The purpose of the Great commission: A historical-critical exegesis of Matthew 28:16--20.
Published: 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 221
Description: This thesis investigates the meaning that the Great commission pericope, Matthew 28:16--20, had between the evangelist and his contemporary readers. Matthew 28:16--20 has traditionally been read as a programmatic text to establish Christian belief and praxis, such as baptism, the Trinitarian doctrine, and above all, world mission. This study seeks to uncover the literal sense of the text, which should guide its practical appropriations.Read as a missionary mandate, Matthew 28:16--20 establishes a missionary agenda (a) whose priority is making new members, (b) whose strategy is to baptize first and teach later, if ever, and (c) where no dialogue is necessary with those to be baptized, not even to seek their consent. These elements, which are peculiar to Matthew 28:16--20, and which characterized Christian missions to Africa, belong more with proselytism than with mission properly understood.Matthean scholars find Matthew 28:16--20 problematic. It contains ideas not found elsewhere in the gospel, such as the triadic formula. It seems to contradict the rest of the gospel in its attitude to the Gentile mission. This thesis argues that these apparent contradictions are occasioned by the traditional reading of this passage as a missionary text.Positively, the thesis proposes a new model for reading Matthew 28:16--20 not as establishing Gentile mission but as a magisterial commissioning whose intent is to authorize the admission of Gentiles to the teaching office of Matthew's Jewish Christian church. The thesis ends by proposing that the church's missionary thinking and praxis be based not on Matthew 28:16--20 but on clearly missiological texts, such as Mark 16:14--18.This thesis finds that there are no textual grounds for reading Matthew 28:16--20 as a mission mandate. The so-called mission command to "go" is not an imperative at all; it is a participle. And the characteristic vocabulary of missionary discourse: sending, proclaiming the good news, kingdom of God, repentance, and faith, are altogether missing from Matthew's Great Commission.
Notes: Adviser: Michael Steinhauser.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of St. Michael's College, 2004.

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Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-12, Section: A, page: 4596.