Christ and Culture Revisited

Recently, conservative Christians have discovered “culture.” Now they are trying to figure out what to do with it. Of course, culture is nothing new. Biblically, it can be traced back to the “cultural mandate” in Genesis 1:26, 28. Beginning with the early church in Acts 2, historic Christian traditions have wrestled with the issue for centuries. Theologians of liberal persuasion have been discussing the issue for some time. “Evangelicals,” broadly speaking, are finally doing the same. D.A. Carson's book, along with a number of other recent volumes, can enhance the latter group's reflections and actions on the subject in a biblical and thoughtful way. Beginning with a summary of the iconic typology in H. Richard Niebuhr's classic Christ and Culture, Carson immediately proceeds to weigh in on the traditional weaknesses of Niebuhr's work. Then he proceeds in the second chapter to his most important contribution in this book with an overview of “the great turning points in redemptive history” (p. 44ff): creation, the fall, Jesus' incarnation, death and resurrection, Pentecost, final judgment, and the consummation. This survey of biblical theology serves as a basis, not only for deconstructing Niebuhr's “reductionisms,” but constructively for showing how these mountain top features of biblical history, when “taken together, constitute a bundle of non-negotiables as we try to navigate our way toward a stable grasp of how Christians should think about the relations between Christ and culture” (p. 67). Instead of viewing Niebuhr's Christ and culture categories as discrete, competing biblical paradigms, Carson demonstrates how at least four of his five models (omitting Christ of culture) can be appropriately “trimmed” and coherently incorporated as useful parts of a larger biblical–theological whole.