biblical critical theory book review

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Robust Biblical Theology Runs Along Diagonal Lines

Review: ‘biblical critical theory’ by christopher watkin, more by carl trueman.

The summer of 2020 is memorable for many reasons, none of them positive: COVID-19; the death of George Floyd; and social turmoil across many Western countries, focused particularly on the colonial past of Europe and the United States. Amid all the chaos, the term “critical theory” (CT)—specifically in the form of “critical race theory”—entered common parlance.

While CT was once a highly specialized phenomenon of little interest outside postgraduate seminars in the humanities, suddenly everyone—especially those with Twitter accounts and personal blogs—was an expert in the field. Most surprising of all was how many Christians seemed eager to be in on the action.

So CT moved into the mainstream, becoming a point of conflict at school boards; higher education institutions; and churches, both locally and at the denominational level. It became a shibboleth, a tribal marker, with the question “Are you for it or against it?” requiring a simple yes or no answer as a test of orthodoxy on both sides of the discussion.

Yet CT isn’t a unified phenomenon, nor is its literature easy to understand. With one stream of CT finding its roots in Hegel and the other in French post-structuralism, the field is rife with rebarbative prose, opaque arguments, and slippery conclusions.

The highly politicized role CT has come to play in current cultural discussions makes it hard to find a reliable guide to the issue or, more importantly, a sound proposal for a Christian response and alternative. Christopher Watkin seeks to address this lacuna in his major book Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture .

Guided by Augustine

CT has two basic goals. It strives to expose the contingent nature of the reality we as human subjects experience and in which we participate, and it aims by so doing to alter the way we think and relate to the world around us.

Further, at the core of CT, whether of the Marxist variety associated with the Frankfurt School or the post-structuralist variety connected to Michel Foucault, is the notion that power and manipulation lay behind the apparently natural but in reality socially constructed world we inhabit. So understood, CT has clear affinities with Christianity. Christianity claims the world and our perception of it are distorted by sin, that we live according to lies, and that all human relationships are marked to some degree by selfishness. What Watkin does is build on these and other affinities to move beyond knee-jerk and simplistic “Boo!” or “Hooray!” alternatives and to mark a path forward.

Watkin moves beyond knee-jerk and simplistic ‘Boo!’ or ‘Hooray!’ alternatives to mark a path forward.

The guiding light of Watkin’s project is Augustine, whose City of God is arguably the first and greatest example of what a Christian CT might look like. In the course of that work, Augustine debunks the myths Rome told about itself, often by way of what later critical theorists would dub “immanent critique,” exposing the contradictions of Rome’s own narrative as a means of clearing the ground.

Augustine uses the biblical plotline to provide a grand explanatory scheme for his relativization of Rome and his assertion of the superiority of the gospel, something the contemporary theologian John Milbank refers to as “out-narrating.”

Watkin deploys all these elements in his development of a biblical CT. Using the overarching biblical metanarrative to frame his analysis, he moves deftly from Christian doctrine to critiquing the most pressing issues of our day. Much of what the book contains will be familiar to TGC readers as it’s solid biblical theology. The discussions of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation follow familiar lines, along with discussions of key biblical genres, such as prophecy and wisdom.

Indeed, it’s in his discussion of the prophets—the great exemplars of biblical CT—that Watkin excels. If, as Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach state, the point isn’t to describe the world but to change it, then the prophetic imagination is surely critical.

Key Framework: Diagonalization

So what is it about Watkin’s work that makes it “critical” and not simply a re-presentation of standard biblical theology? The answer lies above all in his deployment of what he calls “diagonalization.” If a broadly covenantal scheme shapes the narrative, it’s diagonalization that drives the analysis. This is the idea that many of the things human beings tend to conceptualize as opposites can be overcome when viewed from a biblical perspective that refuses to accept the (humanly constructed) opposition.

Many of the things human beings tend to conceptualize as opposites can be overcome when viewed from a biblical perspective.

In one sense, this is a repackaging of a perennial problem: How does one reconcile the one and the many, being and becoming, freedom and determinism, autonomy and dependence? These questions have preoccupied philosophers since the era of the pre-Socratics.

Watkin’s approach is to begin with God, in whom things dwell in perfect harmony—even though we sometimes place them in opposition to each other (his love and his justice, for example). Watkin then demonstrates how modern culture demands we either affirm one or the other or adopt a synthesis of the two that produces an unsatisfying compromise—a tertium quid , or “third thing,” to use the technical theological term (“neither fish nor fowl,” to use the untechnical, nontheological expression). Finally, he moves to showing how the truths that exist harmoniously in God are manifested in the gospel, albeit in an unexpected way.

The obvious example is the cross. Fallen human beings often place mercy in opposition to justice or develop a synthesis that’s neither just nor merciful. The cross binds both together, but, as the reactions of Greeks and Jews show, it does so in a way that’s unexpected and incomprehensible outside the context of faith.

There are many other places where this can be seen throughout Scripture. Watkin ends his book with a discussion of attitudes to culture, noting the West tends to see itself as normative and superior while others make all cultures equal. The gospel refuses this dichotomy, however, proposing a transcultural message that places under judgment all human efforts to make God in man’s image.

Limitations

This is a rich volume on a complex subject, and any complaint that “the author missed this topic” risks sounding gratuitous. Nevertheless, the book provoked several thoughts in me that the reader might wish to reflect on further.

First, it’s odd that little to no attention is paid to the Frankfurt School. This is no doubt a function of Watkin’s work in French studies and his familiarity with and skill in expounding French critical thought. Further, as there are a number of affinities between the two streams, this is in no way a serious flaw.

Yet the Hegelian Marxist stream has much to offer any discussion of CT, and its commitment to the dialectical movement of history is helpful in understanding why, for example, culture changes over time and the oppositions Watkin identifies shift and morph. Redemptive history has clearly differentiated epochs, each with its own theological logic. But profane history is messier, and analyzing how concepts such as love and justice are understood in different times and places is a historical task.

Watkin does cite Terry Eagleton numerous times, and he has certainly drawn positively from the early critical theorists and Frankfurt School associates, particularly Walter Benjamin, but it’s odd there isn’t more interaction with this stream.

This raises a second area of interest. Diagonalization seems to work best where the categories being “diagonalized” are both morally equivalent and stable. Yet often neither of these applies.

As to equivalence, I wonder, for example, if “conservative/evolutionary progress” and “progressive/revolutionary transformation” are really parallel (554), given the latter has accounted for incalculable suffering and bloodshed compared to the former. Watkin may not intend to indicate moral equivalence, but the reader could be forgiven for drawing that conclusion.

As to stability, given there’s often no agreement (and there’s sometimes fierce debate) about how terms such as “justice” and “racism” should be understood, the possibility of diagonalization seems to be put into serious question as a practical strategy.

Further, human beings are complicated, inconsistent creatures. Nobody is a pure individual or completely subsumed by the community. All of us live in different realms—family, workplace, geographic location, online. Life doesn’t consist of polarized opposites but of overlapping identities that sometimes reinforce each other and sometimes contradict each other. Life, in short, is complicated. And that means there’s always a danger a theoretical model can become not merely a helpful heuristic device but a tool for eliminating necessary complexity.

For instance, Watkin’s reference to Brexit, dividing the sides into those who prioritized the local and the particular over those who prioritized the universal, is far too simplistic (363–64). Issues of geography (London versus the rest), economy (those who do well out of globalization versus those whose jobs have been eliminated or jeopardized by it), workplace (the so-called laptop class who can work anywhere versus the worker who has to be in a certain location), and politics (those who prize technocracy versus those who value democracy) were all part of the Brexit phenomenon. To simplify it into local versus universal is naive, misleading, and not actually “critical” at all.

The analytical model seems to function here not to illuminate but to demand a complicated issue conform to a procrustean bed predicated on uncomplicated categories. It left me wondering if a critical theorist of a different stripe might not accuse Watkin’s diagonalization of being exactly what he insists it isn’t: an inoffensive “third way” that serves primarily to bolster his own kind of evangelicalism (19–21).

Ongoing Conversation

None of this is meant to detract from Watkin’s remarkable achievement. This is a learned book, replete with stimulating arguments and ideas. These criticisms are intended not to highlight fatal flaws but to indicate, as Watkin himself urges, that the conversation about CT in Christian circles should continue.

This is a learned book, replete with stimulating arguments and ideas.

Indeed, his hope in writing Biblical Critical Theory is to make it “just a little easier for others to come after [him] and do the real labor of deploying a range of biblical figures as they carefully and painstakingly work through complex social questions” (605). And so, as that important task proceeds, we can be grateful it will now do so enriched by Watkin’s graceful volume.

This article is adapted from Carl Trueman’s book review of Biblical Critical Theory that appears in Themelios 48, no. 3 (December 2023). Access the full journal online .

Carl Trueman (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He has written more than a dozen books, including Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History , Luther on the Christian Life , The Creedal Imperative , and The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution .

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Book Review

"biblical critical theory," by christopher watkin: a review.

Zondervan Academic | 2022 | 672 pages (hardcover) | $39.99

Over the past few months, I have recommended Biblical Critical Theory to more than a few fellow believers. Almost every time, I was met with a dubious look. The phrase “critical theory” carries negative connotations for many Christians. More than once, a diatribe began against critical race theory before I could explain that this book is something very different.

As Tim Keller notes in the foreword, “The term critical theory has an older and more basic meaning” than those we often hear in contemporary debates: “It means to not just accept what a culture says about itself but also to see what is really going on beneath the surface” (xv). This gets to the matter of “worldview” or how we see and interpret the world around us. As Christians, our worldview is fundamentally shaped by Scripture, though we don’t often consider how exactly the Bible can and should affect our view of reality.

In Biblical Critical Theory , Christopher Watkin helps us further adjust our worldview in the light of Scripture. Watkin does this in unique fashion by walking us through the storyline of Scripture, unpacking the implications for our thinking along the way. Good luck trying to shelve this book in a library! It doesn’t fit with systematic theology, biblical hermeneutics, or Christian living. It encompasses all three.

In addition to the creative organization of this book, the sheer enormity of its scope is impressive. This shouldn’t be surprising. We’re talking about how the Bible shapes our view of the world. What could possibly lie outside such a scope? As a result, Watkin engages many of the hardest philosophical dilemmas and dichotomies—like unity and diversity, rationalism and irrationalism—in the light of Scripture. Yet, he constantly vacates the ivory tower to address ground-level issues.

While Watkin’s writing gets a bit heady at times, he adds just enough quotes, pop culture references, and elegant turns of phrase to keep the reader’s attention. I’m not sure I’ve ever read another book that quotes both G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Watkin’s impressive oeuvre of literary sources and knowledge of contemporary culture keeps the tone conversational.

One of the most important concepts Watkin introduces is that of “diagonalization.” He shows how the Bible eschews false dichotomies and partial truths and transcends them. For example, various worldviews favor God’s transcendence at the expense of immanence or vice-versa. The Bible shows us that God is both—not in some 50/50 balance, but in a way that allows these truths to hang together in a manner that only God can do.

Already, the Christian blogosphere has lit up with critiques of this concept, calling it—among other things—“third wayism.” In other words, Watkin is being accused of theological compromise. This accusation totally misses the mark. This concept of diagonalization is unique in that it refuses to compromise with oversimplifications of reality. The Bible is neither the handbook of the rationalist nor the irrationalist, for example, but the God-breathed word that can be reduced to either school of thought. (Unfortunately, quality theological work generally does not thrive in the humming hive of online Christian punditry.)

If the book has one partial weakness, it’s this: Due to the sheer scope of the book, a good many important discussions and ideas are abbreviated and underdeveloped. Occasionally, Watkin whets my appetite and then leaves me unsatiated. I’m not sure whether he really had a choice—the book is nearly seven hundred pages as it is. In spreading the feast of thinking biblically for all of life, perhaps Watkin could offer only limited portions lest the reader overindulge.

Yet, this arguably unavoidable weakness creates another subtle strength to this work: It introduces several academic roads less traveled. Embedded within nearly every perfunctory point is the question, “Couldn’t this idea be further developed?” If Helen of Troy had the “face that launched a thousand ships,” then Biblical Critical Theory will be the book that launched a thousand dissertations.

This may very well be my favorite book of the year. In how it will both start and shift conversations within the church, it should be equal in influence to Carl Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self . Although this isn’t fodder for Sunday school, it will likely produce a secondary wave of writing that will be immensely important for Christians in the pew. It belongs in every church office and every seminarian’s already over-weighted bookcase. In an age of reactionary heat, we should be thankful to the Lord for books like this that enable a new generation of scholars to view the world with biblical critical lenses—and thus with greater light.

Stephen Roberts

Christopher Watkin

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What is Biblical Critical Theory? A Review Article

Jay Harvey Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology Reformed Theological Seminary, New York City

Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture [1] ( BCT ) is a remarkable book that will bless the Church and the academy. Do not be intimidated by the length of the book. Watkin is a delightful writer who is always clear and often witty. Throughout 28 chapters, he expounds key moments and movements in redemptive history, moving from the biblical text to contemporary application in all facets of culture. Taking the book’s title as a guide, we will consider what is biblical, critical, and theoretical about BCT. This review will summarize some benefits of the project for the Church then move to consider some of its distinctive features.

The Benefits of Watkin’s Project for the Church

First, Watkin offers a sound exposition of crucial moments, movements, and structures from Genesis to Revelation in redemptive history. He is well-sourced theologically. His writing is devotional yet academic, sermonic yet technical at times, often witty, and always clear. Each chapter has study questions at the end. One can easily envision small groups working through this text together, with a Bible in hand for the relevant Scripture passages. The breadth and quality of the biblical survey would be worth the book’s price.

Second, Watkin moves from sound biblical exegesis to sound cultural exegesis (we will discuss his method later), drawing upon a stunning array of sources. His formal training is in French Studies (Cambridge University, M.Phil., Ph.D.). He has published widely in French studies, philosophy, and theology. (He has several volumes in the P&R Great Thinkers series on French Philosophers.) He is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Monash University in Australia, a renown global research institution. All this breadth is displayed in BCT , but never arrogantly or excessively. Watkin’s biblical and accessible response to various cultural issues would also warrant the book’s price.

Third, Watkin’s unique method (more below) provides a pathway for believers to move from Scripture to conversation with unbelievers about some of the most polarizing issues of our time. Critical theory is concerned with the marginalized’ experience and the majority’s ethics. Traditional apologetics in the Reformed tradition tends to engage epistemology first, asking interlocutors to set their experience aside. In today’s social climate, the conversation often fails to bloom. The Reformed apologist declares the unbeliever irrational, and the unbeliever declares the apologist ethically irresponsible and uncaring. Watkin’s use of biblical figures (below) to diagonalize (also below) false dichotomies in the culture opens the dialogue without compromising biblical conviction.

Fourth, BCT will benefit scholars. The work will generate many interdisciplinary insights that will be easy to expand upon because of careful sourcing. While written in a popular style, BCT has a scholarly precision. In addition to a general subject index, there are specific indices for biblical figures, proper names, and Scripture references.

Indeed, another remarkable feature of this work is that Watkin advances a novel thesis that scholars will have to consider while at the same time writing an accessible book for the Church. BCT crosses all the traditional boundaries—academic, pastoral, professional, and popular—and does so beautifully. Watkin models for other scholars how to cross these boundaries responsibly. The Church could use more literature like this from scholars that are accessible, designed for study, and sourced with scholarly precision for the academy. Given the target audience, Watkin’s arguments and assertions may leave scholars wanting more. They will not be left, however, feeling that he has been sloppy or careless.

Watkin locates his primary scholarly contribution in BCT in mapping his cultural and theological insights “onto the Bible’s storyline from Genesis to Revelation.” [2] He hopes “this fresh arrangement is in itself significant.” [3] He also sees himself advancing a new way to do cultural apologetics that others can build upon: “By exploring biblical and late modern figures in a framework of biblical theology, I have provided a crudely drawn map, the finer details of which others can complete in ways I never could.” [4]

Having considered some of the benefits of BCT, we turn now to consider some of its distinctive features. This review focuses primarily on the text of BCT . Scholars will find it helpful to scan the footnotes of the chapters where his formative influences are transparent. Since BCT is written to be accessible, the skeptical reader might wonder whether Watkin’s lack of extensive argumentation for his method betrays a lack of knowledge. To be swiftly relieved of such a concern, one need only consult the many volumes and peer-reviewed journal articles he writes for his day job as a scholar in French studies.

Dr. Watkin is a rising star in the field of French studies. He recently published the first comprehensive account of the voluminous corpus of the French polymath philosopher Michel Serres, entitled Michael Serres: Figures of Thought. [5] This book provides an additional theoretical background to Watkin’s understanding and use of figures in BCT . In January 2020, Watkin lectured on Michael Serres at Stanford University’s Division of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures. The lecture, “Michel Serres: Thinking in Figures,” is available on YouTube. [6] Through these sources, one can learn more about the philosophical background to figures.

What is Biblical in Biblical Critical Theory ?

Christopher Watkin is convinced that the Bible is the word of God. He grew up in a practicing Christian family with warm piety. As his intellectual interests matured, Watkin found himself in French studies and consequently immersed in the world of 20 th century critical thought. On more than one occasion, Watkin remarked that before BCT was a book that he wanted to write, it was a book that he wished he had available to read. He came to theology to resolve intellectual tensions in his own Christian experience. Herman Bavinck, Herman Dooyeweerd, Cornelius Van Til, John Frame, Esther Meek, and Tim Keller are influential Reformed voices for Watkin. BCT is Biblical in its commitment to the Bible and Reformed theology.

The biblical emphasis of the project is also obvious in the book’s structure. Watkin takes inspiration from Augustine’s City of God , the first half of which was a critique of the Roman world, the second half a fulsome presentation of the City of God. Watkin proceeds in the reverse order. He patiently moves through the whole canon of Scripture, expositing key moments and movements in redemptive history and applying them to a wide range of modern, post-modern, and contemporary issues. As noted, Watkin understands this structure as one of the primary contributions of BCT to Christian social theory. [7]

What is “Critical” in Biblical Critical Theory ?

To what extent is this volume critical in the technical sense of the term as it is used in the academy today? There are wide varieties of critical theorists in the academy. Watkin is concerned with offering an account from Scripture that encompasses the totality of the concerns represented in critical thought. He describes what he means by critical theory in the introduction:

As I began to sketch in the preface, these social theories have a number of features in common: they address themselves to everything, seeking to explain everything in their own terms; they bring some objects, events, and values into focus, making them the figure of our attention, and relegate other objects, events, and values to the ground of our peripheral vision, tracing constellations and connected dots in our manifold perceptions; they bring with them a particular set of questions and concerns, in terms of which they seek to understand, explain, and transform society; they are not just theoretical or philosophical, but they span both high and low culture and often fuel activism and lobbying for social change. [8]

As critical theorists endeavor to make “certain things visible and certain things valuable,” Watkin seeks to do the same through a fresh reading of redemptive history. He registers his particular critical interest in four ways.

First, from the field of Gestalt psychology, Watkin embraces the figure-ground distinction. Perception is divided into figure and ground: the figure is what you see, and the ground is the background. The figure is perceived as it is because it is given license to shape what is there. No one can pay full attention to everything in the same depth or detail. Watkin wants to broaden the figure-ground distinction used in theories of perception into a theory of knowledge and ethics. [9] This is an innovative move for Watkin, an aspect of his method that warrants further elucidation and critique.

The “so-what” is always made plain in BCT. Watkin can be called a biblical critical theorist because he wants to give due attention to what remains unseen or undervalued—what remains in the background—reassesses which figures should be orienting us to this background, and bring new figures into view that cause us to see afresh that which was unseen before. As with secular critical theories, once the Bible makes visible that which was unseen before, this new vision will have ethical implications. This is another feature in which Watkin is a critical scholar—he is not a dispassionate describer of redemptive history or contemporary cultural issues. He elucidates for action, and often with verve. Preachers will appreciate and benefit from this aspect of the book.

Second, Watkin is concerned with the so-called “as-structure” of experience. The “as-structure” of experience is from the philosophical discipline of phenomenology, which studies the structure of experience. [10] “As-structure” refers to the difference between reality and our experience of reality. This is evident in the way in which two people can experience the same reality as meaning something radically different. One person sees in a political march a sign of democracy, another a sign of potentially violent revolution. Referencing Terry Eagleton’s Ideology, Watkin summarizes:

What we are presented with is exactly the same; what we experience it as is radically different. A great deal is at stake in the differences between these experiences, and so the terrain of competing theories today—or what is sometimes called the culture wars, a term that is itself a prime example of seeing-as—is in large part “the struggle of antagonistic social interests at the level of the sign,” at the level of the meaning we attach to things.” [11]

Watkin’s concern about accounting for how different people experience the same realities is a classic concern for critical theorists in the academy. This area of emphasis can have pastoral value as well. If Watkin’s exposition and cultural analysis can help foster greater understanding and unity among Christians from different ethnic, social, or national backgrounds, then we are better for it.

Third, Watkin wants an apologetic method that can enter various worlds of discourse. He embraces Foucault and Latour’s contentions that different eras (Foucault) and different institutions (Latour) tend to produce their own canons of acceptable discourse, which, if they don’t always delimit what can be received as truth, certainly determine what has the most profound resonance for participants, adherents, and interlocutors. Put simply, there are times and places where certain ways of saying things “ring true” and other ways do not. Watkin believes the Bible can be bought into contact with alternate worlds of discourse with subversive, reshaping power. His primary tool for this contact will be figures, which “help us get a handle on the fact that each cultural moment has certain broad commitments and assumptions that shape what people can meaningfully think, say, and do.” [12]

Fourth, Watkin is concerned with setting forth an all-encompassing theory that can explain everything on its own terms. In this way, a BCT aims to out-narrate contemporary theories just as Augustine’s City of God out-narrated the Roman world in his day. Watkin would likely say that Augustine was the first comprehensive critical theorist in the best sense of the term for Christians. In City of God , Augustine sought to make the right things visible and valuable under the light of the Holy Scripture. Watkin’s commitment to letting Scripture define terms and God’s revealed speech define reality will resonate with presuppositional apologists.

What is “theoretical” in Biblical Critical Theory ?

In Michael Serres: Figures of Thought , we learn that the concept of the figure became intuitive to Watkin in his reading philosophy as a graduate student:

What does it mean to ‘understand’ a philosopher? As a beleaguered PhD student finding my way in the forest of modern and contemporary French thought I remember what it felt like finally to come to terms with a particular thinker. This sensation almost invariably came at the moment when I began to discern the characteristic ‘moves’ of the philosopher in question, to see the ways in which, time and again, they approached disparate subjects in distinct and recognisable ways, such that I came to be able to predict in a general sense the likely contours of their response to any given question. Not that they became predictable, not that they ceased to surprise me, but nevertheless I was able to fit what I was reading into an emerging understanding of the pattern of their thought. Once I began to understand how a philosopher thought in general, it became easier to understand what he or she thought about any theme in particular. [13]

Watkin believes that a close, attentive reading of Scripture reveals the significance of creation and redemption similarly. [14] While God can never be domesticated or mastered, we have in Scripture access to as much revealed divine truth as we can handle this side of glory. God is showing us in Scripture patterns in creation and redemption. Figures arise out of careful contemplation of Holy Scripture. Figures are at the center of Watkin’s theory. When all the types of figures combine, they form the world of meaning for an individual (more below).

What is a figure? The first sense of figure has to do with figures of speech, e.g., metaphor, simile, alliteration, etc. “Each figure is a repeatable structure or pattern of language that can be filled with almost any content whatsoever.” [15] The key is that the structure or pattern is found repeatedly in the Bible.

Serres understood figures as algorithmic operators, “complex functions for producing an infinite variety of outputs from infinite possibilities of inputs.” [16] These structures and patterns are also generative. Different senses of meaning arise when one puts different words in a relationship using these structures and patterns. When repeatable patterns in space and repeatable rhythms in time are deployed beyond literature and language to include creation, ideas, systems, and behavior, they become helpful in analyzing culture. Watkin says this work mirrors God’s work in creation, where he organizes space and creates rhythms.

How many types of figures are there? Watkin says that there are six categories of figures. The six figures are time/space; language/ideas/stories; objects; behavior; relationships; and structure of reality. Taken together, these six categories form the “figuration totale of a given cultural moment.” It is important not to place on figure in the controlling position over all the others. Examples of biblical figures include:

the biblical concept of covenant, or repeated narratives embodying the “first shall be last” motif (language, ideas, stories); the rhythm of promise and fulfilment (time); the biblical idea of God as the ruler over all space, not like one of the localized gods of the ancient world (space); the biblical distinction between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God (structure of reality); the first Christians meeting together on the Lord’s day to sing, break bread, pray, and hear teaching (behavior); the unity of all believers in Christ, and God as the lawgiver (relationships); and, the location and architecture of the tabernacle, or available modes of transport for Paul’s missionary journeys (objects). [17]

In discussing Watkin’s critical concerns, we already noted the figure-ground distinction. The Biblical figures that arise from Scripture have the effect of shaping the way we perceive our experience. Figures provide us with our world of meaning. “A world is not only that which is perceived by human consciousness. It also includes networks of machines or ecosystems that rhythm and pattern reality just as effectively or extensively as any human actor.” [18] Crucially, given the concrete nature of Watkin’s critical concerns, world is a more concrete and comprehensive concept than worldview. It includes rational and physical elements.

Watkin’s goal in BCT is to bring the world of the Bible into conversation with our world. The process by which this happens is disruptive and subversive. There are no neutral encounters. Borrowing from Ricoeur, Watkin wants the Bible to “refigure” our worlds:

Encountering another world can be a disruptive, subversive experience, and this is the mode in which I want to engage the Scriptures in these pages. I want to explore how the world of the Bible refigures our contemporary world with all its priorities, values, assumptions, and desires.” [19]

First, there is prefiguration—what we bring to the encounter with another world. Second, there is configuration—what happens when the new figures we encounter affirm, challenge, or subvert the figures constituting our world. Finally, there is reconfiguration—what happens when we emerge from the encounter with a new world constituted by new figures. These processes are happening continually across all six figures domains in three contiguous movements. [20]

One aspect of the process is called diagonalization . As the world of biblical figures encounters conflicting positions within culture, the biblical figures will often cut across these positions in a way that reveals them both to be lacking. A Biblical alternative emerges, which is more fulsome than anything that contemporary culture has to offer. Watkin stresses that diagonalization is not a fancy name for compromise or a repristinating of the Aristotelian mean: “let us not make the mistake of thinking of it as a cardigan-and-slippers-wearing, middle-of-the-road compromise between two bold options” (19).

This process of reconfiguration aims to “out-narrate” the story that the contemporary culture is offering. Augustine did this by first critiquing the Roman world of his day, then putting forward the Biblical world in its fullness. Watkin does the reverse: he sets forth the biblical world and then shows how it out narrates the contemporary alternatives. This “out-narration” is the project’s payoff, wherein the Bible’s critical theory is shown to be more effective at making the things unseen visible and valuable.

There is something new at work in BCT besides its presentation. In Biblical Critical Theory , Christopher Watkin sets forward a comprehensive model for integrating Biblical theology and cultural apologetics. He has provided a new tool—figures—which does a different kind of work in the apologetic task—diagonalization. Critically, the work of Watkin and Serres on figures has significant implications for natural theology, epistemology, the relationship between nature and grace, and apologetics that lie beyond the scope of this review. While more familiar territory for Reformed scholars, some will likely also be inclined to review Watkins’ transposition of aspects of Ricoeur’s narrative theory to Reformed theology, ethics, and apologetics.

Positively, there will be those who take up Watkin’s invitation to walk in this new way of figural apologetics:

If it does its job well, the present volume will provide a warm-up act before the main event, a pump-priming exercise making it just a little easier for others to come after me and do the real labor of deploying a range of biblical figures as they carefully and painstakingly work through complex social questions. Some of these interventions will deploy only a handful or even only one of the biblical figures I have identified; some will no doubt find others I have missed. [21]

Will we one day speak of Christian Figural Apologetics ? Time will tell. As critical evaluation of this method unfolds concurrently with the positive application of figures in various fields of endeavor, the durability of Watkin’s method may well be demonstrated.

Whether Watkin has developed a new Reformed school of apologetics or is simply applying presuppositional apologetics, BCT is a helpful project for our cultural moment. There are moments in the history of the Church that call for a comprehensive response. Augustine responded to the Romans with City of God . Aquinas responded to medieval Islam with Summa contra Gentiles . Bavinck responded comprehensively to Hegel, Darwin, Feuerbach, and Marx (whose shadows still loom large over contemporary social theory) with Christian Worldview . Machen responded to early 20 th century liberalism with Christianity and Liberalism . In our cultural moment, Watkin is responding to critical theory with Biblical Critical Theory . If we find his work lacking, he welcomes our contribution:

I am painfully aware of the gaps in the present volume. Do I not understand the richness of the sacrificial system? Have I not even heard of the Holy Spirit? Do I simply not care about all the harm Christians have caused in history? Would someone please give me some Aquinas or some African theology to read! In my defense I can only say: if you see something missing, add it; if you see something broken, fix it. [22]

[1] Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022).

[2] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 603.

[3] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 604.

[4] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 604.

[5] Christopher Watkin, Michel Serres: Figures of Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q8bo3RL0ik (December 16, 2022).

[7] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 603.

[8] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 28.

[9] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 5.

[10] Smith, David Woodruff, “Phenomenology”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/>

[11] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 6.

[12] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 6.

[13] Watkin, Michel Serres .

[14] Christopher Watkin, Thinking through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 as Tools of Cultural Critique (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2017). This short book has an extended treatment on the need to study Scripture and culture with a posture of attentiveness.

[15] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 4.

[16] Watkin, Michel Serres . Kindle, Loc 743.

[17] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 9–10.

[18] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 11–12.

[19] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 13–14.

[20] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 13.

[21] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 605.

[22] Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory , 604.

Volume 7 Issue 2

December 2022 | 98 pages

Other Reviews in This Issue

The Apocalyptic Paul: Retrospect and Prospect
If Adam Had Not Sinned: The Reason for the Incarnation from Anselm to Scotus
Pastoral Theology, Volume 3: The Man of God: His Shepherding, Evangelizing, and Counseling Labors

Bob on Books

Thoughts on books, reading, and life, review: biblical critical theory.

Biblical Critical Theory , Christopher Watkin. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2023.

Summary: An attempt along the lines of Augustine’s City of God to offer a comprehensive overview of how the biblical account from Genesis to Revelation to engage in a critique of late modern culture and the critical theories that have also attempted to analyze the culture.

Critical theory, and particularly critical race theory has become much discussed on the US political and cultural scene even though many participants in such discussions have little more than soundbite understandings of these terms. I suspect that it is this discussion that has created a certain “buzz” in Christian publishing circles over Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory. While Watkin engages various critical theorists from Marx to Derrida to Foucault, coming from an academic background in French studies, he seeks to do far more.

His intent is to show how the Bible, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 provides the basis for a critique of late modern culture in the various facets of its life, while engaging other theorists who attempt to do so. He draws his imspiration for this project spanning more than 600 pages from Augustine’s City of God , which he sees as engaged in a similar project in critiquing the City of Man, exemplified in the late, declining Roman empire, in the light of the City of God, God’s rule in the world.

The Introduction to this work is vital to understanding the framework that will inform all that follows. First is Watkin’s understanding of culture, which he articulates in terms of figure, referring both to the idea of “figures of speech” that reflect the patterns and rhythms that shape our lives and the “figure-ground” distinction of Gestalt psychology that he broadens from perception into a “way of understanding how we live in the world.” Figures include 1) Language, ideas, and stories, 2) Time and space, 3) The structure of reality, 4) Behavior, 5) Relationships, and 6) Objects. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s idea of social imaginaries, he suggests a slightly more flexible term, “worlds,” to describe the ensembles of figures that make up a culture. In turn, critical theories are “theoretical approaches to the whole of life that make certain things viable, visible, and valuable.

The problem Watkin sees in theories of culture are two-fold. One is that they tend to create either-or binaries around which theories (and camps) are polarized, and as human systems are admixtures of truth to be affirmed and error to be avoided. One the one hand, there is much of worth to be learned from these theories, yet the Christian will find these inadequate. What is the way forward, then? Watkin proposes the idea of diagonalization , in which inter-related biblical truths offer novel approaches connecting what is true and good in each approach in ways neither envisions, avoiding both dichotomizing and compromise. His intent is to show how the Bible “out-narrates” the cultural critics, but to do so in a way that interweaves cultural engagement (the City of Man) with biblical critique (the City of God).

Watkin does not simply offer a theoretical approach but implements it in twenty-eight succeeding chapter covering the biblical material from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. Before beginning with Genesis 1, Watkin focuses on the Triune creator of all and the realty that the Trinity reveals that all reality is personal, absolute and relational, truth that diagonalizes dichotomies of absolute and personal, science and art, and communal societies that crush individuality versus modern societies that exalt the individual at the expense of the communal. He then turns to Genesis 1 showing how God addresses dichotomies of chaos and order as he speaks creation into being and how God’s speaking into what was formless and void diagonalizes the dichotomy of language creating the distinctions of reality versus reality being transparent to reality. He also introduces the idea of gratuity, that God makes a good world not out of necessity nor in response to others, but freely, for God’s own pleasure. He will recur to this idea at various points contrasting human systems of acting in certain ways to produce a result versus God’s acting in ways apart from what humans earn or deserve, what he refers to as n- shaped versus u- shaped figures.

It is not possible to cover the breadth of what Watkin does over the succeeding chapters in the space of a review. Every chapter sparkles with insights relating scripture to matters of culture. The promise to Abraham addresses our dichotomizing of faith and reason. The incarnation addresses our dichotomies of particular and universal. The gospel of the kingdom addresses competing narratives of the rich being blessed as rich, and the poor in their poverty. The poor are blessed for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He offers a striking discussion of the church as vital in resisting the subsuming of civil society into the market state. His discussion of the idea of being exiles and strangers challenges dichotomies of cultural assimilation versus isolation.

There are two possible critiques I think that may be offered. At times, diagonalization felt forced or an over-simplification. As a dominant method used over and over again, I felt we were being offered a toolkit of cultural engagement that basically had one tool. While it is a powerful one and I have often argued along similar lines that Christians turn neither to left nor right but offer a third way, a unique perspective to our society, I wonder if this is our only way to engage. What about instances when there isn’t a dichotomy?

The other critique is one Watkin acknowledges in his conclusion. This is a Euro-American-Australian work that does not engage South American, African or Asian perspectives. Theological resources cited are Western ones, other than Augustine, who was African. I recognize that given a project of this size, and the breadth of material Watkin addresses, both biblical and critical, that this may have been beyond the scope of this work. A few chapters that did this as examples may have been helpful. Watkin invites and welcomes others to add to what he has done, acknowledging its limits.

That said, Watkin has given us a singular work, one that goes beyond mere criticism to point to how Christians may use the Bible in cultural critique and how we might out-narrate rather than simply criticize, to do so in thoughtful conversation and engagement. He offers foundational insights just waiting to be expanded as well as a compelling overview of the narrative arc of scripture and its relevance to our cultural life.

________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

“Biblical Critical Theory” By Christopher Watkins Review

A New Christian Social Theory

[But now] enter Christopher Watkin and his mammoth volume Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture , which gives a new take on what culture is and how to think about it as a Christian. In the book Watkin’s aim is to map ways in which the Bible teaches us how to inhabit our faith in any given culture context—but especially the world of late modernity.

Watkin’s expertise in modern languages and literature provides the backdrop for the book. He argues that as he studied social theories and their theorists, from Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis, to postcolonialism and feminism, he was both struck by their comprehensive explanatory power used to map how to live, and the dearth of a compelling Christian alternative.

This lack of a Christian cultural theory to guide our mode of inhabiting our contemporary world is certainly not due to a lack resources to draw upon, but rather, he argues, because Christians do not always fully understand the ideas and values shaping the society around them.

For the writers and thinkers who swim in the waters of “theory” regularly, their attention to the lenses by which we see the world comes as second nature. In its technical usage, “theory” refers to construction ideas about the world to make sense of it, and then using these ideas to shape the entirety of the world into the image of these ideas. For example, Marxist social theory posits a power struggle between social classes as root driver of all change in society, and therefore sees all interpersonal relationships and what needs to change in society in light of this theory. For most Christians, though, rather self-consciously employ some sort of social theory to make sense of life in the world, we often take the world as it is. In doing so, we do not always pay attention to what informs our take on the world. We do not always see how it is that we see things.

To chart the outlines of a Christian cultural theory, then, Watkin aims to revisit the great source of how we ought to see the world and Christian scripture, in order to let CCT show us how much modernity, with all its sensibilities and mores, affect how we see both scripture and the world through it.

All of this points to the fact that we cannot ever really divest ourselves from the context from within which we come to the text. So, as Watkin models throughout the book, the prudent thing to do is to return again and again to the text with today’s dominant social theories in tow to put them in conversation with the text and see how scripture critiques

This requires knowing both Christian scripture inside and out, and the theories and theorists that have shaped the way we think and live in the late modern West. Yet, lest we think such an endeavor is simple enough, equipped as we are with worldview thinking or the familiar Christ-against-culture or Christ-above-culture paradigms, Watkin models for us in great detail how complex a task this really is.

The above is an excerpt from the full article posted on The Land Center for Cultural Engagement .

Dennis Greeson is Dean of the BibleMesh Institute and Research Fellow in Public Theology for The Land Center for Cultural Engagement. He teaches and writes on theology, culture, and public square issues.

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“Biblical Critical Theory,” by Christopher Watkin: A Review

Published Friday, September 1, 2023 By Stephen Roberts

Zondervan Academic | 2022 | 672 pages (hardcover) | $39.99

Stephen Roberts is a US Army chaplain and has written for The Washington Times and The Federalist .

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Special book review: Biblical Critical Theory

By Revd Dr Richard Turnbull

Christopher Watkin’s aim is to analyse and critique our contemporary culture through the lens of the Bible. He seeks to set out a Christian social and cultural theory based in theology and Scripture to help us understand and relate to the world in which we live. A laudable objective indeed, as shown in the sub-title, ‘How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture’, and a welcome endeavour to deal with an important topic.

The book consists of 28 chapters set out over more than 600 pages and 114 figures or illustrations covering a wide range of theological themes and biblical overview. Dr Watkin, who is not a theologian, admits that he is not saying anything radically new. He takes an expansive overview of the subject matter and quotes from a range of diverse authors across various disciplines, although the choice does not always seem entirely relevant.

While the aim is admirable, it is not achieved. Rather, there is a good deal of fog and lack of clarity. The title is problematic and so too is much of the content. Perhaps most problematic of all is what is excluded.

Critical theory, which originated in the ‘Frankfurt School’ (a school of critical theory, philosophy, and social thought deriving mainly from the 1920s) is primarily an approach to action ( praxis) rather than dogma or belief. The aim is to pursue certain outcomes – for example, equality or social justice . The late sociologist, Professor Christie Davies, always used to point out that the insertion of the word ‘social’ before a noun tended to reverse the actual meaning of the noun itself.

We see the impact of critical theory today in the current contemporary challenges around gender, racial issues, and approaches to history. We must overthrow the existing structures which prop up unjust systems of power or economics, rewrite partial and discriminatory histories, and so we end up with critical race theory, critical gender theory, and so on.

Critical theory or theories seek to overturn biblical norms for the family, for work and the economy, for justice, history, and gender, to name but a few. To equip us to respond, we need biblical clarity. But this book does not provide it.

Watkin develops an idea which he calls ‘diagonalization’ (is that even a word?). He argues (p.15): ‘Given a choice between two camps or positions in our culture, the Bible frequently settles for neither and presents us with something richer than both, a subtler solution that neither position has the resources to imagine.’

Consequently (p.17), ‘diagonalization presents a biblical picture in which the best aspirations of both options are fulfilled, but not in a way that the proponents of those options would see coming.’

Forgive me if I see this as simplistic, illustrative of the often superficial discussion of the actual issues Christians face today. Extreme dichotomies are presented. For example, immersion in the culture or separation from the culture? And diagonalization tells us we are ‘in but not of’. There are over a hundred such simplistic diagrams, which I found irritating rather than helpful.

Indeed, one consequence of all of this is little or no discussion of the actual cultural issues facing Christians. This derives from two structural weaknesses in the book.

First, there is a failure to properly discuss the creation mandates and the place of the moral law in society. One would expect to see both of these foundational points in any biblical social or cultural theory.

The first chapters of Genesis are authoritative and decisive for all humanity for all time. Yet the book lacks a proper discussion of the principle of a creation mandate. There is some helpful discussion around the Sabbath, but no attempt to place that into a context built on the creation principles.

One would expect something about creation mandates in general and then a discussion around particular examples and how we apply these today – dignity and life, work and wealth creation, marriage and gender, family, property rights, and so on. How is it even possible to discuss creation without discussing the creation mandate for marriage?

Perhaps it is this failure to consider creation mandates which explains the author’s intense criticism of the market economy which is spread throughout the book? The material on economics, markets, and taxation is shallow and insufficiently grounded in a proper understanding of God’s created order.

The so-called diagonalization on tax is between paying taxes and refusing to pay tax, a simply bizarre dichotomy. Perhaps there could have been a discussion as to why the Bible has no examples of progressive income taxes, only flat rates, but I suppose it would not fit the narrative.

Second, one would look for some discussion around the continuing place, or otherwise, of the moral law in society. We got emancipation and liberation theologies (old hat, I am afraid), but nothing on the manner or extent to which God’s moral law continues to apply to society. Does the moral law matter, or not? Does it matter today, or not? None of this was discussed in what was supposed to be a book on biblical engagement with culture.

Where is the debate around values, marriage, abortion, dignity, enterprise, work, crime, the nation state, the role of government, the voluntary principle? This type of discussion from a biblical perspective (and yes, wider than the traditional personal moral issues) would be genuinely beneficial.

One final point is that C. S. Lewis is often quoted; but he would be aghast at the content. Lewis viewed family, marriage, life, and liberty at the heart of what God has provided for us – the natural law, or the Tao as he referred to it sometimes. Biblical Christians see that reflected in the moral law of Scripture and its continued relevance for us today. Lewis was also concerned for economic and educational independence and highly resistant to an overpowerful state.

I am not convinced I am much the wiser after wading through over 600 pages. In reality I don’t expect many people will get that far. The book would be much improved at half the length.

Christians need help in engaging with the culture around us, clarity over the principles involved, the dangers faced, and the stands to take. We need high quality reflection on biblical and theological foundations, as well as the inspiration of examples from history. We need concise, coherent, and clear expositions and reflections to guide us. Perhaps try Sharon James’s The Lies we are Told, The Truth we must Hold ?

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Revd Dr Richard Turnbull is Director of the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics, a trustee of The Christian Institute, and visiting professor at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.

This article first appeared in Evangelical Times and is reproduced here with permission.

Biblical Critical Theory: [Review]

To start, I want to acknowledge the two groups of people who may be reading this review. In the first group, I am sure quite a few people have automatically dismissed this book based on the subject. In the second group, I am also quite sure that some people saw the name Tim Keller on the front cover and decided this book was no good. If you fall into either of those two groups, you should know that this review has you in mind. This review is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of all the book’s ideas. Instead, I would suggest that an extensive response to Biblical Critical Theory is unnecessary. Intentional or not, Christopher Watkin has written a book that will live or die on its premise. The project fails if the book cannot adequately establish these initial assertions.

I think it’s also important to note that Watkin is a knowledgeable man. He has a very philosophically-minded approach to the world, and he writes as a person who has thought about these subjects for a long time. Taken as individual thoughts, some of Christopher’s work provides gainful insights into the Bible. Taken as a whole, however, the project offers little to no value.

The Premise

The biggest hurdle of this project is also the most obvious: How can a critical theory be Christian, much less biblical? Over the last few years, Critical theory (especially Critical race theory) has presented itself to Christians in the worst possible light. Thanks to Black Lives Matter, the majority of laypeople have been trained to associate the words critical theory as a synonym for Marxism. With this backdrop, Watkin starts his project in an uphill battle to prove his ideas are worth any attention.

Instead of addressing the long and infamous history of Critical theory , Watkin’s philosophical impulse leads him to choose a broader definition. “There are many social theories on the market today; some of the most prominent are feminist theory, psychoanalytic theory, postcolonial theory, queer theory, eco theory, and Frankfurt school critical theory, or ‘cultural Marxism’ as it has sometimes been called.” 1 Cristopher Watkin, “Biblical Critical Theory” – 2022 (page 27) By establishing a more generic understanding of critical theory, Watkin then presents his own project as more of a “biblical social theory.” To be honest, this would have provided a much better title for the book. Christopher’s project is best understood as an attempt to paint a biblical and theological framework that can “inform and shape a Christian social and cultural theory.” Noticeably absent from this premise, however, is the historic Christian understanding of this topic.

Typically, when developing a Christian social theory or philosophy, the most common place to start is in history. The Puritans, for example, provide a fantastic historical example of the Christian social phenomenon in practice. Many historians also gravitate to the early church , identifying the characteristics of early Christianity vs. Roman pluralism. That’s why it’s so strange that the Biblical Critical Theory project starts at ground zero. Instead of an in-depth study of previous Christian societies, the framework is created almost exclusively on biblical and theological grounds. While this approach is not necessarily a bad one, the weaknesses of such an approach should be incredibly obvious.

Even though Christians have had the same faith through the ages, every society that was markedly Christian looked different from the rest. Even though God’s word has guided Christians in every century, each culture the Christians create is entirely unique to that society. This phenomenon should not be interpreted as a deficiency in scripture. Instead, Christian social philosophy should be understood as the unique product of the Christians that formed it. Ernst Troeltsch, a German sociologist, theologian, and a friend of Max Weber, known for his studies in the churches’ social teachings, reaches a similar conclusion.

“Christianity has a social philosophy that was derived, for the most part, from the social philosophy of late antiquity, and that has been continually modified. But it has no social theology, that is, no social theory springing directly from its religious idea, either directly as dogma or indirectly as logical consequence. […] In reality, the social philosophy of Christianity is to be found rather in works and treatises dealing with apologetics, canon law, and politics. A glance at the central religious conceptions of Christianity will show why this is, and must be, the case. All these conceptions culminate in that of the kingdom of God.” Ernst Troeltsch, “Religion in History” – 1922

Christian social theory does not arise directly from theological beliefs, partly because it is not a theological matter. In every Christian culture, the social philosophy manifests in different apologetic approaches, church governance , and civil politics. Watkin, however, seems to believe precisely the opposite.

In his book, Christopher acknowledges that cultural engagement must be “refreshed” in every generation but, at the same time, fails to portray the specific nature of a Christian’s modern social theory. Watkin’s proposal generally works by speaking in abstracts, diagonalizing paradoxes in a “third-way” style 2 https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-third-way-is-dead-long-live-the-third-way/ , or by “out-narrating” the culture. Not only does Christopher avoid the historical understanding of a Christian social theory, but he goes so far as to speak against the real-world application of one.

“…a Christian social theory should be nonpartisan. It will not be a tool to promote the interests of a single political party or interest group in society, and it will not be just one more turn of the emancipation narrative crank, with Christians portrayed as a downtrodden minority, victims of discrimination who need liberating and who demand equality. It will be radically conservative and conservatively radical, traditionally progressive and progressively traditional, soberly optimistic and optimistically sober, because these oppositions are too reductive to contain the complexities of biblical figures and their relation to culture. Biblical diagonalization cuts across reductive oppositions; Christian social theory must not reinscribe itself in their unhealthy and moribund binaries.” Cristopher Watkin, “Biblical Critical Theory” – 2022 (page 30)

Whatever Watkin describes in the above quote is certainly not a social theory. As soon as Christians adopt a social philosophy, it is, by its nature, a partisan political stance, noticeable to the surrounding culture. If Christopher had bothered to find a real-world example, he would have realized that a nonpartisan social theory is impossible. Take, for instance, the politics of abortion (a word that only appears three times in his book). The Pro-life movement, a distinctly Christian social value, is currently considered a partisan agenda of the religious Right. If a Christian is determined to hold a nonpartisan social theory, opposition to abortion would be impossible. Suggesting that a Christian philosophy of social life will not have significant political effects is downright disingenuous. But, instead of addressing this obvious real-world contradiction to his premise, Watkin continues his theory in broad and nonspecific terms.

It should be evident that the premise for the Biblical Critical Theory project relies very heavily on unreliable and nonspecific definitions. It seeks to ignore any empirical portions of historical social theory and relies entirely on creating a self-defined framework from something that doesn’t prescribe one. I would have much rather seen Watkin justify his hypothesis using stricter definitions, as this is far more important than the theory itself. It’s hard to take this work seriously when it claims to be different than every other modern critical theory simply because it uses Christian themes.

Politics For The Blind

Because Watkin refuses to use Biblical Critical Theory as an actual, measurable social phenomenon, some of the practical applications of his theory are astonishingly distorted. While it may be difficult for foreigners to understand political nuances, Christopher cannot hide his ignorance in the matter. For example, when discussing the Biblical theme of exile, he appeals to the writings of Tim Keller to double down on his idea of a nonpartisan social theory.

“Timothy Keller puts the matter of Christian political exile bluntly, drawing attention to four biblical values: care for the poor, racial justice, being pro-life, and monogamous heterosexual marriage. The Christian position is split down the middle: two of these issues are characteristic of the left, and two of the right, indicating that both left and right are reductive heresies of a more complex biblical politics, and that a full-orbed biblical Christianity can be fully at home in neither camp.” Cristopher Watkin, “Biblical Critical Theory” – 2022 (page 485)

It’s not entirely clear if Keller and Watkin appeal to media tropes because they are oblivious or consciously disingenuous. Christian politics are not split down the middle. Protecting the poor, positive ethnic relations, pro-life movements, and pro-family legislation are all biblical values that can be uniquely ascribed to Right-wing politics. To suggest that today’s Christian Right is participating in a reductive heresy is downright absurd! Sections like this illustrate the reason for emphasizing the scope and premise of the book. If Watkin had intended for this book to provide an abstract exposition of Biblical themes, this section shouldn’t have made it into the book. If he had intended to give a commentary on social narratives, the current state of politics could have at least been represented accurately.

Watkin continues his misrepresentation of Christian politics by venturing into a rebuttal of Christian Nationalism . The connection is not explicit, but Watkin fully expects the reader to comply with his modern understanding of Christianity’s ethics.

“One distinctively Christian aspect of this care for the poor is the culture of international aid. Most societies practice support at the level of one’s own family, social group, or nation, but cultures marked by the ethic of the kingdom of God show a disproportionate concern for those with whom they have no natural ties, such as the victims of distant natural disasters or oppression. The Christian roots of groups such as Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontiéres ‘run deep.’” Cristopher Watkin, “Biblical Critical Theory” – 2022 (page 385 )

This paragraph is one of the few places in which Christopher offers his metric of Christian culture in clear and plain language without dichotomizing it. In no uncertain terms, Watkin makes clear that a distinctly Christian culture is incompatible with a society that acts for its own good: the exact sort of society suggested by Christian Nationalists. The book decides to feature the “woke” terminology for this particular section, describing a culture of the kingdom of God as disproportionately concerned with victims of oppression.

It becomes especially hard to give Chris the benefit of the doubt after looking up his example of groups with “Christian roots.” A glance at Amnesty International shows the group is a proud supporter of transsexual extremists and advocates for the right to perform acts of sodomy. 3 https://web.archive.org/web/20230610022038/https://www.amnestyusa.org/pride-2022/ The group claims that abortion is a foundational right of humanity and encourages US citizens to lobby senators to support infanticide. 4 https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/stop-the-roll-back-on-aborton-rights-in-the-usa/ The fact that Watkin views this organization as a group with “Christian roots” is deeply concerning. Combining this information with his atrocious understanding of abortion politics and it’s impossible to confidently say that Watkin’s motives can be trusted. Critical Biblical Theory represents political issues so poorly that a good faith reading is simply out of the question.

In another example, Watkin borrows a dichotomy from Bruno Latour. This situation paints the Left as “socially global, economically local” while the Right is described as “socially local, economically global.” Watkin attempts to diagonalize this Left/Right divide by appealing to something called “The globalization of blessing.” However, it was still incredibly unclear what the bridge attempted to cross. I have never once seen a political system describe the Left/Right difference in such a manner, so I had to visit Watkin’s source: Bruno Latour. After reading the relevant sections of his book, it became clear why the Left vs. Right dichotomy was described so poorly. Latour attempted to explain the rise of climate change denial and the attraction to something he called “Trumpism.”

“Trump’s originality is to link, in a single gesture, first the headlong rush toward maximum profit while abandoning the rest of the world to its fate (billionaires are called upon to represent “ordinary people”!), and second, the headlong rush backward of an entire people toward the return of national and ethnic categories (“Make America Great Again” behind a wall!).” Bruno Latour, “Down to Earh” – 2018

Thanks to Watkin’s footnotes, the reason for the confusing Left/Right paradigm made complete sense. Latour tried to explain a nonsense Trump world where “For the first time, climate change denial defines the orientation of the public life of a nation” and Watkin was trying to apply Biblical social theory to that nonsense! Latour had created a political scenario where “Trumpian politics is not ‘post-truth,’ it is post-politics – that is, literally, a politics with no object” , and Christopher was trying to apply Christian social theory to this same asinine understanding. Latour’s political scenario made no sense when Watkin attempted to describe it because it made no sense at all.

With such a poor understanding of the world, it is impossible to take Watkin’s book seriously. Critical Biblical Theory provides a commentary that is laughable at best and subversive at worst. While some of Christopher’s paradoxes are accurate, the ones that rely on a real-world application are often ludicrous, sometimes going so far as to reveal the unconscionable ethic underneath.

The Positives

Oddly enough, there are some very good things in this book. Watkin is a knowledgeable man with some unique insights. What I still haven’t decided, however, is how to handle the brilliant and coherent sections of the book when they fail to follow through with a usable application. For example, Christopher discusses an “n-shape vs. a u-shape” dynamic, introducing a framework to consider God’s promises and our relationship with Him. While not necessarily a new theological concept, I found this discussion enjoyable. In the n-shape, a person thinks about performance and reward: “I do X for God, and I receive Y from God.” In the u-shape, this dynamic changes to grace and gift: “I receive X from God, and I give Y to God.” While not necessarily groundbreaking, Watkin’s rhetoric is enjoyable to read and offers interesting insights.

In another example, Watkin discusses secularism and the process of secularization. Watkin does not want the world to be secular, but he takes issue with how some people view the current problem. Christopher first offers this diagram – an illustration of the “subtraction story.” Charles Taylor discusses this view at length, and it paints a picture of modernity that wants to strip away all religion and superstition from a religious core.

I think this diagram does a fantastic job of explaining the current situation. There is no such thing as a “neutral core,” totally devoid of religious principles. On this point, Watkin agrees: “The ‘neutrality’ of the naked public square, like the neutrality of the secular, is nothing of the sort…” 5 Cristopher Watkin, “Biblical Critical Theory” – 2022 (page 518) However, Watkin disagrees slightly on the reason for the current problem. Instead, Watkin holds to a “migration thesis.” He believes that the current version of secularization does not attempt to remove religious and theological ideas from society but to attach them to other ideas and institutions (like the nation-state). While the distinction is a bit minor, it was also a point I could understand and agree with. Thanks to COVID, I was well aware of the culture’s tendency to worship the nation-state. It was a point I could quickly agree with.

While reading the book, I became excited to hear the conclusion. Watkin accurately described one of the many issues with secularism and deconstructed it with clarity. I read with a sense of jealousy as Christopher unpacked some of the many issues with secularizing formerly Christian culture. However, Christopher’s conclusion leaves the reader with much to be desired despite his clarity.

“This complex context lends the church in the last days of late modernity both a conservative and a subversive dynamic. It is conservative insofar as the moral intuitions of our society are still largely Christian, and it is subversive insofar as those intuitions have been decontextualized, isolated, and inappropriately deployed.” Cristopher Watkin, “Biblical Critical Theory” – 2022 (page 526)

In all honesty, how does this help? Does Christopher’s conclusion provide insight into radical two-kingdom philosophy and the limits of secular/natural law? What about institutional secularization? Does the presented dynamic contribute to the discussion of organizational “wokeness?” No. It doesn’t. Watkin somehow manages to isolate a problem with modernity, dissect it with ease and clarity, and then leave the reader with an unsolvable dichotomy – an “already, but not yet” sort of paradox. No solution was presented. The problem of secularization is abandoned at this point in Critical Biblical Theory, the chapter concludes, and Watkin moves on to the next subject. Disappointing, to say the least, and leaves the reader questioning the author’s motives. What was the point of identifying the problem without an actionable solution?

If you had hoped for a shorter review to read, I would like to apologize. However, this is a large book, and it isn’t easy to condense the concepts within unless I employ many words of my own. If you recall, I started this review by asserting that Critical Biblical Theory would live or die on its premise. A premise that seeks to introduce a new framework for a Christian social theory in today’s age and to use it to critique the world we live in today. It became clear from the first chapter that the project would need very charitable definitions – which only served to muddy the lines between sociology, philosophy, and Biblical fundamentals. And yet, I was still willing to excuse the strangeness of the approach until it came time for the rubber to hit the road.

Even when reading the book with an open mind, the most painfully unaware portions of Critical Biblical Theory can easily be identified as the politically relevant selections. It attempts to paint both the Left and the Right as tending toward Marxist patterns of oppression (page 273), a bizarre and spurious claim at best. The book attempted to look at Brexit “through the prism of the incarnation”(page 362), which, once again, resulted in more questions than answers. Watkin describes the New Jerusalem as “neither a conservative nor a progressive place” (page 562) – a phrasing eerily similar to the cringe statements of Scott Sauls. 6 “Jesus is neither conservative nor liberal and yet he is both.” – Scott Sauls, https://twitter.com/scottsauls/status/1572707564265308160 Even when taking into account an assumed post-enlightenment political scale, these statements are still an atrocious understanding of the day.

I believe Watkin and I agree that the Bible should inform our Christian social theory, but it seems apparent that we would strongly disagree on how. Looking back at the project’s premise, the reason for our disagreement should be reasonably obvious. Instead of attempting a historical approach to social theory, Watkin attempts to start from scratch, yet instead of genuinely starting from scratch and presenting a system outside of modernity, Critical Biblical Theory imports many terms and political notions from the very system it is trying to critique. Every application falls painfully flat, as Watkin’s points assume, and often support, the same secular system he is trying to criticize. And every time these critiques miss the mark, the reader is inevitably left wondering if the book was even written with reality in mind.

1 Cristopher Watkin, “Biblical Critical Theory” – 2022 (page 27)
2 https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-third-way-is-dead-long-live-the-third-way/
3 https://web.archive.org/web/20230610022038/https://www.amnestyusa.org/pride-2022/
4 https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/stop-the-roll-back-on-aborton-rights-in-the-usa/
5 Cristopher Watkin, “Biblical Critical Theory” – 2022 (page 518)
6 “Jesus is neither conservative nor liberal and yet he is both.” – Scott Sauls, https://twitter.com/scottsauls/status/1572707564265308160

Author Information:

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Book Reviews

Tuesday, April 09, 2024

Book review- biblical critical theory.

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What Makes Critical Theory Christian?

Reviewing Christopher Watkin.

Pentecost, about 1030–1040 Tempera colors, gold leaf, and ink Leaf: 23.2 × 16 cm (9 1/8 × 6 5/16 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. Ludwig VII 1, fol. 47v, 83.MI.90.47v

Pentecost by an unknown artist, ~1030–1040.

Christopher Watkin has written a book called Biblical Critical Theory . For many readers, these three words will prove a puzzle. Placed next to one another, they make for strange bedfellows. Before unpacking the whole phrase, however, we need to understand the original term being modified by “biblical.”

Critical theory names a family of analytical tools that unveil, expose, or unmask the hidden wrongs of our common life. For critical theory, there is always a man—a force, a system, a power—behind the curtain that we call truth, morality, or beauty. For the more drastic critical theorists, civilization is nothing but curtains. Living in Oz means the task of theory is endless. The aim of criticism may be justice, but such justice will inevitably contain new injustice, and so generate ever further criticism.

This may sound cynical. But we ought to pause before rejecting such a view out of hand. Jews and Christians were primal practitioners of “apocalypse,” a potent and rather spectacular form of revealing unjust systems at work in the visible everyday structures of society. God’s people were bold enough to claim to see behind and beyond and above the ruling authorities of their day—whether Babylon, Persia, Greece, or Rome— and what they saw was monstrous : empires built on slaves, regimes bathed in blood, temples built to demons, peace bought with war. Pagans returned the favour. They saw Christians as anarchic, atheist, uncivil, sectarian, and unduly pessimistic about human nature. Not unlike the way many view critical theorists today.

Indeed, the church is committed to the most radical of all critical theories—namely, original sin. No philosophy is more honest about the human capacity for evil and self-deception than St. Augustine and John Calvin. Every secular attempt to outdo the Christian doctrine of sin is bound to fail. It can never go far enough or deep enough. From conception, you and I and every other human being in history are sinful through and through. As Ian McFarland puts it , we are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. And by our own efforts, there is nothing we can do about it. The harder we squirm in the quicksand, the deeper and faster we sink.

The question is not how to destroy critical theory, but how to disentangle the good from the bad.

As for postmodern critical theory, like so much else in Western thought its roots lie in Christianity itself. It is less heathen than heresy. It is a branch shorn from the tree, not an alien or poisonous vine. It has wisdom to offer alongside distorted or corrupted ideas. The question, then, is not how to destroy it, but how to disentangle the good from the bad. More to the point, the question is how the church might do it one better, by formulating her own critical theory—the substance of which secular theory is the shadow.

A number of theologians and philosophers have sought to do just that in recent decades, chief among them Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, John Milbank, and David Bentley Hart. Another name to add is Robert Jenson, who wrote the following in 1999 , regarding the dangers of theologians borrowing from social theory to describe the church:

The church is not simply heaven, describable in this age only in the imagery of apocalyptic; but neither is she simply a phenomenon of this age, patient of the concepts and hypotheses of secular social theory. Therefore, at least with respect to the church herself, “theology . . . will have to provide its own account of the final causes at work in human history.” Borrowings from secular theory may sometimes be convenient but must be done strictly ad hoc and with great circumspection and usually . . . with considerable bending of the recruited concepts.

Why this circumspection? Partly because the church is a unique institution in the world: at once heavenly and earthly, eternal and temporal. More important, though, it is because “the successive modes of Western social theory are a succession of Christian heresies and so necessarily distort reality,” as Jenson paraphrases Milbank’s thesis. The church needs her own theory, proper to the gospel and therefore to reality in light of the gospel, if she would truly penetrate the depths of mere phenomenal and social perception. We need God’s eyes to see God’s world truly.

The church’s response to the challenges of modernity and postmodernity cannot be to play by their rules, on their terms. It must be a genuinely spiritual and theological response, rooted in the good news of Jesus.

Jenson goes on to write that “the needed social theory is and can only be the doctrine of Trinity itself.” Whether or not Jenson is right about that, his approach is exemplary. The church’s response to the challenges of modernity and postmodernity cannot be to play by their rules, on their terms. It must be a genuinely spiritual and theological response, rooted in the good news of Jesus. This means, in turn, the church’s theory must be sourced and governed by Holy Scripture. Above all, it means following the example of Augustine in his magisterial work The City of God , written in the early fifth century. There the bishop of Hippo sets forth competing narrations: the course of the earthly city, defined by love of self, running in parallel with the pilgrimage of the heavenly city, defined by love of God. Whereas the former is bound for destruction, the latter is destined for glory. These twinned stories constitute the one history of the world; accordingly, Augustine leaves nothing out: philosophy, sacrifice, war, slavery, language, sex, bodies, souls, political order—and much more. Every Christian bid to out-narrate pagan or heretical accounts of human life is an imitation of Augustine’s paradigmatic project. It is doubtful anyone will ever match his achievement. But it will always remain the measure of such attempts.

Watkin’s new book is the latest attempt. Its subtitle lays out the aim and scope of the work: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture . Watkin is a scholar of modern and postmodern French and German philosophy. He has written a number of studies on major contemporary theorists like Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and Serres. He earned his doctorate at Cambridge and teaches in Melbourne. This is not his first book for a popular audience, but it is certainly his biggest and boldest. Running more than six hundred pages and spanning the entire biblical narrative, the book closely follows the Augustinian blueprint. Watkin wrote the work he sought but couldn’t find in the library stacks: a biblical critical theory, in careful conversation with and counterpoint to the variety of secular critical theories on offer. Each of the scholars I mentioned above (MacIntyre et al.) is catholic in one form or another. Watkin saw this gap in the literature: an evangelical Protestant meta-response to (post)modernity. So he took up the task himself.

Here is how he describes the project:

A biblical social and cultural theory is both possible and important today if we are to refresh the agenda for Christian cultural engagement in our generation, as we must in every generation. But there is also a sense in which a biblical social theory should be radically different from other social theories. It is not just like critical theory or feminist theory with different labels. Reflecting the patterns and rhythms of the Bible itself, a biblical social theory should be distinct not simply in its content but in its manner and mode of engagement. . . .

In The City of God Augustine does not merely explain the Bible to Roman culture, he explains Roman culture within the framework of the biblical story. In other words, he elaborates a biblical social and cultural theory for his day. At our own moment in history it is not enough for Christians to explain the Bible to our culture. We must explain our culture through the Bible as we pray for the raising up of a generation of thoroughly Christian social theorists.

This quote is representative of the flavour of Watkin’s writing. Congenial, patient, pious, and thoughtful, his prose is disposed against polemic, indictment, and the rhetoric of culture war. Augustine is never far from his mind; neither are Taylor, Milbank, and Hart. He has his own unique approach, though. Here are the main features.

First, Watkin wants to place the Bible front and centre as itself a, or the, principal tool of social analysis, cultural critique, and spiritual converse. This underwrites, second, an emphasis on “Christianity at its best, the Christianity of Christ”; the book is therefore “about biblical figures, not primarily about flawed and sinful people.” Third, with Christ at the centre, the resulting mode or temper of intellectual engagement is winsome . Charity for God, neighbour, and culture alike is definitive of the life to which Christ calls his followers; encounters with opponents, however hostile or wicked they may be, should thus be charitable and in good faith. The necessary accompanying posture, fourth, is “nonpartisan.” Watkin has an allergy to Western cultures’ constant demand to take sides; his desire instead is to grasp the “worlds” of the societies we inhabit in all their complexity through examining the “figures” that constitute them and sifting the wheat from the chaff.

“Figure” here is a term of art intended “to embrace all the patterns and rhythms that shape our lives.” Watkin sets the “figures” of the biblical world alongside those of the fallen world in order to show how the first embrace, fulfill, and/or call into question the second. Watkin selects this word for its capacity to capture the totality of a culture’s lived reality, in all that it says and does and all that it takes for granted; in other approaches to “Christianity and culture” he sees an unnecessarily narrow focus on the cognitive, the symbolic, the behavioural, or the material.

The book’s fifth and final distinctive feature is the sum of the rest: what Watkin calls “diagonalization.” This procedure recurs in every chapter of the book. Put simply, it is a refusal to accept false binaries and to opt instead for a third way. Watkin insists that this method is not a trite via media , balanced evenly between every worldly dichotomy. Rather, it rejoins what sin has fractured: not a mean or a median, but a repair, a surgical operation, even a transfiguration. As he writes, “the aim of this book is not to offer piecemeal arguments on this or that burning issue but to unfold a connected story that diagonalizes dominant contemporary cultural alternatives. In other words, rather than either brushing away modern cultural figures or falling into lockstep with them, the task of out-narrating is a way of allowing the Bible to diagnose and heal them, fulfilling all that is good in them and everything that makes for flourishing.”

From Genesis to Revelation, Watkin renders the canonical story as simultaneously a judgment on Western society and an alternative to it; its primordial source and ultimate fulfillment. In the Bible he proposes to find an untapped resource for cultural criticism, even a full-blown critical theory.

Does he succeed? For all the erudition, wisdom, and guileless faith on offer in the book, I do not think he does. In what follows I explain why.

Watkin has done his homework. No reader will doubt that. His expertise shines through most clearly when he is on his “home turf,” interpreting Latour or Heidegger or Riceour or one of their many peers. His sympathy for their ideas, his handling of their often impenetrable prose, his ability to render their thought into words accessible to ordinary Christians—these are his greatest gifts. Many pastors and lay believers will benefit from Watkin’s labours to demystify and expound these authors, their texts, and their ideas.

The problem is not that Watkin presents us with straw men, though at times certain ideas are so simplified as to appear that way. No, the problem lies with his solutions. These are consistently banal, platitudinous, and even vacuous. His “diagonalizations” amount either to sheer assertions or to “third ways” any reasonable person (Christian or not) would affirm.

Take an early example from the book. In his chapter on the creation account in Genesis 1, Watkin pauses to discuss the fact-value dichotomy. He mentions the “long and tortuous genealogy that takes us from Aristotle via the medieval nominalists, voluntarists, Kant and Kierkegaard, up to the ‘postmodern’ thinkers,” a line of thought that arrives at a notion many of us take for granted: “facts” are “public and universal” and “values” are “private and subjective.” It is a fact, on this scheme, that the earth is round, but a value that adultery is wrong. Yet there is something amiss here. Adultery has public purchase, in law and custom and childrearing, whereas awareness of the roundness of the earth doesn’t much affect the way I live day to day. Humans got along well enough for a long time without the knowledge of that “fact,” important as it is. We can barely last a generation without the “value.”

His “diagonalizations” amount either to sheer assertions or to “third ways” any reasonable person (Christian or not) would affirm.

Watkin is right, therefore, to draw attention to this false division. He follows up his reference to its genealogy with this comment: “The Bible, by contrast, resists attempts to wrench facts and values apart. We could say that for the Bible, values are factual and facts are valuable.” And after a few more sentences, he moves on to the next topic. The whole subsection takes less than a page.

The brevity and superficiality on display here are representative. What could the import of such a discussion be? Is it intended to persuade? Is the reader supposed to conclude that the Bible, just as it stands—perhaps its opening chapter alone—resolves a centuries-long conundrum in philosophy? Are we to take Watkin’s word for it? The suggestion is neither exegesis nor argument; it is a premise expressed as a conclusion. It is true that Christians need not accept the modern dichotomy of facts and values. I fail to see, though, how readers are helped by a treatment as perfunctory and assertive as this.

Now consider some other dichotomies that Watkin “diagonalizes”: “loveless justice” versus “justiceless love”; traditional versus modern societies; “No human improvement is permitted” versus “Any and every human ‘improvement’ is permitted”; rationalism versus irrationalism; nature/determinism/appetite versus freedom/self-determination/reason; faith versus reason; Brexiteers versus Remainers (!); cynicism versus idealism; liberal versus conservative; assimilation versus isolation; political radicalism versus political compromise; “evolutionary progress” versus “revolutionary transformation”; and many, many more.

If anything is deserving of the kind of opprobrium directed in recent years at “both-sides-ism” and “third-way-ism,” it is this list. Invariably Watkin presents two ideal types, bordering on caricature, that stand on each side of a cultural divide, and “the Bible” is there to guide us smoothly between Scylla and Charybdis.

The trouble is twofold. On one hand, there are no teeth to Watkin’s “diagonalizing” proposals. Take Brexit, his own example. Following Graham Tomlin, bishop of Kensington, Watkin claims that “the Brexit debate . . . divided and opposed the two natures of Christ.” Whereas Remainers were attached to the universal, Brexiteers were attached to the particular. His proposed diagonalization? Four words: The Word became flesh . As he elaborates: “The tragedy of the Brexit saga was that it forced us to choose between these two sets of values, when the very distinction and opposition between them is already a heretical dismembering of a more complex incarnational view in which they are perfectly united.”

I don’t want to mince words. As a matter of analysis, this is hackneyed and hollow; as a program for practical action, it is useless. For anyone responsible for voting on the question or executing the decision, this “critical theory” would offer neither guidance nor understanding. At best, you would have Christians who utterly disagreed with each other about Brexit who nevertheless agreed in principle that the particular (Christ’s human nature) and the universal (Christ’s divine nature) are not opposed but united. So what?

On the other hand, the actual sides represented here would not recognize themselves in Watkin’s portrayal. There were and are advocates of Brexit who could be called on to offer a nuanced defence of the decision to leave the European Union , a defence in no way implicated by racism or sneering parochialism. But Watkin’s reader wouldn’t know it. We don’t hear from such a perspective. We are left with brief generic summaries painted in broad brush strokes, little more.

The result, across the book, is an essentially idealist engagement with contemporary society and its mores. It is idealist in the sense that it rarely, if ever, leaves the realm of ideas to touch down on terra firma; and in the sense that it pits biblical ideals against ideal types of the finite, imperfect, fallen world as it is. Hardly a fair fight, I’d say. In one way this amounts to a continuous comparison of apples and oranges. In another way it leaves everything just as it was. After all, the Brexit vote was a binary choice, and in the voting booth, Watkin’s theory offers no direction. What is a Christian to do when faced with only two options?

Watkin proposes diagonalization as a finely honed tool of spiritual surgery, “cutting across and rearranging false cultural dichotomies.” Yet it fails to deliver in practice. In Watkin’s hands it proves less a scalpel than a cudgel.

But the book has deeper problems than these, problems rooted in prior decisions on Watkin’s part.

First is his choice to construct a biblical rather than a Christian or ecclesial or theological critical theory. The Bible is many things, but it is not everything, nor can it be asked to do just anything. Many sections of Watkin’s book contain lovely commentary on this or that passage of Scripture. But that is just what they are: his own commentary. Watkin’s vast learning, not the plain sense of the sacred page (much less its spiritual sense), is the source of most of the book’s insights. That learning has much to instruct us. But it is load-bearing to a degree that Watkin is not prepared to acknowledge. A truly Bible- only critical theory buckles under the weight of the attempt—not because the Bible is not sufficient, but because of what it is sufficient for : the saving truths of the gospel of God. A Christian critical theory needs more than the Bible. Among other things, it needs sacred tradition.

A truly Bible- only critical theory buckles under the weight of the attempt—not because the Bible is not sufficient, but because of what it is sufficient for.

The second problem is about the sources Watkin relies on, which clarify the nature of his project. He draws on five types of literature: modern philosophy, postmodern theory, academic scholarship, Reformed dogmatics, and contemporary apologetics. That’s an impressive list. What is missing, though, is Christian writing between the apostles and the Enlightenment. St. Gregory of Nyssa gets a cursory mention or two, as do Nicholas of Cusa and Calvin. The only true exceptions prove the rule: Augustine and Pascal, each of whom can be read as a kind of undercover Calvinist, if before and after the letter. (As Calvin wrote, Augustine was “the best and most faithful witness of all antiquity.”)

In short, catholic Christianity—the only Christianity in existence before the sixteenth century and the global supermajority until the nineteenth—has basically no part to play in Watkin’s version of a Christian critical theory. This helped me realize that his proposal is no “merely” Christian critical theory at all. It is not a master discourse drawn from all times and places of the church applied to our time and place. It is an exercise in biblicist Reformed apologetics, written for evangelicals in a postmodern age. Neither I nor countless other believers and time periods are in view. We’re eavesdroppers on an in-house conversation. Watkin so rarely names his presuppositions (a young earth? no evolution? a historical flood?) because he does not need to. He assumes you’re already part of the family, fluent in the speech of the house.

Such an approach can make for a fine project. But it is not what Augustine set out to do in his tale of two cities. Nor would Calvin himself approve, for reasons I will return to below.

Before I turn to Calvin, however, I want to linger on Augustine. For Watkin’s difference from Augustine is the third and most decisive reason for his idealism. When Augustine “out-narrated” the city of Rome, he did so with the city of God. What is the city of God? Answer: The people of God. That is to say, the covenant family of Abraham, a family opened to the gentiles in Christ, by his Spirit. In a word: the city of God is the church. (Plus angels, but we’ll leave that to the side for now.)

To be sure, Augustine has in mind what Christian tradition calls the church triumphant , God’s holy people viewed from the vantage of heaven. Retrospectively, with a kind of God’s-eye view, one can look back and trace the pilgrimage of the true church and her true members, from Adam and Abel to the End. The church in the middle of history is thus the church militant : a martial image for a people at war with the principalities and the powers of this passing age.

The story told by Augustine, in brief, is the story of a people; this people is, in a crucial way, the point of the story; and both the story and the people continue into the present, till kingdom come.

By comparison, Watkin’s “narration” is no story at all. It is a contest of ideas between the Bible, on one hand, and Western society, on the other. Though he calls his account a story, it is not clear what it is a story of . Here is a representative paragraph, in a chapter on Babel:

The two cities will remain intermingled and in conversation with each other throughout the rest of the Bible, until the very end when they are separated at the final judgment. There is a sense in which each of us lives in one and only one of these cities now and a sense in which Christians live in both, depending on how the city language is used. If by “city of God” we mean something like the biblical language of being “in Christ,” and if we equate being a member of the earthly city with being “in Adam,” then any individual inhabits one and only one of the two cities at any one time, and all Christians, by definition, inhabit the city of God.

Notice the remarkable inability to say the little word “church,” underwritten by an emphasis on the “individual.” A salient clue to this pervasive ecclesiological reticence is the sheer absence of baptism, Eucharist, Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit from the book. I am not exaggerating: In a supposed narration of the biblical story, neither the sacraments nor the outpouring of the Spirit nor the Spirit himself warrant mention. I imagined this to be some inexplicable oversight until page 604, when Watkin asks rhetorically, “Have I not even heard of the Holy Spirit?” Well, that’s not an unreasonable question, given the foregoing. Perhaps readers are due an answer.

At first glance, the missing Spirit might suggest an overly materialist analysis. But the opposite is the case. As Eugene Rogers has observed , the Spirit makes himself known in bodies: in persons, matter, and meals. Subtract the Spirit and you subtract as well the church and her sacraments; the two go hand in hand. Hence Watkin’s idealism: his theory isn’t nearly materialist enough. While he promises to interrogate institutions, practices, and technologies, mention of these predictably defaults to ideas, values, and abstractions. The ideals supervening the biblical narrative combat the ideals of Western culture. Diagonalization glides along the surface of both, ensuring rolling victories of the former over the latter.

A reader would be justified in being skeptical. It just seems too easy. Watkin is preaching to the evangelical choir. I am a sometime member of that choir, yet I still found myself regularly befuddled, unconvinced, or disappointed. There is a better way.

Ecclesiology, sacramentology, and tradition are non-negotiable elements in any account of the Christian faith, let alone an attempt to build a critical theory for believers on a par with Augustine’s City of God . The Lord’s mighty works narrated in Scripture are not merely past tense. They are present here and now. Theologians and other Christian writers must be vigilant, therefore, in refusing either to reify or to fossilize them. What, according to St. Paul, is “the mystery hidden for ages in God”? Namely, “that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:9–10). The church is intrinsic, not extrinsic, to the will and work of God in the world.

Consider how John Milbank concludes his own book on this topic, Theology and Social Theory , published more than thirty years ago. Regarding the Christian metanarrative, he argues that “the metanarrative is not just the story of Jesus, it is the continuing story of the Church, already realized in a finally exemplary way by Christ, yet still to be realized universally, in harmony with Christ, and yet differently , by all generations of Christians.” He goes on, “The logic of Christianity involves the claim that the ‘interruption’ of history by Christ and his bride, the Church, is the most fundamental of events, interpreting all other events. And it is most especially a social event, able to interpret other social formations, because it compares them with its own new social practice.”

In other words, the protagonist of history is Christ, but not Christ alone. In Augustine’s formulation, it is the totus Christus : the whole Christ, head and body. As Paul writes, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of . . . the children of God” (Romans 8:19, 21). St. John spies a glimpse of this finale when he sees “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2). It is this city, the bride and body of Christ, that will endure. It is her story that the Spirit is writing in real time. Writing our own stories in his shadow, we do well not to forget that.

John Calvin, for his part, never forgot it. It may be the case that church, sacrament, and tradition—even the Spirit!—are oversights in modern evangelicalism. Not so in Calvin. The late John Webster called Calvin “arguably the first and last great Protestant theologian of the Spirit.” This greatness is evident in his magnum opus, Institutes of the Christian Religion , one-fourth of which is dedicated to the church: her calling, her mission, her worship, her pastors, her sacraments, her place in civil society. As Calvin writes, “let us learn, from her single title of Mother, how useful, no, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth.” So exalted is his doctrine of the church that Calvin can affirm St. Cyprian’s dictum, extra ecclesiam nulla salus : “beyond the pale of the church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for.” For this reason “the abandonment of the church is always fatal.”

In sum, “What God has thus joined, let not man put asunder: to those to whom he is a Father, the church must also be a mother.”

There is much more where that came from. Calvin, like the other reformers and their predecessors , is a rich vein ready to be tapped. It is he whose critical theory unveils the sinful human heart for what it is: a factory of idols. We desperately need analysis like his today. Following Calvin, a Christian theory need not be Roman to be catholic; need not be recent to be relevant. It must avoid, however, leaving out what is essential. Idolatries old and new abound in our time, and we need all the help we can get. We need the whole counsel of God, preserved and propounded by God’s people and handed on, through them, by God’s Spirit.

Let us therefore be grateful to Watkin: his book is apt to our moment; it should inspire other attempts, not foreclose them. Watkin calls his book but “a warm-up act,” meant to “prime the pump.” We should take him at his word. Together with him we still await “the main event.”

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture. Zondervan Academic, 2022. 672 pp.

June 28, 2023
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On Culture, Caesar, and Biblical Critical Theory

There is plenty of incisive commentary in the new volume by watkin:.

The new book by a Monash University philosoph y professor and Christian thinker is receiving a lot of interest, attention and discussion. Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture b y Christopher Watkin (Zondervan, 2022) is a large and important volume – so much so that simply writing a short review of it will not do it justice.

So I will instead just pen some pieces looking at aspects of the volume, highlighting some key chapters. Those who are somewhat familiar with his earlier titles will know that Watkin is a capable Christian philosopher who has written helpful assessments o f postmodern heavyweights such as Foucault and Derrida.

He has long been interested in offer ing Christian analysis of contemporary thought, and that has culminated in this 6 00-page attempt at lining up the biblical storyline with it. A VERY brief and sketchy overview of his current volume would go something like this:

The secular left is heavily into critical theory, which is about criticising and deconstructing all aspect of life: culture, politics, history and so on, to determine the inherent power relations going on. The aim is not just to identify so-called oppressive power structures and try to make things better. The aim is to tea r down society altogether and rebuild it according to the latest version of utopian revolutionary thinking.

Watkin reminds us that the biblical story, or metanarrative, is also a far ranging ideological assessment of culture. It too offers a type of critical theory: it also tests and evaluates all things, but in the light of God and his Word. And the aim is not revolution but redemption. It seeks to restore fallen individuals, and where possible, renew a fallen culture – although that only fully occurs with the new heaven and the new earth.

Thus he applies the biblical storyline to the cultural and social and intellectual issues of the day. The chapter I want to examine here (Ch. 23), looks at “The Last Days and Giving to Caesar What Is Caesar’s”. He looks at how we are to react to culture and society around us: do we embrace it fully or reject it altogether?

To help answer this question he appeals to the famous gospel story of paying taxes to Caesar (Luke 20:21-26). His critics of course were trying to trap Jesus : if he said yes to paying these taxes he c ould be accused of being “an assimilationist who has sold out the gospel,” and if he said no, they c ould accuse him of treason and rebellion against the state. T he response of Jesus wa s this:

[Y] ou give the object to the one whose image it bears. And here is the genius of the principle: giving Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s is not like sorting a load of washing into skirts and blouses, with each item neatly folded away either in the “Caesar drawer” or the “God drawer.” There is no neat separation of the two… because the coin is an image of an image. The coin is in the image of Caesar, so it should be given to Caesar, and both the one who gives and Caesar himself are in the image of God, so they and everything that is theirs should be devoted to God. In other words, giving to Caesar is part of giving to God. Paying taxes is a gift (so to speak) to Caesar, but it is also at the same time – and in a more fundamental way – a gift to God. Paying taxes is part of my Christian duty (Rom 13:6-7). In doing so, I offer service to God. I am to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but I am to do so recognizing that everything – including Caesar and my very self – is first of all and ultimately God’s. The second gesture, giving to God what is God’s, gathers up the first giving in its own transcendent offering.

He cites Augustine and Bonhoeffer to reinforce the point that all that we are, all that we have, and all that we do, is ultimately God’s, and should be viewed in that light. Whether it is paying taxes or raising a family or leading a church service, it is all to be an act of worship to God.

As Watkin states: “[E]very good gift and providence that we enjoy from God – life, health, relationships, career, holidays, gadgets, taxes, you name it – should be used as kindling on the roaring fire of our love for God; it should be loved for God’s sake and not for its own.”

And this is what separates the Christian from the non-Christian: “The unbeliever pays his taxes, and that’s it. The Christian still pays her taxes, but that’s not it; the gesture is now part of a bigger story, a note in a richer melody that transcends and transfigures the single act. Paying taxes to Caesar becomes a small part of giving myself to God.”

Loving God includes loving the world he made for us and the gifts he has given us. Sure, in a fallen world all this is distorted and skewed. If you love the world and things in it for themselves, then yes, we can commit spiritual adultery. But not if we love them because we first love God and want him to be Lord of all.

One implication of all this is the truth that my ultimate commitment must be to God alone, and not to anything else. Only God is absolute. The state is not, so Caesar is under God’s authority just as we are. Only God owns us – not the state. Only God can demand of us total allegiance.

A further implication is that the old sacred/secular dichotomy vanishes in this regard. Working 9 to 5 jobs and paying taxes are not just secular things, while pastoring a church is a spiritual thing: “It is not that we labor in the home or work for our employer, and then we give our Sundays to God. Our work should be part of our offering to God, part of our full-time 24-7 ministry, and part of our obedience to God’s commands.”

Watkin goes on to elaborate upon a point Bonhoeffer had made about the ultimate and the penultimate: “The ultimate is the justification of the sinner by grace alone. The penultimate is all that precedes the ultimate: all that pertains to life in this world such as food, clothing, shelter, and work.”

Image of Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture

Thinking this way helps us avoid the errors of radicalism and compromise. While radicalism absolutizes the end, compromise absolutizes what exists. He lays this out as follows:

Radicalism hates time. Compromise hates eternity. Radicalism hates patience. Compromise hates decision. Radicalism hates wisdom. Compromise hates simplicity. Radicalism hates measure. Compromise hates the immeasurable. Radicalism hates the real. Compromise hates the word. What radicalism and compromise share is that they are equally opposed to Christ.

He notes how various modern thinkers look at all this, and then offers “a more adequate account of the relationship between this world and the next.” He continues: “First, my giving to Caesar is transfigured by my giving to God because all my earthly offering is gathered up as part of my offering of myself to God. But second, my giving to Caesar is also conditioned by my giving to God because offering myself to God sets limits on what I can allow Caesar to demand of me.”

Watkin teases this out further in how the Christian should view and relate to culture. We are neither to reject everything nor blindly embrace everything. Instead:

Christians find their measure of good and evil outside the created order, in God’s character and word (Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19), in a way that is not open for negotiation… Locating an ultimate measure of what is good and evil outside creation, Christians find that nothing and no one in this world is completely and purely good. No cultural artifact, novel or play, building or song, person or movement, ideology or church, is utterly good: everything is a mixture of creation and fall, of beauty and ugliness. The implications of this for cultural criticism are huge. It means that a biblical attitude to cultural artifacts can neither be one of utter affirmation or of unlimited condemnation. Wherever Christians look in the cultural and intellectual world, we are sure to find evil and rebellion against God. But by the same token, nothing in culture is so full of sin, falsehood, and ugliness that it can fully erase the goodness of the original creation.

He rounds this off by presenting a way in which we can live this out as we interact with culture and interact with our non-Christian neighbours. He calls this a “hermeneutic of charity” and explains how this will look in practice. And in part, this “is not a curate’s egg, an exercise in finding and affirming the good, however slight and well-hidden it may be. We are not to get to the end of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and praise its vivid metaphors. To assume that love always affirms is a modern heresy of charity, not the biblical pattern.”

This is just one short chapter of a quite important and thoughtfully-argued volume. As mentioned, I hope to do more articles on this book in the days ahead. And bear in mind that one need not agree with everything found in it to still appreciate the fact that there is very much of value here. So stay tuned.

[ 1 5 84 words]

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4 Replies to “On Culture, Caesar, and Biblical Critical Theory”

The Biblical reference to ‘Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God’ is far reaching in that when we break every item down to its last denominator then none of us can not give to God all things as all things -seen and unseen belong to God as God created all things and all things are God. When each of us claim that the law this and the law that, the question should be asked – which law, God’s law of State law? In this, each of us hangs in the balance as Christians are compelled by the Christ’s edict to obey those who govern us and how we apply that edict to all things belong to God. When we claim ownership of anything such as ‘my body my choice’ we give to Caesar that which belongs to God. We pay the taxes not to Caesar but to pay for the services we obtain from the State as Caesar does not claim ownership of the taxes and the State represents the services to the community. In this, even so Caesar’s image appears (Queen, King, President or famous citizen) on the coin it does not mean that any of these images receive the tax and nor did Caesar as the coin collected went into the consolidated fund/revenue to pay the legions and those employed by the State. In my opinion, Jesus was well aware of this and gave his all consuming answer that each of us must decide with each decision of who own what. Those who beckon to Caesar may be told to go to Caesar to open the seed of life. John Abbott

To me the various “critical theories” supposed analysis of power is simply a guise exploiting the prophesied unwillingness of people to subject themselves to authority, even the authority of the Truth. Whereas truth was in the past a defence against slander and libel charges, the modern approach wants to force people to lie and even attempts to use the law to do this. No prizes for guessing where that is coming from. So we now even have laws which are based on lies and laws attempting to force people to lie, making it even harder for people to respect authority.

This, it appears will be the trick going forward. As Christopher Watkins has pointed out, we need to render to Caesar what is his and what is God’s to Him. Where this leaves us with library transgender story hour, protection for what children are taught in schools and laws against conversion etc. is the really big question. People are God’s. We can’t give them over to the state to clearly ruin. The image on the coin may have been Caesar’s but people are made in the image of God.

Have you read Naomi Wolff’s new essay, Bill? Definately worth a look

https://brownstone.org/articles/have-the-ancient-gods-returned/

Thanks Damien. Yes it is a great article and I still might yet write it up.

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"Biblical Critical Theory"

Thread starter bookslover
Start date Dec 15, 2022

Puritan Board Doctor

Dec 15, 2022

Has anyone read Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture by Christopher Watkin (Zondervan, 2022). Zondervan says that the first printing sold out completely before it was even released, and even Zondervan, per its website, doesn't have any copies (hopefully, they're printing more). I haven't even seen a copy. Must be some book! Judging from the sample on Zondervan's website, the book is, in a sense, a long meditation on Augustine's City of God.

Chad Hutson

Puritan board freshman.

I'm awaiting my copy. It's on backorder due to be delivered January 5.

Puritan Board Senior

Critical theory is generally not associated with good things. Hopefully this isn't more of that type of critical theory and this book isn't another way to bring marxism into the church.

RamistThomist

Puritanboard clerk.

Critical Theory is an acid drip. Yes, it is fun to use it on the left and deconstruct things like democracy, human rights, and the IRS. In other words, right wing continental philosophy. The problem with acid drips, though, is that they do not care what they touch.

retroGRAD3 said: Critical theory is generally not associated with good things. Hopefully this isn't more of that type of critical theory and this book isn't another way to bring marxism into the church. Click to expand...

Jack K said: I'm reading it now (in small chunks, as I have a lot of work these days). It's scholarly and good. I anticipate it being popular among the crowd on this board. It's long and quite deep. A few pages at a time is actually a good way for an untrained-in-philosophy reader like me to take it in. View attachment 9844 The idea behind the title is that critical theories exist to critique everything else in life, society, and culture. So if you ascribe to critical race theory, for example, you will tend to see and critique everything else through the lens of race. This book attempts to show what we get when we see everything else in society through a biblical lens. Watkin interacts with the intellectuals who espouse those critical theories and gives a Christian response that's stated in some of their terms. It's nothing like Marxism. I looked for the book a few weeks ago at Westminster Books and saw I would have a long wait. So I went to the Amazon account I share with my wife, saw it was available, and put it in the cart to buy it. Amazon immediately informed me I had already purchased the item six days earlier. I went to ask my wife if she bought it. Was it already in the house? Turns out she had gotten it for me for Christmas, and she pulled it out of a closet. I now have my present early, and am enjoying it. Click to expand...

bookslover said: For now, the book seems to be as rare as hens' teeth. Click to expand...

davejonescue

Puritan board junior.

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture|eBook

RamistThomist said: Yes, it is fun to use it on the left and deconstruct things like democracy, human rights Click to expand...

Tychicus said: Could you elaborate? Click to expand...

Northern Crofter

This sounds like a good read - thanks for the post (though the dust jacket mention of a Tim Keller forward does give me pause). Having had my high school and early university years dominated by teachers and professors hooked on postmodernism and French deconstructionists, I will admit I agree with those above that it is enjoyable turning the tables and applying critical theory against modern constructs such as darwinism and feminism, and this book sounds like it will provide insight/ammunition.

RamistThomist said: In other words, positions aren't necessarily self-evidently true, but find their truth (or falsity) in their historical situation. Click to expand...

Tychicus said: So, when you say you can use it against the left, you mean something like: "liberal individualism is not a universal value. The position is not self-evidently true. It has given rise to the sexual revolution, breakdown of the family, etc."? Click to expand...

RamistThomist said: Kind of. Modern liberalism, at least post-Nietzsche, has little reason to believe in things like human rights. What is a right, anyway? And why should I ultimately care? We only believe in that because of our unique position in human history. All of the above is true. But that cannot function as a logical critique, and that's the danger of genealogical reasoning. Irenaeus was able to do it in "Against Heresies." Click to expand...

Dec 16, 2022

davejonescue said: If someone doesnt want to wait for this to be available in physical. You can simply order it from Logos and read on the web or phone app without downloading the program. They have it for $32. Also just looked and Barnes & Noble has it for regular Ebook, I think for $29. Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture It is not enough for Christians to explain the Bible to the culture in which we live. We must also explain the culture in which we live within the framework and categories of the Bible. If we are to meet this challenge, two things are necessary: we must develop a deep grasp of the shape of the... www.logos.com Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture|eBook *With a foreword from Tim Keller*A bold vision for Christians who want to engage the world in a way that is biblically faithful and culturally sensitive.In Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin shows how the... www.barnesandnoble.com Click to expand...

Tychicus said: Okay, that's what you meant. I confused what you said with consequentialism, leading to my example. Critical theory is indeed acid. It's consequences have been far-reaching. In India's case, it prevented a proper historical consideration of its past, first in the form of the post-colonial theory, articulated popularly by Edward Said. This was co-opted by the Indian academia post-independence, which at the time (and still is to some extent) was almost exclusively leftist. Peddling a myth of Hindu-Muslim pre-colonial paradise, and then a subsequent "colonial exploitation" of the unity, it inadvertently gave rise to Hindu nationalism, who's adherents saw the myth for what it was. Now the Hindu nationalists appropriate the decoloniality school (a notable proponent being Walter Mignolo), another critical theory to further their false myth of an indigenous paradise destroyed by subsequent Islamic and European "invasions". Hence the move to "decolonise" both the British and Islamic influences (the latter is very insignificant though), while the post-colonial school focused merely on the "white man". Decolonise also includes a return to the indigenous religions, since Christianity was an imposition of the "coloniser". Click to expand...

Chad Hutson said: But I won't be able to impress anyone who comes into my office if it isn't on the shelf! Click to expand...

Puritan Board Professor

davejonescue said: Thats funny. I joked around with someone they should make bookshelf wall paper for us digital book users, so we wont feel left out in our Youtube videos, or pictures, or when people come into our homes/offices. You can even have the wallpaper differ by denomination which books they will include. Click to expand...

ZackF said: Nothing is stopping you from hooking up a few projectors… Click to expand...

There's a software-development project in this for someone: Create an app that reads your online library, creates a background imitating the spines of those books on a bookshelf, and uses it as the background for your Zoom calls. The technology surely exists. And such an app would be a sure bet marketing-wise, as it appeals to the subtle showoff in each of us. What could go wrong?

@Jack K please do a review. Jacob may be awhile before getting a copy.

Polanus1561

I will take this time to say that you can buy Logos books and return it within 30 days.

Dec 17, 2022

ZackF said: @Jack K please do a review. Jacob may be awhile before getting a copy. Click to expand...

RamistThomist said: Modern liberalism, at least post-Nietzsche, has little reason to believe in things like human rights. What is a right, anyway? And why should I ultimately care? We only believe in that because of our unique position in human history. Click to expand...

Tychicus said: This seems to be Scruton's critique of rights: they are abstractions. If true, it is odd, given that Scruton identifies himself with the analytic school. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding his position. It would be anachronistic to bring in Burke too, though. Click to expand...

RamistThomist said: I've mixed feelings on the "analytic school." Some of them are given to abstractions, but I don't think it is necessarily the case. Abstractions are not necessarily wrong, but as such I don't think they are self-evident. By itself, I think that is the main problem with "rights-talk." Click to expand...

Tychicus said: I meant to say his argument sounds like saying "what are rights? Where do they exist?" I'm still trying to grasp his issue with rights talk...any help? Click to expand...

Tychicus said: So you take issue with the Declaration of Independence? Click to expand...

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Voddie baucham jr..

Voddie Baucham wears many hats. He is a husband, father, former pastor, author, professor, conference speaker, and church planter. He currently serves as Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia.

Voddie makes the Bible clear and demonstrates the relevance of God’s word to everyday life. However, he does so without compromising the centrality of Christ and the gospel. Those who hear him preach find themselves both challenged and encouraged.

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Dr. Baucham holds degrees from Houston Baptist University (BA in Christianity/BA in Sociology), Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (D.Min.), an honorary degree from Southern California Seminary (D.D.), and additional post-graduate study at the University of Oxford, England (Regent’s Park College).

Voddie and his wife, Bridget have been married since 1989. They have nine children: Jasmine, Trey (Voddie, III), Elijah, Asher, Judah, Micah, Safya, Amos, and Simeon. The Bauchams are committed home educators.

Away from the pulpit and the classroom, Voddie is also a voice actor, lending his voice to films like George Washington Carver: An Uncommon Way, and the 2017 national theatrical release, Genesis: Paradice Lost, and an accomplished Martial Artist. He took up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in 2012 as an avenue of self-defense training, personal fitness, and outreach. However, he began competing and found both a passion and a talent. He has won numerous tournaments and titles, including winning the 2014 Pan American Championship in his division.

Miracles in the Dark: How a Childhood Cult and Abuse Survivor Reclaimed the Light

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Customers find the character loyalty compassionate, brave, and intelligent. They also say the book provides thorough, well-rounded support from clarified philosophical. Readers describe the book as clear, simple, and useful for approaching constructive dialogue. They find the content informative, brilliant, and brilliantly examining Critical Race Theory. Customers also mention that the author is careful to cite primary sources and not press the data beyond where it can go.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book informative, useful, and an invaluable resource for the church. They also say the author does an excellent job dispelling myths and narrative of critical race. They appreciate the sharp and accurate cultural analysis, and the careful documentation of references and critiques. They say the book provides definitions, key presuppositions, and encouragement.

"... This strategy is brilliant , in my opinion, because it flies in the face of those who may criticize him as not being qualified to speak on the subject..." Read more

"...The book is solidly biblical and eminently practical , and its vision is worldwide. Dr. Baucham's range of experience, ministry, and education..." Read more

"...His teaching ministry is uplifting and edifying to all. His research is on point and incredibly accurate in laying out how past events have been a..." Read more

"...'s Looming Catastrophe, Dr. Baucham has provided the church an invaluable resource , one that helps to define what CRT and CSJ are as well as to sort..." Read more

Customers find the book easy to read. They say the rhetoric is scholarly, but spoken very well and easy to understand. They also say the book is full of documentation, explanation, and proclamation. Readers also mention that it's thoughtful, informative, and precise. They mention that the book was wonderfully organized around the Fault Lines title, using metaphors.

"...There is so much in this book. It is very well written in typical Voddie Baucham fashion, with truth, with humility, with godly insight and godly..." Read more

"...incompatible, and he lays out his case step by step, clearly and plainly , with logic and solid exegesis, and without ad hominem or vitriol. I..." Read more

"...portray gays as innocent and vulnerable, victimized and misunderstood , surprisingly numerous yet not menacing...." Read more

"...I cannot overemphasize the fact that the author does a phenomenal job clarifying terms , exposing biases and outright lies while also providing a..." Read more

Customers find the book an engaging and sufficient read for driving the point home. They also appreciate the solid exegesis and well-rounded support from clarified philosophical.

"... This book is so needed . I pray that it gets the attention it deserves both within the Evangelical Church and outside the church...." Read more

"...out his case step by step, clearly and plainly, with logic and solid exegesis , and without ad hominem or vitriol. I myself am a white pastor..." Read more

"...I am also reading it again. It is worth your time ." Read more

"...Let me speak frankly, I think this is the most important book written in the last 20 years (perhaps more) not just on this subject..." Read more

Customers find the biblical truth in the book thoroughly, lovingly, and graciously. They also appreciate the Christ-focused delivery and God-glorifying quotes from primary sources.

"...The book is solidly biblical and eminently practical, and its vision is worldwide. Dr. Baucham's range of experience, ministry, and education..." Read more

"...What does that mean? He is intelligently defending the Christian Faith while engaging all fronts in our Woke Postmodernism culture and dealing some..." Read more

"...This book is highly recommended for every Christian and is—in my opinion—required reading (not optional) for all church leaders...." Read more

"...He is careful to cite primary sources , not press the data beyond where it can go, and provides the best introduction for those seeking to understand..." Read more

Customers find the book compassionate, non-emotionally driven, and heartwarming. They also say it's full of grace toward opponents and respectful and fair.

"...clearly and plainly, with logic and solid exegesis, and without ad hominem or vitriol . I myself am a white pastor and Seminary professor..." Read more

"...and ethnic reconciliation, fulfillment, joy, justice, peace, hope, forgiveness , and salvation.This “way forward” is the Gospel...." Read more

"...It was a heart-warming account of his childhood , and the excellent parenting of his mother; his point being his mother pressed upon him the..." Read more

"...In this fabricated arrangement, there is no forgiveness . There is no gospel. The only thing left are the oppressors and the oppressed...." Read more

Customers find the writing style engaging, compelling, and honest. They say the book is incisive, honest, and heavy researched. Readers also mention that the author's kindness, passion, and love clearly come through the pages. They describe the book as amazing and say it's a lesson in humility, grace, and the unfailing love of God.

"...He is knowledgable and kind to the opposing view. Yet, he still offers real and hard , objective truth...." Read more

"...It is a lesson in humility, grace , and the unfailing love of the Father which is the only thing that will actually solve the problems we face in our..." Read more

"...and the impact of CRT on the church is incisive , well researched, and in hits the mark dead center...." Read more

"...if you are not a Christian, or if you are a Christian, this is compelling and the key book to read for many reasons...." Read more

Customers find the book on fault lines important for anyone wishing to understand how to both communicate.

" Fault Lines is a timely book that (in my opinion) should be required reading for all Christians, especially church leaders...." Read more

"... Fault Lines is very well documented , not with emotion and opinion, but with empirical and quantitative data and solidly rooted in the authoritative..." Read more

"...that the coming catastrophe is unavoidable: “These fault lines are so deeply entrenched , and the rules of engagement so seriously complex, that the..." Read more

" Fault Lines is well thought out , well written, and deftly handles a topic that seems to be everywhere but can be like trying to nail jello to a..." Read more

Customers are mixed about the religious content. Some find the book thorough and thoughtful, unpacking satanic ideologies and warning evangelical churches. They appreciate the research and scripture. However, some readers feel the book is more polemic than exegetical, filled with victimology, and reckless.

"...It bears false witness, causes dissension in the church, ridicules the saints , creates an unbiblical worldview, and leaves no possible atonement for..." Read more

"...an ad is that it would economically portray gays as innocent and vulnerable , victimized and misunderstood, surprisingly numerous yet not menacing...." Read more

"...It exposes the Critical Social Justice movement as an unbiblical, anti-Christian and inaccurate view of America and the world that has gained the..." Read more

"...that the author does a phenomenal job clarifying terms, exposing biases and outright lies while also providing a biblically-based critique of the CRT..." Read more

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Review: Biblical Critical Theory
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Review: 'Biblical Critical Theory' by Christopher Watkin
Biblical Critical Theory does a great job of identifying both the target—reality as described by the Bible—and the sub-Christian misfires scattered around it. Scope and Scale But no isolated example (or review) can do justice to this book of vast ambition and towering achievement.
Review: 'Biblical Critical Theory' by Christopher Watkin
This is a learned book, replete with stimulating arguments and ideas. Indeed, his hope in writing Biblical Critical Theory is to make it "just a little easier for others to come after [him] and do the real labor of deploying a range of biblical figures as they carefully and painstakingly work through complex social questions" (605). And so ...
"Biblical Critical Theory," by Christopher Watkin: A Review
Zondervan Academic | 2022 | 672 pages (hardcover) | $39.99. Over the past few months, I have recommended Biblical Critical Theory to more than a few fellow believers. Almost every time, I was met with a dubious look. The phrase "critical theory" carries negative connotations for many Christians. More than once, a diatribe began against ...
What is Biblical Critical Theory? A Review Article
Christopher Watkin's Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (BCT) is a remarkable book that will bless the Church and the academy.Do not be intimidated by the length of the book. Watkin is a delightful writer who is always clear and often witty. Throughout 28 chapters, he expounds key moments and movements in redemptive history ...
My Review of Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin
In Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, Christopher Watkin (Jesus College, 2002, University of Cambridge, MPhil, 2003, & PhD, 2006,) author of such works as, From Plato to Postmodernism (Bloomsbury, 2011) and Thinking Through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 (P&R Publishing, 2017) strove ...
Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense
Informed by the biblical-theological structure of Saint Augustine's magisterial work The City of God (and with extensive diagrams and practical tools), Biblical Critical Theory shows how the patterns of the Bible's storyline can provide incisive, fresh, and nuanced ways of intervening in today's debates on everything from science, the arts, and ...
Review: Biblical Critical Theory
Review: Biblical Critical Theory. Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2023. Summary: An attempt along the lines of Augustine's City of God to offer a comprehensive overview of how the biblical account from Genesis to Revelation to engage in a critique of late modern culture and the critical theories ...
Book Review
The final limitation I note is that Biblical Critical Theory is long, deep, and comprehensive. It's a journey worth completing, but I fear not all will endure. My reflections are better understood as the unavoidable constraints of the task Watkin sets himself, rather than criticisms of his book per se. I encourage you - read it - to the end.
"Biblical Critical Theory" By Christopher Watkins Review
A New Christian Social Theory. [But now] enter Christopher Watkin and his mammoth volume Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, which gives a new take on what culture is and how to think about it as a Christian. In the book Watkin's aim is to map ways in which the Bible teaches us ...
"Biblical Critical Theory," by Christopher Watkin: A Review
Zondervan Academic | 2022 | 672 pages (hardcover) | $39.99 Over the past few months, I have recommended Biblical Critical Theory to more than a few fellow believers. Almost every time, I was met with a dubious look. The phrase "critical theory" carries negative connotations for many Christians. More than…
Special book review: Biblical Critical Theory
Special book review: Biblical Critical Theory. 2 May 2023. Christian Heritage. Zondervan Academic. By Revd Dr Richard Turnbull. Christopher Watkin's aim is to analyse and critique our contemporary culture through the lens of the Bible. He seeks to set out a Christian social and cultural theory based in theology and Scripture to help us ...
Christianity Today's 2024 Book Awards
Thankfully, CT's book of the year, Christopher Watkin's Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, belongs to the first category.
Biblical Critical Theory, A Review
Christopher Watkin attempts in his book, Biblical Critical Theory, to continue the prophetic legacy of Augustine's City of God by engaging in cultural critique that is both bold and biblical. A critical theory is a tool for analyzing culture through a specific lens in order to make sense of it. Critical theories can even be used to try and ...
Biblical Critical Theory: [Review]
To start, I want to acknowledge the two groups of people who may be reading this review. In the first group, I am sure quite a few people have automatically dismissed this book based on the subject. Biblical Critical Theory: [Review] - Unconscionable Life
The Benson Journey: Book Review- Biblical Critical Theory
In Biblical Critical Theory Christopher Watkin focuses on how the story of the Bible seeks to make sense of the current culture we find ourselves in. For decades Watkin was reading books about how the Bible and culture intersect. He never felt he found one that accurately described what he read in Scripture and saw in culture, so he wrote this book.
What Makes Critical Theory Christian?
C. Christopher Watkin has written a book called Biblical Critical Theory. For many readers, these three words will prove a puzzle. Placed next to one another, they make for strange bedfellows. Before unpacking the whole phrase, however, we need to understand the original term being modified by "biblical.".
Book Review: Biblical Critical Theory
Biblical Critical Theory Christopher Watkin Zondervan Academic, 2022. Reviewed by Tim Collison. I was in Koorong with every Australian Christian's favourite present: a Koorong Gift Card. I'd recently heard Dr Christopher Watkin speak about why Augustine's 'City of God' was the first critical theory.
On Culture, Caesar, and Biblical Critical Theory
There is plenty of incisive commentary in the new volume by Watkin: The new book by a Monash University philosoph y professor and Christian thinker is receiving a lot of interest, attention and discussion. Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture b y Christopher Watkin (Zondervan, 2022) is a large and important volume - so much so ...
Two reviews of Biblical Critical Theory on The Gospel Coalition site
Here are two reviews of Biblical Critical Theory: by Rory Shiner for The Gospel Coalition Australia, and by Andrew Moody for The Gospel Coalition (US Edition).
"Biblical Critical Theory"
Puritanboard Clerk. Dec 15, 2022. #4. Critical Theory is an acid drip. Yes, it is fun to use it on the left and deconstruct things like democracy, human rights, and the IRS. In other words, right wing continental philosophy. The problem with acid drips, though, is that they do not care what they touch. 1.
Vol 4, No 2 (2008) Bible and Critical Theory
Surveillant Discipline: Panoptic Vision in Early Christian Self-Definition — David M. Reis. Intersections in Queer Theory and Postcolonial Theory, and Hermeneutical Spin-Offs — Jeremy Punt. Revelation for Sale: An Intercultural Reading of Revelation 18 from an East Asian Perspective — Rohun Park. The Story of Hannah (1 Sam 1:1-2:11 ...
Biblical Critical Theory and Other Errors
If a Christian scholar has figured out a way to wrestle with critical theory through a biblical lens, that would be an important book. Unfortunately, Christopher Watkin's Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture is mistitled. Watkin's project is to construct a Christian cultural theory showing that the Bible supports Christian ...
Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming
In this powerful book, Voddie Baucham, a preacher, professor, and cultural apologist, explains the sinister worldview behind the social justice movement and Critical Race Theory—revealing how it already has infiltrated some seminaries, leading to internal denominational conflict, canceled careers, and lost livelihoods.

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Zondervan Academic | 2022 | 672 pages (hardcover) | $39.99

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“Biblical Critical Theory,” by Christopher Watkin: A Review

Zondervan Academic | 2022 | 672 pages (hardcover) | $39.99

Special book review: Biblical Critical Theory

By Revd Dr Richard Turnbull

Biblical Critical Theory: [Review]

The Premise

Politics For The Blind

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What Makes Critical Theory Christian?

Reviewing Christopher Watkin.

The question is not how to destroy critical theory, but how to disentangle the good from the bad.

The church’s response to the challenges of modernity and postmodernity cannot be to play by their rules, on their terms. It must be a genuinely spiritual and theological response, rooted in the good news of Jesus.

His “diagonalizations” amount either to sheer assertions or to “third ways” any reasonable person (Christian or not) would affirm.

A truly Bible- only critical theory buckles under the weight of the attempt—not because the Bible is not sufficient, but because of what it is sufficient for.

Grace upon Grace

The enduring significance of Augustine of Hippo

What is to be done... in political theory?

Literature and Belief

On Culture, Caesar, and Biblical Critical Theory

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Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture