Page 41 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

A more technical notion of culture as “the total nonbiologically transmitted heritage of

man” has been employed in Germany from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since that

time, this concept of culture came to be conventional in the behavioral sciences and other

64
academic disciplines. Anthropology, one area of academia that has devoted itself to the study

of culture, has significantly accomplished the extension and clarification of the concept of

culture. Anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn see culture as “patterns, explicit and implicit,

of and for behavior.” Culture, on the one hand is “products of action,” and on the other,

65
“conditioning elements of further action.”

The human is a being that is completely immersed in culture. Each individual begins her

life in a distinct socio-cultural context, receiving enormous influence from the members of the

culture, and following the cultural patterns of that society. Culture gives cohesion to a society

and gives it a meaning by providing an integrated system of beliefs, of values, of customs, and of

66
institutions which express these beliefs, values, and customs. Without culture, therefore, one

64
Ibid., 46.

65 Alfred Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and
Definitions (New York: Vintage Books, 1952), 357.

66 The Theology and Education Group of the Laussanne Congress on World
Evangelization convened a consultation on the topic of “Gospel and Culture.” Thirty three
theologians, anthropologists, linguists, missionaries and pastors from six continents gathered at
Willowbank, Somerser Bridge, Bermuda to study the topic from 6th to 13th January 1978. This
convention produced this report. John Stott and Robert T. Coote eds., Gospel and Culture
(Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1979), 435. Moreover, consult Howard Marshall, “Culture
and the New Testament,” included at the same book, 27. He maintains that “culture means a
way of thinking, an approach to life in the world, which opens up possibilities for those who hold
to it, and at the same time may impose limits on their understanding and ability.” For a helpful
pastoral definition of culture, see Don Browning, The Moral Context of Pastoral Care
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 73. He defines culture as “a set of symbols, stories
(myths), and norms for conduct that orients a society or group cognitively, affectively, and
behaviorally to the world in which it lives.”