Book reviewed by Charles Sherlock, July 2024
Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture
by Christopher Watkin
Grand Rapids, MI, USA: Zondervan, 2023; xxiv + 648 pages
ISBN 9780310128724, 1st edition, hardcover
AUD$48
How keen are you on shopping? Sport? What shapes your vote? What makes you angry, exhilarated, despairing? In short: how does your worldview shape how you live?
Such questions are what this book is about. It was deservedly the Australian Christian Book of the Year for 2023. It speaks to the “late modern” world that western Christians inhabit, covering many fields of thought. Yet the author does not lecture but explores and offers resources. He can excoriate false ideas and attitudes—but out of a deep love for what God is bringing to fulness. For a critical theory, there is no rancour.
Christopher Watkin is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. As a scholar, he knows Descartes, Marx, Nietzsche, Popper, Sartre, Derrida, and the like. As a Christian scholar, he engages the cultural analyses of writers such as Herman Dooyeweerd, Terry Eagleton, Jacques Ellul, John Milbank, Paul Ricoeur and Charles Taylor. As a theologian, he makes excellent use of varied perspectives, notably Reformed (Cornelius van Til, Herman Bavinck, and John Frame), Anglican (Oliver O’Donovan, Richard Bauckham, and Sarah Coakley), and the modern martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As a “mere Christian,” he delights in C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton.
Behind the book lies a fresh reading of Augustine’s City of God—the foundation work behind western civilisation. The first half of City of God is an empathetic critique of the culture of ancient Rome; the second takes a “grand sweep from Genesis to Revelation” as Watkin puts it. These halves are blended here, cultural critique woven across an analysis of the biblical story. This is what “Biblical Critical Theory” entails.
Watkin loves diagrams (“figures”): the 114 sprinkled across the book even have their own Table of Contents! These are often used to illustrate pairs of dichotomies (e.g., traditional versus modern, pessimism versus utopianism, sovereignty verses responsibility), but then shows how a biblically grounded analysis, called “diagonalization,” can “rearrange false cultural dichotomies” in creative ways (p. 15). But words are not neglected, since they shape how we see and interpret the world.
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Watkin observes about his university life and Christian experience, “We are taught the ‘what?’ and the ‘why?’ but not so much the ‘so what?’,” its relevance to life. So, he has penned “a book about how the whole Bible sheds light on the whole of life” (p. 2).
The book’s structure is significant. The opening chapter is “Trinity” (Karl Barth would applaud!). Then come thirteen chapters on each Testament, with unusual balances in their contents. On the First Testament, ten chapters cover Genesis 1–11 which Watkin sees as crucial. The others are “Prophecy and Power,” “Prophecy and Cultural Critique,” and “Wisdom Literature” (brilliant)—but the “historical” books are omitted. On the New Testament, after six (excellent) chapters on Jesus, from incarnation to ascension, eight chapters cover “The Last Days” and “Eschatology,” skipping Acts.
It is unusual that over half the book focusses on the opening and closing parts of the Bible. Watkin is not interested in “creationist” side paths, or “pie in the sky” waffle. Common questions are handled skillfully, but the focus is on how we are to live here and now. The foundations laid in Genesis 1–11 remain for us, living in the “last days” between Christ’s ascension and return, and, by appreciating both the “now” and the “not yet,” and both cultural and heavenly understandings of reality, we are called beyond a simple two-dimensional perception of reality to a more three-dimensional “parallax living” (pp. 477–492). Alongside the big issues of market economy, environment, globalisation, and more, Watkin responds to personal ones, such as the “go your own way” ethos of today’s world (pp. 570–573).
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Two themes recur across this book. First, Watkin delights in the “super-abundance” of God’s grace and love, in contrast to the cramped ways of the world. Two letters symbolise this: n and u. The shape of the letter n, up then down, reflects the idea that we make offerings to the “gods”—money, fame, family, ideology, etc.—so that they might supply our needs. Such self-serving “religion” leads nowhere. The contrasting shape of the letter u, down then up, reflects God’s boundless grace, taking the initiative to call and empower us to live responsively and responsibly with money, fame, family, ideology, etc. (pp. 408-410).
Secondly, the “way of the cross” is seen as the ethos for Christian living, including church life. God’s power is “always expressed in and through love” (p. 51), love seen most fully in Christ crucified. Christian living thus means being “witnesses” (“martyrs”) to what God in Christ did, does, and will do (pp. 527–539). Such witness calls us to engage positively with the world God loves, to live in the light of the “new creation” towards which the Spirit is moving all things.
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As I worked through this excellent book, I found two aspects to critique: gender and narrative. When speaking of individual acts, Watkin typically uses feminine pronouns: “The Christian … is free for service of God and other people, commissioned by her Lord to love God and her neighbor as herself” (p. 451; Watkin’s italics). But masculine pronouns for God are so frequent that I found myself wincing. For example: “God … finds identity in nothing greater than himself and in nothing outside himself. He reveals himself when he wishes and as he wishes. He does not say …” (p. 261). Reducing (or eliminating) pronouns for God would help many readers.
Secondly, while Watkin emphases the importance of the Bible being in “story” form overall, he resists “metanarrative” to describe the Bible since this is “an explanation of the world that sits not on the surface of events but beyond (meta) the history it attempts to frame” (p. 368). Rather, “I prefer to speak of the Christian mesonarrative—from meso, meaning ‘middle,’ ‘between,’ or ‘amidst’ … Christ appears in the midst of this world, dirty fingernails and all, to dwell among us” (p. 368).
Narrative thus lies at the heart of Watkin’s argument. However, there is little discussion of the historical books, Joshua to 2 Kings, and nothing on 1 and 2 Chronicles, Esther, and Nehemiah. In the New Testament, the missing book is Acts beyond chapters 2 and 17. This absence of reflection on narrative texts leaves a hole. A chapter tracing the story of God’s work overall from Joshua to Paul would consolidate Watkin’s thesis—and another 30 pages would make little difference!
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This book is long—some 650-plus pages of some 500 words each—and its subject matter is solid. Long sentences are rare, and Watkin’s stories from life, films, and more, as well as his “figures,” illuminate the argument helpfully. But readers with little or no background in politics, philosophy, or theology will find it a challenge. Even so, I would hope that anyone who wants to learn will, with patience, gain much.
Let me make a radical suggestion: some readers may find it helpful to read chapters out of order. Start with the Preface on how Watkin came to write the book. Unfamiliar with “late modernity,” a key period for Watkin’s thesis? See Chapter 24, “The Last Days and Modernity,” followed by Chapter 27, “Eschatology and Identity.” Chapter 14, “Wisdom Literature,” would be good to be read next; it explores how the Bible’s sharp contrasts are responsibly used. Chapters 1 and 2, “Trinity” and “Creation” will then make a lot more sense. Chapter 17, “The Ministry of Jesus, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor,” and Chapter 22, “The Last Days and Parallax Living,” are the core of what all this means for Christian living. In sum: Preface, 24, 27, 14, 1, 2, 17, 22. The remaining chapters read in order will now make a lot more sense.
Each chapter concludes with an exercise and study questions that explore the chapter’s sections. These would suit a group engaging with serious questions—the Parliamentary Christian Fellowship in Australia’s capital, Canberra, comes to mind. A full bibliography, and indices on subjects, scripture references, and names, round the book out.
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I have no hesitation in commending this highly significant book. It is particularly relevant to those—Christian or not—whose vocation touches public service, service industries, the media, church structures, and community involvement.