53 Quotes by Lesslie Newbigin

When coercion of any kind is used in the interests of the Christian message, the message itself is corrupted.

What is true in the position of the social activists is that a Church which exists only for itself and its own enlargement is a witness against the gospel, that the Church exists not for itself and not for its members but as a sign and agent and foretaste of the kingdom of God, and that it is impossible to give faithful witness to the gospel while being indifferent to the situation of the hungry, the sick, the victims of human inhumanity. I.

If I do not know the purpose for which human life was designed, I have no basis for saying that any kind of human life-style is good or bad.

In the attempt to be “relevant” one may fall into syncretism, and in the effort to avoid syncretism one may become irrelevant.

In the twentieth century we have become accustomed to the fact that – in the name of the nation – Catholics will fight Catholics, Protestants will fight Protestants, and Marxists will fight Marxists. The charge of blasphemy, if it is ever made, is treated as a quaint anachronism; but the charge of treason, of placing another lyalty above that to the nation state, is treated as the unforgivable crime. The nation state has taken the place of God.

Does the use of the word “revelation” mean that reason has been left behind? Obviously not. Both the discovery by Kepler of a new pattern in the movement of the heavenly bodies and the disclosure to Moses of a personal calling become the starting point of a tradition of reasoning in which the significance of these disclosures is explored, developed, tested against new experience, and extended into further areas of thought.

Opinions about how it ought to function can only be personal opinions, and any assertion that the purpose for which human life exists has in fact been revealed by the One whose purpose it is, is treated as unacceptable dogmatism.

If the relativist claims that, since all reasoning is embodied in a particular social context, no claim to know the truth can be sustained, one has to ask for the basis on which this claim is made. It is, after all, a claim to know something about reality – namely that reality is unknowable.