The West Is Christian—The Gospel Is Not Western

Abstract

The West may be described as Christian in a historical sense but not as a theological verdict of innocence, ownership, or election. Western societies have been deeply shaped by Christian worship, Scripture, institutions, conflicts, art, and moral vocabularies. Those histories include real goods and grave guilt. This essay argues that the end of Christendom is therefore neither the death of the gospel nor a summons to restore a lost Christian civilization. It is the exposure of distinctions that Christendom repeatedly blurred. The church receives the gospel through Israel rather than possessing it as a Western achievement, the sinner is justified by a verdict from outside rather than by cultural performance, and temporal government preserves outward life without becoming a bearer of salvation. The Lutheran teaching of the two governments provides a grammar for holding these claims together without political withdrawal. In conversation with Paul R. Hinlicky and Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, the essay asks how political freedom may be sustained when Christian cultural memory weakens. Eastern Germany provides a particularly stark setting in which to consider Christian witness when the language of faith is no longer socially self-evident. Mission after Christendom is not civilizational reconquest but public, non-coercive witness to Jesus, the Christ, in service to the neighbor.