Shared with Permission from Criswell Theological Review
Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture. By Christopher Watkin. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2022, 648 pp., $39.99, Hardcover
In Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, Christopher Watkin (Jesus College, 2002, University of Cambridge, MPhil, 2003, & PhD, 2006,) author of such works as, From Plato to Postmodernism (Bloomsbury, 2011) and Thinking Through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 (P&R Publishing, 2017) strove to write the book he wished others had, using the richness of the Bible’s storyline to create, in the vein of Augustine’s City of God, a Christian cultural theory to critique modern societies.
Watkin uses the Scriptural meta-narrative and at times individual narratives to establish what he calls a “diagonalization,” where he reunifies intimately-bound biblical truths that human societies have splintered into competing philosophies, what he calls reductive heresies. For example, in a world torn between loveless-justice and justiceless-love, Scripture reveals a potential not partly-just and partly-loving, but a true reflection of the harmony of justice, love, mercy and truth found in God—“Abounding in love and faithfulness.” (17) This is not a safe compromise, but a positive and viable third way that exploits coherences and conflicts between the “cities” of God and Man, which are inseparably entwined until kingdom come. Scripture, he says, “out narrates” (21) the reality-defining stories hither-to presented, casting a bigger, more comprehensive, and more sensible vision.
Watkin begins with Trinity, wherein the revealed intra-relations of a God of love speaks powerfully to the interrelations of His creation. He then gives a closer reading to Genesis, addressing conflicts over God, man, and reality resonant in its original context, bringing correction and stability to a people wrestling in a pagan context. Thus, Genesis provides the philosophical vision needed to address our own reductive heresies about life and society throughout the ages, including our more recent struggles with modernism, Humanism, Marxism, Post-modernism, and Critical Theory. Watkin’s consideration of God as a loving creator and man’s sin struggle from Fall to Babel sets the stage for how biblical visions of promise, exodus, and Torah speak in their own way to the historic humanist dilemma. From there, Watkin turns his attention to the biblical prophetic and wisdom traditions, and how incarnation, elements of Jesus’ ministry, the cross, resurrection and eschatological hope challenge our very understanding of humanity and life.
Biblical Critical Theory was a monumental undertaking. Watkin has brought significant literary skill, careful organization, important processes, and an obvious breadth of knowledge of writers ancient to modern. His topics are too numerous to encapsulate here, but his reading of Genesis is methodologically important. Far from being a collection of childish stories about origins, Genesis is revealed as a sophisticated presentation of issues that confront enduring struggles in human nature and societies, and prove relevant in correcting the most erudite offerings of the modern world. His discussions on creation as the good work of a loving creator and sin as the declaration of human autonomy are inspiring, as are some of his discussions on biblical eschatology as a lens for living.
Fulfilling his own hope that “every reader finds at least one thing… that she profoundly disagrees with,” (30) I have four interconnected concerns.
Firstly, Watkin recognizes that his ideas have “practical consequences,” (51) and they do. He intends, however, to write “a book about the ‘so what?’ of Christian belief,” (2) “a book about how the whole Bible sheds light on the whole of life,” (2) but he does not. Unlike, City of God, his work is sparse on real-world details. Most of the issues plaguing frustrated and often confused modern believers make little to no appearance. He shows himself philosophically poised to address them, but rarely does.
For example, Watkin largely ignores the practical conflict brimming globally in the advance of the plethora of interconnected “post-modern” and “critical” theories that he discusses. He does give some philosophical critique, eschewing what he describes in Calvin as “pugnacious” terms, (41) but, given their ubiquity in media, politics, and the academy, this smacks of a particular negligence of “the ‘so what?’ of Christian belief… on the whole of life.” (2)
Secondly, though declaring that “Christian social theory should be nonpartisan” (30) in the few occurrences in which truly practical application does appear, whether addressing climate concerns, merit, Covid, Brexit, the “right-wing” tragic view of life, criminal justice, missions, immigration, or healthcare, Watkin leans decidedly “left.” At such times, he misrepresents his chosen “reductive heresies” and claims to draw solutions from the biblical metanarrative that stand in stark contrast to biblical details.
Third, Watkin seems inclined to evaluate certain ideas based on the aesthetic pleasure they give him, rather than through an analysis of their real-world outcomes in terms of real human thriving or suffering. He signals this early in his victimization fixation on markets in which some people are “left behind,” (63) in which there is “increasing wealth for some and increasing inequality between all.” (64) He imagines, one may assume, in spite of existing in a fallen world boasting paths of life and death, wisdom and folly, and in a natural world dolling out unequal gifts and unequal starting places, that equality of outcomes is a biblical value, and unequal outcomes a systemic condemnation. Neither is true.
Hence, when calling both socialism and capitalism, left and right reductive heresies, (391; 486) Watkins either ignores or distorts their real outcomes. The care for the poor that the left boasts has always proven both counterproductive and a disingenuous excuse to power, and its millennia long history of inducing poverty, starvation, oppression and murder does not seem to warrant comment. Watkin saves his real scorn for the most efficient economic system for human blessing in history. He actually derides “efficiency” as a value by isolating it from other systemic constraints and painting it maniacal. (425) He seems to regard the evils committed in the pursuit of possession and profit under every system of exchange as the unique soul of free-market economies.
Fourthly, Watkin’s methodology for choosing and engaging dialogue partners, introduced in pages 504-08, could use significant clarification and movement to front matter. He uses a “hermeneutic of love” (seeking to understand first and engage in webs of relationship), rather than a “hermeneutic of violence.” His push back, “We are not to get to the end of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and praise its vivid use of metaphors,” however, begs his soft handling of a litany of other destructive and often wicked theorists. At what point does any given writer’s lack of character, dark prejudices, untenable presuppositions, intellectual dishonesty, gas lighting tendencies, and vile behavior need consideration when engaging what they’ve written? This is an honest and important question, and Watkin will increase pastoral participation in his journey if he can answer it satisfactorily.
That said, Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory is an extraordinary achievement. He has fairly called it the cobbling together of a tasting menu, so that others might prepare a banquet. (605) He has widened and straightened a path through a jungle of worldview and philosophy roughly hacked out first by others. In doing so, he has increased the likelihood that many will follow, widening and straightening and lengthening the path yet more. It shall, I think, prove a landmark work in unraveling what a true biblical social theory can look like today, and what kinds of issues and categories it should be engaging. His methodology is instructive, even if his particular answers are, at points, resisted. It should grace every educated Pastor’s shelf and garner their attention.
~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD
