“Pro-Cultural” or “Counter-Cultural”? A Brief Theology of Human Culture
Posted by deangonzales on January 11, 2010
What should Christians think about human culture?1 Should they be for it or against it? Before we can answer these questions, we have to define the term. The word “culture” doesn’t appear in most English Bibles. The English noun is related to the verb “to cultivate,” which in turn derives from the Latin verb colere. It was initially used in contexts primarily referring to farming or “agriculture.” Over time the term “culture” acquired a broader usage, referring not just to farming but also to all sorts of human endeavor. The first entry in the American Heritage Dictionary (2009) defines “culture” as “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.” So culture is everything human societies think, feel, and make. The question is whether this concept is found in the Bible. I believe it is. In fact, the Bible not only describes human culture but it also provides us with ethical guidelines by which to assess it.
Human Culture Is Good
In Genesis 1:26-28, we find the origin of human culture.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Not surprisingly, this passage has been called “the cultural mandate.” God not only creates human beings, but he assigns them a task. They’re not to live in isolation from one another. Men are to marry women and produce children. Those families are to become clans. Those clans are to become cities and nations and societies. And those societies are to work together in order to “subdue the earth.” That is, humans are assigned the task of taking earth’s natural resources and developing or cultivating those resources for the good of man and the glory of God.
Note carefully that it’s not the will of God that man leave the world in its natural state, as some radical environmentalists would call us to do. We’re not to go out into the wheat fields and graze like cattle or walk up to a pine tree and chew on its bark, like Euell Gibbons might have encouraged us to do. On the contrary, we’re to grow the wheat, harvest the wheat with the sickle, separate the grain from the chaff, grind the grain into flour, put it into the oven, and consume it in the form of bread. Likewise, man is to domesticate animals so that the animals serve the needs of society. Man is to mine the earth order to extract various metals to make tools and machinery and coinage. Man is to fell trees and cut stones in order to make homes and buildings and cities. Moreover, the cultural mandate includes learning about the world. God commanded man to learn about the animals and name them according to their characteristics. And we can assume that God also wanted man to learn and classify details about the soil, and the water, and the air, and the trees, and the mountains, and the oceans, and the stars. And God intended this knowledge to be passed on from one generation to another, from one society to another. Furthermore, God endowed man with aesthetic capacity so that he could not only enjoy God’s creation but that man might imitate his Creator’s creativity. So men would not merely extract metal and stone from the earth but he would distinguish some as precious metal and stone. Men would not only build places to live but he would design and adorn the buildings so that they looked attractive. And some would refine the art of communication and others painting and others music. We should also note that God expected man to subdue and rule over the earth in a responsible way. On the one hand, man was not to leave creation in its natural state. On the other hand, man was not to exploit or misuse earth’s resources. So while Christians should reject the agenda of radical environmentalists, they should also reject an anti-environmentalist posture. We are to be concerned about the responsible use and maintenance of earth’s resources.
Now if we stopped reading our Bibles at this point, what would we have to conclude about culture? We’d have to assess human culture in precisely the same way God assessed it: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). Of course, God’s primarily assessing his work not man’s work in this verse. Nevertheless, God’s assessment in this verse embraces or includes the mandate he gave to humanity. In other words, God views human culture as a good thing.
Human Culture Is Bad
But we all know that history doesn’t end at Genesis 1:31. When we come to Genesis 3, we read of man’s rebellion against God and his fall into sin. When we come to Genesis 4, we see that human sin spreads from the first generation to the second, and Cain murders his brother Abel. Perhaps Cain took the very sickle he had made to harvest the field and employed it as the first weapon of violence. By the time we reach Genesis 6, we find that the whole earth is corrupt and filled with violence. We read that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Men are no longer satisfied with God’s norm of monogamous marriage but they give in to sexual lust and begin building harems. They can’t work together in harmony, so they hate and fight and war against each other. Things get so bad that God has to send a worldwide flood to destroy the whole human race with the exception of one family. But the flood didn’t wash away sin. Not long after Noah’s new beginning, we read of humans employing the tool of human language to unite together to build a city with a tower that would reach to heaven. Was their goal to bring glory to God? No, they say in Genesis 11:4, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.” This is human rebellion on an international scale! And things haven’t improved much since Babel.
Now, in light of mankind’s fall into sin and his subsequent history, how should we evaluate human culture? At this point, the “counter-cultural” Christians may smile and say, “See, we told you. Culture is bad. We must not accommodate to culture; we must avoid it. We must keep it out of the church. Because of human sin, it’s ‘Christ against culture,’ plain and simple.” If that describes your position, you’re partly in the right. There definitely are aspects and dimensions of human culture that we must reject because they’ve been corrupted by human sin. And when we reject those aspects and dimensions of sinful culture, then we’re being “counter cultural” in the right and biblical sense.
Human Culture Is Both Good and Bad
However, I don’t believe the “counter-cultural only” position is a good position. In the first place, it’s not possible. There’s no way for us to completely escape human culture. Certain sects like the Amish have attempted to do this. But in reality, they’re only exchanging one form of human culture for another. They simply reject the American culture of 2009 and try to revert back to the American culture of the late 1800s. More importantly, if we’re only “counter-cultural,” then we’re only partly biblical. And if we’re only partly biblical, then we’re not fully or truly biblical. In point of fact, to be “partly” biblical is often to be “unbiblical.” Certainly, none of us wants to be unbiblical. Therefore, we need to consider more biblical data in order to have a fuller and more accurate view of human culture.
What biblical reality do we need to add to creation and the fall in order to cultivate a more balanced view of human culture? What part of the biblical picture do the “counter-cultural” only Christians often miss? The simple answer is “grace.” According to the Scriptures, God did not completely abandon mankind in his sinful state, but he showed kindness or favor or grace. To be more specific, he bestowed two kinds of grace: common grace to all fallen sinners and special or saving grace to those God chose to save. I think we’re all pretty familiar with God’s special grace, which enabled us to turn from our sin and trust in Jesus Christ—the grace by which God has endowed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ and has secured for us an eternal inheritance. But sometimes we lose sight of God’s common grace. What’s “common grace” from a biblical point of view?
Like the word “culture,” the phrase “common grace” doesn’t appear in the Bible. But the concept of common grace does. Common grace refers to God’s blessings on the human race that fall short of salvation from sin. Theologians usually classify them as follows:
1. God restrains human sin.
When God confused human speech at Babel (Gen. 11:6-9), he was restraining the extent to which that societal sin would develop. Similarly, God doesn’t allow every human being to develop into an Adoph Hitler or a Charles Manson or a Jeffrey Dahmer. Every human being is totally depraved and has the moral capacity to develop into cruel dictators or serial killers. But God doesn’t allow every human being to become as evil as he could potentially become. Jesus recognizes this when he says to Pilate, “He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11). Pilate was guilty. But Pilate’s sin was not as grievous or blameworthy as the Jewish leaders who delivered Jesus to Pilate.
In light of this reality, we don’t have to view every unconverted workmate, classmate, next-door neighbor, grocery clerk, or baseball coach in the worst possible light. We don’t have to live in the wilderness of Montana for fear that our next-door neighbors might kill us and eat us. We don’t have to ban our child from Little League baseball team because we’re afraid he’ll be kidnapped and sent to a concentration camp. In fact, here in America there’s been such a high degree of common grace that very few Christians have had to endure serious hostility or persecution from unbelievers. And because of God’s common grace, we have many opportunities to develop relationships with unbelievers in the hopes of winning them to Jesus Christ.
2. God bestows some temporal blessings on human beings indiscriminately.
Jesus alludes to this when he instructs his disciples to love their enemies on the basis of God’s indiscriminate love to mankind. “For,” says Jesus, “[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). God doesn’t just do nice things for Christians and bad things for unbelievers. In this life, God is often kind to both. And Jesus wants us to imitate our heavenly father. He doesn’t want us to form little Christian colonies that are separate from unbelievers. On the contrary, he says to us,
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden…. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5:14, 16).
And the people before whom we’re to shine are not just fellow Christians. Jesus wants us to be engaged with unbelievers. “Father,” he prays in John 17, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (17:15). Jesus wants us to remain separate from sin. He doesn’t want us to succumb to the wiles of the devil. But Jesus does want us to engage sinners. He wants us be proactive in our gospel outreach. Remember the words of Paul, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them” (1 Cor. 9:19).
3. God endows unbelievers with knowledge and skills that benefit society as a whole.
Cain was a murderer. And his descendants turned out to be an ungodly lot. Nevertheless, as we read the Genesis account we discover that God was pleased to endow some of them with a great deal of knowledge and skill. In Genesis 4:20-22 we read that Cain’s descendant Jabal, “He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. [And] Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.” Commenting on this text, John Calvin remarks,
[Moses] expressly celebrates the remaining benediction on that race, which otherwise would have been deemed void and barren of all good. Let us then know, that the sons of Cain, though deprived of the Spirit of regeneration, were yet endued with gifts of no despicable kind; just as the experience of all ages teaches us how widely the rays of divine light have shone on unbelieving nations, for the benefit of the present life.2
So Christians are not the only ones who can selectively breed livestock, or make good music, or develop metallurgy. God has endowed many unbelievers with knowledge and skill to provide services, create art, and invent technologies that benefit everybody. In 1 Kings 5:6, we read that Solomon employed the Sidonians to provide him with the timber because no one in the ancient world possessed the same degree of skill as they possessed in cutting timber. And when Solomon began work on the Temple, he sent word to King Hiram of Tyre and asked Hiram to send him a skilled craftsman to oversee the project. So Hiram responded,
Now I have sent a skilled man, who has understanding, Huram-abi …. He is trained to work in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and in purple, blue, and crimson fabrics and fine linen, and to do all sorts of engraving and execute any design that may be assigned him, with your craftsmen, the craftsmen of my lord, David your father.
So he didn’t place a fellow Israelite over the project. He chose a man from Tyre. The men of Sidon were better lumberjacks and the men of Tyre were better builders. And Solomon doesn’t limit the use of their products to secular buildings. He employs their technology in the Temple of God even though the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon were some of the most notorious sinners in the Bible!
All of us are greatly indebted to the inventions of Thomas Edison. He developed the carbon microphone that would later be used in telephones. He invented the light bulb and then patented a system for electricity distribution in 1880. Later he invented the phonograph and an early motion picture camera called “the Kinetograph.” Think of what life would be like without electricity, light bulbs, audio and video recording. If you’re Amish, you’d probably say, “Better.” But if you’re like the rest of us, you’re grateful for all the technology that came out of Thomas Edison’s inventions. But it’s highly unlikely Edison was a believer. When asked whether he believed in God, Edison responded, “What you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter.” And he goes on to assert, “It is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made.”3
What’s my point? Not everything produced by an unbelieving world is bad in-and-of-itself. True, unbelievers cannot fill and subdue the earth for the glory of God. So in terms of their motives, unbelievers are unable to do good. Moreover, unbelievers often transgress God’s laws. They take another man’s life or another man’s wife. They steal and lie in order to make money. They use God’s world in ways that God’s word prohibits. Nevertheless, thanks to God’s common grace unbelievers are able to write good books. They’re able to create beautiful music. They’re able to invent surgical techniques and medication that save lives. They’re even able to be kind, fair, generous, loving, and honest.
Concluding Applications
I’d like to conclude this brief study with three practical exhortations in light of our brief theology of human culture.
(1) Let’s thank God for his common grace.
Our freedom to worship God today is largely due to God’s common grace. And think of the ways in which modern technology is making it possible to get the gospel to every tribe and every tongue.
(2) Let’s learn to make distinctions between what is good and what is not good in human culture.
It’s not enough to adopt en toto the “Christ against culture” position. Nor would it be biblical adopt absolutely a “Christ pro-culture” position. In reality, Jesus is opposed to some aspects of human cultures—particularly in relation to evil motives and transgressions of God’s law. On the other hand, there are aspects and dimensions of human culture that can be viewed and enjoyed as gifts from God. Moreover, there are some aspects of human culture to which we may accommodate in order to communicate the gospel more effectively (1 Cor. 9:19-22; 10:31-11:1).
(3) Let’s work towards redeeming culture for the glory of God.
Redeeming or transforming human culture doesn’t necessarily mean starting from scratch. It doesn’t mean that as Christians we have to “reinvent the wheel” just because an unbeliever originally came up with the patent. As we’ve seen, God has endowed many unbelievers with knowledge and skill. As a result, at a certain level they can do a fine job at subduing the earth. If you and I were to watch a video of two expert tire repairmen at work—the one a Christian and the other an unbeliever—what difference would we see? Probably none! The main difference between the two would be a matter of the heart. One would be putting that new tire on the car for the glory of God; the other merely for his paycheck.
That’s the part of human culture we need to change. We also need to change aspects of human culture that are clearly violating Scripture: abortion, euthanasia, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, theft, fraud, perjury, crass materialism, etc. And the best way to transform culture is to preach the gospel so that it can transform the people who make culture. “If any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation; old things have passed away and all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary
- I’m indebted largely to John Frame’s theology of culture, which can be found in his Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2009), 851-908. See also Donald Carson’s helpful study Christ & Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). [↩]
- Commentaries on the First Book of Moses (reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), 1:218. [↩]
- From Edison: A Life of Invention cited on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison. [↩]
January 11th, 2010 at 11:57 am
[...] be for it or against it? These questions are addressed in the most recent post on RBS Tabletalk. "Pro-Cultural" or "Counter-Cultural"? A Brief Theology of Human Culture Bob Gonzales Jr., Dean Reformed Baptist Seminary Easley, South Carolina "Persons need not [...]
January 12th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Thank you brother for your wonderful insight….Question..do you think that a total Counter-cultural position is dictated by a Platonic view of creation being manifested through a dispensational worldview??? since everything is going to burn & pass away why change it? Just a thought.
January 12th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Chris,
Perceptive question. In certain branches of Dispensationalism and Fundamentalism, there are tendencies that betray the kind of dualism characteristic of Platonism. Of course, I’m not certain that those Dispensationalists or Fundamentalists given to these tendencies consciously realize that their worldview is, in some respects, more Platonic than biblical.
Your servant,
Bob Gonzales