Newbigin, The Open Secret

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Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995.

Referenced in: Theology of Mission, Proposals and Formulations – Missio Dei

LifeandLeadership.com Summary

The story of the missional movement actually began with Lesslie Newbigin. Upon returning to his native England in 1974 after a missionary tour in India, Newbigin was struck by how the once mission-sending Western churches in Europe and the United States now needed re-missionizing themselves. He began to write on this, and his books inspired the beginning of what is now the Gospel and Our Culture Network.

This is one of four books that lay out the theology of Lesslie Newbigin, each of which is referenced in LifeandLeadership.com resource guide, Theology of Mission, Proposals and Formulations – Missio Dei.

Still today, The Open Secret is universally recommended as an excellent treatment of missional theology. Much of the language used among missionals owes its origin to this text. That said, this is probably not the best place to start for churches that are new to the missional conversation. Its chief value may be as a resource for church leaders who distill its essential insights into a series of studies/discussions to benefit their church or group. I will focus on a few features of that are commonly referred to in the current missional conversations.

In The Open Secret, Newbigin articulates an essential thesis that Triune God is involved in a mission, and sends the Spirit-empowered church to participate fully in that mission. The mission is repeatedly expressed in these words: “The church lives in the midst of history as a sign, instrument, and foretaste of the reign of God.” (110, 113, 150) This reign, or kingdom, of God is the “secret” that is now “open” as God reveals himself through the church he has sent into the world. This highlights three concepts:

“Sign” that God’s redemptive reign (kingdom) is present in history
“Foretaste” of the eschatological fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan that has already begun
“Instrument” under the leadership of the Spirit to bring that redemptive reign to bear on every dimension of life

An important overriding theme in the Open Secret is how God has always interfaced directly with culture: “The biblical story is not a separate story: it is part of the unbroken fabric of world history.” (88) The church, therefore, must manifest a robust public engagement of the idols of the cultures where it finds itself.

The community that confesses that Jesus is Lord has been, from the beginning, a movement launched into the public life of mankind. The Greco-Roman world in which the New Testament was written was full of societies offering to those who wished to join a way of personal salvation through religious teaching and practice. There were several commonly used Greek words for such societies. At no time did the church use any of these names for itself. It was not, and could not be, a society offering personal salvation for those who cared to avail themselves of its teaching and practice. It was from the beginning a movement claiming the allegiance of all peoples, and it used for itself with almost total consistency the name “ecclesia” — the assembly of all citizens called to deal with the public affairs of the city. The distinctive thing about this assembly was that it was called by a more august authority than the town clerk: it was the “ecclesia theou,” the assembly called by God, and therefore requiring the attendance of all. The church could have escaped persecution by the Roman Empire if it had been content to be treated as a cultus privatus—one of the many forms of personal religion. But it was not. Its affirmation that “Jesus is Lord” implied a public, universal claim that was bound eventually to clash with the cultus publicus of the empire. The Christian mission is thus to act out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all. (16-17)

This engagement should occur right where Christians find themselves. He says the Western church has “totally failed to recognize that the most urgent contemporary mission field is to be found in their own traditional heartlands, and that the most aggressive paganism with which they have to engage is the ideology that now controls the developed world.” (10)

On the other hand, it must give attention to how it expresses itself in each culture.

It is not enough for the church to go on repeating in different cultural situations the same words and phrases. New ways have to be found of stating the essential Trinitarian faith, and for this the church in each new cultural situation has to go back to the original biblical sources of this faith in order to lay hold on it afresh in contemporary terms. (27)

Newbigin underscores three specific ways that Christians bear witness in their environments, each of them tied to a Trinitarian understanding:

Proclaiming the Kingdom of the Father: Mission as Faith in Action – This next section emphasizes the role of the Father in the mission. He says.

“The bible is unique among the sacred books of the world’s religions in that it is in structure a history of the cosmos. It claims to show us the shape, the structure, the origin, and the goal not merely of human history, but of cosmic history.” (31)

Salvation must therefore be seen not in terms of just the individual, but the entire universe. In this respect, the Father is aiming the entire world toward a specific end:

“The Bible, then, is covered with God’s purpose of blessing for all the nations. It is concerned with the completion of God’s purpose in the creation of the world and of man within the world. It is not, to put it crudely, concerned with offering a way of escape for the redeemed soul out of history, but with the action of God to bring history to its true end.” (34)

He summarizes that mission as faith in action

“is acting out by proclamation and by endurance, through all the events of history, of the faith that the kingdom of God had drawn near. It is the acting out of the central prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to use: ‘Father hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’” (39)
Sharing the Life of the Son: Mission as Love in Action – This section emphasizes how the community of disciples now continues the presence of Jesus after his death. We are empowered for the impossibility of this task by the Holy Spirit. “His mission is to be their mission. And so also his Spirit is to be theirs…. the disciples are now taken up into that saving mission for which Jesus was anointed and sent it the power of the Spirit.” (48) He continues:

“The church represents the presence of the reign of God in the life of the world, not in the triumphalist sense (as the “successful” cause) and not in the moralistic sense (as the righteous cause), but in the sense that it is the place where the mystery of the kingdom present it the dying and rising of Jesus is made present here and now so that all people, righteous and unrighteous, are enabled to take and share the love of God before whom all are unrighteous and all are accepted as righteous. It is the place where the glory of God actually abides among us so that the love of God is available to sin-burdened men and women. It is the place where the power of God is manifested in a community of sinners. It is the place where the promise of Jesus is fulfilled: ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.’ It is the place where the reign of god is present as love shared among the unlovely.” (54)
Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Mission as Hope in Action – The section emphasizes how the church is actually engaged in the work of the Spirit. He says,

“mission is not just something that the church does; it is something that is done by the Spirit, who is himself the witness, who changes both the world and the church, who always goes before the church in its missionary journey.” (56)

This is the only hope the church has of actually being the presence of the reign of God. The Spirit is the empowering presence of God in the ministry of the church, upon which the church is dependent: Newbigin writes,

“My own experience as a missionary has been that the significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decisions about the mobilizing and allocating of ‘resources.’” (64)

Another strong influence of Newbigin is on witnessing to people of other religions, Newbigin made interesting observations that still shape missional philosophy today on the posture of being a “witness” and not a “judge.” He says, we often “assume that our position as Christians entitles us to know and declare what is God’s final judgment.” (173) He finds this troublesome: “I find it astonishing that a theologian should think he has the authority to inform us in advance who is going to be ‘saved’ on the last day.” (173) He also emphasizes the importance of this:

“This is not a small matter. It determines the way in which we approach the man of another faith. It is almost impossible for me to enter into simple, honest, open, and friendly communication with another person as long as I have at the back of my mind the feeling that I am one of the saved and he is one of the lost.” (173)

This does not mean Newbigin is weak on the exclusive claim of the Lordship of Christ. He reaffirms this authority, but reminds us that we should

“meet the person simply as a witness, as one who has been laid hold of by Another and placed in a position where I can only point to Jesus as the one who can make sense of the whole human situation that my partner and I share as fellow human begins. This is the basis of our meeting.” (174).

From the Publisher

In the many years since this prophetic volume was first published, Newbigin’s clarion call to reemphasize the missionary character of the church has grown more necessary than ever before. Newbigin argues clearly and convincingly that mission is the heart of the church, and a church without missions is no church at all. This edition includes a helpful index and a new preface by the author.

About the Author

James Edward Lesslie Newbigin (December 8, 1909 – January 30, 1998) was a Church of Scotland missionary serving in the former Madras State (now Tamil Nadu), India, who became a Christian theologian and bishop involved in missiology, ecumenism, and the Gospel and Our Culture Movement.

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