What Hath Cairo To Do With Beaverton?

As I mentioned in my last post, D.A. Carson's main criticism of the "pessimism" of D.G. Hart's and Frederica Matthewes-Green's respective positions on the role of the church in culture is that they "fail to see the temporally good things we can do to improve and even transform social structures." Carson then cites abolishing slavery, curing disease, and reducing sex traffic as concrete ways (among "countless others") that "God's redeemed people" can fulfill our "responsibility to do good to the city."

Judging by the number of comments in the last thread, I'd say this has hit a nerve. Let's delve deeper and in greater detail, shall we?

For now, let's start with Carson's first example of how Christians can impact society: abolishing slavery. As has been pointed out already, "slavery" is hardly a univocal concept. The Egyptian subjugation of the Hebrews was evidently bad (though it got the divine thumbs-up later on when the Hebrews were the ones holding the whips). The Roman Empire's version of slavery, however, was apparently not evil enough to elicit a condemnation from Jesus, Peter, or Paul. American slavery was clearly an abomination, not only in this writer's opinion but in that of most people outside the bearded of Moscow, Idaho.

Whether or not the "wage slavery" that many have attributed to capitalism, or the sweatshop labor that the "free market" works so hard to perpetuate, qualifies as the kind of slavery that Carson thinks the church should abolish is unclear (I kind of doubt it, since it's always easier to tsk-tsk the crimes that Americans no longer commit than those that we presently associate with God's Own Politics [GOP for short]).

Either way, though, I'm not sure which book of the Bible provides the best tactical approach for putting Nike out of business (maybe Romans or Galatians, since they clearly repudiate the Mosaic works principle of "Just Do It").

But then, if Paul fails to suffice there's always Naomi Klein....

Gimme an "S"! Gimme an "L"! Gimme an "A-V-E-R-Y!"

In his discussion of the options vying for favor in the contemporary Christ/culture conversation, D.A. Carson interacts with those whose expectations he deems “minimalist” (such as Darryl Hart and Frederica Mathewes-Green).

Citing Hart’s insistence that Kuyperian attempts to integrate faith and scholarship are misguided, and Mathewes-Green’s likening of culture to the weather (we live in it and can even predict it with some accuracy, but changing it is not really an option), Carson argues that if all these authors were doing were offering a warning against utopianism, then all would be well. But such pessimism “fail[s] to see the temporally good things we can do to improve and even transform social structures” (p. 217-18, emphasis original).

Listing examples such as abolishing slavery, curing disease, and reducing sex traffic, Carson maintains that “in these and countless other ways cultural change is possible. More importantly, doing good to the city... is part of our responsibility as God’s redeemed people in this time of tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet.’”

Hmmm....

If “God's redeemed people” are the ones uniquely fit to end slavery and cure cancer, then it must follow that all people who dislike cancer are God's redeemed people, and all who are God's redeemed people dislike slavery. Unfortunately for us all, many anti-abolitionists were southern Presbyterians, but fortunately for us all, many pagans are not huge fans of cancer.

And for my own part, I am not a big slavery- or cancer aficionado. But as I recall, I wasn't much of a fan in my BC days either.

Maybe there is common ground between the old and new me after all.

The Clarion Call to Live Quietly

The last of Niebuhr's five options for discerning the relationship between Christ and culture is dubbed "Christ the Transformer of Culture" which, according to Carson's reading of Niebuhr, is not concerned so much with individual conversions, but the conversion of culture itself.

Niebuhr argues that for the proponent of this transformationist motif, eschatology is more "realized" than it is for most other Christians of differing persuasions.

"[The conversionist] lives somewhat less 'between the times' and somewhat more in the divine 'Now' than do his brother Christians. The eschatological future has become for him an eschatological present."

Interestingly, Niebuhr places both John Calvin and John Wesley within this trajectory. According to Carson, Wesley actually strengthens his conversionist heritage by espousing the doctrine of sinless perfection.

I hope to deal with the methodological problems with Niebuhr's approach in a subsequent post, but I do trust that the careful reader will at least scratch his head in confusion over the placing of John Calvin and John Wesley on the same team, regardless of the game.

There are others who could deal with the questionable historical-theological claim that Calvin was a transformationist better than I (Hart? Wenger? Clark? acd?), but I will say that the idea that Calvin was all about transforming Geneva is somewhat suspect, not in the least because, as a French refugee in the city, he had no real power in the first place.

Biblically-theologically, though, I am certainly more than competent enough to challenge the idea that Niebuhr, by his lack of negative criticism, tacitly endorses, i.e., that Jesus wants to change the culture from common to holy. Despite the fact that Jesus, Paul, and Peter all spoke of the role of the believer in society, none of them waxed more inspiring than simply calling their hearers to live quietly and mind their own business.

No, such a message won't sell many best-selling books, but if the goal is to call out from this present earthly kingdom a holy city for the glory of God, then it sounds just about right.

Between Heaven and Earth

Niebuhr's fourth option, "Christ and Culture in Paradox," is assigned to "dualists" such as the "true Lutheran [who] finds life both tragic and joyful." The dualist motif is also found in Paul, Marcion, and Augustine.

Although D.A. Carson finds all five of Niebuhr's categories for determining the relationship of Christ and culture to be problematic (an assessment with which I heartily concur), it is difficult not to sympathize with this paradoxical option, however falsely arrived at.

"Living between time and eternity, between wrath and mercy, between culture and Christ, the true Lutheran finds life both tragic and joyful. There is no solution to this dilemma this side of death."

It is precisely this tension between the already and the not yet (not to mention between iustus and peccator) that accounts for the love/hate relationship the believer has with the world around him. He hates the world while loving it, and both legitimately. He fears turning earth into a false god, but resists turning it into a false devil either. He insists that secular culture is not demonic, but also admits that it's not divine.

In a word, the Christian experiences all the messiness (forgive the emergent rhetoric) of dual citizenship, while rarely, if ever, feeling truly "at home" anywhere. As Conor Oberst put it, "My mind races with all my longings, but can't keep up with what I've got."

For my own part, while I know that all my unfulfilled longings are really longings for heaven in disguise, such knowledge doesn't change the fact that earth can look pretty good, too.

The Incarnation: A Good Start?

The third of Niebuhr's five options for determining the relationship of Christ to culture is "Christ Above Culture," and is, according to him, the majority position in the history of the church.

This view, Niebuhr argues, insists that:

"... Christ and the world cannot be simply opposed to each other. Neither can the 'world' as culture simply be regarded as the realm of godlessness; since it is at least founded on the 'world' as nature, and cannot exist save as it is upheld by the Creator and Governor of nature.... We cannot say, 'Either Christ or culture,' because we are dealing with God in both cases. We must not say, 'Both Christ and culture,' in full awareness of the dual nature of our law, our end, our situation."

Advocates of this "synthesist" position include Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and, most importantly, Thomas Aquinas who, according to Niebuhr, managed to combine without confusing "philosophy and theology, state and church, civic and Christian virtues, natural and divine laws, Christ and culture."

"Thomas's synthesis was not only an intellectual achievement but the philosophical and theological representation of a social unification of Christ and culture."

On of the greatest problems wth this approach, argues D.A. Carson, is that it ignores just how culturally conditioned such syntheses really are. Just like the Jesus of Harnack and Herrmann looked suspiciously like a nineteenth-century German liberal, so the Jesus of the contemporary advocates of "Christ Over Culture" looks, well, just like us.

I find it curious that in the thinking of many, the incarnation of the Son of God is considered to be a mere first step towards Christ incarnating himself to become "the express image" of whoever our target audience happens to be. Perhaps the Market's obsession with demographics has subtly taught us that incidentals such as income and race are so profound that the Son's merely becoming Man was not enough to convince us of God's earnest desire to be relevant.

But take the next step and make Jesus "my homeboy" and I'll buy the T-shirt.

Aristocratic Missionalism

The second of Niebuhr's five options regarding the relationship of Christ to culture is dubbed "The Christ of Culture." This position, Niebuhr argues, is adopted by those who hail Jesus as the Messiah of their society, and has been represented by the early Gnostics, Abelard, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, and the various "culture-Protestants" who have dominated the religious scene since the eighteenth century.

Advocates of "The Christ of Culture" are to be congratulated, Niebuhr maintains, for making Jesus appear less alien than he does in the "Christ Against Culture" mindset.

"The cultural Christians tend to speak to the cultured among the despisers of religion.... They are missionaries to the aristocracy and the middle class, or to the groups rising to power in a civilization. "

The main difficulty with this view, argues Niebuhr, is that its watered-down flavor is so diluted that it fails to win the respect of true pagans or the truly pious. Carson remarks that:

"[Pagan writers] suspect that what is to them a compromised position will weaken the purity of their paganism, or of their liberalism, or of their Marxism—just as, from the other side, the orthodox suspect that these cultural Christians have sacrificed too much of what is essential to Christianity. "

From where I sit, I see a disturbingly fair amount of this "aristocratic missionalism" in my own circles. The main difference, though, is that the much-coveted prize is not so much the respect of politicians or scientists as it was in Niebuhr’s day, but the props of the bohemian, soul-patched Gen X-er (the well-inked Gen Y-er works, too, but he doesn’t tithe).

The way this plays out in the contemporary scene is in our obsession with "the arts" and "the city," and our palpable disinterest in anything that likes NASCAR, wears a blue collar, and rocks a John Deere cap unironically.

In biblical terms, these are the same people who would have bragged to Jesus about how impressively ornate their temple was, right before he pronounced that not one of its edgy, postmodern stones would be left upon another.

Carson on Niebuhr: Christ Against Culture

In D.A. Carson's Christ and Culture Revisited, the author seeks to bring some biblical-theological insights to bear upon H. Richard Niebuhr's famous work, Christ and Culture. The project sounds welcome enough, but I'm not far enough in to the volume to really see what Carson is attempting to do just yet.

The first of Niebuhr's five options for understanding the relationship of Christ and culture with which Carson interacts is Christ Against Culture. Citing Tertullian as an advocate of this approach (Christians are a "third race" distinct from Jews and Gentiles), Carson sums up Niebuhr on this point thus: "... for the Christian, political life must be shunned, and so also military service, philosophy, and the arts." Included within this group would be certain Mennonite groups, the early Quakers, Leo Tolstoy, and, Carson adds, Stanley Hauerwas.

This position is inadequate, Niebuhr argues, since escape from one's culture is an impossibility. At the end of the day, Tertullian is a Roman and Tolstoy a Russian, whether they wanted to admit it or not. Among the various theological problems with this approach is the subtle assumption that while sin abounds "out there" (in the culture), it is largely absent "in here" (in the believer).

It seems to me that the root of many evangelical myths and misunderstandings about "the world" is seen at this very point. The world is almost purely demonic while the Christian bubble is virtually divine, when in point of fact, common grace makes the culture much better, and spiritual pride makes the church much worse, than most evangelicals want to admit.

For my own part, I see the doctrine of the two kingdoms as providing the necessary basis for the kind of cultural engagement during which one need not cross his fingers or grope for the underlying redemptive significance of the Lakers losing game three to the Spurs Sunday night.

In a word, the culture must not be made into a false idol, but it need not become a false devil either.