We have to tell the story in our communities and allow it to challenge our traditions, to ‘stretch our reason back into shape, and to reform our world views that are always in danger of becoming like the world’s world views.’ In respect of this last point Wright is clear that we need to allow Scripture to norm our world view:

When we tell the whole story of the Bible, and tell it … by articulating it in a thousand different ways, improvising our own faithful version, we are inevitably challenging more than just one aspect of the world’s way of looking at things … We are articulating a viewpoint according to which there is one God, the creator of all that is, who not only made the world but is living and active within it… who is also transcendent over it and deeply grieved by its fall away from goodness into sin … The story … will function as an invitation to participate in the story oneself, to make it one’s own, and to do so by turning away from the idols which prevent the story becoming one’s own … Evangelism and the summons to justice and mercy in society are thus one and the same, and both are effected by the telling of the story, the authoritative story …

This takes us back to our starting point — the biblical story. However we shouldn’t view this as a staid and static base; we listen to the text, ‘tell the story in our communities and allow it to challenge our traditions’. We have to continual keep in mind that our communities will never completely and faithfully embody the text. We have to make a conscious effort to allow our story to ‘stretch our reason back into shape, and to reform our world views’; otherwise we may find that our worldview starts to blend with the ones around us. If the salt loses its saltiness…

We then allow our re-stretched reason/imagination/worldview to spill out into our cultural life. We must chose to tell and live according to the real story and invite others to participate in that story with us. And it is by living the real story that our cultural activities are transformed to fit with God’s plan for creation.

The second quote is taken completely out of context, but I love it and it sums up for me the motivation behind all of this. It comes from the song ‘So Long Sweet Misery’ by Brett Dennen:

…
if I could I would wash all these wounds away
I would surround your room with sentiments of grace
I would paint your portrait over everything mundane
…

That surely is our goal — to paint the portrait of Jesus over everything, mundane or otherwise, to declare in our actions the beauty, justice and truth of the way God intends the world to be.

We’ve started looking at how our understanding of culture within the biblical story affects how we act and how we think. We have to begin by realising we always live and think within a story. As Christians, we should consciously think within the Biblical story; to let the Bible interpret the world.

But there is another side. We must also keep in mind that not everyone shares that story/worldview. This can be corresponds to John Stott’s assertion that we must learn to listen to the world around us. This is vital to keep in mind so that we can be wise in our influence of culture, to have the necessary understanding to allow us to act and to communicate with those around. What are the keys for understanding the stories around us? Middleton and Walsh do a simply breakdown into three components: stage setting, problem/conflict and solution. So, as an example, for Cinderella the scene setting is the ball, the problem is her lack of carriage and ball-dress, the solution is the fairy godmother. (In fact, there are two applications of this formula in Cinderella — the other is the overarching story with the problem of her oppressed life and meeting the prince/going to the ball as the solution.)

In The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness, Opitz & Melleby give examples of how modernism and post-modernism can be characterised with this pattern:

Modernity has been the culture-shaping story of our time. It is not a story of creation, but of matter. It is not the story of the fall (of sin); it is the story of ignorance. It is not a story of redemption, but one of human progress. the story-frame of modernity (matter-ignorance-progress) is so compelling that most of us, even though we espouse the Christian story, live the tale of modernity.
…
The post-modern story begins not with creation or matter, but with culture. Rather than creation-fall-redemption (biblical) or matter-ignorance-progress (modernity), the story-frame of postmodernity is culture-oppression-expression.

We can also learn something about the stories that others live by, by looking at the particular stories that they tell, whether books, film, TV, etc. I gave examples of this in an earlier post.

We could take listening to the stories of others in many directions, but let’s just try one here: By taking this approach, we begin to understand the clashes and misunderstandings that occur between people. Often there is mis-communication in our discussions that can lead both sides to see a mis-representation of the others position. I’ve heard Michael Ramsden make this point well. Often when discussing moral issues we have in mind, for example, God’s justice or plan for authentic human life, so we happily point out the constraints He places on us. Those we are talking to see choice as the highest goal, so any constraints get interpreted as due to a kill-joy God. Through misunderstanding we have communicated almost the opposite of what we want to say. So, we listen, amongst other things to ensure that what we say is heard as intended.

If you haven’t been following, then best to start way back here. But basically, we looked at how culture fits into the Christian story and some of the consequences.

There are many places we could have ended up, but I tried to have a brief look at how we should think about culture as a result. One problem have now is that I’ve just finished reading Everyday Theology (ed Vanhoozer et al). This is so good that it has pointed out loads of ways this bit of the seminar could have been improved. But never mind, let’s go for the original form and maybe when I come to discuss the book, alternatives will be clear.

We wound up in the previous section by concluding that our cultural lives should reflect God’s new creation and also that we should remember that the fall implies not every area of culture matches God’s intentions. All this leads us to conclude that we need to think carefully about culture from a Christian context. A prime reason is that understanding helps us in our involvement in the mission of God. One obvious example of this help is that we cannot communicate with the culture around us if we do not understand it, so our preaching, etc. will miss the mark. Another is that, is part of our mission is to work with God in the transformation of culture, then we need to be able to discern what fits God’s intentions and what needs work.

So, how do we think? In some ways, the whole seminar up to this point was an example — we tried to think about culture in general from within the Christian worldview or story. (The place of story in worldview or vice versa is a whole other discusssion. Suffice it to say, I’m keen on the story view at the moment. Perhaps because I spend many hours reading the Gruffalo to my children!)

More generally, we need to keep in mind that we all live/think within some overarching story (or worldview). The story that is influencing a person will have a direct impact on how they approach things. This works in two ways — first, we need to keep in mind the story that we hold to and, second, we need to realise that we constantly come up against cultural products that do not have that story as a basis. We have to find the way to negotiate these two components and act appropriately. For the starting point, we can go back to the quote from John Stott: we need to listen to the word and listen to the world.

So, first, we need to keep a very firm grip on the Biblical story and allow this to be the controlling narrative in our interpretation of the world. (Just to remind us, the key plot points of this story are Creation-Fall-God’s Mission/Jesus-New Creation.)

I think it is Eugene Petersen who said that the Bible is not primarily something we interpret, but is itself an interpretation of the world. We need to allow the story to shape our thinking and imagination; to ‘renew our minds’. I think perhaps we have seen how the thinking aspect works, but we need to go further & let the thinking filter into our imagination. Middleton and Walsh touch on this in the following quote:

A liberated imagination is a prerequestite for facing the future. Consequently, we need to ask ourselves some honest questions. Can we imagine a politics of justice and compassion in place of the present global politics of oppression and economic identity? Dare we imagine an economics of equality and care in place of the dominant economics of affluence and poverty> Can we imagine our work life to be at one with our worship — an act of service and praise, rather than a grim necessity of a means to an affluent lifestyle? Can we imagine a society which has broken through its morbid preoccupation with death and instead truly affirms life, both at the fetal stage and in all of its dimensions? Is a relatinship of friendship, instead of exploitation, with the rest of creation imaginable? Is it imaginable that the mass media could be an agent of spiritual awakened social, cultural and spiritual renewal, rather than the one thing that most numbs us into cultural complacency and sleep? And is our imgination open enough to conceive of a business enterprise that is characterised by stewardship, environmental responsibility and real serviceability, rather than profits, pollution, and the production and marketing of superfluous consumer goods? If we connot have such a liberated imagination and connot countenance such radical dreams, then the story remains closed for us and we have no hope.

What are the consequences? The first is that we have to listen to what is being said by the culture around us and work to interpret what we hear. By this, I mean active listening — trying to understand what is under the surface and its implications. We also need to relate this understanding to the Biblical story itself.

Kevin Vanhoozer talks about how we need to be ‘bilingual’.

Christians must learn to read the Bible and culture alike. Christians cannot afford to continue sleepwalking their way through contemporary culture, letting their lives, and especially their imaginations, become conformed to culturally devised myths, each of which promises more than it can deliver: “Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”

(from ‘Everyday Theology’)

John Stott says something similar, describing our task as ‘double listening’

We listen to the Word with humble reverence, anxious to understand it, and resolve to believe and obey what we come to understand. We listen to the world with critical alertness, anxious to understand too, and resolved not necessarily to believe and obey it, but to sympathize with it an to seek grace to discover how the gospel relates to it.

(from The Contemporary Christian, quoted by Opitz ad Melleby in The Outrageous Idea…)

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(By the way, I’m currently reading ‘Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends’ by Kevin Vanhoozer et al. This is a great book on precisely the topic of reading culture. I hope to get around to blogging about in more detail at some point. Briefly: The book starts with an extended essay by Vanhoozer on the theory followed by a number of eclectic examples of interpretation in practice. Highly recommeded.)

We are at the point of considering the consequences of the biblical story and our place in it. Here are some culturally-related starting points…

First, if we are part of the new creation, our lives should reflect the new creation. We can look at this from many different perspectives. We’ve already quoted 1 Cor 5:17. This may imply more than simply our individual lives are newly created, but it certainly doesn’t say less. We are already — in some sense — part of the new creation and our lives should show that. This must cover all aspects — including our involvement with creation and in culture. To borrow a rough train of thought from Paul — do we think that because the world is going to be re-created that we can exploit the present one and act as if it is optional whether we work in line with the way God want things to function? How can this be?! We have seen the way things should be, the place where mourning disappears, etc. Can we live in a way that subverts this now?

Second, remember that we said that the Creator is glorified by a correctly functioning creation. So, we work with the way things and try to bring them close to God’s intentions be cause that act in itself brings glory to God. Our lives should glorify God by fitting in with that correct functioning.
This isn’t a stale and fixed thing — recall that we said culture was what we did with the freedom that God has given us. One aspect of ‘correct functioning’ is that we use that freedom and act creatively.

Third, in reflecting the new creation now, we proclaim God’s new creation in the present. As Tom Wright points out in an old Veritas talk So What?, we can proclaim in many — including non-verbal — ways. We don’t work for correct operating of creation in the hope that it gives us an opportunity to explain ‘the gospel’, but primarily because such work is a proclamation in itself.

As we said earlier (repeatedly), we know this on the level of personal piety — I bring glory to God by living my life in accordance with His intentions. But we cannot simply restrict ourselves to ourselves to this; we have to let it ripple out into our culture-making — I bring glory to God by working for culture that is in accordance with His intentions (in whatever way is appropriate).

Of course, it will take thinking to understand what this means in the areas we touch. It is not necessarily obvious and we must be sure not to restrict it to catagories that we are comfortable with. For instance, we might be clear about the way all this applies to our personal actions at work (treating others fairly, etc.) but what about the impacts for the products of our work, etc.?

In all this we need to work to understand where we are and to act for healing:

…we should seek to comprehend the good of God-made structures, counter the lies and heal the scars of sin, and contribute to the development of neighbour-loving relationships and God honouring cultural development. The biblical gospel is the good news of the kingdom, the healing and restoratin of creation itself. Jesus himself is constantly referring to his work as the gospel of the kingdom. He offers not only forgiveness but also healing and guidance toward a new way of being human in the world. Jesus cares about healing his diseased creation. He is the good physician, and we are the orderlies instructed to attend to the healing process.
(From The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness by Opitz and Melleby)

Two helpful articles available on-line are:

* Richard Middleton’s article “A New Heaven and A New Earth: The Case for a Holistic Reading of the Biblical Story of Redemption” does exactly what it says on the tin.

* Douglas Moo has a great paper on environmental issues in the context of the New Testament: “Nature in the New Creation: New Testament Eschatology and the Environment”. I also recently discovered the mp3 of an associated talk.

The combination of these two underpin a lot of the cuture-in-the-biblical-story section. Although Moo is limited to nature, Middleton provides the link that culture is part of creation, hence allowing Moo’s argument to be applied more widely.

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Books that were in my mind, but not quoted much (if at all):

* Eat this Book by Eugene Peterson; this is very good on living in the biblical story

* The Mission of God by Christopher Wright; which has an impressive overview of the Old Testement from a missional hermeneutic point of view. It complements Moo’s paper in it’s discussion of responsibility for creation as part of the mission.

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Books that are good on Worldview are

* The Transforming Vision by Middleton and Walsh. I dipped into this while preparing the talk and realised (again) what a classic it is. It’s a long time since I read it & I discovered that a lot of things I’ve learnt since are in this book, if only I had been awake enough at the time…

* The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness by Opitz and Melleby. I bought this to help the talk preparation, mainly because Byron Borger recommended it highly. A good book for students pitched at a nice introductory level. See also the associated website.

* Discipleship of the Mind by James Sire. Another classic. Again, aimed at students, but of wider interest. More depth than Opitz and Melleby. Probably a good next step if that convinces you to investigate futher.

* The Universe Next Door by James Sire. Sire’s worldview overview — looking at the main contenders around today.

* I’ve also dipped into Albert Wolters’ Creation Regained

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Quotes from Jeremy Begbie come from:

* Resounding Truth, which I have just got, but have only read the introduction. That is impressive enough in itself.

Quotes from Kevin Vanhoozer come from:

* First Theology, normally the essay ‘The World Well Staged?’, but all the essays in the book are stimulating and thought-provoking

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Books I have acquired recently, which would have helped:

* The Drama of Scripture by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen

* Everyday Theology ed. Kevin Vanhoozer, Charles Anderson, Michael Sleasman

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Books that I have become aware of, don’t actually own, but suspect would have been useful:

* When the Kings Come Marching In by Richard Mouw

* Plowing in Hope: Toward a Biblical Theology of Culture by David Hegeman

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Please comment with other recommendations…

It’s worth having a brief aside at this point: It is easy to restrict our approach to a halfway point here, where we let our faith impact culture but only in a personal-piety sort of way. So, for instance, we focus a few key markers — perhaps the presence of sex and violence — in cultural products (possibly missing the larger issues that are going on). While this is not an irrelevant component, I don’t think it is getting away from the dualism we talked about earlier. It is really restricting God’s interest in culture to a simple morality issue. But I’m trying to get at something more here. A more holistic view of the redemption of culture that isn’t just about the moral values that are depicted on the surface.

But if we want to let God’s mission impact our cultural life then what do we do? So far, our approach has been to work from the perspective of the biblical narrative, so what are the consequences of the story and our place in it?

So far we attempted to do a whirlwind tour of the biblical story to see how culture fits in. Essentially coming down to it being an integral part of creation and God’s Mission being to save and re-create all of creation, including culture.

Where does this get us? How should we then act?

Lets go back and look at two key parts of the story that we missed out the first time around — Resurrection and the Church.

Amongst the many things that the Resurrection of Jesus points to, a significant one is that New Creation starts now. This links in with the now-and-not-yet of Paul’s theology (I guess it is the basis of it, in fact). God’s kingdom has both come and is coming; with Jesus’ resurrection new creation has broken in on the old and the transformation has begun, but we wait for the all-encompassing re-creation at a future time.

I love the way this already-started theme comes into the New Testement, so although it is not strictly necessary lets mention a couple here:

As Tom Wright emphasises, John weaves this theme into his gospel: He emphasises that Jesus’ resurrection occurs on ‘the first day of the week’ (nudge-nudge, remember what happened in that week in Genesis?); and Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener (geddit? the one who is commissioned with stewarding the garden).

There is also the famous quote from Corinthians ‘If any man is in Christ — New Creation!’ Not, as we usually restrict it — he is a new creation (perhaps some dualism creeping in with that translation?) Us being in Christ is indicative of the bigger picture. And not a future picture but something that can be described with a present tense.

But if, in some sense, new creation starts now, what are the implications? What do we do as the church in response?

I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away … I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. .. He who was seated on the throne said “I am making everything new”

What happens to our culture in this new heaven and earth? Darrell Johnson points out the following (from Discipleship on the Edge):

God says from the throne, “I am making all things new.” God does not say, as I have wrongly read the words most of my life, “I am making all new things.” For years the future meant for me God scrapping everything of the old creation, and starting over with a whole new plan. “I am making all new things” is how I read it. Now certainly God can make all new things; and I believe, will, and does; and we are called to join God in it. But the point of Revelation 21-22 is that God is taking hold of all things — creation, humans and cities — and making them new.

So, we are reminded that new creation involves the transformation of all aspects of the current creation, not just a small aspect such as human souls. But, we can take this further and look specifically at culture. Johnson looks at Rev 21:24/26

The nations will walk by the light of [the city], and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it … The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into [the city].

and quotes Richard Mouw (When The Kings Come Marching In)

Ancient kings served as the primary authorities over the broad patterns of the cultural live of their nations. And when they stood over against other nations, they were the ‘bearers,’ the ‘representatives’ of their respective cultures. To assemble kings together was in an important sense to assemble their national cultures together. The king of a given nation could bear, singly, a far-reaching authority that is today divided among many different kinds of leaders: the captain of industry; the molders of public opinion in art, entertainment, and sexuality; educational leaders; representatives of family interest; and so on. This is why Isaiah and John could link the entrance of the kings into the city with the gathering in of the ‘wealth of the nations’.

As Johnson summarises it: ‘The presence of kings signals the presence of cultures!’

So, new creation incorporates purified culture. I guess this includes both old culture purified and new culture that develops as intended. In both cases, new creation is a properly working creation, developing in line with God’s character and bringing glory to the Creator.

A final quote, this time from Miroslav Volf (from The Church’s Great Malfunctions), makes the same point and takes on to the next stage of our discussion:

There is a remarkable image in the closing pages of Scripture that has become a touchstone for the way my colleagues and I think about faith and culture. Amid its descriptions of the New Jerusalem, Revelation includes “the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2). The tree holds out hope that whole cultures will be healed and mended, becoming places where people can flourish. And it sets an agenda for faith as a way of life that contributes to that flourishing, in anticipation, here and now.

… in the incarnate Son, crucified, risen and now exaulted, we witness God’s re-creation of the world’s beauty. The one through whom all things are upheld (Heb 1:3), by whom all things are held together (Col 1:17), by whose blood all things are reconciled to God (Col 1:20), is “the firstborn of all creation … the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:15, 18), the one through whom all things will finally be gathered up (Eph 1:10).

Rob Bell puts it like this in Velvet Elvis:

As Paul put it in Colossians, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Paul uses another significant word here: reconcile. To make peace where it has been lacking. To bring back together. To mend what is torn and to fix what is broken. And Paul wants us to make sure we grasp that this is a much larger issue than just human souls. He uses the phrase “all things, whether thing on earth or thinsg in heaven” because he wants us to see that this is all of creation. “All things really means “everything” — every bird and tree and mountain and star and every single square inch of physical creation.

In Jesus, God is putting it all back together.

To make the cross of Jesus just about human salvation is to miss that God is interested in the saving of everything. Every star and rock and bird. All things.

Keep this in mind as we recall our starting point: “Creation in the biblical tradition, however, includes human society and culture in all its complexity and fullness…” (Richard Middleton). Consequently, if culture is an integral part of creation, then culture is part of these ‘all things’.

As I said earlier, we find it easy to miss the ‘all things’ in these passages. Partially due to dualism and partially, I guess, due to our (not inappropriate) focus on individual salvation. Tom Wright is useful in this context when he emphasises that our individual salvation should be located in the bigger picture — as a local outworking of the overall rescue plan.

I wonder also if we can look at it the other way — the overall salvation of creation has individual salvation as a key building block. If we are the stewards of creation, then the rescue must start with us and fan out from there. I guess this is something close to Paul’s point in Romans 8, where creation is desribed as waiting for the sons of God to be revealed and looking to join in their freedom.

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(As an aside, we probably should also say something here about Jesus being the ultimate Image of God and consider that in the context of our earlier comments on image: As mankind is made in the image of God, his imaging marks him out as the true human. Consequently he can reconcile to God all that humans are responsible for stewarding.)