Is Any Culture
Predisposed to Aspects of the Truth?
Keller believes that God, by virtue
of common grace, has instilled in every culture things that are good and
pleasing to Him. Because of this common
grace, Christianity must also praise the culture appropriately with the gospel where
the world promotes human flourishing.
Keller says, "Because
the city has potential for both human flourishing and human idolatry, we
minister with balance, using the gospel to both appreciate and challenge the
culture to be in accord with God’s truth. (87)"
This can be seen throughout the
three sections of CC, but perhaps
never so clearly as the discussion about how to bring offensive gospel
doctrines into a culture with the least offense. Allow me to quote Keller at length:
To
enter a culture, another main task is to discern its dominant worldviews or
belief systems, because contextualized worldviews or belief systems, because
contextualized gospel ministry should affirm the beliefs of the culture
wherever it can be done with integrity.
When we enter a culture, we should be looking for two kinds of beliefs. The first are what I call “A” beliefs, which
are beliefs people already hold that, because of God’s common grace, roughly
correspond to some of the Bible’s teaching (which we may call “A” doctrines). However, we will also find “B” beliefs—what
may be called ‘deafeater’ beliefs—beliefs of the culture that lead listeners to
find some Christian doctrines implausible or overtly offensive. “B” beliefs contradict Christian truth
directly at points we may call “B” doctrines. (123)
Keller goes on to describe the “A”
doctrines as logs and “B” doctrines as stones.
In order to get them down the river (his analogy), lash the logs
together and float the offensive stones on the logs. So, Keller’s view of common grace is that God
has so revealed Himself that there are areas where every unbelieving culture
will naturally enjoy and affirm something that agrees roughly with the
truth. It is these areas which afford the
Christian the place to affirm the unbeliever.
According to Keller, finding where we can affirm unbelievers in their
unbelief is necessary, or else we will never have power to persuade them of the
gospel. He says,
In
our gospel communication, we enter the culture by pointing people to the
overlapping beliefs they can easily affirm (123)
…
we should take great care to affirm the “A” beliefs and doctrines (124)
Our
criticism of the culture will have no power to persuade unless it is based on
something that we can affirm in the beliefs and values of that culture. (124)[1]
Examples of “A” doctrines and “B”
doctrines were love toward your neighbor and prohibitions on sexual
immorality. The Manhattan culture is
declared to embrace loving the neighbor as an “A” doctrine and to reject sexual
purity as a “B” doctrine. A Middle
Eastern culture would be exactly the opposite. How any unbeliever in Manhattan loves his
neighbor in the biblical sense[2]—let
alone how any unbeliever outside the Manhattan culture has never lusted in the
way Jesus prohibits in Matthew 5:27-30—I have no idea. More than that, appealing to common grace as
a basis for affirming the ungodly in their unbelief is a twisted and wicked
approach to evangelism.
