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21 " during the latter part of the seventeenth and through the eighteenth centuries, while ordinary churchgoers continued to live in the world of the Bible, intellectuals were more and more controlled by the humanist tradition, so that even those who sought to defend the Christian faith did so on the basis that it was “reasonable,” that is to say, that it did not contradict the fundamental humanist assumption. "
― Lesslie Newbigin , The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
22 " The curiosity which is always seeking to discover more seems to be one of the necessary conditions of life. But seeking is only serious if the seeker is following some clue, has some intuition of what it is that he seeks, and is willing to commit himself or herself to following that clue, that intuition. Merely wandering around in a clueless twilight is not seeking. The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about “what is true for me” is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death. "
23 " Where there is a believing community whose life is centered in the biblical story through its worshipping, teaching, and sacramental and apostolic life, there will certainly be differences of opinion on specific issues, certainly mistakes, certainly false starts. But it is part of my faith in the authenticity of the story itself that this community will not be finally betrayed. "
24 " To maintain, in this new situation, the old missionary attitude is not merely inexcusable but positively dangerous. In a world threatened with nuclear war, a world facing a global ecological crisis, a world more and more closely bound together in its cultural and economic life, the paramount need is for unity, and an aggressive claim on the part of one of the world’s religions to have the truth for all can only be regarded as treason against the human race. "
25 " the business of the missionary, and the business of the Christian Church in any situation, is to challenge the plausibility structure in the light of God’s revelation of the real meaning of history. "
26 " Natural theology, in other words, is in no way a step on the way toward the theology which takes God's self-revelation as its starting point. It is more likely, in fact, to lead in the opposite direction. "
27 " In a consumer society where the freedom of every citizen to express his or her personal preference is taken as fundamental to human happiness-whether this personal preference is in respect of washing powder or sexual behavior-it will be natural to conclude that adherence to the Christian tradition is also simply an expression of personal preference. "
28 " The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about “what is true for me” is an evasion of the serious business of living. "
29 " The scientist starts with the conviction that the world is rational and that events at different times and places in the natural world can be related to one another in a coherent way. Without this conviction, which is a matter of faith, he could not begin his work. But the goal of his work is to prove the truth of the faith from which he began, to prove it in ever new situations. "
30 " The difference is not between the use of reason and its abandonment; it is the difference between two ways of understanding the world, one in which the self is sovereign and the other in which I understand myself only in a relation of mutuality with other selves. "
31 " Ministerial leadership is, first and finally, discipleship. "
32 " discussions about the authority of the gospel the word “reason” is often used as though it were an independent source of information to be set alongside tradition or revelation. But clearly this is a confusion of categories. Reason does not operate in a vacuum. The power of a human mind to think rationally is only developed in a tradition which itself depends on the experience of previous generations. This is obviously true of the vast edifice of modern science sustained by the scientific community. The definition of what is reasonable and what is not will be conditioned by the tradition within which the matter is being discussed. Within an intellectual tradition dominated by the methods of natural science it will appear unreasonable to explain things in terms of personal will and purpose. But if God exists and he is capable of revealing his purpose to human beings, then the human reason will be summoned to understand and respond to this revelation and to relate it to all other experience. It will necessarily do this within a tradition which determines whether or not any belief is plausible — in this case the tradition of a community which cherishes and lives by the story of God’s saving acts. "
33 " Perhaps my title, “The Logic of Mission,” may seem an odd one, but I am concerned to explore the question how the mission of the Church is rooted in the gospel itself. There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command. It has been customary to speak of “the missionary mandate.” This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point. It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel. "
34 " Nietzsche, he says, was the first to realize that the operation of the modern critical principle would make it impossible any more to speak of right and wrong. The factual, ontological basis for using such language had been removed. There could only be personal choice. And what could guide that choice except the will? We choose what we want. So we are left with the will to power. "
35 " A society which believes in a worthwhile future saves in the present so as to invest in the future. Contemporary Western society spends in the present and piles up debts for the future, ravages the environment, and leaves its grandchildren to cope with the results as best they can. One searches contemporary European literature in vain for evidence of hope for the future; rather, in Jürgen Moltmann’s words, it is characterized by cold despair, loss of vision, resignation, and cynicism. My "
36 " The light cast by the first rays of the morning sun shining on the face of a company of travelers will be evidence that a new day is coming. The travelers are not the source of that witness but only the locus of it. To see for oneself that it is true, that a new day is really coming, one must turn around, face the opposite way, be converted. And then one’s own face will share the same brightness and become part of the evidence. This "
37 " If we turn to the Gospels we are bound to note the indissoluble nexus between deeds and words. A very large part of the first three Gospels is occupied with the acts of Jesus — acts of healing, of exorcism, of feeding the hungry. And while in the Fourth Gospel there is a larger proportion of teaching, yet most of this teaching is explanatory of something Jesus has done: the healing of a paralytic, the feeding of a multitude, the giving of sight to a blind man, and the raising of a man from death. "
38 " Clearly, therefore, the preaching is an explanation of the healings. On the one hand, the healings — marvelous as they are — do not explain themselves. They could be misinterpreted — as in fact they were by Jesus’ enemies, who attributed his healing works to Satanic power. The works by themselves did not communicate the new fact. That had to be stated in plain words: “The kingdom of God has drawn near. "
39 " There is surely no part of Christian teaching which has been the subject of so much ridicule and indignant rejection as the doctrine of election. "