The unprecedented, immensely challenging task

"We are in a new situation, and we cannot turn back the clock. It is certain that we cannot go back to the corpus Christianum. It is also certain - and this needs to be said sharply in view of the prevalence among Christians of a kind of anarchistic romanticism - that we cannot go back to a pre-Constantinian innocence. . . . We cannot go back on history. But perhaps we can learn from history. Perhaps we can learn how to embody in the life of the church a witness of the kingship of Christ over all of life - its political and economic no less than its personal and domestic morals - yet without falling into the Constantinian trap. This is the new, unprecedented, and immensely challenging task given to our generation. The resolute undertaking of its is fundamental to any genuinely missionary encounter of the gospel with our culture." (Lesslie Newbigin Foolishness to the Greeks p102).

As I get more involved in gospel entrepreneurship, I see how I am prone to the romanticism (although not the anarchist varieties). Yet I yearn to witness the kingship of Christ over economic life, which I do see as the immensely challenging task given to our generation. We have been told that Christian faith is a permissible private belief, but is not public truth. Consequently, any attempt to witness the kingship of Christ over economic life challenges our society at is very foundations. This, I believe, is where, as Newbigin says elsewhere, we must be very humble and very bold.