Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church

Presley, Stephen O. Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024. Paperback. Pp. 220. $24.99.

When I first began teaching Christian high school students in the 1980’s, I would often reference Old Testament teaching on the remnant, reminding students that Christians are never far from persecution. Students read authors such as Justin Martyr, Origen, Irenaeus, and Tertullian and texts such as the Epistle to Diognetus, Pliny’s letter to Trajan, and the Didache. I believed then, as I do now, that if apologists wanted to help the church contend with outside pressures and opposition worldviews, they should produce a work that explains the connection between the present day and Roman rule during the first and second centuries. We now have that work in Stephen Presley’s Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church.

Christians exist within cultural contexts, often with unbelievers who struggle to understand Jesus’s followers. As every New Testament epistle teaches, Christians are aliens (1 Peter 2:11-12) wherever they find themselves. Their prescribed way of life is sanctification wedded to Christian confession (40). The distinctiveness of Christian thought and life depends on a believing liturgy wrapped in a lived morality, a theme that runs throughout the book. The development of Christian character through liturgical catechesis is Presley’s summation of his historical work. According to Presley, the Christian life must unite mind with affections thus motivating behavior (25).

The behavior of pagan culture is antithetical to the biblical message (Romans 1:18-32). Pagan vices transform a populace, first by its affections, then by its behaviors, and finally codified in unconscious acceptance of the culture’s values. So, church leaders emphasized “the importance of doctrinal and moral formation” in Christian communities to impact “soul and body” (33-34). This “way of life comprised the virtues” (my emphasis, 41). The term “virtue” itself has a long history, one that points to an external, ethical standard. These Hebraic-Christian virtues (Exodus 20, Leviticus 19, Deuteronomy 10) – entailed a cultural sea change, “not in ways that removed themselves from society, but in discernment choosing how to participate in ways that did not offend the Christian conscience” (45). Biblical wisdom created “internalized habits of virtue” (47) for the church. These habits were so “nefarious” to Roman values (50) that the distinctiveness of Christian traditions and practices (including but not limited to “eating the flesh and blood” of Jesus, John 6) drove apologists Justin Martyr and Tertullian to explain “rival patterns” of the church “within a pagan world” (53).

Catechism and liturgy that forged the identity of the church (chapter 1) had applications for citizenship, intellectual, and public lives (chapters 2-4). Right from the start, Presley begins with the story of Polycarp’s martyrdom as a foreshadowing of Christian persecution for the next twenty centuries, teaching “political theology” (57). Having heard Jesus’ words (“in this world you will have tribulation,” John 16:33) and the apostles’ warnings (“all who live godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution,” 2 Timothy 3:12), Christian public theology was established on the assumptions of God’s transcendence, His providential control of human authorities, and the infusion of Christian virtue within the culture (58). Christian apologists reminded Christians of their responsibilities to honor authorities, pray for them, and pay taxes (70-77). The same apologists spoke truth to power by affirming the role of the state to “maintain the order and structure of society” defending religious liberty and promoting Christian virtue, reminding rulers that Christians make the best citizens (77-79). It is important to say here that the American experience does not equal the Roman Empire. The “American Experiment” is different in that we are trying to preserve a societal structure which is unlike any other in world history. This is not to discount any of Presley’s ideas, it is to expand on them, to give credence to the idea that we are also conservers of culture, responsible for passing on what we have received, i.e., freedom. Both for intellectual (81-112) and public life (113-39), the early Christian community sought, as we seek, to contend for the betterment of the culture by adhering to Scriptural doctrine and practicing its virtues “as light in the midst of the surrounding darkness” (138).

Whereas the Romans simply wanted to preserve their power (142), Christians resided in another hope, “a distinctive feature of the Christian faith” (149). Of course, Christian hope proceeds from Jesus’s resurrection. And it was this world-changing event for which the apologists spilled the most ink. In direct contrast, “This vision of hope subverted the ancient order that located hope in the political and social structures of the Roman Empire” (158). Here Presley returns to one of his earliest concerns: how does a Christian “occupy a position of influence” without losing “moral power and independence” (162)? The is the tension that causes a division of conviction between apologists. Does one separate themselves from the world via monasticism? Or does one persuade the culture through virtue education? Presley summarizes his salient ideas from chapters three and four, advocating for a “public display of morality” promoting “the public good” through “resocialization” of Christian belief (165-68). One wonders about the management of “acculturation” and “ethical improvisation,” wishing for a bit more explanation and application of those terms. What is clear, however, is Presley’s resolve to incorporate into church life now, the doctrine and liturgy of the church, then.

Those who appreciate the reanimation of historical events will be glad for Presley’s chapter introductions where real life situations illustrate the book’s point. Each section, from introduction to conclusion, gives a snapshot of an issue that corresponds to the topic of those pages. Drawing from church historians and texts of the day, Presley impresses upon his reader that the themes developed in his work were concerns for Christians in that day. A treasure trove of resources for further study exists in Cultural Sanctification. Several endnotes are worthy of fuller attention.

I would strongly urge Christian colleges, seminaries, study centers on public university campuses, church leaders, and church discipleship groups to ponder Presley’s excellent work. The author says, “We are entering a world that is post-Christendom” (163) to which I would add, we are already there. Woe to us if we do not mine this book and the works of early church apologists for answers to questions posed now, living within the current labyrinth of pagan thinking. We must prepare ourselves and those who follow us, for what is surely the tribulation that will come. It was always important to me to prime students for persecution, to be the remnant. Cultural Sanctification prepares us well for the task.