Niebuhr Christ and Culture

Niebuhr Material

Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1951.

The author of Christ and Culture Richard Niebuhr is today largely remembered as one-half a famous pair of siblings. Reinhold was the more famous of the two Niebuhr brothers, but both Niebuhrs redefined Protestant theology for the 20th century. While his brother Reinhold described himself as a devout Lutheran, Richard Niebuhr was "more inclined toward Augustinian, Calvinistic approaches to the realm of theological and ethical discourse" like Kierkegaard and even the postmodern literary philosopher Roland Barth (Swatos 2008).

Richard Niebuhr, like his older brother, grew up in Missouri, graduated from Elmhurst College (1912) and Eden Theological Seminary (1915), Washington University (M.A., 1917), and Yale University Divinity School (B.D., 1923; Ph.D., 1924). Niebuhr was an ordained minister in the Evangelical and Reformed Church (1916) and worked as a pastor. Also called the more philosophical of the two brothers, most of Richard Niebuhr's life was spent teaching. "Niebuhr taught (1919-1922 and 1927-1931) at Eden Theological Seminary and served as President of Elmhurst College (1924-1927). In 1931, he joined the faculty of Yale Divinity School and, in 1954, was named Sterling Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics at Yale, a post he held until his death" (Swatos 2008).

Christ and Culture was seen to come as a critical juncture in Niebuhr's corpus of writings. His first book was entitled The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929). This book put forth Niebuhr's belief in the vital role that the church could and must play in creating a more equitable society. Niebuhr's second book, The Kingdom of God in America was a history of different strains of American Protestant thought, and focused on Christian thought as removed from the course of human history. These two different perspectives were seen as existing in a state of "tension in the Niebuhrian corpus between material and ideational factors" (Swatos 2008). But Christ and Culture's five-part typology defining the relationship of Christ to culture acted as a bridge between these two strains and showed that heavenly faith and earthly social mission could coexist and engage in a productive dialogue.

Niebuhr's Christ and Culture ultimately aims to provide not a singular answer to the question of the significance of Christ in modernity, but to show readers the best methodology of exploring the nature of Christ. Niebuhr's definitional approach to his subject is inclusive rather than exclusive. Like each of the gospels show different facets of the persona of Jesus, likewise different answers to the problem of Christ and culture are necessary to fully encompass such a complex phenomenon. In fact, Niebuhr claims it would be a usurpation of Christ to claim that someone had found a single answer to what values Christ encompasses.

Niebuhr's definition of Christ is complex, embracing both Christ's status as the Son of God and also His role as mediating figure between heaven and earth. Culture, which Niebuhr uses synonymous with the 'world,' is innately artificial, while Christ is natural. Culture is the lens with which we impose our human-focused values on eternal substances. Because of the imperfect nature of humanity, theological answers that attempt to encompass the nature of Christ will always be partial, but by identifying and classifying these different answers, and examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each type, a more perfect understanding of the relationship of Christ and culture can be established. There is no single Christian answer, but many.

This potential negativity of the world provides the first definition of Christ and His relationship to culture, the idea that Christ stands against culture. Although Niebuhr finds this view admirable to some degree, he also warns that Christ encouraged his followers to pay taxes, and render unto Caesar what was Caesar's. Also, he believes such a view is overly idealistic. No human being is truly outside of culture, even the concept of cultural dislocation is itself a construction of humanity. This is an almost postmodern, forward-thinking interpretation of the construct of culture in modernity. But, to return to Niebuhr's more orthodox sentiments, he reminds the reader that an entirely Gnostic or dualistic view of the world that sets God in opposition to His creation was condemned as heretical by the Church fathers.

The second understanding of Christ is the Enlightenment point-of-view that Christ fulfills culture, much like the Deist founding fathers understood religion -- that the world was perfect, or perfectible, and that God had left humanity to accomplish this task. Niebuhr believes that this view of Christ has had some positive social influence. It can spur humans on to action by telling them that they are responsible for caring for their neighbors by reminding them that they cannot rely upon providence alone to change the world. But to equate Christ's mission with secular culture can be self-congratulatory. Also, at its extreme such a view can deny the need for faith at all. It is essential to Christianity to understand that the human condition is incomplete on earth, it is not fulfilled, and one cannot accommodate earthly culture to such a degree that one forgets the separate, special place of God.

A more positive third view, Niebuhr implies (although he insists his typology is not a hierarchy, somewhat disingenuously) may be to state that although there is a distinction between Christ and cultural fulfillment, humanity needs both, which Niebuhr calls the way of St. Thomas Aquinas. But this 'synthesis' has often resulted in the dilution of Christ's unique message, and encourages people to use Christ to defend conservative, secular and social values, rather than to appreciate the more radical teachings of Christ that make worldly people uncomfortable. Christians often must oppose secular culture to fight against evil instructions like slavery.

Martin Luther countered to Aquinas' "synthesis" that although both culture and Christ may claim an individual's life, an individual must live in the sinning world. Even while the believer turns his eyes to Christ, the faithful must accept the paradoxical nature of the fact we dwells in a fallen world. Luther felt that humans must understand that earth is a place governed by laws made by humanity, and God's heaven is run by divine and eternal laws. But not until we enter this kingdom can we obey such laws perfectly. This is the fourth, Protestant solution that allowed Protestants to labor at trade, make money, but still reserve a private place for God on Sunday. Faith alone saves, not works or deeds in the world.