The roots of contemporary missiology are found in the era of higher criticism when all branches of theology were subject to scientific analysis. Scripture was studied according to the rigors of historical and archaeological verification. Similarly, Christian mission began to be studied according to the rigors of the social sciences. From that time till now – for better or for worse – missions studies have been approached scientifically. Evangelicals like myself follow a pietistic impulse that view the biblical narrative as a supernatural, all-encompassing, divinely revealed narrative. I accept the level of circularity that exists in my presupposition of faith – I believe the Bible because it affirms itself to be the word of God. This, however, does not preclude the profound evidence of my own experience walking with Jesus the Christ.

But studying mission according to principles that arose during the scientific revolution is not anathema to biblical faith. I believe the academic inquiry and scholarship are essential aspects of a humanity created in God’s image. The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies is perhaps the most comprehensive source for current scholarship and theory related to missions.

In this article I will dialogue with chapters 3 and 4 of the handbook in relation to the biblical vision known as one new man or one new humanity based on Ephesians 2:

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 

For the purpose of this article, one new humanity (ONH) refers to the belief that the rejection of the Jewish part of the ekklesia by the Gentile believers was the first division in the body of Christ, laying the foundation for subsequent fracturing. Jewish followers of Jesus have been present in the ekklesia for all of its history, but most often absorbed into the Gentile church and taught – even forced – to abandon all practices of Judaism as a prerequisite for faithfulness to Christ. Note that I use the term ekklesia to refer to what the Catholic Church has described as the community of those called to Christ ex circuncisione and ex gentibus (Nina Rowe, 2011). 

Participants in ONH hold that the emergence of the Messianic Jewish movement in the 1960s and its subsequent development are foundational to the restoration of the unity of the ekklesia. The use of the term ekklesia is important because Messianic Jews increasingly refer to themselves as practicing a form of Judaism and not as Christians or members of its church. Therefore, the restoration of ekklesia refers to the initial vision of Ephesians 2 which did not last past the second century. As an ingrafted “wild olive shoot” the apostle Paul exhorted the Gentile believers to honor the unique calling and future destiny of the Jewish “olive root” (New International Version, 2011, Rom. 11:17). 

Unfortunately, by the second century a distinctly Jewish part of the ekklesia disappeared due to their rejection by both the nascent Gentile church and Rabbinic Judaism. The parting of the ways describes the alienation of the Jewish Jesus-believing from their Gentile brethren (Enslin, 1961), the subsequent suffering of which was compounded by the rejection of the former by emergent Rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the temple. Participants in ONH believe that with emergence of Messianic Judaism in the mid 20th century the Gentile church has a legitimate interlocutor towards which repentance can be directed and reconciliation sought. What is less known is how participants in ONH view its implications for missions – how it may affect its conceptualization and application? How have participants in ONH applied this vision to mission and what have been the results? 

Chapter 3 of the current version of the Oxford Handbook for Mission Studies was written by Paul Kollman (2022), titled Defining Mission Studies for the Third Millennium of Christianity.  Kollman (2022) cites three probable trends in the future of missions studies: interest by a “growing diversity of scholars”, influence applied to “more areas of Christian life and scholarship”, and new insights coming from “innovative comparative approaches” (p. 46). The emerging field of anthropology of Christianity looks at “the various social changes that Christianity – often linked to mission – fosters in diverse situations” (Kollman, 2022, p. 47). How might the fulfillment of the ONH vision impact societies and cultures? Currently Christianity is expressed around the world with an impressive cultural diversity. The Bible has been translated into most of the world’s languages and worship is shaped according to local customs and creativity. However, just as the gospel was transferred from Jew to Gentile, it was then transferred from the Roman World to the New World. In the 20th century unprecedented church growth in the Global South (Africa, Asia, and South America) signified the transfer of primary Christian leadership to the Non-Western world. Unfortunately, however, the pattern or cultural hegemony has been present throughout church history, with the national/enthnic centrality of the gospel shifting from one supreme Christendom to another. 

Kollman (2022) also describes how recent missions studies have interacted with social movement theory (p. 47). Some theorists have explored the benefits of integrating the study of complex or formal organizations and the study of collective action and social movements (Gerald F. Davis et al., 2005, xiv). It has been proposed that concepts developed in the domains of organizational theory and social movement theory are useful to each other (Gerald F. Davis et al., 2005, xiv). When looking at a phenomena such as ONH from a social science perspective, is it unique or just one of many similar religious movements? It can be argued that the history of the church is a succession of grassroots social movements that evolved into formal organizations. These religious institutions then followed the pattern of all religions – they were challenged and replaced or reformed by prophetic movements from the margins. My passion for ONH flows from my belief that the Ephesians 2 vision is truly unique in world religions and has yet to be fulfilled as Christ desired. 

Kollman cites recent studies of the Didache that show how mission concerns existed in the first century (Kollman, 2022, p. 48) when a Jewish and Gentile community of believers still existed. The Didache was written by Jewish Jesus-believers to instruct their Gentile brethren in religious practice (Nessim, 2023, xiv). The Didache’s articulation of how the Torah was applicable to the Gentile believers gives a motif for considerate and effective Jewish-Gentile relations within the ekklesia before the parting of the ways. 

A steadily more religiously pluralist world due to globalization has led missiologists to seek what insight might be gained from comparative dialogue with other missionary religions such as Buddhism and Islam (Kollman, 2022, p. 49-50). Comparative study is being made of the missionary practices of these religions, as well as analyzing the reasons that other religions such as Hinduism, Confuscianism, and Judaism have less impetus for self propagation beyond a particular people group (Kollman, 2022, p. 50). One question related to my research on ONH is how Messianic Jews see mission and evangelism. Messianic Judaism is rooted in a more ethnically centered religion, therefore their increased presence within the ekklesia could affect the missionary impetus. Many Christians struggle to reconcile the missionary vision they were taught in church in light of religious pluralism and secularism. It is hard for Christians to understand non-missionary religions, including the relatively inward-focused nature of rabbinic Judaism. What might Christians learn from dialogue with these other faith traditions? Nany anthropologists today are studying how “mission-generated social change produces new cultural forms” (Kollman, 2022, p. 51). The theme of reconciliation has been extremely influential in missions studies over the past 50 years. Perhaps it can be argued that mission-generated social change led to ONH as an example of a new cultural form. 

Kollman (2022) describes the gravitation in missiology towards fields that are related but not centered on Christian mission as “engaging mission tangentially” (p. 51). In this, missiology is predicted to follow the trend of other academic fields. This means that missiologists increasingly make connections to other social sciences that would have been considered irrelevant. This freedom is expanded by the trend towards missions studies including scholarship from other disciplines or under the labels of “intercultural studies, contextual theology, and world Christianity (Kollman, 2022, p. 51). 

There is an increased censuses that the missio Dei is the foundation of mission, while not disregarding the link of mission to human activity (Kollman, 2022, p. 51). Based on missio Dei, mission is open to unlimited possibilities while at the same time particular mission foci can exist (Kollman, 2022, p. 52). The understanding of mission as any human cooperation with divine action in the world grounds mission studies in “empirical realities” that can be analyzed within non-theological systems (Kollman, 2022, p. 52). Intergroup conflict studies is one example of an observed phenomena that relates directly to ONH.

Chapter 4 of the Oxford handbook was written by Dorottya Nagy (2022), titled Theory and Method in Mission Studies / Missiology.  Nagy (2022) cites the fragmentation of missiology derived from the “multiplicity of terms referring to theory and method in missions studies” (p. 56). Nagy (2022) proposes that an “interdisciplinary awareness” of missions studies methodology may improve interdisciplinary dialogue and partnership (p. 56). By methodology, Nagy (2022) refers to “the logical reasoning and the theological/philosophical assumptions that underlie academic work” consciously or unarticulated (p. 57). Methods, distinctively, are the orienting research techniques and procedures that are drawn from methodology (Nagy, 2022, p. 57). There is a trend in research toward clustering comparative, historical, empirical, and hermeneutical methods across disciplines, causing the challenge of “interdisciplinary miscommunication and misunderstanding” (Nagy, 2022, p. 57). Nagy (2022) describes theory as pointing to “contemplation, observation, and consideration, aiming at an understanding of reality” (p. 57). In considering missions studies theory then, we face the principle of ontological and epistemological plurality within the academic world (p. 58). Thus the discussion of method and theory in missions studies is another validation of using interdisciplinary methods and recognizing epistemological plurality in my study of ONH. 

Nagy (2022) indicates that missions studies are conditioned by institutionalization and contingency (p. 58). Here contingency refers to the influence of particular innovators and trends in the soft and hard sciences. Missiology combines knowledge production education that is both academic and theological-missiological (Nagy, 2022, p. 59). Consequently, missions studies are being situated in a “newer, larger, fashionable field of study”, with the strategic move of re-articulating missiology as “intercultural theology or world Christianity” (Nagy, 2022, p. 59). Nagy (2022) observes that these strategic moves require “methodological awareness and accountability”, especially regarding the epistemological ambivalence inherent in interculturality (p. 59). Thus although the breadth of social sciences available to missions studies steadily grows, interculturality requires sensitivity to epistemological contradictions. The “conflictive plurality within identities” (Nagy, 2022, p. 59) will be present in my engagement with with Messianic Judaism and Jew-Gentile relations in the ekklesia. 

With interculturality as an “epistemological locus”, Nagy (2022) sees a possible working definition of missiology as “the study of the relational, communicative (co)existence between God, humans, fellow human beings and the whole creation across space and time” (p. 60). Therefore, at its core missions studies deals with “an understanding of God and relationality with God” (Nagy, 2022, p. 60). For example, missions studies engages theories about salvation in other religions and how this affects missionaries’ communication of the gospel. ONH can be seen as motif of mission as intergroup reconciliation, therefore how this vision is interpreted by diverse cultures is foundational to my research. One area of my inquiry is how God’s particular relationship to Israel demonstrates his desire and capacity to love all people groups in their unique cultural identities. In this sense the relationship of God to human groups – not just individuals – is a key aspect of ONH. 

Nagy (2022) proposes that love is relevant to method and theory not as an uncontaminated emotion but as an “ontological drive of separated beings towards union (p. 60). Missions studies are concerned with the nature and action of God and the implications for how humans should think and live (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). Thus missiology is normative, always expressed in a “situational, actual, and empirical-intercultural manner” (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). The normativity of missions studies has to be placed “against the constellation of other modes of normativity, and is thus “always partial and becoming in relationality” (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). Missiological normativity is closer to discernment, rooted in spirituality, which makes it an “open-ended discipline, one which does not hide the researcher behind the research” (p. 62). This spiritual open-ended discipline does not presume that the researcher has a neutral position but exposes the “entanglement, power issues, and issues of representation” (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). However, this spiritual open-ended discipline also demonstrates the legitimate desire to love God and his world (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). This normative, spiritual, open-ended conception of missions studies means as a researcher I do not need to detach myself as a religious devotee. 

Nagy (2022) refers to interculturality as “the ways through which the various agents act, interact or relate in co-creation (p. 62). Context and culture are still foundational concepts for developing missiological theory and method, but they can be problematic (Nagy 2022, p. 63). The “wide interdisciplinary interest in the spatiality of societal and cultural phenomena” has strongly influenced missiology (Nagy, 2022, p. 63). Nagy (2022) advocates for missiologists’ engagement and dialogue with scholars who come from different epistemological frameworks (p. 64). However, Nagy warns against understanding locality primarily in terms of “owned/claimed territory” as this would interpret culture primarily through “tribal, ethnic, and national lenses” instead of understanding locality in its “spatial relationality/interconnectednness” (p. 64). In my research of ONH, I must make sure not to interpret participants’ concept of locality in ways they never would. Nagy cites Steve Bevan’s work on the dangers of Western attempts to attribute meaning to cultural identity “which is not the lived experience of the culturally identified people” (p. 64). In spite of the influence of Bevan’s research, “Christian identities, informed by academic theology, keep producing and reproducing cultural (i.e., national, ethnic, or tribal) Christianities” (Nagy, 2022, p. 65). Nagy (2022) suggests that theories of culture that consider interculturality and space may be helpful in “overcoming the homogenous and homogenizing principles” that have caused “reproductions of nationalistic forms of Christianity”, such as in Europe (p. 65). Participants of ONH have contended that a key impetus for supersessionist theology arose during the Era of Exploration when the people of God replaced the notion of Gentile (Jennings, 2010). 

Lastly, the spiritual turn in missions studies described by Nagy is key to ONH because from its inception it has been a prayer movement with Charismatic practice uniting Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Messianic Jewish, and Pentecostal church leaders (Hocken, 2007). Nagy (2022) describes the spiritual turn in mission studies as overlapping with increased attention given to Christian spirituality in relationship with other spiritualities, and the researcher’s spirituality (p. 66). Thus, 

mission does not aim primarily at the propagation or transmission of intellectual convictions, doctrines, moral commands, but at the transmission of the life of communion that exists in God…The Holy Spirit is incompatible with individualism, its primary work being the transformation of all reality to a relational status (Nagy, 2022 p. 67). 

This anti-individualist conception is highly relevant to ONH’s contention that biblical mission does not consist primarily of reconciliation between human persons and God. Instead, biblical mission is fundamentally about reconciliation between human groups in fulfillment of God’s expressed desire and for his ultimate glory. 

References

Enslin, M. S. (1961). The Parting of the Ways. The Jewish Quarterly Review, 51(3), 177–197. https://doi.org/10.2307/1453437

Gerald F. Davis, Doug McAdam, W. Richard Scott, & Mayer N. Zald. (2005). Social Movements and Organization Theory. Cambridge University Press; eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=nlebk&AN=132352&authtype=sso&custid=s6133893&site=ehost-live&custid=s6133893

Hocken, P. (2007). TOWARD JERUSALEM COUNCIL II. Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 16(1), 3–17. Academic Search Premier.

Jennings, W. J. (2010). The Christian imagination: Theology and the origins of race. Yale University Press; Biola Library ebooks. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=cat08936a&AN=bio.ocn808346478&site=eds-live&custid=s6133893

Kollman, Paul. (2022). Defining Mission Studies for the Third Millennium of Christianity. In Coleman, Paul (Ed.),The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies. OUP Oxford.

Nessim, D. (2023). Torah for Gentiles? [Electronic resource]: What the Jewish Authors of the Didache Had to Say. Lutterworth Press, The; Biola Library ebooks. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=cat08936a&AN=bio.on1391441015&site=eds-live&custid=s6133893

Nagy, Dorottya. (2022). Theory and Method in Mission Studies / Missiology. In Nagym Dorottya (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies. OUP Oxford.

New International Version. (2011). BibleGateway.com. http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-International-Version-NIV-Bible/#booklist

Nina Rowe. (2011). The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge University Press; eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=e000xna&AN=435252&site=eds-live&scope=site&custid=s6133893