Christ & Culture Revisited

CHRIST & CULTURE REVISITED
by
D. A. CARSON

 
… Clifford Geertz combines succinctness and clarity: “[T]he culture concept…denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life.” (p. 2)

Christianity can be tolerated, provided it is entirely private Christian belief that intrudes itself into the public square, especially if it is trying to influence public policy, is most often taken, without examination, as prima facie evidence for bigotry and intolerance. (p. 6)

Some, whether consciously or unconsciously, develop a two-tier mentality, one for Christians and church functions, and one for the broader cultural encounters that take up most of the rest of the week. (p. 7)

Culture is the “artificial, secondary environment: which man superimposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organization, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values. (p. 11)

Tertullian states it in radical fashion: Christians constitute a “third race” different from Jews and Gentiles, and called to live a way of life quite separate from culture. (p. 13)

But Niebuhr is not blind to the problems of the synthesist version of Christ above culture. Christians of the other groups “will point out that the enterprise in and of itself must lead into an error,” for the effort to bring Christ and culture, grace and works, God’s work and human work, the temporal and the eternal, all into one neat system, is bound to lead “to the absolutizing of what is relative, the reduction of the infinite to a finite form, and the materialization of the dynamic.”

…liberalism is not another denomination or any other kind of legitimate option within Christianity. Rather, it is another religion. (p. 34)

This new liberalism is often more strongly informed by pluralism, and so it is prepared to think of  “Christ in culture” only in the sense that we may also happily discern “Allah in culture,” “Buddha in culture,”  a generalized “spirituality in culture,” and so forth. (p. 35)

It is simply to say that any movement whose structure of thought depends on sidestepping the great turning points of redemptive history, including fall, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and final judgment, is not usefully though of a Christian. (p. 36)

Islam has no body of tradition that enables it to distinguish between church and state. Indeed, the ummah, the people themselves, bound up with allegiance to Allah, are, in theory at least, more important than any state. But the state’s role, finally, is to bow to the law of Allah. (p. 57)

On the other hand, where “multiculturalism” is a sloganeering word associated with left-wing social agendas that relativize all cultural values and all religious claims, except for the dogmatic claim that all such values are to be relativized, the word may bespeak a culture diametrically opposed to the exclusiveness of Christian claims – and in that case Christians will gravitate toward a “Christ against culture” paradigm. (p. 77)

Consider an easy contrast. The American Amish view of the relationship between Christ and culture is very different from any of the dominant Calvinistic views. Both are claiming to be Christian, yet one is advocating a very substantial withdrawal form (the rest of) American culture, and the other is advocating a very substantial transformation of culture. (p. 80)

One cannot forget that “offbeat” interpretations have been and are being advanced regarding every major Christian teaching, every major turning point in biblical theology – and , correspondingly, complex rebuttals have been offered. The problem is that in the contemporary climate, these offbeat interpretations convince some observers that all doctrinal matters are “open,” and therefore that rigorous biblical theology is impossible, so much so that where it is attempted, the result is merely parochial. (p. 83)

To sum up: Recall, once more, the definition of culture provided by Geertz: it is “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about life and attitudes towards life.” (p. 85)

The recent work by Gianni Vattimo, Richard Rorty, and Santiago Zabala on The Future of Religion, a combined European and American project, is profoundly anti-metaphysical. Religion in general and Christianity in particular, they say, is moving to the place where it must abandon “onto-theology,” “realism” and “objectivism,” and as a result it is losing any capacity it once had to order the public square. Its function is merely to provide private comfort, and in that capacity it performs a civic duty, it displays civic virtue. (p. 88)

Moreover, to be able to talk about Christ and culture in the ways I am suggesting, it is necessary not only to be able to talk about particular truths that are essential to Christianity, but to be able to talk about the Bible’s story line, the Bible’s metanarrative, the big picture. To put the matter negatively, we must reject, in the strongest terms, the idea that there is no big picture. (p. 94)

There is a lesser but entirely coherent sense in which a human being may see the “whole” of reality – for this is, in fact, what the Bible’s storyline provides. A worldview must be comprehensive enough to address the question of deity (If there is a God, what is he like?), the question of origins (Where do I come from?), the question of significance (Who am I?), the question of evil (Why is there so much suffering? If things are not the way they’re supposed to be, why not?), the question of salvation (What is the problem, and how is it resolved?), the question of telos (Why am I here? What does the future hold?). (p. 96)

Nevertheless it must be said that a Christian worldview, a Christian theological vision, is more than a system of beliefs (though it is never less): it also includes the volition that self-consciously thinks and acts in line with such beliefs. (p. 96)

We may know some things truly, that is , our knowledge of them may conform to reality, not because we have omniscient knowledge of them (that standard belongs to God alone), but because the knowledge we have of them, however partial, however mediated, is predicated on the revealing words and acts of God: human knowledge is still knowledge of the truth. (p. 101)

Biblical writers are not embarrassed to talk about truth, including propositional truth; equally, they are not at all hesitant to speak about knowing people, knowing God – and knowning things and knowing truths. (p. 108)

Clearly this knowing is not the knowledge of omniscience; the “certainty’ that Luke wants Theophilus to enjoy is not the certainty that belongs to God alone. (p. 108)

Faith enables us to have confidence in God where we do not see, because it is grounded in the immutable character of God that we have come by grace to perceive as utterly reliable. (p. 110)

And always we insist that what we are urging people to believe is the truth, not because we claim to have gained access to this truth from an epistemologically neutral vantage point, but because it conforms to what God has given, whether people acknowledge it or not. (p. 111)

It does no good to camp out with those moderns who demonize postmodernism, for in fact, whether we like it or not, we are all perspectivalists; equally, it does no good to camp out with those postmoderns who demonize modernism, for in fact, within the limitations of what it means to be a finite creature touched by grace, we can know and proclaim the truth. (p. 113)

In more popular parlance, however, all three words – “secular,” “secularization,” and “secularism” – have to do with the squeezing of the religious to the periphery of life. More precisely, secularization is the process that progressively removes religion from the public area and reduces it to the private realm; secularism is the stance that endorses and promotes such a process. (p. 116)

But it is futile to speak of loving and trusting and obeying this God if his words do not delight us and terrify us and instruct us and shape us. (p. 122)

… oft-repeated assessment of Winston Churchill: democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other kinds. (p. 123)

In other words, when voters choose something other than what these liberal writers want, these writers cannot conceive of it as the outworking of democracy; rather, they see it as the sacrifice of democracy. This judgment is grounded in the assumption that theological considerations cannot be admitted into the reasoning of an voters: in other words, religion is private, the values of secularism are unquestioned, and those who challenge this stance are not democrats at all. Worse, in the mind of leaders of the left, what is being destroyed is their freedoms, and thus their vision of America. (p. 131)

Having rejected the authority of the pope, many a Protestant pastor exercises papal-like authority in his much smaller fiefdom. One is not long in the ministry before one observes some curates, assistant ministers – whatever a particular denomination labels them – subtly trying to undermine their seniors, wickedly trying to assume power, covering the operation with agauze of pious verbiage and a veneer of humility. (p. 141)

Salt does not confront; it enhances. (p. 143)

When we uphold freedom of religion as something to be desired, we include Christianity with all other religions, claiming the same sort of freedom; when we explain the distinctive elements of biblically faithful Christianity, we often distinguish Christianity from religion. (p. 148)

Similarly, Christians who exercise authority in the church do not mark their discipleship to Jesus by abandoning all exercise of authority, but by exercising it within the constraints of a life sacrificially lived for the sake of others. (p. 168)

Sadly, there are ecclesiastical leaders who take their cue as to what leadership is from the surrounding world, who sell their souls for pomp, flattery, and the lust for ever-increasing manipulative control.  (p. 168)

At least in part, the American Revolution and its aftermath were designed to support freedom for religion; at least in part, the French Revolution and its aftermath were designed to support freedom from religion. (p. 189)

The way we get to the end is not by military conquest, and not even by the ballot box, but by our Lord’s return – and meanwhile we engage in the proclamation of the good news about Jesus in word and deed and remember that he himself taught us that Caesar has a sphere, under God, that is to be respected, an authority that is to be obeyed. (p. 193)

If Christians are not allowed to argue in the public arena as Christians, then implicitly we are supporting the contentions of Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins and their friends, to the effect that atheistic secularists are the only people who are arguing their case from a “neutral” position. (p. 197)

…every culture is perpetually in flux, ensuring that no political structure is a permanent “solution” to the tension. (p. 207)

…within Kuyperianism on presumptive regeneration. This is not to argue that dramatic, still less traumatic, conversion of children reared in Christian homes is necessary; nor is there a biblically mandated need for certainty about the moment of one’s conversion. (p. 216)