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Letter To America No. 2 - By Robert Kolb
Upon reflection of his recent experiences in Russia, Robert Kolb examines how Lutherans can relate to the world without retreating from it, more specifically how to "criticize our cultures withouth rejecting them...accepting their gives without idolizing them."
Letter to North America 2. October 2006
This summer I had the blessings of spending two weeks with Russian Lutheran pastors. The first week the brothers of the Siberian district of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria in Russia, the partner church of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod in that land, and their families were meeting near Lake Baikal, just north of the Mongolian border. The second week saw Ingrian pastors and pastors from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia and Other States from European Russia come together in Moscow. Both groups met to wrestle with the challenges of bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the midst of the specific culture in which God has called them to serve. Russian culture has a long and rich tradition. The Russian people have put God’s gifts to use in creative and imaginative ways. The music and the literature of the nineteenth century provide copious examples. The culture in which most of these pastors grew up, however, was Soviet-Russian culture, a culture that attempted through its political organs to eradicate Christianity. Many of these pastors have stories to tell.
Thus, these discussions proved to be a stimulating provocation for me to think more about the challenges of relating the message of Christ to our rapidly changing culture in North America. The Russian church leaders gathered to assess how the church and culture meet with the assistance of the classical study of H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (first published 1951), which defined the ways in which North Americans have discussed the place of believers and of the institutional church within society or culture for the past half century. It is a book that is thoroughly North American in its orientation, with a methodology given us by German intellectuals a hundred years ago. (That may explain why the book is about as unimportant beyond our shores as it is important in the U.S. and Canada.) Nonetheless, the Russians found that what Niebuhr described as the five options for the Christian relationship to the world around us had some parallels and application to their own situation.
One of Niebuhr’s options places believers in simple, stubborn opposition to the “world” and stands in danger of losing the insight into the goodness of God’s gifts within culture because of a single-minded concentration, usually driven by fear, on the evil that culture brings. Two of Niebuhr’s other options try to ignore the evils of culture, to a great extent, at least, and believe in a good deal of continuity and commonality between the church and the world surrounding it. The fourth Niebuhrian option strives to take over the world and make culture totally Christian. The Lutheran option Niebuhr labeled “Christ and Culture in Paradox,” attributing it to Luther, Paul, Marcion, and his brother Reinhard.
My own opinion is that Luther’s realistic biblical view of the relationship of the faithful and the culture is not paradoxical, as are indeed some elements of his thought. Luther simply recognized that what makes human life function and what makes a human being a human being is different in relationship to God than in relationship to his creation. That has meant that Lutherans have been able for the most part to appreciate God’s earthly gifts as part of their cultures and make thankful use of the specific gifts of their cultures while at the same time not confusing their own culture with God and his rule as Redeemer and Lord in their lives. Lutherans have, according to Luther’s view of life, lived in two realms and defined life as having two kinds of righteousness. This has provided us the framework for criticizing our cultures without rejecting them, for accepting their gifts without idolizing them.
Most Lutherans have been able to do that with some ease because they have lived in cultures that displayed some inner harmony with biblical perceptions of life. In the homelands of the Reformation in central and northern Europe, Lutherans have been the establishment or closely linked to it for a half millennium. In the immigrant churches of the Americas, Australia, and South Africa we have had friends in high places, even if we have not occupied those places ourselves. But in the other two kinds of Lutheran churches in this world, that comfortable coordination with culture has not provided the setting for Lutheran life and practice. In the mission churches of Africa, Asia, and Latin America Lutherans have sometimes been quite on the outside of the culture in which God has placed them. In the persecuted (first by the Counter-Reformation, then by the National Socialists, finally by the Soviets) churches of central and eastern Europe fellow believers had had practice at living as faithful disciples of God within a hostile culture. They have experience we need to understand.
For in western cultures of every stripe the temptation is coming to Lutherans to retreat into Niebuhr’s “Christ against culture” mode. That would mean a denial of the goodness of God’s creation in the midst of the evils that human beings visit upon each other and upon the gifts of God. That made my encounter with my Russian colleagues so valuable. They cite Dostoevsky and Gogol in sermons; they put Rimsky-Korsakov’s music to work; they are proud of what God has permitted the Russian people to give to themselves and others. At the same time they know the absolute necessity of not confusing the Gospel with any earthly allegiance or haven. They know how deadly for faith cultural corrosion and cultural corruption can be.
Among the challenges for Lutheran theology in all parts of the world in the early twenty-first century is that of finding ways in which we can continue to be critical of our cultures without condemning them wholesale, for that is a denial of God’s providential goodness as he supplies us with the gifts that our cultures bring. We must find avenues of serving within our cultures while maintaining the integrity of our message and our way of life, approaches which enable us to aid the cultural enterprises and endeavors of those outside the church with sharply critical assessment and biblical insight and acumen. The confessing tradition of the Book of Concord provides us with resources for the task and commits us to the hard intellectual work it takes to affirm our doctrine of creation along with out doctrine of salvation.
Written By: host
Date Posted: 1/10/2007
Number of Views: 620
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