Kathryn Tanner featured in The Christian Century

I don't know that Kathryn Tanner (meine Doktormutter at Yale) ever thought she'd be the cover story on a national magazine, but there she is gracing the front of The Christian Century. It's called "How Kathryn Tanner's theology bridges doctrine and social action," written by Amy Plantinga Pauw. It's an excellent, accessible entree to Tanner's thought, particularly the last ten years or so and the ever-present emphasis, throughout her three-plus decades of work, of the non-competitive relationship between divine and human action. Go check it out.

Pauw only hints at a possible criticism, namely the role and doctrine of the church in Tanner's thought, but doesn't explore it further. That's because she already did so in an article some years ago, which gently but less tentatively suggests Tanner develop an ecclesiology—which Tanner then did, albeit briefly, in a response to that essay. For those interested in pursuing that line of thought, two years ago I published an article in Scottish Journal of Theology called "An Undefensive Presence: The Mission and Identity of the Church in Kathryn Tanner and John Howard Yoder."

In any case: Now let's see those Gifford lectures in print!

More on the analogia entis (from my inbox)

I emailed my last post to a couple friends and asked them to spot any errors. They came back with some helpful clarifying comments and questions, so let me post some of them below along with my responses.

Friend #1:

I like the first half of this. I think you’re right to make the doctrine fundamentally metaphysical (with the latter allowing certain epistemological moves). I read the analogy of being in Thomas as shorthand for the whole metaphysical process of emanation and return, and with that of the corresponding epistemological moves of affirmation and negation in positive and negative theologies.

The second half (the Barthian bit!) raises some questions for me. Firstly—and this is a predictably historicizing point—when you say things like “the analogy of being makes the claim,” what exactly do you mean? To put it bluntly, the doctrine “the analogy of being” doesn’t obviously say anything it all. Doctrines don’t make claims. People and texts make claims about doctrines. And particular people in people texts make different claims about them (sometimes subtly different, sometimes altogether different)? So, to bowdlerize MacIntyre, which  doctrine of the analogy? Whose? Thomas’? As defined at Vatican I? Prsyzwara’s? Barth’s?

If (as I suspect) the kind of language you use (“the analogy of being states…”) really means something like this—the doctrine as I am interpreting it qua constructive theologian on the basis of my reflection on Scripture and engagement with and respect for the traditions of the Church—all well and good, but it just seems to me that not being more explicit about that is historically distorting. It may be that you have an implicit commitment to a pre-Newman Catholic, or Laudian Anglican view of doctrine and tradition, where you are making a faith claim about an essential uniformity of doctrine across time. I think as Newman et. al. found, it’s hard to do that given modern historical investigation into the history of doctrines, and I hope and think that’s not your view. I think instead what you’re saying is something more like “I think this what is true about this doctrine, and I think it speaks to the best that I have found in the tradition.”

With all that in mind, the second problem I have about part two is that I think it holds for Barth (and might also be the best way of thinking about the doctrine), and I think it serves well as a kind of ecumenical constructive appropriation of Thomas (which might be the Thomas that finally matters most), but I don’t think it's what Thomas himself thought, and again, I think it’s historically misleading. The analogy of being in the Summa at least, which is being written as he’s lecturing on Pseudo-Denys, is relying on a basic metaphysical scheme (from Proclus) that isn’t specifically Christian, but Neo-Platonic in origin. Of course, in Denys it’s already being used as a vehicle for understanding Christian revelation, but there seems to me something disingenuous about the claim “this is only possible by special revelation,” when, in fact, it’s basic provenance is pagan and philosophical. In other words, your second half has something like what bothers me about the later Augustine (although of course he’s my favorite Augustine too). We’ve conceded that the pagans through contemplation in someway see God (Conf. Bk VII), and this will remain basically consistent given a basic metaphysics and epistemology adopted from Platonism, but we recognize too that the horizontal Christian story of sin, fall, redemption, consummation is supposed to complicate the picture, so that we have to go through the valley of the cross to get to the city on the hill that we see only in the distance, etc., etc. But the two claims sit oddly together, or, are never fully harmonized/reconciled. 

I think there are wider problems here about the the Barthian Thomas emerging in our own day and circles. Ultimately this is probably a good Thomas and maybe even the one we want; the synthesis of the great theological dialectic of the past millennium. But all this “of course Thomas isn’t doing natural theology (who would be so naive as too do "natural theology” after reading de Lubac, Barth, Wittgenstein, Foucault, etc.?)" is basically wrong as an historical assessment, and relies on a different nature/grace picture to the one Thomas operated with (this is what the Neo-Thomists had mostly right, etc., etc.). Concretely that might mean that the historical Thomas did think that an unregenerate pagan could attain to the knowledge of something like the analogy of being, even given the reality of sin and its noetic effects. That strikes me as not only theologically plausible (Rom 1, etc.), but also historically more honest if the doctrine does come in the first place from Proclus and the pagan Neo-Platonists!

My reply:

You're right that (a) I'm not doing historical theology here and (b) I'm cheating a bit by making the doctrine palatable in a constructive way, in accordance with contemporary concerns. Here's what I was trying to do, briefly, and let me know if you think it's objectionable.

I wasn't per se trying to do a Barthian spin on analogy. I was actually coming from the other direction: Reading a book on Jenson by someone doing the typical Barthian anti-analogy routine, and finding myself frustrated at what felt like the usual rhetorical moves inspired by Barth without charitably articulating the best, most substantive Christian theological approach to analogy.

So this was an attempt at simple clarification, first of all: "If you're going to disagree with anything, disagree with this." My mention of Barth in the second half is then a way of saying, "It isn't obvious or clear why the Barthian has to reject all this. Say more if he still does."

Obviously I'm both reducing a lot and doing some constructive work. Doctrines don't speak or act, their interpreters do. (All praise to Dale Martin.) But part of what I was trying to do, at a simple level, was show the necessary rather than accidental commitments of analogy, ontologically construed, as well as some of the non-necessary entailments. So that, e.g., a Barthian in my view basically has to admit analogy after the fact, and it's silly to then call it analogy of faith, when you're still doing ontology, and locating it at the level of creator/creature distinction and not soteriology.

As to the provenance of analogy, I have less to say about that. Given that Denys and Thomas and their reception are (to me, clearly) modifying the Neoplatonists in their Christian theological explication, I have less of a problem with infection-at-the-source. And I should also add that the post is meant to be ambivalent about natural theology: i.e., that it doesn't seem to me that natural theology necessarily follows from a doctrine of analogy, though it can, as it has been, made complementary to it. In other words, Thomas can affirm some kind of knowledge of God apart from the revelation in Christ, but that is a logically independent claim from analogy, which secures something different.

Friend #2:

As I see it, you're basically asking the Barthians what's wrong with the analogy of being when paired with a strong doctrine of sin, esp. the noetic effects of the fall. That seems like the right question. But some quibbles:

"Third, God speaks to human beings, as the rational embodied creatures they are, thus eliciting their reply and constituting a unique relationship (compared to other creatures' relationship to God)."

If "speaks" here refers to revelation, as I take you to mean, then it is not entailed by the analogy of being, which holds even in the absence of revelation. But if God's speech refers to God speaking creation (and God said...), then this is basically the heart of the doctrine.

"...not being an epistemic principle, it is not concerned with the source or medium of knowledge of God, whether through revelation or nature or anything else."

Analogy at its most basic means that nature and indeed any existant is in principle a medium for knowing God, though we may be blind to it. Not sure if you mean to deny that here.

"...it does not make a claim to be itself a generic or universally perspicuous or philosophical doctrine: it is a Christian theological claim about the ontological conditions 'on the ground,' so to speak, that in fact obtain, conditions necessary for knowledge of and speech about the triune God to occur."

I think the analogy of being has to be necessarily true: if there are creatures, then their being is analogically related to God's. So it's not about what just happens to obtain. But it may be that we only know this necessary truth through revelation. Like the trinity: a necessary truth that we do not know necessarily but only through God's free revelation. Unlike the trinity, the analogy of being is classically held to be knowable through natural reason, though of course there is room for debate as to how much this holds of corrupted natural reason. But this much is consistent with both Calvin and Vatican I.

"Finally, the analogy of being does not make any positive claim about the human capacity for speech about God, whether it is pre- or post-lapsarian humanity in view."

I think some kind of prelapsarian natural theology is implied by the analogy of being, though I'd probably need to bring in more Christian Platonism to say why. But I also don't see the problem with that, given Rom 1, the Institutes, etc.

My reply:

Yes, to your summary of what I'm up to. As to your particular quibbles:

–No, by speech I don't mean "revelation." I mean the twofold speaking of Genesis 1: God speaking creation into being, and God addressing humanity personally—however one wants to construe the latter.

–Yes, I'm not meaning to deny that. Not only may we be blind to it (and need that only be because of sin?), but God is free to choose to use this or that existent as a medium of knowing him, or not.

–Yes, agreed about your analogy to the Trinity: analogy is necessarily true but we do not necessarily know it. And agreed about the classical claim regarding analogy's being knowable through natural reason, but apart from the effects of sin, my further claim is that it doesn't seem to me to follow necessarily from the doctrine itself that the doctrine of analogy must be knowable through natural reason. Sin levels this disagreement anyway, in my opinion, but that's my claim.

–And yes, agreed: I've never really known what's at stake in the denial (does anyone deny it?) of prelapsarian natural theology/natural knowledge of God. Particularly if natural theology is not specified such that God is somehow inactive or passive in being known.

A stab at the analogia entis

The analogy of being does not analogize God and creatures under the more general category of being, but is the analogization of being in the difference between God and creatures.

—David Bentley Hart 

What is the analogy of being? Here's my stab at a clear, sympathetic description.

The analogy of being is a Christian theological claim about the relationship between God and creatures and the ontological conditions of the possibility for the latter to know and/or speak about the former. As I understand it, it entails three core claims.

First, God is and creatures are;
Second, God is the creator of all that is that is not God, that is, creatures have the source and sustenance of their being in the one triune God;
Third, God speaks to human beings, as the rational embodied creatures they are, thus eliciting their reply and constituting a unique relationship (compared to other creatures' relationship to God).

The analogy of being makes the claim that the ontological condition of the possibility for human knowledge of and speech about God is this threefold set of affairs. If this is a fair summation, what follows about what it is not?

The analogy of being is not first of all an epistemic principle: it does not say how creatures come to know God or anything true about God; it offers no criteria for measuring claims about God; it does not insert itself explicitly into the process by which theological claims are made. Further, not being an epistemic principle, it is not concerned with the source or medium of knowledge of God, whether through revelation or nature or anything else. Further still, it does not make a claim to be itself a generic or universally perspicuous or philosophical doctrine: it is a Christian theological claim about the ontological conditions "on the ground," so to speak, that in fact obtain, conditions necessary for knowledge of and speech about the triune God to occur.

Finally, the analogy of being does not make any positive claim about the human capacity for speech about God, whether it is pre- or post-lapsarian humanity in view. Humans must be addressed by God—admittedly my own semi-innovation on analogy—in order to reply to him, but even once addressed, God remains the enabling condition of their speech about and to him. Moreover, after sin, all true knowledge of God may indeed be wiped out apart from wholly gracious divine revelation. The analogy of being still obtains, because humans remain creatures and God remains their creator; it is simply that the human reply to God's initial speech fails so utterly that the possibility of faithful speech is eliminated, unless and until God intervenes to make it possible again. Barth's analogy of faith may indeed enter in at this point, and it may reserve to itself exclusive claim to truthful knowledge of and speech about God—but just as the economy of grace reconciles lost creatures to God—it does not make new creatures ex nihilo—so divine revelation reestablishes and renews the proper relationship of creator and creature, so that creatures may offer their reply to God's initiating address in Spirit and in truth. But the ontological conditions never changed; and if they did not obtain, there would be no speech about God on humans' behalf.

Put differently, and in the context of theological language, the analogy of being is an analysis of how speech about God works in the first place—but note, Christian speech, from a Christian theological perspective, assuming the truth of the gospel, working within and not (hypothetically) without the event and domain of revelation. It is not a denial of the necessity of faith to know and speak truthfully about God. It is faith's reflection on how the language of faith succeeds, given that God is and believers are and that God is the creator of all, how faith's words work one way when applied to God and another way when applied to creatures.

I said it was a stab, and so it was. Where I've erred, I welcome correction.

I've got a new article out in Modern Theology

It's called "What is the Doctrine of the Trinity For? Practicality and Projection in the Theology of Robert Jenson." You can find it here (paywalled). And here's the abstract:

"This articles engages the theology of Robert Jenson with three questions in mind: What is the doctrine of the Trinity for? Is it a practical doctrine? If so, how, and with what implications? It seeks, on the one hand, to identify whether Jenson’s trinitarian theology ought to count as a “social” doctrine of the Trinity, and to what extent he puts it to work for human socio-practical purposes. On the other hand, in light of Jenson’s career-long worries about Feuerbach and projection onto a God behind or above the triune God revealed in the economy, the article interrogates his thought with a view to recent critiques of social trinitarianism. The irony is that, in constructing his account of the Trinity as both wholly determined in and by the economy and maximally relevant for practical human needs and interests, precisely in order to avoid the errors of Feuerbachian “religion,” Jenson ends up engaging in a full-scale project of projection. Observation of the human is retrojected into the immanent life of the Trinity as the prior condition of the possibility for the human; upon this “discovery,” this or that feature of God’s being is proposed as a resolution to a human problem, bearing ostensibly profound socio-practical import. The article is intended, first, as a contribution to the work, only now beginning, of critically receiving Jenson’s theology; and, second, as an extension of general critiques of practical uses of trinitarian doctrine, such as Karen Kilby’s or Kathryn Tanner’s, by way of close engagement with a specific theologian."

The article has its origins in a term paper I wrote for Linn Tonstad at Yale, in a seminar a few years ago in which we read the manuscript for what eventually became God and Difference, a book now receiving warranted attention from all over the place, most recently in a series of rousing responses in Syndicate. It also has a degree of overlap with Ben Myers's recent series of tweets on the Trinity (gathered together in a post) summarizing the classical approach to the doctrine over against the last century's innovations and trends. Consider my article an exercise in that sort of frumpy theology—borrowing my friend Jamie Dunn's coinage—but in this case focused on a single important figure on the contemporary scene. I love Jenson's work and it means a great deal to me, but the article identifies within his trinitarian project a problem (a significant one, I think) internal the logic of his own system. I look forward to hearing what others think, especially those who read and value Jenson's thought.

The real problem with political liberalism

"Near the beginning of the book, Tuininga takes brief notice of recent theological critiques of liberalism, but it’s not clear he has grasped the objections. He defines liberal democracy as a system of representative, democratic government erected to protect rights 'in accord with the rule of law under a system of checks and balances that includes the separation of church and state.' Virtually none of liberalism’s theological critics objects to these forms and procedures as such. Their complaint isn’t against representative government or voting or freedom of speech and association. No one advocates a fusion of Church and state.

"Rather, they claim that such a formal, procedural description masks the basic thrust of liberalism. Liberalism’s stated aim is to construct a society without substantive commitments, leaving everyone free to choose whatever his or her . . . own may be. Liberalism’s common good is to protect society from adopting any single vision of the common good. That’s a deviation from classical and traditional Christian politics (including Calvin’s), which sought to orchestrate common life toward a common end—the cultivation of virtue or the glory of God. In fact—and this is the other side of the critique—liberal societies do have substantive commitments. The liberal state pretends to be a referee, but beneath the striped shirt it wears the jersey of the home team. Under the cover of neutrality, liberal order embodies, encourages, and sometimes enforces an anthropology, ecclesiology, and vision of the good society that is often starkly at odds with Christian faith."

—Peter Leithart. Apart from whether his treatment of Tuininga's book is accurate or fair—seeing the name, I recall that he was a T.A. for one of my classes at Emory, working on the dissertation that became this book—Leithart's articulation of the actual substantive issues operative in a Christian critique of political liberalism is as succinct and clear as it gets.

The liturgical/praying animal in Paradise Lost

In Book VII of Paradise Lost, Milton has the angel Raphael recount to Adam the six days of creation, and this is what he says concerning humanity:

There wanted yet the master-work, the end
Of all yet done—a creature who, not prone
And brute as other creatures, but endued
With sanctity of reason, might erect
His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence
Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends; thither with heart, and voice, and eyes
Directed in devotion, to adore
And worship God Supreme, who made him chief
Of all his works.

What is striking about this account is the way in which the rationality ascribed to humanity, unique among all creatures, is specified and given content. Initially it seems quite in line with classical accounts: humans are distinct by virtue of their reason. But what sort of reason, and to what end?

According to Milton, men and women are rational inasmuch as, and so that, they "correspond with Heaven," thanking God for his manifold gifts and worshiping him as the source of all, including their own, being and goodness. Which is to say, human rationality is at once the condition and the means of prayer, which is reason's telos. What sets apart human beings from other animals is that they use words to talk to and about God in thanks and praise. As Robert Jenson has it, human beings are "praying animals." Or in Jamie Smith's words, homo sapiens is homo liturgicus.

Rationality, for Milton, as for Jenson and Smith, isn't the cold logic of unbiased inquiry or instrumental reason. It is the devotion of a heart on fire for the Creator, manifested in the speech of adoration and love, awe and thanksgiving. Rationality is correspondence with heaven.

Webster on Barth's engagement with philosophy

"Barth's insistence on speaking [with philosophy/non-Christian disciplines] on his own terms is not to be interpreted as obstinate reluctance to come out of his lair and talk to the rest of the world; quite the contrary: in writing, as in life, Barth showed remarkable openness to all manner of ideas, provided he is allowed to exercise Christian nonconformity."

—John Webster, Barth, 2nd ed. (New York: T&T Clark, 2000, 2004), p. 174

P. D. James on the sameness, the joylessness of lust

"Dalgliesh walked through Soho to the Cortez Club. With his mind still freshened by the clean emptiness of Suffolk he found these canyoned streets, even in their afternoon doldrums, more than usually depressing. It was difficult to believe that he had once enjoyed walking through this shoddy gulch. Now even a month's absence made the return less tolerable. It was largely a matter of mood, no doubt, for the district is all things to all men, catering comprehensively for those needs which money can buy. You see it as you wish. An agreeable place to dine; a cosmopolitan village tucked away behind Piccadilly with its own mysterious village life, one of the best shopping centres for food in London, the nastiest and most sordid nursery of crime in Europe. Even the travel journalists, obsessed by its ambiguities, can't make up their minds. Passing the strip clubs, the grubby basement stairs, the silhouettes of bored girls against the upstairs window blinds, Dalgliesh thought that a daily walk through these ugly streets could drive any man into a monastery, less from sexual disgust than from an intolerable ennui with the sameness, the joylessness of lust."

—P. D. James, Unnatural Causes, p. 173

The best American crime novelists of the last century, or: a way into the genre

Four and a half years ago I decided I wanted to try out the genre of crime fiction. I was about to take a semester off from my doctoral studies for paternity leave, and I knew my academic reading would be on the wane, at least while I was caring for my newborn son during the day. I needed something punchy, new, and different that would grab and hold my attention during downtime, long walks, and seemingly endless Baby Bjorn–pacing.

So I ordered a few books: The 39 Steps by John Buchan, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins, The Hunter by Donald Westlake, Killing Floor by Lee Child, and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré. An odd, eclectic sampling, obviously made by an outsider. In any case, the experiment worked.

Turns out I love crime fiction.

From there, I wanted to get my hands on the best stuff out there. But the way my mind works, I wanted to do this in a particular way. First, I wanted to get a sense of the genre as a whole, particularly in its development and in the order of influences. I wouldn't read chronologically, but if I read Ross Macdonald, I wanted to know and not be ignorant of the fact that he had read and was influenced by Hammett and Chandler. Second, I wanted to read the masters, not their second-rate imitators. And third, if the author had a series featuring a long-standing character—and they nearly always do—I wanted to read that series and preferably the first entry. I knew that that would mean I might not read an author's best, or best-read-first, work, but that was fine by me. I wanted to see the genesis of their art; and should they draw me in, I wanted to read the series from beginning to end, not start in the middle.

Long story short, here's my list. (I'm an inveterate list-maker. It's a compulsive habit.) I've yet to find a comparable one online: when I do, it invariably includes British authors (e.g., P. D. James, Agatha Christie), expands the genre to include spy fiction (e.g., John le Carré, Len Deighton), does not limit itself to one book per author (e.g., Hammett and Chandler get multiple entries), and includes mysteries from every time period (e.g., Poe, Dickens).

My list's rules: only Americans, beginning with Hammett in the 1920s (so the last 88 years—but close enough to say "the last century"), only crime fiction (broadly defined, but excluding spy and similar novels), and focusing especially on the first entry in the author's most beloved or well-known series.

I've put an asterisk by the ones I've yet to read. I'm only about halfway done, so this is far from an authoritative list. To state the obvious, I'll feel comfortable ranking either the authors or their works only once I've actually read them all. I'll add that falling in love with le Carré and P. D. James along the way hasn't helped in finishing the list.

But in any case, here it is. I welcome suggestions of every kind: corrections, amendments, additions, subtractions, and more.

1. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1929)
2. Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933)
3. James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)
4. Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance (1934)
5. Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
6. Cornell Woolrich, The Bride Wore Black (1940)
7. Vera Caspary, Laura (1942)
8. Helen Eustis, The Horizontal Man (1946)
9. David Goodis, Dark Passage (1946)
10. Mickey Spillane, I, The Jury (1947)
11. Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, The Blank Wall (1947)
12. Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place (1947)
13. Kenneth Millar (as Ross Macdonald), The Moving Target (1949)
14. Charlotte Armstrong, Mischief (1950)
15. Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me (1952)
16. Margaret Millar, Beast in View (1955)
17. Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
18. Evan Hunter (as Ed McBain), Cop Hater (1956)
19. Chester Himes, A Rage in Harlem (=For Love of Imabelle) (1957)
20. Dolores Hitchens, Fools' Gold (1958)
21. Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark), The Hunter (1962)
22. John D. MacDonald, The Deep Blue Good-by (1964)
23. George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970)
24. Robert B. Parker, The Godwulf Manuscript (1973)
25. Donald Goines, Crime Partners (1974)
26. Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys (1975)
27. Lawrence Block, The Sins of the Fathers (1976)
28. James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)
29. Ross Thomas, Chinaman’s Chance (1978)
30. Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park (1981)
31. Sara Paretsky, Indemnity Only (1982)
32. Newton Thornburg, Dreamland (1983)
33. Charles Willeford, Miami Blues (1984)
34. Robert Crais, The Monkey’s Raincoat (1987)
35. James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain (1987)
36. Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty (1990)
37. Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
38. James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential (1990)
39. Michael Connelly, The Black Echo (1992)
40. James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly (1992)
41. Richard Price, Clockers (1992)
42. George Pelecanos, The Sweet Forever (1995)
43. Laura Lippman, Baltimore Blues (1997)
44. Ace Atkins, Crossroad Blues (1998)
45. Craig Johnson, Cold Dish (2004)
46. Megan Abbott, Die A Little (2005)
47. Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog (2005)
48. Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone (2006)
49. Benjamin Whitmer, Pike (2010)
50. Dennis Lehane, Live by Night (2012) 
51. Adrian McKinty, The Cold Cold Ground (2012)
52. Reed Farrel Coleman, Where It Hurts (2016)

**Update #1: Added Highsmith, Hughes, and Millar on Megan Abbott's recommendation.
**Update #2: Added Lippman, Stout, Sallis, Holding, Goodis, Thompson, and Woolrich on Topher Lundell's recommendation.
**Update #3: Added Hitchens, Eustis, Armstrong, and Caspary on Sarah Weinman's (editorial) recommendation.
**Update #4: I've dropped the asterisks on the books I haven't read—with 15 new additions, the disproportion of unread to read was getting out of hand!
**Update #5: Added Coleman, whose first Gus Murphy book, out last year, I had forgotten to include. 
**Update #6: Added Johnson, Woodrell, and Whitmer on Kester Smith's recommendation.

Four writing tips for seminarians

In the spring of 2016 I served as a teaching assistant for a course at Yale Divinity School on theological interpretation of the New Testament (co-taught by Dale Martin and Kathryn Tanner. I know!). After the first month of class, the students began submitting one 3-page theological exegesis of a NT text on a weekly basis until the end of the semester, for a total of eight mini-papers. The goal—quite successful, as a matter of fact—was to offer detailed feedback on each student's writing in order to see a much improved paper #8 compared to paper #1. It was a lovely thing to see how much improvement could come in just two months.

At the beginning, however, there were a lot of problems to work out. After finding patterns across a number of students' papers, I wrote up a list of writing tips, and I thought I'd share them here. They probably lean in the direction of liberal seminarians, or at least seminarians at a liberal school—though my sense is that even the most conservative context is full of students whose self-understanding is one of liberation or progression or expansion from former, supposedly more parochial, less open-minded ways. I share my suggestions here because I think they capture a specific set of proclivities—as much intellectual as writerly—that are worth identifying and exorcising as soon as possible, being consistently damaging to rigorous and charitable theological thought.

Here they are:

1. Avoid referring to what "modern people/believers/Christians" or some anonymous collective "we" think, assume, or believe. E.g., "modern believers find the subordination of women in the NT problematic." This is an empirical claim that is not true: some modern believers (the world over, but including in the U.S.) disagree with the claim that the NT subordinates women; others think that it does, and that that is God's will. Either, minimally, specify the group in question (e.g., "many mainline Christians in the U.S. are troubled by...") or, preferably, just state, and support, your own position on the matter (e.g., "this text/claim is troubling because...").
2. Avoid fundie-bashing, that is, using conservative evangelicalism and/or fundamentalism as foils in your argument. This, because it is either too easy or too complicated: too easy, because there is always a seemingly stupid fundamentalist position available to caricature, but which is immaterial to your argument; or too complicated, because in fact many conservative theologians have sophisticated theories about theological questions, but by dismissing them rhetorically, your own argument is weakened by acting as if their arguments and positions do not exist or do not require thoughtful consideration.
3. Avoid contrastive argumentation, that is, only stating your own position by way of contrasting it with some other (often 'very very bad') position. Not only is this usually unnecessary, but it also invites the question, 'Why aren't these two claims/positions compatible?' For example, 'instead of a divinely authored document, the Bible is a collection of disparate texts from different time periods' is an instance of bad contrastive argumentation, because the Bible very well could meet both descriptions, yet the claim assumes, without demonstrating, their mutual exclusivity. Best to avoid the contrast, and simply state your own claim, followed by support.
4. Stay modest in your rhetoric and your claims for what your argument accomplishes. Try to be measured in how you represent your conclusions. Assume that if such-and-such theological question has been controversial for centuries, your own paper has not resolved it for all time. At best, you may have resolved some specific issue, or taken a strongly supported position on one side or the other, or pointed out the problems inherent in the side you opposed, etc.

Freud's historical-critical methods

"When I use Biblical tradition here in such an autocratic and arbitrary way, draw on it for confirmation whenever it is convenient, and dismiss its evidence without scruple when it contradicts my conclusions, I know full well that I am exposing myself to severe criticism concerning my method and that I weaken the force of my proofs. But this is the only way in which to treat material whose trustworthiness—as we know for certain—was seriously damaged by the influence of distorting tendencies. Some justification will be forthcoming later, it is hoped, when we have unearthed those secret motives. Certainty is not to be gained in any case, and, moreover, we may say that all other authors have acted likewise."

—Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage Books, 1939), 30n.1

Barth on what matters in the Gospel narratives

"In the editing and composition of the Evangelical narratives the interest and art and rules of the historian do not matter. What matters is His living existence in the community and therefore in the world. What matters is His history as it has indeed happened but as it is present and not past. What matters is His speaking and acting and suffering and dying today as well as yesterday. What matters is the "good news" of His history as it speaks and rings out hic et nunc. It is not a question of digging out and preserving Himself and His history in order to have them before us and study them. It is a matter of living with Him the living One, and therefore of participating in His history . . . . It is quite right that the voice and form of Jesus cannot in practice be distinguished with any finality in the Gospels from the community founded by Him and sharing His life. The historian may find this disconcerting and suspicious (or even provocatively interesting). It is further evidence of that submission to the divine verdict without which the Gospels could never have taken shape as Gospels."

—Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 320

Figural christology in children's Bibles

The two Bibles my wife and I read to our children are The Jesus Storybook Bible, written by Sally Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Jago, and the Jesus Calling Bible Storybook, by Sarah Young. Their favorite story by far is "the Moses story" (a title I required instead of their original "the Pharaoh story"), which they quickly came to know like the back of their hand.

One night, when I persuaded them to let me read them something other than the Moses story, we read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. To my delight, when we got to the part where the three were thrown into the fiery furnace, and "a fourth figure" was there with them, and none of them were burned by the fire, the text and illustration both delivered on the christological implications of the episode and drew the figural connection implicit within it.

First, my children recognized the fourth figure as Jesus, for the simple reason that he is depicted exactly as he is later in the same Bible. And second, when I began to say, "And because Jesus was with them, the fire didn't burn them up..." I was able to continue, without skipping a beat, "...just like the burning bush. What happened to the leaves on that bush?" To which my children answered, "They didn't burn up!"

And so we had ourselves a little family figural reflection on God's presence when it comes near: both its fearsome power and its power to save. A reflection rooted in and oriented to christology, stretching across salvation history and the scriptures of Israel and the church. At a 4-year old level.

Give me these Storybook Bibles over historical criticism every day of the week.

Zechariah as the sixth evangelist

Isaiah was famously heralded by the church fathers (originally Jerome?) as "the fifth Evangelist." If there's room for another at the table, I propose we give the honor to Zechariah. Having never read the book start-to-finish before, in doing so the last couple of weeks I was repeatedly struck by how deeply interwoven it is into the canonical Gospels; along with Second Isaiah and the Psalms, it is an ineliminable feature of the Evangelists' depiction of Jesus's person, teachings, ministry, actions, and passion. Tug on that thread, and the texts unravel. Given its importance, I wonder—because I don't know—whether and to what extent the fathers and medievals read and commented on Zechariah, or whether, for whatever reason, it slipped by the wayside. Given its non-linear and non-systematic character, its apocalyptic and sometimes violent imagery, and its simultaneous emphasis on contemporaneous political events as well as the coming eschatological future, perhaps it was less immediately conducive to the sort of readings they would have been interested in undertaking.

But, wow, it is a powerhouse of figural christological exegesis. It's basically necessary pretext, historically, literarily, and theologically, for understanding the Gospels' presentation of Jesus. It's all there: Jerusalem (1:14-17; 8:3), exile (passim), YHWH's return (1:16; 8:3; 9:14), Israel's renewed election (2:12), the divine presence at the temple (2:5; 8:3; 9:8), a second exodus (14:16-19), the forgiveness of sins (3:9; 13:1), the Lord's rebuke of Satan (3:2), the eschatological gathering of all nations (passim), a priest-king named Joshua (6:11-13), the capstone (4:10), the anointed (4:14), the blood of the covenant (9:11), the Spirit's power and outpouring (4:6; 7:12; 12:10), grabbing a Jew by the hem of his robe (8:23), Israel's salvation (9:16), Israel's king at once human (9:9) and divine (14:9), 30 pieces of silver (11:12), the house of David (12:8), a cleansing fountain in Jerusalem (13:1), Jerusalem looking on him whom they have pierced (12:10), the shepherd struck and the sheep scattering (13:7), YHWH's feet standing on the Mount of Olives (14:4), the coming of YHWH with his saints (14:5), the day of darkness that is the first evening of the new creation (14:6-7), the singular sovereignty of the name of YHWH (14:9), the nations coming to worship this self-same king (14:16)—and so on.

I realize I'm not the first one to note this. (I'm vaguely aware that Wright, whose corpus I am making my way through as we speak, has made Zechariah central to his proposal about the historical Jesus's self-understanding.) But it's incredible nonetheless, both at a literary-historical level and, especially, in its implications for Christian theological interpretation of the Evangelists proper and of this unique proto-Evangelist.

Marilynne Robinson on biblical scholarship

A lovely little missive from outside the theological academy, directed right at the heart of biblical scholarship. Amen and amen:

"Perhaps I should say here that when I say 'Matthew,' 'Mark,' or 'Luke' I mean the text that goes by that name. I adapt the sola scriptura to my own purposes, assuming nothing beyond the meaningfulness of forms, recurrences, and coherences within and among the Gospels, at the same time acknowledging that different passions and temperaments distinguish one text from another. I have solemnly forbidden myself all the forms of evidence tampering and deck stacking otherwise known as the identification of interpolations, omissions, doublets, scribal errors, et alia, on the grounds that they are speculation at best, and distract the credulous, including their practitioners, with the trappings and flourishes of esotericism. I hope my own inevitable speculations are clearly identified as such."

—Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 2015), pp. 241-242

Thomas Aquinas on the Trinity in Genesis 1

"[One reason] why the knowledge of the divine persons [that is, that God is triune] was necessary for us . . . [is that i]t was necessary for the right idea of creation. The fact of saying that God made all things by His Word excludes the error of those who say that God produced things by necessity. When we say that in Him there is a procession of love, we show that God produced creatures not because He needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of His own goodness. So Moses, when he had said, In the beginning God created heaven and earth, he subjoined, God said, Let there be light, to manifest the divine Word; and then said, God saw the light that it was good, to show the proof of the divine love [that is, the Holy Spirit]. The same is also found in the other works of creation."

—Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Q32 a1 ad3

Augustine on multiple interpretations of Scripture

"There are doubtless other ways of understanding our Lord's words, Why ask me about the good? No one is good but the one God (Matt 19:17). Provided however they do not favor belief that the Son's substance, by which he is the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:3), is of a lesser goodness than the Father's, and are not otherwise at odds with sound doctrine, we may cheerfully use not merely one interpretation but as many as can be found. For the more ways we open up of avoiding the traps of heretics, the more effectively can they be convinced of their errors."

—Augustine, De Trinitate I.31

Brevard Childs as John Rawls

In the coming days I'm going to be intermittently re-posting pieces here, on the new blog, that originally appeared on my previous blog. I wrote the following post in February 2015.

Reading the work of Brevard Childs, in tandem with its critical reception, it strikes me that he is the John Rawls of late 20th century biblical scholarship. Enormously talented, undeniably brilliant, hugely influential, an intellectual pillar at an elite Ivy League institution—and yet, the "big idea" that animated his thought throughout his career never stopped evolving, never quite reached clarity in presentation, and by the time retirement came it had, as it were, reached the point of exhaustion, becoming a disciplinary touchstone that basically nobody was persuaded by anymore. Reviews and summaries tend to treat both men's thought similarly: we "must" talk about them; they "changed" the field; and, today, we are "beyond" them. One's feeling in reading the magnum opus of each is at once a solemn respect for their achievement and an overriding sense that, alas, it just doesn't work.

A possible exception to this overall picture is the good will Childs had and continues to have in the theological academy, presumably due, at least in part, to the many significant scholars who studied under him at Yale. (I can't speak for Rawls.) But apart from Christopher Seitz, who has taken up the mantle of Childs's "canonical" proposal and continues undeterred, the field seems empty of (implicitly or explicitly) "Childsian" bibliology and theological hermeneutics. Which makes me wonder how, decades from now, this period in theological proposals about Scripture will be recounted. Will Childs be a transitional figure? Will he be a footnote? Will he stage a comeback? As with Rawls in political theory, it will be interesting to see.

“About This Blog"

I've created an "About This Blog" page here (along with a page for my CV here). Here's what you'll find there:

My name is Brad East, and I am a theologian, professor, and writer. As of fall 2017 I will be Assistant Professor of Theology in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University. I will walk in December with my PhD in Theology from Yale University, having earned my Master's of Divinity from Emory University in 2011 and my Bachelor's from Abilene Christian in 2007. For more academic credentials, see my CV.

I've been blogging on and off since summer 2006. I began to blog in earnest when I entered my Master's studies in Atlanta in 2008, a practice that continued through my course work in New Haven, but tailed off after that.

Why pick it up now? And what do I want this blog to be?

I'm one of the lucky ones in the academy, getting a great job offer right out of doctoral studies. My blogging had decreased to almost nil in the meantime not only because of increased demands on my time, not only because I was beginning to publish in scholarly outlets, but also because, well, the kind of "writing in public" that blogging is—brainstorming, seeing what sticks and what doesn't, more transparent, less professional—did not recommend itself to an applicant on the academic job market. And I simply did not want to be an unemployed blogger not yet "officially" in the field. That's not a knock on those who fit that description, only to say that it wasn't for me.

But now that this new chapter is upon me, it seemed like a good time to re-enter this part of my life, and this part of the internet. Using a blog to spitball, share thoughts, respond to pieces online (appreciatively as well as critically), create contacts, mark down ideas for later—so on and so forth—is both ideal for my intellectual temperament and useful for my writing habits. My new job is going to take over my academic publishing for a while, and I don't want my writerly muscles to atrophy in the process.

So what is this blog about? What will it be? The dumping ground for my thoughts about theology, the academy, literature, politics, pop culture, the NBA, and much more besides. The blogs I most admire and read most often are those—like Alan Jacob's, Richard Beck's, Peter Leithart's, Derek Rishmawy's, Ben Myers's, Freddie deBoer's, Timothy Burke's—that are intellectually curious, even promiscuous; willing to hazard a half-baked idea in the service of a helpful connection or new idea; value breadth and depth in equal measure; avoid polemic as much as possible, and even in the briefest of posts say something of substance; stay breast of current events and commentary without becoming beholden to it, much less gripped by chronological snobbery; are conversant with pop culture without falling for the notion either that it is more substantive than it is or that it is the unifying theory of everything for our society today; etc.

That's what I aspire to. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading.

About This Blog

My name is Brad East, and I am a theologian, professor, and writer. As of fall 2017 I will be Assistant Professor of Theology in the College of Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University. I will walk in December with my PhD in Theology from Yale University, having earned my Master's of Divinity from Emory University in 2011 and my Bachelor's from Abilene Christian in 2007. For more academic credentials, see my CV.

I've been blogging on and off since summer 2006. I began to blog in earnest when I entered my Master's studies in Atlanta in 2008, a practice that continued through my course work in New Haven, but tailed off after that.

Why pick it up now? And what do I want this blog to be?

I'm one of the lucky ones in the academy, getting a great job offer right out of doctoral studies. My blogging had decreased to almost nil in the meantime not only because of increased demands on my time, not only because I was beginning to publish in scholarly outlets, but also because, well, the kind of "writing in public" that blogging is—brainstorming, seeing what sticks and what doesn't, more transparent, less professional—did not recommend itself to an applicant on the academic job market. And I simply did not want to be an unemployed blogger not yet "officially" in the field. That's not a knock on those who fit that description, only to say that it wasn't for me.

But now that this new chapter is upon me, it seemed like a good time to re-enter this part of my life, and this part of the internet. Using a blog to spitball, share thoughts, respond to pieces online (appreciatively as well as critically), create contacts, mark down ideas for later—so on and so forth—is both ideal for my intellectual temperament and useful for my writing habits. My new job is going to take over my academic publishing for a while, and I don't want my writerly muscles to atrophy in the process.

So what is this blog about? What will it be? The dumping ground for my thoughts about theology, the academy, literature, politics, pop culture, the NBA, and much more besides. The blogs I most admire and read most often are those—like Alan Jacob's, Richard Beck's, Peter Leithart's, Derek Rishmawy's, Ben Myers's, Freddie deBoer's, Timothy Burke's—that are intellectually curious, even promiscuous; willing to hazard a half-baked idea in the service of a helpful connection or new idea; value breadth and depth in equal measure; avoid polemic as much as possible, and even in the briefest of posts say something of substance; stay breast of current events and commentary without becoming beholden to it, much less gripped by chronological snobbery; are conversant with pop culture without falling for the notion either that it is more substantive than it is or that it is the unifying theory of everything for our society today; etc.

That's what I aspire to. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading.