In the Feb 2011 issue of Catalyst Michael Gorman reflected on Pauline Studies and Missional Hermeneutics. It provides a useful overview of some of the key strands running through both disciplines. Here’s an excerpt:
“…In his very readable published dissertation, Mission and Moral Reflection in Paul (Peter Lang, 2006), [Michael] Barram argues that “mission” is not a discrete aspect of Paul’s work, such as evangelism and initial community formation, but a principal rubric for understanding the apostle’s entire vocation, including moral reflection and ongoing community nurturing. Paul’s letters are therefore “mission documents.” If Barram is right, as I think he is, then we need to read Paul’s letters in two ways: first, as witnesses to Paul’s understanding of God’s mission, his role in it, and the place of his congregations in it; and, second, as scriptural texts for our own missional identity, our contemporary vocational and ecclesial self-understanding and practices. Thus is born a Pauline missional hermeneutic.
In a Pauline missional hermeneutic, the guiding question is: How do we read Paul for what he says about the missio Dei and about our participation in it? In other words, the issue before us is not primarily exegetical or historical, but hermeneutical. What is a Pauline letter? (A mission document). How are we to read it appropriately? (Missionally). Older historical and exegetical questions—e.g., about how and whom Paul evangelized, and whether he expected his communities to do the same—are still relevant, but they will not be our primary concerns, and they are not ends in themselves. Rather, they are part of a larger discussion about Paul and mission. Together with all kinds of new questions that emerge from this enlarged understanding, they serve as a means to our own theological and missiological reflection…
… More importantly, this way of considering the question of the church and mission in Paul immediately raises a whole network of additional questions that are in some sense historical and exegetical, but also, and more importantly, hermeneutical. The following examples come to mind:
- What was and is the relationship between the church’s deepest convictions and the shape of individual and corporate Christian existence?
- What kind of existence in the world is faithful to the gospel, and specifically to the story of Jesus?
- Why and how does such an existence both attract some and repel others?
- How does Christian speech and behaviour, seen as an integrated whole, relate to and reflect what God is doing in the world (the missio Dei) as manifested in the story of Jesus, which is itself grounded in the story of Israel?
Moreover, we are now obliged to reformulate the basic question. Did Paul expect his congregations to evangelize others? In one sense, this is the wrong question. The better question is, how did Paul expect his communities to participate in the missio Dei? Then there is the corollary fundamental hermeneutical question, how does God expect us who read Paul’s letters to participate in the missio Dei?...”
You can read his musings in full here.
Comments