Niebuhr’s “Christ and Culture” Revisited

Niebuhr summarizes the perennial Christian approaches to culture; it reveals that our own current debates are but the latest phase of a debate that has continued for millennia.

Richard Niebuhr’s classic Christ and Culture has long been on my reading list. It is a book I remembered for its title, and the title summarizes a major topic of debate in Christian circles and beyond. As I understand, the question of how Christ relates to culture is closely related to that of how grace is related to nature, the major question of this newsletter. It is broached every day in a Christian’s life, as we find ourselves doing things other than praying and reading the Bible. What is the status of this cultural work, and how does it relate to Christian faith?

Niebuhr and his brother Reinhold Niebuhr were Protestant theologians of the mid-twentieth century. They operated in mainline Protestant denominations and were influenced by the neo-Orthodox theological movement, Karl Barth being its main proponent. Theological liberalism denied the supernatural and gutted Christianity of its distinctive teachings, leaving only the moral teachings of Jesus. Neo-orthodox theologians, like Barth, the Niebuhrs, and Emil Brunner argued for a minimal Christian orthodoxy that made room for the supernatural while accepting critical biblical scholarship and other results of modern scholarship.

As an evangelical Christian myself, the Niebuhrs have never been my go-to trusted sources. I knew, for instance, that Barack Obama had cited Reinhold Niebuhr as an influence, and I had never thought of myself as theologically akin to Obama. (Obama actually says that Reinhold Niebuhr is his favorite philosopher and theologian.) But even this suspicion is emblematic of the kind of difference in approach that Richard Niebuhr describes in Christ and Culture. My theological priors led me to a more wary approach to culture than did Niebuhr’s.

But this only illustrates the need for a helpful exploration of the different Christian approaches to culture. While I may not end up agreeing with Niebuhr’s approach, his taxonomy of Christian views may be quite helpful. (Niebuhr refrains from quite endorsing an approach in the book.) And this is indeed what I found.

The Perennial Approaches

Niebuhr summarizes the different Christian approaches to culture that are perennial, reappearing over time but also over space. In a different theological context, I might put different names to each approach, but Niebuhr’s framework remains helpful. Most importantly, it reveals that our own current debates are but the latest phase of a debate that has continued for two millennia.

Niebuhr’s taxonomy of Christian approaches to culture includes five views: Christ against culture, Christ in culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of culture. “Christ against culture” sounded familiar, as emblematic of fundamentalist and evangelical worries about secular culture. “Christ the transformer of culture” is familiar to me from a prominent Reformed view, which gets called “transformationalist,” is attributed to Abraham Kuyper, and was influential at Wheaton College. But the views in the middle sounded less familiar.

Christ Against Culture

If “Christ against culture” represents the fundamentalist and conservative evangelical approach, then the mainline Niebuhr will be expected to argue against it. But Niebuhr is remarkably fair to the “Christ against culture” view. He describes it as a necessary moment in the Christian response to culture. 1 John is emblematic: “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” The church father Tertullian took this approach in intellectual matters: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” In being a Christian, one must leave behind that which is contrary to Christ.

But among the “Christ against culture” folks, Niebuhr also includes Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy was, theologically, a theological liberal. He held to the moral teachings of Jesus but entirely separated them from the teaching that Jesus is divine and a savior. In taking a pacifist view about war and cautioning against the use of power, Tolstoy positions himself within a strand of Christian teaching that is preceded by monasticism and the Anabaptist movement (including the Mennonites and the Amish). This inclusion of Tolstoy and a politically radical strand of Christianity in the “Christ against culture” view makes things more complex, in a way to which we will return.

Christ In Culture

“Christ in culture” is at the opposite end of the spectrum. On the “Christ in culture” view, culture is seen positively, and Christ is seen as the apex of human culture. In particular, Niebuhr has in view the liberal Protestantism of his day, which did not reject human culture but, if anything, reduced Christ down to the cultural level.

However, Niebuhr also makes this view more complex by reflecting that the “Christ in culture” view can be found in Christianized cultures, where Christians think that the culture reflects Christianity. Likewise, Christians who react against their current culture sometimes argue for movement or return to some era of a more Christian culture. Even if such people view themselves as embodying “Christ against culture,” they may turn out to be cultural Christians nonetheless.

Even here, Niebuhr offers a thorough defense of cultural Christianity, whether of the theologically liberal or conservative variety. As he says, Christianity must take cultural form wherever it is. As a result, a purely negative view of human culture cannot be maintained, and we must view cultural Christianity as the inevitable fruit of Christian conversion.

The Mediating Views

To this point, “Christ against culture” and “Christ in culture” appear to be the two poles of Christian approaches to culture, both valid as moments that must occur. At some point, a Christian has to say “no” to culture; at another point, “yes.” But a pure version of either fails to recognize the validity of the other. So, Niebuhr’s remaining three views are meant to be the only ones that are viable for a Christian. They are the attempts to mediate between extremes, which every Christian must do.

Briefly, “Christ above culture” is the most positive toward culture, while retaining that Christ is supernatural and distinct from the products of culture and is represented by medieval Catholic theologian-philosopher Thomas Aquinas. “Christ and culture in paradox” is the most negative toward culture, while retaining the necessity and unavoidability of culture, and represented by Luther. “Christ the transformer of culture” is somewhere in the middle, accepting a negative judgment of culture, while taking an optimistic view of the possibility of Christian cultural transformation, represented by Augustine.

Christ Above Culture

“Christ above culture” is Niebuhr’s title for this view because, while taking a largely positive view toward human culture and philosophy, Christ is held to be distinct from and superior to human culture. Aquinas, for example, thought that the best of culture and philosophy of his time would lead toward, not away, from Christ. However, Christ was nevertheless distinct from, and above the realm of culture and nature. Reason could teach us a certain amount about the world, man, and even God; but revelation was necessary for the knowledge of salvation.

While expressing some sympathy for the view, Niebuhr ultimately lobs a critique at it: The positive view of culture it expresses is nothing more than a positive view of thirteenth-century European culture. Niebuhr is taking twentieth-century Catholic neo-Thomists as his target here; this may have been a fair critique for them. But this seems too harsh a judgment, and more can (and will) be said for the “Christ above culture” view.

Christ and Culture in Paradox

“Christ and culture in paradox”: This view sounded the least familiar as I began to read, though I eventually got my mind around it. On this view, culture is viewed relatively negatively, but ultimately as necessary and appointed by God. For example, Luther, in reaction to Catholicism, defended secular institutions like marriage and the state without wanting their Christian transformation. But the state is taken to have the role merely of preventing evil in society. There is no program of transformation for the Christian statesman, or lawyer, or barber, but these secular vocations are allowed.

Niebuhr also calls the “paradox” view “dualism,” and in it, I see the contemporary Reformed theological view defended by David VanDrunen as the “two kingdoms” view. This view allows a place for the state and other secular institutions but puts no hope in them beyond their minimal role of maintaining order. D. G. Hart, another proponent, is representative in arguing for a kind of secularism, in his book A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State. Both Thomists and transformationalists are more ambitious for the secular sphere, though for different reasons.

Christ the Transformer of Culture

“Christ the transformer of culture” is the view that, while secular culture is sinful, Christianity can build a distinctively Christian culture, transforming each of the dimensions of society for the good. Niebuhr probably expresses the most sympathy for this view, positioning it as the moderate and final view, though stopping short of endorsement. He offers Augustine as representative, as well as Calvin. These figures had quite negative judgments of human culture without Christ but did not view this as preventing the possibility of positive and transformative cultural work by Christians.

An Eclectic Approach

Niebuhr finishes the book by arguing that Christians will need to take an eclectic approach, depending on where they find themselves. Sometimes it is more necessary to be against culture, sometimes in, and so on. He also points out that an approach to Christ and culture is not merely theoretical, but displayed in action. We cannot adopt a completely consistent approach from the get-go, but rather, we respond in particular situations to the claims of Christ and the culture. While this eclecticism prevents us from taking a pure “Christ against culture” or “Christ in culture” view, our moderation of these two moments of Christian relation to culture, the positive and the negative, may look like any of the three moderating views at a given time.

So far, my summary of Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. In my next post, I’ll reflect and offer my conclusions on the book.