Christ & Culture Revisited, by D.A. Carson, is, as the title suggests, a book review in itself.  The original Christ & Culture, written by Richard Niebuhr some fifty years ago, presented five Christ-and-culture options that have shaped much of Christian thought about the issues.  Carson proposes that it is time to revisit Niebuhr’s conclusions, suggesting that they are not in fact separate options but merely facets of one larger vision.   For those who have not read the original, Carson summarizes the five points but also references works by other writers (Christian and secular) who comment on the relationship between Christ and culture.  The overall aim of the book seems to be to provoke thought about how to deal with the tensions of living in the world, yet not being of the world; the author provides historical background that shows us Christ and culture interacting in significant ways.

Carson briefly but thoroughly defines culture before explaining Niebuhr’s five Christian/cultural perspectives and illustrating how they have looked in history: Christ against culture (exemplified by monasteries, Tolstoyans and the Amish); the Christ of culture (the early-church Gnostics, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Jefferson);  and Christ above culture, with two subdivisions--Christ and culture in paradox and Christ the transformer of culture.    Niebuhr understands the latter three to have been the majority positions of the church.  (Carson comments that these labels are somewhat confusing and might be better understood as “Christ above culture, synthesis type [Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian]; Christ above culture, dualist type [Luther, Kierkegaard]; and Christ above culture, conversionist/transformationist type [Calvin, Wesley].” [p.20])  

In the second chapter, Carson considers how Niebuhr’s categories might have looked had they been grounded in the “non-negotiables of biblical theology.”  These include creation, the fall, the call of Abraham, the exodus, the giving of the law, the incarnation, Christ’s death and resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the final judgment, with heaven to gain and hell to fear.  Carson’s conclusion is that approaches to culture which selectively focus upon one or more of these realities, to the marginalization or exclusion of the others, rapidly become reductionist, simplistic, and suspect.  Any approach to culture which commits to thinking about all of these realities at the same time will help us to discover authentically Christian ways of relating to culture in a wide variety of contexts.  “An authentic Christian,” Carson says, “is the one who is most shaped in thought, word, and deed by Christianity’s foundational documents, by Christianity’s Lord, [and] by Christianity’s creeds.”  This is why “reading and re-reading the Bible, and knowing and reciting the creeds” are so important: “…it is futile to speak of loving and trusting and obeying this God if His words do not delight, terrify, instruct, and shape us.” (pp. 121-122)

One of the strengths of the book is Carson’s careful attention to definition:  terms that can be carelessly applied and misunderstood, especially in the heat of an emotional discussion, are clearly (not simply!) defined and their past connotations explored, along with present uses and misuses.  The third and fourth chapters are devoted to such thorough definitions of postmodernism, secularism, democracy, freedom, and power. (Your knee-jerk reactions to these volatile and somewhat slippery concepts may never be the same again.)

A hefty (fifty-five page) chapter entitled “Church and State” clarifies the two terms, gives an overview of pertinent Scriptural teaching, and provides a few historical examples of how the tensions between church and state have played out.  Carson proposes that what the church does as the institution of church and what the individual Christian does in culture may look very different.  The book concludes with a short chapter on several of the common options chosen by Christians, the title itself illustrating why none of these has been able to control or end the discussion: “On Disputed Agendas, Frustrated Utopias, and Ongoing Tensions.”  (However complicated his patterns of reasoning, Carson does not lack a sense of humor.  It flashes out delightfully in unexpected places throughout the book.)

Carson has thought far more deeply about the practical relationship of biblical theology to culture than most of us have or will.  He is not unfamiliar with Anabaptists, having at least a passing acquaintance with the Amish as well as the less-traditional John Howard Yoder.   For those among us who would like to settle the question of cultural interaction once for all time and for every situation, Carson reasonably points out that this is not likely.  Human beings falter; we overlook things; we distort balances.  We also live in a fallen world, where even the most Christlike of actions can provoke misunderstanding and reaction from unbelievers.  Therefore, he concludes, canonical and inflexible rulings are much less helpful than thought-provoking questions that lead us to passionately pursue a “robust and nourishing wholeness of biblical theology.”  (One such example: in following Christ’s perfect standard, we must learn when it is right to suffer persecution while loving the persecutor and when it is right to drive the money-changers out of the temple with a whip.)

This book is no easy Sunday-afternoon read for the half-asleep armchair scholar.  Nor is it an accessible small-group resource with helpful study questions at the end of each chapter, or a how-to manual you can hastily read, absorb, and apply.   Carson is a pastor, an educator, and the author of nearly fifty books; he is also a highly-skilled academic who is accustomed to addressing other academics.  His thought processes, sentence structure, and word choices reflect this.   Frankly, I found the book difficult reading, particularly at first; I took notes and made outlines in order to keep the end of the discussion in focus while plunging to dizzying depths of detail.  If you are not well-acquainted with doctrinal/theological categorizations and their corresponding heresies, you may want to find someone who is; not all of Carson’s terms can be found in the dictionary.  I recommend this book for anyone who wishes to stretch his intellectual capacity, deepen his understanding of Christian history, and be (uncomfortably) provoked to love and good works in his particular culture!