Quotes from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Lesslie Newbigin ·  264 pages

Rating: (1.9K votes)


“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“The gospel is not just the illustration (even the best illustration) of an idea. It is the story of actions by which the human situation is irreversibly changed.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“The minister’s leadership of the congregation in its mission to the world will be first and foremost in the area of his or her own discipleship, in that life of prayer and daily consecration which remains hidden from the world but which is the place where the essential battles are either won or lost.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“If we cannot speak with confidence about biblical authority, what ground have we for challenging the reigning plausibility structure?”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“And since the gospel does not come as a disembodied message, but as the message of a community which claims to live by it and which invites others to adhere to it, the community's life must be so ordered that it "makes sense" to those who are so invited.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society



“Does the use of the word “revelation” mean that reason has been left behind? Obviously not. Both the discovery by Kepler of a new pattern in the movement of the heavenly bodies and the disclosure to Moses of a personal calling become the starting point of a tradition of reasoning in which the significance of these disclosures is explored, developed, tested against new experience, and extended into further areas of thought.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“If the relativist claims that, since all reasoning is embodied in a particular social context, no claim to know the truth can be sustained, one has to ask for the basis on which this claim is made. It is, after all, a claim to know something about reality — namely that reality is unknowable.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“For Greek thought this was impossible since the essence of perfection is changelessness, and perfection cannot arise from the changes of human history. By contrast the Old Testament writers look forward to a glorious and terrible consummation of history. History has meaning in the sense that it has a goal.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“If I do not know the purpose for which human life was designed, I have no basis for saying that any kind of human life-style is good or bad.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“In contrast to the long period in which the plausibility structure of European society was shaped by the biblical tradition, and in which one could be a Christian without conscious decision because the existence of God was among the self-evident truths, we are now in a situation where we have to take personal responsibility for our beliefs.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society



“The sociology of knowledge has taught us to recognize the fact, which is obvious once it is stated, that in every human society there is what Peter Berger calls a “plausibility structure,” a structure of assumptions and practices which determine what beliefs are plausible and what are not. It is easier to see the working of the plausibility structure in a culture of a different time or place than it is to recognize it in one’s own.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“Opinions about how it ought to function can only be personal opinions, and any assertion that the purpose for which human life exists has in fact been revealed by the One whose purpose it is, is treated as unacceptable dogmatism.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“When coercion of any kind is used in the interests of the Christian message, the message itself is corrupted.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“What is true in the position of the social activists is that a Church which exists only for itself and its own enlargement is a witness against the gospel, that the Church exists not for itself and not for its members but as a sign and agent and foretaste of the kingdom of God, and that it is impossible to give faithful witness to the gospel while being indifferent to the situation of the hungry, the sick, the victims of human inhumanity. I”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“It has often been said that during the period of liberal Protestantism, when innumerable “lives of Jesus” were written, designed to help educated middle-class Europeans and Americans to respond to the gospel, the portraits that resulted were very obviously self-portraits. They told you more about the writer than about Jesus.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society



“It seems to me clear from the whole New Testament that the Christian life has room both for a godly confidence and for a godly fear. The contrast between these is not a contradiction.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“I have listened to young Indians who said, “Christianity taught me to believe in the possibility of a different world; Marxism showed me how to get it.” It does not take more than a generation to discover that Marxism necessarily betrays the hopes by which it lives.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“But one may acquire what MacIntyre calls a “second first language,” a language which is learned in the same way that a child learns to use the native tongue. A missionary or an anthropologist who really hopes to understand and enter into the adopted culture will not do so by trying to learn the language in the way a tourist uses a phrasebook and a dictionary.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“Against both of these temptations the New Testament warns us with its insistent call for a patient hope, a hope which is — on the one hand — confident and sure, an anchor of the soul, and on the other hand patient and enduring.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“It is impossible to write history without some vision of its meaning from which judgments of significance can be made. And if there is no meaning, why be a historian? The”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society



“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, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society



“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“Ministerial leadership is, first and finally, discipleship.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society


“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.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, quote from The Gospel in a Pluralist Society



About the author

Lesslie Newbigin
Born place: in Newcastle upon Tyne, The United Kingdom
Born date December 8, 1909
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“They would claim that she was either delusional or naïve to the point of a learning disability.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Just One Look


“Unerringly locating Riley's dick in his loose dress pants, Jack grabbed it forcefully and leaned close to Riley's ear, hearing the quick indrawn breath from his husband. A spark of lust flashed through his own body as he contemplated what to do next. Finally he decided. He was tired of all the pussy-footing around, and the darkness of the hallway invited sin. He moved his hand on Riley's hard dick, listening to the groan in Riley's throat. Riley, you know who this belongs to? This belongs to me." He gentled the touch, twisting his hand. "I saw you flirting and sharing with those girls out there, and I'm telling you now, I don't share. No one else gets to see this.

No one else gets to touch it. No one else gets to taste it. Just me. It's mine for one whole year, and I have the contract to prove it."

Riley tried to form a reply as Jack moved his hand again. It was good to see the other man speechless for once.

"Don't worry though, husband.I'm gonna treat it so good. I've decided that I'm gonna make it,and you, feel so damn good you'll never look at another woman again. You only have to say the word, and I'll show you what you signed up for." His voice fell into a heated whisper, the words low and drawled. Now do we need to get out of here? I'm thinking I might need to take you home and show you who you belong to." Riley's eyes widened, his dick fully hard, iron in Jack's clever hands. "I can make you scream. You wouldn't even know your name when I finished with you."

"Jack—please."

Riley's voice was broken.

Everything Jack wanted to hear.

"Please?"

Riley blinked, unconsciously pushing his groin into Jack's hold. Jack knew what followed next was certainly not a decision Riley made with his upstairs brain. "Fuck, Jack. Let's get the hell out of here.”
― R.J. Scott, quote from The Heart of Texas


“Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from Election


“When I left Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty [...] I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again. (p. 262)”
― Raymond Chandler, quote from The High Window


“...there was no spell to cure a broken heart that did not also destroy that heart's capacity for love forever.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from The Midnight Heir


Interesting books

At Swim, Two Boys
(6.7K)
At Swim, Two Boys
by Jamie O'Neill
Sullivan's Island
(14.8K)
Sullivan's Island
by Dorothea Benton Frank
Vagabond
(12.5K)
Vagabond
by Bernard Cornwell
White Wolf
(7.8K)
White Wolf
by David Gemmell
In Dubious Battle
(9.6K)
In Dubious Battle
by John Steinbeck
Kill the Dead
(16.9K)
Kill the Dead
by Richard Kadrey

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.