The Facts on the Ground

Book excerpt: Starting with the fraught and often contested role of Christian participation in contemporary culture, and in the light of the chaotic challenges of recent events, William Dyrness develops a biblical theology of cultural wisdom, both its poetics and its practice, as a way of making sense both of these human cultural challenges, and of God’s presence on the way to the New Creation. Making use of the biblical category of wisdom in both Old and New Testaments, Dyrness offers a fresh way to understand both human responsibility in culture and God’s presence and purposes for creation as this developed in the life of Israel, and was embodied in the life and teachings of Christ. Centrally the book argues Christ’s life and teaching represent a Christian wisdom that opened up new possibilities for human culture. This Christian wisdom emerged as the Gospel made its way in culture--first into the Greco-Roman world of the Early Church and then, since the Reformation, into the modern period. Dyrness suggests this Christ-centered cultural wisdom offers resources that help illumine, and transform received notions of common grace, and even general and special revelation.