OMF Mission Research Consultation 2010

PERICHORESIS AND MISSIO DEI: IMPLICATIONS OF A TRINITARIAN VIEW OF PERSONHOOD FOR MISSIONARY PRACTICE
How Chuang Chua In his magnum opus, David Bosch describes Protestant missionary mood during the Enlightenment period as pragmatic, purposeful, activist, impatient, self-confident, singleminded, triumphant (1991: 336). Gary Simpson is less kind, but nonetheless arguing along the same line, when he judges the missionary enterprise as influenced by Enlightenment values to be little more than culturally conditioned western moral imperialism (1998: 266). Bosch and Simpson are not far from the mark in their respective pronouncements, when one considers how Christian belief during the Enlightenment came to be profoundly shaped by an excessively optimistic anthropology predicated on Kants moral religion and Schleiermachers experiential piety. The missionary imperative became reinterpreted in humanistic terms: to civilize the non-Christian world through the spread of the gospel and scientific knowledge. The influence of the Enlightenment on the mission of the church can only be understood properly in theological terms. The relentless quest for human autonomy, and the uncompromising stress placed on human rationality in service of that quest, all but led to the gradual erosion of the understanding of the sovereignty of God, the soteriological perception of Jesus Christ, and of the traditional belief in the work of the Holy Spirit. In sum, the personal, triune God became all but jettisoned from Enlightenment religion. No wonder, what results is, as Bosch rightly observes, a refusal to give all credit to God (1991: 343). There is a deeper root to the problem; there is more than meets the eye, as one might say. In an age steep in scientism, the received doctrine of the Trinitythe mysterium tremendum et fascinosumbecame an obvious embarrassment. Kant even went as far as to say that the doctrine of the Trinity, taken literally, has no practical relevance at all . . . Whether we are to worship three or ten persons in the Deity makes no difference . . . no difference in the rules of conduct (cited in Simpson 1998: 226). Similarly, Schleiermacher saw the doctrine of the Trinity as secondary, even superfluous (Moltmann 1981: 3). The effects of such theology on mission are damaging, to say the least. The truth is that a unitarianas opposed to a trinitarianunderstanding of mission is only one step away from its complete humanization, as can be seen in what happened during the Enlightenment years, culminating in the growth of the social gospel movement at the end of the nineteenth century (cf. Bosch 1991: 323-24). However, all was not lost. The twentieth century saw a genuine revival of interest in the doctrine of the Trinity, largely through the theological efforts of Karl Barth among Protestants, and Karl Rahner among Roman Catholics. Both resisted unitarianism and the liberal convictions of the sterility of the doctrine of the Trinity, and sought to show the exact opposite, that a proper appraisal of the doctrine does bear positive implications for all matters relating to life and faith. It comes as no surprise as well that, with the recovery of the doctrine of the Trinity, we see a corresponding recovery of the theocentric nature of mission. John Thompson (1994: 68) notes that the Willingen Conference of the International

Missionary Council in 1952 led to the crucial recovery and modification of the term missio Dei, indicative of the growing recognition that mission is not primarily a human work, but the work of the triune God.1 Wilbert Shenk, a scholar committed to classical trinitarian doctrine, affirms the same when he pens this opening line of his book Changing Frontiers of Mission, To be authentic, mission must be thoroughly theocentric. It begins in Gods redemptive purpose and will be completed when that purpose is fulfilled (1999: 7). This essay affirms not only the theocentric nature of mission, but argues that mission must indeed be predicated on nothing less than a biblical understanding of the triune God. The mission of God, missio Dei, is in essence the mission of the Trinity, missio Trinitatis. In other words, the mission of the church flows out of the tripersonal nature of God. Exactly what this nature constitutes shall form the exploratory theme of this essay. Following this, the implications of a theological understanding of the trinitarian nature of God for missionary practice will be discussed. In sum, this paper is an attempt to construct a missiology from above. A Historical Sketch of the Patristic Development of Trinitarian Doctrine2 Lesslie Newbigin (1964: 32) makes the interesting observation that the doctrine of the Trinity grew out of the confrontation between the gospel of Jesus Christ and the paganism of the Roman world. In this sense, the theological development of the Trinity was a contextual imperative. So right from the beginning of the history of the church, one can see how bound up trinitarian doctrine is with missionary proclamation. In Western theology, the Trinity is understood as the three-personness of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In part, this can be traced to the Latin formula given by the early church father Tertullian in the latter half of the second century: una substantia, tres personae (one substance, three persons).3 However, as to the exact meaning of persona intended by Tertullian, no one seems to be completely sure.4 The word was in all probability translated from the Greek prosopon, which means face or mask. The Greek fathers, especially the Cappadocian theologians, had a different formulation from Tertullian. They found the word prosopon problematic as it carried the modalistic connotation that God reveals Himself through three faces or masks. At the Council of Constantinople in 381, the word prosopon was rejected once and for all, and replaced with the word hypostasis, as in the original Nicene formula: treis hypostaseis kai mia ousia (three hypostases with one essence). This formula, in contradistinction from the Tertullian one, stresses the three concretely objective manners of presentation of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but all sharing in a single divine essence (Prestige 1952: 188). Subsequently, the Latin fathers were happy to make a one-to-one correspondence between the Greek ousia and the Latin substantia, and between hypostasis and persona, although the nuances in each of the words are subtly different. What is important to note from this all-toobrief historical sketch is that theologians from both Greek and Latin camps were agreed on the interpretation of the biblical record that Gods revelation to His creation is essentially trinitarian, supremely attested in the incarnation and life of Jesus Christ. Relating to this, if one understands Gods self-revelation as the beginning of all mission, one will see that it is only in the context of Gods missionary activity that the believing community is led into the mystery of Gods tripersonhood (Bjork 1999: 232). The Meaning of Personhood

Interestingly, the focus on trinitarian discourse in Western theology since Constantinople has always been on the concept of personhood. This is perhaps most obvious from the English expression, one God in three persons. Indeed, from Augustine, through Boethius and Aquinas down to modern times, there has been constant theological reflection on the ontological conception of personhood in a bid to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Trinity without falling into the heretical traps of either modalism or tritheism. How then should we understand the meaning of person in its orthodox application to the Trinity? The modern Western mind inherits the Enlightenment understanding of the person as an autonomous individual who is self-initiating and self-determining. This conception of the person has its source in Ren Descartes who held that the individual human being is at his5 most personal when he is most self-conscious, or most reflective: cogito ergo sum. The Cartesian view of the person is essentially self-referential: the person is one who necessarily turns in upon himself as a reflective being without recourse to any external relation. A natural corollary of the Cartesian conception is that every person is a distinct center of subjectivity, free and independent of anything external to him. This Cartesian view of the human being was absorbed in toto into Enlightenment anthropology. An observation can be made here. The individualistic notion of personhood, as propounded by Descartes, if applied without qualification to the Cappadocian formula of the Trinity, could only lead to a thinly-veiled tritheism, since God would then be construed as three individual persons with three distinct subjectivities. This is indeed the reason why the classical doctrine of the Trinity posed such a problem in the light of Enlightenment rationality, even among Christians. Later attempts by theologians such as Karl Barth to salvage the situation by placing the seat of divine subjectivity in the unity rather than in the three Persons are noteworthy, but they all tend towards modalism (cf. Moltmann 1981:139144). In sum, trinitarian personhood is completely incompatible with modern individualistic notions of the person. At this point we find ourselves with a methodological problem. Is it theologically acceptable to impose an anthropological interpretation of personhood on the Trinity? John Calvin shows us a way out of this difficulty. At the outset of his Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book 1, Chapter 1), Calvin lays out in no uncertain terms the significance of the double knowledge of God and of the self, and the necessary relationship between the two. Then he quickly warns us, [H]owever the knowledge of God and of ourselves may be mutually connected, the order of right teaching requires that we discuss the former first, then proceed afterward to treat the latter (McNeill 1960: 39). In other words, instead of defining personhood anthropologically and then applying the definition to the Trinity theologically, a more fruitful approach is to begin our study with the nature of trinitarian personhood and then apply our derived understanding of personhood to humans. The assumption behind this approach is that we are created in the image of God, and therefore we can truly know ourselves only in the light of our knowledge of God. Indeed our personhood has to do with the imago Dei, the fundamental content of which is the constitution of the human being as the image of God in relation to His trinitarian nature (Gunton 1991: 59). Hence what better place is there to begin our quest to know who are and what we are created for than in trinitarian personhood? For trinitarian doctrine is indeed a theology of personhood.

Now then, if one holds that authentic personhood is grounded in the Trinity, one quickly realizes that personhood does not mean individualism. Rather, the key to understanding trinitarian personhood is in understanding the inter-personal relationships within the Godhead. Actually, the notion of persons as being constituted by their mutual relations is not a new one. John O Donnell (1989: 102), for instance, comments on how Thomas Aquinas started his Summa Theologica with Boethius definition of a person as an individual substance of a rational nature (persona est naturae rationabilis individual substantia) but later modified it to emphasize the mutual relatedness of the persons:
At the end of Aquinas reflection, he defines the three persons of the Trinity as subsistent relations. The relations are subsistent because each person is identical with the divine essence . . . This stress on relation, however, indicates that each person is who he is precisely because he is related to the others (emphasis mine).

In sum, the meaning of personhood is essentially a relational one. God as three Persons is constituted as a divine fellowship, a trinitarian community or society, with a single communion. Let us now turn our attention to the nature of the relational communion of the divine Persons in the Trinity. Communion within the Trinitarian Godhead The one, eternal God is three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is, however, not enough to affirm the real existence of the three Persons in the Godhead. What is equally, if not more, important is to stress the inter-relationships between the three divine Persons. Boff reminds us that the existence of the one God is made up of the most complete communion and the most absolute eternal participation. The unity of the three Persons expresses the infinite dynamism of communion and interpenetration prevailing in the Holy Trinity (1988: 123). In other words, the Trinity is the perfect community where nothing is lacking. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are always in the presence of one another, in total reciprocity, in immediacy of loving relationship, being one for another, by another, in another and with another (ibid). Yet although They are three unique Persons, They are not three individuals, who only subsequently and incidentally enter into relationship with one another. Nor are They three modes of being of the one God. Their threeness is not reduced to the unity, nor is Their unity dissolved in the threeness. The Godhead is marked by unity and diversity without conflict. An unknown author somewhere around the beginning of the eighth century, conveniently referred to as pseudo-Cyril, first used the Greek term perichoresis to express the essence of the intrinsic unity and dynamic plurality within the Trinity (Prestige 1952: 29699).6 The perichoretic communion defined by the interpenetration7 of one Person by the others in the Godhead is marked characteristically by love, an intimate and everlasting love that pervades the whole Godhead. The apostle John declares this truth in a simple but powerful way: God is love (1 John 4:16). In this perichoresis, the trinitarian Persons form their own unity by Themselves in the dynamic circulation of divine life. Through divine love, They are intimately related to one another and exist in one another. Each Person lives in the eternal presence of the others. Moreover, within this perichoretic communion, it is the

relationship of love that creates unique and absolute identity. In this sense, John Zizioulas is right in perceiving the transition from an ontology of substance to an ontology of love as necessary for understanding the relationship between the One and the Three in a way which is non-contradictory (Schwbel 1991:14-15). In fact, Zizioulas himself refers to the way Basil the Great (330-397) rejected substance as an ontological category in describing the Godhead, and in its place used the concept of communion: Instead of speaking of the unity of God in terms of His one nature, he (Basil) prefers to speak of it in terms of the communion of persons: communion is for Basil an ontological category. The nature of God is communion (1985: 123, emphasis in the original). In Their eternal communion of love, the divine Persons themselves constitute both Their differences and Their unity. Understanding the perichoretic communion of the triune God should put to rest the common, but ultimately heretical, notion that God created humans because He was lonely.8 Precisely because God is the perfect community, He has no need to create. The only motivation for God to create the universe is His gracious love. William Barry describes it well, It is as if the three Persons said to one another, Our community is so good; why dont we create a universe where we can invite others to share our community? (1992: 47). Indeed, as James Houston (1989: 199-200) keenly notes,
The eternal character of Gods love is that of love given, love received, and love shared. For the love of the Father begets the Son; the love of the Son is that [of] the Begotten; and the love of the Holy Spirit is to share and make the Father and the Son known to us, and realizable within us.

Hence in this universe, we encounter a triune God who not only reveals Himself to us His creatures, but He also continually invites us to participate in His relational life by calling us to a friendship, first with Him, and with other people. Indeed the profound invitation to friendship, divine and human, constitutes the primordial missiological principle! The suffocating individualism of Descartes may lead to autonomy, but ultimately it is the way of alienation (cf. Gunton 1985:11-25).9 In contrast, the nature of trinitarian personhood creates the axiom that persons are always inter-personal. In the words of a wonderfully succinct African proverb, We are, therefore I am.10 The superlative example of inter-personal life in the Trinity takes us a step further, by showing us that the way in which persons can truly relate to one another is through heterocentric love, i.e. love for the other.

The Ontology of Personhood As we have discussed above, the ontology of personhood is ultimately grounded in the doctrine of the Trinity. The being of each of the divine Persons is a being in relationship. Let us now look at the ontological elements presupposed in trinitarian personhood that enable each divine Person to relate with the others in perfect communion love. In so doing, we will be able to find a basis in trinitarian personhood on which a theology of mission can be developed. But for now, let us consider three fundamental aspects which characterize personhood (Boff 1988: 130-131). First, we see that personhood implies the openness of being. A person is one who

is open toward communion. Such openness facilitates the building up of community with other persons. Boff (1988:130) elaborates,
Openness is the mark of the spirit; it implies feeling oneself referred outside oneself, not forming a totality of oneself. Without this openness there can be no acceptance or bestowing, nothing new resulting from the meeting of two presences communicating with each another. Being-in-openness is being in freedom, being capable of the love that transfigures the whole universe.

In the perichoretic communion of the Trinity, the three Persons are constantly engaged in mutual trilogue. For instance, Jesus, the Son of God, maintains an intimate relationship with his Father, as expressed in His familiarity language of address: Abba (Mark 14:36). On earth, He was constantly open to the influence and leading of the Spirit, from the moment of His conception, baptism, until His death. Before He left His disciples, Jesus asked His Father to send another Counselor to be with them, the Spirit of truth, who comes from the Father (John 16:14; 15:26; 14:26). The unity of the three divine Persons is formed by Their perfect openness to each other. Each Person is truly with the others, each living and acting in the presence of the others. Second, personhood necessitates the transcendence of the boundaries of the self. The process of self-transcendence enables a person to go out of himself effectively in order for him to enter into communion with another, so as to create a history together and to establish bonds of interdependence (Boff 1998:130). This point is very much related to the first. Zizioulas (1991: 85) uses the term ekstasis to refer to this self-transcendence beyond the openness of being. The self-transcendence of the Son of God enabled Him to say, My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work (John 4:34). The Spirit, too, does not speak on His own, but will take that which belongs to the Son of God and makes it known to Jesus disciples (John 16:13-15). In the Trinity, each Person is not only with the others; each is also for the others. Third, personhood entails a mode of being by which the person becomes part of a single whole, an actual community. A person is a being in communion. The ontological condition of personal identity is relationship, such that if isolated, personal identity becomes completely annihilated (Zizioulas 1991: 46). In other words, being and relation cannot be separated ontologically, but are to be understood as part of the one ontological dynamic (Gunton 1993: 214). The point has been belabored by now that each Person of the Trinity is ontologically a relational being. If we observe the perfect mutual relationships between the archetypal Persons in the Trinity, we notice that no Person exists in total isolation from the others. In fact, no one can be a Person except in relation with the other two Persons. Gunton puts it this way, Father, Son and Spirit are eternally what they are by virtue of what they are from and to one another (ibid). The Father is the Father only by virtue of His relationship to the Son, and vice-versa. The Holy Spirit is who He is by virtue of His interaction with the other two Persons, not as an independent subsistence or substance. Each Person is the condition for the revelation of the others. That is why Jesus was able to make such bold declarations, I am in the Father, and the Father is in me (John 14:11), and, All that belongs to the Father is mine (16:15). Thus each Person is not only with the others and for the others; He is in the others.

There is a real sense of a mutual interiority between the three divine Persons, yet these mutual relations are constitutive of each Persons identity. It is important to note that in the divine perichoresis, each of the three Persons preserves His uniqueness, for Their perfect communion does not render Their being co-dependently enmeshed with each other to the point that differentiation is lost. In refuting the radical individualism of our time, one must take care to avoid the equally heretical extreme of dissolving the identity of the individual person in the name of community. Zizioulas puts it well, Uniqueness is something absolute for the person (1985:47).11 The point is that the distinct identity of a person makes sense only in the larger context of his relationship with other persons. The Trinity and Salvation History The act of salvation is more than anything else an act of love (John 3:16; 1 John 4:16). God is love in Himself, or shall we say, in Themselves, and the extension of that love is realized in creation, redemption, and the ultimate consummation of human history. On the stage of human history, Jesus the God-man came in order to reveal God as Creator, Father, and Lover, and through the enabling of the Holy Spirit, we receive the divine revelation by faith. Although it may be pedagogically helpful to distinguish the Persons in the Trinity by ascribing to each a particular activityGod the Father as Creator, God the Son as Redeemer, and God the Holy Spirit as Sanctifierwe must not lose sight of the theological truth that the one undivided God is present in his salvific mission in all three persons . . . As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it is Gods will to bring salvation to humanity (Thompson 1994: 69). Professor James Torrance (personal communication) gave the analogy that just as there are three Persons in the Trinity, there are also three moments in our salvation: God the Father chose us to be saved from all eternity past (first moment); God the Son died at Calvary for our sins at a definite point in human history (second moment); God the Spirit moves us and enables us to believe at a time in our personal history (third moment).12 The point we need to make here is that just as the Godhead is indivisible, each of the three moments of salvation is meaningless in itself without the reference of the other two. Torrances idea finds resonance in Thompson (1994: 72) who expresses astutely in missiological terms the work of salvation wrought by the Trinity:
The ultimate basis of mission is the triune Godthe Father who created the world and sent his Son by the Holy Spirit to be our salvation. The proximate basis of mission is the redemption of the Son by his life, death, and resurrection, and the immediate power of mission is the Holy Spirit. It is, in trinitarian terms, a mission Dei. Thus mission is based on the will, movement, and action of the grace and love of GodFather, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In biblical theology, the history of salvation is customarily interpreted through the Christ-event. This is right insofar as we acknowledge that since we live in the human realm, there is no way by which we could apprehend the soteriological content of divine revelation other than through the historical and historic event of the Incarnation. It is only through the atoning work of Christ that men and women find reconciliation with God. One certainly cannot deny the theological fact that while the Christ-event represents the in-breaking of God into the realm of human history, it carries with it an eschatological decisiveness. But the full picture of salvation-history can only be appreciated when one views it through the lens of trinitarianand not just christologicalactivity. Take for example, the soteriological motif of reconciliation. The perichoretic principle is evident in that the three Persons of the Trinity work together to effect reconciliation with humankind. The apostle Paul declares that God
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demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8), and that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ (2 Cor 5:19). In Gal 4:6, Paul describes the pneumatological dimension of Gods reconciling work, Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out Abba, Father. Conversely, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ (Rom 8:9b). The triune GodFather, Son and Holy Spiritshare together in a common mission not only in creation, but now in redemption of lost humanity. The triune involvement of God is not a mere theological aside, but the centerpiece of the gospel.13 Missio Dei is indeed missio Trinitatis. It is not a wonder then that the evangelist Matthew, in penning the words of what is popularly known as the Great Commission (28:18-20), chose to include within it the most straightforward trinitarian formula in the entire New Testament (Kstenberger et al 2001: 105). To be baptized in the triune Name is to testify to the saving work of the triune God. It marks the beginning of an eternal participation in the communal love of God through the indwelling of the Christian by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). Missiological Implications More than forty-five years ago, Lesslie Newbigin issued a call to the missionary movement to bind to itself afresh the strong Name of the Trinity (1964: 31). The call still rings true today. There is a need to recover mission from all the sheer activism that currently defines it, and locate it once again in that very mission of the triune God. For God is a God of mission, which means a God who sends (Thompson 1994: 69). Indeed, as Bosch reminds us, [t]he Latin word missio was an expression employed in the doctrine of the Trinity, to denote the sending of the Son by the Father, and of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son (1991: 228). While this view of mission is hardly disputable, what is often not taken seriously enough is that this understanding of mission as Gods activity toward humankind though His sending of His Son and Spirit into the world necessitates a critique of other bases, however valid they may be in themselves (Thompson 1994: 69). All too often, we find the work of the church taking precedence over the mission of God. We need to see that all our missionary endeavours are only possible in the light of the mission of God, and as such, they are to be taken up and integrated into the activity of the triune God (ibid). This does not mean in any way the end of human involvement in mission. The key idea here is participation. In other words, the church does not initiate mission, but responds to the divine invitation to participate in what God is already doing in the world.14 This response of obedience to the missio Dei is what defines the missiones ecclesiae of the church (cf. Kirk 2000: 23-37). As Anastasios of Androussa puts it so succinctly, mission is participation in the life of the Holy Trinity (1995: 119). Indeed the sending of the church into the world to preach the gospel is predicated on the sending of the Son by the Father, as well as on the empowering of the Holy Spirit (John 20:21-22). Participation rids us of presumption, and compels us to listen attentively to God so that we may discern more clearly His ongoing work in the world. In this sense, the mission of the church takes its lead from Gods very own mission in reconciling the world to Himself, not by duplicating Gods work, but, in word and deed proclaiming the presence and the coming of the kingdom of God and bringing the world the message of salvation in Jesus Christ (Thompson 1994:73). In the light of a trinitarian understanding of human personhood, in what ways then can we work out this missionary calling of the church?

First, our trinitarian faith guards us against that very ancient seduction of a purely individualistic spirituality (Newbigin 1989: 164). If humanity is created in the image of the triune God, then it follows that the goal of human existence is indeed koinonia, the participatory fellowship of the entire human race (Newbigin 1997: 7). And because the gospel contains the uniquely Christian doctrine of Gods triunity, one can expect that when it is preached and authentically lived out, the gospel will mitigate powerfully against the alienating effects of sin and fulfill the deepest longing of community of every person. The missiological implication is clear: the church is not an imperialistic movement which seeks to take control of history but the community that lives by the story of the selfemptying of God in the ministry, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. (Newbigin 1989: 120). This is indeed what the church is called to be: an authentic community that lives by the truth of the gospel, modeling itself on the inter-personal life of the Godhead. Ecclesiology must indeed play a significant role in the development of mission theology (cf. Senior and Stuhlmueller 1983: 252). An absence of a dynamic ecclesiology will only accentuate an individualism that goes against authentic personhood. What is distilled from a weak ecclesiology is not only privatized faith, but also privatized mission: the personal responsibility of the individual for the individual salvation of non-Christians, which Shenk rightly identifies as [t]he keynote of modern missionary activity (1999: 144). Trinitarian theology offers the corrective to an aberrant ecclesiology by calling for the creation of a community characterized by love, where its members live in relationships of equality, diversity, mutuality, uniqueness and interdependence, following the paradigm of the triune God (Houston 2000:19). So really, the first step in the churchs witness to the world is in the way Christians live as truly members one of another, allowing for the fullness of trinitarian love to be expressed in the life of the church. What a powerful witness that will be to the world if the church were to live up to its ecclesial calling as a truly perichoretic community! Related to this calling of the church is the second point of how Christians should relate with people outside the church. A trinitarian understanding of personhood suggests that Christians, more than other people, ought to be able to appreciate the need for the other, and hence be genuinely open to the other. On this point, Kenneson (2002: 79) writes,
Such openness is not simply a strategy for facilitating conversion, nor is it simply a toleration of difference that stems from and compounds a posture of indifference. Rather the notion of difference and otherness that should inform the Christian faith flows from our understanding of Gods trinitarian nature, as well as from a deep sense of humility, a humility that creates the space not simply to give to the other but also to receive from the other. Thus any sense of mission that excludes reception seems destined to transform the other simply into an object of our missionary efforts or our indifference.

In other words, Christians must always view people as created in the image of God, never as mere evangelistic targets. Indeed we must move away from commodifying the gospel and peddling it to people whom we treat as potential consumers; rather we need to recover our reputation as people of persuasion (Guinness 1994: 345-46), as we bear witness to the work of salvation the triune God has wrought for all humankind created in His image. When we seek to live perichoretically, we allow our identity to be defined by our
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giving to others, as well as our receiving from them. Conversely, the identity of the other whom we relate to is also profoundly shaped by the dynamics of giving and receiving. This mutual indwelling has a circular structure wherein we are always living from God and toward God, as well as living from one another and toward one another (ibid). The problem is that in reality, because we live in a sinful world, we can never image divine perichoresis perfectly. The question that presents itself to us is this: How can Christians live the perichoretic life that intersects this sinful world? Kenneson points us to the paradigmatic example of Jesus Christ, whose being and life is best understood through the concept of self-donation (ibid). The self-donation of Christ essentially teaches us the necessity of suffering if we want to live personal and authentic lives in a world dominated by evil and violence. In the words of Kenneson again, This willingness to suffer on behalf of the other, this embrace of the other without expectation that the other will necessarily embrace us, is the cruciform life to which Christians have been called (ibid). As we live out our calling as witnesses of Jesus Christ in this world, we will do well to consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that [we] will not grow weary and lose heart (Heb 12:3). The principle of openness should find an even more obvious application to the relationship between missionaries and national co-workers and believers. Historical circumstances have often distorted this relationship into one predicated on such issues as power and money. These are undoubtedly real and important issues, but when they breed attitudes of moral and religious superiority, missionary work is weakened.15 There is a need to emphasize and keep the unity with other believers in Christ, a unity characterized by a constantly interacting cooperation while preserving intact the identity and properties of each other (Bjork 1999:238-39). Newbigin has always insisted that the missionary traffic must always run on a two-way street (Kenneson 2002: 80). The teaching of the seventeenthcentury Dutch Reformed theologian Gisbertus Voetius, perhaps a little revolutionary for his time, is instructive here as well: The planted mission churches are not subordinate to the sending or planting church; the relationship is a coordinate one. The freedom and independence of the mission churches is inviolable (Jongeneel 1991: 67). One of the greatest gifts a missionary can give to, and in turn receive from, national co-workers and believers is that of friendship. Indeed the love of friendship springs directly from the heart of the triune God.16 At the historic 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Bishop V. S. Azariah of Dornakal, South India, when addressing the topic The Problem of Co-operation between Foreign and Native Workers, uttered these memorable words,
Through all the ages to come the Indian Church will rise up in gratitude to attest the heroism and self-denying labour of the missionary body. You have given your goods to feed the poor. You have given your bodies to be burned. We also ask for love. Give us FRIENDS (cited in Latourette 1968: 359).

The extension of friendship entails at very least the willingness to listen, to give an understanding context to the other. By listening, one enters into the world of the other. It is an act of incarnation. Houston (2002: 121) says it well,
The purpose of listening is more than healing, for it is also to enjoy a measure of self-transcendence. The exercise of kindness, in giving space for the other to be and in the desire to free the hearts of others, is a sign we are moving forward into the realm of beneficence, where love is being radiated selflessly.

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In sum, the principle of openness as paradigmatic of trinitarian relations compels Christians to transcend social and cultural boundaries in order to live relationally and incarnationally. Theo Sundermeier says that the church in mission is not only to be the church for others, but also the church with others (cited in Bosch 1991:375). In a similar vein, the Indian theologian Mar Osthatios insists that mission must move beyond rescuing the perishing to the sharing of divine love (1987:17). Finally, a trinitarian understanding of human personhood compels us to evaluate the nature of the evangelistic task. It is unfortunate that many Christians, in their reading of the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20), place an undue emphasis on the word go and forget the more important command to make disciples. In some circles, this flawed exegesis has led to what Tite Tinou calls the salt water syndrome (personal communication), a romanticization and glorification of overseas missionary work.17 The four Gospels all make it clear that the goal of Jesus ministry is no less than the call to discipleship. It is an uncompromising demand to leave everything and follow Christ. Becoming a disciple is definitive to becoming personally like Christ. The disciple of Christ is one who is transformed from being autonomous to becoming self-renouncing and open to the other. Houston (2002: 117) elaborates,
Allegiance to Christ means self-abandonment . . . Conformity to Christ thus reconstructs ones whole manner of being and doing. So as Alistair Mcfadyen has aptly defined Christian discipleship, it is intrinsically, as well as extrinsically, openness to God, as putting ones whole life in a wholly new context; truly a new creation. This is vitally a renewed transparency of life, in which ones person is nurtured and grows in relationships.18

The missionary task therefore cannot be reduced simply to presenting a message in propositional terms; it must involve discipling people to become persons in Christ. The process of making disciples involves undoing the ravaging effects of a self-grounded individualism, and effecting a redemptive transformation into authentic personhood. It is facilitating an encounter with the triune God of grace, and in the process helping people to be truly open to God and to others, to experience freedom not only from the bondage of sin, but also freedom in relationships. In other words, evangelism must involve the recovery of a theology of authentic personhood. For it is this uniquely Christian theology of personhood that provides the only truly adequate basis for evaluating and for prophetically resisting the secularity and impersonality of so much of modern society and culture (Gay 1998:295). Of course, we need to bear in mind the reality that as long as we are in this world, we will always remain incomplete in becoming persons. Houston helpfully reminds us that there is also an eschatological orientation toward the future. For God now becomes our goal or telos; it is no longer oneself. Yet our objective remains incomplete. Our humanity is still unfinished (2002: 117). While we rejoice that in Christ we are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Cor 5:17), we also resonate with the words of confession of the Apostle Paul, Not that I have already obtained all this, . . . but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me (Phi 3:12). The perichoretic communion of the Trinity is our constant inspiration of what we will ultimately become as truly free persons-inrelationship. Coda From beginning to end, mission belongs to God, not us. For that reason, the end of
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mission is not saving souls, but the glory of the triune God. Voetius reminder is a timely one, that God is not only the first cause but also the ultimate goal of missions (Jongeneel 1991:68). The great vision of the church-in-mission is a redeemed people, called out of every language and tribe, worshipping God in all His splendor, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is fitting to end this paper with these magisterial words of the great mission thinker, the late Bishop Lesslie Newbigin (1964: 78), words that speak of the high missionary calling of the church as derived from the mission of the triune God:
We are invited to participate in an activity which is the central meaning of creation itself. We are invited to become, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, participants in the Sons obedience to the Father. All things have been created that they may be summed up in Christ the Son. All history is directed towards that end. All creation has this as its goal. The Spirit of God, who is also the Spirit of the Son, is given as the foretaste of that consummation, as the witness to it, and the guide of the Church on the road towards it.

References Aelred of Rievaulx. 1974. Spiritual Friendship. Trans. Mary Eugenia Laker. Washington, D.C.: Cistercian Publications. Anastasios of Androussa. 1988. Participating in the Trinity. In Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, ed. Norman E. Thomas, pp. 119-21. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. Barry, William A. 1992. Spiritual Direction and the Encounter with God: A Theological Inquiry. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press. Boff, Leonardo. 1988. Trinity and Society. Trans. Paul Burns. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. Bosch, David J. 1991. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. Bjork, David E. 1999. Towards a Trinitarian Understanding of Mission in PostChristendom Lands. Missiology 27(2): 231-44. Gay, Craig M. 1998. The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why Its Tempting to Live As If God Doesnt Exist. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Gunton, Colin. 1985. Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. __________. 1991. Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of the Imago Dei. In Persons, Divine and Human: Kings College Essays in Theological Anthropology, ed. Christoph Schwbel and Colin E. Gunton, pp.47-61. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. __________. 1993. The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guinness, Os. 1994. Mission modernity: Seven checkpoints on mission in the modern world. In Faith and Modernity, ed. Philip Sampson, Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden. Oxford: Regnum Books. Houston, James. 1989. The Transforming Friendship: A Guide to Prayer. Oxford: Lion Publishing. __________. 2000. Implications of Knowing the Triune God of Grace. Unpublished paper. __________. 2002. The Mentored Life: From Individualism to Personhood. Colorado Springs, Col.: NavPress. Jongeneel, Jan. 1991. The Missiology of Gisbertus Voetius: The First Comprehensive
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Protestant Theology of Missions. Calvin Theological Journal 26 (1): 47-79. Kenneson, Philip D. 2002. Trinitarian Missiology: Mission as Face-to-Face Encounter. In A Scandalous Prophet: The Way of Mission after Newbigin, ed. Thomas F. Foust, George R. Hunsberger, J. Andrew Kirk and Werner Ustoff, pp. 72-83. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Kirk, J. Andrew. 2000. What is Mission? Theological Explorations. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press. Kstenberger, Andreas J. and Peter T. OBrien. 2001. Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press. Latourette, Kenneth Scott. 1968. Ecumenical Bearings of the Missionary Movement and the International Missionary Council. In A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1579-1948, ed. Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill, 2nd ed., pp. 351-402. Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster Press. McNeill, John T, ed. 1960. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion 1. Trans. Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster Press. Moltmann, Jrgen. 1981. The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God. Trans. Margaret Kohl. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Newbigin, Lesslie. 1964. Trinitarian Faith and Todays Mission. Richmond, Virg: John Knox Press. __________. 1989. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. __________. 1997. The Trinity as Public Truth. In The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age: Theological Essays on Culture and Religion, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, pp. 1-8. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Osthatios, Mar Geevarghese. 1987. Divine Sharing: Shape of Mission for the Future. International Review of Mission. 76 (301):16-20. Prestige, G. L. 1952. God in Patristic Thought. London: SPCK. Schwbel, Christoph. 1991. Editorial Introduction. In Persons, Divine and Human: Kings College Essays in Theological Anthropology, ed. Christoph Schwbel and Colin E. Gunton, 141-70. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Senior, Donald, CP and Carroll Stuhlmueller, CP. 1983. The Biblical Foundations for Mission. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. Shenk, Wilbert R. 1999. Changing Frontiers of Mission. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. Simpson, Gary M. 1998. No Trinity, No Mission: The Apostolic Difference of Revisioning the Trinity. Word and World 18(3): 264-71. Thompson, John. 1994. Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press. Zizioulas, John D. 1985. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimirs Seminary Press. __________. 1991. On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood. In Persons, Divine and Human: Kings College Essays in Theological Anthropology, ed. Christoph Schwbel and Colin E. Gunton, pp. 33-46. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.

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Endnotes

It must be acknowledged that Barth was one of the earliest theologians to expound the notion of mission as an activity of the triune God. This Barthian influence on missiological thinking reached a peak at the Willingen Conference (Bosch 1991:390). 2 This section is what it says it is, a historical sketch. For a detailed treatment of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity during the Greek patristic period, see G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952). 3 It was Tertullian who coined the term trinitas, from which the English word Trinity is derived. 4 Leonardo Boff (1988: 59) suggests that Tertullian used the term persona to designate a specific individual with the dimensions of subjectivity, mind, and personality. 5 Throughout this paper, the masculine pronoun is used to denote both sexes, unless otherwise specified. The choice of the masculine form is for the sake of pure convenience and convention. Nothing else is intended or otherwise. 6 Until pseudo-Cyril, perichoresis was originally a christological term used to describe the co-indwelling of the two natures of Christ (Prestige 1952: 291-92). 7 Some other English words used to translate perichoresis include co-inherence (eg. Prestige 1952: 284), and circumincession (eg. Houston 2000: 15). 8 I once heard a Sunday school teacher teaching her class that God created humans so that He could have fellowship with them. While this is not entirely wrong, it is not entirely right either since it conveys the impression that God created humankind because He needed fellowship. 9 Tite Tinou makes the interesting observation that it is such radical anthropocentrism that drives modern paganism in the West today (personal communication). 10 I was rather impressed when I read the Acknowledgements page of What is Mission?, in which Andrew Kirk thanked his former students for their input in his work. He writes humbly, I am, because you are (2000: viii). It is instructive to note that proverbs abound in non-Western cultures that define the identity of the individual person in the context of community. Houston (2002: 111) tells of a Xhosa proverb that persons need persons to become persons. 11 On the same theme, Miroslav Volf writes, Every divine person is indwelled by the other divine persons; all the persons interpenetrate each other. They do not cease however to be distinct. Rather, their interpenetration presupposes their distinctions; persons who have been dissolved in some third thing cannot be said to be interior to each other (cited in Kenneson 2002: 78). 12 Admittedly this schema reflects Torrances strong Reformed understanding of salvation. The three moments of salvation are to be appreciated homilectically rather than hermeneutically. The homilectical case can be built from such biblical texts as Jer 1:5, Gal 4:4 and 1 Pet 1:12. 13 Lesslie Newbigin warns, [T]here is a danger in a kind of thinking which founds the whole missionary task solely upon the doctrine of the person and work of Christ . . . (1964: 77). 14 Despite the closed-door policy of China between 1950 and 1978, the Chinese church experienced phenomenal growth that defies all human explanation. Indeed God was continually working in China, even during those years when all missionaries were expelled from the country. The point here is that regardless of whether we work or not, God is already working in the world. 15 Indeed this is one of four points of criticism launched by the Indian historian K.M. Pannikar against modern missions. See Shenk 1999: 164. 16 Ivo, a friend of the Cistercian monk Aelred of Rievaulx (c.1110-67) made an insightful remark on 1 John 4:16 when he said, God is friendship, to which Aelred gave the rejoinder, he that abides in friendship, abides in God and God in him (Aelred of Rievaulx 1:69-70). 17 A good friend of mine, himself a missionary, once told me, Missions is not about crossing the sea; rather it is about seeing the cross. 18 The reference to Alistair Mcfadyen is taken from his The Call to Personhood (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 48-61.