Podcast Summary: "What is a ‘Theology of Culture’?"

Podcast: Religion on the Mind
Host: Dr. Dan Koch
Guest: Rev. Matthew Burdett
Date: November 13, 2025
Episode #: 360

Overview

In this episode, Dr. Dan Koch interviews Matthew Burdett—a theologian, Episcopal priest, editor, and writer—about what a "theology of culture" means in contemporary Christian thought. Their conversation dives deep into how Christian theology interacts with culture, personal and collective morality, the boundaries between divine and human meaning, and the challenges of navigating faith in a complex, pluralistic world. The episode features philosophical insights, practical examples, and thoughtful wrestling with contemporary issues at the intersection of psychology, religion, and culture.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining "Theology of Culture" ([02:53])

• Origins: The term was popularized by Paul Tillich, who innovated the idea of applying theological analysis to subjects beyond God alone.
• Core Concept: A theology of culture means both examining the implicit theologies within cultural artifacts and critiquing culture via Christian theological tradition.
• Tension: Tillich tried (imperfectly) to balance attention on both God and human experience, seeing human beings as both affirmed (creatures) and disaffirmed (sinners).
• Matt Burdett:

  "I treat theology of culture as an attempt at identifying what is the implicit theology of certain cultural artifacts, but also kind of more normatively speaking, I attempt to critique culture from the tradition of Christian theology." ([04:32])

2. Understanding Human Nature: Creature and Sinner ([05:03])

• Balance in Theological Anthropology:
  Dan and Matt discuss how poor theology results from emphasizing only one aspect of humanity:
  • Bad liberal theology overemphasizes human goodness/creatureliness ("collapsing into sort of shitty self-help").
  • Bad conservative theology overemphasizes sinfulness and human depravity.
• Responsibility vs. Trauma:
  The intersection with psychology—acknowledging both agency and the understanding that some behaviors are trauma-induced, not just moral failings.
• Matt Burdett:

  "The human condition can't be defined so narrowly as to exclude human freedom, human evil, human goodness, all of these things. It's a mess." ([06:29])

3. Therapy, Responsibility, and Systemic Influence ([07:43])

• Therapy Culture Risks:
  Dan raises the point that "therapy speak," especially when adopted uncritically in pop culture or on social media, may sometimes remove the sense of agency in favor of systemic explanations.
• Good Therapy Practices:
  Emphasize both systemic and personal influences; balancing understanding of context with individual agency is core to therapy, as in faith.
• Suspending Moral Judgment:
  Temporarily suspending moral evaluation within therapy can help clients return to a sense of agency and healthier self-responsibility.
• Notable Quote (Dan):

  "Most people's true values are not to be assholes, islands unto themselves and stuff like that." ([11:33])

4. God as God: The Challenge of Divine Otherness ([13:18])

• Difficulties of Defining God:
  Both discuss how quickly any definition of God risks anthropomorphizing or reducing God to a mere "object" for human use.
• Doctrine of Analogy:
  We must speak about God only analogously, acknowledging the mystery and that God is not like any created thing.
• Meaning with or without God:
  Matt:

  "What would be the meaning of human life if there wasn't God? ... That God exists, to me is the final condition that guarantees that everything has meaning, everything has ultimate goodness, everything has ultimate purpose." ([16:32])

5. Theism vs. Atheism: The Source of Meaning ([16:51])

• Shared Perspective:
  Dan and Matt agree that theism posits ultimate meaning outside human minds, while atheism confines meaning to what is constructed by creatures.
• Dan Koch:

  "Theism is the idea that everything that happens has actual meaning, not only the Meaning that creatures create within our own minds." ([17:08])

6. Against Pantheism: God and the World ([18:22])

• Matthew's Position:
  He rejects pantheism, insisting that the world is not God; our meaning and value come "from without, not from within."
• Existential Implications:
  The experience of not being God (creatureliness) is, for the sinful human, a problem to wrestle with.

7. The Limits of Human Perspective: Culture vs. Ultimate ([23:54])

• Human Filtering:
  Dan reflects on how all divine revelation and scripture is necessarily filtered through human perspective and psychology.
• Matt's Response:
  The danger is not in recognizing this, but in letting that recognition become an excuse for giving up the pursuit of the ultimate, the true, or the good.
• Notable Quote (Matt):

  "...Perfect objectivity isn't possible. But that perfect objectivity isn't possible does not entail thereby that you simply give in to all of your power interests or just say, well, then my perspective is all that matters." ([24:32])

8. Conservative vs. Liberal Approaches to the Ultimate ([26:22], [29:44])

• Conservative Stance:
  Anchors ultimate meaning in historic events or unchanging doctrine (e.g., resurrection, the law).
• Liberal Stance:
  Attends to the vastness of reality, cosmology, and plurality of traditions, questioning how any doctrine or text could exhaustively represent the ultimate.
• Matt's Position:
  Sees Christianity as rooted in a concrete event (the resurrection) but not as a closed philosophy—capable of engaging with the world's immensity.

9. Christian Faith and the Problem of "Worldview" ([34:49])

• Breadth of Vision:
  Matt posits that a good worldview is measured by how much of reality it permits us to see and integrate.
• Christian Worldview Risks:
  If Christianity is used to shrink, rather than expand, our vision (by denying inconvenient evidence, such as the reality and cost of certain moral commands—e.g., mass immigration, failed marriages), it becomes a crisis of faith.
• Notable Quote (Matt):

  "If Christianity means ... I'm not allowed to see that marriages fail ... or that mass migration hasn't had enormously negative effects ... then it’s an invitation to a smaller world. And ... the ethic is being defended by means of excluding evidence." ([38:32])

Memorable Quotes

• Matt Burdett on Theology of Culture:

  "All of these things originate with this innovation of applying theological analysis to things other than God." ([03:15])

• Dan Koch on Therapy:

  "You’re not coming to therapy individually if there’s nothing you can do individually about it. Otherwise, you would only have group therapy..." ([08:44])

• Matt Burdett on God:

  "God is not a thing among things ... even when we apply the word exists to God, we should be cautious to not import into that word the things that really don't apply to God." ([13:42])

• Dan Koch on Theism:

  "Theism is the idea that everything that happens has actual meaning, not only the Meaning that creatures create within our own minds." ([17:08])

• Matt Burdett on Worldview:

  "A view of the world is measured by how much it can take in. It's a breadth. The size of your world is the measure of your worldview." ([34:51])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Opening & Introduction to Guest — [00:08]-[02:53]
• Defining ‘Theology of Culture’ — [02:53]-[05:03]
• Human Nature: Creature & Sinner — [05:03]-[07:43]
• Therapy, Responsibility, Systems — [07:43]-[13:18]
• God as Other & Meaning — [13:18]-[18:22]
• Pantheism & Existential Meaning — [18:22]-[20:04]
• (Advertisements) — [20:04]-[21:31]
• Culture, Meaning, Objectivity — [23:54]-[26:22]
• Conservative vs. Liberal, Ultimate vs. Penultimate — [26:22]-[32:13]
• Christian Faith as Worldview — [34:49]-[39:18]
• Faith, Ethics, and Reality — [39:18]-[End]

Final Thoughts

This interview offers a rich, nuanced, and honest wrestling with how theology can and should relate to contemporary culture, personal and collective meaning-making, and the limits—yet necessity—of striving toward the ultimate in a world of contingency. Both Dan and Matt reject simplistic, binary answers and embrace the messiness of lived experience, doubt, and faith.

The episode is recommended for listeners looking for thoughtful, progressive-yet-rooted discussion of Christianity, culture, and psychology, featuring real intellectual humility and curiosity.