If asked to provide a one sentence summary of D.A. Caron’s Christ and Culture Revisited, an adequate reply (at the risk of being ironic) might simply be, “Thou shall not be reductionistic.” Clearheaded, evenhanded and above all nuanced, Carson deafly navigates the nearly overflowing river of spilled-ink dedicated to the topic of cultural engagement. Rather than arguing for a particular vision of the Christ-and-culture relationship, Carson instead offers an fair-minded text focused on (1) clarifying terms, (2) establishing boundaries, (3) evaluating diverse approaches and (4) probing a number of related questions. Alive with clarity and sanity, Christ and Culture Revisited should be required reading for anyone interested in this topic.
Chapter one – “How to Think about Culture: Reminding Ourselves of Niebuhr” – opens with the simple question, “What is culture?” After setting aside the outdated “high culture”/“low culture” distinctions, Carson settles upon the definition offered by Clifford Geertz (a definition he returns to throughout the book):
[T]he 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 (2).Having established a footing to stand upon, Carson then moves into a summary Niebuhr’s now codified five-fold typology: (1) Christ against Culture, (2) the Christ of Culture, (3) Christ above Culture, (4) Christ and Culture in Paradox, and (5) Christ the Transformer of Culture. Carson’s treatment of Niebuhr is concise and well-documented such that even those who are unacquainted with Niebuhr will find his summary easy to follow. At the heart of his work, “Niebuhr,” remarks Carson,
…is not so much talking about the relationship between Christ and culture, as between two sources of authority as they compete within culture, namely Christ (however he is understood within the various paradigms of mainstream Christendom) and every other source of authority divested of Christ (though Niebuhr is thinking primarily of secular or civil authority rather than the authority claimed by competing religions) (12).In the first half of chapter two – “Niebuhr Revisited: The Impact of Biblical Theology” – Carson begins his critique of Niebuhr’s typology and method by focusing primarily on the “comprehensiveness” Niebuhr’s approach and his use (or misuse) of Scripture. Regarding the former, while one may “reflect, with gratitude,” upon the breath of Niebuhr’s net, “it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Niebuhr’s comprehensiveness is also a deadly weakness” (32). It is this comprehensiveness that allows for liberal and Gnostic forms of Christianity to “constitute the major proponents of the second of his five patterns, namely, ‘the Christ of culture’” (36). Such movements are not themselves “usefully thought of as Christian” and thus call into question the usefulness of Niebuhr’s second category. In reference to his use of Scripture, Niebuhr’s fundamental error lies in his understanding of the canon’s function. Carson explains:
Niebuhr’s view, a view that is still quite common in some academic circles, is that the Bible in general, and the New Testament in particular, provides us with a number of discrete paradigms. We are being faithful to Scripture so long as we align our choices with any one of these paradigms, or perhaps even with some combination of them. The canon’s “rule” is thus not so much in the totality of the canon’s voice, as in providing the boundaries of the allowable paradigms.The second half of chapter two, sets forth what Carson calls the “Non-negotiables of Biblical Theology” necessary for constructing a Christian vision of Christ and culture. This is perhaps one of the book’s strongest and most useful features. Carson tracts four epochal turning-points: (1) creation and fall, (2) Israel and the Law, (3) Christ and the New Covenant (with a special focus on the kingdom) and (4) Heaven and Hell. Under the third head, Carson delves into Jesus’ statement in Matthew 22:21, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (56-58). Carson’s purpose in all this is to call for both the integration and a culturally specific balance of these various biblical-theological points in order to formulate a broad and flexible model of Christ and Culture.Alternatively, Christians recognize the diversity of the Bible in general and of the New Testament in particular, but insist that the Bible as a whole constitutes the canon – and his canon’s “rule” lies in the totality of the canon’s instruction, not in providing a boundary to possible options. …[W]e should [therefore] be attempting a holistic grasp of the relations between Christ and culture, fully aware as we make our attempt, that peculiar circumstances may call us to emphasize some elements in one [Scriptural] situation, and other elements in another situation (40-43).
Chapter three – “Refining Culture and Redefining Postmodernism” – first seeks to think a bit more deeply about the nature of culture (broadly speaking) and its varying relationships with Christianity as a culture in itself (narrowly speaking). “The ‘Christ and culture’ formula is simply an easy way to summarize the possible relationships between Christians and non-Christians, not at the personal level or at the narrowly ideological level, but at the comprehensive level of ‘culture’ as developed in his essay” (79). Second, Carson argues for what he calls “chastened modernism” or “soft postmodernism.” To this ends he cites Christian Smith’s “perspectival realism”: “Things are not of human construction and interpretation all the way down; there does exists an ordered reality objective of human consciousness of it, which provides material which humans then interpret to construct what for them is reality” (92).
Between Omniscient knowing and radical skepticism, there is a third, mediating position that recognizes all human knowledge is both finite and fallen as well as true and concrete.
Chapter four – “Secularism, Democracy, Freedom and Power” – as the title suggests examines “four huge cultural forces: the seduction of secularization, the mystique of democracy, the worship of freedom, and the lust for power” (115). After much useful discussion, Carson concludes:
These biblical realties [the doctrine of God, creation and sin] make for a worldview that is sharply distinguishable from the worldviews around us, even where there are overlapping values. We cannot embrace unrestrained secularism; democracy is not God; freedom can be another word for rebellion; the lust for power, as universal as it is, must be viewed with more than a little suspicion. This means that Christian communities honestly seeking to live under the Word of God will inevitably generate culture that, to say the least, will in some sense counter or confront the values of the dominate culture. … Christians thus shaped by Scripture envision a church that not only counters alternative cultures but also seeks sacrificially to serve the good of others – the city, the nation, common humanity, not least the poor. Salt does not confront; it enhances. Believers must be the best possible citizens (cf. Jer. 29:7; cf. also 1 Pet 1:1; Jam. 1:1), and that means that Christians, who are taking their cue (and thus their worldview) from outside the dominate culture, not only shape and form a Christian culture recognizable different from that in which is it embedded but also become deeply committed to enhancing the whole (143-44).The last two chapters – “Church and State” and “On Disputed Agendas, Frustrated Utopias, and Ongoing Tensions” – continue to flesh out the implications of a biblically saturated worldview in the face of diverse cultures, state powers and ideologies. Again, Carson does not offer a one-size-fits-all approach to any of these areas; instead, he strives to articulate viable solutions within a wide array of biblical options.