https://reformedlibertarians.com/022
Gregory:
This is episode TWENTY-TWO.
We’re discussing the broader cultural context of politics. I’m Gregory Baus here with Kerry Baldwin, and we’re talking about part 1 of the Reformed Libertarianism Statement, which outlines a basic view of what culture is, as part of the context for civil governance, and the Reformed libertarian view of it. In episode 4 we discussed subsection “a.” of part 1, and in this episode we explain more about the remaining subsections of this part.
Kerry:
We begin by highlighting several recent episodes in which some points from episode 4 are elaborated, and by summarizing again what “subjective sanctification of culture” is. We then address several questions that listeners might have about the other subsections of part 1 on culture. We talk about defining culture “as such,” about what activity isn’t culture, and about why the Statement mentions culture at all. We also say more about dimensions of the image of God, and elaborate on “reciprocal layers” of culture, communities and institutions, values and beliefs. We then briefly illustrate the reciprocal influence between layers. We mention the relation of cultural analysis to the study of historical process, and conclude with a word about so-called “cultural Christianity.”
Gregory:
In episode 4, among other things, we mention that Reformed libertarianism holds to a Neo-Calvinist view of culture, society, and civil governance. We particularly contrasted a Neo-Calvinist approach with two erroneous perspectives. The first erroneous perspective we mentioned was Scholasticism. We say more about Scholasticism in episode 19 on The Myth Of Religious Neutrality, and in episode 21 on Two Kingdoms And Christian Cultural Activity. If you haven’t listened to episodes 4, 19, and 21 yet, we hope you will. What we explain in those episodes should clarify how Reformed libertarian Neo-Calvinism differs in important ways from Scholasticism.
Kerry:
The second erroneous perspective we mentioned in episode 4 was Biblicism, and we specifically addressed a form of Biblicism known as “theonomy.” We say more about theonomy, and other theocratic views, in episode 15 on Can Christian Civil Government Be Theocratic, and in episode 18 on Politics And The Church’s Mission: What Should The Church Teach About Civil Government? Of course, we hope you’ll listen to those episodes too. What we explain there should clarify how Reformed libertarian Neo-Calvinism differs in important ways from Theonomy, including falsely-named “General Equity” theonomy. In a future episode, Lord willing, we’ll explain more about the problems with Biblicism generally, and with other predominant forms of it.
Gregory:
As a sort of preface to the following discussion of the rest of part 1 of the Reformed Libertarianism Statement, we thought it might be helpful to reiterate the idea of Christians’ subjective sanctification of their cultural activity. Cultural activities, even where there is no specific Scriptural teaching about a particular activity, are normed by God, and cannot be viewed or done in a religiously-neutral way. This is because one’s view of the norms involved necessarily depends (whether consciously or not) on a view of the basic nature of reality, which in turn is necessarily guided by an assumption of something as self-existent (which is a matter of attributing divine status).
Not only is the morality involved in any action only properly wrought from a regenerate heart of faith in Christ, in the way Scripture requires, unto God’s glory… but also, it’s only because of redemption in Christ that one can understand creational revelation (through the lens of all Scripture does teach) in a non-idolatrous way. Subjective sanctification of culture also involves increasing discernment of, and conformity to, the other norms for cultural activity revealed by God in creation. Our hope is that the Statement itself and the explanation of it in our episodes serves to edify you in your service to Christ with your whole life.
Kerry, The Statement speaks about “culture” in general, rather than about a specific culture or cultures. Why is that important?
Kerry:
Particular cultures can be un-like each other in numerous ways. But their differences are only “contrast-able” (or noticeably different) because they are also compare-able, or similar in some ways. So, for example, Croats, Greeks, and Turks, speak different native languages, but they are all speaking language.
So, part 1 of the Statement is attempting to summarize what generally makes any specific culture a “culture” categorically. We’re answering the question what “kind” of thing culture is, in a broad or abstract sense. In a way, almost all of human action or activity could be said to be cultural activity. And we’re describing certain general characteristics of human activities that qualify them as culture or as cultural activities in a basic sense. We’re talking about culture “as such.” And in that way the general description applies to all particular cultures.
In light of that, Gregory, What sort of human action, then, wouldn’t be cultural activity? In other words, the Statement gives a general description of culture… but, as opposed to what?
Gregory:
The main category of human action we have in mind as distinct from culture might be referred to as “cult,” (or cultus) –a word obviously related to culture through the idea of “service.” In this sense “cult” doesn’t refer to an authoritarian group, but to the distinct activity of worship. Categorically, we might say that worship or cultic activity is activity that is directed “vertically” (as it were), directed toward what is considered in some way transcendent, but also sometimes viewed as foundational for reality. This is, of course, why –in this technical sense– not everyone engages in cultic activity, properly or narrowly speaking. Not everyone believes there is anything it makes sense to distinctly worship in some way. And that’s the case, even if everyone is inherently religious (holding something to be self-existent) and inevitably worships in a broader sense of serving the ends of something they take to be ultimate, consciously or not. And this isn’t to say that various forms of worship in the narrow sense don’t have cultural elements. For example, if speaking or words are involved, those words will be the cultural product of some language. And even if the worship involves ecstatic utterances or so-called glossolalia (which is to say, just nonsense gibberish, and aren’t an actual language, as in Pentecostal or Charismatic worship), there’s a definite culturally-developed element of that practice.
We somewhat answer this in the very title and introduction to this episode, but… Kerry, Why does the Statement address culture and society at all? What’s the point of a statement on politics or civil governance commenting on what culture and society are?
Kerry:
One’s view of culture and society is the broader context in which any view of politics is set. Basically, this means that civil governance (and one’s view of it) isn’t really isolated, or “compartmentalized” from culture and society, or from one’s understanding of what those things are. Politics is an element of society, a particular community within it, and it’s a form of cultural activity.
If you fail to really think-through your political views in relation to a well-developed view of culture, society, and a more comprehensive view of human nature and the nature of reality… then, your politics will be largely unrealistic and inadequate for real life. You’ll have an uncritical, immature, and shallow view of civil governance and political reality. Inevitably, you’ll be blown-about by the winds of political doctrine. Evidence of this is nowhere clearer than in the phenomenon of so-called “ex-libertarians.”
So, in order to have a clearer and more coherent view of civil governance, it’s important to be clear about its societal and cultural contexts. And we can have a coherent view of these things, exactly because they are all part of what God has normed or ordained for human nature and human life. And God’s ordained norms are coherent; and He’s created a coherent reality; the created order. The fact that God has established a normative order for what humans are and how they should function, is crucial to understanding what politics is, and how we should “do” politics. And we understand this in relation to all the other particular kinds of God-given functions and callings we have as human beings –as God’s images, and as sinners, and as those redeemed in Christ.
Gregory:
And tho all people are totally depraved, guilty and corrupt in their core and so in every part of their natures, even nonChristians continue to be “God’s images” insofar as, by common grace, they retain a dimension of His image –is that right?
Kerry:
That’s right. And it’s not that the image of God is “rationality,” as you may have often heard. Humans are different from animals in human’s capacity for reasoning, of course. But we differ from animals in plenty of other ways too (for example, linguistically, socially, economically, aesthetically, morally, politically, etc). And you won’t find in Scripture the idea that “rationality” is the image of God. Rather, there’s the positive “Directional” dimension of God’s image in true righteousness, holiness and knowledge, that all humanity lost, that was totally corrupted and mis-directed in sin, but that is renewed and re-directed in those regenerated in Christ. This includes our central religious relation to God in Christ, and all the temporal expressions of one’s heart in what we (in more or less norm-conformity) think, say, or do. And there’s also a “Structural” dimension of God’s image, preserved in all sinners by God’s common grace, related to one’s being fundamentally religious (even if mis-directed to an idol), and to humanity’s official calling to cultivation and exercise of authority (even if in rebellion to God and in violation of His norms).
In episode 4 we touched on culture being based in religion. We spoke about Structural laws&norms, and relative Directional conformity to laws&norms, about the fall, redemptive grace (and subjective sanctification of cultural activity) and common grace (as well as elaborating on common curse)… Gregory, what more can we say about sub-section “B” concerning culture’s so-called “reciprocal layers”?
Gregory:
Cultural anthropologists sometimes speak of culture as including beliefs, communities, and behaviors. The model we introduce here elaborates that a bit. What we’re proposing is a way of interpreting God’s general or creational revelation about cultural activity, viewed through the lens of a Reformed understanding of Scriptural teaching. Scripture itself doesn’t teach a theory of what culture is. But all Scripture does teach can inform how we view what cultural activity is and means. And this model is just one way of approaching that topic.
At a surface level, more than just external behaviors that include cultural manners and customs, there are, obviously, also objects of human production, all the man-made artifacts, around us. But beneath that, so to speak, are various societal relations. We refer to “communities and institutions,” but societal relations also include inter-individual relations and inter-communal relations. And we elaborate more on what society is in Part 2 of the Statement.
Kerry:
What are some differences between communities, generally, and the particular sort of communal relations that might be referred to as “institutions”?
Gregory:
There are different ways to categorize all the different kinds of communal relations or communities, according to different “taxonomic” criteria. But we might distinguish “institutions” from other kinds of communities by either their normative design to include members for a large part of their lives, or to continue as organizations despite a change in members, or beyond the lifetime of members at any given time. A non-institutional community, in that sense, could be something like an association of friends who have organized to meet regularly for some activity, like sharing a meal, or poker, or exercise, or book-discussion. Although these can also be formed as institutions.
By a different criterion, we could also speak of institutions as those communities which God has more directly established by special revelation. Before the fall, God institutes marriage, and while no children had yet been born, also family. After the fall, with the establishment of the Covenant of Grace (in Genesis 3), God institutes His church, although the sort of institutional form it takes differs with the different administrations of that covenant. So, we can speak of the New Covenant institutional Church in particular. Also, after the fall, while implied by the creational norm of justice in light of sin, after the great flood, God explicitly institutes the administration of civil justice (in the Noahic Covenant, in Genesis 9), which authorizes or warrants communal organization of civil governance (but, importantly, not in a monopolistic form). And further, also after the fall, and specifically post-flood, God generally “re-institutes” a now modified (or common grace) cultural mandate that particularly authorizes or warrants free market or economic organization and activity too.
Kerry:
How about values and beliefs?
Gregory:
We distinguish some beliefs as “values.” This includes not only morality or ethics in a narrow sense, but also views of several other kinds of normativity related to human action. For example, values concerning biological health, psychological well-being, logical soundness and validity, historical development, linguistic clarity, social politeness, economic efficiency, beauty or aesthetic suitability, justicial fairness (or more particularly, civilly just proportionality), credible reliability or trustworthiness, and so on, among other so-called “axiological” valuations or judgments. In various ways, the communities we form both reflect and serve to promote given values. And it’s not hard to recognize how marriages, families, schools, hospitals, churches (as well as non-Christian religious organizations), businesses of various kinds, museums and other arts organizations, charities, various mutual aid societies, private clubs, political and civil governance organizations, and so on, all promote and reflect certain values and other beliefs.
And there are various other kinds of beliefs that are at a deeper level than, or foundational for, values. Some of these beliefs, even if they are largely unconscious ones, are beliefs about the basic nature of humanity and reality in general, or so-called “worldviews.” Of course, some people deny (or claim to deny) that there is such a thing as a given “human nature” or that there is any nature of reality that can be known. However incoherent, these are views of the nature of reality and humans, or worldviews, nonetheless.
Kerry, how could we illustrate the “reciprocal influence” that these various layers of culture or cultural labor and activities have on each other?
Kerry:
Let’s take for example cell phones. We can only scratch the surface here. In the US, for over a century (if you can believe it), the Federal government exercised a crippling monopoly on phone service through the so-called “Bell System.” Despite general developments in technology since the late 1800s, the ridiculous “Soviet style” phone industry remained comparatively unchanged for a long period. And, for the most part, like everything else the government controls, most people just took it for granted that it had to be that way. They literally could not imagine how phone service could be any different.
In any case, beginning in the early 1980s various regulations were changed to allow for some (tho still very limited) competition, and that, happily, began a sort of snowball effect. More regulations were changed in the mid 90s with the development of the internet, and now almost everyone has a little interconnected mini-computer in their pocket.
Gregory:
(Yes, it’s popularly called “de-regulation,” but that’s not entirely accurate. It was national de-monopolization, and the regulations were changed. But the less there’s prevention of competition, the better. And there’s a lesson about reducing government intervention in every area of non-aggressive activity, tho most people refuse to see it).
Kerry:
Definitely. But here we have, on a surface level, an artifact, a piece of technology, and there are various behaviors and customs associated with its use. And cell phones have clearly influenced behaviors. Societal communities also relate to cell phones in different ways. Some are responsible for the economic production of cell phones and their services, of course. But the “sector” of communications is obviously quite significant in our broader societal lives, inter-individually and communally.
And the reciprocal influence between cell phones, communal life, and differing values is evident, for example, in the phenomenon of social media, and its relation to addiction and to children and parenting. And not only has the appearance of cell phones influenced views of human nature and what reality is like, raising questions of “what is real?” and “what is good for people?”, but the development of cell phones depended on a certain view of reality that made the technological development possible to begin with.
So, that’s just a very, very brief sketch of some elements of the mutual interaction of all these levels.
In sub-section C, it’s mentioned that by cultural activities we “form the histories of our individual lives and civilizations alike.” Gregory, What else can we say about culture and historical process?
Gregory:
Of course there are different beliefs about how history should be generally understood. One of the most compelling Christian understandings was developed academically or theoretically by Herman Dooyeweerd in his Reformed, Neo-Calvinist or Reformational philosophy. I should say I was first introduced to the idea of reciprocal layers of culture and how that relates to the academic study of history by the late Lou Voskuil, former professor of history at Covenant College (where he taught from 1972-2001). He adapted the model of reciprocal layers from anthropologist G. Linwood Barney. But Voskuil was also quite influenced by Dooyeweerd’s approach, and introduced a view of historiography and the study of historical reality that sought to account for what history is, as a cultural-formative process, informed by a more basic Reformed view of reality in general.
For any who are interested, we link to a couple helpful articles by Voskuil, concerning history and cultural development, in the shownotes. The first article is titled “History: Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing?” dated March 1988, and the second article is titled “History as Process: Meaning in Change” dated June 1988.
While not everyone is called to be a professional scholar, Reformed believers, especially Reformed libertarians, insofar as they’re able, would do well to give attention not only to the academic study of theology, philosophy, and political theory, but also to historical interpretation. Voskuil provocatively closes the first article by noting: “What communities believe about the ultimate issues of life, and how they interpret the past in light of that belief, sets the agenda for the future.” This is to say that what people, individually and together, seek to do and what sort of culture and society they labor to produce, is fundamentally influenced, not only by their religious beliefs, but by the way those religious beliefs guide a view of reality that includes an understanding of what has come before, and how it developed. A better view of historical reality, can help equip us for God-glorifying lives.
Kerry:
In episode 4, we raised the question of so-called “cultural Christianity,” and there, our answer simply focused on the fact that however else a given culture is characterized, it is inevitably guided by ultimate religious views of one sort or another, and is more or less conforming to (or violating) God-given creational norms for cultural activity and human action generally.
Gregory, in conclusion, What can we add to that, in relation to popular conceptions of “cultural Christianity”?
Gregory:
As the term is commonly used in a Western context, a “cultural” Christian can be synonymous with a “nominal” Christian; that is, someone who perhaps identifies themselves as a Christian in some way, but without actually believing the gospel, or other tenets of Christian belief, and without sincerely practicing any form of Christian religion. At the same time, such a person might claim to hold certain values, and be a member of communities, and externally practice customs or behaviors influenced by the Christian Faith.
Similarly, the term “cultural Christianity” is often used to mean some set of values, communities (and other societal relations), and behaviors that are influenced by the Christian Faith, and by a Christian view of human nature and the basic nature of reality, but apart from those involved actually holding to the Christian religious beliefs or views of reality and humanity that produced such values, societal relations, and behaviors. “Cultural Christianity” in this sense is, of course, an unstable isotope, so to speak. It can’t last long if actual Christianity isn’t predominantly present, sufficient to sustain a culture superficially riding on its coattails.
Kerry:
Exactly. Without the presence of a critical mass of actual Christian religious conviction that manifests in a relatively coherent adherence to a Christian view of human nature and reality itself, then non-Christian, and inevitably anti-Christian, values, societal relations, and behaviors will (and in many ways have) become dominant.
Gregory:
Now, among those promoting a recovery of cultural Christianity, such as Christian Nationalists, there seems to be a focus often placed on the area of law and politics. If only the state would stop producing and enforcing laws at odds with Christianly-influenced culture, and in some way legally privilege Christian beliefs, institutions, and practices, so they reason, a preferable and beneficial cultural Christianity could be recovered.
A Reformed libertarian view understands that kind of thinking to be a serious misdiagnosis of the problem, and a deadly false-remedy. Of course, we promote radical de-centralization, nullification of unjust laws, and secession. And the laws permitting abortion, pedophilia, sexualization of children, the mutilation of children by surgery and drugs, re-definition of marriage, and those laws requiring use of preferred pronouns, preferred non-biological sexual-identity, recognition of more than two genders, etc, not to mention the majority of other local, state, and federal programs, agencies, and regulations, should ALL be abolished.
But more basically, in our view, the best approach involves more Christians recognizing the fundamental illegitimacy of the monopoly state itself, and its inherent violation of God-given norms for civil justice. And such an approach is in stark contrast to that of establishmentarians (such as Christian Nationalists and theonomists) or other Christian statists (of whatever political bent) who, instead, seek to strengthen Leviathan and use it for their ends.
Romanticizing or idealizing the European Middle Ages, or any period in the Western past, is totally erroneous. And the antichrist Beast of the monopoly state (even if cut down in size and scope) cannot help recover cultural Christianity, let alone genuine Christianity. Rather, promoting greater Christian influence in society and culture must involve promoting non-monopolistic civil governance, according to what God has actually ordained.
Kerry:
That’s all for this episode. We hope you’ll check out the Reformed Libertarianism Statement at our website. We intend to discuss parts 2 and 3 in future episodes.
