Lesslie Newbigin's Contribution to Mission Wilbert R. Shenk

esslie Newbigin (1909-98) was one of the outstanding and the religions, the meaning of contextualization, LChristian leaders of the twentieth century.' This brief conversion, pluralism,and Christian witness in a culture thathas essay considers Newbigin's contribution to theology from the rejected Christendom. Time and again Newbigin led the way in perspective of the Christian mission. He lived a long and full life introducing an issue thatwouldbecome a dominanttheme in the and continued to write and speak right up to the end. His ensuing years." writings span six decades. In this appreciation of Newbigin's Newbigin's modeof discourse was theological, eventhough oeuvre as reflected in his writings, I note the characteristics that he consistentlydisclaimed any pretension to beinga professional distinguish his work and assess the impact of his thought and its theologian. In the preface to one of his most widely read books, continuing relevance. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society,6 he wrote: "I can make no claim A fitting starting pointis the formative experience he records eitherto originalityor to scholarship. Iam a pastorandpreacher." in his autobiography.' He entered University in 1928 Virtually everything Newbigin wrote was "on assignment," that an agnostic, but during his first year at university the example of is, in response to a speaking or writing assignment. He found no an older student challenged him to consider the Christian faith. timefor leisurely and detached reflection. He spoke and wrote on The following summer, at age nineteen, he joined a Quaker the run, both figuratively and literally, for, despite a permanent service center in South Wales that provided recreational services limp that resulted from a serious bus accident in India in 1936, he to unemployed miners. The coal mining industrywas depressed, moved with dispatch. This habit stamped his thought with an and the situation bleak and hopeless. One night as he lay in bed immediacy not characteristic of the academy. He seldom both­ overwhelmed with concern for these men, he saw"a vision of the ered with the usual scholarly apparatus of notes and references, cross" touching, as it were, heaven and earth.' Its outstretched so that some academics felt compelled to charge that he was not arms touched the whole world and the whole of life. This one of them; yet his thought has consistently commanded atten­ experience left an indelible imprint on him, furnishing the point tion because of its profundity, vigor, and challenge. from which Newbigin would thereafter take his bearings. The Newbigin remained intensely engaged in both church and cross as clue became a central motif for his life. Furthermore, his world and devoted himself to reflecting on the life of faith as it relationship with God was intimate and vivid, nurtured by intersects with the world; he was impatient with "airy-fairy" or continual communion. From this time he was one of God's detached scholarship that flaunted its objectivity. (He could be partisans. devastating in exposing the pretensions of the latter.) His voca­ Newbigin was highly disciplined. He mastered the basics of tion was to be one of the seminal frontline thinkers of the whatever he was studying and prepared thoroughly for each twentieth century. He was read with appreciation by a vast assignment.' When he arrived in India in 1936, he immediately number of laypeople, while his books have regularly appeared set out to attain proficiency in Tamil, a language nonnative on the reading lists of numerous divinity schools' syllabi. Rather speakers find difficult to master. Next he deepened his under­ than being a systematic scholar attempting to provide a compre­ standing of the culture and religion of India by spending many hensive account, he is best characterized as a strategic thinker, hours with the Ramakrishna Mission reading alternately the one sensitive to the priority issues facing the church. Svetasvara Upanishad and John's gospel in the original lan­ guages. This attitude of readiness to fearlessly confront the Christ's Community as Key intellectual and theological demands of each situation continu­ ouslydrew himinto dialogue witha range of viewpoints, regard­ Newbigin was wholly committed to God's mission of the re­ less of whether or not he found them congenial. demption of the world. He was equally committed to the unity of By force of personality and giftedness, Newbigin early the church. At the center of mission and unity stood Jesus Christ. emerged as a statesman and ecumenical leader of His total commitment to Christ-centered mission and Christ­ substance. His views were never parochial, and yet he remained centered gave his witness a coherence that leaped rooted in the local-be that the rural villages of Tamil Nadu, over the usual ecclesiastical and theological lines. Conventional urban Madras, or inner city Winson Green in . He theological labels were never adequate to describe him: he was modeled what it means to contextualize Christian witness by too evangelical for some conciliar Protestants, and too open for immersing oneself in the language and culture of a particular some evangelicals. people. Rather than narrowing or limiting one's view, true This passage from the 1952 Kerr Lectures, frequently re­ contextualization will extend one's horizon. peated over the years, functions as something of a programmatic Lesslie Newbigin was a frontline thinker because of an statement of Newbigin's theological vision: uncommon ability to sense the emerging issue that must be It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord addressed at the moment. This trait is not to be confused with the left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of pursuit of fads. He abhorred faddishness. What captured his thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community.... He attention were the issues that impinged on the future of the committed the entire work of salvation to that community. Itwas church and its obedience in mission: the nature of the church in not that a communitygathered round an idea, so that the idea was relation to unity and mission, the relevance of the Trinity, the primary and the community secondary. It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and Wilbert R. Shenk,a contributing editor, is Professor of Mission History and re-created in Him, gradually sought-and is seeking-to make Contemporary Culture,School ofWorld Mission,Fuller Theological Seminary, explicit who He is and what He has done. The actual community Pasadena, California. is primary; the understanding of what it is comes second?

April 2000 59 The starting point must ever be God's initiative in Jesus Christ, from that of Hocking's. For the latter, faith is "an individual the calling of the church to be the visible and witnessing commu­ experience of timeless reality," a view that echoes nity of the Gospel, the essential structure an unfolding narrative Radhakrishnan's. In the Bible the living God acts by gathering a rather than an institutional system. people committed to covenant relationship-that is, God takes The categories of theology andmissiologyare almostwholly the initiative in creating a new social reality. According to the irrelevant. Newbigin's theologyis thoroughlymissiological, and biblical account, "the eternal emphatically has a history, how­ his missiology theological. The wellspring of his thought and ever shocking it may be to the philosopher.?" Hocking speaks action was his vision of the cross that perforce thrusts the church abstractly of One who is Love, but this One never engages into missionary witness; for him, action must continually be history. This is too vagueand insubstantial to commandourfaith tested against the norm of the Gospel, the center of which is the response. cross. Second, Hocking is diffident about Jesus Christ, preferring Newbigin's only effort to present a comprehensive state­ to interpret the Christ in relation to some universal religious mentof his theologyof missionis his bookTheOpenSecret, 8 based spirit. He suggests that Christian faith is of a piece with the faith on a course of lectures he gave at for several by which all people live. Hocking cited the words from John's years following his retirement from India. In the preface he notes gospel: "The real light which enlightens every man was even that the original germfor the workwas his Relevance ofTrinitarian thencominginto theworld" (1:9NEB). HereNewbiginpointsup Doctrine forToday's Mieeion,' This is a serviceable summaryof his the logical fallacy on which Hocking's argument turns. Hocking theology of mission but does not anticipate his preoccupation bases his reasoning on personal religious experience, the classi­ with "The Gospel and Our Culture" final phase of his life. cal liberal premise, whereas the Johannine passage insists that this light is "present wherever man is present, not wherever Missionary Theologian religion is present." In this and numerous other passages, Newbigin warns of the danger of putting confidence in religion. On almost every page of Newbigin's writings, one encounters Biblical faith arises from God's initiative in history, encountering the mind and heart of the missionary theologian at work. In the us in our world, dying at the hands of sinful humans and in the William Belden Noble Lectures for 1958 at Harvard University, resurrection gaining victory over the power of death. Biblical Newbigin offered a rejoinder to one of Harvard's most eminent faith depends on whatNewbiginrepeatedlyrefers to as "thetotal philosophers in the twentieth century, William Ernest Hocking, fact of Christ." who two years earlier had published TheComing World Civiliza­ The third criticism of Hocking concerns the way the philoso­ iion:" In the 1930s Hocking had presided over the Laymen's pherargues for a necessary linkbetweenhistoryand religionbut Foreign Missions Inquiry, which produced the multivolume fails to base this on the incarnation. Christians believe, insists report Re-Thinking Missions," Hocking himself wrote the sum­ Newbigin, "that at one point in human history the universal and mary volume, which stirred intense debate about the future of the concrete historical completely coincided, that the Man Jesus Christian missions. Hocking's proposed reformulation of mis­ of Nazarethwas the incarnateWord of God, thatin his worksand sionary principles entailing a fundamental redefinition of mis­ words the perfect will of God was done without defect or sion contributed to polarization within the missionary move­ remainder.r" The Christian Gospel depends on this "total fact of ment. Christ."16 Hocking fails to take this center seriously, opting Newbigin's reply to Hocking posed a question: A Faith for instead for a universal mystical experience available to human­ This One World?12 Already at this point Newbigin was wrestling kind but without any specific point of reference. By contrast, the withthe issue that would preoccupyhim continuallythe last two Gospel insists that God acted decisively in Jesus Christ to reveal decades of his life: "No faith can command a man's final and the meaning of divine love and salvation. absolute allegiance, that is to say no faith can be a man's real Ultimately, Newbigin's reply to Hocking's program is that religion, if he knows that it is only true for certain places and the only viable basis for the civilization he advocates is to be certain people. In a world which knows that there is only one found in the missionary proclamation of God's revelation in physics and one mathematics, religion cannot do less than claim Jesus Christ, bywhich a new humanity is being called into being. for its affirmations a like universal validity."13 The modern In the ensuing years Newbigin would develop his theology of secular solution in which two mutually unintelligible categories mission further by placing it in a Trinitarian framework and wereestablished-"facts" and "values"-hadto be rejected. The thinkingthroughissues of conversionandcontextualization. But secularist claimed universal validity for scientific facts but al­ its foundation remained "the total fact of Christ." lowed only for personal preference insofar as values were con­ cerned. In making his critique and counterproposal, Newbigin Contextual Theologian considered three schemes for a universal religious framework for humankind put forward by Indian philosopher S. A cursory reading of the Newbigin writings might suggest a fair Radhakrishnan, British historian Arnold Toynbee, and Ameri­ amount of repetition. He early developed a characteristic style of can philosopher William Ernest Hocking. It is the latter that discourse on which he continued to rely. Certain themes recur concerns us here. over the decades, and the theological framework remains se­ In his quest for a basis for a universal civilization, Hocking curely in place. What then accounts for the vibrancy and rel­ argued that Christianity alone offered an adequate foundation. evance of his thought? I suggest that what makes Newbigin To be viable, however, the Christian message had to strip away consistentlyworthlistening to is his keen sense of contextand his its offensive parochialisms and doctrinal particularisms. capacity to identify with his audience. He had the ability to Newbigin queried Hocking's proposal at three crucial points: articulate what for others remained only subliminal until he Hocking's view of faith, his understanding of Jesus Christ, and expressed it for them. the relationship between faith and history. Newbigin began his missionary service in India in 1936. First, the biblical view of faith is fundamentally different Western civilization was in turmoil, with intimations of another

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Announcing Personalia Gerald H. Anderson, editor of the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF Timothy Dakin, 41, is the new General Secretary of the MISSIONARY RESEARCH since 1977, has announced that he will Church Mission Society (CMS), . He takes the place of retire in June 2000. Following missionary service in the Philip­ Canon DianaWitts, GeneralSecretarysince 1995,who retires pines,he cameto the OverseasMinistriesStudyCenter(OMSC), at Easter 2000 and who will be a Senior Mission Scholar in thenin Ventnor, NewJersey, in 1974as AssociateDirector,and residence at the Overseas Ministries Study Center, New Ha­ became Director in 1976. He will be succeeded by Jonathan J. ven, Connecticut, for the Fall term 2000. Dakin was a mission Bonk as Director and Editor. Robert T. Coote will become partner with the Church Army and was Principal of Carlile Associate Director and Associate Editor. College, Nairobi, Kenya, for six years. He is a graduate of The annual meeting of the American Society of Oxford University and is ordained in the Anglican Church. Missiology will be held June 16-18, 2000, at Techny (near Michael Kinnamon has been appointed to the new Allen Chicago), Illinois. The theme is "Creative Partnerships for and Dottie Miller Chair for Mission and Peace at Eden Theo­ Missionin the Twenty-firstCentury." AnneReissnerfrom the logical Seminary, Saint Louis, Missouri, effective July 1, 2000. Center for Mission Research and Study at Maryknoll, New Kinnamonbeganhis ministryon thestaffof theWorldCouncil York, is the ASM president. The Association of Professors of of Churches as executive secretary for the Commission on Mission will meetJune 15-16 at the same place in conjunction FaithandOrder. Anordainedministerof theChristianChurch with the ASM. The theme of their meeting is "The Global (Disciples of Christ), he comes to Eden from Lexington Theo­ Churchin the MissionClassroom." SusanHiggins of Milligan logical Seminary, where he served as Professor of Theology College, Tennessee, is president of the APM. For further and Ecumenical Studies. informationand registrationfor bothmeetings,contactDarrell Died. Ruth Sovik, 71, American ecumenical mission R. Guder, Columbia Theological Seminary, P.O. Box 520, administrator, January 12, 2000, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Decatur, Georgia 30031-0520 (Fax: 404-687-4656; E-mail: Followingmissionaryservicein Taiwan,she movedto [email protected]. and, in 1965, joined the World Council of Churches (WCC) as The International Association for Mission Studies, meet­ editorial assistant for the International Review of Mission, a ing in South Africa in January, 2000, elected Paulo Suess as publication of the WCC's Commission on World Mission and President. A German Catholic missionary, he is Director of Evangelism (CWME), whose deputy director she became in Postgraduate Studies of Missiology, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 1978. She left the WCC in 1980 to become associate general Darrell L. Whiteman, Professor of Missionary Anthropology secretary of the World Young Women's Christian Association at Asbury Theological Seminary E. Stanley Jones School of (YWCA) and later, in 1983, its general secretary. In 1985 she World Mission and Evangelism, in Wilmore, Kentucky, was was appointed as one of three deputy generalsecretaries of the elected Vice President. They will serve for the next four years WCC. She held this positionuntilherretirementin 1991,when until the next general meeting of the association. she and her husband, Arne, returned to the United States.

world war. Movements for political independence in the Asian Christendomas well as in otherpartsof the worldwhereWestern and African colonies constantly reminded the European colonial missions had established churches based on this Christendom powers that the present order would not last indefinitely. Mis­ , the theological understanding of the church is a sionary leaders were aware that the so-called younger churches matter of urgent concern. were restive under continued mission control, even if the mis­ If we compare The Household of God with The Gospel in a sions typically seemed paralyzed as to what constructive steps Pluralist Society, written thirty-six years apart, an underlying might be taken. coherence in theme and structure is evident. Each book models Newbiginbegins the 1952Kerr Lectures witha discussion of sensitivity to the sociohistorical context in which it is set, which the breakdown of Christendom and its significance for characterizes a vital theology. In 1952 Newbigin is a Western ecclesiology." Christendom stands for "the synthesis between missionary living in the non-Western world trying to address the Gospel and the culture of the western part of the European bothworlds;by 1988his outlookhas undergonea radicalchange. peninsula of Asia" that had developed over a long period. Retiring from servicein India in 1974,he attempted to "go home" Christianity was so accommodated to European culture that it but discovered that the Great Britain he once knew was no more. had become the folk religion of the West. The ecclesiology Instead it had become a disconcerting, even disturbing, environ­ developed in this insular Western context was devoid of a sense ment. Now he saw his homeland with critical concern, indeed of mission to its own culture. This ecclesiology was largely alarm. What some artists and philosophers were describing as devoted to conflicts between various Christian groups rather the decline of the West and the end of Christendom in the pre­ than being animated by a vision of the church in relation to the World War II era, had nowbecome reality. A palpableexistential paganworld. The breakup of this historical Christendom reality, hopelessness had settled over Western society. The bankruptcy startingin the seventeenthcentury,coincidedwiththe beginning of the Christendomecclesiology weighed heavily on him. It is no of the movement to send Christian missions from the West to surprise that the chapter in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society that other continents. Naturally, these missions took with them the attracts the greatest reader response is chapter 18, "The Congre­ only understanding of the church they knew, the Christendom gation as Hermeneutic of the Gospel." The malaise widely felt model. Thus, both in the historical Christian heartland called among Western Christians is generally attributed to forms of

62 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH Died.JosefAmstutz,S.M.B.,72,Swiss missiologist, Octo­ sity, Heidelberg University, and Union Theological Seminary, ber 9, 1999,at Immensee, Switzerland. Ordained to the priest­ New York (Th.D.), he was ordained in the hood in 1953, he had doctorates from the Gregorian Univer­ and sent to China in 1938with his wife, Pearl, where he taught sity, Rome (1957) and Oxford (1959). After pastoral work in at Moukden Theological College. In 1951, in Singapore, he Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and teaching theology in became the first general secretary of the Malayan Christian Switzerland, he was General Superior of the Bethlehem Fa­ Council, and lectured at Trinity Theological College. In 1958he thers from 1967 to 1981. He was one of the founders of the became the representative in South East Asia of the Nanking Institute of Missiology at the Universidad Intercontinental, Theological Seminary Board of Founders (now the Foundation Mexico, from 1982to 1985,and since 1986he was a member of for Theological Education in South East Asia), and in 1961 he the research group at Romero-Haus, Lucerne, Switzerland. was appointed executive director. He was the first editor of the His most recent book is Missionarische Praesenz: Charles de SouthEast AsiaJournal ofTheology, the first dean of the SouthEast Foucald in der Sahara (Immensee, 1997). Asia Graduate School of Theology, and the first executive Died.DavidM. Stowe,80,executivevice presidentemeri­ director of the Association of Theological Schools in South East tus of the United Church Board for World Ministries, the Asia. In 1968he became Senior Lecturer in systematic theology overseas mission agency of the United Church of Christ in the at the UniversityofSt.Andrews.In 1971he receivedan honorary U.S.A., January 10,2000, in Englewood, New Jersey. A gradu­ Doctor of Divinity degree from University. ate of the University of California at Los Angeles in 1940, he Died. StephenFuchs,S.V.D., 92,Indiamissionaryscholar, earned his B.D. degree in 1943 and his Th.D. in 1953 from January 17, 2000, at St. Gabriel near Vienna, Austria. Born in Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, which Austria, he joined the Society of the Divine Word in 1927, awarded himan honorarydoctorate in 1966.Ordained in 1943 where he came under the influence of Wilhelm Schmidt, the in the Congregational Church, he and his wife, Virginia, went noted S.V.D. scholar of linguistics and anthropology. Follow­ to NorthChina in 1945as missionaries of the American Board ing in 1934, Fuchs went as a missionary to India of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, where he taught at wherehe worked amongthe so-calleduntouchablesin Madhya Yenching University in Peking. In 1956 he joined the national Pradesh. He received his doctorate from Vienna University in staff of the American Board in Boston, which became the 1950, with a dissertation that was a pioneering ethnographic United Church Board for World Ministries in 1957. In 1963 he study of a Harijan caste in India. During his sixty years in India became executive secretary of the Division of Foreign Mis­ he taught at various universities and institutes, including the sions in the National Council of Churches in the U.S.A., and in University of Bombay, and was a visiting professor at the 1970he was elected to the top executive position of the United University of San Carlos, Cebu, Philippines. He also estab­ Church's World Board. He retired in 1980. lished the Institute of Indian Culture in Bombay. Among his Died. John R. Fleming, 88, Scottish missiologist, June 27, numerousbookswereAnthropologyfortheMissions (Allahabad, 1999, in St. Andrews, Scotland. Educated at Glasgow Univer­ 1979) and TheAboriginal Tribes ofIndia (New Delhi, 1992).

church life that do not support Christian discipleship and wit­ cal and missiological. From this point on Newbigin was not only ness in modern culture. The diagnosis Newbigin offered in 1952 engaging a particular context but was continually asking the has, if anything, become even more compelling as the decades question of strategy: how can the church respond faithfully in have moved on. this situation? Yet this was no exception. Throughout his life he demon­ Strategic Theologian strated an uncommon ability to discern the critical issues and offer a strategic, constructive response. Some initiatives failed, In 1981the British Council of Churches asked Newbigin to draft while others succeeded." Always one began by defining the key an aide-memoire to guide the council in responding to the crisis concern and then working out an appropriate theological re­ of the church in modern British society. The result was a small sponse. book entitled The Other Side of 1984: Questions for the Churches." which sparked The Gospel and Our Culture program, a six-year The Challenges Ahead initiative under BCC auspices that culminated in a national consultation held at Swanwick in 1992 entitled "The Gospel as It is entirely characteristic that Lesslie Newbigin titled his auto­ PublicTruth." This was a sustained effort to get Christianleaders biography Unfinished Agenda. He lived in the present for the in the professions, public life, and church to come together to future. He had a strong sense of an eschatology that gave one rethinkwhatit means to witness to the Gospelin all sectorsof life. nerve to face the present knowing that the victory was assuredly This effort became his consuming passion and set the course in God's hands. What guidance with regard to the future did for the rest of his life: so to renew the church in the West that it Newbigin offer? would again bring the witness of Christian revelation to bear on 1. We are challenged to affirm that the cross provides the the whole of life, but do so without reverting to "Constantinian" clue to the human predicament. The Gospel tells us the story of forms and assumptions. Newbigin deployed insights from phi­ what God has done to redeem the whole creation from bondage losophy, history, sociology, and science to create a compelling to sin, decay, and death. At the center of that story stands the analysis of the presentsituation, buthis framework was theologi­ cross, representing that moment when God in Jesus Christ inter-

April 2000 63 vened decisively "for us and our salvation." No part of human essential that we press to reclaim the church for its missionary existence is beyond the scope of God's saving purpose, for the purpose, we cannot stop here. The next step is to work out that divine compassion encompasses the whole of creation. fundamental missional ecclesiology in relation to modern West­ Yet Christian history is filled with examples of how the ern culture. This is admittedly a daunting undertaking. With its Gospel of the cross has been denied or reduced to fit the prevail­ roots in Christendom, modern Western culture manifests deep ing plausibility structure. Whenever this occurs, the powerof the antagonism toward religious faith. It views itself as being post­ Gospel is diminished. An emergent modern culture in the seven­ Christendom, even postreligious. Such attitudes and habits of teenth century introduced the distinction between "fact" (i.e., thought are deeply held. It is urgent that the church in the West that which is empirically verifiable according to scientific laws) retrieve the integrity of its identity as a missionary presence in and "value" (i.e., what is personal, private). Only objective society. This recovery entails learning to understand this culture, "facts" could be regarded as universally valid and authoritative. its controlling myths and plausibility structure, from a mission­ Religion was relegated to "value" status. The Gospel of the ary perspective and discern the relevance of the fullness of the cross-viewed merely as a value-was regarded not only as Gospel in this culture. scandalous but as entirely out of place in the public sphere. But With full awareness of the profound changes that the Chris­ if the church is to have a witness, it must reclaim "the total fact of tian mission had to make in light of the ending of the colonial era, Christ," not a truncated version tailored to accommodate mod­ Newbigin concluded his lectures at the Kuala Lumpur assembly ern sensibilities. This requires that the church learn once more to of theEast Asia ChristianConferencein 1959by emphasizingthe indwell the biblical narrative so that its own life, witness, and urgentneedfor a newpatternandappropriatemissionarymethod. worship are shaped by that narrative rather than by secular But in order to translate such talk into action, one condition had myth. to be met: "That condition is that there shall be distributed 2. We are called to reclaim the church for its missionary throughout the whole membership of the Church a deep, and purpose. In The Household of God Newbigin pointed to the fatal strong, and experientially verified conviction about the suffi­ dichotomy that marks Christendom ecclesiology, that is, the ciency and finality of Christ for the whole world'"? The church separation between church and mission. Mission is often treated will onlymanifestits convictionas to the"sufficiency and finality as a stepchild or, even worse, in some cases an orphan, for of Christ" when its faith is continually being tested in the world traditional ecclesiology often had no place for mission. Yet the by the world. Thus, Newbigin concluded, "It is the church which church was instituted by Jesus Christ to be a sign of God's reign lives on the frontier that will be ready to advance in strength.'?' and the means by which witness to that reign would be carried Conviction tested and tried in experience is conviction renewed. to the ends of the earth. The church that refuses to accept its This insight posits what it means to lead a missionary existence missionary purpose is, at most, a deformed church. in the world. It is an especially apt challenge to a church trying to 3. We are called to reclaim the church for its missionary find identity amid the ruins of Christendom and the emerging purpose in relation to modern Western culture. While it is postmodern world.

Notes------­ 1. This article is a revision of one commissioned for the British Bible Newbigin's 1963work TheRelevance ofTrinitarian Doctrine forToday's Society's periodical TheBible in TransMission (Summer 1998).A full­ Mission (London: House Press) was precursor to the scale appraisal of Newbigin's thought appears in George R. recovery of Trinitarian theology in the 1970s.In conversationin 1991 Hunsberger, Bearing the Witnessof the Spirit (Grand Rapids, Mich.: he expressed puzzlement over W. A. Visser't Hooft's dismissal of Eerdmans,1998).Anyonewishingto considermorefully Newbigin's his attempt to promote a Trinitarian theology as a counterweight to contribution will want to avail themselves of Hunsberger's book, the rising secular theology. Theologically, Newbigin and Visser't including the bibliography of Newbigin's writings for the years Hooft had much in common, and they were good friends. 1933-95 (pp. 283-304). 6. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 10. 2. Lesslie Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda, rev. ed. (Edinburgh:St.Andrew 7. Published as The Household of God (New York: Friendship Press, Press, 1993). 1954), p. 20. 3. Ibid., p. 11. 8. First published in 1978 as The Open Secret: Sketches fora Theology of 4. At age seventy-eightNewbiginwasinvitedto be the 1988Alexander Mission; the second edition appeared in 1995 as TheOpen Secret: An Robertson Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He understood Introduction to theTheology ofMission.Both editions were published that this entailed the delivery of half a dozen public lectures during by Eerdmans. the autumn term. He arrived in Glasgow with the lectures in 9. See note 5 above. completed manuscript form, only to be told by the dean of faculty 10. William Ernest Hocking, TheComingWorld Civilization (New York: that this term the lectures would be delivered as twenty classroom Harper & Row, 1956). lectures to first-year divinity students. Immediately he set about 11. New York: Harper & Row, 1932. reorganizingand rewriting the lectures in the form found in his book 12. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Geneva: WCC Publications; Grand 13. Ibid., p. 30. Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989). In the event, he was greatly 14. Ibid., p. 48. challenged by this group of students, which ranged from new 15. Ibid., p. 51. university graduates to thirty-five-year olds who had left their 16. Ibid. professions to prepare for pastoral ministry. They represented a 17. Note 7 above. wide variety of religious experiences and levels of commitment. 18. Geneva: WCC Publications, 1983. 5. Two examples illustrate Newbigin's thought leadership. First, the 19. Newbigin regarded as a failure the study entitled "The Missionary majorworkby A. T. vanLeeuwen, Christianityin World History(New Structureof the Congregation," whichwas launchedin 1961following York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), is anticipated in Newbigin's the New Delhi Assembly, while he was director of the Commission lecture "The Work of the Holy Spirit," in A Decisive Hour for the on World Mission and Evangelism, World Council of Churches. Christian Mission (London: SCM Press, 1960). Van Leeuwen 20. A Decisive Hour, p. 44. acknowledges Newbigin's influence on him (pp. 16-17). Second, 21. Ibid., p. 45.

64 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH hristianity's World Mission would be less intimidating and P epare for a more manageable if everyone spoke the same language, fol­ Clowed the same customs and viewed life the same way. That idyllic world, however, is not the world Christ calls us to engage. Life ime of The real world features at least a dozen major cultu ralfamilies and more than 2,000 religions, 6,000 languages and 30,000 distinct Effective Minist ry, societies and cultures. There are also an unknown (and shifting) number of sub-cultures, counter-cultures and peoples with their own ANYWH ERE! distinct name, history and identity. Furthermore, secularization has transformed Western nations into "mission fields" once again. Several fields of knowledge prepare the effective missionary to DEGREE PROGRAMS "exegete" the biblical text and people's cultural context. These lit­ M.A. and Th.M. in World Mission and eratures are as necessary, and as sophisticated, as the literatures Evangelism; Doctor or Ministry, Doctor that prepare physicians to make sense of an epidemic, or of Missiology, and Doctor of Philosophy astronomers of a galaxy. Asbury's ESJ School will prepare you to in Intercultural Studies. George Hunter Dean, Church Growth, understand the historical, cultural and religious contextof the field communication. Leadership of mission to which Christ has called you, and to serve, communi­ cate and help grow the indigenous Church in that context. So if you are interested in making sense of a piece of the world, and in helping its people make sense of the Christian gospel, callthe admissions office today at 1-800-2-ASBURY or Darrell Whiteman Ron Crandall Robert Tuttle e-mail us at "admissions_offi [email protected]". Assoc. Dean, Anthropology, Evangelism, Small Evangelism. (hurch Renewal. Indigenou s Christianity Churches. Church Planting Theology of Evangelism ASBURY THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Howard Snyder Eunice Irwin Matt Zahniser WI LMO R E , K Y ,~ O R l. AN D O. FL History of Mission, Primal Religions, WorldReligions, W WW . A SB lJ RY SF.M I NARY . E D U Theology of Mission Cantextual Theology Cross-Cultural Discipleship

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