4 posts tagged “lesslie newbigin”
Rebutting Denis Munby's 1960s book, The Idea of a Christian Society, Lesslie Newbigin observes that in a truly secular society, "language about justice becomes meaningless." Why? Because injustice is inevitably a claim to or an appeal to a court higher than the state--a sacred court.
With this an several other helpful criticisms, Newbigin concludes: "the idea of the secular society has been accepted by many Christians uncritically because it seemed to offer the Church the possibility of a peaceful coexistence with false gods, a comfortable concordat between Yahweh and the Baalim. But the promise is illusory." (Gospel in a Pluralistic Society, 220).
After spending more than 20 years as a missionary in India, Lesslie Newbigin returned to England to discover himself a stranger in a strange land.
Things he had never seen before in his own culture stood out now like a sore thumb--and sorely in need of change.
Coming particularly from the point of view of a Christian missionary, Newbigin's culture shock brought him to some discoveries about missions and the nature of the Gospel that shaped much of his writing.
Most of his books focus on subjects related to culture and kingdom. In fact, Newbigin's insights have influenced me a great deal, even to the naming of this blog--but that's another story.
I'm working on two of Newbigin's books: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society and Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture.
Both of these works give excellent insights into the true nature of a 21st century missionary. I was first turned on to Newbigin by a network of church planting churches I am a part of, called Acts 29. I've since seen threads of Newbigin's ideas running backwards into teachers and pastors I respect and admire, which I take as confirmation of being "on the right track."
For example, for anyone who has heard of Van Til's presuppositionalism, Newbigin does a very solid job of laying out the principles of the transcendental argument, and an apologetic that both engages, and challenges, significant non-biblical ideologies.
What makes Newbigin worth reading, though, is that he challenges significant so-called biblical ideologies as well.
There are a lot of us that need coverting to Jesus, in the end, aren't there?
More from Newbigin, on the occasion of Easter:
The truths which Buddhism teaches would (as Buddhists understand them) be true whether or not Gautama had discovered and promulgated them. But the whole of Christian teaching would fall to the ground if it were the case that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were not real events in history but stories told to illustrate truths which are valid apart from these happenings. (the Gospel in a Pluralist Society)
The Christian message--what is radical about the Message of the Gospel--is that it is not, as with other faiths, other religions, about "truth for life." It is about Truth in History.
The Gospel is not a myth in the sense that it communicates principles or generic notions of truth. Newbigin shows that it is true in the sense that it relates to Events Which Took Place in History.
So, this connects to what a friend said to me yesterday: "I believe all people in all cultures are good." I agreed, and added: some people in some cultures are decidedly better than many professing Christians. Still, something else must be said: it isn't about whether or not I am good or not...or you are good or not.
It is about whether He was dead and rose again. That makes all the difference.
It has been seriously argued that a monkey with a typewriter, given enough time, could produce all the works of Shakespeare. But have you ever heard of someone arguing that the monkey could also build the typewriter with enough time?
Lesslie Newbigin makes this point in his book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, and adds, "a machine is precisely that which can never be explained without invoking the concept of purpose."
