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The Gospel in a pluralist society
Paperback. Previous owner's blind stamp on half title page. Slight wear on upper edge fo text and corners of cover. Otherwise VG
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First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
Lesslie Newbigin
96 books102 followersBishop James Edward Lesslie Newbigin was a British theologian, missiologist, missionary and author. Though originally ordained within the Church of Scotland, Newbigin spent much of his career serving as a missionary in India and became affiliated with the Church of South India and the United Reformed Church, becoming one of the Church of South India's first bishops. A prolific author who wrote on a wide range of theological topics, Newbigin is best known for his contributions to missiology and ecclesiology. He is also known for his involvement in both the dialogue regarding ecumenism and the Gospel and Our Culture movement. Many scholars also believe his work laid the foundations for the contemporary missional church movement, and it is said his stature and range is comparable to the "Fathers of the Church".
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May 15, 2013
This is one of the most overrated books I have encountered among thoughtful Christians in the last couple of decades. I still scratch my head trying to account for its widespread popularity.
Since I have no widespread popularity to put at risk, here's my guess: This book presents a wide range of good ideas that many people encounter in this book for the first time. The good ideas are generally not Newbigin's. They are not always well phrased. In my view, they are frequently oversimplified and not infrequently juxtaposed with other ideas to render Newbigin's discussion incoherent. But because these ideas have not been encountered before (Newbigin is typically encountered by people moving up from pop Christian books to serious Christian books), Newbigin gets credited for unusual wisdom and knowledge.
Well, I don't agree. C. S. Lewis? Yep, he's genuinely a genius, and anyone who claims to have "outgrown" Lewis (as I, to my shame, did as a graduate student) is a pretentious ass (as I, to my shame, was as a graduate student). But Newbigin? His books are much more like Francis Schaeffer's: Conduits of other people's ideas that are expressed more carefully and coherently in the originals, but for the transmission of which we can be grateful as the (limited) service they are.
Fans of Newbigin who have read this far and have not punched their computer screens in rage at my sacrilegious demurral will be demanding proof. And rightly so.
Since this is GoodReads, though, and not a formal review, I can just spout off as I like, can't I?
Still, duty calls.
1. Newbigin indulges in the excitement of reducing options to antinomies, instead of considering more moderate relationships. For example, he writes, "One does not defend this new perspective by trying to demonstrate its compatibility with the old. One challenges the old with the demand and the offer of a death and new birth" (12). This assertion strikes me as the effusion of someone who has taken a heady draught of Barth at his antithetical worst, rather than the seasoned reflections of a successful missionary. (See Lamin Sanneh's "Translating the Message" for a book-length implicit refutation of this proposal.)
2. "What we see as facts depends on the theory we bring to the observation" (21). Well, sort of, sure. But, as I have described elsewhere as "The 99 Bus Refutation," whatever your theory happens to be about anything and everything, even if it is the starkest solipsism or skepticism, if you step off the curb into the path of the 99 Bus, you will encounter A Fact. Newbigin ought to have said, "depends IN SOME RESPECTS on the theory we bring."
3. "A theory is abandoned only when it has been shown that there is another theory which is more intellectually and aesthetically satisfying and which can account for more of the facts." Uh, well no, that's not true. This seems to be a badly bowdlerized version of Kuhn, and Kuhn's focus is on scientific revolutions (when one theory does, in fact, supplant another), not a history of "when scientists abandon disproven hypotheses." Again, oversimplification that amounts to nonsense.
4. Newbigin follows Peter Berger into suggesting that "the heretical imperative" is a condition of modernity: we all have to choose (choice = "heresy") in a culture in which there is no "automatic" choice because of the hegemony of this or that religion (40). But to say that in the Middle Ages "for the vast majority faith is not a matter of personal decision: it is simply the acceptance of what everybody accepts because it is obviously the case" is to badly caricature an extremely complex situation in which people are choosing all sorts of things all the time--from their stock of native religious doctrines and practices as well as from what is being offered them by the village priest, the nearby monastery, travelling friars and other holy men, the wise woman down the road, and so on.
I restrict myself to drawing examples from the first 50 pages to suggest I could offer more.
Newbigin is a popularizer, but there's no shame in that. I've done more than a bit of it myself.
What is worth warning against, however, is questionable popularizing that gets much more credit than it deserves. That's my beef with the fanbase of Brother Newbigin: This book just isn't that good, and I wish better books were more widely read by these good people--not least the books by Polanyi (okay, he's hard to read: but Nicholas Wolterstorff isn't as hard, and he makes many of the same points), Kuhn (not hard to read), and Berger (ditto).
Newbigin, like Schaeffer, has served many people usefully, and for that I do not want to appear ungrateful or disrespectful. I'm just trying to put the book in its place--about 2 1/2 stars, I'd say.
Since I have no widespread popularity to put at risk, here's my guess: This book presents a wide range of good ideas that many people encounter in this book for the first time. The good ideas are generally not Newbigin's. They are not always well phrased. In my view, they are frequently oversimplified and not infrequently juxtaposed with other ideas to render Newbigin's discussion incoherent. But because these ideas have not been encountered before (Newbigin is typically encountered by people moving up from pop Christian books to serious Christian books), Newbigin gets credited for unusual wisdom and knowledge.
Well, I don't agree. C. S. Lewis? Yep, he's genuinely a genius, and anyone who claims to have "outgrown" Lewis (as I, to my shame, did as a graduate student) is a pretentious ass (as I, to my shame, was as a graduate student). But Newbigin? His books are much more like Francis Schaeffer's: Conduits of other people's ideas that are expressed more carefully and coherently in the originals, but for the transmission of which we can be grateful as the (limited) service they are.
Fans of Newbigin who have read this far and have not punched their computer screens in rage at my sacrilegious demurral will be demanding proof. And rightly so.
Since this is GoodReads, though, and not a formal review, I can just spout off as I like, can't I?
Still, duty calls.
1. Newbigin indulges in the excitement of reducing options to antinomies, instead of considering more moderate relationships. For example, he writes, "One does not defend this new perspective by trying to demonstrate its compatibility with the old. One challenges the old with the demand and the offer of a death and new birth" (12). This assertion strikes me as the effusion of someone who has taken a heady draught of Barth at his antithetical worst, rather than the seasoned reflections of a successful missionary. (See Lamin Sanneh's "Translating the Message" for a book-length implicit refutation of this proposal.)
2. "What we see as facts depends on the theory we bring to the observation" (21). Well, sort of, sure. But, as I have described elsewhere as "The 99 Bus Refutation," whatever your theory happens to be about anything and everything, even if it is the starkest solipsism or skepticism, if you step off the curb into the path of the 99 Bus, you will encounter A Fact. Newbigin ought to have said, "depends IN SOME RESPECTS on the theory we bring."
3. "A theory is abandoned only when it has been shown that there is another theory which is more intellectually and aesthetically satisfying and which can account for more of the facts." Uh, well no, that's not true. This seems to be a badly bowdlerized version of Kuhn, and Kuhn's focus is on scientific revolutions (when one theory does, in fact, supplant another), not a history of "when scientists abandon disproven hypotheses." Again, oversimplification that amounts to nonsense.
4. Newbigin follows Peter Berger into suggesting that "the heretical imperative" is a condition of modernity: we all have to choose (choice = "heresy") in a culture in which there is no "automatic" choice because of the hegemony of this or that religion (40). But to say that in the Middle Ages "for the vast majority faith is not a matter of personal decision: it is simply the acceptance of what everybody accepts because it is obviously the case" is to badly caricature an extremely complex situation in which people are choosing all sorts of things all the time--from their stock of native religious doctrines and practices as well as from what is being offered them by the village priest, the nearby monastery, travelling friars and other holy men, the wise woman down the road, and so on.
I restrict myself to drawing examples from the first 50 pages to suggest I could offer more.
Newbigin is a popularizer, but there's no shame in that. I've done more than a bit of it myself.
What is worth warning against, however, is questionable popularizing that gets much more credit than it deserves. That's my beef with the fanbase of Brother Newbigin: This book just isn't that good, and I wish better books were more widely read by these good people--not least the books by Polanyi (okay, he's hard to read: but Nicholas Wolterstorff isn't as hard, and he makes many of the same points), Kuhn (not hard to read), and Berger (ditto).
Newbigin, like Schaeffer, has served many people usefully, and for that I do not want to appear ungrateful or disrespectful. I'm just trying to put the book in its place--about 2 1/2 stars, I'd say.
July 22, 2025
"The only possible hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation which believes it."
This is one of those rare books that make other, lesser books useless to you.
Such a rich read, difficult, but if you can stick with it, it will give you such a deep understanding of mission and the gospel in our culture.
Newbigin comes across as so unbelievably well read. It's almost as if he can articulate your position better than you can, before he critiques it. No one is safe in this book, Newbigin's coming for everyone. Left, right, middle. He's got something challenging to say.
But if you listen, you'll hear a call to deeper trust in the triune God, you'll feel a greater willingness to take the way of the cross and you'll see the deep folly at the heart of western culture.
This is one of those rare books that make other, lesser books useless to you.
Such a rich read, difficult, but if you can stick with it, it will give you such a deep understanding of mission and the gospel in our culture.
Newbigin comes across as so unbelievably well read. It's almost as if he can articulate your position better than you can, before he critiques it. No one is safe in this book, Newbigin's coming for everyone. Left, right, middle. He's got something challenging to say.
But if you listen, you'll hear a call to deeper trust in the triune God, you'll feel a greater willingness to take the way of the cross and you'll see the deep folly at the heart of western culture.
April 5, 2021
According to Lesslie Newbigin, the countries of the “Western world” constitute a “pluralist society,” not merely in the sense of “variety of cultures, religions, and life-styles,” but in the sense that “this plurality is celebrated as things to be approved and cherished” (1). He goes on to note that plurality has its limits, in that, for example, a plurality of religious opinions is accepted but a plurality of scientific explanations of biological evolution is not. This limit implies a distinction between “facts,” which constitute public knowledge, and “values,” which constitute a “private choice” (7).
Given that Christianity understands the gospel as public knowledge, not merely a personal opinion, the task of The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is “to examine the roots of this culture which we share and to suggest how as Christians we can more confidently affirm our faith in this kind of intellectual climate” (7).
To understand the roots of this pluralistic society, Newbigin employs Peter Berger’s concept of “plausibility structures,” defined as “patterns of belief and practice accepted within a given society, which determine which beliefs are plausible to its members and which are not” (8). These change over time. For example, while modernity accepts the distinction between public fact and personal value, the medieval world did not. The deliverances of the study of both nature and supernature constituted public knowledge.
Modernity’s plausibility structures stem from the Enlightenment—a value-laden term, one might point out—starting with the philosophy of Rene Descartes, whose distinction between res cogitans and res extensa created a gap between our thoughts and the material world about which we hold those thoughts. “A scepticism [sic] about whether our senses give us access to reality is the background of the major philosophical thinking ever since” (18). In the hands of Immanuel Kant, this gap became practically unbridgeable: We cannot know noumena (thinks as they are), only phenomena (things as they appear). Because the supernatural belongs to the noumenal realm, knowledge of it became doubtful, while the natural belongs to the phenomenal realm, which we can investigate.
(Newbigin—and I, following him—skims a bit too quickly across the movement from Cartesian rationalism to British empiricism to German idealism, but you get the picture. The epistemological turn in Western philosophy over time contributed to assigning religion to the category of value but science to the category of fact.)
If the gospel is to be affirmed as true in a pluralist society, this fact-value distinction and its underlying epistemological method of systematic doubt must be subjected to fundamental critique. Newbigin does this by drawing especially on the work of Michael Polanyi and Alasdair MacIntyre.
From Polanyi, Newbigin borrows the concept of “personal knowledge,” the personal commitment or investment of the knower to what is known. This applies to all knowers and all forms of knowledge. Thus, to distinguish between “knowledge” on one side and “faith” on the other commits a fundamental error. “There is no knowing without believing, and believing is the way to knowing,” Newbigin writes (33). To know anything is to make a personal commitment to a body of assumptions that in the nature of the case one cannot prove.
From MacIntyre, Newbigin borrows the concept of community-derived tradition. He writes, “Reason is a faculty with which we seek to grasp the different elements in our experience in an ordered way so that, as we say, they make sense. It is not a separate source of information about what is the case. It can only function within a continuing linguistic and cultural tradition.” More concisely, “all use of reasoning depends on and is embodied in a tradition” (53).
If this is the case, then it makes little sense to privilege science over religion as public knowledge as opposed to personal opinion since both require faith and operate within a tradition. Given this critique of modernity, Newbigin goes on to articulate a missiology that upholds the revelation of God in Christ as public knowledge, on the one hand, while continuing to value aspects of the variety of cultures on the other.
Newbigin was an Anglican missionary to India and an ecumenist, and his thinking reflects the influences of mainline Protestantism at points, though not uncritically. By the same token, his missiology can inform evangelical missiology, even though he criticizes evangelicalism at points—for its individualism, its otherworldliness, and the like.
In addition to personal knowledge and community-derived tradition, the one other concept that I want to emphasize from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is what Newbigin calls “the hermeneutic of the gospel.” He writes, in a passage worth quoting at length:
"How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. I am, of course, not denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel—evangelistic campaigns, distribution of Bibles and Christian literature, conferences, and even books such as this one. But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community" (227).
Believing community: One that is characterized by the trust and personal commitment of personal knowledge and formed by a tradition.
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is well worth reading, especially as, nearly 30 years after its publication, Western society has become even more committed to the ideology of pluralism that Newbigin examined here. The need for a fundamental critique of modernism (and postmodernism) is greater than ever, just as the need for faithful congregations of Christ-followers is more pronounced than ever. After all, didn’t Jesus himself say, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35)?
Book Reviewed
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989).
P.S. If you liked my review, please click “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.
Given that Christianity understands the gospel as public knowledge, not merely a personal opinion, the task of The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is “to examine the roots of this culture which we share and to suggest how as Christians we can more confidently affirm our faith in this kind of intellectual climate” (7).
To understand the roots of this pluralistic society, Newbigin employs Peter Berger’s concept of “plausibility structures,” defined as “patterns of belief and practice accepted within a given society, which determine which beliefs are plausible to its members and which are not” (8). These change over time. For example, while modernity accepts the distinction between public fact and personal value, the medieval world did not. The deliverances of the study of both nature and supernature constituted public knowledge.
Modernity’s plausibility structures stem from the Enlightenment—a value-laden term, one might point out—starting with the philosophy of Rene Descartes, whose distinction between res cogitans and res extensa created a gap between our thoughts and the material world about which we hold those thoughts. “A scepticism [sic] about whether our senses give us access to reality is the background of the major philosophical thinking ever since” (18). In the hands of Immanuel Kant, this gap became practically unbridgeable: We cannot know noumena (thinks as they are), only phenomena (things as they appear). Because the supernatural belongs to the noumenal realm, knowledge of it became doubtful, while the natural belongs to the phenomenal realm, which we can investigate.
(Newbigin—and I, following him—skims a bit too quickly across the movement from Cartesian rationalism to British empiricism to German idealism, but you get the picture. The epistemological turn in Western philosophy over time contributed to assigning religion to the category of value but science to the category of fact.)
If the gospel is to be affirmed as true in a pluralist society, this fact-value distinction and its underlying epistemological method of systematic doubt must be subjected to fundamental critique. Newbigin does this by drawing especially on the work of Michael Polanyi and Alasdair MacIntyre.
From Polanyi, Newbigin borrows the concept of “personal knowledge,” the personal commitment or investment of the knower to what is known. This applies to all knowers and all forms of knowledge. Thus, to distinguish between “knowledge” on one side and “faith” on the other commits a fundamental error. “There is no knowing without believing, and believing is the way to knowing,” Newbigin writes (33). To know anything is to make a personal commitment to a body of assumptions that in the nature of the case one cannot prove.
From MacIntyre, Newbigin borrows the concept of community-derived tradition. He writes, “Reason is a faculty with which we seek to grasp the different elements in our experience in an ordered way so that, as we say, they make sense. It is not a separate source of information about what is the case. It can only function within a continuing linguistic and cultural tradition.” More concisely, “all use of reasoning depends on and is embodied in a tradition” (53).
If this is the case, then it makes little sense to privilege science over religion as public knowledge as opposed to personal opinion since both require faith and operate within a tradition. Given this critique of modernity, Newbigin goes on to articulate a missiology that upholds the revelation of God in Christ as public knowledge, on the one hand, while continuing to value aspects of the variety of cultures on the other.
Newbigin was an Anglican missionary to India and an ecumenist, and his thinking reflects the influences of mainline Protestantism at points, though not uncritically. By the same token, his missiology can inform evangelical missiology, even though he criticizes evangelicalism at points—for its individualism, its otherworldliness, and the like.
In addition to personal knowledge and community-derived tradition, the one other concept that I want to emphasize from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is what Newbigin calls “the hermeneutic of the gospel.” He writes, in a passage worth quoting at length:
"How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. I am, of course, not denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel—evangelistic campaigns, distribution of Bibles and Christian literature, conferences, and even books such as this one. But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community" (227).
Believing community: One that is characterized by the trust and personal commitment of personal knowledge and formed by a tradition.
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is well worth reading, especially as, nearly 30 years after its publication, Western society has become even more committed to the ideology of pluralism that Newbigin examined here. The need for a fundamental critique of modernism (and postmodernism) is greater than ever, just as the need for faithful congregations of Christ-followers is more pronounced than ever. After all, didn’t Jesus himself say, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35)?
Book Reviewed
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989).
P.S. If you liked my review, please click “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.
Read
November 1, 2025Phenomenal; Newbigin puts his finger on our culture's deepest problems, and shows how the gospel can cut through them. It's a great book for everyone to read, but especially those in missions or evangelism.
April 3, 2025
This was my second time reading Newbigin’s classic. The early chapters, in which he draws heavily on Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge, can be a bit slow going, but they are a key to his posture throughout the rest of the book. Newbigin critiques the common separation between supposed “facts” and supposed “values”, which has led to a situation in which scientific knowledge is considered to be publicly available truth, while the Christian’s testimony about God‘s intentions for the world and the good news of Jesus is seen as personal opinion or feeling. Newbigin believes that the church has too readily bought into this view of things, and it has made us unable to communicate appropriately in our world. But this is unacceptable because we are called to live as witnesses to Jesus and as people who care deeply for our neighbours and are invested in their welfare as ambassadors of the kingdom of God. The final chapters of the book layout some of Newbigin’s suggestions about the way forward.
Along the way, there are some wonderful chapters addressing important questions like how we are to think about the idea of contextualization (my favourite chapter), how the gospel relates to world religions, and how the gospel interacts with human culture. There is a lifetime of wise thinking in the pages of this book.
Along the way, there are some wonderful chapters addressing important questions like how we are to think about the idea of contextualization (my favourite chapter), how the gospel relates to world religions, and how the gospel interacts with human culture. There is a lifetime of wise thinking in the pages of this book.
February 28, 2024
I very influential book in Christian missionary work. Especially in the 1990s and 2000s. Many of the authors observations have come true. The growth of individualism and the effect its had on the society both religious the secular. Worth a read if u are interested in build a church community or influencers I would be church history.
August 18, 2012
This is one of the more important books I've read. It has helped me to critically think about the concept of truth, the doctrine of election, the role of the church in the world and how church leadership ought to help.
In light of it being written 20 years ago, it is very prophetic and is most helpful in its critique of pluralism: are we really a pluralistic society? Is a secular culture even possible? How do we come to know truth at all?
Seriously, this book is amazing and I can't wait to read something else by Newbigin. In the meantime, I'm left to sort through my understanding of the church and mission and public truth.
It was not an easy read by any stretch, but well, well worth it. I will come back to sections of this book for discussion and teaching often.
In light of it being written 20 years ago, it is very prophetic and is most helpful in its critique of pluralism: are we really a pluralistic society? Is a secular culture even possible? How do we come to know truth at all?
Seriously, this book is amazing and I can't wait to read something else by Newbigin. In the meantime, I'm left to sort through my understanding of the church and mission and public truth.
It was not an easy read by any stretch, but well, well worth it. I will come back to sections of this book for discussion and teaching often.
November 24, 2013
It seems nearly every author writing about missions, the church and the gospel in the last decade point back to this one from Newbigin. It's not an easy read, and I didn't agree with everything, but it's an important book that has stood the test of time.
April 18, 2023
This is a superb book, one I will be coming back to. Honestly it really challenged my thinking in certain areas especially pertaining to contextualization, and I’ve got a lot to chew on right now. If you had Raphael Anzenberger as a professor at CIU, this will probably remind you of his classes in terms of depth and content. I could not recommend it enough to anyone who wants to grow in their understanding of how Christians and churches can and should face what is only an increasingly pluralistic society around us. This is not only or even primarily a book for missionaries; in fact it was written initially as a response to the pluralization of British culture. However, it makes for very good missiology and I found it very helpful in thinking through issues here in Japan as well as the USA.
My one gripe, if it could be called that, is that I feel Newbign was too restrained in his chapter on powers and principalities. My guess is he was writing with western readers in mind and so didn’t want to delve too deeply into anything that looked like demonology but the specific reality of demons (as opposed to a more general reality of “spiritual warfare” many will give lip service to without wondering very hard about exactly what it is they’re in warfare against or how to fight it) is something that I feel could have been addressed better. Nevertheless.
Newbign confronts here what he calls the reigning “plausibility structures” (think of these as the systems of belief that undergird the dominant western worldview), pulling them out of the shadows and dissecting them that we might understand how much of our thought and action as Christians is influenced by our culture. Alongside this revealing is a critical look at how we’ve been corrupted and derailed in so many ways by these plausibility structures, and a laying out of the counter-culture Christian worldview which is in contest with them.
He challenges readers to think of the mission of the church not only or even primarily as converting individuals (itself a goal shaped by our highly individualistic culture) but rather as glorifying God by teaching the world her history and future, something only truly knowable as it is revealed in Christ and his scriptures. It is the annunciation of the coronation of Jesus over all creation, not important only to individual souls but indeed to the souls of our cities, our countries, of creation itself.
Here are a couple stand-out highlights for me (and I highlighted a huge portion of this book, unusual for me):
*For anyone who has understood what God did for us all in Jesus Christ, the one question is: “How shall God be glorified? How shall his amazing grace be known and celebrated and adored? How shall he see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied?” The whole discussion of the role of the world religions and secular ideologies from the point of view of the Christian faith is skewed if it begins with the question, Who is going to be saved at the end? That is a question which God alone will answer, and it is arrogant presumption on the part of theologians to suppose that it is their business to answer it. We have to begin with the mighty work of grace in Jesus Christ and ask, How is he to be honored and glorified? The goal of missions is the glory of God.
*We are to cherish human culture as an area in which we live under God’s grace and are given daily new tokens of that grace. But we are called also to remember that we are part of that whole seamless texture of human culture which was shown on the day we call Good Friday to be in murderous rebellion against the grace of God. We have to say both “God accepts human culture” and also “God judges human culture.”
*The Church is an entity which has outlasted many states, nations, and empires, and it will outlast those that exist today. The Church is nothing other than that movement launched into the public life of the world by its sovereign Lord to continue that which he came to do until it is finished in his return in glory. It has his promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. In spite of the crimes, blunders, compromises, and errors by which its story has been stained and is stained to this day, the Church is the great reality in comparison with which nations and empires and civilizations are passing phenomena. The Church can never settle down to being a voluntary society concerned merely with private and domestic affairs. It is bound to challenge in the name of the one Lord all the powers, ideologies, myths, assumptions, and worldviews which do not acknowledge him as Lord. If that involves conflict, trouble, and rejection, then we have the example of Jesus before us and his reminder that a servant is not greater than his master.
My one gripe, if it could be called that, is that I feel Newbign was too restrained in his chapter on powers and principalities. My guess is he was writing with western readers in mind and so didn’t want to delve too deeply into anything that looked like demonology but the specific reality of demons (as opposed to a more general reality of “spiritual warfare” many will give lip service to without wondering very hard about exactly what it is they’re in warfare against or how to fight it) is something that I feel could have been addressed better. Nevertheless.
Newbign confronts here what he calls the reigning “plausibility structures” (think of these as the systems of belief that undergird the dominant western worldview), pulling them out of the shadows and dissecting them that we might understand how much of our thought and action as Christians is influenced by our culture. Alongside this revealing is a critical look at how we’ve been corrupted and derailed in so many ways by these plausibility structures, and a laying out of the counter-culture Christian worldview which is in contest with them.
He challenges readers to think of the mission of the church not only or even primarily as converting individuals (itself a goal shaped by our highly individualistic culture) but rather as glorifying God by teaching the world her history and future, something only truly knowable as it is revealed in Christ and his scriptures. It is the annunciation of the coronation of Jesus over all creation, not important only to individual souls but indeed to the souls of our cities, our countries, of creation itself.
Here are a couple stand-out highlights for me (and I highlighted a huge portion of this book, unusual for me):
*For anyone who has understood what God did for us all in Jesus Christ, the one question is: “How shall God be glorified? How shall his amazing grace be known and celebrated and adored? How shall he see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied?” The whole discussion of the role of the world religions and secular ideologies from the point of view of the Christian faith is skewed if it begins with the question, Who is going to be saved at the end? That is a question which God alone will answer, and it is arrogant presumption on the part of theologians to suppose that it is their business to answer it. We have to begin with the mighty work of grace in Jesus Christ and ask, How is he to be honored and glorified? The goal of missions is the glory of God.
*We are to cherish human culture as an area in which we live under God’s grace and are given daily new tokens of that grace. But we are called also to remember that we are part of that whole seamless texture of human culture which was shown on the day we call Good Friday to be in murderous rebellion against the grace of God. We have to say both “God accepts human culture” and also “God judges human culture.”
*The Church is an entity which has outlasted many states, nations, and empires, and it will outlast those that exist today. The Church is nothing other than that movement launched into the public life of the world by its sovereign Lord to continue that which he came to do until it is finished in his return in glory. It has his promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. In spite of the crimes, blunders, compromises, and errors by which its story has been stained and is stained to this day, the Church is the great reality in comparison with which nations and empires and civilizations are passing phenomena. The Church can never settle down to being a voluntary society concerned merely with private and domestic affairs. It is bound to challenge in the name of the one Lord all the powers, ideologies, myths, assumptions, and worldviews which do not acknowledge him as Lord. If that involves conflict, trouble, and rejection, then we have the example of Jesus before us and his reminder that a servant is not greater than his master.
January 9, 2023
I gave it a 3 because I think there was a lot more truth in this book than I was able to grasp. It was a bit heady for me. However, I loved his emphasis on the Spirit empowering and initiating missions, not us. And his concluding remarks made the book for me:
I therefore believe that a Christian must welcome some measure of plurality but reject pluralism. We can and must welcome a plural society because it provides us with a wider range of experience and a wider diversity of human responses to experience, and therefore richer opportunities for testing the sufficiency of our faith than are available in a monochrome society. As we confess Jesus as Lord in a plural society, and as the church grows through the coming of people from many different cultural and religious traditions to faith in Christ, we are enabled to learn more of the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of God (Eph 3: 14-19) than we can in a monochrome society. But we must reject the ideology of pluralism. We must reject the invitation to live in a society where everything is subjective and relative, a society which has abandoned the belief that truth can be known and has settled for a purely subjective view of truth- "truth for you" but not truth for all.... It may well be that for some decades, while churches grow rapidly in other parts of the world., Christians in Europe may continue to be a small and even shrinking minority. If this should be so, it must be seen as an example of that pruning which is promised to the Church in order that it may bear more fruit (John 15:1ff). When that happens it is painful. But Jesus assures us, "My Father is the gardener." He knows what he is doing, and we can trust him. Such experience is a summons to self-searching, to repentance, and to fresh commitment. It is not an occasion for anxiety. God is faithful, and he will complete what he has begun.
I therefore believe that a Christian must welcome some measure of plurality but reject pluralism. We can and must welcome a plural society because it provides us with a wider range of experience and a wider diversity of human responses to experience, and therefore richer opportunities for testing the sufficiency of our faith than are available in a monochrome society. As we confess Jesus as Lord in a plural society, and as the church grows through the coming of people from many different cultural and religious traditions to faith in Christ, we are enabled to learn more of the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of God (Eph 3: 14-19) than we can in a monochrome society. But we must reject the ideology of pluralism. We must reject the invitation to live in a society where everything is subjective and relative, a society which has abandoned the belief that truth can be known and has settled for a purely subjective view of truth- "truth for you" but not truth for all.... It may well be that for some decades, while churches grow rapidly in other parts of the world., Christians in Europe may continue to be a small and even shrinking minority. If this should be so, it must be seen as an example of that pruning which is promised to the Church in order that it may bear more fruit (John 15:1ff). When that happens it is painful. But Jesus assures us, "My Father is the gardener." He knows what he is doing, and we can trust him. Such experience is a summons to self-searching, to repentance, and to fresh commitment. It is not an occasion for anxiety. God is faithful, and he will complete what he has begun.
November 9, 2025
Pluralism is a characteristic of a secular society. A secular society (SS) is one where there is no officially approved pattern of belief or conduct. No approved pattern because all patterns can be approved.
The Gospel is always needed and by gospel I do mean the Life, Death and Resurrection. But I also mean the life that I am supposed to live out because I have given my life to Jesus. Which is not a life of comfort, but a life of sacrifice.
Plausibility structures(PS): patterns of belief and practices accepted within a given society, which determine which beliefs are plausible to its members and which are not.
• a huge PS of the West is that we must be Pluralistic in fact and principle. Fact: that’s true for you because of XYZ, not for me. Principle: separating public and private life.
Six essential marks of SS by Denis Munby.
1. SS uncommitted to any particular view of the universe and mans place in it.
2. SS therefore a pluralist society, not only in fact but also principle
3. SS therefore will be a tolerant society, tolerance limited only by the need to resist activities which are directed against the accepted policies of society.
4. SS must have some common aim for citizens. SS will eliminate the relics of the sacred and deflate the pretensions of government.
5. SS will solve problems it’s problems by eliminating emotion and irrational impulses
6. SS will be without official images, ideal types or models held up for imitation. SS will work to provide a framework within which people of different allegiances can work together.
The Gospel is always needed and by gospel I do mean the Life, Death and Resurrection. But I also mean the life that I am supposed to live out because I have given my life to Jesus. Which is not a life of comfort, but a life of sacrifice.
Plausibility structures(PS): patterns of belief and practices accepted within a given society, which determine which beliefs are plausible to its members and which are not.
• a huge PS of the West is that we must be Pluralistic in fact and principle. Fact: that’s true for you because of XYZ, not for me. Principle: separating public and private life.
Six essential marks of SS by Denis Munby.
1. SS uncommitted to any particular view of the universe and mans place in it.
2. SS therefore a pluralist society, not only in fact but also principle
3. SS therefore will be a tolerant society, tolerance limited only by the need to resist activities which are directed against the accepted policies of society.
4. SS must have some common aim for citizens. SS will eliminate the relics of the sacred and deflate the pretensions of government.
5. SS will solve problems it’s problems by eliminating emotion and irrational impulses
6. SS will be without official images, ideal types or models held up for imitation. SS will work to provide a framework within which people of different allegiances can work together.
December 16, 2019
"The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" is already rightly considered a classic (and NOT overrated as some esteemed theologians grumble) and still speaks to our cultural situation in the West today even if it is thirty years old. Lesslie Newbigin offers shrewd insights into how Christians can navigate culture, carefully guiding believers down a middle path between theological liberalism and ardent fundamentalism.
June 25, 2021
The first 5 chapters were really good. The idea that facts are really beliefs was insightful. He talks about the Structure of Scientific Revolutions & paradigms as it applies to the idea of truth.
I skimmed through the second half of the book as it kind of lost focus. I will try reading Foolishness to the Greeks next.
I skimmed through the second half of the book as it kind of lost focus. I will try reading Foolishness to the Greeks next.
January 28, 2022
We live a a pluralist world which sees everything is relative, how can we preach the gospel to it??
How does the gospel deal with different worldviews, religions and ideologies?
This is the topic of this book and in the end Newbign talks about the church and its ministry in this world.
How does the gospel deal with different worldviews, religions and ideologies?
This is the topic of this book and in the end Newbign talks about the church and its ministry in this world.
Want to read
July 9, 2018Recommended here.
June 23, 2022
Foundational. Every bit as timely and guiding 30 years later.
October 29, 2015
In our church we read this for our men's book study. I think it was a little too heavy on philosophy for the group we had, and a few guys dropped out early who don't get into academic studies very well. The five of us who stuck it out to the end really enjoyed the discussions, though. Everyone found it helpful, even when the chapters got pretty heavily academic. With discussion everyone came away understanding the concepts and benefitting from it.
Newbigin is odd. Most of the book is fantastic and you can tell he shared a lot of insights with Cornelius Van Til (though as usual Van Til never gets mentioned, a pet peeve of mine). As good as most of the chapters are in this book, he has a very strange way of being liberal. He'll have a great chapter on how Christianity is the only possible way to make sense of our experience, destroying false views of the pluralist, and the next chapter will be about how awesome Karl Rahner's universalism is. So he openly contradicts himself. All of the same arguments he uses against the pluralist worldview apply to his universalism. He really threw me for a loop a few times.
The other thing that bothered me was his chapter on the pastor. He very obviously thinks it's okay for women to be pastors. But it is so bizarre with the way he writes about the pastor. All he uses is military and warfare language to talk about the work of a pastor. Hello? War is a man's job. Shouldn't that indicate that women don't fit in that role?
I recommend the book. It will help you know how to interact with unbelieving ways of thinking. There is some great practical stuff in this book, for a work that is largely philosophical.
Newbigin is odd. Most of the book is fantastic and you can tell he shared a lot of insights with Cornelius Van Til (though as usual Van Til never gets mentioned, a pet peeve of mine). As good as most of the chapters are in this book, he has a very strange way of being liberal. He'll have a great chapter on how Christianity is the only possible way to make sense of our experience, destroying false views of the pluralist, and the next chapter will be about how awesome Karl Rahner's universalism is. So he openly contradicts himself. All of the same arguments he uses against the pluralist worldview apply to his universalism. He really threw me for a loop a few times.
The other thing that bothered me was his chapter on the pastor. He very obviously thinks it's okay for women to be pastors. But it is so bizarre with the way he writes about the pastor. All he uses is military and warfare language to talk about the work of a pastor. Hello? War is a man's job. Shouldn't that indicate that women don't fit in that role?
I recommend the book. It will help you know how to interact with unbelieving ways of thinking. There is some great practical stuff in this book, for a work that is largely philosophical.
August 15, 2016
Despite the naysayers in other reviews, I think this may be one of the best books of the late 20th century. One indication is that reading it 25 years later the issues are still at hand and contested. The one that stands out is his outing of the secularization thesis. Much more has come to light since his book that validates Newbigin's critique of the thesis. I appreciated his application of Polyani to the missional context in the first several chapters. The practical application of being a missionary church in the last few chapters is challenging. As a pastor, I'm trying to live it out, but the calls for working as a traditional church on the one hand and leading the charge into missional engagement on the other are equally strident and loud. I believe that often 200-page Christian books are 35 page books hiding within the length necessary to make publishers happy. Every page of Newbigin is worthy of publication and reading. It can be dense, but will reward the diligent.
January 3, 2025
An outline for the post-liberal synthesis which, in many ways, we still need. I would say _Foolishness to the Greeks_ is superior as a single book — this volume is, for whatever reasons, distinctively looser and more repetitive. Some quibbles and concerns around the corners. But he’s drawing all the right key ideas into conversation with one another and giving that conversation a push in the proper direction.
June 8, 2012
A classic work which I'm embarrassed to be reading just now. Newbigin's book is a treatise on understanding and living Christianity in an age of pluralism, and his primary argument is that the Christian faith is both contextual and relatively understood as well as universal and intended as truth for all. He bases his argument in a comparison with science, arguing that faith and science are both ways of knowing that have their own fundamental assumptions. In this way, he attempts to demonstrate that Christianity is not just a matter of subjective belief opposed to reason but a different, equally valid set of lenses just as reason and science are.
Newbigin is fascinating and it's hard to pin him down. Every time he said something that I didn't buy or thought I disagreed with, I then couldn't find a way to refute it.
Newbigin is fascinating and it's hard to pin him down. Every time he said something that I didn't buy or thought I disagreed with, I then couldn't find a way to refute it.
December 17, 2020
I’m sure this book has more to teach me than what I absorbed in my halting, brain-stretching first reading of it. I kept thinking, I’m going to have to go back and re-read what I’ve underlined to really appreciate the flow of Newbigin’s thoughts. And I hope I do that one day, because I’ve never read anything quite so probing regarding the cultural implications of Christian mission and evangelism. I struggled to align myself with everything Newbigin expressed, but the value of this book is that it forced me to think outside the well-established theological lines I’m accustomed to staying within, and that, I believe, is a good thing.
March 14, 2008
Probably the best book I've found dealing with Christian interaction with culture. One of Newbigin's main points - that (despite its continuing failures) the Christian community is exclusively charged with the task of proclaiming and embodying the completely non-exclusive grace and love of God - has probably been the most important step thus far in my questions about Christian exclusivity. I recommend this book for people in the church trying to find a sense of truth between extremes of a self-righteous Christian Right and a naive spiritual relativism. Good stuff.
September 13, 2013
I finally sat down and read this cover to cover. I've read chapters in it off an on over the years, but never worked through the whole thing. This is vintage Newbigin, and while there are things to take issue with throughout the book, what he does well he does EXCEPTIONALLY well. I think every seminary student should be forced to read his chapters on epistemology (the first several chapters), as well as the chapters on "The Myth of Secular Society" and "The Congregation as Hermeneutic of the Gospel". I will revisit this book many, many times.
March 25, 2019
This review was first published in Regent College's website: https://marketplace.regent-college.ed...
No doubt pluralism is a popular buzzword for our generation. Through this book, Newbigin pointed out just how pluralistic our society is, and what role the gospel and its believers should play within such an environment. Originating from a series of lectures Newbigin gave at Glasgow University in 1988, this book drew extensively from his personal experience as a pastor and a missionary, alongside references from other missionaries throughout the centuries. The abundance of real life examples brought his points to life.
This book was structured to first provide a definition on pluralistic culture, which he defined as embracing different choices in life without passing any absolute value judgment. He then addressed how this mindset worked against the gospel. Arguments for why the gospel should be regarded as the universal truth were then proposed, and finally, pointers were given to the disciples of Christ for what they should do in proclaiming the gospel. This book started off with analyzing the theoretical aspects of the topic, but ended with very practical suggestions, seamlessly weaving chapters together to present a comprehensive view of the topic in a logical progression.
Newbigin suggested that the concept of a secular society is merely a myth, where in fact we live in a pagan society that replaced God with other gods of the world in an attempt to fulfill the needs of the human spirit. According to Newbigin, it is difficult to preach the gospel in the contemporary context since any claims to announcing the gospel as true will be dismissed as ignorance and arrogance, with Christianity evaluated as a value and not a fact. To make the matter worse, many Christians would go out of their way to make sure they do not seem arrogant, voluntarily compromising the gospel in favour of catering to other opinions.
I find it disappointing to face the harsh realities of the church being seen as a voluntary society of personal choice and the gospel as one element of the society where pluralism is the main ideology. As a corrective, Newbigin redefined missions as not only something we do far away from home, but an action plan for local churches of the Western world, set amidst political correctness and religious diversity. Newbigin proposed “contextualize without compromise,” which means even though we need to be sensitive to the needs of others, it should not be a factor that overrides the Scripture. This book demonstrates the fact that preaching the gospel is never out-dated. In a world that is more pluralistic than ever, it is surprising how relevant this book still is even when it was written over two decades ago, without the internet or any social media.
The idea that stuck with me the most from this book is how election is not God playing favourites. Since human beings were seen in biblical times as collective member of a family, nobody was thought of as being saved privately or individually. In our individualistic society, it is difficult to even begin to comprehend how a religion that affects the individual will change society as a whole. However, Newbigin suggested that God intended for everyone to be saved, just that those chosen by God need to serve as the bearers of salvation to others, not merely be proud and content with themselves for being elected. There are many who have attempted to explain election, and while we can never be sure which theory is correct, this explanation is certainly in a language that both non-believers and believers can understand and appreciate.
Christianity is to indwell in a world while trying to understand it from within at the same time. As Newbigin puts it, “Christians living in the contemporary world must speak multiple first languages, and be able to communicate both with society's cultural lingo and the gospel.” The gospel never lives in a timeless vacuum, which is why we should make it our aim to speak fluently in the world’s language, so that non-believers who stumble upon churches will be able to hear the gospel in a language that they can understand and hopefully respond to. Yet, with our competence in cultural knowledge, we should still strive to stand firm in the gospel and assess the culture through it. Newbigin encouraged Christians to develop a confident theological stance within a pluralistic world and to further solidify one's stance through understanding the stance of others. This book certainly gives a lot of room for us to do so.
No doubt pluralism is a popular buzzword for our generation. Through this book, Newbigin pointed out just how pluralistic our society is, and what role the gospel and its believers should play within such an environment. Originating from a series of lectures Newbigin gave at Glasgow University in 1988, this book drew extensively from his personal experience as a pastor and a missionary, alongside references from other missionaries throughout the centuries. The abundance of real life examples brought his points to life.
This book was structured to first provide a definition on pluralistic culture, which he defined as embracing different choices in life without passing any absolute value judgment. He then addressed how this mindset worked against the gospel. Arguments for why the gospel should be regarded as the universal truth were then proposed, and finally, pointers were given to the disciples of Christ for what they should do in proclaiming the gospel. This book started off with analyzing the theoretical aspects of the topic, but ended with very practical suggestions, seamlessly weaving chapters together to present a comprehensive view of the topic in a logical progression.
Newbigin suggested that the concept of a secular society is merely a myth, where in fact we live in a pagan society that replaced God with other gods of the world in an attempt to fulfill the needs of the human spirit. According to Newbigin, it is difficult to preach the gospel in the contemporary context since any claims to announcing the gospel as true will be dismissed as ignorance and arrogance, with Christianity evaluated as a value and not a fact. To make the matter worse, many Christians would go out of their way to make sure they do not seem arrogant, voluntarily compromising the gospel in favour of catering to other opinions.
I find it disappointing to face the harsh realities of the church being seen as a voluntary society of personal choice and the gospel as one element of the society where pluralism is the main ideology. As a corrective, Newbigin redefined missions as not only something we do far away from home, but an action plan for local churches of the Western world, set amidst political correctness and religious diversity. Newbigin proposed “contextualize without compromise,” which means even though we need to be sensitive to the needs of others, it should not be a factor that overrides the Scripture. This book demonstrates the fact that preaching the gospel is never out-dated. In a world that is more pluralistic than ever, it is surprising how relevant this book still is even when it was written over two decades ago, without the internet or any social media.
The idea that stuck with me the most from this book is how election is not God playing favourites. Since human beings were seen in biblical times as collective member of a family, nobody was thought of as being saved privately or individually. In our individualistic society, it is difficult to even begin to comprehend how a religion that affects the individual will change society as a whole. However, Newbigin suggested that God intended for everyone to be saved, just that those chosen by God need to serve as the bearers of salvation to others, not merely be proud and content with themselves for being elected. There are many who have attempted to explain election, and while we can never be sure which theory is correct, this explanation is certainly in a language that both non-believers and believers can understand and appreciate.
Christianity is to indwell in a world while trying to understand it from within at the same time. As Newbigin puts it, “Christians living in the contemporary world must speak multiple first languages, and be able to communicate both with society's cultural lingo and the gospel.” The gospel never lives in a timeless vacuum, which is why we should make it our aim to speak fluently in the world’s language, so that non-believers who stumble upon churches will be able to hear the gospel in a language that they can understand and hopefully respond to. Yet, with our competence in cultural knowledge, we should still strive to stand firm in the gospel and assess the culture through it. Newbigin encouraged Christians to develop a confident theological stance within a pluralistic world and to further solidify one's stance through understanding the stance of others. This book certainly gives a lot of room for us to do so.
February 24, 2022
Please bear with me, I know that give many high ratings and I am always praising certain books as revolutionary and life altering 🤣
While this is true a lot of the time to my personal experience, I’d like you to come to this book with a fresh palate.
Lesslie newbigin is a true, (to my knowledge) mostly still undiscovered teacher and witness to the nuance and power of the Gospel in our time.
Though He has now gone to be with the Lord, he has vastly influenced the writing of N.T. Wright, so much so that Tom himself says that he is basically saying Lesslie’s theology after him.
I am very excited to read his other famous work: foolishness to the Greeks
This book though, was utterly astounding, especially the first half.
From his excellent ideas around dissecting the current lingering post-enlightenment divide between knowing and believing, to the way he masterfully articulates the real and true ways of managing pluralistic cultures and their adaptation of the Gospel, this book is a sure and sturdy foundation.
I was overwhelmed by his high level of work, and yet at some points his readability and relatability.
His heart always was felt through the work.
I encourage everyone to please give this a read if you can grab the modern copy.
If a book in 1985 can reveal this much truth for our time, how much more can the Spirit of God illuminate.
While this is true a lot of the time to my personal experience, I’d like you to come to this book with a fresh palate.
Lesslie newbigin is a true, (to my knowledge) mostly still undiscovered teacher and witness to the nuance and power of the Gospel in our time.
Though He has now gone to be with the Lord, he has vastly influenced the writing of N.T. Wright, so much so that Tom himself says that he is basically saying Lesslie’s theology after him.
I am very excited to read his other famous work: foolishness to the Greeks
This book though, was utterly astounding, especially the first half.
From his excellent ideas around dissecting the current lingering post-enlightenment divide between knowing and believing, to the way he masterfully articulates the real and true ways of managing pluralistic cultures and their adaptation of the Gospel, this book is a sure and sturdy foundation.
I was overwhelmed by his high level of work, and yet at some points his readability and relatability.
His heart always was felt through the work.
I encourage everyone to please give this a read if you can grab the modern copy.
If a book in 1985 can reveal this much truth for our time, how much more can the Spirit of God illuminate.
September 17, 2021
The author's perspective is definitely different from other apologetics books I have read, which is good. The main downside of this book is that he seemed to go on tangents at times where it was not always clear how some chapters related to his central point.
Here are some of my takeaways:
1. Our cultural assumptions are involved when we try to rationally prove Christianity. Even supposedly neutral rationality is embodied in a culture, which eliminates the illusion of a truly unbiased perspective. The acceptance of new scientific theories is also subjective.
2. Our society has an arbitrary separation between values and facts. Values such as faith are deemed private, personal opinions, whereas only facts such as gravity are true for everyone.
3. Impacting the world for Jesus involves both evangelism to individuals as well as redeeming societal power structures. But we should also never confuse a particular project of ours with the kingdom of God
4. Eastern Hindu religions function by looking inside yourself for the truth. Christianity is different because you must look outside of yourself so another person can tell you the truth.
Here are some of my takeaways:
1. Our cultural assumptions are involved when we try to rationally prove Christianity. Even supposedly neutral rationality is embodied in a culture, which eliminates the illusion of a truly unbiased perspective. The acceptance of new scientific theories is also subjective.
2. Our society has an arbitrary separation between values and facts. Values such as faith are deemed private, personal opinions, whereas only facts such as gravity are true for everyone.
3. Impacting the world for Jesus involves both evangelism to individuals as well as redeeming societal power structures. But we should also never confuse a particular project of ours with the kingdom of God
4. Eastern Hindu religions function by looking inside yourself for the truth. Christianity is different because you must look outside of yourself so another person can tell you the truth.
June 17, 2022
What a phenomenal read! I had read about Newbigin being an influential voice in the church of the past century, but until this read I had never heard of him or read anything from him. Walking into this book, I expected the same sort of thing that I see in a lot of Christian works written to the church: a drawn-out exploration, by way of cozy anecdotes and slogans, of one particular idea. This expectation turned out to fall well short of the profound insight and breadth to be found in this book. Newbigin not only deftly explores the question of pluralism and truth, drawing on the likes of Polanyi to establish a clear vision of how we approach truth and knowledge, but also draws out several features of what he believes this vision to imply for the church's witness and ethos. Newbigin expresses several thoughts that I already agreed with, several that I hadn't considered before, and a few that I would still disagree with (or at least would not readily embrace). Altogether, it was a fascinating and edifying read. For any modern Christian who senses the crisis of truth in our culture and would like to dig a little deeper into it, this is a worthwhile read.
January 1, 2016
Interesting book.
I believe readers’ prior expectations determine whether they will have feasted or left the restaurant still hungry when they finish Newbigin's work. At the very least, it provides fertile ground for discussion. For readers looking for a Christian manifesto—a rhetorical, defining call to gospel allegiance with a deeper understanding of the gospel mission and its juxtaposition with culture, then Newbigin’s book is ideal. However, if the reader is expecting a practical how-to for gospel interaction with a pluralist culture, then it falls short. Perhaps that is why, as he explained a couple of his foundational points regarding faith commitments in science, tradition, and authority, and the “obvious” analogy he drew for faith commitments to the gospel, as well as the idea of differing plausibility structures for the gospel and the larger society, I wanted to both applaud and argue.
Though unprecedented cosmopolitanism continues to bust through fragile barriers of language, culture, nationalism and economy, and society is more than ever before a bubbling cauldron of cultural and religious pluralism, Christianity finds itself in a strangely polarized position. Bemused by the vestiges of modernism and the demands of humanism, a seemingly antiquated gospel struggles to locate its voice in an intellectual climate that finds its claim of authority offensive. Christianity, however, is far from obsolete, and it is possible—and necessary—to boldly assert the Christian faith within the larger culture, according to Lesslie Newbigin in his book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.
In order to establish his claim, Newbigin rewinds history to discuss dogma, and cast a “hermeneutic of suspicion” on doubt itself. He traces the origin and development of pluralism, and challenges the prevailing assumptions that govern modern humanist thought. In addition, he calls Christian mission to the stand, accusing it of allowing pluralism to weaken the gospel’s claim and authorizing humanist assumptions to dictate the criteria by which biblical defense is measured. He then unpacks ideas such as plausibility structures, reason, revelation, the definition of mission, and how mission functions within its context.
Newbigin points out that dogma is not an idiosyncrasy of the church; rather, every belief system holds it own dogmas, and these judge new information within the context of what they have established as truth. In a society where independence of thought and suspicion of ideas is celebrated, doubt is a cultural god. Doubt, though, is ironically fueled by its own presuppositions and dogmas and is therefore logically—and apparently unwittingly—hoisted by its own petard.
According to Newbigin, there is no way to begin thinking or learning with an ideological clean slate. People learn in terms of what they already know, as well as on a kind of faith that temporarily accepts the propositions of the teaching authority until those propositions prove true in the minds of the learners and are assimilated and “owned.” After demonstrating the kind of “trust” in tradition that must take place in order for anyone to accept new ideas, Newbigin compares it to the faith required to initiate an entry into the gospel, and to maintain a continued exploration that holds onto hypotheses until better ones come along, just as scientists do.
Each society operates within plausibility structures, Newbigin goes on to say, beliefs and ideas that are accepted and shared as “reasonable” to a particular group of people. Western culture celebrates reason and rational thinking, as though reason offers a transcendent contribution of ideas; however, reason is not a third-party source of information, Newbigin says; reason is simply a vehicle for processing information. Differing paradigms all employ reason, but reason is tied and subjected to that paradigm’s “given” truths, which means that reason is a servant of the plausibility structure of its master—whether that master is an atheist, or a Christian, or a religious pluralist. The problem occurs when the gospel is taken out of its own plausibility structure and judged by the “reason” of an incompatible structure; it falls short of the expectations of humanism and becomes an embarrassment. Newbigin, however, explains that the gospel transcends the “reigning” plausibility structure. For purposes of the gospel and Christianity, it is necessary to indwell the paradigm of revelation, allowing reason to function within that parameter; for purposes of bringing that gospel into larger society, it is also necessary to indwell the larger societal paradigm, so that both are “lived” understandings.
Newbigin believes mission, by definition, is a natural consequence of a fulminating Christian experience. It cannot quietly exist in the religious marketplace deferring to competing ideas out of “respect” or concerns of the appearance of arrogance. Though it would be erroneous to assume that God works in Christians alone and that he is not an active presence in the lives of those seekers who practice other religions in sincerity, Newbigin says, it is also erroneous to believe that since God is operative everywhere, mission is unnecessary. On the contrary, mission is imperative.
Having established the gospel’s place in pluralist society, Newbigin wraps up his argument with a description of how the gospel appears when lived out by a congregation. He sees a congregation that is characterized by a God-focus, acted out through praise, reverence, and thanksgiving. The congregation is also committed to truth, able to challenge other plausibility structures because of the differentiated position it occupies and the sharp contrast of the gospel. In addition, the congregation will live out the gospel self-sacrificially, for the good of others. The lay people of the church, using their spiritual gifts, will be equipped for ministry by the clergy, and will work together toward social change, fueled by hope.
There is a lot of fodder for discussion within these pages.
I believe readers’ prior expectations determine whether they will have feasted or left the restaurant still hungry when they finish Newbigin's work. At the very least, it provides fertile ground for discussion. For readers looking for a Christian manifesto—a rhetorical, defining call to gospel allegiance with a deeper understanding of the gospel mission and its juxtaposition with culture, then Newbigin’s book is ideal. However, if the reader is expecting a practical how-to for gospel interaction with a pluralist culture, then it falls short. Perhaps that is why, as he explained a couple of his foundational points regarding faith commitments in science, tradition, and authority, and the “obvious” analogy he drew for faith commitments to the gospel, as well as the idea of differing plausibility structures for the gospel and the larger society, I wanted to both applaud and argue.
Though unprecedented cosmopolitanism continues to bust through fragile barriers of language, culture, nationalism and economy, and society is more than ever before a bubbling cauldron of cultural and religious pluralism, Christianity finds itself in a strangely polarized position. Bemused by the vestiges of modernism and the demands of humanism, a seemingly antiquated gospel struggles to locate its voice in an intellectual climate that finds its claim of authority offensive. Christianity, however, is far from obsolete, and it is possible—and necessary—to boldly assert the Christian faith within the larger culture, according to Lesslie Newbigin in his book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.
In order to establish his claim, Newbigin rewinds history to discuss dogma, and cast a “hermeneutic of suspicion” on doubt itself. He traces the origin and development of pluralism, and challenges the prevailing assumptions that govern modern humanist thought. In addition, he calls Christian mission to the stand, accusing it of allowing pluralism to weaken the gospel’s claim and authorizing humanist assumptions to dictate the criteria by which biblical defense is measured. He then unpacks ideas such as plausibility structures, reason, revelation, the definition of mission, and how mission functions within its context.
Newbigin points out that dogma is not an idiosyncrasy of the church; rather, every belief system holds it own dogmas, and these judge new information within the context of what they have established as truth. In a society where independence of thought and suspicion of ideas is celebrated, doubt is a cultural god. Doubt, though, is ironically fueled by its own presuppositions and dogmas and is therefore logically—and apparently unwittingly—hoisted by its own petard.
According to Newbigin, there is no way to begin thinking or learning with an ideological clean slate. People learn in terms of what they already know, as well as on a kind of faith that temporarily accepts the propositions of the teaching authority until those propositions prove true in the minds of the learners and are assimilated and “owned.” After demonstrating the kind of “trust” in tradition that must take place in order for anyone to accept new ideas, Newbigin compares it to the faith required to initiate an entry into the gospel, and to maintain a continued exploration that holds onto hypotheses until better ones come along, just as scientists do.
Each society operates within plausibility structures, Newbigin goes on to say, beliefs and ideas that are accepted and shared as “reasonable” to a particular group of people. Western culture celebrates reason and rational thinking, as though reason offers a transcendent contribution of ideas; however, reason is not a third-party source of information, Newbigin says; reason is simply a vehicle for processing information. Differing paradigms all employ reason, but reason is tied and subjected to that paradigm’s “given” truths, which means that reason is a servant of the plausibility structure of its master—whether that master is an atheist, or a Christian, or a religious pluralist. The problem occurs when the gospel is taken out of its own plausibility structure and judged by the “reason” of an incompatible structure; it falls short of the expectations of humanism and becomes an embarrassment. Newbigin, however, explains that the gospel transcends the “reigning” plausibility structure. For purposes of the gospel and Christianity, it is necessary to indwell the paradigm of revelation, allowing reason to function within that parameter; for purposes of bringing that gospel into larger society, it is also necessary to indwell the larger societal paradigm, so that both are “lived” understandings.
Newbigin believes mission, by definition, is a natural consequence of a fulminating Christian experience. It cannot quietly exist in the religious marketplace deferring to competing ideas out of “respect” or concerns of the appearance of arrogance. Though it would be erroneous to assume that God works in Christians alone and that he is not an active presence in the lives of those seekers who practice other religions in sincerity, Newbigin says, it is also erroneous to believe that since God is operative everywhere, mission is unnecessary. On the contrary, mission is imperative.
Having established the gospel’s place in pluralist society, Newbigin wraps up his argument with a description of how the gospel appears when lived out by a congregation. He sees a congregation that is characterized by a God-focus, acted out through praise, reverence, and thanksgiving. The congregation is also committed to truth, able to challenge other plausibility structures because of the differentiated position it occupies and the sharp contrast of the gospel. In addition, the congregation will live out the gospel self-sacrificially, for the good of others. The lay people of the church, using their spiritual gifts, will be equipped for ministry by the clergy, and will work together toward social change, fueled by hope.
There is a lot of fodder for discussion within these pages.
July 4, 2020
There is so much of our cultural moment that is perfectly summarized by Newbigin here, including his prediction of a pursuit of both nationalism and Marxism in hopes of attaining utopia. But as he states, both of these visions have the same problem, which is the problem of death. On Jesus can answer this problem.
I’ll need to reflect on this one and wrestle through it more. He seeks to bridge the divides between liberal and conservatives views on almost everything, in hopes of creating ecumenical unity, but I’m still unsure if his approach works or not. Also, he leans towards a Barthian theology.
After using many words with great density, his conclusion of what needs to happen in our pluralistic world is simply that the church needs to be the church. He says in fact this is only only that we can do and gives a few specific suggestions of what this could look like.
I’ll need to reflect on this one and wrestle through it more. He seeks to bridge the divides between liberal and conservatives views on almost everything, in hopes of creating ecumenical unity, but I’m still unsure if his approach works or not. Also, he leans towards a Barthian theology.
After using many words with great density, his conclusion of what needs to happen in our pluralistic world is simply that the church needs to be the church. He says in fact this is only only that we can do and gives a few specific suggestions of what this could look like.
July 2, 2022
Newbigin has written a book that suggests a path forward in our pluralist society. His approach avoids many of the pitfalls of the believe nothing because everything is great pluralists, the overly optimistic about human nature liberal crowd, and the overly-pessimistic about humans and the future fundamentalists. As Christians, we cannot be pluralists. We believe our faith is the one that provides the only way to God, and we should own this reality. We are a historical faith basing our beliefs on the actual, physical, and factual death and resurrection of Jesus. This book explores many aspects of faith and life in a new and refreshing way. And the book remains relevant though it is not particularly recently published.
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