Jake Meador has kindly cross-posted my original blog post "Against pop culture" over at Mere Orthodoxy, and it's gotten a second round of (much larger) attention. Mostly the responses have been appreciative or generously critical, but let me address some of the criticisms as well as clear up some misunderstandings.

1. The piece is meant to be provocative, as both the title and tone suggest, so part of this is doubtless my own fault; but the overall point I'm trying to make is not that pop culture as such, or Netflix, is Bad, or that Christians should not ever "engage" it. The primary argument, instead, is that Christians (with an audience) who believe or write that Christians (in general) ought to "engage" popular culture as an imperative are wrong. That is, even if pop culture is neutral (which it is not), there is no good argument that Christians (again, in the aggregate) should, as a prescriptive norm, make it a priority to watch more Hulu, see more Netflix originals, listen to more Spotify, spend more time on YouTube, etc. My argument, then, is wholly negative, countering the opposing (positive) argument regarding Christians' behavior and posture toward pop culture. Though I gesture in this direction, I do not in fact make the mirror-image (positive) argument that Christians, normatively, should not, ever, under any circumstances, "engage" pop culture. What I do suggest is that there are worthwhile alternatives to such activity—an observation I would assume we can all agree on, though perhaps I am wrong.

2. I am therefore not "against" pop culture in the strong sense. This is true in multiple ways. Personally, I am—albeit ambivalently—an avid consumer of and participant in popular culture. Peruse my blog or CV and you'll see evidence aplenty. I have published academic work on, e.g., the Coen brothers. I write regularly about film and TV: on A Clockwork Orange; on Ex Machina; on The Leftovers; on the supposed monoculture; on ParaNorman; on Phantom Thread; on Godless, Three Billboards, and The Last Jedi; on Rachel Getting Married; and much more. My reading online is probably evenly split between political commentary and movie/TV criticism. I could name my top 10 favorite film critics off the top of my head. I teach a class called "Christianity and Culture" that includes a film critique assignment; moreover, when I teach it as a one-week intensive, we spend an hour every afternoon viewing "cultural artifacts" together via YouTube. I was that kid in high school thumbing through my (subscription) Entertainment Weekly while methodically crossing off entries on AFI's Top 100 Movies list. I still have individual Word documents for each year going back two decades that include my own personal "Best Of" lists for both film and TV. I can neither confirm nor deny that I continue to update them.

3. So I've got pop culture bona fides (Lord forgive me). And I do not think Christians must flee to the hills and keep their children safe from the mark of the beast, i.e., Hollywood. (This isn't a "keep Christian culture pure" take.) I'm not even arguing, as Matt Anderson does, that Christians should delete their Netflix accounts. I have Netflix, and I'll be enjoying season 3 of Stranger Things later this week. There is indeed plenty of good in various artifacts and products of our artistic culture today, and that includes popular culture—this isn't, to address another criticism, a high versus low argument. Though I am constantly trying to expand my cultural and aesthetic palate, I am a very poor reader of, say, 19th century novels. One day I'll be able to offer thoughtful reflections on Austen and Melville and Trollope, but this is not that day. So, no, I'm not pitting two options against each other—Schitt's Creek versus Crime and Punishment—stacking the deck in favor of one, and judging the poor plebs who opt against Great And High Culture.

4. So what am I doing? Well, to repeat, I'm rejecting the case made by far too many Christian writers, academics, and pastors that their fellow Christians should be engaging pop culture. As I wrote, that is silly, and its silliness should be dazzlingly apparent to all of us. It's a way of rationalizing our habits or elevating what is usually quite shallow entertainment—an undemanding way to pass the time, alone or with others—to the venerable status of Meaningful. In a way, I'd rather folks admit the truth, that sometimes, perhaps more often than they'd like to admit, Netflix (et al) is a way to shut off their brains and veg out at the end of a long day. I still think (as I'll say below) that there are reasons to resist that route, but most of us have done it, it's not the worst thing in the world, and it's far more honest than high-minded justifications as to why House of Cards is deep art. (Which it is not: absent a few directorial flourishes from Fincher in the opening episodes, that wretched show is a self-serious daytime soap about evil people doing wicked things with absolutely nothing interesting to say about human nature, politics, or power. It's as bad for your soul as it was for mine when I watched it.)

5. So why the digression in the original post about how Netflix (serving as a shorthand for all digital and streaming content) is bad for you? And about how there are dozens of other activities that would be better for you? Well, because more than one thing can be true at the same time. It is true both (a) that there are quality films and shows on Netflix that would not be a waste of your time and (b) that, in general, spending time on Netflix is the worst option among a host of otherwise life-giving, body-restoring, mind-expanding, soul-rejuvenating activities available to you on any given evening. And thus, I want to suggest, it is worth considering the time one gives to streaming apps and other screens and social media, compared with how one could be using that time differently. What if, instead of 2+ hours of Netflix per night, you had 3-5 Netflix-free nights per week, and limited yourself to a movie one night and a (single episode of a) show another night? Here is the counter-prescriptive argument for the rah-rah Christian pop culture folks: I am confident that all the activities I listed in my piece—gardening, reading, cooking, serving, crafting, writing, etc.—are superior, 99 times out of 100, to spending time on Netflix. Does that mean, as I said there, that one therefore ought never to watch Netflix? No! We don't always do The Very Best Thing For Ourselves at all times. Otherwise we'd be praying 90-minute Vespers after the kids went to bed every night, or learning a new language every 18 months, or what have you. But the fact that we don't always do The Very Best Thing, and even that we needn't feel like there is a standing imperative Always So To Do, doesn't change the fact that Netflix is on the very bottom of the list of activities that are good and restorative and healthy for us; activities, that is, that are an excellent use of the (very limited) time allotted to us. We don't need to lie about that to make ourselves feel better about it.

6. I had at least two audiences in mind with my original piece. One was the group criticized directly: those who believe, and write, that Christians ought to "engage" pop culture. And the reaction of at least some folks proved, to me at least, the point: there is a kind of nervous insecurity on the part of folks who "love" pop culture and who therefore need it to Be Meaningful. (An insult to it is an insult to us all.) But why? Would the lives of Christians be worse in any way if they decreased the time they give to streaming TV and movies by 80%? Answer: No! Would they be worse neighbors as a result? By no means! If your concept of neighborliness, of Christian neighbor-love, is necessarily wedded to knowledge of pop culture, then it is your concept that needs to change, not the people who fail to live up to it. Now, does the fact that most Christians would be well served by decreasing their Netflix (and Hulu, and Spotify, and HBO, and Instagram, and Facebook, and Twitter, and...) usage mean, as a consequence, that a minority of Christians who are lovers and critics, professional or amateur, of visual art forms must—like St. Anthony hearing the Gospel read in church and Jesus's words spoken directly to him—give up their streaming services, abandon cinema, and forever devote themselves to Faust and Beethoven instead? What an exaggerated and convoluted question you've asked. You know my answer by now.

7. My other audience was, basically, my students. Or, more broadly, my own generation (I'm technically a Millennial) and the generation coming up behind us (Gen Z). It is impossible to overstate how bad their technological habits are. From sunrise to sundown (through many hours of sundown) they fill their minutes and hours with brain-stunting screen-candy, whether social media, music, streaming video, or all of the above. They wake up to it and, quite literally, fall asleep to it. They can't imagine going without it for even brief stretches, and they can't imagine sitting in a room, without a device, without artificial noise of some kind, and reading a book for 25 minutes straight. (They can't imagine it because they've never done it or, all too often, seen it done.) This is another, larger conversation, granted, but it is related to the present topic, because the principal thing for Christian teachers, pastors, professors, and writers to say to these kids is not Thou Shalt Engage Pop Culture EVEN MOAR. The thing to do is to model, instruct, and shape them so as (a) to unlearn their screen-addled habits and (b) to present an alternative. True, this generation isn't going to go Full Butlerian Jihad—though I wish to God they, and we, would—and so it is indeed a wise and worthwhile thing to train them in healthy, thoughtful, critical habits of engagement with culture of every kind. And inasmuch as that is what the pro–pop culture folks are in actuality up to, I have no beef with them. But in order to motivate that project, we don't have to shore up the depth or quality or worthiness of pop culture as such; we don't have to pretend. We just have to accept it as a part of our common life, bad as much of it is, then think through how Christians ought to relate to it (in a complex balance of resistance, ascesis, discipline, engagement, celebration, and critique).

8. A coda on sports, then a postscript on myself. A number of folks asked either why I didn't mention sports or whether sports falls under my critique. Those are good questions. Sports, even more than pop culture (understood as concrete artifacts produced for mass entertainment purposes—and even here I realize sports is becoming less and less distant from such a definition), can become an idol from which Christians should flee. But since what I had in mind was Christians with an audience arguing that fellow Christians have a kind of spiritual or cultural or missional duty to "engage" popular culture, sports seemed a separate issue. I've not encountered that kind of rhetoric regarding sports, partly because basically no one, including Christians, needs to be convinced to play or watch sports; partly because sports has a different kind of importance in our lives—different, that is, than art and its aura of significance. But I have no doubt much of what I wrote and what I've written here applies, mutatis mutandis, to sports and the adoration, even fanaticism, that surrounds it.

9. My original piece had a third audience above all: myself. Outside of the most important aspects of my life (God, family, church, vocation), I probably spend the largest chunk of my time, day to day and week to week, thinking about how to change my relationship to technology. I've written about that a number of times on this blog. My relationship to technology includes my phone (cut down to ~45 min/day!), social media (no Facebook! Minimal Twitter!), my household (no kids have devices! No TV on Sundays!). But it also includes my viewing habits. And those have always been the hardest for me to curb. I grew up watching a lot of TV, and then in my late teens I got into film in a big way. In college and grad school I developed what I take to be quite bad habits—not morally bad, in terms of what I viewed, but psychically bad, in terms of shaping my brain and body's expectations for what it means to fill free time, to rest. If I didn't have school work to do in the evenings, my singular instinct was (and to some extent still remains) to turn on the TV (where "TV" means some film- or show-streaming screen). From 2000 to 2010, film-wise, and from 2006 to 2016, TV-wise, if you've heard of it, I've probably seen it. Having four kids in six years both helped and hurt. Helped, because my movie habits were forced to change whether I liked it or not. Hurt, because while I was staying home part time as a doctoral student, I simply couldn't find the energy to do intellectually demanding work when my kids napped, so I actually increased my TV viewing. In the last 3+ years, I have made it a dominating goal of my life to decrease this time spent in front of a screen, watching a show (however good the show might be—and sometimes they're quite good). And I've succeeded, to an extent. My aim is not—pace Matt Anderson—to rid my life of TV or streaming art. It's to unlearn the itch, that is, the psychological and almost physiological reflex to fill "blank" time with a screen filled with moving images. I treat this itch like a disease, though I am self-aware enough to know that my almost maniacal posture toward the itch is itself a sign of how far I've come. But so far as I can see, it really is a disease, a social disease, present in Kindergartners, freshmen in college, thirtysomething parents, empty-nesters, and retired grandparents. When dinner's done, or the dishes are washed, or the kids are in bed, or the house is clean—when there's a chunk of time to be filled—we all do we what we've always done since the 1950s: turn on the TV. Only now, the name of that all-powerful gravitational pull is no longer TV but Netflix. It's a cultural tick, a habitual default, an emotional itch, a psychological addiction. And speaking only for myself, I want to be free of it.

Brad East 7/8/19 Brad East 7/8/19

On climate change and the church

Yesterday Freddie de Boer posted a brief reflection on climate change, which he opens in this way:

"This is one of those things where I feel like everybody quietly knows it but we have this sort of tacit agreement not to say it openly in order to preserve some sort of illusion about what our society is and who we are. But, I mean, come on – we’re not fixing climate change. Nobody thinks we are, not really. Everyone’s putting on a brave face, everyone’s maintaining the pretense on behalf of the kids of whatever. But come on. Let us be adults here. We are not, as a species, going to do the things necessary to arrest or meaningfully slow the heating of the planet and thus will be exposed to all of the ruinous consequences of failing to do so."

This is neither, for him, denialism nor despair, just the hard facts. Action is still called for:

"I’m not telling people to give up, and I’m not telling people to despair. Of course we have to fight this thing, just like you fight to save your life even when it’s impossible. This is not in any sense denialism; it’s real, it’s coming, and the changes are utterly devastating. And though I recognize it would be easy to think this, I say this without a shred of glee, smugness, or superiority. I just feel like everyone privately knows that this is a fight we’re going to lose. Turn off every emotional part of your brain and do the pure, brutal actuarial calculus and find out what you really believe."

Let me share a few brief thoughts and questions in response to this.

1. It seems to me that, bracketing sincere deniers and those who simply never think about the topic—and we should allow that, at least in the U.S., that covers a sizeable slice of the population—this analysis is basically correct. If, on the continuum of predictions, the worst is true, paired with what it would be necessary to do to prevent such a future from happening, who can plausibly believe a fractious and divided globe of 7 billion people will unite in order to change their own lives and the lives of everyone else, the very structure and habitus of civilization, in the blink of an eye, without dissent, peaceably, and voluntarily?

2. Is Freddie correct that this is not a counsel of despair? At least, for people who broadly share Freddie's moral and political convictions? People fight to save their lives out of the natural instinct of self-preservation. But would it, strictly speaking, be rational for, say, an atheist who knew she would die in 3 hours to fight—with all her might, with great suffering, and to no avail—with the certain knowledge that, at most, she would die in 6 hours instead? Why should people who lack faith in God (and the concomitant beliefs, commitments, and practices of faith in God) not despair for themselves and their progeny, assuming the prediction of doom is correct?

3. What do Christians have to say about this? What should Christian theology say about it? So much of the oxygen of this conversation has for so long been sucked up by dispute over the existence and severity of climate change, and even then, in the register of politics. But let's just stipulate the fact: not only of climate change but also of its most disastrous potential consequences. Does the church, do theologians, have something unique—something substantive, or prophetic, or evangelical, or apostolic, or penitential, or whatever—to say about such a matter? Has such commentary been offered, and I have missed it? Are there Europeans or Africans or other church authorities or theologians that have offered a richly Christian word on the topic? I don't mean, again, recognition of the problem and vague generalities about meeting the challenge of the day. I mean the possibility (here, the stipulated fact) of widespread ecological ruin, terror and suffering and destruction of human life and culture on a vast, perhaps unparalleled scale, social instability and generational loss, the near-total transformation of conditions of human existence on planet earth. Has serious theological attention been paid to that? Even as only a potential or stipulated future? What would the gospel speak into such a situation? What would the call of God be upon the church, both today and in such a future?

I'm left wondering.

Brad East 7/3/19 Brad East 7/3/19

Against pop culture

Christians love pop culture these days. But the subset of Christians who love pop culture the most is pastors, writers, and academics. Pop culture as a mode of "engagement"; pop culture as a means of "reaching" this or that group; pop culture as a way of "relating" to students: all these and more are celebrated and commended and practiced in churches, classrooms, and websites every day. "Finding the gospel in [pop culture artifact X]" is a ubiquitous and representative genre. Christians love pop culture, and Christians with an audience want fellow Christians to love pop culture.

Why is that? Why should Christians like, love, or "engage with" pop culture?

I don't think there are very many, or perhaps any, good answers to that question.

Now, sociologically and empirically, we can surely posit some reasons for the lovefest. Christians, especially conservative Christians, especially conservative evangelical Christians, have tended to be socially and culturally disreputable, either isolated or self-exiled from dominant norms, media, and elite artistic production. When that has taken the form of anxious parents "protecting" their children from, say, Disney or Hollywood, it could assume unhealthy forms. Moreover, once such children grow up—or, perhaps, move up in terms of class—they may discover that, as it happens, The Lion King and Return of the Jedi and even some R-rated movies aren't so bad after all.

More broadly, knowledge of pop culture is the lingua franca of upwardly mobile bourgeois-aspirational twenty- and thirty-somethings working white collar jobs in big cities (not to mention college, the gateway to such a destination). I remember a long car ride I once took with three academic colleagues, one of whom had not seen a single "relevant" or popular film or TV show from the previous decade. The result? He basically sat out the conversation for hours at a stretch. What did he have to contribute, after all? And what else was there to talk about?

But such explanations are just that, explanations, not reasons for why Christians (or anyone) ought to be enthusiastic consumers of pop culture, much less evangelists for it. And rather than flail around for half-baked arguments in support of that view, let me just posit the contrary: there are no good reasons. The boring fact is that Christians like pop culture for the same reasons everyone else does—it's convenient, undemanding, diverting, entertaining, and socially rewarded—and Christians with an audience either (1) rationalize that fact with high-minded justifications, (2) invest that activity with meaning it lacks (but "must" have to warrant the time Christians give to it), or (3) instrumentalize it toward other, non-trivial ends.

Options 1 and 2 are dead ends. Option 3 is well-intended but, nine times out of ten, also a dead end.

The truth is that, for every hour that you do not spend watching Netflix, your life will be improved, and you will have the opportunity to do something better with that time. (I'm generalizing: if, instead of watching Netflix, you break one of the 10 commandments, then you will have done something worse with your time.) Reading, cooking, gardening, playing a board game, building something with your hands, chatting with a neighbor, grabbing coffee with a friend, serving in a food pantry, learning a language, cleaning, sleeping, journaling, praying, sitting on your porch, resting, catching up with your spouse or housemate: every one of these things would be a qualitative improvement on streaming a show or movie (much less scrolling infinitely on Instagram or Twitter). There is no argument for spending time online or "engaging" pop culture as a better activity for Christians with time on their hands than these or other activities. Netflix is always worse for your soul—and your mind, and your heart, and your body—than the alternative.

Now, does that mean you should never, ever stream a show? No, although this is usually too quick an escape route for those who would evade the force of the claim. ("Jesus, I know you said turn the other cheek, but could you, quickly though in detail, provide conditions for my justifiably harming or even taking the life of another human being?") My argument here is not against the liceity of ever streaming a show or otherwise engaging pop culture; it is against the ostensibly positive reasons in favor its being a good thing Christians ought to do, indeed, ought to care about doing, with eagerness and energy. Because that is a silly thing to believe, and the silliness should be obvious.

I had been meaning to write something like this the last year or two, but a recent exchange between Matthew Lee Anderson, in his newsletter, and his readers, including Brett McCracken, prompted me to finally get these thoughts down. The short version is that Matt suggests people delete their Netflix accounts, and people think that goes too far. (To be clear: Whenever anyone anywhere at any time suggests that people delete their [anything digital/online/social media], I agree reflexively.) The present post isn't meant as an intervention in that conversation so much as a parallel, complementary reflection. Any and all libertarian (in the sense of a philosophy of the will's freedom) Christian accounts of pop culture, Netflix, social media, etc., fail at just this point, because they view individuals as choosers who operate neutrally with options arrayed before them, one of which in our day happens to be flipping Netflix on (or not) and "deciding" to watch a meaty, substantive Film instead of binging bite-size candy-bar TV. But that is not an accurate depiction of the situation. Netflix—and here again I'm using Netflix as a stand-in for all digital and social media today—is a principality and a power, as is the enormous flat-screen television set, situated like a beloved household god in every living room in every home across the country. It calls for attention. It demands your love. It wants you. And its desire for you elicits desire in you for it. It is, therefore, a power to be resisted, at least for Christians. Such resistance requires ascesis. And ascesis means discipline, denial, and sometimes extreme measures. It might mean you suffer boredom and lethargy on a given evening. It might mean you have to read a book, or use your hands. It might even mean you won't catch the quippy allusions in a shallow conversation at work. So be it.

A final word, or postscript, speaking as a teacher. I have too many colleagues (across the university and in other institutions) who have effectively admitted defeat in the long war between 20-year olds' habits and the habits of the classroom, and who thus not only employ various forms of visual media in class (assuming students cannot learn without them) but actively encourage and solicit students' use of and engagement with social and digital media and streaming entertainment in assignments outside class. Granting that there are appropriate forms of this (for example, in a course on Christianity and culture, one of my assignments is a film critique), I am thinking of more extreme versions of this defeatism. What I mean is the notion that "this generation" simply cannot be expected to read a book cover to cover, or that the book must be pitched at a 9th-grade level, or that assignments "ought" to "engage" other forms of digital media, because "this is the world we live in." Education must be entertaining, lest the students not be educated at all. But as Neil Postman has taught us, when education is made to be entertaining, students do not learn while also happening to be entertained. They learn that learning itself must always be fun. And when it isn't, that must be a failure of some kind.

Our students do not need us to encourage their Netflix and Twitter and other digital habits. They need us to help them unlearn them, so far as is possible within the limits afforded us. Acceptance is not realism, in the classroom any more than in our own lives. Acceptance is acquiescence and retreat. For Christians, at least, that is not an option.

Brad East 6/23/19 Brad East 6/23/19

New essay published in The Los Angeles Review of Books: "Enter Paul"

I have a new essay published this morning over in The Los Angeles Review of Books, titled "Enter Paul," on Paula Fredriksen's two latest books, Paul: The Pagans' Apostle and When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation (both from Yale University Press). Here's a sample:

"Put it this way: an itinerant rabbi from the Galilee — the backwaters of Palestine — leads a popular movement among the Jews, one that comes to an ignominious end when he is executed for sedition by the Roman authorities. Some of his followers form a small community in Jerusalem, proclaiming that not only was this rabbi and prophet the longed-for Messiah of Israel, but he is alive, in glory with God, vested with impregnable power and heavenly authority. These messianic Jews share goods in common and worship daily at the temple, praying and waiting eagerly for Jesus’s imminent return, when he will drive out the pagan occupiers and restore his people’s fortunes.

"Pause the frame there. Nothing about this picture offers even a hint that this same community — one defined by exclusive loyalty to Jesus, Israel’s Messiah and Lord — will, centuries hence, find itself filling the Roman Empire, legalized and endorsed by that same empire, dominated by gentiles, not Jews, and led by men like Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis.

"How did this happen? Why did it happen? To answer, we need to leave Augustine behind and follow Fredriksen into the world of the eastern Mediterranean in the first century of the common era, specifically Jewish life under the thumb of the Roman Empire."

Read the rest.

Brad East 6/10/19 Brad East 6/10/19

“We can't really be that fallen": a question for Christian socialists

Recently Nathan Robinson, editor-in-chief at Current Affairs, a socialist magazine, responded to National Review's issue "Against Socialism." He considers, successively, thirteen different writers' contributions in the issue. The tone of the piece is cheeky while wanting genuinely to respond in kind to substantive critiques of socialism.

One passage stood out to me. First, here is a paragraph that Robinson quotes from Theodore Dalrymple's essay in the NR issue:

"Socialism is not only, or even principally, an economic doctrine: It is a revolt against human nature. It refuses to believe that man is a fallen creature and seeks to improve him by making all equal one to another. It is not surprising that the development of the New Man was the ultimate goal of Communist tyrannies, the older version of man being so imperfect and even despicable. But such futile and reprehensible dreams, notwithstanding the disastrous results when they were taken seriously by ruthless men in power, are far from alien to current generations of intellectuals. Man, knowing himself to be imperfect, will continue to dream of, and believe in, schemes not merely of improvement here and there but of perfection, of a life so perfectly organized that everyone will be happy, kind, decent, and selfless without any effort at all. Illusion springs eternal, especially among intellectuals."

Here is what Robinson writes in response:

"Now, this part has a bit of truth to it. Socialism is not principally an economic doctrine, and I’ve suggested that the best way to understand it is as the set of principles that arise from feelings of solidarity. But it is not a 'revolt against human nature.' We simply have a difference of opinion on what 'human nature' means and what it allows to be possible. We believe human beings can be a cooperative species and do not see our fellow creatures as helplessly 'fallen' (or rather, if they’ve fallen, it’s our job to extend a hand and get them back up.) It’s true, we like to daydream about everyone being happy, kind, and decent, perhaps because we know so many people who fit the description and we find it easy to imagine the ethos spreading further. But we’re also realistic: we are not focused on mashing our fellow people into a vision of the New Human Being, but on achieving concrete goals that will materially improve people’s lives. I’m a utopian by twilight, but during the day I’m a practical sort, and so are the other lefties I know. Their goals are actually so modest that it’s remarkable they’re so controversial: a good standard of living for all, freedom from exploitation and abuse, democracy in the workplace, a culture of mutual aid and compassion. Can we not manage these things? We can’t really be that fallen."

It's unclear to me whether Robinson is having some rhetorical fun here, or whether he doesn't know the Christian theological language of "fallenness" on which Dalrymple is drawing. For what fallenness names is the condition of human (and indeed all created) life under sin, a condition that, according to Christian faith, will not change, much less be resolved, so long as this world endures. To the claim, "We can't really be that fallen," the broadly catholic, or Augustinian, tradition replies, at least in principle, "Indeed we are that fallen—and it is far worse than you imagine."

Now, that doesn't per se answer the concrete political, economic, or policy goals that Robinson sets out (though I do think there is a bit of a sleight of hand at work between the "modesty" of the proposals and the normative anthropological vision of flourishing he admits underwrites them). And non-religious or non-Christian socialists may be perfectly coherent, and even justified, in rejecting the theological account of human being that the church confesses, following revelation, to be true.

But the Dalrymple/Robinson pairing of perspectives makes for a nice contrast, and one, moreover, that touches on a question I have had percolating in the back of my mind for a while now. The question is for Christians who claim the socialist vision—and here I mean socialism in the strongest of terms, not as a cipher for left-of-centrism or left-of-the-DNC or even social democracy as such.

Here's the question, put a few different ways. What is the relationship between the Christian doctrine of original sin and Christian support for a socialist economy? What role does ineradicable human fallenness play in such an account of socialism's operation and success? Is "human nature" and/or the limits and/or sinfulness of all human beings without exception a determining factor in the Christian support for, or version of, socialism? Does affirmation of human fallenness in some way modify, alter, color, qualify, mitigate, or otherwise affect specifically Christian socialism as opposed to secular or atheistic socialism? Does original sin put a "brake" on the envisageable "perfectibility" (however analogically defined) of human character, action, will, and life together? What role, if any, do fallenness and tragedy play in theoretical accounts of, and policy proposals regarding, ideal economic arrangements in human society?

You get the idea. It's a real set of questions. I know or read just enough Christian socialists to suspect there are answers; I know or read just few enough to lack the awareness of which resources to consult on these questions. I welcome direction—or answers!

Brad East 6/3/19 Brad East 6/3/19

Theses on preaching

1. The principal subject matter for preaching, always and everywhere, is the triune God of Israel attested and revealed in the good news about Jesus, the Lord and Messiah of Israel. If a sermon could not plausibly be said to have been about that, it was not a sermon.

1.1. This is primarily a substantive point, that is, regarding what a sermon is "about," which doesn't mean that counting the number of times the words "God," "Lord," "Jesus," "Spirit," "Trinity," etc., are mentioned in a sermon is going to do the job. Throwing around those words isn't good enough; indeed, imagine an expertly crafted sermon on the book of Esther that somehow avoided such terms, just like the text in question, while nevertheless rendering God's providential, saving hand throughout.

1.2. Having said that, the point is secondarily grammatical. That is, months and months of sermons unpopulated by liberal use of the sentence structure, "God [verb]," would be deeply suspect. In most sermons God ought to be the grammatical subject as much as he is the subject matter. God is not passive—in Scripture, in the world, in the church, or in the sermon—and he shouldn't be implied to be by the rhetoric of preachers.

2. A sermon is the proclamation of the gospel by an authorized member of the church out of a specific text from Holy Scripture in the setting of public worship among, to, and for the sake of the gathered local assembly of the baptized.

2.1. Proclamation means announcement, attestation, verbal testimony, public witness, a herald's message from the royal throne. A sermon, therefore, is not a lesson. It is not (primarily) teaching, or didactic in tone or content. It is not a pep talk, an inspirational message, or personal sharing. It is not a comedy routine. It is not a TED Talk. It is solemn, joyful, awesome declaration of the gospel of the incarnate Lord.

2.2. The gospel is the good news about Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God become human, crucified, risen, and ascended. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us; the autobasileia, the kingdom himself in person; the God-man who takes away the sins of the world. He is the promised one of Israel, the grace of God enfleshed, the King and Ruler of the cosmos. His name means love, forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption. A sermon is not a sermon that does not point, like the outstretched finger of John the Baptist, to this Christ, and to life in him, the life he makes possible.

2.2.1. That the sermon announces the gospel, and the gospel is the good news of friendship with God through the grace of Christ, does not mean that every sermon must be about or mention the name of Jesus. Most should, no doubt, and no sermon should fear mentioning Christ lest he be "imported" into or "imposed" on, say, a text that does not mention him by name. A Christian sermon should not fear to be a Christian sermon. But it is certainly possible to preach a faithful Christian sermon out of an Old Testament text without mentioning Jesus. Why? Because the good news about Jesus is the gospel of Israel's God, whose covenant with Abraham is the very covenant renewed in Christ and extended to the gentiles. God's grace, in other words, and God's identity and attributes, are one and the same across the covenants. To preach the one God just is to preach the gospel.

2.2.2. Having said that, reticence about preaching Jesus from Israel's scriptures is an inherited prejudice worth unlearning in most cases. Moses and David and Isaiah foretold Jesus, as Jesus himself taught. We should take him at his word, and God's people deserve to hear of it.

2.3. A sermon is and ought to be rooted in and an explication of some particular passage of the Christian Bible. This should go without saying. A sermon, however thematic, is not on a topic or theme first of all. The topic or theme arises from the text. A sermon series that does not follow the lectionary and is organized thematically should be very careful so as to commit itself to concrete texts each week.

2.3.1. Expository preaching may be done faithfully, but not all preaching need be expository. The danger of so-called non-expository preaching is that it become unmoored from the text. The alternative danger, however, is mistaking the sermon for a class lesson. But a sermon is not a lecture; the pulpit is not a lectern. A lecture's aim is understanding. A sermon's aim is faith. One can proclaim the gospel out of a text without parsing its every verb and explaining its every historical nuance. But one can do the latter without accomplishing the former. That's the error to avoid.

2.3.2. A sermon is not a book tour. It is not a personal testimony. It isn't time for church business (or, God forbid, budget talk). A sermon isn't practical advice, or suggestions for living your best life now, or ideas about how to parent. It is not electioneering and it is not political advocacy. If you hear attempted preachments that, for example, do not have a biblical text as their source or the living God as their subject or the gospel as the matter of their announcement: then you have not heard a sermon.

2.3.3. Texts preached on should be diverse in every way: narrative, epistle, Torah, psalms, wisdom, paraenesis, apocalypse, etc. For both lectionary and non-lectionary traditions, the harder texts should not be avoided (purity laws, money, war, nonviolence, gender, miracles, politics, justice—whatever challenges you or your audience's preconceptions or sacred cows).

2.4. Preaching is an item of Christian worship. It is an element of the liturgy, the word proclaimed in speech and sacrament. Preaching is not secular. It is not a species of human speech in general. It is the word of God communicated through human words. The preacher is an instrument of divine speech, a sanctified mediator of Christ's saving gospel. The Holy Spirit sanctifies the words of the sermon to be, in all their unworthiness, the medium of the eternal Word that slays and makes alive again.

2.4.1. Preachers and Christian hearers ought to approach the word proclaimed mindful of what is happening. Which is not to make the occasion a somber or rarefied event: a sermon's environment is and ought to be the lively reality of human community, which means nursing babies and fussing kids and coughs and tears and inarticulate moans (offered by, for example, profoundly intellectually disabled persons, who are welcomed by Christ himself to hear him speak). The sermon, in short, is not cordoned off from real life; the assembly need not resemble the silence of a monastery before God can begin to work. But precisely in the midst of and through all such common features of human life together, the Spirit of Christ is making his presence known in the speaking of his holy word.

2.4.2. The long-standing catholic practice of the church is for the proclaimed word to precede the celebration of the Eucharist, which is the climax of the liturgy. Churches descended from the Reformation tend to reverse the order, so that the service culminates in the sermon (sometimes tending, regrettably, to eliminate the meal altogether). The catholic sequence seems right to me, but in either case, there are dangers to be avoided.

2.4.3. Protestants must resist the temptation to make worship talky, so word-centered that it really does become like one long classroom experience, peppered with prayers and a bit of music. The word, moreover, must not swamp the sacrament. Far too many sermon-centered churches, even if they celebrate communion, downgrade its importance through a minimum of ritual, time, and emphasis. The sermon becomes the reason the people are gathered; and if the sermon, then the preacher; and if the preacher, then a mere minister has displaced Christ as the locus of the church's assembly. The gravest theological danger is that the sacramental principle of ex opere operato ceases to apply, practically, to the sermon, because its centrality highlights the need for technical quality, and preachers are no longer trusted to successfully proclaim God's gospel apart from their own worthiness or talents, for those very things become exactly the measure of their faithfulness, and thus their appeal.

2.4.4. Catholics (East and West) must resist the temptation to make the sermon, or homily, a mere prelude, preferably brief, to the Main Event. The gospel is proclaimed in word and sacrament; that need not imply equality in every respect, but it certainly requires a kind of parity, a recognition that each has its proper work to do, under God, for God's people. Ritual is good and liturgy is good, but proclamation of the gospel has the converting power of Christ himself through the Spirit (a sword in the hand of the servant of God, to mortify the flesh and vivify the soul), power to convict of sin, awaken faith, to work signs and miracles, to raise the dead. The centrality of the Eucharist does not logically entail, and must not become an excuse to enact, the liturgical devaluation of the proclaimed word.

2.5. A sermon is an ecclesial event; it exists by, in, and for the church of Christ. Preaching is a practice proper to the baptized. The proper context and principal audience for the word of God is the people of God. In this the sermon is no different than the Eucharist, whose natural home is the gathered community of faith.

2.5.1. The twofold telos of the sermon is the awakening of faith and the edification of the faithful. The sermon, then, is preached primarily to and for baptized believers, not to nonbelievers, visitors, seekers, or pagans. The sermon is not first of all evangelistic or apologetic. Doubtless there have been and are contexts in which sermons ought to be oriented to nonbelievers, but that is not ordinarily, not normatively, what the sermon is or is for. The word proclaimed is for the upbuilding of the saints in via, the (audible) manna alongside the (visible) manna that the Lord provides for the journey through the wilderness to the promised land.

2.5.2. Simplifying sermons so as to be intelligible, week in and week out, to people who know nothing about the Christian gospel or Holy Scripture is unwise and, though it may provide short-term results, in the long-term it is impracticable, ineffective, and damaging. The Lord's people require feeding. Refusing, on principle, never to move beyond milk for infants will leave the people famished and arrested in their spiritual maturity.

3. Preaching in a digital age presents challenges the church hasn't had to face in nearly its entire life. It's a genuinely new world, and the changes are still fresh, historically speaking. Microphones, video, images, projected text, recording, podcasts, broadcasting to multiple sites at once—I don't envy pastors who have to make decisions about such things in real time. But there are principles worth keeping in mind while navigating the new landscape.

3.1. Technology should serve the sermon and the sermon's ends, not the other way around. It should serve, in fact, every one of the theses above. If it does not—if it distracts, if it draws attention to itself, if it becomes an end in itself, if it is superficial, if it is flashy, if it is ugly, if it abets rather than subverts the hyper-technologizing tendencies already gnawing and corrupting the minds and souls of the faithful—then it should be resisted and rejected out of hand.

3.2. Preaching is an oral event. Considered as a natural occurrence, it is essentially a verbal communication spoken by one human being to the hearkening ears of a gathering of other human beings. Technology can aid this occurrence: by amplifying sound, for example, for the large size of an assembly; or, say, for the hard of hearing. It can even transmit the sermon to those unable, for medical or travel or other reasons, to attend the convocation of God's people in person. These are clear ways in which technology serves the orality of gospel proclamation.

3.2.1. Technology can also mitigate the spoken nature of the sermon. Such technology includes videos, extensive use of screen text, involved graphics and images and slide shows, and so on. The question is not whether these are absolutely forbidden in any and all cases. The question is whether they are subjected to rigorous theological inquiry as to their suitability to the essential form of churchly proclamation, rather than their merely instrumental capacities with respect to desired secondary ends (e.g., lack of boredom, capturing youths' attention, entertainment, laughs, viral videos). The medium is not neutral, not an instance of adiaphora; the medium is, literally, the message: the word of God for the people of God. If it isn't a word, if it isn't God's word, then it isn't the preaching of the gospel. And that's the whole ballgame.

3.3. Churches and preachers should be wary rather than eager to use new technologies. Technology takes on a life of its own. It masters its domain. Nor is it neutral: a social media app cannot reinforce good habits of sustained attention, for example, because by its very nature a social media app is meant to colonize your attention and destroy your ability to concentrate for sustained periods of time without interruption. Nor is technology master-less; it serves gods, rabid and hungry and insatiable. Those gods are the market and Silicon Valley. Technology doesn't descend ready-made from heaven. It comes from somewhere, and is made by human beings. Those human beings make what they sell and sell what they make for one reason: money. Letting what they make and sell into the church is a dangerous game to play, even if well-considered and well-intentioned. A pastor ought always to be suspicious rather than sanguine about the power of technology in the life of the church—and such suspicion should bear on its use in preaching.

4. Technique is, hands down, the least important thing about preaching. If a pastor has spent the week dwelling in the biblical text for that Sunday's sermon and, from the pulpit, strives, while petitioning for help from God's grace, to preach from Scripture the good news of God's grace in Jesus on behalf of and for the sake of the upbuilding of Christ's body—then the job is done. In a real sense that is the only criterion for any sermon: was that thing accomplished (even, was its accomplishment sought)? If so, then questions of delivery, eloquence, clarity, form, etc., are all secondary, and of little import. If not, if a truly Christian sermon was not even attempted, then all the good humor, articulateness, pathos, personal anecdotes, intelligence, powers of rhetoric, and the rest don't mean a damn thing.

4.1. Method is a matter of prudence, native talent, gifts of the Spirit, audience, context, training, and many more largely uncontrollable variables. A faithful sermon can be 20, 40, or 60 minutes long (or more); it can be done from memory, with a basic outline, or with a manuscript; it can involve gestures and movements and animation or minimal intonation and emotion; it can encompass the whole spectrum of human passions and virtues; there is no platonic ideal of Faithful Proclamation. (Nor, by the way, is there The Biblical Model of it.) Method depends; don't be a slave to method; don't be a disciple of methodologists.

4.2. Preaching should wear its study lightly while depending on it as the sermon's lifeblood. You can spot a preacher who doesn't study from a mile away. A preacher who doesn't read except for what is strictly necessary. A preacher who doesn't read widely, who doesn't read for pleasure, who doesn't read anything but commentaries (though, please, read the commentaries!). A preacher whose primary—or, God forbid, exclusive—allusions and references are to pop culture. A good preacher doesn't flaunt sources and drop names. But the research that informs a sermon should be discernible in the rich substance of it; should be there to be offered to anyone with further questions following the sermon. "Oh, you had a question about that line? Here are half a dozen books I'd recommend on the topic if you want to go deeper on it..."

4.2.1. Speaking of pop culture: steer clear of it. Nine times out of ten an explicit and/or drawn-out reference to pop culture is a distraction and undermines the aim of the reference. Lovers of pop culture vastly overestimate the universality of their pop culture darlings. Harry Potter may have millions of fans, but here's the truth: half of your church hasn't read the books or seen the films. Moreover, pop culture almost always skews young, and playing for the youth is a capitulation to market pressures. A sermon is catholic: it is meant for the one holy church of God—not some upwardly mobile demographic slice of it. Finally, pop culture references usually denigrate rather than elevate the material. What hath Hollywood to do with Jerusalem? Children's movies and science fiction are silly and insubstantial compared with the holy ever-living Trinity and the sacrifice of Jesus upon a Roman gallows. "When Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die—oh and that reminds me of this funny little anecdote from Finding Nemo..." The juxtaposition is absurd, and though congregants might chuckle or wink, in their hearts they know something great and weighty is being set alongside something weak and shallow. Don't do it.

4.2.2. The pop culture rule is a species of the greater genus of illustrations. (Another species is anecdotes.) Illustrations are certainly useful and have their place. But at least two dangers are worth addressing. One is the tendency for illustrations to swamp the text. Instead of the preacher's experience at the DMV illuminating the real matter at hand, which is the text from Scripture, the opposite happens: God's word becomes a bit player in the larger drama of the preacher's life. The other danger is related: illustrations, consistently used, can come to shape the people's minds in the following way. Instead of Scripture being the relevant, formative, immediate influence on their souls—their hearts, minds, morals, imaginations—Scripture is instead pictured as distant, alien, strange, ancient, foreign, irrelevant. And what illustrations do is bridge that gap, translate that language, assimilate that culture into ours, our time and context and culture and language being the dominant factors. Illustrations and stories and anecdotes and allusions need, rather, to serve the relevance and power and relatability and authority of the scriptural text, not reverse the terms and increase the alienation people (perhaps already) feel about the Bible.

5. All that the preacher does, all that the many facets of the sermon strive to achieve, must be in service of the one thing necessary: to speak human words, rooted in God's written word, that may, by the Spirit's grace, become a conduit for the living and eternal Word, Christ risen and reigning from heaven, to speak himself in person, in his saving presence, to his beloved people, that he might justify and sanctify, equip and encourage them in faith, hope, and love; and that they might, when the words are finished, give glory to God—and say Amen.

Brad East 6/1/19 Brad East 6/1/19

Politics on the pattern of the martyrs

In my Comment essay earlier this year titled "The Church and the Common Good," I wrote the following, describing and recommending Paul Griffiths' idiosyncratic spin on quietism as the proper form of Christian political action:

"At bottom it is a radical call for epistemic, moral, and theological humility. For we cannot know either the actual or the unintended consequences of the policies for which we advocate; nor can we know those of the policies we oppose. We must assume our opponents act in good faith, even as we admit we act from mixed motives ourselves. If we fail, we may trust that providence has allowed it, for reasons opaque to us; if we prevail, we are in an even more precarious position, for we will be responsible for what results, and we will be tempted to pride. In any case, what good comes, we receive with gratitude. What evil comes, we suffer with patience.

"Quietism, in short, is politics on the pattern of the martyrs, who, like Christ, did not consider victory 'a thing to be grasped, but emptied' themselves, entrusting themselves in faith to 'the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being the things that are not.' Christ forsook the sword as a means of establishing justice in Israel; the kingdom came instead at the cross.

"Banished is every utopia, including the confident Christian rhetoric of justice in our time. As St. Augustine teaches us, the only true justice is found in the city of God, whose founding sacrifice constitutes the only true worship of God. The celebration of this sacrifice is the eucharistic liturgy. Approximations of this justice in politics are difficult to assess in the moment, not to mention predict in advance. The church therefore cannot be codependent with politics. Its hope lies in a future not of its making."

I then ask the inevitable question: "How, you may ask, is this not secession from politics, a status quo–baptizing desertion of the common good?" I go on:

"Answer: Because Christians remain as engaged as ever, even to the point of laying down their lives, only without the vices that attend a realized eschatology (activism absent resurrection): the desperate need to win, the entitled expectation of success, the assumption of God’s approval, the forgetfulness of sin, the recourse to evil means for good ends. Domine, quo vadis? Christian political witness is figured by St. Peter—the rock on which the church is built, surely an ecclesial sine qua non—following the Lord back into Rome, certain that his end is near, but equally certain that all his noble plans and good deeds are not worth resisting the call. For the End is not in his or any human hands, and depends not one iota on our efforts."

All that is by way of preamble, to make a single and simple point. This week has seen the conservative intellectual world roiled by an explosive intramural spat, sparked initially and mostly carried on by Christians, concerning their proper political witness and their prospects, and strategies, for victory.

Here is my question. Of what relevance, if any, is the witness and example of the martyrs for the way that Christians conduct themselves politically? Is "politics on the pattern of the martyrs" exemplary in some way, and thus possible, and thus a goal to strive to approximate? If so, what difference does that make for Christian theory and practice of public engagement? If not ... well, I would like to read someone make the case either that martyrdom is irrelevant to sociopolitical matters (women and men put to death by state authorities regarding their convictions or deeds) or that, though relevant, the stakes are too high to pay them heed in this matter, today, in our context.

Put differently: The martyrs teach us, at a minimum, that sometimes letting go is more faithful than fighting, dying more faithful than continuing to live. The first three centuries of the church's life attest to the vitality of this witness precisely in the arena of politics, as does the church's experience across the globe at present and in recent centuries.

The martyrs were not doormats, and martyrdom is not despair or acquiescence before evil or persecution. It is the power of the cross made manifest in the world. Surely that power has a word to speak to our moment, and to the dispute alluded to above. If we listened, what might it say?

Brad East 5/31/19 Brad East 5/31/19

Are there good reasons to stay on Twitter?

Earlier this week Nolan Lawson wrote a brief post extolling people to get off Twitter. He opens it by saying, "Stop complaining about Twitter on Twitter. Deny them your attention, your time, and your data. Get off of Twitter. The more time you spend on Twitter, the more money you make for Twitter. Get off of Twitter."

Alan Jacobs picked up on this post and wrote in support: "The decision to be on Twitter (or Facebook, etc.) is not simply a personal choice. It has run-on effects for you but also for others. When you use the big social media platforms you contribute to their power and influence, and you deplete the energy and value of the open web. You make things worse for everyone. I truly believe that. Which is why I’m so obnoxiously repetitive on this point."

I've written extensively about my own habits of technology and internet discipline. I deleted my Facebook account. I don't have any social media apps on my iPhone; nor do I even have access to email on there. I use it for calls, texts, podcasts, pictures of my kids (no iCloud!), directions, the weather, and Instapaper. I use Freedom to eliminate my access to the internet, on either my phone or my laptop, for 3-4 hours at a time, two to three times a day. I don't read articles or reply to emails until lunch time, then hold off until end of (work) day or end of (actual) day—i.e., after the kids go to bed. I'm not on Instagram or Snapchat or any of the new social media start-ups.

So why am I still on Twitter? I'm primed to agree with Lawson and Jacobs, after all. And I certainly do agree, to a large extent: Twitter is a fetid swamp of nightmarish human interaction; a digital slot machine with little upside and all downside. I have no doubt that 90% of people on Twitter need to get off entirely, and 100% of people on Twitter should use it 90% less than they do. Twitter warps the mind (journalism's degradation owes a great deal to @Jack); it is unhealthy for the brain and damaging for the soul. No one who deleted their Twitter account would become a less well-rounded, mentally and emotionally and spiritually fulfilled person.

So, again: Why am I still on Twitter? Are there any good reasons to stay?

For me, the answer is yes. The truth is that for the last 3 years (the main years of my really using it) my time on Twitter has been almost uniformly positive, and there have been numerous concrete benefits. At least for now, it's still worth it to me.

How has that happened? Partly I'm sure by dumb luck. Partly by already having instituted fairly rigorous habits of discipline (it's hard to fall into the infinite scroll if the scroll is inaccessible from your handheld device! And the same goes for instant posting, or posting pictures directly from my phone, which I can't do, or for getting into flame wars, or for getting notifications on my home screen, which I don't—since, again, it's not on my phone, and my phone is always (always!) on Do Not Disturb and Silent and, if I'm in the office, on Airplane Mode; you get it now: the goal is to be uninterrupted and generally unreachable).

Partly it's my intended mode of presence on Twitter: Be myself; don't argue about serious things with strangers; only argue at all if the other person is game, the topic is interesting, and the conversation is pleasant or edifying or fun; always think, "Would my wife or dad or best friend or pastor or dean or the Lord Jesus himself approve of this tweet?" (that does away with a lot of stupidity, meanness, and self-aggrandizement fast). As a rule, I would like for people who "meet" me on Twitter to meet me in person and find the two wholly consonant. Further, I try hard never to "dunk" on anyone. Twitter wants us to be cruel to one another: why give in?

I limit my follows fairly severely: only people I know personally, or read often, or admire, or learn something from, or take joy in following. For as long as I'm on Twitter I would like to keep my follows between 400 and 500 (kept low through annual culling). The moment someone who follows me acts cruelly or becomes a distraction, to myself or others, I immediately mute them (blocks are reserved, for now, for obvious bots). I don't feel compelled to respond to every reply. And I tend to "interface" with Twitter not through THE SCROLL but through about a dozen bookmarked profiles of people, usually writers or fellow academics, who always have interesting things to say or post links worth saving for later. All in all, I try to limit my daily time on Twitter to 10-30 minutes, less on Saturdays and (ordinarily, or aspirationally) zero on Sundays—at least so long as the kids are awake.

So much for my rules. What benefits have resulted from being on Twitter?

First, it appears that I have what can only be called a readership. Even if said readership comprises "only" a few hundred folks (I have just over a thousand followers), that number is greater than zero, which until very recently was the number of my readers not related to me by blood. And until such time (which will be no time) that I have thousands upon tens of thousands of readers—nay, in the millions!—it is rewarding and meaningful to interact with people who take the time to read, support, share, and comment on my work.

(That raises the question: Should the time actually come, and I'm sure that it will, when I am bombarded by trolls and the rank wickedness that erupts from the bowels of Twitter Hell for so many people? I will take one of two courses of action. I will adopt the policy of not reading my replies, as wise Public People do. But if that's not good enough, that will be the day, the very day, that I quit Twitter for good. And perhaps Lawson and Jacobs both arrived at that point long ago, which launched them off the platform. If so, good for them.)

Additionally, I have made contacts with a host of people across the country (and the world) with whom I share some common interest, not least within the theological academy. Some of these have become, or are fast becoming, genuine friendships. And because we theologians find reasons to gather together each year (AAR/SBL, SCE, CSC, etc.), budding online friendships actually generate in-person meetings and hangouts. Real life facilitated by the internet! Who would've thought?

I have also received multiple writing opportunities simply in virtue of being on Twitter. Those opportunities came directly or indirectly from embedding myself, even if (to my mind) invisibly, in networks of writers, editors, publishers, and the like. (I literally signed a book contract last week based on an email from an editor who found me on Twitter based on some writing and tweeting I'd done.) As I've always said, academic epistemology is grounded in gossip, and gossip (of the non-pejorative kind) depends entirely on who you know. The same goes for the world of publishing. And since writers and editors love Twitter—doubtless to their detriment—Twitter's the place to be to "hang around" and "hear" stuff, and eventually be noticed by one or two fine folks, and be welcomed into the conversation. That's happened to me already, in mostly small ways; but they add up.

So that's it, give or take. On a given week, I average 60-90 minutes on Twitter spread across 5-6 days, mostly during lunch or early evening hours, on my laptop, never on my phone, typically checking just a handful of folks' profiles, sending off a tweet or two myself, never battling, never feeding the trolls, saving my time and energy for real life (home, kids, church, friends) and for periods of sustained, undistracted attention at work, whether reading or writing.

Having said that, if I were a betting man, I would hazard a guess that I'll be off Twitter within five years, or that the site will no longer exist in anything like its current form. My time on Twitter is unrepresentative, and probably can't last. But so long as it does, and the benefits remain, I'll "be" there, and I think the reasons I've offered are sufficient to justify the decision.

Brad East 5/16/19 Brad East 5/16/19

DIY Christianity

What is the greatest threat to the church in America today? You could list a lot of candidates.

My answer is DIY Christianity.

That's the term I use with my students to communicate the notion—which they readily recognize—of the Christian faith as recreated anew in, by, and for each generation, or even perhaps each local body of believers. This is Christianity without history, without tradition, without authority, without saints or martyrs or anything mediate, that is, anything intervening (thus obtruding, thus obstructing) between the individual and Jesus. DIY Christianity is "founding" a local church the way entrepreneurs found a start-up, with Big Ideas and Enough With The Old and Radical Innovation. (DIY Christianity thinks "innovation," like "curiosity," is a virtue rather than a vice.)

DIY Christianity is a mortal enemy to the faith once for all delivered to the saints and handed on, generation after generation, from the apostles to the present day. In all that I do—writing and teaching, at church or in the classroom—my singular goal is, so far as I am able, to excise this malignant tumor from the hearts and minds of anyone who will listen.

In positive terms, what I want is for American Christians today to learn, or relearn, to be catholic: to belong to the one great tradition, the one apostolic faith, the one universal church. To reimagine faith not as something they create or manufacture or curate or judge for themselves, but that to which they submit, in joy, the way one simply receives an unexpected gift, a beloved friend's return, the birth of a child. The faith as a given, and the real matter before us one of how to live that faith today, in the midst of so many challenges.

For catholic faith to reign, and DIY Christianity to die: that is the task before us, and therefore the prayer on my mind and on my lips, every single day.

Brad East 5/6/19 Brad East 5/6/19

New article published: “The Church and the Spirit in Robert Jenson's Theology of Scripture" in Pro Ecclesia

I have an article in a two-part symposium in Pro Ecclesia commemorating the life and thought of Robert Jenson, and though the issues are not yet published, my article is available in an early, online-first capacity. Here's the abstract:

In the last two decades of Robert Jenson’s career, he turned his attention to the doctrine of Scripture and its theological interpretation. This article explores the dogmatic structure and reasoning that underlie Jenson’s thought on this topic. After summarizing his theology of Scripture as the great drama of the Trinity in saving relation to creation, the article unpacks the doctrinal loci that materially inform Jenson’s account of the Bible and its role in the church. Ecclesiology and pneumatology emerge as the dominant doctrines; these in turn raise questions regarding Jenson’s treatment of the church’s defectability: that is, whether and how, if at all, the church may fail in its teaching and thus in its reading of Scripture.

Check out the whole thing here.

Brad East 4/23/19 Brad East 4/23/19

Tolkien on the temptations of rule

“...our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see. ...

"A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all. There is no hope left in Elves or dying Númenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf. There is hope that way. Its victory is at hand; and there will be rich reward for those that aided it. As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.”

—Saruman to Gandalf, in The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter 2, "The Council of Elrond"

(I see now that many, many others online and elsewhere have seen in this quote the ongoing relevance it has to any number of important issues today; but since I'd yet to notice that, perhaps others haven't as well.)

Brad East 4/20/19 Brad East 4/20/19

Denise Levertov: “Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell"

Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell

By Denise Levertov

Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
the innocents just His own age and those
unnumbered others waiting here
unaware, in an endless void He is ending
now, stooping to tug at their hands,
to pull them from their sarcophagi,
dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,
neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
still streaked on the dried sweat of his body
no one had washed and anointed, is here,
for sequence is not known in Limbo;
the promise, given from cross to cross
at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn.
All these He will swiftly lead
to the Paradise road: they are safe.
That done, there must take place that struggle
no human presumes to picture:
living, dying, descending to rescue the just
from shadow, were lesser travails
than this: to break
through earth and stone of the faithless world
back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained
stifling shroud; to break from them
back into breath and heartbeat, and walk
the world again, closed into days and weeks again,
wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit
streaming through every cell of flesh
so that if mortal sight could bear
to perceive it, it would be seen
His mortal flesh was lit from within, now,
and aching for home. He must return,
first, in Divine patience, and know
hunger again, and give
to humble friends the joy
of giving Him food—fish and a honeycomb.

Brad East 4/19/19 Brad East 4/19/19

Denise Levertov: “On a Theme from Julian's Chapter XX"

On a Theme from Julian's Chapter XX

By Denise Levertov

Six hours outstretched in the sun, yes,
hot wood, the nails, blood trickling
into the eyes, yes—
but the thieves on their neighbor crosses
survived till after the soldiers
had come to fracture their legs, or longer.
Why single out the agony? What’s
a mere six hours?
Torture then, torture now,
the same, the pain’s the same,
immemorial branding iron,
electric prod.
Hasn’t a child
dazed in the hospital ward they reserve
for the most abused, known worse?
The air we’re breathing,
these very clouds, ephemeral billows
languid upon the sky’s
moody ocean, we share
with women and men who’ve held out
days and weeks on the rack—
and in the ancient dust of the world
what particles
of the long tormented,
what ashes.

But Julian’s lucid spirit leapt
to the difference:
perceived why no awe could measure
that brief day’s endless length,
why among all the tortured
One only is “King of Grief.”
The oneing, she saw, the oneing
with the Godhead opened Him utterly
to the pain of all minds, all bodies
—sands of the sea, of the desert—
from first beginning
to last day. The great wonder is
that the human cells of His flesh and bone
didn’t explode
when utmost Imagination rose
in that flood of knowledge. Unique
in agony, Infinite strength, Incarnate,
empowered Him to endure
inside of history,
through those hours when he took to Himself
the sum total of anguish and drank
even the lees of that cup:

within the mesh of the web, Himself
woven within it, yet seeing it,
seeing it whole. Every sorrow and desolation
He saw, and sorrowed in kinship.

Brad East 4/9/19 Brad East 4/9/19

The blurbs are in for The Triune Story

I couldn't be more pleased to share the following four blurbs for The Triune Story: Essays on Scripture, the volume of the late Robert Jenson's writings on the Bible that I am editing for Oxford University Press. Due later this summer, pre-order your copy today!

"Robert Jenson was undoubtedly one of the most influential and original English-speaking theologians of the last half century, eloquent, controversial, profoundly in love with the God of Jewish and Christian Scripture. This invaluable collection shows us the depth and quality of his engagement with the text of Scripture: we follow him in his close reading of various passages and his tracing of various themes, and emerge with a renewed appreciation of the scope of his doctrinal vision. He offers a model of committed, prayerful exegesis which is both a joy and a challenge to read." —Rowan Williams

"Robert Jenson never needed to be reminded that the most interesting thing about the Bible is God. For those frustrated by biblical scholars apparently willing to harangue us about anything but God, The Triune Story will come as a healing draught. With vigor, clarity, and learning, Jenson reminds us that the apostolic faith, ancient yet always future, is the only true key to the understanding and interpretation of Scripture." —Christopher Bryan, author of The Resurrection of the Messiah and Listening to the Bible

"The never ending task of helping students learn how to read scripture theologically just got a lot easier with this collection. Jenson had a lot to say about the theological interpretation of scripture—much of it important and worthy of offering to future generations as an able guide into the strange world of the bible. Jenson's work on scripture will also be studied by generations of historians and theologians who will want to see a theologian in full intellectual flight thinking about scripture and society and doing so with a seriousness almost unmatched in the latter half of the twenty century. This is a book both important and necessary." —Willie James Jennings, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies, Yale Divinity School

"In a cultural and theological milieu in the twentieth century that viewed the Bible as a book from the past, Robert Jenson put the biblical story as a living Word of God at the center of his thought. The essays in this rich collection are as fresh and stimulating today as they were when first published." —Robert Louis Wilken, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity, University of Virginia

Brad East 4/5/19 Brad East 4/5/19

Thoughts about Don Winslow's Cartel Trilogy

1. I initially called it his Border Trilogy, but then I remembered that name's already taken.

2. What Winslow has done in these books is impressive, in literary terms, and powerful, in terms of educating the reading public while also entertaining them. Little did he know when he began writing the first book nearly 20 years ago how relevant, and prescient, the topic of the drug war and its ever-widening social, moral, and political consequences would be.

3. Winslow is a gifted writer. His prose is propulsive, soaked in adrenaline and masculine energy, in all its creative and destructive forms. His control of tone, voice, character, cultural reference (popular and "high"), and biblical allusion is masterful. The complexity of his plots, the centripetal force drawing their far-flung lines of action to some center or centers of encounter and explosion (often literal), is enthralling. The man was born to do this.

4. The TV adaptation of the trilogy, on FX, is therefore going to be a blast to watch.

5. Having said all that... I found myself disappointed with The Border, and increasingly so as the book wore on. At over 700 pages, it brings the trilogy as a whole (following The Power of the Dog and The Cartel) to around 2,000 pages. In the end, the series makes for diminishing returns. I would recommend POTD to anyone, so long as they could stomach some intense, though realistic, violence and sex. The sequel was nearly as good, though the ending was a betrayal, in my view, and some of the flaws that would drag down the conclusion began to show up here. What are some of those flaws?

6. First, the sheer gratuity of the sex and violence becomes pornographic. It's superfluous, upsetting, and finally boring. Winslow, like so many genre artists, wants to have his cake and eat it too: to titillate readers then to indict them for it, given the who and the what and the how and the what-for of what's on the page. In other words, it's Truffaut's principle about war films applied to the drug war journo-novel: reveling in the glorious debauchery and hedonism of the money, power, fame, and pleasure that comes with the illegal drug trade only to reveal the nauseating rot that underwrites it all. There is (I believe) a way of showing the behavior and experiences of those who themselves revel in the extravagance made possible by drug trafficking without inviting readers to be voyeurs, to enjoy what they see, even if from afar. Call it the Goodfellas problem. However brilliant the third act, the first two acts of a story don't vanish into thin air once the bad guys get their comeuppance. Portray them as they feel in the moment (rather than as they are in lamentable fact), and you glorify The Life, whatever the consequences awaiting them down the line.

In short, I just got sick of it all. And I realized, whether it's Winslow or another genre author, I think I'm done with this sort of thing. It's just too much. Life's too short to have your nose rubbed in this wretchedness. Morally (and Winslow thinks his novels have a moral perspective), it's ugly; artistically, it's unnecessary and self-defeating.

7. The great temptation today is to make Relevant Art, where "relevant" means "speaking in terms that correspond directly and literally to the loudest and most public events on the American scene," and where "art" means "a vehicle for a thesis about said scene, didactically delivered, preferably reducible to a single statement about 'what it all means.'" Alas, Winslow has, with The Border, made Relevant Art.

8. How so? Well, Trump and his son-in-law and a Mueller stand-in all play central roles. You read that right. It's as bad as it sounds. Actually, it's worse.

Perhaps I shouldn't say "central." They aren't page-to-page speaking characters (though we do meet all of them face to face, as it were). But they're there on every page, whether as background, subtext, or pseudonym.

In fact, the climax of the narrative—I kid you not—has the protagonist of all three books, Art Keller, testifying before Congress (on and on and on he drones, with impressive, dizzying self-righteousness), the dramatic upshot of which concerns whether the Attorney General will appoint a Special Counsel. Winslow actually has his Trump stand-in, Dennison, fire Mueller-1, only for Keller's testimony to elicit a Mueller-2 to replace him. (Whoops: maybe should have delayed publication by a year or so...)

It dawned on me in the last 100 pages of the novel: I was reading Resistance Fan Fiction. A fever dream of anti-Trump Earth-2 wishful thinking. What an error in judgment.

9. Because Winslow views this Trilogy as educational entertainment, he also indulges himself with a C-plot that bears no relationship the rest of the story, except by the most indirect and least consequential reckoning, and even that in a terribly forced way. The plot tracks a 10-year old boy from the slums of Guatemala all the way north across the Texas border, through the immigration system once he's caught, into street crime in New York City, and finally in a wildly implausible intersection with three other (actual) characters. Why, you might ask, are we reading the tale of this boy, Nico? There's only one answer: to inform American readers What It's Like. What it's like, that is to say, to live in poverty in Latin America, to consider migrating to El Norte, to actually undertake the terribly dangerous journey, etc., etc., etc.

It's a Ripped From The Headlines Vox Explainer Piece, in novelized form. It does not work. It has no reason internal to the novel for its own existence. It exists because readers are wondering about such things, so Winslow will give it to them—even if it adds 150 pages to an already enormous book.

10. Last, Winslow already failed his lead character, Keller, in the finale of The Cartel, and The Border only extends the problem. I won't elaborate on the plot details, only to say that what makes the Trilogy work, when it does, is its willingness to let the tragic realities of the drug war bear, without sentimental qualification, on the lives and psyches of its fictional characters. But there's one, 2,000-page exception to this rule: the hero. He is insulated from it all, as if he has a force field protecting him—not just from bullets, but from any and all other consequences of his and others' actions. Divine providence (i.e., Don Winslow) just can't let Keller take a fall. Though he doesn't ride into the sunset, he does see one, looking across the border with his wife, on the final page of the book. They need a cane and a walker, respectively, to make it down the hill on their newly purchased land—but they're there, and it's theirs.

This is the same man who commits perjury before Congress and murders a man in cold blood, in addition to all the other extralegal and immoral and morally gray actions he commits across four decades for the simple reason (which Winslow has him earnestly report) that he's a "patriot." This is a man who makes a deal with the devil then, at the end of book 2, gets to shoot the devil twice in the face before walking out of the jungle, and taking a flight home to see his love.

The problem isn't that Keller "needs" to be "punished." It isn't that he lives. It's that the rules of the story that Winslow sets up from the beginning, and consistently lets play out in the lives of his characters up to the end, do not apply to the man at the center. It doesn't help that when Keller gets to speechifying in front of Congress, it reads like Winslow's (actual, not hypothetical) op-eds in favor of legalizing all drugs, ending mandatory minimums, so on and so forth. Fictional heroes usually embody their creators' aspirations for themselves, but in this case the self-projected myth-making goes so far as to undermine everything that made the story worth reading, and telling, in the first place.

Brad East 3/19/19 Brad East 3/19/19

Two thoughts on Adam Nayman on A Clockwork Orange

You should be reading the film criticism of Adam Nayman. Last week he wrote at The Ringer about Stanley Kubrick's adaption of A Clockwork Orange "in the age of cancellation," i.e., in a time when works of art deemed "problematic" are censored, edited, or banned. Or at least when such a fate is wished upon them by screaming hordes online.

I have two thoughts in response to his piece on ACO, which as usual is an excellent, thoughtful engagement with a difficult and culturally influential film.

First, toward the end of the essay he writes the following:

"It’s hard to say what’s more boring: The idea that a good movie is one made by a good person and/or contains content that could be considered progressive for its time and place, or the shouting-down of that position from those whose investment in rejecting it can seem condescending or creepy."

This is a genuinely strange dichotomy to pose, and there is only one plausible source for it: Twitter, or social media more generally. Surely Nayman knows there are—no joke—real-life, actual arguments, in print, in reputable journals and magazines, going back decades (and more), about the reception of art whose content or creator is morally questionable? Whereas the first item in his dichotomy is a culturally powerful, and growing, one, the second item he opposes to it is limited to a minuscule chorus of internet trolls who represent nothing and no one. Framing it in the way that he does, however, presents a faux false choice between two apparently equally bad options. Yet the falseness of the false choice is in the set-up, not in the actual positions available on the issue.

So either Nayman really thinks these are the options before us, or he is taking the easy way out and presenting a fake dilemma he knows is built on straw. Or, I suppose—what's best for him and worst for us—he, like so many who write about film and the arts today, spends too much online. Twitter distorts the mind, y'all. Get off it.

Second, he concludes the essay with the following paragraph:

"A Clockwork Orange is worth defending and decrying, although it’s not like coming down one way or the other is going to have much effect on a movie that’s already been elevated into the canon, and whose influence—from countless dorm rooms and laptop desktops adorned with posters and screenshots—is already massive. In truth, we don’t need another essay on A Clockwork Orange. But I do think we need the movie itself, not just because its problematic aspects are so bound up in its power, but because of what it says about the psychology of cancellation itself, and the unnaturalness of censorship and the comforting lie of 'bad apples,' which reassures us that it is other people who are rotten to the core. To paraphrase Kael, we become clockwork oranges if we reject difficult art without asking what’s inside us first. And it’s better to watch A Clockwork Orange than to be one."

This is a brilliant ending, and a point I largely endorse, since it's implicitly Augustinian: original sin means that, under fallen conditions, every artist and every work of art is implicated in evil—there's no way out. Which need not lead to either license or excuse or flattening of complicity in evil; but at a minimum it makes the correct diagnosis and eliminates the vacuous hope of "pure" art.

A minor addendum, however, from this unrecovered moralist: in point of fact, we don't "need" A Clockwork Orange, and for most of us, it would be better not to watch it at all. ACO and films like it—that is, works of visual art that depict or engage in gratuitous sex, violence, or vulgarity in such a way as to indict the viewer's own imlication or pleasure in them—fall prey to Truffaut's critique of anti-war films: the medium undermines the message. All anti-war films ultimately end up glorifying war; mutatis mutandis, the same goes for films that attempt to critique decadence by enacting it. Martin Scorsese is postmodernism's guilty auteur de jour here: Goodfellas, Casino, and The Wolf of Wall Street fail at exactly this point.

Which isn't to render a quick and easy No against these movies, or to argue that no one should see them, or to suggest that they don't have subtle things to say worth attending to in critical essays like the one Nayman's just written. Only to say that, all things being equal, A Clockwork Orange might do more harm than good, either in one's own life or in the broader culture; and that can be true at the same time that everything approbative Nayman says about the film is true, too.

Art's complicated. Cliché though it is, nevertheless it's one more reason, among many others, to resist cancellation culture, however "problematic" the work in question.

Brad East 3/9/19 Brad East 3/9/19

Pre-order The Triune Story today!

Good news: the book I am editing for Oxford University Press, The Triune Story: Essays on Scripture—a comprehensive collection of the late theologian Robert Jenson's writings on the Bible, with a foreword by Bruce Marshall—is available online at both OUP's website and Amazon.

Oxford says the book will be out mid-June; Amazon says mid-July. I'd go with Amazon on that one. I'm working on indexing the book right now, after which point, late this month, I'll get the proofs. So perhaps the revised proofs will be ready by May 1? I don't know how quickly the turnaround is on these kinds of books, but perhaps quicker than I imagined. We also need to get the blurbs, about which more soon.

But, anyway, I only just happened upon this bit of news, and I couldn't be more delighted. This volume is going to be a real resource going forward, for Jenson scholars as well as for theologians interested in Scripture more broadly. I can't wait for y'all to have it in your hands.

And speaking of which, pre-order today! And how could you not, gazing on that gorgeous cover (image by the great Chris Green):

Brad East 3/7/19 Brad East 3/7/19

Gentiles exiting the faith

It seems to me that most Christians today—in my context, I mean: college-educated or middle-class American Christians, especially those raised in the church—see their spiritual options as basically threefold. Either they maintain Christian faith of some kind; or they become spiritual but not religious; or they become officially agnostic, though functionally atheist. That is, there are basically two "exit" options from Christianity, both of which can be described as a form of nonbelief: faith in nothing at all, or faith in something-or-other left undefined.

In other words, such wayward believers aren't drawn to other religious traditions: the primary question is organized theism. Give up the former, you remain spiritual but not Christian; give up the latter, you're neither Christian nor spiritual. The temptation isn't ordinarily to become a Muslim or Sikh or Hindu. (Though the other day I did hear someone say, "If it weren't for X in Christianity, I'd be Muslim." But the exception proves the rule.)

Here's my question: Why don't Christians who cease to believe in Christ become Jews instead?

By which I mean: Why don't gentile worshipers of the God of Israel who cease to confess Jesus as the Messiah of Israel convert to Orthodox Judaism—precisely that religious community that worships the God of Israel without confessing Jesus as Messiah?

This is hardly an unknown trend in Christian history. It saturates the pages of the New Testament. Depending on how late you date some of the New Testament texts, it seems to have lasted well into the second century. Moreover, it's popular as late as St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom—the latter of whose sermons contain such strikingly anti-Jewish rhetoric exactly because his listeners find the synagogue so attractive.

There are social, political, and historical reasons that help to explain why so few American gentile Christians would ever, in the absence of faith in Jesus, even for a moment consider converting to Judaism, not least secularization's spiritual minimalism and liberalism's ethical individualism. Here's what I think the main factor is, though; it's theological and, in my view, the most damning one.

Most—or at least, far too many—gentile American Christians do not love the God of Israel.

Which is to say, the fact that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is the God of the Jews, and thus the God of the Law, the prophets, and the Psalms, is a stumbling block for Christians today. It may be a stumbling block they've overcome, or seek to overcome. But it's a part of the challenge of faith, not part of its appeal. They don't want the Father without the Son; they want the Son, and are stuck with the Father. Drop the New Testament, they're not left with the Old; they've only accepted the Old because of the New.

Now, obviously gentile believers the world over are believers because of the person and work of Jesus, through whom they have been grafted into the covenant people of God. I'm not suggesting for a moment that that is odd or out of sorts. What I'm saying, rather, is that, according to the gospel, Jesus is the mediator, not between generic humanity and generic divinity, but between gentile humanity and the God of Abraham. Jesus's introduction of the gentiles to the praise and glory of YHWH, Lord of Hosts, isn't meant to remain at the level of stiff formalities: gentiles are meant to grow in knowledge and affection for this One, precisely as their trusted Father and King.

And the truth is, converting to Judaism would sound to these Christians like a prison sentence. Why? Because of sermon after sermon, catechesis class after catechesis class, Bible study after Bible study preaching and teaching more or less explicit Marcionite doctrine.

They love Jesus. But not the One who sent him.

If I'm even close to right, this only furthers my resolve so to teach and preach that—counterfactually—if Jesus were not risen from the dead, his gentile disciples would nevertheless long with all their hearts to continue confessing the ancient prayer with Abraham's children: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one."

Brad East 3/4/19 Brad East 3/4/19

Incomplete theses on God's will, providence, and evil

Last week, in my upper-level majors course on systematic theology, the topic was providence. We read classical accounts of divine and human agency and discussed the nature of God's will. I wrote up some provisional, incomplete theses to help guide them through the thicket. I'm sharing them below, partly as an aid to others, partly as an invitation to be corrected by my betters—this area is simply not my specialty. St. Thomas, pray for this theologian's poor soul!

* * *

Affirmations

God, as the sole creator and author of creation ex nihilo, is solely responsible for the ongoing existence and well-being of the creation.
God is sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, and good.
God is Lord of creation.
God upholds creation as a whole and in all its parts at all times, without ceasing.
God underlies, informs, and enables any and all activity in creation: nothing happens apart from God; no creature can act apart from God’s sovereign will.
God conducts creatures and creation as a whole toward their proximate and final ends, in this world and the next.
Nothing exists or happens outside the scope of God’s will.
Sin and evil are contrary to God’s will; sinful deeds and evil events occur.
God does not will sin, nor is God the author of evil.
When and where sin and evil are found in creation, God permits it.
God is able to bring good from evil and sin, including when they are intended by creatures to obstruct God’s purposes.
In the end, God will triumph over all sin and evil, and they will be no more in the new creation.

Implications

We do not know why God permits sin and evil.
On its face, a sinful deed or evil happening is a surd: meaningless in itself; neither sin nor evil is ever (really, deeply, ultimately) good.
The experience of suffering or loss is not itself necessarily sin or evil.
God may therefore actively will (rather than permit) our suffering in this world.
“Everything happens for a reason” is either true in an incomprehensible way (where that “reason” is Christ, who will reveal all to us only in glory) or false in a facile and pastorally disastrous way (where the starvation of children has a readily intelligible reason we can grasp in the moment).
The relationship between God’s will (as primary cause) and my will (as secondary cause) when I engage in sin (say, lying) is mysterious and inscrutable: somehow my willing as a free agent in bondage to sin possesses some deficiency (or, rather, lacks something necessary) that keeps it from fully performing righteous activity in full in accordance with God’s will and command.
So that:

We may say that God wills in all my willing, but...
...we may not say that God wills the sin I invariably will.