How do we live the out the Bible? How do we apply what we believe to our daily lives? Why does the atonement matter? What about justification, the final judgment, and Christ’s ascension? We believe these things are true. So what? What difference does it actually make? This is what Christopher Watkin asks in his new book Biblical Critical Theory. He isn’t satisfied to ask only how do we apply these to ourselves in a compartmentalized spiritual way, but how do these doctrines and beliefs relate to all of life, to politics, the sciences, the arts?
With “critical theory” becoming an oft-heard term these days and being made up of some differing theories, it can be hard to know how to navigate this new information. Watkin’s goal is to “paint a picture of humanity and of our world through the lens of the Bible and to compare aspects of this image to alternative visions” (2). The Bible shines light on all of life, not just our spiritual compartment that we use on Sundays. It shapes how we understand ourselves, our culture, and society.
Watkin talks about culture using the term figures. In its first sense we have figures of speech. These are patterns and rhythms in language. Broaden this idea out and we get pattersn and rhythms in creation. Culture does what God did in the first week of creation—it creates repeatable patterns of behavior, thought, language, art, work, rest, and more, that can be seen and repeated. As well, using the idea of figure-ground from Gestalt psychology, which says that “people instinctively perceive objects as either being in the foreground or the background.”
Along with this are cultural commitments and assumptions that different cultures in different times and places have that shape what people say, think, and do. Watkin gives six ways we can understand culture (or figures). We use language and ideas to make sense of our experience, we divide up time and space, we have beliefs about how reality is structured (is there an afterlife or not?), we behave in certain ways (shopping malls, checking our phones when we get the chance, etc.), we pattern our lives through relationships with family, friends, people on social media, and in clubs and groups, and objects (phones, cars, cities) can nudge us toward acting a certain way in the world.
What does all this mean? Culture is a part of all of us. We can’t shed out culture like a coat. We are shaped by our thoughts, beliefs, habits, objects, and so on. We have a particular way of understanding the world due to the rhythms we keep, and we can have a hard time understanding the cultures of others when they differ from our own. To engage with other cultures and ideas faithfully, Watkin writes about diagonalization, a middle-of-the-road approach through false cultural dichotomies.
Take for example how the Bible tells us God is just and loving, merciful and truthful. Culture can splinter these in an attempt to force us to choose between them. Loveless justice vs. justiceless love. We can’t compromise and end up with only a bit of justice and a bit of love. The biblical way that would bridge both sides would be to abound in love and faithfulness (17).
The Bible out-narrates all other narratives. It tells the bigger story where all other stories find their place. Watkin points to Augustine’s The City of God where in Part 1 Augustine Roman religion and philosophy, and in Part 2 he offers the story of two cities from Genesis to Revelation. Watkin attempts to do the same in his book, only he weaves these two sections together. He follows the biblical storyline while examining our modern (western) culture and its beliefs. His purpose is not merely to analyze and critique our modern society but to also “provide a vision for its future flourishing and renewal” (30). In doing so, Watkin provides a Christian social theory where we can explain our culture through the Bible (31).
There are 28 chapters. The first 10 deal with Genesis, which leaves the next 18 chapters overing the rest of the Bible. This means large portions of the Bible have to be used to cover modern social ideas and concepts. However, given the size of the book it’s hard to imagine this being any longer. Someone else can delve further with these ideas in the future.
Watkin does well trying to follow the Bible’s emphasis. There are many ditches a person can fall into when reading the Bible (God’s sovereignty vs. man’s responsibility; God’s immanence vs. God’s transcendence; speaking truthfully vs. speaking lovingly; Jesus is fully God and fully man). Watkin’s diagonalization follow’s where the Bible puts the pressure. God is both transcendent and personal (ch 1). The Triune God has absolute power yet the Persons of the Trinity are in relationship with each other as well as with believers. God is relational without erasing the uniqueness of the Persons of the Trinity. We can look to the Trinity to navigate a path between communal and individual identities.
Proverbs primarily shows us a world that is predictable, just, and orderly. Ecclesiastes on the other hand, shows us the opposite: unpredictability, anarchy, and chaos. Neither of these dichotomies are false, but they do not provide the whole truth. Job weaves both of these melodies together “in such a way that neither melody drowns out or completely dominates the other” (324). The Bible is comprehensive in the multitude of perspectives it provides us with. These books give us wisdom on how to relate to time. How do we act when work begins at 9am but we lost our keys at 8:40am? Or when we get home an hour late because of traffic? Biblical wisdom infiltrates every part of our day. If a wise saying was only a “one-off,” good for only one moment, then it wouldn’t be wisdom. It would be a fortune cookie. Watkin writes, “Wisdom is available to every epoch, but owned by none” (333). We are given different voices (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes) because life is complex. This doesn’t mean that all perspectives count, for Job’s friends were still condemned.
Recommended?
I found this to be a really helpful book, even when I disagreed. While we have Augustine’s The City of God and Francis Schaeffer’s How Then Should We Live?, Watkin’s book is necessary because we live in a new time. It is no longer the 1970s (when Schaeffer’s book was first published). Life is very different now, and we need an updated way of thinking biblically. Kevin Vanhoozer has written that we are always being trained by something. I don’t know enough about the culture(s) I live in, and I want to be able to think biblically. This is a great book to help shape your social imagination be more in line with the Bible. I hope that when scholars read this, when they “see something missing,” that they will “add it” and provide more Christian theory to our social imaginations (604).
Lagniappe
- Author: Christopher Watkin
- Hardcover: 672 pages
- Publisher: Zondervan Academic (November 8, 2022)
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Review Disclosure: I received this book free from Zondervan Academic. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.
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