The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of Church

by Lesslie Newbigin

Publisher:

Wipf and Stock

, 2008

Overview

The central question in the ecumenical debate is this: what is the nature of the church? Lesslie Newbigin sketches the present context of the discussion and touches on the biblical meaning of the word “church.” He then presents the Protestant, Catholic, and Pentecostal answers to this question. Ultimately, he argues that the church is at once eschatological and missionary—and both aspects imply “the ends of the earth.”

Key Features

• Investigates the nature of the church
• Sketches the present discussion concerning of the church’s nature in ecumenical debates
• Provides a glimpse into the biblical meaning of the word “church”

Contents

Top Highlights

“The Church is the pilgrim people of God. It is on the move—hastening to the ends of the earth to beseech all men to be reconciled to God, and hastening to the end of time to meet its Lord who will gather all into one. Therefore the nature of the Church is never to be finally defined in static terms, but only in terms of that to which it is going. It cannot be understood rightly except in a perspective which is at once missionary and eschatological, and only in that perspective can the deadlock of our present ecumenical debate be resolved.” (Page 25)

“Western European civilisation has witnessed a sort of atomising process, in which the individual is more and more set free from his natural setting in family and neighbourhood, and becomes a sort of replaceable unit in the social machine. His nearest neighbours may not even know his name. He is free to move from place to place, from job to job, from acquaintance to acquaintance, and—if he has attained a high degree of emancipation—from wife to wife.” (Page 13)

“the unity of believers with Christ and with one another in Him is of a far deeper nature than intellectual agreement” (Page 53)

“The Holy Spirit may be the last article of the Creed but in the New Testament it is the first fact of experience. We” (Page 89)

“In the Bible salvation is concerned with the whole created order” (Page 64)

Product Details

• Title: The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church
• Author: Lesslie Newbigin
• Series: Kerr Lectures
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Print Publication Date: 2008
• Logos Release Date: 2015
• Pages: 156
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Church; Mission of the church
• ISBNs: 9781606082225, 1606082221
• Resource ID: LLS:HOUSEHOLDOFGOD
• Resource Type: text.monograph.lecture
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:34:59Z

About Lesslie Newbigin

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