Adventures with Lesslie - 2

The Post-Christian Culture

After years of work in India and service in countless ministry and missionary efforts around the world, Lesslie Newbigin "retired" by settling into a small, struggling church in very rough part of Birmingham, England. He found this last assignment to be his most difficult. He writes: "I have been forced to recognize that the most difficult missionary frontier in the contemporary world is the one of which the Churches have been -- on the whole -- so little conscious, the frontier that divides the world of biblical faith from the world whose values and beliefs are ceaselessly fed into every home on the television screen."

What is most interesting to me is not that Newbigin finds the England of the 1980's to be hard spiritual soil, but that he sees the problem facing contemporary society as an old problem: "Like others I had been accustomed... to speak of England as a secular society. I have now come to realize that I was the easy victim of an illusion from which my reading of the Gospels should have saved me. No room remains empty for long. If God is driven out, the gods come trooping in. England is a pagan society and the development of a truly missionary encounter with this very tough form of a paganism is the greatest intellectual and practical task facing the Church." (Newbigin, An Unfinished Agenda, 249).

I would say that Newbigin's assessment of England in the 1980's is an appropriate fit for America in the early 21st century: we also have become a pagan nation. I am more and more convinced of this not because of what I see on TV and outside of the Church, but because of what I see and experience in the churches of America and with those who profess to be Christians in America. Much of what is called "christianity" is really paganism with a christian mask.

This is nothing too shocking; essentially all I have said is that Christians in America have an unformed Christian world view. At best, this is immaturity; at worst, it is apostasy. It will only be tragic if, like a child who never develops, the situation remains the same.

The task that lies ahead is for us as Christians, the task mentioned above by Newbigin, needs to be taken seriously and is being tackled by many faithful people today. Every Christian leader must face it and every Christian must embrace it. Those of us who are sitting in the "pews" must be willing to be educated in this faith and have our world view reformed to it. Those of us who are in the "pulpits" of America must be willing to reform our teaching after this great faith. Repentance is required on all accounts: we must live this faith that has been handed down to us, and we must seek to avoid the syncretistic tendency that our forefathers often fell into. We must, above all, ask for grace from the Triune God, that we might glorify Him in our own day.

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you to so guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP, p.100)

A quote from Simon Chan's "Liturgical Theology"

"But the question whether the church should be understood as a divine-humanity or as essentially a social organization has less to do with hermeneutics as with one's presunderstanding or worldview. The issue concerns boundary principles by which we seek to make sense of Scripture. If we accept the idea that the church is only a way of organizing ourselves, then all biblical descriptions of the church are likely to be understood as metaphorical descriptions of social realities-- for example, sacraments are nothing but a "memorial" of what Jesus Christ has done for our redemption. But if we believe that the church is a transcendent reality, then we need to probe the biblical descriptions more thoroughly and discover the deeply implications. Give the historical tendency within evangelicalism to accommodate itself to the spirit of the times, what appears to be the "obvious meaning of Scripture" may in fact be a result of implicit acceptance of the reigning "plausibility structure," namely, the secular assumptions of a post-Enlightenment age." (p. 29)

Adventures with Lesslie - 1

I am currently reading a massive biography (400+ pages, tiny print) on Lesslie Newbigin: leading missiologist, theologian, and ecumenist of the 20th century. He was a bishop in the Church of South India, a pastor, a prolific author, and an all around genius. On top of all that, it even appears that he was a good man, too!

My plan: to post quotes and ideas from this biography in hopes that such posts will help me get through this with my sanity safely intact and that they might benefit my friends and I as we seek to process one of Bishop Newbigin's chief concerns: the nature of the Church.

Today's post: The Church as a Means of Appropriating Salvation

In his work Sin and Salvation, Newbigin lays out a rather typical evangelical understanding of man's need for atonement and the satisfactory propitiation of Christ. However, once he moves on to "how salvation becomes ours," the bishop's reasoning takes a surprising turn. Wainwright comments: "Instead of beginning with the inward spiritual act of faith, he reverses the order and starts with the outward and visible fact of the church. Two reasons are given for the switch..." He then goes on to quote Newbigin directly:

"Firstly, it is the order which the reader of the NT finds himself following: the Acts of the Apostles come before the Epistles--the fact of the Church before the clue to its inner life. Secondly, 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. Only when he has come within its fellowship does he (usually) come to any deep understanding of its inner source."

This, I believe, has deep implications for the way Christians seek to evangelize their neighbors. All Christians should seek to tell their friends and family about Christ; it is, after all, a matter of love and death and life. Newbigin's observation should guide Christians in this pursuit: only in the context of the life of the Church will anyone know Jesus truly and in a compelling way. We cannot expect our friends to have a true introduction to Jesus Christ without first being introduced to his Church. No doubt, this poses a host of problems, because, as everyone knows, the Church does not often reflect the goodness of her Savior. But, if Newbigin is right, it seems that this difficult way is the way God has chosen to work. Belonging in the fullest sense may not precede believing, but some sort of inclusion and contact must come before any sort of faith can grow.

This is an old lesson, and Bishop Newbigin is echoing the words of one of his predecessors to the office: "He cannot have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother." Of course, nothing true is ever new.

a prayer of confession

"Forgive my sins, O Lord-- forgive me the sins of my present and the sins of my past, the sins of my soul and the sins of my body; the sins which I have done to please myself, and the sins which I have done to please others. Forgive me my wanton and idle sins, forgive me my serious and deliberate sins, forgive me those sins which I know and those sins which I know not, the sins which I have labored so to hide from others that I have hid them from my own memory. Forgive them, O Lord, forgive them all. Of thy great mercy let me be absolved, and of thy bountiful goodness let me be delivered from the bonds of all that by my frailty I have committed. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen." -- Thomas Wilson, Sacra Privata.

(Again, lifted from Doberstein's work)

a statement

"I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him; but the Holy Ghost has called me through the gospel, enlightened me by his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith; in like manner as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the true faith; in which Christian Church he daily forgives abundantly all my sins, and the sins of all believers, and will raise me up and all the dead at the last day, and will grant everlasting life to me and to all who believe in Christ. This is most certainly true." - Martin Luther, Small Catechism, Explanation of the Third Article of the Creed.

(Lifted from Minister's Prayerbook, the Doberstein classic)

words, words, words

Theologians, politicians, ad men and journalists,

like world controllers,

subtly deceive

by murdering words

in academician gulags.

They know not what they do. Good

God, destroy them

before they reach into the souls'

of my children and

cut out the tongues that make us human.

-- a reflection on Hamlet II.ii and Lewis' Abolition of Man

Why is it "good" to help the poor?

I am currently knocking out some reading for a class on Ethics, and I have floating around in my head many fragments of the reading I've done lately. These fragments are being brought in slowly into my worldview, and I don't think I'll ever be the same... at least I hope not. This class has given me a new set of goggles with which I'm looking at the world, and as a result, I'm noticing ethical problems and issues everywhere.

We are a people who make great ethical claims all the time, and I am seeing that though we all know some things are good and other things are not, most of us have only a very vague sense of why this is the case. I'm thinking about three specific things I've seen lately: the presidential press conference last week, every episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," and a documentary on Dietrich Bonhoeffer I watched last night. All three of these productions had ideas of good, evil, hope and despair. The question I'm most interested in is why the idea-makers behind these three events think these ethical ideas are valid and true. Why is a particular idea 'good'?

Lately, I have been very curious about the ethical base of the people in my city and in my life. I wish I could just stop every person I see on campus or at the store or on the street and ask them: "Do you believe there are things that are essentially good and things that are essentially bad? How do you believe those things? Do you love your family? Why? and why does it matter?" (I know that not all of these questions are ethical in nature.) I just want to get in their heads.

While I can't do that, I can ask you. So, if you're reading this, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

And just so I don't get responses that ramble all over the place, I'd like to narrow the discussion to one particular question. So please post, if you are able:

WHY IS IT "GOOD" TO HELP THE POOR?