As a missiologist specialising in the history of Christian missions and World Christianity, I greatly appreciated Collin Cornell’s lucid exposition of a new understanding of the way in which the Hebrew Bible can and should be used to craft a theology of mission. Arguing against a biblical theology of mission which has been regnant among mainline and evangelical Protestant missiologists for over seven decades, Cornell presents his own compelling vision of how the Old Testament should be read and appropriated by those engaged in the teaching and practice of Christian missions.
It was a completely unacademic observation that seems to have gotten the author thinking about the ways in which the Bible is misused, in his view, to generate a theology of mission. He noticed that retired missionaries returning ‘home’ from ‘the field’ felt lost, out of place and without purpose. The conclusion he drew is that their condition ‘reflects a widespread theology whereby relationship with God is defined by a particular divine purpose. After that purpose comes to fulfillment, it is as if the basis for relationship with God becomes obsolete’ (pp. 1–2). Admitting that there are several possible sources for this feeling of uselessness, Cornell hypothesises that one of the main sources is a faulty theology of mission, which he terms the ‘dramatic paradigm’, in which God’s purpose is the repair of a world that has been corrupted by sin. Cornell argues that several popular texts on the biblical theology of mission exemplify this paradigm and, in so doing, further the obsolescence thinking that infects mission workers who see no purpose for their lives once their mission is over. Yet for Cornell this obsolescence thinking infects more than depressed mission workers: it also characterises missiological thinking about the role of Israel (which comes to an end once the knowledge of the God reaches the Gentiles) and the incarnation (whose purpose is exhausted once humankind is saved from sin) in God’s mission.
After describing the emergence of the dramatic paradigm over the course of the twentieth century in chapter 2, in chapter 3 Cornell provides a ‘geometric’ alternative, so called because in its reading of the Bible there is not one but ‘several plotlines [that] can crisscross and braid together horizontally’, and in which ‘communion rather than repair [is] the theological center’ (p. 81). Cornell then proceeds to address the issues of obsolescence he associates with the dramatic paradigm and its single, reparative plotline, first with respect to Israel (chapter 4) and then Christology (chapter 5). He argues that Israel is not rightly understood as an instrument for repairing the damage caused by sin; instead that ‘God always meant to bless and draw near … to Israel – and God persists in that communion purpose throughout scripture’ (p. 132). Likewise with respect to the incarnation, Cornell argues that ‘redemption – which is to say, repair – has an end point, but communion does not. Fellowship with Christ may always and ever deepen – past the time when creation reaches full restoration’ (p. 139).
The conclusion synthesises the various arguments made through the book. Stressing that ‘the dramatic paradigm is gentile-centric as a function of its commitment to universality’ (p. 172), Cornell places God’s relationship to Israel as the center of his geometric reading in order to affirm ‘an Israel-centric Bible’ (p. 174). He ends by noting that while the dramatic paradigm ‘builds obsolescence integrally into its spiritual vision, and this move generates anxiety’, his alternative of ‘mission as communion’ can ‘provide a more secure basis for mission practice’ because the call to communion persists through ‘all changes and chances of life’ (p. 185).
As I said at the outset, I find Cornell’s work illuminating. He has named the regnant understanding of the Old Testament in biblical theologies of mission and set out to present a new biblical theology. Refreshingly, he uses the Hebrew Bible as the foundation for this new theology, and his argument, on the whole, is convincing. I do, however, wish to register one disagreement, one criticism and one suggestion.
The disagreement has to do with the oft-repeated claim that obsolescence theology is what creates malaise in retired missionaries returning from the field. Since his evidence is anecdotal, I would counter with my own anecdotal evidence that plenty of missionaries who have worked within the dramatic paradigm of biblical mission theology do not feel dispirited and useless upon retirement. Indeed, they have continued doing God’s reparative work long afterwards, whether in new contexts and circumstances at ‘home’ or back in the ‘mission field’ where they have chosen to retire. Still more, I cannot understand why Cornell believes that a reparative approach should lead to ‘obsolescence thinking’, since all the evidence in the world supports the conclusion that God’s ‘reparative’ work is definitely not complete.
My criticism of Cornell’s work has to do with the historical framework he uses to understand the development of the dramatic paradigm. For him, the only history which counts is the history of biblical interpretation, deeply infected with antisemitism. Without denying the pervasiveness and insidiousness of antisemitism in western Christian thought, there were other important historical factors at work during the development of the dramatic paradigm. The fact that this paradigm emerged after World War II (and so after the Holocaust), and that its main sponsor was the International Missionary Council, should have alerted Cornell to the fact that other important events and intellectual movements were at play. Very generally speaking, if World War I convinced the Protestant missionary movement that Europe was no longer Christian, then World War II convinced this movement that Christianity was no longer European. What was needed was a biblical theology that explained how the God of Israel was also the God of the nations – and the dramatic paradigm was a cogent and powerful response. A close study of the world Christian movement from 1945 to 1965 would help us make better sense of the rise and the power of the dramatic paradigm. What Cornell needs is a geometric history paradigm, capable of holding together several historical trajectories, to go along with his geometric reading of scripture.
Finally, my suggestion is that in thinking about the way theologies work themselves out in missionary thought and practice, Cornell should refer not only to academic biblical theologies but also to the songs which missionaries have been singing. It is Protestant hymnody that western missionaries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have carried with them into the world, and my guess (and, admittedly, it is only a guess) is that it is on the whole much more focused on communion than repair. The missionary bishop Reginald Heber’s hymn of communion, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’, is far more popular than his missionary hymn, ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’. Moreover, in songs like Isaac Watt’s ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ and Fanny Crosby’s ‘Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross’, the difference between communion and repair is dissolved, as the cross which repairs a fallen world also becomes the site of communion with God. These last two popular hymns suggest that the relationship between repair and communion is more complicated than the primarily oppositional model Cornell has presented.
Notwithstanding these critical remarks, Cornell’s work provides a powerful stimulus to further thought and discussion in the field of mission theology, and more particularly in the investigation of biblical theologies of mission. His work is a breath of fresh missiological air that appropriately takes a critical view of current paradigms of mission theology, yet goes on very helpfully to offer highly innovative and creative proposals for a new biblical hermeneutics. Those of us who teach and research about missionary thought and practice are deeply in his debt for articulating so lucidly and cogently the case for a new understanding of the Bible by which to generate and support our theologies of mission.
