The late professor Samuel Volbeda taught a course entitled the Biblical Doctrine of Missions at Calvin Semi­nary before the school had a mis­sions department or a full time pro­fessor of missions. The heart of Volbeda's course was his theocentric definition of missions. Everything else he taught sprang from this defi­nition.*

With its heavy English and one-sentence, paragraph-length structure, Volbeda's definition is not easily grasped. (It required an entire course to ex­plain it.) Though it has deficiencies, I have found none other to match it in theological depth and comprehensiveness.

Volbeda's Definition of Missions⤒🔗

Missions is the absolute vindication, integrated organically in the process of the history of the world by the Triune God, of his divine honor grounded in his infinite self-love through the utter defeat of Satan his archenemy, by means of the reclamation of his ruined world in organic connection with the redemption of man its fallen head, in Christ the incarnate second person of the Trinity, in cooperation with the church as his body, in the power of the Holy Spirit the third person of the Trinity, according to his eternal counsel revealed in Scripture, to the eternal praise of the glory of his grace by the redeemed humanity at the head of all creation.

Volbeda's purpose in formulating a definition of missions as he did was to underscore the fact that mis­sionary endeavor is first and foremost God's work. Its end is in God and not in mankind, or even in the institu­tional church. Volbeda viewed the extension of the church as but one means among many that God uses to accomplish His purpose.

Moreover, Volbeda wanted to em­phasize that missions did not begin with the New Testament or at Pente­cost. He viewed the Old Testament revelation as clearly missionary in tone and purpose. God's people in the old dispensation had a mission to the nations around them. Mis­sions entered a distinct new phase at Pentecost, but this was only part of a larger movement as the definition shows.

Volbeda's Analysis of the Definition←⤒🔗

Volbeda emphasized that all ele­ments contained in the definition are logically interdependent. He ex­plained them using the following scheme:

1. Author of missions: The Triune God

2. Objectives of missions:
   1) The utter defeat of Satan, God's archenemy
   2) The vindication of God's honor

3. Means of missions:
   1) The reclamation of God's ru­ined world
   2) The redemption of fallen man­kind

4. Agents of missions:
   1) Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the arch-missionary
   2) The church, Christ's Body, as Christ's co-worker

5. Dynamic of missions: The Holy Spirit

6. Projection of missions: the eternal decrees of God

7. Publication of missions: The divinely inspired Bible, Old Testament as well as New

8. Purpose of missions: The praise of the glory of God's grace by human beings at the head of cre­ation

Within the Trinity, God the Father sent the Son, and the Son is the prin­ciple divine agent of the Godhead in missions. The Holy Spirit is the di­vine dynamic. Individually and jointly, three persons of the Trinity carry forward the divine project of missions.

All the elements of the definition rest on the assumption that missions originate in God. People are mis­taken, said Volbeda, when they think the church originates missions. Even when we speak of ourselves as a "sending church," we realize that we are God's handiwork in missionary respect as well as all others (Philippians 2:12-13).

Only God is adequate to accom­plish what missions set out to do. Only God can defeat His archenemy, Satan. God is the great architect of missions. He blueprinted mis­sions (Ephesians 1:11), designing its end as well as its beginning and providing the ways and the means. "The divine authorship of missions includes the publication of God's missionary plan in his infal­libly inspired mission book called Scripture."

Volbeda considered missions to be the key to understanding history:

All history is nothing but the ex­ecution of God's missionary plan. Some things are close to the cir­cumference, some to the center; but it's all in God's missionary plan. Nobody knows history un­less they see it from the mission­ary aspect. This is the Scriptural point of view. No wonder mis­sions is invested with so much interest for those who love it and study it closely.