Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Christ Against Culture
Part 3: Christ of Culture
Part 4: Christ Above Culture
Part 5: Christ and Culture in Paradox
Niehbuhr calls the fourth type "dualists." The dualists join the first group "in pronouncing the whole world of human culture to be godless and sick unto death. But there is this difference between them: the dualist knows that he belongs to that culture and cannot get out of it." (p.156) Whereas the synthesist believes that culture contains some positive values on its own, the dualist sees culture as only preventing "sin from becoming as destructive as it might otherwise be..." (p.165)
The dualist believes that during our present lives there will always be this tension between culture and Christ—a tension that we could not escape of we wanted to.
As long as man remains in the body he has need then, it seems of a culture and of the institutions of culture not because they advance him toward life with Christ but because they restrain wickedness in a sinful and temporal world. (p.167)
People in this group tend to recognize the pervasive nature of sin, but on the other hand, they tend to not question the absence of justice or the presence of evil in culture. Culture is seen as a restrainer and is not questioned as often. Or, in some cases culture is seen as something evil that can be ignored, which eventually results in antinomianism. Finally, dualism of this sort tends to associate sin so closely to creation that people mix up sin's affects on creation with creation itself.
In Paul the idea of creation is used significantly only for the sake of reinforcing his first principle of the condemnation of all men because of sin; while his ambiguous use of the term "flesh" indicates a fundamental uncertainty about the goodness of the created body. For Luther the wrath of God is manifested not only against sin, but against the whole temporal world. (p.188-189)
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