand, in the
sending of the Son and the Spirit, humanity has to do with God, for “God
corresponds to himself in this history of his dealings with men.” On the other
hand, “it presents the divine secret as being from the very beginning, and in
its very origins, an open secret.”[39]
The
sending of the Son and the Spirit reveals the fact that the eternal, economic
Trinity is an open Trinity. “It is open for its own sending…It is open for men
and for all creation. The life of God within the Trinity cannot be conceived of
as a closed circle—the symbol of perfection and self-sufficiency.”[40]
Such an openness to all humanity and to the world is an open secret.
In
Invitation to World Missions: A
Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-First Century, Timothy C. Tennent
defines mission as follows: “Mission refers to God’s redemptive, historical
initiative on behalf of His creation.”[41]
Mission is about God and his redemptive purposes in the world. It is not about
us and the church. It is everything about God. The church participates in God’s
mission. If the nature of the sending God is open, the missionary nature of the
church is open too. Not only is the Trinity open for one another for the
trinitarian communion perichoretically, but also open for humanity and the
world for redemption and unification. Moltmann quotes Jesus’ prayer in John
17:21: “…that they also may be in us.”[42]
The
open Trinity is not without center. The sending of the Son through the Spirit
in history is the center of the sending activity. For Moltmann, the horizon has
to do with the center. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer insightfully noted, “The more
exclusively we acknowledge and confess Christ as our Lord, the more fully the
wide range of his dominion will be disclosed to us.”[43]
The more the church is drawn into the presence of Christ, the more the church
is involved with the modern world and its issues. The modern issues of the
world always bring the church back to Christ, the head of the church, and to
examine her role, function, and identity in relation to Christ. In other words,
the missionary nature of the church depends on the church’s identity in
relation to Christ and her relevance to the modern world. “Centre and horizon
will always be lost or won together.”[44]
Thus,
an open church is not without the center. The more the church is open to the
world, the closer the church is toward the center, which is Christ Jesus. An
open secret of the Trinity shapes the missionary nature of the church, which is
also open to the world. The sending of the Son invites the church to be
actively involved with the world in which we emphasize the three non-negotiables: the primacy and uniqueness of Jesus Christ,
the centrality of His death and resurrection, and the need for an explicit
response of repentance and faith.[45]
The cross is the foundation of the Trinity as well as Christ’s open church.
Mission in the
Context of World Religions: the Mission of the Church and Dialogue with the
World Religions
Center and Horizon
Moltmann’s relational ecclesiology
emphasizes that the church as a missionary church never exists for herself.
Rather, the church always exists in relation to God and to the world. The
church always defines herself from Christ. Or, more accurately, the church can
be only defined by Christ. Otherwise, the church ceases to be a church. Thus,
the church lives in the remembrance of the history of Jesus in the past and the
eschatological anticipation of Christ in the coming of God in the future. For
Moltmann, “the whole being of the church is marked by participation in the
history of God’s dealings with the world.”[46]
The church’s participation in the trinitarian history of God is based on the dialectic of suffering and joy. On the
one hand, the church under the cross is called to participate in the suffering
of the world and stand in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. On the
other hand, the church participates in the history of the divine joy. The
church celebrates “every conversion and every liberation.”[47]
Moltmann’s dialectic of suffering and joy
is grounded in his fundamental dialectic
of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The sign of the cross
represents that the church is willing to suffer with the suffering; the reality
of the resurrection proves that the ultimate end of suffering, which is death,
is triumphed over by the risen Lord. The crucified Christ means that God can
suffer because of his love to the suffering. We who follow the crucified Christ
participate in the suffering of others in order to follow him, for where Christ
is, the church is, not vice versa. As Moltmann notes, “It lives in a God who
can suffer and who in the power of his love desires to suffer in order to
redeem.”[48]
In the midst of suffering and death, we are not bound and succumbed to what we
see in reality. Rather, the hope of resurrection offers a transcendent
perspective to look beyond what we see and anticipate what is to come.
Moltmann confesses that the closer we
are to the Christological center and identified with the crucified Christ, the
more fully and widely we extend to the world. “There cannot be any
Christological concentration unless we simultaneously go to its utmost limits.
There can be no knowledge of the centre without the simultaneous knowledge of
the furthest horizon for which this centre is
the centre.”[49]
In other words, Moltmann’s theology has “a Christological centre and a universal eschatological horizon.”[50]
In The
Crucified God, Moltmann develops this concept from the identity and
relevance of faith.[51]
The identity of the church is found in Christ and his cross. The more we accept
our identity as found in the crucified Christ, the more we are relevant to the
surroundings, especially its pain, despair, and suffering. Identity and
relevance go hand in hand. We cannot say that we claim as Christ’s disciples
and have no impact on the world as salt and light.
We may want to make Christian theology
reveal that it is Christian, but this cannot be done in abstract and timeless
terms, or from the mere desire for self-assertion. It has a definable and
circumscribed place amongst modern problems. The Christian life of theologians,
churches and human beings is faced more than ever today with a double crisis:
the crisis of relevance and the crisis of identity…the more theology and
the church attempt to become relevant to the problems of the present day, the
more deeply they are drawn into the crisis of their own Christian identity. The
more they attempt to assert their identity in traditional dogmas, rights and moral
notions, the more irrelevant and unbelievable they become. This double crisis
can be more accurately described as the identity-involvement
dilemma.[52]
The missionary nature of the church
depends on the church’s identity in relation to Christ and her relevance to the
modern world. From a missiological perspective, Moltmann’s analysis of the
double crisis is extremely crucial for the church to witness to other
religions. Moltmann asks, “What task can Christianity have towards the other
world religions?” His answer: “It is one goal of mission to awaken faith, to
baptize, to found churches and to form a new life under the lordship of
Christ.”[53]
The mission of the church among other religions must be defined by Jesus Christ
and submitted to the lordship of Christ. In dialogue with other religions,
Moltmann clearly says, “Christianity’s vocation must be presented as clearly as
possible, but it must be a presentation in relationship, and must not precede
that relationship.”[54]
The mission of the church must not retreat from the world to her own comfort
zone in which the church only deals with those who are like. Rather, the church is called to engage with the unlike just as God dwelled among us in
flesh to participate in the world that is so unlike him.
Dialogue: Quantitative and Qualitative mission
In his discussion of the relationship
between Christianity and the World Religions in The Church in the Power of the Spirit, Moltmann mentions two kinds
of missions: quantitative mission and
qualitative mission. Quantitative
mission refers to the geographical expansion of the missionary works, the
increase numbers of believers in the church, and the strategy of reaching the
goals. Qualitative mission is directed to others in dialogue with openness and
vulnerability.[55]
The gospel being spread to the ends of the earth (quantity) must be balanced by
how people are influenced and improved by the gospel in the present (quality).
There must be hindsight in the work
of the gospel in the long run; an insight
is needed to apply the transforming power of the gospel into the life of others
in the present. Moltmann’s quantitative and qualitative missions co-exist and
yet aim at different directions. The former takes place in goal; the latter, in
dialogue. In his discussion of the role of Christianity among world religions,
Moltmann focuses more on qualitative aspects of mission.[56]
In this new world situation, every
nation, every civilization, and every religion are interdependent. A locality
is part of the whole. No nation, no civilization, and no religion exist apart
from others. “History only existed in the plural form of all the different
histories on earth.”[57]
The world has been globalized in such a way that the world has become flat. As
a result, a local area does not just reflect its own distinctiveness, but also
the global ones. The world has been shrunk that people encounter the globe in
their own locality. Due to the reality of globalization, Christianity cannot be
just close to herself, for the world religions become our next-door neighbors.
In the age of the growing
interdependence of all the peoples and societies on earth, limitation to one’s
own society or to ‘Christendom’ becomes more and more provincial. Wherever
Christianity is involved in economic, political or cultural processes—and that
means everywhere, practically speaking—it is involved in world processes. It has to recognize this interdependence and free
itself from national and cultural narrow-mindedness. Christianity does not
exist for its own sake; it exists for the sake of the coming kingdom.
Christians look forward to this kingdom as the future of the whole of creation;
and so they can only prepare for it together with other people.[58]
Moltmann’s interreligious dialogue is
developed eschatologically in hope. The future of Israel, the nations, and the
world are interconnected, for “living hope is always connected with
relationships.”[59]
It is through this living hope in dialogue with others that the church faces
her own inadequacy and imperfection. The needs and imperfection of the world
drive the church out of her comfort
zone and into the unknown world. Due
to the missionary nature of the church and the passion of the triune God’s
dealings with the world, the church has a sense of obligation as well as
inadequacy towards the imperfection of the world. In this regard, Moltmann
thinks that the future of this interconnected relationship is part of Christian
eschatology—the eschatology of the all-embracing kingdom. Moltmann writes:
If the church is only interested in
itself, it will only be able to see its own perfection on the horizon of its
hope. But if it is interested in a different life—and as Christ’s church it is
bound to be so interested—then it enters into relationships with partners in
history who are not the church and will never become the church. It has
therefore to ask about the future of these relationships in which it is
involved.[60]
In his understanding of the
all-embracing kingdom, Moltmann views other nations and religions as part of
the becoming of the church. It does
not mean that the church has no clear being in the midst of the world. Rather,
it means that the being of the
church, which derives from Christ Jesus, must extend herself to others just as
God extended himself to others through the sending of the incarnated Son. The
church, as the body of Christ, is the embodiment and representative of Christ
to the world. In terms of being, the
church is complete because of the objective, finished work of Jesus Christ. In
terms of becoming, the church is incomplete
in its mission because of the subjective, unfinished work of the Holy Spirit.
Thus, Christian eschatology is “always only specific as relational
eschatology.”[61]
Moltmann’s qualitative mission is
eschatological-oriented and dialogue in nature. The Apostles’ Creed and the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creeds acknowledge the four marks of the church: one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic.[62]
For Moltmann, the catholicity of the church is “a corrective term to its
unity.” He writes, “Qualitatively, its catholicity means the church’s inner
wholeness…the church with its inner wholeness is related to the whole of the
world…Being entirely related to Christ, it is related to the whole world.”[63]
In the context of the world religions, the qualitative mission of the church is
open for others in dialogue and actively anticipates the coming God who will
put all the pieces as one whole in
the future. The church is invited to participate in this process of actualizing
the reality of God’s future kingdom in the present and anticipating the God of
coming with hope.
Moltmann’s qualitative mission, which
“aimed at creating a climate for life in fellowship,”[64]
must be understood in the church’s double crisis of identity and relevance. Any
dialogue with other religions without a clear sense of who we are is unfruitful
and meaningless. The identity of the church must remain in the person and work
of Jesus Christ. The relevance of the church originates from Christology. And
from that origin, the church actively engages with other religions in the
world. But the identity and relevance of the church does not mean that the
church has no sense of incompleteness and inadequacy. The otherness of the
world as well as other religions allows us to see what we do not see within the
church. The needs of others are different from the needs of our own. Not only
do we fully understand who God is in Christ, but also through the truths of
others that may be found through the general revelation even though other
religions cannot provide salvation because they miss Jesus Christ as the only
Savior. Thus, Moltmann’s qualitative mission in dialogue with other religions
is “a creative need for the other.”[65]
It is Christian fellowship with the unlike.
The mission of Jesus Christ is to dwell among the unlike, to converse with the
unlike, and die for the unlike.
The missionary church is called to do the same.
Missiological
Implications
1.
The
trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world takes contexts seriously.
Moltmann’s theology lies in history, especially the history of Jesus Christ,
the incarnate Son. The history of the Son means that the God of mission looks
at mission field not from afar. Rather, this God who is above (Eccl. 5:2) comes
down from above and engages with others, the unlike, with grace and truth. He
takes the mission field as a unique locality. He does not generalize each group
of people and apply the same principle to all. In the demonstration of the
incarnation of the Son, the God of mission who is so interested in the history
of humanity treats each context with active engagement, sensitivity, and
appropriate contextualization. The God of mission is the God of history in
contextualization as revealed in and exemplified by Jesus Christ. The missionary
church is invited to follow his footsteps not to generalize people’s needs but
to know specific needs of others in a particular time and space. It is the task
of the church to treat the history of others with seriousness and sensitivity
and share the gospel with skill, grace, and truth.
2.
The
identity and relevance of the church is crucial in mission, especially in
dialogue with other religions. In the midst of interfaith dialogue, the church must
hold fast to her identity that can only derive from the head of the church,
Jesus Christ. A fruitful dialogue must come from a firm standpoint. Otherwise,
conversation partners are succumbed to relativism, which affirms various truths
but denies the absolute truth. As the church of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is
the Truth (Jn. 14:6). People are illuminated and liberated by the Truth. Jesus
is the only way to the saving truth. The closer the church clings to Jesus
Christ, the wider the mission of the church should extend. This is the
relevance of the church. In other words, the identity determines how much
influence the church can have for the wider culture. In reverse, the relevance
of the church ought to reflect how much the church builds herself around this
great center. Roger Helland and Leoard Hjalmarson lament over the churches in
North America: “Meanwhile 80 percent of churches in North America have
plateaued or are in decline because most of them don’t know how to handle
change or how to engage their culture.”[66]
The church that fails to engage with the culture with the gospel may lose her
function and role as salt and light of the world. As Moltmann comments, “Centre
and horizon will always be lost or won together.”[67]
3.
Moltmann’s
dialectic of suffering and joy is
grounded in his fundamental dialectic of
the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Such a dialectic thinking
puts the missionary church in perspective. The church does not overlook
hardship and obstacles in ministry. Rather, the church must enter into the
world of suffering just as Christ walked the path of suffering from Galilee to
Jerusalem. The church must not stand on the side to preach the gospel to the
suffering and the oppressed. The church must stand in solidarity with them just
as Jesus walked among them. The reality of the resurrection is the other side
of the same coin. The hardship in life is not the sum of the whole reality.
Resurrection follows after crucifixion. There is always a sense of hope in the
paradox of death and life, the cross and resurrection, and suffering and joy.
The resurrection of Christ invites the church to surf with faith, hope, and
love in mission. The Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead is the same
Spirit who has guided and empowered the church throughout the generations.
4.
Moltmann’s
qualitative mission focuses on inter-religious dialogue with openness and
vulnerability. The missionary church is an open church, for the triune God is
open for humanity and the world. The church is not only open for others who
have the same faith, but also for others who embrace different religions.
Qualitative mission gears towards the latter groups in dialogue. It is an open
fellowship in love. However, as we discussed, it is a fellowship with a firm
stand. Moltmann’s qualitative mission does encourage the church to revisit her
theology of religions. Christian theology usually focuses more on the internal
framework of how various doctrines should be understood and articulated within
Christian community. Perhaps, the concept of qualitative mission challenges the
church to embrace theology of religions as part of her task of theologizing
Christian theology. Mission praxis is grounded in sound theology. What we
believe shapes the way we act. As a church, we are desperate in needs of a
wholistic understanding of other religions in the place of missiology.
[1] Geiko
Muller-Fahrenholz, The Kingdom and the
Power: The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), p. 85.
[2] Jürgen Moltmann, The
Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 65.
[8] Ibid., p. 13. Richard Bauckham, one of the leading experts
in Moltmann’s theology, says that “‘Messianic ecclesiology’ is short-hand for
‘a christological founded and eschatologically directed doctrine of the
church.’” The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), p. 122.
[10] Ibid., p. 38.
[11] “Hope makes us
ready to bear the ‘cross of the present’. It can hold to what is dead, and hope
for the unexpected. It can approve of movement and b e glad of history.” Jürgen Moltmann, Theology
of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1993), p. 31.
[13] Veli-Matti Karkkainen,
Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in
Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker,
2002), p. 131.
[16] Veli-Matti
Karkkainen, An Introduction to
Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical, and Global Perspectives (Downers
Grove: IVP Academic, 2002), p. 129.
[27] See Karkkainen,
Pneumatology, p. 130.
[28] Bauckham, The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann, p. 124. See Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, pp. 34, 54.
[29] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit,
p. 34.
[30] Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. by Joseph Donceel
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 10; Quoted by Klaus Detlev Schulz,
“Fellowship Issues and Missions,” in Concordia
Theological Quarterly 70 (2006): 170.
[31] Schulz, “Fellowship
Issues and Missions,” p. 171.
[32] Ibid., p. 172.
[33] Ibid., p. 174.
[34] Stanley J.
Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The
Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), p. 75.
[35] Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences
in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2000), p. 310.
[38] All quotations
from the Bible in this essay are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
[40] Ibid., pp. 55-56. Moltmann has no intention to say that
God is not self-sufficient and perfect. When he talks about the Trinity as an
open Trinity, the Trinity is open to humanity and to the world because of his
self-giving love to create living space for others. Moltmann writes, “The
Trinity is open, not out of deficiency and imperfection, but in the superfluity
and overflow of the love which gives created beings the living space for their
livingness, and the free scope for their development.” Experiences in Theology, p. 323.
[41] Timothy C.
Tennent, Invitation to World Mission: A Trinitarian
Missiology for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2010), p.
54.
[42] Moltmann, Experiences
in Theology, p. 322. In regard with reciprocal indwelling, Moltmann
believes that “perichoresis does not merely link others of the same kind; it
links others of different kinds too.” In 1 John 4:16, it says, “God is
love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Thus,
perichoresis does not only apply to the reciprocal indwelling of the inner
communion of the triune persons, but also the mutual indwelling of God and human beings in Christ. See Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, pp. 321-323.
[45] Tennent, Invitation to World Mission, p. 197.
[48] Moltmann, The
Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 160. So, for Moltmann, the classical
idea of apatheia does not apply to the God of freedom and love. Tim Chester
comments on Moltmann’s understanding of the passibility of God: “If God is love
then we cannot talk about his freedom not to love even if this love is
suffering love.” Mission and the Coming
of God: Eschatology, the Trinity and Mission in the Theology of Jürgen Moltman
and Contemporary Evangelicalism, Paternoster Theological Monographs (Milton
Keynes: Paternoster, 2006), p. 34.
[51] Jürgen
Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of
Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1993), pp. 7-31.
[62] We only focus
on the mark of catholicity here, for we are dealing with having theological
dialogues with other religions as part of the theological activity of the
missionary church.
[65] Ibid.
[66] Roger Helland
and Leonard Hjalmarson, Missional
Spirituality: Embodying God’s Love from the Inside Out (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press, 2011), p. 17.
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