Newbigin on the Community of Faith
I am reading the book, The Household of God by
Lessile Newbigin. The below is a seminal thought about the church and its
role in the world.
“It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance
that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of
thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community. He committed the entire
work of salvation to that community. It was not that a community gathered round
an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary. It was that
a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and
re-created in Him, gradually sought – and is seeking – to make explicit who He
is and what He has done. The actual community is primary; the understanding of
what it is comes second.” The Household of God (p.20)
The Lasting Legacy of Lesslie Newbigin by Michael Goheen
Duke University theologian Geoffrey Wainwright said that when the history of the 20th century church is written, Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998) will be among the top 10 or 12 theological thinkers of the century. Newbigin spent forty years in India as a missionary. Upon his return to England in 1974, he published numerous books and began to command an international audience. His missionary eyes brought fresh sight to the Western church as he called for a missionary encounter with Western culture. And it is in that phrase—a ‘missionary encounter with Western culture’—that we find Newbigin’s enduring legacy for the Western church today.
via www.qideas.org