Newbigins Trinitarian Missiology: The Doctrine of the Trinity as Good News for Western Culture

Adam Dodds
Adam Dodds is a nal year doctoral student and teaching fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand, where he is studying Lesslie Newbigins trinitarian missiology. Abstract This paper explores Newbigins trinitarian missiology by rst evaluating its theological basis, and then looking at the practical implications for the churchs mission within Western culture today. Newbigin claimed that the doctrine of the Trinity . . . is the necessary starting point of preaching. This statement actually involves two mutually related claims that are discussed using the resources of recent trinitarian theology. First, evangelism begins with describing the triune God, and second, the triune nature of God is irreducibly bound up with the substance of the gospel. This discussion evaluates these bold claims using the resources of trinitarian theology, taking the claims in reverse order because the second impinges upon the rst. The second part of this paper applies the fruits of this discussion to the churchs mission within Western culture. It briey articulates a relational ontology based on the doctrine of the Trinity, and then describes a relational anthropology based on the imago Dei. Next it explores Newbigins theology of the inter-relatedness of all life as the clue to understanding missional election. The practical implications this has for ecclesiology and missiology vis-a `-vis Newbigins understanding of the congregation as the hermeneutic of the gospel conclude this exploration. They demonstrate the abiding signicance of Lesslie Newbigin for continued theological, missiological, and practical reection. In 1963 Newbigin wrote his major work on the Trinity, Trinitarian Doctrine for Todays Mission, in which he claims the doctrine of the Trinity . . . is the necessary starting point of preaching.1 By itself, this is clearly an overstatement, but Newbigin goes on to explain this claim, saying . . . one cannot preach Jesus even in the simplest terms
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Newbigin, Lesslie (1998) Trinitarian Doctrine for Todays Mission, Paternoster, Carlisle, p.35.

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without preaching Him as the Son. His revelation of God is the revelation of an only begotten from the Father, and you cannot preach him without speaking of the Father and Son . . ..2 In the next paragraph Newbigin goes on to immediately add the Holy Spirit to that claim. The context of this passage concerns the place of the doctrine of the Trinity in evangelism, rather than the specic activity of preaching. From the context, Newbigin makes at least two related claims: that evangelism begins with describing the triune God, and the triune nature of God is irreducibly bound up with the substance of the gospel. My purpose is to rst evaluate these bold claims using the resources of trinitarian theology, and second to briey explore in what sense the doctrine of the Trinity is good news to Western culture. This will involve sketching a theological anthropology, a doctrine of election, and some practical implications for the church-inmission. Evangelism and the triune God Prima facie, trinitarian theology seems in broad agreement with Newbigin in afrming that the triune nature of God is irreducibly related to the substance of the gospel. In the early 20th century A. Schlatter said that . . . the Trinitarian name of God is the Christian Gospel.3 Toward the end of that century, Carl Braaten says, The doctrine of the Trinity is the solid declaration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.4 Jenson declares that the phrase Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a condensed telling of the gospel.5 Colin Gunton describes the doctrine of the Trinity . . . as encapsulating the heart of the Christian Gospel.6 Why is there this broad agreement that Gods triune nature is central to the nature of the gospel? The answer, as Newbigin suggests, is that the gospel concerns the actions of the triune God. Naturally, the gospel centres on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, but this same gospel does not describe Jesus apart from the Father and the Spirit. In evangelism the crucial issue at stake is the question, Who is Jesus? The evangelists answer that Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father. Pannenberg observes, The title Son reects Jesus message of the Father. The reection of the content of the message falls on his person.7 The gospel declares that God, the Father of all humanity (Eph. 3:
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Newbigin, Trinitarian Doctrine . . ., p.36. Schlatter, A. (1923) Das chr. Dogma, p.354, quoted in Karl Barth Church Dogmatics I/1: The Doctrine of the Word of God. G. W. Bromiley (trans.) & G. W. Bromiley & T. F. Torrance (eds), T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, p.302. Braaten, Carl E. (1990) The Triune God: The Source and Model of Christian Unity and Mission, Missiology: An International Review, Vol. XVIII No. 4, October, p.424. Jenson, Robert W. (1997) Systematic Theology Vol. 1: The Triune God, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p.46. Gunton, Colin E. (1997) The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 2nd ed., T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, p.31. Pannenberg, Wolfhart (1991) Systematic Theology Vol. 1, Geoffrey W. Bromiley (trans.), Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, p.309. & 2010 World Council of Churches

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1415; 4:6), loves Gods wayward children with a strong and persistent love that is undeterred by wilful rebellion. From eternity the Father and Son have, with the Holy Spirit, given and received love to and from each other. In the sending of Gods Son, God the Father demonstrates that the love between Father and Son is so expansive that all humanity are invited to participate in the sonship of Jesus and themselves become adopted children of God. As children of God, humans can have security in the love of their heavenly Father, condence when approaching God in prayer, and intimacy in relating to the Sovereign Creator and Ruler of all as Abba. Pannenberg is right to suggest that the content of the gospel is reected in Jesus person as the Son. Thus the answer to the crucial question in evangelism is that Jesus is the beloved Son, the only begotten of the Father.8 Jesus cannot rightly be identied without describing the triune nature of God. This is because, says Moltmann, The New Testament talks about God by proclaiming in narrative the relationships of the Father, the Son and the Spirit . . ..9 Although the gospel is the gospel of Jesus Christ, this gospel begins with the Father sending the Son who is conceived by the Holy Spirit. Stepping back from a close reading of the gospel narrative in order to discern the broader theological landscape, Gunton says, The gospel is that the Father interrelates with his world by means of the frail humanity of his Son, and by his Spirit enables anticipations in the present of the promised perfection of the creation . . ..10 The Son was sent by the Father and lived to carry out Gods will. The beginning of the Sons mission his conception and empowerment at baptism, and the climax of his mission his atoning death and resurrection, were all accomplished in and by the Holy Spirit.11 That is why Athanasius described the doctrine of the Trinity as . . . the summary (skopos) of our faith.12 In what way does the doctrine of the Trinity summarize the Christian faith? Daugherty explains that the doctrine of the Trinity . . . could be called the theological statement of the gospel; it is the gospel explained with reference to the being of God.13 The doctrine of the Trinity not only identies this triune God as the author of and chief actor in the drama of salvation, but it goes further to say that this triune God revealed in
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Newbigin, Trinitarian Doctrine . . ., p.36. Moltmann, Ju rgen (1993) The Trinity & the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, Margaret Kohl (trans.), Fortress Press, Minneapolis, p.64, emphasis removed from whole sentence. Gunton, op. cit., p.72. Cf. Luke 1:35 (conception), Luke 3:2123; 4:18f (empowerment), Hebrews 9:14 (atonement), and Romans 1:4; 8:11 (resurrection). Athanasius, De Decretis 31, quoted in Anatolios, Khaled (2001) The Immediately Triune God: A Patristic Response to Schleiermacher, Pro Ecclesia, Vol. X, No. 2, p. 166. Daugherty, Kevin (2007) Missio Dei : The Trinity and Christian Missions, Evangelical Review of Theology, Vol. 31:2, p.162.

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the gospel events is actually who God is in and of himself. The gospel reveals a God who loves (Rom. 5:8), and . . . the doctrine of the Trinity is the teaching that God is love, not only towards us, but in his deepest and eternal being.14 In other words, the immanent and economic trinities so truly correspond that Gods loving actions in the gospel story are an economic echo of the eternal trinitarian love that God is. T. F. Torrance says,
If the economic or evangelical Trinity and the ontological or theological Trinity were disparate this would bring into question whether God himself was the actual content of his revelation, and whether God himself was really in Jesus Christ reconciling the world to himself. That is the evangelical and epistemological signicance of the homoousion . . . formulated by the Council of Nicaea in AD. 325 . . . . The trinitarian message of the Gospel tells us that . . . in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit we really have to do with the Lord God himself as our Saviour.15

The doctrine of the immanent or ontological Trinity safeguards the fact that the gospel is in fact the good news that God really does love us because God is love. In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity ontologically underpins the truths of the gospel. However, this doctrine is also rooted in the events of the gospel in which God reveals himself as Father, Son and Spirit. Therefore, the doctrine of the Trinity is not speculation projected onto the divine being. On the contrary, Trinitarian theology is not theory; it is an account of Gods being which is tied to his action, and that action centres on a gospel rooted in the life, suffering and resurrection of Jesus.16 In this dialectic of divine being and action, could we go as far as saying that the triune God is the Christian gospel? Well, the gospel declares that the triune God has judged all humanity in Christ out of Gods love for them. The No of God has been spoken within an all-encompassing Yes so that all humanity has been judged and forgiven and invited to participate in the loving relations that God is. Concerning the divine Yes spoken to humanity, Barth says it is Jesus Christ who . . . pronounces a single and unambiguous Yes. Barth then goes further, saying of Jesus Christ, He is this Yes, and therefore not merely its proponent, sign, symbol or cypher.17 The gospel is not merely what Jesus pronounces effects or enacts, but in his person he is the gospel. Following Barth, T. F. Torrance argues that the atoning reconciliation and the death of death that Jesus achieves on behalf of all humanity do not occur externally from his person. Rather, . . . atoning reconciliation,
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Gunton, Colin E. (2003) Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Essays towards a Fully Trinitarian Theology, T. & T. Clark, London, p.18. Torrance, Thomas F. (1996) The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, pp.78, emphasis original. Gunton, op. cit., xiv, emphasis added. Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics IV/3: The Doctrine of Reconciliation Second Half, p.797. & 2010 World Council of Churches

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and one might add, the death of death, takes place within the personal Being of the Mediator.18 However, the atonement itself does not constitute the heart of the gospel. Torrance explains, . . . it is not the atonement that constitutes the goal and end of that integrated movement of reconciliation but union with God . . ..19 God became human in order to adopt all humanity into the divine life, what the ancient Eastern fathers called sis or theopoie sis. The good news is that the triune God, Creator, and Redeemer, loves theo humanity even in its obstinate and deant rebellion, and, by way of the atoning reconciliation accomplished in and by the mediator Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Spirit who unites us to this mediator, humanity is beckoned into fellowship with God. The triune God is the gospel, for in Jesus the Emmanuel humanity discovers not only that God is with us but that God is for us, because this is Gods nature. The gospel events are only good news inasmuch as they describe the actions of this God who is himself the gospel. Nevertheless, it would be a false dichotomy to suggest that God is the gospel apart from Gods actions that the gospel describes. There is no division between divine being and act, for as Psalm 119:68 succinctly describes God, You are good and do good . . .. It is of course by Gods good deeds that Gods being as the triune God who is good is revealed. Describing the unity of divine being and act, Barth says, God is who He is in His works. . . . in Himself He is not another than He is in His works.20 Gods self-revelation is reliable because God is truthful, so we know that he is giving us himself and not an external manifestation whose internal structuring may be different.21 Simply put, Gods . . . revelation is His Self-donation.22 In concluding this section one must afrm that Newbigin was right; the doctrine of the trinity is irreducibly bound to the substance of the gospel. What of Newbigins other claim that evangelism begins with describing the triune God? Evangelism by denition is a communication of the gospel, and the gospel as we have seen is both the being and the saving activity of the triune God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is why H. Bavinck says, In the doctrine of the Trinity beats the heart of the whole revelation of God for the redemption of mankind.23
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Torrance, Thomas F. (1983) The Mediation of Christ, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, p.73. Torrance, Ibid., p.77. Barth, Karl (1957) Church Dogmatics II/1: The Doctrine of God, p.260. Gunton, op. cit., p.42. Forsyth, P. T. (1998) The Soul of Prayer, Paternoster Press, Carlisle, p.18. Gereformeede Dogmatiek, vol. II 4th ed., 1918, p.346f, quoted in Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, p.302.

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Athanasius rightly called the doctrine of the Trinity the summary of our faith, but Bavinck adds to that, calling it the . . . kernel of the Christian faith, the root of all dogmas, the substance of the new covenant . . ..24 All Christian truths that one would seek to communicate in evangelism, such as creation, fall, salvation, eschatology and so on, derive from the doctrine of the Trinity, for the works of God can only be rightly understood in the light of the nature and being of God. That is why Khaled Anatolios says, Trinitarian doctrine is the hermeneutical key to Christian faith.25 Therefore, evangelism must describe the triune God of the gospel, communicating the truths contained within the doctrine of the Trinity without discussing the (necessary) obscurities of its theologomena. These truths, summarized in the patristic term homoousion, crucially include the fact that God actually is from and to all eternity the loving God revealed in the gospel, that the gospel is a gospel of salvation because God is its author, and that the triune God who is love has so acted in the events of the gospel so that all may participate in the divine nature. In Trinitarian Doctrine, Newbigin observes,
The vehemence of the doctrinal struggles which centred on the formulation of the trinitarian doctrine, and especially on the question of the relation of the Son to the Father, is evidence of the centrality of this issue for the whole Christian witness to the pagan world of that time.26

The missiological signicance of the doctrine of the Trinity, with its central Christological and pneumatological aspects, was clearly enormous during the patristic era. Missiologist Aasulv Lande acknowledges this fact, but proceeds to argue that the doctrine of the Trinity is inescapably culture-bound to its Greco-Roman context and so it should remain in its socio-cultural past. Lande believes that for our purposes in the 21st century the doctrine of the Trinity is irrelevant.27 Lande is not alone is this summation, for Immanuel Kant said it was irrelevant whether a person worshipped three or ten persons, because . . . it is impossible to extract from this difference any different rules for practical living . . ..28 I believe both Lande and Kant not only completely misunderstand the doctrine of the Trinity as I have already shown, but also, as I hope to demonstrate shortly, this is a misreading of the utility of this doctrine for mission in and to Western culture. Against Landes thesis I concur with Gary Simpson, who argues that the doctrine of the Trinity possesses intrinsic relevance for missiology.
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Ibid. Anatolios, op.cit., p.166. Newbigin, op.cit., p.35. Lande, Aasulv, Trinitarian Missiology, audio cassette AN812. After Newbigin: A Missiological Enquiry in Honour of Lesslie Newbigin, 23 November 1998, Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham. DA29/13/2/12. Lesslie Newbigin Archives, Special Collections Department, Main Library, University of Birmingham. Quoted in Moltmann, op.cit., p.6. & 2010 World Council of Churches

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To my mind, it is not mere coincidence that we are developing a consensus regarding the dearth of missional imagination at the congregational level at the same time some are deploring the non-trinitarian character of Christian theology, life, and practice. I will investigate, therefore, the link between no Trinity and no mission.29

Given what we have sketched about the relation between the doctrine of the Trinity and the gospel, a demise in the belief in and confession of the triune God will inexorably lead to a partial or faulty understanding of the gospel. Misunderstanding this good news, which contains within itself missional momentum, will result in a corresponding decline in missional consciousness and practice. The doctrines of the Trinity and Christology are inextricably related, so neglecting the Trinity leads to neglecting the importance of Jesus. Robert Schreiter says, . . . a neglect of the Trinity opened the way for theocentric understandings that minimise the importance of Jesus in the Christian confession.30 Minimizing the importance of Jesus necessarily leads to a decrease in missional consciousness and activity since the Person of the Mediator, in whom the fullness of the godhead dwells bodily, is the content of the gospel. Schreiter says that neglecting the doctrine of the Trinity leads to neglecting orthodox Christology, but I would also add that neglecting orthodox Christology leads to a denial of the doctrine of the Trinity. These two doctrines, along with pneumatology, stand or fall together.31 Both the doctrines of Christ and the Trinity were eroded by the forces of the Enlightenment as epitomized in that quintessential Enlightenment religion Deism which denied both the homoousion and the doctrine of the Trinity. Churches that were signicantly affected by the Enlightenment paradigm were not, in general, those who were actively promulgating the gospel. On the contrary, Walls states that the modern missionary movement . . . is an autumnal child of the Evangelical Revival.32 Evangelicalism is well-known for its high Christology, historically orthodox theology, and its missionary character: three elements that are not unrelated. I have examined the claims that evangelism begins with describing the triune God, and the triune nature of God is irreducibly bound up with the substance of the gospel with
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Simpson, Gary M. (1998) No Trinity, No Mission: The Apostolic Difference of Revisioning the Trinity, Word and World, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, p. 265. Schreiter, Robert J. (1990) Jesus Christ and Mission: The Cruciality of Christology, Missiology: An International Review, Vol XVIII, No. 4, p. 434. Dogmatically, Christology exercises interpretive control over pneumatology, not vice versa. That is why in the patristic era the Sons identity had to be rst established before that of the Spirit, for understanding the latters identity requires a sound Christology. It is no accident that Athanasius applied the same arguments for the Sons divinity to the debate concerning the Spirits divinity. Walls, Andrew F. (1996) The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, p.79.

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the aid of modern trinitarian theology. In the course of this discussion I believe I have veried these claims and deepened these insights in ways Newbigin was unable to achieve due to his vocational commitments. The triune God is the gospel, and so necessarily evangelism begins with describing this God whose being is in communion. Thus I have demonstrated the importance of Newbigins insights for a trinitarian missiology that indicates the abiding signicance of Newbigins writings for continued theological reection and for continued missionary praxis, two activities that Newbigin refused to separate. Having described the inter-relation between the doctrine of the Trinity and the gospel, we now turn to how this doctrine is good news specically to Western culture. The Trinity good news to western culture According to Colin Gunton, the theological enterprise has two main foci the internal function of helping the church better understand the truth, and the external function, . . . the elucidation of the content of the faith for those outside the community of belief: the apologetic or missionary function.33 It is commonly believed that, while trinitarian doctrine might be of value for the former, it is an obstacle to the latter, . . . a troublesome piece of theological baggage which is best kept out of sight when trying to commend the faith to unbelievers.34 Like Newbigin, Guntons
belief is the reverse: that because the theology of the Trinity has so much to teach about the nature of our world and life within it, it is or could be the centre of Christianitys appeal to the unbeliever, as the good news of a God who enters into free relations of creation and redemption with his world.35

I think Gunton particularly has in mind the fruits of the doctrine of the Trinity for a holistic theological anthropology and the inter-connected nature of all created reality, so important in this era of heightened ecological awareness. Gunton was no doubt inuenced by his doctoral father Robert Jenson, who summarizes his major work on the doctrine of the Trinity by saying, The whole of this book can be read as a sustained argument for the proposition that consistently trinitarian faith is now the Wests only open alternative to nihilism.36 In the foreword, Jenson explains this claim a little further, suggesting, In the foreseeable future the life of the Western world will be very like that of the declining Mediterranean antiquity in which Christian trinitarian language was rst
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Gunton, op.cit., p.7. Newbigin, op.cit., p.35. Gunton, op.cit., p.7. Jenson, Robert W. (1982) The Triune Identity: God According to the Gospel, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, p.186. & 2010 World Council of Churches

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created presenting a different divine offering on every street corner.37 In this analogous context it is vitally important that in this increasingly pluralistic society we identify which god we mean. Hence Jenson asserts, Therefore the Western church must now either renew its trinitarian consciousness or experience increasing impotence and confusion.38 In agreement with Newbigin, some trinitarian scholars, including Jenson and Gunton, see a particularly missional role for the doctrine of the Trinity in late- or postmodern Western culture. Trinitarian anthropology How is the doctrine of the Trinity really the gospel, good news, to modernity? Trinitarian theology in recent years has offered the church rich resources for understanding what it means to be truly human, in contrast to the hyper-individualism that besets late- or postmodern culture. I shall rst outline the communal nature of Gods being, and then proceed to discuss a correspondingly relational theological anthropology. From here I shall give an account of Newbigins understanding of election as Gods missional strategy, and then I will conclude with practical implications for the church-in-mission. Over fty years ago Newbigin said, God is not an individual; God is personal but He is not a person. He is a Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God; one personal being in whom love is perfect and complete because love is both given and received.39 In The Open Secret Newbigin further describes the divine life, saying, Interpersonal relatedness belongs to the very being of God.40 With the benet of modern trinitarian theology we can develop Newbigins insight further, and say with John Zizioulas, The substance of God has no ontological content, no true being, apart from communion.41 In other words, there can be a sharing in being, because in God the one and many coinhere. In the doctrine of the Trinity this ontological sharing is expressed in the concept of person, which is understood relationally. According to Zizioulas, it is thanks to the Cappadocian fathers that theology possesses the concept of the person, as an ontological concept in the ultimate sense.42 Since the three divine Persons eternally exist in mutually loving perichoretic relations, the concept of person is inherently interpersonal.
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Jenson, op.cit., p.ix. Following Michael Polanyi, Newbigin often made parallels between that time period and our own. Newbigin, Lesslie (1983) The Other Side Of 1984: Questions for The Churches, Geneva, WCC, p.63. Jenson, op.cit. Newbigin, Lesslie (1956) Sin and Salvation, SCM Press, London, pp.1718. Newbigin, Lesslie (1978) The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, rev. 1995, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, p.70. Zizioulas, John D. (1985) Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church, DLT, London, p.17. Zizioulas, John D. (1995) The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Signicance of the Cappadocian Contribution. In: Christoph Schwo bel (ed.), Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, p.56, emphasis original.

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The person cannot exist in isolation. God is not alone; He is communion . . ..43 The relations between the divine Persons are ontologically constitutive, what T. F. Torrance calls onto-relations. Gunton explains,
The persons are what they are by virtue of what they give to and receive from each other. As such, they constitute the being of God, for there is no being of God underlying what the persons are to and from each other. Gods being is a being in relation, without remainder relational.44

God, the source and goal of all created being, is inherently relational; Gods being is in communion. This insight of trinitarian theology has profound implications for theological anthropology. Without requiring a Thomist notion of analogia entis and all that that entails, by afrming that God created humans in the imago Dei, one cannot understand human being without rst understanding the One in whose image humanity was created. Reecting on the imago Dei, Newbigin says, The image of God is not seen in an individual man, but in man-and-woman bound together in love. He explains, Thus the nature of man is that he was made in love, by love, and for love. Love is the source and end of his being. Therefore man cannot live alone.45 It is being-in-relatedness for which God made us and the world and which is the image of that being-in-relatedness which is the being of God himself .46 In his lifetime Newbigin contrasted this account of being human with what he characterized as Indian religion that sought to understand the true nature of humanity by looking inwards.47 Newbigin believed that classical thought was simply an extension of the thought-world of India, part of the one philosophical family.48 This school of thought portrays human being not as an inter-related family but as a spiritual monad, with this depiction featuring prominently in both Enlightenment (Descartes) and modern thought (John Hick).49 For Newbigin,
The deepest root of the contemporary malaise of Western culture is an individualism which denies the fundamental reality of our human nature as given by God namely that we grow into true humanity only in relationships of faithfulness and responsibility toward one another.50
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Zizioulas, Ibid. Gunton, op.cit., 143. Newbigin, Sin and Salvation, pp.1718. Newbigin, The Open Secret, p.70. Newbigin, Ibid., p.69. Newbigin, Lesslie (1995) New Birth into A Living Hope, unpublished, no page numbers. www.newbigin.net Newbigin, The Open Secret, p.102. Hick, John (1976) Death and Eternal Life, Harper & Row, New York. Newbigin, Lesslie (1989) The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, SPCK, London, p.231. & 2010 World Council of Churches

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Western society today is commonly described as being postmodern or late modern, which in part is a reaction against modernism with its conviction about progress and belief in an overarching metanarrative. It is also, however, a deepening of other features of modernism, particularly its focus on the individual.51 By contrast, Newbigins portrayal of human life is inter-personal, corporate, cosmic and teleological. God is love, and God created humanity in the divine image and likeness, so human personhood is understood in the light of divine personhood. Since God is a communion of Persons inseparably related, then it naturally follows that human being is inherently relational, for it is in our relatedness to others that our being human consists.52 For being human, relations with other humans are not superuous; rather, human being consists in these relations. Human being is a being-in-relation, and so these relations are onto-relations, that is they have ontological status.53 The origin of human life is the triune God whose being is communion, and the goal of this same human life, that to which all things are directed, is that shared communion of love and bliss which is the being of the Trinity.54 Simply put, the goal of human life is that which out of all the Old Testament divine imperatives Jesus highlights as the most important: loving God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and loving your neighbour as yourself.55 Newbigins trinitarian theology denes his theological anthropology, which in turn shapes his missiology and ecclesiology, both of which can be understood in relation to his doctrine of election. Election and the missionary church For Newbigin, election is central to a biblical ecclesiology and missiology. Explaining divine election Newbigin says, The instrument of His choosing [election] is precisely the apostolic mission of the Church. I chose you, says the incarnate Lord to His apostles, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit (John 15:16).56 In Gods election of Abraham, Israel, and the church, Newbigin understands that they are to be conduits of Gods blessing, not cul-de-sacs.57 Gods mission is the reconciliation of his wayward
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Brian Carrell conrms this, stating that one of the chief features of modernity is a focus on the individual which translates into individualism. Carrell, Brian (1998) Moving between the Times, The Deepsight Trust, Auckland, p.40. Gunton, The Promise . . ., p.113. This raises profound questions of the quality of ontological personhood of those whose lives have been shaped by abusive relationships, and those persons who are incapacitated from engaging in normal relations due to mental or physical illness or the effects of trauma. This important subject lies outside the scope of this paper. Newbigin, Lesslie (2003) Living Hope in a Changing World, Alpha International, London, p.15. Mark 12:3031. Newbigin, Lesslie (1953) The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church, SCM Press, London, p.102. Piper, John (1993) Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, Baker, Grand Rapids, p.106.

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creation and is therefore cosmic in scope, but the doctrine of election teaches that Thinking globally, God acted locally.58 God accomplishes his universal mission by means of particular election. For Newbigin, election is Gods choosing (election) of a people to be His own people, by whom He purposes to save the world.59 The challenge to any doctrine of election is holding together the particular with the universal, and in this, as in so many other areas, Newbigin shows the way forward. Those elected by God are indeed blessed, but they are elected as Bearers not exclusive beneciaries.60 David Bosch concurs, asserting that The purpose of election is service, and when this is withheld, election loses its meaning.61 Election provides the framework in which Newbigin understands ecclesiology. He says the Church is . . . the pars pro toto in the sense that it is sent in order that the rest of the world may be converted . . ..62 God has chosen the church to be bearers of Gods blessing in order that others might also be chosen through the church to receive Gods blessing for themselves, and then themselves be channels of divine blessing for others. Therefore election, and consequently the church, is decidedly missional, for it refers to Gods strategy of choosing some on behalf of all, choosing some for the sake of all. The Bible depicts divine wisdom appearing as foolishness to human understanding, and in many ways election is a prime example. The question arises, says Barth, indeed whether God and the world would not be far better served by a word of reconciliation (2 Cor. 519 ) spoken by Jesus Christ Himself and alone, without any co-operation on the part of Peter and Paul, let alone the rest of us.63 Why would God elect such indirect, inefcient and unreliable means as the church? Why did God not choose to bless all people directly rather than using the fallible, weak, erring and wayward church? By way of a preliminary answer, Gods strategy of election is in accord with Gods salvic and revelatory action in Christ. If God were to savingly reveal Godself to all people directly, then this entails an ahistorical account of God and divine revelation that is at odds with the biblical witness. But why does God savingly reveal himself through actions in history
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Howard Snyder quoted in Escobar, Samuel (2003) The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone, IVP Academic, Downers Grove, p.62. Newbigin, Lesslie (1954) Why Study the Old Testament?, National Christian Council Review, Vol. 74, p.75. Newbigin, The Open Secret, p.32. Bosch, David J. (1991) Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, p.18. See also Blauw, Johannes (1962) The Missionary Nature of the Church: A Survey of the Biblical Theology of Mission, Lutterworth Press, London, p.22. Newbigin, Lesslie (1969) The Finality of Christ, SCM Press, London, p.97, emphases original. Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3, p.607. & 2010 World Council of Churches

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rather than in an ahistorical manner? Why does God savingly act through the church rather than in more efcient and reliable ways that do not depend on human cooperation? To revert to a human analogy, why would a wise manager choose risky and unreliable means of accomplishing his or her purposes? The decisive clue to the answer lies in ascertaining exactly what these purposes are, and how the means are related to the ends. In addressing these questions one must begin with theological anthropology understood in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity. Humans are intrinsically relational beings made in the image of the God whose being is in communion. The intrinsic relatedness of the human person is in particular directed both to God, the creatures maker and Lord, and to fellow humans. Sin primarily consists in humans failing to completely love God and fellow humans and so has both Godward and humanward dimensions. Hence, the reconciliation that God intends for humanity requires repairing the breach not only between humans and God, but also between humans and their fellow humans. If God simply desired the salvation of each individual soul, then election appears to be arbitrary favouritism. However, since election is Christocentric and corporate, so the salvation that God intends for humanity is also Christocentric and corporate. God is seeking not a city populated with redeemed individuals, but a bride, a body, what Martin Luther King, Jr used to call the beloved community. Newbigin clearly perceived that election is Gods means for salvation because it is commensurate with Gods ends.
But a salvation whose very essence is that it is corporate and cosmic, the restoration of the broken harmony between all men and between man and God and man and nature, must be communicated in a different way. It must be communicated in and by the actual development of a community which embodies if only in foretaste the restored harmony of which it speaks. A gospel of reconciliation can only be communicated by a reconciled fellowship.64

Gods purpose is that humans should have concern for their fellow humans; therefore God chooses one to be sent to another, and so on, so that all may be knit together in one redeemed fellowship. Receiving Gods saving revelation, therefore, requires the humility to receive it from another person, Gods appointed messenger.65 This humility is not simply a means to an end but is itself part of Gods saving purpose of reconciling and uniting humanity in Christ, for one aspect of human unity is simply corporate humility under Christ. Thus the church becomes His reconciled and reconciling people.66 John
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Newbigin, The Household of God . . ., p.141. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, pp.8283. Newbigin, The Household of God, p.101. It is worthwhile noting that the most sustained discussion of election by Newbigin prior to 1978 is in his one volume devoted to expounding ecclesiology, The Household of God.

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Thompson rightly says, The church is, on the one hand, the provisional result of mission but, on the other hand, it is Gods agent of it.67 Going one step beyond Thompson, as the reconciled humanity, the church is also the goal of Gods mission. For Newbigin salvation depicts a making whole, a unifying of all creation whose source and pattern is the love within the life of the triune God, the summing up of all things in Christ.68 Christ reveals that God is like a mother hen seeking to gather her chicks under her wings, so there can therefore be no private salvation. Humans cannot experience salvation in its fullness until all for whom it is intended have it together.69 That is why God advances the missio Dei by way of electing the church, and this has profound implications for ecclesial praxis. Practical implications for the church-in-mission The church is called to be a sign, instrument, and foretaste of this beloved community here on earth. As the church continues to be dened not by the character of its wayward members70 but by the One who is its Head, so she can become what Newbigin famously called the hermeneutic of the gospel. This insight is a development from his earlier ecclesiology worked out in The Household of God. There Newbigin afrms that not only is the church the proclaimer of the gospel, a typically Protestant emphasis, but, drawing on Roman Catholic ecclesiology, he also afrms that the church . . . is also itself the bearer of Gods redeeming grace, itself a part of the story of redemption which is the burden of its message.71 Newbigin is not here idealizing the church for which he gave his lifes service he knew its empirical reality far too well for that. Indeed, one of his shorter writings is entitled The Church: A Bunch of Escaped Convicts. Explaining this title Newbigin says, That is why laughter is so big a part of church life when it is healthy . . ..72 The church is born of God, but this does not entail immunity to the sin that besets the rest of the human family. Therefore the church needs to be continuously reformed by undergoing the process of mortication and vivication, by which the Spirit increasingly conforms her to the likeness of Christ.73 In the aforementioned article Newbigin says:
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Thompson, John (1994) Modern Trinitarian Perspectives, Oxford University Press, New York, pp.7576. Ephesians 1:10. Newbigin, op.cit., p.140. Describing the church David Bosch says, Throughout most of the churchs history its empirical state has been deplorable. This was already true of Jesus rst circle of disciples and has not really changed since. Bosch, Transforming Mission, p.519. Newbigin, op.cit., p.94. Newbigin, Lesslie (1990) The Church: A Bunch of Escaped Convicts, Reform, June, p.6. The Reformed slogan ecclesia reformata semper reformanda est is helpful. & 2010 World Council of Churches

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The Church does not exist for the sake of its members; it exists to continue the mission of Jesus. But this does not make the Church a mere programme agency. The Church continues the mission of Jesus rst by being itself a foretaste of the kingdom, a community in which the freedom and joy of the kingdom are already tasted and celebrated in praising and adoring God. It can thus also be a sign of the kingdom, pointing beyond itself to Gods love and holiness.74

Newbigin suggests that the gospel becomes credible to the world when there is a congregation of people who believe it and live it.75 One characteristic of such a congregation is the prevalence of praise. Praise, something that is almost totally absent from modern Western society, is cultivated in the church by an attitude of reverence toward the One who is truly worthy of adoration. This praise is naturally expressed as thanksgiving in response to the gratuity of Gods love, which the apostle Paul calls grace. Thankful that she has been chosen by God, the church expresses this thanksgiving not merely by prayer and song but by the missionary praxis of bearing, proclaiming and demonstrating the good news of Jesus. The churchs worship services are both the place where the foretaste of Gods present and coming kingdom is experienced and where the church is sustained for her mission. She is built up by the preaching of the word that comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable, and is nourished by the eucharist which is bread for the missionary journey.76 As the rst fruits of the new humanity, the church experiences Gods love and forgiveness in Christ as she is caught up by the Spirit into the dawning reality that is the destiny of all creation. This is particularly true of the church engaged in worship. As the church joyfully and reverently beholds and worships her Lord, she is transformed from one degree of glory to another. In such acts of adoration the church catches a glimpse and even tastes of Gods new creation, and this lls her with hope.77 The church is the denitive community of hope, the hope that God will make all things new, because in Christ and by the Spirit cosmic renewal has begun. This is tremendously signicant for late- or post-modern Western society that has grown sceptical and apathetic with modernitys conviction about progress and that is characterized by what Newbigin calls the disappearance of hope.78 In the midst of this society the presence of large and small communities of hope is a profound witness. Furthermore, as the hope-lled church ex-

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Newbigin, op.cit. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p.227ff. Motte, Mary (1993) Issues in Protestant-Catholic Discussions of Theology of Mission. In: The Good News of the Kingdom: Mission Theology for the Third Millennium, Charles Van Engen, Dean S. Gilliland, Paul Pierson (eds) Orbis Books, Maryknoll, p.122. Cf. Romans 5:5. Newbigin, The Other Side of 1984, p.1.

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periences as a foretaste the peace of Gods new creation, she grows increasingly intolerant towards the sinful conditions of this present life, and so engages in action for justice and mercy.79 The church increasingly reects her nature as the bearer of the gospel as she is incorporated by the Spirit into the Sons lial obedience to the Father. As humanity remade in Christ, the church is the place where Gods intentions for humanity are realized, albeit partially, for she is . . . a provisional representation of the new humanity in the midst of the old.80 Thus, the churchs very existence is itself a sign, sacrament and witness of the coming kingdom of the God who is love. Supremely, God created humans as relational beings for loving relations with God and each other. Hence, Jesus said to his disciples, By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.81 This love is not understood in terms of Pelagian self-help, but rather as a Spiritenabled response to the gift of grace that is Jesus Christ. Genuine loving relations of honesty, trust, and joy should characterize the church. Since this is organizationally impractical for congregations of fty or ve hundred, this commitment to love others is naturally expressed by organizing the congregation into small groups, commonly called homegroups, fellowship groups, cellgroups or lifegroups. These small groups, of which Newbigin spoke positively, meet regularly for the members to share their stories and their lives, and for worship, prayer, Bible study, discipleship and mission.82 This will help to practically enable the church to be the loving community that is both her calling and her mission. Furthermore, J. Andrew Kirk believes that these small groups . . . are the key to the local church in mission, and he believes this is true regardless of geographical context, whether in rural Norfolk or rural China, in urban Birmingham or urban Johannesburg.83 Finally, the church is unique in that she alone lives in the knowledge of the reality that, in Christ, she is unconditionally loved by God. The church is enabled to extend this same grace of unconditional love and forgiveness to others, because, by Christs work in which she participates by faith, she has been judged and forgiven, and thus has been ontologi-

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Fiddes, Paul S. (1989) Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement, DLT, London, pp.3233. Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics IV: The Doctrine of Reconciliation Part Two. G. W. Bromiley & Ed. G. W. Bromiley & T. F. Torrance (trans.), T. & T. Clark International, London, 2004, p.642. John 13:35. Newbigin, Lesslie and Aagaard, AnnaMarie (1989) Mission in the 1990s: Two Views, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 13, No.3, July, p.102. Kirk, J. Andrew (1999) What Is Mission? Theological Explorations, DLT, London, p.218. & 2010 World Council of Churches

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cally reconstituted from above. This good news of the forgiveness of sins contains its own missionary impetus for the church to spread the gospel to others. As such the churchs boundaries are porous and ever-expanding as the Lord continues to build Gods church and as more people experience the forgiveness of their sins and so are caught up in the growing and inbreaking of Gods new creation.

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