# 1 in an occasional series, "Behind the Buzzwords"
This was originally composed over a year ago. Going through my files it seemed worth thinking about again.
Along with "passion," Culture is another hot word these days. Last night after a fine dinner and conversation with the Taloyos, I came home pondering "culture." Rob Johnston proposes that it be added to the Wesleyan quadrilateral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_Quadrilateral )
because he sees it just as important as Reason, Tradition, Experience and Scripture in the Christian life and theological reflection. I've been chewing on that for a while now.
In good analytic fashion, I think we must first define our terms. Wikipedia lists four possible definitions of culture:
1) culture= civilization, as opposed to nature (this one is pretty much passe)
2) culture=worldview
3) culture= values, norms and artifacts
4) culture = patterns of products and activities
But what about culture as Wittgenstein's "language game?" or MacIntyre's narrative and practices? Worldview might include these, I suppose...
Another thought: IMO it seems that just as modernism idolized reason, so postmodernism idolizes culture. The pendulum always swings to the opposing extreme. Having spent over two centuries under the spell of Reason, are we doomed now to spend a century charmed by multiculturalism? And after that, what?
Culture is no more solid a foundation than Reason to stake one's life upon, yet we seem to be perpetually tempted to confuse filters with foundations. Both Reason and Culture can be helpful filters in life, enabling us to focus on important aspects of our experience and order it in order understand ourselves, the world, and ultimately God. But--in our sinfulness? -- we demand more: we want to make these filters into foundations. Rather than "seeing through" them to what is real and good and true, we make them into ends in themselves: we idolize them as what is real and good and true. The lie of modernism's idolization of Reason is to say that the particulars doen't matter; the lie of Postmodernism's idolization of culture is to say that universals don't exist.
In good analytic fashion, I think we must first define our terms. Wikipedia lists four possible definitions of culture:
1) culture= civilization, as opposed to nature (this one is pretty much passe)
2) culture=worldview
3) culture= values, norms and artifacts
4) culture = patterns of products and activities
But what about culture as Wittgenstein's "language game?" or MacIntyre's narrative and practices? Worldview might include these, I suppose...
Another thought: IMO it seems that just as modernism idolized reason, so postmodernism idolizes culture. The pendulum always swings to the opposing extreme. Having spent over two centuries under the spell of Reason, are we doomed now to spend a century charmed by multiculturalism? And after that, what?
Culture is no more solid a foundation than Reason to stake one's life upon, yet we seem to be perpetually tempted to confuse filters with foundations. Both Reason and Culture can be helpful filters in life, enabling us to focus on important aspects of our experience and order it in order understand ourselves, the world, and ultimately God. But--in our sinfulness? -- we demand more: we want to make these filters into foundations. Rather than "seeing through" them to what is real and good and true, we make them into ends in themselves: we idolize them as what is real and good and true. The lie of modernism's idolization of Reason is to say that the particulars doen't matter; the lie of Postmodernism's idolization of culture is to say that universals don't exist.
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