Christianity Today reviews 'Christ and Culture Revisited'

James K. A. Smith, writing for Christianity Today, reviews D. A. Carson’s new book Christ and Culture Revisited, which is itself a reconsideration of H. Richard Niebuhr’s five models of ways that Christians relate to culture. Smith feels the critique is needed, but Carson’s attempt falls short in its execution because of its narrow views of both culture and salvation. Here’s the final paragraph of the review:

“Indeed, what Carson misses is an opportunity to finally undo our bad habit of disconnecting the cultural mandate and the Great Commission. Even those who affirm both too often see them as unrelated, failing to discern their intimate connection. Yet what is the gospel but God’s call and invitation to be restored and renewed as proper image bearers of God — who bear his image by unfolding creation’s potential in rightly ordered culture? Being God’s image bearers is a calling, a vocation, and a task, not a static property of being human (I refer the reader to Richard Middleton’s brilliant account of this in The Liberating Image). And Christ, as the Second Adam, has shown us what it looks like to do this: in a fallen and broken world, the shape of such a vocation is cruciform; being cultural agents of the crucified God is not a project of triumphal transformation, but suffering witness.”