Luther, Calvin and the Mission of the Church

Contents

Foreword

The Charges against the Reformers

The Critics and their Flaws

The Reformation Cities: Regional Mission Hubs

Wittenberg and the Reformation in Scandinavia

The Reformers and their Mission Theology

Bibliography

Biographical Notes

Foreword

The year 2017 commemorates the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Refor­mation. In 1517 Martin Luther, a German monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg published his Ninety-Five Theses in which he criticised the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church. On the 31st October of the same year Luther sent his Theses to his bishop, Albert of Brandenburg. This date is considered the beginning of the Reformation. While the Protestant Reformers are widely praised for the rediscovery of the biblical gospel, they have come under fire regarding their views on mis­sion.

There is a school of missiologists and church historians who argue that the Protestant Reformers were not interested in mission and, in fact, ignored the mission mandate which Christ had given to his Church. Consequently, the Reformers did not make any noteworthy contribution to mission theol­ogy, so the critics claim. This view is widespread and accepted by many as fact. However, a closer study of Luther, Calvin, Bucer, and Melanchthon, shows that the critics miss both the Reformers’ commitment to practical mis­sion work and their missiological contributions.

The critics seem to overlook the fact that cities, such as Geneva and Wit­tenberg, in which the Reformers lived, studied and taught, served as hubs of a huge missionary enterprise. Thousands of preachers went out from these centres of the Reformation to spread the gospel all over Europe. Leading Scandinavian theologians, such as Mikael Agricola, Olaus Petri, or Hans Tausen, had all studied under Luther and Melanchthon in Wittenberg before they began their reform work in their home countries.

Furthermore, with their re-discovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone, their emphasis on the personal character of faith in Christ, their radical re-interpretation of the priesthood, their recognition of God’s author­ship of mission, their reminder that the witness to the gospel takes place in the midst of a spiritual battle, and their insistence that the Bible has to be available in common languages, the Protestant Reformers laid down im­portant principles for the mission work of the church which are still valid today.

I am very grateful to Peter Beale, Hannah Fox, Ruth Newman, and Ka­ren Roe for all their comments and corrections. I am also grateful to all faith­ful partners in the gospel who through their support have made it possi­ble for me to write this book. My special thanks go to the following organisa­tions and churches: Crosslinks (London), Namibia Evangeli­cal Theo­logical Seminary (Windhoek), All Saints Church (Pres­ton), Corner­stone Church (Nottingham), Evangelische Sankt Martini Ge­meinde (Bre­men), Not­tingham Chinese Christian Church (Nottingham), St Michael’s Church (Bramcote), and the Windhoek Congre­gation of the Rhenish Church in Namibia.

Thorsten Prill

The Charges against the Reformers

The Protestant Reformers have come under fire regarding their views on the role of mission. Key critics include both church historians and mission schol­ars. Among the former is the American historian William R. Hogg. In his book Ecumenical Foundations Hogg argues that within Western Protestant Christianity interest in mission work developed very slowly.^[1] He goes on to say that ‘[t]he Protestant reformers, among them Luther, Melanch­thon, Zwingli and Calvin, disavowed any obligation for Christians to carry the gospel beyond their fellow-countrymen.’^[2] Hogg’s view is shared by Stephen Neill who served as a Professor of Missions and Ecumeni­cal Theology in the German University of Hamburg. In his well-known book A History of Christians Missions Neill writes:

Naturally the Reformers were not unaware of the non-Christian world around them. Luther has many things, and sometimes surprisingly, kind things, to say about both Jews and Turks. It is clear that the idea of the steady progress of the preaching of the Gospel through the world is not foreign to his thought. Yet, when everything favourable has been said and can be said, and when all possible evidences from the writings of the Reformers have been collected, it all amounts to exceedingly little.^[3]

Similarly, J. Herbert Kane, an evangelical scholar who taught at Trinity Evan­gelical Divinity School, criticises the churches of the Reformation for a lack of missionary enterprise. He comments:

One would naturally expect that the spiritual forces released by the Reformation would have prompted the Protestant churches of Europe to take the gospel to the ends of the earth during the period of world exploration and colonisation which began about 1500. But such was not the case. The Roman Catholic Church between 1500 and 1700 won more converts in the pagan world than it lost to Protestantism in Europe.^[4]

Kane goes on to identify deficiencies in the Reformers’ theologies as the main contributing factor.^[5] He argues that the Reformers believed that the Great Commission had been achieved by the apostles by taking the good news to the ends of the world as it was known at that time. Consequently, there was no longer any need to send out missionaries to faraway countries. Kane also sees the Reformers’ views on predestination as a stumbling block.^[6] Their ‘preoccupation’ with the sovereignty of God, Kane believes, prevented them from promoting the spread of the gospel among pagan na­tions. Finally, he mentions the Reformers’ ‘apocalypticism’ with its negative view of the future as a hindrance to global mission.^[7]

In his book From Everywhere to Everywhere: A World View of Christian Mission the Anglican missiologist and former bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali gives the following explanation for the Reformers’ lack of mis­sion awareness:

The theological underpinning of this abandonment of responsibility for the world was provided by a curious kind of dispensationalism which limited World Mission to the times of the apostles! The apostles had proclaimed the offer of salvation to all nations, it was held, and there was no need to make a second offer to those who had refused the first. Closely allied to this view was the doctrine, taught by Calvin among others, that the Kingdom of God could not be advanced by human in­dustry but was the work of God alone. Even those who believed that God used means in the exercise of his sovereign will believed that the absence of means for a particular people and their presence for another was a sign of that sovereign will, to which Christians must submit. It was not until much later that the view which regarded Mission as one of the means used by God came into prominence. It is not too much of a caricature to say that at the time of the Reformation it was widely believed that if God wanted the heathen to be saved, he would provide the means for their salvation. There was little reflection on the voca­tion of churches and individuals to bring this about. It was not until well into the eighteenth century that such views began to be chal­lenged in a systematic way.^[8]

Other scholars have suggested that the Reformers refused to consider mis­sion to be a proper theological subject and therefore showed a remark­able indifference to the missionary task of the church . In Eclipse in Mission: Dispelling the Shadow of our Idols Goodwin argues that the early Protestant era was characterised by a surprising lack of missionary activity.^[9] As one of the reasons he identifies a trend towards hyper-Calvinism among the Reform­ers which saw no need to reach out to those who did not believe in Christ.^[10] However, for Goodwin the decisive reason is that the thought of the Protestant Reformers did not necessitate a separate theology of mis­sion.^[11] Goodwin continues: ‘Indeed, Calvin and Luther’s thought,…, would suggest that the absence of mission in their thinking was theological and not just an issue of oversight! It appears that they did not deem mission per se to even be a valid theological discipline or doctrine worth mentioning.’^[12]

In What in the World is God Doing? C. Gordon Olson speaks of the Great Omission of which Luther, Calvin and their fellow Reformers were guilty.^[13] The reason for their failure, Olson believes, was a spiritual one. The Reformation which they had started lacked deep spiritual roots. Olson goes on to explain what he means by that:

The Reformation was not a great revival in which tens of millions of people were born again. Probably there were only a minority of Protestants who really came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The rest were swept along with the tide. With the territorial church ar­rangement of Europe it was not hard to be a Protestant without being born again. It is important to understand that the Reformers did not spell out a clear doctrine of regeneration or new birth. Much reliance was placed upon baptism and communion, which were seen as ‘sacra­ments’…The more we learn about the spiritual state of the reformation churches, the more it seems like Christ’s words to the Sardis church in Revelation 3:1, “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” Before there could be world evangelism, there had to be spiritual renewal. That was two centuries in coming.^[14]

In his article The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission Ralph Winter also speaks of an omission.^[15] However, by that he means the Protestant Reformers’ abandonment of any kind of monastic or sodality structure. For Winter this was the greatest error of the Protestant Reform­ers.^[16] He believes that ‘in failing to exploit the power of the sodality, the Protestants had no mechanism for missions for almost 300 years, until Wil­liam Carey’s famous book, An Enquiry, proposed “the use of means for the conversion of the heathen.”^[17] In another article entitled The Kingdom Strikes Back: Ten Epochs of Redemptive History Winter insists that the first Protestants ‘did not even talk of mission outreach.’^[18] According to Winter, they left the work of mission completely to the Roman Catholic Church:

Rather, the period ended with the Roman Europe expanding both po­litically and religiously across the seven seas. Thus, entirely unshared by Protestants for at least two centuries, the Catholic variety of Chris­tianity actively promoted and accompanied a worldwide movement of a scope unprecedented in the annals of mankind, one in which there was greater missionary awareness than ever before.^[19]

Like Ralph Winter, the Mennonite missiologist Bernhard Ott is very cri­ti­cal of the Protestant Reformers. However, in contrast to Winter he identi­fies another wing of the church as the most mission-minded group within 16th century Christianity. Ott writes:

Even the reformers did not recapture the New Testament vision of a missionary church. Their focus was on the inner renewal of the estab­lished church and the stability of Christendom. It is not Mennonite ar­rogance when I claim that the Anabaptists were the only real mission­ary group in the time of the Reformation.^[20]

Such criticism of the Protestant Reformers, which is shared by many other authors,^[21] is anything but new. In his work Outline of a History of Protestant Missions from the Reformation to the Present Time published in 1901 German missiologist Gustav Warneck has laid, as Schulz writes, the foundation for the widespread criticism of the Reformers.^[22] If Neill’s and Kane’s criticism is harsh, Warneck’s judgement like that of Olson is devas­tating. Thus, he states:

We miss in the Reformers not only missionary action, but even the idea of mission, in the sense in which we understand them today. And this is not only because the newly discovered heathen world across the sea lay almost wholly beyond the range of their vision, though that reason had some weight, but because fundamental theo­logical views hindered them from giving their activity, and even their thoughts, a missionary direction.^[23]

The question one has to ask is whether such criticism of the Protestant Reformers is justified. Were the Reformers really indifferent to mission? Is there really a lack of mission emphasis in their theologies?

The Critics and their Flaws

Most of the critics of the Protestant Reformers like Neill, Kane, Olson or Warneck share a view of mission which emphasises its global dimension. Warneck, for example, defines mission as ‘the regular sending of messen­gers of the Gospel to non-Christian nations, with the view of Christianizing them.’^[24] Olson’s definition has a similar thrust. ‘Mission’, he writes ‘is the whole task, endeavour, and program of the Church of Jesus Christ to reach out across geographical and/or cultural boundaries by sending missionaries to evangelise people who have never heard or who have little opportunity to hear the saving gospel.’^[25] If we understand mission first and foremost in such a way, i.e. as the enterprise of taking the gospel to places where there is no Christian presence, the charge against the Protestant Reformers might be justified. Martin Luther, though he recognised the Turks’ need of salva­tion in Christ,^[26] was not actively involved in the sending of missionaries to them or any other non-Christian nation. He only encouraged Christians who had become captives of the Turks to serve them ‘faithfully and diligently’ so that they might ‘convert many, if they [the Turks] were to see that the Chris­tians are so superior to the Turks in humility, patience, diligence, faithful­ness, and similar virtues.’^[27]

Calvin supported the sending of two preachers from Geneva to the Por­tuguese colony of Brazil in 1556,^[28] ‘but for a variety of internal and exter­nal reasons this first overseas Protestant mission effort failed.’^[29] This was Calvin’s only direct involvement with overseas mission work.^[30]

While on the surface, the charges against Luther, Calvin and their fellow Re­formers seem to be warranted, a closer examination shows that they are for various grounds problematic.

Historical Circumstances

First, the critics seem to ignore the fact that there are several valid reasons why the Protestant Reformers were not more focussed on world mission. The Reformers, as the word indicates, considered it their first task to reform the church, which was a time-consuming endeavour.^[31] They were fully com­mitted ‘to establish and secure the principles of the Reformation in their own domain.’^[32] Their regional churches were, as Bosch points out, ‘in­volved in a battle of sheer survival; only after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) were they able to organize themselves properly.’^[33] The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), in particular, had devastated many Protestant countries in central and northern Europe and had made it very difficult for Protestants to have a normal church life.^[34] As a result, it was almost impossible to develop an overseas mission strategy.^[35] Furthermore, in contrast to the Roman Catho­lic Church, located in countries like Italy, Portugal, and Spain which were maritime powers with colonies and trading connections outside Eu­rope, most Protestant churches in Germany or Switzerland did not have any direct links with overseas countries.^[36] Unlike the Catholic rulers ‘none of the monarchs won over to the Reformation had’, as Zorn points out, ‘respon­sibilities in distant countries.’^[37] Therefore, it would have been diffi­cult for the Reformers to pursue overseas mission work compared to Span­ish and Portuguese Roman Catholic monks who could rely on the support from their monarchs and willing navigators.^[38] The rulers in the Protestant countries were in general solely interested in their own regional churches and indifferent to mission work in other lands.^[39] Consequently, the Reform­ers would have had to proceed without their sponsorship, raise sufficient funds themselves, and identify both missionaries and experienced seafarers, who were willing to take the former to other continents. Missionaries would have been particularly difficult to find due to the abolition of monasteries in Protestant countries, which had previously served as mission centres for a thousand years.^[40] However, even if the Reformers had found suitable mission­ary candidates, convinced their Protestant kings, dukes and princes of the necessity to spread the gospel beyond the boundaries of their territo­ries, and secured financial support for such mission work it is very unlikely that many Protestant missionaries would have been allowed to enter the over­seas territories governed by the Roman Catholic superpowers of that time.^[41] Schulz concludes: ‘Thus the lack of missionary intent and enterprise is mostly a case of historical circumstance, which many scholars – who of­ten level scathing criticisms against the reformers – are loath to admit.’^[42]

Missing the Wider Picture

Surprisingly, many of the critics seem to be unfamiliar with the Reformers’ theological writings. They interpret some of their doctrinal positions with­out looking at the wider picture. However, if the wider picture is taken into account their allegation that the Reformers lacked missionary vision and zeal becomes less convincing. This is, for example, the case with both the doctrine of predestination and the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. According to Kane, the former ‘precluded the responsibility of man’^[43], while James ar­gues that the latter had a similar effect as it ‘lessened the responsibility of humanity.’^[44] However, a careful study of their writings shows us that neither Luther nor Calvin downplayed the role Christians should play in spreading the gospel; neither Luther nor Calvin were ‘Hyper-Calvinists’ as some of the critics seem to suggest. Calvin even saw the doctrine of predestination as a motivation to share the gospel with all people. In Concerning the Eter­nal Predestination of God Calvin writes:

Since we do not know who belongs to the number of the predestined and who does not, it befits us so to feel as to wish that all be saved. So it will come about that, whoever we come across, we shall study to make him a sharer of peace. But our peace shall rest upon the sons of peace. Hence, so far as we are concerned, salutary and even severe re­buke will be administered like medicine, lest they should perish or cause others to perish. But it will be for God to make it effective in those whom He foreknew and predestined.^[45]

Like Calvin, Luther did not have any doubt that all responsibility for sal­vation from sin and eternal condemnation lay exclusively with God.^[46] In his explanation of the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed, which we can find in his Small Catechism, Luther famously states: ‘I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.’^[47] However, at the same time Luther stresses that believers are totally responsible for the sphere of respon­sibility which God has given them.^[48] This includes the area of evange­lism. In his commentary on Isaiah 40:9 Luther writes that ‘[e]very Christian is also an evangelist, who should teach another and publish the glory and praise of God.’^[49] The church, he argues, has been ‘well informed and taught’ and therefore is obliged ‘to proclaim and urge joyful tidings’. Luther clearly distinguished between divine and human responsibilities. He strove, as Kolb puts it, ‘to hold God’s responsibility in tension with human responsibility to preserve the integrity of God as Creator and the integrity of the human creature as his special creation, fashioned in God’s image…’^[50]

For Bucer the doctrine of predestination had an important place in his theology.^[51] Stephens even argues that it shaped the whole of his theological thinking.^[52] In any case, it is striking that Bucer’s conviction regarding God’s supreme role in salvation did not keep him from being passionate about evan­gelism. During his time of exile in England Bucer wrote De Regno Christi (On the Kingdom of Christ) in the form of two books to promote the Reformation in his host country.^[53] In the second book Bucer dedicates five chapters to the selection, training and sending of evangelists. In chapter four he writes the following about the necessity to send evangelists to every par­ish church in England:

Furthermore, since such great ignorance of the Kingdom of Christ holds sway over all everywhere, so that its power and its salutary ef­fect upon its men and the fact that apart from it everything is harmful and destructive can hardly be explained, taught, and presented con­vincingly in one or two sermons, no matter how careful and accurate they are, there must first be sent out to all the churches of the realm evangelists who are appropriately learned and motivated for the King­dom of Christ.^[54]

Bucer continues to explain what expectations he has regarding the ministry of those evangelists.^[55] They have to be highly motivated and passionate, while their approach has to be not only Gospel and Kingdom-centred but also contextual. Bucer writes: ‘They must announce assiduously, zealously, and in a timely fashion to the people everywhere the good news of the King­dom. And they should teach from the Gospel, with strength and energy, whatever pertains to the Kingdom of Christ and whatever it is necessary to believe and do for present and future happiness.’^[56]

Regarding the Reformers’ understanding of the Great Commission Kane states that ‘[t]hey taught that the Great Commission pertained only to the original apostles; that the apostles fulfilled the Great Commission by taking the gospel to the ends of the then known world; that if later generations were without the gospel, it was their own fault…’^[57] Kane continues to say that it was part of the Reformers’ teaching that ‘the church in later stages had neither the authority nor the responsibility to send missionaries to the ends of the earth.’^[58] This view is widespread and often repeated by contempo­rary authors.^[59] Luther and Calvin are usually at the centre of their criticism. In Discovering the Mission of God: Best Missional Practice for the 21st Century, edited by Mike Barnett, R. A. James, for example, puts it this way: ‘Martin Luther, John Calvin and many other early Reformers as­sumed that the apostles had completed the Great Commission, and the mes­sage had fallen on deaf ears….Their belief was that the church did not have the power or the responsibility to commission missionaries.’^[60] In The Church in the Theology of the Reformers Paul Avis speaks of ‘the strange silence’ of the Protestant Reformers on mission.^[61] He continues: ‘When both Luther and Calvin comment on the Great Commission (Matt. 28), they remain bafflingly silent on the duty of present-day Christians to carry on the work of the apostles in bringing the gospel to ‘every creature’.’^[62]

The fact that this charge against the leading Reformers is often repeated in both popular and scholarly works does not necessarily mean that it is true. What is certainly true is that 17th century Lutheran orthodox theologi­ans revived the scholastic view that the Great Commission was no longer valid.^{[63] [64]} In 1652 this view was even expressed by the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg.^[65] Luther, however, did not identify with this viewpoint. ‘Luther did not’, as Coates writes, ‘accept the interpretation of Ps. 19:5 and Rom. 10:18 as signifying that the apostles had literally pene­trated into every country and region of the earth.’^[66] Coates continues:

[...]

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^[1] Hogg, Ecumenical foundations, 1-2.

^[2] Hogg, Ecumenical foundations, 2.

^[3] Neill, A history of Christian missions, 222.

^[4] Kane, A concise history of the Christian world mission, 73.

^[5] Kane, A concise history of the Christian world mission, 73.

^[6] Kane, A concise history of the Christian world mission, 74.

^[7] Kane, A concise history of the Christian world mission, 74.

^[8] Nazir-Ali, From everywhere to everywhere: a world view of Christian mission, 43.

^[9] Goodwin, Eclipse in mission: dispelling the shadow of our idols, 25.

^[10] Goodwin, Eclipse in Mission: dispelling the shadow of our idols, 25.

^[11] Goodwin, Eclipse in mission: dispelling the shadow of our idols, 26.

^[12] Goodwin, Eclipse in mission: dispelling the shadow of our idols, 26.

^[13] Olson, What in the world is God doing?, 119.

^[14] Olson, What in the world is God doing?, 119.

^[15] Winter, The two structures of God’s redemptive mission, 250.

^[16] Winter, The two structures of God’s redemptive mission, 250.

^[17] Winter, The two structures of God’s redemptive mission, 251.

^[18] Winter, The kingdom strikes back: ten epochs of redemptive history, 224.

^[19] Winter, The kingdom strikes back: ten epochs of redemptive history, 224.

^[20] Ott, Mission and theological education, 87-88.

^[21] E.g. Camp, A survey of the church’s involvement in global/local outreach, 214-215; Dakin, What is at the heart of a global perspective on the church?, 45; James, Post-reformation missions pioneers, 251; Johnstone, The church is bigger than you think: the unfinished work of world evangelization, 54-61; MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s house divided, 427; Tanis, Reformed pietism and Protestant missions, 65-66; Tennent, William Carey as missiologist: an assessment, 17; Thomas, Readings in world mission, 32-33; Verkuyl, Contemporary missiology, 18.

^[22] Schulz, Mission from the cross: the Lutheran theology of mission, 46.

^[23] Warneck, Outline of a history of Protestant missions from the reformation to the present time, 10.

^[24] Warneck, Outline of a history of Protestant missions from the reformation to the present time, 10.

^[25] Olson, What in the world is God doing?, 13.

^[26] Miller, From crusades to homeland defense: Martin Luther responded to Islam with a new military philosophy, fresh focus on the Qur’an, and provocative readings of biblical prophecy, 32.

^[27] Cited in Pelikan, After the monks – what? Luther’s reformation and institutions of missions, welfare, and education, 6.

^[28] Reifler, Handbuch der Missiologie, 164.

^[29] Jongeneel, The Protestant missionary movement up to 1789, 223.

^[30] See Wilcox, Evangelisation in the thought and practice of John Calvin, 215; Beaver, The Genevan mission to Brazil, 14-20.

^[31] Bosch, Transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission, 245.

^[32] Coates, Were the reformers mission-minded?, 609.

^[33] Bosch, Transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission, 245.

^[34] Coates, Were the reformers mission-minded?, 609.

^[35] Coates, Were the reformers mission-minded?, 609.

^[36] Bosch, Transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission, 245; Sunshine, Protestant missions in the sixteenth century, 14.

^[37] Zorn, Did Calvin foster or hinder missions?, 173.

^[38] Stewart, Calvinism and missions: the contested relationship revisited, 67.

^[39] Coates, Were the reformers mission-minded?, 610.

^[40] Stewart, Calvinism and missions: the contested relationship revisited, 67-68; Thomas, Readings in world mission, 32.

^[41] Coates, Were the reformers mission-minded?, 610.

^[42] Schulz, Mission from the cross: the Lutheran theology of mission, 45.

^[43] Kane, A concise history of the Christian world mission, 74.

^[44] James, Post-reformation missions pioneers, 251.

^[45] Calvin, Concerning the eternal predestination of God, 138.

^[46] Kolb, Martin Luther: confessor of the faith, 103.

^[47] Luther, Small catechism.

^[48] Kolb, Martin Luther: confessor of the faith, 103.

^[49] Luther, Luther’s works: lectures on Isaiah, vol. 17, 13.

^[50] Kolb, Martin Luther: confessor of the faith, 103.

^[51] Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland, 331 .

^[52] Stephens, The Holy Spirit in the theology of Martin Bucer, 23.

^[53] Pattison, Poverty in the theology of John Calvin, 114 .

^[54] Bucer, De regno Christi, 269.

^[55] Bucer, De regno Christi, 269.

^[56] Bucer, De regno Christi, 269.

^[57] Kane, A concise history of the Christian world mission, 73.

^[58] Kane, A concise history of the Christian world mission, 73.

^[59] E,g. Allen, Preaching for a great commission resurgence, 286; Davies, The great commission from Calvin to Carey, 44; Gerrish, Christian faith: dogmatics in outline, 232; Goodwin, Eclipse in mission: dispelling the shadow of our idols, 26; Ryoo, The Moravian missions strategy: Christ-centered, Spirit-driven, mission-minded, 38.

^[60] James, Post-reformation missions pioneers, 251.

^[61] Avis, The church in the theology of the reformers, 168.

^[62] Avis, The church in the theology of the reformers, 168.

^[63] Coates, Were the reformers mission-minded?, 601.

^[64] In Witness to the World Bosch writes the following about the attitude towards mission at the time of Lutheran Orthodoxy: ‘In Lutheran orthodoxy in particular, mission disappeared completely beyond the horizon of the Church and theology. Orthodox theologians no longer saw, as Luther did, a challenge in the decadence of the world, but rather withdrew into the dogmatically demarcated reserve of pure doctrine.’, 124.

^[65] Coates, Were the reformers mission-minded?, 601.

^[66] Coates, Were the reformers mission-minded?, 601.