MISSIONARY CONTENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN CATHOLIC CONTEXT

Abstract

Introduction: The article deals with the ideas of the New Testament that can be basic for a formation of the catholic missionary paradigm. The purpose of our work is to revise different scientific theories about missionary ideas of the New Testament and understand the ones that could be used by Catholic theology in the planning of missionary activity. To get a needed scientific result, we use methods of logical, comparative, stylistic analysis, hermeneutical, phenomenological and synthetic ones. On the basis of these methods, scientific theories, and our own researches, we want to get a balanced understanding of biblical ideas that could be fundamental for Catholic missionary work and about those ones that couldn’t. Besides ideas that were written in Scripture and were clearly missionary ones, for example The Great Commission, we want to examine  the aspects that were unobvious but very important in the context of understanding of Catholic missionary paradigm and its differences from the Orthodox one. Conclusion. After revision of the New Testament in a confessional context we can claim that there were certain ideas that became the basis for Catholic missionary work, and that confessional peculiarities of missionary work could appear because of different ways of understanding of the biblical texts as well as because of cultural, political, philosophical and mental differences between East and West.