Warning:Academic Discussion Ahead. This post assumes you know what ecclesiology and missiology are and have thought about the relationship between the two.
At a recent post here at the NEW Missional Tribe Network, Ben Wheatley argues along with Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost that “Missiology needs to precede ecclesiology because if ecclesiology precedes missiology, mission becomes just a subset of the church.” There are some good comments after the post. Wheatley is of course following Alan Hirsch in his book Forgotten Ways (p.141 ff.) and Hirsch and Frost in the Shaping of Things to Come (p.) I’d like to chime in here with another take. I believe its fruitful to ask what are the epistemological implications of such an affirmation.
Epistemology is the study of how we know. Though it is a specialized question mostly reserved for philosophers (all we pastors need is another “ology,” right!), I believe our epistemological assumptions shape the way we understand the gospel (individual versus social) and church (a group of individuals or a social context for working out the gospel). Many will say that we should forget about such issues and just follow Jesus. Of course, this too is laden with epistemological assumptions. I contend that the formula “Christology determines missiology determines ecclesiology” is fraught with epistemological assumptions (modern Enlightenment) that lead us to the very problem (individualist de-cuturalized oriented salvation leading to pragmatic Christianity) the phrase was intended to avert in the first place. So let’s think this through.
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Caveat I generally reserve this kind of writing for other kinds of blogs or in academic contexts. So please, if you’re not interested – don’t go on reading. For me however this issue is essential for the time and place we live in. So here goes.
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I contend that the affirmation “missiology precedes ecclesiology” depends upon the epistemological priority of the individual thinking self – the cogito of modernity. We know Jesus and the gospel primarily as individuals first versus the encounter of God in Christ manifested in a people. For many of us postliberal types however, the church is the embodied narrative (post)foundation for the working out and displaying of the truth of Jesus Christ into the world. In this way, the church provides the epistemological foundation of sorts. It is in the social context of the church where the language is learned, the Story is carried on and indeed the presence of Christ is directly visible (The fullness thereof-Eph 1:22-23). From this place the revolution infests the world. For us, it makes no sense to say that the church is derivative of mission.
No doubt, in response to this, Hirsch and Frost would make the case that Jesus should be that foundation. Who can argue with that? Jesus (Christology) should precede missiology, right? (This is most likely what they’re expanding on with their most recent book, Re Jesus, though I have not read it and am due to get it from Amazon this week). This is true, yet this still bypasses the epistemological question entirely. How do we “know” Jesus? In essence, if missiology precedes the church, we must assume the gospel comes first in and through individuals and their mind/experience faculties.
Protestants have generally answered the epistemological question by referring to the Scriptures. The Protestants, you remember, no longer could trust the church as God’s work in the world. As a result, whether one is Prot. liberal or evangelical, the Scriptures are what point us to Jesus. This is where we encounter the living Lord. For evangelicals, the autonomous individual rational mind reads the Bible and by the Holy Spirit understands and encounters the living Word. For liberal Protestants, the autonomous “feeling self” reads the Bible and “gets in touch with (encounters) the religious experience” of Jesus afforded by the Scriptures. Evangelicals argue for the historical reliability of Scripture and the wherewithal of individual rationality under submission to the Holy Spirit to come to the propositional and real truth. Lib. Protestant theology appeals to the authority of universal religious experience. To me, Hirsch and Frost must affirm these classic protestant assumptions for this phrase (missiology precedes ecclesiology) to stand and make sense.
In either case however (evangelical or Prot Liberal), two bad things happen. ONE, it puts the epistemological foundations for knowing Jesus upon the autonomous ( a law nomos unto him/her self auto ) individual via the universal categories of either universal human experience or human reason and the meta narrative of science. We are now all on our own (via the Holy Spirit) to interpret as best we can (via historical commentaries). Yet even the best of us knows that we differ as to what the Holy Spirit is “telling me.” Try listening to John McArthur and Joel Osteen explicate the same Scripture at the same time. This is why interpretation is a communal discipline of the Holy Spirit where individuals are in submission to the church and the Holy Spirit and its ongoing community and collective history of interpretation. TWO this modernist epistemology inevitably makes Mission into something for individuals to pursue. It turns the Mission inward. It works against the reality that God has always chosen to work collectively in a people beginning with Israel to the birth of the Twelve and the church (read Gerhard Lohfink). As Yoder taught us, Jesus offers more than an individual salvation or a personal pattern of discipleship, his Lordship births a social reordering among us, a politic, as a foretaste of the world to come. Herein lies the base (foundation) for our witness into the world.
As an aside, but important to me, we live increasingly in a postmodern, post Christendom or even post-epistemological world, where these universal foundations are gone. Christendom, or a universal rationality, or a universal human experience (the most imperialist assumption of them all) has been destabilized. If we wish to minister under the “missiology precedes ecclesiology” moniker how do we navigate these contexts? Yet it seems to me Missional is particularly aimed at these contexts.
For all of these reasons we need the church as an epistemological foundation for the gospel in the world. We need the church as God’s ordained bearer of the Story, an historical apostolicity to ground us into who Jesus is and our ongoing relationship to the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. Here Scripture is socially embodied in the continuous people of God. Indeed such a story can only make sense in a community that embodies the Story. The stories, the language, the anamnesis of a people continuous with Jesus himself, birthed by his apostles (sent ones), the very extension of Jesus himself, wherein His presence is promised and made possible by the Holy Spirit – this body in the world becomes the epistemological foundation for knowing Jesus. This is the very incarnation (another missional buzz word)of Christ in the world. This is why the apostle Paul insists on calling the local church “the Body of Christ.” Herein lies “the fullness of Christ” the one who rules over all things (Eph 1:22-23). In this community we show forth (socially embody) in the present what is the world’s future, the salvation of God in Christ that is overtaking the whole world.
All this to say, I don’t see how this epistemological quandary can be navigated apart from a strong ecclesiology. Indeed putting missiology before ecclesiology should eventually lead to the contextualizing of the church into oblivion. Indeed, I believe the incarnational nature of the church is jeopardized by making it a post development of the missionary sending as opposed to putting it as the very extension of that sending.
I therefore suggest the following: Instead of advocating missiology precedes ecclesiology, let us instead advocate that indeed ecclesiology is missiology, or for that matter, missiology is ecclesiology. I’m following the same logic as my mentor Hauerwas (you can hear him here in Toronto in March), who often reiterates “the church does not have a social ethic, the church is a social ethic.” The church does not have a missiology, the church is a missiology.
I rest my case and await the accusations that I am an ecclesiocentric fundamentalist dinosaur 
. I’m open to criticisms. And, for the record, none of what I have just said takes away from the edification and growth I have received from listening and conversing with my friend Alan Hirsch. Peace
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PS: I’m finding there is a interesting history here between the various Missional church authors and the history of the theological construct Missio Dei. It could be argued for instance, that the concept of Missio Dei that emerged post WW2 in the WCC Missions Councils was the Prot liberal version of it, which de-centered Missio Dei away from both the church and of course the particular person and work of Jesus Christ. This scared away the evangelicals and they resisted Missio Dei as an organizing doctrine for world mission (see Ed Stetzer’s article here). In this light, it could be argued that Alan Hirsch (along with Michael Frost, David Bosch and others) are simply recovering Missio Dei restoring Jesus to to the Missio Dei missiology, the Jesus who was lost in the WCC developments regarding Missio Dei. Nonetheless, both Prot liberal and some current missional church authors rely upon the same epistemological assumptions inheritng the problems as discussed above. In this sense, I see Hirsch and Frost’s argument of “Christology determines missiology which then determines ecclesiology” admirable for recovering Christ in missiology. The argument unfortunately continues the flawed (according to me) epistemology of the Enlightenment.
You all can tell I’m writing a book on Missional Theology:).
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post. I agree with you completely. You have eloquently stated what I have so long felt but couldn’t put into words.
Simon Chan’s wonderful book, Liturgical Theology,similarly argues that mission must flow from being (ontology).
Recovering a communal ecclesiology is the most important thing we can do as postmodern evangelicals. But, if this is true, why not just join the Romans or the Orthodox who have never forsaken this understanding of the church? Why should we try to remake the wheel? As a tired baptist pastor, it just seems so much easier to walk away from my free church connections and start going to daily mass.
david, I've been trying to make another point for some time now, partly in reaction to the Christology > missiology > ecclesiology shorthand, from the perspective of Trinitarian theology. Mission if it does start somewhere starts with God and with the perichoresis.. the inner life and overflowing love and relationality.. of the triune God. It seems to me that any formula (legacy of modernity anyway but shorthand we all use) that begins with Christology runs multiple risks, the prominent one being that it could reinforce an individualistic gospel. Christ on mission.. me on mission.. instead of the collective performance of the gospel in transformed communities. Love embodied. etc etc coincidentally posted this morning.. http://nextreformation.com/?p=2532
Dave,
I loved the post. I also liked Len’s observation
Great post, Dave…thanks so much!
I was reading Len’s post on his blog earlier today and have just finished setting up a Group at Missional Tribe concerning perichoresis.
I very much believe that we have to start with the eternal dance, into which we have been invited as the Bride of Christ…and where the Holy Spirit gives dancing lessons — both privately and with the group.
I am gratified to see this conversation following nicely along with the 7 Commandments of MT … ;^)
David –
Loved this post. Basically agree w/ you. And especially your “Hauerwasian” comments at the end.
It seems to me, however, that when missional thinkers/authors/practitioners say that “missiology precedes ecclesiology”, they’re not quite making the same point that you’re attacking. It seems like they’re saying that in order to understand what the
Church is and what she is supposed to be about, we must begin w/ mission; that is to say, we begin with God, what God has done in Jesus, and what God is continuing to do in the world through Jesus, and that God calls together a community to enact his purposes for the whole cosmos. I’m under the impression that the intent of doing so is more heuristic/pragmatic than anything else – and to that extent I personally don’t find it misleading, as long as it’s willing to concede that in the economy of salvation, missiology and ecclesiology are in fact coextensive. “Without God we cannot; without us God will not.”
Is this an unfair assessment?
Peace.
Andrew,
I think you might be right … but it gets confusing. At times I hear Alan saying just that (what you said), at other times it veers off. In any case, I’m working on a sermon tonite so I’ll try to have some more substantive interaction on your comment and the others tomorrow and Monday .. thanks !!
David, VERY helpful post. I hear what Andrew is saying about others not "quite making the same point" that you are pushing back on.
I find the "progression" that Hirsch makes with Christology > Missiology > Ecclesiology to be most helpful when working with church planters who many times are drawn to start with the ecclesiology of the latest "successful" plant highlighted in the last conference attended or book read instead of having the church plant birthed out of serious missiological reflection of the local context. For so long it seems the vast majority of planting resources defaulted to a pragmatic, ecclesiological focus.
Lastly, does Guder's simplified take of Theology (of the triune God) > Missional Ecclesiology offer a helpful alternative?
David,
Two comments: First, doesn’t all of this depend on variant definitions of “missiology”? It seems if missiology is defined properly ecclesiology could flow from it; if not, then not.
Second, a slight push back: isn’t this predicated upon an assembly line kind of thinking, a modernist epistemology of addition or entailment, a linear shape to thinking … and shouldn’t we reframe such issues in a more integrated, epistemic approach?
But, I agree that too many Prots want to make the epistemic foundation too simply Scripture, even without Pneuma or Ekklesia.
Very, very helpful, David. Thank you. When’s the book due to be out? (wink)
Peace,
Jamie
Gotta echo Scot here a little bit. The Church is a living thing. Like most living things, development doesn’t come in specific order when you work across empahses. Infants develop physically, mentally, and socially simultaneously. (that’s a lot of -ly’s) Plants grow roots, stems, and leaves at the same time.
Certainly physical development follows stages (as do mental and social development) so within each area there are stages.
I’d apply this thinking to the church in that our Christology, Missiology, and Ecclesiology develop together–each enabling (or retarding) growth in the other. To place them in sequence causes more problems than is solves. And the church cannot be a viable organism without all three aspects. Optimal health comes when they are balanced.
I’m so glad this discussion is taking place. David, I never thought of tackling this issue from an epistemology perspective. That’s one of the things I love about your writings, they hit me from a completely different angle than I’m used to.
To me, the great danger of having missiology precede ecclesiology is that it turns the church into a society (individuals gathered around a purpose) rather than a community (individuals united in a common life), and as a consequence defines people in functional terms. Like the Trinity, so with the Church, mission springs out from our common life and love for each other (John 13:35; 17:21).
Hi David,
I wanted to reply but the comment editor does not seem to let me make nice drawing. I have a post here in reply
In the end I conclude that the church does not have a mission but God's people are missional and it is in this that others know the Gospel.
Friends, fellow conversants, I’m a bit behind in responding to the many comments above. So I’ll have to be quick and hit on a few points.
Len, I’m interested in what you’re saying. I read your review of ReJesus.And I have to go read Alan’s (with Frost) book. I sympathize with your trinitarian argument but from probably slightly different angle ( as best I can tell) I’m convinced we have to tread carefully in inferring from the immananent Trinity to social ontology (the immananent Trinity and the anthropocentric Fuerbachian tendecies of those who have worked with this concept), but would argue very much within the economic trinity as the basis for Missio Dei orginating in the Father sending … for this grounds the Missio Dei in the Trinitarian Drama of which the church is the on the ground extension of the Son via the Spirit.
Scot, Brad , Andrew et. al. I think you’re right that the progression mantra is not necessarily meant to do the theological work some people put on it. And the definitions of missiology get quite confusing for me. Yet I see the impulse working nonetheless in evangelcial contexts where very littl thought is given to what the church is (i.e. the Mission). Instead, I find most church planters discounting church as the viable instrument of mission, and I just can;t see how this can hold together, especially inthe contexts of post Christendom. I agree with Scot and Bob (David I haven’t yet read your post) that missiology and ecclesiology are worked. This is why Yoder called the church “a hermeneutic of peoplehood.” So I suggest we clear up the confusion and say ecclesiology is missiology or vice versa… Blessings
I think the notation of '>' 'precedes' and 'determines' allows a lot of play in how this is interpreted and defended. It's easy to look at the statements and get all caught up in linear thinking, when probably nobody thinks it is quite that simple.
The story in Acts does 2 things that are not quite mentioned by David. First Mission _assumes_ eccesiology, where the Great Commission was given to a group of people. And Secondly in the working-out of things, eccessiology moved around as mission was being pursued. The Jerusalem church created a missional community but did not expand until pushed out by persecution. And then it stopped at the Jewish barrier until another breakthrough in eccessiology came through Peter and others. The mission remained the mission while ecclesiology iterated and continues to iterate.
And while I appreciate Adams comments concerning society and community. I would posit that war veterans of any culture share a deep sense of community with those they fought/missioned beside. As we mission together, we naturally return to our comrades for stength, encouragement, and training. Too often worshiping together does not naturally ooze out into mission (although it should).
David,
Thanks for your good reflections. I’m a big fan of the blog…God has used it to nourish my soul.
I’m a church planter and have appreciated the emphasis from my mentors that theology informs praxis and ecclesiology (and not the other way around). I hear this same emphasis in Hirsch’s statement.
I also appreciate your critique about such a statement’s epistemological implications and that the church is the embodiment of God’s mission in the world.
I’m hesitant, however, to identify missiology with ecclesiology if that means God’s mission is relegated to the church (don’t get me wrong, I think the church is the primary vehicle of mission)–perhaps for the same reason theologians would not equate the kingdom of God with the church. The church is the embodiment of the kingdom of God but is not the full expression of it. Glimmers of God’s reign can be found outside the church.
My denominational heritage (Churches of Christ) equated kingdom and church for many years and what resulted was a kind of hubris–we’re right and everyone else is wrong. Turns out, we weren’t all right and everyone else was not all wrong.
How does God / God’s mission call the church into question when ecclesiology = missiology?
As you seem to have implied at the end, putting either missiology or ecclesiology “first” is a mistake, for it assumes that we as interpreters are forced to cast one in the frame of the other. It almost has a pragmatic flavor (i.e., we decide our ecclesiology based on our missiology), which disregards (or at least fatally underestimates) the fact that both the ontological and functional nature of the Church is defined by Scripture (and illustrated by historic tradition(s)).
This is case in point of the need for good biblical scholarship in the field(s) of missiology and ecclesiology, that is, good missional theology.
Thanks for the helpful discussion.
Dave Fitch,
2 quick points.
1) The term Post- Christian is used quite often, to give support for certain ecclesiologies and approches to mission. I am not sure this is helpful, because the whole concept is vauge and in my opinion (If i understand what is bieng said) incorrect.
2)Your affirmation on the role of the community for interpretation and a need for ecclesiology seems to be not in line with your previous statements about mission. In a post on attractional and missional church you said that the anabaptist tradition was the only viable ecclesiology for a Post Christian world. Yet here in this post, you are asserting an ecclesiology that uses the history of the church to interpret scripture and be a communal witness.
If your grid is applied to the issue of the church, then an anabaptistic structure would be a rather new development, dependent on the very interpretive methods of scripture that Hirsh uses.
I love your posts and your great missional insight, but I wish you would abandon the statement “What I want to argue is post Christendom requires of us an Anabaptist missional ecclesiology.” It seems not only to be incorrect, but untenable based on my argument above.
Matt,
post Christian is sometimes used synonymously with post Christendom, I use it with the same overlap except that post Christian refers to something broader than the allignment of culture-culture and state that Christendom inplies. I use the term as it is found in the theological ethics and church and culture literature. I can’t always take the time to define my terms and make every nuance explicit. So I apologize, but hence are the limitations of blogging.
as for your second point – I don’t see the incongruency … mainly because I folow in the shadow of Hauerwas who claims regularly to be a “high-church mennonite.” Why does calling for an Anabaptist ecclesiology reject out of hand a submission to the histiory of teh church. I admit that at first blink, Anabaptists appear to reject the Constantinian history of the church, but those of us who call for a post Christendom Anabaptist communal ecclesiology also depned heavily upon understanding the chiurch as a historical apostoloic traditioned continuoous Body of Christ. This is in essence what Hauerwas did way back in the 80′s when he joined McIntyre together with Yoder.
For all these reasons I find your second statement a tad over confident.
Blessings DF
dave, thanks, you nearly lost me there, but it was greatly helpful to see you anchor this in epistemological concerns. I knew my intuition was right regarding the Frost/Hirsch linearity and I saw the implications but I wasn’t sure where the problem lay. btw, this is all greatly complicated by what Noam Chomsky refers to as “concision” see link..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cceC3DeFcY
Dave, you sound quite…catholic…Cyprian would be proud
.
btw, fascinating connection in what you blogged above to Tickle’s suggestion that the discernable difference among emergent types is increasingly organized around Theonomy vs Orthonomy. See my short review just posted for that distinction.
Chicken . . . egg . . . chicken . . egg . . . hmm . . . chicken=egg. You’ve got a heck of a deconstructionist argument going here. You even pick on imperialistic metanarratives.
You picked some good boundaries to blur, though. I’ve been thinking about missiology is ecclesiology all day, and as much as I originally wanted to argue for the primacy of mission, I have to agree with you. You’ve closed the circle. We need an ecclesiology informed by missiology as much as we need a missiology informed by ecclesiology, and both of them centered on christology. The church is the product of mission, the means of fulfilling mission, and an embodiment of the goal of mission.
I’m not convinced, however, that christology -> missiology -> ecclesiology de facto depends on the primacy of the cogito. Frost and Hirsch always stress the importance of the communitas in incarnating Christ amongst a people, and so presuppose the church. The Apostle Paul did something similar, forming a small mobile ecclesia around a mission. All of them seem to have started with missiology, but assumed ecclesiology. I’m also not sure that stressing ecclesiology as an epistemological foundation will de facto remove the cogito from its place of primacy. In a culture of church hoppers and consumers, beginning with ecclesia is likely to sound just as much like an autonomous choice (which church do I choose to begin with and why? What’s my ecclesiology?) as beginning with mission.
@hurdler
My concern is that when purpose is central, then the motive for the relationship is to achieve the purpose, whereas in a true community it’s mutual affection (love) that motivates the relationship. Using your example, those who are in military combat are there for a purpose, not because they love each other. Granted, community may form out of their experience and they may continue to nourish that community long after the military conflict.
It goes back to the reason for the relationship. The Christian message is that people are an end in themselves and sufficient reason to love and commit to. Like a marriage, the purpose is the relationship. If a couple married for the express purpose of having children, we would consider that aberrant. Children may result, but that’s not the purpose of the marriage. That’s why ecclesiology can’t be a sub-category of missiology. Scottish philosopher John Macmurray has some great things to say about this. See his quote at my blog and my comments about this topic.
[...] fitch, ecclesiology, michael frost, missiology, missional church I recently had my mind changed by David Fitch. Frost and Hirsch argue for christology -> missiology -> ecclesiology, (I blogged it here), [...]
Very helpful post. It’s hard to talk about what precedes what, because there are the mixing categories of human experience, divine life, and revelation.
All three, christology, missiology, and ecclesiology are inseparable, so the challenge is trying to figure out how they relate, which I thought you have added a very valuable way of thinking about these issues.
Is there also a question of ontology? I thought ontology was the basis of Frost/Hirsch assessments of christ->mission-> church (which seems very much related to Moltmann’s views in Church in the Power of the Spirit. The church exists because God’s mission exists which is exemplified by Christ’s action in the world past, present, and future.
Yet, I do think you bring valid epistemological concerns.
Dave, not sure I agree with you but you’ve given me something to chew on.
David says his position, “depend[s] heavily upon understanding the church as a historical apostolic traditioned continuous Body of Christ.”
I haven’t read Hirsch’s original, so I can’t comment on that. But my argument has long been that when we say the church is “apostolic” we’re doing more than claiming a historic link with the apostles. We’re saying that a mark of the church as church is that it is a sent community (“as the Father has sent me, so I send you.”) Missio is a perfectly fine translation of apostello.
David F,
Very helpful conversation starter. I have wrestled over how to describe the flow in linear terms. It seems Ed Stetzer uses some overlapping circles along with a linear progression – something of “crescendo-ing” ellipses.
Even more helpful for me is your exchange with Len over the place of the Trinity. I have long thought it not bad to borrow from the Eastern Orthodox the implications of the social Trinity. It seems a move Grenz was making in his later writings. Your assertion this may come from the economic Trinity rather than deriving a social ontology from the immanent Trinity gives me more to think about.
As always, thanks for the time you take to write.
[...] didn’t get into the whole Christology precedes ecclesiology issue because I addressed that here). Below find Frank’s take on this and then my response [...]
[...] Further reading: Vanhoozer, Everyday Theology. Adam, Fowl, Vanhoozer, Watson, Reading Scripture with the Church. Senge et al, Presence. David Fitch on the epistemological problem [...]
[...] Missiology precedes Ecclesiology or Missiology is Ecclesiology. I affirm the latter. I think the only way my beloved friend Alan Hirsch’s formula [...]