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Called to live in the world, but not to be of it, Christians must maintain a balancing act that becomes more precarious the further our culture departs from its Judeo-Christian roots. How should members of the church interact with such a culture, especially as deeply enmeshed as most of us have become?D. A. Carson applies his masterful touch to this problem. He begins by exploring the classic typology of H. Richard Niebuhr with its five Christ-culture options. Carson proposes that these disparate options are in reality one still larger vision. Using the Bible's own story line and the categories of biblical theology, he clearly lays out that unifying vision. Carson acknowledges the helpfulness of Niebuhr's grid and similar matrices but warns against giving them canonical force.More than just theoretical, Christ and Culture Revisited is also designed practically to help Christians untangle current messy debates on living in the world. Carson emphasizes that the relation between Christ and culture is not limited to an either/or cultural paradigm -- Christ against culture or Christtransforming culture. Instead Carson offers his own paradigm in which all the categories of biblical theology must be kept in mind simultaneously to inform the Christian worldview.While many other books on culture interact with Niebuhr, none of them takes anything like the biblical-theological approach adopted here. Groundbreaking and challenging, Christ and Culture Revisited is a tour de force.… (more)
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DAC's emphasis on our "perspectivalness" is most helpful (pgs. 87-104). We are all perspectivalists, influenced by our culture (p. 113). His defining of terms is also helpful and necessary (culture is "an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols..." pgs. 2, 69, 85, 205).
"Are Christians part of a larger culture (embedded in it and) called upon by God to be making contributions to this larger culture; or, is "the kingdom of God" the larger culture and the only way of looking at the Christian community's involvement in culture?" This helpful framing of the debate flowed out of pages 209-219 (and 98).
His thesis is that it is best not to restrict our responses into just one of five (man-constructed) possibilities, but that different situations call for the application of different biblical principles. We are to apply all truth concurrently, using discernment to apply the appropriate scritpture at a particular time, place, and circumstance (pgs. 42, 43, 45, 59, 60, 62, 67, 79, 85, 145, 172, 206). He would say that these different "man-constructed" possibilites are helpful, to help us grasp different sparkles of truth.