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Christ & Culture Revisited

Reviewed by Luke Penkett.

Beginning with Richard Niebuhr’s typology of the Christ-and-Culture relationship, D A Carson explores how Christians could respond to the call to live in the world without necessarily being of it.

He examines in far-ranging yet tightly argued detail how Christians face the problem of interacting with their culture, which can so frequently depart from Judaeo-Christian roots. He shows that, whilst Niebuhr’s approach is helpful, it should not be slavishly followed.

Don Carson, a prominent scholar of the evangelical movement, is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois and has written and edited almost fifty books, including  The Gagging of God: Christianity confronts Pluralism and  How long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil.

Though there are several other books that look at Niebuhr’s teaching, this one is worth reflecting on not least for its sound biblical-theological approach.