According to Braaten what is the biblical foundation of evangelism?? What is the abiding evangelistic task?? What is incarnational evangelism and missions?? What are the five dichotomies

CHAPTER 11

The Meaning of Evangelism in the Context of God’s Universal Grace

Carl E. Braaten

I. The Biblical Foundations of Evangelism

The classical expression of the evangelistic task of the church is given in the Great Commission of the risen Lord, recorded in Matthew 28:19-20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” This trinitarian formula is not only a baptismal confession of the early church, it also offers a comprehensive setting for understanding the universal intention of God in his covenant with Israel, the coming of God’s kingdom in the person of Jesus, and the preaching of the apostles in the power of the Spirit. The roots of world evangelization are deeply embedded in the entire history of God’s revelatory activity set forth in both the Old and New Testament Scriptures and they give us a number of starting points for reflecting on the church’s role in the universal scheme of God’s grace.

The evangelistic activity of the early church did not start from scratch. It was a continuation of what God had already announced through the prophetic history of Israel. The call of Abraham, the father of faith, was God’s way of initiating a new relationship between himself and all the nations. Here is the nucleus of the promise which the New Testament announces as the salvation to be extended to all people’s through Christ Jesus. God’s purpose in setting Israel apart from other nations was to prepare the way for the coming of God’s rule throughout the whole world. The purpose of election was not to shower Israel with special favors for the sake of its own salvation, but strictly for the sake of witnessing to the lordship of God over all the nations of the world. It is clear that God’s special relationship with Israel was not an end in itself but a means to bring about a universal relation between God and all peoples.

The root of this universal perspective of Israel’s place among the nations lies in its radical monotheism. In Deuteronomy 4:39 we read: “Know therefore this day, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven and on the earth beneath; there is no other.” If Israel’s task is to witness faithfully to Yahweh as the one and only Lord of the nations, the universal horizon is clearly implied. The book of Isaiah speaks of Israel’s role in terms of bringing forth “justice to the nations,” (42:1) of being a “light to the nations.” (42:6). In the book of Jonah it is apparent that Israel’s vocation was not to be confined to itself, but included the task of proclaiming the infinite love of God among the heathen nations.

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Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-09-28 03:29:23.

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Connected with the universal scope of Israel’s mission was its expectation of salvation through the future coming of the Messiah who has the power to redeem the world. Even though the time of this salvation lay in the future, Israel became engaged in direct witnessing activity. Particularly during the time between the two Testaments, the Jews of the Diaspora made efforts to convert pagans and to gain followers of the Torah. This means that when the apostle Paul and the early missionaries preached the gospel to the Gentiles, there was a considerable constituency of Gentile converts providing points of contact in the major cities of the Roman Empire. The universal thrust of biblical faith had already been put in motion by the Jewish Diaspora prior to the coming of Jesus as the Messiah and the rise of the Christian community. It is noteworthy, too, that the Greek translation of the Old Testament — the Septuagint — became the great document of Jewish mission, and thus placed a ready-made tool at the service of Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles.

The Gospels picture Jesus of Nazareth as one who confined his mission to the “house of Israel.” Matthew 15:24 quotes Jesus as saying: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This is illustrated by his order to the disciples: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 23:15). Jesus went further; he attacked the conversion efforts of the Jews of his time: “Alas for you, lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites! You travel over sea and land to win one convert; and when you have won him you make him twice as fit for hell as you are yourselves” (Matt. 23:15, NEB).

On the other hand, Jesus is never pictured as one with narrow religious or nationalistic attitudes. He broke through Jewish particularism by freely demonstrating his openness to the Samaritans, both in his actions and in his parables. Furthermore, Jesus’ proclamation of the coming kingdom embraces a future that includes Gentiles along with the Jews. Matthew 8:11 states, “I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” Salvation in the kingdom is open to all people, Jews and Gentiles; yet, meanwhile, Jesus and his disciples restricted their preaching to the people of Israel. But at the end of time the nations will make their way to Jerusalem, feast on Mount Zion, and worship the true God. In continuity with the Old Testament, the expectation of salvation in the Gospels is universal and eschatological. The future kingdom of God includes all nations of the world, and the special role of the Jews is to be God’s chosen people serving that end.

In summary, we can say that we have not yet reached a full biblical theology of evangelism with the materials from the Old Testament, nor even with the coming of the Messiah and his proclamation of the kingdom of God. Something radically new was required to raise the evangelistic consciousness of the people of God to another plane. This new element broke through in the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Messiah Jesus.

The apostles were authorized by Jesus to be the first Christian evangelists because they were witnesses of his resurrection. As representatives of the risen Christ the apostles were commissioned to proclaim God’s salvation to the uttermost parts of the world. As apostolic emissaries of Christ they became founders and leaders of new ecclesial communities. Thus,

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-09-28 03:29:23.

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the church as the new people of God, the new community gathered around the presence of the risen Christ, is founded forever on the faith and witness of the apostles.

The church is not identical with the kingdom of God which Jesus proclaimed. Rather, the new community gathered around the name of Jesus exists in order to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom to all the nations, and to be a sign of its activity in the world. The apostles preached that Israel’s hope for the coming of God’s rule and kingdom was realized in the coming of Jesus as the Messiah, but not in the usual nationalistic and political terms. Instead, the coming of God’s righteous rule took place in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and therefore the apostles proclaimed Jesus as the focal point of God’s continuing activity in world history. The apostolic preaching of Christ became the primary means of access to the mystery of the kingdom. The great christological titles were applied to Jesus to designate the absolute meaning of his person and work. Jesus is Messiah, Son of Man, High Priest, Prophet, King, Lord, Savior, Son of God, and finally connected with the significance of all these titles, the New Testament designates Jesus as the Word of God, indeed, addresses him as “God.” Jesus is the core of the apostolic message.

In the New Testament the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus and his commission to the apostles to go with the gospel to the nations appears intertwined in the same context. The gospel is the good news of what God has done to death in raising Jesus from the grave; that is the heart of the message of the apostles and to the nations. “Christ is risen!” Death has been conquered at Easter and a new ruler has been enthroned in the world. “Christ is King.” The effect of this event is absolutely decisive, uniquely authoritative, and universally valid. As Matthew 28:18-20 states the matter: “All authority” has been given to Christ; “all nations” are to be made disciples and baptized in the name of the Triune God; they are to be taught “all that I have commanded you”; and Christ promises to be with his followers “always, to the close of the age.” There are no qualifications, no limits bearing on time or space, geography or chronology, that could plausibly relativize the Lord’s mandate for the proclamation of the gospel to all peoples, everywhere, until the end of time.

But the apostles were not given a worldwide mandate to accomplish under their own power and direction. Easter was followed by Pentecost. The apostolic witness to the risen Christ became charged with power by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, authorized by Christ himself: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Here we have the beginnings of world evangelization in a nutshell: the commission to preach the gospel of the risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem and then going to every part of the world until time runs out. The direct result of the apostolic proclamation of the gospel was the creation of a new kind of community transcending the usual distinctions between Jew and Gentile, male and female, rich and poor, etc. This new community is the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the new people of God, called and commissioned to preach the gospel, to cross all frontiers, and to witness to the realities of the new age that has dawned.

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-09-28 03:29:23.

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The apostolic pattern of being called and sent by Christ to the world continued to be valid for the generations of Christians following the apostles. Christian identity and gospel proclamation were inseparable. Christians who existed among Jews and Gentiles understood that it was the gospel that made the difference, and that belief in this gospel meant the privilege and obligation to make it known to all others. The successors of the apostles had to continue doing what the apostles had begun. How was this to be done? Through the ongoing proclamation of the word and witness of the apostles to the crucified Christ. “Faith comes from what is heard,” said Paul, “and how are people to believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14-17). All baptized believers are preachers in the sense that they are called to bear witness to the full and final revelation of the world’s reconciliation through Jesus Christ our Lord.

II. The Abiding Evangelistic Task

The church in history exists between the times: the kairos of salvation in the person of Jesus and the final parousia at the end of history. As long as the kingdom of God has not yet arrived in its full power and glory, the church is called to continue in the apostolic line to spread the good news of the gospel to all people. The memory of God’s victory in the death and resurrection of Jesus keeps alive the hope for history to reach its final goal, the basic transformation of the conditions of life as we know it, especially the defeat of death, and at last the eternal life in communion with God forever. In the end the world of creation will be set free from its bondage and decay and will obtain the glorious liberty of all the children of God. The final consummation will spell the removal of all evil, the overthrow of Satan and his power of destruction, and the conquest of sin and all its consequences.

But the kingdom of God is not merely future; it is also present as an offer of mercy to sinners, restoring humanity’s broken relationship with God. This new relationship is experienced through repentance and faith, as the forgiveness of sins, a new life in Christ, and receiving the gifts of the Spirit, with far-reaching implications for life in all its daily aspects. This new relationship with God cannot be confined to the private sphere of life or matters of personal piety. Jesus’ ministry of the kingdom showed signs of breaking into every dimension of life, healing physical illness, exorcising spirits, feeding the hungry, speaking out against corrupt officials and religious authorities, and caring for the poor and neglected.

Correspondingly, the church is to be a Christlike medium of the kingdom of God in this world, bringing its missions to the frontlines of struggle on behalf of human beings, including the battles being fought in the political, social, and economic areas of life. Through missionary service the gifts of the kingdom of God are offered to the world and distributed here and now. Yet, Christians must not be carried away into a kind of utopian enthusiasm, as though they could expect the ultimate victory over physical death, disease, destruction, and deprivation under the present conditions of existence in history. All solutions to human problems of this side of the final consummation remain partial and preliminary.

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-09-28 03:29:23.

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A church committed to continue the apostolic mission in the world must believe that entry into the kingdom of God is mediated by the church’s proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and by its administration of the sacraments. This constitutes the primary aim of the church’s existence everywhere in the world. Those who are incorporated into the church through faith and baptism are ordained by the Spirit to convey the gospel of the kingdom of God to all who do not yet believe. The church continues in history under the original mandate of Jesus: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).

God’s plan of salvation includes all the nations. Until this plan is consummated the Christian church is engaged in a task that bears on the meaning and destiny of the present history of the world. Meanwhile, Jesus Christ represents the “Yes and Amen” for all the promises of God, and sets the church in motion in the power of his Spirit to proclaim and pioneer the hopes opened up for all peoples, nations, cultures, and religions. The evangelistic imperative to go and tell fades away whenever the church turns in upon itself and loses sight of the universal horizon of God’s all-embracing kingdom. If the gospel has not already been preached to all nations, the church has no choice but to bring its witness wherever the name of Jesus Christ is not yet being confessed.

The church today must strive assiduously for a comprehensive view of the kingdom: the vertical dimension of the gospel which mediates the unconditional grace of God as well as the horizontal dimension in which we meet Christ and the persons of our needy neighbors; the depth dimension which deals with the universal human condition of sin and estrangement as well as the breadth dimension which struggles with demonic forces in everyday existence; the personal dimension which lifts up the absolute significance of every individual human being in the sight of God as well as the political dimension bearing on the quality of justice and liberty that prevail on earth. The comprehensive symbol of the kingdom of God includes all these dimensions, and the church is right to work for their realization as an expression of its faith in Christ in the power of the Spirit.

No matter what the social, economic, or political circumstances may be, the church still has the indispensable task of witnessing meaning and goal in life in Jesus Christ, thus bestowing on individuals here and now a sense of absolute worth in the eyes of God. Witness to individual persons with the hope of conversion — repentance and faith — is an inalienable priority of the church’s total mission. Avoiding this aspect of personal evangelism is always a sign that the church has forgotten the way of the kingdom in the ministry of our Lord who touched and changed the lives of forgotten individuals, and who made God’s love for the world manifest in behalf of all sorts of individuals, children, women and men, rich and poor, sick and sinful, crippled and blind.

Some Christians have wearied of the evangelistic task altogether. They may view Christianity as an appropriate religion for Western culture, but with no right to claim universal validity for all other cultures. The twin concepts of religious pluralism and historic relativism make it seemingly difficult to see how that which has occurred in one time and place can possess final meaning for all peoples and ages. Perhaps we can engage in a dialogue

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-09-28 03:29:23.

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between religions or faiths, and benefit from the cross-fertilization of ideas. Then the aim of the church’s evangelistic outreach would be more like cultural exchange than religious conversion. Others would make a case for recoiling from evangelistic activity because of its recent association with Western imperialism and expansionism. Western missions allegedly become colonial outposts of the divided churches of Europe and America. Missions supposedly became propaganda organs by which the denominations reduplicated themselves in Africa and Asia. These charges have been told over and over again, and people hold varying opinions on the success or failure of the Western missions.

Regardless of all that, theologically viewed the apostolic mission of the Messiah and God’s kingdom is a continuation of the biblical history of promise, proceeding beyond the limits of Israel, reaching in principle absolutely universal dimensions. In the New Testament no limits are set to the universality of God’s redemptive will. “God would have all to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). In an ultimate sense we are not even speaking of the mission of the church and its evangelistic task. For the mission belongs to the one God, unfolding a plan for the world that emanates from the Creator of the world, the Lord of history, and the Savior of all humanity. The unique thing, however, about this biblical kind of universalism is the way it is mediated through particular events of history, beginning with the election of Israel, so that the eschatological goal of world history is carried as a promise within the concrete history of God’s missionary people. In contrast, there is a gnostic type of universalism which trusts in a spiritual or mystical essence common to all religions ultimately void of all concrete symbols and historical events. What makes biblical faith into a global missionary movement is that the universal promise looks to concrete history for its future realization, and following the apostles the church believes it has been summoned and commissioned by God to serve as a particular means to the universal end.

III. The Final Hope of Biblical Universalism

Today there is a trend in both Protestant and Catholic theology to restrict the scope of biblical universalism, and to make Christ small and unimportant. The Christocentric emphasis is under attack, at least among the deans of modern liberal Protestant and Catholic progressive theology. Our biblical, evangelical, Reformation Christology is too exclusivistic. On account of historical relativity and religious pluralism, many are challenging the place of Christ as the goal of things. Is Christ really that final, definitive, and normative?

John Hick represents a liberal Protestant view which allows Christians to hold to Christ as their unique Savior without necessarily claiming as much for others. Christ may be my personal Lord and Savior, but this does not mean that he is the only Savior or the only Lord for all other religions. To hold Christ as the final and normative Word of God is branded as “theological fundamentalism.” There is room, after all, for other savior figures in other religions, at least enough to go around for everybody. To be sure, Jesus is one of the ways in which God meets the world of human experience, but it is arrogant bigotry to claim that Jesus

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-09-28 03:29:23.

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is God’s unique way of dealing with the salvation of the world. Other voices in modern theology like Tom Driver, Rosemary Ruether, and Dorothee Sölle

are claiming that the uniqueness, normativity, and finality of Jesus Christ account for the sins of Christianity, its sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism. The scandal of the particularity that insists on a once-and-for-all Christ is supposedly the breeding ground of intolerance, supremacy, imperialism, and what these theologians call “Christofascism.” As Tom Driver says, “The infinite commitment of God to finitude in Jesus does not indicate something done once and once for all time.”1 What these theologians are asking for is a “paradigm shift” from a theology wherein Christ is the center to one in which he is one of the satellites in a galaxy of religious superstars. John Hick calls it a “Copernican revolution,” contrasting it with the old Ptolemaic system of geocentric thinking, which imagines that the incarnate revelation of God in Christ stands at the center of the universe of world religions. Paul Knitter, a progressive Catholic, speaking in favor of this new trend, states: “We are in the midst of an evolution from Christocentrism to theocentrism.”2 James Gustafson continues the attack on Christocentricity, demanding that the homocentric view that focuses on God’s humanity in the earthly Christ must give way to a theocentric perspective that fits a post-Copernican view of the universe.3

I agree with Paul Knitter’s assessment that there is “growing endorsement” of a “nonnormative christology” both among Protestant and Catholic theologians. They are holding ranking positions in the prestigious divinity schools. However, there is a counter- offensive going on in contemporary theology sparked by interest in Karl Barth’s Christocentric trinitarianism. Diametrically opposed to the anti-Christological trend is a movement to continue the Barthian initiative toward a new affirmation of the Trinity on the basis of Christology. There are new books on the Trinity by Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann, and Robert W. Jenson.4 They represent a significant advance to a new conception of the Trinity, precisely at a time when most other theologians have raised the white flag of surrender.

When we stress, as we have done, a Christocentric trinitarian perspective, some liberals charge “archaism,” and when we emphasize universalism some evangelicals cry “heresy.” How can we have our cake and eat it too? Do we need to restrict the confidence born of hope and prayer that God will get his wish in the end that all will be saved? May we share the hope of Karl Barth? He said: “There is no good reason why we should forbid ourselves, or be forbidden, openness to the possibility that in the reality of God and man in Jesus Christ there is much more than we might expect and therefore the supremely unexpected withdrawal of that final threat, i.e., that in the truth of this reality there might be contained the super- abundant promise of the final deliverance of all men. To be more explicit, there is no good reason why we should not be open to this possibility … of an apokatástasis or universal reconciliation.”5

We would teach a highly nuanced and qualified evangelical universalism. It is not a dogma, not a piece of knowledge, not something to which humans have a right and a claim.

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-09-28 03:29:23.

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Yet, it is something for which we may cautiously and distinctly pray and hope, that in spite of everything that seems to point conclusively in the opposite direction, God’s mercy will not cast off his world forever. Alternatives to a Christocentric universalism are Arminianism and double predestination. It should come as no surprise that a Lutheran is comfortable with neither. For us the doctrine of election means at least that those who come to faith in Jesus Christ are elected through God’s grace and love. God’s justice and wrath have already taken their toll in the rejection of Jesus Christ on the cross. (Shades of Barth.) God’s love is not limited. It is limited neither by human freedom nor by divine wrath.

We cannot hold a universalism of the Unitarian kind. People are not too good to be damned. There is no necessity for God to save everybody, nor to reject anyone. God is not bound by anything outside of himself. He is not bound to give the devil his due. If we take into account G

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