My book, For the Life of the World: Jesus Christ and the Church in the Theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas, has recently been published. In celebration of its appearance there is going to be a book launch event at Good Shepherd Community Church in Scarborough on Wednesday, July 6. More information about the event can be found here. Print and electronic copies can be purchased through the Wipf and Stock website, Amazon, or ordered through your local bookstore. There will also be a limited number of copies available for purchase at the book launch. To whet your appetite, here’s the blurb from the back cover: Continue reading “For the Life of the World” Now in Print
All posts by Robert Dean
Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 3. A Declericalized Theology
[This post is the fourth in a series of posts on what could be called “Newbigin’s marks of the missional church” as outlined in his book Foolishness to the Greeks. The previous posts can be found here: introduction, mark #1, mark #2.]
“The missionary encounter with our culture for which I am pleading,” Newbigin writes, “will require the energetic fostering of a declericalized, lay theology.”1 Upon returning to England after years of missionary service in India, Newbigin observed that theology in the modern West had become largely isolated from the lives and concerns of average Christian men and women. Continue reading Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 3. A Declericalized Theology
- Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (W.B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 142. ↩
Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 2. A Christian Doctrine of Freedom
Having considered in the previous post Newbigin’s insistence that the church must recover its eschatological imagination, we now turn to the second of what could be called his seven marks of the missional church — a true Christian doctrine of freedom. Two sets of concerns fall under this heading for Newbigin. The first set deals with matters that pertain to the relationship between church and state, while the second touches upon issues related to anthropology.1 Continue reading Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 2. A Christian Doctrine of Freedom
- Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1986), 137-141. ↩
Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 1. Eschatology
The previous post set the stage for a series of posts on Lesslie Newbigin’s understanding, as presented in Foolishness to the Greeks, of the seven essential conditions that must be recovered if there is to be a genuine missionary encounter between the church and the modern West. The first of these essential conditions, Newbigin asserts, “must be the recovery and firm grasp of a true doctrine of the last things, of eschatology.”1 Continue reading Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – 1. Eschatology
- Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1986), 134. ↩
Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – Introduction
This past week marked the start of a course I am teaching at Tyndale Seminary called “Integrative Seminar II.” Don’t let the nondescript title fool you; this course may very well be the most enthralling course that I’ve had the privilege to be involved with at Tyndale. There’s a variety of reasons for this, including the fact that the course occurs near the end of the MDiv In-Ministry program and provides an opportunity for the students to bring together what they have learned and the skills they have developed over the course of the entire program. Probably the biggest factor, though, is the compelling character of the subject matter itself. “Integrative Seminar II” is shaped around exploring the life and thought of six twentieth century Christian pastor-leader-theologians: Lesslie Newbigin, John Perkins, Vinay Samuel, Dorothy Day, Desmond Tutu, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Continue reading Series: Newbigin on “The Call to the Church” – Introduction
Proper Confidence
“The confidence proper to a Christian is not the confidence of one who claims possession of demonstrable and indubitable knowledge. It is the confidence of one who had heard and answered the call that comes from the God through whom and for whom all things were made: ‘Follow me.'”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1995), 105