Читать книгу Church for Every Context - Michael Moynagh - Страница 26

This distinction has been challenged by Walter Kaiser, who has argued that ancient Israel had a duty to go out in centrifugal witness.

There could be no mistaking where Paul got his marching orders: they came from the Old Testament. The case for evangelizing the Gentiles had not been a recently devised switch in the plan of God, but had always been the long-term commitment of the Living God who is a missionary God. (Kaiser, 2000, p. 82)

If Jewish proselytizers among the Gentiles existed in the first century ce, as scholars used to suggest (De Ridder, 1975, pp. 58–127), this would lend support to Kaiser. It would suggest that there were at least some Jews who recognized a call to mission beyond Israel’s borders. Yet Martin Goodman and others have shown that Judaism did not contain a proselytizing tendency before Christian mission began. The later emergence in Judaism of Christian-type proselytizing owed less to impulses within Judaism than to what the Christians were doing (Goodman, 1994, pp. 60–91; Riesner, 2000, pp. 211–50; Bird, 2010, p. 11).1

Christopher Wright points out that the Old Testament contains no explicit command that Israelites should go to the nations in mission. If this had been the expectation, it is surprising that the prophets did not condemn Israel for its failure to do so. The Old Testament emphasis is on God summoning the nations to himself ‘in the great pilgrimage to Zion’ at the end times (Wright, 2006, pp. 502–3). Zechariah 8.20–3, for instance, pictures people ‘from all languages’ streaming to Jerusalem. According to Isaiah 61.5–6, when Israel is what it is meant to be Gentiles will join the people of God.

Only in Isaiah 66 is there explicit word of God sending messengers to the nations, and that is as a future expectation contingent on the ingathering of Israel first. (Wright, 2006, p. 503)

Within this broad sweep are hints of a more centrifugal approach. Jonah leaps to mind of course. Nahum and Amos 1 and 2.1–5 are addressed to the nations, suggesting that Israel should be outward looking. But they are a sub-plot. From a New Testament perspective, they point to what would be fulfilled later in Christian mission.