Plowing in Hope: Towards a Biblical Theology of Culture

Culture is a continuing, forward process—the gradual unveiling of truth as life. But often we get ensnarled. We can only imagine culture as a war, a gritty ideological and religious struggle where every arena is bloody with strife: art, philosophy, cuisine, music, literature, science. But at its foundation, culture is about building, not conflict. The time has come for us to beat our swords into plowshares.

By realizing the Bible's vision for a cultivated earth, we can build a more comprehensive, radical, holistic culture, resistant to compromise and dedicated to a Trinitarian aesthetic. What does this culture look like? It is the development of the earth into a global fabric of gardens and cities in harmony with nature—a glorious garden-city.

Our "cultural mandate" finds its roots in God's command for us to rule the earth and till the ground, causing hidden potential to flourish. The New Testament boldly reverberates this calling. God has given central preeminence to our cultural "plowing," weaving it into the whole tapestry of mankind's history, from the very beginning to the consummation and beyond. Plowing in Hope provides a positive, clear, and colorful introduction to this transformational topic.

Plowing in Hope seeks to affirm the power and glory of human culture within a clearly defined biblical theology. True culture, Hegeman writes, "is not an activity to keep mankind occupied until something else (presumably better) happens. It has a particular God-ordained end in view: the development of the earth into a global network of gardens and cities in harmony with nature--a glorious garden-city." Placing the development of human culture in a biblical context through a close examination of key words in Greek and Hebrew ("work," for example), the author explores the true importance of the labor we do upon the world, arguing that true work must involve the "threefold connotation of work, service, and worship.

Not all will agree with Hegeman's conclusions; he rejects the monastic ideal of celibacy, for example, as a "denial of the normative goodness of marriage and the culturative commandment to fill the earth," and assumes that much of "non-Christian art" is useful in that it "may be given over to God's people for their use and enjoyment." Nonetheless, the book will be helpful to Bible-focused Christians who are looking for an affirmation of human culture in a Christ-centered context. --Doug Thorpe