Foolishness To The Greek Summary

Introduction
The intense book Foolishness to the Greeks by Lesslie Newbigin is a genuine attempt to explore the cornerstones of the Western Culture that shapes millions of lives in Europe and North America, with the hope of opening new doors for the Gospel. As a missionary, Newbigin is conscious that any possible encounter between two men or two cultures has to be found within the dimension of language. Before preaching the truth of Christ, the urgency for the church is to understand what means ‘truth’ in the language of one specific culture. Thus, mastering the language of the Western Culture involves not merely knowing its vocabulary but rather its origins, structure, and the ways of thinking in which its inhabitants make sense of their experience
Any discussion about the Western culture needs to start from the paradigm shift of the Enlightenment. There – free from passive acceptance of old ideas, ignorance, and superstition – our society started to look at the world with a reinvigorate confidence through the scientific method. Over the time, the main consequence of this shift was the dichotomy between the private and the public world. The interminable and incessant scientific work in investigating the universe and the human life has monopolize the public debate. What it is now real and true is only the world of facts: scientifically observable evidences that can be explained rationally by natural laws. If in our daily life in order to ‘function’, there is no necessity to recur to teleology or God as the ultimate foundation of the creation anymore, religions and Christianity as well have started to be confined in the private, a sort of a personal space in the intimate of our houses where individuals can still hold beliefs and values, specific categories that science has diminished as merely subjective opinions. The practical results of this blind dominion of science are visible in several areas such as politic, commerce, and