God’s love for Israel for its own sake

Any theological account of God’s relationship with Israel will have to approach it as a relationship that exists for its own sake. God loves Israel like a parent loves a child or like a husband loves a wife. Israel is not a means to a larger end but a love with its own intrinsic end. This is the way the Biblical narrative characterizes the relationship between God and Israel—in the Torah, in the prophets, and in Paul. Moreover, it is a relationship to which God commits Godself everlastingly. This forms the basis for Paul’s assertion of an eschatological universal Jewish salvation—they are beloved for the sake of the promises made to their ancestors.

This love is not exclusive. The Abrahamic blessing already implies that while Israel is not elected for the nations, its election will benefit the nations. They are blessed for Israel’s sake. God’s love for Abraham spills over to those around him. Paul offers a further interpretation of what this looks like: The Gentiles are to be included in Israel’s covenant, grafted onto Israel’s root and folded into Abraham’s family. To them now also belong “the adoption, the glory, the covenants.” The God who made promises to Israel is the one “from and through and to whom are all things” (Rom. 11:36). Nonetheless, this growing universalism of the narrative does not imply a waning particularism. It is Israel’s God to whom the nations are drawn; Israel’s root onto which they are grafted; Israel’s covenant in which they share. From being pagan polytheists they become monotheists. From being believers in violent or dualistic cosmogonies they embrace the Jewish idea of a good creation through a simple divine word. The ways they look at the world as the handiwork of the one God, the ways they reshape their ethics, the ways in which they conduct their liturgies are all shaped decisively by Jewish sources. They look forward to the glorious rule of a Jewish Messiah who will seat them with Abraham at a Jewish meal that they anticipate in every one of their worship services: the Messianic meal, the Eucharist. In short, they do something that Paul never had to do when he became a follower of Jesus: They convert. The eschaton is not a celebration of inclusive pluralism; it is the celebration of inclusion in Abraham’s family.

This Pauline account of God’s loving commitment to Israel and the grafting of the Gentiles onto the Jewish root aligns with the vision of Colossians and Ephesians of the patterned gathering of all things into Christ: beginning with Israel, the covenant with Abraham, and from there continuing with the Gentiles – those who once were far off, “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise” (Eph. 2:12)—being gathered into this covenant as well. This vision is, I argue, a supralapsarian vision: According to these letters, the gathering activity of Christ is not a response to sin but the goal of creation. Likewise, the covenant with Israel, as the first step of this gathering work, is supralapsarian. Paul’s account of Israel in Romans squares with this interpretation: a people established by God’s loving election not for the sake of a sin problem but for its own sake and loved eschatologically, long after sin’s reign has ended.

 —Edwin Chr. van Driel, Rethinking Paul: Protestant Theology and Pauline Exegesis (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 310-312

CCM

My friend and colleague Richard Beck, author of the best theology blog around, has been on fire lately with some stimulating reflections on church, ministry, preaching, and what it means to be faithful in the contemporary American context. If you’re not reading his Friday series on Jordan Peterson, get on it forthwith. His post this past Monday was a sort of follow-up to his latest Friday piece on Peterson. Both posts, along with many preceding ones, are about interpreting the state of the culture and what that interpretation tells us about how to respond with the gospel—not in 1950, not on an exotic mission field, but here, now, today, in the United States in 2022.

In particular, he points to three popular phenomena that wise Christian leaders should be learning from but, on the contrary, usually treat with disdain, if they engage them at all. Those three phenomena are (1) men like Peterson; (2) Joel Osteen; and (3) contemporary Christian music, or CCM. Beck isn’t interested in recommending any of these to us as samples of faithful Christian teaching or practice. Rather, he wants to draw the attention of snobby, Master’s degree–holding pastors and academics to persons and practices in which normies (Christian and non-Christian alike) find pleasure, meaning, and inspiration. Having drawn our attention there, he wants us (1) to stop being so condescending and (2) to learn something about where our culture finds itself today, what it might need, and therefore how that might inform the work of evangelism, catechesis, worship, etc.

Here’s how he concludes the second post (my emphases in bold):

I can't tell you how many times I've heard seminary-educated pastors and seminary professors sneer at Christian praise music. The music is castigated for being overly individualistic, therapeutic, and sentimental. We sneer and call it "Jesus is my boyfriend" music. You'll see the point if you listen to the lyrics of a song like Hillsong's "Oceans" (over 129 million YouTube views) or Lauren Daigle's "You Say" (over 242 million YouTube views), lyrics like "You are mine and I am yours" and "In You I find my worth, in You I find my identity."

Instead of sneering at the therapeutic individualism of these songs, their focus upon me and my feelings, take a second to listen to the songs as a missionary, as a cultural anthropologist. Instead of lol lol lol how about we think for a second? To what deep ache in the modern world are these songs appealing to?

This isn't rocket science. The reason praise songs centering therapeutic themes of God's intimate care and love are so popular is simple. As I recount in Hunting Magic Eels, anxiety, depression, suicide, loneliness, and addiction are all sky-rocketing. So the appeal of songs like "Oceans" or "You Say" are no mystery. These songs are hitting us right where we are hurting. Their appeal is blindingly obvious to any decent missionary.

But sadly, we're not very good missionaries. We've been too busy sneering at Hillsong, Osteen, and Peterson.

Now, am I suggesting that churches and pastors should follow their lead? Am I saying that we should ignore the theological content of praise music, preach the prosperity gospel, and hand Bible studies over to Jungian psychologists? No, I'm not saying any of that. What I'm saying is WIPE THE DAMNED SNEER OFF YOUR FACE AND LOOK AT THE CULTURE! If we took a moment to think like a missionary there are some things about Hillsong, Osteen and Peterson staring us in the face. Things we need to address, like any good missionary would, if we want to get a hearing for the gospel in this culture. But we can't see any of this because our seminary degrees have turned us all into elitist snobs. 

The modern would is suffering, staring into a void of meaninglessness where something true, beautiful and good once existed. Families are broken. Depression, anxiety, suicide, loneliness and addiction at high tide. And if you look out upon all that pain, with a compassionate heart and the mind of a missionary, there really is no mystery as to why Jordan Peterson, Joel Osteen or Hillsong are so popular. This, dear pastors, seminary professors, and church leaders, is our mission field. Let's stop sneering and get to work. 

In response to this all one can say is: Preach!

*

Well, maybe not all. I think Richard is dead right about Peterson and Osteen both. And he’s got all of us over-educated patronizing highbrow jerks dead to rights on CCM. The class divide both across and within denominations in the U.S. is rarely remarked upon yet staring us in the face. It may be, besides technology, the single greatest threat to the church’s spiritual, social, and moral health today. So preach on, I say.

Having said that, something in Richard’s comments about CCM hasn’t been able to work its way out of my mind, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. I don’t have a settled or confident counter to his claim, only questions I want to wonder about out loud. Perhaps he or you or someone else might provide me some clarity on the matter.

Here’s what I’m circling around.

It isn’t clear to me that the content or style of CCM reveals something important to us about our culture, perceiving that culture the way a missionary would—at least nothing revelatory on a par with Peterson and Osteen. Obviously anything with some level of popularity tells us something about a culture; it doesn’t come from nowhere. Nevertheless I wonder in this area. Part of my wonder has to do with the market, namely, the commercialization of “Christian music.” Pop culture critics often make this mistake. “The market” “has spoken” about this or that “popular” artifact or content, ergo we are entitled to analyze said content to death in search of a meaning that ostensibly reveals something deep about us.

I’m not so sure. Not least because “the market” largely delivers sedatives in the form of forgettable, bite-size entertainment whose primary effect is to numb us. Sure, in the aggregate the fact that we’re all looking to numb ourselves into oblivion is itself a datum that calls for analysis. (Though even then, Christians have a ready-made answer to why it is we do this: it’s called sin.) But often enough X-entertainment will substitute perfectly well for Y-entertainment. In fact, what often seems of world-sharking importance, given its popularity, is forgotten almost the moment it is finished. (Remember Game of Thrones?) Put differently, the species of numbing-fun isn’t especially important. It’s the genus—i.e., what Huxley called “soma” in Brave New World—that matters.

So back to CCM. What I want to suggest as a possibility is that CCM’s popularity as Sunday morning praise music might be an accident of relatively little significance. It might, for example, merely reflect people’s pleasure in singing in church what they sing in the car; and since CCM is what’s on the radio, that’s what we get at church. Perhaps you suppose what’s on the radio (or Spotify) is itself meaningful. For a moment, though, go in for a materialist rather than a market-demand analysis. Perhaps, after the success of CCM in the 1990s, the big corporations that stepped in and made CCM not only Big Business but Global Business were the ones who set the terms for what CCM could sound like and be about going forward. Perhaps they are the ones who are responsible for the sort of lyrics most CCM songs contain: minimal biblical allusion, imagery, and terms, few polysyllabic words, plenty of you-and-me generic love affairs, oodles of spare repetition. Call it the Hallmark-ification of CCM. Hallmark sells. But that doesn’t tell us much. It’s just a known quantity built to sell in a continuous, self-replacing fashion—i.e., in such a way that we forget the best songs from last year so that we stream the best songs from this year, so on and so forth, into capitalist eternity.

Is that an entirely implausible interpretation of CCM these last 30 years? If not, it suggests to me that the popularity, such as it is, of CCM in the worship assemblies of low-church traditions (i.e., non-denom, baptist, evangelical) may not mean that much. In other words, we don’t need to put on our missionary hats in order to learn from this particular phenomenon. We need only put on our economic—perhaps our Marxist—hats to do so.

In short, it is all too believable, in my view, that if other music were on the radio, that’s just what our churches would be playing. Or suppose we had replacement songs—songs quite different in content but that were equally singable, equally catchy, equally popular, even equally kitschy. Suppose that, without anyone’s knowing it, these songs were more or less seamlessly substituted for our current CCM worship. I submit that they would do the job, and people would enjoy them well enough.

I admit that these are hypothetical conjectures. Remember, I didn’t promise much by way of compelling argument, much less a confident thesis. Anyway, this is what Richard provoked in my thinking, for what it’s worth.

*

Two final thoughts, while I’m at it.

1. None of what I’ve said above should imply that, because CCM mostly comprises kitsch, it should be rejected. Though it is true that plenty of CCM isn’t very good, musically or theologically, such a judgment is not per se a judgment about its kitschiness, which in turn is not a judgment on its worthiness either to be used in worship or to be enjoyed by Christians. As Paul Griffiths has rightly written, kitsch is very near to the heart of the church. It is not the church’s primary business to make aesthetes of the baptized. It is to make them little Christs. It is, that is to say, to make them disciples, conformed over time to the holiness of the image of Christ. That may or may not involve aesthetic formation in genuine appreciation of the truly beautiful. (This is where Hans Boersma, in my view, went wrong in his reflection last summer on the role of beauty in the liturgy.) Some of the most faithful saints in church history wouldn’t know the difference between a Rembrandt and a Warner Sallman, or which is to be preferred, Bach or Michael W. Smith. Who cares? The beauty they know is the one that matters: Christ himself. He contains all the beauty they need. And if Christ, in his wisdom and mercy, uses kitsch as means of his grace—and he certainly does, every day of the week and twice on Sunday—then glory to God for one more illustration of his great love for us. In fact, the real miracle is that he loves us snobs.

2. Perhaps this is burying the lede, but the real liturgical phenomenon I want to subject to missionary analysis in modern low-church worship is not the style or content of the songs on offer. It’s the very fact that the songs are the star of the show. By which I mean that, outside of high liturgical traditions, in (very broadly speaking) evangelical Protestant churches, there are two and only two options for why one is there in the assembly on Sunday morning—what I have elsewhere called the inner rationale of worship. It’s either the sermon or the concert. Reformed and Baptist churches typically offer a version of the former: preaching that lasts 30, 40, 50 minutes, not in spite of but in service to both what the church and what its members want out of the sermon. Long, rich, deep saturation in the biblical text and the proclamation of the gospel. But if it’s not the sermon—and my anecdotal observation is that previously sermon-centric congregations and ecclesial traditions are in the midst of an enormous shift here—then it’s the concert.

As I tell my students, think of worship as a pie chart; slice it up by time allotment, and you’ll know pretty quickly what a church cares about, that is, what it thinks worship is all about, why people are there or want to be there or should be there. And in many churches today the majority of the liturgical pie chart is a concert performed by a band. The songs performed by that band are the very songs the faithful listened to on the radio or Spotify on the way to church that morning and on the way home afterward. The Lord’s Supper (if it happens, and if it isn’t optional self-serve in the back) takes little more than a few minutes. There are prayers. Some Bible. A modest sermon. But the main event is the stage. This is where “worship”—which is the word young evangelicals typically use to mean “praise and worship music in big church”—is performed by a group of four to ten individuals.

Of even greater theological interest: In such a church the once-normative priestly role of the pastor, whether he be an actual priest, formally ordained, or “just” the pulpit minister, has vanished completely. Even in the lowest of low churches, only a few decades ago, the priestly character of the preacher-minister-pastor was a given. He would call the church to order, open with a prayer, welcome newcomers, etc., and then serve in a continuously public role throughout the service. He would—again, whether he or his congregation thought of it this way—do what a priest does: represent Christ to the people and the people to Christ. For some Protestants this role might include the blessed sacrament, but for all and sundry it culminated in the preaching of the word. Now, for the communities I am thinking of, no longer. I actually can’t emphasize enough how epochal this change is. It is monumental. It is a wholesale shift from every form of liturgical practice in Christian history of which I am aware, outside of the rare Quaker or equally radical departures from the norm.

I said Richard got me thinking. He did. But I’m not thinking of the songs as such, nor their lyrics or style. I’m thinking of their overpowering centrality in worship, their outright displacement of both word and sacrament from the heart of the liturgy. That calls for comment. Let’s don our missionary hats and figure out what’s going on there. I’m all ears.

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.

Touchy self-regard

There are many scholarly vices, but the two that stand out most prominently to me are defensiveness and self-pity. We all know academics who fall prey to these. What’s unfortunate is that, far too often, they seem to be positively rather than inversely correlated to one’s status, fame, renown, and success. Attend a conference, observe a well-known master of a sub-guild on a panel, and you’ll be shocked (or not) by his sheer touchiness. The mere mention of a minor dissent from one of his many ideas will call forth a thunderstorm of wrath and emotion worthy of a toddler tantrum.

But it’s not just the intemperate. Follow a scholar or writer on Twitter. It should be clear to all of us by now that social media in general exacerbates these vices. For the voices we’ve heard in our heads our whole lives—you’re a fake, everyone knows it, you don’t know anything, your writing isn’t worth a damn, why do you even waste your time?—are given quite literal and insistent and incessant expression in one’s replies, DMs, and emails. This is why every writer and scholar should get off every form of social media, Twitter above all. It trains the psyche (and the ego) to categorize any criticism, however legitimate or gently phrased, as falling under the genre of “reply-guy mentions.”

The other vice I have in mind is an exaggerated self-regard. This manifests in a reflex that wonders why it is that one writes in the first place—after all, no one reads my work anyway, so what’s the point? But then, such a cri de coeur is invariably in print, meant for others to see. Even when it’s honest and not just fishing for compliments or protestations, it’s an emotional and scholarly trap. How many people today are writing in English for a public audience, whether in books, journals, magazines, blogs, newsletters, or on the internet? Surely the number is in the tens of thousands. It boggles the mind, to be honest. Unless you’re selling millions of books, or you’re one of a handful of super-scholars like Charles Taylor, the truth is the only impact you can or will have is on a very, very, very small audience of readers, one that is necessarily vanishingly minuscule in absolute terms. Which means, in turn, that the overall effect of one’s work is in all likelihood going to be almost nil.

It seems to me that we have a choice: accept this as a fact on the front end or doom ourselves to inevitable melancholy, self-loathing, and despair on the back end. That I am not going be a Saint Augustine or a Bucer or a Barth, an Austen or a Trollope or an Eliot, a Taylor or a MacIntyre or a Jenson—this is a certainty. Does it mean I ought to stop writing? I don’t think so. I write, among other reasons, because I must. I can’t not write. But I also write because I might, within a very circumscribed range, affect or inform or educate or edify a few souls in my orbit. I call them souls because that is what they are: souls. Having even a tiny impact on a single soul isn’t nothing. It’s not much by comparison to the big leagues, but it’s something.

If you can accept that, you can be a writer without driving yourself crazy in the process. If you can’t, well, at least have the decency not to draw us into your circle of self-regard.

Misdiagnosis

A running theme has emerged on this blog over the last few years, but especially the last 18 months or so. That theme is the sorry state of the church in the U.S., in particular “low church” traditions: non-denominational, baptist, evangelical, and other similar communions (like my own, churches of Christ). The focus is on those traditions because those are the ones that compose my world: the Christians I know, the neighbors I live among, the students I teach. I stay abreast of analogous problems in Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline churches, but they’re farther afield in terms of my lived daily circles.

Lately I have found myself struck by a commonality that unites so many of the objects of my critique and frustration within this lagging, sagging, tattered sub-world of American Christendom, such as it is. That commonality I will call a fundamental misdiagnosis of the situation, that is, of the root problems besetting the churches today. So far I can tell—granted that this is an untrustworthy mix of anecdote, hearsay, reading, and guesswork—a certain framework and diagnosis is shared among an enormous unofficial and unconnected network of pastors, church leaders, writers, and academics. When these folks look at the churches today, what they see is a surfeit of errant but otherwise strong, and strongly held, beliefs. This surplus of conviction is a problem for one of two reasons. Either the content of the conviction is wrong or the confidence in its truth is overweening. In both cases it is the pastor’s, the church’s, or the seminary’s job to exercise discipline—that is, to transform the content or to undermine the confidence. Sometimes the act of discipline is self-directed; sometimes the passion of directing it outward stems from autobiography. In any case, frustration results when laypersons do not take kindly to the attempt at discipline. Mutual distrust lingers like an aura, even in the absence of such an attempt. Each side wonders when the other will make a move.

I do not doubt that there are communities in which this description obtains. I do not doubt, in other words, that there are churches in this country filled to the brim with self-assured, belief-suffused Christians who sniff and snarl at the faintest whiff of a notion that they are not one hundred percent right in their every opinion—and, what is important to add, that many of those opinions have next to nothing to do with the gospel.

As I say, I do not doubt this. Nevertheless, as a diagnosis of what ails the churches in the aggregate, I think it is mistaken.

The problem, at the macro level, is not a surfeit of strong belief. The problem is the social, moral, and theological acids corroding every belief in sight. These acids are everywhere, affecting everyone. Marx’s description of the effects of capitalism on the wider society apply equally well here:

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…

Fast forward to the present and it is the selfsame phenomenon. In a word, it is liquid modernity that is sucking believers down into the depths. It is not some mass illusion of stability. The ground is breaking up beneath our feet as we speak. Or rather, it’s been broken up for some time, and only now are some of us peering down to see what little remains. Individual by individual, community by community, believers are falling through the cracks.

And what do they hear from their ostensible leaders? From the books and blogs, pulpits and classrooms, profiles and influencers? They see a finger pointing in accusation; they are told that the problem is too much belief held too tightly. Nein! I don’t know a soul in the churches under 45 years old for whom such a label fits. To a man, to a woman, they’re barely keeping their heads above the waters. And all they see is tidal waves coming for their children.

What we need, accordingly, is a shoring up of the foundations, not a tearing down of the walls. What we need, as I have written elsewhere, is not deconstruction. It’s reconstruction—or just plain construction, starting with what we have. From the raw soil and the still-smoking ruins, a shelter can be built. But we have to see what’s in front of us if are going to build at all, much less wisely, and we’ll never get around to the job if we project onto the smoldering wreckage the image of an impregnable fortress. Perhaps that’s what once was there. No longer.

What do I want for my students?

I teach theology to undergraduates. That means, on one hand, that I’m not teaching them a skill. Many professors pass on a set of concrete skills meant for a job or some other professional activity: how to interview a client; how to detect a speech impediment; how to parse a verb; how to mix solutions. Not me. That’s not what theology is about.

On the other hand, I’m not teaching my students a discrete collection of facts, such that they might memorize them and, having done so, be assessed for their (or my) success. To be sure, theology contains facts—the date of the seventh ecumenical council, the name of the angelic doctor, the location of the crucifixion—but these are not the point of theology; they are necessary but relatively unimportant elements along the way.

Moreover, nine out of ten students register for a class with me because it is part of a menu of courses they are required to take. In other words, they’re with me because they have to be, not (necessarily) because they want to be. I cannot assume either prior knowledge or present interest.

Finally, professors should be honest with themselves. Whatever a student learns from me, she will almost certainly forget within five to fifteen years. No student is going to see me at a restaurant in 2035 and say, “Dr. East! Chalcedon! Theotokos! St. Cyril and the Tome of St. Leo!” Even if they did, they wouldn’t remember what those words meant. It would be an impressive student who did.

I imagine it’s hard for some teachers to accept this. Why teach if they’re going to forget it all?

Well, to contradict myself for a moment: I remember verbatim a line from a professor in a course on teaching my senior year of college. He said: Learning is what you remember when you’ve forgotten everything you were taught. (Or something like that.) That is, you do take something with you, even if you forget all the facts and figures. So what is that something?

The answer will vary based on the teacher and the topic. Here’s mine.

My principal task as a teacher of theology is the act of exposure. I want to expose my students, usually for the first time, to the Christian theological tradition. I want to show them that it exists, that it makes a claim on their lives, that it is of crucial importance to understanding God, and that it is supremely intellectually interesting. If I do nothing else whatsoever, and students walk out of my classroom having imbibed those lessons, I will have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

Put from a different angle, and more simply, my goal is for students to understand—or at least to see a visceral instance of someone who believes—that God matters. There is nothing more important than God, nothing more interesting, nothing more vital, nothing more imperiously imposing, nothing more existentially significant.

Further, I want my students to see that the person in front of them not only believes this to be true but has staked his life on it. More, that this person is morally and intellectually serious and—for this very reason, not in spite of it—believes it to his core. In other words, having taken me, no student will be able to say, for the rest of his or her life, that he or she never met an educated, intelligent, committed Christian adult. I’ve got all the credentials. I’ve got the knowledge. In worldly terms, I’ve got the goods. Not the goods that matter, mind you—like the fruit of the Holy Spirit or the cardinal virtues or any meaningful sign of holiness—but the goods that the world cares about. The Ivy PhD, the books and articles, the whatever other superficial symptoms of success that are meant to impress on social media and dust jackets.

If the students listen to my teaching, then they will know that the point about the gospel is that these things don’t matter. They are means to other ends, often little more than filthy lucre and in any case full of temptations—not least to seek after prestige or to be impressed with one’s own resume. Nevertheless, one thing they communicate is that the person bearing them cannot be dismissed as a country bumpkin or a dime-a-dozen fundie. Even if I’m wrong, it’s not because (as they say) I haven’t done the reading. No student finishes a semester with me and thinks I haven’t done my homework. That’s the one thing I make sure to rule out.

In that sense, then, I use what’s to hand as a tool for amplifying what I’ve judged to be most important for them to hear. For the most part, they won’t remember the grammar of orthodoxy as I’ve tried to spell it out for them. What they’ll remember is that there is such a thing as orthodoxy. And whether or not they were raised on it in their home church, now they can’t claim ignorance: it exists, it’s grand, it’s rich and wide and deep—the sort of thing one might give one’s life to, as their (somewhat excitable and quite strange) professor seems to have done and (even stranger) seems to think they should, too.

My courses, in a word, remove plausible deniability. They can’t say they weren’t told. Through sheer relentless heartfelt passion, energy, and love, I give all that I have and use all that I know to show forth the truths of the gospel of God. The assignments aren’t onerous, but the reading is. I want to saturate them in the wisdom and beauty of the doctors and saints and martyrs of the church. (I want them, secondarily, to imagine that reading might be a habit worth acquiring.) I want them to see themselves in the writings of the tradition, by which I mean, I want them to see the Christ they already know in the words of ancient and unknown forebears. They knew Christ, too! Perhaps, as a result, they might have something to teach us of Christ in the here and now.

More than anything, I want my students to see in the sacred tradition of the church what Rilke saw in the torso of Apollo: A peremptory and inescapable word from beyond, addressing them by name: You must change your life.

That’s what I want for my students. I want them to know Christ, and to keep on knowing him for the rest of their lives. They can do that while eventually, or even quickly, forgetting all I ever said. And that would be just fine with me.

Christian ethics

This spring semester I’m piloting a course in theological ethics for upper-level students at ACU. Wednesday this week wrapped up our fourth week as well as part 1 of the course. To begin the work of synthesis I wrote up a series of ten theses on Christian ethics and distributed copies to the class. Here’s what I wrote:

1. Christian ethics pertains to followers of Christ.

2. The community of Christ-followers is the church.

3. The church is thus the context, audience, and agent of Christian ethics.

4. Christian ethics is for “the world” in the sense that those outside the church are invited to visit and to join the church; but the church does not expect the world to live according to Christian ethics.

5. The church is the teacher of Christian ethics; the Spirit’s pedagogy or “moral epistemology” is housed there.

6. The vehicle or living source of the church’s teaching is its sacred tradition, governed and normed by Holy Scripture, inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit.

7. Human beings develop good character, or virtue, through belonging to the common life of the church, which is centered on the corporate worship of God.

8. If ethics is about flourishing as a human being, then it follows that knowing and worshiping God is the height of human flourishing; our final end is friendship with God.

9. Virtuous character in community is ordered by and to imitation of an ideal or exemplar; in the case of the Christian community, the one truly human being worthy of imitation is Jesus Christ: he is the pattern or paradigm of “the good man.”

10. In sum, therefore, Christian ethics is about:

    1. journeying in and with the life of the worshiping community of the church toward the eternal life of the triune God;

    2. learning the moral life in humble obedience to the church’s teaching;

    3. developing good character over time and through practice by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit;

    4. and, ultimately, being conformed to the image of Christ.

Turning back the clock

In the last six weeks I’ve read three different books that all makes disparaging reference to “turning back the clock.” By disparaging I mean that they repudiate the usual use to which the cliché is put. Noticing the shared rhetorical move between these works, spread across about four decades in the first half of the twentieth century, made me wonder how common a trope this is for Christian and especially conservative writers in the last hundred or so years. Do share if you know some other ones.

Here’s the first. From G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World (1910):

There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, “You can’t put the clock back.” The simple and obvious answer is “You can.” A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a piece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed. There is another proverb, “As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it”; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.

Next comes C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1941–44; rev. 1952):

You may have felt you were ready to listen to me as long as you thought I had anything new to say; but if it turns out to be only religion, well, the world has tried that and you cannot put the clock back. If anyone is feeling that way I should like to say three things to him.

First, as to putting the clock back. Would you think I was joking if I said that you can put a clock back, and that if the clock is wrong it is often a very sensible thing to do? But I would rather get away from that whole idea of clocks. We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be and if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when we do arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start over again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistakes. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.

Finally, Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (1948):

Whoever argues for a restoration of values is sooner or later met with the objection that one cannot return, or as the phrase is likely to be, “you can't turn the clock back.” By thus assuming that we are prisoners of the moment, the objection well reveals the philosophic position of modernism. The believer in truth, on the other hand, is bound to maintain that the things of highest value are not affected by the passage of time; otherwise the very concept of truth becomes impossible. In declaring that we wish to recover lost ideals and values, we are looking toward an ontological realm which is timeless. Only the sheerest relativism insists that passing time renders unattainable one ideal while forcing upon us another. Therefore those that say we can have the integration we wish, and those who say we cannot, differ in their ideas of ultimate reality, for the latter are positing the primacy of time and of matter. And this is the kind of division which prevents us from having one world.

Now the return which the idealists propose is not a voyage backward through time but a return to center, which must be conceived metaphysically or theologically. They are seeking the one which endures and not the many which change and pass, and this search can be only described as looking for the truth. They are making the ancient affirmation that there is a center of things, and they point out that every feature of modern disintegration is a flight from this toward periphery. It is expressible, also, as a movement from unity to individualism. In proportion as man approaches the outer rim, he becomes lost in details, and the more he is preoccupied with details, the less he can understand them. A recovery of certain viewpoints associated with the past would be a recovery of understanding as such, and this, unless we admit ourselves to be helpless in the movement of a deterministic march, is possible at any time. In brief, one does not require a particular standpoint to comprehend the timeless. Let us remember all the while that the very notion of eternal verities is repugnant to the modern temper.

I imagine there are many, many more where these come from. Anti-modern, conservative, and reactionary writers adore Chesterton, Lewis, and Weaver. Perhaps someone else has already collected the further quotes and riffs they spawned. I’ll be keeping my eye out for more.

Perennial epigraph

Plaster this as the epigraph or foreword to every work of theology, every essay, every review, every lecture, every class, every tract, every sermon, every degree in doctrine or ministry or biblical studies. It comes from the opening chapter of Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ:

Quid prodest tibi alta de Trinitate disputare, si careas humilitate unde displiceas Trinitati? Vere alta verba non faciunt sanctum et justum, sed virtuosa vita efficit Deo carum. Opto magis sentire compunctionem quam scire definitionem. Si scires totam Bibliam, et omnium philosophorum dicta quid totum prodesset, sine charitate et gratia? Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas præter amare Deum et illi soli fervire. Ista est summa sapientia per contemptum mundi tendere ad regna cælestia.

Twitter and Thomas à Kempis

I’ve been on Twitter for nearly nine years. For the last three of those years I’ve wondered whether I should stay on, and I’ve gone back and forth. I quit for a few months while keeping my account active before returning in the spring of 2020, then took another big break that summer. Since fall 2020 I’ve stayed more or less consistent with a few self-defined rules for my Twitter usage:

1. The app is not on my phone.

2. I don’t scroll.

3. I don’t reply to tweets.

4. I don’t like tweets.

5. I look at half a dozen accounts daily or weekly, using them as RSS feeds.

6. I use my own account exclusively to share news about or links to my work.

This has been a winning formula the last 18 months. The first five are alike easy enough and simple enough to stick to, and following them has meant my Twitter usage has been both minimal and healthy, all things considered.

That said, the intentionally and insistently self-promotional aspect of #6 has begun to wear on me. On one hand, my Twitter profile has unquestionably been a boon to my writing career and whatever small profile I have among a few like-hearted readers. I’ve met genuine friends on there, and folks have bought my books after finding me on Twitter. On the other hand, can relentless flashing neon lights, operated by me, endlessly reiterating just how great I and my work are … can that possibly be good for the soul?

This morning I was reading Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. Here is the second chapter of the opening book, reproduced in its entirety:

Every man naturally desires knowledge; but what good is knowledge without fear of God? Indeed a humble rustic who serves God is better than a proud intellectual who neglects his soul to study the course of the stars. He who knows himself well becomes mean in his own eyes and is not happy when praised by men.

If I knew all things in the world and had not charity, what would it profit me before God Who will judge me by my deeds?

Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise.

Many words do not satisfy the soul; but a good life eases the mind and a clean conscience inspires great trust in God.

The more you know and the better you understand, the more severely will you be judged, unless your life is also the more holy. Do not be proud, therefore, because of your learning or skill. Rather, fear because of the talent given you. If you think you know many things and understand them well enough, realize at the same time that there is much you do not know. Hence, do not affect wisdom, but admit your ignorance. Why prefer yourself to anyone else when many are more learned, more cultured than you?

If you wish to learn and appreciate something worthwhile, then love to be unknown and considered as nothing. Truly to know and despise self is the best and most perfect counsel. To think of oneself as nothing, and always to think well and highly of others is the best and most perfect wisdom. Wherefore, if you see another sin openly or commit a serious crime, do not consider yourself better, for you do not know how long you can remain in good estate. All men are frail, but you must admit that none is more frail than yourself.

These words nailed me to the wall. Or rather, if I may be permitted the severity of the expression, to the cross. Can any serious Christian read this passage and approve of spending even ten seconds of a day cultivating and curating a Twitter profile dedicated to nothing whatsoever except self-promotion? St. James advises that not many of us become teachers, “for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness” (3:1). What of those of us who proclaim our surpassing wisdom, our eloquent wit, our impressive pedigree, our latest important publication to the world? In an infinite scroll of self-regard and pride?

I’ve never used one of the penitential seasons to fast from Twitter, but I may do so this Lent. I may begin sooner than Ash Wednesday. My inner PR rep tempts me against this, urging me to consider that I have a book to sell this April, a profile to maintain, readers to woo and buyers to court. What self-indulgent nonsense. God help me if my insecurities and anxieties keep me on a website I know in my heart is wicked, on whose platform I continuously proclaim without shame my pride and self-importance to the world in a doom loop of frustrated desire, hoping beyond hope “to appear learned and to be called wise.”

As Thomas says just one chapter earlier, the whole aim of Christian faith is to study the life of Christ and thence to pattern one’s own life on his. What better time to get started than now? “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2); “you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom 13:11-14).

With St. Paul and with St. Augustine, we all say: Amen.

New essay published in The Christian Century

An essay of mine is the cover story in the newest issue of The Christian Century; it’s titled “Jewish Jesus, Black Christ.” I first wrote it in late August 2020, about 18 months ago, and it’s finally here, in the world. Thanks to the editors at CC for their comments and for accepting it. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Outside the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, along lengthy walls that enclose the church’s courtyard, there is a series of portraits of the Madonna and Child. Each portrait is labeled with the nation whose culture and artistic traditions it represents. Ethiopia, Singapore, Thailand, France: each contribution is not only designated by its origin but marked as such by its features. Many are unmistakable; one knows where they come from at a glance. Some combination of aesthetic style, garb, skin tone, and ethnic and cultural features define the newborn Jesus and his mother as members of a particular people. They belong among them, and in so belonging the Christ Child claims that people as his own. By an unfathomable mystery, he is incarnate as one of them.

Inside the basilica, pilgrims descend to the cave where it is said that the angel Gabriel announced to Mary what was to come. On the altar in the cave is inscribed an amended version of John 1:14: verbum caro hic factum est—the Word became flesh here. The eternal God assumed humanity in the womb of a virgin at a place one can visit, at a date one can locate on a calendar. To the question, “When and where did it happen?” the church has a ready answer.

If that is so, why then a gallery of portraits of what we know Jesus and his mother did not look like? Representing times and places to which Jesus did not come some two millennia ago?

The essay then turns to violence against African-Americans, iconography depicting victims in christological terms, the history of racism in America, and the work of James Cone. Click here for the whole piece.

Perennial Lewis

As I’ve written about previously, I’ve spent the last 10-12 months rereading the major works of C. S. Lewis by listening to them on audio. That has meant nearly 20 books, split evenly between fiction and nonfiction. I’m on my last one now (I finished my romp through Chesterton earlier this month), which means 2022 will be wide open for my post-podcast listening habits.

In any case, a few final reflections on Lewis. In particular, on Lewis the apologist and why (a) there has not been a genuine successor to his genius or his stature and (b) why he remains so popular as we approach the 60th anniversary of his death.

1. The first answer is simple: they don’t make ’em like they used to. Lewis describes himself as a converted pagan among apostate puritans, and that’s the right way to read him. Even if he weren’t a first-rate stylist and multifaceted writer (novels, children’s stories, science fiction, literary criticism, poetry, memoir, philosophy, ethics, apologetics), his sheer learning sets him apart. Nor did he gain that learning as part of a strategy for something called “outreach” or intellectual evangelism. He came to the faith ready-made, the product of an extraordinary mind molded by an extraordinary education. I wonder sometimes whether there’s even one Anglophone Christian scholar today under 45 years old who does not spend his or her time regularly on the internet, social media, and/or streaming television. The sheer time given to such trifles (I’m looking at myself here) means ipso facto that one could not hope to reach one-tenth of Lewis’s erudition.

2. The next answer is obvious: the disciples of Lewis are not like Lewis, nor do they aspire to be. They do not come from where he came from; they do not share his education; their overlap with his literary and intellectual affections is minimal. Lewis came to Christ by way of myth and romance, epic poetry and the drama of pagan pleasures. These are foreign to Lewis’s foremost admirers, above all American evangelicals. This is a man who was (until the end) a bachelor who loved rich beer, good tobacco, other men, and talk of dragons. Preferably with a shared knowledge of half a dozen languages, ancient and modern. Whereas those who love Lewis most love him for his side hobby (which, granted, we may assume was his calling from God): putting the complexities of the faith into plain language for common people, against powerful cultural trends. None of them, in other words, is going to have a chance of becoming him.

3. But that’s a negative way of putting the matter. So let me say this. Going back over books I first read twenty years ago, now on the far side of a more or less continuous theological education in college and graduate school, I see now more clearly than ever Lewis’s brilliance. He really was a one of one. As I listen to his most popular—by which I mean not his most successful or beloved but his most vulgar or common—speeches and writings, I am consistently struck by how little has changed (at least, between postwar England and contemporary America), but more so by how excellent his answers are to the questions of the time. By and large they need not, because they cannot, be improved upon. There is no Lewis 2.0 because eight times out of ten, if an honest skeptic asks you a question, you should just point him to the essay or book that Lewis already wrote. If it ain’t broke, etc.

4. There are subjects that Lewis did not address or articulate as well as he did others; these remain for others to elaborate or expand upon. He is not, it seems to me, especially trustworthy on politics. His ecclesiology is thin. Though he can be quite good on sex and gender, at other times he is bad, and occasionally he is plain weird. In his time he was on the threshold—knowingly—of a truly post-Christian society. It was already present in the people, but the trappings remained in law, education, and culture. No longer. What does it mean to take up the baton from him? That is, to evangelize a re-paganized West at once post-Christian and anti-Christian yet also somehow formally and thus morally and spiritually Christian (without knowing or acknowledging it)?

That, so far as I can tell, is the question to ask. Not least because it’s the question he’d be asking. I don’t have hope that there will be another like him anytime soon. But God has done stranger things. At any rate, we can give God thanks for doing the altogether strange thing of converting Lewis to Christ. Lord knows Lewis is on the short list of reasons why I am a believer. How many others can say the same?

Evangelical addenda

As soon as I hit “Publish” on the last post, I felt some unease about how it might come across. I re-read it, and let me offer a few further comments, especially before I go read what anybody else makes of it.

1. My remarks there are meant primarily in a descriptive register. I’m trying to get at a dynamic I feel like I constantly observe, whether in person, in conversation, or in written form.

2. In that sense my post is one more mini-entry in a sort of sociology of American evangelicalism. What is going on with this community? is the founding question. Given that I live in Evangelical Land, I have a few thoughts.

3. I’m continually thinking about this question, since my students are mostly evangelicals, and I want to teach them well. Evangelicalism also (obviously) interacts with our politics and culture in significant ways. I’m thinking of this recent essay, as well as this one from a few years back; the latter essay I take to be one of the best and most succinct analyses of evangelicalism in the past few decades.

4. I imagine my rhetoric sounds more critical in tone than I meant it to be. I’m all aboard for educating anyone, not to mention evangelicals, in the faith and doctrines and ethics of historic Christianity. What I was wanting to recommend, though, is twofold. On the one hand, an awareness, on the part of those who belong or half-belong or once belonged to evangelicalism, that letting go of the evangelical hermeneutic just is to let go of a crucial, perhaps a fundamental, piece of what it means to live and move and have one’s being as an evangelical Christian. If that hermeneutic is a sine qua non of evangelical being, then it is worth admitting and accepting that the loss of one is the loss of the other.

5. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean a chasm separates former from current evangelicals. It doesn’t mean conversation is impossible. What it means it that, even more than awareness, what is required is explicit acknowledgement that one’s aims in teaching, writing, and argument are ordered to, or dependent upon, the student, reader, or listener rejecting the evangelical hermeneutic. It entails as well that one’s arguments that do not operate in accordance with that hermeneutic will just to that extent fail, falling on dear ears, at least for dyed-in-the-wool evangelicals; and thus that if one’s arguments are to succeed, even with the goal of persuading one’s audience to reject said hermeneutic, they must operate on its terms.

6. I am not myself an evangelical, though once or twice I’ve been mistaken for one. But because my own ecclesial tradition is currently in process of being absorbed by evangelicalism; because most of my students and neighbors are evangelicals of one sort or another; because I’ve gotten to know some thoughtful evangelicals over the years; because my research focuses on the doctrine and interpretation of Scripture (a hobbyhorse of evangelical scholarship); and because evangelicalism is such a potent force in American culture and politics, I find myself reflecting, even perseverating, on evangelicalism just about every day. Hence these observations.

7. Evangelicalism is undergoing what appears to me an epochal fracturing in our time, before our very eyes. One sees it everywhere. I see it especially in the relationship between church leaders (pastors, professors, writers) and church members, i.e., the rank and file. That relationship is frayed and fraying. It is often a function of class and/or education. Running parallel with those divisions is theology. Over and over I see the theology and ethics of leaders and of members drifting apart. Neither reflects or represents the other. In effect you have two different churches within a single church: the faith and morals of leadership versus the faith and morals of the pews. That is a real problem. In the case of the original post, I was trying to put my finger on the, or at least one, source of that divide. The presence or absence of the evangelical hermeneutic in leadership/membership is one such source, or so it seems to me.* My goal was to draw attention to that. If I didn’t, allow this post to rectify that error.

*A related but distinct problem that I see is not that either party rejects the evangelical hermeneutic, but that each holds to it on paper but in fact adverts to some other hermeneutic (typically, though not always, experiential, political, or cultural in nature) as determinative of theological judgments. If the second essay I linked to above is right, this dynamic follows the trajectory of Protestant liberalism overtaking, eventually, all churches and Christian institutions, however traditional or evangelical they may have begun as or may continue to claim to be. That phenomenon is worth reflecting on further in greater detail some other time.

The problem with evangelicalism

There’s not only one, granted. But this isn’t one of those posts. It’s not a beat-up-on-the-evangelicals manifesto in nine parts. It’s not about evangelicals and politics, or about that popular Christianity Today podcast, or about which marks truly define an evangelical, and whether they ought to be doctrinal or sociological or other.

This is a minor little comment about theology and hermeneutics. Here it is.

Evangelicalism isn’t merely a style (a way of being Christian) or a worldview (a set of beliefs). It’s a hermeneutic. It’s a path from here to there, a map for movement, a manual for drawing conclusions and making judgments about what Christian faith is, what Christian behavior entails, and how to inhabit the world. That manual occasionally takes written form but it usually operates in unwritten circulation, imbibed like mother’s milk from (successful) catechesis in active involvement in evangelical churches.

The substance of that manual may be summarized in a slogan: nuda scriptura. That is:

1. the Bible alone is for Christians the one encompassing and all-purpose practical guide to faith, ethics, politics, and culture;

2. the individual Christian is equipped and encouraged (perhaps required) to use the Bible in order to discover its normative teaching and guidance for him or herself regarding matters of doctrine and morals;

3. in principle no one and nothing—no person (a fellow Christian) or office (a pastor) or institution (a church) or text (past tradition)—is either better equipped or more authoritative with respect to reading the Bible for its normative teaching on doctrine and morals than the living baptized individual adult believer;

4. whatever the Bible does not speak about in clear, direct, and explicit terms is for Christians adiaphora.

Let me remind you again that few evangelical scholars would endorse this hermeneutic as a positive proposal. But it is unquestionably the default setting for numberless evangelical believers, churches, and institutions. And the main point I want to make here is that that is a feature, not a bug. Moreover—and this is the kicker—to cease to believe in and act according to this hermeneutic is in a real sense to cease being evangelical, at least as that term is embodied and enacted in concrete communities and the society at large.

This is why, for example, so many evangelicals who ostensibly remain evangelicals while earning graduate degrees and teaching in institutions of higher education no longer attend the kinds of churches in which they were raised but worship instead in Anglican or similarly liturgical traditions. Their on-the-page beliefs (inerrancy, sola scriptura, virginal conception, bodily resurrection, traditional marriage) remain the same, but the outward devotional and liturgical expression of those beliefs is different, indeed necessarily different, rooted as those external practices are in a crucial hermeneutical transformation.

So far I’m merely offering a description. This isn’t a critique. The title of this post, however, refers to a “problem.” Here’s the problem as I see it.

There are people who were raised evangelical and still claim, or at least do not repudiate, the title. But such people have migrated away from the evangelical hermeneutic in their studies, their experiences, their teaching and writing, and/or their ecclesial home. Nevertheless they still aim to speak to and for, if not on behalf of, evangelicals. They seek to persuade evangelicals to believe this or that, or reject this or that. Having unlearned or let go of the evangelical hermeneutic, though, they no longer speak from and to that hermeneutic; they don’t argue according to its premises; they write by different premises, rooted in a different hermeneutic.

Always—and I do mean always—the result is a failure to communicate (not to mention to persuade). The message is lost in translation. The speaker and listener, the author and reader, simply talk past each other. For they are not speaking the same language. They no longer share enough in common for their disagreements to be intelligible. Instead, their disagreements are an inevitable function of differing first principles, in this case, opposed hermeneutics of Christian faith and theology with respect to Holy Scripture.

Yet rather than this situation being seen as both obvious and unavoidable, the tenor of the constant miscommunication is, on both sides, rancor, distrust, and endless anathemas. I’m not so much concerned right now with the folks on the receiving end, those who still hold to the evangelical hermeneutic. I’m concerned with those who’ve lost or rejected that hermeneutic but who continue to speak to those who hold it.

It should be neither surprising nor frustrating if, should I say, “We as Christians ought to believe X doctrine because Y saint or Z tradition teaches it,” the response from a true-blue evangelical is, “Why should I care what Y or Z say? I don’t see X taught clearly, directly, and explicitly in the Bible.” For you are not seeking to persuade on the terms held by your listener or reader. The latter senses intuitively that what you are really asking him or her is to stop being the sort of evangelical they are, i.e., you are asking them to give up the evangelical hermeneutic. That may be a worthy endeavor—almost everything I’ve written as a scholar is in service to that endeavor—but that is a different task than making an argument by and for and among a certain community, on the terms set and shared by that community, that presupposes that those very terms, which in turn define that community, are wrong on principle. It’s a bait and switch, intended or not.

Furthermore, it’s important to see that you can’t have your cake (evangelical hermeneutic) and eat it too (sacred tradition). There are plenty of traditional doctrines that are plausibly compatible with the evangelical hermeneutic; there are fewer of them that follow, logically and necessarily, therefrom. Take divine simplicity, or the eternal generation of the Son, or the perpetual virginity of Mary, or even the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople. None of these is incompatible with the plain teaching of Scripture. Can each and every one, in each and all of its details, be generated (1) directly from scriptural exegesis (2) to the exclusion of all other interpretive options (3) in accordance with the evangelical hermeneutic? I’m not so sure.

Which is why evangelicalism is such a rambunctious, fractious collective. It’s built for incessant, indefinite dissent. Someone or someones will always raise an objection, and precisely in accordance with the rules for assent and consent stipulated by the evangelical hermeneutic.

Biblicism is a woolly, ungovernable thing. It has a life of its own, because (among other reasons) it empowers individuals to interpret the text for themselves, with unpredictable results undecided in advance of reading, discussion, and debate.

In my view, for those who would remain in the evangelical family, you have to choose. You can be a biblicist, and stay; or you can stop being a biblicist, and leave. The sharpness of that choice need not be a matter of literal church membership. But theologically speaking, in terms of ideas and writing and how we make arguments and to whom and according to what premises, it seems to me that the choice is indeed just that sharp. It’s one or the other. There is no third way.

The endorsements are in for The Church’s Book!

My second book, The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context, will be published on April 26. That’s just three months away—fourteen weeks from Tuesday, if anyone’s counting. And if you are, pre-order it today! From Eerdmans, from Amazon, from Bookshop … wherever you prefer.

I first pitched the idea for this book to my doctoral advisor ten years ago this month. I finished the eventual dissertation in 2017, five years ago. And after what feels like ten thousand paper-cut edits—not to mention garden shears–sized snips in between machete-hacking cuts—the book is ready to be released into the world. Going into the Christmas break, the revisions were approved; the manuscript was typeset; the indexes were complete. Since then I’ve been waiting for the last piece of the puzzle, namely the endorsements. And they came in this week!

Without further ado, then, here are the blurbs. If you, like me, swoon in disbelief, know that you are not alone.

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“How we understand the church determines how we understand Scripture. Brad East grounds this basic claim in a detailed examination of three key heirs of Barthian theology—Robert Jenson, John Webster, and John Howard Yoder. The corresponding threefold typology that results —church as deputy (catholic), church as beneficiary (reformed), and church as vanguard (believers’ church)—offers much more than a description of the ecclesial divides that undergird different views of Scripture. East also presents a sustained and well-argued defense of the catholic position: church precedes canon. At the same time, East’s respectful treatment of each of his theological discussion partners gives the reader a wealth of insight into the various positions. Future discussions about church and canon will turn to The Church’s Book for years to come.”
— Hans Boersma, Nashotah House Theological Seminary

“Theologically informed, church-oriented ways of reading Scripture are given wonderfully sustained attention in Brad East’s new book. Focusing on Karl Barth and subsequent theologians influenced by him, East uncovers how differences in the theology of Scripture reflect differences in the understanding of church. Ecclesiology, East shows, has a major unacknowledged influence on remaining controversies among theologians interested in revitalizing theological approaches to Scripture. With this analysis in hand, East pushes the conversation forward, beyond current impasses and in directions that remedy deficiencies in the work of each of the theologians he discusses.”
— Kathryn Tanner, Yale Divinity School

“In this clear and lively volume, Brad East provides acute close readings of three theologians—John Webster, Robert W. Jenson, and John Howard Yoder—who have all tied biblical interpretation to a doctrine of the church. Building on their work, he proposes his own take on how the church constitutes the social location of biblical interpretation. In both his analytical work and his constructive case, East makes a major contribution to theological reading of Scripture.”
— Darren Sarisky, Australian Catholic University

“If previous generations of students and practitioners of a Protestant Christian doctrine of Holy Scripture looked to books by David Kelsey, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Kevin Vanhoozer as touchstones, future ones will look back on this book by Brad East as another. But there is no ecclesially partisan polemic here. This book displays an ecumenical vision of Scripture—one acutely incisive in its criticism, minutely attentive in its exposition, and truly catholic and visionary in its constructive proposals. It has the potential to advance theological discussion among dogmaticians, historians of dogma, and guild biblical exegetes alike. It is a deeply insightful treatment of its theme that will shape scholarly—and, more insistently and inspiringly, ecclesial—discussion for many years to come.”
— Wesley Hill, Western Theological Seminary

“In the past I’ve argued that determining the right relationship between God, Scripture, and hermeneutics comprises the right preliminary question for systematic theology: its ‘first theology.’ Brad East’s The Church’s Book has convinced me that ecclesiology too belongs in first theology. In weaving his cord of three strands (insights gleaned from a probing analysis of John Webster, Robert Jenson, and John Howard Yoder), East offers not a way out but a nevertheless welcome clarification of where the conflict of biblical interpretations really lies: divergent understandings of the church. This is an important interruption of and contribution to a longstanding conversation about theological prolegomena.”
— Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“For some theologians, it is Scripture that must guide any theological description of the church. For others, the church’s doctrines are normative for interpreting Scripture. Consequently, theologians have long tended to talk past one another. With unusual brilliance, clarity, and depth, Brad East has resolved this aporia by arguing that the locus of authority lay originally within the people of God, and thus prior to the development of both doctrine and Scripture. And so it is we, the people of God, who are prior, and who undergird both, and thereby offer the possibility of rapprochement on that basis. East’s proposal is convincing, fresh, and original: a genuinely new treatment that clarifies the real issues and may well prepare for more substantive ecumenical progress, as well as more substantive theologies. This is a necessary book—vital reading for any theologian.”
— Nicholas M. Healy, St. John’s University

“All of the discussions in this book display East’s analytical rigor and theological sophistication. As one of the subjects under discussion in this book, I will speak for all of us and say that there are many times East is able to do more for and with our work than we did ourselves. . . . I look forward to seeing how future theological interpreters take these advances and work with them to push theological interpretation in new and promising directions.”
— Stephen E. Fowl, from the foreword

New essay published in Comment

I’m in Comment today with an essay on gratitude to God. It’s called “Grace Upon Grace,” and here’s how it starts:

Gratitude to God is at the heart of Christian faith and theology. One comes to see the specific character of Christian gratitude—or rather, of Christian talk about gratitude—through an examination of the role it plays within, and the shape it receives from, the doctrine of God. For the doctrine of God is not only of God but extends to all things in relation to God. What it means to speak of God truthfully thus bears directly on our understanding of creation, redemption, humanity, virtue, and the church. Gratitude becomes a sort of red thread common to these topics, descending from the heights into the nooks and crannies of our daily lives.

The essay traces the role of thanksgiving through the whole dogmatic corpus, displaying its internal grammar and its intrinsic connection to Christ. Read on for the whole thing.

Masterly Spielberg

I’ve written before of my love for Steven Spielberg (whose critical fortunes, having waxed and waned over the decades, seem to have settled into a sort of consensus: whatever your personal feelings for this or that movie of his from the past 10-15 years, it’s undeniable that the man knows where to put the camera), and Tim Markatos, whose writing on film you should read and whose newsletter you should subscribe to, captures perfectly what makes Spielberg so great in his explanation for placing West Side Story at #5 on his list of the best 25 films of 2021:

This movie is so well blocked that it simply embarrasses nearly every other movie released this year (including some of the highbrow fare on this very list). Mise en scène alone doesn’t make a movie (“But what if it does?” whispers the little devil-horned Janusz Kamiński that suddenly appeared on my shoulder), but it matters more for a musical. The Spielberg–Kushner rendition of West Side Story lets the Robert Wise version alone and leans harder into political awareness (a key distinction, I would say, from political correctness) not merely by writing it into the script but also by building it into every material aspect of the production. Sometimes it gets a bit hokey, Ansel Elgort brings all his personal baggage to the screen in a way that will either alienate you or not, but none of that matters because I will watch “America” approximately 300 times once it’s inevitably uploaded to YouTube and be floored by Spielberg’s total mastery of this medium every single time.

I will, too. “Total mastery” is right. In those areas of which he is master, the man is without peer.

2021 recap: the blog

This was a banner year for the blog, for the simple reason that after 15 years of blogging I finally own my own turf. I’d been blogging on Google’s Blogger/Blogspot since spring 2006, but in June of 2021 my personal website (this very one) went live, and I moved over four years’ worth of posts from Resident Theologian (itself a successor to Resident Theology, my blog of nine years that I maintained during Master’s and doctoral work). That transition is marked by the distribution of posts: I wrote only 14 before June 12, and from then through year’s end I wrote 82, for a total of 96. That’s the most I’ve blogged since 2011, when I had 100 posts. That’s a lot of writing “on the side.” If I were to keep up the pace from the second half of the year, it would amount to a new post every two and a half days. And while I’ve partly stayed on mission—i.e., “mezzo blogging”—I’ve also written some rather huge posts.

Oh well. I’ve had a lot to say.

Given all that writing, I’d like to take a page from my friend and colleague Richard Beck’s long-running blog and do a rundown of the best, or at least my favorite, posts from the year, especially those you might have missed.

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10. On miscellaneous matters: aliens and Christian faith; Zuckerberg and the meta mafia; Enneagram anthropology; dreams and prayers; the secular spirit of Roger Scruton; biographies of theologians; Jordan Peterson, humor, and despair; the theology of C. S. Lewis; and a bit of nitpicking with Freddie deBoer’s anthropology.

9. On popular culture: Bezos Ad Astra; interpreting The Last Jedi; and, God help me, an MCU viewing order.

8. On art more generally: the catholicity of art; whether artists must be our friends; the fiction of P. D. James; and the heavenly vision of Piranesi.

7. On biblical scholarship: keeping up with the latest scholarship and writing in the subjunctive mood.

6. On the Bible and theology: a test for your doctrine of Scripture; anthropomorphism and analogy; heresy and orthodoxy; for angels; against theological fads.

5. On the state of the church in America: in tatters; slowly dying; and locally defectible.

4. On the (dis)contentment of affluent twentysomethings today who nevertheless need Jesus—and who feel the Ache for him, whether they know it or not.

3. On teaching the faith: (re)construction and deconstruction.

2. On life in the university: diverse academic vocations; emotional support in academia; authority in the classroom; and teaching a 4/4: office hours, tradeoffs, publishing, and freedom.

1. On podcasts: namely, why you should quit them.

2021 recap: reading

Ten years ago I cracked 150 books in a year; ever since, it’s been around 100 annually, give or take a few in either direction. Heading into 2021 I wanted to up that number—which felt just stuck—as much as I could. I met my minimum goal (I’m currently sitting at 120), along with some of my strategic goals, but I’m hoping to crawl back to 150 in 2022. Some of the successful strategies this past year that I hope to continue:

• Adding audiobooks to my regimen.

• Cutting out podcasts altogether.

• Reading less online.

• Reducing TV viewing.

• Keeping up an ongoing mix of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and academic works.

I didn’t crack the audiobook nut until March, nor did I drop podcasts until the fall (when a tsunami of work and illness and family commitments overtook my extra time), plus I was working on finalizing the proofs for not one but two books from May to November. Looking ahead to 2022, at the level of mere numbers, if I were to average 11 books per month during the two academic semesters and 16 books per month during the four summer months, that would come to 152. It’s doable, y’all! I’m going to make it happen. One year from today my reading recap for 2022 will be nothing but a Tim Duncan fist pump GIF.

And now, some of my favorites from the year, with scattered commentary.

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Rereads

5. George Orwell, Animal Farm

4. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

3. C. S. Lewis’s nonfiction. Some comments here.

2. G. K. Chesterton’s nonfiction. Some quotes and remarks here.

1. C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia. I read all seven once as an 18- or 19-year old. The re-read (via Audible) was glorious. My favorite used to be Dawn Treader, and I had low memories of Caspian and Horse, few memories of Last Battle, and no memories of Silver Chair. Now my definitive ranking: 1. Silver Chair 2. Last Battle 3. Dawn Treader 4. Magician’s Nephew 5. LWW 6. Horse & His Boy 7. Prince Caspian. In truth none of them are bad, and Horse would be higher if its weird and indefensible religious, racial, and cultural stereotypes weren’t so interwoven in the story. As for Lion, if it weren’t the first or so foundational or so iconic, I’d rank it last. I used to think Caspian was the one bad egg, but now I think it’s no longer bad, just the seventh best. But it’s Puddleglum and Underland for the win.

Poetry

5. W. H. Auden, Early Poems

4. John Updike, Endpoint and Other Poems

3. Molly McCully Brown, The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

2. Franz Wright, selected volumes. Every year I re-read Wright’s best collections (Beforelife, Martha’s Vineyard, God’s Silence, Wheeling Motel), and every year he remains my favorite.

1. R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems. This year, though, I re-read Thomas’s best volumes (running from Laboratories of the Spirit up to Mass for Hard Times) for the first time in a decade, and he overawed me once again. The master.

Graphic novels

3. Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints. Recommended. Go in not knowing anything, and read both back to back.

2. Art Spiegelman, Maus. A classic for a reason.

1. Craig Thompson, Blankets. This one walloped me.

Fiction

8. Patrick Hoffman, Every Man a Menace. Taut, brutal, surprising, and to the point. In other words, the best sort of crime fiction.

7. P. D. James, Death of an Expert Witness. You know I had to include the Queen.

6. Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son

5. G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Orwell and Huxley are the standard scribblers of the dystopian future; what if Chesterton (Notting Hill) and Lewis (That Hideous Strength) were added to that duo? At least one result: the realization that wit and style, not to mention religious vision, don’t have to be excised from the genre.

4. Jamie Quatro, Fire Sermon

3. Charles Portis, True Grit. As promised, this one’s perfect.

2. J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace

1. Susanna Clarke, Piranesi. Charming and enrapturing from the first sentence to the last. I wrote about it here.

Nonfiction (popular)

11. James Clear, Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results & Cal Newport, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

10. Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth

9. Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills. I wrote about it here.

8. Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World

7. Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work

6. Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. If you love style guides, as I do, this one might move to the top of your list, as it did mine.

5. Abigail Tucker, Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct & Ross Douthat, The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. These belong together, both because their authors are married and because they tell parallel stories: about science, about knowledge, about family, about marriage and parenthood and children and illness. I wrote about Douthat here and included a nugget from Tucker here.

4. Andrew Sullivan, Out on a Limb: Selected Writing 1989–2021. A whirlwind tour of one of the most socially and politically influential public intellectuals and writers of my lifetime. A sort of chronological testament to that influence; you see the nation changing as time goes by in these essays.

3. Dwight Macdonald, Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain

2. E. H. Gombrich, A Little History of the World. Delightful. I wrote about it here.

1. Paul Kingsnorth, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays. A book that could change your life. As I read it in early 2021, I wondered why Kingsnorth wasn’t a Christian, or at least why he didn’t take serious Christian thinking and writing as a worthy interlocutor. Then he converted.

Nonfiction (scholarly)

5. Audrey Watters, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning. Watters is the very best; my review of her book is forthcoming in Comment.

4. Jason Blakely, We Built Reality: How Social Sciences Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power. My review here.

3. Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left; Culture Counts; How to Be a Conservative. This year I read some of Scruton’s classics. I wrote about how they struck me as surprisingly but essentially secular here.

2. Matthew Rose, A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right. Required reading for the present moment. Get on it.

1. Allen C. Guelzo, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. I’d never read a full-bore history of the Civil War. My mistake. This is the one. Magnificent.

Christian (popular)

5. Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age

4. Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ

3. Peter Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

2b. Eve Tushnet, Tenderness: A Gay Christian’s Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God’s Extravagant Love. I can’t count how many times this book brought me to tears. Why? Because Tushnet has the preternatural ability to force her readers to come to terms with just how much Jesus loves them. She is a treasure.

2a. Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. Christianity Today was right to crown it the book of the year. My review here.

1. Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection. First published in the late 1960s, a book that cannot be categorized by genre or style, a true N of 1. Buy it, read it, love it.

Theology (on the recent side)

5. Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation

4. Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation

3. Timothy P. Jackson, Mordecai Did Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionism. My review here.

2. Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., Blood Theology: Seeing Red in Body- and God-Talk. My review here.

1. Paul Griffiths, Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar & Regret: A Theology. Now that Jenson has passed, there is no living theologian I take greater pleasure in reading or learning from—or being provoked by—than Griffiths. He never fails to make you think, or to re-think what you thought you thought before.

Theology (less recent)

5. François Mauriac, What I Believe

4. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom

3. Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture. All Christian undergraduates should read this book, certainly those who already know they are interested in the life of the mind.

2. Oliver O’Donovan, Begotten or Made? I sometimes wish this little book had a different title, because it obscures both its subject matter and its relevance. Tolle lege.

1. Michael Ramsey, The Resurrection of Christ: An Essay in Biblical Theology. A model of succinct, stylish, substantive, scripturally normed, academically informed, and theologically rich writing. I want every book I write to be patterned on this minor classic.

2021 recap: writing

This past year was a big one for me, writing-wise. I published my first book, wrote about a dozen essays, curated a book forum in an academic journal, and got published for the first time in three of my favorite magazines. Here’s a quick rundown.

(Though first, here is a journal article that became available right as the clock turned from 2020 to 2021 a year ago—it’s an exploration of criteria for judging the success or failure of theological interpretation of Scripture—and a book review of Steven Duby’s volume on metaphysics, Scripture, and the doctrine of God’s life in se; the review was published in 2020 but I didn’t realize was in print until just a few months ago.)

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The Doctrine of Scripture. The book! My first. Its topic is its title: it is about what it says it is. I’m very proud of this book. I hope you’ll give it a chance. Here’s more information about it. Click on the link to buy it on Amazon; click here to buy it from the publisher (use EASTBK2 for a discount); click here to get it from Bookshop. If you’ve got some Christmas cash on hand, I’ve a notion how you could spend it!

Theology in the Dark. This was my introduction to a forum I edited in an issue of Political Theology in response to Karen Kilby’s new volume of essays on the Trinity, evil, and suffering. The six contributors were Sarah Coakley, Andrew Prevot, Katherine Sonderegger, Kathryn Tanner, Miroslav Volf, and Rowan Williams. (I know.) You should go read all six of their essays, as well as Kilby’s reply, right this instant.

The Circumcision of Abraham’s God. A New Year’s Day reflection in First Things on the happy convergence of a number of distinct feasts on different liturgical calendars, centered on Mary, Jesus, and his circumcision.

To See God in the Darkness. A review essay in Mere Orthodoxy of Tish Harrison Warren’s outstanding book Prayer in the Night; the through-line of the piece is the long Lent of Covidtide.

Covidtide Triduum. A sort of sequel, and another liturgical reflection for First Things, this time for Holy Week.

When Losing Is Likely. My first essay for The Point: a lengthy response to the socialist critic George Scialabba on the politics of Wendell Berry (and why Scialabba should be friendlier to Berry’s subtle understanding of the personal and the political in their connection to mass policy consequences).

Market Apocalypse. A review essay in Mere Orthodoxy of Rodney Clapp’s book Naming Neoliberalism. I was impressed and chastened by the work, but also frustrated by the overall approach.

Statistics as Storytelling. A review essay in The New Atlantis (my first for them) of Jason Blakely’s We Built Reality. The critique of scientism on display here leads nicely to the next entry…

Dragons in the Deep Places. A review essay in Mere Orthodoxy of Ross Douthat’s The Deep Places, his memoir of chronic Lyme disease. As it happens, Douthat’s wife Abigail Tucker’s book Mom Genes gets a shout-out at the end of the next entry…

Power in the Blood. A review in The Hedgehog Review (my third first of the year) of Eugene F. Rogers Jr.’s Blood Theology. What a weird and wonderful read, even if the politics of the book turn out to be needlessly predictable in an otherwise surprising work.

Still Supersessionist? A long review for Commonweal of Timothy Jackson’s Mordecai Would Not Bow Down. A major contribution whose shortcomings concern not its treatment of Jews or Judaism but Christ and Christianity.