All authors dream of writing the book that is not only popular and valuable, but which becomes the reference point—the standard work—the book that sets the terms of the discussion, such that all subsequent books have to take account of it. H Richard Niebuhr managed to do that with his 1951 book Christ and Culture.
In it, he put forward a five-fold framework or typology for how Christians in history have interacted with culture. Niebuhr’s typology has framed the options ever since. His five models for Christians relating to culture were (very briefly):
1. Christ against culture—in which the demands of Christ are so opposed to the norms of culture that the two must be fundamentally opposed. In the Bible, we see this in the powerful imagery of Revelation (where the world is an evil opposing force to God’s kingdom), or in passages that urge us not to “love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15).
2. The Christ of culture—in which Christ represents, exemplifies and perfects all that is best in human culture. This is the vision of Enlightenment-style Liberalism, where there is no opposition between Christ and culture, but where Christian doctrine is molded to reflect and endorse what we already regard as the best and highest aspects of our civilization.
3. Christ above culture—in which the demands of Christ and culture are in some tension, but a tension that can be resolved by putting the two together (with Christ in the higher place). This approach is typified by Thomas Aquinas, who argued that the church stands over the world and helps the world achieve peace, stability and fulfillment.
4. Christ and culture in paradox—which also sees Christ and culture in tension (neither entirely separating, nor accom¬modating), but says that this tension will never be resolved in this age. This approach is exemplified in Luther’s doctrine of the ‘two kingdoms’, in which the Christian belongs at the same time to Christ’s eternal kingdom, and to the temporal kingdoms of this world. There is a high degree of pessimism in this option about improving or transforming the culture: it will remain sinful and flawed until it is redeemed in the new creation.
5. Christ transforming culture—which accepts the tension of option 4, but is more optimistic about the effect that Christ’s gospel will have in renovating the world now. Niebuhr anchors this in Augustine and Calvin (although with some difficulty), but is a little vague about how much transformation is possible.
In his new book, Christ and Culture Revisited, Don Carson takes account of Niebuhr’s influence on the ‘culture’ conversation, but tries to move beyond his framework. He spoke with Tony Payne recently.
Tony Payne: One of the things I liked about your book was that you weren’t afraid to critique Niebuhr’s types, and show some of the inconsistencies and problems. You say that the second one, for example—the Christ of culture—is not really legitimately Christian in any deep sense. And you point out that with the fifth one, the transformationist paradigm, Niebuhr himself can’t really find a proper example earlier than the 20th-century liberal theologian FD Maurice. I also appreciated your discussion as to whether a five-fold typology—trying to group people into camps—was, in fact, the best approach to make.
Don Carson: The problem with it partly is a canonical one. Some people use the Bible as a set of books to authorize different approaches. Provided you can anchor your view on almost anything to some strand in the canon, you are still canonical. Whereas I don’t think that is an appropriate use of canon, if God has given the whole thing—if it’s structured, not as a canon of case possibilities or case laws, but as a holistic thing. If it is a holistic thing, then there has to be something deeper behind all of them that makes any one of them relative; they are not options to choose from. They themselves are embedded in something bigger that is authorized by all of Scripture speaking canonically to the whole.
There may be particular emphases that have to be adduced when the church is under persecution, as opposed to when it’s flourishing or at peace. Yet it’s not as if Christians in the southern part of the Sudan have the right to say, “Of the various options before us, I think, perhaps, I would like to choose this one”. That’s not the way to think. The way to think is to understand the holism of the whole thing, and understand that the applications might vary a bit depending on our own circumstances.
So the whole typology thing ends up to be, in my judgement, too neat by half. It’s heuristically helpful to recognize different trends, but when you speak of Christ and culture and what is mandated, it makes me nervous to speak about different models or typologies, in exactly the same way that I am deeply suspicious of talk about different ‘models’ of the atonement. If the Bible has different ways of talking about the atonement, at the end of the day, there is still only one atonement. There are not different models from which you may pick and choose; rather, there are different emphases that must all be integrated together to understand the atonement as a whole thing. So the right question is not “Which ones shall I pick?” but “How do they hang together within the canon—within Holy Scripture itself?”. In my judgement, Niebuhr, although he has been analytically helpful, has not been helpful in terms of bringing us to more faithful, biblical theology.
TP: ‘Biblical theology’: that phrase crops up (well, not just the phrase, but the idea) as you start to propose an alternative approach. You say that we should view the canon as a whole—as an unfolding story with key turning points—if we are going to live faithfully to the whole Bible. I thought that was very helpful, especially in us seeing where we now sit in that story.
DC: Yes. The great turning points of redemption history are to be believed simultaneously and all the time, so that one does not have the right to believe in all of them except, let’s say, the Fall: that will skew your view of Christ and culture. Or to believe in all of them but have no place for thinking much about the new heaven and new earth—the prospect of heaven and hell. That will also skew your view of Christ and culture. You can show that all Niebuhr’s individual typologies, if pushed too far, are ignoring one or more of the turning points of redemptive history. Christians don’t have the right to do that because these are all non-negotiables in the Bible story line, and part of submitting to the word of God.
TP: Even the word ‘culture’ itself can be slippery and problematic. At points, I thought you were coming close to dispensing with the word altogether, and saying, “Let’s find some other categories and labels to talk about reality”—perhaps more biblically grounded categories and labels to talk about the reality of our engagement with the world and with race and with politics and with all the phenomena of our world. Do you think, in the end, that ‘culture’ is a helpful label? Is it too broad?
DC: It is an unavoidable term now; it’s used in so many different ways. But it is helpful to realize that it is used in a number of different ways, and it is helpful to recognize that context helps to determine its particular meaning in a specific place. There are some people who do argue that we should dispense with the term entirely—sometimes because, I think, they have implicitly adopted definitions that no serious thinker in the area actually uses. They argue that culture is made up of bric-a-brac—that is, a bit here, a bit there and a bit somewhere else, and every individual has his/her own bric-a-brac, and, therefore, how can you speak of the bric-a-brac of the entire world because nobody has exactly the same bric-a-brac as anyone else? But, in the first place, nobody in the field uses culture in so individualistic a fashion. It is something that includes the value systems worked out in art and language and symbol and priorities and so on—that are passed on from one generation to another. Then you realize right away that it can’t be just individualistic.
Moreover, there are concentric circles of referentiality. For example, I can speak of the differences between, let’s say, Australian culture and American culture. But, on the other hand, even within Australia, you can speak happily of differences between, let’s say, Aboriginal culture and European Australian culture, and then you can narrow things down much more than that. Nonetheless, it is still useful to speak of the differences between, let’s say, Australian culture and Chinese culture. It’s still useful, and you realize that there are different circles. So, likewise, when you come to Christ and culture, there’s a sense in which Christians on the Christ side still belong to the Australian culture, or the French or German or whatever it is.
Some people have objected to the whole discussion of Christ and culture because they say Christians can’t escape being within the culture. Well, that’s true! Hispanic Americans can’t help being Americans, but nevertheless there is still something that differentiates them from other Americans. So long as you try not to make the term ‘culture’ too narrow or too narrowly focused, you realize that there are overlapping circles of referentiality, and the term is useful for discussion along these kinds of lines. So there is a sense in which an Australian Christian will be an Australian as well as a Christian.
Nevertheless, while that Australian Christian is distinct from the broader culture in certain ways because the authority lines run differently—the values run a little differently—there are all kinds of positions of overlap: you might be all equally proud of the Sydney Opera House, or whatever. So that obviously compounds the discussion. You are forced to think through what kinds of overlap are being invoked implicitly or explicitly, and so some of the book is devoted to trying to untangle those sorts of uses.
TP: This was one of the book’s most helpful emphases for me—that it’s a complex field we are interacting with, resisting simple typologies or one-size-fits-all solutions, and calling for different responses to different challenges. It also made me realize how easily we shift between different levels or meanings of ‘culture’ without noticing we’ve done so—especially in using ‘culture’ as a synonym for ‘high culture’, even though that’s not really the accepted definition anymore. So when friends of mine talk about the need to ‘engage with culture’, what they often mean is that we need to be more into the arts and literature and music, whereas my brother’s favourite TV programme is American Chopper, and he loves motor racing. Why don’t we engage that culture?
DC: So we might say that ‘engaging the culture’ means something a little different in the personal experience of Tim Keller and of Mark Driscoll.
TP: [Laughing] To put it like that!
DC: They both really are engaging the culture, and both very fruitfully in all kinds of ways. One is going after a pretty sophisticated audience in New York—especially Manhattan, where most people in his congregation have degrees, are 30-something, sophisticated, and living in a city with 10 different opera companies (no other city in America has more than two)—a city which is the publishing centre of the western world in many ways, and so on. And the other is reaching out very effectively to blue collar guys with no biblical background and relatively little sophistication—guys who are feeling disen¬fran¬chised by an awful lot of the world, who can be a bit vulgar, and all the rest. And he is preaching very effectively to them too. So engaging with culture can mean a lot of different things so long as you don’t attach too much of a ‘highbrow’ connotation to culture.
TP: In terms of engaging the culture, I’d like to talk a little bit about seeking the good of the city (you quote Jeremiah 29:7 a few times) and how it relates to eschatology, and to cultural transformation and redemption. I’ve heard Jeremiah 29:7 quoted a lot in the last five years—more than I’ve ever heard it quoted before (I think), and it reminds me of my youth when the verse that was often quoted was 2 Chronicles 7:14: “[I]f my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land”. It was a similar kind of appropriation of a particular Old Testament promise, which had an historical context, into a promise for today—or a prescription for today. I’m just wondering, thinking biblically theologically, how do we think about doing good in our city—doing good in our country—doing good where we are for the sake of those around us—without buying too much into a kind of more overrealized ‘build-a-kingdom-now’ problem?
DC: Well, on the first element, I don’t mean to have cited Jeremiah 29:7 out of its context, but to use it illustratively for trends that are found in both Testaments. We are called to be salt and light—to do good to all men, especially those of the household of God (Gal 6:10), and so on. There are enough of those around that one can simply not write off Jeremiah 29 as being somehow restrictively focused on those who were in exile at the time: “No, the exile is over; we can forget Jeremiah 29. Who cares about Babylonian cities?” I don’t want to deny its historical specificity, but it is of a piece, nevertheless, with a much broader array of material, and, it seems to me, it has to be integrated somehow.
And second, I would say pretty strongly that I don’t like the language of ‘redeeming the culture’. Some of my friends use it, and when I talk to them about it, they usually back off a wee bit. I know what they mean by it, and I sympathize.
TP: What do they mean by it?
DC: The best of them mean Christians who roll up their sleeves and do good in the broader world can often really help bring into being some changes for the good of the broader community. Often that is not possible, depending on what’s going on at the moment. But on the other hand, one thinks, for example, of the Whitefield-Wesley awakening and the abolition of slavery, taking children out of the mines and the introduction of trade unions.
TP: There’s a connection in that story.
DC: Yes, there is. It is doing good to the city—doing good to the nation. It’s redeeming the culture in some sense. So if that’s all they mean by it, I’m not too troubled. The trouble is that it becomes so sloppy a use, that redeeming the culture becomes entirely parallel for redeeming men and women for eternity. And that’s not quite right, because there are all of these strands that do insist that there are some people who are of God and some people who are not of God, and that there is a difference between the world and the church. So unless one is deeply, deeply committed to a kind of post-millennial eschatology (which I judge to be a mistake theologically), the ‘redeeming culture’ language can be disruptive, and may have the effect of decreasing the distinctiveness of the church.
There are examples along that line that we should be wary of too. A lot of people refer to Abraham Kuyper, and Kuyper, in many ways, is a great man: he’s a hero, and he gets a lot of things right, in my judgement. One of the things he gets right is his insistence that what the church does qua institution is different from what Christians do as the people of God. I think that’s right. There are huge questions about ecclesiology locked up in all of that, but I still think it is right. If it is something that the church does, then it should be the leaders of the church who are supervising it. Whereas, already in the New Testament, you have even in the church in Jerusalem the first church leaders—the apostles—being given over to the ministry of the word and prayer. And when there are issues of justice, even within the church, then they are given over to some other people as well. That’s very interesting. And when you look at the list of qualifications of the elders, and so on, in the New Testament, they are very much bound up with the ministry of the word.
Nevertheless, there is this broader mandate for Christians to do this more influential stuff out there, and then, it seems to me, they are operating as Christians in the world as salt and light to all men, and especially to the household of God. But that’s not the church qua church that’s doing it. That depends on a certain type of ecclesiology—I acknowledge that too. And so I argued in the book that, on that point, Kuyper gets it right. But as he proceeds in his life—as he gets farther into to his Christian university, Christian trade unions and Christian political party and all the rest, you see a little less focus on the Christian gospel and evangelism and this sort of thing, and more time committed ultimately into institutionalizing Christian things. And in his case, that is tied also to the presumptive regeneration which is a pretty big part of a Dutch heritage of theology—that if people are reared in a Christian home and have been baptized and so on, you should presume that they are regenerate (rather than evangelize them or something). To my mind, it is suicide because it means that you are no longer trying to evangelize the next generation, and in two or three generations, it blows up in your face. You have a lot of conservative people who really aren’t born again.
So I am nervous about too much talk about redeeming the culture. I’m much happier with what developed in the evangelical awakening where people like Wilberforce and Shaftsbury and Lady Huntington, who were heavily involved, were also first and foremost evangelical Christians who were praying and evangelizing and telling people about Christ, and wanting people to be converted, and so on and so on. It’s that kind of focus, while nevertheless being concerned to do good in the broader culture, that I want to see preserved.
TP: Is Kuyper’s view what would be called ‘sphere sovereignty’? Or is that a slightly different thing?
DC: Kuyper himself held a modest form of sphere sovereignty that eventually developed beyond him into Dooyeweerdianism. It would be anachronistic to charge Kuyper himself with Dooyeweerdianism, since Herman Dooyeweerd came after him, and he took the insights that Kuyper had, and developed them.
Probably the most famous quote from Kuyper is, “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine! This belongs to me!’”1 There’s a sense in which any Christian who knows the Bible wants to say “Amen, amen! That’s right!” But then it also has to be, in my judgement, integrated with the fact that although Jesus, this side of the resurrection says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me [Matt 28:18]. This is mine!”—although 1 Corinthians 15 does say that all of God’s sovereignty is mediated through Christ until the very end, so he is still saying in a sense, “This is mine!”. Yet the same New Testament also insists in the strongest possible way that the reign is contested. And because it is contested until the end, therefore Satan does have certain prerogatives and initiatives, and so on, and this will continue until the last enemy is defeated, namely death itself (1 Cor 15:25-26).
TP: And the kingdom of this world is become—
DC: —the kingdom of our God. The ultimate hope of that, it seems to me, is Christ’s return. It’s not finally that we get enough spheres actually locked down. So under sphere sovereignty, then you start looking at the various spheres of life and saying, “What does the Lordship of Christ mean or look like in this sphere or that sphere?”. And so you do it in education, and start a Christian university. And you do it in trade unions, and so on.
TP: It’s a progressive colonization, as it were, of the spheres of life.
DC: Correct. And, in one sense, you have to admire the boldness of it all. You could argue, for example, that Wilberforce was looking at the whole slavery thing, and saying, “How do you express the sovereignty of Christ in this miserable institution?” The way to do it is to, first of all, stop the slave trade across the Atlantic. That was the first step. And eventually to abolish slavery itself. So, in one sense, as a sympathetic reading—that is a kind of working out of the implications of Christ’s sovereignty even now. Once again, you don’t want to just say that ‘sphere sovereignty’ is stupid; you see what he is trying to do.
But at the end of the day, you start thinking about your various spheres all the time, and work out your theology in ways that are pretty severe extrapolations beyond anything the New Testament actually says. Worse, your focus becomes wrong. Even if what you are trying to do is right in terms of doing good in the culture and so on, if it is at the expense of investing a lot of thought and energy in evangelism and planting churches, then once the gospel becomes merely the assumed thing, while the thing that you are excited about is ‘sphere sovereignty’, and then you’ve got things wrong again. You are then only a generation or two from losing the gospel.
I’ve been teaching for a lot of decades now, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that students don’t learn everything I teach. What they tend to learn is what I am most excited about. So if the gospel and church planting and outreach and seeing men transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, and regeneration and the transformation of families and all the rest—if this is not my passion, but is the assumption after which you focus on the transformation of society and culture, the you are in trouble. It could even be that a lot of the individual decisions in the latter are themselves defensible. But if it is at the price of losing excitement about what is biblically very much and demonstrably and exegetically at the centre, the price is too high to pay.
Endnote
1. From a speech Abraham Kuyper gave before a university audience in Amsterdam, quoted by Richard J Mouw in Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1992, pp. 147.↩
