Dimensiunea socio-politică a

învăţăturii Bisericii primare

INSTITUTL TEOLOGIC PENTICOSTAL, BUCURESTI
2012-2013 (Licenţă, Anul III, Sem. II)

Conf. univ. dr. Corneliu Constantineanu

 Gospel and Culture:
An Introduction
 Culture is our environment
 we are in culture, and culture is in us
 “We are children of our culture”

 We are born into culture without choice.

It teaches us language, customs, a
whole way of life. It gives us a sense of
identity, belonging. Culture makes us
who we are.
 ‘Gospel and Culture’
is not:

 Objective analysis:
As though we can stand back from
‘gospel’ or ‘culture’, analyze them
and their inter-relationship from
the outside, and make use of them
for our purposes.
 ‘Gospel and Culture’ is:

 there is distinct tension for Christians vis-à-vis culture

– one that is true in any and every cultural context.
 A permanent paradox
 John 17: in the world… but not of the world

 A call to be disciples
 To walk in the world as faithful followers of Jesus Christ
 Gospel and Culture:
Theological dimensions:
 Creation
 What kind of world are we in?

 Redemption
 What is the divine-human story of which we are part?

 Eschatology
 What is the teleology, or ultimate purpose, of this story/journey?

 Ecclesiology
 What does it mean to be a ‘called and sent’ people?
 Changes in Culture Theory

 “Superiority of the Elite” -- those with

inherited land/title in society

 “Superiority of the Educated” -- those with

refined aesthetic perceptions and taste

 “Superiority of the Excellent” -- those with

‘a way of life’ more humanizing
 Theoretical Tensions

 Cultural Evolutionism -- all societies are

evolving. Some are more advanced, while
others are more primitive.

 Cultural Egalitarianism -- all societies are

unique. No particular culture is superior. Not
better; just different.
 Key Dimensions

 Group Identity -- Who are We?

Identity as a function of shared story

 Group Boundaries -- Us versus Them

Identity as a function of shared position

 Group Rules -- Our Way of Life

Identity as a function of shared behaviors
 Modern to Postmodern

 Modern Anthropology -- Cultures are unique:

clear boundaries and internally-logical systems of
social rules
 Modern to Postmodern
 Postmodern -- Cultures are hybrid: porous
boundaries and mixed social rules not necessarily
logical or consistent
 Cultural Imperialism

 Globalization = Homogenization?
 Cultural Interaction

 Globalization ≠ Homogenization
 Global vs. Local
Universal vs. Particular
 The Gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to give
ultimate loyalty to One Lord, who sets us
free to respond from within our particular
culture with ‘all our heart, soul, mind and
strength’

 No culture is unacceptable, and no culture is

absolute
 Church and Culture

 Church proclaims the Gospel of freedom from sin,

cultural hegemony, & imperial force
 Church nurtures a community where the dignity of
each person is valued & defended
 Church demonstrates an ethic of service and love,
not authoritarianism
 Church encourages local cultural creativity -- not
‘traditional’ only, but cultural creativity born out of
a people’s unique story...
Christ and Culture
by Richard Niebuhr
(New York: Harper & Collins, 1975)

A summary
 The Problem:
 the relationship between “Christianity and
civilization”
 This is a problem because we know Christ is perfect/sinless,
and if culture is man-made (as Niebuhr shows it is), and since
humans are imperfect/sinful, how can Christ mingle with
imperfection?
 This is compounded by the fact that there are verses in the Bible
that suggest we should be out of the world and also verses that
suggest we should be in the world.
 Definitions:
 ‘Christ’ - stands for the radical demands of Jesus who challenges
the culture - as the Son of God, he “calls into question the
values of culture because they are not ultimately important”
and he points people “away from the many values of man’s
social life to the One who alone is good; …from all worlds,
present and future, material and spiritual, to the One who
 Niebuhr’s 5 typologies:

1. Christ AGAINST culture: RADICAL TENSION

1. Christ OF Culture: ACCOMMODATION

1. Christ ABOVE Culture: SYNTHESIS

1. Christ and Culture in PARADOX

1. Christ TRANSFORMS culture

 Christ AGAINST Culture:
Radical Tension
 “culture” is identified with “the world” in NT
and so they are in radical tension: 1 John 2.15

 “affirms the sole authority of Christ over

culture and resolutely rejects culture’s claims
to loyalty” (45).

 “The counterpart of loyalty to Christ and the

brothers is the rejection of cultural society; a
 Christ AGAINST Culture:
Radical Tension
Strengths:
 “radical consistency and the striking
parallelism with what Jesus and the apostles
said about “the World” (34)
 The people who believe/adopt this way of are
the single-most reason why we can have
some sympathy for this view, says Niebuhr
(66).
 The people who reject the world “have not
 Christ AGAINST Culture:
Radical Tension
Weaknesses:
 this separation from world and
Christianity has never actually
been achieved at any time, nor
can we think that it can be;
 this kind of social critique is not
 The Christ OF Culture:
Accommodation
 In this view, men/women ‘hail Jesus as the Messiah
of their society, the fulfiller of its hopes and
aspirations, the perfecter of its true faith, the source
of its holiest spirit” . These people seek to maintain
fellowship not only with believers with also with
unbelievers:
 Representatives: Niebuhr refers to the Gnostics
as the first example of the ‘Christ of Culture’
position, namely, “that Christ is seen as merged with
the best available human insights and the already
acknowledged values of civilization” (35); it is
followed by the Renaissance and modern
 The Christ OF Culture:
Accommodation
Strength:
 People tend to feel that only those who refuse to
adapt to culture can make an impact on culture
(blood of martyrs). However, history testifies that
people were attracted to Christ also because of the
“harmony of the Christian message with the moral
and religious philosophy of their best teachers” Also
this group of people tend to attach themselves to
many positions in society where they have the
potential to make a deep impact in the lives of
people.
 The Christ OF Culture:
Accommodation
Weakness:

 “its failure to recognize that biblical faith and general

human wisdom are not identical” (36)

 Niebuhr’s biggest problem with this view lies in

distortion of Christ when seen with the intention to
make Jesus conform to the best of society.
 Christ ABOVE Culture:
Synthesis
 “…a careful and self-conscious effort to find a ‘both-and’ solution
to the problem” (38). Because of the universality of human sin all
human work depends upon the grace of God. It is because of this
constant need of divine grace that culture is to be neither glorified
nor totally rejected. There is always a priority of Christ.
 Representatives: the apologetic writers of the early centuries and
Thomas Aquinas . They stress that God orders culture, and thus
culture is neither good nor bad. When man sins, his rebellion
against God is expressed in cultural (actual) terms, yet that doesn’t
mean that culture is bad.
 Niebuhr notes, “They cannot separate the works of human culture from the grace of
God, for all those works are possible only by grace. But neither can they separate the
experience of grace from cultural activity; for how can men love the unseen God in
response to His love without serving the visible brother in human society?” (38).
 Christ ABOVE Culture:
Strengths:
Synthesis
 confident intermingling of the two realms

 the priority of Christ is affirmed

 the synthesis does not reduce Christ to the best in

culture
 culture cannot do the work of grace for salvation and
faith. Yet for other important purposes human
understandings of truth and value are reliable. (38)
 It attempts a fine balance between seeing Christ as
part of culture (as the incarnation), and yet being
 Christ ABOVE Culture:
Synthesis
Weaknesses:
 “it may lose its critical vigor, and thereby tie the church
to the world views and the philosophy of a given age”
(39)
 this position when pushed to its limit leads to the
institutionalization of Christ and the gospel.
 This is evident especially when this position can draw
attention away from the “eternal hope and goal of the
Christian” towards the “temporal embodiment” in a
“man-devised form.”
 Also, “they do not… face up to the radical evil present
 Christ &Culture IN PARADOX

Description:
 “The culture is an indispensable yet not
‘religious’ backdrop for preaching the
gospel. Since it is socially indispensable, it
has an authority of its own in spite of the
critique for ‘Christ’ (39). Culture is
insufficient rather than sinful.

 Representatives: Paul (by his paradoxical

 Christ &Culture IN PARADOX

Strengths:
 This view rightly capture the biblical
tension depicted for Christians in this
world. For man is “under law, and yet not
under law but grace; he is sinner, and
yet righteous…” recipient of “divine
wrath and mercy”.
 This is in fact a dynamic process, not a
static rejection or acceptance of culture
 Christ &Culture IN PARADOX

Weaknesses:
 this position becomes static; it is in that
the Christian loses the voice to say
anything meaningful in/to culture. It is a
position that leads us to accept culture
(conservatism) because we see in each
instance both wrath and mercy; and
because we see both, there is a danger
that we act in favour of neither.
 Christ TRANSFORMER of Culture

This group can be


described as ‘conversionists’
who have a more “hopeful
view toward culture” (191).
There theological conviction
 Christ TRANSFORMER of Culture

 In practice, this view means that we work in culture

for its betterment, because God ultimately had
some hand in human creativity, and it was good
(and can be good).
 We also work for its transformation because while
there is sin in culture, it is not all lost, there is hope
through Christ, for redemption of cultures.
 Furthermore, we would defeat sin not by escaping it
or fighting it directly (like focussing on the devil),
but rather with our eyes on Jesus, our desire to be
 Christ & Culture: A “Concluding
Unscientific Postscript”
 Niebuhr ends his book calling for decision. This
is not because he believes that the last option
is the best presented and most logical; on the
contrary he believes that the answers for the
enduring problem remain “unconcluded and
inconclusive” which could be extended
indefinitely (230).
 Saying that theory can go on and on, he
proposes that we move from “consideration to
action, from insight to decision” (233).
 Christ & Culture: A “Concluding
Unscientific Postscript”
 Niebuhr is not appealing for simple/un-critical
social action. He proposes an awareness of
three things to guide our action:
 Niebuhr argues that we need to be aware of the
relativism/culturally conditioned nature of our
actions.
 He says that since we have “partial, incomplete,
fragmentary knowledge” we need to have a
measured opinion (not be too optimistic) about our
ability to be involved in culture for the Lord.
 Christ & Culture: A “Concluding
Unscientific Postscript”
 Also Niebuhr stresses that we do not act alone,
or for ourselves alone. Rather, we act as
believers, for a higher purpose, to act in the
present moment (history) with real
consequences and results alongside eternal
reward.
 Christ & Culture: A “Concluding
Unscientific Postscript”
 The way out of this relativity, and our action,
Niebuhr rights states, is faith. In light of Jesus
Christ, we make our “confessions and decisions
both with confidence and humility which
accepts completion and correction and even
conflict from and with others who stand in the
same relation to the Absolute” (238). This is
because “faith in the Absolute, as known in and
through Christ, makes evident that nothing I do
or can do in my relative ignorance and
knowledge,… right without the completion,
 Christ & Culture: A “Concluding
Unscientific Postscript”
 In his final paragraph Niebuhr says,
“To make our decisions in faith is to make them
in view of the fact that no single man or group
or historical time is the church; but that there is
a church of faith in which we do our partial,
relative work and on which we count. It is to
make them [our decisions] in view of the fact
that Christ is risen from the dead, and is not
only the head of the church but the redeemer
of the world. It is to make them in view of the
 Critique of Niebuhr:
Shortcomings:
 Strictly Western cultural references

 Abstract universals, not concrete realities

 Produces ‘reified’ view of culture

 Bias for ‘Christ transforming culture’

 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder (Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of
Christ and Culture. Nashville: Abingdon, 1996)
 “Niebuhr affirms that each of these five positions,
especially each of the last three, has its strong points and
that each is needed on the Christians scene” (41)
 And since all human wisdom is limited and humility the
chief of all virtues we should definitely adopt a pluralist
stance. Though, somehow ironically, we should rejoice in the
pluralism of position we find today expressed in the church
– affirming in this way the unity of the church – Niebuhr
has a definite preference for the ‘transformation’ type and
calls for serious challenge of the ‘radical’ position!
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
 “Thus to summarize the core argument of the
book, Niebuhr is saying, with careful refinement
and pluralistic respect, ‘Jesus would have us turn
away from all culture, but we prefer not to do
this because of our more balanced vision of the
values of nature and history. Yet in out
affirmative attitude to ‘culture’ we do want to
continue to show some respect for the criticism
(or the ‘transformation’) which flows from Christ’s
critical attitude toward it.’” (42-43).
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
 The main criticism that Yoder finds with this position is
that Jesus became “one of the poles of dualism.” (43) It
is not anymore Jesus as Lord, who judges the culture but
we do. WE even decide whether or not should give
allegiance to Him:
 “It is we, the modern practitioners of Christian ethics,
who shall judge to what extent we give our
allegiance to him and to what extent we let his critical
claims be conditioned by our acceptance of other
values, within the culture, which He in principle calls us
to turn away from. We also are in charge of defining
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
How do “Types” work?
 A typology is offered as a serious aid in establishing a
classification of entities or events, which will throw some
needed light on the very nature of those things classified,
or on the logic of how they “world’ in the mind or in
cultures” (45)
 “The thesis which underlies my critique is the growing
impression that Christ and Culture has regularly led its
readers to make too much of the normative rigidity of
the five-type model.” (47) –
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
The Inner Structure of C&C
 …his position clearly partisan, clothed in and
carried by the pluralism of his presentation. He
speaks with enormous authority, giving grades to
every figure of church history with an air of great
clarity and certainty, and thereby impresses his
readers as enormously competent. (52)
 …a strong partisan argument in favor of the
‘transformationist’ position as the only one which is
correctly balanced in its weighing one side against
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
There are two other limitations in the argument.
 First, N. defines culture as “monolithic” and judged
everyone by the consistency with which they respond
to the entire ‘bloc’ of culture.
 “For this consistency to be a logical flow, as it is reported to
be, ‘culture’ must be assumed to be a single bloc, which an
honest and consistent approach would either reject entirely
or accept without qualification; you must either withdraw
from it all, transform it all, or keep it all in paradox.
Niebuhr cannot conceive of, much less respect, a position
which would not make a virtue of such consistency” (54-55)
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
 Second, for N. culture is also autonomous.
 “It is a necessary presupposition of the entire argument that
the value of culture is not derived from Jesus Christ but
stands somehow independently of him. It is independent of
Jesus Christ in the orders of both being and knowing.” (55)

 The whole argument then depends completely on

these two assumptions neither of which is stated or
argued from the outset!
 Yoder observes that N. is not consistent in his use of
the definition of culture throughout the book and
that there are not accurate descriptions in the
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
The Meaning of ‘Christ’
 “Jesus is first of all seen as a moralist. He is a teacher of human
values who affirms the transcendence of the spiritual and
therefore condemns concern for the world. .. He does not
condemn it [culture] at all. He simply ‘points away from’ it
towards something else incomparably more important. ‘In his
single-minded direction toward God, Christ leads men away
from the temporality and the pluralism of culture.’” (59)

 However, the portrait of Jesus he offers has nothing

from the meaning of Jesus one finds in the main
stream of Christian tradition: as the Son of God
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
The Standards in C&C and in the NT
 “…N. has made room for his freedom to follow other
standards of ethical decision than ‘Christ’” (66)

1. The first and perhaps the most basic implicit

assumption, …, is that it is the responsibility of
the ethicist to stand within the ‘main stream’ of
his own religious civilization. … assumption of
the necessity of managing society from the top
and his identification of political control of
‘culture’.
 Critique of Niebuhr:
by John Howard Yoder
 The book C&C is thus an intentional mix of two
modes of approaches to the experiences it reviews:
 Partly it exemplifies a ‘tolerant’ or
‘pluralist/descriptive’ style according to which all
five ‘types’ are in some sense ‘right,’ all are
needed, the interaction of them all being truer than
any one standing alone; and no one view should
claim to be right; yet
 Partly it represents a ‘directional’ or ‘dialectical’
view, according to which the fifth pattern
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
Christ & Authentic Transformation
 “Our appropriate response to the book as a whole will
then not be to choose one of the other ‘type’ postures, as
N. had set tem up, and to argue for its being right. Our
response should rather be to ask how the preferred but
insufficiently defined notion of ‘transformation’ should
in its turn be transformed, so as to take account
adequately rather than inadequately of the element
which N.’s last and best position … claims to have
included. We therefore need to ask what would be the
criteria and the prerequisites, if Christ were
authentically to transform culture. Without making these
criteria substantially clear, to talk of ‘transformation’ is not
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
Christ & Authentic Transformation
The Christ of the NT: Authentic Transformation

A. The humanity of Jesus of Nazareth was a cultural

reality. … disciples who follow him faithfully are also
within culture.

B. The church of the NT confessed that Jesus was Lord

over the “principalities and powers.” … Paul spoke of the
tendency of human civilizations toward claiming autonomy
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
Christ & Authentic Transformation
C. The cultural stance of the Christian church according to NT
will therefore not be a matter of seeking for a strategy to
be applied uniformly, either accepting or rejecting (or
paradoxing or transforming) all of ‘culture’ in the same
way. It will and should proceed precisely by denying
such a global character to culture, and will move rather
by discrimination:
Some elements of culture the church categorically rejects
(pornography, tyranny, cultic idolatry). Other dimensions of
culture it accepts within clear limits (economic production,
commerce, the graphic arts, paying taxes for peacetime
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
Christ & Authentic Transformation
D. Where there is opposition between the claims of
Christ and the claim to autonomy of given cultural
value – i.e., when it claims our ultimate loyalty,
making itself an idol – then the Christian church and
the individual disciple must reject that claim, even
at the cost of some sacrifices. … taking the kind of
position which N. calls ‘radical’ and ‘sectarian’. (70)
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
Christ & Authentic Transformation
E. Where there is rebellion of some segments of
‘culture’ against God and authentic human well-
being, so that Christians are called to withdraw from
certain dimensions of the larger society and
civilization, the NT still affirms that the world continues
to be under the Lordship of Christ. … (Rom. 13).
…The task of the church is, it follows, not to try to
seek to take over the rebellious world on its own
terms through shrewd scheming or naïve
compromise, nor are Christians reduced to the
position of the irrelevant ‘gadfly’ or ‘prophetic
minority’ resigned to getting no hearing. The
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
Christ & Authentic Transformation

F. Where the rebelliousness of a given element of

culture can be overcome, where its tools can be used
Christianly, it should and will in fact be the Christian
whom we should expect to find being most creative.
(71)
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Social Shape of Moral Judgment in the Church
 Yoder concludes his analysis by “suggesting an
alternative set of assumptions on the level not so
much of ethical notions as of social forms and
processes …with a view to their functioning as
criteria to evaluate the authenticity of the call to
transformation.” (71).
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Social Shape of Moral Judgment in the Church

1. The Church Assumes That The Will Of God May Be

Known
 “The task of the intellectual in the faith community is
then …to analyze the communal quality of obedience,
so as to demonstrate the difference between
wholesomely complementary diversity and counter-
productive contradictions.” (72)
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Social Shape of Moral Judgment in the Church

2.The Church Assumes That The Will Of God Can Be

Done

 Faith ‘transformation’ is no an unreachable ideal.

…The possibility of obedience is therefore a
statement not about our own human capabilities, but
about the fullness of the humanity of Jesus and
the believers’ identity with Him through the Spirit
in the church. (72-73)
 To bring this axiom to bear on real decisions will
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Social Shape of Moral Judgment in the Church

3. The Church’s Consistency Is Its Being A Fellowship Under

Christ’s Lordship
 The consistency which count is the concrete community
process of discernment, as that community converses, in
the light of the confession “Christ is Lord”, about
particular hard choices. (74)
 The tension will not be between a global reality called
‘culture’ on one side and an absolute spiritual distance
called ‘Christ’ (or monotheism) on the other side, but rather
between a group of people defined by a commitment to
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Social Shape of Moral Judgment in the Church

4. The Church Is The Locus Of The Process Of Decision

5. The Church Functioning Within Society Is A New Cultural

Option
 The distinctness of the church from the rest of society
means that Christians will be making their moral decision
on grounds which not all men and women will apply.
(75)
 It is this specificity of the church as a new phenomenon
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Social Shape of Moral Judgment in the Church

6. The New Form Of Culture Is Concrete

 What needs to be transformed is actual ways of living,
working, relating, and not merely our ways of thinking
about them. (75) N. provides no reality test. (76)

7. The Lordship Of Christ Must Be Proclaimed As Judgment On

Idolatry
 The judgment of God on the Lordship which the Powers claim is
not destructive but merciful. It redeems (‘transforms’) the
Principalities and Powers* [Note 114. Ever since I translated H.
Berkhof’s Christ and the Powers, Pauline thought about the
powers has seemed clearly to offer the clearest alternative
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Social Shape of Moral Judgment in the Church

8. The Church-Specific Structures For Decision Making

 Normatively and normally, the body of Christ actualizes the
plurality of members and charisms, thereby attaining a
credibility such as cannot be claimed for the ‘established’
traditions where a ruler, a professor, or a priest makes
decisions for the community by virtue of his office. (76)

9. The church needs a canonical foundation

 The concept of ‘canon’ does not assume any special view of
how to read the scriptures, or how to construct behind the
scriptures one’s notion of ‘Christ’. The issues at stake is not a
doctrine of Scripture but the principle of accountability. (77)
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
An Alternative

 From Yoder’s analysis so far it is clearly that he cannot

offer ‘a new typology of Christ and Culture’. He blames
N. for the way he put his question and the beginning of
the book, by his own definitions of ‘Christ’ and ‘Culture’ –
predisposed to his own view on the history of the
problem – that cannot bring right answers.

 Yoder challenges especially N.’s way of attributing the

formal qualities of ‘culture’ as ‘autonomous’ and
‘monolithic’ – as if we can give the same answer to each
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
An Alternative

 Instead of refuting every step N. has taken, and the

way he has shaped the problem, Yoder proposes a
few remedial steps that, he hopes, will give a better
way to handle the whole question of C&C, “by taking
account expressly of the pitfalls he has helped us to
identify” (84):
 how does the Bible deal differently with the ‘autonomy’
challenge?

 how does the Bible deal differently with the ‘monolithicity’

challenge?

 How does the Bible deal differently with monotheism’s being

 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Lordship of Christ

 The way Yoder tries “to restate the Gospel, as it

relates to our cultural obedience to Christ’s
Lordship” is by giving “a list of five cases, five
texts, from five different authors in five different
settings,” highlighting how the biblical writers
responded to the world around them with the
proclamation of the gospel. Yoder stresses that:
 In each of those five cases, the apostle faced the
challenge of how to affirm Christ’s Lordship in the face of
a value structure, or a power structure, or a meaning
system, which denied that Lordship. The five cases are
utterly independent of one another in vocabulary,
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Lordship of Christ
 John 1:1-14 uses the language of the Gnostics to
reject the Gnostic strategy of putting Jesus in the box of
a prior cosmological commitment. The writer does that
with special reference to Jesus’ humanity and his being
rejected by ‘his own’.
Hebrew 1: 1 – 2:9 uses the language of cosmology
interested in priests and angels mediating between God
and humankind, but places Jesus above rather than
inside that ladder, accentuating again his humanity and
his suffering (85)
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
The Lordship of Christ

 The message is always the same.* [Note 133, from

priestly Kingdom, p.53:
 (a) the writer appropriates the language of the host
culture;
 (b) he places Jesus above the cosmos instead inside
it;
 (c) what makes Christ Lord is the Cross;
 (d) the reader is called not to glory but to
discipleship;
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
“Principalities & Powers”

 WHAT THE PULINE LITERATURE SPOKE ABOUT UNDER

THE HEADING “PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS”. The
thesis is now well established* [Note 134, pp.283 –
Earlier sketchy statements be Berkhof, Caird, Rupp,
MacGregor, and applied by Jacques Ellul have now been
followed up encyclopedically in three volumes by
Walter Wink] that even though the textual basis for any
synthesis is thin, [see Berkhof for a dozen texts gathered
and exposited], a solid and consistent world view
underlines these texts.
 It is said about these ‘entities’ at the same time that they
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
“Principalities & Powers”
 It was again Paul, but this time the Paul of Acts, who
faced the challenge of testifying in public address to a
pagan audience about the impact of Christ. In Lystra
(chapter 14), where a healing wonder had already caught
the crowd’s attention, he set his “News” about the God
(who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all
that it in them) within his audiences’ world view of
parallel cultures: (he allowed all the nations to follow their
own ways), and of reliable cyclical nature (giving you
rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with
food and your heart with joy). Yet in so speaking Paul
insisted that the proper response to this benevolent
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
“Principalities & Powers”
 Yet none of this creative readiness to meet his audience
in their own terms diluted Paul’s (original Jewish)
radical monotheism, his affirmation of God’s creating
all things and governing history, his rejection of graven
images and sacrifice, and the final call to repentance in
the name of Jesus whom God had raised from the
dead.(87)
 In these [7] passages this monotheistic critique is affirmed
in a culturally relevant way, in the language of the listeners
or readers. It is in no way obscurantist or ‘sectarian.’ Yet to
this is always added the reference:
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
“Principalities & Powers”
 What is quite absent in all of the NT is any trance
of the Niebuhrian assumption that the pagan
cosmology as a whole must be responded to
somehow as a monolith, wither affirm it all, reject it
all, synthetizing with it all, or paradoxing it all.
What Paul and the other NT authors do is always
to transform, but the transformation always has
firm material criteria. It takes account of:
 the Jewishness of Jesus (affirming creation and providence,
rejecting graven images and sacrifice) of

 the humanity of Jesus (especially his proclamation, his

 Yoder’s Response to C & C
“Principalities & Powers”
 The call for discernment as to what constitutes authentic
transformation invites us then to come up with criteria of
at least two kinds.
 One kind will be procedural. How should believers
proceed, in complex settings and in the face of major
moral challenges, to make discussion about cultural values?
What agencies, what institutions, should we use?
 The other half of the criteria question will be substantial.
What is culturally good? What obligations and
prohibitions follow from being a family? From being a
 Yoder’s Response to C & C
“Principalities & Powers”
 Following Yoder’ critique of, and extremely nuanced
response to Christ and Culture, it follows that we
should ‘name’ and ‘unmask’ the ‘powers’ of culture
(social evil/sin) vis-à-vis specific Christian doctrines
(i.e. ‘exclusion’ of ‘the other’, nationalism,
‘individualism’, ‘selfishness’, indifference’, etc.) and
only then try to decide, concretely [“each setting,
each event, each relationship will open for us a set
of options or challenges, where we shall need to
decide how to love our enemies…” (Yoder, Authentic
Transformation, 89)] how to ‘engage’ the powers,
i.e. how to love our enemies, how to keep our
 Niebuhr’s Enduring Value

 Culture Formation
 Culture is always social

 Culture is product of human achievement

 Culture is a ‘world of human values’

 No value-free cultures
 Every culture will fight for its values
 Culture concretizes value choices

 Culture is always plural in character

Christ and Powers
by hendrik berkchof
(Scottdale: herald press, 1972)