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I wonder — I really do — whether there is such a thing as a "Christian culture". Does this apply there (or rather, here)?
Excellent stuff, Frank.
Both sides of my family are chock-a-block full of artists, writers, teachers, musicians, etc. I grew up with an appreciation for the arts...but I count it all as nothing now. (I still watch too much TV, though.)
This world will continue to raise up monuments to the supposed glory of man and irrelevance of the triune God, and the cultural elites will be among those scoffing the loudest when the great tribulation begins against the Church. And they'll continue to scoff until Jesus Christ returns in glory.
Also, please forgive me for this off-topic tangent, but I need some guidance, and Frank and the regulars here may be able to help.
Are there any good video/DVD series on the history of Christianity (especially pre-Reformation) from a reformed point of view, that would be suitable for an adult Sunday school course of mature credobaptist believers who take the five solas seriously?
I was asked to check out the Christian History Institute's History of Christianity, but the series uncritically espouses a big-tent, broadly ecumenical definition of Christianity. There's no concept of Christianity's being the faith and practice of an invisible church of regenerate believers down through the ages.
Capitol Hill Baptist Church seems to have a good program (link), but no video. Not that that's a problem. We could just turn that into a series of lectures. That might be the most effective way of testifying to the glory of Christ in the history of His church.
Thank you for this sobering reminder of what really matters Frank. I couldn't agree more and at the same time am convicted because of my own misguided affections for the trivial things of this world. It was nice to meet you Wednesday night at T4G!
I only had time to skim the article, but I agree with you.
Christ didn't save cultures, he saved souls. And He and the apostles pretty much turned cultural norms on their heads in the process.
"But I bring that up because I think someone has to ask the question: is Frank engaging a culture or is Frank seeking to engage people who happen to be inside a culture?" An excellent question. Some would say that engaging the culture is merely shorthand for engaging the people who happen to be in that culture, but if all we aver talk about is the shorthand version people will become confused, and will see the culture as the object of their efforts, and not the people who live in and make up that culture. There is much, much more that can be said about this issue...
Frank:
I was waiting for some T4G dialougue, but this is not so far removed, considering that the church is allowing "culture" to influence or transform the gospel. I think it was either Johnny Mac or Dever who pointed out the way some have reshaped the Mars Hill discourse into something more than it is. Paul wasn't adapting or contexualizing the message, but he was just borrowing something as a sort of hook or starting point to grab their attention.
Isn't culture the sum total of the people who contribute to its development...thus the culture is not some existential reality, but rather the some total of its parts...fallen humanity.
As a result, the culture is naturally going to look different when the gospel moves in power among a particular people...aka the Roman Empire. But what happens when this occurs? The culture at large fights back to preserve itself because the darkness hates the light.
Sorry to ramble on...
Alright, another decent post! I think you may have your hands full with this subject...I think you are on to something big here.
Frank, I'm tending more and more toward your view of Christ & culture. While I understand that we as His people are to be salt and light in a dark world (culture?), I think that mandate falls far short of a command to redeem the culture, to make it "Christian", if there is such a thing. The Gospel, and the God who gave it, both transcend any definition of culture that we can come up with. The mission of the Church is to glorify and worship God. And only redeemed people, not redeemed cultures, can do this.
Aside from languages, are there any biblical "cultural" barriers?
Also, besides it being foolishness to some, are there other reasons (demonstrated in scripture) that one would reject the gospel?
Nevergall: spirtual deadness in sin is the reason Scripture says men reject the Gospel.
__________
Doulos: I'm thinking mostly of broader implications of Thabiti Anyabwile's talk.
As a result of being dead in trespasses & sins and blinded by the god of this world, the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing (as was the case with each of us at one point; and since moral superiority did not lead to our conversion, we were saved by grace through faith).
I get confused when some claim cultural barriers (outside of language) when I can't seem to connect those dots. If cultural barriers (in regards to sharing the gospel) are not really biblical than that would make them man-made obstacles. As a result of these obstacles, we find ourselves relying on our own solutions to overcome them.
Also, why the need for numerous cultural approaches to sharing the gospel when there seems to be only one reason for rejecting (as well as believing) it? Meaning, no matter what "inside info" you have about a certain cultural group, or what "angle" you chose to come in with the gospel, the reason for believing or rejecting is always the same (and the bible gives those reasons).
If you continue with this subject, perhaps you will answer these questions. That being said, allow me to add one more...
I have a friend who happens to be Islamic. We have shared many moments of conversation. If he (up to this point) has rejected Jesus as being anything more than a prophet, what good is it going to do to rethink my technique and come at him from a different angle? Afterall, isn't it the gospel itself that has the power to save and not my technique or interpretation of it?
From the opposite side, wouldn't I, in fact, be doing him a disservice by relying on technique rather than the gospel itself?
Frank, I gotta go back and listen to Thabiti's (Beety-Bob's) message again since I was way up in the corner in the cheap seats (due to being late) and could barely hear him due to the echo-echo-echo...
But would you equate "culture" with what Thabiti termed "ethnicity"? Are these synonomous, or overlapping terms in the context of his message? Just trying to figure out where your goin' with this.
Doulos and Frank,
Do you think 'culture' would be a broader tent that 'ethnicity' would live in? Such as 'American culture', which is made up of lots of ethnicities?
Oh yeah...I actually came to comment on the fact that you are exactly right on the post-mil optimism stuff. I am every bit as optimistic about the prospects of the Gospel as anyone, but I don't for one second think that the return of Christ is based on my works.
Re: Nevergall: why the need for numerous cultural approaches to sharing the gospel [...] ?
I'm guessing the answer is that people in some cultures find people in other cultures offensive. The folks in both cultures are sinners, after all. So the point is to remove other offenses so the only offense left is the Gospel's. The problem comes when removing other offenses becomes (subjectively) more important than explaining the Gospel.
Hi Frank,
Thanks for interacting with my article a bit. You do raise some good points and, as you know, an article can't cover all possiblities or viewpoints.
Let me say up front that it is critical that we engage people and culture. In fact, that is part of our church mission statement: "redemptively engaging peoples and cultures."
In my article, I advocate a critical and redemptive engagement with culture. As I noted, part of being critical requires us to condemn/reject that which is evil, ugly and untrue in the classical ethical sense. So, this lens would comport with the text you quoted from Rev 19. God in Christ will slay the wicked, the evil, the ethically and morally disfigured and unfaithful. However, that is not the only lens Scripture offers in engaging culture (as Niebuhr has made clear). Christ is also a transformer of culture. We need just about all the catagories offered by Niebuhr's Christ and Culture typology if we are to, indeed, engage culture critically and redemptively.
Jonathan:
Thanks for stopping by. Here's my only question:
Can you cite some passage of Scripture, or some book of the Bible in general, which supports the view that "Christ is also a transformer of culture"?
I have heard this said often by many people all over the theological spectrum. I'd like to see what the biblical evidence for such a thing -- as you see it -- is.
BTW, I think Neibuhr is not hardly the last word in considering the question of the relationship of "Christ" to "culture". I think his presuppositions are more determinative of his conclusions than is warranted by the subject, especially given the view to human culture we get through the Biblical lens.
The phrase "as Neibuhr has made clear" seems to me to consider the matter closed, and I think that's a pretty large mistake.
Happy to.
A few brief observations from Jesus' ministry demonstrate that he employed culture as a 1st C Jew and transformed it. He took natural resources and transformed them into cultural products: water to wine, grain to bread, and so on. On a textual note, I'll just restrict my comments to Revelation, since that is text you raised.
Revelation displays the whole range of Christ and Culture positions, from Transformer to Against. We see God in Christ destroying cities (Babylon: 19) and establishing them (Jerusalem: 21), burning the world and renewing it, and so on. Revelation 19, in particular, focuses on the judgment of the nations but also the redemption of the nations. The chapter opens with a multiethnic/cultural multitude praising God, a chorus of cultural and ethnic voices redeemed and transformed (5.9; 7.9) in the service of God. These peoples (ethne) represent enculturated people, distinct cultural human beings with particular languages that are preserved in the new creation. Languages are, of course, a cultural phenomenon, and we have every reason to believe that language will be at its highest and most virtuous expression in the new creation, transformed in the service and worship of the Word himself. Moreover, the elders and people of the new creation are clothed with garments, not any garments but garments that have a superior quality, that have been transformed into “fine linen, bright and pure” 19.8. To be sure, this reference has a theological meaning—the righteous deeds of the saints—but that does not require us to read the text immaterially. In fact, Revelation depicts the judgment and a necessary interlude to the vision of a corporeal, material new heavens and earth.
Perhaps the greatest text in Revelation that demonstrates the biblical support for Christ Transformer of culture is Rev 21. The multi-symbolic description of our future includes a concrete new city and new creation, a city and creation that is transformed. The natural ores of the earth are transformed into precious stones and metals, some unknown to man, in order to adorn the New Jerusalem including jasper, sapphire, gold, chrysoprase, and chrysolite (21:19-21). This lavish, cultural city is to be adorned with the “glory and honor of the nations” (21:26). This glory and honor is an allusion to Isaiah 60: 5 and the entire prophetic vision of the new creation. The “wealth of the nations” is, in fact, cultural tribute (commonly given to conquering kings in the ancient Near East), including perfumes, precious stones, and fine woods for the architecture of the new city. More details could be listed, but you get the idea. John’s vision of the future is rife with transformed culture, the highest achievements of human flourishing sanctified and offered to the King in praise and worship. The great Creator and Redeemer is also a Consummator, bringing an exalted climax to his creation project that will forever ring with doxological, cultural tribute!
Mr. Dodson: I see the answer you posted, but I don't think you've answered Frank's question.
Because even if one accepts your discussion about Christ's miracles as cultural "transformation," that still doesn't provide any Biblical mandate for us to transform culture.
Or does it? Perhaps you could expound on what you see in the rest of the NT (outside the Gospels and Revelation) that mandates "cultural change."
Jonathan, don't you think Philemon as an application in flesh and blood of what Galatians spells out in principle is a better case? Or is it not a better case because Paul deals with things one life at a time? It seems any talk of cultural transformation has to be present, not eschatological. It's fine to go out into the world to make it a better place out of love for Jesus as long as we don't act like we're going to hand the world to God on a silver platter because that is our destiny. Jesus DID say "My kingdom is not of this world". Millenialists of every stripe seem to forget that during election years.
And I'm fine with Wallace Stevens' late poetry or Paul Dini's run on Detective. 
Thank you for your follow ups J and G. And for the record, I am not post-millenial.
Frank: I agree, Neibuhr certainly doesn't have the last word, but he did contribute a very helpful typology. No one debates that. Moreover, that parenthetical comment simply leaned on Neibuhr to make the point that there is more than one valid perspective on Christ and culture, which, in all fairness, is the point you are making, i.e. its not just Christ transformer of culture.
Jeremiah: Philemon is a great example of engaging slavery and sin with a redemptive approach, especially since it is the outworking of a theological principle (justification) in a cultural issue (slavery).
Gummby: I actually believe that my answer is quite relevant. Eschatology is not just "the future"; it is an indicative, a theological reality that is now (inaugurated on earth but consummated in God) and should motivate present actions now. The NT consistently appeals to eschatology as the basis for present action. Even our justification is inaugurated (Gal 2:15-17), but we dont let that hinder our fighting of sin our missional activity.
For other NT mandates on our responsibility to engage and transform culture see my article: Missional Discipleship: Reinterpreting the Great Commission.
Jonathan --
It's very brave of you to engage our little corner of the blogosphere (we have a reputation, after all), and frankly I'm grateful that you take the cartoon-colored blog and its peanut gallery seriously enough to answer our questions. Thanks for your continued participation here.
Let me propose two things:
[1] Neibuhr is only helpful to those who think that Christ owes something to culture -- that culture somehow is an irreducible term in the discussion like "God" and "creation" and "fall" and "redemption". I think that premise needs some reconsideration.
[2] Your examples of "culture" are so broad that everything is thereby a function of culture. Let me suggest to you that things like bread, water, wine, and disease/health are not parts of culture -- or rather, if they are, then the condition "culture" is so broad as to be nearly meaningless because it doesn't really create a distinction. It is a word synonymous with "creation" or "cosmos".
Frank, my pleasure. Thanks for being so welcoming.
1. Not really sure what you are getting at here. I don't think that Neibuhr approaches culture as something that Jesus is in debt to. Perhaps you could clarify? What he does aver is that Christ inhabited culture, God created culture and therefore we must deal with it theologically and christologically.
2. Culture is a broad term by classical anthropological definition. Anthropologist E.B. Tylor borrowed from Germoan Kultur in 1871 to designate the “nonbiologically transmitted heritage of humans.” And the formidable Malinowski: “the sum total, integrated learned beliefs and behaviors of a society.” So culture is broad, ideaological and material. In this regard, culture is what we make of the world (Myers).
I have been addressing the material aspects of culture, the products of man-manipulated creation. So God makes trees and Adam makes clothes, God makes ore and man makes gold. Both of these examples, as with my prior examples, are an expression of man's creative interaction with the raw materials of the earth. They are, in short, material culture. This is not debated in anthropology. So, grain is not culture but bread is because man manipulates it to feed humanity in a creative culinary way. Water is not culture but wine is for a similar reason. There is a clear distinction in my mind (and many others) between creation and culture, what is and what is produced. Again, this is all on the material note, and as you know culture is much more complex, but this addresses the definition of culture and my examples, placing them wihtin a classic anthropological framework.
The conversation can be narrowed into folk, high, and pop culture also. But that takes us off track.
It seems like it would be useful to distinguish between utilitarian culture (cooking, textiles, metalwork, functional ceramics, etc.) and non-utilitarian culture (the arts, decorative ceramics, and so on)....
...If we accept Jonathan's definition of "culture," that is.
I'm not sure Niebuhr is the best source to consult, by the way, given that much of his intellectual career seems to be have been consumed with politics: both his leftism before WWII, and his shift to Christian Realism after it. Although I admit I have not read any of his writing, the fruits he bore would suggest that he considered the Gospel subordinate to this-world issues, which would in turn affect his views on culture.
Jonathan –
Again, thanks for taking us seriously and interacting graciously.
1. Not really sure what you are getting at here. I don't think that Niebuhr approaches culture as something that Jesus is in debt to. Perhaps you could clarify? What he does aver is that Christ inhabited culture, God created culture and therefore we must deal with it theologically and christologically.I may have you at a disadvantage as I have recently read D.A. Carson's new book on Niebuhr's paradigm, Christ and Culture Revisited, which just came out (you may have not seen it yet). As he sums up his view of what's going on there, he makes this note:
The tensions between Christ and culture are both diverse and complex, but from a Christian perspective they find their origin in the stubborn refusal of human beings, made in God's image, to acknowledge their creaturely dependence on their Maker. [207]In my opinion, and I think Carson goes there in his book, this is the real problem with Niebuhr: he fails to see that when culture competes with Christ, the root cause is sin -- and the only way to deal with sin is, well, the Gospel, or the Rider on the White Horse.
Or, as it turns out, the biblical option: with both the Gospel and the Rider on the White Horse.
And this gets back to the real problem: subculture or counterculture is not the cause of transformation, and it is even in the best case not the objective of transformation. It is merely one (possible) result which allows us to demonstrate some kind of relationship between what we are declaring and the ultimate eschatological event.
Our goal ought not to be "cultural transformation". Our goal ought to be obedience to Christ, joining Him outside the camp, and bearing the reproach he endured – demonstrated in declaring the Gospel and making people into disciples. This may transform the culture, or produce a counterculture which plays a prophetic role toward the prevailing culture, or maybe some other result. But trying to frame the Great Commission by impact on culture is, at best, misguided.
As to [2], I don't think that takes us off-track. We have to ask ourselves: if "culture" is "the sum total, integrated learned beliefs and behaviors of a society", did Jesus come to save that, or did He come to save us from that?
I think it's the latter.
I'm certain you meant to say our sanctification is inaugurated. Our justification has already taken place, yes?
I'm in the process of reading your missionalogical missive, but I have to admit that in the middle, there's a statement that kinda bothers me. You say: Jesus grew up and became a first century, toga-wearing, sandal-sporting, temple-frequenting Jew. He accommodated first century Jewish culture (also known as contextualization). So, within reason we should take on the trappings of our culture in order to contextually relate the gospel. This can entail wearing broken-in jeans, togas, hand-made sandals or a suit and tie.
1) You argue "Jesus contextualized" (which honestly makes me go "Eee!"). That aside, where does John the Baptist fit into the contextualization thing?
2) Didn't God create the "temple-going culture?" And so what does that mean for us - do we need to make a culture where people go to church?
3) How do you simultaneously contextualize and culturally transform?
Alright guys. This is my final post, out of a commitment to my stewardship of time. However, I have enjoyed the interaction and appreciate your thoughts.
Frank, we are beginning to talk past each other. I don't disagree with your summation of Carson's critique of Neibuhr (i have read a review of Revisited and my copy is on the way). Unfortunately, I think you have projected Carson's critique onto my article, which is not founded in Neibuhr but in a commitment to biblical theology, as is Carson's approach. The article was primarily a pastoral attempt to guide folks to more critical and redemptive cultural engagement. Christ Against culture or "White Horse posture" is one such expression.
Re your comment about my reframing the Great Commission; it is not a permanent reframing but a more honest and full reading of the commissions. Making disciples, obedience to Jesus, and living the gospel entails cultural renewal and rejection. This is plain from Jesus' conception of the gospel in Luke 4/ISa 61. The gospel renews cities, restores walls,repairs vineyards, mends broken hearts, liberates spiritual captives, etc. Read Isa 61 for the full gospel/good news context. I am arguing that it is not an either/or but a both/and, when it comes to the question of transform culture or reject it. And, yes, the gospel and obedience is what we call disciples to, and that obedience entails both the "pilgrim" and "indigenizing" principles (Andrew Walls) OR biblical-theological terms rejection of SIN and embrace of NEW CREATION; the rejection and transformation of culture, all for God's glory.
I love you guys, seriously. It will be fun in the new creation!
Gummby: I meant justification, and yes it has taken place and will take place. I recommend you read some books on Inaugurated Eschatology ala George Ladd, Presence of the Future and so on. Pair it with some NT Wright and you can start another blog on Justification or visit some of my posts at www.Theological.wordpress.com
1) I think you are reading something that is not intended into my use of contextualized. The plain fact is that Jesus and John the baptist took on culture forms, i.e. clothing, manners, speech, foods, ways of communicating, etc. Jesus contextualized his deity into 1st Jewish flesh and blood and culture. But he also polemicized against it. Nevertheless, he was contextualized. Everyone is contextualized.
Out of time, brother. Thanks for reading and reflecting. May God enrich your faith, increase your love for him, and strengthen your resolve to be a blessing to this world.
Ah, I knew Bishop Wright must be hanging around here somewhere. I could feel his shadow.
Jonathan --
Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your engagement here, even if there wasn't a real conclusion to our discussion.
my pleasure. perhaps the discussion could be continued in a fresh post. setting the issues out for a clearer discussion? if so, let me know.
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