BOOK REVIEW –RICHARD NIEBHUR, CHRIST AND CULTURE

Christ and Culture

            Christ and Culture, authored by H. Richard Niebuhr in 1951, is a book which discusses how a Church or a Christian is to interact with ones culture.  Niebuhr systematically answers this question by placing the church into the following five categories they have utilized through history to answer this question: Christ against culture, the Christ of culture, a Christ above culture (Christ synthesizing with culture), Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of culture. Reading this book more that fifty years since it was penned, I believe Christ and Culture to somewhat dated, yet still highly relevant today. This review will discuss Niebuhr’s five categories, his strengths, weaknesses, and what I see as a missing element for contemporary culture.

            Niebuhr begins his book with the problem and question of how Christianity is to relate to culture. He indicates that Christ’s answer to the problem does not always coincide with Christian answers (Niebuhr, 2001). This critique is valuable as it cuts through Christian hermeneutical idolatry in which people believe their understanding of the interaction of Christ and culture are systematically locked in to only one absolute definition. Niebuhr shows that following Christ can threaten culture for numerous reasons. While elaborating on the problem and defining his five categorical answers he does not believe that one person or a community can completely conform to only one type, which indicates to me that people can freely belong to multiple categories. The first chapter also defines the terms Christ and culture.  

            Niebuhr’s first answer to the question of Christ and culture looks at Christ against culture. Adherents to this philosophy believe that the counterpart of loyalty to Christ is the rejection of cultural society; [where] a clear line of separation is drawn between the brotherhood of the children of God and the world. He shows that these Christians condemn culture. This type of framework of worldview consists of people that believe all non-Christians and everything that is in the world is corrupt. Here, Christians must take numerous steps to remain pure from the sinfulness of the world. This form of Christianity tends to embody isolationist behavior in which Christians follow the holy road or as Niebuhr says it, the way of life, while all others follow the secular path or road to death. Niebuhr exemplifies Tertullian as a model for the epitome of the Christ-against-culture position because he was against military service and believed that Greek culture was completely inferior to Christianity. Niebuhr also utilized 9 pages illustrating Leo Tolstoy as another exemplar of Christ against Culture. He also briefly utilizes modern Mennonites as believers of Christ against Culture.

            Next Niebuhr discussed the Christ of culture and states that these people are Christians not only in the sense that they count themselves believers in the Lord but also in the sense that they seek to maintain community with all other believers. Yet, they seem equally at home in the community of culture.  He shows that these are the believers that harmonize Christ with culture. Unfortunately, instead of focusing primarily at the positive aspects of these believers, he instead spotlights the radical aspects of Christians in this category; in particular Gnostics, Ritschl, Thomas Jefferson, and other people that reduce Jesus immanence, transcendence, and deity to only a peaceful and moral Jesus. I agree with Niebuhr that elevating a Christ of culture theologian such as Schleiermacher to sit on an orthodox pedestal (my words, not his) is dangerous. However, apparently defending his credo Niebuhr verbally slaps fundamentalists for defending themselves against liberal theology.  Although I have my critiques against Niebuhr, he continues to provide much wisdom. Regarding the Christ of culture he states, The terms differ, but the logic is the same: Christ is identified with what men conceive to be their finest ideals, their noblest institutions, and their best philosophy. (Niebuhr, 2001)

            If my understanding of Niebuhr’s explanation of the Christ of culture is correct and if his latter critique is correct then the contemporary missional doctrine and belief known as the Missio Dei will continue to be rejected by main stream Christianity. I strongly agree with the Missio Dei and believe that Christ is the fulfillment of culture. I believe Christ can be found all through out culture, be it in film, the arts, in nature, etc and that the church should be incorporating the Missio Dei as its heartbeat, showing the culture where God is already present while in essence providing a cultural specific apologetic. It is my hope that Niebuhr is wrong and that Christians will embrace this Christ of culture theological viewpoint. This portion may go toward the end of the paper.

             Niebuhr next looked at the Christ above culture where Christ is Lord of both this world’s culture and heaven. These two realities cannot be entirely separated. Here, people are obligated in the nature of his [man’s] being to be obedient to God, which includes God in Christ and Christ in God. In this view human culture and God’s grace are mysteriously linked together. Niebuhr focuses on the synthesist’s view with a profound sentence and says, we cannot say, Either Christ or culture, because we are dealing with God in both cases. We must not say both Christ and culture as though there were not great distinction between them; but we must say Both Christ and culture, in full awareness of the dual nature of our law our end, and our situation.  This synthesis in a sense sounds like the Christ of culture, yet once Niebuhr examines the duality of the Christian life, it becomes apparent how synthesizes place Christ above culture. In particular Niebuhr focuses on the synthesis Thomas Aquinas and professes that Thomas way of solving the problem of culture and Christ has become the standard way for hosts of Christians. Thomas places Christ far above culture. As a Thomist, Norman Geisler’s influence on the Southeast’s apologetic movement is filled with an understanding of logic in nature as a key to understanding the Gospel (Niebuhr, 2001). I believe this ultimately has lead to a form of reductionism in which Christ has been logically and rationally systematized, structured, and diagnosed which in a sense can germinate into humanity acting like the Holy Spirit.

            Another problem that Niebuhr believes contemporary Thomists are vulnerable to is that Christ is not synthesized properly to the current culture and hence in a sense as they have become outmoded. Furthermore, outmoded theology can become an institution and without this institution theology is open to attack. This I believe is Niebuhr attacking a fundamentalist framework. I agree with him in theory, yet left unchecked this belief can rally heretical armies to combat orthodox Christianity and God’s word, something I firmly oppose. Finally, Niebuhr offers one additional noteworthy critique against synthesis’s; I believe he is correct when he thinks synthesizes do not face up to the radical evil present in all human work (148). Humans can and do interpret and act upon Christ in sinful ways and Christians must be aware of this warning.

       Although I found Christ and Culture helpful in articulating five different categories that Christians can utilized to understand the interaction of Christ and culture, his Christendom centric worldview does not exist in the contemporary west.  In particular, where does the non-Christian postmodern or the non-Christian relativist fit into Niebuhr’s five categories? I wonder if Niebuhr were alive today, would he take up John Stackhouse’s cultural apologetic thrust and ask is Jesus / Christianity is plausible?

      Perhaps he would have asked this same question. Although I do not agree with Niebuhr’s theology, which for lack of better words is too liberal for me, I do think he was ahead of his time in regards to viewing the world through a postmodern filter. For instance, he states, The effort to bring Christ and culture, God’s work and man’s into one system of thought and practice tends, perhaps inevitably, to the absolutizating of what is relative, the reduction of the infinite to a finite form, and the materialization of the dynamic. Instead of looking at a one size fits all philosophically based answer to theology Niebuhr values of cultural diversity. He goes on and says, But no synthesist answer so far given in Christian history has avoided the equation of a cultural view of God’s law in creation with that law itself. Although I am unsure of Niebuhr’s definition of cultural view of God’s law, I think he is explaining the necessity of theology to reshape itself in every culture. If my understanding of Niebuhr is correct, I wonder if he would attempt to reshape theology to attract a non-Christian audience in order to help the Gospel look plausible.

            My final comment of this book is that it was an intellectually exhaustive read.  I do not think well in the abstract which seemed to be the preferred method of explanation of this book.  Adding to the complexity were sentences that equaled paragraphs and pages that did not contain any paragraphs.  It is a shame that he presented such simple categories with complex articulation.  Adding my 21st century emphasis, I think authenticity requires one to reveal their bias up front; I think Niebuhr should have stated his theological bias instead of hiding behind supposed objectivism.