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How Should Christians Communicate With Culture

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With all of these different types and ways Christians can interact with culture, a vital question emerges: How should Christians engage with culture? Like Christ against culture, should Christians shun culture and strive to exist outside of the world, like monks or the Amish? Or should Christians embrace culture like the Christ of culture perspective? Unlike those two polar opposites, the three median types recognize Christians cannot exist merely in Christ or culture exclusively, but rather acknowledge that the two often intersect during a person’s life. The dualist perspective, Christ and culture in paradox, in particular examines this phenomenon in a way that is easily understood. Unlike the others, this particular type provides space for …show more content…

He argues there are two kingdoms, one of God and the other of the world, and that the two are closely related. The two are related in this sense: Christ creates the community in which all action takes place, but he does not govern the actions or constructs where man carries out his work. In this way “life in culture is the sphere in which Christ could and ought to be followed,” but the rules for these actions are not always written explicitly in the bible (Niebuhr, 174). However, Luther also realized that being of two kingdoms brings about great tensions, he argues this is occurs due to the integration of technique and spirit. Spirit is defined as personal and eternal, the deepest thing in man, and technique as temporal, a habit or skill that is a function of the office or vocation a person has in society. The tension, or dilemma, is how should Christians combine a spirit of Godly faith and mercy to the techniques of man’s justice and anger. Luther proposes one solution is to mimic Christ’s strange work, expressing mercy to those in community and culture, yet “hiding” the wrath of God. But Luther also consents that no true solution to this dilemma can be found on this side of death

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