Theology in Missionary Perspective

Lesslie Newbigin’s Legacy

Mark T. B. Laing, Paul Weston, Laing, Weston

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781610975742
  9781498261203
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621899266
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Lesslie Newbigin was one of the most significant missionary strategists and theologians of the twentieth century. With the breakdown of confidence in some of the central philosophical and theological paradigms that have been shaped and sustained by the culture of modernity, Newbigin's approach to a genuinely missionary theology offers fresh insights and approaches, providing something of a prophetic model for the global Christian community in new and challenging times. In this collection of essays, scholars and practitioners from around the world engage with aspects of Newbigin's continuing legacy. They explore Newbigin's approach to theological method, his theological and philosophical account of Western culture in the light of the gospel, and some of the implications of his thought for global mission in the third millennium. This collection is essential reading not just for Newbigin enthusiasts but also for all who are concerned to develop a genuinely missionary encounter with contemporary culture. Contributors: Ian Barns, John G. Flett, Michael W. Goheen, Kenneth D. Gordon, Eleanor Jackson, Veli-Matti Karkkainen, David J. Kettle, J. Andrew Kirk, Mark Laing, Murray Rae, Jurgen Schuster, Wilbert Shenk, Jenny Taylor, Geoffrey Wainwright, Ng Kam Weng, and Paul Weston.

Section One

A Way of Doing Theology

Unfinished Dialogue?

The Reception of Lesslie Newbigin’s Theology1

David J. Kettle

Lesslie Newbigin was one of the most significant missiologists of the twentieth century, according to Timothy Yates.2 In Geoffrey Wainwright’s assessment, he was comparable with the Fathers of the Church in spiritual stature and scope of ministry.3 Tom Wright congratulates “any seminary or degree course that offers a special subject on his thought.”4

Lesslie Newbigin is best known in New Zealand, Britain and North America for his pursuit of authentic missionary engagement with Western culture through a series of books and his “Gospel and Our Culture” initiative.5 However, in current conversation about such mission he does not widely receive attention. He is remembered with affection by many who knew him, and his message has inspired many in a general way, but his teaching is not often subject to careful reflection. Indeed many have passed over his message or dismissed it. In Britain, at least, he seems to have been relegated to the margins. The reasons for this raise questions of importance to theology, church life and mission today.

A marginal figure?

Newbigin was in his time Bishop of Madras, General Secretary of the International Missionary Council, a popular lecturer, and the author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. It may seem odd, therefore, to suggest that he always has been a marginal figure. Yet relative to various well established institutions and parties of allegiance with enduring influence, he has always been so.

Firstly, Newbigin was marginal to both “Evangelical” and “Liberal” parties in their mutual opposition (an opposition which he himself attributed to secular ideology). Presenting challenges to each, he has often been treated with suspicion by both. Evangelicals have often been suspicious of him for his close involvement in the ecumenical movement.6 Because he refused to pronounce on the eternal destiny of particular souls, he has been suspected of universalism. Because he claimed on behalf of the church in each culture (in dialogue with the church in other cultures) responsibility to discern for itself the gospel he has been accused of an “existentialist contextualization” which absolutizes culture and exalts reception at the expense of objective revelation.7 Liberals, for their part, have been inclined to dismiss his theology for placing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ at the center of a true understanding of the world in all its aspects (more of this below). More generally, he has been dismissed as simply “conservative” in outlook.

Secondly, Newbigin was marginal to academic theology. He never held an academic post and did not take bearings from current debates in academic theology. He never provided footnotes. To those schooled in post-Enlightenment, encyclopedic traditions of systematic theology, his theological writing could appear “ad hoc,” lacking in comprehensiveness or adequate nuance, or obsessive as he pursues relentlessly one or another key act of illumination and conversion. Intellectually he has been seen more often as a missiologist than a theologian.

Thirdly, Newbigin was marginal to denominational church life. He was the enigma of a Presbyterian bishop. His own episcopal status remained unrecognized by the Anglican Church for many years. The Church of South India union scheme, which he hoped might be seen as pioneering the way for global Christian unity, was not thus received.

Newbigin also sought to pioneer the way in other matters only to find his lead rejected. When the classical Christocentric model for mission was increasingly felt to be inadequate in the World Council of Churches, he formulated a Trinitarian missiology which would reflect more faithfully the activity of the Holy Spirit within and beyond a church called to witness to the truth of the gospel and the finality of Christ. By the 1990s, however, this missiology had been displaced by views he had resisted as failing adequately to reflect this calling of the church.8

Then in the 1980s and 1990s Newbigin sought to pioneer “authentic missionary engagement” with Western culture through lectures, books, the “Gospel and Our Culture” initiative and a major consultation at Swanwick in 1992. This in turn has been set aside by many who ponder mission in our culture today. In the remainder of this article I shall consider this last dismissal and the perceptions of Newbigin associated with it, and raise the question of further dialogue with his work. In order to do so, it will be necessary to consider what kind of theological enterprise Newbigin undertakes in the first place.

Doing theology: the example of Newbigin

When Geoffrey Wainwright conceived writing a “theological biography” of Lesslie Newbigin, he was challenged by his publisher’s reader to explain how someone who was in the avant-garde of the theological mainstream in the 40s and 50s “has since been marginalised despite the fact that he has remained remarkably up-to-date intellectually.” The reader added “This suggests that the theological mainstream itself is now intellectually marginalised in a way that was not true in Newbigin’s youth.” Wainwright comments: “Insofar as that may be an accurate reading of the situation, I would suggest that a clue resides in the fact that many theologians in the intervening years, in the chase to remain abreast of fashions in the secular academy, have distanced themselves from the body of the faithful, which has thus itself been diminished in its intellectual life.”9

Lesslie Newbigin’s theological reflection always remained, by contrast, rooted in the mission and ministry of the Church. David Ford writes “Newbigin has had an extraordinary gift of discerning at different periods in this century what the fundamental issues are.”10 For Wilbert Shenk, Newbigin was “a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Contributors
• Introduction to the Essays
• Lesslie Newbigin
• Section One: A Way of Doing Theology
• Section Two: Theology in Western Context
• Section Three: Theology in Global Context
• Appendix