Performing Newbigin’s Plurality of Sources in the Pluralist Context
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Holistic Theological Method and Theological Epistemology
Performing Newbigin’s Plurality of Sources in the Pluralist Context
Steven B. Sherman
There is good reason for using the term holistic as a descriptor for Lesslie Newbigin’s theological method and theological epistemology—the bishop’s work and life personifies such. This chapter focuses on these two central aspects of Newbigin’s theological commitments: methodology and epistemology. We begin with consideration of Newbigin’s characteristically holistic approach to theology, and then examine several features of Newbigin’s broad-ranging theological epistemology. Finally, we present briefly some potential ways forward in “performing his play” in the pluralist context.1
Newbigin’s Theological Method
Newbigin uses multiple sources and authorities that provide warrant for his convictions. While a full analysis of his theological method is beyond the scope of this chapter, we will sketch its contours along three trajectories: faith seeking understanding; missional, confessional and contextual; and trinitarianism and christocentrism.
Faith seeking understanding. Any assessment of Lesslie Newbigin’s theological method ought to begin with the bishop’s own joyful admission that he is first and foremost a pastor.2 This self-understanding underscores his whole body of work, providing a consistent lens through which to appreciate and assess Newbigin’s approach to theology, epistemology, ecclesiology, culture, and so on. It also explains his enduring theological praxis concerns—or, better, faithful theology performances—backed by generally well-informed and substantive theological reflection.3 Moreover, the exceptional breadth of kingdom service—encompassing multiple occupations, disciplines and contexts—richly contours Newbigin’s theological method, which might best be viewed as a robust and holistic fides quaerens intellectum approach. For Newbigin, the starting place for theology matters—the locus of confidence being not in our own competence in knowing but rather in “the faithfulness and reliability in the one who is known.”4
Newbigin’s missionary years in southern India awakened him to competing philosophical and theological systems that powerfully contested the predominant Eurocentric viewpoint. Alternative worldviews, rather than being “barbaric,” were highly systematic and pragmatically viable for particular cultures, which his Enlightenment heritage had inadequately prepared him to effectively engage. He therefore sought an apologetical methodology that would seriously consider different cultural worldviews while preserving an irenic—yet also vigorously evangelical—Christian theology and faith. The way forward encompassed old and new strategies: a return to the ancient Augustinian credo ut intellegam, plus a fresh appropriation of Michael Polanyi’s “personal participation” philosophy.5 Together, these approaches provide a legitimate and substantive response to both the resolute empirical scientific method and reason-driven fundamentalism with Gnostic-like tendencies.
Missional, contextual and confessional. Newbigin’s integrative theological method infuses key elements of his own life and work, mission serving as one center point, grounded most centrally in Christ and within a trinitarian framework. The church has been given a mission of reconciliation, and this is the highest priority. Even theological reflection must be done through the lens of mission, as well as concrete experience. Nevertheless, as Newbigin would clarify on multiple occasions, the church first must be reconciled to itself; otherwise, the call of others to reconciliation with God in Christ will go largely unheeded. The household of God must actively seek reconciliation and reunification.6 Mission, theology, apologetics, ecclesiology, religious dialogue, worship, teaching and preaching are all part of the same larger picture: the Creator’s desire for his creatures to know and glorify him as universal Lord, experiencing and growing in reconciliation and wholeness by means of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on their behalf.
The settings in which Newbigin lived, worked and thought varied significantly—each tangible milieu informing his theological reflection while not calling into question the objective reality of God and the transcendent work of Christ. This variegated situatedness highlights Newbigin’s insistence that history and culture affect theological and epistemological views. Thus, theologians bear a divine mandate for authentic living and thinking within their specific environments. Perhaps one of Newbigin’s most formative contextual-awareness moments came when he stepped back onto British soil after having been away for nearly forty years. Immediately, he felt the culture-shift effects underway in the West. The Enlightenment project had failed to provide the backbone, the values or the utopia anticipated by so many who had trusted in its supposedly objective and “foolproof” system. Consequently, forms of Enlightenment-entangled Christianity were being met with increased intolerance. Questioning all truth and authority claims progressively came to characterize the final decades of twentieth-century Britain, as well as most (if not all) of Western Europe. Here was a new era with a new philosophy. How would—or could—the gospel be heard again in the new context? Newbigin would become substantially preoccupied with this question throughout his mature years, which deeply informed his theological reflection.
Newbigin’s cultural engagement from multiple arenas and ministries makes his already incisive—sometimes even prophetic—observations particularly compelling. Speaking and writing ahead of his time, Newbigin sagaciously comprehends cultural vicissitudes and their outcomes, sometimes years before his contemporaries. He keeps pace with many vital occurrences through a broad compass and quality of reading, demonstrating a widely informed and cross-disciplinary methodology. Numerous authors from various fields and disciplines influence Newbigin’s theological outlook.7 His eagerness to engage diverse philosophies—prompted by a Reformed allegiance to “all truth is God’s truth”—ameliorates possible fundamentalist-like concerns over discovering other “truths” undermining the Scriptures. Thus, while maintaining that truth has not been constrained by God to solely biblical or theological domains, Newbigin’s strong confessional stance remains in agreement with historic Christian dogma. His theological method and theological epistemology reveal deep commitments to both fixed core doctrines of the unchanging gospel and a program that authentically (re)presents that gospel in ever-changing contexts.
While no single theological system defines Newbigin’s theology, as a Presbyterian he would firmly favor Reformed over Arminian or Anabaptist claims on most matters. Nevertheless, the bishop’s far-reaching ecumenical experiences open him to occasionally accepting perspectives not espoused—sometimes rejected—by his denominational tradition.8 Ultimately, Newbigin’s broad experience and deep reading and reflection—including beyond his particular denominational and confessional borderlines—lead him to acquire ways of considering God’s character and works different from those generally reflective of his own theological tradition.9
Trinitarian and christocentric. Newbigin’s forthright commitment to essential, historic Christian doctrines is well documented. The starting point for Newbigin is God’s personal revelation in the history of Israel and, finally, in Jesus Christ: God spoke and acted. Consequently, his approach comprises a systematic trinitarianism that is both robustly christocentric and—among Reformed-minded theologians—exceptionally open to the work of the Spirit.10
Quintessential to Newbigin’s theological method is embodying a christomorphic life, theology and epistemology. Rather than unavoidably involving a precritical naiveté, this way calls for a christocentric interpretive paradigm—grounded in a robust trinitarian framework. Where one stands on this core worldview, Newbigin might say, determines the focal point for theological knowledge—whether reason or faith and revelation. Such opposing outlooks necessitate radically incompatible methodological outcomes for Christian thinkers, setting the agenda for theological epistemology. With this in mind, Newbigin contends that ultimately it is inappropriate for those who have embraced the gospel to rely on other “collateral sources of information” in attempting to know the truth since “the truth surely is not that we come to know God by reasoning from our unredeemed experience but that what God has done for us in Christ gives us the eyes through which we can begin to truly understand our experience in the world.”11
In sum, Newbigin’s approach to theology unites credo ut intellegam, missional, contextual, confessional, christocentric and trinitarian elements in providing a robust, holistic theological method.
Theological Epistemology
Not surprisingly, Lesslie Newbigin’s theological epistemology follows a pattern similar to his theological method, particularly in terms of being highly integrative—in a way that defies precisely defined boundaries and categories. Nonetheless, for reflection and assessment purposes, we will partition his theological knowledge approach into several major categories, while remaining cognizant of the bishop’s characteristically holistic schema.
Postfoundational and holistic. The major methodological shift in the Middle Ages—owing to the rediscovery of Aristotelian thought and its subsequent influence on Christian theology, especially through Aquinas—unfortunately prepared the way for reception of René Descartes’s views. Descartes would construct an entirely alternative knowledge foundation—the self—commencing from a standpoint of doubt rather than faith, and seeking indubitable certainty over against a growing discord among Christian traditions (opinio). His highly influential method essentially reversed Augustine’s maxim; the course to knowledge would now begin with doubt rather than faith, dominating practically all of Western thought for three hundred years. However, since the mid-twentieth century, this scientio-focused quest has encountered insurmountable problems and is effectively self-destructing.
Seeing the scientific method’s fallacy and failure to impart incontrovertible objective knowledge and truth, Newbigin commends a postfoundationalist approach, viewing all knowing as interconnected with believing and a priori commitments. One must begin with Augustine rather than Aquinas—by credo ut intelligam—although without strictly dividing what may be realized by faith and revelation on the one hand, and by reason on the other.12
Against the prevailing modernist method that regards reason or experience as singularly authoritative sources for the knowledge of God, Newbigin espouses a whole-life outlook, with the interconnectivity of Scripture, tradition and proclamation being essential. Reason and experience are neither disconnected nor uninvolved sources for theological knowledge, but rather part of the whole Christian faith and life. Our story and the gospel story must interconnect; through that connecting—by way of Scripture, the community, experiences within the community, the use of reason and apologetics within the community, and the Holy Spirit’s work within the community—people come to know God intimately.
Historical, cultural and contextual. Newbigin champions the particularity of all knowledge perspective—knowledge as historically, culturally and contextually grounded. This outlook unequivocally challenges the Enlightenment idea of a pure objectivity of knowing being potential or actual for human beings, yet without particularity diminishing the gospel’s objectivity and universally intended metanarrative. Newbigin consistently eschews ahistorical, acontextual, acultural theologies, questioning whether these are theologies at all. Purporting to be “above and beyond” historical-cultural frameworks, pretended “God’s eye” points of view are most likely what human minds conceive when utterly reliant on reason, subversively shaping thinkers being molded by their contexts. Thus, Newbigin—in the strongest of terms—rejects Enlightenment rationalism and the scientific method as ostensibly definitive for theological knowledge. He also emphatically denies natural theology, deeming it closer to idolatry than to delivering partial theological knowledge.13 For Newbigin, extraordinary thinkers like Augustine and Polanyi ought to be effectively used to counter faulty Enlightenment assumptions in a post-Christendom, postmodern world, challenging reductionistic ways of knowing, especially in terms of sources for theological knowledge.
Newbigin’s thought also displays a strongly contextual emphasis, aware of the indispensable interplay between theological thinking and principled praxis in concrete conditions. Moreover, the bishop understands competing views, seeing their problems and potential remedies, while showing an ability to “‘out-narrate’ the stories told by those whose ultimate commitments lie elsewhere—for the achievement of the Father’s purpose, and so to the glory of the Triune God.”14
Newbigin’s proficiency in effectively engaging in theological reflection and praxis within diverse communities and contexts reveals wisdom to be gleaned by contemporary Christian thinkers, which I hope to reflect in part by means of considering his identified sources for theological knowledge.
Revelational and metanarratival. Some of Newbigin’s earliest theological writings demonstrate his nascent theological epistemology—perhaps seen most clearly in a paper written during his studies at Cambridge in 1935–1936. Therein, the young scholar understands God’s self-revelation as necessary for human knowledge of God, with faith being the reception of revelation; to know God through divine self-disclosure requires a sensitive and trustful response to God’s revelation. But in regards to our knowledge being true, Newbigin’s focus involves both “inward understanding and valuing” and “a reality external to our minds.” Furthermore, inasmuch as that revelation is passed down through historic community, the church is the location of, and the Bible is an instrument for, reception of the divine self-disclosure.15
Newbigin’s claim for the primacy of divine initiative in the process of human knowledge of God suggests an ontological basis: “If the reality that we seek to explore, and of which we are a part, is the work of a personal Creator, then authority resides in this One who is the Author.” This is owing to knowledge of a person being incumbent on that person’s willingness to self-disclose—a view rejected by the Enlightenment concerning God’s own authority. And “because personal being can be known only insofar as the person chooses to reveal himself or herself, and cannot be known by methods that are appropriate to the investigation of impersonal matters and processes, then authority, in this view, must rest on divine revelation.”16
Newbigin sees this divine authority as powerfully evident in the teaching and healing work of Jesus as he “embodied final authority,” unlike the scribes who bound themselves to the authority of the Torah. Thus, ultimate authority does not rest with Enlightenment rejection of appeals to revelation and tradition as sources of authority, but rather directly with the revelation-based authority of the personally disclosed Creator—most clearly and finally witnessed in Jesus Christ.17 Throughout each stage of Newbigin’s developing theological epistemology, Jesus remains central and definitive. In the Scriptures, the object of faith is sought: Christ and his work, in trinitarian terms.18 Scripture is where, through the testimony of his first followers, Christ is encountered in his person, words and works: they bear witness to “God’s redeeming act once for all at a point in history.”19 With this move, Newbigin opts to follow Barth in disallowing all allegedly authoritative arbitrators of truth set to judge the confessed authority of God’s self-revelation. Contributing to this perspective is his general belief in the fiduciary character of all knowledge.
Central to Newbigin’s perspective on revelation is commitment to the gospel metanarrative as ultimate story concerning the knowledge of God and reality. This narrative orientation contrasts with more proposition-oriented approaches to the biblical text, without denying or downplaying explicit didactic assertions about truth and knowledge within the biblical story and its diverse genres. Moreover, the biblical context as a whole is fundamental in safeguarding against erroneously disconnecting Jesus from the story and in effect rendering him a mythical figure, or construing the whole story apart from the living and authoritative word of God, Jesus.
Newbigin centers on the narrative preeminence encompassing the biblical writings—essentially a story that claims to be the story, and which includes the cosmos and human life within it.20 Against the Cartesian-Newtonian pursuit of “timeless realities governed by eternal laws,” which aim for “a total knowledge that leaves no room for either faith or doubt,” he works to ground his case for theological knowledge in the story—its proclamation and believers’ immersion within it.21 This instrumental use of Scripture involves a looking through rather than at biblical texts, which calls us “to indwell the story, as we indwell the language we use and the culture of which we are a part.”22 Living in the story of the Bible, in company with our own contextual story, compels us to construct “an internal dialogue as the precondition for true interpersonal dialogue.”23 Thereby, we continue growing in theological knowledge, together with relevant reflection and praiseworthy praxis, exercising humble fidelity to the gospel metanarrative while participating in the story in real time. In addition, the story-oriented approach is also highly relevant for the present cultural context.24
Personal trust and obedience. Arguably no contemporary thinker has shaped Newbigin’s epistemological views more than Michael Polanyi, especially via his monumental tome, Personal Knowledge. Polanyi’s discernments concerning knowledge within the scientific sphere—with particular applicability to religious and theological realms—has markedly affected the bishop’s own understanding. One celebrated Polanyi thesis maintains that all human knowledge is of a fiduciary character, whether the discipline encompasses natural science, psychology or theology. Accordingly, Newbigin recognizes that if all knowledge is of a personal and fiduciary character, then trust is inherent to the process of knowing.25 At the outset there is the given, comprising the data and the knowing tradition, which contains its language and conceptual method. Knowing encompasses being exposed, mind and senses, to “the great reality which is around us and sustains us.” Thus, “in order to be informed, we have to make acts of trust in the traditions we have inherited and in the evidence of our senses.”26
Therefore, in emphasizing personal commitment, Newbigin merges Polanyi’s argument for the fiduciary character of knowing with an effort to recapture the premodern impulse toward trust as central to theological knowledge. This insightful amalgam rejects the impersonal Enlightenment and self-centered authoritative norm for a biblical relatedness orientation, wherein God is central and human personal mutuality (i.e., serving one another) is the rule.27 Claims of indubitable certainty (pace Descartes) altogether fail because knowledge does not reside in the mind of the knower, but rather in the personal incarnation. This demonstrates “ultimate reality to be personal in nature, which means that it can only be known by self-revelation on the part of the Creator and by an answering response on the part of the human knower. Such knowledge comes by way of an inseparable trust and obedience toward the call of Christ.”28 As a result, Christian confidence rests squarely in the One who is known and on his trustworthiness, rather than in the competence of one’s own knowing; moreover, the knower does not possess perfect knowledge of final truth, but merely is on the path leading toward eschatological luminescence that awaits humanity. Again, trust remains the fundamental element. Neutrality exists solely as a fallacious myth.29
Newbigin reflects on the diverse types of knowledge recognized outside modernity’s limited ideal that reduce all knowledge to “mathematical formulae” and that undervalue the personal realm while overvaluing impersonal rationalism. For instance, he asserts the Bible presents the central meaning of “to know” in relation to knowing another person, in a trust-centered journey with the other who “discloses his own mind and heart to me.”30
Ecclesial and communal. Newbigin’s church-oriented focus existed decades before certain contemporary evangelical scholars contended for a more ecclesial-centered theology (i.e., theology for the church) in place of a prevailing academy-oriented tone. His theological epistemology is intimately linked with the body of Christ as Newbigin is convinced God was made known explicitly in Jesus Christ and to the church. Moreover, his efforts in uniting the Church in South India have shaped and maintained his church-centric theological reflection. Furthermore, it is the local congregation that Newbigin sees as the dominant location for which “the reality of the new creation is present, known, and experienced,” and primarily for the sake of mission.31
Throughout the premodern church, disciples of Jesus lived out immersed participation in the faith community; knowledge of God via such communities is vital today as well. Thus, the sociology of knowledge model has come to the fore. As previously noted, Newbigin pictures the church as a crucial source for theological knowledge. Applying Polanyi’s judgment of knowledge/discoveries located in the sciences, Newbigin stresses that knowledge of God, like all knowing, is permanently part of a tradition—occurring as individuals become learners in an apprenticeship within the Christian heritage, indwelling its language, concepts, models, images and assumptions.32
Drawing on Polanyi again (particularly from Personal Knowledge), Newbigin
shows that all knowledge is a “skill” that has to be learned; that all knowledge is “an activity of persons in community,” involving mutual trust and accountability to certain standards; that all knowledge entails at least a provisional commitment to an existing framework of thought and knowledge, but that advances in knowledge occur only when the risk is taken that one may be proved wrong.33
Consequently, an individual’s vocation as articulated in God’s revelation is that of learner or apprentice—learning how to learn and know. This spirit of apprenticeship calls for connectedness to another or others who know the way: particularly the path to the knowledge of God. In this, Newbigin designates to the faith community (or tradition) a principal and reciprocal role in helping shape the knowledge and worldview of its adherents.34
Therefore, as it relates to theological knowledge, the question becomes, who is to be trusted as to knowledge of God claims? In The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Newbigin points to the broad Christian heritage:
Tradition is not a separate source of revelation from Scripture; it is the continuing activity of the Church through the ages in seeking to grasp and express under new conditions that which is given in Scripture. The study of Scripture takes place within the continuing tradition of interpretation.35
In addition, there is a three-way shared relationship between individuals, the written Word and the lived tradition: “it is only by ‘indwelling’ the Scripture that one remains faithful to the tradition.”36 Devotion of authentic worshipers to the story’s Creator is the intended ultimate goal, and immersion in the expressions of worship within the tradition entails genuine learning in community—growing in the grace and knowledge of God, part of the “activity of persons in community” invested in the tradition’s worldview. This includes theologizing in worshipful contexts. Newbigin sees worship as the central work of the ecclesia, with everything else in its life having meaning and value only as it focuses on worship.37
Moreover, supremely authoritative church practices (i.e., the sacraments of baptism and Communion) are vehicles for theological knowledge where these point to Jesus and through Jesus to the Trinity. In consequence, obedient faith-community praxis demonstrates human knowledge of God. Concurrently, Newbigin affirms the gospel calls individuals to salvific knowledge of God in Christ, while maintaining that growing in the knowledge of God occurs above all as learners within the Christian community context. Both personal and corporate commitment to responsibility and witness are crucial, with the resident congregation functioning as “the local presence of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church that we acknowledge in the creeds.”38 Clearly, theological reflection and praxis must hang together.
Doing justice and mercy, being inclusive and dialogical. Newbigin also declares—from a mission-focused context that included critique of liberation theology (and later, capitalism)—that “to know the Lord” involves performing justice and mercy in concrete situations. He asserts that those who “claim to know the Lord and do evil are deceived.” They are far from God since there is “no knowledge of God apart from the love of God, and there is no love of God apart from love of the neighbor.”39 Only the biblical story and the authority of Jesus Christ can rightly determine what are true justice and mercy, not an unchallenged “proletariat praxis,” which characterizes the Marxist coercion of much liberation theology. So even while liberation theology may be assessed as closer to the biblical models of salvation and liberation than Enlightenment-driven theology that separates theory from praxis, for those who appear to imply that action itself is the truth, the biblical text functions “as a source of judgment upon the praxis of those who have the Scriptures in their hands.”40 Therefore, the “supreme moral value” is in fact “obedience to the personal calling of Jesus Christ in and through his community. The ultimate model, in terms of which I am to understand what is the case and what is to be done, is furnished by the biblical story.”41 Newbigin observes the gospel has always inspired acts of justice and mercy (e.g., healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and serving the poor and destitute). The believing community accomplishes God’s purposes through these deeds and consequently manifests the knowledge of God in seeking to make visible the prayer, “Thy will be done.”42
For Newbigin, the pursuit of justice and mercy proceeds dialogically. While the gospel presupposes a bold proclamation of Jesus as the way, the truth and the life, Newbigin charges us to avoid the two extremes of either pessimistic exclusivism or fanciful pluralism, instead embracing biblical realism43—one of several elucidations within the inclusivist category found in many of his works.44 This wideness perspective envisions knowledge of God extending beyond Christianity’s perimeter (as a religion); since Christ is Lord of all, knowledge of God ought to be expected in multiple contexts. Rather than soliciting persons to embrace a religion, the gospel calls to all people, offering God’s grace through faith in a person, Jesus Christ.
Thus, while Newbigin emphasizes the importance of Christian (particularly evangelical) engagement in interreligious dialogue, these discussions must commence and conclude with commitment to the gospel—not detached reason—as ultimately authoritative, including the dialogical purpose for Christians involving a witness for Christ in various ways.45
Experience and reason. Before my study of Newbigin’s theological method and theological epistemology concludes with a modest constructive section focused on performing his play (i.e., practicing his program), I will first venture a brief retrieval and advance of his basic perspective on the role of experience and reason—two primary sources of authority in Enlightenment-oriented epistemology.
Newbigin remains rather unconvinced with regard to experience serving as an authoritative source for theological knowledge. He notes that the way in which the term operates in recent vernacular does not exist before the early nineteenth century; only then does it come to fruition in the thought of F. D. E. Schleiermacher, who sought an apologetic for Christianity for the “cultured despisers” of his era, concentrating attention on an imagined universal “feeling of absolute dependence” on God.46 Thus, Newbigin disapproves the idea of a stand-alone (or separate source of) authoritative experientialism. Instead, he rightly claims that experience more appropriately belongs within a particular conceptual and interpretive framework. “All experience is interpreted experience,” the bishop avers;47 treating it as a “distinct source of authority for Christian believing” would be misleading inasmuch as “the character of our experience is a function of the faith we hold.”48
Viewing all experiences, conceptual and interpretive frameworks, and claims to truth as contestable plausibility structures does not mean Newbigin presumes or promotes a resultant radical relativism. On the contrary, while fully functioning within both Christian and alternative plausibility structures and leaving the “ultimate outcome” to the “one who alone is judge,” he proclaims the trinitarian faith brings together both the whole story (corporate) and each life story (personal) in a deeply harmonious and experiential way. Connecting these stories means that “there is thus no dichotomy between the inward experiences of the heart and the outward history of which each of us is a part. . . . Through the work of the Spirit we are led into an even fuller understanding of it [God’s revelation in Jesus] as the Spirit takes of the things of Jesus and shows them to us through the experiences of our place and time.”49
And what about reason? Should it be considered a separate source of theological knowledge, extricated from tradition and culture? Such autonomy for reason is rejected entirely by Newbigin. Instead, reason serves to facilitate individuals and communities in making sense of particular elements composing their experiences. In contrast to an Enlightenment trust in ahistorical and acultural rationalism, Newbigin asserts that “all rationality is socially and culturally embodied”:
Reason operates within a specific tradition of rational discourse, a tradition that is carried by a specific human community. There is no supracultural “reason” that can stand in judgment over all particular human traditions of rationality. All reason operates within a total worldview that is embodied in the language, the concepts, and the models that are the means by which those who share them can reason together.50
But if this particularity of reason is valid, how can a Christian worldview possibly elude the perceived relativism? The question of adequacy is key—testing Christianity’s account of reality against all other accounts. “The fact that it is thus rooted in one strand of the whole human story in no way invalidates its claim to universal relevance.”51 Newbigin proclaims the Christian vision
will convince people of its superior rationality in proportion to the intellectual vigor and practical courage with which those who inhabit the new plausibility structure demonstrate its adequacy to the realities of human existence. This will call for the most vigorous and exacting use of reason . . . [and] I suspect that one of the main functions of the church in the twenty-first century will be to defend rationality against the hydra-headed Volksgeist.52
Such committed employment of reason does not mean working toward a Cartesian indubitable certainty for Christian knowledge and truth (reserved solely for the eschaton). Instead, Christians are called presently to trust and follow the One having reconciled us through the cross, who says not “follow reason,” but “follow me.”
Newbigin also develops the idea of interpersonal—rather than impersonal and autonomous—reason: a matter of the role reason is given to play. Autonomous reason is under my full control as I determine and ask the questions, make the claims, force answers and exploit reason to service my own sovereign will. Yet in interpersonal relations with others—for our purposes, the Other—I must surrender control, listen, reveal and question myself, and allow reason to be “a listening and trusting openness, instead of being the servant of a masterful autonomy.”53 Reason is not abandoned; its role is changed. And as Nietzschean interpretations have become fashionable among current elites claiming knowledge as merely disguised assertions of power,54 such circumstances present the church with opportunities to utilize reason in service to the Master. It is the nature of the gospel to speak into the diverse collapses of the “plausibility structures” throughout the world—and to do so thanks to the resurrection, which is “the beginning of a new creation, the work of that same power by which creation itself exists” and therefore “the starting point for a new way of understanding and dealing with the world.”55
In sum, Newbigin’s approach to theological knowledge unites postfoundational, historical, cultural, contextual, revelational, metanarratival, christocentric, personal, trustful, participatory, ecclesial, apprenticeship, justice, mercy, inclusivist, dialogical, experiential and interpersonally reasoned elements in providing a robust holistic theological epistemology.
Performing Newbigin’s Plurality of Sources in the Pluralist Context
Three overarching questions underlie my modest constructive proposal for enacting Lesslie Newbigin’s play amid our own Sitz im Leben: What warrants Newbigin’s method serving archetypally? What are plausible ways of performing his routine? And what outcomes might be anticipated from such a performance?
Newbigin’s theological method and theological epistemology provide abundant treasures that the church and the Christian academy would do well to retrieve constructively in this ever-evolving twenty-first-century context. Enacting Newbigin’s approach involves what I am calling “performing his play”—in other words, critically adopting and adapting the holistic theological and epistemological performance that has come to characterize the bishop’s life and work. The following three “acts” suggest important parts of the bishop’s play that call for faithful and effective performance today.
Faithful reflection and cross-disciplinary praxis. Performing Newbigin’s play will involve emulating his lifelong commitment to faithful and holistic theological reflection and practice for the sake of the gospel, the church, and the other. Spanning decades of experience in multiple cultures and contexts, the bishop conscientiously developed and engaged in understanding, clarifying and utilizing a biblically based, Christ-centered, trinitarian-framed theological approach—to God’s glory and the church’s benefit. Likewise, his broad experience with diverse worldviews, cultures, historical periods, churches, traditions and denominations fosters a certain reliability and esteem. Equally commendable is Newbigin’s panoramic viewpoint, crossing boundaries of East and West, privileged and oppressed, intellectual and experiential, modern and postmodern, Christendom and post-Christian cultures.
Consequently, following this act of Newbigin’s play will require many Christian and evangelical intellectuals to move beyond familiar territory marked out by modernity: traditionalism, modernist-fundamentalist categories, foundationalism, ahistoricism, aculturalism, acontextualism, propositionalism, triumphalism, objectivism, ethnocentrism, certainty, hubris and more. In its place, a model must arise incorporating biblical perspectives and insights from multiple Christian traditions, along with critically evaluated post-Enlightenment theology and epistemology: a holistic approach by faithful scholars enacting Newbigin’s script—representing both tradition-conserving reformist and conservative tradition-reforming perspectives. This new paradigm will involve commitment to critically analyze and learn from myriad disciplines and interests. Newbigin’s example bodes well for scholars willing to transcend specialization and preference for generous cross-disciplinary conversations; the bishop’s résumé demonstrates a breadth of subjects and cultural mastery that rarely appears in this era of ever-narrowing expertise. Therefore, a prerequisite will be listening to other voices—beyond conservative Christian and evangelical communities—for valuable contributions to the current theological knowledge discussion. Perhaps this will involve taking up virtue epistemology, as some evangelical academicians have done. It might evoke judicious reading and critique of French and other postmodern philosophers whose epistemological views have radically altered both intellectual and popular scenes throughout the (mainly Western) world.
Research and developments in sociology, linguistics, philosophy, hermeneutics and other disciplines related to theology call for a concerted interpretive and assessment effort among Christian intellectuals, perhaps most helpfully by way of communal, conference and inquiry contexts (such as sponsored endowments and grant programs) on global, national and regional/local levels. This multidisciplinary attitude will increase sensitivity levels relating to diverse theological and epistemological approaches while synonymously adhering to Newbigin’s irenic yet full confession of faith model, which takes seriously the dictum “All truth is God’s truth,” agreeing with Kuyper’s declaration, “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is Mine! This belongs to me!’”56
Respectful, analogical and generous. Newbigin’s assimilation of Michael Polanyi’s thought transformed the bishop’s understanding as to the personal nature of knowledge, including knowledge of God. Performing this particular act of the Newbigin play will involve deepening our appreciation for the predominantly narratival and relational character of the Bible and, relatedly, a theological focus on the gospel metanarrative in both its particularity and universal intent. This paradigm performs well since only by grace did God choose self-disclosure to human creatures, most manifestly in Christ Jesus. It is past time for rejecting, as regulatory for knowing, the modern scientific method and its hard evidentialism saturated with fact/value and related faulty dualisms. Properly attending to a personal orientation for theological knowledge ought to ensure remaining centered on Jesus Christ: God-with-us. The New Testament instrumentally endorses this by pointing out truth and knowledge of God being constituted and incarnated in Messiah Jesus. Furthermore, this (re)direction better aligns with the more relational (than rational) emphasis of both the biblical drama and post-Enlightenment sensibilities.
Following Newbigin’s performance in this act also means rejecting hubris and exclusivist tendencies detrimental to the cause of the gospel and its gaining a hearing among alternative views of reality. Instead, a more gracious and inclusivist approach is called for, while simultaneously disavowing unmitigated open-endedness and salvific theological pluralism. Moreover, in the post-Enlightenment condition, reason need not be discarded, but rather recast as one among other useful, divinely provided tools—a tool to be employed faithfully and imaginatively within a Christian belief mosaic in the quest for theological insight and wisdom, centered on the Object of faith and knowledge. Newbigin’s “middle way” calls us to remain true to the gospel while open to the mercy of God by means of grace beyond human understanding.
Enacting Newbigin’s play also entails embracing contextual and epistemic particularity—though with universal intent—over the notion of universality in how and what individuals and cultures reflect and know. This move correctly understands that although an Archimedean point is not available presently to human beings, a non-reductive and faith-seeking-understanding historicism is sufficient and presupposes the reality of knowledge and truth constituted in God and the will of God.57 Here we ought to follow Newbigin (vis-à-vis Aquinas) in understanding that the quantitative difference between divine and human limits our speaking of God to an analogical sense, and thus in using the language of creatures to speak of God, we cannot fully—yet we may adequately—reflect or comprehend God and God’s will. Performing this act in Newbigin’s play entails moving the unchanging gospel forward in the ever-changing garb of new historical and cultural contexts. Thus, our theological and epistemological approaches must successfully bridge the two worlds—biblical and contemporary, the communicated word and the receiving world.
Performing Newbigin’s play also involves joining with him in trusting the “presence of the Spirit of God in power”58 to draw people to the particular Savior Jesus, leading the church “into ever fuller understanding of the truth” as the church “lives in the power of the Spirit,” learning what it is to share “in the suffering and rejection of Jesus.”59 At the same time, enacting this performance likewise means maintaining a more open stance toward accepting a certain level of theological truth and knowledge within other world religions and spiritualities, keeping in mind the necessary distinctions and nuances to be made concerning the salvific value of such knowledge and truth. This shift toward greater openness to the Spirit’s role in the knowledge of God ought to be both enthusiastically and critically welcomed.
Performing Newbigin’s play also calls for reviving other ways of knowing—such as opinio—that have too often been considered merely tertiary support for things known autonomously. While carefully guarding against elevating opinio to an idolatrous level, retrieving it will allow for more open dialogue with various Christian and non-Christian traditions, increasing the room for Scripture, wisdom, experience, practices, community, and mystery in theological and epistemological matters. This also implies willingness to incorporate critically into our theological method more of the “great tradition of belief,”60 including insights provided by the larger tradition of the church, embracing that which has been believed by nearly all Christians at nearly all times and nearly everywhere. Such acts will include intercommunity dialogue—Christian scholars involved in constructive discussion and debate on questions concerning theology and culture, including the bi-directional impact. Further, this dialogue encourages opening cherished theological systems to greater scrutiny, especially to the scriptural priorities, focusing attention on fidelity to the gospel metanarrative in present historical and cultural contexts. Emulating Newbigin in this will demand painstaking patience, effort, sacrifice, time and a genuinely open attitude.61
For Christian theology and epistemology, this move ought to encourage an apologetic commending a more biblically derived functional/relational emphasis on God’s revelation to humanity.62 Such an effort might best be carried out within a broadly evangelical (or still wider) Christian context, involving judiciously tested claims about knowledge of God made by believers, particularly for understanding and evaluating these assertions in light of Scripture, tradition, virtue, Christian maturity and the like. Intercommunity dialogue among diverse Christian and evangelical academics on certain theological subjects (e.g., “knowing/doing God’s will”) is difficult and induces disagreements. Nevertheless, we ought to follow Newbigin’s lead in pressing toward constructive engagement on these and other issues and their biblical criteria, and in a spirit of peace and tolerance; ecumenical and dialogical attitudes will shape the potential interaction and fruitful advancement of twenty-first-century theological and epistemological apologetics.
Participatory and eschatological. Performing Newbigin’s play also calls for (re)turning theological method and theological knowledge to their “home base” orientation: immersed participation in the ecclesial community. Worshiping together and partaking in the sacraments—in a “community of praise”—provide a focal point for gratitude and growth in the grace and knowledge of the Lord “that can spill over into care for the neighbor.”63 This additionally means forging better connections between the Christian academy and the ecclesia, both locally and globally. One reasonable bridge-building tactic includes offering advanced theological education in local churches, making such opportunities available for parishioners unable to attend seminary or university—while not diminishing Christian higher education institutions. This new emphasis could involve theologically based training and dialogue among congregations: seekers and Christ-followers otherwise unlikely to experience systematic theological learning beyond church walls. Christian university and seminary “satellite campuses” should be welcomed into Christ-honoring local church communities as one way of guiding people to love God with all their minds, while remembering to be careful in presenting material “so that the non-specialist reader will not be misled. It is an exercise in communication, which is sadly not always the scholar’s greatest aptitude.”64
Finally, since theology and human knowledge are never complete or absolute until the eschaton, we ought to perform Newbigin’s play by adopting an eschatological realist orientation,65 being mindful that while we presently share in the cultural mandate as God’s image-bearers (i.e., filling the earth and constructing the world), only in the future—with God as subject and the purposes of God realized—will the knowledge of God be expressed and experienced with certainty. Faith and hope will be swallowed up in that which never fails: love. Therefore, performing this act today involves allowing space for the work of the Spirit within all cultures, contexts and even religions, remembering the future fulfillment of God’s purpose will bring about the eschatological community of God. Without assuming salvific efficacy, knowledge of God may be characterized in various ways that connote the truth of the Spirit’s omnipresence, and thus the triune God’s universal accessibility throughout the world.