The salvation of a people

Salvation comes to each of us not, so to say, straight down from heaven through the skylight, but through a door that is opened by our neighbour. . . . The salvation of God is a consistent whole. From beginning to end it relates us to God only through a relationship with our neighbour. One is related to God's saving acts not by any kind of direct, unmediated spiritual experience, however it may be formulated. One is related by becoming related to God's people and to the history of God's people, and the central and decisive acts in the history of God's people, which are the substance of the apostolic message.

Lesslie Newbigin, from A Faith for this One World? (1961)