Culture or Faith?

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Valerie
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by Valerie »

Bootstrap wrote:
Hats Off wrote:One of Jonathon Stoll's conclusion was that you can't separate faith and culture in the plain Anabaptist setting. Culture is driven or informed by faith. The culture to a large extent is how faith is lived out.
Can you say more about how he comes to that conclusion? Are there New Testament passages that he sees as an admonition to build a culture, or equate the Kingdom of God with a culture? Is he thinking of culture in a way that is radically different from the way I am?

I can't speak to the plain Anabaptist setting, I have too little experience with it. I grew up with a different kind of cultural Christianity where everyone I knew went to church and we all thought we were living as good Christians but we didn't know how to be disciples. The fervent faith of our grandparents and the culture they had created wasn't doing it for me.

I was very influenced by a book called "The Problem with Wineskins" - here's a quote:
God is a God of newness. On the one hand he is the Ancient of Days, “the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17), and Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). But this does not mean that God is static or stationary. The history of God’s people in the Bible and the history of the Christian Church show just the opposite. In every age the true biblical gospel is a message of newness and renewal.

God has not stopped doing new things. The Bible says, “We wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet.3:13). Many of the Old Testament prophecies already cited were fulfilled in part with the coming of Christ and the birth of the church, but the prophetic fund has not yet been exhausted. Unfulfilled prophecies and promises of new things remain. At the end of the Bible God is still saying, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Every age knows the temptation to forget that the gospel is ever new. We try to contain the new wine of the gospel in old wineskins — outmoded traditions, obsolete philosophies, creaking institutions, old habits. But with time the old wineskins begin to bind the gospel. Then they must burst, and the power of the gospel pour forth once more. Many times this has happened in the history of the church. Human nature wants to conserve, but the divine nature is to renew. it seems almost a law that things initially created to aid the gospel eventually become obstacles — old wineskins. Then God has to destroy or abandon them so that the gospel wine can renew man’s world once again.
I worry that any cultural Christianity might become wineskin Christianity. Do plain Anabaptists have ways of protecting against that danger?

I am sorry Boot, but red flags go up within me regarding this influence, from this writer. I have seen the 'old wineskins vs new wineskins' used to justify all kinds of thinking in Christendom and to me it is error when I consider the correct interpretation of that passage in Matthew 9, and I am very uncomfortable about anyone straying from the original interpretation of what Jesus was saying- it is not to be conveyed as 'relevance' -
from my OSB:

The old garment and the old wineskins stand for the Old Covenant and the Law viewed as imperfect and temporary; the new wineskins ae the New Covenant and those in Christ. The new wine is the Holy Spirit dwelling within renewed people, who cannot be constrained by the old precepts of the Law"

Perhaps there is a prinicple that can be applied, I just prefer to focus on what Jesus was teaching here- old covenant vs new covenant- when you read the previous scriptures leading up to Vs 17 n Matthew 9, you can understand the ancient interpretation and I don't think it is to be applied the way so many are using it today.
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Valerie
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by Valerie »

Jeremiah 6:16King James Version (KJV)

16 Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by Bootstrap »

Valerie wrote:I am sorry Boot, but red flags go up within me regarding this influence, from this writer. I have seen the 'old wineskins vs new wineskins' used to justify all kinds of thinking in Christendom and to me it is error when I consider the correct interpretation of that passage in Matthew 9, and I am very uncomfortable about anyone straying from the original interpretation of what Jesus was saying- it is not to be conveyed as 'relevance' -
from my OSB:

The old garment and the old wineskins stand for the Old Covenant and the Law viewed as imperfect and temporary; the new wineskins are the New Covenant and those in Christ. The new wine is the Holy Spirit dwelling within renewed people, who cannot be constrained by the old precepts of the Law"
Footnotes in a modern Bible do not represent "the original interpretation". And even the New Testament needs to be interpreted and lived out renewed people by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So let's look at the passage in context and see what it says.

Here's the passage in Matthew:
Matthew 9 wrote:14 Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?”

15 Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.

16 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. 17 Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
I don't think Jesus is saying that fasting is an Old Covenant teaching that is no longer applicable in the New Covenant, fasting continues in the New Covenant, and Jesus says that his own disciples will also fast, just not now. And I don't think Jesus is saying we should judge according to wineskins, merely replacing the old wineskins with a new set of New Covenant wineskins.

The disciples faced this again in Acts 15 with circumcision, where they had to wrestle with applying this wine to new believers from a Greek culture.

One example: This passage is about fasting, and you are quoting from an Orthodox Bible highly influenced by Protestants. In the modern Orthodox church, fasting is probably pretty different from the way John and the Pharisees fasted. These are rules that grew up during the middle ages - but if we don't judge by wineskins, perhaps we can see this as a valid way to fast.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by Bootstrap »

Valerie wrote:Jeremiah 6:16 King James Version (KJV)

16 Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.
This is an Old Covenant passage. Surely you aren't saying there was no room for anything to change after the time of Jeremiah. And surely you are not saying we need to model our culture after the culture of his forefathers.
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KingdomBuilder
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by KingdomBuilder »

Obviously one could argue the point that Christianity is indeed a culture (or at least subculture), but what I'm talking about is the deliberate clinging to ethnic and social cultural aspects.

Our identity is supposed to be in Christ- not the geographical region of Europe from which we came, not our traditional occupations/ past times, not our ancestors language, and most importantly, not solely with people who share these aforementioned things with us.
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Valerie
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by Valerie »

Bootstrap wrote:
Valerie wrote:Jeremiah 6:16 King James Version (KJV)

16 Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.
This is an Old Covenant passage. Surely you aren't saying there was no room for anything to change after the time of Jeremiah. And surely you are not saying we need to model our culture after the culture of his forefathers.
"S

I believe God would say the same thing today, that this truth applies today-

Actually I just looked it up in the Septuagint-that says:

"Thus says the Lord, "Stand in the ways and see, and ask about the eternal pathways of the Lord. See what the good way is and walk in it. Here you will find purification for your souls. But they said 'We will not walk in it' -

The rest of the chapter is pretty enlightening-

St. Athanasius connects this passage with John 14:6, where Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

Apparently my protestant Bible has a different wording- but I do appreciate the meaning- I just think that today's emerging Church is bringing the culture into the Church that makes the Church look like a whole different Church then what I'm comfortable with at all- in attempt to save the struggling churches it seems and to reach out to a culture that needs entertained and to not be bored.
Last edited by Valerie on Thu Aug 10, 2017 10:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Valerie
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by Valerie »

KingdomBuilder wrote:Obviously one could argue the point that Christianity is indeed a culture (or at least subculture), but what I'm talking about is the deliberate clinging to ethnic and social cultural aspects.

Our identity is supposed to be in Christ- not the geographical region of Europe from which we came, not our traditional occupations/ past times, not our ancestors language, and most importantly, not solely with people who share these aforementioned things with us.
That seems to be the biggest struggle for people trying to become Anabaptist Christians. It may be, because they want to always remember their earliest days of Christianity and that it is all connected- their ethnicity/culture/heritage/Christianity
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Bootstrap
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by Bootstrap »

Valerie wrote:
KingdomBuilder wrote:Obviously one could argue the point that Christianity is indeed a culture (or at least subculture), but what I'm talking about is the deliberate clinging to ethnic and social cultural aspects.

Our identity is supposed to be in Christ- not the geographical region of Europe from which we came, not our traditional occupations/ past times, not our ancestors language, and most importantly, not solely with people who share these aforementioned things with us.
That seems to be the biggest struggle for people trying to become Anabaptist Christians. It may be, because they want to always remember their earliest days of Christianity and that it is all connected- their ethnicity/culture/heritage/Christianity
Clearly, ethnic Orthodox churches in America face the same struggle. In many churches, their faith identity and their cultural identity are not always distinct. And frankly, mainstream Americans have a culture of our own that we are often unaware of. Evangelicals sometimes conflate that with faith too.

At any rate, I'd like to hear Hats Off summarize the article and share more about his experiences in a plain Anabaptist setting. I'd rather not have the plain Anabaptist voices get lost in this thread. So I'll sit back - I won't respond to anything on this thread for 24 hours.
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lesterb
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by lesterb »

St strong beliefs always affect our lifestyle and Lifestyles eventually develop a culture. So it's inevitable that Christians will have culture. The important thing is to remember where that culture comes from and not to let it supercede the Bible.
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haithabu
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Re: Culture or Faith?

Post by haithabu »

The Christian faith faithfully lived out over generations will influence the surrounding culture - if long enough, to the point where its host culture may consider itself to be "Christian". This was once the story of Europe. I don't think it is a bad thing in itself. I believe that something like this is a natural part of the Kingdom's leavening process which Jesus described.

The danger is that the culture may supersede the faith to the point where people don't think of Christianity as something which is a matter of personal belief or commitment.

Elsewhere, believers in a hostile or indifferent social setting may develop a subculture of their own. I don't thing this is a bad thing either because you need a counterculture to stand against the false values of the world. In Muslim countries where the religion is the culture, such a subculture is a positive requirement for sustainable Christian communities. This was the experience of the Dutch Mennonite missionaries in Indonesia.

The danger if it goes too far is that Christians will withdraw into a sort of tribalism and lose access for outreach into the surrounding society. There has to remain some cultural common ground between them and nonbelievers.
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