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

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A book that I have been eagerly anticipating for years. ... My prayers are that this book will bear much intellectual and spiritual fruit in many lives over the decades ahead.” Here’s a few comments on Tim’s take on critical theory to illumine how critical theory can help us make space for God to work in an antagonistic broken world. Modern epistemology, and N. American evangelicalism as well, has focused on the person as the individual thinking subject capable of making independent decisions, assessing worldviews, and through personal disciplines becoming a sanctified follower of Christ. I often call this version of the self the “naïve modern subject.” Critical theory undermines the excess confidence modern people have in the naïve modern subject. It shows over and over again how humans are not these autonomous cogitos – self developed personalities - who are free and can make independent decisions. We are subjects formed by discourses, scripts, cultural constructs to think, feel, desire by these ideologies, that ensconce into power relations. What may seem natural to us in our culture (like white privilege or sexual attractions or gender scripts) is indeed scripted and these scripts are shaped by power relations. And we need to gain a little distance and examine how we are being formed. This realization is the genesis of the modern spiritual formation movement. And this kind of critical theory helps us in this process of self-reflection and spiritual formation. CRT: There’s an endless struggle between oppressor and oppressed. Justice for the latter can only come at the price of overthrowing the former: it’s a zero-sum game. It is not enough for Christians to explain the Bible to the culture or cultures in which we live. We must also explain the culture in which we live within the framework and categories of the Bible, revealing how the whole of the Bible sheds light on the whole of life.

Dr. Keller summarizes Critical Theory’s understanding of the individual is these words: “neither individual rights nor individual identity are primary … it is an illusion to think that, as an individual, you can carve out an identity in any way different or independent of others in your race, ethnicity, gender, and so on. Group identity and rights are the only real ones.” only knew that the church had only known the Roman Empire in its hundreds of years of history. Yeah. Or consider the question of our fundamental problem as humans: Is our fundamental problem sin, in which case we all equally stand condemned before a holy God? Or is our fundamental problem oppression, in which case members of dominant groups are tainted by guilt in a way that members of subordinate groups are not? Keller says that, for critical theory, “the main way power is exercised is through language—through “dominant discourses”… Language does not merely describe reality—it constructs or creates it.” I think Dr. Keller is accurate as much as a generalization can be. But whereas Keller sees this aspect of critical theory as detracting from a theory of justice, I see it as a tool for helping us to see things we are blind to. I find discourse analysis as useful in unfolding both the contingency and the formative effects of a sociological discourse. In other words, it helps us see how the way we talk, use words, behave in certain ways embodies learned and unspoken assumptions in matters such as racism, sexuality, gender, socio-economics, etc. Christopher Watkin, Thinking through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 as Tools of Cultural Critique (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2017). This short book has an extended treatment on the need to study Scripture and culture with a posture of attentiveness.A wonderful book bringing the Scriptures—every part of them—into a deep and illuminating conversation with the concerns of culture.” Look, Chris, I’m looking for two short answers, and a little bit hard, short answers on the next two questions. This is from in biblical critical theory, how the Bible is unfolding story makes sense of modern life and culture from Zondervan. All right, you did not introduce your concept of diagonalization in this book, but as with some of your previous work, it’s pretty core. Briefly explain what you mean by diagonalization. I hear you call in short answers and prepare, getting into lecture mode. And so what do I mean by diagonalization? Okay. It’s the idea that the modern world again and again, takes biblical truth and rips it apart. And sets one part of biblical truth against the other image of God will be one where either animals or we guard, it does it sometimes with justice and love. God is both just and loving. They’re in beautiful tension. They’re beautiful harmony, they’re not in tension with each other. But so often in modern political discourse, you’ve either got to be on the hard justice side, or the self compassion side, aspects of God’s character ripped apart, set against each other as if you got to choose one or the other. And diagonalizing you’re saying no, you don’t don’t have to choose one or the other. They’re part of a rich, complex biblical harmony. And we shouldn’t rip them apart to begin with. Was that shotgun? Oh, that’s In Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin shows how the Bible and its unfolding story help us make sense of modern life and culture. Another little question, they’re all gonna be like, This is what happens when you write big books get big question.

CRT: Identity markers like race are basic to human existence. The fundamental unit of social life is the group united by a particular identity marker. Space doesn’t permit a comprehensive treatment of this important subject, but we’ll highlight a few basic facts about critical theory that all Christians should know. Informed by the biblical-theological structure of Saint Augustine's magisterial work The City of God (and with extensive diagrams and practical tools), Biblical Critical Theory shows how the patterns of the Bible's storyline can provide incisive, fresh, and nuanced ways of intervening in today's debates on everything from science, the arts, and politics to dignity, multiculturalism, and equality. You'll learn the moves to make and the tools to use in analyzing and engaging with all sorts of cultural artifacts and events in a way that is both biblically faithful and culturally relevant. His exact words were “I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!” Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Washington (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 219. ↩ Positively, there will be those who take up Watkin’s invitation to walk in this new way of figural apologetics:

Give to bethinking

the biblical concept of covenant, or repeated narratives embodying the “first shall be last” motif (language, ideas, stories); the rhythm of promise and fulfilment (time); the biblical idea of God as the ruler over all space, not like one of the localized gods of the ancient world (space); the biblical distinction between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God (structure of reality); the first Christians meeting together on the Lord’s day to sing, break bread, pray, and hear teaching (behavior); the unity of all believers in Christ, and God as the lawgiver (relationships); and, the location and architecture of the tabernacle, or available modes of transport for Paul’s missionary journeys (objects). [17]

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