3. Living Within God’s Story: The Missio Christianus
As has been mentioned several times now, a large part of the missio Dei is the delegation of that mission to God’s representative covenant partners – Adam and Eve, Israel, Jesus, and now, the Church. The Church is the body today that is assigned this vocation. Therefore, Christians must find a way to live within God’s Story, for, as Tom Wright says: “We are the people through whom the narrative… is now moving towards its final destination.” Or, as Richard Hays puts it: “The church is to finds its identification and vocation by recognizing its role within [God’s] cosmic drama.” Living within God’s Story, a missional story, means that the Church is fundamentally missional. She is called to go forth into the world. As Karl Barth says, “the Church lives by its commission as herald” and “when the life of the Church is exhausted in self-serving, it smacks of death.” Barth is not simply being hyperbolic and exaggerating his point. If the Church does not respond to her call to be God’s herald in creation, then death will continue to reign. Consequently, by moving into the biblical story of the missio Dei, we seek to fulfill the challenge issued by Tom Wright. We hope to be: “ferociously loyal to what has gone before and cheerfully open about what must come next.”
Tracing the movements of God’s Story in light of the Christian mission requires us to engage in an interesting reversal. Although the movement of God’s story goes from the Father, to godforsakenness, to the Son, to the Spirit, the mission of the Church traces this movement backwards. The missio Christianus is to become the Spirit in order to become the Son in order to become the godforsaken in order to become the Father. Furthermore, in this whole process we also become subversive gospel-bearers. It should be noted that this reversal of the trinitarian order does not mean that our model is cyclical in nature. We are not working back to the garden, we are moving forwards to the new creation of all things, the parousia of Jesus, and the descent of heaven to earth. Therefore, our mission within the story of God, as we move from the overlap of the ages to the consummation of God’s new creation, can be diagrammed as follows:
Becoming: [the Spirit]-[the Son]-[the Godforsaken]-[the Father]
———- [ —————– Gospel-Bearers —————- ]
As the true humanity of God’s new creation, already possessing the Spirit of the new age, the missio Christianus is to follow the cruciform road of the Son, proclaiming a subversive gospel and journeying into godforsakenness, so that we can in that very process, become the image of the Father.
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Sources:
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline.
Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.
N. T. Wright, The Last Word.

2. God's Story: The Missio Dei (conc.)
Shortcomings and Summary
Shortcomings of this Schema
Any model imposed onto a narrative is bound to fall short in some way. The narrative must be read in its entirety and, just as it cannot be reduced to doctrines, it also cannot be reduced to any given number of movements, acts, or types. Such reductions are helpful in order to grasp the big picture but then all the details must be worked through again in light of the big picture. As this is done, the big picture will continually become more nuanced, it will shift a little here and there. Therefore, one must continually move back and forth between the big picture and the details. Furthermore, it must be said that there are other models that have been developed that are also excellent models and well worth using. This should be expected, especially when missiologies are understood as spiritualities. Tom Wright’s model of the biblical narrative as a drama in five parts is just one example of an excellent model that is gaining increasing use. Therefore, I do not think that this model is the only useful model to be used. Indeed, there is some benefit it comparing and contrasting models to see why various authors stress various elements of the story. Having said that, there are two particular critiques of this model that are especially strong.
The first critique comes in regard to the emphasis upon the movement of exile and the movement out of exile. Although the term “exodus” is deliberately avoided, it is easy to substitute the simple word “exodus” for the compound word “out-of-exile.” However, I would encourage the reader not to do so. Although the phrase out-of-exile may appear to be more awkward and less aesthetically pleasing, I would like to insist that the term “exodus” is not an appropriate substitute. History has shown us that an exodus paradigm has been regularly employed in order to justify the oppression and extermination of others. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious today than in the way in which the exodus paradigm is used by the State of Israel to justify the systematic abuse, torture, and murder of Palestinians (and as of today, July 17, 2006, Canadian civilians and children). The problem with an exodus paradigm, as Naim Ateek, a Palestinian liberation theologian, notes, is that the notion of exodus is to intimately linked with that of conquest. Therefore, those who conquer others, tend to use the exodus narrative to justify the brutality of their actions. Thus, both the Christian Boers in Africa and the Christian British in Australia appealed to the exodus story in order to justify the atrocities they committed against the aboriginal people found in those places. By using the language of “out-of-exile,” I hope to avoid this sort of abuse. However, I recognize that this model, divorced form the explicatory content of this paper, still remains vulnerable to those abuses.
Secondly, there is an undeniable male-dominance to the language used within this model. Speaking of God as “Father” and as “Son,” and going on to speak of “becoming the Father” and “becoming the Son,” seems to leave women in a place of marginality – or even invisibility. But, to the best of my abilities, I have tried to avoid male-dominated language. I have spoken of all humanity, both male and female, as the imago Dei. Instead of referring to an Adamic covenant, I have spoken of God’s covenant with Adam and Eve. Instead of a Noahic covenant, I have spoken of a covenant with Noah and his descendants (both male and female). Instead of speaking of an Abrahamic covenant, I have spoken of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah. Even when I spoke of God as Father, I spoke of God giving birth and suffering labor pains – a distinctly female characteristic. I wholeheartedly want to be divorced from any notion of God as male or any theological argument the supports patriarchy and the ongoing abuse and oppression of women. However, I find the language of “Father” and “Son” to be unavoidable, not only given the way it functions within the ecumenical creeds of the Church, but because of the prominent role it plays within the biblical narrative itself. I only hope that my readers will be open to reading those terms in a way divorced from all contemporary notions of gender and sexuality.
God’s Story: summation of the missio Dei
Concluding our reflections upon these four movements within God’s Story, we can make the following summary of the missio Dei, from a trinitarian perspective. The mission of the Father, in the movement of creation and covenant, is to reign and subvert all opposition, to create new life and goodness, to love and to be loved, to rest and to take pleasure in creation, and, with a great deal of humility, to create a covenant partner to fulfill his mission. The mission of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, in the movement of exile and godforsakenness, is to sustain creation by withdrawing from creation, to continue to subvert other powers, and to continually rely upon God’s covenant partner. The mission of the Son, within the movement out-of-exile, is to be the Father’s faithful covenant partner, to fulfill the covenant made with Israel, to fulfill to covenant made with humanity, to enter into godforsakenness and bring exile to an end, and to embody God’s return from his exile, and to prepare the way for the Spirit. Furthermore, the Son, like the Father, continues to fulfill his mission in a way of humility and subversion that confronts all other powers. Finally, the mission of the Spirit, in the movement of the overlap of the ages, is to cause the new age to break into the present all over the cosmos, to bring resurrection life, to restore the people of God to the image of God, to bring light, prophetic truth, and practical guidance, and to comfort all who are afflicted.
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Sources:
Naim Ateek, Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation.
Jane Doe, The Story of Jane Doe: A Book About Rape.
N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God.

2. God's Story: The Missio Dei (cont.)
Movement 4. Overlap: the Mission of the Spirit (sent by the Father and the Son)
The resurrection of Jesus is inevitably followed by the event of Pentecost. Because the resurrection is the eschatological events it necessarily follows that the eschatological Spirit, spoken of in the prophets (cf. esp. Joel 2), should be poured out. Therefore, on Pentecost, the Spirit of the new age is poured out in Jerusalem and, over the course of the Acts narrative, overflows into Samaria, Asia, as it moves from Jerusalem to Rome and inexorably on to the ends of the earth. Of course, the Spirit is only the first fruits of the new age, the Spirit comes only as a down-payment. It continues the process of transformation and new creation begun by Jesus within the present age. Therefore, this fourth movement is defined as a time of overlapping ages.
Within this overlap, the Spirit constantly proclaims to all other powers that their time is now up, that the one creational and covenantal God, revealed in the Lord Jesus, has now come and claimed the entire world as his own. As Karl Barth says, “[t]he game is won, even though the player can still make a few further moves. Actually he is already mated.” The Spirit continues the movement of opposition and subversion that we have now come to recognize as one of the fundamental elements of the missio Dei.
Particularly evident in the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost is the way in which the exile of the nations that occurred at Babel has been overcome. Where before God gave humanity new tongues in order to fracture humanity, God now gives his people new tongues in order to reconcile humanity and unite humanity in Christ. Where before God scattered humanity in exile over the earth, now he commissions his people and sends them out to the ends of the earth proclaiming the end of exile. Just as Jesus brought an end to the exile of Israel and of humanity, now the Spirit calls the Church to bring an end to the exile of the nations that were scattered over the earth. This is the movement in which we now live, it spans from the resurrection of Jesus to the present and on until the return of Jesus in glory.
From a missional perspective it can be said that the Spirit is poured out in order to bring life, light, and comfort. As the Spirit of life, the Spirit brings resurrection life. It transforms God’s people into more than simply “sinners” saved by grace – the Spirit transforms believers into God’s new creation, God’s new humanity incorporated into the crucified and now resurrected and transformed body of Christ. Therefore, the Spirit crafts a kingly people, a people capable of reigning over creation in the way that the Father and the Son reign. The Spirit of life also sets people free from bondage to sin, and allows them to live as forgiven and forgiving people. In this way the Spirit crafts a priestly people. As the Spirit of light, the Spirit reveals truth and provides guidance. The Spirit helps people to discern the times in which they live, and allows people to speak truthfully in a world full of deceit, lies, and manipulation. Therefore, the Spirit crafts a prophetic people. As the Spirit of comfort, the Spirit journeys intimately with all those who suffer and, in this way, the Spirit crafts a loving people. This is a people defined by unity. They are united with both the body of Christ that exists within the Church and the body of Christ that exists among those who are crucified today. The Spirit of comfort crafts a resurrection-people who possess, for the first time, the power to follow Jesus’ road to the cross and Jesus’ descent into hell. In sum, the missional task of the Spirit is to transform people of the old age into people of the new age, and to lead that people in the ongoing process of transformation – both of themselves and of the world around them.
The outpouring of the eschatological Spirit into the people of God introduces a further novum into the missio Dei that points to a consummation of creation that is greater than Edenic existence. At this point of the story, God has become so intimately with his people that he is actually dwells within his people, and causes his people to dwell within himself. Stated in trinitarian terms the Spirit indwells believers as they are incorporated into the body of Christ and therefore confirmed to the image of the Father. Whereas, in the beginning, humanity receives the breath of life and reflects the image of God, now, within the overlap of the ages, humanity is actually being incorporated into the inner trinitarian fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit.
At this point we have completed our sketch of the major movements of the biblical narrative up until the present time. However, there is one final movement –- that of consummation and the new creation of all things, but we shall leave reflections upon that movement until the conclusion of this paper. Therefore, before continuing to discuss how Christians today are to live within this story and embody these movements it is necessary to reflect critically upon this model and then summarize the conclusions we have drawn from the biblical narrative about the missio Dei.
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Sources:
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline.
Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.

2. God's Story: The Missio Dei (cont.)
Movement 3. Out of Exile: the Mission of the Son (commissioned by the Father, empowered by the Spirit)
But the Word, through which all things were made, is himself made flesh in the person of Jesus, and that changes everything. Into a world where darkness and death seem be winning a continual victory the light is born in order to bring life to all. This is the climactic movement of the story: the movement out of exile, accomplished by Jesus, the Son of God, Israel’s Messiah, the new prototype of humanity.
The story of Jesus reveals how God is able to remain faithful to all aspects of his covenant –with creation and humanity, with Abraham and Sarah – while also working through his covenant partners. Jesus fulfills both the vocation of Israel, and the vocation of Adam and Eve. He brings blessings to all people (as Israel should have done) and he reveals the true nature of humanity (as Adam and Eve should have done). This is why Jesus so often refers to himself as the “Son of Man.” The “Son of Man” was a title used in Jewish apocalyptic literature (like Daniel 7) to refer to the people of God, who were God’s true humanity, over against the pagan nations who are represented as ferocious beasts because they have lost track of their true humanity identity. This is also why, Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener when Jesus first appears to here in the garden by the empty tomb. Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener because he now appears as the one who truly fulfills the mandate of Adam and Eve – to care for the garden of creation. Thus, as Moltmann suggests, the eternal Son became human, not just to deal with sin, but to fulfill creation. Jesus, therefore, fulfills both the role of God’s faithful covenant partner, and the role of God being faithful to his covenant! Jesus is both the Son of Man and the Son of God. As Israel’s Messiah, as the faithful representative of Israel, and as the new and true prototype of humanity, Jesus is the true imago Dei. The Father is revealed in the Son, and, once again, we know God as Immanuel – God-With-Us.
Because he is bringing exile to an end, Jesus comes proclaiming the forgiveness of sin, healing the sick, and celebrating with even the most socially despised people – the tax-collectors and the prostitutes (those who were traitors to the cause of freedom and justice, and those who were morally degenerate). Exile, the consequence of sin, was being brought to an end as sin was being forgiven, and, concomitantly, the fracturing of humanity was being healed as the unclean and marginalized were restored to full fellowship with others. God was returning to be with his people and – wonder of wonders – his presence did not bring disastrous floods or damning judgments. His presence brought reconciliation, light, and life.
In Jesus we have the revelation of God with us, not bringing a judgment of hard and fast justice that destroys creation, but bringing a judgment of grace that makes all things new. This is so because Jesus comes, in humility, to serve and to suffer. Building on the hints of divine humiliation found in the movement of creation and developed in the movement of exile, the Son also travels a road of humiliation. The humiliation of God comes to a climax in the life, crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus. Jesus overcomes exile by journeying to the depths of exile with those who are trapped in exile. He brings God to the godforsaken by becoming one of the godforsaken. Jesus so closely identifies himself with those who are in exile, that he experiences ultimate, hopeless, entire alienation from God. Indeed, the “torment in the torments” of Jesus’ death on the cross was his abandonment by God.
Yet, in his humiliation and his humility, Jesus goes silently as a lamb to the slaughter. Thus, the Jewish leaders, who should be leading Israel as a light to the world, condemn and hand over the one who is the true light of the world because he is thought to be a blasphemer; the pagan rules, who actually owe all their authority to God, crucify the one who is the true Lord of the world because he is thought to be a rebel; but most painfully of all, the Father, who has loved the Son more than all others and who has communed in unheard of intimacy with the Son, abandons him so that he can be handed over and killed.
Thus, exile climaxes in the exile of Jesus on the cross, and in the grave. As von Balthasar argues, the death of Jesus, and his descent into hell, complete his solidarity with all those who suffered the hell of death and godforsakenness. Yet it is this “solidarity until the end” that becomes that which brings exile to its shocking conclusion. Those who have been “doomed” by God, even those who have wanted to exist in this state, now discover God with them even in the midst of this experience. Moltmann sums it up well:
through his forsakenness Jesus brought God to the Godforsaken. The Father did not spare his own Son but ‘gave him up for us all’ (Rom 8.31ff), in order through him to be the Father of all the forsaken, the God of the godless and the refuge of those without hope.
Jesus refused to cease suffering, he bore sin and death, and by carrying it, he carried it away. It is the mission of the Son to move into exile. The missio of the Son is to be become godforsaken with the godforsaken and thus put an end to exile and godforsakenness.
This, too, is a subversive action, and the theme of the subversion of all the other powers that was already present in the creation and exile movements surfaces once again. Not only does Jesus overcome sin and the fracturing of the world, he also overcomes socio-political structures of sin and death. Indeed, the whole story of Jesus (and of God) is a gospel story, a story of subversive good news. Of course, in order to understand why good news is also subversive one must understand how the term gospel fits into the local context of Second Temple Judaism and the broader context of the Roman Empire in the first-century. The word “gospel” had two basic meanings then: to the Jew it meant the good news of Israel’s return from exile and the return of God to Zion; to the Greek it meant the good news of the victory, birth, or accession of an emperor. In the Second Testament the term “gospel” incorporates both of these meanings. Therefore, the gospel is not simply a description of how people get saved, it is the narrative proclamation that, stated most compactly, proclaims that “Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is Lord” and that the God of Israel is the one true God over against all false gods and their followers.
The Son is able to become the new prototype of humanity because he fully suffers the consequences incurred by the actions of humanity’s old prototype. As James Dunn writes: “Jesus first shared in the actual destiny of the first Adam (death) before he achieved the intended goal for Adam (dominion over all things).” This is what is confirmed in the resurrection of Jesus. In the resurrection, God vindicates Jesus, in all of his humility, helplessness, and forsakenness. Jesus is revealed as the one true Lord of the cosmos. Not only in his resurrection body (which still bears the wounds of the cross), but also (and perhaps especially) in his broken, bleeding, and dying crucified body, Jesus is the true imago Dei and there is, therefore, a new covenant that takes place in and through Jesus.
Thus, by fulfilling his mission to bring about the end of exile (in all of its dimensions), the Son opens the door for the new creation of all things. The Son reveals the old age of godforsakenness, darkness and death is passing away, and the new age of intimacy with God, of light and of life, has already begun. The eschaton has begun. The exile of Israel is over, the exile of humanity is over, the exile of creation is over, and the exile of God is over! God has returned, God is once again God with us, and he is now in the process of making all things new and of becoming all in all.
Therefore, the mission of the Son is to fulfill the mission of Israel, embodying cruciform obedience, in order to bring light and life to the world. Furthermore, the mission of the Son is to fulfill the original Edenic mission of humanity, to rule over creation as the Father rules, and thereby reveal the Father to the world. Indeed, by fulfilling the mission of Israel and of humanity, the Son begins to fulfill the missio Dei which moves from creation to new creation, from goodness to greater goodness, from life to resurrection life. Of course, in order to properly fulfill all three of these aspects of his mission, the Son also becomes the Godforsaken One and is, therefore, vindicated as the Resurrected Lord. Finally, the mission of the Son is to prepare the way for the Spirit. The Son inaugurates the new age so that the eschatological Spirit can be poured out. Therefore, speaking in trinitarian terms, we can conclude that the Son, is both commissioned by the Father and the definitive revelation of the Father; and the Son is both empowered by the Spirit and prepares the way for the Spirit.
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Sources:
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology: IV, and Mysterium Paschale.
Daniel M. Bell Jr., Liberation Theology After the End of History: the refusal to cease suffering.
James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle.
Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, God in Creation, The Trinity and the Kingdom, and The Crucified God.
N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, The New Testament and the People of God, and Romans.

2. God's Story: The Missio Dei (cont.)
Movement 2. Exile and Godforsakenness
The next major movement following creation and covenant is that of exile and godforsakenness. Just as the most foundational biblical covenant is that which God enters into with Adam and Eve (and, by implication, the rest of creation), so also the most foundational exile, the exile which is the lens through which all other exiles are to be viewed, is the exile of Adam and Eve from the garden in Eden. It is essential that the reader realizes the active role God plays in this event. Exile from the garden is not simply the inevitable consequence of the actions taken by Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. Rather, exile, and all that comes with it, is imposed by divine decree. It is God who creates enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, it is God who increases the woman’s pain in childbearing, it is God who curses the ground because of the man’s actions. It is God who will no longer allow the humanity to walk and talk with him in the shade of the garden. God “banishes” humanity, humanity is “driven out” of the garden, and God ensures that they will not be able to return. Humanity is exiled and creation is cursed and broken.
This fundamental exile of humanity from the garden goes on to be worked out in two other major exilic occurrences, and both of these events are connected with further covenants that build upon the original covenant made with Adam, Eve, and all creation. The second major exile occurs in Genesis 11, at the end of the primordial history. Although an exceedingly bleak history, there is a moment of hope when God reaffirms his original covenant with humanity by entering into a covenant with Noah and his descendents. Yet, the narrative of the occurrences on the plain of Shinar at a city called “Babel” brings the primordial history to its lowest point. At Babel, God not only fractures the earth, he fractures humanity, and drives the nations into exile. Humanity is scattered over the face of the earth. Upon until this point in the primordial history God had appeared to be committed to renewing creation, despite its ongoing brokenness. Even the devastation wrought by the flood is a part of this. Although the flood is terrible, God is still actively working to make the world new again. But at Babel things are different. Now it appears that God is no longer working to make things new. Instead of being present, even if God’s presence means judgment, God seems to withdraw. Humanity is scattered and, to the horror of the reader, God seems to abandon humanity, and all creation, to itself and to the consequences of its own actions. The movement into godforsakenness that began at Eden now seems to have come to completion. The primordial history ends and God does not renew his covenant.
But, after an indeterminate amount of time, God remembers the covenant he made with creation through Adam, Eve, and Noah’s family. Therefore, he enters into a covenant with Abram and Sarai, renamed Abraham and Sarah, so that the exile of the nations can be brought to an end, and so that creation can be made new. God reaffirms this covenant with Abraham’s son Isaac, and with Isaac’s son Jacob, renamed Israel, and in this way the Israelites are born and become God’s chosen people. Israel is to fulfill the role of Adam and Eve, she is to become God’s true humanity. Acting as God’s vice-regent she is to make all things new and bring exile to an end. But, once again, it is not long before things go wrong. Israel, fails in her vocation, and instead of becoming a part of God’s solution she becomes a part of the problem. Therefore, as Tom Wright concludes: “That which was wrong with the rest of the world was wrong with Israel, too.” Consequently, Israel, too, goes into exile. She is removed from the land in which God rooted her, and her holy city, Jerusalem is destroyed and the temple of her God is desecrated and burned with fire. Indeed, even after Israel returns to the land, she continues to live within an exilic state, as she is ruled by pagans or, at best, compromised Jews. Therefore, the exile of all creation from the garden, moves to the exile of the nations at Babel, and culminates in the exile of God’s called-out-people, Israel. Therefore, the movement of ever-specific covenants, and ever-deeper exiles can be diagrammed as follows:
Covenant Partner: [Humanity]-[The Nations)]-[ Israel ]
Exiled from: —— [ -Eden- ]-[ — Babel — ]-[the Land]
This exile must be understood as the experience of complete abandonment by God. The state of exile is the state of godforsakenness. In order to grasp the extent of this forsakenness it is useful to put this argument into trinitarian terms. First of all, God the Father abandons his children. The Father abandons creation. Even more shocking, the Father abandons his firstborn son, understood within the biblical narrative as humanity first of all and Israel secondarily. Secondly, God the Son abandons his beloved. The notion of the people of God as the Son’s Beloved, is appropriate because the First Testament language of God as Lover, and God’s people as his beloved, is taken up in the Second Testament in the language of Jesus as the groom and God’s people as his bride. Within the state of exile, the one who was once called Beloved becomes the one who is called Godforsaken. Thirdly, God the Spirit of life of vision and of comfort, abandons creation to death, to blindness and to sorrow. Nowhere is this more vividly portrayed than in the account of the Spirit’s withdrawal from the temple in Jerusalem. Without the Spirit, exile is a foregone conclusion. Therefore, all Israel can to in such a situation is lament… and die serving pagan rulers in a foreign land.
The way in which this movement subverts any claims that assume God’s presence and God’s blessing deserves to be explicitly highlighted. The state of “manifest destiny” is fragile at best, but is more likely a completely illusory notion used by powers in order to justify self-serving actions. Recognizing exile and godforsakenness challenges all who claim to have a monopoly upon God, upon truth, or upon goodness. The movement of exile is just as subversive to the powers as the creation movement.
However, the question is this: how does exile and godforsakenness fit into the missio Dei? If some hesitancy was required in speaking of the Father’s purposes for creation, surely even more hesitancy is required here. However, the motif of covenant helps us to find at least the start of an answer to this question. Because a large part of God’s missional intention is that his mission should be done through his representatives, exile reveals how committed God is to acting only through his covenant partner(s). Furthermore, godforsakenness is, paradoxically, a part of God’s ongoing sustaining of creation. As the flood narrative shows, God’s response to humanity’s continual breaking of the covenant and of the world could potentially destroy the entire created order. Therefore, instead of choosing to be present in a way that would cause the world to be destroyed, God chooses to become absent. Indeed, godforsakenness is then to be understood as an act of God’s covenant faithfulness. God has committed himself to his creation and to his people and so, instead of being present in a way that would abolish that covenant, God removes himself. Furthermore, because God’s mission is to love and to be loved, the experience of godforsakenness reveals the extent to which God is willing go in order to not impose himself forcefully upon his creation. Therefore, as much as the experience of godforsakenness is the experience of exile for creation, godforsakenness occurs because God chooses to go into exile away from those he loves, and those whose love he desires. Creation goes into exile because God exiles himself from creation. This also develops the theme of God’s humiliation that begin with the self-limitations God imposed upon himself when he birthed the heavens and the earth. Here, God is revealed as so humble that he will not fulfill his mission except through his covenant partner. If God’s covenant partner fails, then God also fails. If God’s people become helpless, God, too, shares that helplessness. This, indeed, is a bleak picture. The darkness that has swirled around the story seems to have become impenetrable. God will not be present with creation so that creation will not be destroyed by his presence. Yet creation, apart from God, is doomed to destroy itself. This movement seems to leave us with the conclusion that even God is incapable of bringing about his missional purposes in the world. The movement of creation and covenant told a story of God with us. The movement of exile and godforsakenness tells a story of God not with us.
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Sources:
N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, and Jesus and the Victory of God.

Please note: I will now be deleting all comments that I feel engage in too much of a personal attack against other commentators. It's okay to be critical, it's okay to be provocative, but if you're just throwing names around, or playing word games in order to upset people, I will erase what is written — even if you make a decent point in another part of your comment. I will, however, be more willing to leave more controversial comments if you attach your name to the comment. Anonymous comments that attack people will no longer be tolerated. Furthermore, I will have less patience with comments that are left in order to incite other commentators, and I will have more patience with comments that are left in order to incite me.
I mention this because I deleted an anonymous response to Abe's comment on my post entitled “Go Forth in Peace.” For a good example of a provocative comment that doesn't cross the line read Josh's retraction on my post about prostitution (as an aside, I'm still a little disappointed that that post became about me… hello? I was trying to spark thought about prostitution!). For a good example of the type of comment that will no longer be tolerated read Hewson's first comment that sparked this whole… whatever it is.
So those are the “rules.” Sorry, if you don't like them, but then again, if you don't like the rules (or my blog) you don't have to stick around. Of course, I hope you do, maybe we can all learn something from each other… but let's speak “truth” just a bit more lovingly.
Grace and peace.

2. God's Story: The Missio Dei (cont.)
Movement 1. Creation and Covenant: the Mission of the Father (through the Son by the Spirit)
“God created.” All else flows from this. God’s act of creation is the opening act of the biblical narrative and it shapes the entire story. However, the biblical story, although it is primarily God’s story -– it is shaped by God, and focuses on God -– does not tell us about what God did (or was) prior to creation. Genesis 1/2 is the beginning of the story of God’s relationship with creation but not the beginning of the story of God per se. We are plunged blindly into the “middle” of the story of God. Indeed, we later discover that God has created prior to the beginning of “the heavens and the earth” but we are only provided mere hints of that story. One could then argue that the original creation is already a “new” creation. Therefore, although the bible relates a story that is first and foremost about God, Genesis 1/2 is the beginning of a story about God and creation, or, stated more compellingly, it is a story about God with us –- God with his creatures, God with his cosmos. The fact that God is first of all known as “Creator” means that God is connected to creation. Already we begin to glimpse the biases of the biblical record of history and we begin to realize why the motif of covenant is so intimately connected to that of creation. Thus, we begin to glimpse how the entire biblical story, beginning with the movement of creation, is a story about the missio Dei. It is God’s story, but it is a story about God’s intentions for, and what God does with and amongst, creation.
Of course, the presence of biases, polemics, and inserted connections and meanings is why the biblical record reads like a story and not like an encyclopedia. Therefore, when reading the creation account, one would expect to find the same subjectivity. The author(s) and redactor(s) of Genesis 1/2 are not simply providing a creation account because it was an historical occurrence that should be recorded for posterity’s sake. God is not simply called “Creator” because creation had to come from somewhere. The act of creation and the fact that God is named Creator are recorded in order to tell the reader very specific things about God and the cosmos.
The first major emphasis found in the biblical account of God as Creator is that of monotheism. Creation is the act of one God, not many gods. Polytheism is denied. Furthermore, creation is created by God, and so it is not divine itself. Pantheism is also denied. The one true God is the Creator, and creation belongs within the missional intentions of the one true God, it does not arise out of a conflict between the gods, nor is it preexistent. Indeed, as Gordon Wenham systematically demonstrates, the account recorded in Gen 1/2 is written in such as way as to function as a polemic repudiation and demythologization of other ancient creation narratives. Furthermore, this creational polemic against all other gods is also a polemic against all the empires, rules, and powers that serve these other gods. As Walter Brueggemann suggests, the liturgical polemics of Genesis 1/2, by dismissing the claims of false gods, allow an alternative world to be crafted in opposition to the world as it is imagined by the powers. As we shall see, this creational assertion leads inevitably to the claim that the mission of the Father, as Creator, is fundamentally a mission that stands in opposition to the mission and intentions of all the powers that arise after the exile of creation occurs.
However, it must be clearly stated that monotheism, in the creation account and the rest of the First Testament, is not so concerned with a metaphysical analysis of the inner being of the one God. Instead it is an assertion that the God of this Testament is the one true God over against all others who attempt to claim this title and authority. This is why the First Testament, despite it’s radical assertions of monotheism can posit a divine Wisdom, a divine Shekinah, a divine Word, a divine Torah, and a divine Spirit. Even the most radical assertion of monotheism in the First Testament, the Shema, is not a metaphysical proposition; it is, as Tom Wright says, “a battle-cry of the nation that believed it’s god to be the only god.” This is why the First Testament account of creation can also be restated from a trinitarian perspective: Creation is the work of the Father done through the Son by the Spirit. Such an assertion actually fits quite comfortably within the First Testament’s understanding of the being of the one God.
Therefore, by laying claim to the title of Creator, the God of the bible intends to be known as the one and only God. It is not just any God that made the world, it is this God, known, after Jesus, as Father, who did so. The world is not shaped by the mission of just any divine Creator-Being, the world is shaped by the mission of this Father-God. Knowing the Creator as Father strengthens the suggestion that the creation story leads us to read the story of God as a story of God with us. Already, in the very beginning, God, the Father and Creator, can be tentatively named Immanuel -– God-With-Us.
This notion is further strengthened when the kenotic elements of creation are highlighted. By choosing to become the Creator of the world, by choosing to create an extra Deum, God chooses to impose limitations upon himself. As Jurgen Moltmann argues: “In order to create a world ‘outside’ himself, the infinite God must have made room beforehand for finitude in himself.” Therefore, drawing from the kabalistic notion of zimsum, Moltmann, in his notion of a Christian panentheism, argues that creation results when God withdraws into himself in order to create space outside of himself within himself. John Goldingay pushes this thought one step further when he addresses First Testament references to creation as being birthed by God. Birthing moves us from the language of voluntary humiliation, it also incorporates the notion of suffering into this humiliation. Therefore, one wonders if suffering is a part of God’s mission – even before the exile of creation occurs!
These three things –- the polemical claim of creational monotheism against other gods and other powers, the claim that the Creator is also Father, and the claim that creation is a kenotic movement – help us to realize why the notion of covenant is so intimately linked to that of creation. Indeed, a large part of the Father’s missional intention in the act of creation was that of creating a people who would participate within, and fulfill, his mission in the cosmos. This is why the faith of Israel is most simply described as a creational and covenantal monotheism; in the First Testament, the act of election cannot be separate from the movement of creation. Of course, it is humanity that is created as the covenant partner that shares in God’s mission. God’s first, and most foundational covenant is the covenant with Adam and Eve and all other covenantal developments must be understood in light of this. Adam and Eve are created in the image of God and, therefore, function as God’s vice-regents of creation. Indeed, because Adam and Eve are the representatives of the human race, it is humanity as a whole that is the imago Dei, and God’s vice-regents. Thus, it could be said that the one God chooses one representative in creation, the Father-God, claims humanity has his Son, and the humble God embraces vulnerability by laying creation in the (hopefully responsible) hands of his vice-regents.
However, to suggest that the missio Dei of the Father, as the one Creator God, is to create a people who will be a part in his mission is a woefully inadequate answer if left by itself. What is the mission within which humanity is created to participate? When one looks to the creation account for the answer to this question, one quickly realizes that one is imposing a question upon the text that the text is not seeking to answer. Genesis 1/2 does not want to tell the reader why God created the world; Genesis 1/2 wants to tell the reader that God created the world. Indeed, the entire biblical narrative seems to be hesitant to speak of why God chose to become involved with creation, or about why God chose to become Creator, at all. However, a few suggestions can be offered as to what the missio Dei entails at this point. First of all, the mission of the Father is to reign over creation. If humanity is created to be God’s vice-regents, the proper conclusion to be drawn from this is that God is the one true sovereign over all things. Secondly, the mission of the Father is to give life. In creation the Father gives birth to an astounding variety of life forms, from plant, to animal, to human. Thirdly, the mission of the Father is to affirm goodness. The resounding refrain of the creation narrative is the divine affirmation of the goodness of what is made. However, it is interesting to note that, prior to the creation of the heavens and the earth, life and goodness both already existed. Thus, it can also be stated that the mission of the Father is to create new life and to affirm new forms of goodness, because to do so is better and/or more pleasurable than leaving things as they are. In this regard, the comments Moltmann makes about the missio Dei are quite intriguing. Moltmann argues that creation is “the fruit of God’s longing for ‘his Other’” and he goes on to say that “[f]rom eternity God has desired not only himself but the world too.” God creates the world, not because he has need of the world, but because he desires it. God has no need of another lover, but because God’s love is moving ever outwards, God creates the world. Therefore, working this notion into trinitarian terms, Moltmann concludes: “The Father creates the world out of his eternal love through the Son, for the purpose of finding a response to his love in time, in the power of the Holy Spirit.” In light of these things, we can say is that, fourthly, the missio Dei is to love and to be loved. It is the Father’s mission to delight in and with creation. Finally, we can also say that it is the mission of the Father to rest in and with creation. The Sabbath, here understood as God’s day of rest, comes as the climatic and ultimate event of creation, and of all the times mentioned in creation it is the only time that is explicitly and emphatically blessed by God.
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Sources:
Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy.
Stephen Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible.
John Goldingay, Theology of the Old Testament: Israel's Gospel.
Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation, and The Trinity and the Kingdom.
Gord Wenham, Genesis 1-11..
Tom Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, and What Saint Paul Really Said.

In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein stresses the claim that application is a criterion for understanding (cf. 1.143ff). It is through repeated attempts at application that one comes to grasp the meaning of a particular task. Apart from application there is no genuine understanding of any given task. We may think that we have things figured out, but until we actually attempt to apply that knowledge we will never know if we are correct or incorrect in our assumptions. Indeed, Wittgenstein argues that until we apply our knowledge, our knowledge is mistaken in some way. Practice seems to confirm this suspicion. How many examples do we have from our own lives where we thought we had things figured out only to discover that things are either far different or far more complicated when the rubber actually meets the road? A few hypothetical examples: I thought I trusted God… until I ran out of money and panicked. I thought I had a clear grasp on the homosexuality discussion… until I was befriended by a homosexual couple who are dedicated to following Jesus together. You get the picture. Hell, I thought I wasn't addicted to smoking… until I tried to quit (three months clean, by the way!).
What is interesting is the way in which Wittgenstein's claims overlap with the claims Jim Wallis makes in his book The Call to Conversion (IMHO this book, and not God's Politics is Wallis' best work). Wallis claims that we cannot love the poor, unless we are in active and intimate relationships with those who are poor. Indeed, bringing Wittgenstein and Wallis together, it could be said that we do not even know what it means to love the poor until we are in a dynamic relationship with them.
I suspect that this is part of the reason why mainstream Christianity does not want to listen to voices from those who journey alongside of those who are in exile. Those who do not engage in active relationships with the crucified people of today have a fundamentally different understanding of love. In essence, to continue the thoughts of Wittgenstein, the language-game played by Christians on the margins is fundamentally different than the language-game played by mainstream Christianity.
Which is why, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter all that much if people agree or disagree with me on this blog. Only, if you will not give me a voice, please do this: journey into deeper intimacy with those who are in exile — with the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the isolated, the sick, and the abandoned. It is there, and not here on the internet, that you will learn what it means to love as God loves.
Let us all go forth in peace.

[Note: I have revised my model somewhat. I was always intending to include a fifth stage in my conclusion, but I decided to rename the fourth stage and make mention of the fifth stage now.]
2. God’s Story: The Missio Dei
On Finding a Useful Model: why Creation-Fall-Recreation is not enough
Reflecting upon the story of God from a missiological perspective does not do violence to the nature of the biblical narrative. That is to say, reading the bible missiologically is not imposing a external lens upon the text. The story of God is fundamentally missiological, and reading it as such is simply to recognize that there is a telos to the story. This is not simply a story that is told for the sake of being told. This is a purposeful story, told purposefully. Furthermore, the purpose inherent to the story is not one that is simply fabricated by human authors. The story of God is purposeful because God is purposeful. The story of God is a story of God’s missional intentions and activities. As such, the biblical story of God is the story of the missio Dei.
In order to understand the mission of God, it is necessary to examine the story in its entirety. To do this within the limited scope of this paper, it is necessary to impose a schema upon the text. Instead of examining every passage, and every episode, we will examine the story through the lens of a series of movements. Of course, the most simple and most prominent schema used to do this is that of creation-fall-recreation. However, there are a few reasons to reject this model. To begin with, this model makes history appear as a cyclical movement. It seems to suggest that the entire goal of history is to get back a state of original perfection. Put even more simply, this model suggests we were created good, we became bad, but we will be made good again. Such an approach to the biblical meaning generates a significant crisis of meaning. If this is the trajectory of history, why is it taking so long to come to completion? Furthermore, if creation is just traveling “back to the garden” then we did God permit the fall in the first place? Granted, this model proposes a way in which evil is overcome but it does suggest that everything between creation and recreation is essentially meaningless. This model cannot account for God’s purpose for the fall; it cannot explain how the fall is a part of God’s activity. Within this model the fall is primarily a necessary result of human activity. Consequently, within this view of the fall, God is designated a fundamentally passive, responsive role, not an initiating, active role. This paper wants to suggest that such a view of the event of the fall is fundamentally flawed. Therefore, although a simple three-stage schema is appealing, we must reject this model as overly simplistic and even misleading.
Instead of a three stage creation-fall-recreation model, this paper proposes a five-stage model of (1) creation and covenant; (2) exile (3) out-of-exile; (4) overlap; (5) new creation of all things. This model is much stronger for several reasons. To begin with, it overcomes the cyclical perspective that the first model seems to impose on history. The end result of God’s work is not recreation – it is not restoring broken icons to their original perfection – rather, it is new creation – it is the transformation of God’s good creation, which became broken, into something even greater than it originally was. Thus, God’s act of new creation is just as much of a novum as God’s original act of creatio ex nihilo. The language of “recreation” does not sufficiently grasp this point. Furthermore, by employing “exile” language in place of “fall” language, this model presents a God that is intimately active and involved in all movements of the story. Humanity did not simply fall from grace, humanity was also cast out of the garden and sent into exile by God. As much as the current state of affairs is the result of human sinfulness it is also the result of godforsakenness. Finally, by incorporating the motifs of covenant and new covenant, this model stresses that humanity is not only God’s partner in the event of exile. Human does not simply play an active role in the fall. Humanity is God’s partner in all of God’s missional activity, and in the entire movement of the biblical story. God’s mission becomes humanity’s mission, and this is why the Church that tells God’s story, seeks to also live within that story.
Therefore, this section will present God’s story through the lens of five basic movements (that sometimes blur together and repeat on different levels): the movement of creation and covenant, the movement into exile, the movement out of exile, the movement of the overlap of the ages; and the movement of new creation. Creation and covenant will be explored as the mission of the Father, exile will be explored as the withdrawal of the missional activity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, the end of exile will be explored as the mission of the Son, the overlap will be explored as the mission of the Spirit, and the new creation of all things (which we will not address until the conclusion) will be explored as the mission of the trinity. Therefore, this missional movement can be diagrammed as follows:
[Creation & Covenant]-[Exile]-[Out-of-Exile]-[Overlap]-[New Creation of all]
[ ——– Father ——- ]-[ -?– ]-[ —-Son—– ]-[ -Spirit- ]-[ —–trinity—– ]
Particularly important to this model is the significance of exile and the resulting question of godforsakenness within the broader story of God’s missional activity. Indeed, the transformation of godforsakenness is one of the most wondrous elements of both God’s mission and the Christian mission, but we are, once again, skipping ahead in our argument. Therefore, let us start our exploration of this model, where the biblical story starts – “in the beginning.”