As I work on the literature review for my dissertation, I am examining Missiological Theology as a framework indigenous expressions of church as a movement. I will be posting reflections on my readings here, as a form of pre-writing. This post represents one in that series of reflections.
It was announced today that the United States has entered armed conflict with Iran, joining in Israel’s bombing campaign against the nation. In the tense week leading up to this decision, Mike Huckabee—the US ambassador to Israel—sent a text message to President Donald Trump, in which he encouraged Trump, stating, “I believe you will hear from heaven,” and comparing his decision to Harry Truman, evoking the latter’s deployment of nuclear bombs upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki.1
The purpose of this article is not to provide commentary on politics or armed conflict, neither of which its author is qualified to discuss. But the exchange between Huckabee and Trump draws attention to the curious fact that evangelicals seem to be the most vocal supporters of Israel’s military goals. Before he was the ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee was an evangelical pastor. Surveys have shown that eschatological beliefs about the modern state of Israel fulfilling end-times prophesy lead it to enjoy broad support among conservative Christians in the United States. It has even been suggested that the likelihood of support increases with frequency of church attendance.2
To those outside the evangelical movement, Christ’s non-violent disposition3 may seem at odds with a willingness to support war, but many within the movement experience little cognitive dissonance, often citing Augustine’s Just War Theory as justification.4 Augustine argued that those who have “waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government” and thus have not broken the commandment against killing.5
Regardless of one’s stance on matters of geopolitics, all this begs the question of how individual Christians might engage those outside the church. Are we to adopt a militant posture, antagonistically challenging a world out of step with its creator? Or are we to acquiesce in fickle love, avoiding the truth because we do not wish to offend? This article will answer these questions by demonstrating the irenic nature of missiological theology, and investigating how it might be done.
Dialogical or Dialectical?
In its intercultural engagement, missiological theology holds that “the missionary endeavor is at the same time dialogical and contemplative rather than dialectical and judgmental.”6 Michael Cooper notes that Paul’s respectful posture in Athens led to his invitation by its philosophers to witness to Christ in the Areopagus. Despite feeling “greatly distressed”7 over the many idols of the city, his “respectful dialogue, observation of culture, and knowledge of history were instrumental in Paul’s formation of a missiological theocentric gospel message.”8
It is this respectful and dialogical disposition that Dietrich Bonhoeffer explicitly connects to previously discussed concepts of God in Christ’s activity among all peoples:
Disciples can encounter people only as those to whom Jesus himself comes. Jesus’ struggle for the other person, his call, his love, his grace, his judgement are all that matters. Thus the disciples do not stand in a disposition from which the other is attacked. Instead, in the truthfulness of Jesus’ love they approach the other person with an unconditional offer of community.9
Missiological theology sees this community as a hermeneutical one,10 in which the missionary and the representative of culture, along with the wisdom of history, discover together the ways in which the story of a culture is connected to God’s story.11
Irenic Engagement
This kind of community cannot be built on a dialectical framework. In his discussion about how Christians should interact with religious others, Harold Netland insists that Christianity should interact with graciousness, seeking to persuade people through culturally appropriate means, and “be fair in its treatment of other perspectives, willingly acknowledging what is true and good in them even as it points out what is false or otherwise problematic.”12 It should also reject “any activity that is manipulative or coercive, or otherwise infringes upon the dignity of the other.”13
But this does not mean Christians should withhold sincere attempts to persuade others to become disciples of Jesus. Netland identifies the predominant religious pluralism of the modern globalist age. He maintains that “it is difficult indeed to embrace a thoroughgoing pluralism so long as we have the scandal of mutually incompatible truth claims.”14 As a transnational missionary faith, Christianity makes a claim of public truth, which demands all people in a society to either accept or reject it.15
Netland thus identifies three obligations Christians have toward religious others:
To make disciples of religious others.
To love religious others.
To treat religious others the way Christians would want to be treated by them.16
Collective Intelligence and Missiological Exegesis
So, if missiological theology seeks to include others in an irenic discovery of what God is doing within a culture, how can this be done, practically? I have written previously comparing the mind of Christ to a kind of sanctified collective intelligence.17 James Surowiecki provides a simple, straightforward definition of collective intelligence: “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.”18
Those right circumstances include diversity situated around a clear, unifying purpose, and algorithmic feedback loops involving the implementation of new ideas, evaluation of those ideas, and restructuring of the group accordingly. When these circumstances are employed for missiological purposes, they constitute the mind of Christ, directing his body with wisdom from heaven.19
Thus, missiological theology is best done by assembling a group representing diverse perspectives, who are united by the conviction that God is at work within a culture. The result of this group’s dialogue should be new and innovative concepts that produce churches and disciples at home in their culture and multiplying. These ideas resist the temptation toward institutionalization, as they maintain the flexibility required to adjust their thinking and practice according to the real life experiences in the culture.20
Cooper calls this missiological exegesis. It is the practice of dialoging with people, observing a culture, and studying its history in an effort to connect the story of a people with the story of God.21 But this does not result in redemptive analogies popularized by books such as Peace Child.22 Instead, missiological theology seeks to tell “true stories of Christ’s redemptive activities related to culture accurately and meaningfully.”23
Missiological Hermeneutics
These true stories of Jesus come from an understanding of the Bible as a missionary document. It is in the context of making disciples and planting churches among diverse peoples that the writers of the New Testament produced their testimony.24 Christoper Wright expands this to the Old Testament as well, insisting that “the whole Bible is itself a ‘missional phenomenon.’”25
For this reason he proposes the story of God’s mission of self-revelation to the nations as an interpretive lens for scripture. Although he calls this a missional hermeneutic, by his own definitions, it might be more appropriate to consider it a missiological hermeneutic, because it involves reflection upon the nature of God in Christ.26 This is reflected in Christ’s apparition to the men on the road to Emmaus, when he “explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”27
This is not to say that missiological theology rejects hermeneutical approaches found in systematics, biblical, or historical theology. It instead comes alongside these approaches as a fourth wheel of theology “to focus on the intersection of the sociological and anthropological with the theological and forms a uniquely missiological engagement with diverse cultures.”28 It recognizes that all theologies are contextual.29 Rather than prioritizing any one as normative, it instead appreciates God’s self-revelation to the nations in Christ as a starting point for theology.30 In this way, a hermeneutical space is opened for many different expressions of theology to engage with one another.31
Conclusion
The actual practice of missiological theology is best described as “doing theology in community.”32 It sees all human beings as made in the image of God and, though marred by sin, His work can be seen in all human cultures implicitly. Therefore, it makes disciples partly by inviting them into a community that values their insight, in dialogue with the faithful witness of scripture. In this way, it encourages indigenous expressions of faith rooted in a global theology that values the local.
This concludes the second portion of my literature review focusing on missiological theology by examining the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of missiological theology.
Mike Huckabee, in a text message that Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, Truth Social, accessed June 22, 2025, https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114698784693311065
Motti Inbari, M. Gorgon Byrd, and Kirill Buman, “Why Do Evangelicals Support Israel?” in Politics and Religion 14, Jan 2020, 1-36, 10.1017/S175504831900052X.
See Matthew 26:51-54 (NIV)
“Evangelical Statement in Support of Israel,” The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, accessed June 22, 2025
Augustine of Hippo, City of God, 1.21
Michael Cooper, Innovative Disruption (forthcoming) 51.
Acts 17:16 (NIV)
Michael T. Cooper, Ephesiology: A Study of the Ephesian Movement (Littleton, CO: William Carey Publishing, 2020) 90.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003) 170.
Paul Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2001) 100-101.
Cooper, Ephesiology, 71.
Harold Netland, Christianity and Religious Diversity: Clarifying Christian Commitments in a Globalizing Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015) 247.
Ibid.
Harold Netland, Encountering the Religious Other: The Challenge to Christian Faith & Mission (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001) 188
Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell : The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1991) 1-2
Netland, Christianity and, 236.
A. K. Amberg, “Success, Failure, and the Mind of Christ: How Collective Intelligence Turns our Losses into Victory” in Seedbed (Forthcoming)
James Suroweicki, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2004) loc 62
Amberg, “Success, Failure”
Cooper, Ephesiology, 153.
Ibid, 284.
Don Richardson, Peace Child (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2005)
Cooper, Innovative, 64
David Bosch, Transforming Mission : Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011) Chapter 1, the Mother of Theology
Christopher Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006) 22
Ibid, 24
Luke 24:27 (NIV)
Cooper, Innovative, 11.
Stephen B. Bevans, Essays in Contextual Theology (Boston, MA: Brill, 2018) 30
Cooper, Ephesiology, 79.
William Dyrness, Insider Jesus : Theological Reflections on New Christian Movements (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016) ix
Cooper, Ephesiology, 20