A Point of Meeting on the Road to the Eschaton

On the one hand Newbigin tried to minimize discussion of the relationship between Christ and the religions on the basis of religious experience or belief. One reason for this, as seen, is that he tended to see discontinuity between Christ and religion, describing religion as the “primary area of darkness,”714

evidenced by the lack of receptivity to Christ by learned practitioners of other religions.

But, at the same time Newbigin believed in a meeting point that was related to the eschatological kingdom. He believed the biblical and eschatological vision of salvation as the renewal of the whole world provided the framework for a constructive

712

H. Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, 63.

713 _{H. Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, 67.} 714 _{L. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 173.}

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relationship across faith communities, through shared action in the struggle for “justice and for freedom,” as he states:

It is precisely in this kind of shared commitment to the business of the world that the context for true dialogue is provided. . . . It is not just a sharing of religious experience, though it may include this. At heart it will be a dialogue about the meaning and goal of the human story. If we are doing what we ought to be doing as Christians, the dialogue will be initiated by our partners, not by ourselves. [emphasis mine]715

This eschatological framework is a different approach than that taken by some Indian thinkers in the consideration of the relationship between Christ and the religions. Indian theology, as expressed in thinkers such as Sen, Panikkar, Abhishiktananda and Aleaz, has tended to be concentrated on explaining present realities, present forms and experiences in relationship to Christ. Newbigin appears to have considered this approach unproductive, preferring instead to encourage the church to act, to “do what we ought to be doing as Christians,” and in the context of this action allowing dialogue to naturally emerge. For Newbigin, characteristic with his general approach, the church‟s primary concern must be to indwell the bible story and let other issues, inter-religious dialogue included, emerge from that commitment.

This sense of dialogue emerging in the context of shared action for the

humanization of society can, in part, be explained by Newbigin‟s sense, for much of his time in India, that the search for a just society had become a more significant factor than the religious search for God. He appears to have partially agreed with Thomas‟s idea that the struggle and search for the humanization of life within Indian society as a whole had become the dominant issue for the society, where once it had been the search for God.716 Murdoch Mackenzie, who worked with Newbigin in Madras from the mid-1960‟s, gives expression to this aspect of Newbigin‟s thought. Mackenzie explains that in preparation for coming to India he wanted to study

Hinduism, but Newbigin advised him that he “would be better to study Marxism.”717 In relation to this search for a new society Thomas advised that this was the church‟s point of meeting with the world, as he states:

715

L. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 182.

716 _{M. M. Thomas, „The Struggle for Human Dignity as a Preparation for the Gospel,‟ in Renewal for}

Mission, eds. David Lyon & Albert Manuel (Madras: CLS, 1968), 98 in A Bird, „M. M. Thomas:

Theological Signposts for the Emergence of Dalit Theology,‟ 189.

717

Murdoch Mackenzie, „The Other Side of Lesslie Newbigin,‟

http://www.fost.org.uk/pages/The%20Other%20Side%20of%20Lesslie%20Newbigin.pdf, accessed 27 February 2014.

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The secular strivings for fuller human life should be placed and interpreted in their real relation to the ultimate meaning and fulfilment of human life revealed in the divine humanity of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. They should be seen as the means to acknowledge and witness to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as the only God worthy of man‟s ultimate worship and obedience. It is then that men and their strivings are truly saved and made human, and become a sacrament and foretaste of the ultimate Salvation freely offered by God in Christ to all mankind. Herein lies the mission of the Church: to participate in the movements of human liberation in our time in such a way as to witness to Jesus Christ as the Source, the Judge and the Redeemer of the human spirituality and its orientation which are at work in these movements, and therefore as the Saviour of man today.718

In this way the church could break out of the communalism that was threatening to reduce it to a self-centered preoccupation with its own rights and needs, and participate in a genuine act of service to the wider community. Although Newbigin did not give as much emphasis to this kind of joint action with people of other faiths as Thomas did, he did recognize the legitimacy of it, and particularly the need for direct action for the realization of justice within society.

As we have seen, Newbigin did maintain a degree of openness toward the other as the adherent and practitioner of another religion. To what extent did this translate into his understanding of the form of the church in India‟s pluralist society? This is the subject that will now be considered.