Beyond Missio Dei: Contesting Mission, Rethinking Witness (Postcolonialism and Religions)

"In this book, Sarosh Koshy strives to go beyond the mission model of Christianity that emerged alongside and within the colonial enterprise and ethos since the sixteenth century. Rather than denounce the inheritance of the mission movement that transformed both the church and world in innumerable ways, it is a simultaneous expression of appreciation for this precious heritage, and an attempt to do justice by it through a yearning quest for relevant paradigms of Christian engagement. Indeed, there is an intense tension within this book, and in fact a twin tension at that. The tension is between those seeking to keep the current mission paradigm alive out of habit or as a self-serving device, thus corrupting and withering away a bequeathal that essentially set free the voluntary/independent spirit of Christian individuals and their intentional collectives from both the ecclesiastical and political authorities. On the other side are those who enlist mission both as a subsequent activity and as a basis to pursue innocuous, and at times apparently heroic options that would seemingly satisfy a supposed missional mandatory. This work enlists postcolonial and poststructuralist resources pedagogically, to teach of mission, missiology, World Christianity, and intercultural theology."--Page 4 of cover Foreword Acknowledgments Praise for Beyond Missio Dei Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: In Search of Signposts Toward A New Theological Paradigm 1.1 Arguments, Definitions, and the Proposal That Defines This Quest 1.2 Sustaining and Advancing the Christian Faith Tradition 1.3 Problematizing the System of Dual Conversions 1.3.1 Heeding the Call of the Wholly Other, by Regarding Every Other 1.4 Unavoidability of Violence, Violation, and Discrimination, as the Source of Sin and Corruption 1.5 Proclamation That in Itself Is the Call to Discipleship 1.6 Textuality of Everything in the Human Realm 1.7 Current Paradigm of Mission and Its Discontents 1.8 Resources That Lead Us Beyond Missio Dei 1.9 Sola Fructus—Fruits Alone: The Unstated End of the Protestant Solas References Chapter 2: Job, the Joban Tradition, and the Status-Quoist Nature of Mission 2.1 Job and the Joban Tradition 2.1.1 Eschatological Visions and Limited Teleologies 2.1.2 Tame and Traitorous Standpoints: Inhabiting Different Locations on the Same Text 2.1.3 Missional Charity and Solidarity: Considering Privilege and Disprivilege As Mutually Independent 2.1.4 Resisting Temptations of Complete Resolution and Final Peace References Chapter 3: Discernments from the Joban Tradition: Theoretical Context and the Mission Imperative 3.1 Foreclosure, Denegation, and the Imperative of Civilizing Mission 3.1.1 Christian Efforts at Foreclosure and Denegation 3.1.1.1 Delineating All of Christian Life as Mission and Missionary 3.1.2 From Ur to Empty Tomb: The Unending Destruction of Essence 3.2 The Materialist Predication of the Subject 3.3 The Question of Full-Presence of the Self and God in Human Speech 3.3.1 The Disruption of Presence 3.3.2 Possibility of Presence Only Within the Matrix of Critical Pondering and Yearning 3.4 The Source of Universality and Uniqueness 3.5 Sojourning between a Pair of Ellipses and on a Bridge with Unsecured Towers References Chapter 4: Contemporary Theological Articulations in Mission Theology and Missio Dei 4.1 A Retrojective Paradigm that Refuses Shifting 4.2 Seeking to Shift the Paradigm of Mission, Yet Reinforcing It 4.2.1 Modern Missionary Movement and Its Shortcomings 4.2.2 Scriptural and Theological Basis for Mission 4.2.3 Eschatology and Teleology 4.3 Saving Missio Dei from Accidental Secular Authorities 4.4 Saturating the Empty Tomb and Turning It into a Mausoleum 4.5 Seeking a Progressive Theology of Mission for the Postcolony 4.6 Conclusion References Chapter 5: Beyond Missio Dei: Theological Resources for the Journey 5.1 The Messiah Who Abrogates Messianism 5.2 Repentance: Renouncing Current Witness and Embracing a New One 5.3 Counter-Apocalyptic Witness and Relational Becoming 5.4 “Do this in Remembrance of Me”—Witness as Eucharistic Living 5.5 Substitutionary Atonement that Prevents any Theological Response 5.5.1 Ontological Difference Instituted by the Concept of Human Resource Management 5.6 Constructedness of all Religions, and the Witness of God and Christians 5.6.1 Relativization of Religions 5.6.2 Witness: Not Posturing to Leap, But Always Already Leaping 5.6.3 Jesus sans Life, Barth sans Barmen 5.7 Conclusion References Chapter 6: Witness of God and the Risk of Proclamation 6.1 Matthew’s Manifesto on Becoming Witnesses and Living Reflexively 6.1.1 Turn and Become like Children: Begin Living without Eschatological Missions 6.1.2 Making Disciples, Baptizing, and Teaching 6.2 Seize the Miracles and Seek Resurrection 6.3 Law Versus Faith: “Justification by Faith” Reimagined 6.4 Marturion Dei and the Marturia of the Disciples 6.5 Conclusion References Chapter 7: Conclusion: Behold the Marturion Dei, Witness Courageously, and Have Life Abundantly References Bibliography Index