Is there a right answer? (part 1)

In his book about Christ and Culture, Niebuhr does not want to commit to one of the five perspectives to be the right one.

…one is stopped at one point or another from making the attempt to give a final answer, not only by the evident paucity of one’s historical knowledge, as compared with other historical man, and the evident weakness of one’s ability in conceptional construction, in compared with other thinkers, but by the conviction, the knowledge, that the giving of such an answer by any finite mind, to which any measure of limited and little faith has been granted, would be an act of usurpation of the Lordship of Christ which at the same time would involve doing violence to the liberty of the Christian men and to the unconcluded history of the church in culture.

Is this just a complicated way of being safe, and not making an incorrect? Does Niebuhr’s education make things so complicated that he resorts to “relativism”? Can the Bible, which Niebuhr’s liberal theology rejects, give us a clear answer to this dilemma?

I am not so sure. While I do believe that the inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Scriptures can give us a guide for our lives- even as we attempt to engage our culture as Christians- I think the world is very complicated.

Niebuhr gives us four reasons why it is difficult to be conclusive on how Christians should engage culture:

They depend on the partial, incomplete, fragmentary knowledge of the individual; they are relative to the measure of his faith and his unbelief; they are related to the historical position he occupies and to the duties of his station in society; they are concerned with the relative value of things.

As for Niebuhr’s first reason, even the most learned professor of theology and Bible would have to admit that their knowledge is “partial, incomplete, [and] fragmentary.” In fact, one could say that the more you know about any subject, the more gaps in your knowledge become evident. This reflects rule #1 about theology: you are not God. How can any of us know everything completely. Another name for this is the “creature-creator distinction.” If this is true, we should (at least) be very humble as we try to solve this dilemma.

Second Niebuhr argues that different people have different strengths of faith. In fact, we have different strengths of faith in different areas in which we believe. One person might be completely trusting God in the area of their finances, tithing faithfully each week, while uncertain of their acceptance by God in Christ. While another’s complete confidence in their acceptance allows them to step out boldly to love people in radical ways, while they constantly struggle with whether God will keep his promise to provide for their wellbeing. As this relates to how we should engage culture, we will see some people being very consistent and faithful in some areas as they engage their culture, inevitably they will be inconsistent in other areas. Thus we have to be careful in picking the people who are “correctly” engaging their culture- because we might see their inconsistencies at another time or area of their life.

The third limitation is that we are all enslaved to our culture and what it allows. When we look back in history and see how people approached their culture, they might also have certain limitations of their culture that hinder them from consistently engaging it. It is very easy to look back on any historical example and see their limitations as they approached their culture- but it is likewise unfair to judge them according to what our modern culture views as possible.

Last Niebuhr cautions our commitment to any particular perspective because of the relativity of values. I think this is a consideration of walking in another man’s shoes. We might be able to criticize someone for what they did or didn’t do, as they engaged their culture for Christ, but we have to consider that we are judging them by a different standard than they were. For instance, on this side of the Civil Rights Movement we might find it easy to criticize theologians who promoted slavery using the Bible. However, would we have been any different in their day? It’s easy for us to say we would be so- but no one else was saying that then. This is not to say there is no absolute truth, merely to consider how things were different back then.