The Chief End

Scot McKnight had an interesting post at Jesus Creed last Thursday called Is the chief end … missional? You are no doubt familiar with the first question of the Westminster Catechism:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

(If you are Presbyterian and didn’t know this, then you may now turn in your membership credentials. *grin*)

McKnight was responding to a letter from a reader who wanted to know if being involved in the mission of God (missional) is the best way to express our chief end. As usual, McKnight made some thought-provoking observations.

He essentially believes that missional can replace the Westminster articulation. He understands God to be the eternal perichoretic Trinity. (Perishoresis meaning “…the mutual indwelling and absolute interpenetration of Father, Son, and Spirit…”) We are called to love God purely. He writes:

For Jesus the end of all ends is loving God and loving others — which means for Jesus we should look to love being the end.

And:

I think the word missional is at the heart of the perichoresis. The Father and the Son and the Spirit are “missional” with respect to One Another and, correspondingly, they are each hospitable to the Other. Which means that “missional” is another way of speaking of the perichoresis. Which means that missional is really about both acting in love and receiving in love.

I’m entirely on board with Scot’s emphasis on perichoresis. However, love is action. What I’m less clear about is what action would constitute loving God.

In Paul’s Idea of Community, Robert Banks examines the use of the word koinonia in the New Testament. We usually interpret the word as “fellowship.” He emphasizes that the word never means community for the sake of community. It’s always about fellowship or community from joint participation in a common mission. (page 57) Love and mission entail action.

Some say our purpose is fulfilling the Great Commission. But what happens when Jesus returns, and the Great Commission is fulfilled? The mission is over. We no longer have a purpose. The Great Commission cannot be our ultimate purpose.

The key lies in reflecting on our being or our ontology. Action flows from being. We were created for relationship, and we were created as corporeal beings living in a material world. Can non-corporeal beings have relationship and community? It would seem so, yet we were made corporeal. Why? Is there something about our ontology that informs us of our purpose? I think there is.

Gen 1:26-28

26 Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."

27 So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (NRSV)

We were created to be co-creative partners (though junior ones) with the perichoretic Trinity in ruling over nature and bringing it to fruition. We are to be the corporeal representatives of God in the material order. Sin has entered the world, marring this mission, but we are told that we will one day have new bodies in a new creation. Our mission has not lapsed, and it will not end.

I submit that the “chief end of man” is to be co-creative stewards of creation in other-centered community with the perichoretic Trinity and each other. This combines mission and community while giving content to our action. Our primary love and glorification of God are expressed by participating in the mission for which we were created as a community: Exercising dominion and reflections of God.

This “chief end of man” is different from the mission of the Church. The mission of the Church is penultimate. The mission of the Church is to participate in God’s remedial mission of restoring humanity as co-creative stewards in community with the perichoretic Trinity. We best accomplish the Church’s mission by being images of the coming community in the New Creation and by giving testimony about who God is, what God has done, and what God plans to do.

Therefore, the primary locus of the mission of the Church is not as the gathered community on Sunday morning but as God’s people at work in the world, redeeming the daily routines of life and work, as we act in stewardship of the resources (people, money, possessions, mental faculties, all that is under our influence) entrusted to us. Our daily work is central to glorifying God in the present, and our daily work will be for eternity. The work of the gathered community is to foster solidarity among disciples as it equips them for the mission of taking the New Creation into the world, restoring God’s vision of co-creative stewardship in community with the perichoretic Trinity and with each other.

What do you think?