Best of It: Definitions

[Series Index]

John Stackhouse lays out some important definitions to begin Chapter 1 of Making the Best of It.

Culture

Culture is the response we give to two "make" questions when thinking about a particular society:

• What do they make?
• What do they make of it?

As Martin Marty wrote, culture is "everything humans do to, and make of, nature." (14) So it is partly about the physical artifacts, but it is also about the meaning society gives to various actions. Niebuhr wrote:

Culture is the "artificial secondary environment" which man superimposes on the natural. (15)

Stackhouse wants to be sure we differentiate this understanding of culture from the idea of culture as "refined living" or "sophisticated tastes." He also highlights that even in relatively small societies, groups are differentiated within society, and caution is needed when we talk about dominant culture in a pluralistic society. Stackhouse doesn't get into the sociological distinction of culture and society (society being the community that has a culture) and says the two terms will be used almost interchangeably for this discussion.

World

Stackhouse points out that no word in either of the biblical languages translates as "culture." "World" is a term that overlaps with our sense of culture, but it is not identical.

Stackhouse reviews several Greek terms that are translated world. Some uses of kosmos probably come closest to what we mean by culture. It can mean "the whole of creation," "the world of humankind," or "the inhabited world." In some contexts, it clearly incorporates what we mean by culture. Uses of the term run the range of positive, negative, and neutral dispositions.

Church

Church can have a broad range of meanings, from sacred building, to congregation, to international denomination or the entire community saved by Jesus Christ. Stackhouse writes:

"…I will use the word in this central way: those who are committed as disciples of Jesus Christ and who band together as such. But sometimes I will mean simply the visible institution, the church as the society of those who nominally follow Jesus, however sincerely or insincerely they do so. I trust that context will make the pertinent definition clear. (18)

Kingdom of God

In one sense, God is sovereign over all, so all creation is the Kingdom of God. But here we are talking about how it is so frequently meant in the New Testament. Concerning "Kingdom of God" in the synoptic gospels, Stackhouse writes:

The Kingdom of God is where, we might say, God's ways are the way, and God's rules are the rule. The Kingdom of God is where God's judgment – which both assesses good and evil and restores them to their rightful places – has taken place, and shalom (peace, wholeness, and goodness) characterizes all things. The Kingdom of God is thus where God's authority is joyfully embraced as legitimate and welcome. (19)

God's reign is here but has not reached its fullness, so in this sense, he says the Kingdom of God is "already, but not yet."

As we move into John and the rest of the New Testament, we see other euphemisms for the Kingdom of God. John speaks of "eternal life." Paul tends to talk about "salvation." Because the "Kingdom of God" imagery is deeply tied up with Jewish culture, gentiles would not have related to the term, thus the need for other depictions.

The Kingdom of God in this sense, therefore, means the coming of God's salvation and the eternal life it brings – which is, indeed, experienced "already, but not yet," by all those who put their trust in God, follow his ways, and look forward to his eventual renewal of all things. (20)

Church and the Kingdom of God

The church is not the Kingdom of God. Stackhouse points out that individuals and groups within the visible church do not always follow Jesus. Some that may appear to be in the Kingdom of God are not. But then there are also those who we might not expect to be a part of the Kingdom of God who are a part:

Positively, in the view of many Christians (sometimes called "inclusivists"), there are people beyond the church who have put God first in their lives and are serving him as best they can. They have not heard the name of Jesus and thus have not joined the church as self-consciously Christian disciples. By God's justifying and renewing grace, however, they have responded in faith to the Holy Spirit's testimony in their hearts and to whatever revelation God has brought to them in their circumstances. Thus they enjoy genuine Kingdom life and are cooperating with God to reform the world according to God's values, however seriously their outlook and experience are compromised by their lack of exposure to the gospel of Christ and their lack of contact with the church.

Furthermore, the influence of God's Kingdom has been spreading, bit by bit, wherever individuals, groups, nations, and transnational realities have been influenced for the better. In our day, for example, the increased profile of universal human rights in national and international politics – with particular attention to women, children, and the poor (recognizing that women and children constitute most of the poor) – is an example of the spread of the influence of the Kingdom of God incognito, so to speak. It is obvious that the international order is far from Christian in its identity and conduct. In that crucial sense it is clearly not the Kingdom of God. Nonetheless, the Kingdom of God is partially and mixedly, but also really, present in the extension of these values into spheres previously not deeply shape by them. (21)

A final important distinction Stackhouse makes is that while there is considerable continuity with the Old Testament version of the Kingdom of God, there is also discontinuity, particularly in the political sphere.

The political dimensions of human life embodied in the Old Testament people of God are not directly manifest in the voluntary, spiritual community of the New. Indeed, the church carries on these dimensions in the quite different mode of encouraging the state under which it lives and the broader society in which it lives to realize as many of the values of the Kingdom as they will – even as the church also reminds the state and the society at large they are not the Kingdom, but are only ever a deeply flawed and conflicted approximation of the city to come. (21)

My Thoughts:

I suspect some of Stackhouse's definitions may be controversial with some of my readers, especially his thoughts on the Kingdom of God. The more I read about Second Temple Judaism, the more I think that Jesus had something not all that dissimilar to what the Jews had in mind regarding a massive resurrection, Israel being restored to greatness, and the Gentiles drawn into worshiping God. It is post-resurrection that the Kingdom of God begins to take on new textures. Some scholars I respect argue the Kingdom of God must be tied more specifically to the presence and action of actual communities intentional in their worship of God and would not consider the development of certain values and outcomes (like the emergence of human rights) to be an expression of the Kingdom of God. They see more of a one-to-one correspondence between "church" and "Kingdom of God."

With some qualification, Stackhouse's views correspond very closely to mine in these definitions. How about you?

[Previous] [Next]

Comments

[ceemac]

I would think that his ideas on the discontinuity between the OT Kingdom and the NT will be a challenge to those of us in the Reformed family. We have always looked to the OT for instruction on how to order society.

The whole city on a hill thing.

Obviously you have the Theonomists on the right. And the Jubilee folks on the left or the earlier Progressive dream of building the kingdom of god in a "Christian Century".

But on a more pratical level it's my understanding that if you look at the layout of the original Puritan villages in New England you can see that those plans were guided by the instructions to the Israelites on how to set up camp in the wilderness.

And that's the sort of stuff the drives Lutheran "2 kingdoms" christ/culture/paradox folks crazy.

[Michael W. Kruse]

"I would think that his ideas on the discontinuity between the OT Kingdom and the NT will be a challenge to those of us in the Reformed family."

"And that's the sort of stuff the drives Lutheran "2 kingdoms" christ/culture/paradox folks crazy."

Amen!

I think Stackhouse takes a position between some Anabaptist's embrace of disengagement and the "ushering in the Kingdom" via political action take of some reformed folks. That is certainly my perspective as well.

I also think it is appropriate to look to the OT for ethical instruction but the nature of the covenant morphs a bit with the resurrection of Christ and the creation of the church.

[Bill Crawford]

Seems like Kingdom of God is a political/ethical category, not a cultural one.

Does Stackhouse state the relation between Kingdom and culture?

[Michael W. Kruse]

"Seems like Kingdom of God is a political/ethical category, not a cultural one."

I think Stackhouse would say that the political/ethical is a subset of the cutlural (At least I would.)

With "Kingdom" there is a "King," and there is a "dom," or domain. The domain is the land, the people, and the political/ethical fabric that holds it all together.

"Does Stackhouse state the relation between Kingdom and culture?"

I'd say that is the core subject matter of the book. He will begin by revisiting Niebuhr's typology and three 20th Century realists but the back half is going to be his reflection and analysis on how the two relate.