Lesslie Newbigin Reading Room

Note: this content was originally curated by Donald Goertz and is no longer being maintained. Some links may not work. Content posted for archival purposes only.

This page is designed to help make writings on and by Lesslie Newbigin available to those without easy access to a theological library. These texts complement the large selection of on-line Newbigin texts at Newbigin.Net materials. Most of the links below connect you to scanned, published books and articles made available by Google Books (often 75% of content). Importantly, Google Books allows you to search within a volume and also across volumes (rather than across the entire WWW). The Google Book Project also makes hard to find and expensive monographs readily accessible to researchers.

Primary Sources

Books by Newbigin

• The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel. Eerdmans, 1982.
• Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture. Eerdmans, 1986.
• The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989.
• Truth to tell the Gospel as public truth: The Gospel as Public Truth. Eerdmans, 1991.
• Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship. Eerdmans, 1995.
• The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Rev'd ed. Eerdmans, 1995.
• Truth and Authority in Modernity. Gracewing, 1996.
• Signs Amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History. Geoffrey Wainwright, ed. Eerdmans, 2003.
• Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Theologian: A Reader. Paul Weston, ed. Eerdmans, 2006 (also copy).
• Discovering Truth in a Changing World. Alpha International, 2003.
• Living Hope in a Changing World. Alpha International, 2003.

Articles Written by Newbigin

See large selection of on-line texts at Newbigin.Net.

• Reaction to the Toronto Statement [1951], in: The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. M. Kinnamon and B.E. Cope, eds. Eerdmans, 1997. P. 470.
• The Missionary Dimension of the Ecumenical Movement [1961] in: The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. M. Kinnamon and B.E. Cope, eds. Eerdmans, 1997. Pp. 343-346.
• What is "a Local Church Truly United"?, in: The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices. M. Kinnamon and B.E. Cope, eds. Eerdmans, 1997. Pp. 114-122.
• Teaching Religion in a Secular Pluralistic Society, in: New Directions in Religious Education. John Hull, ed. Routledge, 1982. Pp. 97-108.
• Truth and Authority in Modernity, in: Faith and Modernity. P. Sampson, C. Sugden, V. Samuel, eds. OCMS, 1995. Pp. 60-88 (see also copy).
• Evangelism in the Context of Secularization, in: The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church, P.W. Chilcote, L.C. Warner, eds. Eerdmans, 2008. Ch. 4, pp. 46-55.
• Foolishness to the Greeks [excerpt], in: The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church, P.W. Chilcote, L.C. Warner, eds. Eerdmans, 2008. Ch. 24, pp. 345-351.
• The Trinity as a Public Truth, in: The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age: Theological Essays on Culture and Religion. K.J. Vanhoozer, ed. Eerdmans, 1997. Pp. 1-8.
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Secondary Sources

Books on Newbigin

• Goheen, Michael. "As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You": J. E. Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Utrecht, 2000. Pp. 496
• Hunsberger, George. Bearing the Witness of the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology of Cultural Plurality. Eerdmans, 1998.
• Wainwright, Geoffrey. Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life. Oxford, 2000.

Articles, Chapters on Newbigin

See selection of papers (mixed in with primary documents) on Newbigin's thought at Newbigin.Net).

• Fitz-Gibbon, Andrew. A Re-Telling of Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy, in: In the World, But Not of the World: Christian Social Thinking at the End of the Twentieth Century. Lexington, 2000. Pp. 97-126.
• Hunsberger, George. The Newbigin Gauntlet: Developing a Domestic Missiology for North America, in: The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America. G.R. Hunsberger and C. Van Gelder, eds. Eerdmans, 1996. Pp. 3-25.
• Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Lesslie Newbigin: The Gospel as Public Truth, in: An Introduction to the Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Perspectives. InterVarsity, 2003. Ch. 27, pp. 245-255.
• Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Lesslie Newbigin: Missionary Ecclesiology, in: An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives. Intervarsity, 2002. Pp. 151-159.
• Hoedemaker, L.A. A Conversation with Lesslie Newbigin, in: Secularization and Mission: A Theological Essay. Gracewing, 1998. Ch. 5, 42-52.
• Theological Journals Search (theological journals for which full text is freely available on the Internet -- links to many very good articles on Newbigin).
• See Tyndale's eJournal Database --approx. 100 full-text articles on Newbigin-- for Tyndale students and faculty only. (Choose EBSCOhost database; log in; choose "EBSCOhost" and then "All" databases; over 170 full-text theological journals available to you from home; for a few additional journals, go back to Tyndale Journal Database and choose the ProQuest Religion or JSTOR databases); see list of Tyndale's academic ejournals with full-text articles for download.
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PhD Theses on Newbigin

Foust, Thomas F.  Christology, Restoration, Unity: An Exploration of the Missiological Appraoch to Modern Western Culture According to Lesslie Newbigin and Dean E. Walker . Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 2002 (free download; registration with British Library required; EThOS persistent ID: uk.bl.ethos.288423).

Weston, Paul. Mission and Cultural Change: A Critical Engagement with the Writings of Lesslie Newbigin. Ph.D. thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2002 (free download; registration with British Library required; EThOS persistent ID: uk.bl.ethos.270225).

Kandiah, Krish. Towards a Theology of Evangelism for Late Modern Cultures: A Critical Dialogue with Lesslie Newbigin's Doctrine of Revelation. Ph.D. thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2005 (free download; registration with British Library required; EThOS persistent ID: uk.bl.ethos.421853).