Reformed Christians often refer to Genesis 1:28 as the Cultural Mandate:
And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
There is nothing especially earth-shaking in this; it is simply affirming that, as God’s image-bearers, we shape the world around us and adapt it to a diversity of uses. In recent years a number of books have been published by Christians on precisely this topic. One of the best is Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.
However, there is a persistent tendency amongst some to misidentify the Cultural Mandate as a command to redeem the larger culture from the distorting effects of sin. Chuck Colson’s recent Breakpoint commentary is typical in this respect: Dual Commissions. Colson properly understands that the Cultural Mandate — or Commission — and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) are not antithetical but, properly conceived, are complementary. Nevertheless, his understanding of the former is not entirely spot-on:
If Christians do not seize the moment and act on the cultural commission, there soon won’t be any culture left to save. But when we do our duty, we can change the world. Look at Christians like William Wilberforce, who spent most of his life fighting — and winning — the war against slavery in Britain, and bringing about a great cultural renewal in that country.
I will not deny that there are battles to be fought over significant issues, but that’s not really what the Cultural Mandate is about. As Crouch puts it, “Culture is, first of all, the name for our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as it’s given to us and make something else” (p. 23). We have a God-given propensity “to make something more than we were given.” This is fairly basic stuff. We fashion “paintings (whether finger paintings or the Sistine Chapel), omelets, chairs, snow angels.” Those who believe the cultural mandate was superseded by the Great Commission have only to look around: we human beings make culture willy nilly, and we always will, because God created us to do so. You don’t have to be a culture warrior to recognize this reality of life.
Of course, one cannot escape the fact that our culture-making activities are affected by our sinful natures. This is the implication of Genesis 4:19-22. To be sure, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with fashioning culture. Yet neither can we escape the taint of sin in all our undertakings. Moreover, a distinction must be made between obedient culture-making and disobedient culture-making, which corresponds to St. Augustine’s distinction between the City of God and the City of this World. Rightly-oriented culture-making obeys the norms God has given us for life in his world: social, economic, aesthetic, ethical, political and other norms.
A good portion of what Colson calls the “Cultural Commission” must rather be understood to be the last part of the “Great Commission”: “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Evangelization requires that we proclaim, not only God’s saving grace, but the norms by which he intends those who are in Christ to live. In no way do mere human beings redeem culture by engaging in creative activity. This is presumptuous. Only God in Christ redeems his fallen creation. We are at most agents of his kingdom, manifesting his saving grace in everything we do — including the shaping of culture.
November 30th, 2011 | 3:34 pm | #1
Here’s my cultural mission for the day: getting otherwise excellent writers to stop using “impact” or “impacted” as a verb in contexts not related to dentistry. One way to guard against this is to remember that “impact” even as a noun is frequently overused when “effect” would be better. “Impact” should be reserved for conveying a really “weighty” effect (thus staying true to the metaphoric sense of the word.)
Sorry for the pedantic rant, but if just a few of us hold out, then maybe….
November 30th, 2011 | 3:56 pm | #2
There! Happy now? :-)
November 30th, 2011 | 5:40 pm | #3
Blissful. ;-) Thanks for tolerating my correction so graciously.
December 1st, 2011 | 11:19 am | #4
Would that all people were as easily brought to a blissful state! You are most welcome.
December 1st, 2011 | 3:34 pm | #5
Or, it really is earth-shaking as the first command of God to our historical parents, Adam and Eve, and their progeny, and carries heavy significance with God’s purpose and intent in creating them in the first place. The Hebrew word radah carries the idea of rule, subdue, dominion. This command has never been nullified, thus still in effect, and was confirmed and expanded to Noah after the great universal and global Flood (Gen. 9:6-7).
It goes by another name, ‘The Dominion Mandate’, but has possible bad connotations with ‘Dominion Theology’, and thus ‘Cultural Mandate’ is preferable? In either case, in my opinion, was not only not ‘not especially earth-shaking’, but acted as an amelioration of the effects of the historical Fall, and a major motivation for the scientific research, exploration, and discovery of God’s created order in our world. Immensely earth-shaking.
December 1st, 2011 | 10:16 pm | #6
To the contrary, Pentamom, I prefer “impact” over “effect.” When I try to use “effect,” it more often than not feels awkward and unnatural. “Impact” has easy semantic force and just flows better. It has more of a…shall we say…impact!
You think of dentistry, but I think of the countless times I have been assigned with the task of inspiring donors to “make an impact on the poorest of the poor” or thanking them for doing so. As far as I know, it has never conjured up in their minds the image of a hammer impacting a starving old man in the skull.
December 2nd, 2011 | 9:22 am | #7
Hmmm. It seems the substance of this post has failed to impact most of its readers. :-)
December 2nd, 2011 | 9:49 am | #8
@David #7,
What? You and Andy Crouch are right and everyone else is wrong? No one is allowed to disagree with the conclusion of your post? :)
December 2nd, 2011 | 10:43 am | #9
Steve, I believe David is referring to the fact that five out of six prior comments were about word usage, not substance.
For the record,I think the substance was excellent; I just had nothing to add!
Anthony, I agree that impact as a verb can be good and doesn’t always have to refer to physical force or dentistry, and I like your example — those people ARE getting “hammered.” But it’s *overused* in situations where “effect” would be better; that’s not to say there are no situations where “impact” is better. People go around talking about things like the “impact” of prices on the budget — in that case, why not just say “effect?” The only reason is that people just say “impact” all the time without thinking.
December 2nd, 2011 | 10:44 am | #10
“Hammered” in a good way, that is — but the effect on them is “striking” (to pun a bit, but hopefully to make the point.)
December 3rd, 2011 | 11:26 am | #11
I think we are fulfilling the cultural mandate by promoting the appropriate use of language and metaphor.
December 4th, 2011 | 8:46 am | #12
“Evangelization requires that we proclaim, not only God’s saving grace, but the norms by which he intends those who are in Christ to live.”
Looking at the norms displayed around us, it is blatantly obvious that chuches have done a poor job of proclamation.
Who would have ever dreamed that some churches would be promoting same sex marriage?!
But then, in my present church, one of the elders is now engaged to the wife of another Chrstian.
That is what happens when Christians sit silently and allow key Christian basics like “love” and “forgiveness” to be squeezed into the world’s mold.
December 12th, 2011 | 1:27 pm | #13
[...] CULTURE: “What the Cultural Mandate Is Not.” [...]
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