Missions in North America: The Hard Post-Christian Soil

 In many ways, Lesslie Newbigin has helped me think through the implications of the gospel in Western culture.  He well noted that Christianity in the West has, for the most part, been domesticated into one religion among many - a private religion a person can "use" if it helps him through life.  What's the outcome of this privatized…

The Church and Politics

 Lesslie Newbigin keeps me sane in the midst of the annoying political ads this time of year.  "...The [early] church did not set out to create a new political order, or to take political action for the reformation of political institutions.  It would be both anachronistic and theologically confused to infer that.  The God-given - and…

The Contextual Character of Knowledge

This book (or small library of books!), Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996) has been a huge help to me in the past four years (as I mentioned here a few years back).  This week, in my studies, I've been re-reading book 5 of this tome, Science and Hermeneutics by Vern Poythress (I…

The Privatization of Faith

Here in the U.S., we live in a culture (or cultures) where a person's faith is OK as long as she keeps it private and is tolerant of other faiths.  Objective knowledge is public and for the textbook (i.e. the moon is around 384,000 km from the earth), while subjective values and beliefs are personal…

The Gospel And Culture

If you've ever wrestled with how the gospel and culture relate, Lesslie Newbigin is a must read.  One thing he constantly discusses is the fact that everyone's understanding of the gospel is quite cultural.  That is, my understanding of who Jesus is and what he's done for his people is somewhat conditioned by my cultural…