My latest: on incarnation, Theotokos, and abortion, in Commonweal

I have an essay in the newest issue of Commonweal called “Mother of the Unborn God.” It’s something of a sequel or peer to previous essays in The Christian Century on similar themes: “Birth on a Cross” and “Jewish Jesus, Black Christ.” This one takes conciliar confession of Mary as Theotokos as the metaphysical starting point for theological and moral reflection on Christian teaching about abortion—a topic, if memory serves, that I’ve never written about before. I hope I do justice to it, or at least to the confluence of theological questions raised by faith in Him who was conceived by the Holy Spirit / and born of the Virgin Mary.

Click here to read the full essay.

Un-paywalled: me in Hedgehog Review on Slow Horses

Back on March 1, I shared a link to my essay in the latest issue of The Hedgehog Review on Mick Herron’s spy novels (now turned into a TV series) called Slow Horses (or Slough House, as you please). But for those without a subscription it’s been behind a paywall for the last seven weeks, which means almost no one could click on the link and actually read the essay!

As of today, however, it’s out from behind the paywall and available for reading by any and all comers. You should still subscribe to a wonderful magazine. Let my essay be the nudge you needed…

My latest: on Volf/McAnnally-Linz’s Home of God, for Syndicate

Over the last month Syndicate has been hosting a symposium on Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s book The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything. My response to the book is the very last in the sequence, and it’s up today. It’s called “The Home of God in the Body of Christ” and here’s how it starts:

The Home of God is stuffed to the brim. Or better, it is overflowing, like its vision of human flourishing. For starters, it is a systematic theology. It is also part of a larger multivolume project. It consists of an extended commentary on not one but three major biblical texts (the Exodus from Egypt, Saint John’s Gospel, and the Revelation of Saint John the Seer). It is an intervention in numerous moral, political, philosophical, biblical, and theological conversations. It is a proposal of what makes for the good life, here and now. It is, in short, just what its subtitle promises: a brief story of everything.

Its ambitious aims are commendable. Theology isn’t good for much when it narrows its gaze from everything—God and all things in God—to something less. As Robert Jenson writes, “theology must be either a universal and founding discipline or a delusion.” Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz agree. Not for them the false humility of modern theology, which John Milbank once called “a fatal disease.” To be true to itself, theology must function, in Milbank’s words, as a “meta-discourse.” In this book Volf and McAnnally-Linz engage in meta-discourse via meta-narrative, that ineradicably Christian scourge of postmodernity. They are right to do so.

The venture of the book is to narrate cosmic reality through the metaphor of “home.” How? By running the metaphor through three climactic points in the canonical story: YHWH’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in the house of Pharaoh; the advent and exodus of Israel’s Messiah in his death and resurrection; and the same Lord’s descent from heaven at the End of all things to make all things new: “Behold, the home of God is among humans!” (Rev 21:3). The dwelling of God not only with or alongside but in and among his people and, ultimately, all of creation constitutes the theme as well as the aim of each episode and the story as a whole. The world is a homemaking project. God is the homemaker. His epiphany is a homecoming. It is a home for Creator and creature alike, which is to say, it must become a home apt for each and each in relation to the other. Glimpsing this vision of the End, Christians—following Volf and McAnnally-Linz—are able to see where the story was always heading and thereby glimpse anticipations of its finale at key moments along the way.

Click here to keep reading. Following my piece, Miroslav and Ryan—the one my former teacher, the other my former fellow doctoral student at Yale—offer a reply of their own. Things get a teensy spicy but mostly it’s a love fest among friends.

My latest: biblical literacy in a postliterate age, for CT

My latest column for Christianity Today is called “Biblical Literacy in a Postliterate Age.” Here’s how it opens:

Christians are readers. We are “people of the book.” We own personal Bibles, translated into our mother tongues, and read them daily. Picture “quiet time” and you’ll see a table, a cup of coffee, and a Bible spread open to dog-eared, highlighted, annotated pages. For Christians, daily Bible reading is the minimum standard for the life of faith. What kind of Christian, some of us may think, doesn’t meet this low bar?

This vision of our faith resonates for many. It certainly describes the way I was raised. As a snapshot of a slice of the church at a certain time in history—20th-century American evangelicals—it checks out. But as a timeless vision of what it means to follow Christ, it falls short, and it does so in a way that will seriously impinge on our ability to make disciples in an increasingly postliterate culture, a culture in which most people still understand the bare mechanics of reading but overwhelmingly consume audio and visual media instead.

This is a theme I’ve reflected on before here on the blog. Eventually I engage with recent writing on Gen Z literacy among college students by folks like Adam Kotsko, Jean Twenge, and Alan Jacobs. And I try to be tentative and non-despairing in the final turn. See what you think.

My latest: how (not) to talk about Christian nationalism, in CT

This morning Christianity Today published my column. Titled “How (Not) to Talk About ‘Christian Nationalism,’” it argues we should retire the term entirely, because it has ceased to refer to anything concrete while functioning in our discourse as a slander term for “politics and people to my right I dislike.” It’s true, though, that there are things worth worrying about that go under the label, like racism and lawlessness; we should just talk about those things instead of a huge umbrella term that no longer picks out anything specific in the world (or picks out far too much). Here’s how the piece starts:

Some years ago, the Reformed philosopher Alvin Plantinga gave a useful definition of fundamentalist. He noted that, in academic settings, it served as little more than a smear word; he offered an expletive I can’t print here, so let’s just substitute son of a gun.

Where it retained any content beyond the smear, Plantinga argued that fundamentalist meant “considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.” Thus did academics, journalists, and many Christians come to deploy fundie to mean a “stupid [son of a gun] whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of” their own. And because there’s always someone to one’s right, the F-word is essentially relative: It has no stable reference, but it certainly can never refer to me.

These days we might say the same about Christian nationalism. The phrase has lost all substantive content. In nearly every conversation, it has little reference beyond those “stupid [sons of guns] whose political opinions are considerably to the right of mine.” Allegations of Christian nationalism can mean almost anything: Maybe the accused is a literal Nazi. Or maybe he’s just a lifelong Republican whose big issues are abortion and tax rates.

Click here to read the rest.

My latest: on Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis in LARB

This morning The Los Angeles Review of Books published my review of Marilynne Robinson’s new book, Reading Genesis. Here are the opening two paragraphs:

MARILYNNE ROBINSON HAS always been a theologian at heart. It’s merely convention that theology today is one among dozens of specialized academic subdisciplines. If that’s what theology is, Robinson doesn’t write like it—and thank God for that. Theology’s mother tongue is prayer and confession, the language of the liturgy, but these aren’t genres so much as modes that transform disparate genres into vehicles of divine discourse. Like Jacob’s Ladder, the traffic runs both ways.

It just so happens that Robinson’s theology has taken shape in essays, novels, and prose so patient and unpatronizing that it’s embarrassing how long one sometimes takes to catch the point. She has been doing this for almost half a century. She has won all the awards, sold all the books, chatted with presidents, and garnered every laurel and medal. She has nothing to prove. And so, having just turned 80, she has chosen to mark the occasion by publishing a commentary on Genesis, the first book of the Torah.

Click here to rest the rest. (See also Francis Spufford’s review and Ezra Klein’s interview with Robinson.)

My latest: on Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels, in Hedgehog Review

I’m in the latest issue of The Hedgehog Review with an essay called “Beating Slow Horses.” It’s about Mick Herron’s spy novels, which have been adapted for TV on AppleTV+. Here’s how the essay opens:

The conceit at the heart of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses novels is simple. There is a house in London for misfit spies. When MI5 is unable, for one reason or another, to fire failed employees, it opts to send them there. The exile is permanent, though the losers who suffer it do their best to pretend it isn’t. It’s a win-win for the service, in any case. No one gets sued. HR is pacified. And banishment proves either so unbearably dull and humiliating that the misfit spies voluntarily quit, or they remain there forever, whiling away the hours without hope of redemption. It is said of the souls in Dante’s purgatorio that the unhappiest are happier than the happiest on earth. Conversely, the happiest in Herron’s inferno are unhappier than the unhappiest outside its walls.

After all, there is no garden atop this mount and certainly no Virgil or Beatrice. Only a hulking demon, pitchfork in hand, keeping the drudges circling beneath him. The paradiso of Regent’s Park is lost forever. Only after some time does it dawn on the damned that their perpetual expulsion means they’re in hell.

Hell’s name is Slough House.

Unfortunately, the essay is paywalled at present. I imagine it’ll unlock here in the next few weeks. All the more reason to subscribe to a wonderful magazine!

My latest: on faith and doubt in CT

I’ve got a column in Christianity Today this morning called “Doubt is a Ladder, Not a Home.” About a third of the way into it, I write the following:

I’m not describing atheists, apostates, or “exvangelicals” here. This is how many ordinary Christians feel. Or at least, it’s the water they swim in, the intrusive thought in the back of the mind, the semi-conscious source of inertia they feel when the alarm blares on Sunday morning. American Christians face no Colosseum, but this emotional and intellectual pressure is very real. The doubts add up.

It doesn’t help that doubt is in vogue. Doubt is sexy, and not only in the wider culture. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been told by a pastor or Christian professor that doubt is a sign of spiritual maturity. That faith without doubt is superficial, a mere honeymoon period. That doubt is the flip side of faith, a kind of friend to fidelity. That the presence of doubt is a sign of a healthy theological mind, and its absence—well, you can fill in the rest.

The pro-doubt crowd gets two important things entirely right. First, they want space to ask honest questions. Second, they want to remove the stigma of doubt.

I go on to elaborate what they get right, but also to point out four ways they go too far. Click here to read the whole thing.

My latest: a review of Christian Wiman in Comment

It’s called “A Poet’s Faith Against Despair.” The following excerpt comes after the essay’s opening discussion of kataphatic and apophatic talk about God:

You can see why apophasis—as a theory and practice of language, yes, but just as much a style or mood—might appeal to poets. Poetry is the art of saying with words more than words can say. Poets are not masters of words; or, at least, the mastery lies in their recognition of the incapacities of language and their resilience with the failures that result. Is human language metaphysically load-bearing? Poets know the answer is affirmative so long as it’s immediately negated.

Of apophasis in all its varieties, Christian Wiman is a poet without living peer. Or if that’s too grand for you—I wouldn’t really know, since I read poetry the way Wiman reads theology, for nourishment and joy and the prick of provocation, which is to say, not professionally, not with a skeptical and parsimonious eye, which is to say, the way we all read before we’re taught to stop it—then say simply that Wiman’s work stands out from the crowd. Whether he’s writing prose or poetry or something in between, you know his voice at once. In part this is because he’s always writing about the same thing (more on that below, and why it’s not a criticism). What he writes about, though, is indistinguishable from how he writes. That’s what makes him great.

Click here to rest the rest.

My latest: a review of John Mark Comer in CT

It’s titled “My Students Are Reading John Mark Comer, and Now I Know Why.” It starts this way:

I’ll begin with a confession: I was once very skeptical of John Mark Comer.

From afar, he seemed like one more polished celebrity pastor turned speaker turned writer, with slick content designed to evoke the Rob Bell aesthetic of yore—and for that reason, to annoy people like me. By “people like me,” most charitably, I mean bookish believers and teachers concerned with orthodoxy. Less charitably, I mean snobs with too many degrees who look down on books sold in airport terminals (and by “down,” I mean “with envy”).

Here’s how I learned the error of my ways: I noticed Comer’s books in the hands of my students. I assumed someone had assigned him; after all, many college students don’t read for any other reason. But no, they were reading him by choice. They were reading him on technology, on spiritual warfare, on sex—on everything. They started asking my opinion of him. I decided I needed to do due diligence if I was going to have an informed answer.

And even with my defenses up, he won me over.

Click here to read the whole thing.

My latest: on lights and liturgy, in CT

Yesterday Christianity Today published an article of mine called “All Hail the Power of … Stage Lighting?” It opens with an anecdote taken verbatim from one of my freshmen. (Out of the mouths of babes…) You sort of have to read it to believe it.

Here are four paragraphs from later on in the piece:

To afford, maintain, and operate professional lighting of the sort my student had in mind, a church would have to be far above the 90th percentile of American congregational size, which is 250 regular attendees. Yet for my student, as for so many others, this size and its hallmarks are paradigmatic rather than exceptional. They’re just “what church is today,” what one would reasonably expect visiting a random church in a strange city.

This trend is both cause and consequence of churches investing in technologies that make Sunday morning a high-production offering, whether for in-person crowds or for folks who stream from home. Long before COVID-19 but exacerbated by lockdown, many churches have been competing in a kind of techno-liturgical arms race to draw seekers, especially young families and professionals, to the “Sunday morning experience” of high-tech public worship.

For many seasoned evangelicals among the millennial and Zoomer generations, the result—state-of-the-art, high-definition, professional video and audio and music, with smooth transitions and fancy lighting, all frictionless and ready-made for the internet—is simply becoming the norm. It’s what church, or worship, means.

At best, the gospel retains the power to cut through all the noise. At worst, believers receive neither the Lord’s Word nor his body and blood. Instead, they get a cut-rate TED Talk, spiritual but not religious, sandwiched between long sessions of a soft rock concert.

Click here to read the rest. And keep your eyes on CT in the next week; they’ll have my review of John Mark Comer’s new book up soon as well.

My latest: a review of Matthew Thiessen on the Jewish Paul

I’m in the latest issue of Commonweal with a review of Matthew Thiessen’s book A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles. Here’s how it opens:

Of all conversion stories, St. Paul’s is surely the most famous. As a zealous Pharisee, Saul was a tortured soul persecuting his fellow Jews for their dangerous faith in a failed Messiah. Starting in Jerusalem, this band of messianic Jews proclaimed a message that was catching like a plague. And just as with plagues inflicted on Israel in the past, God’s people needed a righteous man to rise up and put an end to it. Once disciplined, these wayward Jews would come to see the light. They would give up their nonsense about a crucified King; they would return to strict observance of God’s Law; and God’s punishment of his people would come to an end.

But on the road to Damascus, God stopped Saul in his tracks. He blinded him with heavenly light. He indicted him for his murderous ways. And he appointed him an apostle to the gentiles. Within days Saul was baptized and preaching the good news that God raised Jesus from the dead. Naturally, he gave up the Law of Moses, since Jesus had fulfilled the Torah and thereby rendered its observance optional, negligible, even obsolete. What mattered now was faith, a posture of receptivity and trust in God’s promises available not only to Saul’s fellow Jews but to non-Jews as well. Saul took this message across the Roman Empire, effectively founding the Church as we know it: predominantly gentile, faith-centered, and Law-free.

This is how Saul became Paul—how the persecuting Pharisee gave up Judaism for Christianity. Except that it isn’t, at least not in key respects.

Click here to read on.

The Church: cover, blurbs, pub date, and Amazon pre-order page!

Habemus cover! And publication date! And blurbs! And more!

The book in question is The Church: A Guide to the People of God. It’s the sixth in Lexham’s Christian Essentials series. Here’s the cover:

Just … wow. Perfect. The Lexham folks really know what they’re doing. (For comparison, here are the other covers in the series.)

How about some blurbs? Here they are, in all their glory. Allow me to find my fainting couch before reading them again:

This is a bright, thoughtful and passionate account of the church. Brad East roots ecclesiology in the story of Israel and the story of Jesus Christ, and in doing so provides a number of fresh perspectives which can help us in our doctrine and our practice.
—Andrew Wilson, teaching pastor at King's Church London

This book is pure delight! Inspiring, instructive, enriching, beautifully written, this book makes one want to be a Christian. It is next to impossible to write an ecumenically rewarding book on the theology of the church, but Brad East has done it!
—Matthew Levering, James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

Brad East's account of Mary as the firstborn of the Church is brilliant. The theology in this book is at once scriptural and creative. With this book East becomes one of the more important theologians writing today.
—Stanley Hauerwas, Professor (retired), Duke Divinity School

I find this an extraordinary book. It is short. It is written with simplicity and clarity. And yet it covers so much, introducing its readers to an extraordinarily rich field of theology.
—Karen Kilby, Bede Professor of Catholic Theology, Durham University

In twelve concise, accessible, penetrating, and artistically-crafted chapters, Brad East provides an introductory guide to the Church as the messianic expansion of Israel among the nations of the earth. Rooting the identity of the Church in the biblical story of God's love for Israel, East shows how the redemptive work of Jesus completes that story, and is incomprehensible apart from that story. This introduction to the Church is both simple and profound—like the good news itself, which the Church proclaims and embodies.
—Mark Stephen Kinzer, moderator of Yachad BeYeshua, an international interconfessional fellowship of Jewish disciples of Yeshua, and Senior Scholar and President Emeritus of Messianic Jewish Theological Institute

Brad East's The Church wonderfully enhances the already marvelous Lexham series on Christian "Essentials." Building off of the Church's "Mystery" that is Christ's Body, as Ephesians proclaims, East outlines the story of God's people born of Abraham, in its breadth, beauty, imperative, and promise. Lucid, compact, attractive, and appropriately rich with the figures of Scripture's visionary treasure, this book is not only a fine introduction for new Christians of all traditions, but a well from which to draw continued reflection and prayerful praise. Highly commended!
—Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology, Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto

There are no words. My thanks to each of them for taking the time to read the manuscript and for their remarkable kindness. I hope other readers feel similarly!

Here is the official description of the book (written by Lexham, not by me):

You belong to God's family. But do you understand what that means?

The Bible tells the story of God and his people. But it is not merely history. It is our story. Abraham is our father. And Israel's freedom from slavery is ours.

Brad East traces the story of God's people, from father Abraham to the coming of Christ. He shows how we need the scope of the entire Bible to fully grasp the mystery of the church. The church is not a building but a body. It is not peripheral or optional in the life of faith. Rather, it is the very beating heart of God's story, where our needs and hopes are found.

That captures perfectly what I’m up to in the book. Short and sweet.

If any of the above piques your interest, here’s the good news: the book is up on Amazon and available for pre-order. As for when it’s coming out…

The publication date is October 23. That’s 39 weeks from now. A long time to wait. So why not make sure it’ll be in your mailbox on time?

Can you tell I’m excited? I’m excited. This is all not even to mention the fact that my other book coming out this fall also has its official cover and a publication date (let’s just say it’s not far off from this one). But I’ll save that announcement for another day, particularly once it too is up on Amazon and I’ve got blurbs and galleys in hand.

Until then. Thanks to everyone, but above all to Todd Hains, who made this happen from start to finish. He’s the man.

*

Update: I neglected to add two things.

First, head here for a webpage dedicated to the book. I’ll also add/share links to the publisher’s website for folks who want to check it out there or who want to avoid giving money to Mr. Bezos.

Second, I forgot to include the table of contents for those interested in such things. Here you go:

Series Preface
Prayers of the People

1. Mystery
2. Mother
3. Chosen
4. Bound
5. Redeemed
6. Holy
7. Ruled
8. Beloved
9. Incarnate
10. Sent
11. Entrusted
12. Benediction

Acknowledgments
Permissions
Notes
Worked Cited
Author Index
Scripture Index

2023: blogging

I published about 70 blog posts in 2023. That’s about one every five days. Sometimes a post is just a link to something I’ve written, or perhaps a quote. I used to do a lot more quotes from books and excerpt-links to stuff I’ve read online. But even the 10-20 minutes it takes to do that can be a timesuck at work, so I’ve backed off that habit.

Below, I’ve organized what I wrote on the blog this year into ten categories. Clearly, I use this blog primarily for two topics, church and technology, alongside other topics that intersect with them, such as politics, writing, and academia. Some of these should have been turned into essays, instead of dashed off in the half-hour before class; oh well.

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10. I wrote about Ahsoka, about how awful most Marvel TV shows look, and about the all-time best series finales for TV dramas.

9. I wrote about fantasy: how every epic fantasy series is finally a comedy (never a tragedy, and always a theodicy—whether or not the author is theistic, whether or not the fictional world features gods or divine justice), what it was like returning to Osten Ard (you should visit if you haven’t!), and how Chuck Klosterman’s decade-old theory about the NFL’s popularity applies to J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter.

8. Call this the miscellaneous bucket. I wrote about Calvin, election, and the zombie problem; Christianity East and West as a love story; how to define the little word “culture”; fitting punishment and penance for people whose “cancellation” is justified; how Christianity might be understood as a kind of conspiracy theory (let the reader understand); and an approach to reading widely in Christian tradition: twenty texts for twenty centuries.

7. I wrote about politics a lot less in 2023 than in years prior; I’m not sure why. In any case, here’s a reflection on Christians and politics (in response to Richard Beck), a brief set of thoughts in response to Reeves’ Of Boys and Men, and a long piece thinking about Catholicism, Protestantism, and why intellectuals convert to the former not the latter.

6. I wrote two posts on the Churches of Christ: one attempting to define them in a way that excludes other evangelical groups (spoiler: I failed) and another following up on the attempt.

5. If others write about kids these days, I write about church these days: about young Christians and their reading habits (or lack thereof); about the divide between biblicist and catholic Christianity; about ecclesial and societal decline; about the church’s reputation in a hostile culture; about reasons why people leave church; about catechesis, catechesis, catechesis; about a “loosening” over the last generation; about generational differences in church leadership (this one was good, I think); and about why you can’t die for a question.

4. I wrote about digital technology: about A.I. fallacies in the academy, about smartphones in the church, about the tech-church show, about living in a tech bubble (NB: it’s sarcastic), and about quitting social porn. I also sketched a digital decision tree for church leaders as well as outlining how to be efficient and timely with email and how, as a professor, to use one’s hours in the office. Finally, I wondered whether it’s possible, wise, or both to find a way to limit one’s entanglement with Silicon Valley’s Big Five—to whittle one’s investment and time down to a single company, thereby expanding into and dwelling within a single digital ecosystem while divesting from all the others. I went with, am going with, Apple. Will report.

3. I wrote about life in academia: about prestige scholarship (not what you think it is), about two ways of reading, about naming the errors of our influences and authorities, about publishing widely, even promiscuously, and about the smartest people I’ve known in my life. I also expanded John Shelton’s map of academic theology across the last three generations.

2. My longest and most heartfelt post, written for students and readers near and far, was about whether and how to get into a theology PhD program. I hope this one has legs; I think it can be helpful to young Christians considering the academic life.

1. By far the most-read blog post from the year was my typology of four tiers of Christian publishing. It keeps popping up online, in my inbox, at conferences, in conversations with publishers. I’m glad people have found it useful. I followed up with applying the tiers to preaching; acknowledging my debt to James Davison Hunter; giving advice(!) about writing for a Tier 2 audience; and pointing out the most popular names and authorities in evangelical Tier 2 writing (and how and why to avoid them).

2023: writing

Unlike last year, when my output was heavy in the first half then MIA in the second, this year was rather even. All in all, I count one journal article, one book chapter, three academic reviews, five podcasts, nine magazine essays, and a dozen or so talks/lectures/“speaking events” (gag). I also discovered a review I thought hadn’t been published, which had been published more than a year prior. Well then.

So much of my time this year was spent revising and writing, writing and revising two books that are both set to come out next fall. So I’m grateful to have gotten this much out there in the meantime. More about those books in another post. For now, the year in writing and related artifacts…

Speaking

Each year I find myself with more opportunities to speak or teach at local churches. This year I taught about martyrdom, technology, hell(!), and the soul, among other things. I seem to be brought in to represent the tradition on this or that view; or to be an alarmist on digital domination. Everyone has to have a calling card, I suppose.

I also participated in an annual meeting of pastors to discuss the theology of the body. I traveled to Austin to talk tech and catechesis and to Oklahoma City to talk election and God’s word. And in February I gave an “address” to an academic honor society induction ceremony then, two months later, gave another to the chapel service celebrating graduating seniors who received ACU’s honor of being “university scholars.” That one was a treat.

Podcasts

The Church’s Book (A History of Christian Theology, 4 January 2023).

The Church’s Holy Scripture (The Great Tradition, 10 March 2023).

Theology, Technology, and Ministry (Live from the Siburt Institute, 5 June 2023).

Called into Questions (Mere Fidelity, 24 October 2023). A conversation about Matt Anderson’s new book.

Faith, College, and Technology (Know Why, 1 November 2023).

Academic

Review of David H. Kelsey, Human Anguish and God’s Power, in Stone-Campbell Journal 25:2 (2022): 265–267. David is in his tenth decade of life. He was a dear member of my dissertation committee. This will surely be his last book, following his magnum opus, Eccentric Existence. I missed the review when it came out. Short, but gives you the gist.

Review of R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis, in International Journal of Systematic Theology 25:3 (2023): 504–506. I say some very nice things here! Check out the book.

Review of Fred Sanders, Fountain of Salvation: Trinity and Soteriology, in Pro Ecclesia 32:1-2 (2023): 200–204. Ditto and ditto. Fred agrees!

Review of Jordan Senner, John Webster: The Shape and Development of His Theology, in Scottish Journal of Theology 76:1 (2023): 92-93. One of the very first serious works of scholarly reception of Webster’s thought. More, please.

“The Fittingness of Holy Orders,” Journal of Christian Studies 2:3 (2023): 71–86. I’ve had a surprising number of folks reach out to me for the PDF. I never planned to write on this topic, but I loved doing so; in the process I realized, reader of Jenson and Ramsey and Ratzinger that I am, child of a primitivist tradition that I am, that I had some thoughts.

“Liberating the Least of These,” in The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education, ed. Jeffrey Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and David Henreckson (Walden, NY: Plough, 2023), 163–174. The culmination of a years-long project begun at the outset of Covid. This one was a fun one to write. Levertov, Aristotle, Coates, Shakespeare, Boethius, Saint Augustine, and Rowan Williams all make an appearance. Buy the book!

Essays

Once More, Church and Culture (Mere Orthodoxy, 18 April 2023). A long-gestating reflection on Niebuhr and James Davison Hunter. I think the story told in the first six or seven paragraphs is on the money. Also the criticisms of pro-work “vocational” theologies that actually function to consecrate upper-middle-class Christian careerism.

Theology in Division (First Things, April 2023). Equally long-gestating, given the number of times the question I open the essay with has been posed to me. Also a tribute to the late Jenson and Ratzinger for their wisdom in answering it.

What Makes Critical Theory Christian? (Comment, 28 June 2023). A review of Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture. I really like Watkin—we met and discussed the review in San Antonio; he couldn’t have been more generous—but I didn’t love the book. The review attempts to outline my reasons why.

America the Biblical (The Christian Century, 1 August 2023). A review of Mark Noll’s America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization. A remarkable achievement, says little old me.

Stay the Course: How to Keep Your Faith in College (Christianity Today, 21 August 2023). A fun one to get out into the world. Share with the rising freshman in your life next August!

AI Has No Place in the Pulpit (Christianity Today, 27 September 2023). Can I get an amen?

Living in a WEIRDER World (The Hedgehog Review, 12 October 2023). A review of Andrew Wilson’s Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. One of the best books of the year. If not for the tenth commandment, I’d be jealous of Andrew for this one. Thankfully, I’m above all that.

The Brand Called You (Commonweal, 15 November 2023). A review of Tara Isabella Burton’s Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. A fun and insightful romp. I close the review by suggesting the next book for Burton to write so as to round out the trilogy she began with Strange Rites.

The Ends of Theological Education (Sapientia, 29 November 2023). Part of a symposium on the present and future of theological education. I have a 5,000-word essay on the same subject coming out as a book chapter next year; consider this a preview.

My latest: the ends of theological education

Sapientia is the online periodical of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding, housed at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. They regularly publish series organized around themes or questions, and the latest is on theological education. You can read Joshua Jipp’s introduction to the series here. My entry is the first to be published; it’s called “The Ends of Theological Education.” Here’s how it starts:

The first and final end of theological education is the knowledge of God. The God in question is not just any deity, much less generic divinity, at least if the theological education in view is Christian. Christian theological education is instruction in the Christian God, which is to say, the triune God of Israel. Theological education is about him, namely, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ revealed by his own Holy Spirit. Whatever else it may be, whatever other ends it may have, theological education aims at the Holy Trinity or it misses the mark entirely.

There are many genres and locations for theological education. The modern research university is only one among many institutional habitats for it, the latest and perhaps the most expansive home, if not the snuggest fit. The monastery is one ancient and abiding institution for instruction in divine knowledge. Sunday school is another. Sometimes theological education happens within the Church, sometimes not; sometimes taught by the ordained, sometimes not; sometimes in a catechetical or devotional spirit, sometimes not. There is no one right way to do it.

Read the rest here.

Three podcasts and two reviews

A bunch of links to share with AAR/SBL and Thanksgiving just around the corner.

First up is three podcasts I went on in the last month:

• On Mere Fidelity I joined the guys to talk about Matthew Lee Anderson’s new book Called Into Questions. I imagined a grilling, but the book is so good it just ended up being a conversation about the topics raised, which are particularly acute for pastors, teachers, parents, and professors. In addition, on Matt’s Substack, I interviewed him with a print Q&A about the book over two editions of the newsletter.

• On Know Why, I spoke with Liberty McArtor about my Christianity Today column on how to keep one’s faith in college as well as the challenges facing all of us, young people especially, by digital technology.

• On Theological Table Talk, I spoke with Keith Stanglin and Todd Hall about my article for the Journal of Christian Studies called “The Fittingness of Holy Orders.” We talked about the academy, the sacraments, catholic tradition, and churches of Christ. (The Zoom conversation includes video on YouTube.)

Further, two more reviews of my books are out:

• In the Journal of Analytic Theology, Caleb Lindgren reviews The Church’s Book. An odd fit for the journal, he admits, but he finds some points of contact with analytic thought. The review is quite positive while also wanting more from the book’s arguments and proposals, if not from me then from analytic theologians who might extend them.

• In the newest issue of the Stone-Campbell Journal, Rob O’Lynn also reviews The Church’s Book. I don’t yet have a link to an online version of the review; I’ll post it once I do. O’Lynn is mixed on the value of the book, tilting more negative than positive; or at least, positive at the level of the parts but underwhelmed by the whole.

Finally, be on the lookout for these:

• An essay on theological education in Sapientia.

• A review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul in Commonweal.

• An essay on Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s book The Home of God in a symposium on Syndicate.

• An essay on the late Albert Borgmann … somewhere.

• An article on evangelicalism, catholicity, and the future of churches of Christ in Restoration Quarterly.

• A review of David Kelsey’s latest (and final) book Human Anguish and God’s Power in the Stone-Campbell Journal—published more than a year ago without my realizing it!

More stuff in the works, whether already written or to be written soon, all due out sometime in the new year. I’ll be in San Antonio this weekend for the annual SBL/AAR conference; no papers, but I will be chairing one of the “Theological Interpretation” sessions: a panel responding to Amy Peeler’s book Women and the Gender of God. Should be good fun. Perhaps I’ll see some of y’all there.

My latest: a review of Tara Isabella Burton

I’m in the latest issue of Commonweal with a longish review of Tara Isabella Burton’s latest (nonfiction) book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. Online, the title is “Have We Become Gods?” In the magazine, it’s “The Brand Called You.” Here are the opening two paragraphs:

I am what I want, and I have the power within myself to make myself what I want to be, if only I find the will to activate this inner potential—or rather, to manifest this authentic identity. Such is the thesis under review in Tara Isabella Burton’s new book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. The thesis is not a new one. It has a long history, which, in Burton’s telling, begins around the fifteenth century. Though she finds its philosophical culmination in the eighteenth, with the Enlightenment, most of her story covers the past two hundred years: from bon ton and Beau Brummell to “the two most prominent self-creators of the past twenty years,” Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump. Across Western Europe and the Anglophone world, self-creation as both a transcendent possibility and a moral imperative trickles down to ordinary people’s lives and self-understanding, mutating in tandem with religious, economic, and technological changes. Since creation is traditionally the prerogative of deity, Burton’s story is ultimately about “how we became gods.”

Burton is a reliable chronicler. This book continues a theme explored in her 2020 work, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. There she argued that rumors of religion’s death in the West have been greatly exaggerated. The God of Abraham may be on life support, so to speak, but other gods are alive and well. We haven’t refuted religion so much as “remixed” it. Postmodern spirituality is a potent cocktail of magic, money, and memes; a hybrid made possible by the internet, the dynamic power of capitalism, and the loss of authority once vested in religious institutions and their ordained leaders. America, at least, is not a land of atheists or even agnostics. It’s full of witches, cosplayers, crystals, fangirls, Proud Boys, and Goop. Is SoulCycle a religion? What about wellness culture? The borders of religion turn out to be porous. Accordingly, Burton suggests we’re misreading the signs of the times. We don’t live in a secular age. The gods haven’t vanished; they’ve migrated. Our age is as religious as any other. You just have to know where to look.

Read the rest here. And take note, please, that the URL for the review concludes in this way: “burton-trump-kardashian-east.” Go back a decade and find me somewhere in New Haven, nose buried in a book, prepping for comprehensive exams on systematic theology, and tell me that one day I’d write an essay with those names in the URL. My assumption would have been that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong in my career…

Three more reviews (two English, one German)

Three more reviews of my books have been published recently. The first is by Martin Hailer in the Theologische Literaturzeitung. He’s reviewing The Church’s Book; here’s the final paragraph:

Der Vf. legt eine analytisch klare, gelehrte und konstruktive Studie über das Verhältnis von Schriftlehre und Ekklesiologie vor. Kritiken sind mitunter deutlich, jedoch fair und übergehen auch die positiv rezipierte Position Robert W. Jensons nicht. Die ekklesiologische Typologie gegen Ende des Bandes verwendet sprechende Bilder und könnte dem notorisch schwierigen ökumenischen Gespräch auf diesem Feld aufhelfen. Zeitigt eine theologische Schrifthermeneutik (auch) hier positive Effekte, dann hat sie viel erreicht.

Being complimented in German is a new experience for me. I think this is when I wave at the camera and say, Look, Ma, I’m a real scholar now!

The second review is also of The Church’s Book; it’s by Robert W. Wall in Catholic Biblical Quarterly. He writes that I “offer both diagnostic and prognostic help to propose an orderly—or at least a more wakeful—approach to [the current] messy hermeneutical topology” in a “reworking of his brilliant Yale Ph.D. dissertation” (!). Final paragraph:

East has given us an important and wonderfully written book. Its constructive impulse is aptly captured by his concluding mention of Matthew Levering’s “participatory biblical exegesis,” which engages a Spirit-animated Scripture in ways that guide one holy catholic and apostolic church into a deeper understanding and more satisfying fellowship with the holy Trinity.

The final review is of The Doctrine of Scripture; it appears in Pro Ecclesia and is written by Brett Vanderzee. Brett’s review is a full 2,000 words long; it’s more of a review essay than a brief summary and evaluation. It also gets my project better than anything else I’ve seen in print; probably better than my own attempts to explain or defend it. Brett simply understands what I’m up to. If anyone wants to know what that is, you can now access it in clear, friendly prose that clocks in under 2K words. That’s 80K fewer than the book in question.

Brett says many kind things about me and the book. I won’t quote them here. What I will quote is a lovely image he uses that I will be borrowing from here on out:

In a sense, the church stands in relationship to Scripture like an art restorer in possession of a masterpiece; stewardship of the work’s welfare is entrusted to her unmatched skill and unimpeachable eye, but the masterpiece itself demands that the restorer answer to the integrity of the art. In the end, if the Bible and the church belong to God, they also belong to one another…

Scripture is a joy; the doctrine of Scripture is likewise a joy; hence, writing my book was a joy; and now, reading Brett’s exposition and elaboration of my book proves to be a joy, too. It’s joy all the way down. Thanks to Brett and to all other generous readers who make writing theology such a pleasure.

My latest: reviews of Andrew Wilson and Fred Sanders

This morning The Hedgehog Review published my review essay of Andrew Wilson’s new book Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. Here’s an excerpt:

Two big ideas define the book. The first is that the year 1776 explains, or contains in nuce, every major feature of the modern world as we know it. The second is Wilson’s expansion of Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich’s label for Westerners: not just WEIRD but WEIRDER. The acronym stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, and Romantic. These are the seven facets that define the unique, historically contingent character of “Western” societies today (Wilson does not like the W-word; he either avoids it, puts it in scare quotes, or replaces it with WEIRDER). Most of the book consists of recounting how each of these traits appeared, took hold, or otherwise began to be disseminated in and around the year 1776.

The story that unfolds is wonderful to read. Wilson has a light touch and an enviable ability to interweave telling vignettes with major events and countless names, dates, and locations without overwhelming the reader. More than two-thirds of the book is straight narrative. Commentary is present throughout, but Wilson clearly wants the work to be accessible to lay readers; his primary audience is not scholars.

Read the rest here. The book is not just great; it’s good fun, at times a rip-roaring yarn. Pick up a copy!

In addition, the academic journal Pro Ecclesia has just published my review of Fred Sanders’ book (not his latest, since just this month he’s published a new one!) Foundation of Salvation: Trinity and Soteriology, which came out about two years ago. Here’s an excerpt:

This is a marvelous work of sober scholarship by one of our leading theologians on the central Christian doctrine. It is systematic theology par excellence: a paradigm of the discipline by a thinker and writer at the peak of his powers. It is, moreover, one more fusillade in the ongoing counterattack by defenders of classic trinitarian doctrine against those would renew, by radically revising, that same doctrine. Following Scott Swain—and in line with John Webster, Lewis Ayres, Michel Barnes, Kathryn Tanner, Bruce Marshall, Karen Kilby, Matthew Levering, and many others—Sanders suggests that “the modern revival of interest in the doctrine of the Trinity” is a kind of renewal without retrieval (p. 184). Phrased more sharply, it is reclamation by erasure, inasmuch as the doctrine is redefined so profoundly that few of the doctrine's ancient architects, patrons, or custodians would recognize it, much less affirm it.

If, in other words, the writings and epigones of Barth and Rahner, Moltmann and Pannenberg, Jenson and LaCugna were once in the ascendant, it would seem that time is past. The upshot is not that this shift, if it is a shift, means the right side has won. But it does mean that those who saw the sheer fact of innovation as itself a sign of abiding vitality were wrong, as in the unfortunate confident tones of James Morris Whiton as he approached the turn of the twentieth century: “Doubtless, many will move on into the larger Trinitarianism which modern thinking requires. But quite as many will stay within the narrower lines of the past … [Nevertheless t]here is too much of the Holy Spirit now in the church to permit the new Trinitarianism to be again excommunicated by the old” (quoted on p. 194). In a candid aside, Sanders calls this way of thinking “a constant harassment by bright new ideas, and a relentless production of new schemas by which to distinguish the latest trinitarianism from the errors that have gone before.” The effect is ironic, given that the stated aim of so many revisers has been to serve the unity and mission of the contemporary church: “the doctrine of the Trinity itself has begun to seem unstable and indeterminate for several generations of theology students and church leaders” (p. 194).

Read the rest here. Another great book by another great scholar. More, please!