A Light to the Nations: The Scriptural Origins of Christian Mission
Martin Hengel wrote that: ‘The irresistible expansion of Christian faith in the Mediterranean world during the first 150 years is the scarlet thread running through any history of primitive Christianity’.[1] In the words of the Jewish scholar Martin Goodman: ‘Christianity spread primarily because many Christians believed that it was positively desirable for non-Christians to join their faith and accrete to their congregations’.[2] Similar is Ramsay MacMullen: ‘The impulse to reach out from the inside was a part of belief itself’.[3]
I would be prepared to argue that the missionary orientation embedded within the early church is partly attributable to the impact of the historical Jesus upon his closest followers. What is also evident from a reading of the Pauline letters and Acts is that the Christian mission arose out of the belief that the eschaton had dawned in Jesus’ resurrection, the experience of the Holy Spirit in the early Christian communities and, importantly, reading the Old Testament in light of those two convictions.
In terms of how the mission was generated by a reading of Scripture, it was Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6, which both refer to Israel as a “light to the nations,” that was very influential.
In terms of Israel’s role vis-à-vis the nations, Julius Wellhausen punned that: ‘There is no God but Yahweh, and Israel is his prophet.’[4]
A striking pattern emerges in Isaiah 40-55 where the Servant, as the representative of Israel par excellence, is Yahweh’s chosen instrument to extend salvation to the outer parts of the earth. The transformation or revivification of Israel from exile, bondage and spiritual death also results in the transformation of the nations around her. As the book of Isaiah develops ‘it is possible to trace a progression in terms of the nations sharing in the salvation to come with the restoration of Israel’.[5] This theme crystallizes in Isaiah 42 and 49 respectively:
1 Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. 2 He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; 3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. 4 He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. 5 Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: 6 I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, 7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness (Isa 42:1-7 [NRSV]).
The Isaianic Servant either is Israel or else is an individual of some kind who represents Israel.
The Isaianic theme also has a prominent place in Luke-Acts. In the Lucan infancy narrative, Simeon announces that in the baby Jesus he has seen ‘a light for revelation to the Gentiles’ (Lk 2:32; echoing Ps 98:3; Isa 52:10; 49:6). This motif is also paradigmatic in Acts where Jews and Gentile alike are co-recipients of the salvation through Jesus. Walt Kaiser suggests that Acts 1:8 is actually a restatement of what God had intended in Isaiah 49:6.[6] In Luke’s depiction of the episode at Pisidian Antioch, Paul justifies his turning to the Gentiles in the face of Jewish recalcitrance by quoting Isaiah 49:6: ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 13:47). The ‘you’ is arguably Paul or other missionaries like Barnabas in Luke’s reckoning. The consistent identification of Jesus as the Servant of Isaiah (Lk 4:16-20; Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30) is interrupted by the ascription of the Servant’s role in being a light to the nation to Paul and Barnabas. C.K. Barrett noted: ‘Paul is a light to the Gentiles only in virtue of the Christ whom he preaches; Christ is a light to the Gentiles as he is preached to them by his servants.’[7] The point of the statement is not to imply a rejection of the Jews or the cessation of a Jewish mission, but rather, that in the same way that Christ went to his people (i.e. Israel, Acts 13:26), Christ also has a mission to the Gentiles and the point is that this two-pronged mission guided Paul’s missionary endeavours.[8] In another speech before King Agrippa II, Paul declares that everything he proclaims is in accordance with the prophets and Moses, whereby after the Messiah suffers and rises, he (i.e. the Messiah) would ‘proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles’ (Acts 26:22-23).
The Epistle of Barnabas (early second century) is a letter that engages with a Christian view of the Old Testament (though mostly allegorically) and probably represents a polemical melee between Jews and Christians in the early second century concerning the interpretation of Scripture.[9] At the beginning of chapter 14, the author provocatively suggests that the Israelites did not actually receive the promised covenant from Moses since they had engaged in idolatry and were not found worthy. In contrast, Christians receive the covenant through the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. Jesus appeared so that he ‘might redeem out of darkness our hearts which had already been paid over unto death and delivered up to the iniquity of error’ (Ep. Barn. 14.5). In the following verses (7-9) the author then cites Isaiah 42:6, 49:6 and 61:1 as Scriptural evidence that Jesus was ordained by the Father to deliver Gentiles from darkness.
In the mid-second century, Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (121-22) argues that the fact that Gentiles believe in Jesus as the Christ is itself proof that Jesus is the Christ. Justin begins with a discussion of Ps 72:17-‘May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed!’ noting that the text states ‘in him’ and not merely in his seed (which would limit the blessing the Davidic line). The nations receive this blessing through their belief in Christ and willingly endure suffering at the name of Jesus. Justin writes that in ‘no nation He is unknown, and everywhere men have repented of the old wickedness in each nations’ way of living’. Since Gentiles ‘hear’, ‘understand’ and are ‘saved’ by Christ, it furnishes proof that he is the one spoke of in Isaiah 49:6. Justin immediately assails what was probably the standard Jewish view of the passage, namely, that it referred to the law as being a light to aliens and proselytes, those who have already entered the Jewish constituency. Jewish exegesis of this passage did not see it as a mandate for mission since a proselyte’s conversion to Judaism was ordinarily at his own request and was a rather difficult affair at that. In contrast, Justin believes that Isaiah 49:6 refers to Gentiles, like himself, who ‘have been illumined by Jesus’ and comprise the ‘blind’ that God himself leads into salvation through the Servant.
So there you, early Christian mission had an Isaianic inspiration!
[1] Martin Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul: Studies in the Earliest History of Christianity (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM, 1983), p. 48.
[2] Martin Goodman, ‘Jewish Proselytizing in the First Century,’ in The Jews Among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire, eds. J. Lieu, J.L. North and T. Rajak (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 53
[3] Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100-400) (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 105.
[4] Cited in Robert Martin-Achard, A Light to the Nations: A Study of the Old Testament Concept of Israel’s Mission to the World (trans. John Penney Smith; Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962), p. 9.
[5] Sean Freyne, Jesus, a Jewish Galilean: A New Reading of the Jesus-Story (Edinburgh: Continuum, 2005), p. 101.
[6] Walter C. Kaiser, Mission in the Old Testament: Israel as a Light to the Nations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000), p. 61.
[7] C.K. Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles (ICC; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), vol. 1, p. 658.
[8] Peter Bolt, ‘Mission and Witness,’ in Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts, eds. I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 207.
[9] Cf. J. Carleton Paget, The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background (WUNT 2.64; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1994); Reidar Hvalvik, The Struggle for Scripture and Covenant: The Purpose of the Epistle of Barnabas and Jewish-Christian Competition in the Second Century (WUNT 2.82; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1996);