Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture [Paperback]

Lesslie Newbigin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1986

In this book on contemporary missiology, Lessilie Newbigin applies the same discernment involved in contextualizing the gospel in another culture to the issues involved in contextualizing the gospel in our Western culture. He calls us to a thorough critique of our culture and of the way in which we understand or misunderstand the gospel of Christ and his good news of the kingdom of God.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (April 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802801765
• ISBN-13: 978-0802801760
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 4.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #82,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid and creative thinking, October 24, 2005

By 

Peter L. Edman (Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Paperback)

This is an excellent resource that presents a fresh approach to its topics and offers a creative and effective presentation of the role of theology in public life and discourse. I would say that its minor weakness would be an incomplete understanding of economics and an (understandable, given the time of its writing) preoccupation with the polarity between capitalism and communism. The result is that Newbigin's economic critique is a bit off-target. There are legitimate critiques of capitalism to make from his perspective but they require a better appreciation of the virtues of capitalism than he demonstrates. One hopes a latter day disciple will issue a fresh edition with a new foreword that could address this minor shortcoming in an otherwise superb small volume.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Searching honesty, August 10, 2005

By 

John Pittard (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Paperback)

In this work, Newbigin explores the relationship of Christianity to power with a searching honesty that few others have matched. While appreciative of Christendom's accomplishments, Newbigin suggests that the power granted the church in Christendom overestimates Christians' grasp of the truth and underestimates the tendency for power to corrupt the church. But the failures of Christendom do not thereby justify completely abandoning the attempt to influence the powers of secular society. Newbigin forcefully argues that Christians cannot simply set aside efforts to influence worldly powers in favor of "sectarian protest" against those powers. Society and it institutions will be guided by some vision of the good life (they cannot be neutral in this regard), and if that vision is the wrong one, much needless harm and spiritual suffering will result. In service to the world, then, Christians must offer their vision of the good life as the truth which should guide individuals and their institutions. Newbigin attempts to articulate an intermediate position (along the lines suggested by Abraham Kuyper) that falls somewhere between Christendom and sectarian protest. Serious questions may be raised about Newbigin's proposal, but his unwillingness to settle for the extremes makes this work a wonderful launching point for further reflection. Whatever model one adopts for Christian activity in the secular sphere, Newbigin suggests that for any engagement with secular culture to be successful Christians will have to first grapple with postmodern pessimism towards the concepts of truth and knowledge. Newbigin considers postmodernity's legitimate insights into the relationship between knowledge and power but moves beyond postmodern skepticism to sketch an epistemology that is appropriately humble yet also hopeful about the possibility of gaining insight into the truth.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic by a missionary statesman, March 31, 2010

By 

Darren Cronshaw (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Paperback)

Lesslie Newbigin Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).

Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw

Newbigin was a missionary in India for nearly 40 years and when he returned to England analysed modern Western culture from the perspective of an outsider using tools of cross-cultural communication. He urged treating the West as a mission field; 'a pagan society ... far more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism with which cross-cultural missions have been familiar. ... the most challenging missionary frontier of our time.' (p.20).

Central to his discussion is how biblical authority can be a reality for those who are shaped by Western culture, and he goes on to consider the interaction of the gospel with science, politics, and economics. Since Newbigin the world has moved on, but he understood how the world had changed because of modernity and foresaw how it was changing with new trends. He articulated how the world is seen from a scientific framework, but also recognised the influence of new science. He commented on Augustine's relevance and Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts which are important to understand for our modern/postmodern transition. He argued the church should not be relegated to the private sphere, but neither is it a new political order. Although written twenty years ago and with only glimpses of postmodern thought, his conclusions are still worth hearing about the need for freedom, dialogue, "declericalized" theology, local ecumenical efforts, looking at cultures with the help of outside perspectives, and learning to proclaim truth with categories that ultimately can't be proved within modern frameworks. His other books, especially The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), are also worthwhile contributions, and George Hunsberger interprets Newbigin as he relates to gospel, church and culture in Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Cultural Plurality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).

Originally appeared in Darren Cronshaw, `The Emerging Church: Introductory Reading Guide', Zadok Papers, S143 (Summer 2005).