Genre lists: the best fantasy series

Last year I wrote about how I worked my way back into regular fiction reading through genre, specifically the genre of crime novels. I also keep separate genre lists for fantasy and science fiction. Each scratches a particular itch, and I slowly make my way through each one, as the mood strikes me. But I'm a novice, using either my own eclectic interests or the lists of others as guides. I thought I'd open myself up to others to build out my current fantasy list.

NB: I'm not looking to be a completist for completion's sake. I don't want to read just-fine or so-so series in order to comprehend the genre. I want to read the very best series, for nothing but pleasure. Having said that, I do enjoy (as my chronological listing below shows) understanding the relationship between different fantasy novelists and series, tracking the influence going forward and the reactions, revisions, and subversions looking backward. I find that endlessly fascinating.

So: Having said that, if you were to add 3-5 must-read books or series to this list, what would you recommend? [NB: The list has now been updated with suggestions.]

1. E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros (1922)
2. Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian (1932–36)
3. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937) + The Lord of the Rings (1954)
4. T. H. White, The Once and Future King (1938–58) + The Book of Merlyn (1977)
5. C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–56)
6. Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960)
7. Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
8. Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–68)
9. Ursula K. Le Guin, Earthsea Cycle (1968–2001)
10. Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972)
11. Stephen King, The Stand (1978) + The Dark Tower (1982–2004)
12. Mark Helprin, A Winter’s Tale (1983)
13. Terry Pratchett, Discworld (1983–2015)
14. Guy Gavriel Kay, The Fionavar Tapestry (1984–86)
15. Tad Williams, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (1988–1993)
16. Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time (1990–2013) 
17. Robin Hobb, The Farseer Trilogy (1995–97)
18. Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials (1995–2000)
19. George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–)
20. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter (1997–2007)
21. Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files (2000–)
22. Neil Gaiman, American Gods (2001)
23. Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2004)
24. Gene Wolfe, The Wizard Knight (2004)
25. Scott Lynch, Gentlemen Bastard Sequence (2006–) 
26. Joe Abercrombie, The First Law (2006–)
27. Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn (2006–)
28. China Miéville, Un Lun Dun (2007) + The City & The City (2009)
29. Patrick Rothfuss, The Kingkiller Chronicle (2007–)
30. Lev Grossman, The Magicians Trilogy (2009–2014)
31. Justin Cronin, The Passage Trilogy (2010–16) 
32. N. K. Jemisin, Broken Earth Trilogy (2015–17)

Paul Griffiths on the liturgy anticipating heaven

"[A]ttending to the liturgy is the closest we can get, here below, to attending to heaven. In examining it, we approach as close as we can get to examining the life of the saints in heaven as it is once they are resurrected and enjoying both sensory and nonsensory modes of knowing and seeing the LORD. This is because most of the elements of the life of the world to come are present in nuce in the worshiping assembly: the ascended LORD is present in the flesh; the gathered people is an assembly of those who know and love him as he is, at least to some degree; and the fabric of the event is woven from the threads of love exchanged—love given preveniently by the LORD, whose creature the church is, and love given responsively by the people, who have collectively and individually been brought into being by the LORD. The leitmotif of the words and actions of the liturgical gathering is adoration. All this is also true of the gathering of the resurrected saints around the LORD's ascended flesh in heaven."

—Paul Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures (Baylor Press, 2014), pp. 67-68

Why there's no such thing as non-anachronistic interpretation, and it's a good thing too: reflections occasioned by Wesley Hill's Paul and the Trinity

For some time now I have been convinced that the issue at the root of all conversation and controversy regarding historical criticism and theological interpretation of the Bible is anachronism. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to write an article on the topic in the next year or two; I've touched on the theme in a paragraph or two in a couple of articles already, but it deserves a treatment unto itself. Until then, let me use Wesley Hill's wonderful book Paul and the Trinity: Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters as an occasion to discuss what's at play here.

Programmatically: The fundamental hermeneutical first principle of self-consciously historical-critical study of the Bible is that such study must avoid anachronism. Two hermeneutical values underlie or spin off this principle: on the one hand, what makes any reading good is whether it is properly historical; therefore, on the other hand, all reading of the Bible ought to avoid anachronism—or to say the same thing negatively, anachronistic readings of biblical texts are by definition bad.

Enter scholars like Hill: supple interpreters, subtle thinkers, careful writers, sophisticated theologians. What Hill aims to show in his book is that the conceptual resources of trinitarian theology may be used in the reading of biblical texts like Paul's letters as a hermeneutical lens that enables, rather than obstructs, understanding. More to the point, such understanding does not stray from the canons of historical criticism, which is to say, it does not fall prey to anachronism. Thus, his project "plays by the rules" while bringing to bear doctrinal resources otherwise considered anathema by historical critics (both Christian and otherwise).

Consider his language:

"I need to clarify in what ways the grammar of trinitarian theology will and will not be invoked, and to specify the methodological safeguards that will protect my exegesis from devolving into an exercise in imaginative theologizing." (31)

"The methodological danger that lurks here is one that may be described as a certain kind of 'projection'... To avoid this pitfall, I will adopt a twofold approach: First, the readings of Paul I will offer ... will be self-consciously historical readings, guided by the canons of 'critical' modes of exegesis. At no point will a trinitarian conclusion be allowed to 'trump' what Paul's texts may be plausibly shown to have communicated within his own context. Second, trinitarian theologies will be employed as hermeneutical resources and, thus, mined for conceptualities which may better enable a genuinely historical exegesis to articulate what other equally 'historical' approaches may have (unwittingly or not) obscured." (45)

"[Paul's theology's] patterns and dynamics may be newly illumined and realized within new contexts and by means of later conceptualities, which are to some degree 'foreign' to the texts themselves." (46)

"...the use of trinitarian theology in the task of reading Paul in an authentically historical mode..." (46)

"my goal is not to 'find' trinitarian theology 'in' Paul so much as to use the conceptual resources of trinitarian doctrine as hermeneutical aids for reading Paul afresh. [This book addresses the] question of whether those trinitarian resources may actualize certain trajectories from Paul's letters that he would have expressed in a different idiom." (104-105)

"[Recent] studies are rightly concerned to respect the linear unfolding of historical development, rather than anachronistically imposing later theologies back onto Paul's letters. But my thesis ... has been mostly taken up with demonstrating the converse: that trinitarian doctrine may be used retrospectively to shed light on and enable a deeper penetration of the Pauline texts in their own historical milieu, and that it is not necessarily anachronistic to allow later Christian categories to be the lens through which one reads Paul. ... I have tried ... to show that the conceptual categories of 'persons in relation' developed so richly in the fourth century and in the following theological era, may enable those who live with them to live more deeply and fruitfully with the first century apostle himself." (171)

"Is it possible ... that a kind of broad, pluriform trinitarian perspective, far from being an anachronistic imposition on the texts of Paul, may instead prove genuinely insightful in a fresh look at Paul?" (169)

Let me be clear: Hill masterfully demonstrates his thesis. Anyone who knows my theological interests knows that Hill is preaching to the choir. The concepts, categories, and modes of reading developed in the 4th and 5th centuries by the church fathers constitute a hermeneutic nonpareil for faithful interpretation of the Christian Bible, the epistles of Paul included. And Hill shows us why: positively, because that hermeneutic was constructed precisely in response to the kinds of challenge for talk about God, Christ, and Spirit found in Paul's letters and elsewhere; negatively, because contemporary historical critics have not learned the exegetical-theological lessons of trinitarian doctrine, and thus largely replay the terminological debates from the side of opposition to Nicaea (e.g., distinction obviates unity, derivation implies subordination, etc.).

But when I say that Hill demonstrates his thesis, I do not mean that he succeeds in offering a reading that avoids anachronism. He does not. But the fault is not with him. The fault is with the criterion itself. His only fault—and it is a minor one, but an instructive one nonetheless—is to play by the rules set for him by biblical criticism. Because the truth is that avoiding anachronism is impossible. The act of reading is itself irreducibly, unavoidably, essentially anachronistic. In particular, reading any text from the past, indeed a religious text from the ancient past, just is to engage in anachronism.

So the issue is not that Hill's trinitarian hermeneutic for Paul is anachronistic. It's that the non-trinitarian hermeneutics of every one of his peers—Dunn, Hurtado, McGrath, Bauckham, whomever—are equally anachronistic.

Hill gestures toward this fact in his critique of the use of "monotheism" as a category applied to Paul, as well as the language of a vertical axis on which to plot the relative divinity of God and Jesus. But the critique goes all the way down. And this cannot be said forcefully enough, given the depths of historical criticism's rejection of anachronism, both for its own exegesis and that of anyone else, and given the extent of its influence not only over the academy but over the church. In a word:

Historical-critical exegesis is fundamentally, inescapably anachronistic.

What do I mean by this, and on what grounds do I say it?

First, and most basically, because historical criticism is itself a contingent, lately constructed mode of reading not universally found among all communities of reading. Put differently: the attempt to read without anachronism is a parochial idea—created at a certain time and place, and therefore present in some cultures and not others. So that the suggestion that non-anachronistic reading is what it means to read well is self-refuting, if reading was ever a successful practice outside of Western culture in the last few centuries.

Second, because all reading is anachronistic, as I said above. Let's limit that claim to the readings of texts not written in one's own immediate time and place and/or addressed to oneself (i.e., not emails received moments after sending). To read a text outside of its original context and audience means to read that text in a new, different context, by or with a new, different audience—in this case, you, the reader. That means that the language, customs, assumptions, beliefs, practices, background knowledge, relationships, intentions, and so on, that pertained to the original setting of the text are no longer present, or present in the same way, and that you bring to the text entirely different customs, knowledge, experience, etc. To read a text in such a setting invariably changes how the text is read. And however much one tries to mitigate such contextual factors, resistance is futile; indeed, resistance is itself a sign of doing something different—engaging in a different practice, through different means, with a different end—than the original audience in its original context.

Now, third, the objection might arise: Does that mean we simply cannot arrive at historical understanding? Not at all. My point is the opposite: True historical understanding is always anachronistic. Because historical self-understanding, historical consciousness, is itself a historical achievement, a contingent event. The way that we late moderns "think" history is not native to history's actors; "putting ourselves in their shoes," trying to think their thoughts after them, in just the way they thought them, ruthlessly identifying and trying to eliminate any stray intrusions of modern thoughts and even modern applications—that is, strictly speaking, something our forebears did not do. We can do it, we can play the game, but it's a game we're playing (just like chess or basketball, which are real games with real rules we can really play in the present, but which have not always existed, even if analogous games existed in other cultures, past or present); it's not a sort of time machine of the mind. Even that metaphor fails, since the trouble with time machines, as with observation of nature, is that they don't leave the past untouched. The same goes for historical investigation. You bring the future with you.

Fourth, the insight of Gadamer is key here: Historical understanding is a possibility, but lack of anachronism is neither possible nor desirable. That would entail leaping over the history in between the text in question and the present. But that history has, quite literally, made the reading of that text now, in this setting, possible; furthermore, texts bring with them the histories of their reception that have attended them ever since their inception. Those histories not only inform our interpretations in the present, however historically rigorous: they set the conditions for them. To make the claim, "Paul's conception of God and Christ is binitarian," is to locate oneself on a timeline; it is not a claim that was made, because it could not have been made, prior to a certain moment in our history. And, as a claim, it would be no more intelligible to Paul than to Anselm. That is what makes it anachronistic.

Fifth, the most important reason why historical-critical reading is essentially anachronistic is the way that it uses—quite explicitly and without apology—resources outside the text, resources foreign to the text's original audience, as a means of interpreting the text. Examples are obvious: monographs and articles, concepts created long after the text's composition, archeological findings, data regarding life and neighboring cultures prior to and contemporaneous with the text's original setting. Historical-critical exegesis often proposes readings of ancient religious texts (say, Genesis 1) that would have been impossible in the original context, because no one at the time had, or could have had, the kind of comprehensive knowledge about their own time and place that we have since amassed. (It is worth noting that this exegetical procedure is not different in kind than reading Genesis 1 in light of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, or scientific theories about the origins of the universe.) In a manner of speaking, the best historical-critical interpretations are self-consciously maximalist in just this way: they are so exhaustive in searching out every possible detail, contour, allusion, and influence that such an interpretation in the text's original setting would have been unthinkable—indeed, no such interpretation would have been possible until now, this very moment in time. Undertaken in that sort of self-conscious way, anachronism would be welcomed and readily admitted as the very occasion and goal of historical reading.

Much more could be said; Lord willing, I'll say it in print here in a few years. For now, recall Hill's rhetorical question in the book's conclusion: "Is it possible ... that a kind of broad, pluriform trinitarian perspective, far from being an anachronistic imposition on the texts of Paul, may instead prove genuinely insightful in a fresh look at Paul?" (169). Let me take a lesson from Hill and apply it to his own work: these are not competing claims; it is not an either/or situation. Bringing trinitarian doctrine to bear on the letters of Paul is both anachronistic and richly insightful. Whether or not it is more insightful than non-trinitarian readings, whether or not it does greater justice to the texts considered as a whole and in all their literary-theological diversity, is a separate question, one not governed exclusively by historical concerns. I happen to side with Hill's answer. But even if we were wrong in our judgment, it would not be because our reading was anachronistic. An ostensibly superior reading would be, too.

The Lord Reigns: A Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension

A sermon preached at the Round Rock Church of Christ, Sunday, 6 May 2018.

Opening reading

Hear this word from the book of Acts, chapter 1, verses 1-12:

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Then they returned to Jerusalem…

Prayer

Almighty God,
whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ
ascended far above the heavens
that he might fill all things:
Mercifully give us faith to perceive that,
according to his promise,
he abides with his Church on earth,
even to the end of the ages;
and now, by your grace,
pour through me the gift of preaching,
that what is heard this day through human lips
might be the word of God for the people of God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Introduction

I’m not sure if you know this, but in four days there is a special day on the Christian calendar.

It isn’t Easter, which was only last month. It isn’t Christmas, which is still a long ways away. It isn’t one of those days or seasons you might have heard about but never celebrated, like Advent or Lent or Ash Wednesday, or for the especially church-nerdy, the Feast of the Annunciation.

No, this Thursday is Ascension Day. It is the day on the church calendar when, for millennia, Christians have remembered and celebrated the ascension of the risen Jesus to heaven. You may have already put together why it is celebrated on a Thursday: because, as Acts tells us, Jesus appeared to the apostles over a 40-day period, at the end of which Jesus was taken from their sight. And this Thursday marks 40 days since Easter Sunday. In the same way, Pentecost Sunday is two weeks from today, since Pentecost is a Jewish festival of 50 days following Passover—and Pentecost is the time when Jesus, having ascended to heaven, poured out the Holy Spirit on his disciples.

So when I was asked to preach this Sunday, I looked at the calendar and realized I had to preach about the Ascension. Not only because of the timing, between Passover, Easter, and Pentecost, but also because—when was the last time you heard a sermon on the Ascension

Now the Ascension doesn’t always play the most prominent role in our retellings of the work of Christ. When we summarize the gospel, we say, “Jesus is risen,” not “Jesus is ascended.” Or when we stretch it out, we say, “the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.” Or we say that Christ died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, not that he ascended to heaven for our salvation. And that’s perfectly fine: the New Testament certainly emphasizes the cross and the resurrection as the fundamental focal points for understanding the significance of what Jesus has done for us.

But what I want to talk about this morning is how pivotal, in fact, the Ascension is to the gospel story. If you leave it out, the story remains incomplete. And not only does the New Testament not leave it out; once you’re on the lookout for it, you realize it’s everywhere. Just as Paul says in 1 Corinthians that, if Christ is not raised from the dead, we are still in our sins, and our faith is in vain—the same applies here: if Christ did not ascend to heaven, the gospel is no good news at all, and we of all people are to be pitied. Why is that?

Well, here’s a question to ask yourself. Where is Jesus, and why is he there? Hold that thought.

Where Jesus is

As many of y’all know, I have two boys. And when you have a theologian for a dad, conversations about God can get really interesting, really fast.

Now Sam and Rowan have a very strict three-tiered understanding of reality. First, there is our world. Second, there is God’s world. Third, there is Pretend World. Pretend World is where they assign anything and everything that isn’t real, or doesn’t really happen in our world. So they regularly ask me, “Is that in our world? Or Pretend World?” Unfortunately for all of us, Captain America and Luke Skywalker and Scooby-Doo are all part of Pretend World. Pretty much anything we read about in a book or watch in a movie is a part of Pretend World, even if it’s real people acting as if something Pretend is real.

So one day we were reading a children’s Bible together, a story about David. And Sam casually referred to David as belonging to Pretend World. I looked at him, and said, “Sam, David isn’t in Pretend World.” He looked back at me as only an all-knowing five-year old can, and said, “Dad, he’s in the Bible. That’s Pretend World.”

At which point I questioned everything I’d ever said or taught about God and the Bible.

And I said, “Sam, everything in the Bible is in our world. It’s not Pretend World, it’s real!” His and Rowan’s eyes got bigger and bigger as I explained to them that, not only were David and Elijah and Jesus and Peter all not pretend, but I’ve been to where they lived. Israel is a place just like Austin and Abilene are places. Now, David died a long time ago, but he lived in the very same world that we live in. The same for everyone else in the Bible.

Having blown their minds, and corrected for all my fatherly shortcomings, I thought my work was done. But then Sam said, “Okay, but since they died, they’re in heaven with God, so now they’re not in our world, they’re in God’s world.” Yes, correct. “Then where is Jesus?” Remember, Sam, he went to heaven after he rose from the dead, so he’s in heaven with God, too. “But Dad, didn’t you also tell us that, just like God, Jesus is everywhere—even in this room with us? But if Jesus is in heaven with God, how can he be here with us too? Is Jesus in God’s world, or is he in our world?”

To which I said, with rich paternal wisdom and years of deep theological training: Time for bed.

Where is Jesus?

Let me back up and situate the Ascension in the broader context of the gospel story.

In his great love, God sends his Son into the world, to become a human being. Jesus proclaims the good news of God’s kingdom in Israel, teaching and healing and caring for those overlooked by society. He is a prophet mighty in word and deed, bringing judgment and repentance and promise of healing to God’s people. He is a king, the son of David, anointed by the Spirit as the long-awaited Messiah. He is a priest, who through the offering of himself on the cross, makes atonement for sins, and through his resurrection triumphs over the power of death once and for all.

He appears to his disciples, and once they realize they don’t have anything to fear from him—they did abandon him after all—they finally, finally realize who he is and what he has done. So naturally, they ask him if what’s next is what they imagined all along: Kick out the pagan occupiers, mop up the godless nations, and restore the glory to Israel, God’s chosen people of old.

And it is at this point that there is a second twist in the story.

The first twist was that Israel’s Messiah would be a suffering servant, yielding to the sword rather than wielding it. The second twist is that, after his victory over sin and death, he still doesn’t take up the sword to decimate the evil powers of the world—not least Rome, which crucified him. Instead, the risen Jesus says to his disciples: “It is not for you to know when the final victory will come. But wait for the Holy Spirit, who will make you witnesses about me to the ends of the earth.” And he was taken from them.

So the Ascension continues this pattern, so common in Scripture, of an unexpected turn in the narrative, yet one that, in retrospect, is perfectly fitting. It’s true that the Ascension answers a question: Where is Jesus? Sam was right about that. But that’s the least significant part of it. And even then, teaching about Jesus being in heaven can come to signify something entirely negative, or passive: the Ascension explains Jesus’s absence; his invisibility; his silence; even, perhaps, his impotence. It can make it sound as if God left us alone after saving us, and we’re stuck here, helpless, until he decides to show up again.

But that is not what Jesus says here, nor is it what the rest of the New Testament says. So why did Jesus go to heaven? What is the meaning of the Ascension? And why is it good news? I want to focus on six aspects of the Ascension that help to answer these questions, and most of all why it is central to the gospel story.

1-2: Spirit & Presence

Back to Acts 1.

Jesus directs our attention to two consequences of the Ascension: the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the mission of the church. These are intertwined; you don’t get one without the other. The ascended Christ will pour out the Spirit of God on the disciples, and filled with that Spirit, they will be Christ’s witnesses not only in Jerusalem and Judea, not only in Samaria, but in every direction: south to Africa, east to India and China, north to Turkey and Russia, west to Greece and Rome—and, centuries later, the Americas.

So why does Jesus return to heaven?

First, so that the Holy Spirit might be poured out on all flesh. This is the promised gift of God, long prophesied in the Old Testament. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the apostles, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” (16:7)

Why is it better for Jesus to go than to stay? Because for Jesus to go means the coming of the Spirit. And what does that mean? It means God himself abiding in us, both together as a community and in each and every one of the baptized. Once God took up residence in a temple, a house made by human hands; now God takes up residence in the hearts of the faithful, temples made of flesh and bone, created in the image of God himself. The Spirit of God convicts, gives life, and liberates; where the Spirit is, there is life and power: life from the dead and power to live free from sin. The Spirit directs us in the way we should go; the Spirit holds us in the mercy and grace of God; the Spirit gives us words to pray and makes the Father of Jesus our Father—through the Spirit we are sisters and brothers of Jesus and therefore sisters and brothers of one another. The Spirit is the power of God for salvation, the unconquerable divine love who puts fire in our bones to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. The Spirit makes us holy as God is holy.

The Spirit, in short, is the very presence of the living God—and though he is a consuming fire, he does not burn us to a crisp, but like the leaves of the burning bush, like the flesh of Jesus on whom the Spirit descended like a dove—the Spirit’s presence purifies and remakes us, but does not undo us.

This is the second aspect of the Ascension. Even after the resurrection, Jesus was embodied; Christians confess the resurrection of the body, including the body of Jesus. The thing about bodies is that they are located in one place. Jesus appeared to his disciples in Galilee, Emmaus, and Jerusalem. He didn’t appear in Rome or Nairobi or Moscow. What Luke reveals to us in Acts is that Jesus’s Ascension, far from initiating Jesus’s absence from the world, is the beginning of a far more radical and intimate presence to the world. When I teach Acts to students, I do a kind of call-and-response about this to drill this into their heads. The Ascension is not about Jesus’s absence, but rather another mode of his presence. The Ascension is not about Jesus’s absence, but rather another mode of his presence.

That is the essential thing. The Holy Spirit is the means by which Jesus Christ, risen in glory in heaven with God the Father, is present in grace and power at all times, in all places, to everyone who believes. Where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, there he is with them—because of the Ascension. Because of the Ascension, through Jesus’s own Spirit, he is present to you and to me, to each and every one of us: speaking, guiding, convicting, calling, justifying, sanctifying, glorifying. Sam asked me how Jesus could be in heaven with God and everywhere else at the same time, including here with us now. The answer is Pentecost. The answer is the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, who has been shed abroad in our hearts, through faith. The answer is the Ascension.

3: Mission

The risen Jesus tells the disciples in Acts 1 that they will be his witnesses to and among the nations. The third aspect of the Ascension, therefore, is mission. For what does the outpouring of the Spirit create? The church of Jesus Christ. What is the church’s primary purpose? To make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the triune name and teaching them all that Christ commanded.

Had Jesus restored the kingdom at a moment’s notice, only days after the resurrection, guess who wouldn’t be included? You and me. As the apostles slowly came to understand, partly through the ascended Jesus’s special calling of Paul to be the apostle to the gentiles, Jesus goes away not only to become near to all who believe through the Spirit; more specifically, it creates a new time in the world’s history—the time of mission, of witness, of the church. And that time is, as Paul puts it in Romans 11, the time for the gentiles to come into the people of God.

It turns out the good news of Israel’s Messiah wasn’t meant exclusively for Israel. It was meant for the whole world.

The Ascension of Jesus creates the time necessary for the gospel to be proclaimed in every tongue and in every nation on this planet. The Ascension of Jesus is an act of extraordinary generosity on God’s part: it wasn’t time to wrap up the world’s history; it was time to get the news to every corner of the globe, and as time unfolded, to spread the word to each new generation as it arose.

If you aren’t a Jew, and if you weren’t born in the land of Israel in the first century—which means everyone in this room—then the Ascension of Jesus means that God wanted to include you in his story. Let me say that again: The Ascension of Jesus means that God wanted to include you in his story. God wanted to wait for all of us to have a share in the kingdom of his Son.

As 2 Peter 3 says, God isn’t delaying. What seems like Jesus taking a long time to return is actually a matter of divine patience. God has all the time in the world for us. He’s not going anywhere.

4-5: Exaltation & Reign

In the second chapter of Acts, after the Spirit has been poured out, Peter stands up and preaches to the crowd. Here is what he says at the end of his sermon: “God raised up [Jesus from the dead], and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies a stool for your feet.’” (2:32-35)

Just a few chapters later, Peter preaches again in Acts 5: “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” (5:30-32)

In Philippians 2, Paul writes: “And being found in human form [Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (2:9-11)

Finally in Hebrews, we read this: “When [Jesus] had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high… For a little while [he] was made lower than the angels, [but] now [is] crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death…[and he is] exalted above the heavens…” (1:3; 2:9; 7:26)

Here is the fourth, and perhaps central, aspect of the Ascension: It is the exaltation of Jesus.

Above every name, above every power, far superior to angels, far more excellent than all the fathers and mothers and heroes in the faith who preceded him—far surpassing every measure of excellence and standard of beauty and seat of power we can imagine—above the heaven of heavens, there stands Jesus, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the slain Lamb, the author and perfecter of our faith, the Messiah of Israel, the eternal Word of God, the One with the keys of death and Hades in his hands—Jesus, son of Mary, son of David, son of Abraham, son of Adam, Son of God—there he stands, enthroned in heaven, bearing the name that is above every name, victor and vanquisher of sin and death, of the devil and all his works—the Holy One, Emmanuel, the Crucified, the Creator himself, our brother, Incarnate, the Alpha and Omega, the One who was and is and is to come, God blessed forever—him, that one, Jesus, he is exalted, raised not just from death to life but from earth to heaven, to the right hand of the Father, to reign forever and ever, world without end, amen.

That is what the Ascension means. That is why Jesus returned to his Father and ours. Because when death could not hold him, this universe itself could not hold him. He returned in glory to the Father’s side, now in the body he assumed for our sake, there to rule not just as God’s Son and Word, but as the Crucified and Risen One, the Messiah and Savior of the world.

To reign, to rule: that is the fifth aspect of his Ascension. Who reigns, who rules? Who is enthroned? Who stands at the head of a glorious procession of victory?

The king. Jesus is the king. The son of David is David’s Lord. Israel’s king reigns, now, over all the earth. He is king of Israel, king of the cosmos, king of heaven. Not for nothing did Paul’s opponents in Thessalonica in Acts 17 accuse Christians before the authorities of “all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” (17:7) There is another king, and his name is Jesus!

The Roman Empire called Caesar “lord” and “savior” and “son of god.” So what titles did the early Christians confess of Jesus? Lord! Savior! Son of God! Why were believers persecuted so often? Because they constituted a threat to the powers that be. Why were believers so willing to suffer and die for the faith? Because they knew who was in charge—they knew the name of the one true King, and his name wasn’t Caesar.

The Ascension means that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King, and he reigns on high over the affairs of earth. Does that mean that life on earth, for believers or nonbelievers, is easy or painless? Not at all. What it means is this. At all times, in all circumstances, no matter how bad things are or how bad they appear to be—the Lord reigns; Jesus is in charge. The Lord Jesus reigns: He will be with you, because he is with us now, by his Spirit. No power or authority on this earth compares with his power and authority. Nor will any power that stands against him triumph. We know with whom, on whose side, heaven stands, because we know those with whom heaven’s king stood during his time on earth. He stood with the poor, the needy, the sick, the overlooked, the beaten-down, the downtrodden, the meek, the tax collectors and prostitutes and little ones whose weaknesses the powerful exploited. That’s where the king of the universe stands: with the least of these, the sisters and brothers of Jesus.

Which means that’s where we must stand, if we want to be where Jesus is.

6: Intercession

So—summing up so far: The exalted Jesus, reigning from God’s right hand, powerfully present by the Holy Spirit in and to his body, the church, as it continues its mission to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth—that, so far, is what the Ascension means, what it enables.

Remember that Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. We have seen how he rules as king and speaks as prophet, through the Spirit. The sixth and final aspect of the Ascension is Jesus’s intercession for us before God, as priest.

The book of Hebrews teaches us that Jesus is both priest and offering; the offering he made was himself, his own body and blood, a once-for-all sacrifice for sins. In chapter 7 we read this: “For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.” (7:26)

Hebrews goes on to say that, as the one, final, permanent priest, Jesus “appears in the presence of God on our behalf,” for “he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” (9:24; 7:25)

Similarly Paul writes in Romans 8 that “it is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.” (8:34)

Finally 1 John 2 says that, “if anyone sins, we have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (2:1-2)

What does this mean?

It does not mean that the Father is against us and the Son is for us, the one angry and the other merciful, as if one Person of the Trinity were divided against another. What it means is that Jesus, our mediator, at once both God and man, fully divine and fully human—Jesus is, now and forever, on our side. He is for us. He is for you. He is Immanuel, God with us. Only now he is human-with-God. On earth, God-with-humans. In heaven, human-with-God.

Our brother, the Galilean, he is in the highest of heavens, the unapproachable, ineffable sphere of beauty and blessedness—he is there, he has as it were taken us with him there, and from everlasting to everlasting he has our best interests at heart.

What sins we commit in the meantime, though we should repent of them swiftly and sincerely, they should not trouble or grieve us, they need not weigh us down: for we have an infinitely patient, infinitely merciful, infinitely willing advocate and priest at God’s side, one who, as Hebrews puts it, “became like his sisters and brothers in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God. And because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” (2:17-18)

Jesus ascended to the right hand of God in order to serve, eternally, as our advocate, priest, and intercessor. Your brother Jesus is not just there with you in the dock; he has the ear of the judge. Now and forever, the verdict is Not Guilty.

Conclusion

After the Ascension, Acts tells us that two angels appear, who say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” In other words: Jesus will return as he left, coming on the clouds of heaven. So long as the earth and the church’s mission on it endure, we wait for our royal priest, Israel’s Messiah and heaven’s King, to appear, once and for all. The Ascension inaugurates the time of hope, of faith’s patient waiting for the final fulfillment of the promise of the kingdom to come at last, for the New Jerusalem to descend from heaven like a bride adorned for her groom.

Until then, I can do no better than to conclude by quoting Paul in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 1:

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Col 3:1-4)

“[This is] the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Eph 1:15-23)

The church’s head is the risen Jesus, and the risen Jesus is Lord, and the Lord reigns from heaven. Thanks be to God.

Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:
You reign from heaven
With your Father and Spirit.
We beg you, by your grace,
To strengthen us in faith, hope, and love,
That you would raise the eyes of our hearts
To you, glorious in power and love,
Ruling on high with mercy and justice.
Rule us, too, as your body,
As we proclaim your kingdom here on earth,
Awaiting with patience your heavenly appearing,
When the will of your Father will at last be done
Here, in the new creation of your marvelous work,
Where peace will dwell forever.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: Amen.

On Paul, apocalyptic theology, and the rest of the New Testament

I'm nearing the end of a full academic year teaching the New Testament to freshmen. Many of my students are new to the Bible, or at least to reading the Bible. I taught the Gospels in the fall, focusing primarily on Mark, and this spring I've taught the rest of the New Testament, without skipping any books.

Usually, the way the spring course works is revealed by its traditional title: Acts to Revelation. Both sequentially and substantively, the class is defined by the history Luke tells of the church's mission after the ascension of Jesus, which crystalizes around Paul's work among the gentiles; this, naturally, is followed by an extensive reading of Paul's letters, beginning with Romans. Then the catholic epistles and Revelation invariably find themselves scrunched together at the end.

On a lark, I decided to try to de-center Paul from the course structure, and to see what would happen. Here's how I've taught the course:

Acts (2 weeks)
James, 1–2 Peter, Jude, 1–3 John (2 weeks)
Hebrews (2 weeks)
Revelation (2 weeks)
[Spring Break]
1–2 Thessalonians, Philippians (2 weeks)
1–2 Corinthians (1 week)
Galatians & Romans (2 weeks)
Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Pastorals (2 weeks)

As you can see, my students don't even read a letter from Paul until the second half of the course; and they don't read Galatians or Romans until Week 12—in the final quarter of the semester.

I was prepared for this plan to backfire in a serious way, not least with so many students (all of whom are majoring in something other than the Bible) unfamiliar with the basic stories, persons, terms, and concepts of the New Testament. As it happens, the result has been better than I could have imagined. What my students have been exposed to—at least from my vantage point as the teacher—is a picture of the profound cultural, geographical, and theological diversity of the apostolic church in its first three generations of life. They have been asked to think about Peter's leadership in the early church; about the teaching of James Adelphotheos, in Acts and in the epistle that bears his name; about the gospel according to Hebrews; about the vision of Jesus and the church found in the Apocalypse; and so on. We spent a full six weeks basically not thinking about gentiles, concerned instead with specifically Jewish Christianity, its faith, its relationship to Israel's scriptures, its understanding of the Messiah, etc.

Put differently: My students didn't hear the phrase "justification by faith" until after they had read 19 other books in the New Testament: all four Gospels, everything Paul didn't write, and a few letters that he did. They weren't introduced to the Jesus of the Gospels plus Pauline Christianity. They were introduced, over the course of a year, to 27 different texts bearing witness to a dizzying display of distinct (though—a topic for another blog post—impressively complementary and unified) modes of approaching, understanding, and presenting the story and meaning of the good news about Jesus. It's true that 13 of those 27 texts bear Paul's name—though they are far from the majority of the New Testament in terms of overall length—and it's true that some of those 13 texts have been very important in the history of Christianity in the West. But they aren't the sum total of the gospel, either historically or theologically. And there is a way of teaching the New Testament that permits, even encourages, a certain selection of Pauline literature to dominate: to serve as a filter on everything else, as the master hermeneutic for the figure of Jesus, the early church, and the definition of the euangelion. My experiment has proven to me, at least, that that is neither necessary nor beneficial.

Which brings me to the topic of apocalyptic theology.

I read a fair bit of apocalyptic theology during my Master's work, and some of it made quite an impression on me. And I just got Phil Ziegler's book in the mail yesterday, which I am very much looking forward to reading. I have the highest respect not just for Ziegler but for all his compatriots in the apocalyptic vanguard.

As I read the introduction, however, it raised the following question. What do the apocalyptic folks do with those parts of the New Testament—in my view, a clear majority—that are not apocalyptic? Or at least, are not apocalyptic in the way that Romans and Galatians are? More to the point, is there a worked-out bibliological claim that positively asserts and defends the thesis that (a) the non-apocalyptic portions of the New Testament ought, normatively, to be read through apocalyptic Paulinism, and (b) those non-apocalyptic portions are, in some profound way, inadequate to the gospel?

I'm aware that there are vaguely supersessionistic, semi-Marcionite, and/or anti-Catholic modes of biblical scholarship and hyper-Protestantism that more or less explicitly cut out "the later catholic epistles" along with Hebrews, the Gospel of Matthew, Luke-Acts, and huge swaths of the Old Testament. I'm going to assume that the people I have in mind steer clear of those (alternately dangerous and silly) theological dead-ends.

But granting that assumption, does there exist a sustained, theologically robust answer to this set of questions? One that makes sense of, or constitutes, a doctrine of Scripture that isn't a pick-and-choose canon-within-the-canon, much less an arbitrary Paul's-the-only-one-who-really-truly-got-it-right?

If you know of resources, essays, books, etc., or if you yourself have an answer, holler. I'm all ears.

Jon Levenson on the costs and limitations of historical criticism

“Historical criticism has indeed brought about a new situation in biblical studies. The principal novelty lies in the recovery of the Hebrew Bible as opposed to the Tanakh and the Old Testament affirmed by rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, respectively. Jews and Christians can, in fact, meet as equals in the study of this new/old book, but only because the Hebrew Bible is largely foreign to both traditions and precedes them This meeting of Jews and Christians on neutral ground can have great value, for it helps to correct misconceptions each group has of the other and to prevent the grievous consequences of such misconceptions, such as anti-Semitic persecutions. It is also the case that some of the insights into the text that historical criticism generates will be appropriated by the Jews or the church themselves, and they can thereby convert history into tradition and add vitality to an exegetical practice that easily becomes stale and repetitive. But it is also the case that the historical-critical method compels its practitioners to bracket their traditional identities, and this renders its ability to enrich Judaism and Christianity problematic. There is, to be sure, plenty of room in each tradition for such bracketing. There are ample and long-standing precedents for Jews to pursue a plain sense at odds with rabbinic midrashim and even halakhah and for Christians to interpret the Old Testament in a non-Christocentric fashion. But unless historical criticism can learn to interact with other senses of scripture—senses peculiar to the individual traditions and not shared between them—it will either fade or prove to be not a meeting ground of Jews and Christians, but the burial ground of Judaism and Christianity, as each tradition vanishes into the past in which neither had as yet emerged. Western Christians are so used to being in the majority that the danger of vanishing is usually not real to them; after all, the post-Christian era will still be post-Christian, not post-something else. But Jewry, none too numerous before the Holocaust, has now become 'a brand plucked from the fire' (Zech 3:2). And most Jews with an active commitment to their tradition will be suspicious of any allegedly common ground that requires them to suppress or shed their Jewishness.

“Bracketing tradition has its value, but also its limitations. Though fundamentalists will not see the value, nor historicists the limitations, intellectual integrity and spiritual vitality in this new situation demand the careful affirmation of both."

—Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (1993), p. 105. That line about Christians in the West not feeling the danger of vanishing, by contrast to Jews after the Shoah, is worth ruminating on. God be praised for Levenson, who is peerless and unflinching in his insights into and critique of historical criticism.

Marilynne Robinson should know better

Like most seminary graduates and all theologians, I have long loved Marilynne Robinson. I read Gilead in the summer of 2005 and The Death of Adam shortly thereafter, and the deep affection created in those encounters has never left me. I have heard her speak on more than one occasion—at a church of Christ university and at Yale Divinity School, my two worlds colliding—and she was nothing but gracious, eloquent, and compelling in her anointed role as liberal Christian public intellectual. God give us more Marilynne Robinsons.

The beauty of her writing, her thought, and her public presence makes all the more painful the increasingly evident internal contradiction at the heart of her work. Others, with greater depth and insight than I am capable of offering here, have drawn attention to a related set of issues; see especially the reviews of her most recent volume of essays by Micah Meadowcroft, James K. A. Smith, B. D. McClay, Doug Sikkema, and Wesley Hill (alongside the earlier critique of Alan Jacobs, and the brief reflection yesterday by Bryan McGraw). The specific issue I am thinking of is not her inattention to original sin or total depravity, or the way in which such a lacuna is a serious misrepresentation of the Reformed tradition; or the way in which her politics is more or less a down-the-line box-checking of the Democratic National Committee, plus God and minus chronological snobbery; or how her public friendship with Barack Obama veers weirdly toward the obeisant—as if the former President did not order hundreds of drone strikes or deport millions of illegal immigrants or grant legal immunity to members of the CIA who engaged in torture under the previous administration or...

These and other matters are all worthy of interrogation and critique. What I'm interested in is her fundamental lack of charity or empathy toward people with whom she disagrees, namely red-state Christians, particularly those who voted for or continue to support Donald Trump.

Robinson is a novelist. The novelist's modus operandi is to create and embody the lives of human beings from the inside, human beings who are by definition not the author, whose beliefs and deeds are neither necessarily good nor necessarily defensible nor even necessarily consistent with one another. Moreover, Robinson has taken this deep attention to difference in the irreducible diversity of human affairs and applied it to history, recommending to others that they resist the thought-terminating prejudices of common cliche and instead offer to historically disreputable groups and personages the same benefit of doubt they would hope to be given themselves. Moses and Paul, Calvin and Cromwell, the Lollards and the Puritans: all are set within their original social and cultural context, judged by standards available at the time, compared to peers rather than progeny, permitted above all to be complex, conscientious, fallible, fallen, gloriously human members of one and the same species as the rest of us.

Comes the question: Why not use this same hermeneutic on the Repugnant Cultural Other that is the Trump-voting red-state would-be evangelical Christian? For, to use Alan Jacobs's term, that is what such a person is for Robinson. Doubtless such a person, and such a group, deserve robust criticism. They need not be treated with either paternalism or condescension. Say what you think, and give reasons why those with whom you disagree are wrong.

But Robinson does not take even one proverbial second to imagine the motivations or emotions or experiences of such people, or to consider how they might have been formed, or to what extent, if at all, they might be legitimate, whatever they popular expression in national politics or cable news. She does not step into their shoes. She does not even appear to imagine that they have shoes to step in. They are shoeless ciphers, a caricature without flesh and blood. And so she can, without irony, slander them in an essay on slander and Fox News; or question their Christian identity while challenging their recourse to drawing lines around orthodoxy; or treat them as a monolithic bloc in paeans to individualism; or castigate them as a group without showing knowledge of literate representation of their views, while wringing her hands about reading primary texts and avoiding capitulation to popular prejudice. Is there any popular prejudice more culturally acceptable in 2018 than dismissing all Republicans south of the Mason-Dixon line as bigoted dummies feigning faith as cover for benighted tribalism?

I am neither an evangelical nor a Republican nor a Trump voter. But I've lived in Texas, Georgia, and Connecticut, in major urban areas as well as "Trump country," with extended family spread out across the South and friends distributed along the Acela corridor. Robinson embodies the smug disdain common to all right-thinking people for folks I've counted and continue to count as neighbors, elders, family members, and fellow believers. More than anyone, Robinson should know that disagreement and critique, however fierce, are not obstacles to love—to the considerate love that generates attention, subtlety, and fellow feeling, without thereby obviating difference or conflict.

She should know better. She owes us more.

Defining fundamentalism

What makes a fundamentalist? It seems to me that there are only two workable definitions, one historical and one a sort of substantive shorthand. The first refers to actual self-identified fundamentalists from the early and mid-twentieth centuries, and to their (similarly defined) heirs today. The second refers to those Christian individuals or groups who, as it is often said, "lack a hermeneutic," that is, do not admit that hermeneutics is both unavoidable and necessary, and that therefore their interpretation of the Bible is not the only possible one for any rational literate person (or believer).

In my experience, both in print and in conversation, these definitions are very rarely operative. Colloquially, "fundamentalist" often means simply "bad," "conservative," or "to the right of me." I take it for granted that this usage is unjustified and to be avoided by any Christian, scholarly or otherwise; it is not only imprecise, it is little more than tribal slander. "I'm on the good team, and since she disagrees with me, she must be on the bad team."

Is there a workable definition beyond the options so far canvassed? In my judgment, it can't mean "someone who does not accept the deliverances of historical criticism," because those deliverances are by definition disputed; you can always find a non-fundamentalist who happens to affirm a stereotypically designated "fundamentalist" position. Postmodern hermeneutics cuts out the ground from the "sure deliverances" of historical criticism anyway.

Nor can the term, in my view, be applied usefully or consistently to specific doctrinal positions: the inerrancy of Scripture; male headship; traditional sexuality; young earth creationism; a denial of humanity's evolutionary origins; etc. On the one hand, "fundamentalist" isn't helpful because it carries so much historical and other baggage, while these positions can simply be named with terminological specificity. On the other hand, there are extraordinarily sophisticated historical, philosophical, and theological arguments for each and every one of these positions that belie the pejorative, "dummy know-nothing" evocations of "fundamentalism." That doesn't mean all or any of them are correct; it just means that branding them with the F-word is an exercise in both ad hominem and straw man tactics. The term itself has ceased to do work other than the functional task of marking who's in and who's out.

Finally, the term cannot mean "people or positions that use or allow the claims of revelation to trump other claims to knowledge." I fail to see how the epistemic primacy of revelation could ever be a mark of fundamentalism without thereby consigning all of Christian tradition and most of the contemporary global church to fundamentalist oblivion. And, again, it would come to mean so much that it would therefore mean very little indeed. If (nearly) everyone's a fundamentalist, then that doesn't tell us anything of value about the Christians so labeled.

So: Anyone got a useful definition to proffer? For myself, I'll limit myself in theory to the first two definitions listed, while in practice refraining from using the term altogether.

The thing about Phantom Thread

is that it's one of three things, none satisfactory. Either:

1. It's a profound meditation on the nature of love, on something intrinsic to love between men and women, a kind of unavoidable, even beautiful, crack in the surface of what is usually presented as seamless, without defect: in which case the film is false, self-deluded, and self-serious. Or:

2. It's a cheeky close-up, not on love in general, but on this particular couple's "love," doomed to dysfunction, an eternal power-play, in which the would-be submissive learns how to gain the upper hand, and the otherwise dominant, now dominated, accepts this kink in the relationship with a wry ardor: in which case the film is vile, an unserious exercise in sadomasochism either metaphorized or taken to an absurd extreme. Or:

3. It's nothing more than funny (and it is very funny), using the trappings of prestige film and high fashion and world-class acting and audience expectations as a Trojan horse for avant garde melodrama, gender-role hijinks, and an all-around send-up of the infinitely humorless genre of Very Serious Genius Men And Their Long-Suffering Muses: in which case the film is a rousing success, but ultimately quite shallow; and its central plot device is such a severe misdirect that the film's biggest fans have mistaken it for that which it is meant to parody: a meaningful commentary on love, genius, gender, art, power, etc.

These are also the stages of my own judgment about the film. I can make no sense of people who opt for either of the first two interpretations and acclaim the movie's greatness. And if, as I have come to believe, the third interpretation is best, then Anderson accomplished a task that wasn't worth the time or energy of his genuine genius. Or at least, it's not worth any more of my time, which otherwise might have been devoted to rewatching and continuing to reflect on such a film.

C. S. Lewis on the fumie

Meanwhile, in the Objective Room, something like a crisis had developed between Mark and Professor Frost. As soon as they arrived there Mark saw that the table had been drawn back. On the floor lay a large crucifix, almost life size, a work of art in the Spanish tradition, ghastly and realistic. “We have half an hour to pursue our exercises,” said Frost looking at his watch. Then he instructed Mark to trample on it and insult it in other ways.

Now whereas Jane had abandoned Christianity in early childhood, along with her belief in fairies and Santa Claus, Mark had never believed in it at all. At this moment, therefore, it crossed his mind for the very first time that there might conceivably be something in it. Frost who was watching him carefully knew perfectly well that this might be the result of the present experiment. He knew it for the very good reason that his own training by the Macrobes had, at one point, suggested the same odd idea to himself. But he had no choice. Whether he wished it or not this sort of thing was part of the initiation.

“But, look here," said Mark.

“What is it?" said Frost. “Pray be quick. We have only a limited time at our disposal.”

“This,” said Mark, pointing with an undefined reluctance to the horrible white figure on the cross. “This is all surely a pure superstition.”

“Well?”

“Well, if so, what is there objective about stamping on the face? Isn’t is just as subjective to spit on a thing like this as to worship it? I mean—damn it all—if it’s only a bit of wood, why do anything about it?”

“That is superficial. If you had been brought up in a non-Christian society, you would not be asked to do this. Of course, it is a superstition; but it is that particular superstition which has pressed upon our society for a great many centuries. It can be experimentally shown that is still forms a dominant system in the subconscious of many individuals whose conscious thought appears to be wholly liberated. An explicit action in the reverse direction is therefore a necessary step towards complete objectivity. It is not a question for a priori discussion. We find it in practice that it cannot be dispensed with.”

Mark himself was surprised at the emotions he was undergoing. He did not regard the image with anything at all like a religious feeling. Most emphatically it did not belong to that idea of the Straight or Normal or Wholesome which had, for the last few days, been his support against what he now knew of the innermost circle at Belbury. The horrible vigour of its realism was, indeed, in its own way as remote from that Idea as anything else in the room. That was one source of his reluctance. To insult even a carved image of such agony seemed an abominable act. But it was not the only source. With the introduction of this Christian symbol the whole situation had somehow altered. The thing was becoming incalculable. His simple antithesis of the Normal and the Diseased had obviously failed to take something into account. Why was the Crucifix there? Why were more than half of the poison-pictures religious? He had the sense of new parties to the conflict—potential allies and enemies which he had not suspected before. “If I take a step in any direction,” he thought, “I may step over a precipice.” A donkey like determination to plant hoofs and stay still at all costs arose in his mind.

“Pray make haste,” said Frost.

The quiet urgency of the voice, and the fact that he had so often obeyed it before, almost conquered him. He was on the verge of obeying, and getting the whole silly business over, when the defenselessness of the figure deterred him. the feeling was a very illogical one. Not because its hands were nailed and helpless, but because they were only made of wood and therefore even more helpless, because the thing, for all its realism, was inanimate and could not in any way hit back, he paused. The unretaliating face of a doll—one of Myrtle’s dolls—which he had pulled to pieces in boyhood had affected him in the same way and the memory, even now, was tender to the touch.

“What are you waiting for, Mr. Studdock?” said Frost.

Mark was well aware of the rising danger. Obviously, if he disobeyed, his last chance of getting out of Belbury alive might be gone. Even of getting out of this room. The smothering sensation once again attacked him. He was himself, he felt, as helpless as the wooden Christ. As he thought this, he found himself looking at the crucifix in a new way—neither as a piece of wood nor a monument of superstition but as a bit of history. Christianity was nonsense, but one did not doubt that the man had lived and had been executed thus by the Belbury of those days. And that, as he suddenly saw, explained why this image,though not itself an image of the Straight or Normal, was yet in opposition to the crooked Belbury. It was a picture of what happened when the Straight met the Crooked, a picture of what the Crooked did to the Straight—what it would do to him if he remained straight. It was, in a more emphatic sense than he had yet understood, a cross.

“Do you intend to go on with the training or not?” said Frost. His eye was on the time. . . .

“Do you not hear what I am saying?” he asked Mark again.

Mark made no reply. He was thinking, and thinking hard because he knew, that if he stopped even for a moment, mere terror of death would take the decision out of his hands. Christianity was a fable. It would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. This Man himself, on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom he trusted had forsaken him—had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? He began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. They had been a safeguard . . . they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making as he turned to Frost and said,

“It’s all bloody nonsense, and I’m damned if I do any such thing.”

When he said this he had no idea what might happen next.

—C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, pp. 334-337

Just published: a review essay of Patrick Deneen and James K. A. Smith in the LA Review of Books

I've got a review essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books of Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed and James K. A. Smith's Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology. It's called "Holy Ambivalence." Go check it out.

Principles of Luddite pedagogy

My classes begin in this way: With phone in hand, I say, "Please put your phones and devices away," and thereupon put my own in my bag out of sight. I then say, "The Lord be with you." (And also with you.) "Let us pray." I then offer a prayer, usually the Collect for the day from the Book of Common Prayer. After the prayer, we get started. And for the next 80 minutes (or longer, if it is a grad seminar or intensive course), there is not a laptop, tablet, or smart phone in sight. If I catch a student on her phone, and Lord knows college students are not subtle, she is counted tardy for the day and docked points on her participation grade. Only after I dismiss class do the addicts—sorry, my students—satiate their gnawing hunger for a screen, and get their fix.

For larger lecture courses (40-60 students) with lots of information to communicate, I use PowerPoint slides. But for smaller numbers and especially for seminars, neither a computer nor the internet nor a screen of any kind is employed during class time. I further require my students to submit their papers (however short or long, however rarely or commonly due) in the form of a printed copy brought to class or dropped off at my office. And for weekly (or random) reading quizzes, students must come prepared with pencil and Scantron; we begin the quiz promptly at the beginning of class, with the questions coming sequentially in large print on the PowerPoint slides. I give them plenty of time for each question, but I do not go back to previous questions. If you arrive late and miss questions or the whole thing, so be it.

I rarely reply immediately to emails, and may not reply at all if the question's answer is specified in the syllabus. I will reply within 24 hours, but I will not reply (unless it is an emergency) after hours, while at home; some days I may not even check my work email between 5:00pm and 6:00am the following morning.

I have a strict attendance policy: I count both tardies and absences; three of the former count as one of the latter; and beginning with three unexcused absences (for a twice-weekly course), I deduct four percentage points from a student's final grade. So, e.g., a student with four unexcused absences and three tardies would go from a 91 to a 79. More than six unexcused absences means an automatic failing grade.

Students behave exactly as you suppose they would. They come to class, they show up on time, they do the reading, and they take hand-written notes. The only distraction they fight is drowsiness (I will not say whether I contribute to that perennial pedagogical opponent). And for two 80-minute blocks of time per week, these students who were in second grade when the first iPhone came out have neither a device in their hands nor a screen before their eyes nor buds in their ears.

It turns out I am a Luddite, at least pedagogically speaking. On the questions raised by this set of issues, my sense is that my colleagues, not just at my university but in the academy generally, are divided into three campus. There are those like me. There are those who find us and our pedagogy desirable, but for reasons intrinsic or extrinsic to themselves they cannot or will not join us and fashion their classrooms accordingly. And then there are those who, on principle, oppose Luddite pedagogy.

This last group, broadly speaking, views screens, phones, tablets, laptops, the internet, etc., as positive supplements or complements to the traditional teaching setting, and want as far as possible to incorporate student use of them in the classroom. This view extends beyond the classroom to, e.g., learning management systems and e-books, videos and podcasts, etc., etc. The scope of the classroom expands to include the digital architecture of LMS: a "space" online where discussion, assignments, interaction, learning, video, editing, grading feedback, and so on are consolidated and intertwined.

What rationale underwrites this perspective? Perhaps it is simply "where we are today," or "what we have to do" in the 21st century, working with digital-native millennials; or perhaps it is neither superior nor inferior to traditional classroom learning, but simply a different mode of teaching altogether, with its own strengths and weaknesses; or perhaps it is not sufficient but certainly necessary alongside the classroom, given its many ostensible benefits; or perhaps it is both necessary and sufficient, superior to because an improvement upon the now defunct pedagogical elements of old: a room, some desks, a teacher and students, some books, a board, paper and pencil.

I'm not going to make an argument against these folks. I think they're wrong, but that's for another day. Rather, I want to think about the basic principles underlying my own not-always-theorized pedagogical Ludditism—a stance I did not plan to take but found myself taking with ever greater commitment, confidence, and articulateness. What might those principles be?

Here's a first stab.

1. I want, insofar as possible, to interrupt and de-normalize the omnipresence of screens in my students' lives.

2. I want, insofar as possible, to get my students off the internet.

3. I want, insofar as possible, for my students to hold physical books in their hands, to turn pages, to read words off a page, to annotate what they read with pen or pencil.

4. I want, insofar as possible, for my students to put pen or pencil to paper, to write out their thoughts, reflections, answers, and arguments in longhand.

5. I want, insofar as possible, for my students to develop habits of silent, contemplative thought: the passive activity of the mind, lacking external stimulation, lost in a world known only to themselves—though by definition intrinsically communicable to others—chasing down stray thoughts and memories down back alleys in the brain.

6. I want, insofar as possible, for my students to practice talking out loud to their neighbors, friends, and strangers about matters of great import, sustained for minutes or even hours at a time, without the interposition or upward-facing promise of the smart phone's rectangle of light; to learn and develop habits of sustained discourse, even and especially to the point of disagreement, offering and asking for reasons that support one or another position or perspective, without recourse to some less demanding activity, much less to the reflexive conversation-stopper of personal offense.

7. I want, insofar as possible, for my students to see that the world to which they have grown accustomed, whose habits and assumptions they have imbibed and intuited without critique, consent, or forethought, is contingent: it is neither necessary nor necessarily good; that even in this world, resistance is possible; indeed, that the very intellectual habits on display in the classroom are themselves a form of and a pathway to a lifetime of such resistance.

8. I want, insofar as possible, for my students to experience, in their gut, as a kind of assault on their unspoken assumptions, that the life of the mind is at once more interesting than they imagined, more demanding than a simple passing grade (not to mention a swipe to the left or the right), and more rewarding than the endless mindless numbing pursuits of their screens.

9. I want, insofar as possible, for my students to realize that they are not the center of the universe, and certainly not my universe; that I am not waiting on them hand and foot, their digital butler, ready to reply to the most inconsequential of emails at a moment's notice; that such a way of living, with the notifications on red alert at all times of the day, even through the night, is categorically unhealthy, even insane.

In sum, I want the pedagogy that informs my classroom to be a sustained embodiment of Philip's response to Nathaniel's challenge in the Gospel of John. Can anything good come from a classroom without devices, from teaching and learning freed from technology's imperious determination?

Come and see.

Rowan Williams on Jewish identity and religious freedom in liberal modernity

"The [French] revolution wanted to save Jews from Judaism, turning them into rational citizens untroubled by strange ancestral superstitions. It ended up taking just as persecutory an approach as the Church and the Christian monarchy. The legacies of Christian bigotry and enlightened contempt are tightly woven together in the European psyche, it seems, and the nightmares of the 20th century are indebted to both strands.

"In some ways, this prompts the most significant question to emerge from the [history of Jews in modern Europe].  Judaism becomes a stark test case for what we mean by pluralism and religious liberty: if the condition for granting religious liberty is, in effect, conformity to secular public norms, what kind of liberty is this? More than even other mainstream religious communities, Jews take their stand on the fact that their identity is not an optional leisure activity or lifestyle choice. Their belief is that they are who they are for reasons inaccessible to the secular state, and they ask that this particularity be respected—granted that it will not interfere with their compliance with the law of the state.

"This question is currently a pressing one. Does liberal modernity mean the eradication of organic traditions and identities, communal belief and ritual, in the name of absolute public uniformity? Or does it involve the harder work of managing the reality that people have diverse religious and cultural identities as well as their papers of citizenship, and accepting that these identities will shape the way they interact?

"Yet again, we see how Jews can be caught in a mesh of skewed perception. The argumentative dice are loaded against them. As a distinctive cluster of communities held together by language, history and law—with the assumption for the orthodox believer that all of this is the gift of God—they pose a threat to triumphalist religious systems that look to universal hegemony and conversion.

"The Christian or Muslim zealot cannot readily accept the claim of an identity that is simply given and not to be argued away by the doctrines of newer faiths. But the dogmatic secularist finds this no easier. Liberation from confessional and religiously exclusive societies ought, they think, to mean the embrace of a uniform enlightened world-view—but the Jew continues to insist that particularity is not negotiable. So we see the grimly familiar picture emerging of Judaism as the target of both left and right.

"The importance of [this history] is that it forces the reader to think about how the long and shameful legacy of Christian hatred for Jews is reworked in 'enlightened' society. Jews are just as 'other' for a certain sort of progressive politics and ethics as they were for early and medieval Christianity. The offence is the sheer persistence of an identity that refuses to understand itself as just a minor variant of the universal human culture towards which history is meant to be working. And to understand how this impasse operated is to understand something of why Zionism gains traction long before the Holocaust."

—Rowan Williams, review of Simon Schama's Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900

My dissertation acknowledgements

Dissertations are strange creatures: written by many, read by few, important to none but the authors. In a way, dissertations are like the angels of St. Thomas Aquinas, not species of a genus but each a genus unto itself.

And yet many years, blood, sweat, and tears go into dissertations; and so the acknowledgements at their beginning are often a moment to step back and thank those who have made finishing the (by then) cursed thing possible. So far as I can tell, there are two different types of acknowledgements: minimalist and maximalist. Either the author thanks only those who contributed materially and directly to the dissertation's production (one friend thanked, if I recall correctly, only about a dozen individuals), or she mentions more or less every single human being she has met along the way—anyone from whom she has received as much as a cup of cold water. I fall in the latter category, both by temperament (being prolix in life and in prose) and by conviction (a lot of people helped me get to the point of completing this thing!).

But because one is lucky if the readership of one's dissertation exceeds single digits, the writing of acknowledgements can seem somewhat narcissistic, or at least futile. Wherefore I have opted to share my acknowledgements here on the blog. Though I completed and submitted the manuscript last May, it wasn't approved until October and I didn't officially graduate until December. So the proverbial ink has yet to dry, and while it does so, let me share with y'all the many names and institutions and communities—each and every one—that made possible, by God's grace, my earning a PhD in theology from Yale University in the Year of Our Lord 2017.

Acknowledgements

It was Thanksgiving 2011, in a living room in Starkville, Mississippi, that the idea for this dissertation came to me. ‘Came to me’ is the right phrase: the idea was not mine, but my brother Garrett’s. He, my brother Mitch, and I were killing time in between meals, talking theology as brothers do. And Garrett said, “You know, you’ve been talking about this Webster a lot lately, and before that it was Jenson, and before that it was Yoder. Maybe you should write your dissertation on their theologies of Scripture.” Five and a half years later, here we are. So my first word of thanks goes to Garrett for giving me the idea for this project, to my sister-in-law Stacy for her relaxed toleration of our weakness for the rabies theologorum, and to Garrett and Mitch together for serving as soundboards, sparring partners, and friends throughout this process—and at all other times.

Thanks to my advisor, Kathryn Tanner, for constant encouragement, support, help (not least in saving me from featuring a fourth primary figure!), availability, theological wisdom, practical insight, and (what is not native to me) love of concision and economy of prose.

Thanks to the rest of the committee: Miroslav Volf, David Kelsey, and Steve Fowl. I could not have dreamed of a more fitting, or a more formidable, group of readers for a dissertation on this topic (they wrote the books on it, after all), and their kindness, generosity, and feedback have meant a great deal.

Thanks to the other faculty members from whom I learned or with whom I worked during my time at Yale: Christopher Beeley, John Hare, Linn Tonstad, Jennifer Herdt, Denys Turner, Dale Martin, Adam Eitel. If I have learned anything during my studies, I learned it primarily by osmosis from these brilliant, friendly scholars.

Thanks to my fellow students, in the Theology cohort and in other sub- disciplines: Awet Andemicael, Liza Anderson, Laura Carlson, Justin Crisp, Ryan Darr, TJ Dumansky, Jamie Dunn, Matt Fisher, Andrew Forsyth, Janna Gonwa, Justin Hawkins, Liv Stewart Lester, Mark Lester, Samuel Loncar, Wendy Mallette, Natalia Marandiuc, Sam Martinez, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Ross McCullough, Luke Moorhead, Stephen Ogden, Devin Singh, Erinn Staley, John Stern, Graedon Zorzi. When I rave about the program at Yale, I am raving about these people.

Thanks to other friends, teachers, and colleagues, near and far, who were a part of my academic journey. In Abilene: Randy Harris, Tracy Shilcutt, Jeanene Reese, Wendell Willis, Glenn Pemberton, Josh Love, Reid Overall. In Atlanta: Ian McFarland, Luke Timothy Johnson, Steffen Lösel, Ellen Ott Marshall, Carol Newsom, Tim Jackson, Mark Lackowski, Leonard Wills, Don McLaughlin, Patrick and Karen Gosnell, Jimmy and Desiree McCarty, Matt and Stephanie Vyverberg, Seth and Kaci Borin, Daron and Margaret Dickens, Adam and Susan Paa. And elsewhere: Junius Johnson, Ben Langford, Andrew and Lindsey Krinks, David Fleer, Lauren Smelser White, David Mahfood, Fred Aquino, and Tyler Richards.

Thanks to the Christian Scholarship Foundation, from which I received a financial lifeline two years in a row, and to Carl Holladay and Greg Sterling, who oversee it.

Thanks to the Louisville Institute, from which I received a generous 2-year doctoral fellowship, and to the new friends and colleagues I made there: Ed Aponte, Don Richter, Terry Muck, Pam Collins, Kathleen O’Connor, Aaron Griffith, Kyle Lambelet, Amanda Pittman, Leah Payne, Derek Woodard-Lehman, Tim Snyder, Lorraine Cuddeback, Layla Kurst, Christina Bryant, Gustavo Maya, and Arlene Montevecchio.

Thanks to those I have come to know because of the issues or figures of this project: Steve Wright, Chris Green, Lee Camp, Peter Kline, Kris Norris, Kendall Soulen, Tyler Wittman, David Congdon, Myles Werntz. Thanks especially to Stanley Hauerwas, Robert Jenson, and the late John Webster, all of whom took the time to encourage this project and my work in general.

Thanks to friends in New Haven: Ross and Hayley (in more than one sense: nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur), Matt and Julia, Mark and Laura, Ryan and Katie, Andrew and Josh, Mark and Liv, Laura, Val, Kelly, Kayla Beth, Roger and Elizabeth, Stephanie and Jeremiah, Stephen and Amanda. What a joy to share life with y’all these last six years. If only it could continue.

Thanks to my zealous and cheerful proof readers: Zac Koons and Lacey Jones.

Thanks to the communities that have taught and formed me in the faith: Round Rock Church of Christ, Highland Church of Christ, North Atlanta Church of Christ, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Trinity Baptist Church.

Thanks to Star Coffee and Round Rock Public Library, where much of this work was written, along with room S217 at Yale Divinity School, now (alas) a faculty office.

Thanks to Spencer Bogle, who is the reason I am in this business in the first place.

Thanks to my parents, Ray and Georgine East, who have never flagged in support or faith in me—beginning at age 17, when I declared my desire to pursue academic theology. What sort of people affirm such a vocation? Thanks especially to my mom, who over the years has read a steady stream of theology supplied by her eldest son. Apart from her I might doubt that this dissertation will be read by someone not paid to do so.

Thanks to Toni Moman—“Miss Toni”—to whom this work is dedicated, a lifelong servant and lover of God’s children. All ministers are theologians, and only God knows how many children have had their first dose of theology from Miss Toni. They are all of them better for it, as am I. Years ago I told Miss Toni that, if and when I had the chance to write a book, I would dedicate it to her. Well: it’s finally here!

Thanks to my three children, Sam, Rowan, and Paige, all of whom were born during my studies at Yale, and who make it all worth it. Sam and Row, especially, will be delighted to hear a different answer than usual to the oft-repeated question, “Daddy, are you done with work yet?”

Thanks, lastly, and most of all, to my wife Katelin, who has been my partner, companion, and best friend for nearly 13 years. We have traveled from central to west Texas, to Atlanta, Georgia, to New Haven, Connecticut, and back again. I cannot imagine doing so without her. Under God, I owe everything to her.

Soli Deo Gloria.

On the speech of Christ in the Psalms

Tomorrow morning I am giving a lecture to some undergraduate students at Baylor University; the lecture's title is "Unlike Any Other Book: Theological Reflections on the Bible and its Faithful Interpretation." The lecture draws from four different writings: a dissertation chapter, a review essay for Marginalia, an article for Pro Ecclesia, and an article for International Journal of Systematic Theology.

As every writer knows, reading your own work can be painful. There's always more you can do to make it better. But sometimes you're happy with what you wrote. And I think the following quotation from the IJST piece, especially the final paragraph, is one of my pieces of writing I'm happiest about. It both makes a substantive point clearly and effectively, and does so with appropriate rhetorical force. Not many of you, surely, have read the original article; so here's a sample taste:

"[S]ince the triune God is the ecumenical confession of the church, it is entirely logical and defensible to read, say, the Psalms as the speech of Christ, or the Trinity as the creator in Genesis 1, or the ruach elohim as the very Holy Spirit breathed by the Father through the Son. Perhaps some Christian biblical scholars will respond that they do not protest the ostensible anachronism of such claims, but nonetheless hesitate at encouraging it out of concern for the humanity of these texts, that is, their human and historical specificity. In my judgment, this is a well-meant but misguided concern...

"[T]he motivations behind the concern for the humanity of Scripture are often themselves theological, but these are frequently underdeveloped. A chief example is the ubiquity in biblical scholarship of a kind of reflexive philosophical incompatibilism regarding human and divine agency, rarely articulated and never argued, such that if humans do something, then God does not, and vice versa. More specifically, on this view if Christ is the speaker of the Psalms, then the human voice of the Psalter is crowded out: apparently there’s only so much elbow room at Scripture’s authorial table. And thus, if it is shown—and who ever doubted it?—that the Psalms are products of their time and place and culture, then to read them christologically is to do violence to the text. At most, for some Christian scholars, to do so is, at times, allowable, especially if there is warrant from the New Testament; but it is still a hermeneutical device, in a manner superadded or overlaid onto a more determinate, definitive, historically rooted original.

"But the historic Christian understanding of Christ in the Psalms is much stronger than this qualified allowance, and the principal prejudice scholars must rid themselves of here is that, at bottom, ‘the real is the social-historical.’ On the contrary, the spiritual is no less real than the material, and the reality of God is so incomparably greater than either that it is their very condition of being. All of which bears two consequences for the Psalms. First, God’s speech in the Psalms in the person of the Son is not in competition with the manifold human voices of Israel that composed and sung and wrote and edited the Psalter. God is not an item in the metaphysical furniture of the universe; one and the same act may be freely willed and performed by God and by a human creature. This is very hard to grasp consistently, and it is not the only Christian view of human and divine action on offer. Nonetheless it is crucial for making sense of both the particulars and the whole of what Scripture is and how it works.

"Second and finally, to read the Psalms as at once the voice of Israel and the voice of Israel’s Messiah is therefore not to gloss an otherwise intact original with a spiritual meaning. Rather, it is to recognize, following Jason Byassee’s description of Augustine’s exegetical practice, the ‘christological plain sense.’ This accords with what is the case, namely, that ontologically equiprimordial with the human compositional history of the texts is the speech of the eternal divine Son anticipating and figuring, in advance, his own incarnate life and work in and as Jesus of Nazareth. When Jesus uses the Psalmists’ words in the Gospels, he is not appropriating something alien to himself for purposes distinct from their original sense; he is fulfilling, in his person and speech, what was and is his very own, now no longer shrouded in mystery but revealed for what they always were and pointed to. The figure of Israel sketched and excerpted in the Psalms, so faithful and true amid such trouble from God and scorn from enemies, is flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ, and not only retrospectively but, by God’s gracious foreknowledge, prospectively as well. It turns out that it was Christ all along."

An honest preface to contemporary academic interpretation of the New Testament

The figures and authors of the New Testament, especially Jesus and Paul, taught and wrote primarily during the middle half of the first century A.D. Their teachings and texts were not, alas, understood in the 2nd century, nor were they understood in the 3rd century, nor were they understood in the 4th century, nor were they understood in the 5th century, nor were they understood in the 6th century, nor were they understood in the 7th century, nor were they understood in the 8th century, nor were they understood in the 9th century, nor were they understood in the 10th century, nor were they understood in the 11th century, nor were they understood in the 12th century, nor were they understood in the 13th century, nor were they understood in the 14th century, nor were they understood in the 15th century, nor were they understood in the 16th century, nor were they understood in the 17th century, nor were they understood in the 18th century, nor were they understood in the 19th century, nor were they understood in the 20th century. Such periods, unfortunately, were not up to date on the latest scholarship.

I am.

What I wrote in 2017, and what's coming up

Last year was momentous for me, both personally and professionally. I submitted my dissertation; I earned my PhD from Yale; I got that rarest of things, a bona fide job—teaching at my alma mater no less; I moved my family to a place we love; and I taught my first semester as a professor of theology, a dream 14 years in the making. My wife and three small children are content and flourishing, and for the first time in any of our lives, we don't have an end date bearing down on us from the horizon.

My gratitude and joy know no bounds.

I also started a new blog! (This one, just like the old one.) And I wrote some stuff, here and elsewhere, scholarly and popular. A 2017 rundown...

Scholarly:

“Reading the Trinity in the Bible: Assumptions, Warrants, Ends,” Pro Ecclesia 25:4 (2016): 459-474. Technically published in 2016, but not actually available to read in print until 2017, so I'm counting it. This article does not, unfortunately, contain this footnote, which was originally meant to be included in it.

“The Hermeneutics of Theological Interpretation: Holy Scripture, Biblical Scholarship, and Historical Criticism,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 19:1 (2017): 30–52. I think this is the best piece of scholarly writing I have published, and the most programmatic at that. If you want to know what I think about theological interpretation of the Bible in relation to historical-critical scholarship, read this.

“John Webster, Theologian Proper,” Anglican Theological Review 99:2 (2017): 333–351. After Webster's abrupt passing in 2016, I was asked by ATR to write a commemorative review article of his many books, and it was a bittersweet experience. The last few pages of the piece engage in some friendly criticism of a couple features of Webster's theology, and I'm hopeful it contributes to the beginning of the reception of his thought.

“What is the Doctrine of the Trinity For? Practicality and Projection in Robert Jenson’s Theology,” Modern Theology 33:3 (2017). I wrote the first version of what eventually became this article nearly five years before its publication, which turned out to be only months before Jenson's death at 87 years old. My argument criticizes a specific feature of Jenson's trinitarian thought, namely its (ironically Feuerbachian) projection into the triune Godhead in order to secure practical payoff for human life. Though critical, the piece comes from a place of pure affection for Jenson's work (see below).

"Review: Gary Anderson, Christian Doctrine and the Old Testament: Theology in the Service of Exegesis," International Journal of Systematic Theology 19:4 (2017): 534–537. This is an excellent book that ought to begin paving the way forward for theologians and biblical scholars alike to read Scripture together, both theologically and historically.

Popular:

"Theologians Were Arguing About the Benedict Option 35 Years Ago," Mere Orthodoxy. This piece grew out of a Twitter thread reflecting on Hauerwas and the Yale School vis-à-vis Rod Dreher. In it I use James Davison Hunter's work in To Change the World to clarify why (a) people disagree so vociferously about Dreher's proposal and (b) how the very way in which the Benedict Option is a popular distillation of ideas from the 1970s and '80s demonstrates the force of Hunter's conception of cultural change and the need for something like the BenOp. My thanks to Derek Rishmawy for suggesting I write my thoughts up in essay form and send it to Jake Meador at MO.

"Systematic Theology and Biblical Criticism," Marginalia Review of Books. A review essay of Ephraim Radner's wild and woolly and uncategorizable (not to mention un-summarizable) 2016 book Time and the Word: Figural Reading of the Christian Scriptures. This piece didn't seem to get as much play as my previous piece for MROB on Katherine Sonderegger, but it was just as pleasurable to write.

"Public Theology in Retreat," Los Angeles Review of Books. 'Tis the season of David Bentley Hart! This piece, ostensibly a review essay of Hart's three latest collections of essays, offered an occasion to reflect, in conversation with Alan Jacobs, on the nature and status (and prospects) of theology on the American intellectual scene. The feedback on this piece, even from the DBH-agnostic, was overwhelmingly encouraging. Twitter remains unarguably demonic, but the kind words of strangers who shared this essay with others was a shaft of clear, angelic light to this junior prof scribbling in west Texas.

Blog:

On the use of "everyone" in pop culture talk. (June 4 & 7) From listening to too much (never enough!) of Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan on their podcast The Watch for The Ringer.

Figural christology in children's Bibles. (June 8) From reading my children Bible stories and noticing theological connections in the illustrations.

Four writing tips for seminarians. (June 9) From my time as a teaching assistant at Yale Divinity School.

The best American crime novelists of the last century, or: a way into the genre. (June 12) A fun diversion; who doesn't love a good list?

The liturgical/praying animal in Paradise Lost. (June 14) Riffing on Milton's anthropology in Book VII with Jamie Smith and Robert Jenson.

On the analogia entis contra Barth. (June 19 & 21) From finishing IV/1 last summer.

Teaching the Gospels starting with John. (June 30) Why not? Fie on the critics.

Figural christology in Paradise Lost. (July 10) One of my favorite things to write in 2017. Focused on the angel Michael's prophetic instructions to Adam in Book XI.

Against universalizing doubt, with a coda. (July 20 & 21) Top five favorite things I wrote in 2017. Would like to revise these together and publish in a magazine or some such thing.

Scripture's precedence is not chronological. (July 24) Expanding on a dissertation footnote on Yoder.

A question for Richard Hays: metalepsis in The Leftovers. (August 1) Having some fun while watching a great show.

Scruton, Eagleton, Scialabba, et al—why don't they convert? (August 11) A genuine question, to which a reader kindly offered a partial answer, at least for Scialabba, who once wrote briefly on the topic (in dialogue with C. S. Lewis, no less!).

What it is I'm privileged to do this fall. (August 22) Reflections on the extraordinary gift of teaching college students theology.

Rest in peace: Robert W. Jenson (1930–2017). (September 6) A bittersweet celebration of what Jenson meant to me, theologically and otherwise. This was by far the most-read piece on the blog this year, which goes to show how much this man of the church meant to so many others, too.

16 tips for how to read a passage from the Gospels. (September 14) Something I gave the freshmen in my fall course on the life and teachings of Jesus.

On John le Carré's new novel, A Legacy of Spies. (September 17) An enjoyable but ultimately disappointing trip back in time once more to the world of George Smiley.

On contemporary praise and worship music. (October 8) A fussy little missive, whose contents you can probably guess.

On Markan priority. (October 12) What would have to be the case for Mark not to be the first Gospel written? What implications would follow? How crazy is it to consider?

On the church's eternality and "church as mission." (October 20) Picking a friendly fight with the church-as-mission folks, with an assist from Thomas Aquinas.

The Holy One of Israel: a sermon on Leviticus 19. (October 25) This was a joy to write and deliver. Flexing some nearly-atrophied muscles in figural homiletics.

Notes on The Last Jedi, Godless, and Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. (December 17) In which I share my critical reflections on all three, including a stirring, unanswerable defense of Rian Johnson's brilliant film. Also Three Billboards is bad.

Upcoming (as of January 2): 

“The Sermon Revisited: A Review of David P. Gushee and Glen H. Stassen’s Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context,” in Living Church. As you'll see when it's published, my evaluation of this book is quite negative.

"Review: Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Biblical Authority After Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity," in Interpretation. I did not love this book, but I respect its author and his goals; he simply fails to persuade here, nor is he helped by the oft-distracting rhetoric.

"Review: Hans Boersma, Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church," in Interpretation. This is a tiny little review of a lovely, fulsome work. My how I love the church fathers' biblical interpretation.

“Ambivalence After Liberalism,” in The Los Angeles Review of Books. This is a review essay of James K. A. Smith's Awaiting the Kingdom: Reforming Public Theology and Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed. I'm a ways into both books, so I hope to have a draft of the piece by the end of the month.

“Scripture as the Church’s Book in Robert Jenson’s Theology,” Pro Ecclesia. This will be out by the end of the year or in early 2019, as part of an issue dedicated to Jenson, who co-founded the journal. I'm going to adapt it from one of my dissertation chapters.

I have another scholarly article planned, which I will not write until the summer, on theological interpretation. I'll probably submit it to the Journal of Theological Interpretation.

And last but not least, I hope to complete my work as editor of Robert W. Jenson's The Triune Story: Essays on Scripture with Oxford University Press and have the book published by the end of 2018—perhaps even by the annual meeting of AAR/SBL in Denver the weekend before Thanksgiving. Lord willing!

Thanks for reading. It was a good year writing. Happy new year y'all.

Notes on The Last Jedi, Godless, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Though not in that order, because spoilers.



Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

–I did not like this film. I admired its craftsmanship, not least the acting, the unwieldy plot, the attempted control at something like permanent tonal dissonance (which is, I suppose, a backhanded way of saying I thought the tone was out of control), the thematic complex animating the film's every turn. I generally admire and enjoy the work of both the writer-director Martin McDonagh and his brother. But not this one.

–Eve Tushnet captures a great deal of what's wrong with the film here. These two paragraphs sum it up:

Or take the reason for Mildred Hayes’s furious grief. She feels guilty about her daughter’s horrifying death–of course she does, that’s how anyone would feel. But the film doesn’t trust us to accept that anybody would feel that way. The movie has her feel guilty because she literally, exactly in these words told her daughter to go walk in that field and get raped and murdered, and then she did!!!!!, and it’s just all so on-the-nose and unnecessary. It’s chintzy.

The huge, sad and sordid problem with the movie is that racism and black people are ciphers in an alphabet used to talk solely about the sins and redemptions of white people. Racism is a theme the movie insists on grappling with but it just cannot do it well, because the black characters aren’t people. They are plot furniture who might as well blink out of existence as soon as they’ve performed their role in the moral drama of the white folk.

The film simply does not trust its audience, nor does it trust the would-be ordinary griefs and grievances the film is ostensibly about. Everything is turned up to eleven: Mildred doesn't just set up outlandish billboards, she throws Molotov cocktails at the police station; the dumb racist violent cop isn't just dumb and racist and violent, he marches into an office building, walks up to the second floor, beats up a man, and throws him out of a window (all filmed in one take, thus doubling down on the scene's histrionics with fussy cinematic virtuosity); and so on.

–Tushnet also touches on the wild tonal swings that, while perhaps not doomed to failure, certainly fail here. One moment Mildred's talking to her ex-husband, busting balls; the next he's throwing the kitchen table against the wall and grabbing her by the throat, their son holding a knife to his own father's throat—only for the ex-husband's dim-witted half-his-age girlfriend to walk in the doorway and drain the tension because she has to pee. It's as if a Judd Apatow comedy interrupted a Scorsese film.

–The first act is mostly good, but everything falls to pieces the moment Woody Harrelson's cancer-stricken sheriff kills himself. Not only are his final words to his wife (in his suicide note) execrably romanticized, but all of a sudden the jolly, ever-recognizable voice of Beloved Actor Woody Harrelson becomes the Ghost of Christmas Future for the characters left behind. Mildred and said dumb racist violent cop receive posthumous letters from the sheriff-turned-seer, poring into their souls and speaking, as only Beloved Actor Woody Harrelson's voice could, their future best selves into being, guiding them from beyond the grave. Having lovingly, generously, self-sacrificially "saved" his wife and daughters untold grief at "having to watch him" suffer and die, and thus be "left" with "that lasting image" of him—instead of the "one final perfect day" they do have—he now transforms himself into a truly selfless saint. Light a votive candle while you're at it, Mildred.



Godless

–Scott Frank is one of the best living writers in Hollywood, and anything that gives him work is cause for celebration. Doubly so when it's a long-gestating limited series Western for Netflix.

–In an interview on Fresh Air, Frank said he didn't want to avoid the classic tropes of the great Westerns; he wanted to include every single one, and then some. Amen. As with all genre, the way to go is either radically revisionary (a la Tarantino) or pure specimen with a twist. Anything in between usually falters; and more to the point, you have to show you can master (or have mastered) the genre's necessary features in order to succeed at all, and few directors are so accomplished as to be able to go the Tarantino route. Frank chose wisely.

–The series centers on a town of women, widows who one and all lost their husbands in a single tragic mining accident. A stranger comes to town, adopted son and deserter of a viciously violent leader of a criminal gang. As the vengeful Bad seeks vengeance, we learn about the stranger, the woman who took him in, the town's inhabitants, and its supposedly cowardly sheriff.

–The series is gorgeously shot, lush with all the Western geography you could ask for, and shots of men riding horses with such skill and beauty you convince yourself God made one for the other, and both to be captured in moving pictures. The actors are uniformly superb, particularly Michelle Dockery (of Downton Abbey fame), Scoot McNairy (from Halt and Catch Fire, among other things), and Jeff Daniels (simply reveling in a truly wicked part without ever crossing the line into Hamville). Frank takes his time with the characters and with the moments that make them who they are, or who they become. The details and the dialogue are lived-in and witty without ever calling attention to themselves.

–Two problems keep the series from making good on its promise. The first is pacing: stretched across seven episodes of varying length, one can easily imagine the two and a half hour movie version of this story. At least two episodes (five and six) are pure filler, and other side plots could be scratched without loss. Such a problem is permissible if everything else works. Unfortunately...

–The finale simply does not deliver. The climactic shootout does deliver, as a piece of sheer filmmaking. But as climax to the narrative, it's a flop. Minus two minor characters who meet their doom quickly and without fanfare (one halfway through the series), no major character loses his or her life. Perhaps acceptable, if not for a serious issue at the script level: namely, the slaughter of Blackdom. You see, outside La Belle (the town of all women) there is an all-black settlement, founded by buffalo soldiers and their families. In the series finale, these characters—mostly a detour from the main plot lines—confer with one another about whether or not to help the all-white town. This is the first the camera has visited these characters without a white character standing in for the audience. Only moments later, however, Jeff Daniels comes a-knocking, and three minutes later every man, woman, and child in Blackdom is dead.

If Frank had committed to this kind of atrocity culminating his story—just one more feature of the impartial, unconquerable godlessness of the Western frontier—this decision could have been justified. Instead, more or less every white character gets to live on, kept safe (by Frank or by God?) from the hateful, meaningless death and destruction meted out just one town over. It is a profound misstep that undoes whatever good will the series has built up to this point, and undermines whatever Frank was hoping to say. Happy endings for the (white) leads, an unmarked grave for the rest.



The Last Jedi

–I am fascinated by what appears to be a wide divide in reactions to Rian Johnson's film. A number of critics as well as SW fans downright love it, hailing it as one of the best SW films ever, rivaling the 1977 original and Empire in quality, depth, and craft. Those who disagree aren't merely in the middle, however; they actively dislike the movie and think it largely fails. What's going on here?

–First, my own take: I think TLJ is a rousing success, marred only by a minor side plot (the trip to Canto Bight), which ends with a silly CGI scene and makes the pacing of the film's second act sag unnecessarily. A few other nits to pick, sure, but otherwise, the film is great. Everything with Rey, Kylo Ren, and Luke is A+. (Agreeing, as more than one person has, then commenting that everything else is a problem is a bit like saying Lord of the Rings is a failure except for all the scenes with Gandalf, Aragorn, and Frodo. Because, um, aren't they in most of them?) And there are at least three moments that took my breath away: the throne room, the lightspeed kamikaze, and the showdown between Luke and Ren. More on the good anon.

–Here's my take on the divide I'm seeing so far. Those praising the film up and down and those disappointed by it appear to be talking about different things. That is, nobody's arguing opposing sides of the same topic; it's all about what one was looking for, what one was struck by, and thus what one holds up for emphasis, as emblematic of the film's quality. Those who love TLJ are talking about Rey, Ren, and Luke; about Johnson's direction; about composition and color; about the film's core themes; about the departures from previous SW entries; about off-loading detritus from Abrams; about upending (even taunting) fanboys' expectations; about where the film leaves the story and its characters. Those left dissatisfied by TLJ aren't talking about any of that. They're talking about the silliness of Canto Bight; about the narrative dead-end of DJ and the covert mission of Finn and Rose; about the odd fit of Laura Dern's character and the half-baked nature of Poe's mutiny; about Leia's Force moment in space; about the premature deaths of Snoke and Phasma; about the further echoes and rhyming repetitions of past SW films; about Luke never leaving his Jedi island of loneliness, never unleashing some serious Force destruction on the First Order.

Note well: The lovers' love has a great deal to do with formal qualities and decisions, combined with the main characters' arcs. The haters' hate concerns specific matters of content, especially plot, especially relative to The Force Awakens. So I suppose this rift is going to continue. The haters aren't going to come around (they already grant the goodness of the Rey-Ren-Luke stuff), and the lovers just aren't worried about some of those plot matters, or think focusing on them is disproportionate to what the film does well.

–Another way to look at it: I think TLJ is a three-star film with two or three bona fide four-star moments and one or two two-star moments, whereas TFA is a three-star film that basically never rises above or sinks below that quality (minus the overall fact that Starkiller Base is an indefensible redux of IV and VI). And it's true that TLJ never quite has an extended sequence like the first act of TFA, which not only never stops moving, but may be the most well-paced, flawless 45 minutes in all nine SW movies. And there's no through-line like Harrison Ford's farewell Han Solo performance or Ridley and Boyega's banter (though the connection between Ridley and Driver in TLJ runs deeper, and is more interesting).

All that to say: I can understand having a preference for TFA over TLJ (leaving aside the original trilogy!); but that's simply comparing different movies with different agendas, different sensibilities, different stories, and different goals.

–So why am I, a TLJ defender, unconcerned about the haters' criticisms? Here's a preliminary response. The running of the CGI alien-bulls on Canto Bight is prequel-worthy nonsense, even cringe-worthy. Granted. But the trip itself is an interesting idea on a number of fronts, so the mere presence of a dumb 5-minute chase scene doesn't torpedo a 150-minute movie. First, the initial reason to go to the planet is to find a way to disable the First Order's ability to track the Resistance's fleet. Second, it provides something the SW series rarely offers: a fleeting glimpse into how the various machinations of the super-spaceships and military maneuvers and Jedi duels actually relate to ordinary planets and their inhabitants—or rather, how ordinary places and people perceive and are affected by this apparently unending galactic civil war. That's a narrative idea worth chasing. Third, the fact that the casino trip fails to result in what Finn, Rose, and Poe dream up for it does not make the whole thing a waste of time; that failure is one in a whole string of failures that mark the film from start to finish. Johnson has constructed TLJ as a kind of Dunkirk in Space: even star wars are less about heroism and triumph than sheer survival, against all odds. Live to fight another day, because maybe that day will be the day you don't get smashed to pieces by the bad guys.

So while Johnson should have rewritten what happens on Canto Bight—make it a heist, make it sleek and fun, make it devoid of all CGI—the trip itself, before and after, is perfectly warranted, and integral to the film's plot and themes.

–Otherwise, I'm basically unperturbed by TLJ's other flaws, real or perceived. Committing to Luke's near despair and total withdrawal (from the war, from those he loves, from responsibility, from the Force) is a brave narrative choice, and it succeeds. The same goes for leaving ambiguous just what happened between Luke and Ren that night when Ren tore down the temple. Relegating Maz to a cameo, making Hux a pitiable joke, and killing off Phasma is altogether shrewd storytelling revisionism, extended canonical universe and fanboys' imaginations be damned. The centerpiece of the film—the throne room scene—is pitch perfect, and killing Snoke before we learned anything about him is the point. He was just another Palpatine (and did we, in 1983, know anything about him, either?), and in shocking the audience through both killing him before IX and uniting Ren and Rey in battle, however briefly, Johnson unwrote Abrams's overweening nostalgia and freed him to finally tell a genuinely new story in the conclusion to this third trilogy. Whatever we might have "learned" about Snoke—whatever time we spent with him—would have been underwhelming and, ultimately, boring; leaving the First Order in (now) Supreme Leader Kylo Ren's hands is brilliant, bold, and wide open, narratively speaking. So much so that I can't believe Kathleen Kennedy let Johnson get away with it.

The rest is noise. And it's in Abrams's hands now, anyway. That's either very good news or very concerning. We'll see in 2019. Until then.

Coda:

 –One thing this experience, and the rift in TLJ's reception, has taught me is how difficult it is to assess a film this highly anticipated and this culturally significant based on a single viewing. I often have trouble with this: the first time I saw—to limit myself to big serial blockbusters—Skyfall, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Dark Knight Rises, and others, all I could register was the problems, real or imagined, with each film's script. It was only on a second or third viewing that I was actually capable of taking the film in, as a film. I'm already eager to go back and have this experience with TLJ.

–I see that there are some who feel like TLJ is basically a combination of Empire and ROTJ. I suppose this is true in a way; but I wonder how such folks feel about TFA, which at times is like a note-for-note remake of IV. In a sense, Johnson played the hand that was dealt him: if what Abrams wanted was to retell the original trilogy with new characters, Johnson sped up the process, so at least IX could be freed from all such expectations. I also happen to think TLJ is neither redundant nor predictable, but your mileage may vary.

–As for whether or not TLJ lets themes and messaging overtake the priority of story—so that, e.g., the film's gender politics become flashing neon lights instead of plot-integrated subtext—I'll just say that (first-time viewing syndrome again) I didn't even catch on to the fact that so many scenes played out between an individual man and woman, the former stubborn with pride, the latter drawing (or arguing, or fighting) said man into the good, the right, the undespairing future. I'll have to see how it plays in the second viewing. But precisely because I didn't see those flashing lights the first time, and since I don't recall a moment when the movie turns preachy, I doubt I'm going to think this is a problem, either.

Jenson on being stuck with the Bible's language

"[In my work] I have used Luther's insights [about the hiddenness of God] therapeutically, to ward off a bowdlerized apophaticism which has recently been popular. That God is unknowable must not be construed to mean that he is but vaguely glimpsed through clouds of metaphysical distance, so that we are compelled—and at liberty—to devise namings and metaphors guided by our religious needs. It means on the contrary that we are stuck with the names and descriptions the biblical narrative contingently enforces, which seem designed always to offend somebody; it means that their syntax is hidden from us, so that we cannot identify synonyms or make translations. It means that we have no standpoint from which to relativize them and project more soothing visions."

—Robert Jenson, "The Hidden and Triune God," in Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation, 69-77, at 70-71

An unpublished footnote on Longenecker on Hays on apostolic exegesis

About a year ago Pro Ecclesia published my article, "Reading the Trinity in the Bible: Assumptions, Warrants, Ends" (25:4, 459-474). On page 466 I briefly reference Richard Longenecker's position on the (non-)exemplarity of apostolic exegesis, and in turn cite Richard Hays's counter to Longenecker. Unfortunately, in the version of the article I sent to the editors, I somehow neglected to include the lengthy footnote I had written in a previous version, summarizing Longenecker's position and responding critically to it. I wish it were in print—and perhaps someday it will be—but I thought I'd publish it here, for what it's worth.

In the “Preface to the Second Edition” (Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975, 1999), xiii-xli), Longenecker responds to criticisms like mine above and those of Hays and Leithart, and engages directly with Hays (xxxiv-xxxix). He takes Hays to be missing his point, which concerns “the distinctiveness of the particular exegetical procedures and practices that Paul uses in spelling out . . . his theological approach” (xxxvi). It is these—along with, e.g., methods such as “dreams and visions, ecstatic prophecies, the fleece of a sheep, necromancy” as well as casting lots—which Longenecker deems “culturally conditioned and not normative for believers today.” He thus wants to distinguish “between (1) normative theological and ethical principles and (2) culturally conditioned methods and practices used in the support and expression of those principles,” a distinction he takes to be commonly accepted by Christian churches that are not restorationist or primitivist in bent (xxxvii). In this way, he agrees with Hays about the normativity of the New Testament’s interpretations of Scripture, but disagrees with him about their interpretive methods, judging these to be “culturally conditioned” (xxxviii). On the contrary, it is not “my business to try to reproduce the exegetical procedures and practices of the New Testament writers, particularly when they engage in . . . ‘midrash,’ ‘pesher,’ or ‘allegorical’ exegesis,” which practices “often represent a culturally specific method or reflect a revelational stance, or both.” (He does not specify what “a revelational stance” is.) Finally, Longenecker does not share Hays’s conviction about Christian hermeneutical boldness, which would seek to follow Paul’s example; similar attempts have been made in the church’s history, but “usually with disastrous results.” The proper contemporary task, for ordinary believers and Christian scholars alike, is to recontextualize the content of the apostolic proclamation today, seeking “appropriate ways and means in our day for declaring and working out the same message of good news in Christ that they proclaimed” (xxxix).

There are a number of problems here. First, regarding imitation of apostolic exegesis, it would be helpful to make a distinction between formal, material, and methodological. Longenecker is right to say that we may not need or want to imitate the apostles in the specific methods of their exegesis (though, even here, the emphasis is on “may not”). But this does not answer the larger question. Hays’s proposal is at both the formal and the material level: formally, we should read the Old Testament (with the apostles) in the light of the events (and texts) of the New; materially, we should read the Old Testament (with the apostles) as in fact prefiguring, mysteriously, the gospel of the crucified and risen Messiah and of his body, the church. In doing so, Hays suggests, we will have read well, and will be well served in our exegetical judgments.

Second, Longenecker uses the modifier “culturally conditioned” regarding apostolic practice as if it is doing a good deal more work than it is. As he allows, our own methods are equally culturally conditioned. Well, then we need reasons—good reasons—why our own exegesis definitely should not conform, or even loosely imitate, that of the apostles. Longenecker seems to think that we are a long ways away from apostolic practice. But we stand at the end of a tradition that reaches back to the New Testament, and a good deal of Christian interpretation since then has taken its lead from apostolic example; moreover, scholarly practice is not a useful indicator for the breadth of Christian exegetical habits. On the ground, churches around the world inculcate and encourage habits of reading that follow the New Testament’s example quite closely. If Longenecker’s only criterion is cultural conditionedness, does he have any objection to this? How could he?

Relatedly, third, beyond the unobjectionable fact that apostolic practice can be and has been adopted, does Longenecker have good reasons to object to Hays suggesting that apostolic practice ought to be adopted? It is not as if we are locked into the cage of our cultural context, unable to make decisions about what we should or should not do. Hays proposes we look to Paul and, in our own time and place, follow his practice in his time and place. What arguments does Longenecker have to offer against this, other than the (universally admitted and materially irrelevant) observation that the practice in question is culturally conditioned?

Fourth and finally, Longenecker veers too close to positing something like “timeless truths” in the New Testament texts, while simultaneously (and oddly) undercutting the possibility of making cross-cultural judgments about common corporate practices like reading. On the one hand, he thinks the apostles deliver to us the true and reliable gospel message, albeit arrived at by methods that are culturally conditioned and, for that reason, not to be imitated by us. On the other hand, his picture presents the methods of “then and there” as if they reside across a great unbridgeable chasm, beyond recovery or the desire for recovery; whereas the methods of “here and now” are similarly cordoned off from criticism coming, as it were, in the reverse direction—that is, criticism by the standards of the Bible’s own exegetical practices. This picture is problematic both at a historical and a theological level. Surely different eras and cultures can comment on and evaluate others, provided they do so with respect and charity. In short: Can Christians really envisage the church’s history in such a way that whole epochs are sealed off from interrogation and/or imitation, by virtue of no other fact than that they are another time and place than our own?