Cultural Sanctification
Engaging the World like the Early Church
Author Stephen O. Presley ISBN 9780802878540 Binding Trade Paper Publisher WM B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Publication Date March 26, 2024 Size 152 x 229 mm
How to keep faith in a culture hostile to Christianity In an increasingly secular world, Christians are often pulled in two directions. Some urge us to retreat and build insular communities. Oth
How to keep faith in a culture hostile to Christianity
In an increasingly secular world, Christians are often pulled in two directions. Some urge us to retreat and build insular communities. Others call upon us to wage a culture war, harnessing the government to shore up Christian cultural power.
But there is another way—and it’s as old as the church itself. Stephen O. Presley takes us back to the first few centuries AD to show us how the first Christians approached cultural engagement. Amid a pagan culture that regarded their faith with suspicion, early Christians founded a religious movement that transformed the ancient world. Looking to great theologians like Augustine, Origen, and Tertullian, Presley shows how the early church approached politics, family, public life, and more. From these examples, he draws lessons for practicing authentic, pious discernment in how we engage with the wider culture.
The Christians who came before us endured persecution to share a vision of human flourishing that changed the world. Following in their footsteps, we can sanctify our society through social witness. Readers anxious about shifting cultural tides will be left with hope in the already-present kingdom of God and the promised resurrection.
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In an increasingly secular world, Christians are often pulled in two directions. Some urge us to retreat and build insular communities. Others call upon us to wage a culture war, harnessing the government to shore up Christian cultural power.
But there is another way—and it’s as old as the church itself. Stephen O. Presley takes us back to the first few centuries AD to show us how the first Christians approached cultural engagement. Amid a pagan culture that regarded their faith with suspicion, early Christians founded a religious movement that transformed the ancient world. Looking to great theologians like Augustine, Origen, and Tertullian, Presley shows how the early church approached politics, family, public life, and more. From these examples, he draws lessons for practicing authentic, pious discernment in how we engage with the wider culture.
The Christians who came before us endured persecution to share a vision of human flourishing that changed the world. Following in their footsteps, we can sanctify our society through social witness. Readers anxious about shifting cultural tides will be left with hope in the already-present kingdom of God and the promised resurrection.
“What I love about this book is the respect that Stephen Presley gives to our early Christian forebears in the second and third centuries. Rather than dismissing them as theological children—as some in the evangelical world have done—he takes them seriously as conversation partners about that most vital of subjects: How should we live God-glorifying lives in an increasingly pagan culture? His answers, though drawn from the riches of our Christian past, are not at all escapist or antiquarian but take into consideration the contours of the present. No easy task to relate that far-off world of late antiquity to our so-called postmodern West, but Presley does it with scholarly
depth and literary verve.”
—Michael A. G. Azad Haykin, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
“Stephen Presley offers us a wonderfully profound and broad sketch of how Christians of the first centuries, living before Christendom, comported themselves within the world: one that was neither flight nor fight, as are often assumed to be the only alternatives available in today’s post-Christendom world, but one of cultural sanctification, pilgrims transforming the world in which they lived, for the better. The rich resources of this period of Christian history are drawn upon not as an exercise in archaeology but as one that has much to offer us as we continue the
task today, so that we can do so, as the last chapter concludes, with hope.”
—John Behr, University of Aberdeen
“Engulfed by an increasingly paganized culture, Christians often perceive a desperate choice between fight and flight. Should Christians struggle to recapture politics and culture, or rather retreat to the catacombs? In Cultural Sanctification, Stephen O. Presley presents a compelling and practical alternative to the extreme options by looking closely at how Christians in late antiquity
lived within the pagan world of their own times—namely, through faithful engagement
with that world. Erudite but clearly and engagingly written, Cultural Sanctification is informative, insightful, even inspiring, and it culminates in the Christian virtue so desperately needed today—hope.”
—Steven Smith, University of San Diego
“Christians anxious about an increasingly pagan culture have many reasons to be encouraged. One of them is that Christ’s church has already experienced such a trial and has left us extensive evidence of how it responded. Stephen Presley has done honorable service for contemporary Christians by presenting the early church’s wisdom in confronting and engaging its own pagan culture. Presley helps us see an attractive, godly, and productive way forward that provides a strong remedy for the bitterness and discouragement many Christians feel today as they survey their cultural landscape.”
—David VanDrunen, Westminster Seminary California
“Taking his cue from an early Christian apologist who invites an inquirer named Diognetus to enter into the gospel teachings and community values of early Christians, Stephen Presley invites readers into that same world, introducing 21st-century Christians to second- and third-century thinkers, without pretending our contexts are the same. Presley expertly guides readers through the primary sources of the church’s formation in the earliest three centuries, allowing modern thinking about Christian cultural engagement to be challenged and refined. He bookends the core of his work—citizenship, intellectual life, public life—with discipleship as Christians’ foundational identity marker and hope driven by the perspective of eschatological certainty. Christians today are called to the same strategies for cultural engagement as earlier believers: faithful discipleship in the present, lived through the lens of confident hope for the future. When isolation from the cultural malaise is not an option, discerning engagement is a must. This volume skillfully and instructively offers the early church’s astounding (and convicting) example of sanctifying culture in a period still hostile to the Christian vision.”
—Stefana Dan Laing, Samford University; author of Retrieving History: Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church (2017)
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depth and literary verve.”
—Michael A. G. Azad Haykin, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
“Stephen Presley offers us a wonderfully profound and broad sketch of how Christians of the first centuries, living before Christendom, comported themselves within the world: one that was neither flight nor fight, as are often assumed to be the only alternatives available in today’s post-Christendom world, but one of cultural sanctification, pilgrims transforming the world in which they lived, for the better. The rich resources of this period of Christian history are drawn upon not as an exercise in archaeology but as one that has much to offer us as we continue the
task today, so that we can do so, as the last chapter concludes, with hope.”
—John Behr, University of Aberdeen
“Engulfed by an increasingly paganized culture, Christians often perceive a desperate choice between fight and flight. Should Christians struggle to recapture politics and culture, or rather retreat to the catacombs? In Cultural Sanctification, Stephen O. Presley presents a compelling and practical alternative to the extreme options by looking closely at how Christians in late antiquity
lived within the pagan world of their own times—namely, through faithful engagement
with that world. Erudite but clearly and engagingly written, Cultural Sanctification is informative, insightful, even inspiring, and it culminates in the Christian virtue so desperately needed today—hope.”
—Steven Smith, University of San Diego
“Christians anxious about an increasingly pagan culture have many reasons to be encouraged. One of them is that Christ’s church has already experienced such a trial and has left us extensive evidence of how it responded. Stephen Presley has done honorable service for contemporary Christians by presenting the early church’s wisdom in confronting and engaging its own pagan culture. Presley helps us see an attractive, godly, and productive way forward that provides a strong remedy for the bitterness and discouragement many Christians feel today as they survey their cultural landscape.”
—David VanDrunen, Westminster Seminary California
“Taking his cue from an early Christian apologist who invites an inquirer named Diognetus to enter into the gospel teachings and community values of early Christians, Stephen Presley invites readers into that same world, introducing 21st-century Christians to second- and third-century thinkers, without pretending our contexts are the same. Presley expertly guides readers through the primary sources of the church’s formation in the earliest three centuries, allowing modern thinking about Christian cultural engagement to be challenged and refined. He bookends the core of his work—citizenship, intellectual life, public life—with discipleship as Christians’ foundational identity marker and hope driven by the perspective of eschatological certainty. Christians today are called to the same strategies for cultural engagement as earlier believers: faithful discipleship in the present, lived through the lens of confident hope for the future. When isolation from the cultural malaise is not an option, discerning engagement is a must. This volume skillfully and instructively offers the early church’s astounding (and convicting) example of sanctifying culture in a period still hostile to the Christian vision.”
—Stefana Dan Laing, Samford University; author of Retrieving History: Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church (2017)
Stephen O. Presley is senior fellow for religion and public life at the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy and associate professor of church history at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also the author of The Intertextual Reception of Genesis 1-3 in Irenaeus of Lyons as well as numerous articles and essays that look to retrieve ancient wisdom for modern Christians.
Table of Contents
List of abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Identity
3. Citizenship
4. Intellectual Life
5. Public Life
6. Hope
7. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Names and Subjects
Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources