Newbigin: embodied in culture

Wednesday, January 30, 2013
    Commemoration of Lesslie Newbigin, Bishop, Missionary, Teacher, 1998
Meditation:
    But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: “Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.”
    —Acts 14:14-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion. It is, in fact, an abandonment of the gospel, for the gospel is about the word made flesh. Every statement of the gospel in words is conditioned by the culture of which these words are a part, and every style of life that claims to embody the truth of the gospel is a culturally conditioned style of life. There can never be a culture-free gospel. Yet the gospel, which is from beginning to end embodied in culturally conditioned forms, calls into question all cultures including the one in which it was originally embodied.
    ... Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), Foolishness to the Greeks: the Gospel and Western culture, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1986, p. 4 (see the book)
    See also Acts 14:11-17; 2:4-11; 26:13-14
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You call us in our own language. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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