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Name   ¾È¸íÁØ
Subject   ½ºÅ³´õ ±×¸®½ºµµ¿Í ¹®È­ ¿øº»º¸±â Christ and Culture
https://spindleworks.com/library/schilder/ChristnCulture.html
 Christ and Culture
1.
¡°Christ and culture¡±—this theme has occupied the minds of many as long as Christianity has had a place in this world. Rather, it did so already many centuries before. For the name ¡°Christ¡± is nothing but a translation of the word ¡°Messiah.¡± Even during the days of the Old Testament, when the Messiah was still expected, men thought, struggled, and prophesied about as well as rebelled against the ¡°Messiah¡± (Christ) and ¡°culture.¡± If what we are about to write is true, then this age-old theme will continue to strain the attention in joy as well as in sorrow until the end of time: The complete solution also of this problem will not be reached in the course of time but is reserved for the day that will put an end to time. It will not be obtained in the way of evolution but along that of the catastrophic parousia of Christ Himself. Therefore the great joy and the deep sorrow about the final outcome of the struggle concerning Christ and culture can be expected at the end of the ages. Here one utters two heavily charged words: heaven—and hell.

2.
The above already makes it clear that the theme which we are broaching here must not be inserted in the list of subjects that the hasty heathen takes into his sphere of interest before and the careful Christian only after the academic discussion thereof. The problem of the relation between Christ and culture immediately concerns the fundamental questions of Christian thought and action. Therefore a Christian must continually contend with it. The one who does not touch it neglects his direct calling. The definition of a Christian¡¯s life-task as it is given in Lord¡¯s Day 12 of the Heidelberg Catechism and in which a Christian is considered as a prophet, a priest, and a king, is so ample and comprehensive that the matter of the relation between Christ (and the Christian) on the one hand, and cultural life on the other, is under discussion as soon as the question is raised how the pertinent words in this section of the Catechism must be interpreted. For this reason in particular, a confessing Christian is not allowed, before entering into the cultural struggle, to wait quietly (ad calendas graecas) for academic resolutions regarding the cultural problem. Neither has he permission to wait for what is more and more becoming their substitute, the resolutions or conclusions of a conference.

For life builds up the academy, but the academy does not build up life. At best it can think about life. The same way the problem of the right appreciation of culture or that of the evaluation of a concrete situation which a Christian comes across or has to help create in a given cultural phase, must never be reduced to a so-called merely academic matter. Life precedes the academy: primum vivere, deinde philosophari. Everyone has to deal with a temporally and locally determined phase of cultural life. At his birth he is thrown into the midst of it, and no one is able to withdraw from it, not even for one single day, supposing that he would be allowed to do so. Man cannot isolate himself, though he may flee into a cloister that does not distill liqueur or anything like that, nor helps to fill the pages of a magazine.

3.
Why is this problem such a difficult one? Many things could be said in explanation. We shall mention a few points only.

a.   One of the main reasons is that the opinions so widely diverge. Not only in what we sometimes too abstractly call the world, but also in what—again we must say, often in too abstract a way—is called the church, we see the struggle between opinions that are very much each other¡¯s opposites. There is nothing unusual in this.

Those who really adhere to the authentic philosophy of pure materialism will have a view of culture that completely differs from that of people who think along the lines of metaphysical universalism. Those who think that history is linear set up a construction that is completely different from that of the man who sees history as a cycle. The theist and the pantheist are one another¡¯s opponents, also in their conception and appreciation of culture. A Lutheran¡¯s evaluation—if only he is loyal to Martin Luther—will differ from that of a Calvinist; that of a pessimist is not the same as that of an optimist.

A Platonist differs from an Aristotelian, a Spinozist from a Cartesian, a Kantian from a pupil of Fichte. Even among the Romantics, Goethe does not agree with Novalis, nor Schleiermacher with the Schlegel brothers. We did not even mention Bismarck and Rosenberg , Otto and Walt Whitman, or the Buddhist of one sect or another. The differences which divide the philosophers will influence the theologians and the ordinary church members. It is only a dream if someone believes that ¡°the cultural idea¡± is a sort of master key opening the door to the conference hall that offers a peaceful reception to cultural congresses. It will be war there—that is to say, if the participants in the conference have their wits about them, which unfortunately is unusual.

b.   A second factor, then, is that time and again the problem itself is given new solutions which—even within the same period—contradict each other. Or that it takes the shape of theoretical foundations. All this happens in as well as outside the church. Both concepts, ¡°Christianity¡± as well as ¡°culture,¡± are thus frequently created, fixed, and used in different senses. Consequently the problem of ¡°Christianity and culture¡± is in the (as we shall see later on: incorrect) opinion of many people—wittingly or unwittingly—narrowed down to a problem of ¡°religion and culture,¡± or of ¡°nature¡± and ¡°grace,¡± which are then repeatedly considered as two separate territories.

Indeed, the word ¡°territory¡± is easy to handle. However, it is mostly used in a too strongly geographical, not to say, mathematical sense. And mathematical concepts (such as e.g. a point, a line, a plane, a ¡°territory¡±) do not find their correlative equivalents in reality. Besides, one may perceive that even then many questions appear one after another.

 c.   To all this must be added that the devaluation of the name Christ caused also the devaluation of the concept of culture. The church started to trifle with the name Christ, and philosophy did the same. As a result they also trifle with the problem of Christ and culture. As soon as two concepts are devaluated, the right track that must be followed by those who search for the relation between them is blotted out.

 d.   One has only to consider how those who call themselves church, broken adrift from the contents of the Confession of Faith, speak about the Christ. What is Christianity? Who is Jesus Christ? What is the historical position of this Jesus in the world and His significance for historical life? Does He have any influence at all on our historical life with its continuous relations? Is He indeed the incarnate Word of God, or is He (rather: he) no more than one of the many Gestalten of God¡¯s Word? Is the Gestalt of the Word of God an adequate revelation of its Gehalt, or is the Gestalt the paradoxical opposite of the Gehalt?

 Is the historical Jesus of Nazareth the fulfillment of the Old Testament expectation of the Christ (the Messiah), or is the messianic idea not adequately revealed in Him, or perhaps only fragmentarily? What does the name Christ mean? What does God intend with the name Messiah? What does His anointing mean? Does it really include a divine commission (¡°His being ordained¡±), and also a real gift (¡°His being made capable¡±), or are these two only designated in a symbolic way? Is there a fundamental difference between those ¡°anointed ones¡± whom we consider as ordinary men and Jesus of Nazareth as One anointed in a completely distinct way? Or is this suggested fundamental difference no more than a fiction only?

To what extent can He, as a historical person, act in human life in a critical, that is, judging and absolutely decisive manner? Does He Himself, as Jesus, as a historical person, together with our whole human life, lie under a crisis, that is, under a radical judgment of God that condemns the world as this, as our world, or did He let us hear on earth, in a pure and effective, lively, judging and sifting way, the voice of God as the perfect Judge and perhaps also as our Father, the voice of the supreme and, in fact, unique criticism, repelling or attracting?

It is actually something to weep about, but it is a matter of fact that in the circles of what is called Christianity there is much serious dispute about all these questions nowadays. And so we stand there as a concrete or legendary ¡°community¡± of ¡°Christians¡±; we all lay claim to this name, and get angry as soon as the one denies it to the other. But in the meantime we are very uncertain about the fundamental questions concerning Jesus and concerning Christ, at least among ourselves.

Neither are we sure about each other. Opposing each other we stand with a series of written and especially unwritten Christologies in the midst of a multifarious world which claims that it is continuing to build up its ¡°culture.¡± And although we repeat a thousand times in tense and agitated Christian protest that the culture of this world is not mature and not pure, that it is deceptive, and that the reward of (also cultural) sin is death, the question is urgent and hurts so deeply, especially as question, whether we ourselves are not (at least as a group) completely unauthorized and unable to utter even one single word on this problem, because of our profound differences with regard to the term ¡°Christ¡± as we find it in the problem of ¡°Christ and cultural life.¡±

We are more and more active as a group in international, interdenominational, and interconfessional, ecumenical relations, and in sending out all sorts of messages concerning world life and culture. But it all lacks power, for as a group we no longer know Christ. As long as Jesus Christ, for us as a group, is not the Known One and the Familiar One, we utter nothing but immature statements about the relation between Christ and cultural life. For the first of these two terms is already hazy. And an international, inter-academic, ecumenical haze is the worst of all.


e.   Is the situation any better as far as the second term of our problem is concerned, namely, cultural life? What actually is culture? The answers differ. We have already referred to that in a few words. However, it is really oppressing that in spite of this we still present all sorts of nervous, hurriedly fabricated and even, as far as our own point of view is concerned, illegitimate constructions. The worst part is not that the culture-philosophers time and again supply widely divergent answers to the fundamental issues. The worst part is this, that while all sorts of culture-philosophers entrench themselves behind a certain—as a matter of course, subjectivistic—theory of value, Christians, even confessional ones, fail to ask themselves more and more if not the first and actually only true value is that of the covenant communion with God, that of the assurance of faith, the value of Christian gratitude, which in a practical syllogism assures faith from the fruits thereof that it is true faith.

The worst part is the servility with which Christian confessors, as soon as they touch the problem of culture, timidly look up to the unbelieving culture-philosophers next-door: Would they be so kind as to grant us a nod of approval? The progressive submission of Christian thinkers and theologians to (non-Christian) cultural and other philosophers, is more and more becoming an obstacle to giving a unanimous and unequivocal answer of faith.

The youth leaders of today and lecturers of adult education classes, as far as they have a Christian background, realize perfectly well that the drafting of a concept of culture meets multiple and searching questions. At their conferences they toil with the problem of history, that of the individual and society, of the essence of the nations and the distinct races of men, of time and eternity, of physics and metaphysics, religion, morals and natural law, of evolution and creation.

But about the fact that we as Christians have to take our starting point in the prejudices of faith, and that we have to accept upon authority, and consequently to act accordingly, that our positive and negative attitudes must merely and solely be a matter of faith, which (as we confess in our Catechism) is a sure knowledge and a firm confidence—about all this one can hear quite often, as long as certain points of systematic theology (ecclesiastical suspensions included) are at stake, but one hardly hears the same things as soon as the sphinx of cultural life comes under discussion.

There is much pride in the many words that are spoken on the theme of right action, but in the meantime the speakers do not discern the oppressive fact that this whole ideogram of ¡°culture¡± and ¡°cultural life¡± remains very hazy, and that one can work with it only a premature and hypothetical basis. It is an artificial term that many people operate with; however, they do so without being justified philosophically, theologically, and, above all, as far as the concrete service of the living God is concerned.

f.    When finally we act as if we really have established a connection between ¡°Christ¡± and ¡°culture,¡± then the main question is not always put to the fore: What is it actually all about? Are we talking about culture as such (the culture) or only about a certain kind of culture? Is there indeed a permanent culture, which may be known by the peculiar style to which it is faithful, or do we, if we keenly discern things, find only a chaos of cultural tendencies? If it is not culture as such but only a particular form of culture, which is it then? The national culture or just a national one? The or an international culture? The or a temporary one? The or a future one?

Is it a (or the) culture which we have created or have to create. Let alone are able to establish—that is to say, we as Christians? Or is it a sort of ideal culture that we are required to acknowledge or to hope for? Do we as Christians have to act in this world and its culture in the way of reform and revolt? Are we capable of doing this? Or have we perhaps been given only the limited task that we might somehow or other force our way through the rapid currents of this world¡¯s multifarious life, and thank God afterwards because the ship of our life just missed being wrecked in the tremendous energy of the breakers?

 Is there really a positive task for us as Christians? Does ¡°following after Jesus¡± then really include the tireless actualizing of a God given creative ability unto a peculiar (or distinct) Christian culture with world-conquering tendencies? Can the ¡°following of God¡± be recognized in certain concrete acts in conformance to the material contents of divine commandments, and also in an accordingly concrete and steady attitude?

Or is the following of God a formal concept only: God did indeed create the world, but He also permanently changes it, and once will do so in a catastrophic manner, wherefore only those can follow Him who replace any ¡°yes¡± spoken to the existing world by ¡°no¡± and thus consider any attitude as being of the devil, the revolutionary as much as the conservative attitude, and vice versa? Is a Christian¡¯s action performed in earnest or just as a game—by virtue of a fixed ordination that does not permit us anything but the game, and thus makes the game into the only possible ¡°earnest¡±?

4.

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DATE: 2021.11.15 - 21:41

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