ANUARUL ACADEMIC 2003-2004 - Facultatea de Teologie "Andrei ...

almost self-evident. We speak non only about human suferings and about superhumanendurance, but we have to speak also about divine compassion. “Bernard ofClairvaux coined the marvellous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed nonincompassibilis 108 —God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth somuch to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterlyreal way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus'sPassion” 109 .Dr. Namsoon Kang, vice-president of the World Conference of TheologicalInstitutions (WOCATI) noted that the term “mission” became a popular word usedfor almost everything from military objective to the frenzy of the missionstatements that corporations use to promote their profit-making purposes. Manychurches have developed “mission statements” as a basic part of their ownplanning. There are “pop” images of mission : it is a foreign enterprise; it is aprogrammatic opinion for a church; it is money sent to a denominationalheadquarters; and so on. 110 “According to widespread public opinion Christianmission has no role to play in a religiously plural society and is incompatible withreligious pluralism. The term mission is, in this sense, equated with religiouspropaganda, with proselytism, with an assault on the perception of truth, withintolerance towards people of other faiths, atheists or agnostics. Based on suchprejudice, the theory and practice of mission are forced to operate in a permanentapologetic posture”. 111The calling to mission is a radical calling into the world as it is, not out of theworld. If we look at Acts ( ch. 3, 4 and 5) we discover at least three misconceptionsabout mission. “The first misconception is that our engagement in God’s missionhas to do with spiritual as opposed to material things. For the apostles as withJesus, there was no division between the spiritual and the physical; there was onlythe work of God to witness to the shalom of the kingdom of God. We see this factin these chapters through the importance of bodily healing.108 Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in Cant., Serm. 26,5: PL 183, 906109 Spe salvi, encyclical letter of the pope Benedict XVI, issued in november 2007110 Dr. Namsoon Kang, ”The Centrality of Gender Justice in Prophetic Christianity and the Mission ofthe Church Rediscovered”, in International Review of Mission (IRM), 94 (373, April 2005), 280111 Christine Lienemann, “Impact of Religious Plurality on my Life, my Work and Thinking”,CURRENT DIALOGUE, World Council of Churches, 34 (2/1999) 16, quoted in : Namsoon Kang,op.cit., p.280-281175