Oscar Mumba
University of Roehampton-London
Module 5: Incarnation and Intercultural Competency
Unit 3 Project: Learning About Culture
Learning about human culture begins with an understanding of how God calls us to become
participants in the Trinitarian culture. Humanity is invited into the community life of the
Trinity when it is made one with the divinity of Jesus on the cross, resulting in partaking in
the divine culture that transcends mere human culture (Tanner, 2004). In Christ, God took on
human nature and participated in human culture. God’s participation in human culture
through the incarnation reveals his missionary actions of love.
Love is the highest Christian goal that is faced by the most fundamental and powerful
constraint on its achievement by the fallen nature of human beings. The Christian life is
called upon to love God and love their neighbors. The authenticity of Christian love towards
God is judged based on one’s love for the other humans. The question arises as to who is my
neighbor, and who is my brother? In seeking to find answers to these questions, the church
has sought to express Christian love in different ways in an attempt to bring the message of
Christ to the world.
The Christian life is about participation in eternal things, and that participation works
on three levels. The Christian life is about participating in what God is actively doing
in the life of the individual. It is about participating in what God is actively doing in
his church. Also, it is about what God is actively doing
about the world, in reconciling all things to Himself (Gabig, 2011:100).
The Council of Jerusalem in the early church considered the challenge of how the Jewish
believers were going to engage with the culture of Gentile believers in a non-imperialistic
way (Acts 15:22-34). The spread of the gospel from the Jewish community reveals a loss of
the influence of Judaic cultural Christianity to the development of new expressions of the
Christian Faith. These cultural wars and contextualization of the Gospel extend to this day as
questions still arise as to how the church and culture should relate.
This research project will seek to reflect on Richard Niebuhr’s work on Christ and Culture.
Niebuhr labored to construct a public theology that would provide interaction between
Christianity and culture. In his work, Niebuhr presented five Christian responses to culture:
Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox,
and Christ the transformer of culture (Haraguchi, 2007). These five models help in
formulating a dialogue that describe the church’s relationship with diverse cultures.
