Christ & Culture Revisited

Since 1951, the starting point for discussions of the church’s relation to culture, or the Christian’s relation to culture, has been H. Richard Niebuhr’s book Christ and Culture. The five paradigms surveyed in that book (Christ Against Culture; Christ of Culture; Christ Above Culture; Christ and Culture in Paradox; and Christ the Transformer of Culture) shape the contemporary discussion in many ways. But are Niebuhr’s categories sufficient? Are they mutually exclusive ways of understanding the relationship between the church and culture? Should different approaches be taken depending on whether one lives in eighteenth-century England or twenty-first-century Saudi Arabia? What do we mean when we speak of “culture” anyway? These and many other related questions are discussed by D.A. Carson in Christ & Culture Revisited (Eerdmans, 2008). Dr. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois and is the author of numerous academic articles and more than forty books, including commentaries as well as works on biblical, theological, and cultural issues. In this book, he brings years of biblical reflection to bear on the subject at hand. Read the rest HERE