Newbigin - Chapter 1, Dogma and Doubt in a Pluralist Culture

Newbigin begins the chapter by talking about his experience as a cross-cultural missionary in India… reading the Upanishads and the Gospels in the Ramakrishna Mission, India is a religiously plural society with the freedom to follow whatever religious path one chooses. Jesus was viewed as one of many great teachers (Newbigin: 3).

Newbigin discusses the changes that secularism and pluralism has wrought in the role of religious faith. Religious truths came not to be regarded as facts in the same way as scientific facts. Only what can stand up under the critical examination of the modern scientific method can be taught as fact, as public truth: the rest is dogma. “Dogma” derives from dokien, “to seem.” It is the word used to designate that which seemed good to a competent authority (Newbigin: 5).

The New Testament repeatedly affirms a radical contradiction between the apostolic message and the wisdom of the world. To subject every alleged truth to the critical scrutiny of reason is, in our culture as in the Greek world of Paul’s day, the mark of a mature person (Newbigin: 6).

The principle of pluralism is not universally accepted in our culture. There is a sharp distinction between a world we call “values” and a world of what we call “facts.” In the former world we are pluralists; values are a matter of personal choice. As long as the church is content to offer its beliefs modestly as simply one of the many brands available in the ideological supermarket, no offense is taken. But the affirmation that the truth revealed in the gospel ought to govern public life is offensive (Newbigin: 7).

If we are to meet secular criticism, if we are to be faithful bearers of the message entrusted to us, we need to pay attention to four points:

One: Part of the reason for the rejection of dogma is that it has been entangled with coercion, with political power, and with the denial of freedom of thought and conscience. When coercion of any kind is used in the interests of the Christian message, the message itself is corrupted.

Two: We do not defend the Christian message by domesticating it within the reigning plausibility structure. That was the great mistake of the eighteenth-century defenses of the reasonableness of Christianity (Newbigin: 10). That the crucified Jesus was raised from death to be first fruits of a new creation is—in the proper sense—dogma (Newbigin: 12).

Three: It is essential that we recognize that to be witnesses, does not mean to be possessors of all truth. It means to be placed on a path by following which we are led toward truth. There is indeed a proper place for agnosticism in the Christian life. There is a true sense in which we are—with others—seekers after the truth. The apophatic tradition in theology has always insisted on the fact that no human image can grasp the full reality of God (Newbigin: 12).

Four: The dogma, the thing given for our acceptance in faith is not a set of timeless propositions: it is a story. Moreover it is a story that is not yet finished, a story in which we are still awaiting the end when all becomes clear. The 18th century apologists wee wide of the mark at this point: The Christian religion which they sought to defend was a system of timeless metaphysical truths about God, nature and man. Any valid defense of the Christian faith, I believe, must take a quite different route. It is to be primarily understood as an interpretation of the story—the human story set within the story of nature. Every understanding of the human story must rest on a faith commitment—for we do not yet see the end of the story (Newbigin: 13).