Christian Ethics, Christ and Culture

I. Christian Ethics

     A.    Ethics is part of Practical Philosophy (answers practical question: “What should we do?")

1.     Ethics presupposes free will.

a.       Various contemporary theories of human nature are deterministic (deny that we have free will and assume that our behavior stems from causes beyond our control)—e.g., the benaviorist theories of J.B. Watson & B.F. Skinner, the socio-economic theories of Karl Marx, the psychological theories of Freud, the bio-chemical theories of Jacques Monod, etc.

b.      Deterministic theories preclude the possibility of free will and, therefore, ethics: if we can’t help behaving as we do (because we’re programmed by environmental conditioning or bio-genetic factors, etc.), then we can’t be praised or blamed for behaving as we do.

c.       Hence, morality and ethics assume that man is a free, responsible moral agent.  Only this assumption makes sense of our moral experience in which we praise and blame others and ourselves for what we do.

2.     Moral character: the foundational component in ethics 

a.      What is moral character?

1)     A cluster of moral habits, formed by repeated performance of similar acts (just as learning a foreign language or smoking are habits formed by repetition of those actions).

2)     Virtues (like honesty) and vices (like dishonesty) are both habits of character.

3)     This means that we can identify individuals as trustworthy, truthful, unreliable, etc., and identify acts that are “out of character” for certain individuals.

b.      Aristotle distinguished four types:

1)     Virtuous: knows what is right, does it spontaneously without a struggle, and enjoys it.

2)     Strong: knows what is right, does it by struggling to overcome contrary inclinations.

3)     Weak: knows what is right, would like to do it, but gives in to contrary inclinations after putting up little struggle, and regrets it.

4)     Vicious: does not know what is right, spontaneously does whatever inclinations suggest without a struggle, and enjoys it

2.     Moral action: the primary focus of ethical decision-making. 

a.       Components include:

1)     Motive: animates action and allows distinctions such as that between premeditated murder and accidental manslaughter in a traffic accident.

2)     The act itself: the moral performance intended in the motive, which allows for distinctions between intrinsically moral and immoral acts, such as charity and rape.

3)     Consequences: the results brought about by the intended act, which may or may not justify the means.

4)     Circumnstances: conditions under which the act is performed, such as fear, coercion, willing or unwilling disposition, etc.

b.       Different ethical theories emphasize the foregoing components of moral action in different ways:

1)     Kant’s deontological ethics, for example, stresses doing one’s “duty for duty’s sake,” which emphasizes both motive and act.

2)     Consequentialist ethics (or teleological ethics) emphasizes the outcomes or consequences of acts, often insisting that the “end [consequence] justifies the means [action].”

3)     Contextualist ethics usually focuses on the situation or circumstances of an act.

      B.    Ways of doing Christian ethics:

1.     Christian deontological ethics

a.      An ethic of Principles:

1)      Focus on duty, obedience, and moral obligation, rather than goals, consequences or ends.

2)      Concerned with what is right and conforms to God’s will

3)      All Christian ethics that emphasize principles are basically deontological ethics.

4)      Origin of principles:

a)      The Bible: Old and New Testaments, Ten Commandments: this emphasis is most pronounced in the various Protestant denominations.

b)      Natural Law (see below): this emphasis, though not to the exclusion of the Bible, is found primarily in the Catholic tradition.

b.      Natural Law ethics

1)   There is a broad natural law tradition that holds that there are “certain principles of right and wrong which human beings, through the diligent use of reason, can discover and apply in the creation of a just society.  Some natural law exponents are religious thinkers who ground their philosophy in a divine creator; others are secular philosophers who regard certain moral principles and rights as beyond doubt or compromise.”

2)   The promptings of informed reason and moral conscience represent an inherent tendency in the nature of man, and conformity to this nature fulfills both the cosmic plan of the Creator and the direct commands of God revealed in Scripture.

3)     Natural law is the divine law as discovered by reason.

4)     Illustration from the Ten Commandments:

a)      The command to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy is accepted only on the basis of Special Revelation (in the Old Testament); it cannot be discerned by reason alone by reflection on human nature apart from the Bible.

b)      The command against stealing, by contrast, can be known by General Revelation apart from Scripture and is nearly ubiquitous (found in all the religions of the world).

c.       Legalism:

1)   Legalism is a distortion of deontological (duty) ethics.  The perspective reduces the ethical task to a rigid following of rules, virtually disregarding elements of context in which one is deliberating.  The attitude is: “A rule is a rule.”

2)   In Christian ethics, legalism often takes the form of focusing on the “letter of law” at the expense of the “spirit of the law.” 

a)      On the one hand, legalism can take the form of a repressive view that ignores the context of a case: for example, when Jesus’ disciples picked some grain while walking through a field on the Sabbath and ate it, the Pharisees condemned them for breaking the Sabbath; Jesus, by contrast, declared Himself Lord of the Sabbath and said: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” implying that the Pharisees missed the point and purpose of the law about keeping the Sabbath holy. (Mark 2:23-28)

b)      On the other hand, legalism can also take the form of a literalism that seeks to excuse itself from the weightier intent of the law: for example, Jesus said that it wasn’t enough to avoid committing murder or adultery; one had to avoid the inner attitudes of hate and lust that lead to such acts as well. (Matt. 5:21-28)

3)   In popular and Fundamentalist Christian circles, legalism is sometimes seen in the manner in which the rules of Scripture are followed, with a kind of hierarchy beginning with the Decalogue, but continuing through the epistles (even regarding the conduct and place of women and their dress codes), including the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7)

a)      It is in the keeping of laws that ethics is done; it is in doing the law that one earns (or stays in) God’s favor.

b)      Ethics is chiefly a matter of reward and punishment, analogous to the relationship between God and man: we are to obey the laws of God, because God gave them and “He said so.”  The purpose behind the law is often ignored.

c)      Often such Fundamentalist legalism reduces ethics to a conservative personal morality about sex, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, dancing, dress codes, etc. 

2.      Christian teleological (or ‘consequentialist’) ethics

a.    An ethic of ends

                          1)  Proximate ends: goals and purposes worthy of a Christian—happiness 
                               in life, based on a life devoted to virtuous ends such as charity and service 
                               toward God and neighbor.

        2)  Ultimate ends: getting to heaven, union with Christ, Beatific vision

b.   Virtue ethics (stressing the development of virtuous character) could be classified as a teleological ethics.

                          1) St. Thomas Aquinas: building on Aristotle’s classical ethics of virtue, stressing the
                                realization of the cardinal virtues (wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice), one
                                dimension of Thomistic ethics stressed the goal of realizing the theological virtues (faith,
                                hope, and charity).

        2)  Alasdair MacIntyre (University of Notre Dame) is a contemporary Catholic philosopher
  representing ethics of virtue.

c.       Possible abuse:

1)   Since all the means point to the ends, and the ends may be viewed as justifying the means, there is always the potential for abuse and distortion.

2)   In Nazi Germany, “Christ” was re-interpreted by the Nazi theologians Kittel and Hirsch to mean the “spirit of National Socialism.”  At the worst extreme, the end (racial purity) was seen as justifying the means (eugenics and the death camps). 

3.      Christian contextualist ethics

a.   Many contexts of contextualism:

                       1)  For example, contextualists would argue that if you wish to act out 
                            of moral intentions in the political sphere, you must know the context 
                            of politics with as much accuracy and insight as humanly possible in 
                            order to understand what forces are actually shaping events in society.

                       2)  So with other contexts—such as those involving questions of bio-genetics, 
                            abortion, cloning, euthanasia, homosexuality, cohabitation, marriage, 
                            racism, affirmative action, military action, supply-side economics, 
                            socialized medicine, etc.

b.     Contextualists (who are often influence by theistic existentialists, such as Karl Barth) often suggest that God calls each of us to responsibility to Him in the particular sphere of life (context) in which we find ourselves.  However, while they are often long on sentimental language about “God’s call to responsibility,” they are also short on guidance as to how God’s call is to be discerned in particular situations, and tend toward subjectivist and relativist positions.

c.      Situationalists represent contextualism taken to the extreme of utter relativism. 

      1)     In some cases, no surpassing theological norms are recognized.

      2)     In others, theological norms are rendered unintelligible.  For example, the Episcopal priest,
      Joseph Fletcher, in Situation Ethics: The New Morality, uses the Christian notion of
      self-less love (agape) as a norm, but empties it of any definable content that could offer
      specific guidance.

      3)   The proportionalist ethics of various dissident Catholic theologians also falls within the
      category of a situationalist ethic (though it could also be classified as a species of
      consequentialism).

      4)   Situation ethics, thus, tend towards rampant relativism and egoistic narcissism.

d.     Autonomianism (literally, “self-law”): this is radical contextualism, understood as the right of each person to determine for himself the nature, content, and implementation of the good [see ‘Isa’s remarks in the Kreeft book about Planned Parenthood vs. Casey].

 II.    Christ and Culture

      A.    Introduction:

1.     H. Richard Niebuhr, a Lutheran theologian, is author of Christ and Culture, an analysis of five paradigms representing alternative visions Christians have had of the relationship of Christ to culture.

2.     What “Christ” and “culture” represent: Church history shows us that Christians have frequently sought to understand and clarify the relationship between the paired distinctions below.  The distinction between “Christ” and “culture” embraces all of these:

3.     Niebuhr’s five paradigms (summary):  Niebuhr distinguishes five ways in which Christians have understood the relationship between “Christ” and “culture”:

B.    Niebuhr’s five paradigms (detailed analysis):

1.     “Christ against culture”:

a.      Basic themes:

      1)     Christianity and the Christian community are viewed as standing in an 
       antithetical relationship over against an adversarial culture.

       2)  The sole authority over the Christian is Christ: the culture’s claims to 
       loyalty on the Christian are rejected.

       3)  The Church and Christian community is identified with God’s grace and 
      salvation and sanctifying presence; and the culture is identified with sinful 
      nature, the kingdom of this world under the aegis of the Prince of Darkness.

b.     Historical examples:

        1)    Early Church: widely held to be the attitude of the first Christians, 
         particularly amplified by their status as a persecuted minority within the 
         Roman Empire.

        2)    I John (First Epistle of the Apostle John): stresses the distinction between 
         the children of God (who are encouraged to love one another) and the 
         world (under the power of evil).  The “world” is understood here as a passing 
         evil “age.”

        3)    Tertullian (end of the second century): “What has Jerusalem to do with 
         Athens?”  The contrast symbolized is between the cities of faith and reason, 
         of the Christian martyrs and the Greek philosophers.  Tertullian rejected the 
         claims of culture and had no sympathy for art and philosophy.  Christianity 
         has nothing to do with the “world.

        4)     The Anabaptist tradition:

a)     The Amish: a contemporary Christian community in the Anabaptist 
tradition, shuns modern culture, electricity, automobiles, involvement in 
politics, military service, and public schools, and withdraws into its own 
counter-cultural communities of simple agricultural life and piety.  (To a 
lesser degree, similar patterns were once found in Mennonite and Quaker 
traditions.)

b)     Fundamentalism: to some degree, this paradigm is exhibited in historical 
currents of conservative Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism, in which 
involvement in the wider culture in was often shunned, whether politics, 
higher education, the stock market, arts & entertainment, social dancing, 
tobacco, alcohol or gambling.

c.      Assessment:
1)     A necessary corrective:

a)     It serves as a necessary corrective against erosion of Christian identity and 
assimilation by the surrounding culture.

·        Reinforced the realization that Christ’s authority must lead every Christian 
to reject the authority of culture, at least at some point

·        If Romans 13 (submission to state authority) is not balanced by I John 
(ultimate allegiance to Christ), the Church can become an instrument of 
the state.

b)     Positive results:           

·        Kept the Faith in the face of severe persecution, physical and emotional 
suffering

·        Maintained a clear distinction between Christ and Caesar, Revelation and 
reason, God’s will and man’s

·        Led to movements of religious and social reform in both ancient 
and modern times—reforming prisons, limiting warfare, promoting 
peace, etc. The movement of Prohibition in the United States, even 
if misguided, helped to raise awareness of the social and spiritual 
dangers of alcoholism and need for disciplined living.

                                2)     An inadequate position:

a)     Culture is inescapable in some sense:

·        One is born into a culture, speaks a language, shaped by a cultural 
worldview.  To some extent, one can’t step out of a culture any more 
than one can step out of his skin.  One cannot dismiss philosophy and 
science as though they are externals altogether.

·        Even proponents of “Christ against culture” make use of some 
culture—the Amish of 19th century technology (horse & buggy, oil 
stoves, etc.), Tertullian of Roman and Stoic ideas, etc.

·        Even the reforms initiated by proponents of this paradigm were not 
achieved by them alone: for example, the conversionist paradigm 
(“Christ the transformer of culture”) exemplified by St. Augustine 
did far more to pave the way for the reformation of Roman culture than 
the “Christ against culture” paradigm of Tertullian.

b)     Theological problems:

·        Anti-intellectualism: setting Faith over against cultural reason, and 
Revelation over against secular learning, does injustice to the intellectual 
credibility and defensibility of the Faith, as well as to the genuine knowledge available through secular culture and General Revelation.

·        Misplaced antithesis: the spiritual antithesis (opposition)-- between good 
and evil, light and darkness, the children of God and the children of darkness,
obedience to God and sin-- does not correspond to the distinction between 
“Christ” and “culture.”  Elements of God’s grace are not absent from culture, 
and evidences of sin are not absent from the community of Christians (the 
struggle between sin and obedience to God cuts through every human heart).
Hence, simple withdrawal from culture is inadequate. 

      2.      “The Christ of culture” (culturally assimilated “cultural Christianity”):

a.      Basic themes:

                               1)     No antithesis between “Christ” and “culture”: there is no tension between
                                the Church and surrounding secular world.  The Christian is completely “at
                                home” in the community of culture, since the demands of “Christ” do not
                                stand in tension over against the world.  Accordingly, this position is often
                                called “Cultural Christianity.”

                                2)     Assimilation: “Christ” and the content of the Christian message (Gospel)
                                are defined in terms of the culture’s own understanding.  The Church no
                                longer offers the world a message that the world isn’t already telling itself.
                                The Gospel becomes an “echo” of the culture.

                                3)     Accommodation: the Christian message loses its own distinctive historical
                                content as it becomes translated into the language of the surrounding culture
                                (“watered down”: C.S. Lewis called this kind of religion “Christianity and
                                water”).  Jesus comes to be understood as a social educator, a moral
                                teacher, or a philosopher or reformer.  The Christian message may be
                                reduced to the betterment of mankind or such banalities as “I’m OK, you’re
                                OK,” or “let’s be kind to one another.”

b.     Historical examples:

                            1)     The Gnostic Christian heresy (early Church era):

a)     Gnostics, like Basilides and Valentinus, the author of Pistis Sophia, thought of themselves as Christians, but reinterpreted Christianity in ways the Church 
rejected as heretical (erroneous).  (See the Apostle John’s condemnation of 
gnostic beliefs in I John 4:1-3.)

b)     They considered the Bible, taken literally, and the Church’s traditional 
interpretation of it, to be barbaric, primitive, and unworthy of belief.  Hence 
they offered sophisticated alternative interpretations influenced by various 
pagan, Greek philosophical sources.  Thus, they sought to disentangle 
the true, occult (hidden) meaning of the Bible, known only to the initiated 
(those who know, hence “gnostic”), from its involvement with untenable 
and “outmoded” Jewish notions about God and history.

c)     They sought to elevate Christianity from the level of belief to that of intelligent 
knowledge (Greek: gnosis) and a philosophical system, thereby increasing its
attractiveness and credibility. 

d)     Examples of Gnostic teachings: the traditional interpretation of original sin, the 
eating of the forbidden fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 
3) is turned on its head and viewed as the first step toward salvation through 
knowledge (gnosis); God did not become incarnate in Jesus but only appeared 
in the form of a man.

e)     Moral practice: there are both ascetic and libertine (self-indulgent) forms of 
Gnosticism: ascetic forms stressed moral discipline, abstinence from indulging 
bodily appetites; and libertine forms did the opposite.

                             2)     Abelard (Middle Ages):

a)     He restates Christian teaching concerning faith and morals so as to reduce it to what conforms with the best in culture.  The standard becomes what we can know philosophically about reality, or what will serve best to improve life according to our ethical self-understanding.

b)     Jesus becomes for Abelard the great moral teacher for Christians.  His moral theory of atonement (Christus exemplar), which makes Christ a moral example for us, is offered as an alternative not only to a doctrine that is difficult for Christians as Christians, but to the whole conception of a once-for-all act of redemption (see St. Anselm’s “satisfaction” theory of atonement).

c)     His ethics side-steps the hard demands which the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) makes on the Christian, and offers kindly, liberal guidance for good people who want to do right.

                            3)     “Culture-Protestantism” (classic Protestant Liberalism)

a)     A thousand varieties of the “Christ of culture” theme have been formulated in this tradition, which emerged from the period of deistic and naturalistic Enlightenment (Age of Reason) in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation.

b)     Thomas Jefferson: a deist, under the influence of his contemporary intellectual culture, he created his own version of the New Testament, by literally cutting out all references to the miraculous and supernatural.  He viewed Jesus, not as an incarnation of God, but as a moral teacher.

c)     David Friedrich Strauss: author of Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Christ), in which he reinterprets the data of the New Testament in a naturalistic way so as to exclude the supernatural.  This marked a new an influential trend in biblical interpretation.

d)     Albrecht Ritschl: reinterpreted Christianity in light of the Enlightenment (Age of Reason) philosophy of Immanuel Kant.  The “Kingdom of God” is reinterpreted in light of Kant’s idea of a universal brotherhood of man in which all people respect each other and treat each other as ends-in-themselves.

e)     Walter Rauschenbusch’s “Social Gospel”: declares the heart of the Gospel to be a social message of feeding the poor and clothing the naked, rather than a spiritual message about Christ’s death and atonement to redeem sinners.  (Traditional Christianity, by contrast, teaches that the Gospel includes both.)

f)       Historical-critical method of interpreting the Bible: stemming from the Age of Reason (Enlightenment), this approach, which seeks to “demythologize” the Bible by offering naturalistic interpretations to explain away everything supernatural, has entered into most mainline Protestant seminaries and, since Vatican II (in the 1960s), has made inroads among Catholic theologians (though its naturalistic philosophical assumptions are rejected in official Catholic teaching).

c.      Assessment:

                              1)     Positive values in this position:

a)     Appreciation of culture: the gifts of human culture, its legacy of traditional wisdom, its contributions of science and arts, are appreciated in themselves.  Christians can learn from these.

b)     “Inculturation” or “acculturation” of Christianity: the process of translating Christianity into the language and conceptual categories understood by various cultures has helped the spread of Christianity.  Thus, cultural Christians have often been eager to note parallels between Christ’s teaching and that of Plato, Kant, the Buddha, and modern humanistic ideals.

c)     Cultural Christians tend to address themselves to the leading groups in society, including the despisers of religion, and to be acquainted with the science, philosophy, political and economic theories of the time.

d)     In their defense, cultural Christians often argue that those conservative Christians who oppose to their position (Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, Catholicism) represent a position of their own, which is often an expression of a cultural loyalty—usually a loyalty to a conservative culture of American civil religion or traditional European cultural ideal.

                              2)     Problems:

a)     “Christ” and His Gospel are all too often “swallowed up” by secular culture where this paradigm holds sway.  Christianity has nothing unique to offer that society doesn’t already have.

b)     Examples of how Christianity gets reinterpreted:

·        “Sin” becomes a matter of (1) unjust social structures in need of reform or (2) indiscretions stemming from animal passions, rather than objectively culpable transgression of divine law.

·        “Salvation” becomes a matter of improving human life, reforming social structures, and overcoming personal vices and addictions.

·        God’s grace, forgiveness of sins, even prayers of thanksgiving, are reduced to a means to an end: serving human purposes, such as the betterment of human society. 

3.     “Christ above culture” (synthesis Christianity):

a.      Basic themes:

                              1)     Affirms both “Christ” and “culture” – but without (a) reducing Christianity
                              to the prevailing secular worldview of the times, as in paradigm #2 (“the 
                              Christ of culture”), or (b) condemning everything in the secular culture as 
                              worthless to the Christian, as in paradigm #1 (“Christ against culture”).

                              2)     The world—including the world of nature and of human culture—is seen 
                              as fallen and corrupted by sin, yet as something that was originally created 
                              by God to be good and as still possessing great value and promise:

a)     Nature (including human nature), though wounded by sin, may be redeemed, healed, completed and perfected by God’s grace.

b)     Reason, though unable to guide on its own, may be harnessed to the faith, so that faith may obtain understanding through reason and reason may derive guidance from faith.

c)     Philosophy (and science) may be enlisted in the service of theology, just as theology may provide support and direction for philosophy (and science).

d)     The same synthesis is possible for everything pertaining to Christ and culture— the sacred & secular, the eternal & temporal, the Church and state, etc.

                            3)     The best that nature and secular culture have to offer is not only wounded 
                            by sin and therefore in need of healing, subject to error and therefore in need 
                            of correction, but also incomplete and therefore in need of perfection.  For
                            example:

a)     The best of Socrates’ arguments may show us what the virtue of justice is, but only Christ can show us what justice perfected by charity (agape) is.  Pagans can exhibit justice, but only a Christian can know what it is for his justice to be animated by the love of Christ.

b)     Aristotle may show us that our natural end consists in seeking happiness in various natural goods and virtues (marriage, offspring, work, morality), but only Christ shows us that our supernatural end consists in union with Him, and everlasting life in Heaven.

a.      Historical examples:

                              1)     St. Justin Martyr (early Church): a philosopher who converted to the
                              Christian Faith, but continued to value philosophy and to wear his
                              philosopher’s cloak.  Revelation, for him, was not something opposed to
                              philosophic wisdom, but something that perfects it.

                              2)     St. Clement of Alexandria (early Church): a theologian in Alexandria,
                               the intellectual center of North Africa (Egypt), who regarded Stoic
                               philosophy as compatible with the Christian Faith, combining Stoic
                               detachment with Christian love.

                              3)     St. Thomas Aquinas (high Middle Ages): thirteenth-century theologian
                              who represents the highest achievement of the Medieval synthesis:

a)     He represents a Christianity that has achieved or accepted full social responsibility for all the great institutions of culture.

b)     He Dominican monk, vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience; but within a Christianity that was actively involved in the world and saw itself as guardian of culture.

c)     Academically, he sought to synthesize Christianity with the tenets of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle.  For example, created a complementary synthesis between the following:

·        The classical Greek philosophical (cardinal) virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice (viewed as natural virtues)

·        The Christian theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity (viewed as supernatural virtues—gifts of God’s grace)

d)     Combined, without confusing, philosophy and theology, state and Church, civic and Christian virtues.

e)     Provides for the intelligent and willing cooperation of Christians with nonbelievers in carrying on the work in the world, while retaining the distinctiveness of the Christian life.

a.      Assessment:

                              1)     Offers a positive appreciation of the gifts to be found in nature and the
                               contributions to be found in secular culture, without compromising the
                               Christian Faith or blindness to the shortcomings that exist in secular life.

                              2)     Possible dangers: if the attempt to synthesize Christianity with elements 
                              of secular culture is not sufficiently circumspect, it can result in absolutizing 
                              the relative—by elevating certain “cultural baggage” to the level of an
                              unquestionable absolute for the Christian.

 4.     “Christ and culture in paradox” (dualist Christianity):

a.      Basic themes:

                              1)     Dualism:

a)     The Christian is citizens of two worlds existing side-by-side, two kingdoms—the Kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of this world

b)     Life is compartmentalized into separate spheres—the sacred & secular, the Church and the world.

c)     The Christian “wears different hats,” as it were—now that of Christian, now that of a secular civil servant, but all the while maintaining citizenship in both worlds.

2)      Paradox (or tension):

d)     The two worlds impose conflicting demands: The Christian is simultaneously under the demands of (1) obedience to the New Testament ethic of Christ (“love your enemies,” “turn the other cheek”) and (2) the secular ethic of civil responsibility (service in the armed forces, police force).

e)     Responsibilities in the secular world may involve unavoidable compromise of Christian principles.  For example, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that even fighting in a just war involves a violation of the commandment against killing, but is a sad necessity in a fallen world.

b.     Historical examples:

                              1)     New Testament examples may be found that appear to support such a 
                              view:

a)     Jesus says “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” (This text is capable of various interpretations, however.)

b)     St. Paul contrasts the righteousness of God with the righteousness of man; and in Romans 13, he enjoins his readers to “be subject to the governing [civil] authorities,” since they are established by God for the purpose of restraining evil in the world; and elsewhere he enjoins his fellow Christians to pray for civil rulers.

                             2)     Martin Luther:

a)     Luther explicitly distinguishes between two kingdoms to which the Christian simultaneously belongs—the Kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of this world.  Most representative of this type of dualism is the contrast H. Richard Niebuhr draws between two of his treatises:

·        Treatise on Christian Liberty: stresses joyful service of one’s neighbor in the spirit of generosity with which God gives generously to all men freely.

·        Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants: stresses the duty of the Christian princes of Germany to put down the peasant rebellions, to “slay and stab,” as agents of God’s wrath and justice.

b)     Luther has a “double” attitude toward reason and philosophy:

·        He called reason unguided by faith a “whore,” while recognizing the unavoidability of the use of reason.

·        He burned St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae along with the Church’s books on canon law and Pope Leo X’s bull of excommunication, showing his disdain for scholastic philosophy even while giving tacit approval to the employment of natural reason in the pursuit of truth.  (Lutheranism has no significant tradition of academic philosophy, as does Calvinism or Catholicism.)

c)     Luther reveled in paradox.  For example, he regarded the Christian as simul iustus et peccator—simultaneously just (clothed in Christ’s imputed righteousness) and yet still a sinner (in bondage to sin and unable to free himself).  Hence, his scatological image of justification was of a “snow-covered dung hill” (the Christian isn’t transformed and made righteous, but simply declared righteous on the basis of Christ’s atoning sacrifice).

d)     Luther’s concept of dual citizenship, simultaneously, in both worlds inevitably involves an irresolvable tension in the Christian who is bound to live with the conflicting demands of each.  Thus, living between time and eternity, between wrath and mercy, between culture and Christ, the true Lutheran finds life both tragic and joyful.

                            3)     Soren Kierkegaard: the 19th century Danish Lutheran philosopher exhibits 
                            a similar dualism within the context of theistic existentialism.  (Cf. James 
                            Sire’s discussion of theistic existentialism):

a)     Faith in Christ becomes an “irrational leap,” not simply beyond reason but against reason—absurd from the rational perspective of calculating reason.

b)     There is a dualism of the finite (man) and the infinite (God): the rational approach of calculating probabilities will never arrive at certitude regarding the object of faith, any more than a couple arrives at the decision to marry based on a mathematical algorithm.

                            4)     Roger Williams (in colonial America): A Calvinist nonconformist from 
                            England who founded Providence, Rhode Island, and represented the 
                            principle of separation of church and state, that is, the peaceful coexistence 
                            of many denominations within a religiously nonpartisan civil administration—
                            a common dualism in Protestantism.

 5.     “Christ the transformer of Culture” (conversionist Christianity)

a.      Basic themes:

                              1)     Creation: because God’s creation is good, the whole world, including 
                              nature as well as the realm of human culture, is seen in a positive light.  
                             God meant it all for good.  Thus every realm of creation and sphere of 
                             culture—agriculture, construction, economy, family, education, arts, 
                             politics, etc.—is seen as originally good.

                             2)     Fall: because of sin, God’s good creation has been undermined and 
                             human culture has been corrupted and distorted.  Creation and culture 
                             are radically fallen.

                            3)     Redemption: because of Christ’s redemptive work, there is no sphere 
                            of God’s creation or human culture, however distorted by sin and its
                            consequences, that is beyond redemption: the key is the redemptive,
                            transformational power of Christ’s Gospel—that is, the principle of
                            conversion.

                           4)     Conversionists contend on two fronts: (a) against the anti-culturalism of
                           exclusive Christianity (paradigm #1) and (b) against the accommoda-
                           tionism of culturally assimilated Christianity (paradigm #2).

b.     Historical examples:

                             1)     New Testament: though this paradigm finds wide support among the New
                             Testament books, the conversionist motif is particularly pronounced in 
                             the Gospel of John and the First Epistle of John:

a)     John takes terms and concepts with a wide Hellenistic background and lifts these ideas about Logos, knowledge, truth and eternity to new levels of meaning by interpreting them through Christ.

b)     The concepts of creation, sin, and Christology are present in conversionist form.

                            2)     St. Augustine:

a)     After the legalization of Christianity by Emperor Constantine in AD 313, Augustine took the lead in working out the theological basis for rethinking the task of the Church in the world in terms of the conversion of culture (rather than merely winning souls for the world to come, and awaiting Christ’s return as a persecuted religious remnant).

b)     An example of Augustine’s conversionism at work is his development of a theological theory of justifiable military use, called the Just War Theory.

c)     The regeneration of human society is portrayed in Augustine’s City of God.

                            3)     St. Thomas Aquinas: elements of the conversionist paradigm are found in
                            synthesist thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and their conversionist view 
                            of a restored proper ordering (“original justice”) of the faculties of the soul, 
                            reason, and body.

                            4)     John Calvin: the Protestant reformer of Geneva

a)     Looks for the present permeation of all life by the Gospel.

b)     Sought to implement the conversionist paradigm in Geneva by means of a theocratic administration of the city: civil laws were Christianized, so that Christian laws, informed by the Bible, became the laws of municipal governance.  For example, church attendance and moral codes were municipally enforced.

c)     There is no sphere of secular life that is viewed as autonomous and independent of God’s authority, not one square inch of life concerning which Christ does not say: “this is mine!” (in the words of Abraham Kuyper).  The goal is to “storm the citadels” of secularism and reclaim them for Christ.

c.      Assessment:

                              1)     Positive elements:

a)     Christianity engages culture (unlike paradigm #1) without losing its own identity (as does paradigm #2)

b)     There is a positive appreciation of culture coupled with the view that it requires submission to the grace and governance of Christ (as in paradigm #3, but not #4).  The world of nature and human culture is seen as something originally good, corrupted by sin, and in principle redeemable.

c)     Every sphere of life is seen as ultimately subject to God’s sovereignty: thus, the conversionist would not interpret Christ’s words “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” as suggesting a compartmentalization of life into spheres that belong and do not belong to God; rather, even Caesar is seen as accountable to God, such that even his political sphere is seen as subject, in principle, to God’s governance.

                            2)     Dangers:

a)     Because all spheres of culture are seen as subject to divine authority, the boundary between "Christ and culture” may become blurred, resulting in the loss of the relative autonomy of various cultural institutions from one another—including education, state, and Church (unlike paradigm #3, in which each sphere is preserved with relative distinctness).

b)     Historical examples of this can be seen in Calvinist theocratic experiments (Geneva, Edinburgh, South Africa, New England) where boundaries between Church and state were nearly lost.

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© 2006-2007 Philip Blosser