Theology and Culture

How can we speak about God without assuming that God is nothing but our own speaking, nothing but our culture's effort to name what cannot be named? How can we deny that our speaking of God is always culturally located? To answer these questions, we need to pay close attention to what we mean by culture, and how we use this very complex term both in our everyday language and especially in the language of faith. Culture is an exceedingly complex term that nearly everyone uses, but no-one is entirely sure what it means. This work examines various uses of the term culture in theology today. Long's insightful book seeks to push the theology and culture conversation beyond unexamined truisms and self-satisfied dogmas. In his analysis, he provides a useful summary of the contribution of Richard Niebuhr, but also suggests that in the light of the increasingly influential theology of Henri de Lubac, there is a need to modify Niebuhr's approach. In de Lubac's view, Christ transforms cultures, rather than standing outside them, and the dynamics of this transformation is now a pressing theological concern which transcends confessional boundaries.

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