Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture
Overview
How can biblical authority be a reality for those shaped by the modern world? Lesslie Newbigin treats the First World as a mission field, offering a unique perspective on the relationship between the gospel and current society by presenting an outsider’s view of contemporary Western culture.
For more by Lesslie Newbigin, see Eerdmans Lesslie Newbigin Collection (8 vols.).
- Treatment of the First World as a mission field
- Interaction with how revelation speaks to the modern world
- Investigation of contemporary society’ relationship to the gospel
Top Highlights
“What Gladstone foretold is essentially what has been happening during the 140 years since he wrote those words. The result is not, as we once imagined, a secular society. It is a pagan society, and its paganism, having been born out of the rejection of Christianity, is far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism with which cross-cultural missions have been familiar. Here, surely, is the most challenging missionary frontier of our time.” (Page 20)
“In modern Western culture, so Berger argues, we are all required to be heretics, for there is no accepted plausibility structure. With respect to ultimate beliefs, pluralism rules, and thus each individual has to make a personal decision about ultimate questions. In that sense, we are all now subject to the ‘heretical imperative.’” (Page 11)
“As people who are part of modern Western culture, with its confidence in the validity of its scientific methods, how can we move from the place where we explain the gospel in terms of our modern scientific world-view to the place where we explain our modern scientific world-view from the point of view of the gospel?” (Page 22)
“But two things are here simply taken for granted, without argument: first, that the essence of Christianity is the same as that of the other world religions, and second, that all the religions have to submit their truth-claims to the discipline of the scientific method.” (Page 18)
“There is no such thing as orthodoxy in the old sense. We are all heretics in the original sense of the word, that is, we make our own decisions about what to believe. And even orthodoxy (which now has to be called neo-orthodoxy) is just a particular style of heresy.” (Page 16)
This is an extraordinary book on contemporary missiology. Writing from four decades of experience in Christian mission, Lesslie Newbigin applies the same discernment involved in contextualizing the gospel in another culture to the issues involved in contextualizing the gospel in our Western culture. He lays bare the pervasive and subtle synergism that alters the gospel, and he calls us to a thorough critique of our culture and of the way in which we understand or misunderstand the gospel of Christ. . . . Important reading for a stimulating perspective on the gospel and Western culture.
—Mission Focus
Newbigin’s analysis is the best part of this stimulating book. I do not know of another such brilliantly comprehensive treatment of Western society.
—Christianity Today
Newbigin’s missionary enthusiasm and his experience in cross-cultural missions make this book far more invigorating than the usual disquisition on the problems of belief in the modern age. . . . With his vast learning worn very lightly and, above all, with a deep commitment to the gospel, Newbigin pierces some holes in the secular plausibility structure that Christians have come in large part to accept.
—Christian Century
- Title: Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture
- Author: Lesslie Newbigin
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Print Publication Date: 1988
- Logos Release Date: 2015
- Pages: 160
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Christianity and culture › Addresses, essays, lectures; Missions › Addresses, essays, lectures
- ISBNs: 9780802801760, 0802801765
- Resource ID: LLS:FLSHNSSGRKSCLTR
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:00:17Z