Jürgen Moltmann’s
Trinitarian Structure of Mission
Introduction
It is crucial for the church to understand the doctrine of the Trinity, for the triune God is the God who initiated the redemptive plan, executed the plan through his Son, and will accomplish the plan in the end time through the Spirit. The missionary nature of the church derives from the triune God who is missional in his being and acting. The question is not about what is the starting point for missio Dei. Rather, the question is how we ought to approach the Trinity as a missionary church. In this essay, we will explore the trinitarian structure of God as the source of the mission of the church. Jürgen Moltmann’s missionary ecclesiology is firmly grounded in his trinitarian understanding of God’s dealings with history. His doctrine of the Trinity can help us further understand the interconnection between the triune God and the mission of the church. As Moltmann writes, “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill to the world; 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.”[1]
The Classical Understanding of the Trinity and Its
Limits
In
the classical approach, the immanent Trinity is the starting point for the
church to understand the ontological nature of God. What the church is
concerned about is the unity of the three Godheads within the Trinity. In order
to guard against any forms of heresy in the history of the church, the church
that contends “for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints”
(Jude 3) emphasized on the co-eternality and co-equality of the three Godheads.[2]
Such a starting point has protected the church from misunderstanding the inner
unity of the Trinity. The implication of this concept of the Trinity is that
the Trinitarian life is humble, loving, worshipful, relational, unified and
diverse, submissive, and joyful.[3]
The limitation of such an approach to the Trinity is that the concept of
sending is missing. It has neglected the outward movements of the Trinity to
save the world in his economy through which people come to know who God is in
his action, reaching its apex in the person and work of Jesus Christ. In other
words, the Trinity as the source of the mission of the church has been
diminished in this classical approach.
Jürgen Moltmann: The
Economic Trinity: The God who is toward us.
The
church has been knowing (even speculating) the triune God in himself. But the
God who saves us from the bondage of sin is the triune God toward us. Reaching
out to people and to the world is the inherent nature of the triune God. Yes,
he is the God in himself. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are co-eternal
and co-equal. But, for us, we come to know him only because of the fact that he
is the God toward us. As Tim Chester rightly notes, “We experience the Trinity
through the sending of the Son and the Spirit. We participate in the Trinity
through the glorification of the Son by the Father, as we receive eternal life
in His name through the Spirit.”[4]
The outward sending of the Son and the Spirit by the Father to the world is the
Good News for all of us.
The
God towards us is the economic Trinity who gets involved with the redemptive
history distinctively and yet without forsaking his oneness. As Klaus Detlev
Schulz notes, “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.”[5]
The economic Trinity in outward sending reflects the perfection of the Trinity
in himself. Such an economic outworking of the Trinity reaches out to the
church, redeems the church in Christ, and commissions the church the Great
commission with the presence of the Spirit. God’s reaching out to the church is
indeed an invitation to participate in his mission to the world. Once the
church participates in the missio Dei,
the church comes to know this triune God in action and obedience. Thus, it is
crucial for the church to approach the Trinity as the economic Trinity
(God-in-Salvation). The triune God toward us and the world gives birth to a
church that is toward others.[6]
The church fails to live out the mission of God if she continues to only understand God as he is in himself. The missionary nature of the church derives from the missionary God who is towards us and the world. The church has been looking for ways to do missions in the world. The starting point ought to be an internal one within the church—the renewal of the understanding of the triune God as he is toward us. As Jürgen Moltmann writes:
What is required
today is not adroit adaptation to changed social conditions, but the inner
renewal of the church by the spirit of Christ, the power of the coming kingdom.
The theological doctrine of the church will consequently allow itself to be
guided by the inner unrest which is agitating the church….Today one of the
strongest impulses towards the renewal of the theological concept of the church
comes from the theology of mission.[7]
Moltmann’s
trinitarian structure of mission does offer a critique of the Trinitarian
theology today. Moltmann has affirmed Karl Rahner’s thesis that “the economic
Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and
vice versa.”[8]
The outward sending of the Son and the Spirit from the Father reflects the
inner dynamic of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The church is
christologically saved and spiritually formed by the Father through the Son and
the Spirit. The church began with the economic Trinity that “not only reveals
the immanent Trinity” but also has a “retroactive effect on it.”[9]
As 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 God himself.”[10]
Because of the outward sending of the Son, we can go back to the Trinity in the
origin. The external operation of the Trinity towards the world in the history
of salvation corresponds to the inner passion of the Trinity. The outward acts
of the Trinity are interwoven with the inner unified movements of the triune God.
The act of God is not a split personality of God. Rather, his acts are
eternally inherent in the nature of the Trinity.
Moltmann’s Dialetical Theology: Christological
Center and Eschatological Horizon
There is a fundamental principle to understand the theology of Moltmann through his theological lens, which is his dialectical Christology and eschatology. The orientation of Moltmann’s theology is firmly grounded in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is a radical contradiction between the death and resurrection of Jesus. The crucified Jesus in his death is identified with “all the negative qualities of present reality, its subjection to sin and suffering and death.”[11] In contrast, the risen Jesus from the dead is God’s promise of new creation “for the whole of the godforsaken reality.”[12] The promise of the resurrection “represents a radically new future, the promise of life for the dead, righteousness for the unrighteous, new creation for a creation which is subject to evil and death.”[13]
In
the light of his dialectical theology, the missionary nature of the church is christological center and eschatological horizon. As Bauckham
notes, “Rather, the eschatological orientation of biblical Christian faith
towards the future of the world requires the church to engage with the
possibilities for change in the modern world, to promote them against all
tendencies to stagnation, and to give them eschatological direction towards the
future kingdom of God.”[14]
The reality of the cross leads the church to participate in history with
contradiction and confrontation. The promise of the resurrection fosters
provisional reality through the church in the power of the Spirit without
losing hope, which is eschatologically grounded in the unchanging promise of
God. Moltmann insightfully writes:
In the Christian
life faith has the priority, but hope the primacy. Without faith’s knowledge of
Christ, hope becomes a utopia and remains hanging in the air. But without hope,
faith falls to pieces, becomes a fainthearted and ultimately a dead faith. It
is through faith that man finds the path of true life, but it is only hope that
keeps him on the path. Thus it is that faith in Christ gives hope its
assurance. Thus it is that hope gives faith in Christ its breadth and leads it
into life.[15]
Without
the cross of the risen Lord, hope is like a bird with no feet. Without the
resurrection of the crucified Christ, faith loses its eschatological goal of
the Christian life. Faith gives the church an access to Christian discipleship;
hope sustains the church in walking down the path of discipleship with the
eschatological goal promised by God the Father through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Moltmann’s
trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world must be understood in the
framework of his dialectical Christology and eschatology. The church is called
to live between the past history of Jesus and the universal future in the
present reality as a provisional community in and through the power and mediation
of the Holy Spirit. The church is christologically grounded in history and
eschatolgically driven toward the future promise. In the light of the future
promise, the provisional reality that is not yet to come, the church feels
unease in this world that is subjected to death and suffering. In other words,
the church that inherits the future hope does not live peacefully with the
surrounding. Rather, the church finds contradiction between the present reality
and the future reality. As a result, the church confronts the world and
functions as a prophet, priest, and king in the midst[16]
with the coming of the God of promise in her mission to the world.
The Mission of the Church in the Framework of the
Trinitarian history of God’s Dealings with the World
The Trinitarian
History of God
For
Moltmann, the outward sending of the Son and the Spirit by the Father to the
world is called the Trinitarian history
of God. As a missionary church, the church can only understand her position
in participation of the history of God’s dealings with the world. The church is
called to participate in the trinitarian sending into the world. As Moltmann
notes, “Without an 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.”[17]
The identity and function of the church become vague and abstract if the church
fails to follow where the triune God has been actively working in history.
Thus, the outward sending of God determines the missionary activity of the
church. The way God has engaged with the world is the way the church engages
with the world. The missionary church derives his missionary nature from the
God of trinitarian sending. “In the movements of the trinitarian history of
God’s dealings with the world the church finds and discovers itself…It is not
the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill to the world; 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.”[18]
The
mission of the church derived from the origin of the Trinity must face the
present reality in the light of the cross and anticipate the future possibility
in the light of the resurrection. The trinitarian history of God’s dealings
with the world is not God’s Plan B in the history of salvation. It is always
God’s Plan A from eternity. The outward sending of the Tri-unity determines the
missional praxis of the church to the world. The God who is toward others gives
birth to the church that is not in herself, but toward others. The missio Dei is the movements of the
trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world. The God of mission
includes the church as part of his mission. The missio Dei is God’s mission from the beginning to the end. “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.”[19]
The Sending of
the Son from the Father
Veli-Matti
Karkkainen rightly notes that “Moltmann developed a doctrine of the Trinity
firmly anchored in the happenings of the world and culminating in the cross of
Christ. This is not a speculative, abstract theology of the Trinity but a
historically based concrete form of conceiving of the divine mystery.”[20]
For Moltmann, the central foundation of the knowledge of the Trinity is the
cross. The cross is where we know the triune God in its vivid form. It is
impossible to place the cross in its proper place when we approach the Trinity from above—the transcendent Trinity.
Apart from the cross, the doctrine of the Trinity becomes metaphysical in which
the experience of the cross is not present.[21]
Thus, the Trinity from below—the
cross—is Moltmann’s approach to the doctrine of the Trinity. Moltmann writes,
“The surrender of the Son for us on the cross has a retroactive effect on the
Father and causes infinite pain. On the cross God creates salvation outwardly for his whole creation and at the same
time suffers this disaster of the
whole world inwardly in himself. From the foundation of the world, the opera trinitatis and extra correspond to
the passions trinitatis ad intra.”[22]
For
Moltmann, the cross is not just an event between God and humanity. First and
foremost, the cross is an event between God and God. He notes, “What happened
on the cross was an event between God and God. It was a deep division in God
himself, in so far as God abandoned God and contradicted himself, and at the
same time a unity in God, in so far as God was at one with God and correspond
to himself.”[23]
In other words, as Veli-Matti Karkkainen rightfully comments, “the cross
belongs to the inner life of God. It does not occur only between God and
estranged humanity, the way classical theism has approached the topic.”[24]
The
cross of the Son is the basis of the Trinity, for it lies in “the
separation-in-unity that the triune God experienced in this event.”[25]
In Experiences in Theology, Moltmann
notes:
If Christ dies
with the cry of profoundest God-forsakeness, then in God the Father there must
be a correspondingly profound experience of forsakenness by the Son. If the Son
suffers his death on the cross not just as a human death but also as an eternal
death of God-forsakenness….The death of the Son of God on the cross reaches
deep into the nature of God and….is an event which takes place in the innermost
nature of God himself. The fatherless son and the sonless Father.[26]
The
death of the Son is an inner-trinitarian event. The cross event is between God
and God. Thus, Moltmann talks about suffering in God. God is not impassible. God can suffer. Thus, Moltmann
criticizes the classical idea of impassibility that God cannot suffer and be
influenced by the suffering. The suffering of the Son means that the Father of
the Son can suffer. The Son suffers the forsakenness of the Father; the Father
suffers from being separated from the Son.
For
Moltmann, the concept of the passibility of God is what drives the triune God
towards the suffering of the world. He is not indifferent to the suffering of
others. His suffering love compels him to move outward. It is his sacrificial,
suffering love that he cannot keep within the inner-trinitarian persons. God’s
openness to the world is possible because of his love to the world. It is
towards the suffering of the world that the Father and the Son “were united in
a deep ‘communion of will,’ for they shared a common love for the godforsaken,
suffering world.”[27]
The Sending of
the Spirit from the Father and the Son
In
Moltmann’s pneumatology, the work of the Spirit ought to be understood in his
trinitarian history of God. The Holy Spirit who proceeded from the Father and
the Son (Jn. 15:26) “mediates the eschatological future to us as the church
lives between the history of Jesus and the anticipation of the coming of the
kingdom; the Sprit serves the coming of the kingdom of Son.”[28]
In The Crucified God, Moltmann notes
that “in the cross, Father and Son are most deeply separated in forsakenness
and at the same time are most inwardly one in their surrender. What proceeds
from this event between Father and Son is the Spirit.”[29]
“In so doing, they entered a new unity in the Spirit.”[30]
At the moment of godforsakeness and the deep communion of will between the
Father and the Son, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son
In
order to apply the objective, accomplished work of Jesus Christ into the world,
the mission of the church is possible only because of the subjective work of
the Holy Spirit through whom the church proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ in
the power of the Holy Spirit. In this regard, the mission of the church is
called to participate in the mission of the Spirit. As Moltmann writes, “The
all-embracing messianic mission of the whole church corresponds to Christ’s
messianic mission and to the charismatic sending of the Spirit ‘which shall be
poured out on all flesh.’”[31]
The mission of the sent Son creates the mission of the church; the mission of the
church is sent by the Spirit whose gifts are freely given to the church to
carry out the tasks of mission. “The Spirit calls them [the new people of
God/the church] into life; the Spirit gives the community the authority for its
mission; the Spirit makes its living powers and the ministries that spring from
them effective; the Spirit unites, orders, and preserves it.”[32]
Veli-Matti Karkkainen concludes the nature of Moltmann’s ecclesiology, “the
ministry of the church is charismatic in essence.”[33]
The Missionary
Church: Christological Origin and Pneumatological Commission
The
origin and commission of the missionary church is christologically centered and
pneumatologically driven, respectively. The missionary church, for Moltmann,
must be interpreted in the framework of the Trinitarian history of God’s
dealings with the world. The church participates in the mission of God and
anticipates the coming of God in history. The church lives out her mission
between the history of Christ and the future of Christ. In between the tension
created by the center and the horizon, the Spirit of Christ mediates
the church from here to there. Thus, in the power and mediation of the Holy
Spirit, the missionary church is called to live between the history of Christ
christologically and the future of Christ eschatologically.
The
missionary church is called to participate and fulfill the mission of God
between the history of Christ and the future of Christ in and through the
mediation of the Spirit. The church lives in the eschatological time that, for
Moltmann, is not linear, for the resurrection of the crucified Christ
transforms the concept of time. This is Moltmann’s backward reading of time.
Moltmann
often criticizes the linear understanding of time. What it means is that we usually
understand the time from past, present, and future. The birth, ministry, death,
resurrection, and parousia of Jesus are usually interpreted in a logical
sequence. As Tim Chester notes, “Moltmann critiques this because it makes the
future appear to be a development of present trends while the present is viewed
simply as a transition from the past to the future. As a result, the unexpected
possibilities contained within the present are ignored and an uninterrupted
process into the future is assumed.”[34]
Nevertheless, the resurrection of Christ radicalizes the concept of time.
Instead of us moving toward the future of time, the future of time is coming to
us as the coming kingdom of God. This eschatological aspect of faith keeps the
church in perspective that the church will never satisfy with the current state
in the light of what is yet to come according to the promise. Thus, the mission
of the church in the power and mediation of the Holy Spirit lives between the
history of Christ christologically and the future of Christ eschatologically.[35]
For
Moltmann, the Trinity is an open Trinity. Consequently, the church is an open
church. “The missionary concept of the church leads to a church that is open to
the world in the divine mission, because it leads to a trinitarian
interpretation of the church in the history of God’s dealings with the world.”[36]
The open Trinity is the source of the missionary nature of the church. The
outward sending of the triune God becomes the model of sentness to understand
missiology in contemporary church. This model of sentness as exemplified within
the immanent Trinity is vividly shown through the economic Trinity. The sending
mission of the triune God sets the agenda for the mission of the church, not
vice versa. Whenever the church neglects God the Father as the source of
mission, God the Son as the center of mission, and God the Spirit as the power
of mission, the church ceases to exist as a church. In commenting on Moltmann’s
missionary ecclesiology, Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz writes:
The church
becomes and remains the church only where and in so far as it remains and
becomes the church of Jesus Christ.
The church is and remains only where and in so far as it remains the church against the horizon of the coming kingdom of
God. The church becomes and remains the church only where it understands
itself as the people of God changed
charismatically by the urging of the Spirit of God (emphasis original).[37]
[1] Jürgen Moltmann, The
Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1993), p. 64.
[2] As it is said
in The Athanasian Creed, “So there is
one Father, not three Fathers: one Son, not three Sons: one Holy Spirit, not
three Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after another: none
is greater, or less than other. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and
coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid: the Unity in Trinity, and the
Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped.”
[3] See Mark
Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, Doctrine:
What Christians should Believe (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), pp. 34-35.
[4] Tim Chester, Delight in the Trinity: Why Father, Son and Spirit are Good News
(UK: The Good Book, 2010), p. 174.
[5] Klaus Detlev
Schulz, “Fellowship Issues and Missions,” in Concordia Theological Quarterly 70 (2006): 174.
[6] Klaus Detlev Schulz rightly notes, “The
missiological significance of the Godhead lies in the economic activity of the
three persons to the world. God’s mission must be seen in terms of what he does according to the personal acts of
creation, redemption, and sanctification.” Mission
from the Cross: The Lutheran Theology of Mission (Saint Louis: Concordia
Publishing House, 2009), p. 92.
[8] Jürgen Moltmann, The
Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993),
p. 160. As Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall comment, “Moltmann built on
‘Rahner’s Rule’ of identifying (or at least never separating)) the immanent and
economic Trinities while criticizing any and every attempt to dilute the
distinction of the persons.” The Trinity,
Guides to Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 99-100.
[13] Ibid.
[15] Jürgen Moltmann, The
Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 20.
[16] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit,
pp. 75-81.
[20] Veli-Matti
Karkkainen, Christology: A Global
Introduction, An Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 2003), 149.
[23] Jürgen Moltmann,
The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of
Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 244; For Moltmann, the
question of the suffering of Christ precedes the question of the suffering of
the world. As he wrote, “Christian theology must look at the question of
Christ’s suffering before looking at the suffering of the world…Only when we
are clear as to what happened on the cross between Jesus and his God can it be clear who this
God is for us and for our experience.” Jürgen Moltmann, “The ‘Crucified God’: A
Trinitarian Theology of the Cross”, Interpretation
26 (July, 1972): 282.
[24] Veli-Matti
Karkkainen, The Doctrine of God: A Global
Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), p. 159; also see Moltmann, The Crucified God, p. 249; In classical theism, the God who is transcendent is
not part of his creation. He is above it and yet detached from it. Pantheism is that God and creation are
merged as one. We see God in creation and vice versa. Moltmann takes a
different approach because of God’s self-giving love. It is called Trinitarian panentheism. For Moltmann,
there is “a genuine mutual relationship between God and the world.” (Karkkainen, The Doctrine of God, p. 157.). But God affects his creation more
than the other way around. Moltmann believes that God created the world out of
his freedom that originates from his love. Because of his love towards the
world, he chose to create it out of love. In other words, it was impossible for
God, according to Moltmann, not to create it because such a self-giving love is
inherent in God’s goodness. His divine goodness does not allow him not to act
outwardly toward the world.
[25] Stanley J.
Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: the
Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), p. 78.
[26] Jürgen Moltmann,
Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms
of Christian Theology, translated by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2000), pp. 304-305.
[28] Veli-Matti
Karkkainen, An Introduction to
Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspective (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 131.
[29] Moltmann, The Crucified God, p. 244; Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God, p. 78.
[30] Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God, p. 78.
[31]
Moltmann, The Church in the Power of
the Spirit, p. 11.
[32] Ibid., p.
294.
[33] Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical,
International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), p.
132.
[34] Tim Chester, Mission and the Coming of God: Eschatology,
the Trinity and Mission in the Theology of Jürgen Moltmann and
Contemporary Evangelicalism, Paternoster Theological Monographs (Milton Keynes:
Paternoster, 2006), p. 13.
[35] As Moltmann writes, “There can
be no christology without eschatology and no eschatology without christology.” Quoted
by Chester, Mission and the Coming of God,
p. 12
[36] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit,
p. 11.
[37] Geiko
Muller-Fahrenholz, The Kingdom and the
Power: The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2001), pp. 101-102.
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