Mission in the Context of Secularization

Yet, far from seeing secularization as a threat, Newbigin saw it as that ordering of events in which the church‟s witness is to be realised. The vital implication of

understanding secularization as attributable to God‟s sovereignty is that it is to be understood as something to which the church is called to respond, in fulfilment of her

139

L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 23f. Newbigin quotes the work of the German Physicist Weizsacker (The Relevance of Science (London: Collins, 1964), pp. 106-7) to help explain his point here that the “rise of modern science and technology was directly related to the beliefs about the created world and about man‟s place in it which are distinctive of the Bible.”

140

Newbigin draws this third point from van Leeuwen‟s book Christianity in World History (1964).

141 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 31ff.} 142 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 34ff.}

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“calling to responsible participation in the events which are the key to world history.”143

Responsible participation involves acting in relation to what God is bringing to pass in the world.

This participation begins with a readiness to reinterpret the gospel and the church‟s action in the world. The changing social and political context which secularization was bringing to both East and West compelled the church to return to God‟s revelation in Christ, to interpret and understand aspects of the gospel in

sometimes new and fresh ways. The problem for Newbigin with part of the response from Western theologians to secularization is that it failed to begin the work of re- evaluation and reconsideration from God‟s action in Christ, understood as of

significance for all human history, as he states: “But the most influential attempts to restate the Christian gospel in terms supposed to be intelligible to modern secularized man have proceeded by using the concepts of existentialist philosophy.”144 The restatement is needed, but only if it is centered in an understanding of Christ as the centre and telos of history. Given this as the starting point for an engagement with secularization, what does Newbigin envisage the church‟s action to be?

Firstly, Newbigin pointed to the importance of the church acting as a guardian of the gains that secularization brought by bearing witness to the transcendence of God to the world in two distinct ways: resisting a return to an assertion of the immanence of God, of sacralising the world as given, and secondly by pointing to the

accountability of the world to God. Secularization could be seen as a rejection of the idea of the immanence of God, in that through the disassociation of much of life from religion, space was generated to question and critique the world as given, as Newbigin states:

Secularization is a process in which men are set free from total envelopment in sacral forms of society – forms, that is to say, in which it is believed that the form of society fully represents and mediates the purpose of God for human life. Secularization sets men free to question, to experiment and to make independent decisions. It requires of the individual man a capacity to take decisions which, in traditional sacral societies, he would not have to take. It is a summons to greater personal freedom, and to the responsibility which freedom entails.145

143 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 44.}

144 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 44. Newbigin particularly has in mind here the}

thought of Bultmann. He quotes from Keryma and Myth and briefly critiques Bultmann for a de- historicized gospel.

145 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 69. Newbigin acknowledges the influence of A.T.}

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Newbigin considered this element of freedom to engage with the creation and the social order as a coming of age, an outworking in history of one aspect of what it means to be a child of God.146 This freedom had to be preserved against the

possibility of a reversal back into the old sacral form of society.147 In the context of mission in Asia and Africa this involved standing “at the point where secularization is cutting into the ancient way of life, making clear by . . . word and manner of life the way in which a Christian can accept the offer of freedom which secularization brings.”148

But perhaps of even greater importance, the church had to maintain a sense of distinction between God and its own action, in the consciousness of its own capacity for departure from the will of God. The church refuses to identify its “programme wholly with God‟s will.”149

Yet, for Newbigin, at that point, this was not the primary point of concern for the church.

The primary focus of the church‟s witness in the context of secularization was to God as the one to whom the world is accountable. The potential danger in a social and political environment that stressed individual freedom was the abandonment of all sense of personal accountability to God. The church‟s particular responsibility to society lay in testifying to freedom being exercised in the context of the reign of God, as he states: “Of a secular society as of a free society, it must be said that the price is constant vigilance. There must be men and women . . . who are ready to be witnesses, if necessary with their blood, to the reality of his rule.”150 Yet, in an important and illuminating section of the book, „Ethics in a Secular Context,‟ Newbigin explains that this accountability is not a return to the old bondages of a de-historicized legal code, to an “ethic of sheer blind submission to external standards of behaviour,” but is rather an accountability that takes form through personal encounter with Christ in the particular social and political conditions of today as “the religion of free worship and obedience in the Spirit.”151 The world‟s calling to participation in Christ as children of God is to be maintained in the area of law, as elsewhere.

analysis of the „ontocratic society‟ in which there is an identification of the social order with the cosmic, divine order. An example of this, of which Newbigin was well familiar, was the caste system, a social order traditionally given religious sanction.

146 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 32.} 147 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 39.} 148 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 137.} 149

L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 72.

150 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 76.} 151 _{L. Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 142.}

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