RSSThe Paradox of Christianity and CultureW.H. Chell…
The Paradox of Christianity and Culture
W.H. Chellis
From the introduction to Christianity and European Culture: Selections from the Work of Christopher Dawson:
“In many of Dawson’s books, there is a clear tension between the Christian virtue of hope and anxiety over the present world situation. Dawson expresses more doubt about the chances for a Christian civilization than T.S. Eliot, but prefers to see in the contemporary state of affairs a challenge similar to that faced by the early Christian’s. They faced what they thought was the end of the world with hope and joy. They were able to surmount the decaying Roman Empire and create a new civilization for the world while keeping their eyes fixed on the promise of eternal life. It is the paradox of Christianity that those disdainful of temporal affairs created a new world, while the pagans whose vision was fixed on this life disappeared (pg. xxvi).”
This is a great reminder that we are pilgrims amidst the nations and that our primary concern is focusing on the cross and worshipping our holy God. Social righteousness is not the fruit of political savvy but a by-product of Christian lives well lived. Jesus said, “seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you (Mat. 6:33)”.
From the perspective of Christ’s kinship over the nations, what happens in the sacred Assembly on the Lord’s Day is much more important than what happens the rest of the week in the legislative assembly.
Jeremy Abel
September 17th, 2006 at 8:23 am
Could you please give the reference for that Dawson quote, if it is supplied? Thank you.
D Hart
September 17th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Let me see if I can draw together Bill’s citation of Dawson with his remarks about Abraham and the covenant through further reflection on Christ and culture or the relationship between grace and nature.
Part of what I am trying to do justice to in my own refusal to bend the knee to the Covenanter construction is the different constructions of grace and nature, or cult and culture in different periods of redemptive history. A Christian civilization is something different for Paul than what it was for Abraham, thanks to the coming of Christ, just as both of these saints’ experiences were different from Adam and Eve’s before the fall. In every case the difference can be characterized as discontinuity. For example, circumcision becomes baptism. In politics it means, in my estimate, Christ becomes David, and the church becomes the New Israel.
Christian civilization in the era of the church is more spiritual than Israel’s physicality, which also means for me that Christ’s rule will be less visible than Israel’s obvious polity. This also means that cult and culture are not as obviously coherent as they were in the Old Testament. This will change in the New Heavens and New Earth. But along the way it means that the different periods of redemptive history have fundamental elements of discontinuity, and so grace and nature relate differently in the different eras.
Andrew Matthews
September 19th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Dr. Chellis, I agree that the Christian EKKLESIA has more inherent dignity than a government legislature. And, in the long run, over hundreds of years, it’s more important that the Church gets it right. Kingdoms wax and wane, but the Church of Jesus Christ remains. However, I’m sure you agree that what a legislature enacts in one session, or a Supreme Court decides in one case, can have immense consequences for the spiritual health of the citizenry.
Dr. Hart writes, “A Christian civilization is something different for Paul than what it was for Abraham, thanks to the coming of Christ…”
Earlier, he had written, “Christianity itself was not the basis for a Christian culture. Christianity as a culture has never existed.”
Can there be a Christian civilization, but not a Christian culture? Please help me out, Dr. Hart.
Is it merely that you want a less “obvious” or “tiumphalistic” Christian culture? Or do you define out of reality any relation between cult and culture? Perhaps they are parallel rays that finally intersect in eternity.
My sarcasm has a point: Your application of Calvinism to this question appears motivated to preserve a remnant for the next world without regard for the moral & spiritual health of a Christian nation, i.e., a nation whose population is composed largely of professing Christians.
I am familiar with the malignant provincialism that characterizes small sectarian groups who claim to live as “pilgrims and strangers” in the “world,” and I don’t like it very much. It is the opposite spirit, the nemesis, of Christian catholicity. It is a purely negative thing.
The challenge a catholic or national church faces is to unite the citizenry through a common confession and liturgy. To abandon this aspiration is to abandon catholicity.
You say, Dr. Hart, that the biblical emphases of “aliens & strangers,” “suffering,” and “less physical-more spiritual,” will preserve the Church’s purity. I have theological and practical arguments against this strategy:
1) The NT never says that the purpose of the Gospel is to “preserve a remnant” in the world. The remnant, according to Romans, is elect ethnic Israel. The Gospel is for the conversion & discipleship of the nations, as many as God shall call.
The OT saints confessed that they were “aliens & strangers,” and the NT writings testify to the establishment, permanence, and greater glory of the New Covenant order. So it is actually more likely that discontinuity between the dispensations is that the Church will succeed where Israel under the Law did not. It is difficult to locate discontinuity between the Church and OT Israel in the category of “aliens & strangers,” when both entities are understood in those terms.
The New Covenant was given so that Israel would obey God’s laws & be a blessing to the whole world, not for the purpose of remaining an invisible remnant (see Jer. 31).
From where I sit, your eschatology makes the difference between covenants to consist in the abrogation of cultural responsibility (”we are no longer under the Law”), a kind of social antinomianism, and traps Christians in a self fulfilling prophecy of cultural marginalization.
Ethnic Israel retains her calling and responsibility to be God’s people, as does every nation whose fathers confess the lordship of Jesus Christ. So, no, I haven’t gotten over Israel.
2) The historical situation we find ourselves in is that the vast majority of people living in the United States and other Western countries are either baptized persons or the descendants of baptized persons.
These people should not be treated as if they are in the position of pagans who never received the Gospel. They should be regarded as an apostate generation, subject to the discipline of the Church and confessional state, who need to be called back to fidelity to their heritage. “The promise is to you and your children.” Moderns should certainly not be encouraged in their apostasy at either the personal or corporate levels.
Just as it is no surprise when uncatechised children raised by Christian parents often grow up to be marginal or non-practicing Christians, so it should be no mystery why the people of a geographic region give up their ancestral faith.
Why make common cause with the Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s and Barry Lindh’s of the world? Why make common cause with the political left against the Christian right?
Rather, we should be emphasizing the best in America ’s religious identity and showing the way to a more faithful future. Arguably, America stands for many things that can be interpreted in light of Christianity: justice, freedom, equality, human dignity, humane treatment of enemies, hearth and home. As I see it, America would be better off with a more self-consciously Christian public life than the watered-down psuedo-religiosity of one of the political parties.
Dr. Hart, I’m afraid that your Klinean commitments serve to undermine Christendom’s resolve against inner (liberal) and outer (Islamic) threats to her peace.
Andrew Matthews
September 19th, 2006 at 12:57 am
Dr. Chellis, I agree that the Christian EKKLESIA has more inherent dignity than a government legislature. And, in the long run, over hundreds of years, it’s more important that the Church gets it right. Kingdoms wax and wane, but the Church of Jesus Christ remains. However, I’m sure you agree that what a legislature enacts in one session, or a Supreme Court decides in one case, can have immense consequences for the spiritual health of the citizenry.
Dr. Hart writes, “A Christian civilization is something different for Paul than what it was for Abraham, thanks to the coming of Christ…”
Earlier, he had written, “Christianity itself was not the basis for a Christian culture. Christianity as a culture has never existed.”
Can there be a Christian civilization, but not a Christian culture? Please help me out, Dr. Hart.
Is it merely that you want a less “obvious” or “tiumphalistic” Christian culture? Or do you define out of reality any relation between cult and culture? Perhaps they are parallel rays that finally intersect in eternity.
My sarcasm has a point: Your application of Calvinism to this question appears motivated to preserve a remnant for the next world without regard for the moral & spiritual health of a Christian nation, i.e., a nation whose population is composed largely of professing Christians.
I am familiar with the malignant provincialism that characterizes small sectarian groups who claim to live as “pilgrims and strangers” in the “world,” and I don’t like it very much. It is the opposite spirit, the nemesis, of Christian catholicity. It is a purely negative thing.
The challenge a catholic or national church faces is to unite the citizenry through a common confession and liturgy. To abandon this aspiration is to abandon catholicity.
You say, Dr. Hart, that the biblical emphases of “aliens & strangers,” “suffering,” and “less physical-more spiritual,” will preserve the Church’s purity. I have theological and practical arguments against this strategy:
1) The NT never says that the purpose of the Gospel is to “preserve a remnant” in the world. The remnant, according to Romans, is elect ethnic Israel. The Gospel is for the conversion & discipleship of the nations, as many as God shall call.
The OT saints confessed that they were “aliens & strangers,” and the NT writings testify to the establishment, permanence, and greater glory of the New Covenant order. So it is actually more likely that discontinuity between the dispensations is that the Church will succeed where Israel under the Law did not. It is difficult to locate discontinuity between the Church and OT Israel in the category of “aliens & strangers,” when both entities are understood in those terms.
The New Covenant was given so that Israel would obey God’s laws & be a blessing to the whole world, not for the purpose of remaining an invisible remnant (see Jer. 31).
From where I sit, your eschatology makes the difference between covenants to consist in the abrogation of cultural responsibility (”we are no longer under the Law”), a kind of social antinomianism, and traps Christians in a self fulfilling prophecy of cultural marginalization.
Ethnic Israel retains her calling and responsibility to be God’s people, as does every nation whose fathers confess the lordship of Jesus Christ. So, no, I haven’t gotten over Israel.
2) The historical situation we find ourselves in is that the vast majority of people living in the United States and other Western countries are either baptized persons or the descendants of baptized persons.
These people should not be treated as if they are in the position of pagans who never received the Gospel. They should be regarded as an apostate generation, subject to the discipline of the Church and confessional state, who need to be called back to fidelity to their heritage. “The promise is to you and your children.” Moderns should certainly not be encouraged in their apostasy at either the personal or corporate levels.
Just as it is no surprise when uncatechised children raised by Christian parents often grow up to be marginal or non-practicing Christians, so it should be no mystery why the people of a geographic region give up their ancestral faith.
Why make common cause with the Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s and Barry Lindh’s of the world? Why make common cause with the political left against the Christian right? Rather, we should be emphasizing the best in America ’s religious identity and showing the way to a more faithful future. Arguably, America stands for many things that can be interpreted in light of Christianity: justice, freedom, equality, human dignity, humane treatment of enemies, hearth and home. As I see it, America would be better off with a more self-consciously Christian national mission than the watered-down psuedo-religiosity of one of its political parties.
I’m afraid, Dr. Hart, that your Klinean commitments serve to engender ambiguity and confusion, undermining Christendom’s resolve against inner (liberal) and outer (Islamic) threats to her peace.
W.H. Chellis
September 19th, 2006 at 9:06 am
Mr. Abel,
My apologies for the confusing quotation. The quote is not from Dawson but about Dawson. It is from the introduction from a selection to Dawson’s works. The book is edited by Gerald Russello (who i think edits the University Bookman.
The selections in the book deal with the question of Christianity and culture. I highly recommend the book especially the first selection, “The Outlook of Christian Culture”.
W.H. Chellis
September 19th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Mr. Matthews,
You have read my statement in its proper perspective. We are strangers an aliens, like Gondor was a city of strangers and aliens in Middle Earth in Tolkien’s legendariam.
Even in the midst of Christendom we remain a people with a homeland to which we look forward with anticipation. This does not mean we suffer the fate of being anabaptists. Rather we seek to build an environoment that reminds, no matter how obscurely, our homeland. What is Christendom but a godly (sometimes) ghetto of heaven?
Tom Muldoon
September 21st, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Praise the LORD!
Soldier’s Angel is a prominent charity. They solicited me, and on
my postcard to a soldier I wrote:
“Jesus Christ is the Lord of the
nations… Seek Him in the Bible…”
So because of your blogspot a cryp-
tic word, at least, about Christ’s
lordship is going to an American
soldier overseas.
Tom Muldoon
September 21st, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Generally a blogspot about Christ’s lordship over the nations should beget concerns about missionary work. “How shall they hear without a preacher?” Talking
about bringing the nations to Christ without missions is like
planning to run a race without legs.
Missionaries like William Carey greatly influenced the nations to whom God sent them. Today Wycliffe
is reducing languages to writing so that small minorities within
nations might build a culture around God’s Word. Think too of the 5 young missionaries martyred by the Auca Indians 50 years ago.
Their story appeared in LIFE Magazine, making the public grapple
with the claims of Christ over the nations…
Even in the last two centuries it was William Wilberforce, an Evan-
gelical greatly influenced by the
Methodists, who was used of God to
end the slave trade in the English
speaking world.
Fifteen years ago Bill Edgar and Rich Ganz wrote SOLD OUT, a book
very critical of Evangelicals.
It was hard for them to find a
publisher. We need to thank God
for what is good in the Evangelical movement as well as
criticize what is bad…
D Hart
October 1st, 2006 at 9:59 am
Mr. Mathews’ question about the difference between a Christian civilization and a Christian culture is perhaps the best one but also the one hardest to answer. Too often the words civilization and culture are used interchangeably. But a civilization seems to me bigger than a culture. The former may apply to the civilization of the automobile — and I would argue that the car has become a civilizational force shaping a host of social and political developments (not for the good). A culture is something that can apply in more local situations, like a family, a congregation, a neighborhood, and even a denomination.
But regarding the point about exile, remnant and purity of the church. I am not sure if I ever said the whole purpose of the church is to preserve a remnant, though I think the New Testament can certainly be read in more preservationalist than transformationalist ways. I don’t get the sense that Christ and the apostles believed they were launching a Christian civilization.
But my point is that the church relates to culture now the way Israel did when in exile. Peter calls Christians aliens and strangers. God gave OT and NT saints similar instructions about what to do in exilic conditions — such as seeking the welfare of the city. But God didn’t seem to expect them to transform the city to become a Christian society. Think of Daniel who participated up to his eyeballs in pagan culture without bowing the knee. As I argue in A Secular Faith, I think Daniel is the model for Christians. He submitted up to a point to the pagan powers that God had ordained. If he could, why can’t we?