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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found Newbigin's work most stimulating. His approach to the Christian worldview is, of course, colored by his 40 years as a missionary to India. Perhaps tempered is a better word, because his insights into Western Christianity are profound.
His main point is that the most resistent culture to Christian evangelism is the very culture that sends most missionaries into the world, namely the West. This resistence is a result of an acculturation which pits a reality based on the now defunct dualism of Newton against the Gospel message. This serves as a most resistent barrier to the Gospel message, but one that is, in Newbigin's view, fundamentally flawed.
In short, Newbigin details the rise and fall of Enlightenmental dualism as a valid critique for social sciences. As a result, he shows that it is methodologically flawed to divorce purpose and intent from observable phenomena. Newbigin then goes on to construct the meeting grounds for historical theology, showing that it is in the classrooms, marketplaces and political platforms of the Western world that this resistence will be overcome.
His argument does not, however, revolve around a revolution of the existing man-made edifices just mentioned. Nor does it encourage radical methods which intend to upset the structures detrimentally. Rather, Newbigin challenges the reader to adjust his own, personal spectacles in order to view the Gospel in the light of a contemporary Man living in a dynamic universe; a universe defined by Relativity theory and quantum mechanics on the scientific side and by love and mutuality on the Christian side. Thus, the challenge of Newbigin is to revolutionize the person who in turn will revolutionize the world. For Newbigin, the greatest challenge to these changes comes from the West.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to live a life faithful to the biblical model in a modern, Western setting. Furthermore, the book is, in my opinion, a must for any minister in the Western world who wishes to see his/her life influence others around him/her.
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5 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Solid and creative thinking
24 Oct 2005
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent resource that presents a fresh approach to its topics and offers a creative and effective presentation of the role of theology in public life and discourse. I would say that its minor weakness would be an incomplete understanding of economics and an (understandable, given the time of its writing) preoccupation with the polarity between capitalism and communism. The result is that Newbigin's economic critique is a bit off-target. There are legitimate critiques of capitalism to make from his perspective but they require a better appreciation of the virtues of capitalism than he demonstrates. One hopes a latter day disciple will issue a fresh edition with a new foreword that could address this minor shortcoming in an otherwise superb small volume.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Searching honesty
11 Aug 2005
Format:Paperback
In this work, Newbigin explores the relationship of Christianity to power with a searching honesty that few others have matched. While appreciative of Christendom's accomplishments, Newbigin suggests that the power granted the church in Christendom overestimates Christians' grasp of the truth and underestimates the tendency for power to corrupt the church. But the failures of Christendom do not thereby justify completely abandoning the attempt to influence the powers of secular society. Newbigin forcefully argues that Christians cannot simply set aside efforts to influence worldly powers in favor of "sectarian protest" against those powers. Society and it institutions will be guided by some vision of the good life (they cannot be neutral in this regard), and if that vision is the wrong one, much needless harm and spiritual suffering will result. In service to the world, then, Christians must offer their vision of the good life as the truth which should guide individuals and their institutions. Newbigin attempts to articulate an intermediate position (along the lines suggested by Abraham Kuyper) that falls somewhere between Christendom and sectarian protest. Serious questions may be raised about Newbigin's proposal, but his unwillingness to settle for the extremes makes this work a wonderful launching point for further reflection. Whatever model one adopts for Christian activity in the secular sphere, Newbigin suggests that for any engagement with secular culture to be successful Christians will have to first grapple with postmodern pessimism towards the concepts of truth and knowledge. Newbigin considers postmodernity's legitimate insights into the relationship between knowledge and power but moves beyond postmodern skepticism to sketch an epistemology that is appropriately humble yet also hopeful about the possibility of gaining insight into the truth.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Classic by a missionary statesman
31 Mar 2010
Format:Paperback
Lesslie Newbigin Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).
Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw
Newbigin was a missionary in India for nearly 40 years and when he returned to England analysed modern Western culture from the perspective of an outsider using tools of cross-cultural communication. He urged treating the West as a mission field; 'a pagan society ... far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism with which cross-cultural missions have been familiar. ... the most challenging missionary frontier of our time.' (p.20).
Central to his discussion is how biblical authority can be a reality for those who are shaped by Western culture, and he goes on to consider the interaction of the gospel with science, politics, and economics. Since Newbigin the world has moved on, but he understood how the world had changed because of modernity and foresaw how it was changing with new trends. He articulated how the world is seen from a scientific framework, but also recognised the influence of new science. He commented on Augustine's relevance and Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts which are important to understand for our modern/postmodern transition. He argued the church should not be relegated to the private sphere, but neither is it a new political order. Although written twenty years ago and with only glimpses of postmodern thought, his conclusions are still worth hearing about the need for freedom, dialogue, "declericalized" theology, local ecumenical efforts, looking at cultures with the help of outside perspectives, and learning to proclaim truth with categories that ultimately can't be proved within modern frameworks. His other books, especially The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), are also worthwhile contributions, and George Hunsberger interprets Newbigin as he relates to gospel, church and culture in Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Cultural Plurality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
Originally appeared in Darren Cronshaw, `The Emerging Church: Introductory Reading Guide', Zadok Papers, S143 (Summer 2005).
Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw
Newbigin was a missionary in India for nearly 40 years and when he returned to England analysed modern Western culture from the perspective of an outsider using tools of cross-cultural communication. He urged treating the West as a mission field; 'a pagan society ... far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism with which cross-cultural missions have been familiar. ... the most challenging missionary frontier of our time.' (p.20).
Central to his discussion is how biblical authority can be a reality for those who are shaped by Western culture, and he goes on to consider the interaction of the gospel with science, politics, and economics. Since Newbigin the world has moved on, but he understood how the world had changed because of modernity and foresaw how it was changing with new trends. He articulated how the world is seen from a scientific framework, but also recognised the influence of new science. He commented on Augustine's relevance and Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts which are important to understand for our modern/postmodern transition. He argued the church should not be relegated to the private sphere, but neither is it a new political order. Although written twenty years ago and with only glimpses of postmodern thought, his conclusions are still worth hearing about the need for freedom, dialogue, "declericalized" theology, local ecumenical efforts, looking at cultures with the help of outside perspectives, and learning to proclaim truth with categories that ultimately can't be proved within modern frameworks. His other books, especially The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), are also worthwhile contributions, and George Hunsberger interprets Newbigin as he relates to gospel, church and culture in Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Cultural Plurality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
Originally appeared in Darren Cronshaw, `The Emerging Church: Introductory Reading Guide', Zadok Papers, S143 (Summer 2005).
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