“Christ and Culture” – An

Overview of a Christian
Classic
February 25, 2015

H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture is one of the most

significant theological and missiological works of the 20th
century, offering a memorable categorization of the ways
Christians have related to culture throughout history.

When contemporary authors address the question of how a

Christian relates to society, they either rename and refine
Niebuhr’s categories (Tim Keller in Center Church),
incorporate Niebuhr’s framework into a simpler one (James
Davison Hunter in To Change the World), or provide
strengths and weaknesses of Niebuhr’s proposal while
reflecting on various applications (D. A. Carson in Christ and
Culture Revisited). Occasionally, authors will reject the
Niebuhrian project altogether for being too heavily
influenced by a Christendom mentality (Stanley Hauerwas
and William Willimon in Resident Aliens), but even then, the
passionate counterpoint to Christ and Culture serves as a
backhanded compliment, since it recognizes and reinforces
the widespread influence this work has had.
Summary

Niebuhr’s work begins with definitions. Who is Christ? He is

the New Testament figure, crucified and raised from the
dead, the One whom Christians accept as their authority
(11-13).

“Belief in him and loyalty to his cause involves men in the

double movement from world to God and from God to
world” (29).

What is culture? It is the social life of humanity, the

environment created by human beings in the areas of
“language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social
organization, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and
values” (32).

Niebuhr turns next to various ways in which Christians have

sought to live faithfully under the authority of Christ as they
relate to the culture surrounding them. There are three
major choices:

opposition to culture (Christ against culture),

agreement between Christ and culture (Christ of
culture),
and a combination that incorporates insights from both
of these two views (Christ above culture).

Within the third framework are three variations:

 a synthetic type that sees Christ as the fulfillment of
culture,
a dualistic type that sees an ongoing tension between
Christ and culture,
and a conversionist type that portrays Jesus as the
converter of culture and society.

The rest of the book lays out these five options.

Christ Against Culture

To exemplify the Christ against Culture position, Niebuhr

claims Tertullian, Leo Tolstoy, the Mennonites, and various
voices from the monastic tradition that are united by a
common theme: loyalty to Christ and the church entails a
rejection of culture and society. The lines between the
church and the world are sharp because the church is a
community whose existence judges the world. Niebuhr
credits the impressive sincerity of adherents to this position,
but he rejects it as inadequate for its inability to extricate
itself from the culture it condemns.

Christ Of Culture

For the Christ of Culture position, Niebuhr points back to

the ancient Gnostics, Abelard, Albrecht Ritschl, and a large
swath of Protestant liberalism. The commonality here is a
lack of tension between the church and the world, since
Jesus is the fulfiller of society’s hopes and aspirations. He is
“the great enlightener, the great teacher, the one who
directs all men in culture to the attainment of wisdom, moral
perfection, and peace” (92). Despite the appeal of this
position the elite and powerful groups within a civilization,
Niebuhr sees it as inadequate for allowing loyalty to culture
trump loyalty to Christ, to the point the New Testament
Jesus gets replaced with an idol that shares his name (110).

Christ Above Culture

The Christ above Culture position, according to Niebuhr, is

the dominant voice of church history. The fundamental
issue is between God and humanity, not God and the world.

In the synthesis version, advocates do not choose

between Christ and culture, but rely on “both Christ and
culture” as God uses the best elements of culture to give
people what they cannot achieve on their own. Church
fathers like Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria are
early examples. Thomas Aquinas is the supreme defender
of this position, seen clearly in his effort to combine into one
system the relationship between reason and revelation,
creation and redemption, nature and grace. The downside
to this view is the institutionalization of Christ and the
gospel, as well as the tendency to absolutize what is
relative, reduce the infinite to finite form, and materialize
what is dynamic (145).

The Christ and Culture in Paradox position is the dualistic

version of “Christ above Culture:” the conflict between God
and humanity is ever present and this conflict represents
Christ and culture as well. “Grace is in God, and sin is in
man,” Niebuhr writes (151), the basis for seeing human
depravity that pervades and corrupts all human work and
culture creation. Upholding the paradox of law and grace,
divine wrath and mercy, the Christian lives between two
magnetic poles. Niebuhr claims the apostle Paul as an early
advocate of this approach, later represented by Martin
Luther and Sören Kierkegaard. Though Niebuhr recognizes
the power of this view because of the way it corresponds to
our experience, he finds it inadequate for its tendency
toward antinomianism or cultural conservatism (187).

The Christ as Transformer of Culture position is the

conversionist version of “Christ above Culture,” and it is
most clearly presented in the work of Augustine, John
Calvin, and F. D. Maurice. According to this view, all of
culture is under the judgment of God, and yet culture is also
under God’s sovereign rule. Therefore, “the Christian must
carry on cultural work in obedience to the Lord” (191).
Emphasizing the goodness of creation, the conversionist
affirms what can be affirmed and seeks to transform what is
corrupted by sin and selfishness. Eternal life begins in the
present, Niebuhr writes, claiming the apostle John as a
biblical advocate for this perspective.

Christ and Culture ends with a postscript encouraging

readers to not settle on one of these views to the exclusion
of the others. No “Christian answer” exists that applies
definitively for all time, since faith is “fragmentary,” and we
do not have “the same fragments of faith” (236).

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the strengths and

weaknesses of Niebuhr’s taxonomy. For today, if you
had to pick one of these five options, which one would
you go with?

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