[Caveat: I am responding to the book as I go rather than producing a well-thought response. Things may annoy me now that won't when I see the whole vision of the book.]
Mission that claims the high spiritual ground of preaching only [sic!] a gospel of personal forgiveness and salvation without the radical challenge of the full biblical demands of God's justices and compassion, without a hunger and thirst for justice, may well expose those who respond to its partial truths to the same dangerous verdict....if faith without works is dead, mission without social compassion and justice is biblically deficient. p. 288
Yes, yes, yes: but it is the conceptual looseness that confuses me here. Is social action part of 'mission'? (Actually, I have a problem with the term 'social action' anyway). Or is social action the result of mission? Or is social action mission? The false dichotomies and straw men don't help. He is attacking nameless opponents: do they exist? Who knows? As he says:
There may be an element of caricature in the way I have sketched this view, but it is not unrepresentative of a certain brand of popular mission rhetoric. p. 280
This is frankly annoying. We are in the middle of what purports to be a scholarly work and what we get is hearsay and gossip! Come on, Chris! I am not interested in whether you can show up a 'certain brand of popular etc.' Who cares? Find a serious thinker who would oppose you and show where THEY are wrong and that your argument is stronger.
In this section, where Wright starts to use the OT to draw ethical implications for Christians today, I start to scratch my head, as I did with his OT Ethics book. It just seems so arbitrarily done, or done with so little reference to the distinctive character of the Church qua Church and Israel qua Israel. Unless you are quite ruthlessly and unbiblically supercessionist, you can't just say that the Church adopts the habits and marks of Israel except in a carefully qualified way. I remain to be convinced as to whether the qualifications have been made here. But I have a long way to read!
Is the Jubilee such a prominent theme that it warrants a whole chapter? Also: I will be very interested to see what he does with the wars of conquest. Mission in OT perspective was carried out by means of the sword! (no index entries under 'Conquest' or 'War' I note)...
4 comments:
Hello Michael,
Have followed with interest your comments on this book.
I think your critique of his statements is quite acccurate, though my viewpoint as a missionary actually living and ministering in the Midddle East is not the same as yours.
Those missionaries who are most intent on making converts are often those who are moving into new areas and being quite creative in doing so. I don't know of a single missionary here (and I know many) who would say that social action, or attending to physical needs, is not part of our integral ministry.
They would rather say, as would I, that such a ministry WITHOUT a clear presentation of the message of salvation in Christ is jejune.
I think that point is incontrovertible. I am guessing you agree?
The first sentence you quote seems to hint not at social action as mission or part of mission, but implies social compassion and justice should be preached. Is the point that these things are part of God's mission, so they should be preached? I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say - reading quotes gives even less of an idea of the vision of the whole book than you have!
Find a serious thinker who would oppose you and show where THEY are wrong and that your argument is stronger.
Is responding to a particular thinker the only way of working? There are advantages to doing so (a more clearly defined method, avoiding straw men and so on), but mightn't it be possible to look at a broader culture (or rhetoric of culture), which may not be accurately represented in the work of any one 'thinker'?
Yes, but he provides not a single example or quote from that culture. So, how do we know that anyone actually thinks this?
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