Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder. Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004), 488 pages.

In Part I, we find a study of the foundation of the Church’s mission through the reading of the Acts of the Apostles. The Jesus’ community ("the people of the way," Acts 9:2; 24:22) was a "sect" within Judaism (Acts 24:5) that gradually developed its own identity in its mission. Easter and Pentecost, which gave birth to the Church, are described as ongoing events in Acts. The mission of proclaiming the good news beyond the boundaries of Israel caused the early Christians to see themselves as a new reality. The Church had its origin as it engaged in missionary activity. At the same time, the "church in mission" also became the mother of theology. St. Paul, as the main actor of the mission to the Gentiles, is also the author of the early theological reflection on the identity of Jesus and the Church.

In a changing context, the Christian community recognized itself as "missionary by its very nature." Its origin points to the need of new responses in new contexts. The Church had to continually reinvent itself. And yet, there are constants by which the Church remained faithful to its very nature. Christianity’s "essential continuity" is to be found in terms of six constants: a christology, an ecclesiology, an eschatology, the nature of salvation, an anthropology, and the recognition of culture. These constants have been interpreted in different ways throughout history. Justo Gonzalez presents three types of theology (A-B-C), guided by three different concerns (law-truth-history). Dorothee Sölle identifies similar types in what she calls an orthodox, liberal, and liberation paradigm. These paradigms of theology are then manifested in different types of mission: mission as saving souls and extending the Church, mission as discovery of the truth, and mission as commitment to liberation and transformation.

In Part II, the authors then summarize the history of the mission in which the constants of the Church’s one mission have both shaped and been shaped by the historical-cultural context and the corresponding theological thought of particular times and places. They take the reader from East to West to South, from Catholicism to Protestantism, from Pentecostalism to indigenous churches, lay and women’s movements. They attempt to write the "full" story of Christianty, beyond the boundaries of the Roman-Catholic Western Church, guided by the History of the World Christian Movement (Irvin-Sunquist), and Christianity: A Short Global History (F. Norris). The history is divided into six periods: the early church (100-301), the monastic movement (313-907), the mendicant movement (1000-1453), the age of discovery (1492-1773), the age of progress (1792-1914), and the 20^th century (1919-1991). These periods have their own mission models, theological paradigms, and constants. For each period, the book presents a comprehensive summary table which makes it easier to remain focused in this long historical survey (pp. 73-280).

Part III of the book presents the "Theology of Mission Today." The first three chapters summarize three strains of mission theology which developed during the late part of the 20^th century. The first strain defines mission as Missio Dei and understands it as the overflowing communion of the Trinitarian God. The second understands mission as liberating service to the Reign of God. It has its starting point in the concrete ministry and preaching of Jesus, continued by the community of disciples. Finally, the third strain focuses on the centrality of Christ and sees mission in terms of an explicit proclamation of Jesus Christ as the universal Savior and unique Mediator. In Catholicism, the three strains originated respectively in Vatican II’s Ad Gentes (1965), Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975) and Liberation Theologies, and in John Paul II’s Redemptoris Missio (1990). The authors believe that these three strains can be brought together in a synthesis under the heading "prophetic dialogue." This dialogue will be manifested in "six essential components of God’s mission in which the Church is called to share": witness and proclamation; history, prayer, and contemplation; commitment to justice, peace and integrity, and creation; the practice of interreligious dialogue; efforts of inculturation; and, the ministry of reconciliation. Mission today is a "single, complex reality" (Redemptoris Missio, 41), single in its faithfulness to what has been always constant (the six constants) and yet complex because of the context in which mission is lived out. "Prophetic dialogue is the phrase that best summarizes a theology of mission for today, keeping the Church constant in this context" (p. 395).

My description of the content of the book hopefully gives an idea of the richness but, at the same time, the complexity of the book. The book summarizes an enormous amount of material which reminds me of the monastic paradigm of mission (pp. 313-407). The monks not only brought Christianity to East and West but have also been the compilers of the Christian tradition which was saved, guarded, and further developed in the monasteries and so reached the second millenium. The authors repeated this monastic task and in the footsteps of Bosch, in nine years of hard monastic labor, brought together a goldmine of missiological material which will serve missiologists and future missionaries in the years to come.

I think, however, that the strength of the book is also its weakness. The sheer amount of material leads to confusion when the authors make an attempt to make it fit into models or paradigms. History is full of surprises and can hardly be fit into models. I was not surprised to read in Book Review of International Bulletin (ibid.) that some of the missiologists did not recognize the paradigm ascribed to them by the authors. Labels are dangerous materials to describe history. I also felt very unhappy about the six theological constants that the mission has to take along on its exploration of new contexts. It suggests that we can isolate a sort of "dogmatic substance," or an "essential catechism." I rather see the "substance" of Christianity in its soteriological experience and message which is at the origin of "the Christian story." The story has indeed been expressed "in a dazzling variety of forms" and yet, we have "the same faith." The six constants of Bevans-Schroeder attempt to express the continuity of what I would call "the Christian story." This story is more encompassing than the six "theological" constants. The "theological" confession that "we received salvation from God in Jesus" was made authentic by other essential dimensions of the Church’s life: fellowship, nourishment of the Bible, common prayer and celebration, a variety of charismatic ministries, and mission. It is this total "soteriological" event, manifested in the different historical forms, that makes us affirm: "We have the same faith." Credibility is not found, first of all in truths, but in the total life witness of a community.

In their International Bulletin article (ibid. 69-72), Bevans-Schroeder somehow try to clarify the six constants. "We do not mean doctrines with certain contents. The constants, rather, are certain basic questions that, however they are articulated or answered, are always the same…" I believe, that "basic questions" do not direct our attention to theological answers (using particular paradigms), but to the ultimate source of all mission: a soteriological experience as a disciple of Jesus that s/he wants to share with others. A history of mission, focusing on this basic experience of salvation (of the kingdom) as a constant, would be easier to follow. As a reader, I got lost in too many constants and paradigms. The approach of Alan Kreider, proposed in his International Bulletin article (ibid.), simplifies matters and focuses on the right issue: a Church corrupted by power. Things went wrong in the history of the Church and mission, not because of a theological system, but because of the shift of understanding in ecclesiology: from a salvation-historical to an institutional and hierarchical perspective. Once the power of an institution had to be protected, mission shifted to the mode of conquest. Kreider sees then the history of the Church and mission under three paradigms: pre-Christendom, Christendom (starting with emperor Constantine), and post-Christendom. The credibility of the Church is the result, not of particular theologies that had to defend an institution, but of the total experience of discipleship, the sensus fidelium, of the Christian community. This sense of faith often failed to flourish in the centuries that the Church’s hierarchical magisterium ruled over the People of God with "the sword and the cross." And yet, within these many dark pages of history, prophets and saints also brought the light of the gospel. The result is a history of a Church, simul justus et peccator (justified and sinner), full of ambiguities that cannot be fit into neat paradigms.

Another area where I had a hard time to follow the authors is in the third part of the book where the three strains of mission theology are simply placed side by side and are then supposed to be linked up in a synthesis under the heading "mission as prophetic dialogue." I compared this synthesis within the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences’ reflection on mission of the last 30 years. The third strain of the mission theology, the papal reflection on mission in Redemptoris Missio, and in the more recent Ecclesia in Asia (1999), certainly did not get an enthusiastic response from the churches of Asia. Jonathan Yun-Ka Tan, in his Mission inter Gentes (FABC Paper no. 109) would certainly consider such a missiology a (Western) missionary conquest approach which focuses on the why-what-who of mission and stresses the need for verbal proclamation, reaching out to the unbaptized. By contrast, the FABC focuses on the how of mission, and describes the mode of mission in terms of a triple dialogue (the poor-cultures-religions) for the sake of the Kingdom. Bevans-Schroeder’s "mission as prophetic dialogue" ties in with this approach about the how of mission. We then still have to fill in the content of this dialogue, and FABC clearly follows Bevans-Schroeder’s second strain and understand the mission as a liberating service to the Reign of God. It is hard to see how, in an Asian context, we can dialogue starting from a Trinitarian perspective ("a doctrine hammered out in dialogue with Hellenistic culture," p. 317), or from an exclusivist Christomonism that can only turn off our Asian partners-in-dialogue. We need a "mission conceived as sharing and continuing Jesus’ mission in a ‘feet-on-the-ground theology,’ constantly scrutinizing ‘the signs of the times,’ and rooted in Christian experience" (p. 317).

As Church, we are a community of disciples of Jesus of Nazareth and we cannot but share this experience of discipleship with our contemporaries. This has to happen in dialogue, proclaiming mainly and often exclusively through life-witness that hopefully will challenge our partners in dialogue, while we ourselves are being challenged by their religious experience. I feel hardly the need to mention in this description "the constants," a package of six theological affirmations ("questions"), expressed in three theological models which we supposedly have to take along in "proclaiming" the good news. I think that in mission, we should not carry a too heavy theological burden of "truths." We certainly will need the Christian story which will indeed be told in a variety of activities (the six missionary activities, described in chapter 4), situated in a context. Different contexts will bring along, however, different stories with a basic core: the liberating ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, our master and teacher, a ministry continued by his community of disciples.

Bevans-Schroeder describe in forceful terms the mode of mission: "mission as prophetic dialogue." Their elaboration of the six activities in this dialogue leads to a more holistic vision of mission. I miss, however, the focus on what they present as one of the strains of the theology of mission today: mission as liberating service to the reign of God. I believe that their focus is somehow imposed on us in a changing context of our world. After a critique of Dominus Iesus, Gregory Baum (Amazing Church. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005) points to the changed ethical horizon of our postmodern, globalized world. He states that in such a changed horizon, "it would be immoral to engage in ecumenical or interreligious dialogue, based on truth and aimed at mutual understanding, in order to persuade one’s partner to change their religion" (p. 120). Instead of stressing that we are possessors of truth and salvation, we need to retrieve the ancient teaching of kenosis. Just as we meet a kenotic Jesus who fully shared our humanity, we need a kenotic Church that "understands its unique divine appointment not as a trump card winning the game among competing religions, but as a mission to help change the game from competition to co-operation. It will allow the Church to honor religions for their difference and rejoice in religious pluralism" (p.133). He then proposes a thesis that "the Church proclaims the gospel to spiritual seekers, to the confused, to people without faith and hope, and to people caught up in destructive ideologies, but that its mission to followers of the world religions is simply dialogue, co-operation and witness" (p. 129). Bevans-Schroeder put it in similar terms in the concluding paragraph of their study: "Only by preaching, serving, and witnessing the reign of God in bold and humble prophetic dialogue will the missionary Church be constant in today’s context" (p. 398).

Lode L. Wostyn, C.I.C.M.