In Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology, Kathryn Tanner opens her first chapters

with a comprehensive view of the development of cultural theory and brings this into conversation
with theological engagement in the second half of her book. The substance of Tanner’s argument lies
in the last three chapters, in which she relies on postmodern cultural theory to engage theology
toward a hybrid and ad hoc task of deepening Christian discipleship in various contexts. The bulk of
her argument challenges the postliberal conception of theology as an alternative social way of life
imbedded within Christian social practices. Additionally, she challenges Troeltschian episodic
cultural engagement, or situation-appropriate application and interpretation, and Gadamerian
correlationist approaches of tradition as transmission to culture. Tanner’s ultimate concern is to
challenge a theology controlled by cultural dominance—such as preassigned cultural continuity or
transmission—or theology confined to reductionism and boundaries. In turn, she seeks an openness to
theological engagement with culture that allows for the free movement of God’s grace. Her new
agenda for theology is to open up Christian communities of healthy argument toward further
creativity and diversity in Christian engagement with the world.

Tanner’s challenge to postliberal theology concentrates on George Lindbeck’s and John Milbank’s
approaches. With regard to Milbank, Tanner finds that the possibility of maintaining an alternative
Christian social world is difficult to sustain empirically (99). Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic approach
also fosters cultural insularity regarding diverse cultural expression within Christianity. Her challenge
to both of these approaches is derived from postmodern cultural theory which articulates a more
complicated and ad hoc approach to cultural identity. Tanner finds that postliberal theological
approaches can be helpful, but also over simplified. She writes: “One can still agree with postliberal
theology that the identity of a Christian way of life is formed by a cultural boundary. This is not,
however, the sharp boundary of independent cultural contents as postliberalism at its extreme
imagines. The boundary is, instead, one of use that allows Christian identity to be essentially impure
and mixed, the identity of a hybrid that always shares cultural forms with its wider host culture and
other religions…”(114).

More specifically Tanner does not find that Christian practices and virtues to be able to be isolated
from the overlapping activities and memberships Christians encounter within the world. Christian
social practices are a part of wider society rather than alternative to or separate from them. She sees
postliberal approaches reducing Christian diversity into uniformity of cultural expression. In turn,
Tanner proposes a more ad-hoc use of various strategies; guided by the case-by-case judgment of
particulars. Her ecclesiological direction is toward “a genuine community of argument, one marked
by mutual hearing and criticism among those who disagree, by a common commitment to mutual
correction and uplift, in keeping with the shared hope of good discipleship, proper faithfulness, and
purity of witness” (123-4). While her proposal is not in conflict with postliberal theology, Tanner
here seeks to highlight the need to disagree within communities in order to allow for creativity and
diversity in both divine and human expression—theology born out of struggle rather than uniformity.
She finds that “In their effort to maintain Christian identity, postliberals are in danger of confusing
subordination to the Word with subordination to a human word” (149).
Tanner’s concern is to allow the Spirit to blow freely and not be scripted by human demands (120). In
this sense, she simplifies Christian identity to “remaining open to direction for the free grace of God
in Christ” (149). In order to do this Tanner sets out some specifics with regard to Christian identity
from a postmodern cultural perspective—the diversity of Christian practices are united in a task,
rather than pre-scripted by rules or method of investigation (153). Similarly, Christian identity can no
longer be determined by “group specificity, sharp cultural boundaries, or homogeneity of practices”
(151-2). The boundaries between Christian and non-Christian ways of life cannot be easily separated,
but are permeable characteristic of hybrid formulations. And, contrary to postliberal perspectives,
what unites Christians are not common practices, but concern for true discipleship.

While Tanner seeks to avoid cultural dominance within Christianity and human prescription of God
working in the world, her project is not without its own risks and reductions. She wrestles with the
tension of remaining open, but also risks a reduction that leaves Christian identity lacking in
substance and conviction. It also remains unclear of what true discipleship consists. Her descriptions
remain limited to a watered-down, specifically reformed position of justification by faith, without
much tribute to the convictions of other theological traditions. Her approach is open, characteristic of
stretching and challenging neat conceptual categories and easily discerned boundaries within
theology. For this it is to be commended. At the same time, she opens up herself and her new agenda
for theology to this same ongoing struggle. In this way, I will give her credit for but also hold her
accountable to the same critiques she poses to others. A new agenda for theology is not complete
without its own ‘agenda’. Thus, her argument includes an important postmodern task of holding
together, tinkering, and creating ‘bricoleur’ out of a potentially messy reality (166). But, at the same
time, her argument also circles back upon itself and risks remaining vague and reductionstic. These
are the inherent risks of the form of her argument within a work that specifically addresses and
challenges academic theologians; what remains to be investigated are the concrete manifestations of
communities of argument and struggle seeking deeper discipleship in hybrid formulations.

Summary
Tanner leads the reader into a deeper understanding of the term culture. She contends that “the
anthropological notion of culture can be profitably employed in theology,” specifically through its
postmodern manifestation.[5] She presents her argument in two parts. Part One traces the evolution of
the term culture through three basic eras of history. The term was most commonly used in Europe
during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries to denote a sense of higher cultivated
society or sophistication. This understanding was nuanced between France, Germany, and Britain,
but, in essence, it carried with it the notion that a person, or a people, could strive to become more
cultured through education and self-discipline.
The definition of culture began to change in the early twentieth century and take on a more
anthropological sense. The modern anthropologist now observed the culture of a people group from a
supposedly objective distance. The term culture, in this anthropological sense, was a “group-
differentiating, holistic, nonevaluative, and context-relative notion.”[6] A person or a people were no
longer cultured, rather, people groups collectively formed a culture that was a self-contained whole,
the boundaries of which distinguished it from other cultures. It was meaningless to pass judgment
upon or to evaluate cultural differences through ethical lenses. Each culture contains its own set of
values which are constructed within the cultural boundaries. This anthropologic sense of culture
became dominant in the twentieth century and heavily influenced many fields of study. It influenced
theological inquiry in that Christianity, Biblicial studies, and the notion of Christian culture can now
be understood through the lens of cultural relativity, conveniently dividing Christianity into separate
spaces of geography and time.
Tanner deconstructs the modern, anthropological sense of culture and introduces the current, post-
modern reconstruction of the term. The need within the modern anthropological sense for culture to
be a consistent whole revealed more the need of the anthropologist to explain culture than an
authentic description of the practice of culture.[7] Culture, for the postmodern anthropologist, “forms
the basis for conflict as much as it forms the basis for shared beliefs and sentiments. Whether or not
culture is a common focus of agreement, culture binds people together as a common focus
for engagement.”[8]

Simply put, culture is messy. There are still large groups of people that, at the surface, may appear to
be cultures as understood by the modern anthropological sense, but they have been “decentered or
reinscribed within a more primary attention to historical processes.”[9] Culture is formed by external
and internal engagement and conflict. One culture engages another culture—sometimes overlapping,
sometimes resisting—while each culture is simultaneously struggling internally as the members of
that culture vie for power and sense-making of the current moment. There is no longer the notion of
holistic, homogeneous cultures existing in self-contained spaces. The postmodern anthropocentric
notion of culture sees the world as a mixture of cultures continually intersecting and evolving in a
pluriform, polycentric interplay of engagement and conflict.

Part Two shifts the conversation from a focus on the term culture to a discussion of how the
anthropological sense of the term culture impacts theological inquiry. Tanner draws parallels between
the modern anthropologist and the postliberal theologian. Both were reassessing their respective
fields in the early twentieth century through fresh and modern lenses. Theologians began thinking
about theology in terms of culture and how theology is a part of culture. Tanner plots out the
difficulties and tensions that lie between theology and culture, and what it means to speak of a
Christian culture. She proposes that it is, first of all, impossible to speak of a single Christian culture.
Christianity has always drawn from the host culture in which individual Christians find themselves.
Christian practices “are always the practices of others made odd.”[10] Christian culture is not a matter
of traditions and rules, but one of style. The what of Christian practices may differ amongst
Christians, but the how is what characterizes them. Christian Identity is defined by a task in which
Christians are united in a “concern for true discipleship, proper reflection in human words and deeds
of an object of worship that always exceeds by its greatness human efforts to do so.”[11]
Tanner claims that the great benefit for theological inquiry derived from the postmodern
anthropological understanding of culture is the recognition and embrace of diversity in a polycentric
and ever-changing world. Christian culture cannot be defined or encompassed by a homogenous and
universally agreed upon proposition of belief. Agreement, she proposes, is not about consensus but
“about how to have an argument, an argument that can, at any particular point, turn back against what
was initially agreed upon, in an effort to rework it.”[12] The goal is to find a way for Christians to
search for the meaning of discipleship together, without killing each other along the way. This can
only be done when we remember that “Christians cannot control the movements of the God they hope
to serve.”[13]
The Gospel and Culture
It seems appropriate to ask a question that brings Tanner into conversation with the purpose of this
class. The class title is The Gospel and Culture. This title intimates boundaries, does it not? It implies
that there is such a thing as The Gospel and such a thing as Culture. Yet, what are the boundaries
around these terms? Do we know exactly what lies within the definition of Gospel and what lies
outside it? Do we know what culture means? Tanner’s argument seems to indicate that boundaries
like this are philosophically and theologically untenable. Is there a definition of The Gospel that is
universally accepted among Christians? Do we, in this class, stand inside of The Gospel and ask how
it connects with this thing out there called culture? Or, do each of us stand within our own
understanding of the Gospel, which has been derived from our own Christian culture, with the edges
of our boundaries interconnecting—sometimes in agreement, sometimes in conflict—in dynamic
interplay? Do each of us stand within our own culture, internally struggling for the definition of such,
while struggling to define how our cultures intersect with each other’s, with the Gospel, and with the
larger culture of the Twin Cities, Minnesota, and the United States?
Tanner states, “Although we have said it is very difficult to tell when it is the case, those differences
may be just that—differences, without amounting to any fundamental disagreement in what
Christianity stands for.” (italics mine)[19] I could not help, as I read these words, to ask myself, “how
can we know what Christianity stands for when everyone disagrees on what seem to be essential
elements, e.g. scripture, revelation, atonement, authority, etc.”
I pose this question to Marie and the class: Does Tanner help us understand the goal of the course, or
does she render us unable to stand, for lack of solid ground on which to plant our feet?