A watershed issue in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) today is whether mission centers on participating in and with what God is doing (missio DEI) or on the instrument in and through which God is acting (MISSIO dei). My thesis is simple: mission as participation in what God is doing coincides more closely with the Reformed-Presbyterian tradition. The dominant Church culture today, however, and our own internal debates push us heavily toward the instrumentalist approach to mission.
Raising and clarifying this issue has a direct bearing on the current divisions within the PC(USA). This essay considers (a) the origin of mission in the Modernist/Pietist era, (b) the problems of the instrumentalist approach to mission, (c) the Reformed accent on participation in God’s mission, and, briefly, (d) why the two cannot be combined.
1. Mission is the watchword of the Church today, including the PC(USA). That’s a good thing. Out of sincere love and committed devotion to Christ, faithful Presbyterian Christians engage in a whole range of creative efforts. The Six Great Ends of the Church (Book of Order, 1.0200), traces the Church’s mission from “the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind” (evangelism) to “the promotion of social righteousness” (social justice). The Confession of 1967 adds, “God’s reconciling work in Jesus Christ and the mission of reconciliation to which he has called his church are the heart of the gospel in any age” (Book of Confessions, 9.06).
The PC(USA) confessions show how novel the idea of mission is for the whole Christian Church. Engaged in spreading the good news of the Gospel, the Early Church, 33-600 CE, does not mention mission by name. Instead, the Apostles and Nicene creeds define the core truth of the Gospel, namely, the Trinity. Engaged in reforming the Church, the Protestant Reformation, 1500-1650 CE, also does not talk about mission as such. The PC(USA) confessions (six from the Reformation and Barmen) are concerned with the five solas of the Reformation: Christ alone, Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone, Church alone. Not until the Modernist/Pietist era, 1650-1950 CE/ present, does mission appear as such in our confessions, in The Confession of 1967 and A Brief Statement of Faith (1996). Even here mission is put into the larger context of the triune God. For all these confessions, as for the Reformed tradition, outreach and service key on participation in what God is doing both universally and personally.
For the first 200+ years in America, Presbyterians fought, divided, and reunited over issues of mission. Should Presbyterians focus on mission-evangelism or correct doctrine (New Side vs. Old Side, 1741-1758)? Should Presbyterians focus on mission-expansion or transforming culture (Cumberland vs. PCUSA, 1810-1906; New School vs. Old School, 1837-1864/69)? Mission won each of those disputes over time. For the last 100+ years, the defining issue for Presbyterians has been, Which mission — evangelism/foreign missions or social action/justice/ Gospel? These differences caused further splits (OPC in 1930s, PCA in 1970s, EPC in 1980s). Most Presbyterians over the last century agree with the Six Great Ends of the Church: mission-evangelism and mission-social action are vital companions; we cannot have one without the other. But the current issue of ordination has brought out the dividing lines again, with no end in sight.
2. Debating the differences between mission-evangelism and mission-social action obscures their common ground — mission, of course, but increasingly also an instrumentalist approach to the Christian faith and Church. The “instrumentalist” approach arose during the Modernist/Pietist era, from 1650 to 1950 CE/present, which needs a brief overview along the way.
Modernism and Pietism emerged together in the 18th Century. Pietism, the religious side, probes the relationships of the inner self with God, other people over time (history), and nature. The experience(s) of the inner self became the private realm of the individual. Modernism, the secular side, embraces the Enlightenment ideal of a self-sufficient, rational humanity. Great interest in nature led to dramatic developments in science, technology, and the most useful ways to meet human needs. Great interest in history focused on the particular, the individual, social context, the human experience of things around us, and opened up new, expansive political and economic institutions.
The Pietist side is usually underestimated in this mix. But both Pietism and Modernism were reacting to the rigid, hierarchical, dogmatic systems of Church and society during the 17th century. Furthermore, those with strong Pietist backgrounds (Kant, Hegel, Rousseau) mostly shaped the Modernist agenda and critical categories. Starting from the Pietist concern for the inner self, Western culture had to work out anew, in every area of human endeavor, how the subject(ive) side of the inner self relates to the object(ive) side of reality — humanity vs. natural and historical necessity, feeling/experience vs. doctrine/idea, worker vs. machine, family vs. industrial system, individual vs. group/organization/rules, etc. The Pietist interest in the perfect embodiment of God’s goodness (“entire sanctification,” John Wesley) made the perfectibility of the human compelling for Modernism as well.
The driving question for Pietism was and still is, “Who’s saved, who isn’t saved, and by what means (instrumentality)?” Whether salvation, reconciliation, liberation, or just meeting human needs, some form of salvation is the end, and Jesus Christ is the primary instrument of salvation. As God was embodied in Christ, so salvation happens when believers embody Christ (or God, or Spirit) in their hearts and practice their faith in all their relationships. As the embodiment of God, they experience God fully and authentically. As “the hands and feet of God,” they are God’s instruments to save souls, bring in the kingdom of God, or meet human needs.
The instrumentalist approach to mission follows from the foregoing. As embodiments of God, believers make willing evangelists, missionaries, social change agents, bearers of God’s love to a sin-sick world, a redeemed and redeeming community, and a demonstration of what God intends for all people. People respond to these believers the way they respond to God or Christ, because God is embodied in them. The instrumentalist call to mission is also an appeal to excellence, high energy, and commitment — even perfection — matching God’s. For the calling is to do God’s work on God’s behalf.
The embodiment of God in the inner person, however, raises some urgent questions about the instrumentalist approach to mission. The following are the most obvious:
a. Even with God embodied in us working through us, can we so express the love or grace of God to other people as to save their souls, redeem them from their sins, or bring in God’s kingdom? Can we in fact control when the love or grace of God flows through us and when it can’t?
b. Can we really do God’s work for God without replacing God in the process? Doesn’t the over-identification of God with the instrument risk an idolatry of the instrument or at least confusion over when God is coming through us and not just the instrument with all his or her shortfalls?
c. Is there any room for sin in the instrument? If God is in us working through us, how can we sin? If we do sin, what becomes of us and of God’s mission through us? Does God fail if we fail?
d. Does the mission of the Church — God in us working through us to transform the World and everyone/ thing in it — put Christians in the untenable, even imperialist stance of striving to rule the World on behalf of God?
e. Is the aim of the Christian life to make humans good, successful, and righteous as a function of God’s embodiment in us? If so, how much — of faith, of works, of goodness — is enough? Can such a view avoid works righteousness?
Too much of contemporary Church life, Presbyterian and other, conservative and liberal, reflects the fallout of these questions.
3. Participation in God’s mission begins with the Great Commission. Jesus says plainly, “All authority (or power–exousia) in heaven and on earth has been given to me [Jesus], therefore … ” (Matt. 28:18a), and then, “Lo, I [Jesus] am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20b). The commandment (19b-20a) not only tells us what we are to do but also what Christ himself is doing. Jesus Christ is the primary actor here, and he does what he also commands us to do. Our doing the commandment is thus a communion with Christ, an active participation in Christ’s life and work. We do not act on behalf of Christ or in a delayed response to Christ. When we go to the nations, pursue discipleship in all of life, baptize into the name of the triune God, and teach others to share obediently in what Christ is doing, we act in simultaneous fellowship with Jesus Christ. The intense closeness with Christ makes what we do, say, think, feel, and choose more important, not less, because we do everything in the context of what God is doing at the moment.
Our faith, itself the gift of the Spirit, drives us to understand (fides quaerens intellectum) every moment, situation, relationship, and activity in relation to God, no matter how good or bad they are. But also, brought to life by the Spirit, the Bible presents patterns of discernment that point to God, without whom there is no participation in God. For example, the Bible portrays the Trinity so that the Father is all-powerful (“almighty”), the Son is the epitome of weakness (vulnerable creature, loving-and-forgiving, condemned and suffering, dead by crucifixion), and the Spirit is the unity of the two together. But, the three are inseparable: no Father without Son, no Son without Father, and the Spirit in common with both of them. Together therefore, they make the lowly, vulnerable Jesus Christ (Son of God) the touchstone of God’s power: “my power is made perfect in weakness” (II Cor. 12:9).
Thenceforth, by God’s action, the first shall be last and the last first, the servant of all will be the greatest of all, and the cross will be foolishness to some and a stumbling block to others. By God’s action the test of all power — economic, political, military, personal — will be the way the powerful use their strength and resources to serve the powerless. The Bible speaks plainly of Jesus’ identity with the least among us, of the reversal of values (proud/humble, rich/poor, strong/ weak, sated/needy), of God’s hospitality to the stranger and the lowly, of God’s justice as mercy to the sinner, of God’s kingdom as a new creation in Christ, of God’s providential care for every creature and all creation, of God’s commandments as pointers to who and what God is doing (hence occasions to commune with God), of God’s Word as defining the present moment in terms of God, and more. The Bible also uses specific language spheres to couch the interaction among the three persons of the Trinity (Moltmann): sending (as in mission), suffering love (as in forgiveness and defeat of death), and glorifying (as in the aim of all things for God). Shaped by these and other “handles,” driven by our faith to seek God at every turn, and enlivened by the Spirit, we do discern God in the ordinary events and concrete relationships of human life, and participate with God there.
The biggest advantage of the participatory approach is that it leaves God free to be God and humans free to be human. God alone creates and provides for every moment of our lives past, present, and future. We don’t have to. God alone in Christ alone recreates our humanity in the image of God. We don’t have to. Fellowship with God does not require us to be semi-divine or perfect humans apart from Christ. God acts more often in spite of us than because of us, but in Christ we participate in a constant, running, covenant communion with God. Thus to live with God is an end in itself, having no higher goal than to glorify and enjoy God forever.
The participatory approach bred “a race of heroes” (Bainton) in early Calvinism. The grace of Christian believing and living over time has fostered a strikingly dynamic cultural, ethical, and missionary vigor (Troeltsch, Weber, Walzer). Grace stands out in the Reformation confessions of the PC(USA), notwithstanding the “must” and duty language. Convinced that they were in the hands of God at all times, Reformed-Presbyterians found the vision, strength, and courage to engage hitherto unknown horizons: unexplored lands across oceans, science, politics, commerce, learning, and outer space. Likewise Reformed-Presbyterians have often stood up to evil, resisting it at every level, when the best human accomplishments become overreaching or take on an idolatrous life of their own.
4. Why can’t we combine the instrumentalist and participatory approaches to mission and get the best of both worlds? That’s the most frequently asked question I get on this topic.
Instrument and participant do converge at a certain point. Instrumentalists participating in God’s mission do commune with God, and God may — never automatically — use participants as instruments of mission. But participants actively seek out God’s redeeming love and operations for the sake of participation, not their own usefulness.
Instrumentalists, on the other hand, are bound by their own intention to be instrumental: if they claim to be authentic instruments of God, they probably aren’t. In truth, we cannot attain instrumentality any more than we can attain humility. As soon as we think we have it, we probably don’t. Any sin or incompleteness in the instrument poses an insurmountable barrier, for sinners cannot intentionally overcome their own sin without increasing the sin, i.e., compounding it into a self-righteousness that doesn’t require God. In truth, being an instrument is up to God, not to us.
Participation in God’s activity is well expressed in the last line of Ephesians 2:8-10, which begins with grace and ends: for we are his [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which [the good works] God prepared beforehand that we should [might–subjunctive] walk in them (RSV, similarly KJV, mistranslated by NIV & NRSV). John 3:1-21 says the same thing (note especially verses 8 & 21).
The passage, II Cor. 5:18-20a, deserves some comments, because it contains the instrumentalist mantra:
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. (RSV)
(a) Paul speaks elsewhere of God in us (so, II Cor. 4:7-12+). But II Cor. 5:18-20a reverses that flow, highlighting us in Christ instead of Christ in us: If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (5:17); God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (5:21).
(b) The passage (5:18-20a) says twice that the reconciliation of sinners takes place through Christ (see also 5:13-14+), not through us. Ours is to bear the message of reconciliation.
(c) The participatory reading of God was in Christ” (5:19a) makes Christ the place where humans participate in the covenant that God re-establishes in him, as in 5:17 and 21. The instrumentalist reading of 5:19a makes Christ an instrument of God for the sake of reconciliation, as in 5:18. But
(d) for Paul, here and elsewhere, us in Christ is the basis of Christ in us, not the other way around. Let the reader compare these two phrases anywhere in Paul! The instrumentalist ignores the difference, collapsing the first phrase into the second.#
On solid ground, the deep accents of the Reformed Tradition point to mission as participation in the sovereign activity of the triune God. The time has come to reconfigure the language of our current discussion about mission. Maybe this is a way out of our current divisions. Maybe this will free us in Christ to embrace with joy and eager anticipation where God is taking us — together — into the future.
Merwyn S. Johnson currently is Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology Emeritus at Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, S.C., and Visiting Professor of Theology at Union-PSCE in Charlotte, N.C.
