Review: The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of Church

The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of Church by Lesslie Newbigin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I greatly enjoyed this series of lectures by Newbigin later turned into a book (and one of his first) on the nature of the church. His primary foci are the unity of the church and its missionary nature. Newbigin makes strong arguments for the necessity of the unity of Christians as being an outgrowth of the Church's missionary task (a la Jn. 17). He takes a very interesting approach to the various emphases in differing Christian traditions, breaking things down into the Catholic (in which likely the Orthodox approach would also be implied), the classic Protestant, and the Pentecostal categories as emphasizing authoritative community, doctrinal teaching, and spiritual encounter respectively. While I cannot go as far with the ecumenical argument as Newbigin seems comfortable with going (one should not forget that he wrote these lectures in the 1950's), there is much that is positive to consider in his words. His argument that neglecting any one element (community, doctrine or Spirit) is devastating to the church and thus there is need to evaluate our own tradition (whatever it may be) in light of the others is on point.

At the root of this call to unity is the missionary nature of the Church. He quotes Brunner saying "The Church lives by mission as fire lives by burning." While Newbigin does give the caveat that the church does not exist only for mission, he sharply and rightly critiques the western church that too often (especially at that time) sees mission as merely a ministry department rather than vital to the nature of the church in the world. His thinking in this regard has been foundational for much of the more recent (and fortunate) turn towards the nature of the church as a missional community. While this was not my favorite book by Newbigin (that place would go to either "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" or "The Open Secret"—both better choices for an intro to Newbigin than this work), it is certainly packed full of much needed insights.

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