
When a few years ago I taught a seminar on Lesslie Newbigin, I realized that throughout his work he consistently draws on the Ephesian metaphor of “all things intended to be summed up into Christ” (Eph. 1:10). From his earliest writings on ecumenism and church unity till his last, famous books on a new missional era this imagery is central to Newbigin’s ecclesiological and missional vision.
Among the multitude of images that the New Testament uses to speak about the difference Christ makes, the Ephesian evokes a rich theological narrative that is different from other Christological stories. Three features characterize this narrative. First, while the letter does not ignore past aspects of Jesus’ work, such as obtaining atonement, the image focuses on Christ’s work in the present and future: an ongoing history as things are gathered into him. Second, this history is not a phase within a much larger, unfolding process, but it is eschatological: the goal for which everything has been created. And third, the image invites us therefore to see the forging of a community as the core and goal of history. The center of this community is Christ; its formation begins small, in the particular history of Israel; but its reach then becomes universal, as all things in heaven and on earth are folded in.
Reading through Newbigin one might discover that he not only regularly references the Ephesian metaphor, but that the narrative it evokes shapes key moments in Newbigin’s own theological thinking: salvation, election, and church.
If “all things summed up into Christ” is to be a central metaphor through which to understand the difference Christ makes, one will understand the salvation he brings as intrinsically communal. This is indeed how Newbigin presents it. Throughout his oeuvre he polemicizes against soteriologies – be it traditional Protestant or more liberal ones – that are primarily concerned with the fate of individuals. Salvation is communal; as such it is embodied, earthly, and not spiritual or otherworldly; and it is progressive, not obtained at once, but deepened and enriched as Christ draws more and more people into the salvific community.
If this is what salvation is, then it presupposes the existence of a concrete, embodied, historic community into which one can be gathered. Salvation can only be offered and received through the presence of a group of people whose common life embodies the salvation that the Gospel speaks about. It is here, Newbigin holds, that the notion of election comes in. In the act of election, God establishes that what is being promised in salvation: the people of God. Newbigin differentiates himself here again creatively from more traditional accounts, on which election may lead to the formation of a community, but does not presuppose it.
Finally, this salvific, gathering work of Jesus Christ becomes visible in the church. The church is an instrument and sign of salvation, but only because it is also, and primarily, a foretaste of it. Here already becomes tangible and visible God’s goal for creation: a community in which God is with God’s people, and they are with one another. Newbigin offers here a fresh interpretation of the early church’s adage that “outside the church is no salvation.” For lots of Protestant theology the church is accidental to salvation. Sure, believers tend to flock together, but you don’t need the church to be saved. For Newbigin – and for Ephesians – this is impossible.
It is interesting that the secondary literature has not picked up on the centrality that the Ephesian vision has for Newbigin. Quite often he is read as simply a missionary minded evangelical or Reformed theologian. But something much more radical is going on here. For most evangelical theology, the Gospel is about God being for us. Humanity has a problem – sin – and the Gospel is about how God in Jesus Christ comes to deal with this problem. God comes to do something for us – and “us” is a collection of individual sinners and, hopefully, believers.
In reality, at the core of Newbigin’s theological vision is God being with us: in Jesus Christ God fulfills the goal of creation, for God to be with us, for us to be with God, and for human beings to be drawn into a community around the incarnate One.
It is exactly this being with nature of Newbigin’s vision that makes that he could offer a fresh contribution to our missional conversations. Missiologist Stefan Paas observes somewhere that the church in the West is in need of a new soteriological paradigm. Older narratives, especially of an evangelical orientation, have lost cultural relevance and plausibility. Key parts of these stories are focused on notions of sin that are no longer acceptable or intelligible to people, which makes the communication of the gospel both difficult and embarrassing. Other parts are shaped by highly individualistic notions of the believer and their agency, which sits uncomfortable with current missional practices which focus on forging relationships and building community. Because of this, traditional soteriological narratives function for many practitioners as a negative benchmark. A convincing alternative seems however to be lacking.
Exactly such alternative can however be found in a being with Christology and soteriology – and Newbigin offers us its first building blocks.
An extensive re-reading of Newbigin along these lines is this year forthcoming in Ecclesiology
A pre-publication can be found here.
Nice digging, Edwin … into Newbigin and helpful foundations for “being with” theology and praxis – it is my experience too of Christian community that within it salvation takes on a much more nuanced, creative and fluid reality.