Resident Theologian
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My latest: on Houellebecq (in Mere O) and Forgiveness (in Comment)
Links to two new essays just published online.
Two new essays for y’all.
The first was published last week at Mere Orthodoxy, on January 7, the ten-year anniversary of the publication of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, which came out the same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. Jake Meador was kind enough to get it up in time for the anniversary—I was surprised not to see any other outlets noting the date—and gave it the title, “A Future Worthy of Life: Houellebecq, Decadence, and Sacraments.” It’s about the insights and shortcomings of Houellebecq’s critique of the West, parallels in other recent novels, and the superior vision (and prescription) found in P. D. James’s Children of Men. (The lesson, as always: James is the queen.)
The other essay came out last month in the print issue of Comment, but it’s been behind a paywall until today. In the magazine it has the title “Promise, Gift, Command”; online it goes by “The Theological Terrain of Forgiveness,” which tracks with the issue’s overarching theme of forgiveness. It’s my attempt at locating, delimiting, and unpacking the Christian doctrine of God’s forgiveness of our sins in Christ, by the Spirit, through the sacraments—and the implications for our own call to imitate this divine action in our daily lives.
Thanks for reading. More soon.
2024: blogging
A rundown of the year on the blog.
Counting this one, I published a total of eighty-three posts on the blog this year. At least half were themselves just news, updates, or links to pieces published elsewhere. In other words, not a lot of original writing in this space. Which makes sense, since any half-baked ideas I would have blogged about in the past became columns for Christianity Today.
In any case, here is a rundown, loosely categorized, of what I did write on the blog in 2024.
10. I annotated an old-fashioned blogroll of one hundred writers I follow.
9. I wrote about Antoine Fuqua’s “real movies” and Alex Garland’s seriously misunderstood Civil War.
8. I wrote altogether too much about Star Wars: three posts on The Acolyte, another comparing Catholic Jedi to Protestant wizards, and a long series of twenty-three thoughts on The Phantom Menace.
7. I loved Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem and thought Percival Everett’s James powerful but flawed.
6. I fell in love with Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia, but noted the absence of religion and imagined a similar book called Theological Amnesia.
5. I wrote about the church and the Eucharist and the desire and search for both.
4. I wrote about disenchantment and reenchantment and the search for both.
3. Theologically, I wondered what idols promise; I argued what biblicism can’t get you; I outlined the metaphysics of historical criticism; discussed the unspoken Name; elaborated Protestant subtraction; and proposed a sort of fallacy: “no true cessationist.”
2. In terms of miscellany, I wrote about the NBA, ancient illiteracy, second naivete in biblical scholarship, the reception of C. S. Lewis among American evangelicals, and forty examples of my “tiers” of writing.
1. This year on the blog I wrote the most about digital technology: how it’s the greatest threat facing the church today; why I changed my mind on podcasts; what it costs not to be on social media; what it means to write with or without a “platform”; how boys are affected by video games; the simple principle governing screens and distractions; the dangers of screentopia; how social media is bad for reading (and we all know it); what unites the best books about technology; a taxonomy of tech attitudes; and the Bartleby rule for the “necessity” or “inevitability” of adopting new technologies.
2024: reading
My year in reading, with ranked lists and categories.
I read fewer books in 2024 than any year in the last decade, and I can’t quite figure out why. I didn’t teach a class for the final eight months of the year, for goodness’ sake. What else did I have to do?
I did read some fairly fat books. And we had a busy summer of travel (including two weddings I performed). And I published at least thirty essays, in addition to two books and a number of lectures and dozens of podcasts. So I was busy.
But still. I’m disappointed. The truth is, I am the slowest reader I know and a terrible skimmer. In 2011 I read 150 books and the closest I’ve come since is 120. In 2025, to take full advantage of my sabbatical, even granting that I’ll be drafting a book manuscript, I should end the year with at least 150 books read, ideally closer to 175. It probably won’t happen, but a man can dream.
This year may not have been a success in terms of quantity, but it was in terms of quality. Below I’ve listed below my favorite reads of the year, organized loosely by category. The only one not listed, since it lacks a category and since now I’m a biased judge, is Gavin Ortlund’s What It Means to be Protestant, which won Christianity Today’s Book of the Year. A few of the following were re-reads, or at least deeper reads following prior skims, but most were first-time reads, however old the book.
Classics
With some friends, this year I read both The Iliad and The Odyssey. We’re currently reading Virgil. Later in the year we’re turning to Dante and Milton. Everyone in the group has different prior experiences with Homer et al. I’ve got an essay under consideration right now that’s partly about (re)reading these classics. We’ll see if someone goes for it.
Poetry
I did my usual re-read of Franz Wright, Mary Karr, and Marie Howe, followed by Malcolm Guite’s Sounding the Seasons and Charles Wright’s Scar Tissue. I confess that, at first, I thought the latter was James Wright, i.e., father to Franz. All three won the Pulitzer and share the same surname, so I think the mistake wasn’t entirely unjustified.
Fiction
10. Daniel Silva, The Kill Artist & The English Assassin. Ideal airport reading.
9. John le Carré, Call for the Dead; A Murder of Quality; Single & Single. Getting closer and closer to le Carré completion.
8. Michael Bond, A Bear Called Paddington & P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins.
7. William Gibson, Neuromancer. This is a “successful” book, and its influence and prescience cannot be overstated, but it is not a pleasant read. The snaggletooth prose had me bleeding, confused, and and even bored. I’m still glad I read it, but I doubt I’ll go on to the sequels.
6. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn + Percival Everett, James. Thoughts here. Rereading Twain did give me a greater appreciation of his achievement.
5. Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. As promised, a delight. On to Moonbound.
4. Michel Houellebecq, Submission. Far different than I expected, based on its reputation. I’ve got a long essay on the novel I hope will be published soon.
3. Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem. Thoughts here.
2. Tad Williams, The Navigator’s Children. Thoughts here. The apocalypse of Osten Ard. Worth the wait.
1. Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener.
Academic Theology
7. Matthew Lee Anderson, Confidence in Life: A Barthian Account of Procreation. Turns out this Anderson guy knows his stuff!
6. Kendall Soulen, Irrevocable: The Name of God and the Unity of the Christian Bible. Some thoughts here.
5. Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper & (with Michael Barber and John Kincaid) Paul: A New Covenant Jew. I’m something of a Pitre super-fan; these books did not disappoint.
4. Ephraim Radner, The End of the Church; Leviticus; Hope Among the Fragments; Time and the Word. More here.
3. William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration.
2. Ian McFarland, The Hope of Glory: A Theology of Redemption. A former teacher of mine and arguably the proper successor to Hauerwas’s moniker for Joe Jones: “the best unknown theologian in America.” This book completes a loose trilogy, following books on creation from nothing and the incarnation. Earlier works also address theological anthropology, the image of God, and original sin. Next up is ethics. The lesson: Read McFarland, people!
1. Paul DeHart, Unspeakable Cults: An Essay in Christology. This book is a riddle, a provocation, a tour de force, and designed alternately to thrill and to madden. If I’d read it closer to its publication date, I would have pitched a review essay to an academic journal. I love Paul’s work, even when we disagree profoundly, and this is him at the peak of his powers.
Spiritual (older)
5. Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy.
4. François Mauriac, The Eucharist: The Mystery of Holy Thursday.
3. Saint Isaac of Nineveh, On Ascetical Life.
2. Simone Weil, Waiting for God. Is Weil having a moment? It seems I can’t go one week without seeing a new essay or podcast about her. Or maybe she’s always having a moment, as seems to have been true from very early in her life.
1. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath. A perfect book. Perhaps the best book about technology, because it’s not about technology, that you’ll ever read.
Technology
8. Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech.
7. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation & Abigail Shrier, Bad Therapy. They go together.
6. Albert Borgmann, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology.
5. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.
4. Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.
3. Byung-Chul Han, Infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy. My second Han, and not the last.
2. D. W. Pasulka, American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. A shot in the arm. Pasulka’s star is rising with reason. Hoping to read her latest soon.
1. Sara Hendren, What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World. In contention for my favorite book I read this year. Certainly the best book-about-technology I read this year. Sara is a rock star.
Nonfiction
12. Ryan P. Burge, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going & Stephen Bullivant, Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America & Isabella Kasselstrand, Phil Zuckerman, and Ryan T. Cragun, Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society. These folks keep me honest, Zuckerman especially.
11. John le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life. Opt for the audiobook; as read by the late author, you might as well be by the fireside with the master storyteller himself.
10. Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis. More here.
9. Albert Borgmann, Real American Ethics & Crossing the Postmodern Divide. The latter is outstanding; the former is not, in my view, Borgmann’s finest work. More here, in any case.
8. Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectual in Politics.
7. Jennifer Banks, Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth. Beautiful. I still can’t quite believe she pulled it off, given the thin ice all around.
6. Carlos Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible. Scholarly cheek in the best way.
5. Joseph Bottum, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America. Ten years later, it remains a vital “explainer” for our times. And beautifully written to boot.
4. Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity. A classic for a reason. As informative as it is distressing and even depressing. Let the reader understand.
3. Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. A one of one. Nothing like it. The sections on therapy and suicide read like they were written yesterday, in direct response to current events. There is nothing new under the sun.
2. Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays. I’m late to Davenport, but better—far, far better—late than never. What a joy.
1. Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time. This book rocked my world this summer. I couldn’t put it down. I’ll never be one-tenth the writer as James, or one-hundredth the reader, or one-thousandth the linguist—but I can try. Reading James doesn’t make you want to give up: it, he, makes you want to persevere. More thoughts here and here.
2024: writing
A list of what I published this year, replete with links and a bit of commentary.
This was a banner year for my writing in more ways that one.
First, I had two books published in October. These were my first true “popular” books, i.e., not written for an academic audience. I have no idea whether or how well they are selling. But I am happy with them; the reviews have all been quite positive; and the podcasts I did for my little digital publicity tour were a blast. I couldn’t be more grateful.
Second, I began in January as something of a part-time columnist with Christianity Today. Every three weeks I send my editor an essay or book review, if I have one written, if it’s worthy to be published. In total, this year CT published eighteen pieces with my byline, one of which came out in the final print issue of the magazine.
This experience was entirely new for me: new in terms of audience and certainly new in terms of the speed and regularity of a deadline. I think I’ve gotten the hang of it, though I still write far too many words in the first draft. (Thank my editor for trimming it down and cleaning it up.) The “pitch” or “level” (or “tier”) of assumed readership at CT is very, very helpful for this logorrheic academic.
In addition to the books and columns, I published one journal article, one academic review, and eleven mid-to-highbrow essays in other venues. All in all, my estimate is that I published around 60,000 words this year, not counting the books or the blog. I’ve got plenty in the works for next year, but my number one hope is to have one or more places that have repeatedly turned me down finally give me the green light on a submission. Come twelve months from now, I guess we’ll see whether I’ve met my goal.
Here are the links.
Books
Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry (Eerdmans, 1 October 2024).
The Church: A Guide to the People of God (Lexham, 23 October 2024).
Academic
Review of Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture, in Interpretation 78:1 (2024): 69–71.
“Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical” and “Response to the Responses,” Restoration Quarterly 66:3 (2024): 133–43, 163–69.
Essays
How to Read Paul (Commonweal, 31 January 2024). A review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul.
A Poet’s Faith Against Despair (Comment, 15 February 2024). A review essay of Christian Wiman’s Zero at the Bone. One of the better things I wrote this year, I think.
Beating Slow Horses (The Hedgehog Review, 1 March 2024). An aesthetic appreciation and political critique of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels (not the Apple show).
The Genesis of Grace (The Los Angeles Review of Books, 12 March 2024). A review of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis.
The Home of God in the Body of Christ (Syndicate, 18 April 2024). Part of a symposium of responses to Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s The Home of God.
Mother of the Unborn God (Commonweal, 25 April 2024). A theological reflection on Mary, the incarnation, and abortion.
The Gift of Reality (The Hedgehog Review, 5 September 2024). A review of Albert Borgmann’s final (posthumously published) book, doubling as an introduction to and exploration of his work and thought as a whole.
The Reading Lives of Pastors (Sapientia, 20 August 2024). A vision for the role of reading in the vocation of ministry.
Gods Who Make Worlds (The Christian Century, 16 September 2024). An essay review of the final book in Tad Williams’ “four book trilogy,” The Last King of Osten Ard, itself a sequel to his original, 35-year old trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. I use Williams as a springboard for thinking about fantasy, tragedy, and the divine comedy of grace.
The Knowledge of God (The Raised Hand, 30 October 2024). An answer in reply to the question: “What do all college students need to know?”
Promise, Gift, Command (Comment, December 2024). An essay on “The Theological Terrain of Forgiveness” (its online title). In the December print issue, and paywalled until January.
Christianity Today
All Hail the Power of … Stage Lighting? (6 February 2024). On liturgy and technology.
My Students Are Reading John Mark Comer, and Now I Know Why (14 February 2024). A review of Comer’s latest book, Practicing the Way; the most-read CT book review of the year, and one of the top-ten most read pieces published on the site period. Checks out, because my inbox exploded at the time, and the stream of emails continues unabated.
Doubt is a Ladder, Not a Home (20 February 2024). Against the sexiness of doubt.
How (Not) to Talk About Christian Nationalism (13 March 2024). What the title says. A good piece, in my opinion, that seemed to fly under the radar.
Biblical Literacy in a Postliterate Age (18 April 2024). A word of lament.
Digital Lectors for a Postliterate Age (8 May 2024). A word of hope.
The Loosening of American Evangelicalism (20 May 2024). An elaboration of a long-running thesis of mine. This one resonated!
Faithful Fathers (14 June 2024). An ode to my dad and to other faithful dads like him.
Two Cheers for the Wedding Industrial Complex (25 June 2024). Weddings are good because marriage is good! Even the over-fancy ones.
Penalty or No, Athletes Talk Faith (25 July 2024). In which I talk about LeBron and the Spurs and the Olympics and God.
Worship Together or Bowl Alone (11 September 2024). The very things our non-Christian pundits and academics are noticing our society most needs today turn out to be the byproducts of belonging to a local congregation. Coincidence or divine providence?
Make Christianity Spooky Again (22 October 2024). A review of Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder; the sixth-most read CT book review of the year.
A Vision for Screen-Free Church (28 October 2024). A sort of third entry in my loose trilogy of postliterate digital commentary.
Saints Are Strange. Martin Scorsese Gets It. (15 November 2024). A review of the new Scorsese-produced docuseries The Saints.
Jordan Peterson Loves God’s Word. But What About God? (19 November 2024). A review of Peterson’s We Who Wrestle With God; the second-most read CT book review of the year, behind Comer.
Our Strength and Consolation (November/December 2024). My first print piece for CT. The online title is “The Consolation of Providence.”
Why Christians Oppose Euthanasia (11 December 2024). Self-explanatory.
The Blood Cries Out at Christmastime (19 December 2024). A reflection on three feast days of Christmastide: Saint Stephen, the Holy Innocents, and the circumcision of Jesus.
An old-fashioned (annotated) blogroll
A list of the 100 living essayists, journalists, and bloggers I always read, no matter what.
“Navigating the vastness of the Internet can feel like getting marooned in the middle of the ocean, both terrifying and sublime in its overwhelmingness.” That’s Franklin Foer in World Without Mind. He’s right. But if there’s too much to read on the internet, how to triage for the best?
One way is social media. Another is Substack. Still another is print magazines (not dead yet!).
Alongside these, my preferred mechanism is the RSS feed, which is basically a personal blogroll: a live feed, perpetually updated, of the authors and publications one wants to be sure never to miss. In principle infinite, in practice finite. Years ago a colleague asked me how I decide what to read and who my favorite contemporary writers are, and ever since then I’ve meant to draw up an old-fashioned blogroll in response to her request. Better late than never. At least it’s annotated!
To be sure, stellar newsletters with links to the best stuff are not hard to find: Arts & Letters Daily, The Browser, Prufrock. If I don’t know a writer by name or don’t keep up with a given publication, resources like these are usually how I happen upon new things, in addition to friends sharing links.
Short of grab-bags and random links, though, it’s nice to have a list of one’s own. Below I’ve drawn up a list of the writers whose work I make it a point to keep up with. I limited myself to one hundred names. Initially I organized them by category, but I opted just to run them in alphabetical order. Bios and links are meant to be helpful but, as will be clear, are sometimes tongue-in-cheek.
A few ground rules first. The listed names fit the following criteria: (a) living writers whose publishing output is (b) regular, (c) popular, and (d) accessible online. These aren’t academics whose primary work is found in scholarly journals. Nor do they mainly write books while occasionally putting out an essay. Nor still is the following list exhaustive, as if I didn’t enjoy, appreciate, respect, or follow those unnamed.
For example, Wendell Berry and Marilynne Robinson aren’t here, but their age is advanced enough and their essay output minimal enough that it wouldn’t make sense to include them. (They’re not exactly “online,” either.) My friend Ross McCullough is my favorite theological writer going, but I can’t induce him to write anything popular more than once every few years. I used to read Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher but slowly drifted away, even as I continue to keep an eye on their work. I’m delighted when Abigail Favale and Erika Bachiochi emerge from their scholarly dens to write popular essays, but lately it’s too rare an event by my calculation to add their names to the list. I subscribe to Robin Sloan’s monthly newsletter, but he’s a novelist with the best newsletter around, not an essayist pumping out regular pieces. I laugh whenever I read Andrew Ferguson and learn whenever I read Noah Millman, but I’d be lying if I said I keep up with everything they write. Maybe I should and maybe I will, but time is short and you can’t read everything.
That’s not even to mention friends and acquaintances whom I try to read as much as I’m able but don’t (yet) read enough of, like Matt Milliner and Kirsten Sanders and Chris Green and Kyle Williams and Ian Olsen and Alex Sosler and Alan Noble and Ben Crosby and James Wood. Or ballers like Onsi Kamel and Matt Burdette and Justin Hawkins and Rachel Roth Aldhizer who need to write more, more, more. Or once-yearly bangers like Matthew Rose and Patricia Snow and Zena Hitz. Or writers I hugely enjoy but can’t quite keep track of, like Ian Marcus Corbin and Matt Feeney and Samuel Goldman and David Samuels and David Polansky and Park MacDougald and Sebastian Milbank and Derek Thompson. Or old standbys I guiltily don’t read enough of, like Nicholas Carr and Mary Eberstardt and Jamelle Bouie and Oren Cass and Niall Ferguson. Or old lovable know-it-all academics like Philip Jenkins. Or old souls like Joseph Epstein and Stanley Fish, Peter Brown and Jackson Lears who’ve written so much for so long that I could barely make a dint in it. Or Ben Thompson and Jesse Singal and Ed West, who seem to write more daily than I can read in a week.
For those names that are on the list, therefore, their inclusion means that their author page is in my RSS feed, that I subscribe to their Substack, that I constantly scour the internet for their latest publication, and/or that I crack open a magazine the moment I see their name on the cover. To be clear, I don’t love or agree with all of them. A few might qualify as hate-reading, or at least facepalm-reading. Nevertheless I do find myself reading them—to see what they have to say, or to see how they say it. Everyone on this list has either style or substance, and many have both.
One last way to put it: These are the writers I’ve learned to read because the editors I trust continue to commission and publish them—Matthew Walther at The Lamp, Ari Schulman at The New Atlantis, Jay Tolson at The Hedgehog Review, Jon Baskin at The Point, Matthew Schmitz at Compact, Rusty Reno at First Things, Matthew Boudway at Commonweal, Anne Snyder at Comment, Peter Mommsen at Plough (all of which, by the way, arrive in my mailbox). These are the gatekeepers, together with their many fellow editors; they know what’s what, and most of what follows is just picking favorites from the murderer’s row of writers they have the regular pleasure of publishing.
Oh: And I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone. If your name is missing, I’m sure that someone is you.
Sam Adler-Bell – leftist journalist and freelance writer, hate-hate relationship with the Right, co-host of Know Your Enemy podcast, bylines at the New York Times and New York Magazine and The New Republic
Sohrab Ahmari – co-founder of Compact, author of Tyranny, Inc., bylines at First Things and The American Conservative
Matthew Lee Anderson – ethics prof at Baylor, founder of Mere Orthodoxy, writes The Path Before Us newsletter, author of Called Into Questions, former co-host of the Mere Fidelity podcast, bylines at Vox and First Things and The Dispatch
Helen Andrews – conservative journalist, former editor at The American Conservative, author of Boomers, bylines at First Things and The Lamp and Compact
Jon Askonas – politics profs at CUA, winner of the Emerging Public Intellectual award, bylines at Comment and Compact and The New Atlantis
Jon Baskin – founding editor of The Point, former editor at Harper’s, author of Ordinary Unhappiness
Richard Beck – psychology prof at ACU, long-time daily blogger at Experimental Theology, author of Hunting Magic Eels
Jeff Bilbro – English prof at Grove City College, editor of Front Porch Republic, author of Words for Conviviality
David Brooks – come on, let’s not pretend you don’t know who he is
Joseph Bottum – man of letters, poet, onetime editor of all the magazines, Catholic and conservative intellectual, author of An Anxious Age (a masterly book but criminally under-read), bylines at The Washington Free Beacon and First Things and Commonweal
Josh Brake – engineering prof at Harvey Mudd, wise guide to all things A.I., author of The Absent-Minded Professor newsletter
Elizabeth Bruenig – staff writer at The Atlantic, formerly at the New York Times and The Washington Post
Matt Bruenig – wife guy, lefty data policy guru, fellow Texan, righteously angry, founder of the People’s Policy Project, blogs at his website, bylines at Jacobin and The Nation
Sonny Bunch – film critic for The Bulwark, writes the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood newsletter
Timothy Burke – history prof at Swarthmore, author of Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women, writes the Eight by Seven newsletter
Tara Isabella Burton – novelist and essayist, former religion reporter for Vox, author of Strange Rites, co-writes The Line of Beauty newsletter, bylines at Comment and Commonweal and Plough and the New York Times and The New Atlantis
Christopher Caldwell – polyglot monarch of conservative intellectual journalism, contributing editor at the Claremont Review of Books, contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, author of The Age of Entitlement, bylines at Compact and The New Statesman and The New Republic and National Review and The American Conservative and Financial Times and The Spectator
Isaac Chotiner – interrogative journalist at The New Yorker, author of the Q&A column, formerly of Slate
Phil Christman – marvelous essayist, equally(!) midwestern and leftist and Christian, English prof at the University of Michigan, author of How to Be Normal, writes The Tourist newsletter, bylines at Plough and Commonweal and Slate
Clare Coffey – freelance writer, bylines at The New Atlantis and The Hedgehog Review and Plough and The Bulwark
Tyler Cowen – economics prof at George Mason, columnist at Bloomberg, author of The Complacent Class, blogs at The Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations With Tyler podcast
Matthew B. Crawford – research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft, writes the Archedelia newsletter, bylines at First Things and The New Atlantis and The Hedgehog Review
Theodore Dalrymple – retired doctor, conservative essayist and novelist, author of Our Culture, What’s Left Of It, bylines at The Lamp and First Things and City Journal
Freddie deBoer – last true Marxist, disbeliever in word counts, freelance writer on everything under the sun, author of The Cult of Smart, writes the Freddie deBoer newsletter, bylines at Compact and the New York Times and Harper’s and n+1
Michael Brendan Dougherty – writer at National Review, author of My Father Left Me Ireland, regular on The Editors podcast, bylines at The Week and the New York Times
Ross Douthat – my own personal op-ed spirit animal, columnist at the New York Times, film critic at National Review, author of Bad Religion, co-host of the Matter of Opinion podcast
Christine Emba – staff writer at The Atlantic, author of Rethinking Sex, formerly at The Washington Post
Edward Feser – philosophy prof at Pasadena City College, long-time blogger, author of Philosophy of Mind, writes for First Things
Angela Franks – theology prof at St. John’s Seminary, author of Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy, bylines at First Things and Church Life Journal and Catholic World Report
John Ganz – lefty interpreter of the Right, author of When the Clock Broke, writes the Unpopular Front newsletter, bylines at The Nation and The New Statesman and The New Republic
David P. Goldman – right-Hegelian journalist of economics and China, writer at Asia Times, author of You Will Be Assimilated, bylines at Law & Liberty and First Things and Claremont Review of Books
Ruth Graham – religion journalist for the New York Times
John Gray – intellectual virtuoso and prolific analyst of the post-Christian West, author of Two Faces of Liberalism, bylines at The New Statesman and The Guardian
Emma Green – religion journalist at The New Yorker, formerly at The Atlantic
Paul Griffiths – retired theology prof at Duke, author of Decreation, bylines at Commonweal and (once upon a time) First Things
Allen Guelzo – historian at Princeton, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, author of Fateful Lightning, bylines at First Things and The New Criterion and Claremont Review of Books
Jonathan Haidt – psych prof at NYU, author of The Anxious Generation, writes the After Babel newsletter, bylines at The Atlantic and the New York Times
Shadi Hamid – columnist at the Washington Post, formerly at The Atlantic, author of Islamic Exceptionalism, co-founder of the Wisdom of Crowds website and podcast, co-host of the Zealots at the Gates podcast, bylines galore
Mary Harrington – reactionary feminist, author of Feminism Against Progress, writes the Mary Harrington newsletter, bylines at First Things and UnHerd
David Bentley Hart – irascible genius unbound by institutional shackles, Eastern Orthodox theologian, essayist, and translator, author of The Experience of God, writes the Leaves in the Wind newsletter, bylines wherever he damn well sees fit
Sara Hendren – design prof at Northeastern, author of What Can a Body Do? (an all-timer), blogs at her website, microblogs at ablerism, write (wrote?!) the undefended / undefeated newsletter, bylines at the intersection of the built and the physical environment
Wesley Hill – NT prof at Western seminary, author of Spiritual Friendship, bylines at The Living Church and First Things and Comment
Dan Hitchens – editor at First Things, sharp-tongued and unsentimental observer of all things Catholic, bylines at The Spectator and The Critic
Peter Hitchens – surviving brother of Christopher, irascible conservative scribbler, columnist at the Daily Mail, author of The Rage Against God, bylines at The Lamp and First Things and Compact
Alan Jacobs – English prof at Baylor, OG uber-blogger, my self-assigned mentor and archegos, author of The Narnian, blogs at The Homebound Symphony, bylines at The Atlantic and Comment and The New Yorker and The New Atlantis and First Things and Harper’s
Samuel James – editor at Crossway, author of Digital Liturgies, writes The Digital Liturgies newsletter
Paul Kingsnorth – ex-pagan novelist, poet, and essayist, my favorite convert to Orthodoxy outside of my brother, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, writes The Abbey of Misrule newsletter, bylines at First Things and elsewhere
Phil Klay – Iraq veteran, novelist and essayist, author of Redeployment, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic and Commonweal
Ezra Klein – columnist at the New York Times, founder of Vox, author of Why We’re Polarized, host of The Ezra Klein Show
Austin Kleon – fellow Austinite and thief, author of Steal Like an Artist, super-duper blogger, also writes a glorious newsletter
Sam Kriss – unclassifiable essayist, logorrheic in a good way, writes the Numb at the Lodge newsletter, bylines at Compact and First Things and The Lamp and the New York Times
Bonnie Kristian – editor extraordinaire at Christianity Today, author of Untrustworthy, writes the Bonnie Kristian newsletter, bylines at The Week and The American Conservative
Peter Leithart – president of Theopolis, author of The End of Protestantism, writes for First Things
David Leonhardt – pandemic worldbeater, writer at the New York Times, author of Ours Was the Shining Future, writes The Morning newsletter
Yuval Levin – everyone’s favorite level-headed institutionalist conservative, senior fellow at AEI, editor of National Affairs, author of A Time to Build, bylines at the New York Times and National Review
Mark Lilla – humanities prof at Columbia, author of The Once and Future Liberal, bylines at the New York Review of Books and the New York Times
Michael Lind – grumpy gumshoe pro-labor conservative, author of Hell to Pay, bylines at Tablet and Compact and The Free Press
Damon Linker – radical moderate, poli-sci prof at UPenn, onetime editor of First Things, author of The Theocons, writes the Notes From the Middleground newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic
Matthew Loftus – doctor in Kenya via Baltimore, bylines at Mere Orthodoxy and Plough and Christianity Today and the New York Times
Zach Lowe – NBA journalist, formerly of Grantland and ESPN, former host of The Lowe Post podcast, currently and unjustly a free agent
Kate Lucky – editor at Christianity Today, bylines at The Point and Commonweal
Tim Markatos – film critic, writes the Movie Enthusiast newsletter
Eugene McCarraher – humanities prof at Villanova, author of The Enchantments of Mammon, byline at Commonweal
Daniel McCarthy – omnicompetent conservatism-explainer, editor of Modern Age, columnist at The Spectator, bylines at the New York Times and The American Conservative
Esau McCaulley – NT prof at Wheaton, author of Reading While Black, writes a New York Times newsletter, byline at Christianity Today, host of the Esau McCaulley podcast
B. D. McClay – simply one of the best essayists around, Swiftie explainer, lover of perfume and anime, has the world eagerly awaiting a book, writes the Notebook newsletter, bylines at The Hedgehog Review and the New York Times and The Lamp and The New Yorker and The Paris Review
Jake Meador – editor of Mere Orthodoxy, author of In Search of the Common Good, bylines at Plough and The Atlantic and First Things
Russell Moore – editor of Christianity Today, author of Losing Our Religion, bylines at The Atlantic and the New York Times, host of the Russell Moore Podcast
Wesley Morris – film critic (the best when he wants to be), formerly at The Boston Globe and Grantland, now art and culture critic for the New York Times, former co-host of various podcasts
Gary Saul Morson – literature prof at Northwestern, master of all things Russian, author of Wonder Confronts Certainty, bylines at First Things and The New Criterion and The New York Review of Books
Samuel Moyn – law prof at Yale, author of Liberalism Against Itself, bylines at the New York Times and Compact and The New Republic
Adam Nayman – film critic for The Ringer, author of The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together
Grace Olmstead – journalist, localist, memoirist, author of Uprooted, writes the Granola newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and Mere Orthodoxy and Plough
Louise Perry – journalist, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, writes the Maiden Mother Matriarch newsletter, bylines at First Things and The New Statesman
Brian Phillips – staff writer at The Ringer, formerly at Grantland, author of Impossible Owls, bylines all over
Jeff Reimer – editor nonpareil at Comment, bylines at Plough and The Bulwark
Adam Roberts – best SF writer alive, supposedly moonlights as a lit prof in London, author of The Thing Itself, writes the (new!) Substack-ships On Fire, Off The Shoulder Of Orion newsletter, byline the Internet
Alastair Roberts – digital lector, adjunct senior fellow at Theopolis, co-author of Echoes of Exodus, blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria, co-writes The Anchored Argosy newsletter, co-host of the Mere Fidelity podcast
Becca Rothfeld – book review critic at The Washington Post, editor at The Point, contributing editor at Boston Review, author of All Things Are Too Small, writes the a fête worse than death newsletter
L. M. Sacasas – best tech writer alive, associate director of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, FL, author of 41 Questions: Technology and the Moral Life (forthcoming), writes The Convivial Society newsletter, writes elsewhere but really just subscribe ASAP
Fred Sanders – humbly wry polymath, theology prof at Biola, author of The Triune God, blogs at fredfredfred.com
Leah Libresco Sargeant – journalist and freelance writer, author of Arriving at Amen, writes the Other Feminisms newsletter, bylines at the New York Times and First Things and The Lamp and The New Atlantis
Matthew Schmitz – co-founder and editor of Compact, former editor at First Things, bylines at the New York Times and The Atlantic and The American Conservative
Ari Schulman – editor of The New Atlantis, steady hand at the scientism-critical ship, bylines at National Review and the New York Times
George Scialabba – my favorite living lefty essayist, author of Only a Voice, bylines everywhere but especially Commonweal and The Baffler and The New Statesman
Matt Zoller Seitz – film and TV critic for New York Magazine, editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, my first-read for all things cinematic, co-author of TV (The Book)
Alan Sepinwall – TV critic for Rolling Stone, co-author of TV (The Book)
James K. A. Smith – philosophy prof at Calvin, former editor of Comment and Image, author of Desiring the Kingdom, bylines at First Things and The Christian Century
Justin Smith-Ruiu – the artist formerly known as Justin E. H. Smith, everything prof somewhere in Paris, author of The Internet is Not What You Think It Is, meta-writes The Hinternet newsletter, bylines at The Point and Tablet and elsewhere
Jonathan Tran – ethics prof at Baylor, author of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, writes for The Christian Century
Eve Tushnet – saint in the making, tragicomic Catholic queer writer and journalist, author of Tenderness, writes The Rogation Dragon newsletter, bylines at Commonweal and America and The Lamp and First Things
Matthew Walther – trad Cath prose stylist bar none, editor and founder of The Lamp, author of a biography of Saint John Henry Newman (forthcoming from Yale UP), bylines at the New York Times and First Things and elsewhere
Tish Harrison Warren – priest at local speakeasy Immanuel Anglican Church, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, writes (wrote?!) for Christianity Today and the New York Times
Audrey Watters – ed-tech Cassandra (and therefore to be trusted), author of Teaching Machines, blogs at Hack Education, writes the Second Breakfast newsletter
Myles Werntz – ethics prof at ACU, author of From Isolation to Community, writes the Taking Off and Landing newsletter, bylines at Mere Orthodoxy and Christianity Today
Alissa Wilkinson – film critic for the New York Times, formerly of Vox and Christianity Today and Books & Culture, author of Salty
Rowan Williams – Welsh wizard, former archbishop of Canterbury, author of On Christian Theology, bylines at First Things and The New Statesman and The Guardian
Andrew Wilson – teaching pastor at King’s Church London, author of Remaking the World, blogs at Think Theology, writes for Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition, sometime co-host of Mere Fidelity
John Wilson – lovable curmudgeon and devotee of books, former editor of the much lamented Books & Culture, bylines at First Things and The Hedgehog Review and elsewhere
Molly Worthen – history prof at UNC, recent convert to Christianity, author of Apostles of Reason, bylines at First Things and the New York Times and Christianity Today
My latest: bloodshed during Christmastide, in CT
A link to my latest column for Christianity Today.
My last column for Christianity Today this year is called “The Blood Cries Out at Christmastime.” It’s about the bloody feasts of Christmastide: Saint Stephen (Dec 26), the Holy Innocents (Dec 28), and the circumcision of Jesus (Jan 1). Here’s a preview:
Each of these ties bloodshed to Christmas—even the last one. This is not, however, how we usually mark the Christmas season, which is festive because it is a festival: a great party in honor of the birth of the King. Advent is for penitence; Christmas is for merriment (Matt. 9:15).
Yet there is a reason for the timing of these altogether bloody memorials. They are a stark reminder of the world into which Jesus was born, the world he was born to save. Even as we make merry, we will be less likely to trivialize the nativity of Christ when we remember that this child was born to die.
“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” of sins: so says Hebrews 9:22. Christmas may seem a long way from Calvary, but in truth it isn’t far at all. The Cross is already in view, whether for God (from eternity), for Scripture (as a narrative), or for us (who know the end of the story). Mary’s son is born to shed his blood for us. Even from the womb, this baby is bound for Joseph’s tomb. The circumstances of his birth and the saints honored during this season testify to that sobering truth.
Read the rest here. Merry Christmas!
My latest: why Christians oppose Euthanasia, in CT
A link to my new piece in Christianity Today arguing against euthanasia.
I’m in Christianity Today this morning with a piece called “Why Christians Oppose Euthanasia.” It is exactly what its title suggests. Here are two early paragraphs:
The church’s moral teaching has always held that murder—defined as the intentional taking of innocent life—is intrinsically evil. It follows that actively intending the death of an elderly or sick human being and then deliberately bringing about that death through some positive action, such as the administration of drugs, is always and everywhere morally wrong.
This ethical argument is very similar to the one Christians make about abortion. We could modify the oft-quoted line from Dr. Seuss—“A person’s a person no matter how small”—by substituting old or ill for “small.” (Other substitutions also suggest themselves: smart, abled, sexed, or hued.) To be sure, there are relevant differences between active euthanasia and, for example, removing a brain-dead person from life support. There are none, however, between administering fatal drugs and offering or prescribing them: Both directly facilitate the intended death of a patient under a doctor’s medical care.
Happy news: Letters to a Future Saint is the runner-up for CT’s Book of the Year!
The headline says it all. Read on for more details!
Yesterday Christianity Today published its annual book awards for 2024. Besides awards for genres like fiction and theology, there is an overall award for Book of the Year. This year’s winner was the great Gavin Ortlund’s What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church. And the runner-up?
That would be my own Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry. It won the Award of Merit for Book of the Year!
I’m grateful beyond words. My deepest thanks to the editors and to all who voted. This is not something I or anyone could have expected when I set out to write this book. I’m still in shock about it.
Ideally I’ll wake up soon, because next week there is a special live event celebrating the occasion: a conversation with Russell Moore, Ortlund, and myself, as well as other CT editors. It’ll run for about an hour on YouTube, beginning at 8:00pm ET, and featuring (I believe) questions from readers and subscribers. I’ll see y’all there!
James
Ten thoughts on Percival Everett’s novel James, a revisionist take on Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and winner of the National Book Award.
Ten thoughts on Percival Everett’s James; spoilers abound:
1. It’s a compulsive read. I finished it in a day. Everett’s prose is supple without being simple. And he lives up to his reputation: bitterly funny and brutally direct, often one when you expect the other. His racial politics are likewise unpredictable, incisive, and reliably scrambled—that is to say, they scramble the reader’s priors.
2. The worst version of this book would have been a Mark Twain “own”: a simplistic takedown of a “problematic” American classic. Everett doesn’t take the bait. His affection for Twain is palpable. There’s nothing “corrective” on offer here. Which doesn’t mean there’s nothing elaborated, investigated, or interrogated. (Joel Rhone’s is my favorite essay on the novel so far.) In fact, for good or ill, Everett extends or completes the Twainian ethos that, perhaps, Twain elected, or felt compelled, to mute. For example, Twain’s book remains thematically Christian in ways Twain abjured in his own life; Everett eliminates all traces of this, about which I’ll say more below.
3. The second worst version of this book would have been a Huck Finn “own”: not a rebuke of Twain but of the indelible little boy he created. In this case, the trick would be, not to reveal Huck as problematic, but to make him so. Once again, no dice. Everett clearly loves Huck and draws his friendship with Jim with affection and care, deepening a relationship we thought we knew: no longer merely friends—who are, of necessity, equals (I take this to be Twain’s first aim and lasting achievement)—but father and son. This change functions to undermine Huck’s priority in Twain’s tale, a fundamental problem given that Jim is a grown man and Huck is a boy.
4. The paternity twist is clever without being cute for many reasons. At the level of the text, it enables a subtext that Twain never countenanced in the original. It offers an emotionally authentic explanation of why Huck’s dad hates him so much. And it explains Jim’s special bond with Huck, both in Everett and in Twain. Beyond these, it entwines the bloodlines of two of the most famous characters in American literature. In Albert Murray’s words, it makes “omni-Americans” of Huck and Jim both. Huck in particular has a white mother and a black father; in other words, the prototypical good-hearted Southern white boy is now, by the retroactive power of the written word, biracial.
In any other hands, this idea would have been cloying or overwrought. In Everett’s hands, it’s deftly hinted at and masterfully revealed at just the right moment. It forces Huck to face questions of identity and maturity from which Twain protects him, as Wendell Berry once observed; Huck’s transformation in Twain is morally profound, but he never grows up. By the end of Everett’s novel, by contrast, he’s ready to.
5. Now to Jim himself. Even calling him by that name feels like a choice, but I think it’s the right one, since “James” is a name he achieves in and through the narrative, and he does not definitively name himself by it until the final sentence. The power of language and especially of naming is the thematic thread of Everett’s whole novel. With great cost, Jim pockets a small pencil and carries it with him throughout his odyssey, up to and beyond his reunion with his wife and daughter. Having earlier noted a narrative “as related” by a slave, Jim ruminates on telling his own story himself. The implication is that what we’re reading is what he’s written.
6. I was surprised that Everett chose to depart from so much of the narrative spine of Twain’s original. The opening third (maybe half) is Rashomon-like, but from then on there’s not even an attempt to make it “line up” with the Urtext; it’s simply Jim’s story, as written by him, an author rendering himself (his name) on the page.
I wondered more than once whether we are meant to suppose that Huck’s tale is the fiction, filled with some “stretchers”; or whether Jim’s is a kind of private fantasy, an escape from his life on the lam, or perhaps behind bars—a life-saving fiction enabled by the word. I even wondered whether the middle third of the book, or alternatively the final 10-20 pages, were a dream: after all, Jim’s dreams are regular features of the novel; the fiery coda to the story is abrupt and ecstatically triumphant; and the tree under which Jim first dreams on the island, after having been bitten by a snake, is the tree under which he awakes on the same island just before the climactic action occurs. There’s a there there, I’m convinced, but I’m not yet certain what I think it is.
7. I’ve not yet mentioned the brilliant conceit at the heart of the novel, namely the code-switching from slave dialect (in front of white people) to standard English (when whites are absent). Nothing to say here except that, in the hands of a lesser novelist, it would be painful to read, at best imperfectly executed; here, it is brilliant and effective. The trap doors are everywhere, and Everett doesn’t fall into any of them.
8. Except one. The only thing I disliked, even hated, was Everett’s decision—loudly made and consistently upheld—to rob his black characters of all faith, religiosity, and superstition. Every black character knows Christianity is false; superstition is a show for the white man; and atheism is the universal default setting, with one or two characters vaguely allowing that maybe something numinous is real.
To state my criticism as bluntly as I can, this is a failure of imagination on Everett’s part. The problem is not that the decision is ahistorical and anachronistic, though it is. It serves no purpose, unlike the linguistic code-switching. It flattens each and every black character into a single non-religious shape. Why? To what end? Sure, make some characters skeptical of the white man’s religion, of the white gospel or the white church or the white god; but what narrative or philosophical purpose is served by evacuating any and all religiosity as such from the inner lives of black slaves in the antebellum South?
As I read the novel, this felt like Everett projecting himself onto his characters—not just Jim but all of them. Making them all the same instead of vibrantly different is a very strange move, in my view. Moreover, the implication is both absurd and insulting. Am I really meant to nod along, as if it were simply and self-evidently true that black American religiosity in toto, Christian faith most of all, has been one great deception from the beginning—a trick pulled by white Americans on Africans too gullible to know better? Give me a break. Granted: I can imagine a book that does the heavy lifting to try to justify such a claim. James, unfortunately, is not that book.
9. A second shortcoming was the ending. I was caught off guard, underwhelmed, and, finally, unpersuaded. In just eight pages Jim finds an unknown plantation, discovers male slaves without being detected, sets them free, rallies them to his cause, finds the female slaves, including his wife and daughter, then sets fire to the fields, liberates all those held in bondage, shoots the master through the heart, and escapes north with his (apparently unharmed) family. Come again?
Sure, send Jim—James!—off into a sort of sunset, however qualified by the horrors of his time and place. But as a literary matter, the finale is rushed and unbelievable, with James himself as the deus ex machina. Oh well.
10. Best not to leave it there though. Everett’s other brilliant conceit is a character named Norman. Norman is a black member of a minstrel troupe who passes as white, including to Jim. (More than once Jim wonders if Norman is playing him. The self-doubt in his mind is a welcome repetition of frailty in a character who is otherwise heroic and self-possessed from the start.)
The best parts of James are Jim’s conversations: with Huck, with Enlightenment philosophers, and with Norman. And every scene with Jim as part of the troupe makes for excruciatingly compelling reading—laughing through covered eyes, cringing with anger and discomfort while letting out an involuntary snort. (By the way, painting Jim’s face white before applying blackface to the white paint called to mind another recent revisionist tale: Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen, in which Hooded Justice is revealed to be a gay black man—a survivor of the Tulsa Massacre, actually—who applies white around his eyes, dons an executioner’s mask, and fights injustice.)
In any case, because Norman’s character is so well drawn by Everett, his death is all the more bitter when it comes. And tragic, given that Jim must choose to save Norman or Huck, whose paternity we have guessed but do not yet know. One more reason to laud Everett for his wit, style, and wry perceptive slant.
In the end, I didn’t adore the book as much as others did, but I’m glad I read it, and I remain in awe at Everett’s accomplishment. Next time I’d just like to see him let his characters believe in God.
My latest: on Jordan Peterson, in CT
A link to my review of Jordan Peterson’s allegorical commentary on the Torah in Christianity Today.
Yesterday Christianity Today published my review of Jordan Peterson’s new book, We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine. The title of the review is “Jordan Peterson Loves God’s Word. But What About God?” Early on I write the following:
The volume is, to put it mildly, an enormous undertaking—quite unlike Peterson’s self-help books. Running more than 200,000 words, it is a thematic and allegorical commentary on the law of Moses, especially Genesis and Exodus. It is gargantuan in every sense of the word: energizing and exhausting, brimming with ideas and asides, full of insightful connections and baffling conclusions, consistent in its viewpoint, maddening in its dodges, impressive in its ambition, and tedious, at times, in its sheer funereal solemnity.
Read the full thing here. For comparison, here is Rowan Williams in The Guardian with a rhetorically more negative but substantively similar assessment.
My latest: on providence and on the saints, both in CT
Links to my two latest columns for Christianity Today.
I have not one but two new pieces in Christianity Today this week (and another this coming Tuesday!).
The first is from the latest print issue; there it’s titled “Our Strength and Consolation,” online it’s called “The Consolation of Providence.” It’s a theological exploration of what the doctrine of providence teaches, what it’s there for, and what it’s not there for. It arose after political upheavals in July then was revised in October to be published after the election. It’s not really about politics; it is about God; it’s also about the uses and abuses of providence as a Christian hermeneutic for history (abusus non tollit usum).
The second piece is a review of Martin Scorsese’s new docuseries The Saints, which debuts in two days. I got to watch a couple episodes in advance—my first screeners! (I’m inching my way toward becoming what I’ve secretly always wanted to be: not a scholar but a film critic.) The title is “Saints Are Strange. Martin Scorsese Gets it.” And he does. Mostly I’m writing not about the technique or quality of the series but instead about the origins of sainthood in the early church and the question the saints pose to believers today.
As Tyler Cowen likes to say: self-recommending.
Stay tuned for Tuesday, when CT publishes my review of Jordan Peterson’s big new book on Genesis and Exodus, We Who Wrestle With God.
Graeber on making the world and Berry on attending to it
Two quotes: one from David Graeber and one from Wendell Berry.
Rebecca Solnit on David Graeber (H/T Alan Jacobs):
That joy: maybe this is how everyone should feel about ideas and the ways that they open up or close off possibilities. The way that, as he wrote, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” If you truly believe that, if you perceive a world that is constructed according to certain assumptions and values, then you see that it can be changed, not least by changing those assumptions and values.
We have to recognise that ideas are tools that we wield – and with them, some power. David wanted to put these tools in everyone’s hands, or remind them that they are already there. Which is part of why he worked hard at – and succeeded in – writing in a style that wasn’t always simple but was always as clear and accessible as possible, given the material. Egalitarianism is a prose style, too. Our mutual friend the writer, film-maker, and debt abolitionist Astra Taylor texted him: “Re-reading Debt. You are such a damn good writer. A rare skill among lefties.” He texted back that August, a month before his demise: “Why thanks! Well at least I take care to do so – I call it ‘being nice to the reader,’ which is an extension of the politics, in a sense.”
Wendell Berry, “Writer and Region,” The Hudson Review (1987):
[Consider the concept] of artistic primacy or autonomy, in which it is assumed that no value is inherent in subjects, but that value is conferred upon subjects by the art and the attention of the artist. The subjects of world are only "raw material." As William Matthews writes in a recent article: "A poet beginning to make something need raw material, something to transform." For Marianne Moore, he says,
subject matter is not in itself important, except that it gives her the opportunity to speak about something that engages her passions. What is important instead is what she can discover to say.
And he concludes:
It is not, of course, the subject that is or isn't dull, but the quality of attention we do or do not pay to it, and the strength of our will to transform. Dull subjects are those we have failed.
This apparently assumes that for the animals and humans who are not fine artists, who have discovered nothing to say, the world is dull, which of course is not true. It assumes also that attention is of interest in itself, which is not true either. In fact, attention is of value only insofar as it is paid in the proper discharge of an obligation. To pay attention is to come into the presence of a subject. In one of its root senses, it is to "stretch toward" a subject, in a kind of aspiration. We speak of "paying attention" because of a correct perception that attention is owed—that, without our attention and our attending, our subjects, including ourselves, are endangered.
Mr. Matthews' trivializing of subjects in the interest of poetry industrializes the art. He is talking about an art oriented exclusively to production, like coal mining. Like an industrial entrepreneur, he regards the places and creatures and experiences of the world as "raw material," valueless until exploited.
The test of imagination, ultimately, is not the territory of art or the territory of the mind, but the territory underfoot. That is not to say that there is no territory of art or of the mind, but only that it is not a separate territory. It is not exempt either from the principles above it or from the country below it. It is a territory, then, that is subject to correction—by, among other things, paying attention. To remove it from the possibility of correction is finally to destroy art and thought, and the territory underfoot as well.
Ancient illiteracy
Some scholarly resources and excerpts on how literate (or not) ancient Greeks and Romans were at the time of the early church.
Literacy is not my area of expertise, whether ancient, medieval, modern, or contemporary. But I find myself talking about it a lot, so I thought I’d put down some markers here for the best resources on the topic, at least regarding mass illiteracy in those societies where Christianity took root early on.
Some relevant books include:
Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 1988)
William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Harvard University Press, 1989)
Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (Yale University Press, 1995)
Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Carol Harrison, The Art of Listening in the Early Church (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Below are two long excerpts from Harrison and Gamble (the former is dependent on the latter); bolded emphases are mine.
First, Harrison (pp. 3–4):
In early Christianity … functional literacy was possessed by perhaps 10 per cent of the population. It was the preserve of a very small group of male citizens who were literally and metaphorically free: free (rather than enslaved) citizens, who had been educated in the seven liberal disciplines—those arts appropriate for free men (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy). Having shared this homogenous education they were prepared for public service, and especially for those key jobs which required a facility in public speaking or rhetoric, and where the ability to teach, move, and persuade an audience of what they had to say was of the utmost importance: the law courts, the senate, the army, provincial administration. As we will see, this training meant that classical and early Christian culture was very much a rhetorical culture; one based on the practice and power of the spoken word. In this sense, we can speak not only of an oral culture, but of a much broader 'cultural' literacy, which those who possessed an ability to read and speak were instrumental in creating among a much larger, more diverse, less socially or gender exclusive group. The words of the formally educated—in teaching, law, politics, poetry, and (following the rise of Christianity) preaching and catechesis—were crucial in forming and perpetuating a shared world of memorial images, beliefs, expectations, and authorities, which together established what we have called a cultural literacy or a facility for “literate listening” among the illiterate majority in the ancient world. The unlettered were able to “read” and understand reality through the shared, often tacit, markers of complicit understanding, customary practice, and habitual ways of thinking created by speaking and hearing. It is this cultural literacy—the Christian culture which the writers and speakers we will be examining built up—rather than the formal literacy of the educated elite that will be out main focus of interest in examining how hearing formed, informed, and transformed the minds of early Christian listeners.
Next, Gamble (pp. 2–5):
To what extent were early Christians actually capable of writing and reading? The question has rarely been raised and has never been explored by historians of early Christianity. Biblical and patristic scholars have shared with classicists the sanguine assumption that literacy prevailed in antiquity on a scale roughly comparable to literacy in modern Western societies and so have imagined that early Christianity was broadly literate. This view has been tacitly disputed only by the early form critics, who aimed to study the oral transmission of early Christian traditions, and only for primitive Christianity, which they regarded as an illiterate or, at best, semiliterate folk culture that relied on oral tradition. But neither the view that early Christianity was broadly literate nor the claim that in its earliest phases it was illiterate is more than a hypothesis, and neither view has been systematically argued.
So the question remains unanswered: To what extent could early Christians read and write? This is a difficult question for several reasons. First, working definitions of literacy vary, and its indices are relative to its definition. If, despite the aid of empirical studies and statistical methods, it is hard to determine the types and extent of literacy in modern societies, it is far more difficult to do so for earlier periods, especially ancient ones. Literacy can refer to anything from signature literacy, which is the minimal ability to write one's name, to the capacity both to write lengthy texts and to read them with understanding. The problem of definition corresponds to the fact that "in reality there are infinite gradations of literacy for any written language," so that a useful definition would be neither too narrow nor too broad but would embrace a range of literacy and acknowledge its various types. Second, direct evidence about literacy is scarce for antiquity generally and scarcer still for early Christianity in particular. This problem may be remedied in part by attending to evidence about education and social class, for literacy has historically been a function of both. Comparative analysis is also useful. The diffusion of literacy in any society is known to depend on certain preconditions and stimuli, and we can infer the extent of literacy in ancient societies from data on the development and scope of literacy in early modern and modern societies by determining how far necessary conditions were satisfied. Third, the question of literacy in early Christianity is complicated by the fact that Christianity developed and spread in multi- cultural and multilingual settings and thus incorporated from the start a diversity that forbids the generalizations that are possible for more culturally and linguistically homogeneous groups. A Christian in first-century Palestine might have been thoroughly literate in Aramaic, largely literate in Hebrew, semiliterate in Greek, and illiterate in Latin, while a Christian in Rome in the late second century might have been literate in Latin and semiliterate in Greek but ignorant of Aramaic and Hebrew. So when it is said of a Christian holding the office of reader in the Egyptian church in the early fourth century that he "does not know letters," we should not suppose that he was illiterate, but rather that he was literate only in Coptic, not in Greek. Although the situation became progressively complex with the missionary expansion of Christianity into the provinces, the linguistic pluralism of Christianity was present from the outset insofar as Christianity originated in the Aramaic-speaking environment of Judaism while its earliest extant literature was in Greek.
The composition, circulation, and use of Christian writings in the early church are manifest proof of Christian literacy but say nothing in themselves about the extent of literacy within Christianity. The abundance of Christian literature from the first five centuries skews our perceptions and leads us to imagine that the production of so many books must betoken an extensive readership. Yet the literature that survives reflects the capacities and viewpoints of Christian literati, who cannot be taken to represent Christians generally. Even the wide use and high esteem for Christian writings among Christian communities do not indicate that the larger body of Christians could read, for in antiquity one could hear texts read even if one was unable to read, so that illiteracy was no bar to familiarity with Christian writings. Because neither the existence of Christian literature nor its broad circulation and use can reveal the extent or levels of literacy within Christianity, it is all the more important to have an idea of the nature and scope of literacy in ancient society generally, especially under the Roman empire.
In the most comprehensive study to date, William Harris has sought to discover the extent of literacy in the ancient world. Using a broad definition of literacy as the ability to read or write at any level, Harris draws on wide and varied evidence—explicit, circumstantial, and comparative—and takes some account of the types and the uses of literacy. He reaches a largely negative conclusion for Western antiquity generally: granting regional and temporal variations, throughout the entire period of classical Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman imperial civilization, the extent of literacy was about 10 percent and never exceeded 15 to 20 percent of the population as a whole. "The written culture of antiquity was in the main restricted to a privileged minority—though in some places it was a large minority—and it co-existed with elements of an oral culture." Although I have some reservations about the way Harris has posed and addressed the problem of literacy in the ancient world, his invaluable survey has made it clear that nothing remotely like mass literacy existed, nor could have existed, in Greco-Roman societies, because the forces and institutions required to foster it were absent. This recognition must stand as a firm check on the romantic and anachronistic tendencies that have too often guided scholarly assessments of literacy in antiquity.
If, as Harris recognizes, his conclusions "will be highly unpalatable to some classical scholars," they should be equally sobering to historians of early Christianity and its literature. There may be special factors in the Christian setting, but it cannot be supposed that the extent of literacy in the ancient church was any greater than that in the Greco-Roman society of which Christianity was a part. This is true in spite of the importance the early church accorded to religious texts, for acquaintance with the scriptures did not require that all or even most Christians be individually capable of reading them and does not imply that they were. It is also true should scholars reject the traditional view that early Christianity was a movement among the illiterate proletariat of the Roman Empire. In one of the most interesting developments in recent biblical scholarship, this conventional social description has been subjected to thorough criticism and revision. Studies of the social constituency of the early church have shown that, especially in its urban settings, Christianity attracted a socially diverse membership, representing a cross section of Roman society. Although it certainly included many from the lower socioeconomic levels, it was by no means a proletarian movement. Both the highest and the lowest strata of society were absent. The most typical members of the Christian groups were free craftspeople, artisans, and small traders, some of whom had attained a measure of affluence, owned houses and slaves, had the resources to travel, and were socially mobile. In terms of social status, Christian communities had a pyramidal shape rather like that of society at large. But since members of the upper classes were less numerous, high levels of literacy—as a function of social status or education, or both—would have been unusual. Still, moderate levels, such as were common among crafts-people and small business persons, may have been proportionately better represented within the early church than outside it. Yet these insights offer no reason to think that the extent of literacy of any kind among Christians was greater than in society at large. If anything, it was more limited. This means that not only the writing of Christian literature, but also the ability to read, criticize, and interpret it belonged to a small number of Christians in the first several centuries, ordinarily not more than about 10 percent in any given setting, and perhaps fewer in the many small and provincial congregations that were characteristic of early Christianity.
The greatest threat facing the church today
Thinking out loud about answers in response to this question.
In my latest piece for Christianity Today, I propose the following thesis:
The greatest threat facing the church today is not atheism or secularism, scientism or legalism, racism or nationalism. The greatest threat facing the church today is digital technology.
That’s a controversial claim for many reasons, and I’m not dogmatic about it. It could be wrong. Moreover, it’s not self-evident that there is a meaningful hierarchy of threats facing the church. Perhaps there are a handful, all on the same level; or a variety that are incommensurable. Finally, a year or two back Alan Jacobs and Andy Crouch took me (ever so kindly) to task for a claim like this one, proposing instead that Mammon, not Digital, is the principal threat; and, further, that Digital is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mammon.
With those caveats in place, what are the candidates for this particular category? What are the most significant threats facing the church today? By what measures should we judge them? And which church, or churches, or regions and cultures of the world, should we have in mind?
The range of answers would at least need to be large enough and systemic enough to threaten millions of believers at once, and in insidious and powerful ways difficult to suss out and extinguish. In the excerpt above I mention some “isms” that people are worried about. Let’s expand that list:
Capitalism
Progressivism
Liberalism
Secularism
Atheism
Scientism
Legalism
Racism
Nationalism
Imperialism
War-mongering
Industrialism
Environmentalism
Utilitarianism
Individualism
Nihilism
Anti-natalism
Technophilia
Thanatophilia (i.e., the culture of death)
The important thing to see is that the nature of the threat doesn’t consist in discrete events or even types of events—famine, plague, poverty, war. These are evils and cause mass suffering, but they aren’t threats to the church, at least not in the way I’m using the term. These and other trials the church will always have her. They’re part of the way of the world, the world we long for God to redeem. They aren’t systems or structures or ideologies perpetrated by human beings (except when they are—but they are rarely reducible to ideology or policies, for the simple reason that they are insoluble, perennial problems of finite, mortal existence in a fallen world). More to the point, in the midst of great suffering the church sometimes rises to the occasion in service, courage, and sacrifice. In the face of danger, damage, and pain the church can fail, falter, or flourish. But she can’t be what God calls her to be if she isn’t prepared—if, that is, her foundations are so eroded that she forgets her own reason for being.
It is the question of what enacts such erosion that I am naming with the language of “threat.” A major threat to the church would snuff out its life whether it was the best of times or the worst of times; it would silence the gospel before anyone could hear it or live it out at all.
Another way to put it would be to ask, as I did recently, what idol or idols a given generation or place or people worships, and why, and what counterfeit blessings it receives in return, and how its worship and what it receives in turn shape and form it in the image of said idol(s).
I’m far from dogmatic on this question, as I said at the outset. If I had to pick five, I suppose I would choose technophilia, individualism, utilitarianism, capitalism, and progressivism. But then, how many of these are birthed from or contained within liberalism, understood as the ideology developed and advanced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Not to mention scientism, which arguably is concomitant with both liberalism and utilitarianism and, later, with the love of the future that finds concrete expression in progressivism and technophilia.
And is Mammon then the devilish father of them all? I leave the question open for others to chime in.
Update (seconds after pressing publish): I realize that I did not specify that I am here thinking exclusively about exogenous threats—if I were put on the spot about internal threats, I might say that church division is the single greatest threat to the church’s integrity and to the credibility of the gospel she proclaims to the world. Not in view here!
My latest: a plea to teach college students about God, in The Raised Hand
A link to my essay answering the question: “What does every university and college student need to learn?”
The Raised Hand is a Substack run by the Consortium of Christian Study Centers and edited by Daniel G. Hummel of the Lumen Center (Madison, WI) and Upper House (serving the University of Wisconsin-Madison). This school year they’ve been running monthly essays written by Christian academics asked to respond to the following prompt: “What does every university and college student need to learn?”
Yesterday they published my entry, titled “The Knowledge of God.” Here’s how it opens:
I am tempted to begin by saying that the first thing every university and college student needs to learn is how to read. But I’ve written about that plenty elsewhere, and you can’t throw a stone on the internet without hitting someone writing about the crisis of literacy on campus and in the public schools. Since I’m a theologian, moreover, there’s some low-hanging fruit (no pun intended) just waiting for me to reach up and take it.
Here's my real answer: If learning is about knowing, then every college student needs, through teaching, to come to know God. Another way to say this is that every student needs to learn how to pray.
Click here to read the whole thing. Thanks to Daniel for the invitation. And thanks to Sara Hendren, who already read and kindly boosted the piece. It was a fun one to write. Watch for a follow-up podcast conversation (sometime in the next week or two) that discusses the essay, also hosted by The Raised Hand.
My latest: a plea for screen-free church, in CT
A link to my new piece on screen-free worship for Christianity Today.
I’m in Christianity Today arguing for screen-free church; here are the opening paragraphs:
Some years ago, author Hal Runkel trademarked a phrase that made his name: screamfree parenting. It’s a memorable term because it captures viscerally what so many moms and dads want: parenting without the volume turned up to 11—whether of our kids’ voices or our own.
I’d like to propose a similar phrase: screen-free church. It’s a vision for an approach to Christian community and especially public worship that critically assesses and largely eliminates the role of digital devices and surfaces in church life. But the prescription depends on a diagnosis, so let me start there.
Consider the following thesis: The greatest threat facing the church today is not atheism or secularism, scientism or legalism, racism or nationalism. The greatest threat facing the church today is digital technology.
Links to a passel of podcast appearances (and a few reviews)
Just what the title says: links to pods and reviews.
I’ve been on the podcast circuit the last couple months, hawking the two new books. I expect these appearances to continue for another month or so but then slowly disappear. I had no idea my sabbatical would really be about clearing my afternoons for book publicity, but there you go.
I usually remember to share links with friends and on Micro.blog, but I wanted to gather some of them here for folks who might be interested; I’ll follow links to pod with links to some reviews of either book that have been published this month. Plus a book launch here in Abilene at a local bookstore!
By the way, feel free to nag your favorite podcaster to have me on. I’m sure I’ll lose stamina by semester’s end, but it’s been so much more fun than I expected. Turns out that talking about God, church, theology, and your own writing with engaged strangers is fun! I’ve also gone on a few live radio shows that don’t record the audio for later—a rare instance of digital conversation not immediately disseminated in eternal form on the internet. Also also, more than once I’ve not realized the conversation would be captured in video form, for YouTube, hence my occasionally disheveled or casual appearance.
Last, I’ve either already recorded more podcasts or have plans to go on others that will be published in the coming months: Trevin Wax’s Reconstructing Faith, the Yale Center for Faith and Culture podcast, the Christian Chronicle Podcast, the Sacramentalists, and more. Perhaps Truth Over Tribe or Mere Fidelity, too—though I’m sure my bad takes and TV habits have led to Matt’s banning my non-Barthian, pseudo-recusant self for good.
Here’s the list for now:
Eerdmans Author Interview – YouTube
Crackers and Grape Juice – this isn’t available on Apple or Spotify yet, but a (sped up) version is available on Jason Micheli’s Substack Tamed Cynic
Marc Jolicoeur (aka “Jolly Thoughts”) – Apple | Spotify | YouTube
And here are a handful of reviews:
Christianity Today: Uche Anizor reviews Letters to a Future Saint
Front Porch Republic: Alex Sosler reviews Letters to a Future Saint
Fare Forward: Will Bryant reviews Letters to a Future Saint
The Baptist Standard: Ben Faus reviews Letters to a Future Saint
Christianity Today: Brett Vanderzee reviews The Church
Holy Joys: Johnathan Arnold reviews The Church
The Gospel Coalition: Samuel Parkison reviews The Church
Joel Wentz: video review of The Church
Last but not least, if you’re here in Abilene, the local bookstore (co-founded by one of my former students!) Seven and One is having a launch party for both books this coming Tuesday. Here’s the flyer; come out and get a book signed!
It’s publication day! The Church: A Guide to the People of God is here!
It’s out! At long last! Order a copy today!
It’s out! It’s here! Order a copy! My second book in the same month! There are no more to come anytime soon, so buy them up while you can!
Buy one for yourself, for your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, your nephews, your nieces, your godchildren, your parents, your pastor, your youth pastor, your college pastor, your professor—or all of them!
Don’t take my word for it—listen to Andrew Wilson, Stanley Hauerwas, Ephraim Radner, Karen Kilby, Matthew Levering, Karen Kilby, and Mark Kinzer, all of whom endorsed it. They can’t be wrong, can they?
The first review of the book came out last week in The Gospel Coaliation. Samuel Parkison writes:
Gentiles don’t become Jews, but they can become the true seed of Abraham through adoption (see Gal. 3:16). This deep awareness of the church’s Old Testament connections is a welcome emphasis. All the more so because of the undeniably beautiful prose in which East develops this idea. Indeed, The Church can just as easily be labeled a work of art as a work of theology. For example, his reflections on the typological resonances between Eve, Mary, Israel, and the church are nothing less than riveting.
He concludes: “This is a beautiful book. Taken in such a way, The Church should receive a wide and appreciative readership.”
Come on: There’s just no way a book that looks that good can be bad on the inside. By way of reminder, here is the book’s description:
You belong to God's family. But do you understand what that means?
The Bible tells the story of God and his people. But it is not merely history. It is our story. Abraham is our father. And Israel's freedom from slavery is ours.
Brad East traces the story of God's people, from father Abraham to the coming of Christ. He shows how we need the scope of the entire Bible to fully grasp the mystery of the church. The church is not a building but a body. It is not peripheral or optional in the life of faith. Rather, it is the very beating heart of God's story, where our needs and hopes are found.
Buy it wherever books are sold. And while you’re at it, buy the rest of the volumes in Lexham’s Christian Essentials series—The Apostles’ Creed by Ben Myers, The Lord’s Prayer by Wes Hill, The Ten Commandments and Baptism by Peter Leithart, and God’s Word by John Kleinig. Kleinig also authored the seventh in the series, due next March, called The Lord’s Supper. The last two should come out sometime in the next 12-24 months…
Get the whole set! Starting with mine! Today! Now! Ahorita! S'il vous plaît!
Thanks to all. This one’s a love letter to the church—both the Church and the churches that I have called home over the last four decades. I hope it shows.
My latest: a review of Rod Dreher, in CT
A link to my review of Rod Dreher’s new book on re-enchantment in Christianity Today.
This morning Christianity Today published my review of Rod Dreher’s new book (out today) Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. The title of the review is “Make Christianity Spooky Again”—just in time for Halloween!
Rod Dreher has some advice for you. First, put down your phone, close your laptop, and turn off the television. Next, begin to pray. Don’t pray just anything; recite the Jesus Prayer, preferably hundreds of times. Now you are positioned to begin your quest. The object of the quest is beauty. Seek to behold divine glory in the work of the Lord’s hands, whether in his creation, icons, or saints. If you have eyes to see, each of these is a mirror reflecting the light of Christ in a dark but not forsaken world.
In a word, you must become a “practical mystic.” If you don’t, you’ll lack the resilience to weather a godless, disenchanted culture. You and your children will lose hold of the faith. Like the apostle Peter, you will sink beneath the waters; unlike him, no one will lift you up. Or so argues Dreher in his new book, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age.
Just wait till we get to the aliens. Read the rest here.
What does an idol promise?
Thoughts on four types of blessings typically promised by idols.
In a word, an idol promises blessing, but in general a false blessing or, at most, a mixed or penultimate blessing: either a poison pill, or a Faustian bargain, or a temporal good enjoyed for a limited time only.
I am tempted to say that an idol cannot bless, cannot impart gifts at all. But that cannot be true simpliciter. If, sometimes, demons lie behind idols, then it stands to reason that, as living beings, demons can exchange gifts for sacrifices, blessings for devotion. All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. The false note is not that Satan’s offer is a lie without remainder but that, as always, it is intermixed with the truth; whether or not Satan can give what he offers, worship is due God alone regardless.
Others have done serious work on this topic, so I expect to be corrected in what I omit here. But on first thought, it seems to me that idols promise at least four concrete types of blessing, whether or not (like Satan) they can deliver on any of them:
Safety
Power
A future
A name
I almost included a fifth, “Beatitude,” but my instinct is that happiness is, in this context, a generic category that calls for concrete specification. In other words, each of these four types of blessing is a species of what makes humans happy, what they seek from the gods when they petition them, and so beatitude and blessing are two sides of the same coin.
What do I mean by these four variations on blessing?
By “safety,” I mean protection or deliverance from some opposing force or feared power beyond human control. Not all religion deals with salvation, but much of it does; furthermore, what one is saved from is not always known with exactitude, but remains formless and unnamed: whatever evil being or bad luck that keeps crops from growing, and rain from falling, and roofs from holding, and babies from being conceived, and marriages from lasting, and money from stretching, and so on.
By “power,” I mean the move from defense to offense. Here an idol offers not a protective wall but a weapon, not a shield but a sword, not preservation of life but the means of taking it. This is where, on an anthropologist’s account, religion becomes magic or superstition; what strength or force I lack by nature or circumstances, the gods provide in exchange for piety, prayer, or sacrifice.
By “a future,” I mean the promise of security and endurance beyond my life or the probable duration of my tribe—whether my household, clan, race, nation, or progeny. The biblical term is inheritance. This blessing is a ward against futility: the futility of finitude, time, and death, which threaten continuously to make a waste of every human life, not just your efforts or mine but all of them together.
By “a name,” I mean one’s reputation, or legacy, or heritage. Bound up with but not synonymous with one’s lineage and future descendants—the perpetual future of one’s nominal fame—this blessing increases one’s magnificence, elevates one’s personage, inflates the reverence and respect others owe the very mention of who you are and what you have done. The purported god promises a hallowing or halo effect, not just in years to come but here and now: People will recognize your name and [tremble with fear/shake with envy/give thanks/fall to their knees].
These, at least, are what came to mind yesterday morning, sitting in church. An idol promises its petitioners safety, power, a future, and/or a name. Unsurprisingly, these are echoes of God’s promises to Abraham and to his seed, the Messiah, and their fulfillment in Him and extension to all are in Him. Do idols make promises that God does not, or vice versa? Are there promises typical of false gods that I am missing? I welcome others’ thoughts.