The Mission of GodI would like to thank IVP for furnishing me with this review copy.

Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.

The recent resurgence of younger evangelicals involvement in ministry and engagement of culture and produced much discussion on the Church’s mission.  Words like “missional” and “missiological” have become commonplace in churches looking to make in impact on their communities and the world.  While this renaissance of mission orientation has spawned welcome enthusiasm, but confusion has also followed.  What does it mean to be missional?  What is the mission of the Church?  Why should the Church be missional?  What does the Bible say about mission, both God’s and the His people’s?  Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God (MOG) provides the answers to these questions and many more.

The purpose of the MOG is not simply to show why mission is important or how mission is a vital part of the identity of the Church, but to show that mission, in many ways, is the purpose for the Church and the priority in its identity.  Therefore, MOG seeks to read the Bible as a story of God’s mission to restore creation and his people’s role and mission in that restoration.

In Part 1 “The Bible and Mission” Wright attempts to defend the necessity of reading the Bible missilogically.  He admits that such a task is not new, but his approach differs from those who have come before.  Instead of looking to proof-text with passages where mission is mentioned, Wright prefers to look at the biblical narrative on a macro-level and determine the missional thrust from there.  This is done by recognizing the need for a global hermeneutic that does not discount non-Western interpreters, but values their own specific situations that lead to a different emphasis on the reading of the text, allowing the global mission of God to be seen.  In addition, if the Bible is God’s revelation to the world concerning His salvation, the Bible itself is a product of God’s mission.

The second section focuses on how to understand God as a God of mission.  Through three chapters, Wright moves from God’s revelation in His acts of salvation and judgment, his ultimate revelation in Jesus Christ and the position of the true God over against the false gods of idolatry.  The emphasis of the first chapter of these three is showing God as the one true God through his acts of salvation, the Exodus, and judgment, the Exile.  The next chapter seeks to identify Jesus and His mission as the fulfillment of God’s mission by identifying Jesus with the YHWH of the OT.  Finally, the third chapter deals with God’s mission in response to idolatry.  After a discussion on the reality of false gods and imaginary figments or spiritual powers, Wright shows that the correct orientation toward the true God requires a mission that exposes false Gods in all their deceptive glory.

Now that the God of the mission has been seen, the people who take part in His mission are investigated.  The third section “The People of Mission” is the longest of the four.  The first two chapters of this section discuss the role of Abraham in God’s mission and correctly recognize the Abrahamic Covenant as the foundation for the entire mission that follows.  The choice of Abraham is described not only for salvation, but also for mission.  Therefore, election must be understood in terms of missiology as much as it is stereologically.  The two following chapters view God’s mission of salvation in the OT in holistic manner.  Here, Wright chides both conservative evangelicals for their lack of engagement with the sociological, political and economical aspects of God’s salvation, seen most noticeably in the Exodus, and liberal (or Liberation) theologians for failing to recognize the massive spiritual significance.  In this recognition, Wright recognizes that neither of these aspects has priority over the other, likening it to the chicken or the egg paradox.

The final section “The Arena of Mission” not only discusses the ‘where’ of the mission but also the objective of God’s mission activity.  The three major topics make up the three chapters, God’s mission to the Earth, to the Image of God and to the Nations.  In the first chapter, the necessity to care for the Earth is likened to the anticipation of the resurrection in inaugurated eschatology of this age.  The restoration of the image is applied to the AIDS epidemic and its destruction of humanity in the individual and society.  Finally, the God’s mission is one that goes to the nations and concurrently the whole world.  This is best seen in the culmination of creation in Rev 21-22.

Wright’s MOG as many of his other writings, bring high-level discussions into the realm of all people.  Wright’s discussion of mission is not an entirely new approach, but a reformulation of the historic approach to the teaching of the Bible.  The Church has always seen the main thrust and grand narrative of the Bible as God’s pursuit of restoration for his entire creation.  It has always been about God’s quest to reestablish himself as Lord of all, now reformulated, as before, to fit the needs of the current issues in the Church.  The criticism I would have of Wright’s missiological Biblical theology would be a lack of emphasis on the Gospels.  While Wright does devote a chapter to Jesus’ role as the fulfillment God’s mission, but I would have like to have seen more discussion of Matthew’s description of Jesus a the fulfillment of Israel of John’s discussion of “sending”.  Even so, this text is an excellent walk through the entirety of Scripture.  While the approach and title firmly establish MOG as a book on missiology, this book may be better classified as a Biblical theology formulated for the current Church.