ABSTRACT
This chapter describes "theology" and "culture" together around a set of core social relations, defining and configuring these relations within a trinitarian and incarnational theological framework, drawn largely from the thought of Scottish Reformed theologian T. F. Torrance. It suggests that this particular theological vision, and the configuration of social relationships it suggests, not only accounts for the emergence of human culture and cultural activity, but is open to insights from work being done in other social-scientific disciplines. Convergence between these other disciplines and the theological vision developed here will be demonstrated through brief considerations of the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker and the sociologists Christian Smith and Peter Berger. Becker found it an incredible claim that any one discipline could offer humanity an accurate understanding of social reality, either in whole or in part, so he shopped around the academic department store and collected insights from every aisle.
