Super-sizing Jesus: Enlarging the Incarnation in Contemporary Missiology Working our Way in: Issues, Definitions

Basil Grafas 25 October 2007 

There may be no more hopeful and cherished doctrine in the Christian tradition than  the Incarnation. The very word conjures memories of wise men, stars, and mangers  laden with straw. The word evokes hope and charity in an otherwise cold world.  There is another side to the concept. Perhaps the dominant term in evangelical  missiology today is “incarnational mission.” Championed by a broad constituency  advocating everything from social justice and postmodernism to extreme  contextualization that calls for converts from Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism to  remain within their original faith systems, incarnationality weaves its way through all  of these as a common theme. In some quarters, it is now seen as a given rather than as  a recent missiological construct less than 50 years old. Because the Incarnation is real  and biblical, we reason so must incarnational mission. But what is it? Furthermore, if  it is not a given, but a choice, what are the alternatives? How should we think about  this? The following is an attempt to describe incarnational mission, set it within some  historical context, evaluate its constructs and claims, and make some  recommendations with regard to dealing with it.  

Incarnation: According to Robert Reymond, quoting in part from the Westminster  Shorter Catechism, the Incarnation is “the act whereby the eternal Son of God, the  Second Person of the Holy Trinity, without ceasing to be what he is, God the Son,  

took into union with himself what he before that act did not possess, a human nature,  ‘and so (he) was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one  person, forever.’”¹ Ross Langmead opts for the following: “The central mystery of  Christianity, that is, the event in which, for the salvation of the world and without  ceasing to be fully divine, God became fully human uniquely in Jesus Christ.”² Wayne Grudem keeps things simpler: “The Incarnation was the act of God the Son  whereby he took to himself a human nature.”³ “In the Christ of Israel this Word has  become particular, that is, Jewish flesh. It is in the particularity of the flesh that it  applies universally to all men. The Christ of Israel is the saviour of the world.”⁴ 

The Navigators opt for a distinctly sociological definition. Incarnation means, “The  messenger identifies with the community in order to create understanding and  demonstrate the good news.”⁵ They flesh this out (no pun intended) with a list of  questions that address John 1:1-4; 14:8-9 and Hebrews 2:14-18. “Do I understand the  worldview of the community and communicate in such a way as to be an acceptable   ¹ Robert L. Reymond, “Incarnation” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology Edited by  Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984) 555. 

² Ross Langmead, Towards an Incarnational Missiology (Lanham, MD: University  Press of America, 2004) 17.  

³ Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994) 543. ⁴ Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,  1963) 24. 

⁵ The Navigators, “Definitions and Principles” www.navigators.org. 

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member of the group? Is the good news I am presenting to the community authentic  (i.e. the way Jesus himself would present it) or culturally distorted? Does it connect  with natural bridges within the culture? Is there a clear understanding of who Jesus is  and how they can be reconciled to God?” The differences between the earlier sets of  definitions and the Navigators’ is profound. The former all concentrate on the unique  work of Christ. The Navigator version leaves the historical act of Christ distinctly in  the background. None of the questions or the definition actually refers to the event of  the Incarnation at all. Two questions refer to the gospel, but none actually say what it  is and none connect it to the Incarnation. 

Dean Gilliland summarizes the Incarnation by saying that “Jesus came into the world  to be at home with all people in every place. In a radically different paradigm, the  Incarnation of Jesus Christ brings God into ‘our house’ in a way that sets the Christian  faith apart from any other. Through the Incarnation, the door is open wide for all  human beings, to have a close and personal relationship with God.” This is  accomplished as God, through the divine Logos, “opens the way to receive the truth  that men and women of every culture and nation are created in God’s image.” He  adds that the good news is that the image can be restored.⁶ This is very interesting  because Wasn’t the Good News something already accomplished in Christ?  Additionally, what is the connection between the Incarnation and the Logos opening  the way for people to know that they are made in God’s image? The key is his use of  Logos. Historically the word has different interpretations owing to the fact that it  applies to the second member of the Trinity before he became man. A key may be  found in Gilliland referring to the spkermatikos logos of Justin Martyr as a way of  explaining how cultures and even religions have a built-in receptivity to the gospel  because a bit of the truth is already in them.⁷ Charles Van Engen sounds a similar  theme. The Gospel and church are not foreign plants that have been slightly modified  to be able to grow in foreign soil. “Rather, this Gospel is a new hybrid seed with new  and different characteristics that allow it to grow in a new climate.”⁸ At least on the  surface of it, his characterization seems to conflict with the historical reality of the  Incarnation which rooted in one soil. The tension resident in trying to stretch the  Incarnation into an umbrella that can include the idea of inculturation is evident.  

Incarnational mission: Incarnational mission has to be modeled on Jesus’ birth, life,  teaching, and siding with the poor.⁹ Lingenfelter and Mayers state that the Incarnation  is God’s model for relationships.¹⁰ This means that Jesus came as a helpless infant, a  learner and as a 200% person. This, he explains, adds up since he was 100% God and  

 ⁶ Dean S. Gilliland, “The Incarnation as Matrix for Appropriate Theologies”  Appropriate Christianity Edited by Charles H. Kraft (Pasadena: William Carey  Library, 2005) 493. 

⁷ Gilliland 508. 

⁸ Charles E. Van Engen, “Five Perspectives in Contextually Appropriate Missional  Theology” Appropriate Christianity Edited by Charles H. Kraft (Pasadena: William  Carey Library, 2005) 188. 

⁹ David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission  (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991) 27f. See also Langmead 8f. 

¹⁰ Sherwood G. Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers, Ministering Cross-Culturally:  An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986)  16.

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100% Jew. Aside from the disquieting implications of applying mathematics to god in  such a way, what the authors are doing is explaining that Jesus’ young life is  paradigmatic in the sense that, just as Christ was a helpless infant, we should not  assume the position of a ruler, expert or adult over other people with whom we have a  relationship. Just as Jesus is a learner (gleaned from his visit to the temple and sitting  with the elders who marveled at what he knew), we should be good learners. In other  words, Jesus is our exemplar. The authors then proceed to explain why cross-cultural  learning, based on the Incarnation is necessary. It is because we learn from within  culture. Moreover, “it is because of cultural blindness that we must become incarnate  in the culture and thus in the lives of the people we wish to serve.”¹¹ This becomes a  pattern for learning within any culture. “If Jesus did indeed set the example, then it is  clear that it was my responsibility to work as hard to become Yapese (for example) as  he did to become a Jew. We are to become incarnate in the cultures to which we are  sent.”¹² We can see from this that the authors leave the event of Christ’s Incarnation  in the background as they use it as a paradigm for our actions as believers. The  Incarnation is useful in establishing relationships as we imitate Christ. Gilliland goes  one step further. He does not think that the Incarnation is reducible to a model.  Rather, he sees it as the matrix through which to see and conduct all ministry. When  we do this properly-when we appropriately contextualize the gospel according to the  Incarnation’s example, we have “appropriate Christianity.”¹³ 

Leonard Hjalmarson recently reviewed an important text used to outline the premises  of incarnational missiology. The text he examined was The Shaping of Things to  Come written by Frost and Hirsch in 2003. The authors note four seminal  characteristics of the incarnation and then apply each in practical terms to  contemporary mission. The four are identification, locality, the Beyond in-the-midst  and the human image of God. Incarnational mission that embodies these “implies a  real and abiding presence among a group of people” and “implies a sending impulse  rather than an extractional one.” ¹⁴ The language of extraction is gleaned from  anthropological terminology and implies that any communication that is not presented  as coming from within a given culture is “extractional.” This is a negative value. They  then attempt to connect the idea of incarnation to a theological construct framed  earlier by Stanley Grenz. They posit two possibilities for core beliefs. They either  serve as boundaries (propositional doctrines that set boundaries and exclude) or as  centers (irreducible attractors that invite people in). Boundaries are exclusive and  centered sets are inclusive. Since incarnational mission endeavors to “incarnate” the  message of the gospel in each culture, centered sets are better at reducing the number  of cultural impediments that can obstruct the clear communication of the gospel. At  the same time, their very nature tends to devalue the role played by doctrine and the  ability of the new faith system to critique the culture within which it is embedded.  This, however, while being a concern, takes a back seat to the importance of taking  down potential barriers. As Hjalmarson says, “We need a spirituality of the road, a  missional spirituality. This is a spirituality that is self-authorizing, decentralized,  sacramental, personal, creative and incarnational. It is a spirituality for the road…a  

 ¹¹ Lingenfelter and Mayers 22. 

¹² Lingenfelter and Mayers 24. 

¹³ Gilliland 497. 

¹⁴ Leonard Hjalmarson, “Toward A Theology of Public Presence: Incarnational or  Attractional?” www.allelon.org. 

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missional spirituality.” The fruit of this labour, as David Bosch outlines, is “not so  much a case of the church being expanded, but of the church being born anew in each  new context and culture.”¹⁵ 

Building on the idea of coming alongside, or identification and locality, Langmead  cites Jean Danielou as saying that this must only be the first step in incarnational  mission. This must lead to bringing the good news, challenging others and  transformation.¹⁶ Transformation is seen in the holistic sense espoused by the Missio  Dei, “God’s incarnational mission.”¹⁷ Langmead notices that Bosch excludes the  cross and resurrection at this point because their omission “helps Christians to bleed  with the victims of oppression and engage freshly with the practice of Jesus.” Like  many other missiologists, Langmead adopts critical realism and applies it to say that  incarnational mission has to be firmly Christological but without being reduced to the  propositional formulas of Chalcedon. In his interpretation of this, Langmead sees  metaphor as being essential in coming alongside people.¹⁸ Being too literal, places  barriers that may not be surmountable. It also indicates another common theme in  advocacies of incarnational mission: the imprecision of doctrine. He roots his own  understanding of incarnational mission in early Anabaptism and contemporary  Mennonite thought.¹⁹ We will explore this connection later. Mission, therefore, does  not flow primarily as proclamation, as a kind of heralding or representation, but from  “living as Christ lived.” He cites J.A. Osterbaan as saying that Anabaptists did not  emphasize faith’s content or objective, doctrinal truth, but something that was more  relational and imitative.  

Contemporary missiology 

The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization “Willowbank Report” strikes the  tone of present missiology when it intones that the Incarnation should serve as the  model for Christian witness. In keeping with John 20:21, we should model Jesus in  mission. Philippians 2 is cited in suggesting that having “the mind of Christ” implies a  profound respect for the people and cultures that missionaries serve, that missionaries  should be under the authority of local Christians, learn dependence on others, expect  to be vulnerable and be able to identify with other peoples.²⁰ John Stott bases this  “modeling” on John 1:14’s proclamation that “the Word became flesh.” In so doing,  Christ became a very particular Jew in First century Palestine while, at the same time,  not surrendering his identity as the eternal Son of God. This Stott sees as the opposite  of cultural imperialism, as Christ “emptied himself of his glory and humbled himself  to serve. Dean Flemming, in expositing Philippians 2:5-11, says it means “nothing  less than a contextualization of the self-denying story of Jesus. In context, it meant no  longer thinking and acting according to the cultural scripts of hierarchy and self- 

 ¹⁵ Bosch 454. 

¹⁶ Langmead 18. 

¹⁷ Langmead 216. 

¹⁸ Langmead 34ff. 

¹⁹ Langmead 64f. 

²⁰ Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization” Perspectives on the World  Christian Movement: A Reader Third Edition (Pasadena: William Carey Library,  1999) 492f.

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promotion.”²¹ This is what the Lausanne Covenant meant when it said, “Christ’s  evangelists must humbly seek to empty themselves of all but their personal  authenticity, in order to become the servants of others” (Para 10).”²² Stott modifies  this by insisting that this also meant that Christ’s presence would challenge every  culture, challenging every person to follow him. This is necessary. On the other hand,  there were also unnecessary threats. Stott notes these as the abolition of harmless  customs, and the destruction of national art, architecture, music and festivals. 

Well, what does this mean in practical terms? According to Steve Griffiths, a  proponent of the Emergent Church, it means, “God took the initiative in assuming  cultural identity through Christ and so we are to take the initiative in developing  ministerial and ecclesiological forms that identify with the shifting patterns of  contemporary society. It is no longer enough to assume that the world will come to us.  It is no longer enough to assume that we should go to the world. The Emerging  Church Movement is concerned to blur- even dismantle- the distinctions between “us”  and “them” in an honest endeavor to present a Christ for today.” Furthermore, this  incarnational ministry must be motivated by love, as Christ was, and that love has to  be unconditional. According to Griffiths, that means loving when faced with  rejection, and challenging without condemning. All of this is derived from living out  Christ’s example. In a sense, it is the living out that is emphasized rather than the  world that inspired it. “”It is in Philippians 2:5-11 that we see this truth expounded  most graciously. This passage of course, is not about Jesus. It is about you and me.”  Like Stott, he also issues a caution as a counterbalance to open-ended  contextualization. He sees the danger of too radically blurring the distinction between  non-believers and us.²³ Unfortunately, fellow proponents often undercut it. “If we  look at the Scriptures, we see that the Jewish people, chosen by God to bare witness  to monotheism, had to accomplish their mission in a religiously pluralistic  environment. That the relationship was largely conflictual can be considered  irrelevant.”²⁴ 

Darrell Guder speaks for much of the postmodern or reformist evangelical community  in defining incarnational mission as “the understanding and practice of Christian  witness that is rooted in and shaped by the life, ministry, suffering, death, and  resurrection of Jesus.” He also cautions that too broadly defining the term runs the  risk of diluting the “uniqueness and centrality of Christ.”²⁵ Key to Guder is linking  incarnational texts such as John 1:14 to the 20^th century theological development, the  Missio Dei. The Missio Dei, often, but ambiguously based on Barth’s influence,  called for a holistic, communal basis for ministry on the basis of Christ’s earthy  

 ²¹ Dean Flemming, Contextualization in the New Testament: Patterns for Theology  and Mission (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005) 175. 

²² Stott, “The Bible in World Evangelization” Perspectives 24. 

²³ Steve Griffiths, “An Incarnational Missiology for the Emerging Church”  www.opensourcetheology.net (30 January 2007). 

²⁴ Michael L. Fitzgerald, “Religious Pluralism-A Theological Consideration” Plenary  Assembly of the Catholic Biblical Federation Lebanon (7 September 2002). The  author considers the impact on incarnational thinking on Roman Catholic theology. ²⁵ Darrell Guder, The Incarnation and the Church’s Witness (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf  & Stock, 1989) xiif.

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ministry.²⁶ In the eyes of some, that meant equating words and deeds in terms of  missiological emphasis. Missio Dei states that mission is not the church’s mission but  God’s. It is God on mission and he uses whatever means he wishes in order to  recreate the world. Mission is not therefore exclusively wedded to the church. For  some, it went further than that. Guder is forthright in insisting that the goal of  incarnational mission not be “a continuation of the once-and-for-all Incarnation but  the continuation of the incarnate Lord’s mission as he shaped and formed it.”²⁷ Nor is  the church its goal or outcome. This links him to other contemporary developments in  ecclesiology. “The church is not the ultimate and intended outcome of God’s grace.  Christ did not die only to save Christians (strange statement), nor to form a church of  the saved, but to bring God’s healing love to the world.”²⁸ Similar are the words of  Mark Norridge. “The ultimate goal of mission is peoples on the earth living out the  reality of what it (the new creation) means to true humanity, living out the reality of  communion with God, community with each other and entering into co-creativity  with God.”²⁹ 

This reflects the under-emphasis of the church endemic to incarnational mission.  Missio Dei and incarnational mission are not about church as a visible, historically  defined organization at all. The church is a construct, a useful mechanism, but not  necessary is any particular form in carrying out mission. God has many other ways  through which to work. What matters is that people come to Christ. It does matter that  they form communities but these do not have to be connected to the historical, visible,  doctrinally bounded church. This thinking makes form incidental (or accidental in the  theological sense) to the process. Guder accepts the institutional nature of the process,  especially given the physical implications of incarnational thinking. He does,  however, minimize the historical framework of the church for the sake of maximizing  inculturation. He is trying to distance his thinking from what he considers to be  Western anachronism. The point, however, is not to throw out the baby with the bath  water. More radical are Mark Norridge’s insights. To Norridge, the institution of  church is not merely a fact to live with, but may be unnecessary altogether. “Whereas  an attractional church may confuse the church gathering or building as in someway  sacred, the incarnational church must have a view that God is already working in the  world and that, since the Holy Spirit indwells the community, they also carry God in  the world.” Somehow this implies to Norridge that the form of church we have is  altogether a social construct. Well, what of his idea? It is valid to posit real  differences in form based on culture. On the other hand, it does not imply jettisoning  the “guts” of the model of church we have in the New Testament. This form was not  incidental, but instrumental. 

For some postmodern Christians, incarnational theology means having the self emptying humility of Christ. What does emptying yourself mean? For Jesus it meant,  giving up the privileges of the Godhead for the position of slave and willing sacrifice.  According to Mark Norridge, it means to give up those things that would cause us to  feel superior to people in our interaction with them. Self-emptying is the required step  before being able to truly identify with others. When we think of cross-cultural  

 ²⁶ Guder 8ff. 

²⁷ Guder 23. 

²⁸ Guder 24. 

²⁹ Mark Norridge, “Incarnational Mission” www.ccn-online.org.uk. 

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mission, this self-emptying involves the putting off of one’s own culture.”³⁰ We will  take a closer look later about the possibility of “putting off one’s own culture.” for the  moment, let us look at his earlier statement about feeling superior. If he purports to be  incarnational as Jesus was incarnational, can we really say that Jesus, in being fully  man, put off his “feelings” of superiority? This smacks of pop culture, not a serious  engagement with the reality of the Incarnation and its implications for us.  Furthermore, for Norrridge, it means that self-emptying “involved the adoption of the  culture being reached out to.” It did involve his being born into the Judaism of first  century Palestine, but this was not just any culture. It was part of the covenantal  framework and therefore unique. More importantly, Norridge does not acknowledge  the unique consequence of Christ giving up the prerogatives of deity. The omission is  important because it severs the act of incarnation from its association with atonement.  For others, it implies the necessity of dialogue with other cultures and religions.  “Culture (and religion) becomes the basis from which the gospel is unfolded to us.  This should lead us to seek out, dialogue with, and learn from other cultures because  it gives us continuing opportunity to discover the fullness of the gospel.”³¹ Aware that  this might be seen as an endorsement for heterodoxy, Bos underlies his commitment  to Chalcedon. He seems to undercut his own position, however, later in the same  article when he promotes dialogue on the basis of his belief that the Old Testament  assimilated Canaanite religion into its beliefs. Does that mean syncretism is permitted  as long as it is biblical syncretism? This also demonstrates a growing pattern among  evangelicals to simply espouse ideas that originated with 19^th century liberalism. 

Historical Background 

Pre-modern Discussions: The Incarnation has played a prominent role in the earlier  history of the Church. Prior to the 12th century however, opinions considering its  purpose were uniform. It represented a once and for all manifestation of God’s love  being poured out in answer to the dread consequences of the fall. In other words, the  Incarnation of Christ was necessary to either propitiate the wrath of God or serve to  expiate man’s sin. “The Word was made flesh, in order that sin, destroyed by means  of that same flesh through which it had gained the mastery and taken hold and lorded  it, should no longer be in us…and overcome through Adam (Christ as a second  Adam) what had stricken us through Adam.”³² “Great, then, was the mercy of God the  Father: He sent the creative Word, who, when he came to save us, put himself in our  position, and in that same situation in which we lost life; and he loosed the prison bonds, and his light appeared and dispelled the darkness in the prison, and he  sanctified our birth and abolished death, loosing those same bonds by which we were  held.”³³ Methodius opined, “Christ, the heavenly man, when he appeared, bore the  same form of limbs and the same image of flesh as ours, through which also he, who  was not man, became man, that ‘as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be  made alive’ (1Co 15:22). For if he bore flesh for any other reason than that of setting  the flesh free, and raising it up, why did he bear flesh superfluously, as he purposed  

 ³⁰ Norridge. 

³¹ Michael S. Bos, “The Dialogical Imperative” The Gospel and Our Culture  Network www.gocn.org. ³² Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching (New York: Newman, 1952) 68. ³³ Irenaeus 72.

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neither to save it, nor to raise it up.” To the contrary, “He did not then take the form  of a servant uselessly, but to raise it up and save it.”³⁴ 

The early Church also held to Christ’s pre-existence and participation in Creation.  This is the firstborn of God 

Who was begotten before the morning star 

Who made the light to rise 

Who made the day bright 

Who parted the darkness who fixed the first mark for creation 

Who hung the earth in its place 

Who dried up the abyss 

Who spread out the firmament 

Who brought order to the world.³⁵ 

On the other hand, the early church, because it was so exclusively wedded to biblical  proof, did not see in that any independent justification of the Incarnation. In other  words, for the Church, the Incarnation was inextricably linked to God’s atoning  purposes. Athanasius, in perhaps the classic exposition on the Incarnation, summed  up the early church’s opinion: “He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was  in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to  be an ambassador for all with the Father. For this purpose then, the incorporeal and  incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. He saw how the  surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their  universal liability to death. All this he saw and, pitying our race, moved with  compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery.  He took to himself a body, a human body even as our own. Thus taking a body like  our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, he surrendered  his body to death in place of all, and offered it to the Father. This he did out of sheer  love for us, so that in his death all might die, and the law of death thereby be  abolished.”³⁶ 

Medieval and Reformation Developments: A new wrinkle was introduced to the  Church’s thinking about the Incarnation by Rupert of Deutz (d.1135), who pondered  the “necessity” of the Incarnation.³⁷ His concern was picked up later by Duns Scotus  (a. 1266-1308), a Franciscan, who was particularly concerned by the Church’s classic  doctrine. Scotus and his followers believed that the doctrine as it had been stated  made it appear as though God’s actions were made necessary by an action of humans,  namely sin. Scotus was attempting to resolve a dilemma in mediaeval theology, the  relationship between two kinds of God’s power, ordained (potentia Dei ordinata, i.e.  the way that god chose to do things) versus absolute (potentia Dei absoluta, i.e. the  way that things might have been).³⁸ In other words, Scotus, eager to protect God’s  ultimate freedom, could not accept that the only reason that God ordained the  

 ³⁴ Methodius, “On the Resurrection” Patrology Vol. 2 ed. By Johannes Quasten  (Allen, Texas: Thomas More, 1950) 135. 

³⁵ Melito of Sardis, “Homily on the Passion” Patrology Vol. 1 245.  ³⁶ Athanasius, On the Incarnation (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1993) 33f. ³⁷ Peter J. Leithart, “Necessary Incarnation” (26 May 2007) www.leithart.com. ³⁸ Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Oxford:  Blackwell, 1987) 19.

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Incarnation was because of the fall. The Incarnation would have happened in any  case, because it was the very reason for the creation in the first place. The world was  created so that Christ could be incarnated. This, in itself, was therefore an act o pure  love. A contemporary Franciscan explains it well. “Sin has been given too much  prominence in contemporary soteriology: God redeems from sin because he loves us?:  no, says the Scotist. God loves us and then redeems us. Redemption is an act of love  first and foremost, not an act of saving us from sin, and the first act of redemption is  the Incarnation.”³⁹ Scotus took aim at Dominicans such as Thomas Aquinas,  accusing them of not honouring Paul’s words describing Christ as the firstborn of  creation ((Col 1:16). How could the Church do justice to the fact that all of creation  pointed expectantly to Christ, when he was reduced to being a means to an end?⁴⁰ Scotus’s opinions generated subsequent support by late nominalists such as Gabriel  Biel, the radical Anabaptists Michael Servetus and Faustus Socinus, the Reformer  Andreas Osiander, as well as by contemporary scholars such as N.T. Wright.  

Radical Anabaptist support for Scotus fused with their spirituality to develop the  ethos that eventually gave rise to incarnational theology and missiology. Thomas  Muntzer, for example, rather than pursuing and radicalizing Luther’s call for  justification by grace through faith alone, called for reform based on a purified  mediaeval devotion. “For Muntzer, salvation is not through faith but through the  imitation of Christ.”⁴¹ Hans Denck saw genuine baptism as an inner experience that  did not purify us, but created the covenant of a good conscience with God. “This  covenant is the promise to die with Christ and to walk in Christ’s way of life. It is  living the imitatio Christi”⁴² Hughes Old points out that in hi most mature work,  Denck, after two years of constant conversation with Anabaptist leadership concludes  that every human being has a little spark (Funklein) of love which is God. “The spark  of the divine in each human being naturally strives to reunite with what is divine.”⁴³ Lest we think these comparisons between Anabaptists and contemporary missiologists  overwrought, consider Dean Gilliland’s approving use of Justin Martyr’s concept of  spermatikos logos. Gilliland defines these as seeds of the gospel of Christ already  planted in cultures and religions.⁴⁴ The most interesting thing about this is that Justin  Martyr and Denck both thought there was a time when Christ did not have  personhood.  

While most Anabaptists held to the historically based atonement, many also embraced  a backward-looking sanctification based on the imitation of Christ. Others such as  Karsthans Maurer, Hans Wolf and Clement Ziegler were all strong prophets of social  

 ³⁹ Seamus Mulholland, “Incarnation in Franciscan Spirituality-Duns Scotus and the  Meaning of Love” Franciscan www.franciscans.org.uk (2001) 

⁴⁰ G.C. Berkouwer, The Work of Christ Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1965) 27. 

⁴¹ Hughes Oliphant Old, The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the  Sixteenth Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992) 83.  

⁴² Old 105. 

⁴³ Old 106f. 

⁴⁴ Gilliland 508.

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justice.⁴⁵ Rational Anabaptist spiritualists such as Sebastian Franck stressed the  presence of the celestial flesh of Christ, a “seminal reason or Logos common to all  mankind as revealed in history and contemporary societies which he studied  comparatively.”⁴⁶ Here we see a Protestant belief that God works within cultures not  committed to the gospel. It is true that modern day incarnational ministry cuts across  denominational affiliation, as evidenced by the broad contributions of as diverse a  group of thinkers as John Stott, Darrell Guder, Brian McLaren, David Bosch and  Darrell Whitman. Nevertheless, it can be demonstrated that ideas generated by the  Anabaptist wing of the Reformation and marginalized within modernity, were set  loose and conquered the evangelical world of missions in the 21^st century. The  importance of this excursus is that while postmodern evangelicals present  incarnational theology and mission as new developments, they actually represent  centuries long commitments that come through one branch of the Reformation. In  other words, they have historical and theological roots. 

Scotus’ thinking contradicted the earlier opinion of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas did not  base his argument on a philosophical or theological construct such as the tension  between God’s ultimate freedom and contingency. He suggested that since there was  no evidence in Scripture of an Incarnation without the fall, it was unwise to postulate  one. Aquinas pointed out that “The cosmic significance of Christ cannot justify the  conclusion that he would have been made flesh without the fall.” There is simply no  biblical evidence to support Scotus’ contention. To Aquinas, it was an argument made  from possible, not necessary inference.⁴⁷ Aquinas marshals Augustine to his aid, as  the latter expounded Luke 19:10: “For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save  that which was lost: -Therefore, if man had not sinned, the Son of Man would not  have come. And on 1Ti 1:15, Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners. Take  away diseases, take away wounds, and there is no need of medicine.” What the  Scriptures tell us is that we needed salvation and that Christ was incarnated so that we could have it. The principle of not going beyond what Scripture teaches on this point  was critical for Aquinas. “For such things as spring from God’s will, and beyond the  creature’s due, can be made known to us only through being revealed in the Sacred  Scripture, in which the Divine Will is made known to us. Hence, since everywhere in  the Sacred Scripture the sin of the first man is assigned as the reason of the  Incarnation, it is more in accordance with this to say that the work of the Incarnation  was ordained by god as a remedy for sin- so that, had sin not existed, the Incarnation  would not have been. And yet the power of God is not limited to this; -even had sin  not existed, God could have become incarnate.”⁴⁸ In other words, God did not have to  choose the route he did. “But once God determines which potentialities to actualize,  

 ⁴⁵ Old 84.See also The Radical Reformation by George Huntston Williams and two  works by James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community  of Goods and Anabaptists and the Sword for extended treatments. ⁴⁶ George H. Williams, ed., Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers Library of Christian  Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957) 33.This is not to say that modern evangelical missiologists all embrace the same position, but it is to say that modern  pluralism as expressed by Brian McLaren and others makes more sense when set  against this background. 

⁴⁷ Berkouwer 27. 

⁴⁸ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Vol IV. Q.1 Art.. 3 Pt. III (Westminster:  Christian Classics, 1948) 2022.

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he is obliged to himself to honour his own choices. Therefore, the present created  order is an expression of wisdom and benevolence rather than necessity.”⁴⁹ 

Calvin picked up the same thought in his debate with Osiander. Calvin accused him of  deriving theology on the basis of speculation. According to Osiander, Adam had been  the first to see what the image of God was, man according to the pattern of the  Messiah to come. Calvin responds, “I should also like to know why Paul calls Christ  the ‘Second Adam’ (1Co 15:47), unless the human condition was ordained for him in  order that he might lift Adam’s descendents out of ruin. For if Christ came before  creation, then he ought to be called the ‘first Adam.’ Paul, calling Christ the ‘Second  Adam,’ sets the fall, from which arose the necessity of restoring nature to its former  condition, between man’s first origin and the restoration that we obtain through  Christ. It follows, then, that it was for this same cause that the Son of God was born to  become man (Inst. II.12. 6).”⁵⁰ Calvin emphasized that the delivery from sin and  eternal death was the biblically stated motive for the Incarnation. Christ himself  declared his reason for coming, being the Second Adam. Henri Blocher notes that  Calvin hated even the idea of separating God’s righteousness from his freedom.⁵¹ This  did not, however, mean that God was acting in a way that undercut his freedom. As  Blocher points out, there are different ways with which to consider necessity. In  Calvin’s view, he was not forced by anything man did. He was, in effect, obligated to  himself, based on his own undeniable goodness, to incarnate his Son fully as man.  Citing Isa 53:10, God chose the way he did because he was good not because he was  forced by his creation.⁵² What both Aquinas and Calvin were doing was observing  that the Bible linked the Incarnation to the Atonement. Both were sensitive not to  imply that God only acted reactively and both understood that God’s power was  unlimited. They simply stood with Scripture because to stand anywhere else was to  open the way to error and therefore move away from God’s leading. 

We should remind ourselves that these discussions are germane to our discussion.  There are profound consequences to either linking the Incarnation and Atonement or  severing the necessity of the tie. In a similar way, the Reformers always linked Christ,  the Word, and the Spirit. What happens when you separate out each of these  elements? In the case of Word and Spirit, it becomes possible to posit God saving  people that do not acknowledge Christ as Lord and saviour, much less consider him  God or join a church. The Spirit, in such a case, can save whom he wills. It is true that  Christ’s sacrifice pays for the sins of the whole world, but, according to this thinking,  does that necessitate tying the Spirit’s hands? No, they say, the Spirit moves where it  wills. You can see the point. Decoupling things has a significant consequence. This  also explains why people like Luther and Calvin were so resistant to such initiatives.  Well, what about the Incarnation and the Atonement? For one thing, it allows us to  make “incarnation” a general principle for our actions. When you separate it from the  Atonement you allow yourself the ability to redefine it or modify it for your intended  use. It can, for example, become shorthand for having an attitude that accommodates  

 ⁴⁹ McGrath 20. 

⁵⁰ John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion II.12.6 (Philadelphia:  Westminster, 1960) 471f. 

⁵¹ Henri Blocher, “The Atonement in John Calvin’s Theology” The Glory of the  Atonement (Downers Grove: IVP, 2004) 297. 

⁵² Blocher 300.

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the observations and direction of cultural anthropologists. They introduce us to  sociological constructs such as “insider” and “outsider,” implying that “insider” is  much better for the gospel. We accept their guidance because it is “incarnational to do  so.” Jesus humbled himself. Shouldn’t we?  

Roman Catholic Developments: One of the principle developments in missiology  during the 20^th century was the increasingly close collaboration between Protestants  and Roman Catholics. This mirrored ecumenical initiatives that swept through and  continue to engage both mainline denominations and evangelicals. Missiology was  particularly affected as the field moved from a stronger dependence on theology and  denominational affiliation to a greater concentration on the social sciences and  linguistics. “Neutral” disciplines such as cultural anthropology and translation  afforded an opportunity for scholars reflecting differing faith systems to interact in a  way that minimized the differences located in their traditions. For example, one can  see the helical development of missions in the ascendancy of Roman Catholic  organizations such as Orbis Books and evangelical organizations such as the Fuller  School of Intercultural Studies and the William Carey Library Press. 

Louis Luzbetak traces Roman Catholic contributions toward incarnational theology  (termed “enculturation” by the author and most Catholic scholars) back to a  Christmas message of Pope Pius XII in 1945. “AS Christ was in the midst of men, so  too his Church, in which he continues to live, is placed in the midst of the peoples. As  Christ assumed a real human nature so too the Church takes to herself the fullness of  all that is genuinely human wherever and however she finds it and transforms it into a  source of supernatural energy.”⁵³ In other words, the Church incarnates Christ in a  real, visible and active way for the sake of the Church and the world. Though the  fullness of meaning resident in incarnational theology is not yet evident, Pius’s words  indicate a movement within Catholicism towards the embracing of a profound  paradigm change.  

The Nigerian priest and scholar Francis Oborji notes the work of the Belgian Jesuit  Pierre Charles. In his last work, Charles highlights the importance of genuine  adaptation to successful church planting. In this regard, the Incarnation serves as the  church’s ideal model. As Oborji explains, “To save humankind and to restore human  nature to its full dignity and to attain its potential, the word of God became flesh in  human history.” By serving incarnationally, a missionary becomes a mediator of  grace.⁵⁴ The subsequent work of Vatican II in the mid 60s accelerated greatly the  focus on coordinating contextualization/enculturation and the perceived principles of  the Incarnation.  

Vatican II contributed familiar ingredients to some versions of the incarnational mix.  Pope Paul VI in Lumen Gentium (The Light of Nations) focused on the unconverted.  “”In the first place we must recall the people to whom the Testament and the promises  were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of  their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts  he makes nor of the calls he issues; but the plan of salvation also includes those who  

 ⁵³ Louis J. Luzbetak, The Church and Cultures (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988) 69. ⁵⁴ Francis Anakwe Oborji, Concepts of Mission: The Evolution of Contemporary  Missiology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2006) 84f.

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acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these are the Mohammedans,  who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and  merciful god, who on the last day will judge mankind. Through her (the Church)  work, whatever good is in the minds and hearts of men, whatever good lies latent in  the religious practices and cultures of diverse peoples, is not only saved from  destruction but is also cleansed, raised up and perfected unto the glory of God.”⁵⁵ 

Gaudium et Spes highlighted the role of the Church in following Christ by  incarnating a spirit of love to it. “And Christ entered this world to give witness to the  truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgment, to serve and not to be served.” This love  had to be visible and contextual. “It is the function of the Church, led by the Holy  Spirit who renews and purifies her ceaselessly, to make God the Father and his  Incarnate Son present and in a sense visible. This faith needs to prove its fruitfulness  by penetrating the believer’s entire life, including its worldly dimensions, and by  activating him toward justice and love, especially regarding the needy.” This all has to  be based on the singular, incarnational work of Christ. “For by his incarnation the Son  of God has united himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human  hands. He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a  human heart.” As we go to the nations, we learn to contextualize the truth of the  Word. “The ability to express Christ’s message in its own way is developed in each  nation, and at the same time there is fostered a living exchange between the Church  and the diverse cultures of people.”⁵⁶ Paul VI in his address to the Fourth Synod of  Bishops on Evangelism, Evangelii Nuntiandi, sounded the new note of urgency and  delineated themes that would become a permanent part of incarnational theology’s  identity. “What matters is to evangelize man’s culture and cultures (not in a purely  decorative way, as it were, by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth and  right to their very roots). Every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of  culture, or more correctly of cultures. They have to be regenerated by an encounter  with the Gospel. The Church links human liberation and salvation in Jesus Christ.”⁵⁷ 

Pope John Paul II championed mission in the Roman Catholic Church. His  Redemptoris Missio reflected his sense of urgency. He also most clearly endorsed the  relationship of incarnation to mission. In the section entitled “Incarnating the Gospel  in Peoples’ Culture” he states: “Through enculturation the Church makes the Gospel  incarnate in different cultures and at the same time introduces peoples, together with  their cultures, into her own community. She transmits to them her own values, at the  same time taking the good elements that already exist in them and renewing them  from within. Developing ecclesial communities, inspired by the Gospel, will  gradually be able to express their Christian experience in original ways and forms that  are consonant with their own cultural traditions, provided that those traditions are in  harmony with the objective requirements of the faith itself.” Interestingly, John Paul  adds something that contradicts much contemporary practice associated with  incarnational mission. “In this regard, certain guidelines remain basic. Properly  

 ⁵⁵ Paul VI, Pope, Lumen Gentium Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the  Modern World, Second Vatican Council (21 November 1964).  

⁵⁶ Paul VI, Pope Gaudium et Spes Dogmatic Consitituion on the Church in the  Modern World, Second Vatican Council (7 December 1965). 

⁵⁷ Paul VI, Pope, “Evangelii Nuntiandi: On Evangelization in the Modern World”  Apostolic Exhortation (8 December 1975) www.papalencyclicals.net.

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applied, inculturation must be guided by two principles: ‘compatibility with the  gospel and communion with the universal church.’”⁵⁸ Of course all practitioners will  admit to the first. Not all, however, can claim the second.  

Francis Oborji expresses a mature post-Vatican II understanding of the role of the  Incarnation to mission. “Just as Jesus Christ, the Word of God, became incarnate in a  human culture, in the Jewish milieu, the gospel of Jesus Christ should be allowed to  be inculturated (or incarnated) in the local culture and context. It means the process of  mutual penetration of the gospel and culture so that Jesus Christ may be present  ‘today’ in every culture.” According to Oborji, it has a second sense that refers  exclusively to the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, when “the Word became flesh and  dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). This serves as the “foundation and model for all  subsequent enculturation.” The author then cites Justin Ukpong’s observation that  “enculturation involves immersing Christianity in the local cultures of the people so  that just as Jesus became man, so must Christianity become the cultural religion of the  people.”⁵⁹ 

Protestant and Evangelical Background:  

Incarnational mission is often attributed to the work of Karl Barth. Darrell Guder, for  example, mentions Barth’s contribution in 1932 to articulating the centrality of the  incarnation. In some way, said Barth, every action of the church is a self-revelation  from God.⁶⁰ At the same time, Barth was also sensitive to the possible abuse of the  word “incarnational” when it was being used to describe an ongoing activity. Guder’s  way of applying Barth to the possibility of abuse is to create a description of  incarnational mission that does not allow for the separation of ministry from Christ.  “Incarnational witness is focused entirely upon the event of Jesus Christ as God’s  saving action for all creation.”⁶¹ This is strongly Barthian language, both in terms of  its inclusive scope and it ambiguity. What event? What does saving action mean?  Who is all of creation? 

Lausanne and John Stott: Stott’s expository and commentary of the Lausanne  Covenant is a good place to begin.⁶² Under “The Purpose of God,” the document  addresses the need for the church to be sent out into the world. This is what mission  means. It means going as servants and witnesses, just as Jesus did. The objectives in  going are to extend the kingdom, build up Christ’s Body and the glory of his name.  The Covenant then confesses the failure of the church to do this faithfully. Stott  elaborates. This is because the church either courts the world or shuns it altogether.  “The best way to avoid these two mistakes of conformity and withdrawal is to be  engaged in mission.” Stott’s use of “mission” rather than “missions” is also  

 ⁵⁸ John Paul II, Pope, Redemptoris Missio Encyclical Letter on the Permanent  Validity of the Church’s Missionary Mandate (7 December 1990)  www.aderemus.org. ⁵⁹ Oborji 19f. 

⁶⁰ Guder 2. 

⁶¹ Guder 19. 

⁶² John Stott, “The Lausanne Covenant: An Exposition and Commentary” Lausanne  Occasional Paper 3 (1975) Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization  www.lausanne.org. 

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significant: the former being the general Catholic expression for holistic ministry.  Under “The Prelude to Evangelism,” the Covenant promotes listening and sensitivity  in the form of dialogue as an essential part of mission. It does not imply compromise,  but rather understanding. Its desired outcome is spelled out next: the conversion of  people, with regard to Christ, the church and the world. Conversion itself is no  truncated decisionism, but includes the social and economic sphere. The Covenant  states, “The message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every  form of alienation, oppression and discrimination.” 

The section, “The Mission of the Church” is full of significant detail. As Stott puts it,  “It recognizes that Christ’s mission in the world is to be the model of the church’s and  that this calls “for a similar and deep penetration of the world. For when the Son of  God was sent into the world he did not remain aloof from its life or pain. On the  contrary, he penetrated deep into our humanity by the Incarnation, and by becoming  man he became vulnerable to temptation and suffering.” We can see Stott’s  engagement of Philippians 2:5-8 here, as he equates mission with the earthly imitation  of Christ’s Incarnation. Critically for future incarnational mission, Stott brings in  Ralph Winter’s anthropologically determined categories of evangelization (within our  own culture/language, similar culture/language and cross-cultural). Though the roots  of this are earlier, Stott provided a powerful boost to anthropology as a discipline that  could guide and define mission. Section 10, “Evangelism and Culture” established the  principle of evaluating and judging each culture by its own standards. The only thing  insisted upon was moral absolutes. It seems to imply that to do more would be to  impose our own alien, culturally conditioned standards on others. This is significant  because it implies that there can be no statement of absolutes that is not also  contaminated by particular cultures. That being true, any attempt to impose these  understandings would be tantamount to imposing our culture on others.  

Stott attempts to explain this by bringing in another giant influence in contemporary  mission, Donald McGavran. According to McGavran, “God has no favorites among  cultures. He accepts them all (Rev 21:6).” This muddies the waters as it leaves out the  unique relationship of Israel and its culture as a vehicle for the gospel. In a sense,  McGavran cannot avoid the problem since he is wedded to anthropological models  from which to understand culture. The Covenant proclaims, “Missions have all too  frequently exported with the Gospel an alien culture.” I hope so, because if the culture  is not alien to mine, I cannot be converted since the answers to my sin condition lie  outside not inside. Once again, we have to wrestle with the fallout of mixing  anthropology and theology in such a way that biblical meaning is distorted. Stott  closes his commentary on culture by exhorting Christians, once again, to be servants,  by imitating Jesus and emptying themselves of their “cultural status, power, privileges  and prejudices.” The Willowbank Report of 1978 also explored the relationship of  evangelism and culture in detail. It mediated specifically on the importance of  Christ’s example in Philippians 2. Most of its comments mirrored earlier statements  and are generally helpful other than in its implicit assumption that mission should in  fact be driven by the imitation of Christ (incarnational mission). It had more to say  later in the document when it alerted the church to the dangers posed by incarnational  mission through dynamic equivalent theology, provincialism and syncretism. 

A strong influence on Stott came through the “left wing of evangelicalism”, in the  work of people such as Rene Padilla, Orlando Costas, Samuel Escobar and other 

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members of the Radical discipleship Group that were present at the first Lausanne  Congress in 1974. The group reflected the political radicalism spreading through the  evangelical world in the 1970s as it pushed out from its Roman Catholic Liberation  Theology epicentre. These drew up a “Response to Lausanne” that was signed and  advocated by John Stott. This signaled an embracing of social concern and holistic  mission by evangelicals based on an incarnational model that relied on verses such as  John 20:21 for support.⁶³ Evangelicals that subsequently networked into the same or  similar ethos included Christopher Sugden, Jim Wallis, Richard Mouw, Pete  Broadbent, and Mennonites such as John Howard Yoder, Wilbert Shenk, Donald  Kraybill, and Ron Sider.  

Other than Stott, none of these early pioneers of incarnational mission was more  important perhaps than Orlando Costas. Padilla describes an article written by Costas  in 1982. He described three qualities that had to be present in the church in order to  grow. The three were faithfulness, incarnation and spirituality. These three qualities in  turn had to be manifest in four dimensions: numerical growth, organic growth,  conceptual growth and diaconal service to the world.⁶⁴ Costas has had a profound and  lasting influence on incarnational mission along with Barth, Stott, David Bosch,  Andrew Walls and in some ways Lesslie Newbigin. An article by J. Todd Billings in  2004 outlined Costas’ contribution and influence.⁶⁵ Costas is important, as Billings  notes, because he is one of a handful of people that have written theological defenses  for incarnational mission. Most literature assumes and promotes it. It and Missio Dei  have become de facto elements of evangelical doctrine. Costas’ most influential  defense of incarnational mission is found in Christ Beyond the Gate. He devotes one  chapter to “contextualization and Incarnation.” The coupling of the two is important  and echoes other, largely Catholic writing, that couples contextualization, or in the  case of Catholicism, inculturation, with incarnation. The two are seen as rough  equivalents, though incarnation retains clearer theological connections. On another  level, the pairing of these words also indicates a potential problem with the construct  itself. Does incarnational theology flow out of the sociological concept of  contextualization or vice versa?  

Costas, however, takes incarnational ministry beyond any rough equivalence to  contextualization. He keys on John 1:14 and the idea of the Logos being made flesh.  In a departure from the orthodox path of Chalcedon with its two nature Christology,  he frames the Incarnation in the same manner as Moltmann. Moltmann rejects the two  natures, affirming the ultimate possibility of God. God himself is vulnerable. Christ is  fully man, poor and oppressed. As Billings points out, it is important for Costas to  identify Jesus with the lowest social strata of humanity. Jesus becomes the lowest of  

 ⁶³ Langmead 94f. 

⁶⁴ C. Rene Padilla, “Evangelical Theology in a Latin American Context.  www.integral-mission.org. Published in The Local Church, Agent of  Transformation: An Ecclesiology for Integral Mission (Buenos Aires: Ediciones  Kairos, 2003).  

⁶⁵ J. Todd Billings, “’Incarnational’ Ministry and Christology: A Reappropriation of  the Way of Lowliness” Missiology: An International Review 32.2 (April 2004)  www.jtoddbillings.com. See also Ken Baker, “The Incarnational Model: Perception  or Deception?” (January 2002) www.emqonline.com and Harriet Hill, “Incarnational  Ministry: A Critical Examination” (April 1990) www.emqonline.com. 

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the low. Because God is passible, God suffers on the cross and not just in the  humanity of Jesus.⁶⁶ There is, therefore, a total identification between the Godhead  and the poor. Another way of seeing it is to say that there is no correlation between  God and power, glory or coercion. God is only revealed in weakness and suffering  that shows his love. Bauckham notes, “Moltmann sees Jesus, in his godforesakenness  on the cross, sharing the plight not only of sinners who suffer their own turning away  from God, but also of the innocent victims of meaningless suffering, who experience  their suffering as abandonment by God. God’s love, enacted in the event of the cross,  is love that suffers in solidarity with those who suffer. God’s love is not only active  benevolence, but also love which willingly incurs suffering.” Moltmann is also  important to Costas and for incarnational mission in general for another reason.  Moltmann rejects any sort of hierarchy within the Trinity, whether immanent or  economic. There can be no monarchy within the Trinity. Everything has to be fully  communal and participatory. There can be no directive element to the relations in the  Godhead; no privileged place. Therefore, everything done among the Trinity is of  equal importance. This drives Moltmann to posit a very strong endorsement of  holistic ministry as we strive to live authentic Trinitarian lives. For Moltmann, for  example, holistic soteriology means “a view of salvation which encompasses body  and soul, individual and community, humanity and the rest of nature, in a vision of  the universal abolition of transience and death and the new creation of all things.”⁶⁷ In  Moltmann, we can see themes that will emerge more fully in incarnational theology;  an immanent God, the solidarity of God with people in their specific circumstances,  the holistic recreation of the world by God, the interaction of god with humanity  based solely on love and not anger, etc.  

Costas extrapolates from this that missionaries cannot act from positions of distance,  let alone privilege. They cannot do things for people, but with them. Billings, at this  point, offers an interesting observation. It is clear enough that missionaries must be for people; he is just not sure what Costas says that they can do for people. Billings  brings this dilemma back to Moltmann. Moltmann was explicit about God identifying  with suffering humanity. On the other hand, he was also very unclear about how  Jesus’ death was for humanity. It seems to place a wedge between Christ the  immanent presence suffering along with us from the Christ who had a divine work to  complete for our salvation. This creates problems for Costas who, as Billings states,  knows how to tell missionaries to be with people and not for them. The same  problem can be said for missionaries that participate in extreme contextualization.  They encourage Muslims to embrace Jesus without leaving Islam. They (the  missionaries) are outsiders, however. They can be with people, but they cannot do  anything for them. At this point, Billings stops and makes an interesting assertion.  “One should admit that it is not self-evident that the Incarnation should be a  significant model for the task of missions. There are many other starting points.” So  there are. It would seem that a reliance on Moltmann actually may create more  problems than are solved. Billings adds, in agreement with Barth, “Christ meets  

 ⁶⁶ Richard Bauckham, “Moltmann” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern  Christian Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) 386. Moltmann saw passiblity as he  belief that God can feel pain and, in a broader sense, be affected by his creation. ⁶⁷ Richard Bauckham, “Jürgen Moltmann” The Modern Theologians: An  Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Blackwell,  1997) 220.

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humanity in the extreme limits of human experience, but ‘salvation is not in those  limits.’ as such, the suffering of the Christian is not redemptive in and of itself; one  must always sharply distinguish between the cross of Christ and the cross of the Christian.” We can say the same with regard for the Incarnation. While writers such  as Guder are quick to distinguish between the “Incarnation” and “incarnational”, it is  not apparent that proponents of incarnational mission get the point. 

Melvin Tinker comments on Stott’s understanding of holistic mission that embraced  the incarnational paradigm. He notes that Stott’s and others’ understanding hinged  largely on what they thought the Kingdom of God meant. He quotes Chris Sugden’s  use of the phrase to cover “all positive social change in society.”⁶⁸ Tinker then  musters the aid of D.A. Carson and R.T. France to give a more precise reading based  on exegesis. Carson maintained that “Kingdom of God” had to be understood within  the context of the sphere of salvation entered into through faith in Christ. France  agreed with Carson: “It is wrong to identify the Kingdom with social reform as it is  with the church or heaven, and for the same reason: it is a category mistake…To talk  of men, even Christian men, bringing about God’s kingdom is to usurp God’s  sovereignty. It is strangely reminiscent of 19^th century liberalism, which called upon  men to create a just and caring society which was called the ‘Kingdom of God.’”  

The role of social sciences: Perhaps the greatest developments and changes in  missiology in the past century have come through the blossoming of incarnational  mission that weds traditional categories of mission with insight and guidance gleaned  through the contribution of cultural anthropology. Anthropologists such as Darrell  Whitman complain about their under-utilization in the mission community, but the  facts to do not bear him out.⁶⁹ It may be true that most missionaries lack specific  anthropological training, but it is also true that anthropology exerts inordinate  influence among intellectuals and seminaries that train missionaries. Even a cursory  glance at missiological publications demonstrates conclusively the dominance of  anthropology in the definition and actualization of contemporary mission. It’s not  your Dad’s missiology anymore. Mike Raiter surveyed missiological publications for  content in 1997.⁷⁰ What he found was revealing. He surveyed 10 years of Missiology,  International Bulletin of Missionary Research (IBMR), and Evangelical Missions  Quarterly (EMQ) publications. What he found was that Missiology only had 5% of  its articles dealing with Bible studies, the IBMR, none and EMQ had five of 312  articles devoted to Bible study. A similar look from the perspective of theology nets  similar results. When Biblical theology is addressed, it is often harnessed as just a  way of justifying anthropological conclusions. The truth is that most articles, like  most ideas formed within the mission community have to do with the practice of  mission and no factor impacts modern mission as much as cultural anthropology. This  admittedly was not always so. Harvie Conn’s Eternal Word and Changing Worlds,  

 ⁶⁸ Melvin Tinker, “Reversal or Betrayal? Evangelicals and Socio-political  Involvement in the Twentieth Century” Churchman (11 March 1999). Online.  ⁶⁹ See Darrell L.Whiteman, “Anthropology and Mission: The Incarnational  Connection” Luzbetak Lecture, Catholic Theological Union (5 May 2003). Despite  my disagreements with many of the author’s conclusions, his article is a gold mine of  good information. 

⁷⁰ Michael Raiter, “Sent for This Purpose: ‘Mission’ and ‘Missiology’ and Their  Search for Meaning” (1997).

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written in 1984 was a call for balance, largely to the theological community. He plead  for the missions community to bring in anthropology and have it serve along with  theology. He did not suggest that anthropology begin to dictate theology or drive  mission, but strove for an informed, contextual application of biblical truth. Well, the  chickens have come home to roost. I am not attempting to denigrate anthropology at  all. It is immensely useful. I simply point out that protests to the effect that  anthropology isn’t listened to, are, to say the least, exaggerated.  

Darrell Whiteman explains the role of incarnation in connecting anthropology and  mission.⁷¹ The construction of his argument is interesting. In order to help readers  become familiar with anthropology, he starts with providing background that explains  the development of the field as an informer of mission. There is a great deal of useful  background here. He punctuates the section by showing how anthropology can help  connect the gospel to culture. He then switches gears. “I now come at last to what I  call the incarnational connection between anthropology and mission. I have argued…  that for reasons of pragmatism and efficiency, anthropology should inform mission,  but there are also important theological reasons for doing so.” Given his task,  Whiteman sensibly organizes his address. I become uncomfortable, however, with  words such as “also” and “important.” It just sounds as though theology and exegesis  provide additional reasons why we should conduct mission in a certain way.  Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Isn’t anthropology just a tool for helping to  apply theology and exegesis more wisely? 

Whiteman continues. “The Incarnation is our model for cross-cultural ministry, and  the biblical reason why anthropology needs to inform mission. This is fine as long as  it does not mean that we can read modern disciplines such as anthropology back into  the Bible. Whiteman plows familiar ground in asserting “God did not become a  generic human being.” The author musters Philippians 2:5-8 in pointing out the  particularity of Jesus’ Jewish identity. As in other works, he does not seem to  recognize the significance of Christ’s being Jewish from a historical-redemptive  perspective. It makes sense in this instance, since anthropology has no inherent  sensitivity to theological imperatives. What is important is that “In the same way that  God entered Jewish culture in the person of Jesus, we must be willing to enter the  culture of the people among whom we serve, to speak their language, to adjust our  lifestyle to theirs, to understand their worldview and religious values, and to laugh and weep with them.” As in other instances, the decisive bits are in the fine print.  What does “in the same way” actually mean? The point for Whiteman is that only  anthropology can help with this acculturation process. While agreeing to the  usefulness of the discipline in providing necessary insight, it does seem a bit of a  stretch. How did Jesus or the early church do it? They never had the training. Neither  did Roberto de Nobili, the Jesuit missionary in South India in the 17^th century. To say  that the field is valuable is not the same thing as saying that it is indispensable. The  Bible is indispensable. Theology, when it is rooted in the Bible and faith is.  Anthropology and the social sciences are hugely useful, but not indispensable. On the  other hand, there is no need to choose between them. Anthropology conducted within  the framework of biblical integrity and a doctrinal soundness that is historical  contemporary, universal and local is of tremendous benefit. 

 ⁷¹ Darrell L Whiteman, “Anthropology and Mission.”

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Whiteman says, “The same process of Incarnation of God becoming a human being  occurs every time the gospel crosses a new cultural, linguistic, or religious frontier.”  He obviously sees incarnation primarily in the sense of a small “I”, an ongoing  imitation of Christ without all of the transcendent salvific implications. Again, it  seems that incarnation equals the imitation of Christ. It is the Incarnation idealized  and made into a program. This is justified on the grounds that “we are bound to work  within the limitations of the cultural forms of the people to whom we are sent.” As an  anthropologist, he is wedded to the idea that things have to work from the inside out.  Incarnation links that methodological perspective to the faith. He finishes his work  with eight implications of being incarnational.  

1. We start with people where they are, embedded in their culture and this  frequently requires downward mobility on our part. 

2. We take their culture serious, for this is the context in which life has  meaning for them. 

3. We approach them as learners, as children, anxious to see the world from  their perspective. 

4. We are forced to be humble, for in their world of culture we have not yet  learned the acquired knowledge to interpret experience and generate social  behavior. 

5. We must lay aside our own cultural ethnocentrism, our positions of prestige  and power. 

6. We will be very vulnerable; our defenses will have to go, and we’ll have to  rely more on the Holy Spirit than our own knowledge and experience. 7. We make every effort to identify with people where they are, by living  among them, loving them and learning from them. 

8. We discover, from the inside, how Christ is the Answer to the questions  they ask, and to their needs that they feel. 

It is a very good list. It provides insight that would benefit any missionary. I do not  see how anthropology is necessary in either coming up with the list or carrying out its  objectives. I can see where anthropology can help tune this properly. There is also  something else to add. Usually when telling the tale about why anthropology is  necessary, we are usually reminded of the many failures of the institutional church  through the mid-twentieth century. The point is, what caused the failures? Often, as it  is pointed out, missionaries exhibited arrogance and Western syncretism as they  attempted to serve. This is fair to say. On the other hand, was the resolution of the  problem bound up in the social sciences alone or in a revival of the faith once  delivered up for the saints? It seems to me that many of the issues were spiritual ones.  If that is the case, perhaps the problems lay more with the church’s failure to adjust to  modernism. Additionally, I find it strangely ironic that we now embrace, along with  social sciences, a large dose of liberal theology in order to rectify problems that were  caused in large part by modernism itself. 

Evaluation: Super-sizing the Incarnation 

Influence of incarnational mission on Open Theism and the Emergent Church  Movement: The close connection between the theology of Openness and  incarnational models is deeply disturbing. There is everything wrong with modeling  theology exclusively on the immanence of God, something promoted by Open  theology. This is how Richard Rice understands John 1:14. “The fundamental claim 

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here is not simply that God revealed himself in Jesus, but that God revealed himself in  Jesus as nowhere else. For Christians, Jesus defines the reality of God.” Bruce Ware  sees the problem with this: “If Jesus defines God’s reality, as Rice has stated, it is  easy to see that we end up with not only an incarnational Christology but with an  incarnational theology proper.”⁷² In other words, we base our thinking about God on  what he reveals about himself. When we create incarnational theology, we essentially  say that the Incarnation is what God says about himself in his fullness. The problem  of course is that this is not true. The point of the Incarnation is not only about what it  says about God; it is what limits it sets about what it says. It is a limited expression.  “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory I had with you  before the world existed” (Jn 17:5). What could we say before the Incarnation? –A  great deal. Look at Hebrews One or the Book of Revelation. Theology and the church  are distorted badly when they are based so exclusively on the Incarnation. 

Brian McLaren devotes an entire chapter in his Generous Orthodoxy to “Why I am  Incarnational.” His application says a great deal about how incarnational theology  “supersizes” the Incarnation in order to accommodate all sorts of ideas that are  frankly contradicted by Scripture as a whole. According to McLaren, the Incarnation  implied inclusion. Jesus came for people after all. “Jesus threatened people with  inclusion: if they were to be excluded, it would be because they refused to accept their  acceptance. If people rejected his acceptance, he did not retaliate against them, but  submitted himself to humiliation, mistreatment, even crucifixion by them.”⁷³ This  acceptance and humiliation then become hallmarks of his practical application. First,  it breaks down the barriers between people. He quotes Daniel Crawford, “I am de nationalized- a brother to all men; Arab, African, Mongol, Aryan, Jew; seeing in the  Incarnation a link that binds us up with all men” –so far so good. All believers should  rejoice at reading these words, but how does he apply them? “The Christian faith, I  am proposing, should become (in the name of Jesus Christ) a welcome friend to other  religions of the world, not a threat. We should be seen as a protector of their heritages,  a defender against common enemies, not one of the enemies.”⁷⁴ 

It takes your breath away: Incarnation means love and love means acceptance. Is this  the meaning of the Incarnation? If there had been that sort of acceptance by God of  other religions, there would have been no need for an Incarnation. You can see the  syncretistic confusion of ideas with his contemporary pluralism and pop psychology  being actualized by his mistaken, disembodied concept of “incarnational.” “I believe  he (Jesus) comes today not to destroy or condemn anything (anything but evil) but to  redeem and save everything that can be redeemed or saved.” He, of course, had  already excluded false religions from the realm of evil so they have to be supported.  Disapproving of non-Christian faith systems, therefore, is not incarnational. It is in  fact Pharisaical.⁷⁵ This only leaves us with one thing. We must support Buddhist,  Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish followers of Jesus.⁷⁶ This is a complete distortion of the  Incarnation as seen by its context. Michael Horton puts his finger on the fallacy found  

 ⁷² Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism  (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000) 145.  

⁷³ Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004) 247. ⁷⁴ McLaren 254. 

⁷⁵ McLaren 257. 

⁷⁶ McLaren 264.

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within this thinking. “The problem, of course, is that we have an outside God and an  outside redemption. Everything inside of us is the problem. The good news, however,  is that the God who is completely other than we are became one of us, yet without  succumbing to our selfish pride.”⁷⁷ I suspect the problem behind the problem is  theological. We can posit the sort of “insider” thinking to which Horton refers only if  we have a limited understanding of the fall and cannot, therefore, see a wide distance  separating nature from grace. Incarnational mission, the Emergent Church, and  modern anthropology may attempt to downplay theology, but that perspective is itself  a theological one. Theology under girds every action and every perspective-even  those of people that descry theology’s relevance. 

Let’s look at Philippians 2:5-8 for example. What is going on in the text? Well, the  immediate context is the call to unity of the body as it faces persecution. Consider  1:27-30. “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that  whether I (Paul) come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are  standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the  gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them  of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted  to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for  his sake, engaging in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still  have.” Paul is telling the church that their context is an unbelieving world that hates  them and will do everything it can to destroy their faith. He also reminds them that the  threat comes from within and without. As they are subjected to the pressure, cracks  appear in the body. Therefore, they are o submit to one another in love and unity in  imitation of their Lord. I love the way Calvin related to this passage: “The strongest  bond of concord is when we have to fight together under the same banner.” The  Philippians are therefore “fellow-soldiers” that have a “common enemy” and are  engaged in the same battle that necessitates their having their minds united together.⁷⁸ 

Second, as they stand together, they stand with the Lord against the enemies of Christ  and the covenantal faith he sums up within himself. “Brothers, join in imitating me  (Paul, not Jesus directly), and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the  example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you  even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their  god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Ph  3: 17-19). These enemies are considered opponents to the Church, not to some sort of  privatized faith. It would have included pagan temples, Jewish synagogues and  professing believers not willing to openly declare their faith in opposition to the world  and life views of the visible body of Christ. This seems to be an application of the  Incarnation for McLaren that is too uncomfortable to consider. Christ embodied a  love for sinners, it is true, but he also stood for biblical, doctrinal truth without  compromise, regardless of consequence. “Suffering for Paul is ultimately a  theological matter; it has to do with our relationship with Christ and our unyielding  commitment to the gospel. The suffering must be the direct result of trying to bring  

 ⁷⁷ Michael S. Horton, “Christless Christianity: Getting in Christ’s Way” Modern  Reformation www.modernreformation.org (May/June 2007). 

⁷⁸ John Calvin, Philippians Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: A New  Translation Torrance & Torrance eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965) 241.

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others in the joy, or it deflects form Christ’s suffering.”⁷⁹ For him, as it should be for  us, anything other than the truth that came through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Christ  is idolatry, regardless of whether it professes to be monotheist, polytheist or pantheist.  This fits the historical context of Philippians as well. As Frank Thielman recognizes,  there is a relationship between the faith of the Philippians and Old Testament Israel  even though few if any of the believers were Jews (e.g. Paul and Silas being thrown  into prison as Jews, Act 16). Paul, when he taught them, considered them as inheritors  of the promises of Israel. They were “thus comparable to the desert generation of  Israelites and so should learn from their conduct, and they have assumed  eschatological Israel’s vocation of being a light to the Gentiles.” The continuity  between the Philippians and the people of God Israel is very strong.⁸⁰ In other words,  you cannot take the Incarnation and divorce it from its canonical and theological  context in order to support your own contemporary contextual agenda. The context in  Philippians is also of people recognized as separate or different from the surrounding  community. Therefore, maintaining a privatized faith is not an option. It is not OK,  according to Jesus and Paul to worship in the temple or stand with the enemies of  Christ as long as you love Jesus in your heart. Neither Philippians nor John will  support it. 

Let’s pick up a point alluded to earlier. Paul not only mentions Christ as an example,  but himself as well. What about it? First, Paul did not adopt the habits and practices of  an alien culture. Rather God fashioned a culture from which to generate a universal  witness that would have a clarity sufficient to communicate with all other cultures and  then have Paul speak from within that tradition.⁸¹ This underlines the importance of  three things. First, Paul did not manifest the sort of incarnational witness popularly  talked about. He proclaimed the salvation of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to  the world. Second, he did maintain sensitivity to culture. He always strove  communicate clearly. Third, he highlighted the uniqueness of his heritage.  Incarnational literature often paints the Jewish background of the Bible as  coincidental. To the contrary, it was deliberate. It, as Deuteronomy 9 points out, was  not because Israel was a superior choice. Nevertheless, God chose to root his  redemptive plan in a particular people, not just in a particular person Jesus, as if his  Jewishness had no bearing. Jesus is the focus, the end and the means of salvation  because he is rooted in a covenantal salvation. This is a major fault of incarnational  theology. It ignores the centrality of the covenant. Yes the world is saved by and  through Jesus, but it is saved as it is also incorporated into the covenant. Once again,  this demonstrates incarnational theology’s disturbing postmodern Western  individualism and pluralism. It purports to be the faith of here and now but it only  does so by severing its ties to the there and then. 

In their rush to enlist the Incarnation as an endorsement for missiological innovation,  people consistently overlook the most prominent reminder of the Incarnation found in  the Word- the Church. The church is the Body of Christ. The Word is redolent with  reference to it. It is the focus of the celebration of the Eucharist (1Co 10:16), a  statement of the essential unity of the church (Eph 4:1), of its being united to Christ in  all things (Rev 21), interdependence (1Co 12:27; Eph 4:12) and love (Ph 1:7; 1Th  

 ⁷⁹ Gordon Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 258. ⁸⁰ Frank Thielman, Philippians (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995) 143f. ⁸¹ Green 139ff.

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1:2-4- 2:8-11), the home of truth (1Ti 3:15) that calls for its common suffering (Ac  8:1; 9:1-14; Ga 1:13) that purifies it (Rev 6-7). All of these references link the church  to Christ in such a way that reminds believers of the once-and-for-all time  accomplishment of salvation in Christ that links the Incarnation and the atonement.  Why then does the Emergent Church and evangelical missiology downplay or ignore  the visible church if it is so committed to incarnational thinking? Several factors may  contribute. First, regardless how committed missiologists are to contextual ministry,  they cannot avoid their own Western thinking. Over and over, when we encounter the  Incarnation in modern missionary or church growth literature, we find it expressed in  either generalized or localized terms. Therefore, the incarnation becomes a slave to  sociological constructs and methods or it extends the reductionist decisionism of  evangelical pietism. We end up with two possibilities: “Incarnation” becomes an  empty vessel that we fill with our own ideas or it serves as a justification for our  continuing to reduce biblical faith to easy-believism. It is only in the Church as a  biblical, historical and visible body that we reliably see the Incarnation fully lived out.  I am not, of course, suggesting that the church gets it right all of the time. The  continuing dominance of parachurch organizations in missions testifies to that fact.  Nevertheless, it is only within the visible, biblically constituted, historically rooted  and internationally connected Body of Christ that the Incarnation has human  expression.  

On the other hand, to say that it is the Body of Christ does not equate it with Christ in  all his fullness.⁸² This is the error of Roman Catholicism, where the church stands  altera persona Christi as the prolongation of the Incarnation. It does so because grace  has to be embodied. It has to be embodied because, according to Catholic theology,  nature has to be elevated. Leonardo de Chirico explains: “The Incarnation is the  divinely appointed meeting point of nature and grace. Its basic pattern surpasses the  particularity of the historical event of the mission of Jesus Christ and shapes the  whole of salvation history, determining the visibility and instrumentality of every act  of grace towards nature culminating in the coming of the eternal Son but also  characterizing the on-going service of the church.”⁸³ In other words, the Incarnation  forms an almost exact bond between Christ and the church. The church is lex mundi,  the mediator. In the long run “the church is seen as the same person as the Son of God  who continues and renews the unique event of the Incarnation, being in herself the  locus where the Incarnation takes place and where the mission underlying the  Incarnation is made present in an ongoing way.”⁸⁴ 

Doesn’t that sound a lot like incarnational mission? While evangelical incarnational  missiology avoids investing the visible church with that identity, it does manifest the  same thinking with regard to the relationship of nature and grace. It also mirrors the  same role in terms of incarnating Christ for other cultures and people. Consider the  comments of Vincent Bacote, a postmodern Christian: “I think a core aspect of  incarnational theology is becoming incarnational. To use the phrase of some people,  ‘You might be the only bible anyone reads, the only Jesus anyone ever sees.’  

 ⁸² Gerald Bray, Steps of Understanding: Key Events in Jesus’ Life (Fearn: Christian  Focus, 1998) 34. 

⁸³ Leonardo de Chirico, Evangelical Theological Perspectives on Post-Vatican II  Roman Catholicism (Bearn: Peter Lang, 2003) 249. 

⁸⁴ De Chirico 253.

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We have to literally take that on and live that out to people, which is an applied  incarnational theology.” Sherri King adds crucially, ‘”At the end of the day, truth is  not a syllogism.”⁸⁵ This is why traditional missionary understanding championed  proclamation rather than incarnation. While they embraced being Christ-like in their  behaviour and actions, they never confused themselves with the message they were  ordained to bring. Incarnational mission and the Emergent Church do just that. It is, as  Chris Green points out, the result of confusing two unequal and different kinds of  terms-“Incarnation” and “mission.”⁸⁶ 

There is something else as well. Gerald Bray explained, reflecting on the meaning of  John 1:14, “The Word of God which became flesh in Jesus Christ has also, in a  different way, become paper and ink in the words of the Bible. The Holy Scriptures  are the voice of God to the Church, the Word inscripturated. As Christians we need to  understand that the Bible performs for us the same function as the incarnate body of  the Son of God performed for the disciples. In other words, our doctrine of Scripture  is not a philosophical abstraction based on some essentially pagan notion of  ‘inspiration’, but an offshoot of our Christology.”⁸⁷ This is amazing. Rather than  making the false choice between relationship or doctrine, a common tactic of those  espousing incarnational theology, we see the two properly wedded in the Incarnation.  Thus, we are left, not with our own local ideas of how best to imitate Jesus, but with  the indwelling presence of Christ in the Holy Spirit and with the perfect Word of God.  The extension of the Incarnation is not us and our sociologically conditioned  ministries modeled on the imitation of Christ. It is the Word and Spirit. Real power  for witness resides in the confluence of these two. Incarnational mission implies that  God cannot communicate unless he is embodied. This ultimately undermines the  power of words and ultimately the power of God.⁸⁸ 

Called From Islam to Christ: Why Muslims Become Christians by Jean-Marie  Gaudeul is hugely helpful in this regard.⁸⁹ The book examines Muslim conversion by  allowing the converts to tell their own stories. Over and over, the reader is introduced  to Muslims that are highly resistant to the gospel, who cannot relate to its message or  its messengers. As Gaudeul allows each story to unfold, we meet people who have to  struggle with the strangeness, the alien nature of the new faith, but who, in one case  after another, finally cast their lives before the Lord Jesus Christ. In some cases,  Christ appears in dreams. In others, their consciences are made tender and vulnerable  by circumstances. For many, they are initially repelled by, but eventually are  overwhelmed by the truth of Scripture. A factor Gaudeul mentions with regard to the  acceptance of the gospel message was the consistency with which its was related to  the listener. In some cases, a contrast formed in the mind of the seeker between the  

 ⁸⁵ Carlos Aguilar, Vincent Bacote, Andy Crouch, Catherine Crouch, Sherri King and  Chris Simmons, “The Antimoderns: Six Postmodern Christians Discuss the  Possibilities and Limits of Postmodernism” Christianity Today  

www.christianitytoday.com (13 November 2000). 

⁸⁶ Chris Green, “The Incarnation and Mission” The Word Became Flesh (Cumbria:  Paternoster, 2003) 127. 

⁸⁷ Gerald Bray, 33. 

⁸⁸ Green 135. 

⁸⁹ Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Called From Islam to Christ: Why Muslims Become  Christians (London: Monarch, 1999).

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Christian who could be relied upon to tell the truth and Muslims who would  commonly change their stories and approaches in order to block his or her eventual  conversion. 

Conclusions 

What is the motive of the Incarnation? It self-evidently fits into the redemptive historical plot, but is there more to it than that? G.C. Berkouwer suggests that it is not  just unwise, but also impossible to separate Jesus from his work. “For he manifests  himself in his work as the Mediator between God and men (2Ti 2:5), so that even the  slightest abstract notions of his work and of the valuable influences and impulses  proceeding from Jesus of Nazareth immediately derogate from the real essence of his  work.”⁹⁰ He is not an example in isolation from his redemptive role. Therefore  imitating him in a way that separates him from the atonement repeats the mistakes of  mediaeval devotion, minimizing rather than centralizing the role of the new birth. The  problem is that “Incarnation” becomes the subject itself, an entire canvas, rather than  one part of a larger painting whose subject is Christ. By moving the Incarnation into  the foreground and isolating it from its context, we run the risk of moving the  atonement, redemption in Christ and the glory of God in the worship of the son of  God into obscurity. This therefore becomes a manifest distortion of the core message  of the Bible.  

What should the model of mission be? Better still, what does “model” mean? How do  creativity and planning relate to biblical paradigms? What about the past, present and  future? What room is there for innovation and modern developments in intellectual  disciplines in mission that is based on the old, old story? What role can the  Incarnation play in that? We saw the pivotal role played by three sets of verses in  incarnational theology: John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,  and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and  truth; John 20:21, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you”; and  Philippians 2:5-8, “Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus,  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be  grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the  likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming  obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” 

Does Jesus’ life have anything to say to us in his coming? Certainly it does; John and  Philippians prove that. It is not his life in its exact details; we cannot go there. We  cannot give up the privileges of divinity in order to bear the weight of the world’s sins  and suffer a Father’s abandonment and absolute punishment. There are other things  that can be ours. This is how B.B. Warfield, in his evaluation of Ph. 2:5-8, put it: “It is  the spirit which animated our Lord in the act of his Incarnation which his apostle  would see us imitate. He would have us in all our acts to be like Christ, as he showed  himself to be in the innermost core of his being, when he became poor, he that was  

 ⁹⁰ G.C. Berkouwer, The Work of Christ Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1965) 19.

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rich, that we by his poverty might be made rich.”⁹¹ Can we be more specific? His  example can drive us to what Warfield termed “self-abnegation, entire and  ungrudging self-sacrifice.” “Is it to be unto death itself? Christ died. Are we to endure  wrongs? What wrongs did he not meekly bear? Are we to surrender our clear and  recognized rights? Did Christ stand upon his unquestioned right of retaining his  equality with God? Are we to endure unnatural evils, permit ourselves to be driven  into inappropriate situations, unresistingly sustain injurious and unjust imputations  and attacks? What more unnatural than that the God of the universe should become a  servant of the world, ministering not to his Father only, but also to his creatures, -our  Lord and Master washing our very feet? What more abhorrent than that God should  die? There is no length to which Christ’s self-sacrifice should lead him.”⁹² 

Well, there was one. He would not compromise his beliefs. He would not commit  idolatry. The whole context of Paul’s incarnational musings is that of suffering as the  consequence of maintaining a visible fidelity to biblical truth. It is because believers  would not cave in to the world that they incurred its ire. In so doing, they followed  Christ’s lead. This is a far, far cry from the applications of incarnational theology  evident in the world today.  

John also has much to say in terms of Jesus serving as our model. Andreas  Köstenberger, having written a commentary on John, also explored the book’s  significance to mission. It is clear that Jesus is the sent one. “He is the shepherd teacher who calls followers to gather in the eschatological harvest.”⁹³ In this sense, we  do not duplicate Christ’s Incarnation- no one can. On the other hand, we imitate a  pattern. We become sent ones that follow our Lord Jesus, both in our being sent and  in sending others after us to complete God’s Kingdom work. As we are sent, there is  much we are called to model in Jesus the sent one who is now the sender.  Köstenberger delineates some of these things:  

1. To know the sender intimately. 

2. Live in close relationship to him. 

3. Bring him glory and honour. 

4. Do the sender’s will. 

5. Do the sender’s works. 

6. Speak the sender’s words. 

7. Follow the sender’s example. 

8. Be accountable to the sender. 

9. Bear witness to the sender. 

10. Exercise delegated authority. 

This does not mean that we are simply replacements for Jesus. D.A. Carson notes,  “The perfect tense in ‘As the Father has sent me’ suggests, at the risk of pedantry, that  Jesus is in an ongoing state of ‘sentness.’ Just because he ascends to his Father does  not mean he is no longer the ‘sent one’ par excellence. Thus Christ’s disciples do not  

 ⁹¹ B.B. Warfield, “Imitating the Incarnation” The Person and Work of Christ  (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1950) 565. 

⁹² Warfield 572f. 

⁹³ Andreas J. Köstenberger And Peter T. O’Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth:  A Biblical Theology of Mission (Downers Grove: IVP, 2001) 203.

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take over Christ’s mission; his mission continues and is effective in their ministry.”⁹⁴ We get to carry on Christ’s work, filled by his Spirit, guided by his Word and inspired  by his example. All of these things are set firmly in the context of God’s redemptive  purposes expressed in one unalterable story. We cannot make the Incarnation become  a slave to our own intentions, honourable or otherwise. To do so would put a lie to our  claims to be followers. Köstenberger has it right when he says, “The mission of Jesus’  followers should mirror the same parameters that determined the sender-sent  relationship of Jesus and the Father.”⁹⁵ In other words, it is the relationships and  character of the follower we are called to imitate.  

As he ponders the meaning of the book of John in all of its redemptive dimensions  N.T. Wright notes, “There is a fad in some quarters about a ‘theology of incarnation,’  meaning that our task is to discern what God is doing in the world and to do it with  him. John’s theology of the Incarnation is about God’s Word coming as light into  darkness, as a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces, as a fresh word of judgment  and mercy. You might as well say that an incarnational missiology is about  discovering what God is saying no to today and how to say it with him.”⁹⁶ What  Wright sees is that there is a vast gap between what the Incarnation actually means  and how we attempt to apply it today. It is a word of judgment of the world even as it  is a word of reformation of his creation. David Bosch on the other hand trumpets that  vengeance is superseded. Comparing Isa 61 with Luke 4:18-19, Bosch notes the  absence in the later of a call for retributive justice.⁹⁷ Proponents of incarnational  mission typically attempt to make proclamation of truth and relationship antithetical.  Fore example, Ross Langmead attempts to describe a prophetic, declarative mission  as one that “sees the primary task to be persuading others to believe certain  propositions rather than inviting others to enter a new reality in relationship to Christ  and the Christian community.”⁹⁸ Wright, on the other hand, is simply saying that if  you are going to model your ministry on the Incarnation, you need to express it in all  of its dimensions, not just the ones that seem to accord more easily with your own  sensibilities.  

Wright’s comments are so important. We cannot be allowed to shape the Word; we  must be shaped by it. When we ignore the judgment that is implicit in the Incarnation,  we reveal our hidden agendas. We do not want to be shaped or transformed. We do  

 ⁹⁴ D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) 649. ⁹⁵ Köstenberger 213. 

⁹⁶ N.T. Wright, “What is This Word? The Incomprehensible Intimate Christmas  Story” Christianity Today www.christianitytoday.com (10 October 2007). ⁹⁷ Bosch 109f. Darrell Bock deals at length with Bosch’s supposed discovery of the  cessation of judgment. He notes two possibilities. “First, the omission may have been  made to delay the allusion to judgment until Jesus’ warnings in 4:24-27. But another  reason is more likely: the ultimate time of god’s vengeance is not yet arrived in this  coming of Jesus (9:51-56; 17:22-37; 21:5-37). This omission represents part of the  ‘already-not yet’ tension of NT eschatology. Jesus’ mission is placed initially in terms  of hope, but it also brings an implication of judgment about which he will warn in  4:24-27.” See Darrell L. Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50 Baker Exegetical Commentary on the  New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994) 411. 

⁹⁸ Langmead 218.

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not want to be recreated. We want to be creators ourselves. We are so very confident  of our carefully derived insights that we will not let anything, not even God stand in  our way. The Incarnation stands in our way. “The loving God who is incarnate in  Jesus is the same God before whom the prophet Isaiah cries out in horror, ‘woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips’  (Isa 6:5). While God’s terrifying holiness is veiled in the humility of One who came  not to serve but to be served, the divine kenosis, or self-emptying, does not alter the  fact that in Christ, a people of unclean lips comes face to face with a holy and just  God. Jesus’ mission is unrelentingly countercultural. It is as an implacable judge of  the current order that he sweeps through the temple, upsetting the tables of the money  changers.”⁹⁹ If we are going to start using the Incarnation to describe ourselves, we  should ensure that we use it fully and honestly. 

There is a caution in all of this for us as we so easily toss around the word  “Incarnation.” Andreas Köstenberger sets the framework for our understanding. We  cannot make it say what we wish. “John conceives of the church’s mission in more  humble terms than an analogy with Christ’s Incarnation, affirming the uniqueness of  the Word’s becoming flesh and of Christ’s salvific work.”¹⁰⁰ It is true that the  suffering of Christ have value as an example, but “the New Testament never forgets  the unbridgeable gulf that exists between the suffering of Christ and human  suffering.”¹⁰¹ “On that cross, at its darkest point, the Son knew himself only as sin and  His Father only as its avenger. Here was a singularity.”¹⁰² In this sense, the  Incarnation cannot be duplicated. It happened once because no one else could do it  and because once was enough. This is reason enough to shift it in the foreground not  let it get lost in the background as we feebly seek to imitate it. 

Mateen Elass is right. “Christmas is ineluctably linked with Good Friday, Easter and  Pentecost.”¹⁰³ Contextualizing the Bible because we are a particular, a cultural people  is right. Seeing in Jesus an example of the new life, and in particular, an example of  how a sent one sends others is also right. None of this, however, justifies as it were,  paradoxically “disembodying” the Incarnation and making it a rubber stamp for our  missiological enterprises. Just as stitching a fish on the back pocket of a pair of jeans  does not make the wearer a Christian, neither does adorning modern anthropological  ideas with the adjective “incarnational” make them appropriately biblical. We must  preserve the links as Elass commends because the Bible does and because it is the  only means through which to ensure that w are not writing our own Bibles. This is the  significance of the narrative itself. It means that God is the maker and the teller of the  great story. We cannot take each of the words and make a different story out of them.  

 ⁹⁹ Christopher A. Brown, “More Than Affirmation: The Incarnation as Judgment and  Grace” The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age  (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1998) 88f. 

¹⁰⁰ Köstenberger 226. He notes in a reference to his earlier work on John that, “John  seems far too concerned to preserve Jesus’ ontological uniqueness to make his  incarnation the model for the church’s mission.” 

¹⁰¹ James Montgomery Boice, Philippians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1971) 126. ¹⁰² Donald MacLeod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove: IVP, 1998) 217. ¹⁰³ Mateen A. Elass, “Why Christmas is Dangerous” www.moodymagazine.com (10  October 2007).

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We must not allow ourselves to highjack the words themselves for as we do so, we  become idol makers. 

© Bill Nikides