CONCEPTS OF MISSION - Orbis Books

Mission in Contemporary Missiology 25
Thus, Vatican II confirms that the event of Christ is the event that gives
meaning and fulfillment to this world and to history. This meaning continues
to receive its progressive and successive fulfillment through the mission of the
church. Sacred and profane history are touched; cosmic time and sacred are
implied in turn. The risen Christ, an example of the power of God which
transforms nature, becomes the sacrament of this transformation. Another
example of the divine transforming power is the Eucharist, where the created
things, cultivated by human hands, are transformed (GS 38; Forte 1975).
Indeed, eschatology is explained best in terms of recapitulation of all in
Christ (CCC 831-32).
Mission and Dialogue with Contextual Theologies
One of the emergent realities in mission studies is the increasing interest in the
theologies of the Third World. It may not be wrong to say that the new ways
of mission came about, largely, as a result of the realities of the Third World
and the emergent theological reflections there. Thus, in this twenty-first century,
contextual theologies may assume a new dimension in mission studies.
One of the critical issues facing Christian mission has always been to respect
and preserve the cultural identity of the people being evangelized and to help
them find and recover all their cultural and religious heritage in Christ. Christian
mission is about the encounter of the gospel message of Jesus Christ with
different peoples and their ever-newer religious-cultural and sociopolitical
contexts. It is about the impregnation of these contexts by the gospel, the
assimilation of people’s cultures by the gospel and that of the gospel by cultures,
and the history of the consequent changes in the process of evangelization
and of people’s cultures.
Again, if mission theology until now has been dominated by the works of
theologians from the North Atlantic, recent studies are showing that the
future of mission and indeed of Christian theology will be determined by
emerging contributions from Third World theologians. Theology, as is often
said, is born of mission and of the concrete situation in which the evangelizing
church finds itself. Even North Atlantic theology has started to become
conscious of its contextualized nature despite its traditional claim to universalism.
And Third World theologians are also becoming increasingly aware
that the sociocultural, religious, economic, and political realities that make
up the respective contexts of their theologies are inseparably linked with this
claim of North Atlantic theology to universalism. Thus, as is already evident,
North Atlantic and Third World theologians are now engaged in a fruitful
and mutually critical dialogue. This dialogue, or rather the renewed interest
for a new vision of relationship between the churches of the North Atlantic
and those of the global South, is inspired by the same reality (Jenkins 2002).
Rather than talk of “displacement” of the North by the South, it is better to