New article published: “Is Scripture a Gift?”

As of this morning, I have a new article published in the journal Religions. It’s called “Is Scripture a Gift? Reflections on the Divine-Ecclesial Provision of the Canon.” Here’s the abstract:

This article investigates whether the canon of Christian Holy Scripture is properly understood as a gift and, if so, what theological implications this might entail. Following the introduction, the article has three main sections. The first section proposes an expanded grammar by which to describe the production and reception of the canon in and by the church, under the superintending sovereignty of the divine will and action. The second section offers a guide to recent inquiry into “the gift” in the fields of philosophy and theology, particularly those theories that might prove useful for applying the concept of “gift” to Scripture. The third section unfolds a normative account of the Christian canon as a gift of the triune God to his people and through his people, thus making sense of the long-standing liturgical practice of responding to the reading of the sacred page in the public assembly with a cry of thanks to God.

The article arose out of research I conducted as part of the “Gratitude to God” project at Biola University, which was funded by the Templeton Foundation. The article is only one part of a whole special issue dedicated to the question of gratitude to God. Most of the other articles are either social-scientific or philosophical; contributors include Christopher Kaczor, Kent Dunnington, and Matthew Lee Anderson, among others.

As part of the same “G2G” project, I also wrote a popular essay for Comment published this past January titled “Grace Upon Grace.” It distills some of the broad contours of a theological conception of grace or “the gift” with respect to the total grammar of Christian doctrine, whereas the article homes in on a particular locus: namely, whether “the gift” applies to the canon and, if so, how and with what theological implications.

It was a pleasure spending more than two years reading up on the literature—theological, philosophical, historical, economic, literary, and biblical—on gift, gratitude, grace, and exchange. It was always on the edge of my interests but never at the center of them. I didn’t come close to a comprehensive investigation. But I learned enough to realize how fascinating the subject is, and I’m glad I did.

A few other odds and ends:

• I already spotted a typo, for what it’s worth: page 21, endnote 45: “field yield” should be “first yield.” (UPDATE: I found a few more, alerted the editors, and they fixed them all.)

• The article is—how should I put it?—long. As in: 19,000 words, if you include endnotes and the list of works cited. It’s a very small book, in other words. Take a deep breath before plunging in.

• This article completes, not a series, but at least an ad hoc sequence of articles on the doctrine and interpretation of Scripture. I’ve been waiting for it to come out so that I could gather together links to all of them in one place, along with links to books, reviews, and occasional writings. All together I imagine they amount to 400,000 words on this single locus, give or take 50,000. And that’s not even to mention the Big Book I hope to publish on the subject in a decade or so. At this point, though, I’ll admit I feel somewhat spent. I’ll gladly take a little break from writing about this doctrine. That word count is high enough as it is; nobody needs more from me on the topic for the moment.

• Religions has a practice more common to the soft and hard sciences (as far as I understand it), that is, of publishing the comments of blind peer reviews; here’s the page for all of them, along with my replies.

• Three of the reviewers’ comments came in all at once; all had good things to say, and approved publication without need for revision. So I made final revisions, submitted it, and we were good to go. Then a fourth reviewer’s comments came in belatedly, and s/he judged the article in need of some more work. Both the editor of the special issue and the journal’s editors decided that the three “yay” votes qualified the article to be worthy of publication, hence its coming out today. But I wanted to flag this reviewer’s comments (a) because this is my first time with “open” reviewer comments and (b) because the comments in question are rich, substantive, and worthy of further reflection. Indeed, granted all the work that went into the article as it stands, I don’t doubt that incorporating this feedback into another version of it would have improved it even more; and if I end up doing any further work on the topic of Scripture and the gift, I will doggedly pursue the lines of inquiry raised by this reviewer, since they demand more attention that I was able to grant them. For that reason, whoever the comments’ author is, he or she has my thanks.

Church people

What does the phrase above mean to you?

I can imagine many answers, but here’s a stab at a common enough picture that comes to mind when the phrase is used.

Church people are the people who have their you-know-what together. They have happy marriages, healthy households, thriving children, good jobs, and dense networks of friendship. They’re not rich, but they’re well off enough. They’re not self-righteous, but they’re not unaware of their uprightness. They are the sort who show up, not least to church, because their lives are full of faith, piety, love, and a spirit of service. They aren’t perfect, but they possess what many wish they had: that wonderful mix of temporal and spiritual happiness that few attain but all strive to acquire. Above all, they love God and out of that surfeit of love they do their level-headed best to love others in his name.

I don’t want to deny that people like this exist. It takes all kinds to make a world. Occasionally people really do seem to have it all together; life has worked out for them, and they’re not worse for it, but better, in terms of their character and the way they treat others.

But to the extent that this description has popular purchase, it’s an image, in my experience, that fosters resentment, anxiety, envy, frustration, and disappointment. And here’s the thing. By and large the image is wrong.

Church people aren’t the ones with their you-know-what together. That couple or family at church that looks like all is well? Like they could star in a 1950s sitcom? One of their siblings is homeless. Or one of their parents is an addict. Or one of their children has a congenital condition you don’t know about. Or one of them works a job that is sucking the soul right out from him. Or, failing all that, they’re wondering what they’re doing here in the first place. They grew up Christian and now they’re not even sure what they believe. Attending worship is muscle memory more than anything.

Every week they show up, and every week they feel observed, feel watched, feel pre-judged for having it all together. Yet they’re lonely and stressed and confused just like everyone else.

“Everyone else,” after all, is also “church people.” Everyone at church is church people. Church is filled with nothing but people; people at church are church people; but people at church are just people. People always and everywhere and without exception includes people in pain, people with problems, people who don’t have it all together. Hungry, broken, needy sinners, in other words. Us. All of us. That’s it. That’s church people.

When I was a young and foolish and excitable student, an uber-Christian who knew all the answers and had big ideas about how the church should become more “radical” (Lord help me) in its commitment to following Jesus, I remember sneering at how “family friendly” churches try to be. It was all so suburban, so bourgeois. Get a grip, y’all! Let’s drop the Starbucks act and stop catering to the middle-class crowd.

It was—no shock here—having children that woke me up to why churches “cater” to families. Not because of their status or their money or their demographic or whatever else. Because it is really, really hard to have young children and belong to a church. Every family with multiple pre-school children that makes it to church on Sunday morning should get a prize. Single moms who do it should get a $1,000 check and the keys to the city. It’s no small thing. Imagine, from the time you wake up to the time you arrive at church, having a small rubber mallet knocked against your skull at random intervals, on average three times per minute. That’s what it’s like corralling, feeding, clothing, and driving multiple young children to church early on a Sunday morning. Except that diapers are involved. Also toys, snacks, tights, and bows. It’s a struggle, every time.

God be praised, I’m nearly out of that phase myself. It’s been just shy of ten years at this point. Now I know. Now, when I see twentysomethings with a baby or a toddler plus a newborn walk into church, I want to throw a parade for them. I want to crown every mother as she enters the sanctuary, lift her up in a seat of honor and carry her hither and thither in triumph. She certainly deserves it. They all do.

But more than anything, I want to remind myself that we are all of us barely scraping by. Making it to church is a victory in itself. The car payment that might not be met this month, the niece who has to live with you for a while, the old friends who filed for divorce out of nowhere, the parent in hospice without insurance—all of it weighs down the soul to the point of exhaustion and despair.

These are the people who straggle into church on Sunday mornings. Have mercy on them. Give them a hug. And if they don’t reach out to you first, don’t assume it’s because they’ve got all they need: friends, faith, money, health. The church people you eye, wondering why they don’t give more out of their abundance, may lack the very abundance you project onto them. They’re wondering why you (along with everyone else) don’t reach out to them. We’re all wondering it about each other. None of us is a position of strength. We’re all operating out of weakness, out of need, out of yearning for contact, connection, presence, friendship—something.

If that’s how you’re feeling, take it as given that that’s how they’re feeling, too. Realizing that will make a difference. Church people is you.