Kerygmania: The Great Commission
On the Missiology 101 thread back in September @Eutychus suggested it might be worth a separate thread to discuss what Matthew 28:16-20 actually means and I'd be interested in such a discussion. In the circles I move in it genserally means going abroad to tell people they must be saved by believing in Jesus. I am not sure I agree and hope Shipmates can throw other lights on it.
Comments
I was taught in my youth that Matthew was 'the gospel for the Jews' in that it contains more references than any other gospel to OT prophecy, intended to demonstrate to those familiar with the OT that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.
However, I later heard reference made to the 'universality of Matthew', meaning that while it may be directed at Jews, it constantly emphasises the other nations, right from the genealogy of Jesus at the beginning which includes them.
So the 'international' flavour of Matthew is not limited to the Great Commission.
However, a similar thought is also to be found at the hands of Luke, in Acts 1:8:
And indeed, Acts records precisely this geographical progression in outward concentric circles.
I certainly grew up with the "going abroad" exhortation @Nenya refers to and if I am where I am now, it's largely due to it. However, it's worth noting a few things:
- as @Baptist Trainfan again says on the other thread, the Twelve were in no position to engage in cultural imperialism, so these texts are no justification for that
- today, in many places it is quite easy to meet panta ta ethne on one's own doorstep; the challenge is not just one of geographical mobility but of being willing to leave one's "comfort zone" to engage with those who are not like us
- the geographical spread of the Gospel in Acts ended up, for the most part, being in spite of the apostles (who doggedly remained in Jerusalem and expressed initial reservations about the Gospel reaching non-Jews) rather than because of proactive implementation of some missiological strategy.
Most evangelicals would not subscribe to baptismal regeneration, talking in terms of an "outward sign of an inward commitment" (which is how I see it) and point to a couple of get-out verses: the thief on the cross, and the 'noncommutative' ending of Mark's gospel (Mk 16:16) (it doesn't say "whoever does not believe and isn't baptised...").
But John the Baptist's ministry shows that baptism was, in Judaism at least, a sign of a spiritual commitment, that appears to have been taken up by Jesus.
Well, good question. I think being a disciple is more to do with what's going on in your heart and motivation, resulting in action, rather than an encounter with a large or small amount of water before or after you can have said to have repented - repentance being ongoing rather than a one-off. Not to discount it being the outer sign of an inner and spiritual truth.
Since then, when considering the Great Commission, I cannot accept that it is a commandment to me personally. My first priority should be to try to live out my faith in my attitudes and example. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven."
IMO the Church should appoint evangelists - they have to be sent. That's not to say that the rest of us shouldn't talk about the Gospel to those who are interested, just that we shouldn't set ourselves up as "self-styled evangelists," any more than we can set ourselves up as apostles, priests or anything else.
1 I still believe in the Bible, I just don't believe every word from Christ to anyone is a direct commandment to me, personally.
Or 'congruent with ...'
The early Christians had a very lengthy catechetical process which culminated in baptism. It could take several years. Whatever our view of baptism, as an 'outward sign of an invisible grace' or as something with sacramental efficacy or regenerative import, it seems always to have been preceded by or accompanied with structured instruction back then.
Not everything, I wouldn't say, just the things which have to do with Authority. We also take those things as being applicable to the eleven and those who succeeded them.
That's where Apostolic Succession comes in, I know it's a problem for many, but how else can we distinguish between those who are sent and those who aren't?
My opinion is that they are synonymous, but it doesn't mean people have to be baptised immediately before they have learnt anything - they have to know what they are being baptized into. But I don't think they can truly be called "disciples" until they have been baptised.
My take on it is that Matthew's audience is likely to have been (Hellenic) Jewish Christians (an anachronism, I know), and they may well have had a difficulty in understanding/accepting that their Christian sect of Judaism could include gentiles. Acceptance of gentiles is a theme that starts with the genealogy and goes through other narratives and ends with what has been called the great commission, though that is not a phrase that occurs in Matthew.
For cultures distant from the early diaspora I think Christians have to think about who they have difficulty in including/accepting into their church. The stand out bête noires in my neck of the woods are the LGBTQI community. So I call the narrative THE GREAT ACCEPTANCE rather than The Great Commission.
It's always seemed naively obvious to me that the original 11 were to teach new disciples everything Jesus had commanded them to do - and that this included the instruction itself.
From this reasoning it follows that the Great Commission applies to all new disciples of Jesus too.
I don't think all disciples have to be cross-cultural missionaries to another land, but I don't think there are two classes of believer in Jesus' thinking here, either.
Does it? Acts 8:26-40 and then you have St Paul account of his own experience. Ideally should be but it is not always practical and God can work within those situations.
I wonder how much the long catechism arose out of the development over worries about converts orthodoxies and the factionalism within the early church (yes right down to Biblical times). That is to what extent it was driven by the need for converts to be trusted by the community.
It's a non-Catholic point of view. I don't share it, but it's still good to discuss it. One point I would like to make is (observation 1) - it most definitely has to do with Authority.
I know there's a new wave of restorationist charismatic protestants (eg. New Frontiers or whatever they call themselves now) who have their own views about "Authority," which they are entitled to, but it is important not to leave this out of the discussion.
The text here in Matthew doesn't refer to the Eleven as apostles but as disciples, the same word as used in the Commission itself. Neither does this particular text explicitly entrust the Eleven with authority; rather, it records Jesus' claim to hold all authority. Anything beyond that you are reading into the text here.
My view on spiritual authority in the NT is as already described in the thread that spawned this one: it's authority to push back evil and advance good, not authority of some people over others. It's a lot harder to make the case for the latter view from the NT than is often supposed.
(One of the reasons I ended up parting company with NF, looking back, is that I started actually looking to see what the Bible actually had to say on the subject of authority, rather than what they said it said).
You probably knew my half-uncle, Mike Betts. Anyway, please bear in mind that their views of "Authority" are very different from the Catholic view.
The only mention of authority in that text is the authority given to Jesus.
The Apostles, doggedly staying on in Jerusalem despite Christ's words to them at the outset of Acts, spend most of their time trying to contain things after the fact (e.g. Acts 8:14; Acts 11:1-3).
One of my most-quoted verses in Acts is 8:4:
I have heard, but cannot properly source, this being referred to as "gossiping the Gospel".
I really think that's how this is supposed to work.
I think that ideally, churches should be the byproduct of the outworking of the Great Commission, or what I would refer to as "seeking the Kingdom", and that they should not be a locus of institutional power (quite influenced in my thinking here by Roger Forster).
I think that power being consolidated in churches (and thus Churches) is an unhappy accident of history during which the exercise of this power has been legitimised by leaders appropriating the notion of authority over evil enshrined in the NT and repurposing it to their own ends to mean, in practical terms, authority over other people.
But I'm starting to rant now.
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*Coincidentally, Two cheers for anarchism, which I'm currently plodding through, notes that most major democratic progress has been the result of mass uprisings, not incremental institutional change.
Many, many thanks for this food for thought.
The difference IMO is that whereas the Catholic belief is that Authority originated from Jesus Christ himself to His Apostles and through Apostolic Succession to their successors (bishops) - and it is the bishops who have the authority to appoint evangelists - NF's "authority" seems to originate from Terry Virgo.
They would claim that he received his "authority" from Jesus Christ himself, but I would dispute that. Needless to say, I don't discuss these things with my NF relative, but that's how it is from what I can see.
So, both views that authority came directly from Jesus himself, which view may be disputed by others.
I was really talking about self-styled "Evangelists" who start their own "churches", which have no authority and their sacraments are graceless - because they were not sent.
About 100 million Chinese underground church members here would like a word with you. In love.
Yes, well, we're working on that!
In my earlier post, though, I was thinking more of people who go to remote places, declared off-limits by the secular authorities either for cultural reasons or because of the risk of transmitting infection, claiming that they have Jesus' authority to do so. And - let's be honest - I'm also thinking of situations in Britain where evangelistic entrepreneurs try to start up new congregations without any reference to the churches that already exist close by, and who may be glad of their help.
Translations tend to go for something like ‘proclaiming the good news’, but that is very easily read as being rather like preaching for which NT Greek has its own separate word. I think ‘gossiping the gospel’, apart from its pleasing assonance, gets away from the more formal idea of preaching.
Extreme cases make bad laws. There's a difference between being a fool for Christ and a twit for Christ. Jesus' mission guidelines referred to in the previous thread include advice not to go (or at least not to stay) where you're not welcome.
Besides, the Great Commission doesn't mention the gospel or evangelism. It talks about making disciples.
As @LatchKeyKid has eloquently shown above, there are more ways of interpreting the universal applicablity of the Great Commission than decisionist evangelism.
I feel your pain. I have just received an email from someone in the US wanting to parachute an evangelistic team in my city in the height of summer. Should I declare us off-limits for cultural reasons, or invoke the risk of us dying from some nasty foreign disease?
But again, churches setting up rigid authoritarian rules is not going to stop these people (by whose authority might one police them?).
And most annoyingly of all, some people may actually end up becoming disciples of Christ as a result of (or despite) their efforts...
Yes, it does sound familiar - I'd like to find those verses.
The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds:
But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel.
What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice."
I'm sure those of us who've been involved in charismatic outfits at one time or other have been in meetings which supposedly 'took authority' over the powers of darkness with all sorts of 'binding and loosing' and jiggery-pokery.
I'm sure that isn't what Eutychus has in mind.
How do we recognise such authority? How can we tell when it is there or actually exists?
Having 'authority over evil' sounds abstract to me. What do we actually mean by that?
More positively, and again harking back to the references given in the previous thread, I think it means we have a mandate to push back bad stuff and encourage good stuff.
One line I recall John Arnott saying and which I've often repeated since: "God: good; devil: bad". Of course things aren't so simple, nevertheless I think that disciples of Jesus could do a lot worse than simply making sure they're doing and encouraging good and not evil. Jesus tells us the devil is a liar from the beginning and comes to kill, steal, and destroy. If we can at least start by doing the opposite of all that, it's a good start.
Why even use terms like 'authority' in that context? It doesn't make any sense.
What are we dealing with here? Metaphor?
But nothing about the apostles’ authority.
My contemporary understanding of 'spiritual authority' is simply that we have a mandate from Christ to do things in his name, as the Great Commission suggests.
As far as the ability of the disciples to exercise that authority in spectacular terms in the Gospels goes compared to today, I've been quite taken by @Martin54's "big rock dropped in a pond at the incarnation with gradually decreasing ripples" explanation.
What has really struck me, though, is the complete lack of any mention of 'authority over people' in the NT. This came home to me when I was still a pastor in NF and as a leadership we looked at appointing more elders. I went through the NT to see what it said about authority and eldership and was amazed to discover that the phrase 'over you/them' occurred precisely nowhere in relation to people.
With time, I've come to see this obsession with hierarchical authority as an expression of patriarchy and a desire to enfeeble rather than empower. I don't think it's in the NT and I would say it's 'not Kingdom-of-God'.
But not recognising earthly authority as absolute does not mean a Christian can do as they like.
To be credible and consistent, claiming the authority of Christ and/or acting in his name involves asking oneself 'What Would Jesus Do?'
Trite, I know, but I hardly think Jesus would come and sneeze all over a bunch of indigenous tribespeople, especially when he'd been asked to leave.