Part II. The Synthesis of Christ and Culture

THE SYNTHESIS
his understanding of the meaning of Christ separates him from the cultural believer, his appreciation of culture divides him from the radical
There is in the synthesists’ view a gap between Christ and culture
No NT documents that clearly expresses the synthesis’s view; but there are many statements in gospels and epistles which sound the motif or which can be interpreted, without violence to the text, as containing this solution of the Christ-and-culture problem Amont them…”think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets I have not come to abolish but forfill them. For truly I say to you,….(matt 5:17-19 Render unto Ceasar (Matt 22:21) Tenative efforts to state the synthetic answer…fond in the apologists of the second century, particularly in Justin Martyr. Clement of Alexandria is the first great representative of the type. Who is the Rich man that Shall be saved Instructor The Miscelanies >>> To pg. 125 The Instructor… Jesus Christ is the Word, the Reason of God; his reasoning in practical affairs is for Clement like all good, soun reasoning. Hense the Christian ethic and etiquette of the Instructor corresponds closely to the content of Stoic handbooks of morality current at the time. Always seeks connection between his rules of decent, sober conduct and the example or words of Jesus Christ, but the reliation is sually a strained one The Instructor is concerned with training Christians to temperance, frugality, self-control. … A Christian, in Clement’s view, must then first of all be a good man in accordance with the standard of good culure. …Sobreity in personal conduct is to be accompanied by honesty in economic dealings, and by obedience to political authority. -- His Christ is not against culture, but uses its best producst as instruments in his work of bestowing on men what they cannot achieve by their own efforts. ….He exhorts them to exert themselves in self-culture and intelectual training, in order that they may be prepared for a life in which they no longer care for themselves, their culture, or their wisdom. p. 128. Clement’s Christ is both the Christ of culture and the Christ above all culture. Synthesis of the NT & the demands of life in the world is carried out by Clement not only with regard to ethics but also in connection with philosophy and faith. ..He neither seeks to reinterpret the figure of Jesus so to make him wholly compatible with the speculative systems of the day, nor does he reject as worldly wisdom the philosophy of the Greeks. It is rather “the clear image of truth, a divine gift to the Greeks” it is “a school-master to bring “the Hellenic mind” as the law, the Hebrews, to Christ God “admonishes us to use, but not to linger and spend time, with secular culture. Clements attempt to combine appreciation of culture with loyalty to Christ was made at a time when the church was still outlawed. It is more concerned with the culture of Christians than with the Christianization of Culture… p.128. Thomas Aquinas, represents a Christianity that has achieved or accepted full social responsibility for all the great institutions. Thomas also answers the question about Christ and culture with a “both-and” yet his Christ is far above culture and he does not try to disguise the gulf which lies between them. With radical Chrsitians, he ahs rejected the secular world. But he is a monk in the church which has become the guardian of culture, the fosterere of learning, the jduge of the nations, the protector of the family, the governor of social religion. - ---it is the secular church aginst which monasticism raised its radical protests in obedience to a Christ against culture. In his stystem of thought he combined without confusing philosophy and theology, state and church, civic and Christian virtues, natural and divne laws, Christ and culture. ---- p.130... We will concentrate here on the manner in which Thomas sought to synthesize the ethics of culture with the ethics of the gospel. The Christian--and any man--must answer the question aout what he ought to do by asking and answering a previous question: What is my purpose, my end? All nature as reason (that is, Greek and Sristotelian reason, the reason of this culture) understands it, is purposive in character; known as creation of God, its character is revelatory of God’s purpose for man and of his requirements. When we regard this nature of ours with the reason that is both God’s gift and human activity, then we discern, Thomas is certain, that the purpose implicit in our existence---since we are made as intelligent, willing beings---is to realize our potentialities completely, as intellects in the presence of universal truth and wills in the presence of universsal good, “Nothing can set the will of man at rest but universal good, which is not found in anything created, but in God alone. Hense God alone can fill the heart of man. So far Thomas is a Christian Aristotelian who has reproduced the philosopher’s argument for the uperiorority of the contemplative life to the practical but has named the object of intellectual vision God. !!He has enthroned the monastic life, not as a protest against he corrupt world, but as an effort to rise above the senivle and temporal world to contemplation of unchaning reality. What man can gain in his culture and by culture of God’s original gifts in creation is only an imperfect happiness. Beyond that lies another end in eternity for which all striving is an inadequate preparation. The attainment of that ultimate happiness is not within the atainment of human possibilities, but it is freely betwoed on men by God through Jesus Crhist. As there is a double happiness for man, one in his life in culture and one in his life in Christ and as the former is again a double happiness, one in practical activity and one in contemplation, so the ways to blessedness are many yet form one system of roads. But now there is set before him through the gospel the other hapiness” exceeding the nature of man, whereunto man can arive only by a divine virtue involving a certain participation in the Deity…Hense there must be superadded to tman by the gift of God certain happiness, even as he is directed to the connatural end by supernatural principles, yet not without divine aid. Thomas understands fully---as many a cultural Christian does not seem to do---how superb and superhuman is the goodness required by the commands to love God with all on’e heart, soul, mind and strength and to love on’e negibor as one’s self…. He recognizes that were faith is absentit cannot be produced by an act of will and that the hope of glory attractive as it appears in lives animated by it, will not come as consequence of resolution. … Those who receive them share in Christ’s nature; they no longer live for themselves, but have been lifted out of themselves. Theirs is the active and effortless goodness of self-forgetful charity. However much men may aspire after these theological virtues, the Christlike living, they can only prepare receptive hearts; they cannot force the gift. And the gift may come to a theif on the cross before it is extended to the righteous citizen or the ascetic monk. p.135 The same sort of synthetic combination is characterisitc of Thomas’ theory of the law. Man cannot live in freedom save under law, that is to say, in culture…. But law must be true law, not derived from the will of the strong but discovered in the nature of things. Thomas does not seek to find a rule for human social life in the gospels. These rules must be found by reason. They constitute in their broad principles a natural law which all reasonable men living human lives under the given conditions of commun human existence can discern, and which is based ultimately on the eternal la in the mind of God, the creator and ruler of all. Though the application of these principles in civil law will varry from time to time and place to place, the principles remain the same. Culture discerns the rules for culture, because culture is the work of God-given reaon in God-given nature. Yet there is another law besides the law rational men disover and supply. The divine law revelaed by God through His prophets and above all through his Son is partly coincident with the natural law, and partly transcends it as the law of man’s supernatural life. Though Shalt not steal is a commandment found both by reason and in revelation; “Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor” is found in the divine law only It applies to man as one who has had a virtue implanted in him beyond the virtue of honesty, and who has been directed in hope toward a perfection beyond justice in this moral existence. p.136... On this basis Thomas provides not only for defense of the great social institutions, but also for their guidance in accordance with moral principles germane to their character. Private property, for instance, so supspect to the radical is justified for it “is not contrary to natural law, but an addition thereto devised by human reason. Yet reason, diserns that though the private management of eterior goods is a fair and just arrangement their use for purely private, egoistic ends is indefensible. Trade, involving profit, is lawful through nnot virtuous and must be governed by principles of fair price and abstention from usery; not simply because the Bible prohibits usury but because it is unreasonable to sell “what is nonexistent.” Government, the state, and the use of political power are provided for in similar fashion, for God has created man a social being and society is impossible on the human level without direction in accordance with law. Boyond the state is the church, which not only directs men to their supernatural end and provices sacramental assistance, but also as custondian of the divine law assists in the ordering of the temporal life; since reason sometimes falls short of its possible performance and requires the gracious assitance of revelation, and since it cannot reach to the inner springs and motives of action. The church, however, is also a double organization, the religious institution in the world and the monastic order. In Thosmas’ synthesis all thse institutions are so organically related to each other that while each serves a particular end each also serves the others. His fundamental conviction was that “the King and Lord of the heavens ordained from eternity this law: that the gifts of his providence should rech to the lowest things by way of those that lie between. Synetheis would not have veen as attractive as it was had Thomas not provided all aonlg the line ofor a certain indepenecne of each instution and of each individual, rational creature. When search later history for similar examples of the Christianity of synthesis we are hard put it to find adequate illustration so fthe time. p.138 Me>>>Christians lack of effort in pursuing difficult theological understanding and tasks