Christ and Culture

Annotated by Jochem Douma

Klaas Schilder

• Publisher: Lucerna: CRTS Publications
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780995065918
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Biblias

The relation between Jesus Christ and culture should be recognizedas a topic of crucial importance in every historical context. It concerns the foundational questions of Christian thought and action. In this book Dr. Klaas Schilder deals with this challenging subject in a bold and incisive manner, thus making his readers aware of the all-embracing significance of Christ for cultural endeavors.The biblical position taken by the author leads him to explore its implications with remarkable clarity and directness. In this way he makes a valuable contribution to the development of a Christian view of culture.

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Consequence Five: The Church as Cultural Force

A fifth consequence: There must be great respect for the church. As Head of the church, Christ is King of the world. In him God will one day “recapitulate” everything (Eph 1:10): God will in Christ bring all things to their sum, their consummation. The church itself is no cultural state, but it is a “hearth” that by the preaching of the Word subjects all of life to promises and norms. If one takes away t he church, the essentially human element will disappear.

Because the balloting norms^[1] of the above-mentioned cooperative communities are their characteristic norms, derived from the law, the proclamation and administration of which have been entrusted to the communion of saints, the fifth consequence of my standpoint will have to be the deep reverence that, also from a cultural perspective, may be demanded for the church.

As the Head of the church, Christ is the King of the whole world also, the one who in its history brings nature to its completion (for Rickert^[2] rightly reminds us of the fact that nature, too, has a historical progression); he is God’s Ambassador, who wants to lay down at God’s feet all the results of the cosmic process of development and recruitment; and consequently he is also the Governor of culture, and the Judge and Redeemer of its agencies and institutions. In him (Eph 1:10) God will one day “recapitulate” all things.

Mention was just made of Ephesians 1:10 and of a “universal recapitulation.” In order to be able to answer the question what particular place Christ has been given with respect to the also culturally to be determined “sum total of history,” Paul’s statement in this text briefly deserves our attention. He speaks of “a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in [Christ].” I have derived the term “universal recapitulation” from, for instance, a translation of Paul’s statement as quoted^[3] by Irenaeus, one of the Church Fathers (this questionable term is still used to designate children of the church^[4] of a not always harmless kind). Irenaeus (AD ca. 140–ca. 202) once discussed Christ’s ascension into heaven and his sitting at God’s right hand with reference to Ephesians 1:10. Where Paul says that Christ will return in order to “unite” all things, Irenaeus’s Greek text uses the word anakephalaiōsasthai, which in the excellent Latin of Rouet de Journel is rendered as the Latin verb “to recapitulate.”

Ascension Day, seen in this light, is the beginning of this universal recapitulation.

Does this word help us at all? That depends on the question whether in the rendering of Paul’s own word in Ephesians 1:10 it accurately achieves its aim. The Vulgate, the official Bible translation of the church of Rome, makes use of a different term in Ephesians 1:10 (“instauration”)—all the more a reason why the term “recapitulation” calls for our attention.

Many^[5] have made use of it. I will give just a few examples, which can at the same time help us grasp what Paul intended to say.

Referring to Ephesians 1:10, John Owen expresses the opinion that the angels are included in this “recovery” and recapitulation of all things that God has given in Christ (Works, I, 147). Subsequently he devotes an extensive discourse to this subject, entitled “The Glory of Christ in the Recapitulation of All Things in Him” (367–74). Referring to, e.g., Colossians 1:20, 1 Corinthians 11:3, and Ephesians 1:22–23, he extols the power of the redemption whereby that which in God’s world had been scattered and broken asunder is gathered (re-collected) under one Head as one family of God, as one body.

Are these interpretations correct?

The Greek word used in Ephesians 1:10 does indeed permit other translations; e.g. “gather together again,” “gather together in one,” “to unite.” Or “include under one head.”

Much depends on the context from which one thinks its connotations are derived and to which it points in its imagery.

According to one view, this word had its origin in a military setting. When there are soldiers who have lost contact with their troops and are wandering about here and there, one has to try, if possible, to bring them back to their detachment. This, then, is taken to show the meaning of the word concerned.^[6]

Others, however, offer a different interpretation. They have in mind not so much military operations as arithmetical ones. Adding certain numbers, one gets the “sum,” the “result.” In Latin “sum” is summa. Then the idea of “con-summation” comes to mind. The final sum is arrived at and underlined, and everyone knows the result.^[7] Christ could then be regarded as the one who makes up the final sum, the sum total, and says: look, now you have everything together. Others have had bookkeepers in mind: they add up amounts of money^[8] and give the result.^[9] In Greek, such a “sum-mary,” such a summing up or final result, can indeed be called kephalaion (something like: head, capital sum or principal), and the verb used by Paul is derived from it. According to this train of thought, Christ is himself the Head, the sum total. But at the same time(!) “all things” are gathered together, summed up, in this sum (the sum is then included within the sum; all things are the sum, including Christ, according to this peculiar train of thought which operates in a rather strange way with the words “in Christ”).

The number of proposed interpretations has still not been exhausted. Others refer to a certain word that was used among the Jews in Paul’s days. It means so much as “agreement” or “harmony” and is derived from another root that can be translated as “head” or “result of a sum.” This technical term would then be in harmony with the Greek word for head (kephalaion), and so its meaning would be “being brought together (added up),” as well as “being in harmony with each other”; ergo, “being gathered together in peace” or “being assembled in harmony.”^[10]

I should like to mention a last opinion yet, one that points back to the schools of the rhetoricians. There an act as meant by Paul was a brief summary, in a few main points, of what was earlier argued in a more elaborate way.^[11] Usually such a summary was not a neutral, dispassionate summing up, but it was accompanied by a sort of application: an admonition, castigation, word of consolation, or conclusion stating a demand as, e.g., in a court case.^[12]

One also comes across various different ways in which these etymologies and interpretations intersect. An example would be the boldness of someone who teaches that a human being is a microcosm,^[13] a world in miniature, comprising the elements of the created world as in a summary; that Christ, as the second Adam, is God and man in one Person; and that humanity (that compendium of “all things,” that microcosm) will in the end be re-united with the eternal Word, the Logos.^[14] Or, just as in civil affairs a “member” that has been separated from its “head” (e.g., a woman separated from her husband, the head) is brought back to that “head” and so is led home again and returns to where it belongs (e.g., a woman brought back to her family), so all of creation, now separated from God, will return to Christ its Head, and be “home” again.^[15] The creation is in that case the reconciled party.^[16]

It is evident that the opinions vary greatly.

Those who wish to come to their own conclusion will have to consider that the Greek word used here does not go back to kephalē (head) but to kephalaion. The latter clearly has the meaning of “sum” or “summary,” as, e.g., in Romans 13:9 and Hebrews 8:1. In Romans 13:9 Paul says that the commandments of the second table can be “summed up” in the sentence, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is in all these commandments the one ever-recurring main point. It is the summary of the law. In Hebrew 8:1 the author states: “Now the point [literally: the sum] in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest” as has been introduced to us in the New Testament. This is the sum of the whole argument. But whoever announces a sum or summary brings something to a conclusion at the same time. This is how God in the fullness of time will give the sum of history, of the history of “all things.” He will give the sum, not its summary in a sort of “microcosm,” a “compendium” of all cosmic elements, an “extract” of all that lives and moves. No, he will give the sum of and in the history of all things. He will give them for himself (Greek middle voice). He will himself bring all things to and in their sum,^[17] as one could translate freely.

Therefore this is surely a universal recapitulation, the final and completing act of drawing up the sum of history.^[18] It is universal in that “all things” will be involved in it and brought to their “con-sum-mation.” However, these “all things” were not stationary entities; they remained permanently in motion. In them and for them the one history has run its course. The sense of this we understand not from those things themselves, nor from their actions. For, as also noted elsewhere,^[19] the enigmatic aspect does not lie in the spoken or written Word of God, but in the facts, in history itself. We understand the things and their actions only in and from God’s Word.

As a matter of fact, no one among us is able, in the manner of a rhetor [orator], to put into words the sum of history, not even if we do our rhetorical best. For we see only piecework, and we ourselves are only piecework. Even the Messiah confesses his inability in this respect: “But concerning that day and hour no one knows . . . but the Father only” [Matt 24:36].

But God is the great Rhetor-Speaker, and ...