» An interview with Eckhard Schnabel

Trinity Magazine interviewed Eckhard Schnabel and asked him, What do we know about the disciples as missionaries?

Here’s a few edited highlights.

On the novelty of the Christian movement. . .

The novelty of the “universal” dimension of the early Christian mission cannot be overestimated.

The early Christian mission was without precedent in the ancient world including Judaism.

This dimension is linked, of course, with the conviction that forgiveness of sins is possible for Jews and non- Jews, for the educated and for the barbarians, for men and women, for rich and poor—but only through faith in Jesus Messiah and Lord.

And it was this conviction that got the apostles, specifically, but also the church in general, in big trouble in the first century and with even more violence and suffering in the second and third centuries.

The novelty of the internationally and cross-culturally expanding early Christian movement also testifies to the courage and audacity of the apostles, who were willing to trust Jesus’ promise of his presence “to the ends of the earth” while having to operate without available models.

On Paul’s method. . .

One major conclusion from my study of Paul’s apostolic ministry is that we need to be very careful not to pay lip service to our reliance upon the triune God and his Word in our own ministries of church planting and church nurture, while relying in fact on models and approaches derived from management studies or sociological models.

Paul was always very much aware of the fact that the message of “Christ crucified” is a fundamental problem in doing missionary work, but he consistently refused to “contextualize” his message in such a manner that this “problem” would disappear.

On the problem of the message. . .

As regards Paul’s proclamation of Jesus as Messiah and Lord, we need to explain how this proclamation of a crucified Christ confronted Greek and Roman audiences with a faith that stood in stark contrast to both the old ideology of the polis (with its egalitarian structures that excluded the weak and the aliens) and the new ideology of the Imperium Romanum (with its hierarchical structures that emphasized the divinity of the emperor and other members of the imperial family).

Faith in and allegiance to a crucified God, a Jewish Savior of the world, was scandalous and nonsensical. Just as nonsensical was the suggestion that a new community of people might be formed in which neither ethnic nor social differences play any role, in which everybody is focused on sacrificial love for fellow believers and fellow citizens, and in which they expectantly hope for the return of Jesus and the restoration of a world unmarred by any imperfection.

“Early Christian Mission (2 Volume Set)” (Eckhard J. Schnabel)