2. Christ is of Culture
Cultural Christians claim that Christ is to be understood as the highest aspiration and fulfilment of culture. So it is possible to affirm both Christ and culture and to deny any necessary opposition between the two.

Culture can be interpreted through Christ, where the elements of culture that are most complimentary to Jesus' work and person are the best; as are those things that can be understood of God through culture.

In this way they are most accommodating, reconciling Christianity with what appears to be the greatest achievements of culture. The early church had it's share of Hellenizers, Judaizers and Gnostics who joined Christ to their mystical philosophy, and in the same way today there are many who attempt to reduce Christianity to practical morality and Jesus Christ to one of many great moral teachers.

The error of this option is equal to, but also in direct opposition to separatism in that it is so concentrated on the world that while focused on the horizontal dimension it ignores the vertical dimension. Thus putting very little emphasis on grace or eternity aand the afterlife, and producing a self-reliant form of humanism.

Ultimately this deifies man and humanises God, creating theology in man's image through connecting Christ with some cultural movement one wishes to endorse. So we have Christianity AND homosexuality, Christianity AND new psychology, Christianity AND Veganism, Christianity AND political correctness or Christianity AND any other syncretism you could care to mention.

So we end up thinking that some aspect of God can be found in a same-sex relationship and the acceptance of homosexual rights. Political correctness in a culture takes preference over what the Bible may say about a subject. And we find that as the horizontal dimension gets distorted the vertical dimension gets ignored. We listen to the spirit of the age more than the Holy Spirit.

There is one aspect of accommodation that is relevant to us. When communicating the gospel we do need to adapt it to our audience, that is, while not compromising the message of the gospel we should present it incarnate so that it translates into the understanding of the people-group. We need to present a contextualised Christianity, not syncretism. Paul adapted his delivery dependant on whether his audience was Jewish, gentile, Roman or Greek in order to make it relevant to their way of thinking. Jesus did the same with His parables. By being cultural chameleons we can take the gospel message and find culturally relevant clothing to make it relevant. This is the incarnation of Christ in the prevailing culture.

3. Christ is above culture
In this view Christ and culture are synthesised. This option says that culture has good in it since God created the world and though it was distorted by the fall it is not entirely evil, it still has attributes of God in it. So in this view we cannot say "either Christ or culture" because we are dealing with God in both cases and we also must not say "both Christ and culture" as if there was no distinction between them.

Thomas Aquinas believed that the church is simultaneously in and beyond the world, leading people to salvation in heaven, while affirming the best in this world's culture. He believed that God has purposes in the temporal as well as the eternal realms.
This option affirms a stable relationship between church and state as well as encouraging the conservation of values and authority. The church should back up the government's authority to maintain order. So in the earthly as well as in the Heavenly realms there is a hierarchical organisation in church and state.

There is one King over the temporal and the eternal and we have practical solutions for living the Christian life within culture and gives incentive for government and education as well as encouraging academic principles.
The danger is that the church will socially stagnate and fossilise with it's emphasis on values and authority, it may perpetuate dictatorships and prevent legislative reform. If respect for temporal authority is too great, there is a danger that man made laws will undermine God's law.

There is also no separation of church and state, leading to prohibition or the evil of forcing people to change their beliefs by relying on the sword rather than the word. The integration of church and state to make people believe things is evil and pretty impossible because changing someone's behaviour produces a hypocrite, and even though you can change someone's behaviour through force, it still does not mean you have changed their belief.

Please see the other parts of this article..... Christ and Culture

Aleck Cartwright is an author, journalist, graphic designer, missionary, teacher and Christian who runs his own website called www.god-life.com, he writes on and addresses many different topics and issues from a Biblical world-view.