L. Newbigin on How God Reveals Himself in the World

“I believe and testify that in the body of literature we call the Bible, continuously reinterpreted in the actual missionary experience of the church through the centuries and among the nations, there is a true rendering of the character and purpose of the Creator and Sustainer of all nature, and that it is this character and purpose that determines what is good.  Because I so believe and testify, I reject the division of human experience into a private world, where the “good” is a matter of personal taste, and a public world, where “facts” are regarded as operative apart from any reference to the good.  I believe that all created beings have a sacramental character in that they exist by the creative goodness for the redeeming purpose of God, that nothing is rightly understood otherwise and that , nevertheless, God in creating a world with a  measure of autonomy and contingency has provided for us a space within which we are given freedom to search, to experiment, and to find out for ourselves how things really are. I believe that the whole of experience in the natural world, in the world of public affairs, of politics, economics, and culture, and the world of inward spiritual experience is to be seen as one whole in the light of this disclosure of the character and will of its Creator.”

- Lesslie Newbigin (Foolishness to the Greeks, 88-89).