Mission as Penance: Essays on the Theology of Mission from a Canadian Context

By Charles J. Fensham and Allan Effa

Mission as Penance explores the posture of Christian mission in Canada, while also uncovering the theological roots that gave birth to the sense of cultural and religious superiority that led to profound harm to others and to God's creation. The story begins by an examination of Johan Bavinck's famous 1954 claim that "mission is thus the penance of the church which is ashamed before God and man." By drawing on his work through forty years in theological education and pastoral ministry, Fensham prescribes a pathway that liberates the church from power games, numerical growth, and preoccupation with programs and technology, to focus instead on genuine listening, solidarity, and love in action. True penance is never satisfied with passivity, nor should it result in a state of paralysis. For a posture of humble penance to be fruitful, it must lead toward concerted action toward change, advocacy for justice, compassion for the marginalized, and care for creation. If mission in Canada is engaged in this way, the Christian faith might cease to do harm and build a new life-giving community of healing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666797251

Charles J. Fensham

Charles J. Fensham is professor of systematic theology at Knox College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. He is the author of Emerging from the Dark Age Ahead: The Future of the North American Church (2008); To the Nations for the Earth: A Missional Spirituality (2013); and Misguided Love: Christians and the Rupture of LGBTQI2+ People (2019).

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Section 1

Introducing Mission as Penance

1

Christian Mission as Penance?

Besides the towering influence of David Bosch, my thesis director, there were three important people I consider to be mentors in my life. The first was Nico Smit. I knew Nico from the time I was a small boy. He was one of my father’s best friends and professor in mission studies at the seminary at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. In my teen years he became my catechism teacher in our local congregation and inspired in me a lifelong admiration for the Reformer Martin Luther. He led us through study of the Heidelberg Catechism with an emphasis on love and justice. Some years later we shared an office when both of us taught at the University of South Africa. Besides his enthusiastic faith, Nico set an example for me in his unflinching commitment not to separate acts of justice from faith. As professor at the seminary in Stellenbosch he enjoyed prestige and lived an upper middle-class life as a privileged white male in apartheid South Africa. But Nico’s conscience was at work and at a critical moment in his career he came out publicly against the injustice and evil of the apartheid regime. This news hit the Sunday papers in the country and was considered a great embarrassment at the seminary. Ultimately this embarrassment, and his calls for racial justice in the courses he taught, caused the end of his academic career. As an ordained minister he was then called to a black congregation as their pastor in the black township of Mamelodi in Pretoria South Africa. There, in defiance of the apartheid law, he built a home in the black township and moved to live in the midst of his parish. On June 27, 1988, his bold move led to a Time Magazine feature article.¹ Nico became a target of the South African security police. He was followed, his telephone tapped, his mail opened and read, and two agents were usually parked in a car across from his home. When I visited him at home, he would make two cups of coffee and we would take it out to the agents and have a little chat with them. Nico had great flair and a strong ego, but he demonstrated and sacrificially lived a Christian penitential journey in the light of the evils perpetrated by some Christian churches in his time.

My second mentor was Willem Saayman who was professor of mission studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA). He directed my master’s thesis and, as a white Afrikaner, he was radically committed to opposing the apartheid system. Willem decided to take early retirement with a much-reduced pension, so that some of his younger black colleagues could enjoy advancement in the university hierarchy.² His sense of humor and his unflinching commitment to seeing all people as human beings with dignity augmented by his profound humility, always set a powerful example for me.

The third mentor came later in life and sadly, passed away while I am writing this. His name is Albert Nolan. He was a Dominican priest in South Africa and became well-known as the author of a book Jesus Before Christianity (first published in 1976). This book challenged many of the assumptions of Christendom. On the cover of the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this book, Harvey Cox described it as the most accurate and balanced short reconstruction of the life of the historical Jesus. I came to know Albert personally after I moved to Canada through a family connection. Some of the most important moments of my life were those rare occasions when, during a sabbatical return to South Africa, I was able to spend a day in retreat with him at the home of mutual friends. Albert devoted his life in ministry to the poorest and most marginalized communities in South Africa. In 1983 Albert was elected as Master of the Order of Preachers of the Dominican Order. This position is the Superior General of the Order, which required him to move to Rome. In a rare moment of disobedience to his order, but in a profoundly humble and penitential act, he declined the election so that he could carry on his ministry among the poor in South Africa. In 1990, when he came to Canada to receive an honorary doctorate from Regis College in Toronto, he stayed with my family, and we spent a wonderful week together.

All these mentors created for me examples of humble Christian penitential engagement in mission. Christian triumphalism simply was not an option in their engagement with the world. Their courage, humility, and unflinching opposition when Christian churches belied the gospel, inspired me. It is therefore no surprise that David Bosch’s reference to Johan H. Bavinck’s claim that mission is thus the penance of the church, which is ashamed before God and man has fascinated me all my adult life.

Bosch first referred to this claim by Bavinck in his 1979 publication Heil vir die Wȇreld, translated in English as Witness to the World.³ In fact, it could be argued that the penitential approach to mission is one of the key themes of Bosch’s grasp of mission. It is not that Bosch advocated for a kind of shrinking violet approach to mission, but rather that Bosch argued for a bold engagement with the world in the name and Spirit of Christ. This bold engagement always had to be tempered by a deep sense of humility and repentance. Saayman and Kritzinger’s Festschrift in Bosch’s honor captured this posture beautifully with the title Mission in Bold Humility. They drew this title from Bosch’s magnum opus Transforming Mission.⁴ As a former student of Bosch, and a former junior colleague at the University of South Africa, I hope this penitential posture will echo in the pieces of my thought collected in this book. But, because short citations from a larger text can often mislead, we need to attend to Bavinck’s penitential claim made almost at the end of his 1954 publication Inleiding in de Zendingswetenschap, translated and published in English in 1960.⁵

A claim that mission is the penance of the church ashamed before God and man may seem like a kind of theological postcolonial critique worthy of the Bhabhas and Spivak’s of the later twentieth century. A closer look at Bavinck’s Introduction to the Science of Mission (from here on referred to as Introduction) will quickly disabuse the reader of such a conclusion. Johannes Verkuyl notes that Bavinck’s Introduction appears at the moment of the demise of the colonial era.⁶ The reference to penance and shame occurs in the last section of his book where Bavinck makes a somewhat dubious argument for an approach to the history of mission. Most of what precedes this section of his book was considered state of the art before the publication of Bosch’s Transforming Mission. However, Introduction can be described as a stolidly Eurocentric piece of work that was sometimes naively unaware of its own biases. Hendrik Kraemer casts a large shadow over the text. Bavinck’s experience of Dutch colonial mission in Indonesia plays a big role as well. Despite these concerns, which I will explore further below, Introduction is full of gems of insight and moments of sheer brilliance as witnessed in the mission doing penance statement. It is therefore worthwhile to attend more fully to Bavinck’s theology of mission.

The first matter to address is the use of the term science of missions. Throughout his book Bavinck is very critical of the secularizing influence of Western culture and the influence of its rationalism and a deification of the human being. Of course, his critique of deification is not aimed at the Orthodox tradition’s doctrine of God’s redemptive work in the human life, but rather a critique of the idolatrous turning of humankind into the ultimate. He sees these troubling influences spread in the world through the export of Western technology and philosophy. Johannes Verkuyl observes that one should not make too much of how you name your discipline, nevertheless, by choosing the title science of missions⁷ for the discipline of missiology, Bavinck appears to follow the Schleiermacherian approach to theology within the academic context. With the establishment of the University of Berlin, Schleiermacher defended the presence of theology in the university by arguing that it is a science. The result is theology as a rational and arguably secularized science (wetenschap in Dutch). In choosing science of mission (zendingwtenschap) Bavinck does not follow the earlier Dutch tradition of A. A. Van Ruler and others to speak of the theology of the apostolate (theologie van het apostolaat). Bavinck observes in the introduction to his book that he understands the concept science in this way, Science is in many ways an outgrowth of life, by which it is ever stimulated.⁸ The idea of science therefore becomes tempered by a more realistic life-affirming perspective rather than a secularized university version of science. To a certain degree, Bavinck’s strong emphasis on a biblical approach and the sovereignty of God consistently contradicts the scientific title. Yet, in his work, there remains an inherent tension between science as an outgrowth of life and the primacy of Scripture and the sovereignty of God. The outgrowth of life attends to that side of Bavinck that is deeply human and empathetic and the sovereignty of God and the assumption of the utter fallenness of the human condition attends to Bavinck’s Reformed theology.

As a Reformed Protestant theologian Bavinck starts with Scripture, then he proceeds to mission practices and motivations and ends with the history of mission. It is helpful to compare this with Bosch’s approach in Transforming Mission. He also starts with Scripture but, in a more sophisticated way, eschewing the kind of proof texting that Bavinck engages in. For Bavinck simply citing biblical texts sufficed to make his case, for Bosch, the larger structure of Scripture, the context of the text and the cultural setting, and the insights of different biblical scholars are brought into play to offer a level of deeper attention to his scriptural reflection on mission. Bosch departs from Bavinck’s approach by moving from Scripture to the history of mission. Bavinck leaves the history of mission to the final section of his book and deals with it quite briefly. This difference is significant. He understands the history of mission and its role in missiological reflection quite differently from Bosch. For Bavinck the history of mission is to be distinguished from church history in that its sole focus is on discerning the action of God in history and the human resistance against it. Mission history can therefore not teach us anything about what mission is, but simply how we may have resisted and failed God’s missional engagement with the world.⁹ In contrast to this, Bosch spends the large middle section of Transforming Mission on the history of mission and divides this history quite differently from Bavinck’s five eras approach.¹⁰ Bosch identifies historical paradigms, and these paradigms serve not only to demonstrate human failure but also serve as lessons of human faithfulness to God. Later in this book my argument for a missional methodology that follows Bosch’s distinction between the descriptive (mission history) and the normative (theological reflection on the history) will explore these elements further as it draws on the penitential tradition in a constructive way.

At the heart of this difference between Bavinck and Bosch lies the difference in the value put on creation. Bavinck, deeply influenced by the dialectical theologians of the twentieth century led by Barth, and also indebted to John Calvin, assumes a deep rift between creatures and Creator. Bosch, even though he too stands in this Reformed and dialectic theological tradition, has a more nuanced understanding of human agency and its value in the practice of mission. One way this is expressed is in the original Afrikaans title of Bosch’s book Witness to the World, which in Afrikaans reads as Heil vir die Wȇreld. Heil indicates well-being, wholeness, healing, and salvation and in this title such wholeness is offered for all the world. Bosch’s deeper appreciation of God’s love and cherishment of God’s creatures and creation is also reflected in his emphasis on justice for the world. Thus, in Transforming Mission he offers a scriptural reflection on the use of the Greek word translated as righteousness (dikaiosyne) in many English translations of the Bible. He argues that this concept is not just a spiritual state but also a state of justice and just action in the world.¹¹

Bavinck does not go as far as Bosch, but he demonstrates some influence from his hands-on experience of intercultural mission in Indonesia. This becomes evident in many subtle ways throughout Introduction. One example is a difference from Barth on the matter of the famous point of contact debate. In 1934 Karl Barth and Emil Brunner conducted a debate about natural theology and the possibility of revelation in and through nature. Their differences were rather small with Barth refusing to admit to any form of revelation through nature. Bavinck’s argument in Introduction can be read as supportive of Barth’s stark contrast God is God—world is world. Nevertheless, Bavinck argues that there must be some connection between the human person and God, and he chooses the Dutch term aangrijpingspunt in contrast to aanknopingspunt (point of contact).¹² The English translation of Bavinck’s term does not do justice to the original Dutch term when it translates aangrijpingspunt as point of attack. This rather violent image in English suggests a warlike attack on the missionary object and it does not accurately reflect the nuanced meaning of aangrijpend in Dutch. In Dutch, this word relays an empathetic emotional connection that stirs one person’s feelings for another in a moving way. Bavinck thus admits that the divine connects with the human in the missionary encounter in a profoundly emotional and human way. Consequently, it is possible to argue that Bavinck has more human affirming insight into the human condition than it first appears, although very cautiously so. Bavinck, the compassionate missionary, recognizes something of the awareness of the divine in the human being in the context of an empathetic connection between human beings—an aangrijpingspunt. Nevertheless, he remains deeply skeptical of any salvific insight into the divine goodness within the postlapsarian human.

In the section preceding his claim of an aangrijpingspunt between the missionary and the person they encounter, he appears to make a case for a kind of point of contact. He refers first to the idea contained in Acts 14:17 when Paul and Barnabas are recorded as arguing that God has not left God-self without a witness in the human experience as they refer to the providence of nature. He also discusses Paul’s engagement with the Greeks on the Areopagus (Acts 17) that seems to suggest that there is a preexisting connection with divine revelation. Then, in contrast, he moves on to cite Calvin’s famous reference to the umbratile numen which he describes as referring to a god who is a nebulous all-pervading being, fabricated by us. Bavinck interprets Calvin’s reference as a strong warning against the danger of reading too much into the human capability to know God through nature.¹³

In the light of this argument advanced by Bavinck, it is worth noting that this citation from Calvin’s Institutes occurs in Calvin’s quotation of Virgil’s poem that recognizes divine work in nature and particularly in the immortal soul.¹⁴ In the text Calvin actually concedes that a pious mind can discern God in nature. Nevertheless, the tendency that concerns Calvin and that he is warning against, is that which sets up a shadowy deity that does not lead to the fear and worship of the true God. Clearly, the more conservative Reformed suspicion of the human condition exercises a deep influence on Bavinck that shapes a profoundly pessimistic view of the human condition. It can be argued that understanding Calvin in Bavinck’s way is possible as there are hints in Calvin of a postlapsarian complete loss of the image of God in the human condition (for example his commentary on Eph 4:24).¹⁵ However, there is also a far more pervasive insistence in Calvin’s work that God’s image remains inscribed in the human condition despite its extensively corrupted state due to sin.¹⁶

These Reformation concerns lead Bavinck to conclude that the early apologists, who assumed a universal logos and used this natural connection with Greek philosophy in their preaching, were misguided. For Bavinck the logos of the philosophers hold no connection to Christ the Logos of John chapter 1.¹⁷ This complete rejection of Justin Martyr’s doctrine of the logos spermatikos or the human affirming doctrine of the gloria vivens in Irenaeus may be quite traditionally Reformed but cannot be conceived to be faithful to the way the Scriptures describe the relationship between God, creation, and creatures. While reading through Introduction I have a sense that Bavinck’s pastor’s heart recognizes God working and speaking to those he considers heathen in his encounters, and then Bavinck the Reformed theologian warns himself not to be hoodwinked! God at work in the human condition and in the revelation of the book of nature, is just not a fully allowable option. In my assessment, Bavinck’s Reformed pessimism about the human condition that sees no ray of a postlapsarian insight into God’s goodness leads to a contradiction of the freedom and sovereignty of God. It also risks leading to a potential pessimistic lack of love for the other. The worst outcome of such pessimistic theological conviction can be seen in Canada as we come to terms with the destructive impact of Christian mission on the Indigenous peoples that will be explored in the next chapter.

In response I would ask, if God so loved the world (kosmos) that God gave God’s only Son, does God not thus value the inherent created dignity and beauty of God’s creatures? Are humans not created in God’s image and does the gospel not unlock our hearts and minds to see and appreciate the wonder, wisdom, and beauty of our fellow human beings and all creation? Should we constantly look at creation and God’s creatures with the suspicion that they are so profoundly damaged by sin that they can render nothing of truth, beauty, or value? Is Christ not described by the Gospel of Matthew as the one who taught of the great judgement in which we learn that God is encountered in the recognition of our neighbors in their need (Matt 25:31–46)? Is divine revelation not thus mediated by the hidden truth found in the least of these (ἐλάχιστος—the smallest, the least, the most insignificant) encountered by those who care with compassion and just action? I would argue that if we miss this insight of God’s choice to attribute value to creation, we risk doing immense harm. If we see our fellow humans whom we consider outside the faith first with a deep sense of suspicion, we are not faithful to the gospel of love. If God so loved the world that God moved in self-giving to this world in deep solidarity, our task is first to love, listen, and understand before we discern the path of justice and love with others. Ignoring this loving regard is a potential hazard that will be highlighted in some of the material to follow in this book. There is no denying that sin is a power present that impinges destructively on creation, creatures, and particularly humankind. That reality does not mean that God has not left a witness of God’s justice, love, truth, and beauty in all creation including all human beings. This is a theme I will pick up later in this chapter.

Earlier I have alluded to some of the Eurocentric assumptions that pervade throughout Introduction. Of course, we should read this text in its context and time. We cannot expect the Johan Bavinck of 1954 to use gender-inclusive language or to eschew the pejorative use of the word heathen, nor can we expect for the 1960 translation of his book to share our contemporary sentiments. However, it must be noted that a piece of particularly apparent Eurocentrism is contained in the consistent use of the word primitive used for people who are religiously and culturally othered. The facile use of primitive and heathen for others is further reflected in an unconscious Eurocentric and simplistic assumptions about what the gospel is and who decides what it is. There are astounding claims in the text that go with this oversimplified understanding of a reified gospel which is somehow assumed to be the European Protestant version of it. Bavinck claims that culture did not play a role in early Christianity and that Paul and his fellow workers taught nothing else but the gospel.¹⁸ This kind of blindness to the cultural garb in which early Christianity came, including its shape in the New Testament, leads to ignorance of cultural blind spots in the biblical and Christian interpreter who makes such assumptions. I will explore below how much influence Bavinck receives from Karl Barth’s famous 1932 lecture at the Brandenburg Mission Conference. The assumption of a pure gospel untouched by culture and context is prominently present in that paper.¹⁹ For those theologians shaped by the European mindset this seemed to be an obvious assumption. What they did not recognize is how their concept of this pure gospel is shaped by their own culture, spirituality, and language, as well as gender and class.

Despite such concerns it is necessary to turn to the ascendence of the idea of the mission of God and its presence in Bavinck’s missiology. The Willingen gathering of the International Missionary Council took place in 1952. Bavinck published the Dutch version of Introduction in 1954. The Willingen gathering is often associated with the rise of the concept of the missio Dei within the ecumenical movement, even though that term does not appear in the Willingen reports. Karl Hartenstein’s insistence in rooting Christian mission in the action of the triune God and the embrace of that idea at Willingen would become the direct cause for the rise of the idea of the missio Dei. Hartenstein already coined the phrase missio Dei in 1934, and it is safe to assume that Bavinck was not unaware of it.²⁰ More clearly so, Bavinck follows Barth’s emphasis on the actio Dei, a strong and recurring theme in Introduction. Moreover, Introduction bears constant marks and references to Barth’s 1932 lecture "Die Theologie und der Mission im Gegenwart," in which we find Barth reminding the missionaries that mission originates in God’s self-sending and thus in the action of the triune God. Barth writes,

Missionsfreund zu denken geben, dass der Begriff missio in der alten Kirche ein Begriff aus der Trinitätslehre, nämlich die Bezeichnung für die göttlichen Selbstsendungen, die Sendung des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes in die Welt gewesen ist?²¹ (Mission friend, think about this. The concept missio in the early [old] church is a concept that originated in the doctrine of the Trinity. It indicates the self-sending of God. Was it thus not understood as the sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit into the world? [my own loose translation]).

Bavinck, too, emphasizes the actions of God as the primary source of mission. Where it is possible to separate this insight from a Eurocentric take on it in Bavinck’s work, his recognition of God’s example and initiative in mission is of ongoing value in missiological reflection. There remains more, albeit wrapped in Bavinck’s own European, male, Dutch cultural suit, that is of great value. It is not by mistake that Johannes Verkuyl notes that one of the most important aspects of Bavinck’s contribution was rooted in his profound humanity and his radical commitment to Christ. Verkuyl describes him as a transparent Christian with a strong commitment to ecumenicity.²² Bavinck the person thus stands in the tension between theological conception and human experience.

One example of thoughtful insight is to be found in Bavinck’s discussion of the relationship between words and deeds in mission. He observes that in his time medical care and other forms of ministry were often seen as an auxiliary function to the true mission of preaching. However, he concludes, Such sharp distinction between words and deeds is unknown in the Scriptures. God’s deeds are also the words in which he reveals himself.²³ Bavinck then goes on to remind the reader that the New Testament emphasizes the inherent connection between word and deed as he cites Jesus’s claim that his works bear witness to the Father who sent him (John 5:36) and that Paul claimed that he preached by word and deed (Rom 15:18). Yet again the suspicion that humans are up to very little good is contradicted by this deeply human side of Bavinck that recognizes how human deeds can become sanctified as witnessing to divine action.

Perhaps the most interesting example of this tension between the human and the divine can be traced in Bavinck’s development of the concept elenctics. The word comes from the New Testament Greek concept ἐλέγχω (elengchon/elengchein) which could mean to persuade or to convince or convict. In Reformed tradition the use of this concept in missionary reflection goes back to Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) and was also developed by Abraham Kuyper. Bavinck’s use of this idea for a kind of prophetic proclamation in mission is often seen as his most important contribution to missiology. He lists a series of New Testament texts that use this word, including Jude 14–15, Rev 3:19, John 16:8, 1 Tim 5:20, Matt 18:15.²⁴ Bavinck’s definition is in his own words:

Taken in this sense, elenctics is the science which is concerned with the conviction of sin. In a special sense then it is the science which unmasks to the heathendom all false religions as sin against God, and it calls heathendom to the knowledge of the only true God.²⁵

Despite the implied role of human intervention to bring about conviction, we need to acknowledge that just preceding this definition, Bavinck makes clear that the only conceivable subject of this verb (ἐλέγχω) is the Holy Spirit. Such conviction of sin and insight into revealed truth is ultimately the work of God by the Holy Spirit. Humans can engage in persuasive or convicting preaching and arguments, but it is God who works the conviction and insight in the human heart.

It is my sense that the same tension between a sense of pessimism about the human condition and consequent assumption that all goodness must come unfiltered from the divine also appears in Bavinck’s theology of elenctics. His understanding also contains a good measure of negative Eurocentric judgement against the religious other. Here, too, there is an ambivalence between Bavinck who encountered people of other faiths that he respected deeply and Bavinck, the Reformed theologian, that feels compelled to condemn them by means of the message of the Christian gospel.

Bavinck applies the scriptural uses of this Greek word in the New Testament as examples of missionary communication to those outside the Christian community. However, the only text in his list of examples that refers to conviction of those outside the Christian community is John 16:8 which emphasizes that such conviction is worked by the Holy Spirit. This observation is also true for the passage he does not mention in Titus 1:9. All texts save one in the New Testament uses the verb elengchein to refer to the task of correction within the Christian community. Of those texts only one, Titus 1:9, associates correct teaching with this verb, the other references all deal with unethical and bad Christian behaviors. Even in the Jude text, it is bad behavior that constitutes being a false teacher. Perhaps the text that comes closes to Bavinck’s missionary elenctics can be found in Acts 18:19 where Apollos is described as having mightily convinced his