T. V. Philip, born in India and a lay member of the Mar Thoma Church, has worked and taught in India, Europe, USA and Australia. He is a church historian, and a former Professor at the United Theological College, Bangalore, India.
This book was published jointly by CSS and ISPCK, 1999, Kashmere Gate, Delhi, India. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.
SUMMARY
(ENTIRE BOOK) An historical study of the ecumenical discussions on mission as expressed in the conferences and assemblies of the International Missionary Council and the World Council of Churches.
Chapters
- Preface
This book is a study of the great missionary conferences covering the period of the first world missionary conference at Edinburgh 1910 to the last ecumenical conference at Salvador 1996. This is an important period in which significant developments in mission theology took place.
- Chapter 1: The Missionary Background of the Modern Ecumenical Movement
Pietism in Germany, the evangelical efforts of the Wesleys and Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards as one of the leaders of the great awakening – these cultivated the fertile soil for the modern Protestant missionary movement.
- Chapter 2: Church and Mission
In the beginning, there was a separation between church and mission giving a disastrous consequence to both. In the beginning, the mission was considered to be from East to West; there were problems relating to the trinity; their were problems relating to the younger churches. The growth of mission was dependent up the solution of these and other problems
- Chapter 3: Mission and Unity
It was not the aim of the early protestant missionary movement, but it was ecumenical, hence the mission of the church and the unity of the church were recognized as belonging together but not until after some tension between the two.
- Chapter 4: World, Mission, and Church
Mission discovered the church between 1919 and 1960, but the next twenty years saw the church discovering the world as the locus of its life and mission. The missionary movement was very slow in recognizing the importance of the secular world in its thinking, but thanks to great theologians such as Bonhoffer and others it became clear that the church’s nature and function needed to be rethought in relation to God’s concern for the whole world.
- Chapter 5: Ecumenical — Evangelical Polarity
There is tension between the terms “Ecumenical” and “Evangelical.” These terms have become symbols of opposed positions and divisons: the former term refers to those who would transform society, the latter, those who would emphasize evangelism and personal conversion.
- Chapter 6: The Kingdom of God and Mission
The church-centric view of mission versus the Kingdom of God: A review of the tension not only between mission and church, but between mission; church and society.
- Chapter 7: Mission and The World of Religions and Cultures
A discussion concerning the necessity of finding a way of reconciling Christian theism with the truth of Aristotle and the world of Muslim scholars concerning scholasticism, and the continuing problem that develops where the dynamic interactions between the Gospel and cultures inevitable raise the question of syncretism.
- Appendix: Mission and Evangelism — An Ecumenical Affirmation
The statement on mission made by the World Council of Churches in 1982. This included lengthy discussion with churches from all over the world.
- Selected Bibliography