Christ and Culture Revisited: A Book Review
Christ and Culture Revisited: Carson, Don. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006; paperback 2012. 243 pages; includes bibliographic references & indexes.
It's hard to think of a more well-known book on the relationship between faith & culture than Richard Niebuhr's 1951 book, Christ And Culture. In this work, Niebuhr outlines 5 possible approaches to the relationship between, well, Christ and culture. Briefly, Niebuhr's categories are: Christ Against Culture; Christ Of Culture, Christ Above Culture; Christ and Culture in Paradox; and Christ Transforming Culture. Given the widespread influence of Niebuuhr's work, and given the ever-present tension between faith & culture that the church finds itself in, Don Carson, in his 2006 book Christ & Culture Revisited revisits Niebuhr's project and offers his critique, followed by a helpful alternative approach to connecting faith and culture.
Since this isn't a review of Niebuhr's work, but of Carson's, I won't spend time summarizing Niebuhr's approach (a helpful summary can be found here). Carson' offers three main criticisms of Niebuhr's work: His handling (or mishandling) of scripture, his assignment of historical figures to one of his five categories, and his cherry-picking approach to scripture. To put this just a bit differently, Carson's primary criticism of Niebuhr is that that Niebuhr is reductionistic. That is, he implicitly if not explicitly suggests that Christians must take one of the five views he posits (You can imagine each of Niebuhr's approaches falling along a spectrum, and people will typically fall somewhere between the two ends). But in coming to his five categories, Niebuhr has selectively chosen certain biblical paradigms to support that category, while ignoring others. So, some ideas in scripture will be used to support one approach, other ideas will be used to support a different approach, and in the end, the reader is (implicitly, at least) urged to choose which approach is best. Doing so, however, puts the reader in the undesirable position of having to choose which passages of scripture they favor. Along the way, Niebuhr makes the same mistake that he accuses liberal Christianity of making -- selecting scripture texts to support their cause.
Instead, Carson argues that any approach to bringing together faith and culture must take into account the whole of scripture, and Carson then lays out what he terms "the great turning points of redemptive history." They include Creation & Fall, Israel & the Law; Christ & the New Covenant, and finally, a future Heaven to be gained & hell to be feared. These major redemptive milestones (and Carson concedes that there may be others that could be added) taken together must shape how we integrate faith & culture together. Carson puts it this way:
The penultimate chapter, "Church and State", is the lengthiest of the book -- and is nearly as helpful as the one preceding it. In this aptly-titled chapter, Carson offers a way through the thorny territory of the relationship between the church and the state. After carefully defining his terms, Carson lists six ways that he sees the New Testament church engaging with the government (They are: Opposition & Persecution; Restricted Confrontation; Differing Fundamental Allegiances; Different Styles of Government, of Reign; The Transformation of Life, and Therefore of Social & Governmental Institutions; In the End, Jesus Wins). What he means in each item isn't always immediately clear, but the main point is. Carson summarizes it this way: "diversity of stances adopted by various NT documents toward the state presupposes some commonalities, while local conditions and complementary theological truths evoke disparate emphases." This is a not-so-thinly veiled alternative to Niebuhr's pigeonholing approach in which the reader is (again, implicitly) urged to select the one option.
Carson concludes his work with a a summary that leads to an exhortation. Christians, he says, are to
There is enough here to spark the imagination, and that perhaps is enough. Maybe spelling out the specifics would be in fact detrimental -- and so perhaps it is understandable that Carson doesn't get as specific as I might have liked.
This minor criticism aside, Carson's work is a must-read for Christians seriously thinking through how their faith ought to engage the broader culture.
It's hard to think of a more well-known book on the relationship between faith & culture than Richard Niebuhr's 1951 book, Christ And Culture. In this work, Niebuhr outlines 5 possible approaches to the relationship between, well, Christ and culture. Briefly, Niebuhr's categories are: Christ Against Culture; Christ Of Culture, Christ Above Culture; Christ and Culture in Paradox; and Christ Transforming Culture. Given the widespread influence of Niebuuhr's work, and given the ever-present tension between faith & culture that the church finds itself in, Don Carson, in his 2006 book Christ & Culture Revisited revisits Niebuhr's project and offers his critique, followed by a helpful alternative approach to connecting faith and culture.Since this isn't a review of Niebuhr's work, but of Carson's, I won't spend time summarizing Niebuhr's approach (a helpful summary can be found here). Carson' offers three main criticisms of Niebuhr's work: His handling (or mishandling) of scripture, his assignment of historical figures to one of his five categories, and his cherry-picking approach to scripture. To put this just a bit differently, Carson's primary criticism of Niebuhr is that that Niebuhr is reductionistic. That is, he implicitly if not explicitly suggests that Christians must take one of the five views he posits (You can imagine each of Niebuhr's approaches falling along a spectrum, and people will typically fall somewhere between the two ends). But in coming to his five categories, Niebuhr has selectively chosen certain biblical paradigms to support that category, while ignoring others. So, some ideas in scripture will be used to support one approach, other ideas will be used to support a different approach, and in the end, the reader is (implicitly, at least) urged to choose which approach is best. Doing so, however, puts the reader in the undesirable position of having to choose which passages of scripture they favor. Along the way, Niebuhr makes the same mistake that he accuses liberal Christianity of making -- selecting scripture texts to support their cause.
Instead, Carson argues that any approach to bringing together faith and culture must take into account the whole of scripture, and Carson then lays out what he terms "the great turning points of redemptive history." They include Creation & Fall, Israel & the Law; Christ & the New Covenant, and finally, a future Heaven to be gained & hell to be feared. These major redemptive milestones (and Carson concedes that there may be others that could be added) taken together must shape how we integrate faith & culture together. Carson puts it this way:
We would be wiser if we refrain from distinguishing discrete patterns or paradigms or models of the relations between Christ and culture, and think instead of wise integration with different aspects of the whole clamoring for more attention from time to time.Chapter Four was the most helpful chapter to me. In it, Carson offers a more nuanced view of how one bridges the gap between Christianity and Culture by identifying four main "forces" that are at work in our present world, and, with the foundation of the whole-canon paradigm, he invites the reader to engage these four forces. Again, listen to Carson explain his point:
In each case, we are dealing with something that can be an enormous force for good, if firmly embedded within the normative structure of the Bible's story line and priorities, but which can be both dangerous and idolatrous when it assumes the independent value and constructs a frame of reference in flat contravention of Scripture's norms.The four cultural forces are as follows: Secularization, Democracy, Freedom, and Power. Each sub-section of the chapter defines what the force in play looks like, and offers Carson's suggestion into how a Christian might respond to such cultural forces. Power, for example, "very often reflects our desire to control others...[which] is very difficult to distinguish from lack of love of neighbor." But, he goes on to remind us that "we are not ultimate; God is...we are not our own; we are responsible to the one who has made us."
The penultimate chapter, "Church and State", is the lengthiest of the book -- and is nearly as helpful as the one preceding it. In this aptly-titled chapter, Carson offers a way through the thorny territory of the relationship between the church and the state. After carefully defining his terms, Carson lists six ways that he sees the New Testament church engaging with the government (They are: Opposition & Persecution; Restricted Confrontation; Differing Fundamental Allegiances; Different Styles of Government, of Reign; The Transformation of Life, and Therefore of Social & Governmental Institutions; In the End, Jesus Wins). What he means in each item isn't always immediately clear, but the main point is. Carson summarizes it this way: "diversity of stances adopted by various NT documents toward the state presupposes some commonalities, while local conditions and complementary theological truths evoke disparate emphases." This is a not-so-thinly veiled alternative to Niebuhr's pigeonholing approach in which the reader is (again, implicitly) urged to select the one option.
Carson concludes his work with a a summary that leads to an exhortation. Christians, he says, are to
pursue with a passion the robust and nourishing wholeness of biblical theology as the controlling matrix for our reflection on the relations between Christ and culture will, ironically help us to be far more flexible than the inflexible grids that are often made to stand in the Bible's place. Scripture will mandate that we think holistically and subtly, wisely and penetratingly, under the Lordship of Christ -- utterly dissatisfied with the anesthetic of the culture. The complexity will mandate our service, without insisting that things turn out a certain way: we learn to trust and obey God and leave the results to God." ... "We will live in the tension of claiming every square inch for King Jesus, even while we know full well that the consummation is not yet, that we walk by faith and not by sight, and the weapons with which we fight are not the weapons of the world.If Carson's work has a weakness, it is that it tends towards the theoretical. It offers a thorough, and highly useful matrix through which to view the culture around us, and it certainly nudges us towards action. But I was left wondering about concrete examples. What might it look like, for example, for a Christian to steward their power well -- in a culture that is indeed power hungry, and prone to abuse of such power? How might Christians positively shape culture through their daily vocation? Through art? Through science and technology?
There is enough here to spark the imagination, and that perhaps is enough. Maybe spelling out the specifics would be in fact detrimental -- and so perhaps it is understandable that Carson doesn't get as specific as I might have liked.
This minor criticism aside, Carson's work is a must-read for Christians seriously thinking through how their faith ought to engage the broader culture.
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