Stephen Barkley
Lesslie Newbigin left India the year I was born—1974. Having spent upwards of four decades working as a Church of Scotland missionary, he was surprised to return to a country that was no longer seemed Christian. Newbigin would devote the rest of his life to Missiology, becoming a founding figure in the Missional Church movement.
In Foolishness to the Greeks he asks an important question:
[W]hat would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and the culture that is shared by the peoples of Europe and North America, their colonial and cultural off-shoots, and the growing company of educated leaders in the cities of the world—the culture which those of us who share it usually describe as “modern” (1)?
In this book, Newbigin looks at modern western culture through fresh eyes. He demonstrates how the rise of the scientific worldview has usurped and pushed religion into the private realm, so that there are public ‘facts’ and private ‘beliefs.’ This false dualism stunts a Christian’s ability to embody the gospel in all of life.
Faith, obedience, repentance, and love are not bracketed off under the category of religion; on the contrary, they are embodied in ways of behaving that cover much of what we would describe as jurisprudence, public health, education, welfare, and economic policy (98).
Newbigin closes the book with seven essential conditions for a missionary encounter with culture. The sixth is perhaps the most radical and necessary today. We need “the courage to hold and to proclaim a belief that cannot be proved to be true in terms of the axioms of our society” (148). Newbigin does not call for irrationalism, but acknowledges that the axioms of modernism do not admit the sort of knowing demanded by the gospel.
Foolishness to the Greeks was published in 1986, before postmodern philosophy had become commonplace in religious discourse. It remains for Christians today to take Newbigin’s core idea—that we need a genuine missionary encounter between the gospel and our culture—and apply it to our postmodern milieu.
Newbigin, Lesslie. Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986.
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Great summary.
I have been reading a few chapters from different books by Newbigin this semester. I have heard of this author before, but I am not that familiar with his work. I have heard stories many times of missionaries returning from the field to discover the decline of the faith in their homeland.
Newbigin is now on my wish list.
Well, if you’re going to read Newbigin, this is probably where you should start. Here or The Gospel In A Pluralist Society.
Regarding his return to England, I should be more clear. It’s not so much that he saw a decline in the faith of the UK. Rather, his experience contextualizing the gospel in India helped him see that his home culture is and has been pagan—requiring a genuine missionary encounter as much as India did.