My latest: on Jordan Peterson, in CT

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

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.

Ancient illiteracy

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.

My latest: a plea to teach college students about God, in The Raised Hand

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

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.

Rest the rest here.

Links to a passel of podcast appearances (and a few 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

• Know Why – Apple | Spotify

• Mornings with Carmen LaBerge – Apple | Spotify

• Marc Jolicoeur (aka “Jolly Thoughts”) – Apple | Spotify | YouTube

• Gospel Simplicity – Apple | Spotify | YouTube

• That’ll Preach – Apple | Spotify | YouTube

• A History of Christian Theology – Apple | Spotify

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!

My latest: a review of Rod Dreher, in CT

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.

My latest: on fantasy and theology in The Christian Century

In the latest issue of The Christian Century I have an essay on the divine comedy of epic fantasy, or as the editors titled it, “Gods Who Make Worlds.” It’s ostensibly a review of the final volume of Tad Williams’s quartet The Last King of Osten Ard, which is itself a sequel series to the original trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn—not to mention a prequel, a bridge novel, and a companion volume—for a total of ten books in this world. The name of that world is Osten Ard, and I use the glories of Osten Ard to think aloud about epic fantasy as a genre and its relationship to Christian faith.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

Three decades ago, Tad Williams published the final volume in the best epic fantasy trilogy written in English since The Lord of the Rings. Called Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the series ran from 1988 to 1993 and totaled over a million words. Half of those words came in the final book—one of the longest books ever to make it onto the New York Times bestseller list.

There is no overselling the significance of Williams’s achievement: the biggest names in fantasy in the intervening decades all acknowledge his influence, from Brandon Sanderson to Patrick Rothfuss to Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin. (There is no Westeros without Osten Ard, Williams’s fictional world.) Yet, although Williams is hyper-prolific and widely admired, he has never had the success or name recognition of these other authors. No streaming service has yet broken the bank in adapting Williams’s magnum opus.

Why have these books sold well but never set the world on fire?

Three reasons come to mind…

Click here to read the rest. Thanks again to The Christian Century for letting me write about these books and this topic—a big ask, given my lack of qualifications.

My latest: on the social effects of church, in CT

In 2016 David Brooks gave an address at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Titled “The Cultural Value of Christian Higher Education,” the talk had a simple thesis: What every college in America is looking for can already be found at Christian universities across the country. In his own words:

You guys are the avant-garde of 21st century culture. You have what everybody else is desperate to have: a way of talking about and educating the human person in a way that integrates faith, emotion and intellect. You have a recipe to nurture human beings who have a devoted heart, a courageous mind and a purposeful soul. Almost no other set of institutions in American society has that, and everyone wants it. From my point of view, you’re ahead of everybody else and have the potential to influence American culture in a way that could be magnificent.

I happen to think he’s right about that, but in my latest column for Christianity Today, I use Brook’s remarks as a point of departure for thinking about another beleaguered American institution: the local church.

The piece is called “Worship Together or Bowl Alone”—a great title, kudos to Bonnie Kristian. Here’s an excerpt:

That’s why the instinct to meet our culture’s critique or ignorance of the church by downplaying its import is so misguided. Church is not an optional add-on to Christian faith. It is how we learn to be human as God intended. Indeed, it makes possible truly human life before God. 

Church has what we need, the purpose and community and cultivation of virtue for which the rest of our culture is grasping in the dark. It’s right here. It’s nothing to be coy or embarrassed about. It’s nothing to apologize for. Church is what people are hungering for, even if they don’t realize it. Sometimes we ourselves don’t realize it.

Click here to read the rest.

My latest: an essay and response in Restoration Quarterly

An essay of mine is featured in the latest issue of Restoration Quarterly (66:3). In fact, the entire issue is organized around it. Let me give a little back story.

Two years ago on the blog I wrote a series of reflections on the past, present, and future of churches of Christ. They got a lot of traction around this neck of the woods, and James Thompson, the editor of RQ, asked me to synthesize and elaborate the posts into a single essay. The result is called “Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical” (pp. 133–44). It’s preceded by a brief reflection by Thompson on the “almost Catholic” ecclesiology of churches of Christ (pp. 129–32), then followed by three replies:

• “A Response to Brad East” by Wendell Willis (pp. 145–51)

• “Churches of Christ: Always Evangelical, Still Catholic” by John Mark Hicks (pp. 152–58)

• “A Response to Brad East” by Paul Watson (pp. 159–62)

I in turn wrote a response to the responses (pp. 163–69). All around a good time was had by all. My response is followed by a proper scholarly article on the New Testament (authored, again, by Thompson), then book reviews. As it happens, a review of my own book, The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context, is the first of this section.

It sort of feels like the Brad East Issue. I’m honored, humbled, and a little embarrassed.

Nevertheless it was a pleasure to engage such serious and pressing issues in a public forum with such thoughtful and generous thinkers and churchmen. My only regret is that while RQ does have a website it doesn’t have an obvious or convenient way to access current issues online or in digital form. Back issues are catalogued in ATLA but this one won’t be there for a while, at least from what I can tell.

I’m not in a position to share the whole issue with folks, but if you email me, I’d be willing to share a PDF of my essay and response. I’ll be curious to hear what folks make of my case, both regarding the absorption of churches of Christ by and into American Evangelicalism and regarding the precipitous institutional decline of the movement. The tone of the pieces isn’t doom and gloom, but it is quite sober and, if readers take it seriously, sobering. Which it should be, if I’m right.

My latest: on the late Albert Borgmann, in HHR

This morning The Hedgehog Review published an essay of mine called “The Gift of Reality.” It’s an extended introduction to and exposition of the life and writings of the late Albert Borgmann, including a review of his last book, published posthumously last January. Here’s a sample paragraph from the middle of the piece:

At the same time, while Borgmann may have been a critic of liberalism, he argued that “it should be corrected and completed rather than abandoned.” In this he reads as a less polemical Christopher Lasch or Wendell Berry, fellow democrats whose political vision—consisting among other things of family, fidelity, fortitude, piety, honor, honest work, local community, neighborliness, and thrift—is likewise invested in preserving and respecting reality. Such a vision is simultaneously homeless on the national stage and the richest fruit of the American political tradition.

Click here to read the whole thing.

My latest: on pastors’ reading habits, in Sapientia

I’ve got an essay in Sapientia called “The Reading Lives of Pastors.” The prompt was to reflect on Pope Francis’s “Letter on the Role of Literature in Formation” and, more broadly, on why pastors should (if they should) include fiction and poetry as part of their regular reading diet. After clarifying at the outset that literature does not per se make you a better person, I write the following:

The fact of literature is in general a human good, in the sense that it is a sign of an advanced culture: symbol, narrative, myth, technology, writing, literacy, communication—these are to be celebrated, granting their capacity to be bent to any number of ends. But the act of wide reading in literature in and of itself entails nothing at all about a person. The voracious reader may be either selfish or selfless, vain or humble, vicious or virtuous, religious or secular, joyful or melancholy, full of life or obsessed with death, a treasured friend or a despised enemy, a cosmopolitan or a provincial, a sage or a boor. Hitler and Stalin may not have been men of letters, but they had men of letters for followers and apologists. The list of wicked writers and artists—who abused women, abandoned children, and passed in silence over the suffering of countless victims—is too long to recount.

It is a difficult lesson to accept, but learning and goodness are not synonymous or coterminous. More of one does not necessarily lead to more of the other. They are neither directly nor inversely related. The desire for a cleaner, clearer correspondence between them is understandable, but utterly belied by the facts. Ordinary experience is a trustworthy teacher: Are the holiest people you know the smartest, the best educated, the most widely read?

Click here to read the whole thing.

Links: three reviews, three podcasts

I’ve fallen behind in my link updates, partly because of busyness, partly because the Micro.blog is so much easier for such things. But! Here are three podcasts I appeared on in the last few months, followed by a round-up of three new reviews of The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context.

Podcasts:

• Holy C of E, “A Catholic View of Scripture” (July 1), available on Spotify and Apple. Lot of high Anglican content here.

• The London Lyceum, “The Doctrine of Scripture” (July 10), available on Spotify and Apple. A rich conversation about Protestant approaches to and questions about Scripture.

• Speakeasy Theology, “The Scandal of Theology” (August 12), available on Apple and Substack. A long, meandering, and wonderful chat with Chris Green about Robert Jenson, wicked theologians, and original sin. To be continued.

Reviews:

• Joel B. Green, Interpretation 78:2 (2024): 174–75. Green writes that

this book serves both as a charitable and analytical reading of three distinct approaches to the use of the Bible in theology and as a formidable proposal for the importance of one’s understanding of the church for one’s interpretation of Scripture. The result is a welcome contribution to theological hermeneutics and to ongoing discussion of theological interpretation of Scripture. For those who imagine that their theological engagement with the Bible proceeds from text to doctrine, East offers an important corrective.

• Keith Stanglin, Calvin Theological Journal 59:1 (2024): 191–93. Stanglin writes: “The excursus alone, with implications that transcend Yoder’s case, is a rather full and careful account of how” to engage work produced by Christians and other writers who, while alive, perpetrated great evil against others. Stanglin concludes: “Through it all, East effectively illuminates a significant link that sometimes remains obscure in theological discourse,” namely between ecclesiology and bibliology.

• John Kern, Restoration Quarterly 66:3 (2024): 184–85. Kern writes:

Ultimately, this book is an exemplary work in contemporary systematic theology. It is historically attuned to the nuances of the figures that it treats. Even so, it evaluates their strengths and weaknesses, all while offering clear paths for bringing the best of their proposals together for a fuller vision. East never loses his constructive edge even while simply trying to get the figures right on their own terms. Even more, he does all of this while keeping his eye on the primary objective: to account for the divisions found among practitioners of [theological interpretation of Scripture]. He accomplishes this and so much more. Even tracing the lineage of these three theologians from Karl Barth’s influence would have been contribution sufficient to warrant a monograph, but East has found multiple ways to carry this conversation forward. The book is necessary reading for theologians and biblical scholars alike for the way it shows a point at once simple and deep: how one understands the church impacts how one understands the Bible as Scripture. It might not ultimately unify the differences between the different ecclesiological paradigms for bibliology, but East has helped theology in a major way by disambiguating the conflicts, showing where they truly originate.

My latest: on athletes and public faith, in CT

My latest column for Christianity Today is called “Penalty or No, Athletes Talk Faith.” Just in time for the Olympics! Alas, I had to cut the opening two paragraphs on the 2023–24 Boston Celtics, the recent champs who may be the most religious NBA team in years. Thankfully I did get to include this paragraph:

In Game 1 of the 2014 NBA Finals, LeBron James—at the time the best basketball player on the planet—had to leave prematurely due to cramps. Why? The stadium was slightly warmer than usual. He’d been known to request ice-cold air conditioning wherever he played, so much so that fans speculated that the opposing team, my beloved San Antonio Spurs, kept things warm for a competitive advantage. True or not, the Spurs won the game and the series both, all because the league’s MVP couldn’t keep his muscles from spasming.

I even got to mention the famous anecdote about MJ peeking at his teammates during Zen meditation. They’ll let me write anything!

What does any of that have to do with God, faith, or CT? Read on to see.

My latest: on weddings, in CT

My latest Christianity Today column is up this morning, and it’s called “Two Cheers for the Wedding Industrial Complex.” I may or may not defend ring by spring and other such sordid ideas. Enjoy!

My latest: on faithful fathers, in CT

Just in time for Father’s Day, I’m in Christianity Today writing about faithful fathers—especially mine. To kick things off, I riff on this remark by C. S. Lewis about George MacDonald:

We have learned from Freud and others about those distortions in character and errors in thought which result from a man’s early conflicts with his father. Far the most important thing we can know about George MacDonald is that his whole life illustrates the opposite process. An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. He was thus prepared in an unusual way to teach that religion in which the relation of Father and Son is of all relations the most central.

Click here to read the rest. Happy Father’s Day!

My latest: three podcast interviews

I’ve been on three different podcasts over the last month and have neglected to link to them here as they appeared.

First, I went on Curiously, Kaitlyn, which is Kaitlyn Schiess’s new spin-off as part of The Holy Post’s growing roster of podcasts. (Esau McCaulley has another one coming later this year, I believe.) Kaitlyn asked me why we can trust the Bible. We had a great conversation.

Next, I went on The Christian Chronicle Podcast to talk about Christian nationalism with BT Irwin. I initially declined, and only joined once I learned how thoughtful and serious BT is as an interviewer and journalist. It turned out to be a pleasure.

Finally, I went on Memorize What Matters to talk about biblical illiteracy, literal illiteracy, and the role of Scripture in a postliterate age. Josh Summers is doing neat work on that podcast, YouTube channel, and larger project of helping folks commit Scripture to memory. Recommended!

My latest: the loosening of American evangelicalism, for CT

My latest column for Christianity Today is up this morning. It’s titled “The Loosening of American Evangelicalism.” It’s an expansion of a blog post I wrote last fall. It’s speculative, noncommittal, and open to rebuttal and revision. An observational thesis subject to empirical or at least widely attested anecdotal verification.

Who knew I’d be writing about evangelical attitudes to alcohol, tattoos, TV, and Lent for CT? The Spirit blows where he wills.

My latest: the rise of digital lectors, in CT

My April 18 Christianity Today column was called “Biblical Literacy in a Postliterate Age.” Last week, on May 8, CT published my follow-up, titled “Digital Lectors for a Postliterate Age.”

I’d always intended a sequel, and later this summer I may write a final column to complete a loose trilogy of reflections on Scripture, literacy, and technology in the church. This latest one covers a range of creative responses to postliterate believers, seekers, and drifters, from the Bible Project to Father Mike’s The Bible in a Year podcast to Jonathan Pageau and the Symbolic World to Alastair Roberts and many others. I call them “digital lectors,” readers and expositors of Scripture for a digital—which is to say, a postliterate—age.

In between the two columns, there were a couple noteworthy interactions with my claims about the state of biblical literacy (and literacy in general) in the church. The first was a conversation on the Holy Post podcast between Skye Jethani and Kaitlyn Schiess; you can find it on video here, starting around minute 33. The second was a response from Jessica Hooten Wilson (whom I quote in the piece), in a piece on her Substack called “The Post-literate Church.” Both engagements are friendly, thoughtful, critical, and worth your time. I’m grateful to all of them for their reflections.

My latest: on incarnation, Theotokos, and abortion, in Commonweal

I have an essay in the newest issue of Commonweal called “Mother of the Unborn God.” It’s something of a sequel or peer to previous essays in The Christian Century on similar themes: “Birth on a Cross” and “Jewish Jesus, Black Christ.” This one takes conciliar confession of Mary as Theotokos as the metaphysical starting point for theological and moral reflection on Christian teaching about abortion—a topic, if memory serves, that I’ve never written about before. I hope I do justice to it, or at least to the confluence of theological questions raised by faith in Him who was conceived by the Holy Spirit / and born of the Virgin Mary.

Click here to read the full essay.