God is never the object of contemplation. He is the subject who
76 THE BIBLICAL BASIS
cannot remain quiescent in the presence of any challenge to it. In Athens, Paul's "spirit was provoked [rapwévvero, "pricked," "irritated," "exasperated"] within him as he saw that the city was
full of idols" (Acts 17:16). He was stirred to action to bear witness to the Kingship of Christ established at the Resurrection and
to be made final at the last judgment (Acts 17:31). The idolatries, the rivals of Christ's Lordship, in our time are different in form from those of ancient Athens but quite the same in essence. Acknowledgment of Christ's Lordship means mission, witnessing to that Lordship until "every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil. 2:11).
The Nature of the Gospel
Mission is involved in the very nature of the Christian Gospel.
1. This may be seen first in its nature as revelation. In the Bible, God is never the object of contemplation. He is the subject who mitiates action to make Himself known. By His very nature as God, He "sits above the circle of the earth" (Is. 40:22), of whom no
"image" can be made (Ex. 20:4) nor any "likeness" imagined (Is. 40:18, 46:5), whose "thoughts" are beyond all human thoughts (Is. 55:8 f.), and upon whose "face" man may not look and live (Ex. 33:20). He cannot be discovered by man's search, but is to be known only when He discloses Himself. Yet He is One who does disclose Himself, who "speaks," whose "word... goes forth from {His] mouth" and does "not return...empty" but accomplishes what He purposes (Is. 55:11).
Paul shared this Old Testament view. He was convinced that "the world did not know God through wisdom" (1 Cor. 1:21), and that those who were outside the group to whom God had made His self-disclosure simply did "not know God" (1 Thess. 4:5). He was equally convinced that God had made himself known in Jesus Christ, who had come not as the end product of human searching but as God's gift to man, initiated and carried through by Him alone. The "mystery" of God's righteousness and wrath, the "secret and hidden wisdom of God" concerning man's salvation and glorification, "kept secret for long ages," is "now disclosed and... made known to all nations" (Rom. 1:17 f.; 1 Cor. 2:7 ff.; Rom.
16:25 f.). The revelation was not the mere impartation of a new set of religious ideas to match or replace those of other men, but
Cay, RDS ae 2 Se ed a
Poe
Pauline Motives for the Christian Mission 77
rather God's gift of Himself to men in the objective, concrete, historic reality of His Son. True revelation is "the direct, temporally located self-manifestation of God, valid for all men," which functions as "God's judgment on man, as God's active relationship to man, and His long-suffering dialogue with man." ¢
The fact of such a revelation is an unproved and unprovable assumption, but counter views rest on a similar undemonstrable basis. The assumption of revelation is the only objective criterion of truth which is not at the mercy of human subjectivity. How is
the truth of a religion to be determined? It is mere subjective assumption to say by the height of its spiritual values, for another may assume that material values are superior to spiritual values.
The measuring rod of unselfish altruism may be countered by one who insists that altruism is "the root illness of man" and that "it
is the morality of altruism that men have to reject." 7 The degree
of mysticism, too, is a purely subjective measuring rod, for it may
just as handily be argued that mysticism is an escape from reality
which should be avoided at all costs. At long last, subjective judg-
ments may be reduced quite largely to what one happens to prefer.®
To posit the fact of God, however, and to hold that because God.
is God He can speak to man, and that in Jesus Christ He has
done so, is an assumption, but it rests on a possible act of God out-
side man which, if true, has a greater degree of objectivity than
rival assumptions. If this assumption has any validity, the criterion
of truth becomes not what one prefers but what God has revealed.
God's self-disclosure, then, is final truth which is the criterion of all truth. Christianity is thus a universal religion which by its very nature as revelation is impelled to mission the whole world. It cannot come to terms with any syncretistic tendency to amalgamate the good in all religions, on the theory that all religions are simply adaptations of one general species. Its aim is not to supple_ ment other religions, but to supplant them. This can be considered arrogance only by those who misunderstand the nature of revelation, and can be arrogance only by Christians who do not understand their own faith. . Seo As an empirical religion, Christianity stands alongside other
®Cf. Hendrik Kraemer, Religion and the Christian Faith (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), pp. 19 and 347.
7 Ayn Rand, Time, February 29, 1960, p. 94.
® Cf. Hendrik Kraemer, op. cit., chapters I and II.