A few friends and I were engaged in an email conversation over the last couple of weeks about the Cultural Mandate in Genesis, specifically questions like:  What was its original character, and what happened to it after the Fall?  To whom was the cultural mandate originally given, and whose is it now?  How does the cultural mandate affect the church’s mission?

Our little conversation was just one part of a much larger one going on right now.  There’s a good number of people strongly advocating the idea that at least part of—if not central to—the church’s mission is the task of culture-building, or perhaps culture-renewing.  Many of these folks call themselves “transformationalists,” and as I understand it, their argument is essentially that a) the cultural mandate of Genesis 1 (and 9) stands mostly unchanged in character after the Fall (it gets harder to carry out, but it remains essentially the same in character and thrust); and b) that the cultural mandate is given to the people of God as such, whether we understand that as the Adamic-Sethite-Noahic line, the people of Israel, or, now, the church.

The push for evangelical cultural engagement is very strong right now, and honestly, I find much in that line of thinking very compelling.  But I still have some significant theological and textual hang-ups with the transformationalist approach.  Here are some thoughts about why that is, from my email conversation.  These are unfinished thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless:

1) I think the biblical text is pretty clear that the cultural mandate does not carry on in exactly its original shape and character after the Fall.  It's not just that it gets harder to carry it out, either.  I think there are some pretty fundamental changes in it.  For one thing, the building of culture is no longer the mandate of the people of God, as such.  It's the mandate of all human beings, and in fact the Bible records (exceedingly oddly) that the first great cultural accomplishments were achieved by the serpent's seed.  Even when God rearticulates the CM to Noah, it's to him as the representative of all mankind, not as the representative of the people of God as such.  That wasn't the case in Eden.  In Eden, the CM was given to God's people and was going to be carried out by God's people.  Another way to put it is that in Eden, God's people and all mankind were one and the same.  The fact that that's no longer the case because of sin is a radical change.

2)  I think the telos, the end, of human culture changes after the Fall.  Before the Fall, human culture was intended to grow and expand until it resulted in a worldwide city perfectly under the perfect rule of God.  No longer.  Now, it seems to me that the Bible's picture is of human culture being pretty consistently on a judgment-ward trajectory.  From Cain (or his son) building the first city, to Lamech, to Babel, to Sodom and Gomorrah, to the whore of Babylon, human culture considered in toto seems to be consigned to judgment, not progress in godliness.  That point is only underlined, as I mentioned, by the Bible's attribution of all the first great cultural accomplishments to the line of the serpent.

3)  Because of #1, I don't think I would say that the cultural mandate (even as it exists now) is the mandate of the church.  I do think it's the mandate of individual Christians, however, and therefore I think it's part of the church's mandate a la Matthew 28 to "teach" Christians how to carry that out under the Lordship of Christ.  But I don't think we can say that culture-building, or even cultural-renewal, is part of the mandate of the church as church.  What we see from Mt 16, 18, and 28 as the church-qua-church's mandate is something much narrower, it seems to me.

4) Because of #2, I think language to the effect that we are "joining God in his work of renewing the world" or "redeeming the culture" is probably not the best language.  I believe that the best reading of Scripture is that at the end of the age, God will transform and glorify---not destroy and remake---this world.  So I believe there is continuity between those two worlds.  But I also think Scripture's general picture is of even more discontinuity when it comes to human culture.  I'm led to that conclusion in great part by Revelation's picture of the judgment of Babylon, the city of man.  The picture there is pretty comprehensive:  everything, including arts, government, clothing, recreation, trade, commerce, architecture, everything falls in judgment.  And then, of course, Jerusalem the eternal city descends, part of the message of which is that it was not made by human effort.  So again, I think there is continuity between human culture now and what will be across the line in eternity, but I think the language of "joining God in his work," et al., can too easily obscure the fact that human culture in toto seems to be headed for judgment, not progressing toward holiness.
    I also, by the way, don't think it's merely the use of culture that falls during the judgment in Revelation, as if the structures (the wine, the gold, the fine clothes) somehow carry over into the descending Jerusalem.  Other texts, I believe, give us some (much?) indication of some kind of continuity regarding human culture, but this particular one is pretty uncompromising in its emphasis on discontinuity.  The structures, it seems, are caught up with the uses.  The city of man is swept away; the city of God descends.

5)  I also think the language of "transformationalism" may be too optimistic, given all this.   Of course it's true that Christians can do much good in society.  But the good that's been done:  Is it really fair to call that "transformation?"  That's entirely subjective, I know.  And maybe it would be appropriate to call some things in history (the work of Wilberforce comes to mind) "transformative."  But I think the story of the church's engagement with culture on the whole has been and is going to be less transformational than a fighting of what Tolkien called the Long Defeat.  Human culture has always on the whole progressed in sinfulness, filled up its iniquity, and wound up being judged.  That's what happened in the Flood, it's what happened at Babel, it’s what happened in Canaan, and it's what happens on a large scale to the whore on the dragon.

6) Despite all this, I think Christians should engage their culture.  But I think the motivation is not so much the hope of transformation or the working toward renewal as a few other things:  a) compassion for people; b) fulfillment of the cultural mandate as it still stands for all human beings; c) as a witness of the goodness and character of God; d) as a sign of the coming perfect Kingdom; e) others.  All those deserve fleshing out at length, but I won't take the time here.

Always eager to hear your thoughts on this stuff, brothers.