Thinking Again About Christ and Culture

This is a very interesting presentation (which I am directed to via Thought Criminal.  Gratias.) that makes me want to re-read Christ and Culture (always a good thing to do).  It reminds me, too, of what one of my seminary professors said:  that Richard was the better scholar than Reinhold.  Of course, Reinhold was more concerned with the world and politics, Richard was always more concerned with the thorny issues of Christian ethics; that they had different strengths does not indicate a profound weakness in the work of either of them.  But it is a starting point to note what a scholar Richard was, because one problem non-scholars have with scholarship is the results the latter produces.

This passage in the article struck me.  It's near the end, but it's clear Niebuhr is not clarifying things enough for Winters:

One of the ways our contemporary culture is accommodated is with a false sense of identification between Christ and someone whose cause we wish to champion. This is most easily identified when someone highlights one part of the Scripture but ignores other parts. The church-of-culture school has been very prominent among theologians calling for radical change in the church's teachings on human sexuality, in which justice is grabbed and upheld while concupiscence is ignored:

"They take some fragment of the complex New Testament story and interpretation, call this the essential characteristic of Jesus, elaborate upon it, and thus reconstruct their own mythical figure of the Lord. Some choose the opening verses of the Fourth Gospel, some the Sermon on the Mount, some the announcement of the kingdom, as the key to Christology. It is always something that seems to agree with the interests or needs of their time. The point of contact they seek to find with their hearers dominates the whole sermon; and in many instances the resultant portrait of Christ is little more than the personification of an abstraction." (p. 109)

Jesus becomes the liberator from patriarchy, or from homophobia or from some other sin from which it is right to wish to be liberated, but somehow the asceticism and the self-abnegation that are so obviously at the heart of the Gospel, which also has to do with liberation from sin, these are never discussed.

Before leaving this group, Niebuhr notes one way in which they are much like the radical Christians described yesterday. Law tends to overwhelm grace:

"Like their radical counterparts, the Christ-of-culture believers incline to the side of law in dealing with the polarity of law and grace. By obedience to the laws of God and of reason, speculative and practical, men are able, they seem to think, to achieve the high destiny of knowers of the Truth and citizens of the Kingdom. The divine action of grace is ancillary to the human enterprise; and sometimes it seems as if God, the forgiveness of sins, even prayers of thanksgiving, are all means to an end, and a human end at that."

"And a human end at that." Ouch.

I admit that this chapter was the most difficult to read. Many people whom I admire and most of my friends would be ranged among the Christ-of-culture school and among them many are more complicated than Niebuhr's characterization would allow. I find myself inclining to this school when focusing on politics even while I find myself lodging elsewhere when considering the life of the church.

And, that is part of the takeaway we will examine at week's end: none of these positions is definitively right or wrong, and all are somehow necessary for the life of the church and true witness to Christ, even while all have temptations and limitations that obscure that witness and impair the life of the church.

Niebuhr is very careful in his work to remain "outside" the subject he writes about; to examine objectively (as much as one can) the four responses to Christ by culture that he identifies.  He doesn't, in other words, draw a conclusion that declares on stance superior to the others.  And that kind of refusal to settle is disturbing to most people.  I find it true to the Gospels myself.  It follows from the parables which, in my reading, have been distorted into "earthly tales with a heavenly meaning."  Most of the parables are irreconcilable paradox, not clever allegories where the shepherd is God or the coin or the pearl is the basiliea tou theou, or the prodigal is us (then who is the elder son?).  I see it all as the teachings of wisdom, but wisdom that comes from God, not from insight; from revelation, not discovery.  I think settling on one standard to which all must conform is actually a form of idolatry, of putting your comfort before, and in the place of, God.  "The peace of God, it is no peace; but strife sown in the sod."  So this part of the article is, for me, "difficult to read":

Jesus becomes the liberator from patriarchy, or from homophobia or from some other sin from which it is right to wish to be liberated, but somehow the asceticism and the self-abnegation that are so obviously at the heart of the Gospel, which also has to do with liberation from sin, these are never discussed.

Yes, by my standards, making Jesus the "liberators from patriarchy, or from homophobia or from some other since from which it is right to be liberated" is making Jesus an idol, again.  But the problem is not with confusing Christ with local culture (the analysis via Niebuhr here is "Christ of culture," so Winters is on the mark there), but of confusing church culture (especially, in this case, Roman Catholic doctrine) with something that stands apart from the culture of "Christ of culture."  All Winters is doing is swapping one culture for another, but insisting his culture is not culture at all, but the true teachings of Christ.  Which, of course, is where all the problems always start.

Can you step away from that?  Kierkegaard would say you can't; and I agree with the melancholy Dane on that point.  But you have to be aware of it.  To me, the true standard of Christianity is not "the asceticism and the self-abnegation that are so obviously the heart of the Gospel," because having examined the Gospels, I don't find those things so obvious at all. I was raised to believe they were, to understand they were.  I read Bonhoeffer's compelling statement "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die," and thought it profoundly true and counted myself wise for realizing it when so many around me so obviously didn't.  Then again, I didn't die, literally or figuratively, even when I felt myself so called by Christ that I entered the ministry (and then left again, let's never leave that out).  And I slowly realized, as Bonhoeffer himself did, that those words were the statement of a young man who understood far less than he had imagined he did when those words, with deep conviction, were written down.  Indeed, it took me a long time to realize the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth were not about self-abnegation but about humility; were not about giving up power, but about the power of powerlessness; were not about liberation from sin, but about foolishness and wisdom.  Most importantly, were not about escaping sin or being aware of sin or constantly asking forgiveness of sins (how profoundly self-centered is that?), but about living the best life possible by being last of all and servant of all.  Which is about as against culture as one can be.  But it's not a posture against culture because Christ is against culture; rather, it is against culture because the world insists culture is the standard that must be upheld, and God shows us (but does not insist upon; where does free will go in these conversations?  In and out like a trained bird, apparently) how we should then live.

That conclusion doesn't allow me to escape Neibuhr's analysis, however.  It does mean, in fact, I need to read his book again.