Introduction

I have been wrestling with two key questions. Firstly, what is the gospel? The second question is, is there a contextual reading of the gospel that can help us to decolonise mission? What prompted these two questions is the nature of my professional vocational calling as a reverse missionary serving among evangelicals in the areas of unity, mission and racial justice. In this context, I have come across an understanding of the gospel that has not connected how the gospel perhaps can speak into ongoing conversations on decolonising mission. Employing tools from post-colonial theology and hermeneutics, this paper engages the colonial context of the biblical narrative. The essay explores a contextual reading of the word gospel to develop what I am describing as Jesus’s decolonial ethic of God’s kingdom.

 

Roman Imperial background of the Gospel

The word gospel (evangelion) comes to us from the Greek vocabulary. It is interesting to note that it was not mediated through the Hebrew or Aramaic language just as the New Testament was written in Greek. These are colonial influences on the New Testament which is important to acknowledge in this discussion.

It is this notion of good news about the peace achievements of Caesar Augustus that the gospel writers took and imbued with new counter-cultural meaning through the life and ministry of Jesus. The gospel therefore takes on a new meaning in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as the only means of saving humanity from sin. All the four gospel writers declare that this is indeed the good news!

To demonstrate how the gospel writers borrowed this notion of gospel from a Graeco-Roman context, below is an inscription dating c.6BC that talks about the divine birth and good news of Ceasar Augustus:

It seemed good to the Greeks of Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apollonius of Menophilus Azanitus: “Since Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance (excelled even our anticipations), surpassing all previous benefactors, and not even leaving to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done, and since the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings [εὐαγγέλιον] for the world that came by reason of him,” which Asia resolved in Smyrna (The Priene Inscription 150:40-41).

This inscription basically refers to the divinity of Ceasar Augustus and how his divine birth has brought in an era of peace, therefore the beginning of good news to the whole world. The beginning of Mark’s gospel is very similar to this:

The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

I will send my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way”—
 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
    make straight paths for him. (Mark 1:1-3, NIV)

 

Old Testament Contributions to the Development of the Gospel

While it is clear that Mark and other gospel writers were borrowing the concept of the gospel from a Graeco-Roman context, they were also appealing to the authority of the Old Testament, and therefore giving a new meaning to the word in the light of the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah.

This was why Mark quoted Isaiah and the use of the word “beginning” in his text also reflects the beginning of God’s creation as declared in Genesis 1:1. The implication is that Ceasar Augustus is not the one ushering in a new era but Jesus the Messiah is the one ushering this new era as a new beginning of a new creation enacted by the arrival of God’s kingdom.

 This good news is understood to mean heralding Yahweh’s universal sovereignty over earthly kingdoms through a messianic figure

The introduction of John’s gospel also appealed to this understanding of a new beginning by affirming that “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1). This introduction also affirms the divinity of Jesus not only as God’s son but as the creator of the cosmos. All of this clearly points to the fact that the evangelist writers understanding of the gospel was shaped by the Old Testament context of the word good news. This good news is understood to mean heralding Yahweh’s universal sovereignty over earthly kingdoms through a messianic figure.

Daniel and the Hebrew boys bear witness to this reign of God’s kingdom. This reign of God through a messianic figure who will be the messenger and ambassador of this good news was made clear in Isaiah (see Isaiah 52:7 and 61:1-3).

If the development of the gospel has all these rich elements, what is the implication of this contextual reading of the gospel in the light of colonial kingdoms?

 

Jesus’s Decolonial Ethic

Anyone who studies the gospels carefully will realise that Jesus lived his life in a way that challenges the colonial power around him. He did this carefully and in a very clever way that was not confrontational to the gospel of Rome. Whilst Jesus did not go about actively campaigning against the Roman empire, what he did instead was to empower people around him through the character of God’s kingdom, and in the process reveal the depravity of power, control, nationalism/imperialism, exploitation and division which characterises earthly colonial kingdoms.

The kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed appears to develop an anti-thesis to these chief characteristics of earthly colonial kingdoms. Instead of power, control and exploitation exhibited in the reigns of  Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great or  Octavius Caesar, Jesus was born into poverty (Luke 2:21-24), he and his family were vulnerable as refugees needing protection (Matthew 2:13-15), he advocated for humility in service rather than power and control (Mark 10:35-44), he was humble riding on a donkey (Matthew 21:1-9), and finally he emptied himself giving everything he had (Philippians 2:5-8).

Instead of embracing a toxic nationalism, he challenged the Jewish religious establishment such as the Pharisees and Sadducees who were very nationalistic in their religious thought. Jesus challenged Jewish religious leaders’ corruption of religious power (Matthew 23).

 All the kingdoms in the biblical narrative were seeking to build an empire but Jesus sought to engage beyond his Jewishness

He also disappointed his followers who wanted him to be a Messiah that would set the nation of Israel free (see Luke 24:21; Acts 1:6-8). He declined becoming enthroned as a national prophet and king (John 6:14-15). Instead of embracing these various forms of national politics, he demonstrated interculturality through engaging Samaritans (John 4), told stories that made Samaritans the heroes (Luke 10:25-37) and commanded his followers to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20). In essence, Jesus was not imperialistic or nationalistic in that sense, but was intercultural in his thinking and engagement. All the kingdoms in the biblical narrative were seeking to build an empire with their image imprinted on everyone like Nebuchadnezzar wanted everyone to worship his image (Daniel 3), but Jesus embraced an interculturality that sought to engage beyond his Jewishness.

Jesus’ ministry also has implication for uniting fragmented and fractured human relationships. Instead of seeking to divide and rule people, although sometimes the implication of his ministry meant people were divided (see Luke 14:25-34), he offered reconciliation that brought us back to God and healed human relationships.

The greatest commandment as taught by Jesus is about healing broken relationships first with God and with other humanity. Loving God and loving our neighbour is about restoring the broken relationship with our maker and with other people that God created in his image.  Jesus’ ministry in seeking to model restored relationship could be seen in these three points.

Firstly, was how he managed to have twelve disciples with different views. Having a tax collector in Matthew and a zealot in Simon is remarkable as they both seat on the opposite spectrum of national politics. Secondly was his pastoral prayer of unity before his death about his followers (John 17). But perhaps most crucial is that his death according to Matthew broke down the religious walls that segmented the Jewish religious community (see Matthew 27: 51).

From the discussions above, we could conclude that the chief characteristics of Jesus’ decolonial ethnic are therefore vulnerability, humility, interculturality, generosity and unity. These values are in anti-thesis to the earthly colonial kingdom characterised by power, control, nationalism/imperialism, exploitation and division. If this is accepted, how can Jesus decolonial ethic help us to decolonise mission in today’s context?

 

Mission shaped by Unity  

In this last section I want to pick one of my proposals for a decolonised mission to illustrate certain perspectives on the subject. Our world is more fragmented than ever before as multiple crisis escalate tensions in different regions. What does the gospel have to offer in this fragile fragmented context? Is it possible to offer hope on the basis that humanity has a common ancestry in God? Perhaps more crucial is how the church, which is not immune from fragmentation, can demonstrate unity at a time when disunity is becoming the order of the day.

This unity cannot and never should be about uniformity, therefore, the church must first prove itself to be an agent of unity through diversity. In essence, the church must demonstrate visibly, holding in tension unity and difference. At the moment, some parts of the church hold to unity but are lacking (for example) in ethnic difference, whilst others are good at ethnic and cultural diversity but have no framework for unity.

The challenge we have is how we demonstrate visible unity with ethnic and cultural diversity so that the intercultural dynamics of the church are not exchanged for uniformity. The image at the heart of church unity is Jesus, but this image must not be sacrificed at the altar of Western models of interpreting God’s kingdom which sometimes means business as usual.

We need a unity that centres polyphonic voices and allows integration to shape its trajectory

We need a unity that centres polyphonic voices and allows integration to shape its trajectory, or else, we will continue unity talks but from the hermeneutics of a Western church that only permits Majority World voices to speak when allowed or permitted. At the heart of this unity is the reconciliation of all things:

And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross (Colossians 1:20, NRSV).

Perhaps, as the world around us continues to have conversations around reparative justice looking at the chattel enslavement of Africans through the triangular trade, one contribution the church can offer is around reconciliatory justice that seeks to repair relationships.

Currently, some of the secular conversations are on reparations borders on punitive justice (punishment) and retributive justice (revenge). The church has a unique role to play in offering reconciliatory justice because society is not truly healed until the oppressor and the oppressed are set free. The victim and the perpetuator need liberation (or, in this case, the descendants of perpetuators).

This is where interculturality and unity offers us something of a different lens in decolonising mission because, it argues that mission can only properly be decolonised when the descendants of colonisers and the colonised are mutually set free.

This is because colonisation has impacted the mission output of both. In the case of the descendants of colonisers, mission continues to be largely rooted in different forms of power. For the colonised, they continue to some extent mirror Western models of mission paradigms and attitudes with all its flaws. The challenge, however, in an intercultural and unity approach to decolonising mission is that certain parts of the Western church have not really dealt with the impact of colonisation on mission, let alone have a robust conversation on how we repair!

Israel Oluwole Olofinjana (PhD) is the Director of the One People Commission of the Evangelical Alliance. He is an ordained and accredited Baptist minister and has led two multi-ethnic Baptist churches and an independent charismatic church. He is the founding director of the Centre for Missionaries from the Majority World, a mission network initiative that provides cross-cultural training to reverse missionaries in Britain.

 

References

Boring, M. E., Berger, K., and Colpe, C., Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament, Nashville: Abingdon, 1995.

Sugirtharajah, R.S., Exploring Postcolonial Biblical Criticism, Chichester, UK, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.