Lesslie Newbigin, "the gospel...calls for a change of mind"

Here is an excerpt from the Introduction to Lesslie Newbigin’s book, To Tell the Truth: The Gospel as Public Truth (the whole book is available at an external site online in PDF here), from pages 5-6; 9; 10-13 (emphasis added):

In the prevailing climate of subjectivism the affirmation of the gospel as public truth is greeted with skepticism. “What do you mean by ‘gospel’? A great variety of religious ideas have been—at sundry times and places—offered under this title. Has not this been so from the beginning? [...] All religion, including the Christian religion, is an ever changing affair, and it is futile to appeal to something which lies behind the Christian religion as we now have it—’the gospel.’” What is to be said in response to this often repeated criticism? 

Plainly, Christianity is a constantly changing phenomenon. The gospel, on the other hand, is news about things which have happened. What has happened has happened, and nothing can change it.

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the opening words of the ministry of Jesus include the word metanoia [“repent”/“change your mind”]. At the very beginning we are warned that to understand what follows will require nothing less than a radical conversion of the mind.

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The problem of making sense of the gospel is that it calls for a change of mind which is as radical as is the action of God in becoming man and dying on a cross. With every new fact, or alleged fact, it is always possible—indeed, it is natural—to take note of it without allowing it to change our mind in any radical way. [The Roman historian] Tacitus could record the fact that someone called “Christus” had been crucified but had given rise to a pestilential sect without this information changing his mind. The two disciples on the way to Emmaus knew that Jesus had been crucified but that had not changed their belief that the Messiah, when he came, would be a successful practitioner of liberation theology. The crucifixion of Jesus was just a ghastly disappointment. What changed their minds, what brought metanoete, was the fact that Jesus was alive. And that meant that the crucifixion was a fact of a different kind. As Einstein used to say, what you call a fact depends on the theory you bring to it. 

The resurrection is, of course, the point at which the question “What really happened?” becomes most pressing. To believe that the crucified Jesus rose from the dead, left an empty tomb, and regrouped his scattered disciples for their world mission can only be the result of a very radical change of mind indeed. Without that change of mind, the story is too implausible to be regarded as part of real history. Indeed, the simple truth is that the resurrection cannot be accommodated in any way of understanding the world except one of which it is the starting point. Some happenings which come to our notice may be simply noted without requiring us to undertake any radical revision of our ideas. The story of the resurrection of the crucified is obviously not of this kind. It may of course, be dismissed as a fable, as the vast majority of people in our society do. This has nothing to do with the rise of the modern scientific world-view. The fact that a man who has been dead and buried for three days does not rise from the tomb was well known even before the invention of electric lights. If it is true, it has to be the starting point of a wholly new way of understanding the cosmos and the human situation in the cosmos. In the tradition of the Church the only real analogue for the resurrection of Jesus has been the creation itself. We cannot use any of the tools of science to go behind the creation and ask: “What was there before there was anything?” We can only take the existing world as our starting point. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the beginning of a new creation, the work of that same power which creation itself exists. We can decline to believe it and take it for granted that we have only the old creation to deal with. Or we can believe it and take it as the starting point for a new way of understanding and dealing with the world. Here two mutually incompatible ways of understanding history meet each other. The “continuing conversation between the present and past” which is the Christian reality in the world is both an ever continuing exegesis of the story which is the gospel and simultaneously a continuing insertion of new creation in the midst of the old. 

I am trying to talk about the gospel—good news about something which happened and which, in that case, does not change. The way of telling it, of understanding it, however, does change. It changes within the time span of the New Testament. But we take leave of serious historical integrity if we replace the record of the first witnesses with myths about various psychological experiences as the origin of the story. There is a gospel to announce today because in the light of the resurrection the whole story of Jesus can be seen not as a series of ghastly misunderstandings and disappointments but as the supreme action of God’s holy love, and the whole story of Israel can be seen—as the two disciples on the Emmaus Road began to see it—as having its fulfillment in this action. 

And when the Christian Church affirms the gospel as public truth it is not engaged in a self-serving exercise. It is not simply promoting its own growth, though surely the Church rejoices when there are more people who are grasped by the truth as it is in Jesus and are committed to following the true and living way that Jesus is. But when the Church affirms the gospel as public truth it is challenging the whole of society to wake out of the nightmare of subjectivism and relativism, to escape from the captivity of self turned in upon itself, and to accept the calling which is addressed to every human being to seek, acknowledge, and proclaim the truth. For we are that part of God’s creation which he has equipped with the power to know the truth and to speak the praise of the whole creation in response to the truthfulness of the Creator.

Lesslie Newbigin

March 1991

You can read the whole book, To Tell the Truth: The Gospel as Public Truth, at an external site online in PDF here.

If you're asking yourself, "Even if this is true, what does this fact from 2000 years ago have to do with me today?" to find Newbigin's answer, I also recommend his book, Sin and Salvation (1956), which is available in PDF online here.  

More from Lesslie Newbigin:

• Lesslie Newbigin, "The Logic of Election", plus a free ebook;
• Lesslie Newbigin, “The Spirit and Our Election in Christ”;
• Great Quotes: Lesslie Newbigin, "God desires only a freely given obedience which is the expression of love";
• Great Quotes: Lesslie Newbigin, "that God created some men for the purpose of destroying them...is quite false teaching".

John Wesley on justifying faith: not only a divine ... conviction that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself;” but a sure trust and confidence that Christ died for “my” sins

“However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness”   Romans 4:5, NIVUK

Here is John Wesley on “Justifying faith”, from his sermon based on Romans 4:5 (Link, Part IV, Para 2, bold mine):

2. Faith in general is a divine, supernatural “elegchos,” “evidence” or “conviction,” “of things not seen,” not discoverable by our bodily senses, as being either past, future, or spiritual. Justifying faith implies, not only a divine evidence or conviction that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself;” but a sure trust and confidence that Christ died for “my” sins, that he loved “me,” and gave himself for “me.” And at what time soever a sinner thus believes, be it in early childhood, in the strength of his years, or when he is old and hoary-haired, God justifieth that ungodly one: God, for the sake of his Son, pardoneth and absolveth him, who had in him, till then, no good thing. Repentance, indeed, God had given him before; but that repentance was neither more nor less than a deep sense of the want of all good, and the presence of all evil. And whatever good he hath, or doeth, from that hour when he first believes in God through Christ, faith does not “find,” but “bring.” This is the fruit of faith. First the tree is good, and then the fruit is good also.

Wesley concludes the sermon with an invitation to repent and believe the gospel:

9. Thou ungodly one, who hearest or readest these words! thou vile, helpless, miserable sinner! I charge thee before God, the Judge of all, go straight unto him, with all thy ungodliness. Take heed thou destroy not thy own soul by pleading thy righteousness, more or less. Go as altogether ungodly, guilty, lost, destroyed, deserving and dropping into hell; and thou shalt then find favour in his sight, and know that he justifieth the ungodly. As such thou shalt be brought unto the “blood of sprinkling,” as an undone, helpless, damned sinner. Thus “look unto Jesus!” There is “the Lamb of God,” who “taketh away thy sins!” Plead thou no works, no righteousness of thine own! no humility, contrition, sincerity! In nowise. That were, in very deed, to deny the Lord that bought thee. No: Plead thou, singly, the blood of the covenant, the ransom paid for thy proud, stubborn, sinful soul. Who art thou, that now seest and feelest both thine inward and outward ungodliness? Thou art the man! I want thee for my Lord! I challenge “thee” for a child of God by faith! The Lord hath need of thee. Thou who feelest thou art just fit for hell, art just fit to advance his glory; the glory of his free grace, justifying the ungodly and him that worketh not. O come quickly! Believe in the Lord Jesus; and thou, even thou, art reconciled to God.

You can read the whole sermon here.

(Ht: @BrandPluckedOut)

Related posts:

• Ronald Stone, "Wesley’s demand for mercy and justice in the economic world".
• On Assurance of Salvation and Calvin's “Evanescent Grace”.

Dr David Gooding and Dr John Lennox, "God's Program for the Restoration of Creation"

Below is an excerpt on resurrection, final judgment and the restored creation from Christianity: Opium or Truth by Dr David Gooding and Dr John Lennox (free ebook, Link):

GOD’S PROGRAM FOR THE RESTORATION OF CREATION

But there is hope! Real solidly based hope! The Bible affirms that creation’s subjection to frustration is only temporary: one day creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption (Rom. 8:21).

Indeed, the restoration has already begun. For when man in his blindness murdered Jesus Christ, the Author of Life, the Son of God himself, God raised Jesus Christ bodily from the dead. That resurrection carries implications for the whole of creation.

The risen Christ, says the Bible, is the firstfruits of them that have fallen asleep (that is, have died). The harvest will comprise all the redeemed of every century from the beginning of time (1 Cor. 15:20-28). Creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption (Rom. 8:21). There shall eventually be a new heaven and a new earth (2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1). And who knows how many further projects the God of All Ingenuity and Creative Power will embark on thereafter?

“But why do we have to wait so many centuries for this promised restoration to happen?” says someone. “Isn’t the real reason that the promise was never any thing more than the wishful thinking of religious people?”

Well, that’s certainly not the reason which the Bible itself gives for the delay. It says that what the restoration of creation is waiting for is the manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:19). What use would it be for God to restore creation and then put it back into the hands of the same kind of weak and sinful human beings as before? In other words, creation is waiting for the completion of what we have earlier called Stage 2 of God’s project: for the production of children of God, and then their development into fully-grown up sons of God (Col. 1:28; 1 Jn. 3:1-2), fit to take over and run the administration of the new heavens and the new earth as Christ’s executive Body (Col. 1:13-20; Eph. 1:9-10; 19-23).

The first step in this process is, as we earlier saw, that human beings having been created by God, should then become children of God. When that happens it does not mean that they are thereafter exempt from the suffering that those who are not children of God normally experience. Ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23), says the Bible. They may, in fact, find that becoming children of God additionally involves them in suffering persecution and even death for Christ’s sake (Jn. 15:18-16:4; 1 Jn. 3:13-16), as has happened so very often to Christians all down the centuries in totalitarian countries.

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When it comes to the unjust suffering inflicted on them by evil men, they [believers] dare to rely on God’s promise, guaranteed by his character and affirmed by the resurrection of Christ, that there is going to be a Final Judgment where all wrongs shall be put right. Like the writer of Psalm 73 they consider the final end of evil men, and, in spite of the believers’ sufferings and the apparent prosperity of the wicked, believers would not even now change places with them for anything (Ps. 73:17ff).

Moreover Christians are not surprised when they find themselves suffering at the hands of evil men enormously more than ordinary citizens do—as happened in the USSR in the bad old days now happily gone by, and in many other countries still. For Christians know it from the start that they are called upon to follow the example left them by Christ who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth; who when he was reviled, reviled not again, when he suffered he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously (1 Pet. 2:21- 23).

Confident that at the Final Judgment God would see to it that justice was done, Christ accepted suffering from evil men: and more than that: he prayed for his executioners and suffered the penalty of sin at the hands of God for them that all might be saved, if they would.

Christians are therefore called in their turn to suffer for Christ their Saviour’s sake as they declare boldly their faith in him, and to suffer for their fellow men’s sake as they take God’s offer of peace and forgiveness to a world that at heart is hostile to God. But Christians do not find such suffering a cause for doubting God’s love or his justice: they find it a confirmation of Christ’s forewarning (Jn. 15:18-16:4) and an honour (Mt. 5:10-12; Acts 5:40-42; 1 Pet. 4:12-14).

Read or download the full book here FREE.  

Further Reading:

• For more on the hope of the resurrection and new creation, I recommend: NT Wright, Surprised by Hope.

Related Posts:

• Dr David Gooding on the Hebrews Warning Passages and a Link to a Free eBook
• NT Wright, "How do you answer someone who says...that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world?".