The Bible On Culture

Lucien Legrand

Israel and Canaan: Emergence and Opposition

• Israel emerges from the wider Canaanite culture.

• Israel and Canaan share a common cultural and religious background.

• Yet, much of Israel’s identity was derived from its opposition to Canaanite culture and religion.

“In the biblical text, Canaan stands as a symbol of what Israel rejected with regard to the Semitic cultural background in which it originated. This statement can be taken both ways. Canaan stands, on the one hand for what Israel rejected, but, on the other hand, for the milieu that nurtured its growth.” (15)

A Biblical Paradox

Immanence Transcendence

Incarnation Judgment

Belonging Dissent

Protest

Belonging

“The transcendent God is also immanent. Incarnation and judgment cannot be dissociated. A witness to that God and fidelity to him imply that the prophetic protest against the unholiness of the world be expressed from within a total communion with this world.” (16)

Kings and Prophets:Culture and Counterculture

Kings =

Political Acculturation

Prophets =

Countercultural Protest

“A King Like All the Nations”

“It is not you they have rejected but they have rejected me as their king.” (1 Sam. 8)

Prophetic Counteraction

• Radical Resistance

• Cultural Dialogue

Elijah:

Showdown on Carmel

A radical all-or-nothing stance against the culture of Baal.

The Rechabites:

Return to the Wilderness

A life of strict separation and return to the past.

Amos:

Afflicting the Comfortable

Sharply criticized culture for its oppression of the poor. Hearkened often to the God of Israel’s wilderness past.

Hosea:

The Baal of Israel

Converts the language and thought forms of Canaanite religion in order to reject Baalism and present Yahweh as the true husband of Israel.

Isaiah:

Prince of Peace

Borrows royal language and motifs from the surrounding cultures to present his image of the Messiah.

Abraham and Moses:Call of the Beyond

Abraham departsMoses breaks free

“Land and itinerancy form the two poles of Abraham’s life and of Israel’s identity. The two aspects are well expressed in the opening verse of the patriarchal saga in Genesis 12:1: ‘Go from your country’: it is the call to follow a god who cannot be encompassed by any locality. ‘To the land I shall show you’: God will give the people his blessings and their identity in the earthly world he created. Like their ancestor, the descendents of Abraham will have to carry in their destiny and culture the two opposite aspects of the initial call. Belonging and transcending will characterize their attitude toward surrounding cultures.” (65)

“Thus are posited, form the outset, the two poles of a biblical attitude toward culture. The children of Abraham live in history and are deeply rooted in and committed to the reality of a world that has been blessed in creation and sanctified in incarnation . . . But the people of Abraham and Moses have inherited and continue to heed the call addressed to their ancestor by the God of the beyond. This call and their response in faith make them a prophetic people … Beyond the realm of created things, they look up at the ultimate. Through cultures but beyond them, they get a glimpse, ever so dim, of the glory of God.” (69)

Jesus: Marginal Jew

“Like the Pharisees, Jesus lived among the common folk and was one of them. Unlike the Pharisees, he sympathized with their forlorn situation … Ultimately, it was with those ‘accursed’ people that he identified best … A mixed lot of simple honest souls and of professed sinners, of poor people struggling to make both ends meet and of corrupt

publicans, they had this in common that they were more concerned with the cares of daily life than with theological issues … But this ‘marginal group’ formed the majority of the population and, in this sense, Jesus belonged very much to the mainstream of Jewish society.” (95)

• Jesus’ parables, “emerge from the subculture of the common Galilean folk.” • The language of these parables, though common, is “great.” “It took a genial creativity to reverse the traditional literary and theological codes and to make folk language the medium of the highest spiritual experiences.”

The words “anti-culture” or “counter-culture” do not do justice to Jesus’ vision. “Jesus did not identify with the opposition groups. His is an attitude of integral freedom. From within the culture he belongs to and in which he was born, he transcends the cultural as well as the countercultural set patterns.” Jesus would probably better be known as “trans-cultural.” (112)

Paul: Both Jew and Greek

Paul was the product of “hybrid culture” – Hellenistic Judaism – a mixture of Jewish and Greek thought.

•Was Jewish. Trained by the Pharisee Gamaliel.

•Also a Roman citizen by birth. Raised in a Hellenistic city. An able Greek writer and rhetorician.

• Paul the Jew was devoted to his people, yet saw that the glory of all cultures – even Jewish culture – fell short of God’s glory.

• Paul the Roman did much to convert the language of Christianity to meet the urban, introspective, Hellenistic mind. Yet he squarely confronted Greek wisdom with the foolishness of the cross.

• The view offered by Paul in his letters is black-and-white, showing the discontinuity between the new age that has come in Christ and the old order of things. “Paul’s theological outlook is commanded by an apocalyptic contrast between good and evil.”

• Whereas, the view offered by Luke in his gospel and Acts emphasizes the openness of the nations to the gospel, and is “more likely to see the points of convergence between the gospel and the Gentile world.” The most notable example being Luke’s account of Paul in Athens (ch. 17).

Conclusion

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1Cultural Reality: Cultures are plural

Biblical Response: Communion: Embracing the richness of God’s family

Cultural Reality: Cultures are ambivalent (mixture of good and evil)

Biblical Response: Prophetism: Confronting culture with the holiness of God

Cultural Reality: Cultures are limited (by our humanness)

Biblical Response: Eschatology: Looking beyond culture to the fullness of time