Chris Wright on a Missional Hermeneutic of the Bible

In the 1st two chapters of his book The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), Chris Wright suggests that instead of seeing the Bible as merely providing a basis for mission (e.g. from favourite passages like Matt 28:18-20), it might be more profitable to see that there is a missional basis for the Bible – i.e. the Bible is generated by and is all about God’s mission. In another words, he suggests and tries to define the shape of a missional hermeneutic of the Bible.

Wright first tries to justify the idea of a missional hermeneutic. One of his main reasons is that the Bible can be seen as the product of God’s Mission. He states: “The whole canon of Scripture is a missional phenomenon in the sense that it witnesses to the self-giving movement of this God toward his creation and us, human beings in God’s own image, but wayward and wanton. The writings that now comprise our Bible are themselves the product of and witness to the ultimate mission of God.” (p.48). The processes by which the Scriptural texts came to be written also arose often out of a missional context or situation. Wright further shows how this missional context or situation which resulted in writing can be seen in the New Testament and Old Testament documents. In short, ‘the whole Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of the whole of God’s creation’ (p.51).

As for the shape of how such a missional hermeneutical looks like, Wright states that we first have to shift our paradigm and understanding of ‘mission’ from ‘our human agency to the ultimate purposes of God himself; missions as “missions” that we undertake, to mission as that which God has been purposing and accomplishing from eternity to eternity; and an anthropocentric (or ecclesiocentric) conception to a radically theocentric worldview’ (p.62). He then proposes a shape for the missional hermeneutic under the following headings:

• God with a mission. The missional hermeneutic begins with us recognising that we have a ‘missional’ God. Wright cautiously agrees with the term missio Dei, often used to encapsulate this idea. The missional nature of God is seen in how the biblical narrative begins with a 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 God’s redemptive purposes worked out in the stage of human history, and finishes beyond the horizon of its own history with the eschatological hope of the new creation (p.63). While not squashing out many of the smaller narratives that occur in the Bible, there is a general flow – 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 God’s Word and for the glory of God’s name. This is the mission of the biblical God (p.64)’.
• Humanity with a mission. Chris suggests that the creational mandate (Gen 1:28) sets humanity and mankind out on a mission. It is out of this missional understanding that generates our ‘ecological responsibility, our economic activity involving work, productivity, exchange and trade, and our whole cultural mandate’ (p.65).
• Israel with a mission. Israel’s election, Chris contends, was for the sake of all nations. The universality of God’s purposes for the nations, but yet seen in this particular stage in salvation history in the particularity of God’s choosing of Israel, remains as one of recurrent themes in the Old Testament.
• Jesus with a mission. Jesus came with a clear understanding and purpose that he was sent, and that he was the fulfilment of the Servant figure in Isaiah and the Davidic messianic king (Isa 42:1 and Ps 2:7, both of which are affirmed in the voice from Heaven at Jesus’ baptism). Jesus had a clear understanding that his will was to do his Father’s will, his mission was determined by God’s mission. Wright states, “In Jesus the radically theocentric nature of biblical mission is most clearly focused and modelled.” (p.66)
• The church with a mission. Jesus in turn, entrusts to us the church a mission that is rooted in his own identity, passion and victory as the crucified and risen Messiah. (p.66).

In summary, Wright states that a missional hermeneutic means that we seek to read any part of the bible in the light of i) God’s purposes for his whole creation ii) God’s purpose for human life in general and all the bible teaches about human culture, relationships, ethics and behaviour iii) God’s historical election of Israel and the effect that has on the nations and their own national life in terms of obeying God iv) the centrality of Jesus v) God’s calling of the church to be the agent of God’s blessing to the nations in the name and for the glory of the Lord Jesus (p.67). He ends the chapter by suggesting how, like a map, this hermeneutical framework will not give an account of every single detail and landmark in the biblical landscape, but that it will provide a way of seeing the whole terrain, of navigating one’s way through it as one experiences the reality of the biblical landscape (p.68-69).

Overall, Wright has provided an interesting suggestion. He is right on how seeing how missions should not be viewed first and foremost as activity and in an anthropocentric way. If we do, our tendency would be to use the Bible to justify such activity and viewpoint. Rather, if we view missions as something integral to God Himself – something God does for the sake of his glory and purpose (and here, some would go further to suggest that missional is something God is) – then missions could be a key way of summarising what the flow of the Bible is about. In another words, there is some truth in Wright’s proposal that just as the Bible gives a biblical basis for missions, there is also a missional basis to the Bible. I’m not fully persuaded though that a missional hermeneutic (as Wright presents it as God with a mission; humanity with a mission; Israel with a mission; Jesus with a mission; and the church with a mission) actually serves to tell one what the Bible is all about – or in other words, what’s the content in this river of the Biblical story that is being told. Missions serves as a good and right way of describing the flow and direction of this river, but something else needs to be filled in to tell us what’s actually flowing in this river. Or to use Wright’s closing analogy of the map – I’m not too sure if his missional hermeneutic actually introduces us and connects the major features in the biblical landscape as we travel through it. Rather, I think the missional hermeneutic acts more like the vehicle we are sitting in as we navigate through the biblical landscape. We are heading somewhere with it, but we still need something else – another map – that helps to explain the major features of the landscape as we are carried along. As to what that map is, suggestions abound – the glory of God manifested in Christ (Schreiner); the Kingdom of God (Goldsworthy); or perhaps not the presence of any one main theme, but the inter-relation and connection of a few central themes (Carson? The writers of Central themes in Biblical Theology? My own view)