Corrientes en Hermenutica Misional

GREG MCKINZIE
Las contribuciones recientes al desarrollo de la hermenutica misional son
significativas, aunque indican que queda una gran cantidad de territorio
inexplorado. Este ensayo ofrece un modelo para trazar temas actuales y
nfasis entre los interlocutores misionales, sobre cuya base el autor
propone una integracin de las dimensiones clave de la teologa misional.
En una conversacin con las propuestas hermenuticas misionales
actuales, el autor desarrolla cinco tesis que sealan una trayectoria para
revisar la espiral hermenutica.

Trazar temas actuales y nfasis en la teologa misional

La bsqueda erudita de una hermenutica misional se ve acosada por la

ambigedad del trmino misional. Esto no es meramente una cuestin de
apropiacin indebida popular; los diversos usos de misioneros y de los
eruditos tambin oscurecen su significado. La resolucin de este problema
no puede ser una condicin para el desarrollo de la hermenutica misional,
ya que indudablemente se convertira en un albatros. Sin embargo, parece
contraproducente proceder con la discusin de la hermenutica misional
cuando, en primer lugar, muchos siguen sin estar seguros de la definicin
de misin. Una comprensin de la teologa misional en trminos de dos
continuos que se cruzan-misionolgico-misional y teora-historia-sugiere
una comprensin multidimensional de lo misional y, a su vez, seala la
necesidad de desarrollar una hermenutica misional completa como una
revisin de la espiral hermenutica. Por lo tanto, comienzo la discusin de
la hermenutica misional trazando varios temas y nfasis en el panorama
de la teologa misional.

La primera distincin necesaria para comprender la discusin actual es la

diferencia entre la hermenutica misional y la hermenutica misiolgica.
Si bien gran parte del movimiento eclesial misional est profundamente
sintonizado con la lgica de la misin, no es especialmente misionolgico1.
En su sentido adjetivo bsico, misional se refiere a cualquier cosa que
tenga que ver con la misin, lo que hace cuestionable la distincin entre
misional y misionolgico. Pero en el contexto de la discusin hermenutica,
las preocupaciones de la misionologa como una disciplina de un lado y el
movimiento de la iglesia misionera del otro son distinguibles, aunque
superpuestas. Esto es algo desconcertante, considerando el hecho de que
el pensamiento de Lesslie Newbigin es ostensiblemente el mpetu principal
detrs del movimiento eclesial misional.2 Newbigin fue realizado tanto
como misionero intercultural como telogo, y su trabajo mantiene unidos
los elementos que se han fragmentado entre sus herederos teolgicos.
Esta fragmentacin se debe en parte al hecho de que la aplicacin de
Newbigin de los conocimientos misionolgicos transculturales a la cultura
occidental inspir la reflexin intracultural que no sostena el mismo
grado de agudeza intercultural como el trabajo de Newbigin. Gran parte de
lo que la disciplina de la misionologa tiene para ofrecer la hermenutica
misional surge de su inters en la dinmica transcultural. Esta
perspectiva intercultural sigue siendo relativamente marginal en las
conversaciones misionales de la iglesia que estn particularmente atentos
a las preocupaciones eclesiolgicas occidentales postmodernas.3

Debido a que estas no son de ninguna manera dimensiones mutuamente

excluyentes, las coloco en un continuo:

Figure 1

El extremo misionolgico del continuo se centra ms en

las misiones de la iglesia, que hasta hace muy poco
tiempo eran tpicamente transculturales, y
concomitantemente en la antropologa. El extremo
misional del continuo se concentra en la teologa de la
missio Dei y, por extensin, en la naturaleza de la iglesia
local como participantes en la misin de Dios. Al
intersectar estas tendencias con un segundo continuo,
que caracteriza a otro espectro tpico de intereses en
trminos de teora e historia, 4 es posible trazar una serie
de temas misionales (Figura 2). Aunque la jerga actual
hace necesario etiquetar un extremo del continuo en la
Figura 1 "misional", mi intencin es abogar por todo el
collage representado en la Figura 2 como una concepcin
integradora de la teologa misional y, por lo tanto, como
indicativo de una definicin multidimensional de
misional.5
Los cuatro cuadrantes que crea esta yuxtaposicin nos
permiten identificar los nfasis clave en diferentes
rincones del mundo de la teologa misional, que etiqueto
Doctrina, Ministerio, Testimonio y Visin del mundo.
Estos, a su vez, corresponden a temas misionales
destacados: la naturaleza de Dios (Trinidad), el reino de
Dios (propsito), la historia de Dios (narrativa) y la
presencia de Dios (creacin). Finalmente, cada nfasis
refleja una de las cuatro normas teolgicas bien
conocidas del cristianismo: tradicin, experiencia,
Escritura y razn. Este modelo intenta iluminar las
tendencias teolgicas. Idealmente, el telogo misionero
vivir directamente en el centro terico, donde todos los
temas, nfasis y normas se informan recproca y
profundamente. Y, de hecho, muchos pensadores
misioneros trabajan desde cerca del centro o incluso se
mueven de cuadrante a cuadrante. Sin embargo, a pesar
de la incapacidad del modelo para retratar las
complejidades de la realidad, espero que ilumine algunas
dimensiones reales de la teologa misional.
 Fi
gure 2
Doctrine

Missional and theoretical concerns combine in the

trinitarian theology of the missio Dei. Although much of
the fruitful work in this area accentuates the biblical
depictions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit instead of the
more speculative ontological concerns that have marked
trinitarian theology, the missio Dei is nonetheless a deeply
trinitarian doctrine and is therefore rooted in the tradition
of the church.6
The aphoristic upshot of the emphasis on the missio
Dei is that the mission is Gods, which the doctrine
articulates over against the churchs often historically
self-centered mission practices.7 Furthermore, the missio
Dei sheds light on the nature and identity of the church
as an extension of the missio. The classical doctrine on
the missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and
God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit was
expanded to include yet another movement: Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit sending the church into the
world.8 Therefore, the church is missional by
nature.9 Because missionalsignals a thoroughly
trinitarian theology, the missional ecclesiology that
emerges is also trinitarian. Newbigins The Open
Secret establishes the architecture of a missional
ecclesiology: This threefold way of understanding the
churchs mission is rooted in the triune nature of God
himself. If any one of these is taken in isolation as the
clue to the understanding of mission, distortion follows.10
Working backward through the missio, the first way of
understanding the church is in light of pneumatology: It
is thus by an action of the sovereign Spirit of God that the
church launched its mission. And it remains the mission
of the Spirit. He is central.11 This is the church in the
power of the Spirit:
In the movements of the trinitarian history of Gods dealings with the world the
church finds and discovers itself, in all the relationships which comprehend its
life. It finds itself on the path traced by this history of Gods dealings with the
world, and it discovers itself as one element in the movement of the divine
sending, gathering together and experience. It is not the church that has a
mission of salvation to fulfil 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. It is not the church that administers the Spirit as the Spirit of
preaching, the Spirit of the sacraments, the Spirit of the ministry or the Spirit of
tradition. The Spirit administers the church with the events of word and faith,
sacrament and grace, offices and traditions. If the church understands itself,
with all its tasks and powers, in the Spirit and against the horizon of the Spirits
history, then it also understands its particularity as one element in the power of
the Spirit and has no need to maintain its special power and its special charges
with absolute and self-destructive claims. It then has no need to look sideways
in suspicion or jealously at the saving efficacies of the Spirit outside the church;
instead it can recognize them thankfully as signs that the Spirit is greater than
the church and that Gods purpose of salvation reaches beyond the church.

The church participates in Christs messianic mission and in the creative

mission of the Spirit.12

Participation in Christs messianic mission is the essence

of the second way of understanding the church in relation
to the Trinity. Two areas of controversy are especially
prominent among missional theologians in this regard.
One is the nature of participation, which is vitally
important because the doctrine of the missio
Dei developed in the first place during the twentieth-
century churchs agony over its history of
ecclesiocentrism and colonialism. Newbigin speaks
somewhat unreservedly of the continuance of [Jesus]
mission.13 The significance of this is twofold: (1) without
the church, the mission will otherwise remain
undone,14 and (2) the distinction between church and
kingdomwhich is the most important safeguard against
ecclesiocentrism in missional thoughtremains blurry.
For Newbigin, the church is sent not only to proclaim the
kingdom but to bear in its own life the presence of the
kingdom.15 On the other hand, chapter four of the
landmark book Missional Church blocks the over-
identification of the kingdom with the church by adopting
representation of the kingdom as its primary
model.16 There is not a tremendous difference between
these two careful renderings, but they do indicate a
polarizing tension in the discussion of participation,
which remains the fundamental concept in the missional
articulation of ecclesiology in relation to Christology.17
The second dispute concerns the relationship between
Christology, missiology, and ecclesiology. Michael Frost
and Alan Hirsch set the board with the claim that
Christology determines missiology, and missiology
determines ecclesiology. It is absolutely vital that the
church get the order right.18 David Fitch takes issue with
this ordering because the epistemological function of the
church logically gives ecclesiology precedence.19 But in
subsequent work, Frost and Hirsch reconfigure the three
topoi less linearly.20 Ed Stetzer and David Putman
similarly advocate that all three be in conversation and
interaction.21Regardless of details, the point is to note
that Christology plays a prominent role in missional
ecclesiology, both in terms of participation in Jesus
kingdom mission and in terms of Jesus and his mission
being theologically determinative of the church.
The third and final way of understanding the church is in
light of the cosmic purposes of the FatherGod who is
the creator, upholder, and consummator of all that
is.22 The cosmic scope of this perspective propels two
conversations. The first is about the relationship of God
to the world. Mark Love, for example, urges a new
understanding of the Godchurchworld relationship in
light of social trinitarian understandings of the Fathers
relationship to Son and Spirit:
God is social, each person open to the other. But God is also openopen to
history, open to creation, open to the stranger. The same kind of dynamic nexus
of relationships that characterizes Father, Son, and Spirit applies to creation as
well. The world constituted by a triune God is a participatory drama with
multiple characters. As Father, Son, and Spirit, God is not only acting on the
world, sending to the world, but God is also for the world, with the world, and
through the world. God is no longer a series of one-way sendings in a straight
line but a participatory God making room for the other with movement in all
directions.23

Therefore:
A missional congregation does not merely take God to the world, but
participates in the life of the world expecting to find God more deeply. The
nature and shape of mission is not already decided but must be discerned in
relation to Gods participation in the world. The resources of the gospel are
needed for this work of discernment. Clearly, not everything that appears in the
world is an appearance of Gods redemptive concern for creation. 24

While the christological viewpoint considers the churchs

participation in Christ, this conversation focuses especially
on the ecclesiological implications of Gods participation in
the world.
The second conversation is an extension of the same idea,
but here the trinitarian particulars fade into the
background. It is about the work of God in the world
outside the church, which moves two directions on Figure
2.25Moving toward the Worldview quadrant are
observations about cultures reflection of the imago Dei
the innate abilities of human societies to fulfill the
cultural mandate through language, reason, and some
measure of creative goodness. Within the scope of
doctrinal concerns, I label this (Re)Creational
Theology.26 Moving toward the Ministry quadrant are
observations about some of the purposes of God, which
we might label broadly as human flourishing, being
fulfilled to an extent through social endeavors such as
politics, with which the church may have more or less to
do in any given situation (that is, the line between
Trinitarian Ecclesiology and Political Theology is fuzzy).
Once considered a relatively liberal view of the mission of
God, there is now wider acceptance among conservative
missional thinkers that Gods creating, sustaining, and
re-creating relationship to the cosmos implies the
advance of his kingdom purposes in the world, to some
degree apart from the church. Trinitarian Ecclesiology
therefore wrestles with, on one hand, the formation of a
community made in the image of Father, Son, and Spirit
who exist as a community in relationship with the world
and, on the other hand, the creational relationship of God
and world that exists prior to and apart from the church.
Ministry

As we move from the theoretical to the historical on the

missional end of the spectrum, a shift of theological
priority takes place. Here the accent falls on actualizing
participation in Gods mission rather than understanding
mission in terms of trinitarian theology. In this quadrant,
the kingdom is the major theme, and the experience of
participating in Gods kingdom purposes becomes the key
theological norm. Praxis and participation converge to
emphasize the churchs life in the world, which I label
Ministry.27
The theological maxim that governs this perspective is
that incarnation is the paradigm. Incarnational ministry
models itself on the ministry of Jesusit is the practical
outworking of the christological priority discussed
above.28 This means service to and sacrifice for the
worldthat is, ones neighborswhich may take many
forms but maintains a methodological commitment to
relationships of solidarity and humility; hence,
incarnation assumes cruciformity. The Ministry
perspective understands Gods kingdom purposes
especially in light of Jesus proclamation of good news to
the poor (Luke 4:18) in word and deed through his
ministry of healing, liberation, and social inclusiveness
and his condemnation of institutional evil.
Such an understanding conceives of the inbreaking of the
kingdom over against existing social structures, which
leads to two varieties of political theology among
missional thinkers. One follows the incarnational
paradigm into identification with existing structures in
order to transform them. Missional practitioners of this
approach involve themselves in and confront existing
communities and polities redemptively on their own terms
from the inside, in light of Jesus teachings (risking
syncretistic civil religion). The other variety follows the
incarnational paradigm into embodiment of alternative
structures. Missional practitioners of this approach
establish distinct communities and polities that allow
Jesus teachings both to contrast prophetically with
distorted structures and to display the possibility of
radically new forms of life (risking escapist sectarianism).
As Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile state, At stake
is how culture and the world are to be viewed: are they to
be viewed primarily in positive terms or in negative
terms?29
Either way, the proclamation of the good news of the
kingdom is holistic in the Ministry quadrant. This comes
to expression in a number of triadic formulas, which are
summed up well in Missional Church: community, servant,
messenger; kerygma, diakonia, koinonia; words of love,
deeds of love, life of love; the truth (message), the life
(community), the way (servant); and being witness, doing
witness, saying witness.30 To these we should add Bryant
Myerss paradigm in his watershed volume on holistic
developmental ministry, Walking with the Poor. Myerss
work with World Vision International in the majority
world has a very different context than most of the
American missional church conversation, and his cross-
cultural developmental work occasions a sophisticated
understanding of holism that complements and expands
the formulas above. Myers states: The gospel is not a
disembodied message; it is carried and communicated in
the life of Christian people. Therefore, a holistic
understanding of the gospel begins with life, a life that is
then lived out by deed and word and sign.31
We must also remember that the gospel message is an organic whole. Life, deed,
word, and sign must all find expression for us to encounter and comprehend the
whole of the good news of Jesus Christ. Life alone is too solitary. Word, deed,
and sign alone are all ambiguous. Words alone can be posturing, positioning,
even selling. Deeds alone do not declare identity or indicate in whom one has
placed his or her faith. Signs can be done by demons and spirits or by the Holy
Spirit. It is only when life, deed, word, and sign are expressed in a consistent
and coherent whole that the gospel of the Son of God is clear. 32

The holism of the Ministry quadrant, whether in Western

or majority world contexts, overcomes the spiritual
gospelsocial gospel dichotomy that plagued the last
century. The closing of this gap owes much to the
influence of majority world theologians such as Mortimer
Arias, Ren Padilla, Samuel Escobar, and Orlando Costas,
who brought liberation theology to bear upon the Western
evangelical conception of mission.33 Through the meaning
of praxis in liberation theology,34 the Ministry quadrant
comes to life as a discrete theological locusa place from
which to talk about God as we come alongside God in
solidarity with Gods creation. Distinct from the doctrinal
context of tradition, participation in the kingdom of God
creates the praxeological context of ministry experience.
Witness

The emphasis I label Witness is where the historical and

the missiological intersect. The biblical story of Gods
mission through his people here combines with the
history of post-apostolic missiones ecclesiae. On the
landscape of missional theology, this is where
a narrative account of Gods mission stands tall. A variety
of ideas converge in the category of Witness: the biblical
authors witness to Gods mission in history, the
particular stories about Gods witnesses (storytellers) in
Scripture (i.e., prophets and apostles), the churchs
subsequent role as witness (storytellers), and the churchs
place in the ongoing story of Gods mission. Again, the
intention of delineating quadrants in Figure 2 is not to
suggest that witness should be limited to a purely verbal
function, as though witness cannot be synonymous with
holistic proclamation or as though the churchs mission
practices have been completely detached from material
concerns. I wish merely to emphasize the
notably testimonial nature of the churchs historical
mission practices, especially in relation to Scripture,
because it bespeaks a distinctive theological emphasis:
proclamation, kerygma, rehearsal of the Script itself.
In the exegetical corner of the quadrant, the chief concern
is the historical exposition of what mission is in the Bible,
in terms of (1) Gods will and work in the world and (2) his
peoples participation in his purposes.35 In the church-
missions corner of the quadrant the theological interest is
twofold: (1) how the churchs missions cohere (historically
and presently) with the biblical witness to mission36 and
(2) how the churchs missions shape (historically and
presently) its own witness to the biblical story.37 The
realization that mission is the mother of theology is
axiomatic for the Witness emphasis.38 Within the Bible
this means both that Gods mission is the storys plot and
that biblical authors wrote as participants in Gods
mission, forced to theologize from within the crucible of
mission. Within the life of the church this means that the
churchs own missional engagement must shape her
theology. In this quadrant, the accent lies on the cross-
cultural nature of witness as the church engages in Gods
global mission, and therefore on missionary practices of
translation and contextualization. Intracultural
incarnational participation on the missional end of the
spectrum (Figure 1) often fails to take into account
missiological understandings of contextualization despite
frequent discussion of culture.
Worldview

In the missiological and theoretical corner of the graph,

anthropology and philosophy overlap in their concern
about worldview, though the two fields of study have
approached the concept in different ways. From a
missional theological standpoint, what anthropologists
and philosophers find in their studies is predicated on
Gods design and presence in creation. Thus, as the
trinitarian description of Gods nature is a reflection of
Gods story in Scripture, so Gods self-testimony in
creation, which is accessible to reason, is a reflection of
Gods initiative in the world, which humankind may
experience. Gods self-testimony (i.e., general revelation)
is accessible to reason because God has made the
languages and correlate worldviews that humankind
develops to be adequate for that purpose (the effects of
sin notwithstanding). His design of humankind and
presence in human cultures (Acts 17:2428) before the
arrival of Christian witness is a prevenient grace that
makes translatability the theological assumption of the
Worldview quadrant.39
Natural Theologywhat people might say about God by
virtue of his presence in creation and without reference to
Christian tradition or Scriptureis a first cousin of
(Re)Creational Theology in the Doctrine quadrant. Here
philosophy as a Western mode of discourse combines
with other cultural varieties of wisdom, and we note that
indeed biblical wisdom literature is steeped in creational
theology and borrows wisdom from diverse
cultures.40 Thus, Natural Theology in Figure 2 designates
the products of the capacity of all cultures worldviews to
perceive and speak about God.
Where (1) missiologys concerns for translation of the
Witness and the development of culturally indigenous
theology combine with (2) this innate capacity, the
emphasis falls on worldview transformation. The nature of
worldviews as intercultural frames of reference, the
products of worldviews as naturally theologically
generative paradigms, and the transformation of
worldviews in terms of conversion, discipleship, and local
self-theologizing are the primary concerns of the
Worldview quadrant of missional theology.

Dimensions of Missional Theology

If my plotting of missional theology is representative of
actual trends and tendencies, then one major implication
of the graph is the need for a more integrated view
of missional. While there is certainly nothing wrong with a
particular missional thinker developing a single
dimension (e.g., cross-cultural communication) or
working out of a limited frame of reference (e.g., Western
ecclesiology), without reference to the bigger picture the
result is often an inadvertently reduced portrayal of the
meaning of missional. In the service of a full-orbed
missional hermeneutic, therefore, I propose the following
outline of dimensions of missional theology. For the sake
of brevity, I will expand in footnotes only upon the more
opaque ideas.
Missional theology should be:
1. Trinitarian (rooted in the missio Dei)
1.1. Narratively ontological41
1.1.1. Keyed to the relational nature of Father, Son, and
Spirit as both community and creator
1.1.2. About participation in the sending (missio)
1.2. Narratively teleological42
1.2.1. Keyed to the purposeful plot of the story
1.2.2. About participation in the dramas continuation
2. Eschatological (attentive to the alreadynot yet nature
of the kingdom)43
2.1. Anticipatory
2.1.1. Keyed to real experience of the Fathers kingdom in
Christ through the SpiritGods fulfilled purposes (first
fruits)
2.1.2. About cruciform (humble, self-denying)
participation in authentic transformation on personal,
communal, and societal levels (experience of the already)
2.2. Teleological
2.2.1. Keyed to the ongoing inbreaking of the Fathers
kingdom in Christ through the SpiritGods unfulfilled
purposes
2.2.2. About cruciform (dependent, hidden) participation
in and yearning for the kingdoms advance (encounter
with the not yet)
3. Cultural (attentive to the incarnation as the paradigm
of Gods relationship to human particularity)
3.1. Contextualized
3.1.1. Keyed to translation
3.1.2. About participation in the local context
3.2. Intercultural
3.2.1. Keyed to dialogue
3.2.2. About participation in the global context
4. Praxeological (developed in solidarity with those among
whom God is at work)
4.1. Experiential
4.1.1. Keyed to mission as the mother of theology
4.1.2. About spiraling reflection on participation
4.2. Holistic44
4.2.1. Keyed to the reconciliation (Col 1:21),
consummation (Eph 1:10), and restoration (Acts 3:21)
of all things, therefore to all of life (word and deed).
4.2.2. About participation in all dimensions of Gods
mission

The State of Play in Missional Hermeneutics

Explicit mention of Scripture is notably missing from my
outline of proposed dimensions of missional theology.
Despite Scriptures place on the graph of missional
themes and emphases, I do not place it among the
dimensions of missional theology because the analysis of
the meaning of missional here only serves as prolegomena
to the primary task of developing a missional hermeneutic
of Scripture. For those who take Scripture, as I do, to be
the ultimate theological norm, the articulation of a
missional theology must happen under the authority of
God exercised through Scripture, but the hermeneutical
question is how this happens. In this section I consider
trends in missional hermeneutics in relation to the
dimensions of missional theology I have outlined above.
Streams in the Gospel and Our Culture Network

George Hunsbergers recent mapping of missional

hermeneutics is presently the primary point of
reference.45 He delineates four streams of emphasis in
the conversation that has developed among Gospel and
Our Culture Network interlocutors:
The Missional Direction of the Story
Hunsberger identifies Chris Wright as the primary
representative of this approach. The essence of Wrights
missional hermeneutic is the way in which the purposeful
story that Scripture narrates as a whole gives meaning to
the parts. This is a narrative model of biblical theology in
which Gods mission is the plot of the story.
The Missional Purpose of the Writings

Darrel Guder is exemplar for this approach, which has to

do with the purpose and aim of the biblical writings, and
the canonical authority by virtue of their formative
effect.46 The point is that the purpose of the original
authors, identified as equipping Gods people for mission,
provides hermeneutical traction by virtue of their function.
The emphasis here is not what texts mean per se but how
they equip the church for mission.47
The Missional Locatedness of the Readers

Michael Barram stands out as an advocate of this

approach. He focuses on the way that the communitys
participation in mission shapes the questions the reader
brings to the text. Such missional questions allow the text
to speak meaningfully to contextual concerns. But asking
properly missional questions depends on the communitys
missional identity and consciousness.
The Missional Engagement with Cultures

The final stream comes from the work of James Brownson.

Hunsberger highlights Brownsons interest in the
hermeneutics present in New Testament authors
appropriation of the Old Testament. The missional sense
of Brownsons interest in intertextual hermeneutics
springs from a basic observation about the New
Testament: The early Christian movement that produced
and canonized the New Testament was a movement with
a specifically missionary character.48
While I find this analysis helpful, I think it is possible to
parse some of the various sources contributions
differently. There are two areas that I believe are
especially important to spell out more than Hunsbergers
article does. The first regards exegesis. In Michael
Barrams response to Hunsberger, he continues to push a
point he has raised for some time: In the end, Im still
wondering, I guess, how concrete exegetical methodology
relates to the notion of a larger, robust
hermeneutic.49 Yet, in his 2007 Interpretation article,
Barram has already spelled out the two most vital points
for exegesis:
First, the communities to which NT documents were written owed their
existence to a missional impulse in early Christianity. God was active in the
world, and the fledgling Christian communities found themselves caught up in
that activity. Of course, the doctrinal struggles we find would never have arisen
apart from a process of early Christian outreach. Second, the NT texts
themselves are in some real sense missiological, inasmuch as they equip their
original addressees for the communitys vocation in the world.50

This is the exegetical aspect of the assertion that mission

is the mother of theology. The formulations of Scripture
itself (1) were born of participation in the missio Dei and
(2) intended to serve the people of God in that context.
Therefore, to attempt to understand their original
meaning outside of this rubric, as Barram calls it, is a
methodological error.
I think it is helpful to distinguish point (2) from Guders
identification of the purpose of the writings. There is a
difference between (a) recognizing exegetically an authors
purpose in order to understand his meaning and (b)
sharing an authors purpose in order to reappropriate a
passages function in new missional settings. There is a
strong connection between the two, but it is still
important to make the distinction because of the value of
methodological rigor in biblical studies.51
For the same reason, Barrams own located questions
are beyond the scope of historical exegesis, even though it
is true that the questions an exegete brings to the text
cannot escape locatedness. That is to say, despite the
recognition of locatedness, missional hermeneutics
should still struggle to understand the author
in his location before turning to the present reader in
hers. In that sense, I think missional hermeneutics needs
to recognize clearly the significance of the two exegetical
points Barram makes but also needs to make it clear that
in another sense the answer to his lingering question
about concrete exegetical methodology is: Exegesis ought
to relate to a robust missional hermeneutic as a part of
the hermeneutical spiral (see below), not by becoming
fundamentally different methodologically.
The second area that needs more clarity is cultural
studies. Hunsberger associates Brownsons interest in the
New Testament authors multicultural hermeneutics with
missiological models developed in recent years.52 Contrary
to this comparison, Brownson himself states:
Missional encounters between people are, almost by definition, cross-cultural
encounters. To the extent that this is true, then it follows that a missional
hermeneutic is one that sees this cross-cultural encounter as the central
context out of which interpretation takes place. This is most closely addressed
in Georges third category, which focuses on the location of the reader.53

In other words, it is Barrams located questions that

come closest to missiological cross-cultural concerns, not
the emphases that Hunsberger labels engagement with
cultures. It is missiologys struggle with cross-cultural
dynamics that constitute its greatest potential
contribution to missional hermeneutics. Barram observes:
Perhaps it should not be surprising that sensitivity to social location is evident
in recent missiological studies concerned with the character and function of the
Bible. Given the historic and geographic scope of missionary activity,
practitioners have explored issues of contextualization and pluralistic
readerships for years. For that reason, missiological conversations regarding the
process of multilateral and intercultural dialogue may be significantly more
developed and sophisticated than analogous developments in biblical studies.54

The point is that Hunsberger conflates two very distinct

contributions to missional hermeneutics. One deals with
exegetically illuminating biblical authors missional
hermeneutics, whereas the other deals with
the similaritybetween (a) biblical authors hermeneutics
and (b) the hermeneutical implications of the cultural
dynamics that missiologists have been exploring for some
time. Therefore, one rich field of study is the missional
hermeneutics of the biblical authors themselves. In other
words, mission sheds new light on intertextual
interpretation. A very different field of study is that of
missiology, especially translation and contextualization.
Theses for Exploring a Fuller-Orbed Missional
Hermeneutic
In light of the dimensions of missional theology,
Hunsbergers four streams are helpful but also indicate
uncharted waters. As a basis for exploring a fuller-orbed
missional hermeneutic, I propose the following theses:
1. Missional hermeneutics examines the listening
communitys preunderstanding culturally in terms of
worldview.55
In his article Continuing Steps towards a Missional
Hermeneutic, Michael Goheen writes about the gulf
between missiology and biblical studies:
Three developments offer signs of hope for a move beyond this impasse that
might help to restore a missional hermeneutic: the development of a much
broader understanding of mission that has been expressed in terms of
the missio Dei; the challenge to higher criticism of new forms of biblical
interpretation influenced by, for example, hermeneutical philosophy; and, the
entry into the field of scholars who combined a sophisticated understanding of
both biblical studies and missiology.56

Goheen represents the trend in missional hermeneutics of

utilizing the theoretical construct worldview where these
three developments converge.57The problem of
preunderstanding is basic for hermeneutics.58 It deals
with the way that the listening communitys constellation
of existing knowledge (both cognitive and embodied) and
habits of knowledge-making determines the possibility
and limits of new understandinga discussion that takes
its cues from postmodern epistemology.59 So much
diversity has marked the conceptualization of worldview
in philosophy that some doubt its usefulness.
Nonetheless, this has been the case in large part because
so many thinkers have found the concept to be useful for
systematizing the range of concerns present in the idea of
preunderstanding. The worldview concept has continued
to evolve, and some of the earlier problems with its usage
in philosophy are no longer characteristic.60 Like any
proposal, worldview has its critics, but for the purposes of
the present overview suffice it to say that worldview is still
proving fruitful as a theoretical construct that brings
together a number of postmodern epistemological
concerns in a systematic way.
Since the rise to prominence of the philosophy of
language, there has been significant overlap between
philosophy and anthropology, and it is precisely in this
area of overlap that missiological anthropologists also
advocate the worldview concept. Cultural analysis sheds
a different light on worldview, but the complementarity of
the two disciplines usages ultimately produces an even
richer model. Because missional hermeneutics attends to
epistemic concerns with intercultural sensitivity, this
complementarity becomes clear, and worldview emerges
as the best model for examining the preunderstanding of
particular communities.61
2. Missional hermeneutics attends exegetically to the
nature and purposes of God revealed in particular
passages. Particularity here is twofold: in relation to
the whole of Scripture and in relation to a passages
immediate context.
In relation to the whole of Scripture, missional
hermeneutics pays close attention to the reality and
inevitability of plurality already evident in the theology of
biblical authors.62 This establishes a fundamental
orientation for the listening community that forestalls the
tendency to build unity upon uniformity and fosters
openness to culturally diverse perspectives. Exegetical
attention to particularity also prevents a facile synthesis
of the whole of Scripture in terms of mission, requiring
instead a nuanced approach to missional biblical theology
that remains open to the dissenting voices of particular
passages.
In relation to context, exegesis should naturally be
attuned to language, culture, occasion, genre, style,
composition, and the like (the study of backgrounds has
always been consonant with anthropology). Yet, exegesis
should especially take into account that Scriptures
authors wrote in the crucible of participation in Gods
mission. Their own formulations are attempts at
contextualization, albeit not, of course, in the
anthropological mode of current missiology. But the
exigencies of mission did compel biblical authors to
perceive and draw out new theological implications and
articulate them in contextually and situationally
appropriate ways.63 This observation yields two distinct
hermeneutical contributions.
First, exegesis that attempts to understand an authors
intention without observing the missional context of the
writing will fall short in its descriptive endeavor. One facet
of missional hermeneutics, thus, is attentiveness to the
biblical authors participation in the mission of God in
order to understand their meaning. Second, doing
exegesis in this light renders the authors modes of
operation as a paradigm for current missional
theologizing. Specifically, (1) the authors original purpose
was to form readers for mission, and (2) the authors make
innovative yet cohesive articulations and determinations
in imitable ways.64 Insofar as these modes are
paradigmatic, exegesis can provide a hermeneutical
direction rather than merely extracting prefabricated
conclusions or principles. Hermeneutics should therefore
be done in service to Gods mission, imitating as far as
possible the interpreters par excellence canonized in
Scripture.
Finally, a critical aspect of exegesis in missional
hermeneutics is the reconstruction of worldviews
represented in particular texts. Here especially there is
reservation on the part of biblical scholars who have
learned to doubt the validity of searching for a biblical
authors intentions, which ultimately falls into
speculation about an authors inaccessible psychology.
This skepticism finds considerable support in the
postmodern hermeneutical conclusion that texts do not
give access to the authors subjectivity. Together these
doubts present a significant challenge to the idea that the
worldviews of biblical authors can be reconstructed. Yet,
we must note that a number of criticisms contribute to
worldview reconstruction, often piecemeal, whether they
intend to or not. This is because, as the anthropological
angle makes clear, worldviews are only accessible through
cultural analysisand biblical studies is not shy
about historical cultural reconstruction. For example, the
New Perspective on Paul is largely a groundswell of
exegetical insight based upon a reconstruction of Second
Temple Judaisms worldview. This amounts to
understanding justification, for example, not in terms of
Pauls psychology or subjectivity as an author but in
terms of his probable frame of reference as a culturally
embedded person.
3. Missional hermeneutics perceives the unity of
Scripture in terms of the metanarrative of Gods
purposes.
Biblical theology finds its continuity (or cohesiveness) in
the metanarrative of Gods mission. This is a story about
a particular God moving the plot forward toward a
particular purpose. Chris Wright, Michael Goheen, and
Craig Bartholomew have been leading proponents of this
assertion.65 Scripture per se is not a metanarrative; rather,
it gives witness to and reveals one. Its range of genres and
diversity of perspectives combine into a whole that implies
the metanarrative. It is the job of biblical theology to
render that metanarrative. Furthermore, the
metanarrative engenders the biblical worldview. Yet,
the biblical worldview assumes the pluralism and
diversity that exegesis establishes. As a metanarrative of
diversity, it addresses, at least to some extent, the
concerns of postmoderns who reject totalizing
narratives.66Brownson states it well:
The challenge is to discover the implicit logic and assumptions that both drive
and constrain that dynamism and diversity. If we can identify and render
explicit that logic and those assumptions, we may be able to articulate a vision
for the coherence of the New Testament that invites a variety of creative readings
of the New Testament within a dynamic but coherent framework. 67

The diversity of Scripture itself is a record of a variety of

cultural worldviews in the process of transformation. The
unity of Scripture implies a shared metanarrative among
the diversity of cultural worldviews. It is not totalizing,
but it is transformative, especially in its teleological
nature. All cultures are enlisted in Gods mission from
their particularity. The canon exists as an expression of
this particular unity.
Though N. T. Wright has not (to my knowledge) identified
his work as missional hermeneutics, it demonstrates
many of the same operating assumptions and has been
influential in the field.68 Specifically, his focus on
worldview, narrative, and teleological eschatology suggest
a missional hermeneutical sensibility.69 One recent
book, Scripture and the Authority of God, is especially
conscious of Gods mission.70 The book is an outworking
of the now well-known hermeneutical proposal that the
narrative thrust of Scripture be appropriated
interpretively as a drama in which interpreters improvise
an act for which the script is not available.71 Cast
explicitly in terms of mission, N. T. Wrights work
suggests that one important facet of missional
hermeneutics is the juxtaposition of the crucial missional
concept of participation in the ongoing mission of God with
the narrative hermeneutical logic of participation in the
ongoing story of Gods purposes. Cast in terms of
worldview, this narrative hermeneutical logic invites
further exploration of the way metanarrative generates
worldview and, therefore, culture. In this regard, the
connection between Wrights proposal and Kevin
Vanhoozers The Drama of Doctrine is important, because
Vanhoozer develops his hermeneutics in conversation
with George Lindbecks The Nature of Doctrineand
therefore with key philosophical and anthropological
interlocutors whose work informs worldview
studies.72 These are connections that have yet to be
thoroughly explored, but the result of that endeavor will
be, I suspect, a more complete missional hermeneutics.
Finally, due to disciplinary divisions, biblical theology is
usually inattentive to trinitarian theology as such.
Nonetheless, the metanarrative is missional not only by
virtue of its teleology but also in terms of its leading
protagonistsFather, Son, and Spirit. Newbigin too found
insight in early postliberalism.73But he believed that
narrative must be the biblical narrative taken as a whole
and in the context of a fully Trinitarian doctrine of
God.74 As a missiologist, though, Newbigin was anything
but slavish about trinitarian formulations:
It has been said that the question of the Trinity is the one theological question
that has been really settled. It would, I think, be nearer to the truth to say that
the Nicene formula has been so devoutly hallowed that it is effectively put out of
circulation. It has been treated like the talent that was buried for safekeeping
rather than risked in the commerce of discussion.75

This is the point at which my earlier proposal of narrative

trinitarianism informs missional hermeneutics. In the
discursive, cross-cultural encounters of mission, new
listening communities hear the story and speak of Father,
Son, and Spirit in fresh ways. Yet, the story is still
trinitarian. This is vitally important because the
communitys life practices may cohere more or less with
this particular story, and when they cohere less, the
tendencies discussed above mar participation in mission.
The incarnational community may embody a
christomonistic, utilitarian story; the charismatic
community a dualistic, escapist story; and so forth. A
narrative trinitarian spirituality, by contrast, forms the
basis for interpreting (performing) the story of Gods
kingdom in cruciform and Spirit-led glorification of the
Father, rather than triumphalism or ecclesiocentrism.
4. Missional hermeneutics brings the biblical
worldview into conversation with the listening
communitys worldview.
This thesis implies two fundamental iterations of the
dialogical worldview encounter. The first iteration entails
basic processes. One is the explication of the biblical
worldview through the lens of the listening communitys
worldview (preunderstanding), though in conversation
with other listening communities involved in mission
(diachronically through historical theology and
synchronically through intercontextual and intercultural
dialogue).76 The other is the explication of the listening
communitys worldview (Thesis 1). Beyond the telling of
the biblical metanarrative over against the communitys
reigning metanarrative, beyond the absorption of the
community into the biblical story and the improvisational
theodramatic performance of the biblical script, missional
hermeneutics attends analytically77 to the worldviews that
the respective metanarratives generate. This requires a
functional model of worldview, which is beyond the scope
of this paper. At this point, however, the hermeneutical
traction of missiological contextualization studies
becomes evident. Nonetheless, there remains significant
work to do in the further development of functional
worldview models as well as the practical application of
such insights in real communities. These tasks must be
undertaken, because in order to ask hermeneutically
useful located questions it is not enough that the
listening community be located; it must discern its
location.
The second iteration of the process happens in the
listening communitys missional encounters in the world.
Here missiological models of communication become
relevant, though I am recasting the process in terms of
worldview encounter rather than merely translation-
communication. Translatabilitythe commensurability of
worldviewsis the operative assumption,78 and linguistic
philosophy provides a great deal of insight into worldview
encounters, but the operative metaphor is dialogue. The
dialogical encounter assumes mutuality, and therefore
the goal of transforming worldviews according to the
biblical worldview is not unilateral. Rather, the
encountered communitys worldview becomes another
lens that both provides perspective and requires
transformation, and the original listening community
finds new interpretive insight in the encounter through
identification, empathy, and solidarity. In this sense, the
incarnational impulse of Christianity rejects an
imperialistic understanding of transforming worldviews
and instead seeks to understand transformation mutually
as living in dialogue and tension with the distinctiveness
of each cultural worldview, while affirming the
normativeness of the biblical metanarrative.79
5. Missional hermeneutics assumes that the listening
communitys participation in Gods mission is
epistemologically relevant.
The hermeneutical fruit of worldview transformation
according to the biblical metanarrative is the development
of missional forms of life. Forms of life, then, are both
what we do in coherence with our worldview
(determinations, applications, actualizations) and what
we do in correspondence to the reality that our worldview
presumes beyond itself. Participation in reality inevitably
reforms a worldview. If the mission of God is the true
story, the true myth, the true history of the whole
world,80 it is not just public truth81 to be told but also
truth in which the community can participate as it listens.
This is the epistemology of praxis that missional
hermeneutics learns primarily from liberation theology
but expands to a wider vision of Gods mission than just
solidarity with the poor. In short, forms of life specifically
coherent with Gods purposes beyond the listening
community reshape the communitys worldview and
thereby focus its hermeneutical lens.
To say that missional questions are epistemologically
privileged is not to say that they are determinative, nor is
it to say that all missional experience coheres equally
with the biblical metanarrative. Rather, it is to say that
missional hermeneutics affirms that intentional
engagement in mission can shed light on the meaning of
the Bibles story of mission. Stated more simply,
missional hermeneutics assumes that because the story
of the Bible is ongoing, the interpreter is able to
participate in it and therefore understand it more
completely from the inside rather than merely analyze it
from the outside. But because the biblical story is the
story of the missio Dei, only participation in the missio
Dei as such affords that hermeneutical advantage.
For similar reasons, spiritual disciplines are vitally
important to missional hermeneutics, not because they
are a tool for accessing transcendental insight or short-
circuiting the rest of the hermeneutical process through
revelatory ecstasy, but because they are the historical
churchs concrete practices of abiding in the Spirit of
Godof living in the reality that the biblical
metanarrative asserts. Narrative trinitarian spirituality
assumes that the missio Dei is currently about Gods
Spirit working before, in, and through the church in the
world. Thus, if the question is not simply What would
Jesus do? but What is the Spirit doing? then the
church needs to reappropriate spiritual disciplines for
mission and, specifically, for discernment through
missional hermeneutics.82
Finally, ministry is not an end in itself, and the
community is not a producer of goods and services
either for itself or the other. Service is a lifestyle of
communion with God in the world, upon which the
listening community reflects. One area of reflection is the
experience of Gods redemptive presence (the
actualization of human flourishing). Another area of
reflection is the experience of Gods creational presence
(the insights of cultural difference, in conjunction with
Thesis 4). Therefore, the facilitation of practical
involvement in mission is a hermeneutical commitment.
This leads to practical questions about equipping and
mobilizing community members as well as mediating
subsequent community dialogue and discernment.
Participation also spirals back to Guders question
regarding passages functions in equipping the people of
God for mission, providing another hermeneutical
handhold.

Conclusion: Revisioning the Hermeneutical

Spiral Missionally
The spiral has proven to be a helpful model for portraying
the relationship between established aspects of the
hermeneutical circulation. Specific versions of the model
are not without their problems. For example, Grant
Osbornes The Hermeneutical Spiral, which presents
probably the most influential version, utilizes Noam
Chomskys transformational grammar in a way that
reduces hermeneutics to the extraction and restatement
of underlying universal propositions.83 The spiral model
itself remains insightful, though, and the missional
theses I have proposed here serve as a course correction
for some of the major issues with Osbornes use of
transformational grammar, especially in his definition of
contextualization.84 As the missional identity and
consciousness of the listening community emerges
through the transformation of its worldview, the
hermeneutical progression assumes a missional direction.
This looks something like Figure 3:
 Figure 3
For simplicity, I enumerate a sequence of steps, though in
the life of a community the hermeneutical spiral is never
neat and sequential. It should, however, be progressive,
cyclical, and take every part of the circulation to be
theologically generative. Ultimately, missional
hermeneutics is not sui generis. The missional church
must place herself under the authority of God in
Scripture, and many of the hermeneutical tools already at
her disposal are indispensable to that calling. But the
mission of Godthe telosis what determines the
progressions trajectory and, consequently, the
hermeneutical means to that missional end. Therefore, I
suggest that the hermeneutical spiral revisioned as
essentially and thoroughly missional is a model worthy of
further exploration.

Greg McKinzie (http://gregandmeg.net/greg) is a

missionary in Arequipa, Peru, where he partners in
holistic evangelism with Team Arequipa
(http://teamarequipa.net) and The Christian Urban
Development Association (http://cudaperu.org). He is a
graduate (MDiv) of Harding School of Theology and the
managing editor of Missio Dei.

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Spirituality. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2014 [forthcoming].
Redford, Shawn B. Missiological Hermeneutics: Biblical
Interpretation for the Global Church. American Society of
Missiology Monograph Series 11. Eugene, OR: Pickwick,
2012.
Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: The Missionary
Impact on Culture. American Society of Missiology Series
13. Rev. and exp. ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2009.
Schnabel, Eckhard J. Paul the Missionary: Realities,
Strategies, and Methods. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2008.
Schreiter, Robert J. Constructing Local Theologies.
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985.
Sire, James W. Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a
Concept. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004.
Stetzer, Ed, and David Putman. Breaking the Missional
Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your
Community. Kindle ed. Nashville: Broadman and Holman,
2006.
Thiselton, Anthony C. Hermeneutics: An Introduction.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.
Van Gelder, Craig, and Dwight J. Zscheile. The Missional
Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the
Conversation. The Missional Network. Kindle ed. Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.
Van Rheenen, Gailyn. Syncretism and Contextualization:
The Church on a Journey Defining Itself.
In Contextualization and Syncretism: Navigating Cultural
Currents, ed. Gailyn Van Rheenen, 129. Evangelical
Missiological Society Series 13. Pasadena, CA: William
Carey Library, 2006.
Vanhoozer, Kevin J. The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-
Linguistic Approach to Christian Doctrine. Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox, 2005.
Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian
History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis, 1996.
Willard, Dallas. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding
How God Changes Lives. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God: Unlocking
the Bibles Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, IL: IVP
Academic, 2006.
Wright, N. T. Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and
Theology in Early Christianity. Inaugural Lecture.
University of St. Andrews. St. Marys College (Faculty of
Divinity). October 26,
2011. http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_StAndrews_Inaug
ural.htm.
________. The New Testament and the People of God. Vol. 1
of Christian Origins and the Question of God. London:
SPCK, 1992.
________. Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read
the Bible Today. New York: HarperOne, 2005.
1This is meant to be a generalization about tendencies.
Notable exceptions can be found, for example, in chapters
of George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder, eds., The
Church between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging
Mission in North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).
2Craig Van Gelder and Dwight J. Zscheile, The Missional
Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the
Conversation, The Missional Network, Kindle ed. (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 3639.
3 Ibid., 16869.
4 I do not intend this terminology to evoke the technical
usages developed among the Church
Fathers; theoria and historia here respectively denote
reflection or contemplation and event or
actualization in a basic sense, without promoting a
spectator epistemology on the theoretical end or an
empiricist epistemology on the historical end.
5 Adam D. Ayers, In Search of the Contours of a
Missiological Hermeneutic, unpublished dissertation
(Fuller Theological Seminary, May 2011), 1819,
perceptively distinguishes between mission hermeneutics
(those done in mission), missional hermeneutics (those
done conscious of Gods and the churchs mission
orientation), and missiological hermeneutics (those
done self-analytically through critical disciplines). Since
my hope is that missional hermeneutics will become
increasingly more missiological, I will use the
term missional for the hermeneutics that intends to
synthesize all three perspectives insights.
6This sentence serves to highlight my caveat about the
descriptive nature of Figure 2. The Doctrine emphasis in
missional theology is not necessarilyconfigured in
contradistinction from the scriptural concerns of the
Witness emphasis; the distinction is purely a description
of where current interlocutors place their theological
accents. Likewise, placing the theme Gods Kingdom in
relation to the theological norm of experience does not
serve to make a hard separation from the norm of
Scripture. Kingdom is obviously a biblical category. Still,
many who emphasize the kingdom in missional theology
do so in terms of participation in Gods kingdom as it
unfolds in the world beyond and before the church. The
theological emphasis of the kingdom theme falls on the
experience of participation in Gods kingdom purposes.
This is not unbiblicalfar from itbut it does reveal a
different location on the continuum of theological
emphases than that of the narrative theme.
7Greg McKinzie, An Abbreviated Introduction to the
Concept of Missio Dei, Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional
Theology and Praxis 1 (August 2010): 920.
8David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in
Theology of Mission, American Society of Missiology Series
16 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 390.
9 See variously: Decree Ad Gentes on the Mission Activity
of the Church
2, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatica
n_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_ad-
gentes_en.html; Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An
Introduction to the Theology of Mission, rev. ed. (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 1; Bosch, 9, 390, 519.
10Newbigin, Open Secret, 65. Van Gelder and Zscheile,
534, note that one issue in the seminal work Missional
Church remains unresolved in much of the missional
church literature:
One is left with a missional church that has two
underintegrated views of the work of God in the world in
relation to the missio Dei and the reign of God. One view
posits a missional church shaped primarily by the
message of Jesus and responsible for embodying and
emulating the life that Jesus lived. The other view
proposes a missional church shaped primarily by the
power and presence of the Spirit, who creates, gifts,
empowers, and leads the church into engaging in a series
of ecclesial practices. Clearly all these authors understood
these views to be complementary. But the argument in
the book did not adequately integrate the sending work of
God in relation to the work of the Son and the work of the
Spirit.
The critique offered here does not argue that the authors
did not have an understanding of the person and work of
Christ or the person and work of the Spirit; evidence is
clear that they did. Rather, the point being made is that
utilizing primarily a Western view of the Trinity can lead
to a functional modalism where the works of the three
persons of God become separated from one another.
The point is well made. I suggest, in fact, that many of the
themes and emphases I will plot here remain
unintegrated or unappreciated, depending on the
interlocutor, and should be brought together
comprehensively. Taken as a whole, though, missional
thinkers are an identifiable group, and between them the
underintegrated ideas are presentincluding social
trinitarian ideas that balance the Western view.
Nonetheless, the authors make a helpful observation that
I hope a return to Newbigins theological framework can
help address.
11 Newbigin, Open Secret, 58.
Jrgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit:
12

A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, trans. Margaret

Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 6465; see also 1011.
13 Newbigin, Open Secret, 47.
14 Ibid., 48.
15 Ibid., 49.
16Darrell L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the
Sending of the Church in North America, Gospel and Our
Culture Series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), ch. 4.
See Van Gelder and Zscheile, 5659, for a nuanced
account of the diverse views of the kingdom present
in Missional Church, which is also relevant to the Ministry
quadrant discussed below.
17In a personal communication, Mark Powell suggested
that it is better to speak of participating in the ongoing
ministry of Jesus instead of continuing Jesus ministry.
For a fuller statement, see Mark Powell, Centered in God:
The Trinity and Christian Spirituality (Abilene, TX: ACU
Press, 2014 [forthcoming]). This distinction, which
emphasizes the present activity of the resurrected Lord, is
consonant with Newbigins comments on the present
sovereignty of the Spirit in mission. Additionally, for
Newbigin continuance is chastened in terms of
cruciformity and therefore hiddenness (Newbigin, Open
Secret, 5255). See also Michael Gormans work on the
connection between cruciformity, participation in Christ,
and mission: Michael J. Gorman, Participation and
Mission in Paul, Cross Talk ~ Crux Probat
Omnia, http://www.michaeljgorman.net/2011/12/12/pa
rticipation-and-mission-in-paul vis--vis Michael J.
Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis,
Justification, and Theosis in Pauls Narrative Soteriology,
Kindle ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009).
18Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to
Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church,
rev. and updated Kindle ed. (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks,
2013), Kindle locs. 46364.
David Fitch, Missiology Precedes Ecclesiology: The
19

Epistemological Problem, Reclaiming the

Mission, http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/?p=187.
Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, ReJesus: A Wild
20

Messiah for a Missional Church, Kindle ed. (Grand Rapids:

BakerBooks, 2009), Kindle loc. 903.
Ed Stetzer and David Putman, Breaking the Missional
21

Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your

Community, Kindle ed. (Nashville: Broadman and Holman,
2006), Kindle locs. 85397.
22 Newbigin, Open Secret, 30.
23Mark Love, Missio Dei, Trinitarian Theology, and the
Quest for a Post-Colonial Missiology, Missio Dei: A
Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 1 (August 2010):
4445; cf. Van Gelder and Zscheile, 11114.
24 Love, 46; emphasis added.
25This is somewhat different than, but related to, Van
Gelder and Zscheiles generalized secular views of missio
Dei and the reign of God, which they make in distinction
from specialized views and their preferred integrated
view, 5659. In the (Re)Creational direction, a missional
interlocutor may focus more or less on the role of God
through the Holy Spirit or the role of the church.
26See Terence E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old
Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville:
Abingdon, 2005), for an incisive biblical account of the
relational dynamics between God and creation that
pertain to a particularly missional creational theology.
See especially pp. 1013 for a correction to the
overpowering redemptive concerns that mark much of the
traditional doctrine of creation, thereby distorting a
biblical vision of original creation, ongoing creation, and
renewed creation.
27In this usage of ministry, I have in
mind diakonia according to Jesus understanding of his
humble, sacrificial relationship to the world (Mark 10:35
45), which carries significant political implications
regarding the churchs way of life in the world. For a
similar use of diakonia, see Paul S. Chung, Reclaiming
Mission as Constructive Theology: Missional Church and
World Christianity, Kindle ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade
Books, 2012), Kindle locs. 353644.
For a positive assessment, see Van Gelder and Zscheile,
28

11415; but see pp. 1067 for an important critique of

christomonism under the guise of an incarnational
approach and the instrumentalism that incarnational
missional approaches often evince.
29Van Gelder and Zscheile, 60. I agree that this is a major,
perhaps the major, discrepancy among missional church
thinkers. Very similarly to the point I make above, they
state:
Newbigin had focused on the churchs role in the
engagement of gospel and culture, a focus that was also
the initial conversation for the first decade of the GOCN.
An important implication of this perspective shift [away
from culture] in Missional Church is that much of the
missional literature today fails to adequately engage the
complex interaction between the gospel and our culture(s).
It tends to follow the logic of the approach of a sending
God. This logic conceives of the world as something out
there into which the church is being sent. The churchs
embeddedness in culture is left unexplored, and the
reciprocal interactions between church and culture are
left unexamined. (61)
This is essentially the point of the distinction I draw
between missional and missiological.
30 Guder, Missional Church, 102.
31Bryant L. Myers, Walking with the Poor: Principles and
Practices of Transformational Development, Rev. and exp.
Kindle ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011) Kindle locs.
631618.
32 Ibid., Kindle locs. 633034.
33Mortimer Arias, Announcing the Reign of God:
Evangelization and the Subversive Memory of Jesus (Lima,
OH: Academic Renewal Press, 1984); C. Ren
Padilla, Mission between the Times, rev. and exp. ed.
(Carlisle, England: Langham Monographs, 2013); Orlando
E. Costas, Liberating News: A Theology of Contextual
Evangelization (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1989);
Samuel Escobar, The New Global Mission: The Gospel
from Everywhere to Everyone, Christian Doctrine in
Global Perspective (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003), ch. 9.
34Anthony C. Thiselton, Hermeneutics: An
Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 261, states
the technical definition clearly and succinctly:
Praxis, Berryman urges, is not merely practice in
opposition to theory, but theory and practical conduct
based on theory. The term is often misused to mean
merely practice in Christian circles, and its
philosophical and technical origins in Aristotle, Hegel,
Feuerbach, Marx, and Sartre are often forgotten. Richard
Bernstein helps us to put the record straight. Marx uses
the term when he observes in his eleventh thesis on
Feuerbach: The philosophers have only interpreted the
world in various ways; the point is to change it (italics in
original). In practice this involves a going out of oneself
and a commitment to God and our neighbor.
35The exemplar here is undoubtedly the bulk of
Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking
the Bibles Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: IVP
Academic, 2006).
36Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Pauls or Ours?,
American ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962 [1912]),
establishes this field of study. Recent works in the
tradition of Allens work include Eckhard J.
Schnabel, Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies, and
Methods (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2008) and Robert L.
Plummer and John Mark Terry, eds., Pauls Missionary
Methods: In His Time and Ours (Downers Grove, IL: IVP,
2012).
37In other words, how the missionary contextualizes the
message. A. Scott Moreau, Contextualization in World
Missions: Mapping and Assessing Evangelical
Models (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2012), presents a thorough
picture of the field at present.
38Martin Khler, Schriften zur Christologie und Mission:
Gesamtausgabe der Schriften zur Mission, Theologische
Bcherei 42 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971), 190,
quoted in Bosch, 16.
39Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary
Impact on Culture, American Society of Missiology Series
13, rev. and exp. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2009), chs. 1
2; see also Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in
Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of
Faith(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), ch. 3.
40 Chris Wright, 441:
We turn now to a section of the biblical canon that is
often neglected in books about the biblical foundations for
mission (as it often has been in books on biblical theology
in general also): the Wisdom Literature. For here we find
within the Scriptures of ancient Israel a broad tradition of
faith and ethics built on a worldview that employs the
wide-angle lens of precisely this whole-creation and
whole-humanity perspective.
We will observe, first, how Wisdom thinkers and writers
in Israel participated in a very international dialogue, with
an openness to discern the wisdom of God in cultures
other than their own. In this respect it models the kind of
bridging dynamic that is part of the missional task of
contextualization. Second, we will observe how Wisdom
takes its predominant motivation for its ethic from the
creation traditions, rather than the historical redemptive
story of Israelthus again setting up a more
universalizing tendency.
Cf. Fretheim, ch. 7.
41By this I refer to a trinitarian theology that begins with
the biblical story of Father, Son, and Spirit, thereby
considering Gods nature on the basis of Scripture rather
than speculative ontology. Love, 4344, summarizes this
point in relation to Jrgen Moltmanns and Wolfhart
Pannenbergs theologies:
First, by choosing a biblical starting place as opposed to
philosophical, they establish the priority of three persons
without the encumbrances of an exclusively relations-of-
origin viewpoint of God. Gods identity is not defined
beforehand in relation to speculative attributes or
characteristics, but precisely through the activity of
Father, Son, and Spirit within history. . . .
Second, the relations of Father, Son, and Spirit are seen
most clearly in relation to the kingdom of God. For
Pannenberg, the drama of the kingdom reveals a much
richer set of relations in the Trinity than relations-of-
origin.
42Chris Wright, 6364, describes teleological
monotheism, a vital contribution to a narrative
trinitarian theology:
The Bible presents itself to us fundamentally as a
narrative, a historical narrative at one level, but a grand
metanarrative at another.
It begins with the God of purpose in creation
moves on to the conflict and problem generated by
human rebellion against that purpose
spends most of its narrative journey in the story of
Gods redemptive purposes being worked out on the
stage of human history
finishes beyond the horizon of its own history with
the eschatological hope of a new creation
This has often been presented as a four-point
narrative: creation, fall, redemption, and future hope. This
whole worldview is predicated on teleological monotheism:
that is, the affirmation that there is one God at work in
the universe and in human history, and that this God has
a goal, a purpose, a mission that will ultimately be
accomplished by the power of Gods Word and for the
glory of Gods name. This is the mission of the biblical
God.
 Regarding the primary tensions in missional theology,
43

Van Gelder and Zscheile, 69, state:

The key issue, comprised of two closely related questions,
is: to what extent are we simply dealing with human
agency, and to what extent is Gods agency operative and
discernible within human choices? This issue represents
a significant distinction that allows us to discern several
branches of the missional conversation. The dividing line
between branches revolves around the extent to which
one starts with the mission of the church and the extent to
which one starts with the mission of God; when starting
with the mission of God, it also has to do with how robust
the trinitarian theology is. This dividing line around the
issue of agency is related to the issue of theological
imagination. The key question is: how do we understand
Gods presence in the world, in general, and in the midst
of the church, in particular?
The answer to the latter question, which also addresses
the former, is: eschatologically. To borrow Ren Padillas
phrasing, mission is essentially between the times. This
robustly trinitarian affirmation deals with the questions of
agency and presence in terms of the Holy Spirit, through
whom alone the church participates in the already of the
kingdom and by whom the churchs words and deeds may
become a manifestation of the kingdom (Padilla, Mission,
204). If christologically centered incarnational ministry
can devolve into mere human agency and kingdom
building, it is because imitation of Jesus is not perforce
tantamount to the Spirits witness to Jesus Christ as
Lord through the church (ibid., 205).
44For a thorough understanding of holism and the
systemic nature of human wellbeing and poverty, see
Myers, chs. 14; see also C. Ren Padilla, Holistic
Mission, in Evangelical Advocacy: A Response to Global
Poverty, Holistic Mission (2012), Papers, PDF Files, and
Presentations, Book 9, 12
24, http://place.asburyseminary.edu/theologyofpovertyp
apers/9.
45George R. Hunsberger, Proposals for a Missional
Hermeneutic: Mapping a Conversation, Missiology: An
International Review 39, no. 3 (July 2011): 30921.
46 Ibid., 313.
47That is, on their formational nature rather than their
propositional nature. Darrell L. Guder, Missional
Hermeneutics: The Missional Authority of Scripture
Interpreting Scripture as Missional Formation, Mission
Focus: Annual Review 15 (2007): 113.
48James V. Brownson, Speaking the Truth in Love: New
Testament Resources for a Missional Hermeneutic,
Christian Mission and Modern Culture (Harrisburg, PA:
Trinity Press International, 1998), 14.
49Michael Barram, A Response at AAR to Hunsbergers
Proposals Essay, The Gospel and Our Culture
Network, Jan. 28,
2009, http://www.gocn.org/resources/articles/response-
aar-hunsberger-s-proposals-essay; cf. Michael Barram,
Located Questions for a Missional Hermeneutic, The
Gospel and Our Culture Network, Nov. 1,
2006, http://www.gocn.org/resources/articles/located-
questions-missional-hermeneutic.
50Michael Barram, The Bible, Missions, and Social
Location: Toward a Missional
Hermeneutic, Interpretation 61, no. 1 (January 2007): 49.
51 Ibid., 51.
52 Hunsberger, 318.
53James V. Brownson, A Response at SBL to
Hunsbergers Proposals... Essay, The Gospel and Our
Culture Network, Jan. 28,
2009, http://www.gocn.org/resources/articles/response-
sbl-hunsbergers-proposals-essay.
54 Barram, The Bible, 45.
55I refer to the listening community rather than the
reading community fundamentally because listening is a
richer biblical metaphor for the dynamics of hermeneutics
and the posture of the community. From the initial God
said (Gen 1:1), through the Shema (Deut 6:4) and the
prophetic I heard (Isa 6:8), to Jesuss exhortations, Let
anyone with ears to hear listen! (Mark 4:9, 23, and pars.)
and Pay attention to how you listen (Luke 8:18), the
community is invited to listen and hear. Missional
hermeneutics is not the strategy of the reading subject
but the posture of the listening community.
56Michael W. Goheen, Continuing Steps towards a
Missional Hermeneutic, Fideles: A Journal of Redeemer
Pacific College 3 (2008): 57.
57From 1999 to 2012 Goheen was Geneva Professor of
Religious and Worldview Studies at Trinity Western
University. Chris Wright also works with the categories of
metanarrative and worldview; see fn. 40 above. N. T.
Wright, who is highly influential among missional
thinkers (see below), likewise makes extensive use of
worldview theory. Newbigin, as the father of missional
theology, naturally sets the stage with his use of
worldview; see, e.g., Open Secret, 2529, where he
explicitly interfaces worldview with Michael Polanyis
theory of personal knowledge. Guder, Missional Church,
121, discusses the churchs alterity in terms of the
biblical worldview. Searches of books such as The
Shaping of Things to Come and Breaking the Missional
Code demonstrate that missional church literature is rife
with references to worldview. Likewise, if my model of
missional theology is valid, it is appropriate to note that
on the missiological end of the spectrum worldview is a
working assumption. See, e.g., throughout all of the
following: Robert J. Schreiter, Constructing Local
Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985); Stephen B.
Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, rev. and exp. ed.,
Faith and Cultures (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002); Paul G.
Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological
Understanding of How People Change (Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2008); Charles H. Kraft, Worldview for
Christian Witness (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library,
2008); but cf. Moreau, 14849.
58 Thiselton, 1316.
59See Epistemological Trends in the West, in To Stake a
Claim: Mission and the Western Crisis of Knowledge, ed. J.
Andrew Kirk and Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 1999), 317, for a summary of issues in current
epistemology.
60See David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a
Concept (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), and James W.
Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a
Concept (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), for a thorough
understanding of worldviews progressive development.
For example, it is evident that the idea
of Weltanschauung that Wittgenstein rejected (taking it to
be basically synonymous with philosophy) is no longer
in use, not least because his own thought radically
reshaped the idea of worldview.
61Ayers, esp. chs. 3 and 6, is a noteworthy synthesis of
Hieberts and Krafts understandings of worldview with
issues of preunderstanding in Hans-Georg Gadamer,
Michel Foucault, Jean-Franois Lyotard, and Peter L.
Berger and Thomas Luckmann. As Brownson, Speaking,
10, says in reference to Gadamers use of horizon, the
very image of horizon implies cosmos, a world that is in
view. That world in turn implies a cosmology, a
comprehensive and synthetic perspective that makes
understanding possible at all and that enables meaning
to take shape. This is a very apt description of worldview.
62 Brownson, Speaking, 15; Brownson, Response.
63See Dean Flemming, Contextualization in the New
Testament: Patterns for Theology and Mission (Downers
Grove, IL: IVP, 2005).
64 Brownson, Speaking, 43.
65Chris Wright, chs. 12; Goheen and Bartholomew
collaborate on two complementary volumes. The first, The
Drama of Scripture, presents the whole biblical narrative
missionally. The second, Living at the Crossroads, brings
the missional narrative to bear on a discussion of
Christian worldview. Goheen authors a third volume, A
Light to the Nations, which is effectively an exercise in
ecclesiology along the lines traced in the previous two
books. Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W.
Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the
Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004);
Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew, Living at
the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian
Worldview (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008);
Michael W. Goheen, A Light to the Nations: The Missional
Church and the Biblical Story(Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2011).
66Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission: Christian
Witness in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2003), ch. 4; see also Ayers, 20513, on the
inevitability of metanarratives and therefore the need to
critique them constructively rather than decry them.
67 Browson, Speaking, 36.
68See especially Goheen and Bartholomew in both of their
volumes and Goheen, The Mission of Gods People and
Biblical Interpretation: Exploring N. T. Wrights Missional
Hermeneutic, A Dialogue with N. T. Wright, Scripture
and Hermeneutics Seminar Meeting, San Francisco,
November 18, 2011, http://64.64.27.114/~mission/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/Missional-Hermeneutic-A-
Dialogue-with-NT-Wright.pdf.
69N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of
God, vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of
God (London: SPCK, 1992), passim; N. T. Wright,
Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in Early
Christianity, Inaugural Lecture, University of St.
Andrews, St. Marys College (Faculty of Divinity), October
26,
2011, http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_StAndrews_Inaug
ural.htm. For an incisive explanation of Wrights
methodology, see Edward W. Klink and Darian R.
Lockett, Understanding Biblical Theology: A Comparison of
Theory and Practice (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012),
part 3, Biblical Theology as Worldview-Story.
N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to
70

Read the Bible Today (New York: HarperOne, 2005), ch. 8.

71 Ibid., xi.
72Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-
Linguistic Approach to Christian Doctrine (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox, 2005), esp. ch. 3.
73Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel
and Western Culture, Kindle ed. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1986), Kindle locs. 76772; Lesslie
Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Kindle ed.
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 99.
74 Ibid., Kindle loc. 1611.
75 Newbigin, Open Secret, 27.
76J. Andrew Kirk, How a Missiologist Utilizes the Bible,
in Bible and Mission: A Conversation between Biblical
Studies and Missiology, ed. Rollin G. Grams, et al.
(Schwarzenfeld, Germany: Neufeld Verlag, 2008), 251,
refers to the world-wide church in mission as a
hermeneutical community.
77Analysis is not merely technical or scientific but also
sapiential and artistic. The best practitioners of
contextualization, perhaps especially at the level of
worldview analysis, demonstrate that the process is as
much art as science and is, thus, impossible to apply
mechanically.
Paul
78 G. Hiebert, Missiological Implications of
Epistemological Shifts: Affirming Truth in a
Modern/Postmodern World, Christian Mission and Modern
Culture (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International,
1999), 8794.
79In particular, contextualization needs to be reconceived
in dialogical terms. Current models, concerned with
syncretism, aim for exchange of the worldview of
Christian revelation for the worldview of this or that other
faith whatever it might be (Hesselgrave) or assume the
conflictual posture of challenging competing worldviews
(Van Rheenen). Replacement and competition metaphors
unfortunately paint worldview transformation in
aggressive and totalizing rather than humble and
dialogical colors. As veteran missionaries and
consummate missiologists, Hesselgrave and Van Rheenen
undoubtedly speak from experiences of radical difference,
entrenchment, and conflictwhich highlights the need for
practical conflict mediation skills in the hermeneutics of
dialogical missional encountersbut they unnecessarily
portray worldview transformation in essentially
contentious terms that undermine dialogue. Gailyn Van
Rheenen, Syncretism and Contextualization: The Church
on a Journey Defining Itself, in Contextualization and
Syncretism: Navigating Cultural Currents, ed. Gailyn Van
Rheenen, Evangelical Missiological Society Series 13
(Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2006), 23; David J.
Hesselgrave, Syncretism: Mission and Missionary
Induced? in Contextualization and Syncretism, 78. See
Michael W. Goheen, Bible and Mission: Missiology and
Biblical Scholarship in Dialogue, in Christian Mission:
Old Testament Foundations and New Testament
Developments, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Cynthia Long
Westfall, McMaster New Testament Studies Series
(Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010) 22630, for a helpful view
of the basic tension between mission and culture that
underlies this discussion.
80 N. T. Wright, New Testament, 471.
81 Ibid., 42.
82See Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines:
Understanding How God Changes Lives (New York:
HarperCollins, 1991), xixii, for an understanding of the
disciplines that I find to be essentially missionalthat is,
about the churchs life in the world rather than
individualistic spiritual growth. Shawn B.
Redford, Missiological Hermeneutics: Biblical Interpretation
for the Global Church, American Society of Missiology
Monograph Series 11 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 100
32, makes the point quite forcefully that hermeneutics is
foremost a spiritual act.
83Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A
Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, rev.
and exp. Kindle ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), chs. 4
and 17.
84 Ibid., Kindle locs. 9755806