Thomas Traherne wrote, “He who thinks well serves God in his inmost court.”
I just finished D.A. Carson’s “Christ and Culture Revisited” and found it one of those books that seems to answer everything. Carson serves God in his inmost court.
(In that regard, it’s similar to other books whose comprehensive coverage of an issue causes me to say: “I know where the answers are!” They are books worth outlining and retaining close to hand. For example, such books for me include “The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God” by Dallas Willard; “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism” by Tim Keller; “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis; “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church” by N.T. Wright; “The Leadership Challenge (The Leadership Practices Inventory)” by Kouzes and Posner.)
Christ and Culture Revisited tackles the messy debates on how fully committed Christ-followers “live in the world, but not of the world.” Using Niebuhr’s five Christ-Culture options as a foil, Carson argues that the relation between Christ and culture is not limited to an either/or cultural paradigm–Christ against culture or Christ transforming culture. Carson offers however a unifying vision—one where the Bible’s story line and the categories of biblical theology contribute to simultaneously to inform a Christian worldview which is flexible enough to fit and interact with a massive variety of contextual problems and situations. In other words, the right understanding of the Christ and culture must give right guidance both to the rich American and the poor African, the persecuted Chinese and the free South Korean.
Carson includes the following helpful quote from Jean Elshtain on the Christ against vs. the Christ transforming stance:
As a stand-alone posture, against too often turns into brittle condemnation, a stance of haughty (presumed) moral superiority, wagons circled. Transform on its own may degenerate into naive idealism, even utopianism . . . Avoiding these extremes, we must see Christ against and for, agonistic and affirming, arguing and embracing. This is complex but, then, Christianity is no stranger to complexity.
I love this book–it cost me $16:32 from Amazon. Now, having read it, underlined it and annotated key sections I wouldn’t sell it for three times that much. A top read.
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