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Re: Mission: Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church
In A Vision of Hope for a Post-Eschatological Church Andrew Perriman provides an innovative and radical book where postmodern mission and New Testament studies collide. Andrew Perriman examines the mission of the earliest church in its historical context and argues that our context is very different and so our mission cannot simply be a matter of doing exactly what the earliest church did. The key question at the heart of the book is, "How do we shape a biblical theology of mission for a post-biblical church?" Controversially Perriman maintains that the eschatological crisis faced by the early church - the coming judgment on the enemies that opposed God's people - has now passed with the collapse of the Roman Empire!
Eschatology, says Perriman, is about temporary transitions from oppression to deliverance in the history of the people of God. However, creational disorder is with us all the time. The postmodern church does not face an eschatological crisis but a creational crisis. A missiology that is oriented towards a new creation is far more relevant to us now than a missiology oriented, as it was in most of the New Testament, towards rescue from opposition and persecution. Andrew Perriman lives in Holland and works with Christian Associates seeking to develop open, creative communities of faith for the emerging culture in Europe.
Eschatology, says Perriman, is about temporary transitions from oppression to deliverance in the history of the people of God. However, creational disorder is with us all the time. The postmodern church does not face an eschatological crisis but a creational crisis. A missiology that is oriented towards a new creation is far more relevant to us now than a missiology oriented, as it was in most of the New Testament, towards rescue from opposition and persecution. Andrew Perriman lives in Holland and works with Christian Associates seeking to develop open, creative communities of faith for the emerging culture in Europe.
- GenresTheology
172 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2007
14 people want to read
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February 16, 2017
I have been reading Andrew Perriman's blog for the past couple months and find him to be a thought-provoking mind. A few months back I read his book The Coming of the Son of Man. This book takes the Bible study from that book and applies it to the mission of the church.
Perriman's basic argument is that Christians throughout history have been too quick to universalize the Biblical texts. He argues that the Gospels tell the story of the coming of the Son of Man, a figure from Daniel 7, who wins victory over the pagan empires oppressing God's people. This figure is Jesus, though there are also aspects of it that apply to the early Christian community. The earth-shattering event her is the fall of Jersualem in 70 AD.
Perriman's next step is that as the early Christians spread and began to face persecution, the situation in Paul's letters reflected the hope of the victory of the Son of Man over the pagan empires of Rome. This is where Christians universalize too quickly. To Perriman, the story is still deeply contextual with judgment reflecting the same Daniel (and other Old Testament) scriptures. He does not come right out and say it, but it appears he sees Constantine's, and Rome's, conversion in the 300s AD as the final victory of the Son of Man. Thus, the Bible says more about the fall or Rome in God's wrath than anything about final judgment (and Perriman does not think the Bible says a thing about an eternal, conscious tormenting in hell).
The reason he calls the book Mission for a post-biblical church is that he sees most of the Bible already fulfilled. It is a story with prophecies that came to be. All we are waiting for is a few bits and pieces, such as the final defeat of death. I think we can look at it this way: God's good creation was broken and God's plan was to restore this creation through Abraham's descendants, Israel. But Israel was also plagued with the same brokenness. The Gospels then tell the story of how Jesus dies for Israel, thus forming a renewed Israel around himself. This people centered on Jesus was able to survive the destruction of the temple and expand into the pagan world. Further, this renewed Israel, the Church, included both Jews and non-Jews. Eventually the pagan empire was converted (300s) and/or defeated (400s) - Perriman is not clear on how this part works.
In this our mission today then is creational: "the mission of the church is to be a creational microcosm, a creative community, a people committed to the volatile, adventurous task of always extracting the best from the world that God has brought into existence. But we do this without ever forgetting to tell the other story of the long exodus made by the early church, in Christ, through a wilderness of suffering and testing toward vindication". In other words, people join the church (get saved from personal sin) and become part of the community tasked by God to bring new creation into being in the midst of the old.
Perhaps my review does not make this sound as different from the traditional Christianity I grew up with. Maybe Perriman ends up in a similar place to many other Christians but by going a different route. If that is the case, it is more likely that Perriman got there intentionally while other Christians stumbled there. In other words, Perriman has taken the ideas of others (such as NT Wright) a few steps farther down the road they have begun, but on a practical, daily ministry level all these people would see the mission of the church as similar.
I definitely think I need to re-read this book and his other. Getting my mind around what Perriman is saying is not easy as his approach to scripture is different than what I have always learned.
I do wish Perriman had written more on...mission. The final chapter of the book tackled the mission of the church today, while the title implied this would be the bulk of the book. The rest of the book was a study of the biblical story from Jesus on through Paul and the early church. Obviously, based on what I said above, I find his reading compelling. But I am still thinking through how it plays out today. Along those same lines, Perriman almost exhibits a phobia against universalizing, or just applying, any passage. I think he is right that the church has been too quick to take, for example, Jesus' message to first century Jews about coming judgment and make it final judgment. That said, is Perriman too slow to take what we learn of God in the particular stories in the Bible and draw universal conclusions from them?
This book is recommended for any working in ministry today and asking what is the purpose of the church in a postmodern, secular culture. It offers a thoughtful reading of the New Testament, which in a culture bored with religion is necessary.
Perriman's basic argument is that Christians throughout history have been too quick to universalize the Biblical texts. He argues that the Gospels tell the story of the coming of the Son of Man, a figure from Daniel 7, who wins victory over the pagan empires oppressing God's people. This figure is Jesus, though there are also aspects of it that apply to the early Christian community. The earth-shattering event her is the fall of Jersualem in 70 AD.
Perriman's next step is that as the early Christians spread and began to face persecution, the situation in Paul's letters reflected the hope of the victory of the Son of Man over the pagan empires of Rome. This is where Christians universalize too quickly. To Perriman, the story is still deeply contextual with judgment reflecting the same Daniel (and other Old Testament) scriptures. He does not come right out and say it, but it appears he sees Constantine's, and Rome's, conversion in the 300s AD as the final victory of the Son of Man. Thus, the Bible says more about the fall or Rome in God's wrath than anything about final judgment (and Perriman does not think the Bible says a thing about an eternal, conscious tormenting in hell).
The reason he calls the book Mission for a post-biblical church is that he sees most of the Bible already fulfilled. It is a story with prophecies that came to be. All we are waiting for is a few bits and pieces, such as the final defeat of death. I think we can look at it this way: God's good creation was broken and God's plan was to restore this creation through Abraham's descendants, Israel. But Israel was also plagued with the same brokenness. The Gospels then tell the story of how Jesus dies for Israel, thus forming a renewed Israel around himself. This people centered on Jesus was able to survive the destruction of the temple and expand into the pagan world. Further, this renewed Israel, the Church, included both Jews and non-Jews. Eventually the pagan empire was converted (300s) and/or defeated (400s) - Perriman is not clear on how this part works.
In this our mission today then is creational: "the mission of the church is to be a creational microcosm, a creative community, a people committed to the volatile, adventurous task of always extracting the best from the world that God has brought into existence. But we do this without ever forgetting to tell the other story of the long exodus made by the early church, in Christ, through a wilderness of suffering and testing toward vindication". In other words, people join the church (get saved from personal sin) and become part of the community tasked by God to bring new creation into being in the midst of the old.
Perhaps my review does not make this sound as different from the traditional Christianity I grew up with. Maybe Perriman ends up in a similar place to many other Christians but by going a different route. If that is the case, it is more likely that Perriman got there intentionally while other Christians stumbled there. In other words, Perriman has taken the ideas of others (such as NT Wright) a few steps farther down the road they have begun, but on a practical, daily ministry level all these people would see the mission of the church as similar.
I definitely think I need to re-read this book and his other. Getting my mind around what Perriman is saying is not easy as his approach to scripture is different than what I have always learned.
I do wish Perriman had written more on...mission. The final chapter of the book tackled the mission of the church today, while the title implied this would be the bulk of the book. The rest of the book was a study of the biblical story from Jesus on through Paul and the early church. Obviously, based on what I said above, I find his reading compelling. But I am still thinking through how it plays out today. Along those same lines, Perriman almost exhibits a phobia against universalizing, or just applying, any passage. I think he is right that the church has been too quick to take, for example, Jesus' message to first century Jews about coming judgment and make it final judgment. That said, is Perriman too slow to take what we learn of God in the particular stories in the Bible and draw universal conclusions from them?
This book is recommended for any working in ministry today and asking what is the purpose of the church in a postmodern, secular culture. It offers a thoughtful reading of the New Testament, which in a culture bored with religion is necessary.
August 1, 2015
Re:Mission is largely a re-presentation of the narrative-historical work that Perriman has done in "The Coming of the Son of Man" and "The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans", here oriented toward the mission of God's people. He works his way very well through the narrative from Creation, Fall, Abraham, Israel's failure and exile, to Jesus who embodies the Son of Man and who redeems Israel from her failure, in the process constituting a new Son of Man community. The narrative continues with judgement on unfaithful Israel, the perseverance of the new community through persecution and then judgement on classical paganism. Perriman's telling of the narrative requires a paradigm shift of sorts as he places the contemporary Church outside or beyond this narrative, hence his description of the Church today as post-eschatological and post-biblical. We're living and ministering more than a millennium-and-a-half beyond the biblical eschatological horizon. This paradigm shift requires a rethinking of "mission" in light of the biblical narrative and our own place beyond it. Perriman offers few specifics, which is a little disappointing. I understand the point of the two or three specific examples he describes, although I'm skeptical about the "soul parties" he describes. And if Jesus is truly Lord, it seems to me that our message is and proclamation ought to be much less subtle than what I see in Perriman's examples. That said, the book offers much good food for thought in terms of giving a clear presentation of the biblical narrative of redemption and re-creation and then locating the contemporary church in this post-eschatological and post-biblical millennium where we display the results of Jesus' redemptive work and re-creation to the world.
December 7, 2014
Very good and possibly paradigm-shifting Survey of the New Testament's eschatological expectations. Complements the author's Coming of the Son of Man. I was not satisfied with this book's treatment of 1 Thess. 4 or of Romans 11. There is still more work to do to clarify how, exactly, Perriman thinks that the Roman oikoumene was. Judged by Jesus. The great value of this book is that it forces the reader to re-examine his own assumptions about what New Testament text concerning resurrection, judgment, Hell, heaven, New creation, and the timing of all these things. Above all, the author does us a great service by insisting that we connect everything to the story of Israel – a story which is central to all of Scripture, but of which most Christian theology has proceeded in blithe and willful ignorance. Many, many passages gain a new coherence and vividness under Perriman's eyes.
November 5, 2016
I've just finished reading this book for the third time; it's become a bit of a favourite of mine.
The first time I read it I was really uncomfortable. I eventually had to lay it down for a season as it challenged my reading of the New Testament beyond what I could take at the time. But I kept going back to it as it provided some healing for me through an experience in a rather fundamentalist church in England. I was also helped by the work I'm doing on my MA in hermeneutics through London School of Theology. I was eventually quite convinced, alongside reading his blog.
His understanding of the kingdom of God, new-creation, and the people of God makes for a much better contextual reading of the New Testament. And his hermeneutic is persuasive. I highly recommend it.
The first time I read it I was really uncomfortable. I eventually had to lay it down for a season as it challenged my reading of the New Testament beyond what I could take at the time. But I kept going back to it as it provided some healing for me through an experience in a rather fundamentalist church in England. I was also helped by the work I'm doing on my MA in hermeneutics through London School of Theology. I was eventually quite convinced, alongside reading his blog.
His understanding of the kingdom of God, new-creation, and the people of God makes for a much better contextual reading of the New Testament. And his hermeneutic is persuasive. I highly recommend it.
August 25, 2013
A provocative and challenging summation of Perriman's views I find it attractive and largely persuasive but it is unorthodox, although deeply exegetical, and a challenge to modern evangelicalism. I feel like I need to go back and retread his books on the Son of Man and Romans with this as a primer.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews