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

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Invariably, we will be forced to choose between critical theory and Christianity in terms of our values, ethics, and priorities. 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.

But I think we also need to be careful of dichotomizing, the two things so that you either plant your flag on the ideas side, or you plant your flag in the stories and images and habits. I will explore two salient examples: Paul’s treatment of Jewish ‘power’ and Greek ‘wisdom’ in 1 Corinthians 1, and Augustine’s engagement with Roman ‘glory’ in The City of God. We want to train Christians—everyone from pastors to parents to professors—to boldly share the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that clearly communicates to this secular age.But we are trying to attempt the same response that he attempted in his generation to his condition.

Guilt and responsibility are individual: no one is guilty simply because of the group to which he or she belongs. Some thinkers, rather than opposing the two doctrines, consider CRT to be the logical outworking of a liberalism that has gone to seed. God’s ‘foolish’ wisdom is wise in a way that embodies the fullness of what human wisdom seeks, though humans can only find it by setting aside their pride and coming to the cross. Divisions around the question of systemic racism are considerable and growing, and over time its potential to cause major and damaging splits in local congregations and within denominations only increases. In the latter group he puts Thabiti Anyabwile, Tim Keller, Russell Moore, 9Marks, the Gospel Coalition, and Together for the Gospel (T4G).This hope is not merely a sense that justice will be done at some point in the future, but a way of inhabiting the complexities of racial injustice now in a way that neither merely laments them nor imagines they can be brushed under the carpet. And to live on the horns of that dilemma, as the modern world is forcing many people to do is agonizingly heart rending, it messes with humanity to try and have to juggle with those two things.

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. But such a dismissive attitude ignores both the influence of critical race theories on social and corporate policies, and also the lived experience of many who feel themselves represented in its claims. So let me first of all say that I am not saying that it doesn’t matter whether Christianity is true or not, it will be very hard to read passages like one Corinthians 15 Your Bible and come away with the idea that it doesn’t matter whether Christianity is true.And Matthew says that the first time in the history of Western cultural critique that you see someone taking the whole of a culture and subjecting it to a systematic critique is Augustine’s city of God. You know, people have had a lot of time for Jesus, at least as a moral teacher, if nothing else, and that is now vanishing. Becoming righteous, or ‘woke’, is an achievement, often the fruit of a careful and painstaking education in the reality and pervasiveness of systemic racism. This is the best yet most accessible exploration of the intersection between Christianity, culture, and philosophy I’ve read in recent years. He does not simply affirm wisdom as the Greeks understand it, nor signs as the Jews think of them, but neither does he completely reject these values either.