Foolishness to the Greeks-The Gospel and Western Culture

For those of you who know me best, if I were to say that “I love the Cross,” it would make complete sense to you. But for those who don’t know me, that statement might make me look like I’d gone off the deep end somewhere. In a culture that prizes money, sex and power above all else, prizing the Cross is—well foolishness. That’s why I like what Paul wrote in his first letter to the church in Corinth. Here’s what he wrote:

1 Corinthians 1:18-15

¹⁸ For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” ²⁰ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

            From the very beginning, a gospel that centers on a crucified savior has been dismissed by countless many at best as unacceptable and at worst as foolish—and our culture is no different. However, insisting that a crucified savior is unacceptable presumes the existence or possibility of a savior. Our Western culture, in most cases, won’t even concede the possibility of a savior at all let alone a crucified savior. Therefore, many in our Western culture see the “idea” of a crucified savior as foolishness of the simple-minded.

In his book, Foolishness to the Greeks—The Gospel in Western Culture, author Lesslie Newbigin endeavors to analyze the relationship between the gospel and the culture. Newbigin looks at the “Post-Enlightenment” culture as a missionary problem and considers what would be involved in a genuine missionary encounter between the gospel and “modern” Western culture.  He attempts to understand the reasons why the Western church is shrinking and the gospel is falling on deaf ears.

Newbigin systematically divides his work into five logical segments. First, he attempts to define Western culture in terms of its modern scientific world-view and its corresponding relation to the gospel. Next, Newbigin describes how the gospel can be part of the culture yet still make claims against the culture. He then moves to the field of science where he looks at science through the lens of the gospel and the gospel through the lens of science to try and understand why Western culture has deemed science as public fact while relegating religion to private opinion. Newbigin then addresses the behavioral aspects mandated by the gospel and the relationship of those beliefs to the areas of public and political life. Finally, Newbigin completes his analysis with some very practical insights into the Church’s role in a genuine missionary encounter with the culture. An expanded analysis of the damaging effects of denominationalism would have been interesting but the suggestion that believers within the Western culture should make a concerted effort to view their faith through the eyes of believers from other (non-Western) cultures was very insightful. Overall, Newbigin does a very good job compartmentalizing the underlying reasons why the gospel message is considered an irrational belief by Western culture and how the Church can be most effective in getting its message out.

One of Newbigin’s most elementary yet most profound assertions is that, “The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any accretions is an illusion…There can never be a culture-free gospel…Yet the gospel, which is from beginning to the end embodied in culturally conditioned forms, calls into question all cultures, including the one in which it was embodied.” (p. 4) This simple observation is perhaps the key foundation on which Newbigin is able to build his entire argument. Newbigin identifies an excellent example of this from the Gospel of John. John communicates in a language readily understood by his audience being influenced by Gnostic teachings. At the same time, however, his language calls into question the teachings of Gnosticism. The “logos”, as used by John, is no longer simply an idea in the mind of someone with special knowledge but is found in the person of Jesus Christ. This familiar language mixed with the gospel truth then causes the hearer to look at his own culture and the gospel message from a new perspective. Similarly, Western culture must hear the gospel in its own language and in a voice that will call into question the culture on its own terms.

With Newton’s scientific discoveries, the belief that the world was governed by a purpose gave way to the belief that the world was instead governed by natural laws of cause and effect. Once purpose was removed, it was determined that all things could be understood through reason. As a result, the Enlightenment also became known as the “age of reason.” One characteristic of the age of reason is that each person has the right to exercise reason to determine reality. However, eliminating teleology in favor of trying to explain everything without reference to purpose naturally eliminates any sense of values except the ideology of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet purpose is an obvious element in all people’s lives. Because people have an ultimate purpose, there is therefore a very clear disconnect within Western culture. This disconnect or dichotomy, to use Newbigin’s terminology, manifests itself in a world that is divided between public and private. Facts, derived by scientific reason, are part of the public world while values, derived by eternal purpose, are relegated to the private world. However, the central idea of the Bible necessarily insists on a divine purpose that encompasses all creation without distinction to public or private life.  Newbigin points out that the, “Dichotomy between the private and the public world is fundamental to Western culture, and that if there is to be an effective missionary encounter of the gospel with this culture, the understanding of this dichotomy is a prime requirement.” (p. 14) Therefore, to fulfill the requirement of communicating the gospel in a language understood by Western culture, particularly a language that is largely shaped by a scientific world-view, the gospel’s “Claim to truth has to be tested in the public world of facts where scientific disciplines operate…Here pluralism is not accepted.” (pp. 17-18) Newbigin states the matter clearly when he says, “We cannot settle for a peaceful coexistence between science and religion on the basis of an allocation of their spheres of influence to the public and private sectors respectively. We cannot forever live our lives in two different worlds. We cannot forever postpone this question: What is the real truth about the world?” (p. 79) However, the gospel is not only about science, ideas and beliefs but how people should behave as well.

“Separation of church and state.” A mantra we have all come to recognize for any and every situation that may in some way hint at the possibility that the public life of politics and the private life of religion may somehow converge. The question that therefore begs to be asked is: Should the Church be involved in the public life of politics? The debate on the matter is long standing with proponents on both sides of the issue. However, the question suggests that the separation between public and private should be preserved. This view is inconsistent at least with Old Testament models of society. “There is no separation of inward and spiritual from the outward, visible and social.” (p. 97) Instead, the Old Testament model of society was based on its inherent relatedness. The Bible, very simply, is a grand story of the relationship between the Creator of the universe and His creation. Individuals were created for relationship with God and one another. It is at this point that Newbigin points out one of the inherent dangers of capitalism when he refers to Novak in saying, “The driving power of capitalism…is the desire of the individual to better his material condition. It is the unleashing of this power from restraints imposed by traditional Christian morality…The name the New Testament gives to the force in question is covetousness. The capitalist system is powered by the unremitting stimulation of covetousness. The apostolic advice that a person should be content with food and clothing (1 Tim. 6:8) is not compatible with the development of our kind of society.” (p. 113) The notion that the freedoms enjoyed by a capitalist society produce an environment where people are better suited to serve one another appears to be true in principal but has proven to be a fallacy in practice. One need only look around our own modern society to see that healthy human relatedness is not society’s primary objective. Based on these failings of capitalism, it seems natural to think that the answer lies in a socialist society. However, socialists, as Newbigin points out, “Tend to judge capitalism by actual practice but socialism by an ideal that has never yet been [successfully] put into practice anywhere.” (p. 114) The real issue is not what kind of society is most receptive to the gospel message. Genuine missionary encounters have been and continue to be successful in all types of societal structures. What is most important for the Church to remember is that it cannot make a distinction between a private life and a public life to the exclusion of being a Christian witness in the public square. Newbigin is absolutely correct when he says, “Whatever the institutional relationship between the Church and the State—and there are many possible relationships, not one of which is necessarily the right one for all times and places—the Church can never cease to remind governments that they are under the rule of Christ and that he alone is the judge of all they do.” (p. 115) How then should the Church go about its business in relation to the culture?

First of all, the Church must finally concede that there will never be a return to Christendom. The Church must therefore conduct its business within a truly secular society. However, it cannot allow itself to be relegated only to the private sector of personal religious experiences. Instead it must be a courageous voice in the public square questioning accepted truths and ideologies of its culture. It should likewise seek to shape public life to conform to the Christian faith as a harbinger of the Kingdom to come. Newbigin points out some very specific examples of how the Church can recover its uniqueness from the culture as well as its responsibility therefore. Initially, there must be a recovery of sound eschatology where seeking the Kingdom is more than social progress. Western culture generally and American culture in particular clearly hold to the view that a capitalistic society, where a majority of people are represented in some sort of democratic process, produces the greatest social advances. While that is clearly true in some cases, it has also produced some of the greatest class disparities of history.  Although wealth and affluence are not inherently evil in and of themselves, the Church must be constantly vigilant of the fact that there have been, are currently, and will continue to be, sinful men and women in positions of power and influence who exercise that power and influence not in a vacuum but based on certain beliefs and ideals that are very often self-serving. Newbigin states that, “No state can be completely secular in the sense that those who exercise power have no beliefs about what is true and no commitments to what they believe to be right.” (p. 132) Yet the Church, having been given the truth of the gospel, must always seek to expose these beliefs and commitments to the “Light of the gospel.” (p. 132) This is rarely a popular position for the Church to be in. However, the Church, when it is true to its biblical calling is rarely popular to the culture of any time or place. Nevertheless, Newbigin says it well when he says, “A preaching of the gospel that calls men and women to accept Jesus as Savior but does not make it clear that discipleship means commitment to a vision of society radically different from that which controls our public life today must be condemned as false.” (p. 132) How then does one perceive the pitfalls of inappropriate beliefs and ideologies of a culture from within a culture?

At times, Western culture can be terribly arrogant in thinking that its beliefs and ideologies are the only true path for social advances. However, as difficult as it may be to admit for someone who has lived their whole life within the confines of Western culture, the gospel has seen its greatest advances in non-Western cultures. Evangelicals must seriously consider this fact when assessing missionary efforts within Western culture. There must be a reason why the gospel message in other cultures seems to produce a great harvest while, in many cases, falls on deaf ears within Western culture. Newbigin is therefore correct in his instruction that evangelicals must be willing to consider beliefs and ideals of Western culture as seen through the eyes and as experienced by Christians from non-Western cultures. It is often the observation of Christians from non-Western cultures that the gospel message in Western culture has become far too synchronized with the surrounding culture to be an effective witness to the culture. Whereas one of the predominant elements of the Christian witness in non-Western cultures is its willingness to be seen as counter-cultural. In this respect, if the evangelical Church hopes to have a genuine missionary encounter within Western culture, it must first and foremost be willing to proclaim a radical message that cannot be proven as true in terms of the accepted precepts of Western culture. That encounter will be radical, revolutionary and controversial. The Church must be prepared to be mocked, jeered and hated because, after all, the message of the cross has always been foolishness to those who are perishing.