CHRIST AND CULTURE

Christ and Culture



Christ and Culture

Introduction

This is a problem because we know Christ is perfect/sinless, and if culture is man-made (as Niebuhr shows it is), and since humans are imperfect/sinful, how can Christ mingle with imperfection? This is compounded by the fact that there are verses in the Bible that suggest we should be out of the world and also verses that suggest we should be in the world. This is even harder to see when the biblical literatures does not represent a single example of a belief that is represented in non-cultural forms. To show how Christians have attempted to deal with this “problem”, Niebuhr introduces and interacts with five views; Christ against culture, Christ of Culture, Christ above Culture, Christ and Culture paradox and finally, his recommended, Christ transforms culture.

Christ against Culture

Here is the most uncompromising view towards culture which “affirms the sole authority of Christ over culture and resolutely rejects culture's claims to loyalty” (45) “The counterpart of loyalty to Christ and the brothers is the rejection of cultural society; a clear line of separation is drawn between the brotherhood of the children of God and the world” (47-48).

The Christ of Culture

In this view, men/women 'hail Jesus as the Messiah of their society, the fulfiller of its hopes and aspirations, the perfecter of its true faith, the source of its holiest spirit” (83). These people seek to maintain fellowship not only with believers with also with unbelievers. “They feel no great tension between church and world, the social laws and the Gospel,… the ethics of salvation and the ethics of social conservation or progress. On the one hand they interpret culture through Christ, where those aspects that are most like Jesus are given most honour. On the other hand, they interpret Christ through culture, selecting from ...