Christ and Culture Revisited

What does it mean to be in the world but not of the world?  How do we define terms such as Christ, culture, and postmoderism?  Is there one particular grid through which Christians can view their relationship between Christ and culture?  What relationship does the church as the church have with the culture?  What relationship does the individual Christian have with the culture? 

Christ and Culture Revisited is a thoughtful book by D.A. Carson who is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.  Carson explores the controversial relationship between Christ and Culture with particular attention given to our postmodern context.  This book, in my estimation, is not the first book you would want to read on the subject, given its scholarly content, but definitely a must read for those who have some background on the subject. 

Carson begins by wrestling with the definition of the term “culture.”  He prefers the widely cited definition offered by Clifford Geertz, which says, “The 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.”  He then interacts with H. Richard Niebuhr’s five-fold typology of Christ and culture: Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of culture.  Carson critiques Niebuhr’s theology as well as his typologies of Christ and culture with the conclusion that they are too idealistic and reductionistic but never the less a helpful starting point for the discussion.  He then emphasizes the importance of recognizing the great turning points in redemptive history (the meta-narrative of the Bible) in order to properly perceive the Christians relationship between Christ and culture.  This leads him to question whether the Bible as a whole offers distinct types as alternatives for the Christian to choose or reject or whether Niebuhr’s types are more rightly thought to be possible emphases within the a more comprehensive whole. 

In the end, if you are looking for someone to tell you what to believe and how to act or react to the culture in every situation, this book is not for you.  Carson, in a very balanced way, interacts with the competing voices of the past as well as contemporary commentators in order to present a well-informed discussion of Christ and culture.  What he does present with certainty is that the ongoing tension between Christians and their relationship with the culture will remain until the second coming of Christ, so until then we must wrestle with these things with the Bible as our norming norm.  With a proper understanding of the Lordship of Christ and redemptive history we will be far better able to interact with the changing nature of our culture than simply adopting a narrow rigid grid.

Carson gives his final charge as follows: To a generation that scrambles for the top and then looks around and asks, “Is this all there is?”  a biblical vision that focuses on Christ and his cross, on the links between this world and the next, on bold Christian living and faithful witness, and on a large-scale vision that makes the world our parish while loving the neighbor next door, raises our eyes above ourselves, and delights in the glory of God.