Culture in a Post-Secular Context

Theological Possibilities in Milbank, Barth, and Bediako

Alan Thomson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781606085042
  9781498267281
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630873028
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Is culture a theologically neutral concept? The contemporary experts on culture--anthropologists and sociologists--argue that it is. Theologians and missiologists would seem to agree, given the extent of their reliance on anthropological and sociological definitions of culture. Yet, this appears a strange reliance given that presumed neutrality in the sciences is a consistently challenged assumption. It is stranger still given that so much theological energy has been expended on understanding and defining the human person in specifically theological as opposed to anthropological terms when culture is in some sense the expression of this personhood in corporate and material forms. This book argues that culture is not and has never been a theologically neutral concept; rather, it always expresses some theological posture and is therefore a term that naturally invites theological investigation. Going about this task is difficult however, in the face of a longterm reliance on the social sciences that seems to have starved the contemporary theological community of resources for defining culture. Against this it is argued that rich subterranean veins for such a task do exist within the recent tradition, most notably in the writings of John Milbank, Karl Barth, and Kwame Bediako.

Chapter 1

Theology and the Neutrality of Culture

H. Richard Niebuhr, perhaps the most influential theological commentator on culture of the latter half of the twentieth century, considered the theological engagement of culture to be “the enduring problem.”4 One way to read David Bosch’s magnum opus Transforming Mission for example is as an account of how “in each historical epoch of the past two millennia the missionary idea has been profoundly influenced by the overall context in which Christians lived and worked.”5 This notion of missionary idea can be described as the attempt to ensure that Christians “with creative but responsible freedom, prolong the logic of the ministry of Jesus and the early church in an imaginative and creative way to our own time and context.”6 Each of the six epochs he examines work in very different ways to resolve the culture problem, birthing in each case theological paradigms that have currency for the duration of the epoch but which then fade in the face of new circumstances (albeit there are usually elements of continuity).

Niebuhr notes this quality of perpetual irresolution, considering it a reflection of the “irreconcilable tension” at the heart of the relationship between Christ and the world, one perennially confronting humanity as it participates in a strategy it understands only dimly; lieutenants following the orders of a captain in whose mind alone the strategy has final form. Some sense of the difficulties he is attempting to encompass is given by Rudolf Bultmann when he points out the relationship consists of the “paradox of the Christian as an eschatological and historical being . . .” as well as “The paradox of Christ as the historical Jesus and the ever-present Lord.”7 This nexus of paradoxes is rendered more complex because the role of the church must also be factored in, itself existing paradoxically “as the eschatological entity . . . between the ‘no longer’ and ‘not yet’.”8 In Bultmann’s writings the overarching relationship is therefore examined through several synonymous pairings: faith and history, history and eschatology, theology and cosmology.9

While many interesting comparisons could be made between Bultmann and Niebuhr it is the terminological question that is the most striking for the purposes of this discussion. Whereas Bultmann conducts his analysis through overtly theological terms, Niebuhr grants prominence to the relatively new word culture, a word lacking the theological pedigree Bultmann’s choices enjoy. Robert Webber, for another example, examines the same relationship Niebuhr is considering but uses “world” (kosmos) instead of culture, with all of its rich biblical pedigree. Webber undertakes an exegetical study that discovers two primary biblical meanings for “world.”10 The first is a positive perspective in which creation (and recreation in Christ) is affirmed while the second is a negative one that captures the deleterious effects of the fall throughout creation (spiritual beings included). The term is likewise present throughout Bosch’s work where it functions in much the same way.11 In his analysis the positive element is historically less prevalent, only recently recovered as an emphasis. This implies the historical dominance of the pejorative model.12

The question this brief analysis raises is why the word culture is the most appropriate term through which to engage this topic given that it lacks the theological heritage or overt biblical grounding of other terms, such as “world.”13 This is especially relevant given that words embody worlds of meaning, as Raymond Williams argues (for which, refer the next chapter); hence it is worth pausing to carefully consider the implications stemming from this seemingly innocuous semantic change. There are of course benefits that accrue, such as the ability to actively engage with external (non-Christian) interlocutors for whom (as will be seen) the term culture is part of normal discourse; as well as for the purposes of internal discussions given that Christians also participate in, because they inhabit, this “normal” discourse. This present chapter is not concerned, however, with elaborating this positive assessment since the prevalence of the term culture in theological discussion already speaks to these constructive possibilities.

In what follows the basic premise is that insufficient attention has been paid to one particular negative implication and to assessing whether this represents an appropriate or unacceptable cost for using the term, or at least for using it as it is currently deployed. It is further argued that it is only through a satisfactory resolution of this issue that the term culture can reasonably be appropriated for theological purposes. The key matter to be placed under the microscope is the reputed neutrality of the concept of culture, a reputation that has led to a widespread, hence general pattern of engagement with the term culture by theologians and missiologists. It is then argued that this general pattern is enacted through three primary modes: explicit, active, and passive deferral.

The “general pattern” refers to a process of deferral whereupon theologians treat the term culture as a neutral construct. In the face of the presumption of neutrality theologians and missiologists defer to the expertise of social scientists as the specialists knowledgeable about culture. As already noted, this inevitably leads to culture becoming a largely unexamined datum inputted into theological projects on the presumption such insertion does not significantly affect their underlying foundations.

This general pattern of deferral is achieved through the three primary modes of engagement noted earlier. The first, active mode, refers to those who select an anthropological or sociological definition of culture after a debate over the respective merits of competing definitions. While rigorous and active, the candidate definitions are nevertheless all selected from the pool of options offered by the social sciences. In the second, direct deferral mode, theologians adopt a definition or definitions drawn directly from the social sciences. In most cases the definition is selected from amongst those offered by socio-cultural anthropologists.14

The final mode is the passive one. Here the term culture is used without further explanation or clarification, amounting thereby to a tacit deferral to social scientific constructs in light of the dominant position these disciplines have in the contemporary intellectual milieu. To commentate on culture today usually means speaking in an anthropological idiom.

The point of distinction between these three approaches amounts to little more than the degree to which the theologian is involved in selecting the specific concept of culture to be relied on. While the differences between these approaches are important, and will be addressed below, for now it is important to note their underlying similarity. When taken together these approaches constitute the general paradigm for theological engagement with the concept of culture: deferral to social scientific explanations. It will be argued against this pattern that the paradigm is actually characterized by two inter-related thrusts: the already noted deferral to social scientific descriptions, and a concomitant, fundamental disengagement from the need for a theological definition of culture. This chapter sets out to demonstrate the presence and prevalence of the first thrust, while the question of disengagement forms the subject pursued in the next chapter.

The primary role of this chapter therefore is to establish and document the presence of this general pattern in each of its three modes by way of representative examples. Hopefully the diversity of contexts, theologians, and theological projects surveyed is enough to strongly suggest albeit not exhaustively chroni...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Theology and the Neutrality of Culture
• Chapter 2: Challenging the Neutrality of Culture
• Chapter 3: John Milbank and a Theological Account of Culture
• Chapter 4: Milbank, Violence, and Idealization
• Chapter 5: Karl Barth and a Theological Alternative
• Chapter 6: Kwame Bediako and an African Alternative
• Conclusion
• Bibliography