Lesslie Newbigin: Evangelical Theologian of the Twentieth Century

Tom Creedy
Book Recommendations
8 Dec 2022
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In his entry on Leslie Newbigin in The New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, A. F. Walls wrote:

Newbigin, probably the most influential British mission theologian of the twentieth century, was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, the son of a ship owner. He came to Christian faith at Cambridge (where he read geography and economics) in the context of the Student Christian Movement (SCM), and after graduation became an SCM Secretary in Scotland, marrying another SCM Secretary, Helen Henderson, a missionary candidate. Convinced of his own missionary vocation, he entered Westminster College, Cambridge, following a course of private study from which he emerged, as he wrote later, ‘much more of an evangelical than a liberal’. Missionary service in India under the Church of Scotland began in 1936.

Formative experiences included interaction with Hindu scholars in the sacred city of Kanchipuram, sharing study of Hindu and Christian scriptures, responsibility for the Christian education of village Christians (his book Sin and Salvation was first written in Tamil) and involvement in the negotiations leading to the formation of the Church of South India. At the inauguration of that church in 1947 he became a bishop with responsibility for Madurai and Ramnad. The status of the church was controversial in some Anglican circles; Newbigin’s theological advocacy brought him to prominence in the International Missionary Council (IMC), and he had much responsibility for the IMC’s Willingen Conference of 1947. In 1959 he was seconded by the Church of South India to be General Secretary of the IMC, with a brief to integrate it with the still young *World Council of Churches (WCC). This accomplished (he believed it would encourage mission as integral to the life of the churches), Newbigin became the first director of the WCC’s Division of World Mission and Evangelism, also editing the International Review of Missions. His secondment over, he returned to India in 1965, being elected Bishop of Madras, though still active in ecumenical affairs. He retired to Britain in 1974. He had always been a prolific writer; this period (despite the demands of teaching at the Selly Oak Colleges and pastoring a run-down city congregation) produced some of his finest work, analysing the post-Christian West, developing a critique of the effect of the Enlightenment on Western thinking, and directing a movement concerned with ‘the Gospel and our Culture’.

Newbigin, an atheist in youth and theologically liberal as a young Christian, was largely self-directed in theological formation. He read Barth seriously only late in life. His theology was developed in his own awakening to faith, and in dialogue with Hindu monism and Western secularism, and shaped by the life of the Indian church. He developed an essentially trinitarian three-dimensional theology of mission, proclamation based on the Father’s authority, presence rooted in the Son’s work and prevenience arising from the Spirit’s preparatory activity. His soteriology, influenced by James *Denney, centred on the *cross as demonstrating both God’s love and God’s judgment, divinity ‘receiving the wages of sin’. The cross also reveals the principalities and powers behind the working of the universe represented in, but not wholly identical with, political figures and institutions. The proclamation of the *gospel has thus not only individual but societal relevance: it is public truth. Newbigin’s epistemology, always expressed in terms of personal relations, expanded in his last period through the influence of Michael Polanyi, stressing that knowledge of God, like scientific knowledge, is external to the knower. The church is chosen (the election of Israel, and of the church, with corresponding privilege and responsibilities, is another recurrent Newbigin theme) to proclaim and demonstrate that reality.

As one of the British Evangelical Theologians from the later part of the Twentieth Century, Newbigin's influence is well worth reflecting on. Donald LeRoy Stults' chapter in British Evangelical Theologians of the Twentieth Century, edited by T. A. Noble and Jason S. Sexton, is a good place to start. You can order your copy in paperback or ebook now.

Tom Creedy