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H. Richard NiebuhrFor Niebuhr there are two parts to the question of finding meaning in Christ. First, belief in Christ means belief in God, “to be related to the One to whom he [Christ] undeviatingly points”. Second, and in the opposite direction, because Christ is the Son of God, so completely immersed in the perfect will of the Father, he becomes the “moral mediator of the Father’s will towards men.”1 Thus there is a double moral movement, “with men toward God, with God toward men; from the world to the Other, from the Other to the world.” Christ is “mediatorial not median… He exists rather as the focusing point in the continuous alternation of movements from God to man and man to God.”2

Niebuhr then moves to a consideration of the other half of the problem: how does one define “culture” so as to be able to usefully and accurately measure it against the given definition of Christ?

Curiously, having stated that he wants to work towards a theologian’s definition of culture (which will of necessity be a layman’s definition as a theologian is not a “professional anthropologist”3– an interesting enough assumption), then goes on to say that his theologian’s definition will be, curiously, without theological interpretation (as the theological interpretation is precisely that which is at dispute among the Christians).

Niebuhr begins his definition of culture negatively, saying that it cannot be identified with any particular society, and especially modern Western culture. From here he again negatively refuses to distinguish between “culture” and “civilization”. For Niebuhr, culture is “that total process of human activitity and that total result of such activity”. It is the layer of artifice placed upon the natural environment, and “comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organization, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values.”4. In other words, culture is everything we do and everyway we do it: a river is nature, a canal is culture5. This might not be a helpful definition.

Niebuhr Christ & CultureHaving done the groundwork, Niebuhr then sets out five types, possible answers to the enduring problem, and answers which have had varying support and success over the Christian millennia. The five types can be defined, following Timothy Gorringe, as Oppositional, Conformist, Synthetic, Dualist and Conversionist6, or, more memorably, and following Niebuhr himself, as “Christ against Culture”, “The Christ of Culture”, “Christ above Culture”, “Christ and Culture in paradox”, and “Christ the Transformer of Culture” (with the emphasis on, in most cases, the prepositions)7. With each type, Niebuhr gives an outline of its familial resemblances, some exemplars from Scripture and Christian history, and some critiques of its weaknesses (the thoroughness or otherwise of these critiques has lead to some of the greatest reservations expressed about the impartiality of the whole process). I will deal with each type briefly, as, it will be seen, I don’t propose to use them any further to develop my theme of priest as cultural interpreter.



This is part of a series of posts. Others in the series are:—
  1. KGH : Death to Herbertism
  2. KGH : Lin-Chi, the Curate and the Anglican Divine
  3. KGH : “…how many live so unlike him now…”
  4. KGH : The only thing I don’t run
  5. KGH : The Cult of Nice
  6. KGH : A little soft around the edges
  7. KGH : Herbertism Habilitated
  8. KGH : +ABC and the 3 Ws
  9. KGH : Witness
  10. KGH : Watchman — The Biblical imagery
  11. KGH : Watchman — Cultural Literacy
  12. KGH : Watchman — A Dissenting Opinion
  13. KGH : Watchman — Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture
  14. KGH : Watchman — Niebuhr and finding meaning
  15. KGH : Watchman — Niebuhr’s “Five Types” of culture
  16. KGH : Watchman — Niebuhr’s legacy
  17. KGH : Watchman — Not Niebuhr, but Barth
  18. KGH : Weaver — What is a “community”?
  19. KGH : Weaver — Bonhoeffer and community
  20. KGH : Weaver — Communities and Ethics
  21. KGH : Weaver — a human society unlike other human societies
  22. KGH : Weaver — Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together”
  23. KGH : Weaver — “Life Together” 1
  24. KGH : Weaver — “Life Together” 2
  25. KGH : Weaver — “Life Together” 3
  26. KGH : Weaver — “Life Together” 4
  27. KGH : Weaver — “Life Together” 5
  28. KGH : Weaver — The Head of the House
  29. KGH : Weaver — An insight from the Masai
  30. KGH : Weaver — Weaving, Worship and Worth

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  1. Niebuhr, Christ and culture, p. 28. [↩]
  2. Niebuhr, Christ and culture, pp. 28-29. [↩]
  3. Niebuhr, Christ and culture, p. 30. [↩]
  4. Niebuhr, Christ and culture, p. 32. Niebuhr acknowledges his debt to Bronislaw Malinowski’s article on “culture” in The Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, published by Macmillan in New York in the 1931. (‘Culture’, Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences Vol 4, pp. 621-646). [↩]
  5. Niebuhr, Christ and culture, p. 33. [↩]
  6. Timothy J. Gorringe, Furthering humanity: a theology of culture, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 14. [↩]
  7. Interestingly Stassen, Yeager and Yoder’s critique of Niebuhr included a previously unpublished essay dating from the years immediately before Christ and Culture was written in which Niebuhr was beginning to delineate these heuristic typologies (H. Richard Niebuhr, ‘Types of Christian Ethics’, pp. 15-29). There the categories are “The New Law Type (Christ against culture)”, “The Natural Law Type (Christ of Culture: the Accommodationist Type)”, “The Median Types— The Architectonic Type (Christ above Culture); The Oscillatory Type (Christ and Culture in Paradox); The Conversionist Type (Christ Transforming Culture). [↩]