Introduction. D. A. Carson Is Research Professor And Teaches

The first view that he talked about was the Christ or church against culture. In this view, Christ is perfect and sinless, while culture is manmade and imperfect. The church should not mingle with an imperfect society. Those who follow this view have a rejection of culture. This mindset typically creates a “Holy Group.” Which is one challenge with this view is that a “Holy Group” has never been achieved, but

“Christ and Culture in Paradox” is the second medial option between the extremes (i.e., it is the dualist version of “Christ above Culture”). It views human culture as a good creation that has been tainted by sin, acknowledging that there is sin is in all creation (including institutions based off a synthesis perspective). There is a persistent battle between God and humanity, representative of Christ and culture. As a result, there is tension in Christians’ connection to culture, having to both embrace and reject certain aspects of it due to their earthly and heavenly responsibilities. A person experiences Christ via interactions between both of these kingdoms, avoiding using the ideas and methods in one that are inappropriate to the other.

Each of the three authors of Struggling with Scripture expresses their own insight in an individual chapter of the book. Walter Brueggemann focuses on how the Church should maintain the inherent truths of the Bible, how they should feel free to faithfully interpret the lesser parts of scripture, and that Christians should fully love God and all of his people.

In his recent article for the October 7th issue of Commonweal magazine, David Bentley Hart highlighted how different the Christians of the New Testament are from modern day Christians. Hart’s article, titled “Christ’s Rabble; The first Christians were not like us”, argues that the first Christians were so different than present day Christians that we would have a very hard time getting along with one another if we meet today. Hart, a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies, came to this conclusion after in-depth study of the text of the New Testament in its original koine Greek. His work translating the New Testament for Yale University painted a clear picture of the character of the first Christians and underscored how far from the original meanings of the text we have come.

From when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 A.D. to the postmodern age, the Christian Church had varying degrees of control on Western society as an authoritative figure, dictating moral decisions and controlling mass culture. This cultural super-influence, of course, bleed into literature, music and film as well as everyday life. With the decline of believers, Jesus’ contribution to American culture has surely not shaken. The

This understanding of Schleiermacher’s religion will become important in our later discussion of the value of Christianity.

In Chapter one, “The Bauer Thesis: An Overview,” Rodney J. Decker orients the reader to the work of Walter Bauer. Though he summarizes Bauer’s other research and highly praises his lexical work enshrined in BDAG (p.9-10), Decker focuses the chapter on summarizing Bauer’s “paradigm shaping book,” Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. First, he sketches the broad outlines of Bauer’s thesis without entangling the reader within the minutia of Bauer’s arguments (p.11-17). Next, taking up the bulk of the chapter, Decker surveys several major responses, both positive and negative (but mostly negative), that have been leveled at Orthodoxy and Heresy since its publication, from the first critical response by H. E. W. Turner in 1954, to Köstenburger and Kruger’s book published in 2010 (p.17-32). Decker concludes the chapter by declaring, in the words of Darrell

In Kingdom Triangle, J.P. Moreland’s goal is to galvanize and to rouse Christians forward to take a lead against the cultural crisis of our age. In Western society, Postmodernism and Scientific Naturalism have taken root in almost every aspect of our culture. The mass embrace of these worldviews have lead many to a sensate view of reality. One of Moreland’s central points in Kingdom Triangle is that western Christians need to band together to regain intellectual ground, as in today’s society Jesus has lost intellectual authority both inside and outside of the Church. In short, Christians must learn to think.

After reading “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time” by Marcus J. Borg I realized that I myself have to find ways in loving and embracing Jesus differently than how I used too. This book is how the author addresses the yearnings of those who want a fully contemporary faith that welcomes rather than oppresses our critical intelligence and openness to the best of historical scholarship. The author shows how a rigorous examination of historical findings can lead to a new faith in Christ, one that is critical and at the same time sustaining. The author shows how an understanding of the historical Jesus can actually lead to a more Christian life. He looked at the major findings of modern Jesus scholarship from the perspective of faith, bringing

John Van Sloten sees outside the box of traditional church and welcomes cultural and creational influences to enrich and enliven the Christian church. He believes Christians confine themselves by constructing four walls and a roof and compress God by rejecting God’s presence in culture and creation. Van Sloten challenges the church to step back, evaluate its practices, and observe that there is much more to God outside its walls. Contemporary thinkers Nicholas Wolterstorff and Barbara Taylor would agree with Van Sloten in some ways but would also be wary of some of Van Sloten’s beliefs.

Niebuhr’s preferred solution to the problem. He wanted a position that could recognize the cultural corruption, but visualize its potential as an aspect of creation from which he called “Christ the Transformer of Culture” or conversionists (Bauder, 2011). The conversionists is concerned with “converting the values and goals of the secular culture into the service of the kingdom of God (Solomon, 1992).” In addition, the conversionists are concerned with culture renewal through Christ (Bauder, 2011). They transvalue their inherited cultural tradition instead of rejecting it they redirect, strengthen, and regenerate it (Lewis-Anthony,

Known as the father of modern liberal theology, Friedrich Schleiermacher was a German theologian, philosopher and biblical scholar who focused his attention on the nature of religious experience from the viewpoint of the individual and human nature itself (Mariña 3). Influenced by German Romanticism, Schleiermacher attempted to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional Protestant Christianity (Crouter 261). By doing so, he abandoned the pietistic Moravian theology that had failed to satisfy his increasing doubts and he adopted the rational spirit of Christian Wolff and Johann Salomo Semler. He then became acquainted with the techniques of historical criticism of the New Testament and of Johann Augustus Eberhard, from whom he acquired a love of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. As a result, he began applying ideas from the Greek philosophers to a reconstruction of Immanuel Kant’s system (Mariña 3). On this basis, this essay articulate Friedrich Schleiermacher’s understanding of religion and its relationship to Christianity as described in Speech I: Defense and Speech II: The Nature of Religion of his work On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. The essay will explore Schleiermacher’s rejection of various views of religion held by the despisers, explain his identification of the true religion with feeling and describe his view of the relationship between religion and Christianity.

Lohfink, Gerhard. Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. Kindle.

In his classic work Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr asserts that the relationship between earnest followers of Jesus Christ and human culture has been an "enduring problem."1 How should believers who are "disciplining themselves for the purpose of godliness" (1 Tim. 4:7) relate to a world whose culture is dominated by "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life" (1 John 2: 16)? Culture is God's gift and task for human beings created in His image and likeness. At creation humanity received a "cultural mandate" from the sovereign Creator to have dominion over the earth and to cultivate and keep it (Gen. 1:26, 28; 2:15). But sin's effects are total, and

However, this Pagan world contains the same “Slave morality” that Judean metaphysics claims, that Nietzche himself criticizes.