Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture

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Serres understood figures as algorithmic operators, “complex functions for producing an infinite variety of outputs from infinite possibilities of inputs.” [16] These structures and patterns are also generative. Different senses of meaning arise when one puts different words in a relationship using these structures and patterns. When repeatable patterns in space and repeatable rhythms in time are deployed beyond literature and language to include creation, ideas, systems, and behavior, they become helpful in analyzing culture. Watkin says this work mirrors God’s work in creation, where he organizes space and creates rhythms. For a fuller discussion of diagonalisation, see my Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022). Queer theory is another activist school of thought deriving from particularly postmodern ideas about human sexuality, seeking to cast off historical (especially Judeo-Christian) definitions and characterizations of sex and gender. “Queer theory is about liberation from the normal, especially where it comes to norms of gender and sexuality. This is because it regards the very existence of the categories of sex, gender and sexuality to be oppressive.” 3 The movement wishes to detach gender identity from the historical trappings of the past that have deemed certain sexual behaviors as right or wrong. Like its ideological siblings noted above, queer theory advocates seek to reshape the ways that gender identity has been assigned. Critical race theory also matters for Christians in particular because, as part of a broader constellation of critical theories encompassing identity issues such as gender and sexuality, in recent years it has exposed fault lines in evangelical and Reformed communities on both sides of the Atlantic. [2] The division usually runs between those who principally seek to repudiate CRT as an existential threat to the church, and those who principally seek to learn from it. [3] In the Church of England, the epicentre of the debate has been around the question of systematic racism within the church, with the publication in April 2021 of From Lament to Action, the report of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Anti-Racism Taskforce. [4] Divisions around the question of systemic racism are considerable and growing, and over time its potential to cause major and damaging splits in local congregations and within denominations only increases. See the introduction to Jayne Chong-Soon Lee, “Navigating the Topology of Race,” in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, eds. Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas (New York: The New Press, 1995), 441–49. ↩

from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father Bible– The struggle is not primarily between different groups in society, nor is it to amass the trappings of self-realisation; it is against evil forces. [43] Salvation is not the victory of one group over another, nor is it akin to individual self-realisation indexed by exterior success; it is a gift received by grace. Grace cuts across both CRT’s racial groupings and liberalism’s idea of the autonomous individual. It leaves no room for looking down on the unsaved and culpable, or for thinking oneself superior for being saved. [44] Through the death and resurrection of Christ, grace also offers the Christian a new identity grounded neither in autonomous liberal selfhood nor in the group identities of critical theories. [45] Forgiveness is offered without distinction and without reservation to all who repent, [46] regardless of their offence. The Christian identity marker of being ‘in Christ’ cuts across and relativises the sort of identity markers fundamental to CRT, [47] while also undermining liberalism’s atomised self-sufficiency and colourblind ideology. [48] Consummation Informed by the biblical-theological structure of Saint Augustine's magisterial work The City of God (and with extensive diagrams and practical tools), Biblical Critical Theory shows how the patterns of the Bible's storyline can provide incisive, fresh, and nuanced ways of intervening in today's debates on everything from science, the arts, and politics to dignity, multiculturalism, and equality. You'll learn the moves to make and the tools to use in analyzing and engaging with all sorts of cultural artifacts and events in a way that is both biblically faithful and culturally relevant. There is something new at work in BCT besides its presentation. In Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin sets forward a comprehensive model for integrating Biblical theology and cultural apologetics. He has provided a new tool—figures—which does a different kind of work in the apologetic task—diagonalization. Critically, the work of Watkin and Serres on figures has significant implications for natural theology, epistemology, the relationship between nature and grace, and apologetics that lie beyond the scope of this review. While more familiar territory for Reformed scholars, some will likely also be inclined to review Watkins’ transposition of aspects of Ricoeur’s narrative theory to Reformed theology, ethics, and apologetics. Michael Walzer, In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 176.Watkin shows why every bit of biblical teaching matters (answering the questions of “so what?”, “what’s the point of this?” or “what difference does it make to believe this?”) and offers countless practical applications for an incredibly wide range of topics and contemporary issues. Charles Mathewes, The Republic of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts for Dark Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010). Second, Watkin moves from sound biblical exegesis to sound cultural exegesis (we will discuss his method later), drawing upon a stunning array of sources. His formal training is in French Studies (Cambridge University, M.Phil., Ph.D.). He has published widely in French studies, philosophy, and theology. (He has several volumes in the P&R Great Thinkers series on French Philosophers.) He is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Monash University in Australia, a renown global research institution. All this breadth is displayed in BCT, but never arrogantly or excessively. Watkin’s biblical and accessible response to various cultural issues would also warrant the book’s price. This stance is particularly dangerous because it undermines the function of Scripture as the final arbiter of truth, accessible to all people regardless of their demographics (Ps. 119:130, 160; 2 Tim. 3:16–17; 1 Cor. 2:12–14; Heb. 8:10–12). If a person from an oppressor group appeals to Scripture, his concerns can be dismissed as a veiled attempt to protect his privilege.

This article about an academic journal on biblical studies is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. It is impossible to think with any clarity about the politics of race or gender as long as these are thought of as biological entities rather than social constructs. Similarly, sexuality is impervious to political analysis as long as it is primarily conceived as a biological phenomenon or an aspect of individual psychology.” Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (Abingdon, England: Taylor and Francis, 1993), 10. ↩ A seminal text for us . . . A foundation and frame for years to come. Absolutely essential reading.” First, Watkin offers a sound exposition of crucial moments, movements, and structures from Genesis to Revelation in redemptive history. He is well-sourced theologically. His writing is devotional yet academic, sermonic yet technical at times, often witty, and always clear. Each chapter has study questions at the end. One can easily envision small groups working through this text together, with a Bible in hand for the relevant Scripture passages. The breadth and quality of the biblical survey would be worth the book’s price. CRT– Racism will remain endemic. Society cannot be reformed without tearing it down first. There is no prospect of racial justice short of this radical unmaking of society.

In addition to the concept of race, critical theory also finds the concepts of gender and sex to be modern inventions, as has been noted previously. 16 Christian definitions of gender and sexuality are perceived as manmade social constructions intended to repress human freedom. 17 “Queer Theory presumes that oppression follows from categorization, which arises every time language constructs a sense of what is ‘normal’ by producing and maintaining rigid categories of sex (male and female), gender (masculine and feminine), and sexuality (straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual and so on) and ‘scripting’ people into them.” 18 The contrast between the teachings of queer theory and the Bible on gender and what it means to be made male and female in the image of God is stark. Critical Theory and the Family For each key moment in the Bible’s storyline I will briefly sketch the CRT and liberal positions, before turning to Scripture itself which, I will argue, diagonalises (cuts across and rearranges) orthodoxies of both critical race theory and liberalism. [25] This exercise reveals them both to be reductive heresies, taking elements of biblical truth and cutting them off from other complementary truths, distorting and falsifying them in the process. Creation This is a magnificent achievement. It is a must-read . . . Here is a total defence and commendation of Christianity like no other. Buy it. Read it. Ponder it. Pass it on.” One of the closest examples in the Scriptures to the situations in which Christians find themselves today is that of Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah at the Babylonian court of King Nebuchadnezzar. The friends are quite happy, as students at the University of Central Babylon, to learn ‘the language and literature of the Babylonians’ (Daniel 1:4). Indeed, they excel in their end-of-year exams (Daniel 1:19–20), which would have almost certainly included religious instruction inimical to the Hebrew Bible. And yet, it appears that they did not confuse or seek to conflate this Babylonian wisdom with their own knowledge of Yahweh (e.g. Daniel 9), and if pushed on an issue central to their commitment to the Lord they would rather risk dismissal and even death than cease to worship God (Daniel 3; 6).

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These respective metanarratives will vie for dominance in all areas of life. Consider, for example, the question of identity: Is our identity primarily defined in terms of our vertical relationship to God? Or primarily in terms of horizontal power dynamics between groups of people?

The Bible and Critical Theory is a biannual peer-reviewed open access academic journal in the fields of biblical studies and critical theory. It was established by Roland Boer in 2004, and was published by Monash University ePress until 2010. Since 2011 it has been published independently. [1] Julie Kelso was the editor-in-chief from 2008 to 2011, and then she co-edited with Boer from 2012 to 2015. From 2016 to 2020, Caroline Blyth and Robert J. Myles were editors-in-chief. For a helpful, biblically informed treatment of the subject, see John Piper, Bloodlines: Race, Cross and the Christian (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 234–40. ↩ Instead I view post-structuralism, critical theory, and critical race theory as tools of diagnosis. They can be extremely helpful in clarifying the issues of power, antagonism, cultural frameworks and subjectivity at work in various issues in race, sexuality, gender, inequality, economics, politics. At their best, these cultural theorists teach us how to ask good questions, make astute observations, locate voices. It can open space for the work of God in Christ to reconcile, heal, make bodies whole, put into place various attractions, reactions, and other formations.

A book that I have been eagerly anticipating for years. ... My prayers are that this book will bear much intellectual and spiritual fruit in many lives over the decades ahead.” Liberalism– Classical liberalism, by contrast, sees salvation in terms of each individual choosing their own version of the good life –‘At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life’ [42]– making any such vision of the good life a matter of purely personal choice. In Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin shows how the Bible and its unfolding story help us make sense of modern life and culture.