The Spirit and Contemporary Christian Mission

The Spirit and Contemporary Christian Mission

Paper presented to the first ANZAMS Conference, 28-29 November 2000

Today we can see a growing emphasis on the Spirit in conversations about mission. At an official level this is obvious in contemporary church teachings:

1. Evangelical Protestant theologies of the Holy Spirit are to be found in the 1974 Lausanne Covenant which speaks of the Holy Spirit as an eternal member of the Trinity, (LC 1), as revealing the authority and power of scripture, (LC 2), and given as a gift upon repentance, (LC 14). Lausanne II, (1989) reiterated such teachings.

2. The Orthodox Church’s 1986 statement, Go Forth in Peace: Orthodox Perspectives on Mission, explores the trinitarian origin of mission. The essential relationship between the Spirit and Christ is affirmed for “the Spirit was with Christ from the beginning of creation”. Later it is stated that the “whole saving activity of Christ is inseparable from the work of the Holy Spirit, and the christological and pneumatological affirmations should be kept integrally related to each other in a fully trinitarian context”.

3. In his 1990 encyclical letter, Redemptoris Missio, Pope John Paul II speaks of the Holy Spirit as the principal agent of mission. In this respect, John Paul was building on earlier emphases in Vatican II documents that pointed to the universal presence of the Spirit.

4. The 1991 WCC Assembly at Canberra focused explicit attention on the Spirit - Come Holy Spirit, Renew the Whole of Creation - present in creation, in the social order and in the church’s call to mission and unity. At the assembly, the address of Korean feminist theologian, Chung Hyung Kyung, ‘Come Holy Spirit - Renew the Whole Creation’, generated debate because of the extensive role in mission that she attributed to the Spirit.

Such an emphasis on the Spirit at the “official” level has lead me explore further the relationship of the Spirit to mission, in an attempt to see how it can alter some of our traditional theologies concerning mission. But first, what are some reasons for this growing emphasis on the Spirit and mission?

1. It reflects a retrieved awareness of the Spirit in the churches of the West, Protestant and Catholic.

2. Because the mission of the Spirit enjoys chronological priority over the mission of the Jesus of history, and because the presence of the Spirit is universal, an emphasis on the Spirit permits a different entry point into inter-religious dialogue - namely the common experience of the Spirit present in all cultures, rather than an emphasis on the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ.

3. Some Christian feminists see in pneumatology a way of being faithful to the Trinitarian origins of all mission, and at the same time moving beyond androcentric christologies that, among other things, often defined women’s role in mission as ancillary or subordinate to that of men, especially to that of ordained men.

4. Environmental concerns mean that some Christians are reclaiming an understanding of the Spirit as immanent in all creation. It is hoped that this can alert women and men to recognise the need for humankind to enter into a non-exploitative relationship with the rest of creation.

Obviously there will appear to be risks involved in re-framing the relationship of the mission of the Holy Spirit to the mission of Jesus. Therefore I would like to make seven points about that relationship.

1. In the synoptic gospels, there are texts (cf. Mark 1:10,12; Matt 1:18; 4:1; Luke 1:35; 2:25-26; 4:1; 4:14), that allows us to appreciate the Spirit’s prior role in the conception of Jesus and his public ministry. Does this suggest that we need to work from the parameters of a christology that understands Jesus as “the face of the Spirit; in his concreteness we encounter mystery, but we never fully grasp it”[1]. When we concentrate on the mission of the historical Jesus as the privileged and foundational entry point into conversation on mission, we diminish that prior mission of the Spirit. This may foster a christocentrism that does not augur well for inter-religious dialogue grounded in an understanding of Spirit whose presence is universal. It can ensnare the missionary into prioritising proclamation over other forms of missionary endeavour. Not that a pneumatological emphasis should minimise the importance of christology. Rather, we ought to understand Jesus as the “face of the Spirit”,[2], “the human concretization of that Spirit in human history, the one who gave God’s “anonymous’ presence a human face”.[3] The traditional Western reliance on the “high” Johannine and Matthean christologies (cf John 20:21-23; Matt 28:19-20) has encouraged a significant christocentric approach to mission. On the other hand, the “lower” christologies that can be located in the synoptic gospels can allow us to understand the Spirit as empowering Jesus for his mission (cf. Luke 1:35; 3:21; 4:1; 4:18-19).

2. To affirm the prior agency of the Spirit in mission may suggest a dichotomy between the work of the Spirit and the work of Jesus. Jesuit theologian Frederick Crowe’s insights to explain his understanding of the relationship between the Spirit and Jesus are helpful. Crowe suggests that we reverse the order in which we commonly think of the Son and Spirit in the world.

Commonly we think of God first sending the Son, and of the Spirit being sent in that context, [Jn 20:21-23] to bring to completion the work of the Son. On the contrary, God first sent the Spirit, and then sent the Son in the context of the Spirit’s mission, to bring to completion - perhaps not precisely the work of the Spirit, but the work of God conceived as one work to be executed in two steps of the twofold mission of first the Spirit and then the Son.[4]

3. To emphasise the prior mission of the Spirit does not mean subverting the trinitarian foundations of Christianity. If we think of the mission of the Spirit as invisible, while the mission of the Son is revealed to humankind in a privileged moment in human history, in the fullness of time, in the visible mission of Jesus of Nazareth, the relationship of the Spirit to the Son is easier to grasp. We need to acknowledge that what is visible “must be first in the cognitional order of discovery”.[5] At the beginning of time, God gifted creation with the Spirit, and in the fullness of time, God gifted creation with the gift of the Son, sent “not in opposition, but in unity, not in subordination, but in complementarity”.[6] In this perspective, both Spirit and Son do the work of God, as do those in whom the Spirit of God dwells. There is one divine economy, in which the functions of the Spirit and Son are complementary. The incarnation is at the centre of salvation history, but it is actualised in history through the action of the Holy Spirit (cf. Luke 1:35; Matt 1:18).

4. There are Christian missionaries who affirm that knowledge of and belief in the uniquely salvific work of Christ are the essential aspects of mission work. However such an explicitly christocentric approach can run the risk of collapsing into christomonism.[7] Concern about christocentric and christomonistic approaches can mean others opt for a theocentric approach to mission which claims that salvation is possible by a name other than that of Christ, because all religious traditions are talking about the one reality, though in different names. Some hold that such a position may be more conducive to inter-religious dialogue.[8] While we should be cautious about setting aside a christocentric approach in favour of such a “theocentric” one, given the NT emphasis on the primacy of Jesus’ role in God’s mission (cf. Acts 4:12), we need to keep in mind that christocentrism historically has often failed to address adequately the question of how God might be working in other religious traditions.

5. Therefore it is important to emphasise that the universal action of the Spirit occurs before, during and after the Jesus event.[9] This, in turn, allows us to identify the shape of a missionary model that is an alternative to a christocentric model. If we can accept that the “universal action of the Spirit in human history and in the world surpasses the Christ event”,[10] then the contemporary theologian is challenged to hold in creative tension belief in the definitive revelation of the historical event of Jesus Christ and the universal and salvific action of the Spirit of God in the one divine economy. This implies that the appropriate entry point into inter-religious dialogue is the universal presence of the Spirit rather than the historical particularity of the Christ-event. Because the Spirit is not historically located in the same way, the universal presence of the Spirit may offer a more sensitive entry point into inter-religious dialogue. The work of the Spirit and the work of the Son represent different but not competing aspects of the one mission of God. “The Word and the Spirit – the “two hands of God” (Irenaeus) – are joined by their universal action to endow with truth and grace the religious life of human beings, and to mark with ‘salutary values’ the religious traditions to which these individuals belong.”[11]

6. The Holy Spirit is a liberating Spirit whose impulses lead to the denunciations of the Old Testament prophets concerning the plight of the poor, to the teachings of Jesus and the first Christian communities, the inheritors of that prophetic tradition, to the voluntary poverty embraced by various religious movements, almsgiving and charitable works carried out on behalf of the poor. Such responses to the reality of poverty reflect the movement of the Spirit in the hearts and minds of humankind. Today that same Spirit calls people to struggle against injustices that marginalise people. The Spirit encourages new forms of community to bring “life and leads history to life on this earth…for the sake of transformation of the world, through the liberation of the poor and oppressed”.[12]. It is the Spirit’s creative and energising power, which can motivate communities of the poor to become agents of their own freedom, and create a renewed and just society.

7. An adequate Christian theology of care for creation must take seriously the role of the Spirit. If we believe in the Spirit as immanent in creation, then we can break with the modern idea of human domination and exploitation of the world and move toward understanding the world the home of God. But if Christians fail to recognise the Spirit’s presence in all creation, they fail to recognise their kinship with the rest of creation, and so are likely continue those patterns of behaviour that deny “the greater community of all God’s creatures, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the vita vivificans who sustains all creation”.[13] Just as the inner life of God is relational, communal and loving, then so too is God’s relationship to the world, seen in the activity of the Spirit who renews, energises and reconciles, enabling all creation to realise its eschatological goal of a new creation. As Moltmann describes it: “In the gift and through the powers of the Holy Spirit a new divine presence is experienced in creation. God the Creator takes up his dwelling in his creation and makes it his home”.[14] I acknowledge that more theological effort is required to explore the relationship between pneumatology and logos Christology (cf. John 1:1-4).

Are we witnessing the emergence of a new missionary paradigm?

This movement toward re-framing the role of the Spirit in mission represents an important development in contemporary missiology. Our brief survey of some contemporary theological writing on the Spirit and mission suggests that there are signs of the emergence of a new missionary paradigm that may provide an alternative to ecclesiocentric and christocentric models of mission.

First, a movement towards a pneumatological paradigm requires a reassessment of those christological perspectives that encourage a certain type of triumphalism that is inappropriate in a pluralistic world where inter-religious dialogue is prioritised as an important missionary task. Christologies, which assert the unique role of Jesus Christ in salvation, may hinder dialogue developing as conversation between two equal partners.

Second, an awareness of the universal presence of the Spirit invites the contemporary Christian to redraw the parameters of mission so that it is no longer restricted by those institutionally defined parameters that prioritise missio ad gentes. To suggest this is not to imply a dichotomy between the Spirit’s presence in creation and the Spirit’s presence in the church. Rather it is to warn against a truncated and reductionist understanding of the mystery of the Spirit. There is no clear solution as to how to live with the mystery of the particularity of the Spirit present within the church, and at the same time, present in non-christian traditions and cultures. If the presence of the Spirit is not spatially or temporally restricted, then individuals and groups can experience the mysterious presence of the Spirit in ways not always recognised or acknowledged by the church.

Third, emphasising the role of the Spirit in mission can encourage a critique of the dominant ecclesiocentric missionary paradigm. It challenges that perspective which restricts the presence of the Spirit in the church to being the guarantor of its teaching or being the agent of personal conversion. Such an understanding seems to pay little attention to the presence of the Spirit active in history and in other cultures and traditions.

Fourth, an appreciation of the Spirit’s universal and active presence encourages an inductive approach to mission. The task of the missionary is not to bring God to those who do not have God. Rather it is to discern with others the action of the Spirit within a particular context and culture. This permits the emergence of contextual missiologies. The importance of these inductive methodologies, “based on the analysis of social conditions and the issues raised by culture”[15] characteristic of liberation, feminist and creation theologies on the contemporary understanding of mission should not be under-estimated.

Fifth, and this is perhaps more significant for the Catholic church than for some other traditions, can suggest that the universal presence of the Spirit means that mission also belongs to the local community, not just to the centre. As the Latin American experience of liberation theology suggests, a local community is well placed to identify an effective missionary praxis. This should not lead the contemporary missiologist to prioritise “localism” over “universalism”. If that were to happen, local theologies shaped by local context only, run the risk of being reduced to “a crude contextualisation …simply a product of its surroundings,”[16] just as dangerous as universalist theologies that deny the local. An awareness of the universal presence of the Spirit ought to encourage dialogue and networking between different communities. Such global networking differs from bureaucratic communication that seeks to control from the centre, for global networking respects the insights and activities of the local. It allows the local community to understand its story and to critique its praxis against the wider story. This global networking can challenge the belief that universal and authoritative significance belongs to one voice only. These global conversations can be appropriately described as “antisystemic global movements”[17] intended to counteract the power of those centralised economic, political and religious systems that are alienating and impersonal. Pertinent examples of such global networking include theological gatherings such as the IAMS assemblies, or the international gatherings of Catholic religious women and men. Such gatherings help facilitate global conversations, allowing for authentic cross-cultural dialogue that is mutually enriching and makes possible effective networking structures.

Sixth, liberation theology’s contribution to our understanding of the relationship of the Spirit to mission understood as work for justice is to be acknowledged. Liberation theology suggests that the Spirit’s presence empowers the poor to seek freedom from all that diminishes them. At the same time, it is the presence of the Spirit that encourages some of the non-poor Christians to denounce the inertia of institutions, challenging them to commit themselves to the cause of the poor. The Spirit invites the non-poor to make “an option for the poor” thereby allowing them to identify themselves as allies of the poor in their struggle.

Seventh, it is possible to extrapolate some important implications for mission understood as care of creation from those theologies that emphasise the immanence of the Spirit in creation.

· A close relationship between Spirit and creation should contribute toward collapsing dualistic theologies that tolerate human estrangement from the rest of creation. Christianity, as the heir of classical neo-Platonism and apocalyptic Judaism sometimes encouraged a dichotomy between nature and the Spirit that allowed for a debased view of nature. This led to understanding redemption as an inner and higher spiritual reality whereby one was redeemed from a material and sinful world. However, to recognise the salvific and active presence of the Spirit in history and in creation suggests that redemption is a this-worldly reality. A retrieval of the Spirit’s immanence in creation means asking women and men to reclaim and reaffirm their connectedness and kinship with the rest of creation.

· To value the interdependency of all life forms links an understanding of mission as care of creation to mission as liberation and work for justice. All too often, the poor are those who live in broken places of existence, ecologically diminished urban and rural areas. In these environs, they experience the non-availability of adequate social structures and environmentally safe living space.

· It is important that humanity recognises that its dwelling place is also God’s. The ecclesiocentric model privileged the presence of Christ in the church, and in the Christian community. Liberation theology invites us to recognise Jesus present in women and men diminished by the reality of poverty (cf. Matt.25:31-46). When we believe that the Spirit is immanent in all creation, then creation too is in fact the privileged dwelling place of God. This invalidates disparaging attitudes toward the material world. The world is God’s home, and ours, and so we have a key role in sustaining it. When we appreciate God’s Spirit as present in all creation, we more readily understand that God’s presence is not restricted to special sacred places or people, and therefore absent from profane spaces. There is a long tradition of referring to the church as the body of Christ, and to our bodies as temples of the Spirit. Now we are asked to understand not only our bodies but also the world as the dwelling place of the Spirit.

· The radical significance of contemporary efforts to reframe the relationship between the Spirit and creation should not be under-estimated. As recently as 1964, Vatican II taught that “men and women strive to subdue the earth by their knowledge and labour” (Gaudium et Spes 53). Therefore the contemporary shift toward a pneumatological theology which emphasises the presence of the Spirit in all creation, and sees this as involving humankind in relationships of inclusivity and mutuality with all creation is also an important theological imperative for Christians committed to addressing the ecological crisis.

Eighth, to talk of mission in pneumatological categories does not entail a rejection of the traditional trinitarian and christological dimensions of mission. However, these are redrawn so as to accent the work of the Spirit in a substantial way. This movement toward understanding mission in pneumatological categories is not concerned with subverting the ontological foundations of the economy of salvation.

Concluding comments:

It is not possible to be more than tentative in discerning the possible emergence of a pneumatological missionary paradigm. We have already commented on the rediscovery of the presence and power of the Spirit by the Western churches. However, the relationship between mission and Spirit does raise some important issues that need more study and reflection. Some of these issues are as follows:

First, when we give to the Spirit a priority in mission that has not previously been accentuated, we are required to redefine how we understand the relationship of the Spirit to the historical Jesus. Perhaps the most appropriate response is to see the historical Jesus in his exercise of mission as a privileged and unique revelation of the Spirit’s salvific presence in the world. As the missionary activity of God does not begin with the redemptive activity of Jesus, but with the activity of the Spirit at the beginning of creation, this seems a better way in which to understand the relationship of the Spirit to the historical Jesus.

Second, it may be necessary to redefine how we understand the relationship between the work of the Spirit and the work of the Word. If the first expression of mission in the economy of salvation is God’s act of creation, then as Genesis 1 attests, the Spirit and the Word are active in giving expression to the plan of God. The scriptures bear witness to the mission of the Spirit throughout history. Prophecy, freedom, liberation, and creativity seem to be the characteristics of the Spirit. The incarnation of the Word focuses our attention on the historical Jesus who gives a particular concrete expression to the mission of God. But the actions of Jesus in history acquire a cosmic significance precisely because he is the Incarnate Word as the “high” christologies of John and Paul indicate (cf. Jn 1:1-14; Phil 2:6-11). The pre-existent Word becomes flesh in order to carry forward God’s saving action in a new historical way. In the Western churches, this perception of the Word has diminished the role of the Spirit. That is why it is necessary to reframe the relationship between the Spirit and the Word so that the agency is of the Spirit is reaffirmed.

Third, the belief in the universal and salvific presence of the Spirit raises questions concerning the relation of the leadership of centralised and hierarchical churches to the local Christian communities. On the one hand, the institutional church can no longer presume that the Spirit dwells within it alone as the guarantor of orthodoxy. On the other, it should understand that the presence of the Spirit in marginalised communities may encourage the expression of a prophetic dimension not readily recognised by the institution. The freedom from institutional structures may alert such communities to new missionary tasks that further the mission of God.

Fourth, an emphasis on the Spirit may suggest a pluralism and relativism that is regarded as unacceptable and diminishing of Christian revelation. I understand pluralism to mean that all religions are equally valid. Does this suggest that non-Christian religions are different ways whereby God’s revelation is mediated to different races and cultures? As Dupuis writes, “although Jesus is the sacrament of God’s revelation and represents its qualitative fullness, the revelation through Jesus does not exhaust the revelatory activity of the Logos or the Spirit”.[18]

Fifth, to believe in the universal presence of the Spirit perhaps removes the need to emphasise missio ad gentes whereby the result of missionary activity is measured primarily in terms of the growth of local churches. Rather missionary activity should be directed to bringing about the Reign of God which has as its goal the transformation of human history so that humankind is liberated “from evil in all its forms” (RM 15). In this perspective, the world becomes the new arena for all missionary activity.

Sixth, there may be a danger that some will de-link the Spirit from its trinitarian foundations given such an emphasis on the role of the Spirit. Perhaps a minority of feminists, reacting against androcentric Trinitarian theologies, may now find that “their God may no longer be the God of Jesus Christ, but a non-personal, benevolent cosmic energy holding reality together in some mysterious way.”[19] However, this probably a minority position, and should not deter Christians from reclaiming the Spirit as the principal agent of mission.

However, it is through reclaiming the Trinitarian origins of all mission that we begin to understand the agency of the Spirit in mission. Mission is an activity of the triune God and to emphasise the agency of the Spirit is to reclaim that Trinitarian reality and to farewell those ecclesiocentric and christocentric perceptions that diminished not only creation, not only women and the poor, but which were diminishing of the Trinity itself. Missionary activity does not begin with the redemptive ministry of the historical Jesus, but with the creative agency of the Spirit through whom God is active in human and cosmic history.

Susan Smith, RNDM

Catholic Institute of Theology

Auckland, New Zealand

s.smith@ihug.co.nz

[1] Stephen B. Bevans, ‘God Inside Out’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 22/3 (July 1998), 104.

[3] Stephen B. Bevans, ‘Jesus, Face of the Spirit: Reply to Dale Brunner’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 22/3 (July 1998), 108.

[4] Frederick E. Crowe, ‘Son of God, Holy Spirit and World Religions: The contribution of Bernard Lonergan to the Wider Ecumenism’, Chancellor’s Address II (Toronto: Regis College, 1985), 8.

[7] McBrien defines christomonism as “a kind of ‘unitarianism’ of the Second Person in which God as Creator and Judge and God as Reconciler and Sanctifier are effectively replaced by the God who is at our side in the service of the neighbour as the ‘man for others’. Christomonism had diminished our understanding of the Church and the Christian life. How else to explain the recent extraordinary rediscovery of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit by the West, if not as an acute reaction to the practical exclusion of the Spirit from Latin Christian consciousness, devotion and even theology?” Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism, Vol 1 (East Malvern: Dove Communications, 1980), 345.

[8] Although Schreiter does not cite particular theologians who perhaps consider theocentrism a legitimate response to christocentrism, Catholic missiologist, Paul Knitter, is an example. Knitter suggests that we consider a movement toward “theocentric Christology”, whereby God is the key to the theological interpretation of Christ, rather than Jesus being the revealer of God. See Paul Knitter, No Other Name? (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985). Knitter uses the expression “theocentric” to describe the attempt “to establish a dialogue with other religions on the basis of a nonnormative Christology”. Knitter, 146. Dupuis writes that a theocentric perspective is one according “to which Jesus Christ and his saving mystery no longer stand at the centre of God’s saving design for humankind. That place belongs to God alone towards whom all the religious traditions, Christianity included, tend as to their end”. Jacques Dupuis, ‘Religious Plurality and the Christological Debate’, Focus 15/2-3 (1995), 4.

[9] See Jacques Dupuis, ‘The Spirit, Basis for Inter-Religious Dialogue’, in Theology Digest 46/1 (Spring 1999): 27-31.

[12] Comblin, The Holy Spirit and Liberation, trans Paul Burns (Maryknoll: Orbis Books 1989), 76.

[13] Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 9-10.

[15] Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local, Faith and Culture Series, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), ix.

[18] Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), 299.

[19] Sandra M. Schneiders, ‘Congregational Leadership and Spirituality in the Postmodern Era’, Review for Religious 57/1 (January-February 1998), 22.