“For religion is not one aspect of department of life beside the others, as modern secular thought likes to believe; it consist rather in the orientation of all human life to the absolute.”
John A. Hutchinson
Faith, Reason, and Existence — p. 210
“Religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion.”
Paul Tillich
The Protestant Era — p. 57
If religion were a zit and it were popped what would come out of the popped zit is culture.
One thing we try to communicate to people about Calvinism is that Calvinism doesn’t really have 5 points of Grace (TULIP) as if those 5 points of Grace were stand alone doctrines. In actuality Calvinism is one doctrine of grace which is taught as five interlocking and interdependent aspects that we call TULIP. This is why it is literally impossible to be anything but a 5 point Calvinist when it comes to the Doctrine of Grace. To contend that one is a 4 point or a 3 point Calvinist is to give up Calvinism on the Doctrine of Grace since the 1 point of Calvinism’s doctrine of grace requires all five aspects known as TULIP. The five points of grace together serve to define Calvinism soteriologically. (Calvinism as as a whole requires more then TULIP but we are here speaking of Calvinism as a soteriology.)
This can serve as an illustration for the way we understand culture. Culture has many points (economics, law, family life, politics, education, church, international relations, etc.) just as Calvinism is one soteriologically but as 5 aspects of grace (TULIP) so a culture has all of these different aspects of the one religion of a people.
Religion is what orients us a people to their absolute and once that people are oriented to their respective absolute that orientation reveals itself in culture.
This is a far different view of the relation of religion to culture that one generally finds in modernity. In modernity religion is but one aspect of culture. Religion gets listed as a department of culture and it is so denigrated by many that legion is the name of those who think we can get rid of religion and still have culture — as if religion is just a kind of extra that we would be better off without.
Of course the pursuit of eliminating religion from culture is merely a reflection of the religion of those writes who advocate such a silly thing.
This of course is why we can never speak of “secularism” as if the secular provided a sphere where religion was put on hold or was muted. Every sphere of life is conditioned by and is a reflection of some religion and there is no sphere that we may speak of as being “secular”, if by secular one means a sphere that is not the product of religion.
“A truly secular culture has never been found, and it is doubtful whether American materialism can be called “secular.” Even communism, like Nazism, has its gods and devils, its sin and salvation, its priests and its liturgies, its paradise of the stateless society of the future. For religious faith always transcends culture and is the integrating principle and power of man’s cultural striving.”
Henry Van Til
Calvinistic Concept Of Culture — p. 39
In every sphere of culture and in every aspect of our living man is pursuing, incarnating, and living out his religion.
Try to think of it this way. The cultus (religion) is that which animates the culture. The cultus (religion) is to the culture what the soul is to the body. As the soul gives life to the body, the cultus gives life, meaning and direction to the culture. Change a person’s soul and you change the person. Change a culture’s cultus and you change the culture. The cultus is the first animated ripple of the spiritual relationship between a man, men and God. Out from that first animated ripple comes the successive ripples that comprise, form, and make up culture.
This is why protecting the purity of worship as being where we find a sense of the vertical, and where we find Word and Sacrament as central is so important, for if and when we lost our way in the cultus the consequence will be that we will lose our way in the culture. Further, the restoration of a culture gone astray will only be seen when the cultus is restored so that worship is pleasing to God…. and the cultus will only be restored where man’s spiritual relationship to God is revitalized.
However it is also absolutely necessary to understand that there is a distinction between the cultus and the culture. If we make them one in the same then we run the danger of suggesting that the cultus is over the culture or that all of the culture finds its meaning only when it is in submission to the cultus. Just recently I read of this mistake being made by somebody moving into a new residence. Before they actually started living there they needed a priest to come by and bless the house and the rooms. This is to lose the distinction between the cultus and the culture. But there is an opposite extreme that we as Westerners are more prone to and that is to totally separate the cult from the cultus so that a denial arises that religion is significant for life. (Of course such a denial would spring forth from religious presuppositions.)
If it is true that by changing a cultus one can change the culture it is also true that one can change the cultus by attacking the culture…. but even here those who attack the culture in order to change the cultus are attacking the culture with a cultus of their own which is springing from an alien religion from that of the culture that they are seeking to transform.
Since the cultus is that which animates the culture the most important aspect of a culture is that which is responsible for the cultus. Historically, in Christendom, that which has been responsible for the cultus is the Church. The Church protected the theology and doxology of the the cultus and the cultus gave strength and vitality to the culture. However in the last 150 years of so in the West the cultus in America can no longer be identified as having the Christian Church be responsible for it. The reason this is so is because the religion which animates our culture any more is no longer Christianity but rather it is some form of the religion of humanism. As such, if we were to look for the cultus that is responsible for our modern culture we no longer must look to the Christian church but rather we must look to the humanist church which takes up residence in the public schools in these united States.
