Category: Apologetics

In the Christian anthropology man is being that is composed of two parts that are so closely integrated that some theologians have referred to man’s ontological reality as being a “modified unichotomy,” comprised of a corporeal dynamic (being made from the dust of the ground) yet also having a spiritual dynamic (God having breathed into him the breath of life). Some have referred to man as being a dichotomous being but this doesn’t quite capture it given that man’s body and spirit are so closely and intimately integrated. We can distinguish body and soul but we can ever isolate them or divorce them. God alone does that at death and then only for a season until our bodies as glorified will be reunited with our heaven dwelling spirits. Unichotomy is a clumsy way to express this union of body and soul (spirit) since the word itself means “One” and “to cut.”

I lead in with the above observation in order to talk about the problems with what we call “multiculturalism.” Multiculturalism, professing that it delights in a multitude of cultures in point of fact ends up creating a unitarian culture that disallows Christian culture since Christian culture is premised upon the conviction that inferior cultures should not be allowed equal standing with superior cultures. For example, while multiculturalism would insist that cultures that honor sodomite marriage should be protected, Christian culture would demand laws prohibiting such inferior cultural norms as existing among a Christian people.

The link between the first two paragraphs is that for multiculturalism, premised at it is on Marxist underpinnings, holds an anthropology that denies the Christian anthropology insisting instead that man is only matter in motion. Since man is only matter in motion and since there are no transcendent ethics by which man must be guided the multiculturalist seeks to create a culture that is unitary. Since man himself is definitely not a composite of body and soul and therefore is a unitary being then it is inevitable that man should build unitary cultures that disallow for any culture that insist that distinctions exist as given by extramundane God, who, according the to the multiculturalist worldview can’t exist because he is a spiritual being.

So, we have established thus far

1.) Multiculturalism is a euphemism that hides the unitarian uni-cultural agenda.

2.)  Man created as body and soul has implications for culture.

It is #2 that I would like to tease out a wee bit.

When we consider culture we have to consider it as being the product of both man’s corporeal and spiritual reality. This is why when asked the definition of culture my answer is typically, “culture is a particular people’s religion externalized.” This is a slight twist on the Calvinistic philosopher’s “culture is religion externalized.”  When we talk about what makes culture, culture we have to take into account our Christian anthropology which teaches that man is a modified unichotomy. We have to take into account that like man individually, culture is, a modified unichotomy expressing both man’s corporeal and non-corporeal realities.

Culture is the expression of men living in one geographic area that reflects both a shared genetic heritage (thus tipping the cap to man’s corporeal being) and a shared religion, belief system, worldview (thus tipping the cap to man’s non-corporeal being). Another way of saying this is that “culture is theology as poured over a particular people group.”

The implications of this are fairly obvious if this is an accurate assessment of culture. One implication is that where there is a particular culture that exists one cannot add too  that particular culture either a large injection of alien peoples (corporeal aspect of culture) or a large injection of an alien worldview (non-corporeal aspect of culture) and still at the end of that addition have the same culture that one started with before the addition was injected. The application here to massive third world migration to the formerly Christian West should be obvious.

Another implication is that just as one cannot add to a particular culture either a massive injection of foreign peoples or alien ideas and retain the same culture, in the same way one cannot delete or vastly diminish either a particular culture’s convictions/religion/worldview or it’s genetic heritage and still have the same culture after the deletion or diminishing.

The implication of pursuing an agenda of either massive addition or deletion as described above in any particular stable culture will be significant conflict as the new mix vies for hegemony in the new culture.

Now, there are many in the Christian community, who will insist that culture is only a matter of an abstracted large number of individuals owning a shared set of ideas. They do not believe that a shared genetic heritage should be considered an element for building stable Christian culture. The problem here, for these will intended but vacuous thinkers, is that they are denying the Christian anthropology as applied to culture that man is both body and soul. Instead, what they have is an anthropology, when applied to culture, that sees man as only the sum of his thoughts. Historically, this line of thinkinking has been known as “Gnosticism.” This line of thought is Gnostic because it does not take seriously the truth that man is an embodied being, opting instead to see man as a brain on a stick. This line of thinking belittles the corporeal realities that make for the manishness of man.

Dr. Adi Schlebusch offers insight here as to the historical foundations of this errant form of Gnostic thinking that has invaded the Christian universe of thought;

“This (Gnosticism as applied to defining culture) is the basic tenet of liberalism and this was central to the flaws of the Enlightenment. It is for this very reason that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century counter-enlightenment philosophers polemicized so heavily against abstract theories of human rights or the idea of the social contract as the basis of society. 

What the liberal philosophers of the Enlightenment, especially the eighteenth-century French philosophers sought to do was to rebuild a new society based on ideals. It fundamentally sought to de-root man from the so-called “chains” imposed upon him by created realities. In doing so, they often appealed to nature or man’s supposed state of nature which, according to them, had been corrupted by customs and habits imposed by tradition. It is for this reason that I believe the contemporary Neo-Thomist accusation against Theonomists that we are fundamentally liberal in our anthropology as a result of our skepticism about natural law, holds no water. The fact of the matter is that appeals to nature as justification for egalitarianism and a universal human fraternity was actually quite common during the Enlightenment, particularly in France. This is not to say that natural law theory is liberal in and of itself, but it has certainly historically been much more of a tool employed by liberals than Scripture has, for example.”

The opposite problem of a Gnostic definition of culture that insists that culture is only the sum total of how abstracted individuals think is the assertion that culture has nothing to do with any spiritual reality, insisting instead that culture is merely matter in motion. This materialist Marxist understanding of culture viewed man and cultures as being a biological machine(s) that could be shaped by the party in any direction it desired. In reality Marxism was the anti-culture culture because it was the anti-religion religion. Marxist culture remained the outward manifestation of a people’s inward beliefs but what was manifested in Marxist culture was the Marxist religion that held that man was an economic being that could only be understood in terms of class warfare. Because man in Marxist religion and culture was only matter in motion man became dehumanized and having lost the manishness of man he lost those realities that make men, men; connection to family, clan, nation, church, and place.

Only Christianity can build stable culture because only Christianity has an anthropology that seeks to maintain the relation man as body and man as soul. Christianity then must do battle with the Gnostics in the church that says culture is only the consequence of what men in the abstract think and Christianity must do battle with the Materialists in the church who think that man is merely matter in motion.

What is interesting here is that even though man as material alone or man as spiritual alone are stark opposites in terms of anthropology in the end they both will build cultures that are unitarian and monistic. If man is merely one component then man will build a culture that is monochrome and unitary. So, even though spiritualist views of culture and materialist views of culture are seeming at opposite ends of the spectrum they end up building the same kind of ugly mulatto cultures. This is where we are right now with the rise of multiculturalism – a euphemism if there ever was one.

As a Christian the danger that I am dealing with now the most in the Christian church on this subject is the the Gnostic/spiritual side of the equation. More than a few are the clergy who seemingly believe that the results of Christianity, in terms of culture, will eventually be a world where particular nations  disappear because the gospel has been so successful that there is no longer a need for diverse nations or cultures. I call this “Christian Globalism,” and it is more prevalent than one might think. It’s almost as if the only reason diverse nations and cultures exist is because of sin.

From what we have said here we see that the finest culture can only arise where there is a dynamic interplay between Christian thinking and Christian genetic heritage. The fun thing about this is that because God has made peoples to be diverse different peoples, these different peoples when turning to Christ, will result in their thinking their thoughts after Christ, and the result of that will be a plurality of diverse Christian cultures, each and all expressing in ways distinct to their heritage strengths the glory of God.  Each and all of these cultures will esteem God’s law but the esteeming of that law will run through the prism of genetic distinctive heritage. In such a way the temporal one and many of culture(s) will reflect the One and Many character of God. With this shared owning of Christ the different distinct and different nations and cultures will together glorify the great and magnificent creator God just as a symphony orchestra with all it diverse instruments work together to produce majestic pieces of music.