Christianity & Culture
Christianity & Culture Part 7: Christ Above Culture, The Synthesist
Niebuhr’s Third Category: Christ Above Culture Believers who hold to Christ Above Culture reject the Christ Against Culture and the Christ of Culture positions. Niebuhr claims that “the great majority movement in Christianity, which we may call the church of the center, has refused to take either the position of the anticultural radicals or that of the accommodators of Christ to culture.” Niebuhr gives three names to the next three views: Synthesists, Dualists, and Transformationalists. We will consider the first of these – the Synthesists – today.
The Synthesis Position Diagramed CULTURE
Culture is what God makes though man Good and rightly ordered by God Both divine and human in its origin Both holy and sinful A realm of necessity and freedom A realm where reason and revelation apply
NATURE
Creation is what God makes by Himself
The Synthesist Postion • The synthesist affirms both Christ and culture, as one who confesses a Lord who is both of this world and of the other….The synthesist maintains the conviction that “Jesus, his Lord, is both God and man, one person with two ‘natures’ that are neither to be confused nor separated.” • The synthesist’s understanding of culture: it is “both divine and human in its origin, both holy and sinful, a realm of both necessity and freedom, and one to which both reason and revelation apply.” But is this how the Bible speaks of culture?
The Synthesis of Christ and Culture • Frame’s explanation of the synthesis view: “So how does Christ relate to culture? Generally speaking, culture is man’s development of nature. Christ supplements nature with something higher. The higher (grace) then mingles easily with the lower, in a ‘synthesis.’” • The theological conviction behind this view is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Father Almighty who created heaven and earth. This introduces “the conception of nature on which all culture is founded, and which is good and rightly ordered by the One to whom Jesus Christ is obedient and with whom he is inseparably united” (D.A. Carson).
The Synthesis of Christ and Culture • In other words, if God created nature, and culture is founded upon nature, then Christ and the world cannot be opposed to each other. • The world as culture, therefore, “cannot be simply regarded as the realm of godlessness; since it is at least founded on the ‘world’ as nature, and cannot exist save as it is upheld by the Creator and Governor of nature” (Niebuhr). • The synthesists insist that Christ is as sovereign over the culture as over the church. Niebuhr writes: “We cannot say, ‘Either Christ or culture,’ because we are dealing with God in both cases.”
Thomas Aquinas’ View Christ is Far Above Culture The Church of the Center
Christ Against Culture • Aquinas is a monk • Faithful to the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience • Rejected the secular world • The church in the cloister
Christ of Culture • Aquinas is a monk in the church • The church is the guardian of culture, fostering learning, protector of the family, judge of the nations • The church in the world
“The steep ascent to heaven, though always involving human activity, proceeds only by power sacramentally bestowed from above” (Niebuhr).
The Motif of the Synthetic View • Niebuhr claims that “the New Testament contains no document that clearly expresses the synthetic view; but there are many statements in gospels and epistles which sound the motif or which can be interpreted…as containing the solution of the Christ-and-culture problem.” For instance: • “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s” (Mt. 22:21). • “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God….the rulers are servants of God” (Rom. 13:1,6).
Problems With the Synthesist’s View • It may lead to the institutionalization of Christ and His gospel. • Synthesists “do not face up to the radical evil present in all human work” (Niebuhr). • John Frame agrees: The synthesist’s view “doesn’t sound so bad when you first hear of it; in fact, it seems to make good sense. The trouble is that the way it is sometimes put is that you really don’t need Christ at the lower level, only at the higher level. Natural reason, for example, works perfectly well without the help of divine revelation. Aristotle learned many valuable things through his natural reason. His problem was not so much that he was wrong, though sometimes he was. His
Problems With the Synthesist’s View problem was that he needed to know more than his reason could tell him. He needed a supplement. And you can do just fine at making your living and raising your family without Christ. But if you’re interested in eternal life, then you need something more. The problem, however, is that it is unbiblical to separate nature and grace in this sort of way. Remember that God intends us to live our natural lives for his glory. When we eat and drink, do our jobs, and raise our families, we should be doing that for the glory of God. But apart from grace, we are sinners…So without grace we cannot live our natural lives as God intended. We need far more than a supplement. We need a complete change of direction. So in Scripture, nature and grace are quite
Problems With the Synthesist’s View inseparable. Grace is not just a higher level, a supplement to nature. Rather, nature is hopeless, apart from grace. And so we must understand culture. Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, and the degenerates of Romans 1 are examples of what culture is like without Christ.”
Creation & the Fall of Man “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” - Romans 8:18-23
Glory and Shame “Christians cannot long think about Christ and culture without reflecting on the fact that this is God’s world, but that this side of the fall this world is simultaneously resplendent with glory and awash in shame, and that every expression of human culture simultaneously discloses that we were made in God’s image and shows itself to be misshaped and corroded by human rebellion against God” (D.A. Carson).
Who Was Responsible for the Shift? Francis Schaeffer maintains that “Thomas Aquinas opened the way for the discussion of what is usually called ‘nature and grace.’ They may be set out diagrammatically like this: GRACE Nature
Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274
Grace, the Higher: God the creator; Heaven and heavenly things; The unseen and its influence on the earth; Man’s soul; Unity Nature, the Lower: The created; Earth and earthly things; The visible and what nature and man do on earth; Man’s body; Diversity
Schaeffer’s Summary of Aquinas “In Aquinas’ view the will of man was fallen, but the intellect was not. From this incomplete view of the biblical Fall flowed all the subsequent difficulties. Man’s intellect became autonomous. In one realm man was now independent, autonomous….From the basis of this autonomous principle, philosophy also became free, and was separated from revelation. Therefore philosophy began to take wings as it were, and fly off wherever it wished, without relationship to the Scriptures.”
Synthesizing Revelation with Aristotle “The medieval scholastics…revived, particularly through Thomas Aquinas, an optimistic doctrine of human reason and stated the case for biblical theism in a way that attracted speculative doubt. The movement of Western philosophy away from the biblical outlook may be summarized as a decline of faith in the existence of an objective, transcendentally created structure of law and order. Replacing this view is a speculative projection of autonomous structures that are directly accessible to human reason independent of divine revelation, and are discontinuous with the sense world….By synthesizing a revelationally grounded theism with the classic Greek view of Aristotle, medieval scholasticism indirectly hastened a philosophy of the autonomy of man and nature independent of the Logos-structured meaning and law of creation” (Carl F.H. Henry).
The Image After the Fall
• The consequences of the Fall were severe for man. • The divine image in man was not totally shattered.
Image Marred in 6 Ways • Man lost his moral integrity. • Man’s reason was tainted. • Man became motivated by an inordinate will. • Man no longer loved God nor his neighbor. • Man sought to escape from the claim of God upon his life. • Man revolted against the truth and the good.
“Catastrophic Personality Shock” “The fall of man was a catastrophic personality shock; it fractured human existence with a devastating fault. Ever since, man’s worship and contemplation of the living God have been broken, his devotion to the divine will shattered. Man’s revolt against God therefore affects his entire being; he is now motivated by an inordinate will; he no longer loves God nor his neighbor; he devotes human reasoning to the cause of spiritual rebellion. He seeks escape from the claim of God upon his life and blames his fellow man for his own predicament. His revolt against God is at the same time a revolt against truth and the good; his rejection of truth is a rejection of God and the good, his defection from the good a repudiation of God and the truth.” - Carl F.H. Henry
Carl F.H. Henry “Why is it that the magnificent civilizations fashioned by human endeavor throughout history have tumbled and collapsed one after another with apocalyptic suddenness? Is it not because, ever since man’s original fall and onward to the present, sin has plummeted human existence into an unbroken crisis of word and truth? A cosmic struggle between truth and falsehood, between good and evil, shadows the whole history of mankind. The Bible depicts it as a conflict between the authority of God and the claims of the Evil One. Measured by the yardstick of God’s holy purposes, all that man proudly designates as human culture is little but idolatry. God’s Word proffers no compliments whatever to man’s so-called historical progress; rather,
Carl F.H. Henry it indicts man’s pseudoparadises as veritable towers of Babel that obscure and falsify God’s truth and Word.”
D.A. Carson: A Different Way of Seeing “The Christian heritage of meanings and values turns on disclosure from God that makes us look at everything differently. In the muchquoted words of C.S. Lewis, ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.’ That is why consideration of Christ and culture promises to be fruitful and revealing: it is a consideration of a different way of seeing, of a different vision, even when we are looking at the same thing.”
Niebuhr’s Third Category: Christ Above Culture Believers who hold to Christ Above Culture reject the Christ Against Culture and the Christ of Culture positions. Niebuhr claims that “the great majority movement in Christianity, which we may call the church of the center, has refused to take either the position of the anticultural radicals or that of the accommodators of Christ to culture.” Niebuhr gives three names to the next three views: Synthesists, Dualists, and Transformationalists. We will consider the first of these – the Synthesists – today.
The Synthesis Position Diagramed CULTURE
Culture is what God makes though man Good and rightly ordered by God Both divine and human in its origin Both holy and sinful A realm of necessity and freedom A realm where reason and revelation apply
NATURE
Creation is what God makes by Himself
The Synthesist Postion • The synthesist affirms both Christ and culture, as one who confesses a Lord who is both of this world and of the other….The synthesist maintains the conviction that “Jesus, his Lord, is both God and man, one person with two ‘natures’ that are neither to be confused nor separated.” • The synthesist’s understanding of culture: it is “both divine and human in its origin, both holy and sinful, a realm of both necessity and freedom, and one to which both reason and revelation apply.” But is this how the Bible speaks of culture?
The Synthesis of Christ and Culture • Frame’s explanation of the synthesis view: “So how does Christ relate to culture? Generally speaking, culture is man’s development of nature. Christ supplements nature with something higher. The higher (grace) then mingles easily with the lower, in a ‘synthesis.’” • The theological conviction behind this view is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Father Almighty who created heaven and earth. This introduces “the conception of nature on which all culture is founded, and which is good and rightly ordered by the One to whom Jesus Christ is obedient and with whom he is inseparably united” (D.A. Carson).
The Synthesis of Christ and Culture • In other words, if God created nature, and culture is founded upon nature, then Christ and the world cannot be opposed to each other. • The world as culture, therefore, “cannot be simply regarded as the realm of godlessness; since it is at least founded on the ‘world’ as nature, and cannot exist save as it is upheld by the Creator and Governor of nature” (Niebuhr). • The synthesists insist that Christ is as sovereign over the culture as over the church. Niebuhr writes: “We cannot say, ‘Either Christ or culture,’ because we are dealing with God in both cases.”
Thomas Aquinas’ View Christ is Far Above Culture The Church of the Center
Christ Against Culture • Aquinas is a monk • Faithful to the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience • Rejected the secular world • The church in the cloister
Christ of Culture • Aquinas is a monk in the church • The church is the guardian of culture, fostering learning, protector of the family, judge of the nations • The church in the world
“The steep ascent to heaven, though always involving human activity, proceeds only by power sacramentally bestowed from above” (Niebuhr).
The Motif of the Synthetic View • Niebuhr claims that “the New Testament contains no document that clearly expresses the synthetic view; but there are many statements in gospels and epistles which sound the motif or which can be interpreted…as containing the solution of the Christ-and-culture problem.” For instance: • “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s” (Mt. 22:21). • “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God….the rulers are servants of God” (Rom. 13:1,6).
Problems With the Synthesist’s View • It may lead to the institutionalization of Christ and His gospel. • Synthesists “do not face up to the radical evil present in all human work” (Niebuhr). • John Frame agrees: The synthesist’s view “doesn’t sound so bad when you first hear of it; in fact, it seems to make good sense. The trouble is that the way it is sometimes put is that you really don’t need Christ at the lower level, only at the higher level. Natural reason, for example, works perfectly well without the help of divine revelation. Aristotle learned many valuable things through his natural reason. His problem was not so much that he was wrong, though sometimes he was. His
Problems With the Synthesist’s View problem was that he needed to know more than his reason could tell him. He needed a supplement. And you can do just fine at making your living and raising your family without Christ. But if you’re interested in eternal life, then you need something more. The problem, however, is that it is unbiblical to separate nature and grace in this sort of way. Remember that God intends us to live our natural lives for his glory. When we eat and drink, do our jobs, and raise our families, we should be doing that for the glory of God. But apart from grace, we are sinners…So without grace we cannot live our natural lives as God intended. We need far more than a supplement. We need a complete change of direction. So in Scripture, nature and grace are quite
Problems With the Synthesist’s View inseparable. Grace is not just a higher level, a supplement to nature. Rather, nature is hopeless, apart from grace. And so we must understand culture. Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, and the degenerates of Romans 1 are examples of what culture is like without Christ.”
Creation & the Fall of Man “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” - Romans 8:18-23
Glory and Shame “Christians cannot long think about Christ and culture without reflecting on the fact that this is God’s world, but that this side of the fall this world is simultaneously resplendent with glory and awash in shame, and that every expression of human culture simultaneously discloses that we were made in God’s image and shows itself to be misshaped and corroded by human rebellion against God” (D.A. Carson).
Who Was Responsible for the Shift? Francis Schaeffer maintains that “Thomas Aquinas opened the way for the discussion of what is usually called ‘nature and grace.’ They may be set out diagrammatically like this: GRACE Nature
Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274
Grace, the Higher: God the creator; Heaven and heavenly things; The unseen and its influence on the earth; Man’s soul; Unity Nature, the Lower: The created; Earth and earthly things; The visible and what nature and man do on earth; Man’s body; Diversity
Schaeffer’s Summary of Aquinas “In Aquinas’ view the will of man was fallen, but the intellect was not. From this incomplete view of the biblical Fall flowed all the subsequent difficulties. Man’s intellect became autonomous. In one realm man was now independent, autonomous….From the basis of this autonomous principle, philosophy also became free, and was separated from revelation. Therefore philosophy began to take wings as it were, and fly off wherever it wished, without relationship to the Scriptures.”
Synthesizing Revelation with Aristotle “The medieval scholastics…revived, particularly through Thomas Aquinas, an optimistic doctrine of human reason and stated the case for biblical theism in a way that attracted speculative doubt. The movement of Western philosophy away from the biblical outlook may be summarized as a decline of faith in the existence of an objective, transcendentally created structure of law and order. Replacing this view is a speculative projection of autonomous structures that are directly accessible to human reason independent of divine revelation, and are discontinuous with the sense world….By synthesizing a revelationally grounded theism with the classic Greek view of Aristotle, medieval scholasticism indirectly hastened a philosophy of the autonomy of man and nature independent of the Logos-structured meaning and law of creation” (Carl F.H. Henry).
The Image After the Fall
• The consequences of the Fall were severe for man. • The divine image in man was not totally shattered.
Image Marred in 6 Ways • Man lost his moral integrity. • Man’s reason was tainted. • Man became motivated by an inordinate will. • Man no longer loved God nor his neighbor. • Man sought to escape from the claim of God upon his life. • Man revolted against the truth and the good.
“Catastrophic Personality Shock” “The fall of man was a catastrophic personality shock; it fractured human existence with a devastating fault. Ever since, man’s worship and contemplation of the living God have been broken, his devotion to the divine will shattered. Man’s revolt against God therefore affects his entire being; he is now motivated by an inordinate will; he no longer loves God nor his neighbor; he devotes human reasoning to the cause of spiritual rebellion. He seeks escape from the claim of God upon his life and blames his fellow man for his own predicament. His revolt against God is at the same time a revolt against truth and the good; his rejection of truth is a rejection of God and the good, his defection from the good a repudiation of God and the truth.” - Carl F.H. Henry
Carl F.H. Henry “Why is it that the magnificent civilizations fashioned by human endeavor throughout history have tumbled and collapsed one after another with apocalyptic suddenness? Is it not because, ever since man’s original fall and onward to the present, sin has plummeted human existence into an unbroken crisis of word and truth? A cosmic struggle between truth and falsehood, between good and evil, shadows the whole history of mankind. The Bible depicts it as a conflict between the authority of God and the claims of the Evil One. Measured by the yardstick of God’s holy purposes, all that man proudly designates as human culture is little but idolatry. God’s Word proffers no compliments whatever to man’s so-called historical progress; rather,
Carl F.H. Henry it indicts man’s pseudoparadises as veritable towers of Babel that obscure and falsify God’s truth and Word.”
D.A. Carson: A Different Way of Seeing “The Christian heritage of meanings and values turns on disclosure from God that makes us look at everything differently. In the muchquoted words of C.S. Lewis, ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.’ That is why consideration of Christ and culture promises to be fruitful and revealing: it is a consideration of a different way of seeing, of a different vision, even when we are looking at the same thing.”
