Throughout the history of the Church there have always been groups of Christians who have sought to completely remove themselves from the world. Of course, there has to be some separation between believers and the world, as Scripture makes it abundantly clear that we are called to do just that. That said, these more extreme groups have not just sought to remove themselves from the sinfulness of the world, but to remove themselves from interaction and association with anything having to do with human culture.
In his influential work, Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr classifies this group as “Christ Against Culture.” Although Niebuhr is the first to admit the limitations of trying to create these types of classifications (primarily due to the fact that few individuals will ever be completely aligned with any given type), there is still a strong impulse to be found with some groups that attempt to remove any influence of human culture from themselves and their particular groups.
The Biblical Authors’ Use of Culture
Many lines of argument could be used to push against this idea, while still affirming the goodness of the basic impulse to keep oneself unstained by the world. In my opinion, the strongest argument is that Scripture itself readily uses and employs items associated with various cultures. From the first chapter of Genesis to the final book of Revelation, Scripture is never written in a vacuum.
It is important to recognize that Scripture is never a slave to culture. What we do not want to communicate is the idea that, in some way, Scripture cannot speak on its own terms, or is limited in its truthfulness or moral goodness due to a cultural factor. May it never be!
That said, it is impossible to deny that the Biblical authors make use of the human culture around and within them as they declare God’s inerrant truth. The story of Creation stands in stark contrast to its counterparts in ancient Mesopotamia in regard to its worldview, while still holding similarities in their overall style and structure. As Hebrew linguistics scholar C. John Collins puts it, “Genesis is offering the true story of mankind’s past. Even if the Mesopotamian tradition got the broad structure “right,” Genesis corrects many of the details; but even more, it provides the true interpretation of these events.”1
Of course, it is not just here, but everywhere, where Scripture utilizes the culture around it in whatever culture it finds itself in. Just one more example is Paul’s famous description of the Church consisting of many members who result in one body, and the way in which each member relies on another, is a reconfiguring of an early metaphor of the body made by Aristotle.2 Clearly, Christians can make use of culture for God’s purposes.
We Can’t Escape It
And yet, the problem of escaping culture completely is even greater. What these above examples start to reveal is just how ingrained culture is in every human being. Quite simply, it is inescapable. To escape culture would be to escape every aspect of it, and the problem with this is that culture includes language and thought patterns. There is no “Christian” language. But believers from every race, tribe, nation, and tongue make use of their culturally derived language to praise and worship the one true God.
Niebuhr points out how impossible the vision of complete escape is when he states,
[The radical Christ against culture view] is inadequate, for one thing, because it affirms in words what it denies in action; namely, the possibility of sole dependence on Jesus Christ to the exclusion of culture. Christ claims no man purely as a natural being, but always as one who has become human in a culture; who is not only in culture, but into whom culture has penetrated. Man not only speaks but thinks with the aid of the language of culture… If Christians do not come to Christ with the language, the thought patterns, the moral disciplines, of Judaism, they come with those of Rome; if not with those of Rome, then with those of Germany, England, Russia, America, India, or China. Hence the radical Christians are always making use of the culture, or parts of the culture, which ostensibly they reject… It is so with all the members of the radical Christian group. When they meet Christ they do so as heirs of a culture which they cannot reject because it is a part of them. They can withdraw from its more obvious institutions and expressions; but for the most part they can only select—and modify under Christ’s authority—something they have received through the mediation of society.3
Framing the Path Forward
Although it by no means answers the many questions that arise from the question of Christians and their relationship to culture, coming to the dual understanding that Scripture readily and unapologetically uses human culture and that no human being is capable of completely disassociating themselves from the influences of culture, is helpful for properly framing the discussion and knowing at least one path that will not lead to a satisfying or faithful conclusion.
Notes:
- C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 243
- C. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018),
- H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2001), 69-70
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