Biblical Critical Theory, by Christopher Watkins
Book Review, #6
Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan Academic, 2022), 648 pages.
In 2 Corinthians 10:5, the apostle Paul declares the superiority of Christian faith over pagan and secular ideologies, saying “we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” For Paul, the truth of Jesus Christ shines a light on all other truth claims, exposing their error but also recognizing whatever incomplete and unfulfilled truth they may possess (Eph. 5:11-13; Rom. 1:18-20). The Christian faith is not just one truth among others but the totality of Truth, something more like the pattern fastening all the jigsaw pieces together while simultaneously revealing the ultimate nature and purpose of each part. In Jesus Christ “all things were created” and in him “all things hold together” (Col. 1:15-17). This is what medieval theologians meant when they affirmed that theology is the “queen of the sciences.” It is the deepest of truths, which gives context and purpose to all others.
Christopher Watkin’s new book, Biblical Critical Theory endeavors to demonstrate how the Christian truth revealed in the biblical story, is an illuminating, clarifying, and fulfilling sort of truth. Like many Christians, Watkins has been somewhat dismayed by the ferocity of the culture wars in recent decades. This book is intended to help Christians understand the ideologies that animate various cultural and political movements and “critique” those movements from a biblical perspective. The title, Biblical Critical Theory, signals his dissatisfaction with any “secular critical theory,” and his conviction that only biblical truth enables us to see and inhabit the world rightly. In his own words, this “is a book about how the whole Bible sheds light on the whole of life, how we can read and understand our society, our culture, and ourselves through the lens of the Bible’s storyline.” Watkins wants to help us avoid an uncritical embrace of secular ideologies, but more importantly, he wants to demonstrate that biblical faith offers the most compelling, and in the end, the only true and reliable lens through which to interpret life rightly.
From the outset, Watkins acknowledges his debt to Augustine’s masterpiece, The City of God, and declares his intention to follow in the great African theologian’s footsteps. If you are familiar with that work, then you will know that the first half of the book offers a devastating critique of Greek and Roman civilization in its philosophical, religious, social, political, and cultural dimensions. The second part of Augustine’s great work offers an outline of the biblical story, beginning with the creation of man and continuing all the way to the eternal city of God, which descends to earth at the close of John’s Apocalypse. Having thoroughly critiqued the “earthly city” represented by Rome, Augustine commends the City of God as the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty. Only the eternal city is truly deserving our allegiance, so those Christians in the late Roman empire facing the collapse of their own civilization had every reason to be hopeful, so long as they were able to faithfully “seek first” the City of God and resist the temptation to place their hope in the pagan ideologies, animating a dying world.
Whether Watkins succeeds in writing a 21st century City of God is more than doubtful, but the book is still valuable. He begins with a survey of contemporary thinkers, such as Charles Taylor, John Milbank, and Hans Frei whose projects inform his own. He then launches into a long survey of the biblical story, beginning with the Triune God and ending with eschatology. Unlike Augustine, whose critique of Rome preceded his survey of the bible, Watkins weaves biblical survey and social critique together in each chapter. The book is long at 648 pages, but it is worth the work. In a world where too many Christians are too uncritical of the prevailing ideologies animating our culture, Watkins reminds us of our much higher calling. The book is relatively accessible, and I recommend it to clergy and laity alike.