What is the gospel?

Gospel is one of those words that we think we understand, until we're asked to explain it.

Most people see the gospel as information about how to go to heaven after death.

Some would define the gospel as

the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that provides full and free deliverance from the power and penalty of sin according to the grace of God alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

Others would say it this way:

Believe in God. Repent. Be transformed by the teachings of Jesus. Love God. Jesus' death and resurrection shows that we too will be resurrected if we listen to Jesus.

In any case, we have been too individualistic in our understanding of the gospel. It's all about me. Even those who say that it's all about God, turn it into a private, personal matter.

But a close reading of the New Testament would seem to indicate that the gospel is bigger than that. It's about more than just getting signed up for heaven.

Lesslie Newbigin gives us some helpful clues about the nature of the gospel in his posthumous book, Signs amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History:

I think we have used the word "gospel" without giving as much attention as we need to the question of what exactly we mean by that world. We don't mean Christianity. Christianity is what generations of us have made of the gospel, and we know we have often made a mess of it (p. 113).

The gospel tells the story of what happened when the true light came into the world, the only light, the light that shines on every human being, the light in which things are seen as they are and reality is distinguished from illusion. Those who were confident that they see turn out to be blind, and those who knew that they were blind receive their sight. The light shows up the illusions of human wisdom and godliness and political shrewdness. It overturns human confidence that we can know how and where God is at work in the world. It invites us to believe that the victory of God is achieved in the rejection and shame and suffering of the cross (p. 108).

The specific responsibility which has been given to the church and to nobody else is the responsibility to bear witness to the reality of Jesus' victory (p. 115).

Whatever else we do for people—to come to know Jesus, to love Him, to serve Him, to honor Him, to obey Him—that is the greatest thing that we can do for anyone and it is the specific thing entrusted to us. It must be the center of our missions (p. 115).

The announcing of the good news about the Kingdom is empty verbiage if there is nothing happening to make the news credible (p. 99).

Here are some things we can say about what the gospel and what it is not.

• The gospel is not about organized religion or about a private, personal faith.
  
• The gospel is not just about the eternal destinies of individuals.
  
• The gospel is not about recruiting church members.
  

• The gospel cannot be reduced to a simple transaction.
  
• The gospel cannot be reduced to a theory of the atonement.
  
• The gospel cannot be reduced to moral reform.
  

• The gospel is good news for all people everywhere.
  
• The gospel is both now and "not yet."
  
• The gospel is the occasion for great joy.
  

We need to recapture that joy, or, better yet, let the good news capture our hearts and produce its characteristic joy.

Isn't it remarkable that according to the New Testament the whole thing begins with an enormous explosion of joy? The disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising God! It seems to me, the resurrection of Jesus was a kind of nuclear explosion which sent out a radioactive cloud, not lethal but life-giving, and that the mission of the church is simply the continuing communication of that joy—joy in the Lord (p. 121).

May we once again experience the gospel as good news.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Stating the Obvious[ly Wrong]

In the command known as the Great Commission, Jesus said, "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Of course, we all know exactly what Jesus meant:

• "Making disciples" means to seek the conversion of individuals.
  
• The goal is to increase the number of Christians.
  
• In order to be baptized, these individuals must repent, which means they must turn away from their sins.
  
• The responsibility of the Church (and individual believers) is to bring unbelievers to a point of decision after presenting them with basic information about the content of the gospel.
  
• After an individual is converted, then he or she learns the commands of Jesus and is encouraged to model his morality.
  
• While both of these steps are important, the most important is conversion because it allows people to get into heaven.
  
• A significant part of this Commission requires us to go (or send others) to other countries.
  
• "All nations" refers to the countries of the world.
  

The problem is that each of these "obvious" facts is wrong.

But our understanding of this Commission has become ingrained in our church culture, and no one asks anymore what it means. Furthermore, many of these assumptions actually get in the way of the Church fulfilling its true mission.

If one regards it as the primary purpose of mission to increase the number of Christians and treats such increase as the criterion of success, without posing all the time the more radical questions which the gospel puts to the common assumptions of our culture, if the dominical call to "repent" is translated as "turn away from your sins" and there is no understanding of that radical overturning of the world's ideas of sin and righteousness and judgment, then there can be rapid church growth; but the very success of the burgeoning congregations may actually incapacitate them for a radical encounter with the culture into which they fit so comfortably. If religion is an affair for the private life, it can flourish in a society governed by other assumptions, taking the characteristic form which we know so well—a series of voluntary societies made up of people who share the same religious tastes. In that form Christianity can flourish, but it cannot challenge the beliefs that control public life. It has been co-opted into the culture.

Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History, p. 91.

Besides, the advancement of the kingdom is not the Church's mission. It is God's mission:

Mission, then, is not essentially a human activity undertaken by the church and its leaders out of obligation to the Great Commission, gratitude for what God has done for us, and the desperate plight of the world. It is God's own mission in which we are invited to participate.

Stephen Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God, p. 161

So what is the mission of the Church?

The Christian mission is thus to act out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all.

Leslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 17

This requires deep knowledge of God and more than a passing familiarity with the culture in which a particular congregation finds itself. It is God's embassy in a particular community.

The business of the church is to tell and to embody a story, the story of God's mighty acts in creation and redemption and of God's promises concerning what will be in the end. The church affirms the truth of this story by celebrating it, interpreting it, and enacting it in the life of the contemporary world. It has no other way of affirming its truth. If it supposes that its truth can be authenticated by reference to some allegedly more reliable truth claim, such as those offered by the philosophy of religion, then it has implicitly denied the truth by which it lives.

Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence, p. 76

So what do you think? Do you still agree with some of the "obvious facts"? Are there other "obvious facts" that you'd like to debunk?

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Mission of the Triune God

In an unpublished essay at www.Newbigin.net, Lesslie Newbigin writes:

We are not engaged in an enterprise of our own choosing or devising. We are invited to participate in an activity of God which is the central meaning of creation itself. We are invited to become, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, participants in the Son's loving obedience to the Father. All things have been created that they may be summed up in Christ the Son. All history is directed towards that end. All creation has this as its goal. The Spirit of God, who is also the Spirit of the Son, is given as the foretaste of that consummation, as the witness to it, and as the guide of the Church on the road towards it. The Church is not promised success; it is promised the peace of Christ in the midst of tribulation, and the witness of the Spirit given out of the Church's weakness and ignorance. For the future it has Christ's promise: it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. And for the present it has His assurance: Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Each branch of the Church has its own idea of what that mission should be. But these ideas quickly become proprietary and "parochial." Furthermore, organizational survival replaces this mission in practice.

The power to accomplish this mission does not come from the wealth, power or influence of the Church. It comes from the Holy Spirit. And this power works through the "weakness and ignorance" of the Church.
Christ won his victory through apparent defeat. If we are serious about following in the way of the cross, we will trust in him rather than in our own success.

Pastor Rod
"Helping You Beecome The Person God Created You to Be"

Christian Political Action

As followers of Jesus Christ, what should be our role in politics?

Jesus called us to be in the world but to avoid becoming part of it. The way of Christ is the way of the cross—victory through weakness. The accumulation of earthly power seems contradictory to Christian discipleship.

Yet we are called to participate in the advancement of God's kingdom, seeing his will done on earth as it already is in heaven.

In a series of lectures in Bangalore, India, given in 1941, Lesslie Newbigin asserted

I do not see how the Christian can avoid concerning himself with politics. Love to men, and the fundamental obligation to seek everywhere to create true fellowship, cannot be made effective except over a very small range of life, without invoking political means. Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History, p. 53

He reminded the audience that the kingdom cannot be produced by human effort. It can only come by God acting in history. But we have been given the privilege of participating in that kingdom.

While political participation is necessary, it is not without its difficulties.

Politics never allows us to choose exactly our own way, but compels us to decide between a very small number of politically possible alternatives. This means, therefore, that Christians taking part in politics always find themselves working with people who are not Christians and [who] do not share their motives or their ultimate aims. It is this that creates the extreme tension which is always involved in Christian political action. That tension cannot be avoided. Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History, pp. 53–54

This means that we can never align ourselves with a political party, or even a political candidate.

We must never lose sight of our true goal. We are not seeking to establish a human-centered utopia. All those efforts seem to end in tragedy and exploitation. Our true goal is the perfect community of the New Jerusalem.

Our goal is the holy city, the New Jerusalem, a perfect fellowship in which God reigns in every heart, and His children rejoice together in His love and joy. To that we look forward with sure hope, and for its sake we offer up to God all that we do in response to His invitation to love our neighbor as we ourselves have been loved. Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History, p. 55

At the same time, we realize that the goal will never be accomplished by us. This true community always remains just out of our grasp. In fact, the forces of evil seem to grow in strength at the same time that God's kingdom spreads.

And though we know that we must grow old and die, that our labors, even if they succeed for a time, will in the end be buried in the dust of time, and that along with the painfully won achievements of goodness, there are mounting seemingly irresistible forces of evil, yet we are not dismayed. We do not need to take refuge in any comfortable illusions. We know that these things must be. But we know that as surely as Christ was raised from the dead, so surely shall there be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History, p. 55

But this does not lead us to despair and passivity. On the contrary, we act with hope and purpose.

A Christian is one who, through Christ, has been reconciled with God who is the King. God's rule is operative in his heart, through gratitude to Christ. If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. His gratitude impels him to acts of love towards men, but he also acts in hope—hope of the final completion of God's Kingdom in a perfected fellowship. Even though his actions may all seem to be failures as far as visible effectiveness is concerned, he commits them to God as his thank offering. In the sure hope that they will not be lost. And by faith, the substance of things hoped for, he now possesses in his heart a foretaste of the joy of that perfected Kingdom in which God's purposes shall be complete. Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History, pp. 52–53

Christianity is not a private, personal thing. It is public and universal. It is good news for all people everywhere. At is very core, Christianity is political. The claim, "Jesus is Lord," has distinct political implications. As followers of Christ, we participate in his war against the "powers."

But we must never forget that it is God's kingdom and his mission.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Missional Manifesto IV

What are the criteria for "success"?

If the focus is not on results, then how do we measure success? We certainly cannot measure it according to the standards of the business world.

The lure of success is seductive. Its siren song causes many people to uncritically ascribe so much authority to high-profile leaders, platform speakers and megachurch pastors…. In American measurement, Jesus' human life was a failure because it ended in the shame and disgrace on a cross with all his followers abandoning him.

Brian J. Dodd, Empowered Church Leadership, p. 11

When numerical growth is taken as the criterion of judgment on the church, we are transported with alarming ease into the world of the military campaign or the commercial sales drive.

Leslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 127

The fruit of effective ministry should first of all be evident in the life of the minister.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23).

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a high-profile leader in the Church is generally not peace, patience, kindness or gentleness. In fact, these qualities are often lacking.

Christians are routinely taught by example and word that it is more important to be right… than it is to be Christlike. In fact, being right licenses you to be mean, and, indeed, requires you to be mean—righteously mean, of course.

Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 238

What matters is not what we are doing and how much we are accomplishing but the kingdom character with which we conduct our business and how we treat people in the process.

Brian J. Dodd, Empowered Church Leadership, pp. 101-102.

The other measure of "success" is faithfulness.

There is no room either for anxiety about our failure or for boasting about our success. There is room only for faithful witness to the one in whom the whole purpose of God for cosmic history has been revealed and effected, the crucified, risen, and regnant Christ.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 125

But what about the situations where nothing seems to be happening?

For those who lead and reason "in the flesh," suffering is a sign that something is wrong, that something is failing, that we should go in a different direction.… For those who learn to lead in the Spirit, we come to recognize that suffering and struggle are often signs that we are on the right road, that we are heading in the right direction, that we are kicking a dent in the darkness.

Brian J. Dodd, Empowered Church Leadership, p. 66.

"Failure," rather than being a sign that something is wrong, can be an asset.

If we are not very successful in ministry, in whatever way we measure success, then God does not have a hard time getting us out of the way. . . . The burdens of office may have become so heavy that we welcome being bumped aside by Jesus.

Andrew Purves, The Crucifixion of Ministry, p. 25

Suffering is not the enemy of ministry. It is through suffering and weakness and "defeat" that God accomplished his victory in Jesus Christ. God does not work in spite of our weakness. He works through our weakness.

The way of the cross sometimes leads us into those places where all we can do is hold on. We can't see our way forward, we are confused that God isn't doing what we expect, and we can't see any meaning for all the pain and frustration.

Allen Mitsuo Wakabayashi, Kingdom Come, p. 170

We must always do what we know is right and true before God even if it doesn't seem as if it produces results.

Allen Mitsuo Wakabayashi, Kingdom Come, p. 172

We must never forget that the path of the cross lead to and through the darkness of death, not around it. Yet the God that we follow is the God of resurrection. We must hang on and stay faithful for as long as it takes.

Allen Mitsuo Wakabayashi, Kingdom Come, p. 173

Faithfulness is not a dodge to avoid responsibility. Faithfulness is not a cover for laziness. Faithfulness is not taking the easy way out.

There is a world of difference between being productive and being fruitful, between striving to build Christ's church and allowing Christ to build his church through you.

Stephen Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God, p. 92

When faithfulness is replaced with mere success, we have failed in our obligation to our Lord.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

It’s the Gospel, Stupid!

When Bill Clinton ran for President, James Carville made a sign for the campaign office to keep everyone "on message." It had three points, the second of which was

The economy, stupid.

I suspect that we need such a sign in our churches.

We spend too much time and energy trying to convince people

• that the Bible is inerrant
  
• that miracles are possible
  
• that evolution is impossible because it violates the second law of thermodynamics
  

Instead we need to be reminded that

It's the gospel, stupid!

This is the only real argument the church has.

The proper form of apologetics is the preaching of the gospel itself and the demonstration—which is not merely or primarily a matter of words—that it does provide the best foundation for a way of grasping and dealing with the mystery of our existence in this universe.
Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence, p. 94

We must keep the focus on the Good News.

And this should not be confused with systematic theology. Theology is important, but the gospel is primary.

We talk too much about

• immutability
  
• soteriology
  
• eschatology
  
• theories of the atonement
  

That is not to say that these issues are unimportant. But compared to the gospel itself, they are simply "details."

And don't fall into the trap of thinking that "the gospel" is about

• Four spiritual laws
  
• A few quotations from Paul' s Letter to the Romans
  
• Getting signed up for heaven
  

The gospel is the announcement of a new reality.

The business of the church is to tell and to embody a story, the story of God's mighty acts in creation and redemption and of God's promises concerning what will be in the end. The church affirms the truth of this story by celebrating it, interpreting it, and enacting it in the life of the contemporary world. It has no other way of affirming its truth. If it supposes that its truth can be authenticated by reference to some allegedly more reliable truth claim, such as those offered by the philosophy of religion, then it has implicitly denied the truth by which it lives.
Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence, p. 76

And the only effective way to convince people of the truth of this new reality is to live it.

It is only as we are truly "indwelling" the gospel story, only as we are so deeply involved in the life of the community which is shaped by this story that it becomes our real "plausibility structure," that we are able steadily and confidently to live in this attitude of eager hope. Almost everything in the "plausibility structure" which is the habitation of our society seems to contradict this Christian hope. Everything suggests that it is absurd to believe that the true authority over all things is represented in a crucified man. No amount of brilliant argument can make it sound reasonable to the inhabitants of the reigning plausibility structure. That is why I am suggesting that the only possible hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation which believes it.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 232

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

What Is Missional Church?

I see many people using the term missional in ways that have little or nothing to do with what I understand the word to mean.

For many it is little more than a synonym for hip or cool.

But I ran across this statement by Lesslie Newbigin in his Foolishness to the Greeks that seems to sum things up rather well:

The church is the bearer to all the nations of a gospel that announces the kingdom, the reign, and the sovereignty of God. It calls men and women to repent of their false loyalty to other powers, to become believers in the one true sovereignty, and so to become corporately a sign, instrument, and foretaste of that sovereignty of the one true and living God over all nature, all nations, and all human lives. It is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God's kingship.

Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 124

Missional primarily refers to the mission that the church has been given.

This is not a mission just to get people signed up for heaven. It is mission to proclaim the gospel and to live as agents of God's kingship in the world.

• We are not calling for people to participate in a business transaction with Jesus that will provide them with a voucher to enter heaven when they die.
  
• We are not calling for people to hire Jesus as a life coach so that they can "live their best life now."
  
• We are not calling for people to vote for Jesus as their deity of choice.
  

We are calling for people to submit to the one who is Lord of the Universe, to acknowledge his rightful place in their lives and in the world.

We are calling for them to actively participate in his kingdom as his will becomes fulfilled "on earth as it is in heaven."

Ironically, it is in giving up our "pursuit of happiness" and in submitting to his sovereignty that we find the fulfillment that seems so elusive:

Human beings find fulfillment not in the attempt to develop themselves, not in the effort to better their own condition, not in the untrammeled exercise of unlimited covetousness, but in the experience of mutual relatedness and responsibility in serving a shared goal.

Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 122

Jesus said something like that

Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it (Luke 9:24).

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

How can we know the truth?

In the modern world of "facts" we have the idea that we can obtain the truth simply by following the right method persistently.

We think of "facts" as treasure to be discovered that is buried in the dirt of data about the real world. When anything interesting is found, a community of experts determines its true intrinsic value.

Beliefs, on the other hand, are like objects that have only personal, sentimental value. No one else wants the plaster casting of your child's handprints. But to you, it is precious.

This seems so obvious that it is beyond dispute.

The only problem is that it is entirely wrong.

There is no "truth" without personal risk. We cannot avoid the vulnerability of faith.

We have on the one hand the ideal, or shall I call it the illusion, of a kind of objectivity which is not possible, of a kind of knowledge of what we call the "facts" which involves no personal commitment, no risk of being wrong, something which we have merely to accept without question; and on the other hand a range of beliefs which are purely subjective, which are, as we say, "true for me," are "what I feel," but which are a matter of personal and private choice.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 23

Yet many live in the illusion that they are "playing it safe." They think of themselves as people who operate purely by reason. They refuse to put their trust in anything that cannot be "proven" true.

Christians claim to know the truth.

This is not a private truth. It is true for all people in all times and in all places.

Unfortunately, Christians have tried to "prove" this truth by using the techniques of the "hard" sciences. There are several problems with this approach.

1. It assumes the false distinction between "facts" and "beliefs." This way of thinking is so deeply ingrained that it seems impossible to question it. In fact, most people would ask, "How else could we possibly prove anything?"
   
2. It requires the eternal truth to submit to the latest fashion of intellectual consensus, a consensus that is based upon the reigning system of unproven assumptions.
   
3. It confuses the existence of absolute truth with the perfect apprehension of that absolute truth.
   
4. It creates a false choice between absolute certainty and total ambiguity.
   
5. It tries to remove the personal commitment necessary to accept any truth, a commitment that is especially necessary to know the truth of the One who is himself Truth.
   

As followers of Jesus Christ, we have been given a sacred trust.

Something radically new has been given, something which cannot be derived from rational reflection on the experiences available to all people. It is a new fact, to be received in faith as a gift of grace. And what is thus given claims to be the truth, not just a possible opinion. It is the rock which must either become the foundation of all knowing and doing, or else the stone on which one stumbles and falls to disaster. Those who, through no wit or wisdom or godliness of their own, have been entrusted with this message can in no way demonstrate its truth on the basis of some other alleged certainties: they can only live by it and announce it. It is something given, dogma, calling for the assent of faith.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 6

We cannot prove that this message is the truth. Any attempt to do so distorts the message itself.

If the congregation is to function effectively as a community of truth, its manner of speaking the truth must not be aligned to the techniques of modem propaganda, but must have the modesty, the sobriety, and the realism which are proper to a disciple of Jesus.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 229

We can "only" proclaim this truth in humility and vulnerability.

We can never claim that either our understanding or our action is absolutely right. We have no way of proving that we are right. That kind of proof belongs only to the end. As part of the community that shares in the struggle, we open ourselves continually to Scripture, always in company with our fellow disciples of this and former ages in the context of the struggle for obedience; and we constantly find in it fresh insights into the character and purpose of the one who is "rendered" for us in its pages.
Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 60

This is the mission of God: To proclaim and to live the truth of the Gospel.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Speaking for the Church

In North America we have canonized individual freedom. We have turned freedom of speech into a right to have all our opinions taken seriously. We have turned the freedom to worship God in our own way into our own private religion (or non-religion).

And this individualism has worked its way into our churches.

There has been considerable discussion of the dangers of an individualistic view of Christianity. We've turned our faith into another commodity to be exchanged in the marketplace.

But this problem isn't limited to individuals. This way of thinking has also infected our thinking about local congregations.

Each group sees itself as an autonomous voluntary association of Christians.

But Paul says, "We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13). We usually interpret that in the context of the congregation. Paul seems to be saying something more.

Congregations should not be acting independently any more than individual Christians should be operating alone.

There is one Church with one Head.

The local congregation is not a branch of the universal Church, but it is the place where the universal Church is made visible. When the local congregation speaks and acts, its words and acts must claim to be the words and acts of the universal Church if they are to be authentic.
Lesslie Newbigin, Truth To Tell, p. 88

Yet we act as if we are independent contractors who "rent" the name Christian but run our own operations.

When we speak, we speak for the entire Church.

We are not just speaking for the group in our town who goes by our denominational label and who prefers our style of worship and shops at the same stores.

This means that we must be more careful about what we say (and what we don't say).

This means that we must be very careful about imposing rules and obligations upon the people in our congregation. We should follow the "categorical imperative" guideline. We should have no rules or obligations that we would not be willing to impose upon all Christians. No more of this, "It's our congregation (denomination), we can make whatever rules we want."

It's not our congregation (denomination). It is Christ's Church.

We don't get to operate it as a bunch of disconnected voluntary associations.

So what do you think? How does this change the way we think about ministry in the local church?

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be."

Sound Familiar?

The words "liberal" and "fundamentalist" are used today not so much to identify oneself as to label the enemy. . . . There are terms of moral opprobrium that each side employs to attack the other: the fundamentalist is arrogant, blinkered, and culturally illiterate; the liberal is flabby, timid, and carried along by every new fashion of thought. From the point of view of the fundamentalist, doubt is sin; from the point of view the liberal, capacity for doubt is a measure of intellectual integrity and honesty.

Replace the word liberal with emergent and this sounds like a commentary on today's blogging world. But this observation was written in 1995 by Lesslie Newbigin in Proper Confidence.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

A Plausible Gospel

The Apostle Paul says, "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18). "We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Corinthians 1:23).

According to the prevailing Greek plausibility structure, Jesus was a failure. According to the Jewish plausibility structure, Jesus was cursed by God and consequently a false Messiah.

But to those who have received the Good News, the defeated, humiliated, crucified Messiah is the power of God.

There are many who read 1 Corinthians 2:14 (The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.) as if the "man without the Spirit" cannot understand the grammar and syntax of plain language whenever the Gospel is communicated.

Rather, Paul is referring here to plausibility structures. (I'm not suggesting that he has this concept in mind or even was aware of the particular idea.) He is saying that according to the reigning belief system, the Gospel seems foolish and absurd:

• "Why would I want to trust in someone who couldn't even save himself?"
  
• "Everyone knows that the true Messiah could never have been crucified."
  

So what makes the Gospel plausible?

There are several factors involved, not the least of which is the Holy Spirit. But the primary reinforcement of the Gospel's plausibility is the community of believers.

It is only as we are truly "indwelling" the gospel story, only as we are so deeply involved in the life of the community which is shaped by this story that it becomes our real "plausibility structure," that we are able steadily and confidently to live in this attitude of eager hope. Almost everything in the "plausibility structure" which is the habitation of our society seems to contradict this Christian hope. Everything suggests that it is absurd to believe that the true authority over all things is represented in a crucified man. No amount of brilliant argument can make it sound reasonable to the inhabitants of the reigning plausibility structure. That is why I am suggesting that the only possible hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation which believes it.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 232

This sheds a whole new light on the idea that participation in a Christian community (church) is optional. Living the Gospel is virtually impossible alone. The Gospel not only needs community to create a hospitable plausibility structure, but it also demands to be expressed in community.

The reigning plausibility structure can only be effectively challenged by people who are fully integrated inhabitants of another.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 228

Unfortunately, much of what is being proclaimed as the "Gospel" does not challenge the reigning plausibility structure or require a community to survive.

Pastor Rod

"Helping you become the person God created you to be"

Belief & Community

I've been exploring the concept of plausibility structures and how this insight can help us to think more clearly about the church's relationship with culture.

One important component of a plausibility structure is community:

A plausibility structure is not just a body of ideas but is necessarily embodied in an actual community. It cannot exist otherwise.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 99.

Every plausibility structure grows out of a community. There is no such thing as a disembodied plausibility structure.

• Scientists have their own community with its plausibility structure.
  
• Public universities and colleges have a distinct community and accompanying plausibility structure.
  
• The inner city minority community has its own plausibility structure which includes the idea that the police and the courts cannot be trusted.
  

This has several implications for the Gospel.

• The alternative plausibility structure of the Gospel cannot survive outside the community of the Church. If a person attempts to be a "Lone Ranger" Christian, the reigning plausibility structure of society will eventually swallow up the competing beliefs of the Gospel.
  
  
• There is no neutral, benign environment for the claims of the Gospel. These audacious claims need the community of the saints to survive.
  
  
• One cannot ossify a particular community and its plausibility structure as a timeless reference for "biblical Christianity" (e.g. 16th-century Geneva).
  
  
• Furthermore, there is no "pure" Christian culture. Every genuine expression of Christianity is always in the context of a particular culture at a particular time.
  
  
• Any community that does not embody the plausibility structure of the Gospel is not truly a church.
  

This concept of plausibility structures does not mean that there is no absolute truth. It is an observation about how people understand, process and practice truth. The idea that truth can be apprehended and adopted in an objective and detached manner is as much a fiction as the idea that people buy cars for entirely non-emotional reasons.

We are really not in a secular society, but in a pagan society—not in a society which has no gods, but a society which has false gods.

Lesslie Newbigin, Interview

Here's the assessment of Dave Chang:

Reading Newbigin's works is dangerous business. It puts fire in the intellect, courage in the heart and motivation for action for the universal mission of Christ to a despairing world. A modern-day prophet has walked amongst us. We would do well to rally to his call to leave our privatized ghettos and ride forth to engage our pluralistic culture.

So what do you think? What are the implications for individual congregations? What are the implications for denominations? What are the implications for how we do theology?

Pastor Rod

"Helping you become the person God created you to be"

Misplaced Certainty

There's been a lot of hand wringing about the lack of certainty in parts of the contemporary church.

At issue is a number of amorphous "movements" within Christianity, the most visible of which is the Emerging Church. One of the distinctives of these groups is a relaxed attitude about doctrines perceived to be not at the core of the Christian faith.

But many see this relaxed attitude as a threat to the Gospel.

In fact, there are many Christians who see almost every doctrine as crucial. They have a long list of teachings that they consider essential to Christianity. In other words, if you don't accept these, then you are not a true Christian:

• A young earth and a 144-hour creation
  
• A Bible that is free of any inaccuracies (from a modern scientific perspective)
  
• A particular view of the schedule of the final days
  
• Restriction of certain ministries to men
  
• Total abstinence from alcohol
  
• A particular theory of the atonement
  
• A specific system of theology
  

There doesn't seem to be any lack of certainty here.

Unfortunately, these people cannot distinguish between

• Their idea of God and God himself
  
• Their interpretation of the Bible and the teaching of God's Word
  
• Their apprehension of the truth and the objective, ultimate Truth.
  

Newbigin had something to say about this situation:

Fundamentalists are often dismissed as obscurantist or crazy fanatics, and some may be. Whatever their defects, they recognize the problem. If we cannot speak with confidence about biblical authority, what ground have we for challenging the reigning plausibility structure?

Lesslie Newbigin. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. p. 97.

Their diagnosis is correct, but their solution is faulty.

But the fundamentalist case has been flawed. If the Bible is treated as a compendium of factually inerrant propositions about everything in heaven and earth, then it is impossible to explain both the contradictions between parts of the Bible and things we certainly know as the results of the work of science, and also the obvious inconsistencies within the Bible itself on factual matters. Even the most convinced fundamentalist who lives in the modern world has to rely at innumerable points on knowledge provided by science and not by the Bible.

Lesslie Newbigin. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. p. 97.

Part of the problem is that fundamentalists have tried to make Christianity fit into a modernist plausibility structure. If the Bible is true, then they assume that it must satisfy the definition of truth in the reigning plausibility structure. In this view, any inconsistency betrays a lack of veracity.

But this idea of truth is not "self-evident" except in certain plausibility structures. In fact, a degree of inconsistency is often an indication of veracity.

In a court of law, for example. If four witnesses tell exactly the same story, without a single variation in detail, a wise attorney will quickly recognize that the testimony has been tampered with. In the real world, witnesses have slightly different perceptions of what happened.

Statistics has a term for a model that explains the available data too exactly: overfitting. With limited data it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate the noise from the data. Our understanding of God's truth always involves a degree of "noise," because we must process revelation through our limited reasoning capacity.

But many Christians crave certainty. Andrew Sandlin calls this Hyper-Realized Epistemology:

It's certainty, not faith in Jesus, that they're really after. Jesus helps them with their certainty addiction; He's a means to an end.

Our commitment is to the Truth, not to our version of the truth.

Our commitment is to God, not to our theology about God.

Our commitment is to the authority of divine revelation, not to our analysis of that revelation.

Certainty and humility do not need to be mutually exclusive.

• We can be confident without being arrogant.
  
• We can be open-minded without being tentative.
  
• We can be gracious without being accommodating.
  

So what do you think? What would you put on the "short list" of essential Christian doctrines? What are some things that you think should not be open to debate? What do you think about the idea that the Bible might contain some "inaccuracies"?

Pastor Rod

"Helping you become the person God created you to be"

That’s Impossible!

"Self-evident truths" are a reflection of society rather than a reflection of reality.

This is the argument of Peter Berger.

Every society constructs a plausibility structure through which it processes "reality." It is impossible to process experiences or information except from within a plausibility structure. There is no objective reference point from which to understand "truth."

This is not to say that there is no such thing as objective truth. But it is to say that there is no neutral authority to which we can appeal to determine what that truth is. All evaluations of "truthiness" and "realness" can only be made from the context of a community.

My first exposure to this concept of plausibility structures was in the writing of Tim Keller. He focused on the negative aspects of this phenomenon and referred to the "implausibility structure" and "defeater beliefs."

Recently, I have learned more about this from reading Lesslie Newbigin's book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. He explains the key conclusion of Berger's model:

All use of reasoning depends on and is embodied in a tradition.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 53.

This has many implications for followers of Jesus Christ. It explains why so many efforts to present the truth of the Gospel fall flat. If a person's "implausibility structure" (to use Keller's term) considers something impossible, no amount of evidence will persuade that person to change his or her mind. This is what Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians 2:14:

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

This doesn't mean that "the man without the Spirit" cannot understand the words that are used to communicate the truth about Jesus Christ. It means that "they are foolishness to him" because they are outside his plausibility structure.

The gospel gives rise to a new plausibility structure, a radically different vision of things from those that shape all human cultures apart from the gospel. The Church, therefore, as the bearer of the gospel, inhabits a plausibility structure which is at variance with, and which calls in question, those that govern all human cultures without exception.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p. 9.

This has several implications for evangelism, apologetics, biblical interpretation, theology and preaching. I'll explore some of these topics in subsequent posts.

So what do you think? Is Berger's model a good fit? Does it explain things that other ways of looking at the world can't adequately address? What are some of the implications of this perspective?

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

Sola Scriptura Fiction

Truth never stands free of a particular tradition.

In other words, there is no such thing as "just the facts." There is always a context within which the "facts" must be understood. This is even true with something as "objective" as science.

"Clearly the scientific tradition as a whole, and the many concepts, classifications of data, and theoretical models which are the working tools of science form as a whole a tradition within which scientists have to dwell in order to do their work. Without such an enduring tradition, science would collapse. At any moment in history several parts of the tradition may be under critical review and alternatives may be proposed; but this critical review would be impossible without the a-critical acceptance of the tradition as a whole. The progress of science depends, therefore, on the authority of this tradition."
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

If this is true for something like science, how much more must it be true for theology?

There is no such thing as a tradition-free truth. The idea that many people have of sola scriptura is dependent upon the tradition of the Enlightenment. It requires a whole series of assumptions that stand outside the text. These assumptions come from a tradition, but it is not the Christian tradition. It is a tradition is that is in large part in conflict with the Christian tradition.

Some Protestants ridicule the Roman Catholic Church for its reliance upon tradition. But Christianity depends upon tradition.

Of course, the Christian tradition should not stand above the text. Nor should that tradition be etched in stone. But the tradition is important, even essential.

Pastor Rod

"Helping you become the person God created you to be"

Truth Without Risk?

"If God is real why doesn't he give us proof of his existence?"

Behind this question are several assumptions. One of those assumptions is addressed by Lesslie Newbigin in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society:

We have on the one hand the ideal, or shall I call it the illusion, of a kind of objectivity which is not possible, of a kind of knowledge of what we call the "facts" which involves no personal commitment, no risk of being wrong, something which we have merely to accept without question; and on the other hand a range of beliefs which are purely subjective, which are, as we say, "true for me," are "what I feel," but which are a matter of personal and private choice.

People who ask this question are looking for "proof" that will take away the element of faith and the element of risk. Newbigin makes clear that this option is not only not available when it comes to religion, but neither it is available in something as "objective" as science.

All acknowledgement of "truth" requires a personal risk.

• Galileo took a risk when he decided that the earth moved around the sun.
  
• Einstein took a risk when he said that light travels at a constant velocity.
  
• Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis took a risk when he said that hand washing could prevent childbed fever.
  
• Columbus took a risk when he said that he could get to China by sailing west. (He was wrong about the size of the earth, but his gamble lead to the discovery of the western hemisphere by Europe.)
  

While God doesn't give us proof of his existence, he does give us evidence (maybe hints is an even better word). It is up to us whether we will acknowledge that truth or reject it. Either choice entails a risk.

Something radically new has been given, something which cannot be derived from rational reflection on the experiences available to all people. It is a new fact, to be received in faith as a gift of grace. And what is thus given claims to be the truth, not just a possible opinion. It is the rock which must either become the foundation of all knowing and doing, or else the stone on which one stumbles and falls to disaster. Those who, through no wit or wisdom or godliness of their own, have been entrusted with this message can in no way demonstrate its truth on the basis of some other alleged certainties: they can only live by it and announce it. It is something given, dogma, calling for the assent of faith.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

So what do you think? Does this view render traditional apologetics useless?

Pastor Rod

"Helping you become the person God created you to be"

The Open Secret

I recently read The Open Secret by Lesslie Newbigin. I had the sense that I should disagree with his theology in some way, but I couldn’t find anything specific to disagree with. Here are a few quotations:

The church could have escaped persecution by the Roman Empire if it had been content to be treated as a cultus privatus—one of the many forms of personal religion. But it was not. Its affirmation that “Jesus is Lord” implied a public, universal claim that was bound eventually to clash with the cultus publicus of the empire. The Christian mission is thus to act out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 16–17

Our mission is to live out the truth of the central proclamation of Christianity. If Jesus is Lord, we must live like it—in every aspect of our lives. And if we do this honestly, we will find ourselves in conflict with the prevailing culture, but not necessarily in the ways that we might think.

It is not enough for the church to go on repeating in different cultural situations the same words and phrases. New ways have to be found of stating the essential Trinitarian faith, and for this the church in each new cultural situation has to go back to the original biblical sources of this faith in order to lay hold on it afresh in contemporary terms.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 27

Too many people treat the Bible as if it were a magical incantation—that simply repeating its words will transform others even if they do not understand their meaning. The work of theology is not done. Every Christian is a missionary. The truth of the gospel must be constantly redefined and communicated in original terms.

It has been said that the question of the Trinity is the one theological question that has been really settled. It would, I think, be nearer to the truth to say that the Nicene formula has been so devoutly hallowed that it is effectively put out of circulation. It has been treated like the talent that was buried for safekeeping rather than risked in the commerce of discussion.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 27

Christian theology is not reduced to organizing and cataloging what previous generations have determined. God does not change his nature, and the canon is closed. But it would be foolish to think that we have exhausted our understanding of the revelation we have received in the form of the Bible and that a few dead men from previous centuries have written such perfect descriptions of God and how he works with humans that there is nothing new to say.

The supreme parable, the supreme deed by which the reign of God is both revealed and hidden, is the cross.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 35

I don’t think we really understand what happened on the cross. I think we have systematized our descriptions of the atonement to the point that it is reduced to a cliché.

What is given here [Acts 1:8] (and this is vital for true missionary thinking) is not a command, but a promise. The presence of the Spirit will make them witnesses.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 58

When the Spirit came they were naturally witnesses. In other words, we should focus more on receiving the Spirit than on trying to be witnesses.

We can be assured that the mission of the church is not conducted, nor is its success measured, after the manner of a military operation or a sales campaign. The witness that confutes the world is not ours; it is that of one greater than ourselves who goes before us. Our task is simply to follow faithfully.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 62

This book should be required reading for every pastor and every denominational executive.

Our so-called eternal truths are the attempts we make at particular moments in the story to grasp and state how things are in terms of our experience at that point. They are all provisional and relative to time and place, as we recognize when as twentieth-century people we read the seventeenth-century language of the Westminster Confession.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 83

Touché.

The biblical story is not a separate story: it is part of the unbroken fabric of world history.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 88

I can live fully the life of a real person, part of the real world of society, history, and nature, and know that, because Christ is risen, my labor in the Lord is not futile.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 106

All of life is sacred. Everything we do should be done in the context of the Lordship of Jesus. We can worship God with our play as well as our work.

The church has to learn how to live by the grace that forgives but does not condone sin and under the judgment that exposes sin and yet keeps open the way of repentance.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 112

Too often the church condemns those who commit the sins we ourselves are not likely to commit and condones (or even celebrates) the sins that have worked their way into the culture of the church.

In no sense does the triumph of God’s reign seem to depend upon the growth of the church.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 125

Most pastors and Christians would think that this statement is a contradiction.

The place where the virus of legalism gets into the work of evangelism is the place where the evangelist presumes that he or she knows in advance and can tell the potential convert what the ethic content of conversion will be.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 136

Our efforts to call people to righteousness and holiness often result in a facsimile of righteousness and holiness that prevents the outbreak of the real thing.

When the light shines freely one cannot draw a line and say, “Here light stops and darkness begins.” But one can say and must say, “There is where the light shines; go toward it and your path will be clear; turn your back on it and you will go into deeper darkness.”
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 175

This is the difference between a bounded set and a centered set.

To invest the money with a view to a high rate of interest is to risk the capital. The church has often been afraid to do this, thinking that the faith once delivered to the saints is to be preserved inviolate and without the change of a comma. The mystery of the gospel is not entrusted to the church to be buried in the ground. It is entrusted to the church to be risked in the change and interchange of the spiritual commerce of humanity.
Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, p. 189

When most Christians engage in a discussion with a person who has a different worldview, they “talk down” to that person and try to convince him or her to adopt the Christian worldview. If we are true seekers of the truth, we must be willing to accept whatever is shown to be the truth, even if it is different than what we already believe. If Christianity is true (and I believe it is), then we do not have to protect it from new scientific discoveries. We do not have to be afraid of challenges and criticisms of the gospel.

It is not our job to defend the gospel. Our responsibility is to proclaim and explain the gospel in words and in actions. We must acknowledge the possibility that we could be wrong about what we believe. If we don’t, then we don’t really believe that it is true. We are just trying to convince ourselves that it is true.

I don’t know if this is the best book that Newbigin has written, but it certainly is better than most of the contemporary books on ministry that I’ve read. It should be added to the list of essential reading for anyone who wants to understand missional ministry.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”