Book Review: Interpreting Your World: Five Lenses for Engaging Theology and Culture by Justin Ariel Bailey

Justin Ariel Bailey (PhD) has served as a pastor and is an associate professor of theology at Dordt University. His writing Interpreting Your World is orientated by Professor Kevin Vanhoozer’s introduction to cultural hermeneutics about 20 years ago. A pastor’s primary task is preaching and ministering the Word of God; therefore, the original and contemporary cultural contexts must be considered to bring the Word effectively to bear upon the world. As culture is like religion, it shapes one’s heart to longing for the Word of God. In the failed world, humans disconnect from God, and are formed by the culture in which we are hardwired in our everyday lives, even how we read and interpret the Bible. Bailey’s five lenses enable “the dialogue between theology and the culture” (p. xi). He did not treat theology and culture at the two ends of the spectrum, but culture as active “lived theology” that both interprets our world. The Holy Spirit and the Word of God are spiritual formation agencies. Nevertheless, understanding the culture and its function brings the Word in its cultural contexts as a “powerful means of spiritual formation on earth” (p. xii). Bailey also saw culture as broadly synonymous with the “world” as opposed to God’s world, the kingdom of God. Therefore, the dialogue between the two worlds is essential. The book aims to engage culture and theology conversation transformed from our cultural worldview to a Christian worldview in response to the Creator, the triune God. Bailey’s noble goal in his book is to discipline the cultural imagination. The strongest argument is that there is not a simple method of rejection and replacement of culture, nor a simple engagement of culture, but rather an emplacement of culture. If one sees the conversation between theology and culture as comparing what they say, theology takes a superior perspective, and the culture is always on the wrong side. Bailey introduced a new metaphor that the conversation must consider “what” is said, the content, “how” it is said, the context, and “who” is speaking, the connection to the conversation partner. In this approach, culture is treated as a text for us to discern its meaning and see it more through different lenses. Further, Bailey gives three different cultural literary prepositions for the conversation: First, the theology of culture sees culture as a “work” we do. It is renewed in every generation by evaluating, justifying, or orienting our current cultural activities in light of biblical-theological views rooted in Scripture and Christian traditions of interpretation. Second, the theology from culture sees culture as a “world” we discern. It seeks to identify and resist any theological visions of an imaginative universe that implicitly emerge from various cultural artifacts. Lastly, the theology for culture aims at our imagination and sees culture as a “web”weweave and share with others. It draws biblical-theological resources to create and cultivate our communities. Through Bailey’s five lenses, one can see culture in five dimensions respectively in five chapters: (1) The semantic meaning a bit of culture works like a virus, but many works together as an Book Review