Considering Culture (5)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
The previous post ended with God’s Mission starting with Abraham. Of course, the culmination comes with Jesus. I’ll assume you know the general plot here, but let’s look at the wider ramifications — Jesus’ life and death does not just impact individuals, but all of creation. God is rescuing the whole thing. To quote Jeremy Begbie again (this time from the essay ‘Created Beauty’)
… 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.)
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
Considering Culture (4)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In the next key point in the biblical narrative, the fall, mankind — the image of God in creation and the intended steward — turns its back on God.
We can refer back to our previous statement, that “a properly functioning creation is what brings glory to the Creator, God, and mankind has a significant role in that proper functioning”. Mankind’s significant role is now twisted as we refuse to work in line with the Creator and all of creation suffers.
In particular, culture no longer brings glory to God. We take “the freedom that God gives us in our role as stewards and divine representatives” (see previous post) and push it to places it was not supposed to go.
Looking at it another way, we can consider the following from Kevin Vanhoozer:
A culture expresses the totality of what a group of humans value.
Due to the fall, our values no longer coincide with God’s, and consequently our cultures express the wrong things.
If creation — including culture and including individual lives — is going to glorify God then something needs to be done.
God kicks off his great mission by calling Abraham and Israel. The ball starts rolling for the big rescue…
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
Considering Culture (3)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Having made tentative steps towards recognising culture as something we should think about from a Christian perspective, we took a more detailed look. The approach was to track through the biblical narrative and see where culture fits in the overarching story.
Of course, by turning to the Bible at all we are making a statement about how God and culture relate — the Bible is a cultural object (albeit a unique one). It is not a dropped-from-the-sky set of writings, but uses, for example, poetic forms from a particular culture and time, references aspects and event of particular cultures, etc. etc.
But, leaving that aside, let’s look at the content and start of the story — creation. One of the key parts of the biblical account is that man is made in God’s image. Taking the approach of, e.g., Middleton & Walsh (in Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be), we can compare this to the action of ancient rulers who placed images of themselves in lands that they conquered; this reminded the inhabitants who was in charge. With this context in mind, man being God’s image implies a role as God’s representatives within creation. And it starts to introduce the theme of mankind as steward of creation on God’s behalf.
Of course, the command by God for man to ‘rule over’ and ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ pushes this theme further. Douglas Moo makes the point that
The Hebrew verbs behind ‘rule over’ and ‘subdue’ are strong ones and not only justify but mandate a significant degree of human intervention in the created world.
And what is culture? Surely it is the way that we interact with the created world and others around us? Kevin Vanhoozer suggests the following:
Culture refers to the expressive work of human freedom in and on nature.
So, perhaps we can say that culture is what we do with the freedom that God gives us in our role as stewards and divine representatives. Consequently, culture is intrinsic to what we do as God’s image.
If we take this approach then it is clear that culture in itself is good. In fact, it is part of the our role as humans within God’s creation. Whether all forms are good is, of course, the next question.
Perhaps we can start by describing things like this: a properly functioning creation is what brings glory to the Creator, God, and mankind has a significant role in that proper functioning. We routinely accept this on a personal level — I bring glory to God by living my life in accordance with His intentions; i.e. when I, as part of creation, function properly. But it also applies on corporate and cultural levels. We have a wider responsibility as God’s image.
So, the implication is that culture is good, but it needs to be culture that fosters or is part of a properly functioning creation.
All this is pulled together by Richard Middleton
While various psalms call upon all creatures (humans included) to worship or serve God in creation, the distinctive way humans worship or render service to the Creator is by the development of culture through interation with our earthly environment (in a manner that glorifies God).
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
Considering Culture (2)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Following the last post, the question is, if we have these prompts to include culture in our thinking as Christians, why don’t we do it? There are, of course, multiple reasons. But, a classic and key one is ‘dualism’ — the tendency we have to slice ‘n’ dice life into so-called spiritual and so-called secular boxes; things that God is interested in/have eternal significance and things that are relatively unimportant.
It is possible to give historical reasons for this ‘duality’, but it seems that we always have a tendency towards some kind of split. Where we draw the line depends on the culture. Today, it seems like (thinking mainly of the evangelical culture I’m a part of) the ‘spiritual’ side includes church, family, some politics (where it touches personal holiness) and some education. Most of the rest of life falls into the ‘secular’. (I know, a caricature, but you get the gist.)
Of course, my comment in the last post about interpreting 1 Cor 15 in a personal way is also an impact of dualism — because I have the underlying tendency to discount big ideas as being important from a Christian perspective, I find it easy to read the Bible in a way that fits my preconceptions.
So, given our tendency to dualism, we can’t go anywhere without first asking if culture is an important subject for our thinking. Of course, in some ways we just go back to the Bible verses above above and work from the point that Jesus is Lord of all. Jeremy Begbie again:
Theologically, the most general and basic reason is simply the lordship of Jesus Christ. For the follower of Christ, there is no “exclusion zone,” no “secular” territory outside the scope of his saving work, no value-free or neutral area of human life.
But, perhaps we need to unpack this a bit further; to look at our starting point(s) in detail. In the process we will hopefully get clues on how to think about cultural issues from a Christian perspective.
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
A hermeneutic of heroes
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I did a seminar on culture over the weekend. I may get around to posting a write-up of my notes, but in the meantime…
As part of the talk, I attempted to use some TV programs as examples of modern and post-modern worldviews. (Slightly mis-judged the popularity of some shows, but there we go.) So the examples don’t go to waste, let’s recycle them here.
In fact, I’ll start with one that has been rolling around my mind for a very very very long time. I didn’t use it over the weekend, but maybe I should have. It seems to me the the X-files is the perfect enactment of the modern/post-modern clash. (I guess someone somewhere has done this before.)
On the one side we had the Thoroughly Modern Scully. Everything is science-based and we need only examine properly to overcome our ignorance. On the other side, the archetypally post-modern Mulder — accepting of all myths and local stories, without any attempt to fit them into some overarching worldview; suspicious of the authorities and the narratives they weave, assuming that these narratives are there to hide and control; not driven primarily by a search for truth, but a relational-based search for his sister.
Coming more up-to-date, it seems like CSI is the perfect modern story — a team of heroes battle ignorance, using science and technology to fight injustice and apprehend the guilty.
On the other hand, there is a common underlying theme to Lost & Heroes that facinates me. Both have a number of relatively ordinary people thrust into bewildering circumstances. In both there is an interweaving of each person’s personal story — in both, paths are frequently crossing, apparently by accident(?). There is the feeling that this interweaving may have design to it, but we cannot be sure what or who controls this. Certainly those involved have no grasp of a larger story that they are part of, though they may suspect that there is one.
Perhaps Heroes and Lost reflect the feeling of our somewhere-on-the-edge-of-post-modern times. Having rejected the big stories, we now have the feeling that there is one, but we have no way to appropriate it
This feeling of some apparently unknowable overarching narrative makes me think of Paul in Athens. Remember that he looked around, saw the altar to an Unknown God and proceeded to associate this with the God incarnated in Jesus. Maybe it is time for us to say that we know the Unknown Author who is writing the big story? He is the one incarnated as the character of Jesus and he is not the tyrant you thought he was.
Tags: culture, postmodernism, story, worldview
the other tension…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
After discussing the tensions in postmodernism, I wonder if there is another tension in our postmodern make-up…
In the world it is called tolerance but in hell it is called dispair. The sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, enjoys nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing but remains alive because there is nothing which it would die for.Dorothy L Sayers
A Princeton student being interviewed by a reporter was questioned about the prospect of American troops going to Afghanistan when the Soviet Union invaded there. “There’s nothing worth dying for” was her response. Which means of course that one day she shall have the unpleasant task of dying for nothing.Stanley Hawerwas and William H. Willimon
(The first is quoted in ‘Finding God at Harvard’; the second is from ‘Resident Aliens’.)
Tags: culture, postmodernism, worldview
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...