What Does Christ Have to Do with Culture?
by Gregg Valeriano
The Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen once wrote that one of the greatest problems to agitate the Church is the relationship between Christianity and culture. Why this has agitated the church is a complex issue, but that it has can be demonstrated from even the slightest glance at the history of the church. The Church’s portrayal of the Gospel has been a mixed bag of fidelity and betrayal. The question I will address in this essay is this: how are we, Gallatin Valley Presbyterian Church, to view, relate to, engage, live and embody the Gospel, within the culture that we find ourselves, and do so in a manner characterized by fidelity rather than betrayal? While the issues here are complex, the following are some thoughts as to how to be faithful to the Gospel as a culturally located Reformed ecclesia (Church).
Before we proceed, an explanation of the terms Church and culture need to be stated. For the purposes of bringing home the practicality of this issue, I will mean by the Church the Reformed tradition in general and Gallatin Valley Presbyterian Church in particular.
The term culture is harder to define. But what I will mean by culture is the worldviews, beliefs, presuppositions, actions, products, and the mediums by which these are mediated, of a given community of people. This means that the Presbyterian Church in America lives in a distinctively American culture that is part of an overall Western culture that holds to, embodies and is shaped by certain distinctive (and not so distinctive) presuppositions, beliefs, actions, and mediating forms.
While there have been differing perspectives as to how the Church should relate to culture, the main perspective of the Reformed tradition has been the Christ Transforming Culture perspective. This perspective can be traced from John Calvin through the Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper to contemporary thinkers such as Francis Schaeffer and Al Wolters.
This Christ Transforming Culture perspective entails the idea that creation is inherently good (or ontologically or structurally good as theologians are apt to say[1]; cf., I Tim. 4:4). This means that creation and thus culture are not to be despised but celebrated and developed because they are part of God’s intent for the human race. God tells Adam and Eve that they are to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth (Gen. 1:27-28). According to Genesis, Adam and Eve are to develop a culture by working and caring for creation, finding creative ways for themselves and the fruit of their loins to live in harmony with creation. In short, they are to construct (i.e., by working and creating) a culture in accordance with God’s will. As sons and daughters of Adam and Eve we too are gifted in this way and have the responsibility to handle this gift properly. This is what Reformed theologians call the cultural mandate.
However, while this creation is structurally good, it is fallen as well. This means that the creative cultural acts of the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve will be fundamentally misguided, resulting in a culture that is not in harmony with the will of God. So, Reformed thinkers argue that while creation is structurally good, it is directionally fallen. That is, the pre-lapsarian, cultural acts of Adam and Eve were aimed toward the right telos—that is, aimed in the right direction, toward the right purpose. Yet because of the rebellion of Adam and Eve, our post-lapsarian[2] cultural acts are now misdirected, aimed at a different telos other than God’s will and glory.
One of the distinctives of Reformed theology is that it sees creation, and thus culture, as part of God’s redemptive plan (cf. Romans 8:18-23, Col.1:15-20). Much of Christianity, from the New Testament church to present-day evangelical theology, sees creation and culture as something that God will abandon or destroy at the eschaton[3]. But Reformed thinkers see creation and culture as something that God will transform. Or to continue with the directional metaphor, God desires to set creation and culture back on track, heading in the right direction.
Bringing together the two notions of the goodness of creation and God’s desire to restore creation, Reformed thinkers have argued that one of the purposes of the Church is to bring a Christian perspective into all areas of culture in order to redeem or transform culture. Thus, Abraham Kuyper’s oft-quoted saying: “there is no inch of the universe over which God does not say ‘This is mine!’”
The Christ Transforming Culture perspective has a lot to offer when it comes to a Biblical view of how the Church should view and relate to culture. It takes seriously the overall narrative construct of creation, fall, and redemption that forms the basis of Scripture. It celebrates the goodness of creation and culture. It recognizes the falleness of creation. It also recognizes God’s desire to restore creation and culture by the death and resurrection of Christ through the ministry of the Church.
However, at the same time I must register a hesitation. The notion of the Church transforming culture can lead to a triumphalistic mentality that believes it will usher in the Kingdom of God. While God’s primary instrument of redemption is the Church, the Church will never have the full picture of what the Kingdom of God will look like. We see through a glass darkly until Christ returns and transforms our perspective. With this in mind we must eschew any triumphalism that sees the Church establishing the Kingdom of God.
Perhaps we should understand our relationship with culture not so much as transformation but as engagement. This isn’t to say that we should not seek to redeem culture—we should. A Christ Engaging Culture model will seek to do this, but will also remember that Christ blesses our efforts in His providential timing and only He brings complete redemption. Our task is to engage culture; God’s task is to redeem it.
But how should we engage culture? While the answer to this question is complicated, what is of primary importance is that we first seek to understand the culture we live in. The following are some very general suggestions of how we can do that:
1. Labor of Love
We must put in the hard work of understanding our cultural milieu. Have we taken the time to read articles, books, or essays that offer a succinct and accurate cultural analysis? While many of us do not have the luxury of reading hours on end, is it too much to ask of ourselves to read one book and some articles over the next few months, or over the year, to get a better understanding of the culture we live in?
2. Active Engagement not Passive Entertainment
Mediums such as television, movies, and music are the prime communicators of our culture. If we want to engage culture, then we must interact with these mediums on more than an entertainment level. While it is not wrong to be entertained in and of itself, if we want to understand the culture around us, then we need to be actively engaged when interacting with cultural mediums. We should attempt to understand the questions that are being asked, the message that is being communicated, the way these are being presented, from a Christian worldview in order to effectively engage our culture with the Gospel. Two salutary places to begin with points 1 and 2 are the web sites of Ransom Fellowship (www.ransomfellowship.org.) and L’Abri Fellowship (www.labri.org).
3. Humility not Pride
Do we rigorously question our own beliefs and presuppositions? We will always, to a significant degree, view Christianity through the lenses of the culture that we are in. This is both good and bad. With this in mind we must ask ourselves: have we taken on cultural beliefs, norms, and presuppositions that are contrary to a Christian worldview? Because we are so indelibly marked by culture, this is a question that must be persistently pursued.
4. Involvement not Separation
Perhaps the best way to engage culture is to be involved in it. One way to be involved is to develop friendships within our community, not for the sole purpose of making them Christians but to show them the love of Christ by being involved in their lives. There are several individuals in our Church who exemplify this.
5. Prayer and Worship
Worship is a two-way communication between God and His people. When we worship, we seek to put God at the center of our attention by praising Him, thanking Him, confessing our sins to Him and bringing our requests to Him. At the same time God promises to reveal Himself and His grace to us through the Word and the sacraments. It is through corporate worship that God meets us and reveals Himself to us in a most vivid and intimate way. If we fail to worship God corporately, then we will miss out the primary way that God wants to reveal Himself to us, show us what it means to be the body of Christ, and sustain us with His grace to do so.
[1]Ontology is the study of being or reality in its most fundamental form. So, in this sense creation is good in its most fundamental form. Or in other words, creation is good in its very being, albeit a goodness derived from God.
[2]Pre-lapsarian and post-lapsarian mean pre-fall and post-fall, respectively.
[3]The eschaton refers to the “last things”; in this context, specifically to the restoring of creation to its intended purpose
The Kingdom must be advanced not merely extensively, but also intensively. The Church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man.
—J. Gresham Machen
The Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen once wrote that one of the greatest problems to agitate the Church is the relationship between Christianity and culture. Why this has agitated the church is a complex issue, but that it has can be demonstrated from even the slightest glance at the history of the church. The Church’s portrayal of the Gospel has been a mixed bag of fidelity and betrayal. The question I will address in this essay is this: how are we, Gallatin Valley Presbyterian Church, to view, relate to, engage, live and embody the Gospel, within the culture that we find ourselves, and do so in a manner characterized by fidelity rather than betrayal? While the issues here are complex, the following are some thoughts as to how to be faithful to the Gospel as a culturally located Reformed ecclesia (Church).
Before we proceed, an explanation of the terms Church and culture need to be stated. For the purposes of bringing home the practicality of this issue, I will mean by the Church the Reformed tradition in general and Gallatin Valley Presbyterian Church in particular.
The term culture is harder to define. But what I will mean by culture is the worldviews, beliefs, presuppositions, actions, products, and the mediums by which these are mediated, of a given community of people. This means that the Presbyterian Church in America lives in a distinctively American culture that is part of an overall Western culture that holds to, embodies and is shaped by certain distinctive (and not so distinctive) presuppositions, beliefs, actions, and mediating forms.
While there have been differing perspectives as to how the Church should relate to culture, the main perspective of the Reformed tradition has been the Christ Transforming Culture perspective. This perspective can be traced from John Calvin through the Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper to contemporary thinkers such as Francis Schaeffer and Al Wolters.
This Christ Transforming Culture perspective entails the idea that creation is inherently good (or ontologically or structurally good as theologians are apt to say[1]; cf., I Tim. 4:4). This means that creation and thus culture are not to be despised but celebrated and developed because they are part of God’s intent for the human race. God tells Adam and Eve that they are to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth (Gen. 1:27-28). According to Genesis, Adam and Eve are to develop a culture by working and caring for creation, finding creative ways for themselves and the fruit of their loins to live in harmony with creation. In short, they are to construct (i.e., by working and creating) a culture in accordance with God’s will. As sons and daughters of Adam and Eve we too are gifted in this way and have the responsibility to handle this gift properly. This is what Reformed theologians call the cultural mandate.
However, while this creation is structurally good, it is fallen as well. This means that the creative cultural acts of the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve will be fundamentally misguided, resulting in a culture that is not in harmony with the will of God. So, Reformed thinkers argue that while creation is structurally good, it is directionally fallen. That is, the pre-lapsarian, cultural acts of Adam and Eve were aimed toward the right telos—that is, aimed in the right direction, toward the right purpose. Yet because of the rebellion of Adam and Eve, our post-lapsarian[2] cultural acts are now misdirected, aimed at a different telos other than God’s will and glory.
One of the distinctives of Reformed theology is that it sees creation, and thus culture, as part of God’s redemptive plan (cf. Romans 8:18-23, Col.1:15-20). Much of Christianity, from the New Testament church to present-day evangelical theology, sees creation and culture as something that God will abandon or destroy at the eschaton[3]. But Reformed thinkers see creation and culture as something that God will transform. Or to continue with the directional metaphor, God desires to set creation and culture back on track, heading in the right direction.
Bringing together the two notions of the goodness of creation and God’s desire to restore creation, Reformed thinkers have argued that one of the purposes of the Church is to bring a Christian perspective into all areas of culture in order to redeem or transform culture. Thus, Abraham Kuyper’s oft-quoted saying: “there is no inch of the universe over which God does not say ‘This is mine!’”
The Christ Transforming Culture perspective has a lot to offer when it comes to a Biblical view of how the Church should view and relate to culture. It takes seriously the overall narrative construct of creation, fall, and redemption that forms the basis of Scripture. It celebrates the goodness of creation and culture. It recognizes the falleness of creation. It also recognizes God’s desire to restore creation and culture by the death and resurrection of Christ through the ministry of the Church.
However, at the same time I must register a hesitation. The notion of the Church transforming culture can lead to a triumphalistic mentality that believes it will usher in the Kingdom of God. While God’s primary instrument of redemption is the Church, the Church will never have the full picture of what the Kingdom of God will look like. We see through a glass darkly until Christ returns and transforms our perspective. With this in mind we must eschew any triumphalism that sees the Church establishing the Kingdom of God.
Perhaps we should understand our relationship with culture not so much as transformation but as engagement. This isn’t to say that we should not seek to redeem culture—we should. A Christ Engaging Culture model will seek to do this, but will also remember that Christ blesses our efforts in His providential timing and only He brings complete redemption. Our task is to engage culture; God’s task is to redeem it.
But how should we engage culture? While the answer to this question is complicated, what is of primary importance is that we first seek to understand the culture we live in. The following are some very general suggestions of how we can do that:
1. Labor of Love
We must put in the hard work of understanding our cultural milieu. Have we taken the time to read articles, books, or essays that offer a succinct and accurate cultural analysis? While many of us do not have the luxury of reading hours on end, is it too much to ask of ourselves to read one book and some articles over the next few months, or over the year, to get a better understanding of the culture we live in?
2. Active Engagement not Passive Entertainment
Mediums such as television, movies, and music are the prime communicators of our culture. If we want to engage culture, then we must interact with these mediums on more than an entertainment level. While it is not wrong to be entertained in and of itself, if we want to understand the culture around us, then we need to be actively engaged when interacting with cultural mediums. We should attempt to understand the questions that are being asked, the message that is being communicated, the way these are being presented, from a Christian worldview in order to effectively engage our culture with the Gospel. Two salutary places to begin with points 1 and 2 are the web sites of Ransom Fellowship (www.ransomfellowship.org.) and L’Abri Fellowship (www.labri.org).
3. Humility not Pride
Do we rigorously question our own beliefs and presuppositions? We will always, to a significant degree, view Christianity through the lenses of the culture that we are in. This is both good and bad. With this in mind we must ask ourselves: have we taken on cultural beliefs, norms, and presuppositions that are contrary to a Christian worldview? Because we are so indelibly marked by culture, this is a question that must be persistently pursued.
4. Involvement not Separation
Perhaps the best way to engage culture is to be involved in it. One way to be involved is to develop friendships within our community, not for the sole purpose of making them Christians but to show them the love of Christ by being involved in their lives. There are several individuals in our Church who exemplify this.
5. Prayer and Worship
Worship is a two-way communication between God and His people. When we worship, we seek to put God at the center of our attention by praising Him, thanking Him, confessing our sins to Him and bringing our requests to Him. At the same time God promises to reveal Himself and His grace to us through the Word and the sacraments. It is through corporate worship that God meets us and reveals Himself to us in a most vivid and intimate way. If we fail to worship God corporately, then we will miss out the primary way that God wants to reveal Himself to us, show us what it means to be the body of Christ, and sustain us with His grace to do so.
[1]Ontology is the study of being or reality in its most fundamental form. So, in this sense creation is good in its most fundamental form. Or in other words, creation is good in its very being, albeit a goodness derived from God.
[2]Pre-lapsarian and post-lapsarian mean pre-fall and post-fall, respectively.
[3]The eschaton refers to the “last things”; in this context, specifically to the restoring of creation to its intended purpose
The Kingdom must be advanced not merely extensively, but also intensively. The Church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man.
—J. Gresham Machen
posted by Gateposter | 8:37 AM
3 Comments:
Gregg,
This is really helpful and I can't help but relate this to what I have been learning about Native Americans and their culture.
First Nations people, here in the US and Canada, have such a rich, beautiful, and original culture. Yet, without Christ most are marred, lacking the presence and clarity of the revelation of the gospel. Not only that, most modern day Native American's view of Christianity is skewed, distorted and even despised because of a failed attempt to apply the principles that you are referring to. Yet, as I observe their "worldviews, beliefs, presuppositions, actions, products, and the mediums..." I see the image of God shining through. Their dress, dance, art, music, view of life and so much more is evidence of your statement, "that creation and thus culture are not to be despised but celebrated and developed because they are part of God’s intent for the human race."
My heart breaks when I think that we, the Church, even the puritans (who I have so much respect for,) thought they were going to transform the Indian culture for Christ yet they instead were stealing their culture and exchanging it for an Euro-American version. Now, so few Native Americans embrace Christ. And, many of those who name the name of Christ, have abandoned their culture saying that it is pagan, evil and godless.
I wonder then what Native American life and culture would look like redeemed by Christ. It is a vision that I hope burns brighter and brighter in my heart and soul. More importantly, I hope to see this realized on reservations and Native communities before I die.
Thanks for your teaching!
Gregg,
This is really helpful and I can't help but relate this to what I have been learning about Native Americans and their culture.
First Nations people, here in the US and Canada, have such a rich, beautiful, and original culture. Yet, without Christ most are marred, lacking the presence and clarity of the revelation of the gospel. Not only that, most modern day Native American's view of Christianity is skewed, distorted and even despised because of a failed attempt to apply the principles that you are referring to. Yet, as I observe their "worldviews, beliefs, presuppositions, actions, products, and the mediums..." I see the image of God shining through in their dress, dance, art, music, view of life and so much more. This is evidence of what you have said, “…creation and thus culture are not to be despised but celebrated and developed because they are part of God’s intent for the human race.”
My heart breaks when I think that we, the Church, even the puritans (who I have so much respect for,) thought they were going to transform the Indian culture for Christ yet they instead were stealing their culture and exchanging it for an Euro-American version. Now, so few Native Americans embrace Christ. And, many of those who name the name of Christ, have abandoned their culture saying that it is pagan, evil and godless.
I wonder then what would Native American life and culture look like redeemed by Christ. It is a vision that I hope burns brighter and brighter in my heart and soul. More importantly, I hope to see this realized on reservations and Native communities before I die.
Thanks for your teaching!
Gregg,
This is really helpful and I can't help but relate this to what I have been learning about Native American +culture.
First Nations people, here in the US and Canada, have such a rich, beautiful, and original culture. Yet, without Christ this culture is marred, lacking the presence and clarity of the revelation of the gospel. Not only that, most modern day Native Americans view Christianity as skewed, distorted and even despised because of a failed attempt to apply the principles that you are referring to. Yet, as I observe their "worldviews, beliefs, presuppositions, actions, products, and the mediums..." I see the image of God shining through in their dress, dance, art, music, view of life and so much more. This is evidence of what you have said: “…creation and thus culture are not to be despised but celebrated and developed because they are part of God’s intent for the human race.”
My heart breaks when I think that we, the Church, even the puritans (who I have so much respect for,) thought they were going to transform the Indian culture for Christ yet they instead were stealing their culture and exchanging it for an Anglo-Saxon version. Now, so few Native Americans embrace Christ. And, many of those who name the name of Christ, have abandoned their culture saying that it is pagan, evil and godless.
I wonder then what Native American life and culture would look like redeemed by Christ. It is a vision that I hope burns brighter and brighter in my heart and soul. More importantly, I hope to see this realized on reservations and Native communities before I die.
Thanks for your teaching!
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