2. The Good News of the Kingdom and the Missionary Church
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The Good News of the Kingdom and the Missionary Church
Our starting point to understand Lesslie Newbigin’s missionary ecclesiology is the gospel of Jesus Christ. But what is the gospel? Our answer to that question will always be given in terms of the context in which we place the central events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That broader context is what gives meaning to those events. Often the larger context is assumed with little conscious reflection. For example, sometimes the gospel is placed in the context of individual testimonies of salvation or evangelistic presentations that follow the logic of individual sin, Christ as substitute, and the need for faith. Then the meaning of the Christ-event is simply as the means of personal salvation. Other times the work of Christ is understood within the context of a systematic theology, usually standing between sin (treated individually) and salvation (treated as the benefits of Christ applied to individuals). Again in this case the work of Christ is a matter of individual salvation. Newbigin would not doubt that there is some truth in this. He would, however, insist that this is an entirely too reductionistic view of the gospel. It has been uprooted from its biblical context and placed within another.
For Newbigin the gospel must be placed first and foremost within the setting of the cosmic history narrated in Scripture. Understanding the nature of the biblical story puts us in a place to more carefully answer the question, What is the gospel? The Bible is a unified narrative of God’s mighty deeds in history that moves toward the ultimate goal of the cosmic renewal. The gospel stands at the center of this story. “The Gospel of God, with which both Testaments are concerned . . . refers to the beginning and the end of all things and therefore to the real meaning of all that happens.” In this light we can offer a preliminary definition of Newbigin’s understanding of the good news of the kingdom: The good news is a message about the fullest revelation and the final accomplishment of the end of universal history—the comprehensive restoration of all creation and the whole of human life in the kingdom of God—present and coming in history in Jesus Christ and by the Spirit’s power. In this chapter we will unpack this loaded definition of the gospel and its significance for a missionary ecclesiology.
Jesus and the Good News of the Kingdom
Anyone who would define the gospel must make a decision about where to begin. In his various discussions of the gospel, Newbigin almost always begins in the same place: with the first announcement made by Jesus, at the outset of his public ministry, about the kingdom of God: “Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:14–15). The good news is the announcement of the arrival of the kingdom: “The original preaching of the Gospel on the lips of Jesus was—precisely—the announcement of the coming of the kingdom.” What is the kingdom of God? To answer that question, we have to first look at the background of the Old Testament story. That will tell us what is being fulfilled. But we then have to look forward into the New Testament witness. That will tell us how it is being fulfilled. Taken together, these will allow us to understand what the kingdom of God is and how it is being fulfilled in Jesus.
Looking Back at the Old Testament Story
The Old Testament is a redemptive-historical story. It is a story of God’s mighty acts that move toward the healing of the world from sin and the restoration of God’s sovereign rule over all things. Behind the announcement of the kingdom is this “Old Testament belief in a cosmic renewal or restoration.” Jesus steps into the redemptive story of the Old Testament and “carries forward these prophetic and apocalyptic hopes of the Hebrews which began with the ardent but humble hope of the restoration of the kingdom of David and led up to the growing hopes of a restoration of God’s rightful sovereignty over the whole world.” Jesus proclaims that cosmic renewal is now breaking into the middle of history in him. “The earliest and simplest statement of the Gospel is: ‘The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand.’ . . . The Gospel is the proclamation of a series of events in history which have been—from their first dawning—proclaimed to be decisive for human history and for every individual.” In Jesus, God accomplishes decisively and climactically the purpose toward which he had been working.
The Old Testament is universal history with cosmic renewal as the End. The good news is the announcement that the End has arrived. Thus, the gospel is fundamentally an eschatological message. Eschatology is not just what comes last chronologically but is the ultimate goal toward which all of history is moving. The good news is an announcement about this goal of history somehow being present in Jesus.
The end of universal history is what gives meaning to the creation and to human life. To be human is to live in some story that gives life meaning. The problem is that, while we are in the middle of history, it is impossible for us to know the End—that is, unless the one who rules history reveals it to us. One cannot know the meaning of history, or even whether there is meaning, until one has reached the end. “How do we know the meaning of the story as a whole? How do we know the meaning of the story while we are still in the middle of it?” Only if the Lord of history, the author of the story, has let us into the secret while we are still in the middle. And that is precisely what has happened: the author has let us into the secret! “The gospel is the announcement of the end of world history.” The goal of universal history has been fully revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. “The Christian faith is the faith that the point of the story has been disclosed: the ‘end’ has been revealed in the middle.”
Newbigin uses an evocative illustration to make his point. He asks us to imagine walking along a street and seeing a work of construction in progress. What kind of building is being constructed? An office? A house? A chapel? There are only two ways to find out: wait until the end or ask the architect who is building it. And then we must believe his word. Similarly, the only way to know the meaning of cosmic history is either to wait until the end—an option not available to us—or to trust the revelation of the one whose purpose it is: “The only way we can know that purpose is by a disclosure from the one whose purpose it is, a disclosure which we would have to take on trust.” The author and architect of cosmic history has disclosed his purpose. And he has done it not merely with information or words or promises; rather, it is in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus, God’s purpose for his whole creation has been revealed.
Two words are key to understanding the eschatological nature of the gospel: “reveal” and “accomplish.” In Jesus, God both reveals and accomplishes the end of history. “God’s purpose for the world is accomplished by the sending of His Son. . . . Jesus was sent once for all by the Father to reveal and establish His reign.” In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus discloses and reveals the very nature of the kingdom of God. He shows us what it is like—what is coming on that final day. We see in Jesus a preview of the coming attraction; we receive windows to peer into a future world yet to come. In the healings we see that there is no disease in the new creation; in the exorcisms we see that Satan is cast out of the new creation; in the calming of the sea we see that the curse is lifted from the nonhuman creation. In Jesus we come to know the goal that defines history and human life. But he does more than simply reveal it to us; he also accomplishes and establishes God’s reign in the midst of history. “The Gospel announces an accomplished redemption.” It is now present in the world, and with its advent we are assured that one day it will come fully. The new creation is not just a promise; it has been accomplished. It is here now and it will certainly come. Jesus stands “at the very centre of the story [as] the One in whom God’s purpose was decisively revealed by being decisively effected.” These two words—“reveal” and “accomplish”—provide a helpful lens on the good news of the kingdom.
Looking Forward at the New Testament Witness
When we turn to the New Testament witness, what is immediately clear is that history has not come to a close: the End is present in the middle, but clearly it has not arrived in fullness. The cosmic renewal of the kingdom is both a present and a future reality; it is somehow now and not yet. “The kingdom is both present and future. It is present in that, through the total work of Jesus, we are given here and now the foretaste, the first-fruit, the arrabon of its grace and peace. It is future in that the story of which our lives are a part, the story of creation and of the human family is . . . a movement directed toward a real goal, a real event in which it becomes clear that something has been accomplished.”
What does it mean that the kingdom as the goal of universal history has arrived and is present now? It means that God’s power to heal the creation has entered history in the person of Jesus Christ and by the work of the Spirit. In Jesus, new powers are present—the powers of the coming age that will one day finally sum up all things.
The central proclamation of the New Testament is that in Christ the new age has already dawned. In the words of the very first proclamation of the gospel, “The Kingdom of God has come near.” In Christ the powers of the new age are at work. The domain of Heaven has touched that of earth and God’s rule is actually being exercised in the world through Jesus. Those who accept Him come within the sphere of operations of the powers of the kingdom: they may in fact be said to have been translated out of the present age into the new age which is to come. The new age is no longer something in the distant future. It is already present proleptically. Christians have already, as it is said, tasted the powers of the age to come.
Two things can be further mentioned about the coming of the powers of the kingdom (and we will return to both in more detail later). First, the new powers are the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit brings the new world of the kingdom of God into the midst of the old world. Second, the imagery of foretaste, deposit, and firstfruits captures something of how the kingdom may be present and yet have a future realization. Newbigin uses this imagery both for the Spirit and for the church.
To say that the kingdom is both present and future is certainly not novel and is well within mainstream New Testament scholarship on the eschatological message of Jesus. The question is what it means exactly to say the kingdom is both present and future. Newbigin’s characteristic answer is that the kingdom is hidden in the present but will be made manifest in the future. This is “not the difference between the incomplete and the complete; it is the difference between hidden and manifest.” In the present it is hidden and veiled: it is not a demonstration of power and manifest victory that is obvious to the naked eye of unconverted people. It is not a matter of the kingdom being partially here and awaiting a more complete arrival. Rather, it is hidden in the sense that it comes in the way of weakness and suffering.
This gives us a lens to understand the relationship of the kingdom to history. It is a relationship neither of total continuity nor of total discontinuity. The kingdom is not simply future and so unrelated to present history. Nor is it collapsed into history so that history is a smooth, progressive, and gradual arrival of the kingdom. The presence of the kingdom creates crisis and conflict as it encounters the powers that oppose the kingdom. History is thus characterized by a conflict and struggle between the powers of the kingdom and those of this world. This produces suffering for those who take the side of the kingdom.
It seems that Newbigin has affirmed two quite paradoxical things about the coming of the kingdom in the present. On the one hand, the powers of the age to come have broken into history. God’s power to heal and renew is present in the work of the Spirit and is now at work in the world. On the other hand, the kingdom arrives in weakness and suffering. Power and weakness—these seem to stand in tension. To this Newbigin answers that this is precisely the “double character” of the kingdom until Christ returns. God’s power to heal and renew all of human life is now present, and therefore we see the mighty works of God in the ministry of Jesus and the church as signs of this restoration. But since the advent of the kingdom is a comprehensive salvation, on the other hand, we see a conflict between the powers. An antithetical encounter between the powers of the kingdom and powers of the present age is necessarily engaged. The mission of Jesus and the church is then in the way of suffering. Only when Christ returns will the victory of the kingdom be made manifest. But until that day the kingdom is characterized by a double character: power and weakness, victory and defeat, mighty works and suffering, faith and hope. Both are manifest in the mission of Jesus; if either is lost, the mission of the church will be distorted either by a triumphalist activism or by a defeatist quietism.
We await the final coming of the kingdom when what is hidden will be revealed and be fully manifest for every eye to see. But why is the final victory and demonstration of God’s power held off? Newbigin always answers the same way: the precise meaning of this gap is mission to the nations.
What has been done for the whole world must be made known to the whole world, so that the whole world may be brought under the obedience to the Gospel, and may be healed in the salvation which God has wrought for it. It is for this that the end is held back. The end has been revealed once for all; it must now be made known to all that all may believe. The decisive victory has been won over the world; the remaining centers of enemy resistance must now be destroyed. That is the meaning of the time still given to us. It is the time for bringing all men and all nations to the obedience of the faith. It is for no other purpose that the end is delayed.
It is precisely the hidden and veiled nature of the kingdom that allows people to hear the good news, to repent, and to be converted. If the kingdom were made manifest in its awesome power, then history would have arrived at its goal; there would be no room for repentance. “The unveiling of the glory of God’s kingdom in all its terrible majesty could leave no further room for the free acceptance in faith which Jesus called for. Only when that glory was veiled in the lowliness of the incarnation could it call out freely given repentance and faith.” And so Jesus manifests the kingdom in his life and deeds; he prays that the kingdom might come; and he proclaims the kingdom, inviting listeners to enter the sphere of the operation of its powers. And the church follows in the way of Jesus.
The Kingdom Comes in the Person and Work of Jesus
The good news is about the restoration of the creation that lies at the End bursting into the middle of history. It enters history both through Jesus and by the Spirit. The kingdom comes through the cluster of redemptive events in Jesus Christ: his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and his gift of the Spirit. Newbigin often grouped all of these events together and referred to them in various ways—the “Christ-event” or the “total fact of Christ” or the “total event of Christ.” By this he means to make clear that the whole person and work of Christ from incarnation to Pentecost is an integrated singular event of salvation in which each individual moment has its necessary and meaningful place in the whole. Each is uniquely significant as part of the one revelation and accomplishment of the kingdom of God.
This last statement is important. When we consider any aspect of the person and work of Jesus—his ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, gift of the Spirit—we may not abstract them from the biblical story. The Bible is narrating the coming of cosmic salvation, and the message of the gospel is that it arrived in Jesus. The question is, What is the significance of each of these historical moments in the Christ-event for the coming of the kingdom?
Jesus’s Life and Ministry
First, the kingdom of God arrives in the life and ministry of Jesus. At the beginning of his ministry, the Spirit is poured out on Jesus. The Spirit is an eschatological gift promised by the prophets for the last days. If the Spirit is present, then the last days or the kingdom has dawned in Jesus. “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). Jesus carries out his kingdom ministry in the power of the Spirit. This ministry is carried out in a threefold way: Jesus embodies the presence of the kingdom in his own life; Jesus does the mighty works of the kingdom—works of healing and deliverance—that are windows into the very nature of the coming age; and Jesus announces the kingdom and teaches about it with his words. This ministry is carried out in a life of prayer that God’s kingdom would be fully manifest one day, and until that day he prays that eyes would be open to the kingdom and that people would believe. But Jesus’s ministry is not carried out in triumphant power; rather, the kingdom comes in seeming weakness and suffering as he absorbs the full force of evil in himself.
Jesus’s Death and Resurrection
Second, the kingdom of God arrives in the death of Jesus on the cross and in his resurrection. These two events stand together as the hinge and turning point that give cosmic history its meaning and direction. “At the centre of history, which is both the history of man and the history of nature, stands the pivotal, critical once-for-all event of the death and resurrection of Jesus. By this event the human situation is irreversibly changed.” These two events constitute the hinge of universal history: in the death of Jesus, there is the end of the old, and in the resurrection, the beginning of the new. In the crucifixion of Jesus, God accomplishes the victory over sin and death and all that has corrupted and enslaved the creation. In the resurrection of Jesus, the new creation that will one day fill the earth begins. The death and resurrection of Jesus are cosmic events.
The Bible gives us many images to describe the decisive and cosmic event of the cross.
Down the centuries, from the first witness until today, the church has sought and used innumerable symbols to express the inexpressible mystery of the event that is the center, the crisis of all cosmic history, the hinge upon which all happenings turn. Christ the sacrifice offered for our sin, Christ the substitute standing in our place, Christ the ransom paid for our redemption, Christ the conqueror casting out the prince of the world—these and other symbols have been used to point to the heart of the mystery. None can fully express it. It is that happening in which the reign of God is present.
Several times Newbigin articulates the cross in terms of five images: the death of Jesus is a revelation of God’s love for the world, a judgment on the sin of the world, a ransom that pays the price to deliver the world, a sacrifice that takes the sin of the world on himself, and a victory over the sin and evil that rules the world. But when we survey Newbigin’s discussions of the cross, two images feature most prominently. And both have implications for the missionary church.
The first image is that of a victory: “It is there, on Calvary, that the kingdom, the kingly rule of God, won its decisive victory over all the powers that contradict it. . . . The cross is not a defeat reversed by the resurrection; it is a victory proclaimed (to chosen witnesses) by the resurrection.” The victory is sure but not obvious. And it is here that we see the paradoxical nature of the cross: in what looks like defeat lies the ultimate victory of God. “The centre of the revealed mystery of the reign of God is the Cross. There the power of God is revealed—but it is revealed as weakness. The glory of God is revealed—but it is revealed as humiliation. The victory of God is revealed—but it is revealed as defeat.” The church shares in this victory but also in the cross-shaped nature of Jesus’s mission.
The second image of the cross is the archetypal image of the representative man who bears the destiny of the whole creation. The death of Jesus is the end of the old age dominated by evil; in the resurrection of Jesus the new creation is inaugurated. Since Jesus bears the destiny of the whole creation, this pattern is true for the whole cosmos, for the church and its mission, and for each person. This death-and-resurrection pattern unfolds in three historical stages. First, in the actual death and resurrection of Jesus evil is dealt with and the new creation begins. Then, the church shares in that pattern as it participates in the resurrection life of the new creation and makes it known through suffering in its conflict with evil. Finally, the whole cosmos will one day partake in the judgment accomplished at the cross and the renewal begun in the resurrection.
Jesus’s Ascension
The third way the kingdom comes for Newbigin is in the ascension of Jesus. Newbigin mentions the ascension less than the other events. But the reality it points to—the sovereign rule of Christ over all things—is central to his understanding of the Christ-event. The resurrection means a new world has dawned in which Christ is enthroned as Lord of all—“the ruler and authority over all things.” The imagery of God’s right hand pictures what is true of the new world dawning: the lordship of Jesus Christ over all creation. Newbigin points to Psalm 110:1, a text quoted twenty-two times in the New Testament: “The LORD says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” This text, fulfilled in the ascension and exaltation of Jesus, expresses precisely the redemptive-historical time in which the church lives. On the one hand, Jesus has been vindicated and exalted. He is at the right hand of God, ruling all creation, and one day this comprehensive rule will be consummated. This is the good news—Christ is now Lord and one day will be fully revealed as Lord and Ruler of all—that must be proclaimed. On the other hand, it is a hidden authority. The powers of the world continue to resist this comprehensive rule of God. This means that time between the times will be characterized by an ultimate battle in which the church submits to the authority of Christ and proclaims his victory. Yet the hidden nature of Christ’s rule opens up the space for the good news to be proclaimed and for people to repent and acknowledge the rule of Christ. “The full revelation of God’s kingdom must mean the obliteration of all that is opposed to it, and God in his mercy withholds that final revelation so that man may repent and believe. Until that day of Christ’s coming in glory, His reign is to be known not by sight but by faith, not in full enjoyment but in foretaste, not in complete manifestation but in signs which point beyond themselves to a reality greater than themselves.”
The Kingdom Comes in the Work of the Spirit
The kingdom comes not only in Jesus but also by the work of the Spirit. In much theological work, the Spirit is confined to being the one who applies the work of Christ to individuals. Often both the work of Jesus and the work of the Spirit are shorn of their eschatological and communal context in Scripture. To rightly understand Newbigin’s view of the Spirit, we have to place his work in four contexts: eschatological, missional, communal, and individual. The order is important: his thought moves from the broader context to the more narrow.
The Spirit’s Work as Eschatological
Newbigin understands the Spirit first and foremost in eschatological terms. The Spirit is primarily a gift of the last days; his arrival in the present means that the age to come has dawned in the midst of history. The cosmic salvation that is the goal of universal history is a work of the Spirit; the End is present with his presence. The promise of the Spirit in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Joel as an eschatological gift sets the background for the Gospels. The new era promised by the prophets is here: in the coming of Jesus, empowered by the Spirit, the last days have come. The kingdom is the work of the Spirit of God in Christ and in the apostolic community.
Thus, the Spirit must be understood in eschatological perspective; the Spirit ushers in the end of history. With the coming of the Spirit, the last days are upon us. “The Spirit brings the reality of the new world to come into the midst of the old world that is. . . . [The Spirit is] the recognizable presence of a future that has been promised but is not yet in sight.” This eschatological future is made known first in the Spirit’s work in Christ and then in the church. “From the very beginning of the New Testament, the coming of Jesus, his words and works are connected directly with the power of the Spirit.” The mission of Jesus continues as the Holy Spirit is given to the church. “The Church’s mission is simply the continued ministry in the world of that same divine Spirit who was in Jesus. His presence in the world means that the new age of the Kingdom has really dawned.”
Three words describe the Spirit as an end-time gift: “deposit,” “first-fruits,” and “foretaste.” Quite often Newbigin discusses these terms in an exposition of Acts 1. A question about the kingdom (Acts 1:6) receives an answer about the Spirit (v. 8). “The question is about the Kingdom; the promise is about that which is the foretaste, the first-fruit, the arrabon of the Kingdom—namely the gift of the Spirit.” All three of these vivid images point to the double character of the Spirit’s presence and the coming of the kingdom: the Spirit is a present reality but points to a future completion. A deposit is a down payment or pledge of actual money now; it is not simply a promissory note or an IOU but real money. But it promises that the rest of the purchase price will be paid in the future. A foretaste is an actual taste of the meal now, not simply the smell and promise of food. But it promises that the rest of the meal is coming. Firstfruits are an actual handful of grain or bunch of fruit held in one’s hand, but they point us to the coming of the full harvest, assuring us that it will one day come. All these images point to a present experience and a future promise: the kingdom has arrived and is experienced in the work of the Spirit, but the fullness is a promised future.
The Spirit’s Work as Missional
The eschatological nature of the Spirit is closely linked to his missionary nature. For Newbigin, eschatology and mission are closely intertwined; the holding back of the completion of the kingdom means mission to the world. Newbigin characterizes the time between the first coming of Jesus and his return in three ways: as a time when the kingdom has already arrived but is not fully present, as a time of mission characterized by a witness to the kingdom, and as the era of the Spirit. The Spirit is an earnest: this is the eschatological nature of his work. The Spirit is a witness: this is the missional nature of his work. “We may indicate the fundamental interconnection of the eschatological and missionary elements in the Church’s nature in yet a third way, by reference to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. . . . He spans, as it were, the gulf that yet yawns between the consummation for which we long and our actual life here.” The missionary movement of the Spirit’s work is outward from the one (Jesus) to the many (all nations), from one place to the ends of the earth: “The new reality is let loose into the world in expanding and ever-widening circles as the gospel is carried out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.” The cosmic salvation accomplished in Christ moves outward to include more and more.
The Spirit’s Work as Communal
The Spirit is not only eschatological and missional but also communal. The Spirit is given to a community, and mission incorporates the nations into this community. Newbigin refers to John 20:19–23 and to Acts 2:1–9 and says that in “both accounts we see that the gift of the Holy Spirit is to a company of people together and not to separate individuals.” Indeed, “in the New Testament it is always to a community, to a group” that the Spirit is given. The Spirit’s ever-expanding witness to Christ’s kingdom is borne by a community, and as people are converted they are baptized into the community of the Spirit.
The Spirit’s Work in Individuals
Newbigin does not move from Christ to the application of Christ’s work and the distribution of various salvific benefits to individuals. For Newbigin “all the benefits which Christ was sent to bring” enable people to be “restored to their true humanity because they are reconciled with their Maker.” And certainly the restoration of individuals to their full humanity in Christ is the Spirit’s work and a sign of the presence of God’s kingdom. However, the movement of Newbigin’s thought on the Holy Spirit follows the Bible itself. It begins by placing both Jesus and the Spirit in eschatological context; the comprehensive salvation of the kingdom has arrived in their work. It moves then to mission as the movement of this end-time renewal outward into all the world. And this movement is through a chosen community that incorporates more and more people into that cosmic salvation. They then receive the many benefits accomplished by Christ. So to be sure, Christ’s accomplished work brings many benefits to people by the work of the Spirit. Yet Newbigin keeps the eschatological, missional, and communal contexts of Scripture firmly in place when making infrequent reference to the Spirit’s work in individuals.
A Chosen People Who Bear the Story
The purpose of cosmic history has been revealed and accomplished in Jesus Christ. The comprehensive salvation that will include all nations is now, by the Spirit, a present reality hastening toward its full realization. This good news must now go to the ends of the earth—to all people and all nations. This is first of all a work of the same Spirit at work in Jesus. However, the Spirit bears his witness to Christ and end-time salvation in and through a community. Jesus formed this community during his ministry and now sends them as a community to bear the witness of the Spirit to all nations. It is precisely this perspective that enables us to understand the missionary nature of the church.
“The logic of mission is this: the true meaning of the human story has been disclosed. Because it is the truth, it must be shared universally. It cannot be a private opinion. When we share it with all peoples, we give them the opportunity to know the truth about themselves, to know who they are because they can know the true story of which their lives are a part.” The historical logic of redemptive history is that, since Jesus has revealed and accomplished end-time salvation, this news must be made known to the ends of the earth. This movement to all peoples must be understood from two biblical standpoints: the Spirit and the church. On the one hand, the Spirit must be understood in terms of his role to witness to Christ and his salvation in ever-widening circles that move from one man and one place to many people in many lands. Mission is first a work of the Spirit. On the other hand, Jesus forms a community and sends them in the power of the Spirit to be witnesses to the good news to the ends of the earth. So this mission is a work of the church. It is precisely as we unfold both of these perspectives and the relation of the Spirit to the church that we come to understand more deeply Newbigin’s missionary ecclesiology. But we must keep clearly before us what he has called the logic of mission: the End has arrived, and therefore it must now be made known to all.
Reconstituting God’s Chosen People
“Jesus did not write a book,” writes Newbigin. “He chose, called, and prepared a company of people, he entrusted to them his teaching, and he promised them the gift of the Spirit of God to guide them.” Central to the mission of Jesus is the gathering and formation of a community. This is fundamentally important for Newbigin. He says, “It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance” that the Lord left behind a visible community and not a book. It is “of the essence of the matter” that Jesus did not leave behind a verbatim record of what he said and did but created a community to be bound to him and be his witnesses in every nation. This is the way Jesus planned for the good news, the arrival of the goal of universal history, to reach all peoples—through a community he formed.
The formation of a community is part of a long history. The Bible is a “sort of outline of world history,” and “the central thread of the history is the story of God’s people.” We are reminded again of the “three Israels.” God chooses Israel to bear his purpose for the world. The “whole core of biblical history is the story of a visible community to be God’s own people, his royal priesthood on earth, the bearer of His light to the nations.” This is Israel, one of the petty tribes of the Semitic world. The community Jesus leaves behind connects with that story: they are “recreated in Him.” Israel lost its way and did not heed God’s call to be a royal priesthood and a light to the nations. And so “Christ accepted it as his vocation to recall Israel to its true vocation. He reconstituted the chosen people, choosing whom he would and appointing twelve to be the nucleus of a new Israel.”
This new Israel returns to its original vocation of being a light to the nations and a royal priesthood. But now the end of history is no longer simply a promise but an accomplished fact. The Spirit is now present. While still taking on the missional calling of making God’s purpose known, the arrival of the kingdom brings significant change to the people of God.
The Overlap of the Ages
God’s people have always been a missionary people—that is, from the beginning they were chosen to bear God’s purpose for and be a light to the whole world. They have been blessed to be a blessing. But with the coming of Christ and the Spirit, the missionary nature of God’s people needs to be reformulated. Eschatology deeply impacts ecclesiology. We can look at the impact of the coming of the kingdom on God’s people in terms of three perspectives: the overlapping of the ages in the already–not yet era of redemptive history, the presence of Christ by the Holy Spirit in the midst of the church, and eschatological definitions of the church.
The role of God’s people in redemptive history is one of continuity. It is determined by their election. They are to picture God’s cosmic renewal in the midst of the world. However, the new era in redemptive history, a time marked out by the coming of the kingdom in Jesus and the Spirit, means discontinuity. What time is it in redemptive history? Newbigin answers that it is a time when the kingdom has come but not yet fully. Therefore, there is an overlapping of the old age and the age to come, a time when the powers of the new age are present but the powers of the old evil age remain. And the reason the end has been held off is so that the good news of the kingdom might go to all nations according to the original promise to Abraham.
The meaning of this “overlap of the ages” in which we live, the time between the coming of Christ and His coming again, is that it is the time given for the witness of the apostolic Church to the ends of the earth. The end of all things, which has been revealed in Christ, is—so to say—held back until witness has been borne to the whole world concerning the judgment and salvation revealed in Christ. The implication of a true eschatological perspective will be missionary obedience, and the eschatology which does not issue in such obedience is a false eschatology.
What makes this era unique is that it represents the culmination of the biblical story. The biblical story is a journey with a universal destination: salvation is for all nations in the context of the whole creation. Yet God has traveled a particular path in Israel, narrowed to Christ, to arrive at this time. But now that time has come! The full realization of the end has been held off so that this good news might go to the whole world.
This understanding may be common. But we would err to miss the incredible significance of this insight. If the only reason for the delay of the end is mission to all nations, as Newbigin maintains, then it is precisely this that defines the people of God in this redemptive-historical era. Note the strong statement: a true eschatological perspective will necessarily mean missionary obedience; any eschatology that does not lead to mission is a false eschatology.
So the coming of the kingdom defines the church in this way: they are a people who live in the already–not yet era with the vocation of making the end of history, accomplished in Christ and given in the Spirit, known to all the nations and to the ends of the earth. But it is a community sent now to the ends of the earth. This means that “Israel” is no longer a geographical and ethnic community. Rather, they are nongeographical: they live in every nation of the world. They are multiethnic: all nations are now incorporated into this community. The eschatological and missionary nature of Israel transforms them into a new kind of community.
Spirit and Church
Jesus forms a community and sends them to all nations to continue his mission of making the kingdom known. He promises them the same Spirit that had empowered him in his mission. Newbigin presents the relationship between Jesus, the Spirit, and the church in two different ways. First, Jesus himself remains present in the midst of his church, making the End that he has ushered in visible in the midst of his people: “The coming of Jesus is the revelation of that end within the created order; in him the Creator who is both the beginning and the end was present among men, and by the operation of the Holy Spirit he is still present in the community of believers.” Jesus continues his mission by the work of the Spirit in the midst of the church. Second—and this is Newbigin’s primary emphasis—Jesus sends the Spirit as the primary witness to his work. The Spirit works in and through the witness of the church as a witness to Jesus. And so mission is first of all the mission of the Spirit of God. “His mission. It is of greatest importance to recognize that it remains his mission.” This means that the first witness to Christ is the Spirit. This is even true of Jesus. The mighty works of Jesus are the work of the Spirit. And so as we follow in Christ’s way, it is the Spirit who gives us power and it is the Spirit who is the first witness to Christ. It is not that mission first is the church’s words and deeds, and for that task they ask for the Spirit’s help. It is the work of the Spirit: “It is not the Church who bears witness and that the Spirit helps the church to do so. This kind of language completely misses the point. The point is that the Church is the place where the Spirit is present as witness. The witness is thus not an accomplishment of the Church but a promise to the Church.” As the church is faithful, it is the Spirit who acts and speaks. Newbigin insists, “It is impossible to stress too strongly that the beginning of mission is not an action of ours, but the presence of a new reality, the presence of the Spirit in power.”
What then is the relation of the church to the Spirit’s witness? Newbigin answers that the relationship is threefold. First, the church is the locus or the place of the Spirit’s witness. The Spirit is the one who brings the eschatological life of the kingdom into the world. As the church shares in the Spirit, that new life is created in them. This new reality of the Spirit working in power in the “total life of the community” is the “central reality” of the church’s mission. “The whole meaning of this present age between Christ’s coming and His coming again is that in it the powers of the age to come are at work now to draw all men into one in Christ. . . . The Church is not to be defined by what it is, but by that End to which it moves. And the power of that End now works in the church, the power of the Holy Spirit who is the earnest of the inheritance to be revealed.”
We remember that the End is cosmic renewal, the comprehensive salvation when men and women are restored again to their true humanity. This cosmic restoration has been revealed and accomplished in the work of Jesus Christ and is made present in the gift of the Spirit. This “salvation whose very essence is that it is corporate and cosmic, the restoration of the broken harmony between all men and between man and God and man and nature, must be communicated . . . in and by the actual development of a community which embodies—if only in foretaste—the restored harmony of which it speaks. A gospel of reconciliation can only be communicated by a reconciled fellowship.” The Spirit is at work within the ecclesial community to accomplish that End.
Second, the Spirit witnesses through the deeds and actions of the church to make known Christ and his kingdom. As the church reaches out to meet the world’s needs, the Spirit witnesses to the coming kingdom. As the church does deeds of justice, mercy, compassion, and shalom, the Spirit witnesses in and through those deeds to the kingdom come in Jesus. As the church becomes deeply and lovingly involved in the sorrow and misery of the world, the Spirit points to Christ and his rule.
Finally, the Spirit witnesses to Christ and his rule in the evangelistic words of witness that the church speaks. Where the power of the Spirit is at work producing new life and deeds of justice, questions about this new reality will open opportunities for a verbal witness. In these words the Spirit witnesses to Christ.
It is precisely the witness of the Spirit to Christ that “constitutes the Church a witness to the kingdom” in its life, deeds, and words. Newbigin has much to say about this threefold witness of the church, and we will return to this in the next chapter.
Kingdom and Church
The church is an “eschatological reality” and “can be rightly understood only in an eschatological perspective.” The church has begun to participate in the kingdom salvation of the end of history given by the Spirit so that it might make known this good news to the ends of the earth. This missionary perspective shapes Newbigin’s eschatological vision of the church.
Newbigin employs three pictures of the church that express this eschatological perspective. Perhaps the most common image is actually a triad of images—namely, that the church is a firstfruit, instrument, and sign of the kingdom. It is first of all the firstfruit of the kingdom. Newbigin regularly substitutes “deposit” and “foretaste” here in the triad to get at the same reality. The church is a people that have already begun to taste of the kingdom life that God intends for humankind. They have a real experience of the salvation of the age to come as well as a hope for its full realization in the future. The church is also an instrument of the kingdom. The people of God are agents or instruments in the service of God’s reign. God uses the church’s costly engagement in the public life of culture as an instrument to bring about something of the justice, freedom, and peace of God’s new creation. God uses evangelistic words to make known the good news of the kingdom. Finally, as the church tastes and embodies the life of God’s kingdom and announces it and pursues its justice and peace in the world, it is a sign of the kingdom. “The point of a sign is to point to something that is real but not yet visible. . . . The Church is a sign of the Kingdom insofar as it is a foretaste. The Church is a sign that points people to a reality beyond what we can see.” This is the very identity and purpose of the church—to be a “pointing people,” a sign pointing to a new reality present and coming in the midst of the world. “This Church then, this one new family created by God in Christ out of all the tribes and nations and peoples, is set in the midst of the world as the sign of that to which all creation, and all world history moves. It is the body of Christ, the new man, the second Adam, the new human race, growing up into its full stature and drawing into itself men of every kind.”
Newbigin employs a marvelous image to speak of the church as a people who reflect the kingdom in the midst of the world. When he and some pastoral companions would travel some distance by foot in India, they would often get up early, while it was still dark, to avoid the heat of the day. They would set off toward the east, but as they traveled, they might meet another party of people traveling west. Those folk might see a faint light on their faces. If they were to ask, “Where does that light come from?” the answer would be, “Turn around and look to the east.” The sun was just coming up over the horizon, and a new day was dawning. One party reflected the light of that new day and invited others to turn to see it. The eastward travelers did not possess the light; they simply reflected the light of a new day. Newbigin says that the “church is that company which, going the opposite way to the majority . . . is given already the first glow of the light of a new day. It is that light that is the witness.”
A second image of the church that depicts its eschatological nature is of the church as “the provisional incorporation of humankind into Christ.” Jesus is the second Adam and the origin of the new humankind. In his death and resurrection he has ushered in the new creation. We are included in that new creation as we are incorporated into Christ by believing the gospel, by baptism into the visible body of God’s people, and by the work of the Spirit. Our incorporation into Christ means that we share in the victory of his crucifixion over evil and the new life of the resurrection. We are the first part of the harvest of the new humankind, but we do not yet fully manifest the new life of the kingdom—and so it is a provisional incorporation.
The notion that the church is the new humankind called out by God and belonging to the new creation leads to a third image: ekklesia. This is the common Greek word for “church” in the New Testament, but it is best translated “public assembly.” The original meaning of this word is a public assembly to which all citizens of the city were summoned. The town clerk was the one who issued the call, and the public gathering of citizens who responded were the ones who discussed and settled affairs important for the city’s life. As such, they were a representation of the whole city. In the New Testament, ekklesia is accompanied by the words “of God.” The church is the public assembly of God. The one who calls out this public assembly is not the town clerk but God himself. In every place God calls forth his new humanity as a representative and public body to which he calls all people. The church is the firstfruit in each city of God’s assembled new humanity.
Ekklesia is the church’s self-chosen name. By contrast, the enemies of the church employed other terms such as heranos and thiasos. These words interpreted the church not as the new humankind but as a private religious cult that offered personal and otherworldly salvation. These religious communities fit nicely in the private realm of life and did not challenge the public doctrine of the Roman Empire. The church refused to adopt this designation of a private religious fraternity. They saw themselves as the new humanity, called into the end-time kingdom by God and launched into the public life of the Roman Empire to challenge all competing allegiances.
Since the salvation of the kingdom is as wide as the creation, and since the church is the renewed humankind, the church may not be relegated to some private realm. It is a public body that must manifest the comprehensive and restorative salvation of the kingdom. This is what drove the church to adopt the title ekklesia and refuse any terms that gave it the identity of a private religious body. Newbigin’s conclusion is that, sadly, today in the West, “church” usually means something closer to heranos and thiasos than to ekklesia. The church has forgotten its eschatological existence as the new humankind called out by God and has accepted the designation of private religious body concerned for personal and otherworldly salvation.
The Unity of the Church and Mission
It is precisely Newbigin’s emphasis on the church as an eschatological and missionary body launched into the public life of the world that leads to his passionate concern for the unity of the church. The unity of the church is shaped by the fact that the church is an eschatological reality. It has begun to participate in the End. The end of history is the summing up of all things in Christ; it will be a world reconciled and made one in Christ. If the church enjoys a foretaste of that coming world, then they will be one body that faithfully pictures the reconciled world that is coming. “The Church’s unity is the sign and instrument of the salvation which Christ has wrought and whose end is the summing-up of all things in Christ.” The unity of the church is a preview of that day when the times will reach their fulfillment to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. “The quest for unity is misunderstood if it is thought of in isolation from the fulfilment of God’s purpose to ‘unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Eph. 1:10).”
When it is a faithful foretaste and preview, the church witnesses to the good news of the new world that is coming that will be reconciled in unity in Christ. Newbigin often turned to the prayer of Jesus: “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20–21). The unity of the church has a missionary purpose because it illustrates the End, a unity of humankind that transcends all usual human divisions and parties. It is a visible proof that Jesus is not simply one more name of a great religious leader. Rather, he is the Creator and Ruler of all and will one day reconcile all things to himself. A reconciled church invites belief in the One at the center who draws humanity together from so many backgrounds and creates a community of love. “When the Church faces out toward the world it knows that it only exists as the first-fruits and the instrument of that reconciling work of Christ, and that division within its own life is a violent contradiction of its own fundamental nature.” Thus, the “unity of the Church” can only be understood “from a missionary point of view.”
Newbigin tells a story to illustrate that the world will only believe the gospel if the church is an embodiment of the gospel of reconciliation it proclaims:
I have often stood at the door of a little church, with the Christian congregation seated on the ground in the middle and a great circle of Hindus and Muslims standing around. As I opened the Scripture and tried to preach the Word of God to them, I have always known that my words would only carry weight, would only be believed, if those standing around could recognize in those sitting in the middle that the promises of God were being fulfilled; if they could see that this new community in the village represented a new kind of body in which the old divisions of caste and education and temperament were being transcended in a new form of brotherhood. If they could not see anything of the kind, they would not be likely to believe.
This is why Newbigin denounces disunity in such impassioned language, calling it “a direct and public contradiction of the Gospel,” an “intolerable offence against the very nature of the church,” “something illogical and incomprehensible,” “a plain denial of the Gospel,” a “public abdication of [the church’s] right to preach the gospel to all nations,” and an “intolerable scandal.” Those are strong words! Newbigin offers a vivid illustration of what he means by scandalous. He says that it may be unfortunate to have two rival temperance societies in the same town, but it is not scandalous. But a temperance society whose members are habitually drunk would be scandalous since their very inebriated existence contradicts their message. So it is for the church: disunity is scandalous because it contradicts the church’s message—the good news that in Christ God is reconciling the world to himself.
So mission is dependent on unity, and unity is dependent on mission. When the church does not grasp its missionary vocation, it is little concerned about unity. Newbigin believed the only way to account for the “astounding complacency” toward a divided church that “so plainly and ostentatiously flouts the declared will of the Church’s Lord” is the loss of a missionary understanding of the church. “It is not possible to account for the contentment with the divisions of the Church except upon the basis of a loss of the conviction that the Church exists to bring all men to Christ. There is the closest possible connection between the acceptance of the missionary obligation and the acceptance of the obligation of unity. That which makes the Church one is what makes it a mission to the world.”
When Christians do take their missionary identity seriously and seek to live as a sign of the kingdom, their disunity becomes literally intolerable. The problem of division is often the fact that we have lost our missionary consciousness. When we take mission seriously, we are forced to struggle toward unity. “I do not think that a resolute dealing with our divisions will come except in the context of a new acceptance on the part of all the Churches of the obligation to bring the Gospel to every creature; nor do I think that the world will believe that Gospel until it sees more evidence of its power to make us one. These two tasks—mission and unity—must be prosecuted together and in dissoluble relation one with the other.”
Thus, unity and mission belong together. They cannot be separated from each other because both belong to the very nature of the church. “The whole meaning of this present age between Christ’s coming and His coming again is that in it the powers of the age to come are at work now to draw all men into one in Christ. When the Church ceases to be one, or ceases to be missionary, it contradicts its own nature.” Perhaps we might say that if one does not feel the passion of Newbigin for unity, one probably does not grasp very deeply his understanding of mission.
Conclusion
The church is rooted in the gospel. The good news is that in Christ and by the Spirit God has revealed and accomplished the cosmic renewal that lies at the end of history. The end of history has been held off so that this good news might reach all people and all nations to the very ends of the earth. In this time between the times, the Spirit gives this new eschatological life to the church to enable it to be a preview of the kingdom in the midst of all nations in its own life and to point to it in its words and deeds. Since the gospel is a gospel of the kingdom, the whole life of God’s people bears witness to the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. This is not simply one more task given to the church; it defines its very existence as missionary.
. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 96, 100.
. Lesslie Newbigin, Trinitarian Doctrine for Today’s Mission (1963; repr., Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1998), 26.
. For example, Greg Gilbert starts with (a rather selective reading of) Romans 1–4 in What Is the Gospel? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010); Scot McKnight begins with 1 Corinthians 15:1–9 in The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016). Their starting point impacts their articulation of the content of the gospel.
. Lesslie Newbigin, The Good Shepherd: Meditations on Christian Ministry in Today’s World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 67.
. Lesslie Newbigin, A Faith for This One World? (London: SCM, 1961), 60–61.
. Lesslie Newbigin, Signs amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History, ed. Geoffrey Wainwright (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 28.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Duty and Authority of the Church to Preach the Gospel,” in The Church’s Witness to God’s Design, ed. Lesslie Newbigin and Hendrik Kraemer, Amsterdam Assembly Series 2 (New York: Harper Brothers, 1948), 23.
. Newbigin will sometimes capitalize the word “End” as a technical term to refer to the eschaton, and I will follow that practice in my own discussion. See, e.g., Lesslie Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church: A Defence of the South India Scheme (London: SCM, 1948), 73; Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church (New York: Friendship Press, 1954), 19.
. See Jürgen Schuster, Christian Mission in Eschatological Perspective: Lesslie Newbigin’s Contribution (Nürnberg: VTR Publications, 2009), for an articulation of the importance of eschatology for Newbigin’s view of mission.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Bible: Good News for Secularised People” (keynote address, Europe and Middle East Regional Conference, Eisenach, Germany, April 1991), Newbigin Archives, University of Birmingham, 6.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Life and Mission of the Church,” in We Were Brought Together, ed. David M. Taylor (Sydney: Australian Council for the World Council of Churches, 1960), 61.
. Lesslie Newbigin, A Word in Season: Perspectives on Christian World Missions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 110.
. Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 57–58.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Life and Mission of the Church,” in The Life and Mission of the Church, ed. C. I. Itty (Bangalore, India: Student Christian Movement of India, 1958), 6.
. Newbigin, “Duty and Authority,” 31.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Bible: Good News for Secularised People,” 6.
. God’s purpose is “revealed and effected” in the historic event of Jesus Christ; see Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 177.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Kingdom of God and Our Hopes for the Future,” in The Kingdom of God and Human Society, ed. R. S. Barbour (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 12.
. Newbigin, Signs amid the Rubble, 27.
. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 105.
. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 107.
. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 106.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 157–58.
. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 108; see Newbigin, Household of God, 126.
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 57.
. Lesslie Newbigin, The Holy Spirit and the Church (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1972), 4. In several places he quotes Luke 4:18 to connect the eschatological Spirit with Jesus (e.g., Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 85).
. Lesslie Newbigin, “Holy Spirit: The Believers Strike Oil,” Reform, May 1990, 6. Newbigin’s own title in his notes is “Holy Spirit: Pledge of Glory.”
. Lesslie Newbigin, “This Is the Turning Point in History,” Reform, April 1990, 4.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “Bible Studies Given at the National Christian Council Triennial Assembly, Shillong,” National Council Review 88 (1968): 9–10.
. Newbigin, Open Secret, 50.
. Lesslie Newbigin, Sin and Salvation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 70–90; Newbigin, “This Is the Turning Point,” 4.
. Lesslie Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way: Bible Studies (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1987), 6.
. Newbigin, Good Shepherd, 64–65.
. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 107.
. Newbigin, “Bible Studies”; Lesslie Newbigin, “The Bible Study Lectures,” in Digest of the Proceedings of the Ninth Meeting of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), ed. Paul A. Crow (Princeton: COCU, 1970).
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 99.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 158–59.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 126.
. Lesslie Newbigin, The Holy Spirit and the Church (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1972), 4.
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 84–85.
. Newbigin, Open Secret, 63.
. Newbigin, Open Secret, 57.
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 86.
. Lesslie Newbigin, Sign of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 33–43; Newbigin, Household of God, 155–59; Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way, 15–21.
. Newbigin, Sign of the Kingdom, 37.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 161.
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 85.
. Newbigin, Holy Spirit and the Church, 11.
. Lesslie Newbigin, Journey into Joy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 67.
. Newbigin, “The Life and Mission of the Church,” in The Life and Mission of the Church, 7.
. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 125.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “Truth and Authority in Modernity,” in Faith and Modernity, ed. Philip Sampson, Vinay Samuel, and Chris Sugden (Oxford: Regnum Books, 1994), 70.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 20.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “Christ and Cultures,” Scottish Journal of Theology 31 (1978): 18.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “Why Study the Old Testament?,” National Christian Council Review 74 (1954): 75–76.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 20–21.
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 77.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 153–54.
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 99.
. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 117.
. Newbigin, Sign of the Kingdom, 38.
. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 119.
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 87.
. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 137.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 19.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 161.
. Lesslie Newbigin, review of God’s Order: The Ephesian Letter and This Present Time, by John A. MacKay, Theology Today 10 (1954): 546.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 153.
. See George Vandervelde, “The Church as Missionary Community: The Church as Central Disclosure Point of the Kingdom,” Trinity Journal for Theology and Ministry 4, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 112–29 (special issue, “The Gospel in the Public Square: Essays by and in Honor of Lesslie Newbigin”).
. Newbigin, Word in Season, 63.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Mission and Unity of the Church” (Peter Ainslie Memorial Lecture, Grahamstown, South Africa, Rhodes University, October 17, 1960), 16–17.
. Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way, 21; see Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 120.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Form and Structure of the Visible Unity of the Church,” in One in Christ 13 (1977): 107–17.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 147. He asks the question: How are we incorporated into Christ and into the eschatological events of his death and resurrection? The threefold answer he offers is the substance of the entire book. Protestants argue that it is by faith in the gospel that we are incorporated into Christ; Catholics say it is by baptism into the visible church; Pentecostals stress that it is by the work of the Spirit.
. Michael W. Goheen, “As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You”: J. E. Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2000), 200–218, 5.5.3. For an articulation of Newbigin’s understanding of unity, see M. Scot Sherman, “Ut Omnes Unum Sint: The Case for Visible Church Reunion in the Ecclesiology of Bishop J. E. Lesslie Newbigin” (PhD diss., University of Wales, 2005).
. Newbigin, Household of God, 171.
. Lesslie Newbigin, “The Nature of the Unity We Seek: From the Church of South India,” Religion in Life 26, no. 2 (1957): 187.
. Lesslie Newbigin, Is Christ Divided? A Plea for Christian Unity in a Revolutionary Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 23.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 9.
. Newbigin, “Nature of the Unity We Seek,” 187.
. Newbigin, Is Christ Divided?, 24.
. Newbigin, Is Christ Divided?, 24.
. Newbigin, Reunion of the Church, 23–24.
. Newbigin, “The Mission and Unity of the Church,” 17–18.
. Newbigin, Faith for This One World?, 81.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 9.
. Newbigin, Reunion of the Church, 9.
. Newbigin, Reunion of the Church, 11.
. See Michael W. Goheen, “Mission and Unity: The Theological Dynamic of Comity,” in That the World May Believe: Essays on Mission and Unity in Honour of George Vandervelde, ed. Michael W. Goheen and Margaret O’Gara (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), 83–91.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 174.
. Newbigin, Household of God, 19.