Unfinished Trinitarian Ecclesiology

Comments please, I am stuck while working with Guder's question from pag 82-3. What do you all think?

In Missional Church, Guder, et al, make the claim that there is work yet to be done. In both theory and practice, the forefront of the missional movement may need to be inherently a charismatic (better word with less baggage?) movement. But still that leaves the “other two” of the trinity out of the picture.

In the works of Jurgen Moltmann, there is a continual working with the Trinity and the narratives of each of these three persons. Each, for the missional church has a story to tell. Each is a sender, and each is sent.

From Missional Church we are offered a challenge to complete some work in which the Trinity is key for the completion and understanding of the missional church.

As I read it, this is Guder’s estimation of what yet needs to be developed in regards to Trinitarian theology and the implications for missional ecclesiology:

1. What does it mean that:
1. The church bears the stamp of the “eternal community”?
2. That God is and characterizes the eternal mutual sending that characterizes that divine communion?
3. What does Jesus mean for quest “b” (above)?

i. Jesus can and doeas say he will send Advocate (Jn 15:26)

ii. But it was the Spirit that baptized Jesus, led (sent?) him into the wilderness; filled him with power in proclamation (Lk 3:22, 4:1,14); and Jesus acknowledged the Spirit’s anointing (Lk 4:17-21).

2. Interprocession: “This mutuality in sending or ‘interprocession’ marks the divine communion as a communion of mission and this in turn leaves its mark on the church.
1. Moltmann, History and the Triune God (HTG), pg 68f, regarding interprocession..

i. It is the direct reversal of the monarchial trinity

ii. “from below” mediated by the HS

iii. Interprocession includes the formation of human communities and thus “we are not only representing God before the world (apostolicity) but the world before God (a.k.a. intercession, or vicariousness?)

2. Interprocession calls for an “open trinity” (contrasting stasis shaped circular or triangular trinities)

i. Open trinity – moves from theory of God’s nature to a soteriological theory a bout our and creations fellowship in God (Trinity and the Kingdon, Moltmann pg 94-96)

ii. Open trinity moves to sharing in the trinity in experience and fellowship. Here Moltmann uses Berdyaev’s reflection from Eastern Orthodoxy on the “tragedy in God” as a shared (perichoreitc) reality.

3. Implications for Ecclesiology are:
1. Choice of narrative to form us being balanced in the trinity? For instance, not just WWJD, but what would God hope for? What will the Spirit draw out?
2. Reconsideration of certain hermeneutics – for instance is John 14:1-12 a description of Jesus going to heaven to build some mansions for us in the great by and by, or, is it a foretelling in Johnanine style of Acts 1-2 and the many mansions are the manifold ecclesia and koinonia formed at the Spirit’s prompting?
3. What does this say about the spiritual history of different ecclesias and their bridges and connections with each other?

i. Do we have many participants in one sending?

ii. Many sendings and many participants?

iii. How are we in this missional task together (Eph 4:1-5)

iv. How do we share in this missional task, not as an exercise in being “tolerant” or politically correct, but actually reflecting the trinity?

Trinitarian character of mission

"What is not yet fully developed in these fresh approaches to trinitarian doctrines is the missional implication for ecclesiology. What does it mean that the church bears the stamp of the 'eternal community' that God is and reflects the eternal mutual 'sending' that characterizes that divine communion? Nowhere is the latter characteristic of the church so fully evident as in the biblical account of Jesus Christ. Jesus can and does say he will send his disciples the Advocate, the Spirit of truth (John 15:26), but it was that very same Spirit who baptized Jesus, led him in the wilderness while he began his itinerant preaching (Luke 3:2; 4:1, 14). Jesus proclaimed that this Spirit rested on him and anointed him to preach good news (Luke 4:17-21). This mutuality in sending or "interprocession," if we may call it that, marks the divine communion as a communion of mission, and this in turn leaves its mark on the church.

One more point of theological recovery that is particularly relevant to this discussion involves the importance of the fourth of the notae, of characteristics, of the church mentioned in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Cree (AD 381). This creed affirms belief in 'one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.' The last-mentioned distictive of the church, 'apostolic,' asserts the church's missional vocation. As Jurgen Moltmann had put it, 'The historical church must be called 'apostolic' in a double sense: its gospel and its doctrine are founded on the testimony of the first apostles, the eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, and it exists in the carrying out of the apostolic proclamation, the missionary charge. The expression 'apostolic' therefore denotes both the church's foundation and its commission....'the church is apostolic not just because it represents the apostles teaching, but because it re-presents Christ.'"

from, Missional Church, pg 82ff