Reflections on the Mission of God (Christopher Wright): Part One
I am reading The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (IVP) by Christopher J.H. Wright for my September D.Min. module, “Communicating and Preaching the Bible Missionally.” Less than one third of the way through the book I have found myself engaged with its general thesis: the Bible and biblical theology should be read from a missiological perspective. For Wright, the Bible is a missional phenomenon. Wright, a British Evangelical connected to John Stott Ministries, has written a Bosch-like text both in volume and content for the evangelical academy and evangelical theological perspective. While he certainly ”pushes the envelope” with some of his theological directions for the evangelical community, i.e. advocating for the exegetical plurality that exists as a positive mark of the faith; distinguishing between “The Biblical Basis of Mission” vs. “The Missional Basis of the Bible” (in other words, the Bible doesn’t produce missional mandates, commands, etc., rather the missional life of the early church produces the Bible); and his lack of fear in engaging with multicultural, contextual, and postmodern hermeneutical conversations, Wright nonetheless still is true to his Evangelical theological worldview in his defense of the authority of scripture. I want to take him on for a moment at this point.
Wright is not afraid to engage postmodern readings of the New Testament. Good for him and his engagement. In the subtitle, however, Wright plays his cards outright: the Mission of God is the key to unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. The phrase Grand Narrative is a direct play against postmodern readings of the New Testament while at the same time using language that engages the postmodern. Again, Wright engages these readings in a open and faithful way which has been very rare in the evangelical community. I appreciate him greatly at this point. He still, however, falls into the same bibliolotry trap so common in evangelical theology. Consider this excerpt:
“What we have to offer, I contend, is a missional hermeneutic of the Bible. The Bible got there before postmodernity was dreamed of – the Bible which glories in diversity and celebrates multiple human cultures, the Bible which builds its most elevated theological claims on utterly particular and sometimes local events, the Bible which sees everything in relational, not abstract, terms, and the Bible which does the bulk of its work through the medium of stories.
All of these features of the Bible - cultural, local, relational, narrative -are welcome to the postmodern mind. Where the missional hermeneutic will part company with radical postmodernism, is in its insistence that through all the variety, locality, particularity, and diversity, the Bible is nevertheless actually the story. This is the way it is. This is the grand narrative that constitues truth for all. And within this story, as narrated or anticipated by the Bible, there is at work the God whose mission is evident from creation to new creation. This is the story of God’s mission. It is a coherent story with a universal claim. But it is also a story that affirms humanity in all its particular cultural variety. This is the universal story that gives a place in the sun to all the little stories.”
Wright’s ”softer” approach to postmodern themes and his willingness to engage these themes on their terms is quite admirable and, to be sure, a risk for Wright given the anti-postmodern sentiments so prevelant in more fundamental evangelical circles that I am sure he engages in. In the margins of my copy of the book I wrote “he had me up to ‘the Bible is nevertheless actually the story.’” The Bible isn’t the story, Jesus Christ is the story! In the claim that “Jesus Christ is Lord,” in this primitive, trans-temporal, and trans-cultural confession, we find the story of God and God’s mission in and for the world. The Bible, like anything, submits to the authority of Jesus Christ’s lordship. Withouth the Bible, Jesus Christ is still Lord! Remember, the first church did not have a New Testament. They had the Hebrew Scriptures and various documents, oral tradtion, and eye witness stories (notice the plural) pertaining to the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth. To be clear, the Bible is authoratative. I like Wright’s conversation around authority, pages 51-58. The Scriptures are indeed the rule and order of life and faith. They are born out of the early Christian community’s vocational commitment and fervor to bear witness to what God had done and will do in and as the person of Jesus Christ by power of the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, the story is not the Bible but Jesus himself. This is the story, this is the drama God enacts, God speaks, and God carries out for the redemption of the world.
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