Culture in the Christian Worldview: Part I

This is the first in a three-part series on Culture in the Christian Worldview, outlining the framework for what I hope this blog will do; connecting faith and art, and engaging critically with what we read and watch.

Part I: The Creation of Culture turns to Genesis, looking at where culture has come from.

Part II: The Current State of Culture considers the place of culture after the Fall, in our own day.

Part III: The Christian and Culture unpacks why and how Christians might engage with culture.

Part I: The Creation of Culture

God Speaks

From the opening of Scripture, words are associated with creativity. God makes the world by speaking it into being:

‘And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.' (Genesis 1:3)

God's speech is efficacious, meaning it produces exactly its desired effect. His authoritative words call the Universe into existence, giving it structure and order as God delineates his world (cf. Psalm 33:6-9; Isaiah 55:10-11). It is also through speaking that God names his creations, giving everything he makes a function and purpose:

‘God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.’ (Gen. 1:5a)

The fabric of reality, then, is thoroughly literate and word-centric. Words are not the result of evolved grunts or communicative chemicals, but a system of understanding made and used by God himself. The New Testament casts more light on this. John’s Gospel opens by recognizing Jesus as the Word, fully God and with God at the beginning of creation as an active agent:

‘All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.’ (John 1:3)

The Word, or ὁ λόγος (logos) in Greek, means more than just speech, but encompasses the divine, unifying explanatory thread woven through everything. By naming Jesus as the Word, John recognizes that Creation has been made in a way that is not only logically and rationally consistent, but knowable - even personal. Things only make sense because Jesus made them all, and made them with the same design language (so to speak). Order, meaning and purpose are therefore not abstract concepts or arbitrary laws of nature but hardwired into reality by their Creator. God has given his world meaning and a consistent purpose.

Colossians 1:17 maintains that just as the Word created everything, so too does he sustain everything: ‘in him all things hold together’. Everything is dependent on God, and bears the stamp of its maker. Colossians 1:17 also tells us the common purpose of Creation: it is all ‘for Jesus’. Everything that is was made by Jesus, is sustained by Jesus, and shares the end of glorifying Jesus. Jesus truly is ‘the Alpha and the Omega’ – the origin and endpoint (or telos) – of all things (Revelation 1:8). Therefore, we can only hope to understand the world when we approach it in this way. Creation - all that there is - has been made to bring glory to its Creator, harmonizing to the singular chord of his praise.

Creation Speaks

Just as God is a speaker, so is his Creation. Psalm 19:1-4 tells us

‘The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech,

and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words,

whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.’

The world, both in how it has been made and the fact that it exists at all, demonstrates and magnifies its Creator God. And if this is true of inanimate objects, how much more so is this true of mankind! God creates man ‘in his own image’ (Gen. 1:27), giving men and women a unique dignity and role in God’s world. Our status as image-bearers has many implications, but one is highlighted early in the command God gives Adam and Eve:

‘“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”’ (Gen. 1:28)

Notice that this instruction, called the ‘cultural mandate’ by Christians, comes before the Fall. This tells us that work is not a bad thing at all, but part of our created nature. We are made for work, to bear fruit in God’s creation. This role of subduing the earth is more than gardening, but a comprehensive responsibility to add to the world. This looks like speech, as we can see when God invites Adam to name the animals in Genesis 2:

‘Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.’ (Gen. 2:19)

Only God can create something out of nothing, but here he calls his image-bearers to participate in Creation by speaking in response, echoing God naming Day and Night in Genesis 1. This is work, fulfilling an aspect of the commission to ‘have dominion’. Words, and therefore culture, are inextricably bound with the act of creation and adding to the world. All men and women are built to participate in Creation in this way, made with the instinct to add to God’s world with our own efforts, be that through physical works or through culture (art, literature, music, etc.). Indeed, the word ‘culture’ comes from the same Latin root as ‘cultivate’.

Culture is not a result of sin but a fundamental part of what it means to be made in God’s image. After all, it is in Eden that Creation hears man’s first cultural expression; love poetry.

‘And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones  

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman, 

because she was taken out of Man.”’ (Gen. 2:22-23)

Adam’s ecstatic response to meeting his wife is nothing short of music. This is a great example of how God’s creation inspires creativity from Adam, and how appropriate art is - it was there in Eden, at the first marriage. It is also right and proper to regard God’s act of creation as art too; God made something indescribably beautiful, with the purpose of causing wonder at its artist. That’s self-evident. As his image-bearers, God has given mankind the capacity to create after him, responding to his Creation with our own speech and expression. Thus, God’s good Creation is one that encompasses and inspires literature and culture.

The Bible Speaks

When considering how God speaks and makes himself known, one must of course consider the Bible. Throughout this article, I have quoted the Old and New Testaments because I am convinced that the Bible is the only authority for all matters of life as a Christian, and that through it, God has revealed his perfect will.

The idea that the eternal and infinite universe-creating God should make himself knowable is an astonishing and radical assertion we make as Christians. It is also quite remarkable that the chief means God has chosen to make himself known is by giving us a book. Surely, that confers a blessed dignity to literature. God has deployed the use of a range of languages, authors and genres in these 66 books, all with the same united aim of revealing his plan for salvation, and how we are to live as obedient followers of him.

With texts ranging from law, historical chronicles and biographies, to poetry, songs and personal letters, stemming from a spread of cultural traditions and languages, the Bible is a unique case study of how God uses culture to point to himself, and the beauty and practical function literature can serve. Not only do we learn about God through what he says but how he says it - the manifold of Scripture. It's not the case that the Bible is the least-worst option for God's communication to man. No! The Bible is a beautiful collection of books, each of which scintillates with the radiance of God's character. The spiritual, lyrical and historical patterns it lays out are unsurpassable. It is little wonder such a book should be so contentiously regarded, having been banned, burned, preserved, smuggled and having changed the lives of so many. It is the greatest book - the Book of Books.

Simply put, the fact that God chooses to use all sorts of literature to exclusively reveal the way man can be saved from Hell shows how beautiful, important and good literature is in God's sight, and how crucial it is that we approach it properly. 

Click here to read Part II: The Current State of Culture.