90 books in 90 days -- christ and culture

Christ and Culture was the most influential book that H. Richard Niebuhr wrote.  He sets out to solve a problem:  "How are we supposed to think about the relationship of Christ and culture?"  After defining "Christ" as a Son in relationship to a Father and "culture" as the social heritage we receive and transmit (ch. 1), Niebuhr articulates the inherent tension between the two:   First, God leads people away from the temporality and pluralism of culture.  Second, culture rejects Christ; who bids people to rely on grace.  Thus, a tension occurs between Christ and culture that results in affirmations, denials, reconstructions and compromises on both sides.   Niebuhr argues that history demonstrates five "types" (later he calls them "motifs") of responses between Christ and culture.  He sets out to articulate each type and argue for Christ as the transformer of culture.

An important trait of Niebuhr's work in Christ and Culture is his method for doing ethics.  Niebuhr was concerned not to superimpose a "cultural" answer onto the question that he is trying to answer.  He was postmodern before the advent of postmodernity.  Thus, instead of making a biblical or philosophical argument for one of the positions, Niebuhr makes a historical argument.   He states that, "we use history to identify partial answers that re-occur often enough and in a variety of cultures -- that they point beyond historical conditioning to the nature of the problem" (p 40).  In other words, if Niebuhr can find iterations of a particular "type" in different cultures and different periods of history, then this could serve as a representative "type" in his analysis.  He argues that there are five of these representative types found in history.

Niebuhr breaks down the five types into three categories.  First, those who see Christ standing in direct opposition to culture (he uses the Anabaptists as a model for this type).  Second, those who see Christ agreeing with culture (e.g., cultural Protestantism).  The third category stands between opposition and affirmation; and those located in this third category attempt to manage the tension between Christ and culture.  He highlights three ways that this tension has been managed:  (1) synthesis (e.g., Thomas Aquinas), (2) dualist (e.g., Martin Luther) or (3) conversionist. (e.g., Augustine and John Calvin).  According to the synthesists, Christ stands above culture; culture gets some things right and where it does, Christ completes them.  According to the dualists, Christ and culture are always in paradox; the Christian lives obedient to grace and under God's sovereign direction of the rules and authorities of a particular culture.  According to the conversionists, Christ is the great transformer of culture; culture is a good that has been created by God that has been corrupted by the presence of sin.   Therefore it should be transformed by God's grace into the goodness of its original creation.

Niebuhr favors this last view and John Yoder argues that the whole of Christ and Culture is an argument for the position of "Christ as the transformer of culture" (a topic I'll pick up tomorrow in reviewing Authentic Transformation).