Engaging with Culture: Learning from the early Church
17 Oct 2006
How christians and the church engage with culture, is a question that began when the church started. In the early church the word ‘culture’ wouldn’t have been used specifically, but their questions centered around how christians engaged with the cultural legacy of the classical world of ars poetica – poetry, philosophy, and literature. Is God at work in other religions, in the poetry and music and writings of pagan culture?
We are in ancient company as we try to male sense of the changes in our culture and how we engage with it. Three key approaches from the Patristic period of the early church are illuminating (at least they are to me).
1. Everywhere: The Gospel is found in the world, outside the church. Justin Martyr in particular in his logos spermatikos wrestling with Christianity’s interactions with the platonic world, asserted that ‘whatever has been said well’ in classical culture was ultimately divine wisdom. Whilst this was a positive engagement with the world around the early church, it’s main criticism was of failing to distinguish between culture and the church. It was too much like seeing everything as equal to christianity for his critics.
2. No-where: Tertullian, in the 3rd century, uttered the infamous phrase, ‘what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’. In other words what has the philosophy and views of the non christian world got to do with Christianity? Christianity for Tertullian was a counter culture movement. Aside from obvious practical problems, how do to share the gospel to others if you cannot use the language and forms of their culture, there are theological issues, such as whether God’s wisdom is located solely in the Christian church, or do we encounter God outside it? However given the context of persecution of the church, it’s not surprising that this view was popular during such times. But when Rome converted, this antipathy to classical culture shifted.
3. Both: Augustine articulated a different view. That we can critically appropriate from culture, whatever is true, right, pure etc. The notion that christianity can liberate critically the writing, thinking and speaking of culture in service to the Gospel.
I think that the modern church in the western world has taken a Tertullianic approach, of separation and rejection of culture (ironically due to a previous overly platonic en-culturation, but that’s a whole topic on it’s own). I think in the emerging church there has been re-discovering is the location of God in his larger creation, his wisdom in throughout the world.
However, I think the interactions with culture have been largely uncritical (for example see A Heretics Guide to Eternity). We see this (I think) when people identify themselves as ‘postmodern christians’, almost as if culture has become their hermeneutic for what is real and true. Is it time the emerging church had not just a critique of modernity, but a robust critique of post-modernity?
In our excitement of finding God outside the church, and alive and well in the world I think we need to re-discover Augustine’s approach, and temper our discovery with a sifting and critique, so that we would find that which is true, perfect, right and lovely.
Tagged: Culture, Philosophy, Theology, Truth
9 comments
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Comment by Paul Mayers
8.19 am on 17 Oct 2006
Hi Jase, I love the historical perspective you bring, especially with those early church fathers and the same sort of struggles they engaged with…
Personally I agree with you that we should engage with culture but do so critically, we don’t want to be swallowing camels but straining out gnats…
When we started looking at culture in an earlier post here I sugested an approach around good/bad culture – i.e. not all culture is bad but discernment is still needed – otherwise we live on the extremes of total indifference to culture or total withdrawal from it – where instead there needs to be a middle way – after all even the son of God was intentionally incarnational – picking a time, community, culture to be born into and interact with…
Comment by marc
10.48 am on 17 Oct 2006
I tend to agree but there always seems to be this mad dash forward and accept everything and find Christ in everything…to get there first.
It seems prevelant in some post-modern approaches (in contemporary worship for instance) to the point where culture is used because it is there not because Christ is is there and so poorly structured post-modern thought arises.
We need to critique, we need to sift through the mass of ‘post-modern debris’ that some people now call church and understand where Christ is in all of this.
My question would be this: who is qualified to sift?
Comment by fernando
11.41 am on 17 Oct 2006
Good stuff, there is a lot to learn from historical theology when in comes to doing theology that engages with culture.
Comment by The Krow
12.40 pm on 17 Oct 2006
Would it be fair to suggest Augustine ’s approach is actually Pauline? Consider when Paul went to differnt towns and engaged them through their culture, such as reciting their poetry, refering to their art(the statue of the unknown god)… he critically engaged the culture of those places and pointed out where God was in them. I believe this is best practice. I liken this to being a spiritual tour guide to point out God in culture and in one’s life. Thus showing God is alive in the world.
Comment by Jason
1.24 pm on 17 Oct 2006
Krow (4): Good suggestion. Whilst Paul was considered the ‘founder’ of the early church in it’s broadest sense, Augustine was known as the second ‘founder’ of the church, such was his influence. Also he was most know for his NT studies on Paul, so no wonder there are strong similarities.
Comment by dh
4.36 pm on 17 Oct 2006
I totally agree Jason. This posts keeps me from the extremes. I like Marc’s question and post. Thanks so much. :)
Comment by Christopher Gillespie
4.52 pm on 17 Oct 2006
In kergymatic preaching, it is essential to make the Gospel come alive in the real world of the hearers. It is impossible to do this without at least being acquainted with the world of the hearers.
Yet, the Pauline model is “in the world, not of the world.” So we use the worldy culture to illuminate and contrast with the Biblical culture. In preaching for example, to use a reference to a popular TV show is not off limits in so far as it is only an example and not the model or ideal. Christ is the model and the ideal for Gospel-centric proclamation.
Coming from a non-emergent perspective, the primary criticism from orthodoxy of much of the emergent movement is that it lacks this critical view. From this angle, culture is seen as guiding the emergent worship practice, strategy, and message… rather than God’s Word (which is Christ) as the norm that norms.
It seems I am repeating what you have said in previous posts. So I will stop.
Comment by Existential Punk
5.06 am on 18 Oct 2006
Christopher, i have to disagree with you when you said, “the primary criticism from orthodoxy of much of the emergent movement is that it lacks this critical view. From this angle, culture is seen as guiding the emergent worship practice, strategy, and message… rather than God’s Word (which is Christ) as the norm that norms.”
This simply is NOT true of the many emergent churches i know of in the US and UK.
Where do you get your information from about this?
Pingback by Jason Clark » Living in sin/living in love: the both/and reality of cultural accommodating Christians?
6.58 am on 18 Oct 2006
[...] Update: Culture and the eary church Jase has done this brilliant post looking how the early church wrestled with these same Qs and what we can learn about being critically engaging. [...]
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