Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks

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Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Eerdmans, 1986).

Referenced in: Theology of Mission, Proposals and Formulations – Missio Dei

LifeandLeadership.com Summary

The story of the missional movement actually began with Lesslie Newbigin. Upon returning to his native England in 1974 after a missionary tour in India, Newbigin was struck by how the once mission-sending Western churches in Europe and the United States now needed re-missionizing themselves. He began to write on this, and his books inspired the beginning of what is now the Gospel and Our Culture Network.

This is one of four books that lay out the theology of Lesslie Newbigin, each of which is referenced in LifeandLeadership.com resource guide on Theology of Mission, Proposals and Formulations – Missio Dei.

In Foolishness to the Greeks, Newbigin analyzes modern Western culture, which serves as the backdrop for the postmodern era. Scholars commonly refer to the first ten pages as foundational. He discusses how one of the effects of Enlightenment culture is dividing between the “public world of fact” and the “private world of value.” (1) Culture has marginalized Christianity into this private sector. But this is incongruent with the nature of the gospel that centers in a series of historic, publically verifiable events regarding Jesus that have “altered the total human situation and must therefore call into question every human culture.” (3-4) Although these events occurred in a time and place of the first-century Mediterranean world, it confronts every culture in every period of history. In this respect, Western culture is a mission field that needs a “forthright missionary encounter.” (1) And so he asks, What would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and Western culture? He exposes the aspects of modern Western culture that are particularly antithetical to the Gospel, and then considers how these can be effectively countered with a confident proclamation of the Gospel, especially as it challenges the intellectual, social, and political realities that need to fall under the reign of God.

From the Publisher

In this book on contemporary missiology, Lessilie Newbigin applies the same discernment involved in contextualizing the gospel in another culture to the issues involved in contextualizing the gospel in our Western culture. He calls us to a thorough critique of our culture and of the way in which we understand or misunderstand the gospel of Christ and his good news of the kingdom of God.

About the Author

James Edward Lesslie Newbigin (December 8, 1909 – January 30, 1998) was a Church of Scotland missionary serving in the former Madras State (now Tamil Nadu), India, who became a Christian theologian and bishop involved in missiology, ecumenism, and the Gospel and Our Culture Movement.


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