Gospel

Today, the final dichotomy we must mend, according to Newbigin, in order for the gospel to have a missionary encounter with our culture.

"Finally, I want to argue the need for a certain boldness that was evidently a characteristic mark of the first apostles... What I am pleading for is the courage to hold on and proclaim a belief that cannot be proved to be true in terms of the accepted axioms of our society, that can be doubted by rational minds, but that we nevertheless hold as the truth" 1

This final dichotomy is huge, deeply rooted in modern epistemology, and therefore very hard to erase. It is the dichotomy of faith and fact, or values and truth.

It is argued (stemming from the Enlightenment) that since we cannot by scientific method test whether God is there or not, that is, that since this cannot be discovered by rationality, it cannot be believed for certain. Therefore, a dichotomy is cut into knowledge; separating facts (that which can be discovered rationally) from faith (that which cannot be discovered rationally. It then follows that since 'faith' cannot be proven, it may make no claim to truth. Truth lies in the other category, the realm of the knowable. Click Here To Continue »

Lesslie Newbigin's fourth suggestion for how we can address and change the current Western Epistemology in order to communicate the gospel to our culture is subtle but very important.

"I want to make a strictly theological point. There can be no missionary encounter with our culture without a biblically grounded eschatology, without recovering of a true apocalyptic. The dichotomy that runs through our culture between the private and the public worlds is reflected in the dissolution of the biblical vision of the last things into two separate and unrelated forms of hope. One is the public hope for a better world in the future... The other is the private hope for personal immortality in a blessed world beyond this one." ¹

This, as I see it, is the dichotomy of earthly hope vs. heavenly hope. I have felt its effects myself most recently as it pertains to evangelism. I was trained from a very young Christian to use the Evangelism Explosion (EE) method of presenting the gospel. This presentation begins with heaven. The famous "Do you know for sure that if you were die today you would be in heaven?" is how we segway into "heaven is a free gift." Heaven, according to EE, is the goal of the gospel. When we share it, we are trying to get this person into heaven. Click Here To Continue »

Today's suggestion is sure to prove controversial. Especially to us Americans. Especially because I believe the solution to this dichotomy sides neither with liberal or conservative views on the subject.

"If we are to escape from the ideology of the enlightenment without falling into the errors of the Corpus Christianum," (by which I believe he means the church-state of post-Constantinian, pre-crusade, pre-enlightenment times) "we must recover a doctrine of freedom of thought and conscience that is founded not on the ideology of the Enlightenment but on the gospel. ... The freedom of conscience, the freedom of thought that was won for us by the men and women of the Enlightenment against the resistance of the Church, is a gift we cannot surrender. ... But if we now ask that the Christian faith claim the whole public life of the nation, of society in the name of truth, how an we safeguard that freedom?"1

What is the dichotomy Newbigin describes for us, and calls for its abolition? I think it is that of church and state. What!? How?! At this point, liberals may wish to cry treason, and the fundamentalists are probably chanting 'amen!' However, I am (and I don't think Newbigin) is saying what either group may think I am saying. You can sense Newbigin's hesitancy or his understanding of the complexity of such a task. Click Here To Continue »