A Missional Method for Constructive Theology (Part 5)

So far, I have sketched my question, thesis, and working definitions of missional, and missiology. In this post, I briefly survey recent proposals for missional theological method from Stephen Bevans, Paul Chung, Stan Nussbaum, and Jason Sexton.[1. When I wrote this survey, Sexton’s book, The End of Theology: Shaping Theology for the Sake of Mission (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2016), had not come out. I will undoubtedly review it separately.]

Stephen Bevans: Missional Systematic Theology

Catholic missionary-theologians Robert Schreiter and Stephen Bevans have, for longer than anyone else, worked to develop a consciously missiological vision of constructive theology. Their now classic works, Constructing Local Theologies (1985) and Models of Contextual Theology (1992) are standards in the missiological study of contextualization, and both theologians have lived with one foot firmly in systematic theology and the other in missiology.[2. Robert J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985); Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, Faith and Cultures, rev. and exp. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002). See also Robert J. Schrieter, “Cutting-Edge Issues in Theology and Their Bearing on Mission Studies,” Missiology: An International Review 24, no. 1 (January 1996): 83–92; Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today, American Society of Missiology Series 30, Kindle ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004).] In a 2008 article, Bevans characterizes his career, patterned on Schreiter’s work: “I am trained in systematic theology and still see myself as a systematic theologian, but I do theology from a definite missiological perspective, developing into a mission or missional systematic theologian.”[3. Stephen Bevans, “DB 4100: The God of Jesus Christ—A Case Study for a Missional Systematic Theology,” Theological Education 43, no. 2 (2008): 107.] In this article, his missional development is on full display as Bevans presents the revised curriculum at Catholic Theological Union and, in particular, his class on the doctrine of God as a case study in “missional systematic theology.” The class, called “Witness and Proclamation: The God of Jesus Christ,” comprises four elements, which actually form a pedagogy for missional theological education; by the same token, they constitute the theological method Bevans imparts to his students. As the trinitarian focus of missional theology already suggests, the doctrine of God is perhaps the easiest to develop as a case study, but Bevans goes beyond suggesting that the typical missional account of the Trinity is the proper point of departure for constructive theology, or even that it is paradigmatic for developing other loci missionally. Too briefly put, he commends (1) the method of practical theology (praxis-theory-praxis), (2) sensitive intercultural and interreligious dialogue based on rootedness in one’s own culture, (3) emphasis on the priority of the mysterious presence of the Holy Spirit in history and in the mission of Jesus, and (4) a social, relational account of the Trinity that warrants 1–3.

Paul Chung: Mission as Constructive Theology

The most ambitious endeavor to develop a missional theological method so far is Paul Chung’s 2012 volume, Reclaiming Mission as Constructive Theology: Missional Church and World Christianity. He develops a richly hermeneutical and anthropological account of missiological theology with which I am extremely sympathetic:

Mission as constructive theology is not isolated from other theological disciplines, but entails an interdisciplinary implication for theology in engagement with cultural anthropology, comparative study of religion, and cultural theory of interpretation. I argue that we must reclaim mission as constructive, public theology in a hermeneutical-practical manner for the sake of embarking on innovative initiatives in missional theology. In other words, missiology as a hermeneutical-practical discipline provides an academic locus for the interdisciplinary investigation of God’s mission, the church, congregational study, and culture. It employs the methodologies of theology, hermeneutics, anthropology, history, intercultural relations, and communications.[4. Paul S. Chung, Reclaiming Mission as Constructive Theology: Missional Church and World Christianity (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012), Kindle locs. 358–63.]

Though missiology is an “academic locus” in mission as constructive theology, Chung unfortunately still characterizes missiology as “a complementary science to other theological disciplines.”[5. Ibid., Kindle loc. 395.] This phrasing fails to capture the integrative vision he otherwise holds forth, which is the critical aspect of his proposal for the present study. Chung, in other words, takes a huge step toward a participatory, interdisciplinary missional theology that is anthropologically intercultural, narratively hermeneutical, and publicly constructive. In the course of the book, though, the anthropological dimension remains underdeveloped from a missiological viewpoint.

Stan Nussbaum: Missiology as Queen of Theology

“What we missiologists are asking for is not a bigger slice of the pie, it is a total restructuring of theology as a discipline,” states Stan Nussbaum with admirable candor.[6. Stan Nussbaum, “A Future for Missiology as the Queen of Theology,” Missiology: An International Review 42, no. 1 (January 2013): 58.] His proposal begins by characterizing modern and postmodern theological models. Modern theology is a pyramid with the doctrine of God at the base, and other doctrines are the truths built on top—truths that practitioners (including missiologists) can apply. Postmodern theology is a menu of competing methods that disparately match theological constants with components of the life context. Unlike modern theology, postmodern theology does not attempt to construct a comprehensive system, because it rejects all metanarratives. By contrast, Nussbaum advocates a missional model:

The missional model of theological structure has the coherence of the modern but unlike the modern, it starts with the reign of God, that is, God’s interaction with the world, rather than God’s attributes in timeless detachment. The proclamation of the kingdom replaces the doctrine of God as the first topic of theology, and engagement with the world replaces philosophy as the standard of theology.[7. Ibid., 61.]

Whereas modern theology focuses on “timeless truths” to the detriment of narrative, and postmodern theology focuses on “timely connections” without metanarrative, missional theology is concerned with the metanarrative of God’s already/not yet reign.[8. Ibid., 62–63.] Nussbaum believes that if theologians would begin with the reign of God—the metanarrative of mission—rather than the doctrine of God or the context, “they would reconfigure their discipline, crown missiology the queen of theology, and inject mission into the heart of church identity and life.”[9. Ibid., 63.] He is aware that his caricature of the alternatives is exaggerated and provocative, but he also knows they are near enough to basic tendencies in theological method to merit consideration.

Jason Sexton: Systematic Theology as Missional Theology’s Missing Ingredient

Finally, Jason Sexton argues that “in its current shape, much of missional theology seems to be developing with an overwhelming and perplexing disregard for systematic theology.”[10. Jason S. Sexton, “Missional Theology’s Missing Ingredient: The Necessity of Systematic Theology for Today’s Mission,” Mission Studies 32, no. 3 (2015): 384–97.] This is the case because missional theology dislikes abstractions and systematic constructs, without which (properly understood) missional theology is guilty of methodological irresponsibility. Sexton believes that systematic theology actually has a missional form (the coherent shape of the gospel), a missional content (the whole gospel), and missional aim (articulation of the gospel). In short:

Theology must be understood and constructed as a missional enterprise. Mission must also not be thought of as taking shape in any other way than the way it most naturally does—systematically—accounting for all reality under Jesus’ lordship and in relation to him as the foundation of our faith. Systematic theology takes shape both whilst on mission and as part of the church’s mission.[11. Ibid., 391.]

Sexton is interested in revising missional theology systematically and not the reverse. His claim is that systematic theology is always already missional by nature. This does not take into account the history of Western theology or the particular character of missional theology, but it does put a finger on missional theology’s methodological lacuna and reiterates the fundamental question: if missional theology seeks something like a coherent, comprehensive articulation of Christian theology, how should it proceed? If it is not enough to be merely “systematic,” what constructive method might serve missional theology’s commitments?

***

All four of these proposals contribute something to the development of a missional method for constructive theology. Bevans highlights the importance of sensitive intercultural and interreligious dialogue based on rootedness in one’s own culture. Yet, what, methodologically, would be the basis for this cultural sensitivity? Chung indicates, in partial answer to this question, the importance of an interdisciplinary method. But what, specifically, do anthropology and intercultural studies offer? In my view, the missiological conception of worldview stands out among other resources. Similarly, what would it mean to crown missiology as the queen of theology as Nussbaum proposes? The competing narratives of postmodernity are irreducibly cultural. Every rendition of the metanarrative of God’s mission must inevitably confront two methodological problems: its own cultural influences and the worldviews with which it engages (not to mention the worldviews represented in theology’s scriptural sources). Likewise, any account of all reality, which Sexton identifies as the subject of a properly systematic missional theology, calls for profound cultural consciousness.

Across the board, the sort of methodological basis that a missiological conception of worldview can provide proves indispensable for the development of the truly praxeological, interdisciplinary, narratological, and systematic theological method that recent missional proposals call for. Subsequent posts will explore a conception of worldview that might serve a missional theological method.

---

Notes

A Missional Method for Constructive Theology (Part 4)

Missiology in Theological Perspective

Because missiology’s relationship to the rest of the theological curriculum has been uncertain since its inception, the discipline’s definition itself highlights the a methodological question for my approach to missional theology. How does the study of mission relate to constructive theology? The historical transitions from the juxtaposition of “theology and mission” as discrete activities to a robust exploration of the “theology of mission” and finally to a “missional theology” put a fine point on the issue.[1. Darrell Likens Guder, “From Mission and Theology to Missional Theology,” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, n.s., 24, no. 1 (2003): 36–54, reviews these transitions deftly.] If missiology is a discrete sub-discipline of “practical theology,” mission is not likely to function as a basis for theological method.[2. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis McDonagh (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1976), 357–58, 413, portrays the classic location of missiology as a sub-discipline of practical theology.] The theology of mission would likewise seem to be a single locus of constructive theology rather than a methodological crux. Hence, the emergence of missional also marks a revisioning of missiology as a discipline.[3. Craig 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), 35, thus include the “renewal of missiology” among the theological concepts that define missional. This does not offer much conceptually, however, and they rightly present the “renewal” as the culmination of the other five developments listed above.]

This is not to say that missiology, or even its subset “theology of mission,” is coterminous with the missional theology movement, but the major components of missional theology have all developed in the context of ecumenical missiology and are arguably indistinguishable from an account of its major late modern developments, except for one. In this regard, it is vital to note that Van Gelder and Zscheile contrast the convergence of missional theology toward missio Dei and the reign of God (represented by Newbigin) with the divergence precipitated by evangelical missiologists’ entrenchment in “classical evangelical themes of the modern missions movement” (represented by Donald McGavran).[4. Van Gelder and Zscheile, 33–36.] This is critically important for defining missiology in relation to missional theology, because McGavran also represents the burgeoning of missiological anthropology, which thrived among evangelicals in a way unparalleled in mainline missiology.[5. For a review of this bifurcation, see Robert Montgomery, “Can Missiology Incorporate More of the Social Sciences,” Missiology: An International Review 40, no. 3 (July 2012): 281–92.] While McGavran’s Church Growth Movement utilized anthropological insights in order to advance the agenda of the modern missions movement (especially cross-cultural evangelization and “church planting”), missiological anthropology quickly led beyond the reinforcement of ecclesiocentric missions to ethnotheology and then self-theologizing as the “fourth self” of the indigenous church.[6. Charles Kraft and Paul Hiebert are the key representatives here. For Kraft’s ethnotheology, see Charles H. Kraft, “Dynamic Equivalent Churches: An Ethnotheological Approach to Indigeneity,” Missiology: An International Review 1, no. 1 (January 1973): 39–57; Charles H. Kraft, with Marguerite G. Kraft, Christianity in Culture: A Study in Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective, rev. 25th anniversary ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005). For the development of self-theologizing, see Paul G. Hiebert, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), ch. 8. Rochelle Cathcart and Mike Nichols, “Self Theology, Global Theology, and Missional Theology in the Writings of Paul G. Hiebert,” Trinity Journal, n.s., 30, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 209–21, trace the development of Hiebert’s understanding of contextualization from self theologizing to his sketches of “missional theology” in a way that is very relevant to the present study.] In other words, the major development in late modern missiology that missional theology typically ignores is theological contextualization based on missiological anthropology. While the preeminence of the majority world church is the great new fact of twenty-first century missiology, missional theology remains a notoriously Western movement. I suspect that this shortcoming is related to its construal of evangelical missiology’s “divergence” from the ecumenical consensus about missio Dei. If evangelicals are warming to missional theology,[7. Van Gelder and Zscheile, 36.] one can hope that missional theology will in turn realize the paradigm-shifting importance of anthropologically-informed contextual theology.[8. Given the rise of the majority world church, the only future for missional theology is intercultural, global dialogue in which anthropological tools such as worldview analysis are indispensable. Two good examples of such dialogue are Craig Ott and Harold Netland, eds., Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), and Stephen B. Bevans and Katalina Tahaafe-Williams, eds., Contextual Theology for the Twenty-First Century, Missional Church, Public Theology, World Christianity (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011).]

In any case, aside from indicating major theological paradigm shifts in missiology, the story of missional theology’s missiological origins highlights two key aspects of the discipline’s ambiguous relationship to constructive theology: its practical concerns and its relationship to the social sciences. Furthermore, the fact that missional theology’s emergence is presently redefining missiology implies that the articulation of missional theological method will itself affect the relationship between missiology and constructive theology. Finally, postmodernity, globalization, and majority world Christianity exert pressure on missiology, which seems to find itself in a constant state of disciplinary renegotiation.[9. The last few years have been rife with discussion of missiology’s definition and role, driven not least by the American Society of Missiology’s study of the question. See Charles Fensham, ed., “Group Discussion Conclusions on the Future of the Discipline of Missiology: Annual Meeting of the American Society of Missiology,” Missiology: An International Review 42, no. 1 (January 2013): 80–86.] Altogether, this state of affairs calls for a tentative but functional definition of missiology by which my study of missional theological method can proceed with conceptual clarity.

To this end, I do not claim what missiology should be but describe, minimally, what it is. In service of minimalism, it helps to whittle away a few definitional options typical of the discipline’s ongoing self-assessment. Virtually every current definition of missiology includes an acknowledgement of its interdisciplinary nature; interdisciplinarity is constitutive of missiology. This does not, however, justify defining missiology merely as interdisciplinarity for the sake of mission.[10. Kenneth Nehrbass, “Does Missiology Have a Leg to Stand On?: The Upsurge of Interdisciplinarity,” Missiology: An International Review 44, no. 1 (January 2016): 50–65, comes very close to such a notion.] Furthermore, my working definition does not attempt to predetermine the meaning of mission (e.g., making disciples or crossing boundaries) or the scope of its concerns (e.g., theology, history, and anthropology). Meaning and scope are both liable to change precisely by virtue of doing missiology. Finally, I do not attempt to distinguish between discrete components of missiology, such as the distinction between the missiological “dimension” of all theology and and missiological “intention” of missionary training,[11. Bernhard Ott, “Mission Oriented Theological Education: Moving Beyond Traditional Models of Theological Education,” Transformation, 18, no. 2 (April 2001): 74–86.] between descriptive (e.g., historical) and prescriptive (e.g., strategic) concerns,[12. Dwight P. Baker, “Missiology as an Interested Discipline—and Is It Happening?,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 38, no. 1 (January 2014): 17–20.] or between theoretical and practical study.[13. The very idea of “practical theology” as a separate branch of theological education is a symptom of dualism that missional theology, being fundamentally participatory and theoretically praxeological, rejects.] Any of these types of missiological work may be undertaken individually, but missiology as such exists as an integrated whole.[14. “It includes the theology that gives rise to mission, the effect of mission on theological understanding, and the interconnectedness of mission with other dimensions of the life of the church.” John Roxborogh, “Missiology after ‘Mission’?,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 38, no. 3 (July 2014): 123.] Thus, I define missiology as interdisciplinary theological study of and for Christian participation in God’s mission.[15. Missiology is committed Christian study, therefore it is inherently theological. It is inseparably study both of and for mission: secular study of mission unrelated to participation in mission is not missiology but religious studies. Because missiology is interdisciplinary, it may be best to call it a “field” rather than a “discipline.” See Ross Langmead, “What Is Missiology?,” Missiology: An International Review 42, no. 1 (January 2013): 67–79.]

---

Notes