Binding: Hardcover Page Count: 240 Publisher: Eerdmans ISBN#: 9780802831743 Availability: Temporarily out of stock. Description: Called to live in the world, but not to be of it, Christians must maintain a balancing act that becomes more precarious the further our culture departs from its Judeo-Christian roots. How should members of the church interact with such a culture, especially as deeply enmeshed as most of us have become?Christ and Culture Revisited is also designed practically to help Christians untangle current messy debates on living in the world. Carson emphasizes that the relation between Christ and culture is not limited to an either/or cultural paradigm — Christ against culture or Christ transforming culture. Instead Carson offers his own paradigm in which all the categories of biblical theology must be kept in mind simultaneously to inform the Christian worldview.Christ and Culture Revisited is a tour de force.
From the Preface:
My own effort in this book begins by summarizing Niebuhr, since Niebuhr has become an icon to which everyone refers, though few today still read him closely. Apart from some initial evaluation of Niebuhr on his own terms, I then try to lay out the rudiments of a responsible biblical theology that any Christian will want to acknowledge, and begin to show how these turning points in the history of redemption must shape Christian thinking about the relationship between Christ and culture (chaps. 1 and 2). The structures generated by such biblical theology are robust enough to allow the many differing emphases within Scripture to find their voices, so that to speak of different “models” of the Christ-and-culture relationship begins to look misleading. Such reflection requires more probing, not only with respect to current debates over “culture” and “postmodernism” (chap. 3), but also with respect to some of the dominant cultural forces of our time (chap. 4). One of the dimensions of this ongoing debate is the relation between church and state (chap. 5). Here I have sketched the very different cultural stances associated with the notion of separation of church and state found in France and in the United States, with glances at a few other countries, so that we can more clearly detect the kinds of cultural spectacles we inevitably bring to the task of reading Scripture, and how even the application of the balance of Scripture will almost inevitably shift in different cultures. The final chapter raises a selection of perennial temptations Christians face as they work through these issues. It is a modest attempt to forge a stable and flexible stance that is immune to various siren calls.
"There is no more crucial issue facing us today than the relationship of the church and the gospel to contemporary curlture. Don Carson's treatment of this issue is the most balanced one out there. Rather than grinding an ax or pushing his own paradigm, he listens carefully to the Scripture and brings us in the end to a sophisticated simplicity about these matters. I highly recommend this book."
--Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City; Author of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
--Mark Dever, Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.; Founder of 9marks.org
