Christianity as Culture … Culture as Theology Incarnated

“Van Drunen’s juxtaposition of ‘Christianity and culture’ suggest that we can first look at Christianity and cultural separately, and then decide whether there is any connection between the two and if so what this might be.”

Willem J. Ouweneel 
The World is Christ’s; A Critique of (Radical) Two Kingdom Theology — pg. 70

This is a simple yet brilliant insight. Neither Christianity nor culture comes to us as disembodied abstracted gnostic realities. Even with Christianity it comes to us as embodied in cultural trappings, be those trappings, denominations, congregations, Bible Colleges, Seminaries, or just one on one discipleship. Christianity thus can’t be abstracted from a culture carrier.  There is no Christianity that can be known apart from some cultural delivery system. Culture likewise is not an inert something that can be dissected apart from the theological respiration system that gives it life. Culture is animated by the theological afflatus of some God, gods or god concept.

To say we can have Christianity without culture is like saying we can have a wedding without a bride. To say we can have culture without a religious impulse is like saying we can have “Charlie McCarthy” without an Edgar Bergen.

And to say we should have culture without Christianity is to say the Kingship of Christ is null and void and is to favor the Kingship of another God in treason against Christ.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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