The Christian Apologist

Abstract

Abstract For the last quarter century of his life, from his return to Britain in 19 74 until his death in 1998, Lesslie Newbigin devoted himself principally to the diagnosis and treatment of the crisis of the Christian faith in the modern world, particularly the Western world. He sought by the Gospel to remedy both the Church and the culture. It is as an apologist to the doubting and to the unbelieving that he now became chiefly known. The great issue, then. was that of “modernity.” On the one hand, Newbigin was happy to acknowledge the dazzling successes of the modern West in the natural sciences and in technology, and to approve in many respects the political gains made in the realms of personal freedom, human dignity, social justice, and material welfare. Indeed, he claimed a historically Christian basis for some of the achievements of modernity: the notion of a created universe that was both regular and yet not itself divine provided both the possibility and the permission for scientific investigation and technical use of the material world; the notion of humankind as persons created by a loving God for freedom and for mutual care provided a grounding for individual liberties and communal responsibilities.