Mission Theology in the Old Testament: A New Paradigm

In theological and missionary circles there is a growing tendency to look for a valid justification of mission. The Bible is searched and most scholars identify several passages in the New Testament as “commissions” for mission. However, mission seems to be present in the Old Testament, too, but scholars do not seem to find an equivalent command to go to the ends of the world. Charles Scobie expresses this widespread belief emphasizing “the almost total absence from the Old Testament of any concern that the people of Israel should actively go out and share their knowledge of the one true God with the other nations of mankind” (1992:286). For a long time scholars agreed that “there is a Christian mission in the true sense of the word only after the resurrection of Jesus. . . . In the Old Testament there is no mission in the real sense” (Hahn 1965:9, 20). David Bosch in his magnum opus, Transforming Mission, dedicates only four pages to mission in the Old Testament. For him mission is the main difference between the Old and the New Testament. He admits that mission is present in the Old Testament but states that “mission is undefinable” in order to avoid challenging the general understanding and recognize the problem of defining mission (1991:9). In order to explain this lack of outgoing missionary concern, missiologists and theologians have used a physics model that combines the forces that push and attract an object that moves. They described mission in the Old Testament as centripetal, with people coming from many places to Jerusalem to worship and be blessed. On the other hand, they labeled New Testament mission as being centrifu-