Chapter 17 WHY ALL THE MODELS ARE RIGHT AND WRONG

Earlier, we acknowledged the fact that dividing people into broad categories, or models, always has pitfalls. Some people conform well to the type, while others do not. Within a given model, we can find areas of pointed disagreement. And as we’ve seen in the case of the Christ and culture issue, people change; thoughtful proponents of certain models are always open to having their views tempered and enriched by insights from the others. We see also a growing body of work that appreciates and criticizes the various Christ and culture models and calls for a nuanced and balanced approach. I have cited several of these already-by Miroslav Volf, D. A. Carson, James Hunter, and Dan Strange.¹ Perhaps the best reason for hope in a balanced Christ and culture model is the example of individuals whose thought and practice defy being contained within a single model.

Lesslie Newbigin, for instance, is often cited by Transformationists, Counterculturalists, and Relevants, even though they may not share all his doctrinal views. Counterculturalists respond to his stress on the church community itself as “the hermeneutic of the gospel,” while Transformationists appreciate his emphasis on training Christians to integrate their faith with their work and influence culture.3 For nearly everyone thinking about culture, Newbigin’s analysis of the post-Christian character of the West is seminal. Most startling of all, Newbigin argues for the possibility of a government that is overtly based on Christian values. He contends that the logic of the cross should lead such a government to be noncoercive toward minorities, committed to the common good of all, and therefore could still allow a pluralistic society to flourish. It is an explicitly Christian political vision that does not sound quite like Christian Reconstructionism, with its claim that democracy is a “heresy,” or like the principled pluralism of neo-Calvinism.4

Another hard-to-classify thinker is Jim Wallis, the author of God’s Politics. Wallis is a strong supporter of leaders of the new monasticism (part of what we are calling the Counterculturalist model). He wrote the foreword to Shane Claiborne’s manifesto, The Irresistible Revolution, and yet he also calls Christians to invest in electoral politics, causing James K. A. Smith to ask whether Wallis promotes a “Constantinianism of the left.” He writes that Wallis focuses on “people of faith’ getting out the vote, lobbying congress, and doing everything they can to marshal the political process to effect prophetic justice.” Wallis might be classified, then, as someone in the Relevance model, like mainline Protestants, or perhaps as a Counterculturalist. It is hard to say.

Yet another prominent example of a theologian who inspires reflection across the categories is N. T. Wright. Counterculturalists appreciate his reworking of the doctrine of justification so that salvation is not so much a matter of individual conversion as it is becoming part of a new community.7 But Wright is not a Counterculturalist. He calls Christians to engage directly with the culture, suggesting that “through the hard work of prayer, persuasion, and political action, it is possible to make governments… see that there is a different approach than unremitting violence.” This he calls “restorative justice” and cites the example of Desmond Tutu in South Africa. He goes on to speak of calling governing authorities to keep in check those who through greed and force would otherwise exploit the poor and weak. In this he sounds somewhat like the liberal political side of the Relevance model.

Wright sometimes sounds like a neo-Calvinist when he calls Christians to “advance the healing of the world” with “art, music, literature, dance, theater, and many other expressions of human delight and wisdom,” and urges artists to “join forces with those who work for justice.”2 He concludes Simply Christian this way:

We are called to be part of God’s new creation, called to be agents of that new creation here and now. We are called to model and display that new creation in symphonies and family life, in restorative justice and poetry, in holiness and service to the poor, in politics and painting,10

FINDING A WAY FORWARD

As we consider the various models and see thinkers who have learned from models other than their own, and as we witness those who have seemed to transcend or incorporate several models, how do we situate ourselves in the debate? How do we make choices about the proper way for Christians to relate to culture?

As we have seen, each of the four models has biblical support, and each effectively responds to a key problem the church faces in relating to culture. For example, is the lack of vibrant, courageous, effective evangelism a major problem that needs to be addressed? Certainly. But what about the failure of Christians to live out their worldview in the institutions of culture? Isn’t it a major problem that Christians are vastly underrepresented in many sectors of the cultural economy? Absolutely. In the visual arts, literature and poetry, theater and dance, academic and legal philosophy, academic think tanks, major research universities, leading opinion magazines and journals, high-end journalism, most major foundations, public television, film, and high-end advertising agencies - there are few or no recognizably Christian voices.

And have we seen the church faithfully standing up for justice on behalf of those in need? Large segments of the Bible-believing church in the United States once supported the institution of slavery — supported by (flawed) biblical exegesis. This mistaken accommodation to cultural values led to an enormous loss of credibility for the church. 11 And this wasn’t just a onetime event either. In the twentieth century, large segments of the church also supported segregation.

Yet we could also argue that the greatest problem for the church today is our inability to connect with nonbelievers in a way that they understand. Isn’t it a major issue that the evangelical church exists as a subcultural cul-de-sac, unable to speak the gospel intelligibly to most Americans, and is perceived to be concerned only with increasing its own power rather than with the common good? Of course it is. Early Christian bishops in the Roman Empire, by contrast, were so well-known for identifying with the poor and weak that eventually, though part of a minority religion, they were seen to have the right to speak for the local community as a whole. Caring for the poor and the weak became, ironically, a major reason for the cultural influence the church eventually came to wield. If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God’s poetic justice.

But perhaps the heart of the problem is our communal “thinness,” the lack of distinctiveness in our own Christian communities. Isn’t the church’s real challenge today not only the views we hold but also our failure to practice a distinctly different way of life? Some evangelical Christians may refrain from drinking alcohol, but they are still as individualistic and consumeristic, as materialistic and obsessed with power pursuits, as everyone else. This is an enormous problem for our witness in the world.

Perhaps the problem, then, is in the ways we have repeatedly attempted to wield political clout and forcefully bring back a Christian-dominated society. Have our goals been misplaced? Have we been compromised by our focus on securing power and control through political means? Many, including sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell, have argued convincingly that this focus - this idol — is a real problem for the church today.

In short, the answer to all of these questions is yes. When we look at each of these models from some distance, it is clear that they all identify a real problem with the church and its witness in the culture. So it is not hard to see why each model has committed adherents. Each one is on to something—an essential truth about the relationship of the gospel to culture — that is extremely important. And yet none of them, taken alone, give us the full picture. None of them have been able to win the field. The core diagnoses of each model are correct and essential, yet incomplete. As a result, the core prescriptions are admirable and necessary, yet unbalanced. Is there a way forward?

TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT CULTURE

I believe most of these concerns can be reduced to two fundamental questions. The first question deals with our attitude toward cultural change: Should we be pessimistic or optimistic about the possibility for cultural change? The second question exposes our understanding of the nature of culture itself and speaks to its potential for redemption: Is the current culture redeemable and good, or fundamentally fallen? Our answers to these questions reveal our alignments with biblical emphases as well as our imbalances.

CULTURAL CHANGE: PESSIMISTIC OR OPTIMISTIC?

James Hunter argues that culture changes mainly (though not exclusively) from the top down rather than from the grassroots up.12 Cultural changes tend to flow out of urban and academic centers. But these changes are typically not initiated by the innermost elites with the highest positions of prestige, for they have a vested interest in the status quo. Nor are they started by grassroots people at the periphery of cultural power, for they are often powerless to effect lasting change, being altogether shut out of institutions and cultural sectors that shape social life and thought. Instead, it is the “outer elites” —usually young men and women who are either low on the ladder of the highest-prestige institutions, or in the less influential or newer institutions — who initiate these changes. 13 In addition, the culture changes more readily when networks of common cause overlap different cultural fields, when the networks that initiate a change include people from the worlds of business, the academy, the arts, the church, and multiple other disciplines, all working together. Still, this is never a simplistic process or formula for effecting change. Because culture is a product of history, not merely of ideas, it has a kind of erratic inertia. It doesn’t change easily or without a fight.14 But it can, in the end, be changed.

This complex and rich understanding of cultural change throws a new light on each model. Each model has a tendency, especially among some of its more strident proponents, to be either too optimistic or too pessimistic about culture change. And within the groups that tend toward optimism, they tend to be too limited in their understanding of how culture can be changed. Some see the importance of arguing for truth claims, while others put more emphasis on the importance of communities and of historical processes - but any one of these can be the crucial factor in a culture shift. All of them can play a part, and none of the current models give equal or adequate weight to them all.

CULTURE: REDEEMABLE, OR FUNDAMENTALLY FALLEN?

D. A. Carson helps address the second question about the nature of culture when he points out how each of the models for cultural engagement fails to do justice to the fullness of the biblical story line or “metanarrative” — the great turning points and stages in the history of God’s redemption: (1) creation, (2) the fall into sin, (3) redemption first through Israel and the law, then through Christ and the new covenant, and finally (4) heaven, hell, and the restoration of all things.15 The Two Kingdoms model puts emphasis on the goodness of the material creation, the strength of the image of God in all human beings, and God’s common grace to all people. Transformationists put greater emphasis on the pervasive effects of the fall into sin on all of life, on the antithesis between belief and unbelief, and on the idols at the heart of every culture. Counterculturalists stress the form of God’s redemption throughout history, namely, by calling out and creating a new people, a new humanity, that exhibits to the world what life under Christ can and should look like. Finally, many of those in the Relevance category put great weight on God’s restoration of this creation, on the healing of the nations, and on the resurrection from the dead.

All of these points on the biblical story line are covered well by the sum of the four models, and the implications of each point of the story line for relating Christ to culture are being faithfully thought out and applied. The problem, however, is that each model tends to overlook the implications of the points on the story line other than the one around which it finds its center of gravity. Two Kingdoms people are criticized for being naive about how people truly need the Scripture and the gospel, not just general revelation, to guide their work in the world. Transformationists are charged with being combative and triumphalistic, unable to appreciate the work and contributions of nonbelievers. Counterculturalists are said by critics to make such a sharp distinction between the world and the church that they end up missing some of the implications of both creation and fall-they underestimate the levels of sinfulness inside the church and of common grace at work in the world. The reality of sin that remains in believers means that the church is never nearly as good and distinctive as its right beliefs should make it; common grace in nonbelievers means that the world is never as bad as its wrong beliefs should make it. Finally, those in the Relevance category are often criticized for forgetting that the kingdom of God in the world is both “already” and “not yet.” God is going to restore the creation, but he has not done it yet. To overlook the intransigence and darkness of human culture is to fail to take seriously enough the doctrine of the fall. To put more emphasis on serving the common good than on evangelizing the lost is to forget the “particularity” of redemption, of God’s calling a people to himself. “In short,” Carson concludes, “it appears that some, and perhaps all, of [these models] need to be trimmed in some way by reflection on the broader realities of biblical-theological developments.”16

BIBLICAL-THEOLOGICAL RESOURCES

To move forward, we must seek theological balance, and by this I do not mean some midpoint between liberal and orthodox theology. Rather, D. A. Carson speaks of allowing the various points of biblical theology to “control our thinking simultaneously and all the time.”17 To flesh this out, we’ll briefly survey the basic theological ideas that have special relevance for Christian cultural engagement and give initial direction about the specific balance we need to maintain in each area. 18

CREATION
The doctrine of creation tells us, first of all, that the material world is important. Unlike other ancient creation accounts, the earth is not the result of a power struggle between deities, but is a work of art and love by one Creator. A major part of God’s work is his delight in continuing to sustain and cultivate creation (Pss 65:9-13; 145:21; 147:15-20). If God himself does both of these things - if he both cultivates and sustains the material creation and saves souls with his truth - how can one say that an artist or banker is engaged in “secular” work and that only professional ministers are doing “the Lord’s work”?

In the Genesis creation account, Adam and Eve are called to be fruitful and multiply, to have dominion (Gen 1:26-28). Michael Allen writes, “Sandwiched as it is between divine declarations of creation’s goodness, this calling suggests that familial, social, political, and economic activities are part of God’s good intentions for the world.”19 The garden is given to human beings to care for and cultivate (Gen 2:15). A gardener does not merely leave a plot of ground as it is but rearranges the raw material so it produces things necessary for human flourishing, whether food, other materials for goods, or simply beautiful foliage. Ultimately, all human work and cultural activity represent this kind of gardening.

FALL
Michael Allen observes, “Death and sin limit the potential of culture, inasmuch as they skew the desires and abilities of cultural agents, who now pursue the wrong rather than the good.”20 Genesis 3:17-19 describes God’s curse that falls after Adam and Eve sin. The text shows us that sin infects and affects every part of life. In a suggestive passage, Francis Schaeffer summarizes it this way:

We should be looking now, on the basis of the work of Christ, for substantial healing in every area affected by the fall …

Man was divided from God, first; and then, ever since the fall, man is separated from himself. These are the psychological divisions … The next division is that man is divided from other men; these are the sociological divisions. And then man is divided from nature, and nature is divided from nature … One day, when Christ comes back, there is going to be a complete healing of all of them. 21

So sin affects everything — not just hearts, but entire cultures, every area of life. The doctrine of sin cuts two ways. On the one hand, it means we must not think we can escape from sin and its effects by withdrawing into our countercultures; nor, on the other hand, can we forget that sin infects the way all work and culture making are done or that idols are at the core of every culture. Thus, under the category of “fall” we must take into account the complementary truths of God’s curse and his common grace (see sidebar on “The Antithesis”). Any goodness in the world — any wisdom or virtue - is an undeserved gift from God (Jas 1:17). Common grace is not special or saving grace; it is a restraining force that allows good things to come in and through people who do not know Christ’s salvation.

A particularly important passage for this doctrine is God’s blessing of Noah in Genesis 8-9, where God promises to bless and sustain the creation through means besides his redeemed people.23 John Murray writes that common grace is “every favour of whatever kind or degree, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God.”24

THE ANTITHESIS
Daniel Strange, in his essay “Not Ashamed!” writes the following:

Under “Fall” we must reckon anthropologically with the complementary truths of the “antithesis,” common grace, and the image of God. The “antithesis” is God’s judicial curse sovereignly inflicted on humanity in Genesis 3:15 and which from then until now puts enmity between followers of God and followers of Satan at all levels, intellectual and moral, individual and societal. The antithesis is principially “the diametrical opposition between belief and unbelief and therefore between belief and any compromise of revealed truth” [quoting John Frame]. The Bible presents this stark contrast between belief and unbelief in many ways: light and dark, death and life, those who are blind and those who can see, covenant keepers and covenant breakers, those in Adam and those in Christ. I stress principially because as well as affirming the truth of the antithesis we must also affirm two other biblical truths. First, as believers we know in practice that a version of the antithesis still runs through our own hearts as we daily deal with our indwelling sin, sin which is a contradiction according to who we are in Christ. Second, we note an analogous inconsistency in the unbeliever.22

This biblical understanding of our fallenness - cursed yet still sustained by non-salvific grace — is crucial for relating Christ to culture. The world is inherently good and sustained by common grace-yet it is cursed. Christians are redeemed and saved - yet they are still filled with remaining sin. The battle line between God and idols not only runs through the world; it runs through the heart of every believer. So the work and cultural productions of Christians and non-Christians will have both idolatrous and God-honoring elements in them. Cultural products should not be judged as “good if Christians make them” and “bad if non-Christians make them.” Each should be evaluated on its own merits as to whether it serves God or an idol.

CULTURAL MODELS AND ESCHATOLOGY
In Reformed Theology, Michael Allen suggests that eschatology - how you think about the last things — will have an impact on your Christ and culture model. Premillennialists are the most pessimistic about cultural change, postmillennialists are the most optimistic, and amillennialists hold a variety of stances.

An aspect of eschatology is one’s belief in how much, if any, continuity there will be between this world and the next. Second Peter 3:10-12 and Revelation 21:1 state that the physical elements of this earth will melt and be destroyed by fire, but Romans 8:19-22 speaks about nature being liberated from its bondage to decay and about our bodies being “redeemed.” Taking these two sets of texts together leads us to affirm that some of this present life and world survives and is renewed and that some of it is destroyed.

Against this background doctrine of the fall we remember Jesus’ call to his disciples to be “salt of the earth” (Matt 5:13). Salt kept meat renewed so that it did not go bad. The salt metaphor does indeed call Christians to go out and be involved with the world — salt cannot do its work unless it is distributed. Christians are to penetrate all the arenas of society. But being salt means having a restraining influence on a society’s natural tendencies to decline and fall apart. While social engagement is necessary and can be fruitful, we should not usually expect to see grand social transformations.

So while the doctrine of creation shows us the goodness of work and of so-called secular callings and gives us a vision for culture building, the doctrine of the fall warns us against utopianism and triumphalism.

REDEMPTION AND RESTORATION

The coming of Christ - his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension-holds great significance for cultural engagement. One of the most important aspects of the Christian understanding of Christ’s salvation is that it comes in stages. As Francis Schaeffer has pointed out, sin has ruined and defaced every aspect of life, and so Christ’s salvation must also renew every aspect of life — it must eventually free us totally from the curse on sin. As Isaac Watts wrote, “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.”25

And yet Christ’s saving and ruling power, often spoken of under the heading of “the kingdom of God,” comes to us in two great stages. As Geerhardus Vos has observed, the kingdom of God is “the realm of God’s saving grace,” which is entered now through the new birth and faith in Christ (John 3:3, 5; Col 1:13).26 In this sense, the kingdom of God is already here (Matt 12:28; Luke 17:21; 21:31). But the kingdom is also, according to Vos, a realm of “righteousness and justice and blessing.” It is a new social order (1 Pet 2:9) that shows itself especially in the church. The Psalms vividly tell us that God’s ruling power will heal not only human social problems but also nature itself, which is currently subject to decay (Rom 8:20-25). Psalms 72, 96, and 97 tell us that under the true king, grain will grow on the tops of mountains (Ps 72:16), and the fields, flowers, rocks, and trees will sing for joy (Ps 96:11-13). Herman Bavinck has noted that grace does not remove or replace but rather restores nature. Grace does not do away with thinking and speaking, art and science, theater and literature, business and economics; it remakes and restores what is amiss.27

To use Francis Schaeffer’s terminology, the spiritual alienation between God and humanity is removed when we believe; we are justified and adopted into his family. But the psychological, social, cultural, and physical effects of sin are still with us. We can expect to see some healing now, yet full healing and removal of those results await the last day. So the kingdom of God, though “already” truly here, is “not yet” fully here (Matt 5:12, 20; 6:33; 7:21; 18:3; 19:23-24),28

Schaeffer suggests we can expect to see “substantial” healing now throughout the created order - but what does this really mean? Just how “already” and how “not yet” is the kingdom? Michael Allen puts it pointedly: “The real issue in the relationship of Christianity and culture, therefore, is … in what time and at what pace will these things happen?”29

Closely related to the question of when we see the fruit of the inaugurated kingdom is the question of the relationship between the church and the kingdom. Sometimes the Bible talks about the kingdom as though it operates inside the realm of the church alone; at other times it speaks as if it is outside the church, incorporating the entire world.30 Just as the biblical teaching on our fallenness gives us complementary truths that we must resolve to hold in balance — the curse and common grace — so too does the biblical teaching on Christ’s redemption. His saving power is already at work, but not yet fully here. This saving power is at work in the gathered church, but it is not exclusive to the church. Here again we see why the different models are correct — and yet how easily they can become reductionistic and unbalanced. We should expect healing from sin in all areas of life - private and public, within the church and out in culture. We must see the gathered church as the great vehicle for this restoration — and yet individual Christians out in the world can be said to be representatives of the kingdom as well. We cannot separate our spiritual or church life from our secular or cultural life. Every part of our life - vocational, civic, familial, recreational, material, sexual, financial, political — is to be presented as a “living sacrifice” to God (Rom 12:1–2).

THE GOSPEL AND THE KINGDOM

It is evident that one of the main reasons for many of the divergent approaches to cultural engagement - among many aspects of ministry today—is the differing views of the nature of the kingdom. I recommend an older work that provides unusual balance and biblical insight - Geerhardus Vos’s The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church.31

Vos summarizes his exegesis and findings in a final chapter titled “Recapitulation.” There he states that the kingdom of God “means the renewal of the world through the introduction of supernatural forces.” For Vos, the kingdom is not just a subjective experience of God in the heart, but the power of God come into the world through a series of “objective facts and transactions” purposed to eventually overcome all sin, evil, suffering, and death in the world.

Vos helpfully observes in the Bible three aspects of the kingdom that must be kept together. First, it is the realm of God’s saving grace. Because salvation is by grace, not works, God is King and Sovereign of our salvation. Second, it is the realm of righteousness and justice. A kingdom always operates according to the norms of the King. So the kingdom of God is a new way of living and a new set of relationships and social arrangements. Third, it is the realm of blessing and joy. God’s future power, which will renew all creation, is present in our lives now.

Vos teaches that the kingdom of God mainly operates through the church, but that it also operates through Christians who integrate their faith and their work.

Undoubtedly the kingship of God, as his recognized and applied supremacy, is intended to pervade and control the whole of human life in all its forms of existence. This the parable of the leaven [Matt 13:33] plainly teaches. These various forms of human life have each their own sphere in which they work and embody themselves. There is a sphere of science, a sphere of art, a sphere of the family and of the state, a sphere of commerce and industry. Whenever one of these spheres comes under the controlling influence of the principle of the divine supremacy and glory, and this outwardly reveals itself, there we can truly say that the kingdom of God has become manifest.32

Vos immediately makes it clear, however, that the institutional church should not have political power or control society through the state.

So Vos states, in summary, that (1) the main way to see the kingdom forces of God at work is in the institutional church, whose main job is to minister through the Word and sacrament to win people and disciple them in Christ, and (2) when Christians are living in society to God’s glory, this, too, is a manifestation of the kingdom of God.

Without this rare balance, there is a tendency to see the kingdom as either strictly spiritual and operating within the church or mainly social and operating in the liberation movements out in the world. Vos’s biblical balance will enable us to avoid imbalances in the cultural engagement and missional church debates in particular. I recommend reading his book carefully and in its entirety.

THE LANDSCAPE OF CHRISTIAN CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT

What do we learn from this brief survey? The word balance thrusts itself on us yet again. The biblical material calls for a balance not of compromises but of “being controlled simultaneously and all the time” by all of the teaching in Scripture. A survey of the various Christ and culture models demonstrates precisely what D. A. Carson suggests that indeed each of them fails to be controlled by all the biblical teaching all the time. Do those within the Two Kingdoms model do justice to the cultural mandate, the pervasive nature of idolatry, the insufficiency of natural revelation, and the reality of the kingdom outside the church? Does the Transformationist model do full justice to the “not yet-ness” of the kingdom, to how much Christians participate with all humans in the common curse and common grace, or the lack of clear calls to “take the culture” in the New Testament? Do those in the Relevance model do justice to the depth and pervasiveness of idolatry in all hearts and cultural products, the particularity and offense of the gospel, and, again, to the not yet-ness of the kingdom? Do the Counterculturalists do justice to the “already” nature of the kingdom or to their participation with the rest of the world in common curse and common grace? I think the answer to all these questions is, “Not sufficiently.”

I have been making the case that each model is biblically unbalanced. That is, each has a pivotal theme that is true but insufficient, and the more we reductionistically apply that theme to cultural engagement without reference to other themes in the Bible, the more unbalanced the theological vision and the less fruitful the work. To visually represent this, I have created a illustration in which the four models are graphed against two axes. The vertical axis represents the nature of our cultural world (“Is the current culture redeemable and good, or fundamentally fallen?”). At the top is the belief that the world is full of strong common grace, that nonbelievers can readily understand natural revelation, and that God is at work in many ways in the world. At the bottom of the spectrum is the belief that the world is a dark and evil place, that God’s natural revelation is hard to read, and that God’s activity happens in and through the church alone. The horizontal axis represents the spectrum of views on our attitude toward cultural change (“Should we be pessimistic or optimistic about cultural change?”). On the left end of the spectrum is the belief that we should not actively try to change culture; on the right hand is the belief that we should be active in culture and optimistic about our efforts to change it. The Transformationist and Counterculturalist models are in the bottom half of the diagram because they share a lack of faith in common grace and a conviction of a radical antithesis between the world and the values of God’s kingdom. As a result, they emphasize the need for a strong, prophetic critique of the idols of the culture. The Two Kingdoms and Relevance models are on the top because they are much more positive about finding common ground with nonbelievers in the culture.

The Two Kingdoms and Counterculturalist models are on the left because they both believe that strong Christian attempts to “engage” and “transform” lead to syncretism and compromise. Both call Christians to simply “be the church” rather than seek to change the culture. Meanwhile, the Relevants and Transformationists are on the right because they both spend much time reflecting on culture and enthusiastically calling Christians to become involved in culture in order to influence it for Christ. Each of the models on the right criticizes the two on the left for dualism and withdrawal.

If we ended this discussion here, it might lead to the conclusion that we can simply combine all the best of the models, leave out the extremes, and find ourselves with a perfectly balanced and faithful “über-model” that all of us should follow. To conclude this would be simplistic and incorrect. In my final chapter on this subject, I will lay out guiding principles for being faithful, balanced, and skillful in relating Christianity to culture in a fast-changing world — regardless of which model most shapes our own practice.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION

1. Keller writes, “Some people conform well to the type, while others do not. Within a given model, we can find areas of pointed disagreement… Thoughtful proponents of certain models are always open to having their views tempered and enriched by insights from the others.” What in this chapter challenged or provoked you? What did you find helpful? What did you disagree with?
2. This chapter provides two fundamental questions about culture to consider:
   • Should we be pessimistic or optimistic about the possibility for cultural change?
   • Is the current culture redeemable and good, or fundamentally fallen?

How would you answer each of these two questions? On a scale from 0 to 10(0 = not at all, and 10 = highly), how optimistic are you about the ability of believers to change culture? On the same scale, how redeemable do you believe culture to be? Do you find yourself leaning in one direction or the other on each question? If so, why?

Possibility for Cultural Change
Pessimistic Optimistic
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Nature of Culture
Fundamentally fallen Redeemable and good
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. D. A. Carson speaks of allowing the various points of biblical theology to “control our thinking simultaneously and all the time.” How do the elements of the biblical story line affect your understanding and practice of cultural engagement?
   • creation
   • the fall
   • redemption and restoration
2. Examine the illustration representing the Center Church model of cultural engagement. Where would you place yourself on this illustration? Where would you place each of your ministry colleagues and leaders? How can the different emphases within your team help to create a balanced, faithful perspective on cultural engagement?