# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_2016_S203
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

tells us to love our enemy and turn the other cheek, the Christian should not
be a soldier. Fundamentally, the Christ Against Culture view is inadequate
because Jesus himself recognizes a legitimate role for temporal authority: we
are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s (Matt. 22:21). Even Pilate has some
authority over Christ in His human nature, because that authority was given
to him from above (John 19:11). Likewise, Paul explains that the governing
authorities are instituted by God and so one cannot simply set the claims of
God against the claims of the state (Rom. 13). It is only if government abuses
its office and commands the Christian to do what is directly contrary to the
Law of God that we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).
Examples of the Christ of culture model include both Modernist and
Postmodernist Christianity. Modernizers, like Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976),
sought to square Christian teaching with a worldview dominated by scientific
materialism. Thus, they rejected literal miracles in favor of existential interpretations in the life of the Christian (e. g., people do not really rise from the
dead, but you will experience a new “life” within you, etc.). Postmodernizers
(including currents within the “emergent church”) have likewise sought
to understand the Christian claim not as objective truth for all mankind
but as the perspective of a particular community of language users.61 More
generally, much of mainline Protestantism is dominated by the idea that the
culture sets the agenda for the church, and that one should carefully study the
dominant or “best” cultural trends to discern the wisest course for Christians
to take.
While cultural sensitivity and understanding are valuable for Christian
evangelists and apologists, the basic problem for the Christ of Culture view is
that even the best of culture is still infected with human sin. To follow culture
when it conflicts with loyalty to Christ is selling out the faith to seek honor
among men (Matt. 6:2; Gal. 1:10). Likewise, to reject miracles foundational to
the faith or to propose a new gospel that is more “relevant” is nullifying the
Word of God for the sake of human tradition (Matt. 15:6). It is a denial that
the only true Gospel is the one from God (John 14:6, Acts 4:12, Gal. 1:6–9). In
practice, this view tends to promote a cultural idolatry that buries the transcendent Gospel in a barrage of manmade agendas which disingenuously
appropriate Christian vocabulary: the result may have the form of godliness,
but it denies its true power (2 Tim. 3:5).62
Both of the one-dimensional models, therefore, are too simple to capture
a proper understanding of the Christian’s relationship to culture. Temporal
61
For a balanced presentation and effective critique of several major theses of the emergent
church movement, see R. Scott Smith, Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effects of
Postmodernism in the Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007).
62
One of the greatest of the 20th century critics of such theological liberalism was J. Gresham
Machen (1881–1937), who opposed the increasing compromise of God’s Word in the Northern
Presbyterian Church (now PCUSA). See Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2009; first published in 1923).

authority has its place, as it is instituted by God, but slavish capitulation to
culture is an abandonment of the Gospel. The two-dimensional models therefore try to hold the concerns of legitimate temporal authority (the earthly
government) and allegiance to Christ (the spiritual government) in proper
balance.

b. The two-dimensional models
The disagreement between theological traditions that accept the two
kingdoms idea63 centers on the relation between the kingdoms. Classical
Catholic theology proposed a synthesis of the spiritual and earthly kingdoms
(“Christ above culture”) where the spiritual kingdom governs the earthly
kingdom. Thus for Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), there is a sharp distinction
between the natural (temporal, earthly) ends of man, governed by the cardinal virtues (courage, justice, temperance and prudence), which are available
to all people regardless of faith, and the supernatural (eternal, heavenly)
ends of man, governed by the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity),
available to the Christian only through grace. What the Fall into sin did in
this view was to sever humanity’s connection to its supernatural ends, while
leaving the ability to pursue natural ends basically intact. Thus redemption is
a matter of restoring the supernatural ends (grace completing nature) in the
individual Christian. Likewise, in a Christian society (such as the theocracies
of medieval Christendom), ecclesial government (directed at our supernatural ends) completes earthly government (directed at our natural ends).
By contrast, in the Reformed tradition (“Christ the transformer of culture”), both the severity of the Fall and the scope of redemption are given
a more dramatic understanding. The Reformed combine a deep pessimism
about fallen man with a profound optimism about the implications of
redemption. The Fall does not merely mean that humanity lost its orientation
to supernatural ends. It means “total depravity”: we are made enemies of
God, and all of our faculties are turned away from God. Not only are individuals turned inward and regard themselves as gods, cultural institutions
likewise assert their independence of God and glorify their own works in
idolatrous rebellion. In this context, nothing but a complete transformation of
the natural man can help. Grace does not complete nature; it fundamentally
restructures and reorients it, yielding new life in Christ. The transformationist
thinks that it is not only individuals, but cultures, that can be redeemed. So
there is an emphasis on reclaiming the culture for Christ, supported by means
and strategies such as Christian bookstores, Christian movies, and Christianized approaches to art, history, literature, government, and science.
The Lutheran perspective (typified by Niebuhr as “Christ and culture
in paradox”) agrees with the Reformed position that sin is a condition of
total depravity, but disagrees that Christians should aim to redeem culture.

63

See fn 23 for a succinct definition of "the two kingdoms."

29

30

Lutherans do believe that cultures can be changed for the better as Christians
carry out their vocation in the world. But they believe that such change is
temporary at best, and that we should simply aim to do the best that we can
for the people we are able to help and with the gifts that God has provided.
While individual Christians can exert an important influence in the political
sphere, it does not make sense to seek to Christianize government because
God’s left-hand kingdom is not a place of abiding hope (Ps. 146:3). The
unique and primary vocation of the church (which bears the Word) is to proclaim the Gospel in truth and purity and to rightly administer the sacraments.
The vocation of government (which bears the Sword) is to restrain evil and
uphold temporal order, thus allowing free passage for the Gospel. This means
that government is susceptible to two main errors: it may wrongly present
itself as an institution of salvation (as may happen in a state church), or it may
wrongly use force to attempt the impossible task of coercing faith, failing to
recognize that only God can create faith (Matt. 16:17; 1 Cor. 3:7). Earthly governments, therefore, provide a framework and context in which the Christian
can serve his neighbor and witness to the Gospel, but our ultimate hope is in
the kingdom that is not of this world (John 18:36).64

the plausibility of miracles depends on whether they can be made to fit in
current scientific theories, religious experience may be analyzed as something generated by “God genes” or “God spots” in the brain,65 and God must
create through the evolutionary process as presently conceived. We quickly
see that this model lends itself to the magisterial use of reason. Science and
Scripture exchange their actual status, disfiguring both: the Scriptures are
viewed as science should be (fallible and limited) while the latest science is
viewed as Scripture should be (ultimate authority). It also easily makes the
anachronistic assumption that Scripture speaks in the same terms as current
scientific theories, which may distort the true message of Scripture, set up a
false conflict between science and Scripture and promote misguided attempts
to “improve” Scripture. So far from saving Christianity by updating it, what
this model actually does is to accord religious veneration to the findings of
science (scientism) while deriding God’s Word as an outmoded relic of a
superstitious past.

c. Applying these models to the intersection of faith and science
When these five models of Christianity and culture are applied to the
intersection of faith and science, they yield strikingly different results which
help us understand the wide disagreement between Christians on these matters, and also help to elucidate what is distinctive about a Lutheran approach
to science.
A Christ against culture approach is liable to reject at least some of science on the grounds that its assumptions, aims, practices, and claims conflict
with allegiance to Christ and His Word. At a moderate level, this might
involve refusing to seriously evaluate or use particular statements, theories,
and technologies. A more extreme reaction would be to reject the work and
institutions of science altogether as idolatrous and godless diversions from
Christ. Either way, it is likely that Christians with this perspective will feel
uncomfortable about scientific work and this will disincline them to pursue
science as a vocation. Surely, something has gone wrong here. The legitimacy
of science is implicit in our original call to be stewards of God’s world: how
can we preserve this trust without knowing how nature operates? And if the
scientific vocation aims merely to serve the neighbor and not to usurp Christ
as Savior and Lord, there is no reason that it cannot be pursued by Christians.
A Christ of culture approach tends to reinterpret the Scriptures and
Christian doctrines restlessly in light of the latest findings of science. Thus

64

For a more extensive examination of the proper relationship between church and state, see
the CTCR’s report Render Under Caesar… and Unto God: A Lutheran View of Church and State (St.
Louis: CPH, 1995), available at http://www.lcms.org/Document.fdoc?src=lcm&id=360.

31

203

The Christ above culture model offers an intellectually impressive
response to the intersection of faith and reason. Seeing that God operates in
both the natural world and the human heart, and believing that grace completes nature, it naturally encourages the idea that the best human science
can be synthesized with the truths of Scripture. As Aquinas took Aristotle’s
cardinal virtues and synthesized them with the theological virtues, Aristotelian science was combined with Scripture. A more recent manifestation of
the same approach is the attempt to combine the Christian faith with neoDarwinian evolutionary theory.66 The fatal flaw of this approach is the way
in which it attempts to fuse the ultimate and the penultimate, the eternal and
the contingent, the infallible and the fallible. Simply joining Christianity with
the latest and greatest scientific theory is a bad idea because it creates the false
sense that the authority of the Word rests on that theory. So when Aristotelian
science was roundly rejected at the birth of modern science, it appeared that
Christianity itself had been discredited. Likewise, an increasing number of
scholars agree with eminent philosopher Thomas Nagel’s assessment that
the reductive materialism which lies behind the Neo-Darwinian paradigm
is “ripe for displacement,”67 as it offers no credible account of the origin
of biological information, consciousness, and the norms of rationality and
morality. Marrying Christianity with science is not only prone to producing
widows, it creates inappropriate pressure to make Christian teachings “fit”

65
For a survey and critique of such debunking accounts of religious experience, see Mario
Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the
Soul (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).
66
See, for example, Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common
Ground Between God and Evolution (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), and Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul (New York: Viking Penguin, 2008).
67
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is
Almost Certainly False (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 12.

32

2016 Convention Workbook