Lesslie Newbigin - The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989)

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What is striking about the books which were written, especially during the eighteenth century, to defend Christianity against these attacks, is the degree to which they accept the assumptions of their assailants. Christianity is defended as being reasonable. It can be accommodated within these assumptions, which all reasonable people hold. There is little suggestion that the assumptions themselves are to be challenged. The defense is, in fact, a tactical retreat. But, as later history has shown, these tactical retreats can—if repeated often enough—begin to look more like a rout.

Lesslie Newbigin
There is a need for what [Michael] Polanyi calls the critique of doubt. When we undertake to doubt any statement, we do so on the basis of beliefs which—in the act of doubting—we do not doubt. I can only doubt the truth of a statement on the ground of other things—usually a great many things—which I believe to be true. It is impossible at the same time to doubt both the statement, and the beliefs on the basis of which the statement is doubted.

Lesslie Newbigin
The missionary calling has sometimes been interpreted as a calling to stem this fearful cataract of souls going to eternal perdition. But I do not find this in the center of the New Testament representation of the missionary calling.

Lesslie Newbigin
The gospel is not just the illustration (even the best illustration) of an idea. It is the story of actions by which the human situation is irreversibly changed.

Lesslie Newbigin
Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the
rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly
be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact?
The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is like the
fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal
but life-giving.

Lesslie Newbigin
To be elect in Christ Jesus, and there is no other election, means to be incorporated into his mission to the world, to be the bearer of God saving purpose for his whole world, to be the sign and the agent and the firstfruit of his blessed kingdom which is for all.

Lesslie Newbigin
There is an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater than any one of us can grasp, but if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to [all others]...We have to ask: 'What is the [absolute] vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims these different scriptures make?

Lesslie Newbigin
The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about 'what is true for me' is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.

Lesslie Newbigin