DAVUILEVU THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE

Term Paper

Mission as Missio Dei

Jone Saraqia

MN 114

Lecture: Rev. Dr. Donald S.

Date of Submission: 24/04/2023

I shall be discussing the topic of "Mission as Missio Dei" that I was assigned in this

essay. I had been tinkering with the theme and had succeeded in segmenting it into four parts.

Although the term has been used in practically every aspect of life, its meaning is unclear. As

a result, the first part discusses how to understand the phrase "mission."

Second, I made an effort to comprehend the connection between the terms mission

and missio dei. These two terms are closely similar, but since they were misinterpreted, their

meaning and application were clouded.

Thirdly, after making sure I understood and clarified their definitions, I made an effort

to look at the background of missionaries' arrival in Fiji and their contributions. They had

made significant contributions to many facets of life, including the creation and growth of the

country. nevertheless there were some setbacks.

Finally, I concluded this article by restating everything I had been talking about up to

that point and offering one recommendation.

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1.0 The Interpretations of Mission

It is important to determine the etymology of the word "mission" because it is one that

is frequently used in both Christian and secular contexts. The term “mission” was first used to

describe Christian evangelization in the sixteenth century, probably by Ignatius of Loyola. It

refers to the generic notion of sending and being sent ( Kollman 2011, 425 - 430). However,

the definition has changed over the years with the development of the debate on what mission

is and its purpose.

Mission could not get an absolute definition due to the developments mentioned

above. According to Bosch, there were many different ways in which the mission was

interpreted in earlier centuries. For instance, it was interpreted primarily in soteriological

terms, introducing one culture into another culture as the expansion of the church, and

transforming the world into the kingdom of God (1991, 389). It is like a moving sand that is

moved by the winds of the countless context that it encounters.

However, the quest for an agreed definition of missiology remains elusive. The

dilemma may arise partly because the noun, mission, is not a biblical one, which makes it

difficult to define on exegetical grounds (Ferdinando 2008, 47). Furthermore, Ferdinando

claims that the term stems from the idea of sending, namely from the New Testament's usage

of the Greek verb " ἀπoστέλλω" (aposteillō), via the Latin mitto (2008, 47). The sending of

the church into the world to make disciples of Jesus Christ is the human component of the

triune God's mission has thus come to be understood in more recent ages.

The current ambiguity was brought forth by a number of circumstances. First, it has

been acknowledged that spreading the gospel is not the sole mission that Christians have been

given. Second, the pluralist and inclusive views of non-Christian religions that are becoming

more and more common imply that preaching is neither a required nor even a desirable duty

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of the church. Finally, the word is being used more frequently in organizational "mission

statements" (2008, 49). These are a few of the elements that have made the definition of

mission less clear.

Thus, the vagueness of the term "mission" may not be as important, though.

“Ultimately, mission remains indefinable. . . . The most we can hope for is to formulate some

approximations of what mission is all about” (1991, 9). It is less vital to define the phrase

precisely than it is to reflect thoughtfully and biblically on the numerous aspects of Christian

ministry and activity that the term may include. As a result, the operations of the Triune God

as revealed in John 20:21 were frequently described as being on a mission. Consequently, a

mission is a task-specific directive delivered by a higher authority to an agency.

2.0 The Relationship of Mission and Missio Dei

Finding a word's origin is a challenging task, but it is fascinating to get beyond the

challenges and learn the word's original meaning. It is possible to go at least as far back as

Augustine in order to trace the history of the word "missio Dei." (Englesviken 2003. 482).

Moreover, Aquinas was the one who coined the phrase to describe the triune God's activity of

the Father sending the Son and the Son sending the Spirit (Hoffmeyer 2001. 108). The term

"Missio Dei" is not new in the context of the church. Therefore, it needs to be clarified and

applied more broadly.

Missio Dei is a Latin theological term that can be translated as "Mission of God", it

refers to the work of the church as being part of God's work (Flett 2014. 69-70). So the

church’s mission is a subset of a larger whole mission that is it is both part of God's mission

to the world and not the entirety of God's work in the world. The missio dei in the church is

not to separate itself from the world, but rather to be present in all realms of reality and to

proclaim its Lord from each of these places.

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 My intention in the following is to affirm the importance of missio Dei for the church

today. To do this, however, it is necessary to address the evident weaknesses in its popular

usage. Yet, despite this range, missio Dei follows a rather narrow formulation, one that can

be simply stated: mission is not first something the church does, but describes the being of

God. Two further affirmations follow this primary one. As God is missionary, so the

community which worships him is missionary.

The main problem of mission in relation to church, or, in Karl Barth's words, the

problem of how human beings may become and be witnesses to God's tremendous works, is

primarily "a divine problem—the problem of God's own being." In christological

terminology, Jesus Christ as the mediator, as real God and true human, creates no schism in

God's essence, but belongs to the mediation inherent to him as Father and Son. Though such

communities must have a missionary form, missio Dei is not a missionary free for all in the

name of a phenomenologically-grounded concern for church expansion.

3.0 The Effects of Mission as Missio Dei in the Church

In the early 1800s, European missions spread to the South Pacific, with two missions

approaching the Fiji Islands from different directions. The Wesleyan Missionary Society

(WMS) had already established a mission in New Zealand and moved on to Tonga in 1822,

where they were successful in converting the king and leaving a lasting Methodist influence

(Darch 1982. 103). Meanwhile, the London Missionary Society (LMS) had been active in

Tahiti, and in 1830 sent two teachers to Oneata, a small island in the southeast of Fiji (1982.

103). To avoid unnecessary overlap of missionary work, the two societies signed an

agreement that WMS would evangelize Fiji while LMS would work in Samoa.

Moreover, the coming of missionaries to Fiji in the early century helped to develop

and shape the country's future but also had its fair share of negative impacts. According to

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Ridgell (2006) missionaries were part of the great disruption caused by western and European

colonialism. Their arrival also brought about significant positive impacts. They were the first

to teach Fijians to read and write. The Catholic missionaries built and taught in teaching

institutions like Loreto in Ovalau in 1885 and Lomery in 1881 (Jenning, 2013). The missio

dei or the mission of God was not only about evangelising the people. However, it was more

than that. It is grounded on the trinity and preaching the gospel through the word and deed.

4.0 Conclusion

The definition of mission has changed over the years with the development of the

debate on what mission is and its purpose. Mission could not get an absolute definition due to

the developments mentioned above. It is less vital to define the phrase precisely than it is to

reflect thoughtfully and biblically on the numerous aspects of Christian ministry and activity

that the term may include.

Therefore, it needs to be clarified and applied more broadly. Augustine was the one

who coined the phrase to describe God's activity of the Father sending the Son and the Son

sending the Spirit. Additionally, Missio Dei is a Latin theological term that refers to the work

of the church as part of God's mission to the world. It is not to separate itself from the world,

but rather to be present in all realms of reality and proclaim its Lord from each of these

places. The main problem of mission in relation to church is primarily a divine problem, the

problem of God's own being. Jesus Christ as the mediator belongs to the mediation inherent

to him as Father and Son.

To conclude, the church has to understand that its mission is God’s mission and the

God that we serve is a missionary God. Therefore the mission of every church has to be

grounded on the Trinity.

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6.0 Bibliography

Bosch, David J. 1991. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission.

Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

Darch, John H. 1982. "Missionaries to the Cannibals: The Establishment of the First

European Mission in Fiji, 1835-1843." Trivium Lampetter 17: 103-117.

Englesviken, Tormod. 2003. “Missio Dei: The understanding and misunderstanding of a

theological concept in European churches and missiology.” International Review of

Mission 92 (367): 481-497.

Ferdinando, Keith. 2008. “Mission: A Problem of Definition.” Themelios Theological

Journal 33 (1): 46-59.

Flett, J. G. 2014. “A theology of missio Dei.” Theology in Scotland 21 (1): 69-78.

Hoffmeyer, John F. 2001. “The Missional Trinity: Dialog.” A Journal of Theology 40 (2):

108.

Jenning, W. 2013. “The Marist missionaries: First encounters with inhabitants of the Pacific.”

Journal of French Studies, 115-149.

Kollman, Paul. 2011. “At the Origins of Mission and Missiology: A Study in the Dynamics

of Religious Language.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79 (2): 425-

458.

Ridgell, R. 2006. Pacific nations and territories: The islands of Micronesia, Melanesia and

Polynesia. Honolulu: Bess Press.