Category: Lesslie Newbigin

Celebrating Lesslie Newbigin’s 100th Birthday Today with 10 Things You Probably Did Not Know About Him
Today is the centennial of Lesslie Newbigin's birth. He was born 100 years ago today on December 8, 1909. He died January 30, 1998.

Ten Things You Probably Did Not Know about Lesslie Newbigin in Honor of the Centennial of his Birth

10. Newbigin means "new building" according to the first page of his autobiography.

9. Though only three years apart in age, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb 4, 1906 – Apr 9, 1945) and Lesslie Newbigin (Dec 8, 1909 – Jan 30, 1998) never did to my knowledge meet one another though the 27 year old Bonhoeffer was in London pastoring a German congregation from 1933-1935 while the 24 year old Newbigin was training for the ministry in Cambridge. Both were very involved in ecumenical affairs and international relationships but Bonhoeffer was active in the 1930's with the World Alliance, Life and Work, and Faith and Order; and Newbigin was primarily involved in the 1940's, 50's and 60's in the International Missionary Council, World Council of Churches, and Faith and Order. Though both were highly effective in the international sphere, both ended their lives more optimistic about the local church and somewhat disappointed in the theological compromises of the large ecumenical organizations.

8. Newbigin was sent out as a missionary by presbyterians (the Church of Scotland) to India in 1936 but in 1947 the Presbyterians, Methodists and Anglicans in that part of India joined together and became The Church of South India. He was elected a bishop. That is how a Presbyterian–they do not have bishops–became a Bishop.

7. On August 15, 1947, India gained its independence from Britain. A month later, on September 27, 1947 the Church of South India was established. There was enormous Hindu (India) vs. Muslim (Pakistan) strife and so it was important for the Christians to demonstrate that they were not divided. Ecumenism for evangelism. Both E's were crucial to Newbigin. In the fall of 1947, Gandhi was 76 and Newbigin was 37. Gandhi was assassinated January 30, 1948. Newbigin died 50 years later to the day: January 30, 1998.

6. Newbigin (age 42-44) and Karl Barth (age 65-67) worked together regularly from 1951-1953 on the "Committee of Twenty-Five" theologians in preparation for the 1954 World Council of Churches conference. Emil Brunner and Reinhold Niebuhr were also in the group. Newbigin, like Karl Barth, did not have an earned doctorate in theology. Newbigin was elected the chair of the group. Barth remembers that the 1952 meeting went better than the 1951 meeting. "I would also suggest that it was because this time we had a chairman, in the person of the young Bishop Lesslie Newbigin from South India, who was able to bring us together and keep us together not only because of our common concern and the human links which joined us, but above all because of his spiritual discipline and his bearing and conduct from the beginning" (Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and and Autobiographical Texts, 399. See pages 395-400 for Barth's memories of those events).

Image from Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life From Letters and Autobiographical Text, p. 396. "Preparations in Bossey for the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches, August 1953. On the left of Barth are Florovsky, Newbigin and Visser 't Hooft; behind him is Marie Claire Frommel (who later became his daughter-in-law), and on the left of her are H. Vogel, E. Schlink and D.T. Niles." Newbigin is in the middle in the gray suit in the first row.

5. Newbigin wrote what are arguably his three most significant works (Open Secret, Foolishness to the Greeks, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society) after retirement from the position of bishop at age 65 in 1974. But before the procrastinators take too much comfort in that, he also wrote many articles and books throughout his ministry responding to the needs of the day. Nor did he "retire and write" but rather took a position as a professor of missiology for five years, served as moderator of a denomination (The United Reformed Church), and then pastored a small church for five years.

4. Newbigin and John Howard Yoder (December 29, 1927 – December 30, 1997) both addressed Donald McGavran's "Church Growth theory." See John Howard Yoder, “The Social Shape of the Gospel,” in Exploring Church Growth (ed. Wilbert R. Shenk; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983), 277-284. and Newbigin, "Conversions, Colonies and Culture" in Signs Amid the Rubble, 78-94 and Newbigin, ""Church Growth, Conversion and Culture" in Open Secret, 121-159. Gayle Gerber Koontz in Radical Ecumenicity: Pursuing Unity and Continuity after John Howard Yoder cites Wilbert Shenk as saying that Newbigin said that Yoder wrote one of the most critical reviews of Household of God that he ever received but I have not found that review yet. Also Yoder used Household of God as an optional text in the syllabus of his "Free Church Ecclesiology" course. Brad Brisco, Josh Rowley, and I discussed Newbigin and Yoder in the comments at Lesslie Newbigin and the GOCN

3. Newbigin's autobiography Unfinished Agenda was originally published in 1985 when Newbigin was 76. It was later published with a new final chapter in 1993 when Newbigin was 84 with a new subtitle Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography. I was impressed with his leadership, passion for the unity of the church, constant championing of evangelism, love for missions, and emphasis on Bible study.

2. There are in existence many audio recordings of Newbigin's lectures and sermons but they are hard to find. Who will put them online for all of us? Holy Trinity Brompton bookshop in London, UK had lots of Newbigin cassette tapes in 2004 when I visited but they do not list their offerings online. I know of a couple lectures online: the first is from 1995 on "Nihilism" from a conference at Holy Trinity Brompton; the second is from a 1991 conference in Toronto and it is called "Christ: Unique and Universal". Here is a Lesslie Newbigin Photos and Images PowerPoint Slide Show

1. Finally, what Newbigin books would I recommend? I would recommend Open Secret for missionaries; Foolishness to the Greeks for those interested in politics; Household of God for people trying to make sense of denominational differences such as seminary students; The Gospel in a Pluralist Society for those interested in apologetics; Sin and Salvation for theologians, Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography for historians; The Light Has Come for readers of John's gospel; and The Good Shepherd (out of print–c'mon publishers!–but available for free at Newbigin.net as a pdf) for church staff devotionals.

Happy Birthday, Newbigin!

Here are the books we read this Fall 2009 in Geoffrey Wainwright's Newbigin Course at Duke Divinity School in which I was a teaching assistant.
Related posts I have written:

Lesslie Newbigin on Communicating the Gospel

Book Review: Lesslie Newbigin's 1956 primer Sin and Salvation

Book Review: Signs Amid the Rubble by Lesslie Newbigin

Recommended: Lesslie Newbigin's Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography
December 8, 2009
Lesslie Newbigin on Communicating the Gospel
I am a teaching assistant in Geoffrey Wainwright's class on Newbigin at Duke Divinity School. (Wainwright wrote Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life). Yesterday we dealt with Lesslie Newbigin's book Foolishness to the Greeks.

At the beginning of the book, Newbigin explains the importance of communicating the gospel "in the language of the receptor culture" (5) But the gospel should also "radically call into question" that receptor culture (6). In the final analysis, conversion "can only be the work of God" (6). Some of us fail to communicate the gospel in language people can understand and others of us are not sufficiently aware of the way we have capitulated to the culture around us. Thanks be to God for working through us in spite of our shortcomings. Here is Newbigin's marvelous longer explanation of this concept.

The same threefold pattern is exemplified in the experience of a missionary who, nurtured in one culture, seeks to communicate the gospel among people of another culture whose world has been shaped by a vision of the totality of things quite different from that of the Bible. He must first of all struggle to master the language. To begin with, he will think of the words he hears simply as the equivalent of the words he uses in his own tongue and are listed in his dictionary as equivalents. But if he really immerses himself in the talk, the songs and folk tales, and the literature of the people, he will discover that there are no exact equivalents. All the words in any language derive their meaning, their resonance in the minds of those who use them, from a whole world of experience and a whole way of grasping that experience. So there are no exact translations. He has to render the message as best he can, drawing as fully as he can upon the tradition of the people to whom he speaks.

Clearly he has to find the path between two dangers. On the one hand, he may simply fail to communicate: he uses the words of the language, but in such a way that he sounds like a foreigner; his message is heard as the babblings of a man who really has nothing to say. Or, on the other hand, he may so far succeed in talking the language of his hearers that he is accepted all too easily as a familiar character–a moralist calling for greater purity of conduct or a guru offering a path to the salvation that all human beings want. His message is simply absorbed into the existing world-view and heard as a call to be more pious or better behaved. In the attempt to be "relevant" one may fall into syncretism, and in the effort to avoid syncretism one may become irrelevant.

In spite of these dangers, which so often reduce the effort of the missionary to futility, it can happen that, in the mysterious providence of God, a word spoken comes with the kind of power of the word that was spoken to Saul on the road to Damascus. Perhaps it is as sudden and cataclysmic as that. Or perhaps it is the last piece that suddenly causes the pattern to make sense, the last experience of a long series that tips the scales decisively. However, that may be, it causes the hearer to stop, turn around, and go in a new direction, to accept Jesus as his Lord, Guide, and Savior.

Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 7-8.

This section from Newbigin is also excerpted in the excellent book:

I have also reviewed some other Newbigin books:
November 1, 2009
Review of Lesslie Newbigin’s 1956 primer Sin and Salvation

I am a teaching assistant for Geoffrey Wainwright’s Lesslie Newbigin course at Duke Divinity School.

Sin and Salvation by Lesslie Newbigin

Basic theology written for village teachers in India, September 16, 2009

By Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) – See all my reviews

Geoffrey Wainwright, professor of systematic theology at Duke Divinity
School, has called “Sin and Salvation” “a marvelous, moving summary of
the gospel.” Lesslie Newbigin’s book published in 1956 is succinct,
clear and ecumenical.

Newbigin (1909-1998) begins the preface this way,

“This small book was originally published in Tamil for the use of
church workers in the Tamil dioceses of the Church of South India.
Those for whom it was intended are mostly village teachers of
elementary grade, who–although without theological training–have to
bear a heavy share of the responsibility for the pastoral care of
several thousand village congregations in the Tamil country . . . I
began writing it in Tamil but found that the work was proceeding too
slowly and therefore completed it in English, and requested a friend to
translate it. I have therefore tried to write the kind of English
sentences that would go easily into Tamil, and have had all the time in
mind the necessities of translation” (p. 7). (Newbigin describes more
fully the villages he had in mind when he wrote this in chapter 7
“Kanchi: The Villages” of his Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography).

The Duke Divinity School students who read this book for
Wainwright’s course noted how valuable Newbigin’s little book was for
helping them review theology. They also appreciated the breadth of his
description of what the cross accomplished. Newbigin cannot be pinned
down as merely “Reformed”–his work has traces of Wesleyan, Orthodox
and Catholic theology as well. (See Wainwright’s extensive analysis of
“Sin and Salvation” in chapter one of his book Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life.

Fans of Newbigin’s writings from the 1980’s and 1990’s will be
interested to note that even as early as 1956 when he was 47 years old,
he was reflecting on what Darrell Guder later called “the missional
church” drawing inspiration from Newbigin. For example, Newbigin writes
in the preface of Sin and Salvation that he has has decided to treat
the “church” before “faith” because “it is the order which the
non-Christian has to follow when he comes to Christ. What he sees is a
visible congregation in his village. It is that congregation which
holds out to him the offer of salvation” (p. 9).

Most people will likely want to read Newbigin’s later works before
picking up “Sin and Salvation” but as vigorous discussion continues
surrounding the nature of Christian salvation and
justification–consider Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision by N. T. Wright, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul by Douglas Campbell, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright by John Piper, and Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology
by Michael Gorman)–Newbigin’s Sin and Salvation reminds theologians of
the need to explain the gospel fairly and thoughtfully to preachers,
teachers, students, new believers, and the curious outsider. It is not
surprising that late in life Newbigin developed a friendship with Holy
Trinity Brompton Church in London which developed the Alpha course and
related resources like Nicky Gumbel’s Questions of Life: A Practical Introduction to the Christian Faith. Another recent attempt to clearly and simply explain the gospel is James Choung’s book True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In and his sketched diagrams. Newbigin would himself acknowledge the need for such resources.

I have reviewed a couple other little known books by Newbigin now.

Book Review: Signs Amid the Rubble by Lesslie Newbigin

Recommended: Lesslie Newbigin’s Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography

September 16, 2009