Biblical Critical Theory: A Review Essay
Watkin, Christopher. Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022. Pp. 672. $49.99.
A Review Essay on Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory with recourse to Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana (Teaching Christianity) and The City of God and the Old Testament books of Daniel and Isaiah.
In the second book of De Doctrina Christiana (§104-152), Saint Augustine begins a discussion about what Christian teachers need to know if they are to faithfully fulfill their vocation. They are first instructed to learn about signs and words, and how words relate to the world, to things, and to other signs. If people can’t read at all, or they can’t get beyond what the words themselves mean, Augustine compares them to people who either can’t see the finger with which someone points or to those who can only see the finger but not that to which the finger points. But for those who can see the finger and that to which he points, he gives instructions on how to obtain essential knowledge for Christian ministry.
Augustine declares that a deep knowledge of Scripture is only acquired through the hard labor of learning its content, rhetoric, and subtleties along with a knowledge of the biblical languages and how they were transmitted in history. He concludes this discussion with a plea to learn the world. And when he says “learn the world,” he means the whole world. Learn about birds and rocks, about music and literature, about history, philosophy, and mathematics. The Christian teacher should know of everything there is to know. Because the earth and its fullness belong to the Lord, and because we are in the Lord, the whole world also belongs to us. It is ours for the taking, ours for the knowing, and ours to transform.
It should be apparent to all who have interacted with Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory that he exemplifies this Augustinian “know of everything” injunction. His book is expansive in scope and engages an impressive range of intellectual and cultural pressures of which Christians are becoming increasingly aware. Not only does the book model an Augustinian standard for the Christian teacher, but it is also a well-executed approach to engaging the culture, a City of God redux. Like Augustine, he offers a critique of our so-called disenchanted world and demonstrates the Christian story as the thread which ties the world together: a critique of culture and a comfort in Christ. In this it is to be greatly commended. It provides a helpful model for Christian critical engagement with the world, at both the academic and existential levels.
I would like to suggest some ways forward which, I think, would strengthen the project. Specifically, I will interact with several statements and concepts present in Watkin’s opening remarks where he notes: “My aim in these pages is to paint a picture of humanity and of our world through the lens of the Bible and to compare aspects of this image to alternative visions. It 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. It does not try to explain and defend the Bible to the culture; it seeks to analyze and critique the culture through the Bible” (2).
I am interested in addressing the “lens of the Bible.” What might that lens look like? And what impact might it have on refining the approach of the book? There are three related steps I would like to take:
to ground the project more firmly in the Scriptural world of ‘heaven-to-earth’ by
making an appeal to the centrality of typological-symbolism for understanding Scripture and world, and then
by seeking to refine and nuance Watkin’s discussion from chapters 21-28 on last days, eschatology, new creation, and apocalyptic
The first two topics of “heaven-to-earth” and typological-symbolism are treated only briefly here to spend more time discussing the language, concepts, and topics relevant to Watkin’s final chapters. Here, I simply offer a way forward that would refine or tighten up the ways Watkin discusses eschatological language and symbolism.
Augustine’s City of God
What is both extraordinary and so foreign to our intellectual priorities is how Augustine, after having critiqued the city of man (the Roman empire) in the first half of his book, begins the second half of the City of God defending Christianity’s superiority. He begins with a discussion of angels! Of all the things he could have used in a defense of Christianity against the dominant socio-political forces, he begins by talking about angels. He notes in Book 11: “In the previous ten books, with the help of our Lord and king, we have responded to the enemies of this holy city as best we could. Now … I shall begin to discuss, to the best of my ability, the origin, the course, and the merited ends of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly, which, as we have said, are somehow interwoven and mixed together in the interaction of this present age. And first I shall indicate how these two cities took their origins in a prior division among the angels” (§11.1).
This is not the only mention of the angels. Discussion of them pervades Book 11 and moves into Book 12 as well. In Babcock’s New City Press translation, the relevant section headings highlight the importance of angels throughout: the creation of angels; the angelic fall; the case of the devil; the separation of the holy angels from the fallen angels; the holy angels and their knowledge; alternative views of the creation of angels; the difference between the good and the evil angels; the cause of the first evil will; the cause of the good will of the good angels.
What is the meaning of this? Why does Augustine start like this, instead of with the topic of God or of Creation? My impression is that he is aware of the primacy of heavenly-spiritual realities as models, types, and portraitures of what will and does happen on earth. Augustine knows in some sense that the battle of the cities of God and of man is at its core a heavenly-spiritual battle because “heaven happens first.” And any discussion of earthly forces must start with heaven.
Watkin does not avoid this discussion of the heavenly realm entirely. He begins the work with a discussion of the Trinity and illustrates its significance for humanity both individually and corporately. But from the beginning, most of Biblical Critical Theory focuses upon the saeculum, not in the pejorative sense, but in the sense of the world largely as it is perceived through the embodied senses. In my interaction with Watkin’s work, I noted these differences to be significant. Watkin engages with the world. He engages with culture. He engages with the biblical story. This is needed and it is good. But it seems that Watkin neglected to interact with the story behind the world. The story behind the culture. The story behind the biblical story. And if we want to see the world through the “lens of the Bible” as Watkin suggests, we must view the world as the Bible views it. And this is from the perspective of “heaven”– what is going on behind the world.
So, if we were to move forward with these emphases, what would the project look like? I suggest that it would begin from an initial recognition and discussion, not of the saeculum, but of heaven-to-earth typological symbolism and its centrality to the features of this world.
Biblical Symbolism and Typology
I think the way forward in refining Watkin’s work is to frame the discussion in terms of the heavenly priority of typological-symbolism. What is the lens of the Bible that paints a picture of our world and that allows us to properly read and understand our society and our culture? I think the answer is, in brief, the lens of typological-symbolism because this is how the Bible presents itself and our world to us. By symbolism, I mean the way that features of the world represent, in some sense, not only a world beyond them, but that they are in fact portraitures from that world in order to guide us to it. Think of the difference here as one of perspective: the anthropomorphic approach to symbolism (i.e., God is a Father because he is like our fathers but bigger) and the theomorphic (i.e., our earthly fathers are micro-cosmic instantiations of grace from The Father, given by God to provide a micro-cosmic taste of himself, the most ultimate reality). The difference is one of earth-to-heaven in contrast to heaven-to-earth, the latter being offered by the Scriptures.
By typology I mean simply something that emphasizes the use and re-use of symbolism and its entailment in repetitive, playful, and largely escalating ways. This way of conceiving the topic will be apparent in the following section. But here, I provide an important quotation from the opening of James Jordan’s Through New Eyes which summarizes these ideas well:
There are a number of books available on Christian worldview, but precious little on the Biblical worldview. By drawing this distinction, I am not belittling the former. There is certainly a place for books that set out the Christian view of philosophy, history, art, science, man, etc., using the vocabulary of the modern age [Think of this as the saeculum with which Watkin interacts]. There is also, however, a real need for books that dig into the Bible and set out the Bible’s own worldview, explaining the Bible’s own language. The Biblical worldview is not given to us in the discursive and analytical language of philosophy and science, but in the rich and compact language of symbolism and art. It is pictured in ritual and architecture, in numerical structures and geographical directions, in symbols and types, in trees and stars. In short, it is given to us in a pre-modern package that seems at places very strange.[1]
This pursuit of the Biblical worldview is no simple task but a serious project of seeing and reading the world through the typological-symbolism in Scripture, in creation, and in ourselves. Although this project would potentially aim toward philosophical and cultural discussion of the saeculum, it would not begin there. It would begin with earth as a microcosm of heavenly-spiritual realities. In the search for ultimate metaphysical reality, it would find “Father and Son” to be the “most real” thing there is. It would recognize Light and Water and Bread as the most ultimate realities based on Jesus’ statements: I am Light, I am Living Water, I am Heavenly Manna.
So, what categories might we receive and employ to shape our view of the world so that we can interact with it afresh? This is a difficult question. And I don’t have anything near a comprehensive answer. But I would start with heaven first, and then approach earth and its fullness as microcosmic portals to the Ultimate Delight who gives us himself with abounding grace and care to the world and to us. As such, it would see the circumstances in life and the cultural trends in terms of de-creation and new creation, exodus, exile, and return. It would see the world as primarily about death and resurrection, because Jesus is Resurrection. But this should not be approached in a simply literary way (although this would be an essential task). It should instead view symbolism and typology as an inescapable aspect of creation, and of God himself. So, in what follows, I hope to illustrate a path toward beginning with heaven first, and reading the Scriptures and the world through typological symbolism as it relates to Watkin’s treatment of the “Last Days” and “New Creation Apocalyptic.”
Bible and Eschatology
I start with a discussion of the “last days.” Watkin engages in a four-chapter discussion over 65 pages on the topic of “Last Days and …” But in his discussion, I could only find three pages engaging with the actual topic and phrase of “Last Days” in the biblical story. He provides a concise statement on page 527: “To live in the last days is to live in a series of overlaps and tensions, between the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet,’ between the ‘in’ and the ‘not of,’ between giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, all within a culture that thinks it is rejecting Christianity at the very moment it affirms its deep and irreducible debt to Christian figures” (527). As you can see, Watkin’s “last days” focus primarily concerns the saeculum of the Christian era. I would like to offer a brief step back from this and toward a cosmic-heavenly approach to the topic of the Last Days with the aim to answer the question: “Last Days of What?”
While this topic of “last days” is treated in many places throughout the Bible, I will focus on the phrase “last days” in Daniel 2:24–28. This passage is a description of the mystery concerning the rise and fall of Babylon as the head kingdom over the future nations of the world. In this passage, the phrase “last days” refers to everything from Nebuchadnezzar to the destruction of his “anti-Adam-image” empire by the stone, the stone which becomes a cosmic mountain with unending dominion. “Last days” in Daniel is the story of the destruction of the old Adamic order and the beginning of a new “son of man” order. This new order begins with the new covenant era in the first century. From this perspective, the last days came to a definitive end in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and session of Jesus, who now sits at and reigns from God’s right hand. And now we are in the days of the new order, the days of the new morning star who rises and sheds forth his blessings as far as the curse is found.
This is what the book of Ephesians is describing in its treatment of the “mystery made known” in Jesus Christ, the head who is seated above the cosmic powers, and whose body rules with him in history. This is how Ephesians 4:12 frames the work and goal of Christian ministry: ‘for building up the body of Christ.’ And we learn in chapter 2 that this body is made up of all peoples, Jews and Gentiles, the city and citizenship of God. And this head over the church is one who shines light, not gold, upon the dead of Adam’s race in order to join them to the new Adam who has replaced the old Adam order. Christian cultural engagement and criticism does not exist in the last days. It takes place in the first days, the days of Spirit-guaranteed victory over the powers of intellectual darkness in the heavenly and earthly places. Because God is clothed with light, and Jesus is the light, and we are in him who is light, we wear his clothing of battle, the armor of God that is victorious in its multifaceted battle. In this portrait, the last days are over, and the new days of the new creation have begun. The already has fully arrived, but it has not yet been fully realized. In the new days, heaven is in the process of descending to earth.
Concerning the topic of new creation, what is it? In short, new creation is the establishment of any social and political order in a cosmic heaven-to-earth perspective. And old creation is whenever one of these political orders comes to an end. As we see in Isaiah’s apocalyptic language regarding the rise and downfall of kingdoms, it is frequently accompanied by parallel descriptions of the rise and fall of cosmic realities. Stars falling and cosmic forces being darkened are parallel realities to the downfall of kingdoms and kings. But in Isaiah, this language of old and new creation occurs with kingdoms that have already fallen and have already risen. Old creation and new creation are regular features of our world in the language of the Bible. What we see in the nation-oracles of Isaiah is that the old creation-order of Babylon, Jerusalem, and Edom in the pre-Christian era have already come to an end. And in their place arises a new creation, which we see in the rise of a new heaven-earth political order.
The rise of a new creation order is detailed in Isaiah 60, a passage which describes Israel’s return from exile: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples [i.e., old creation], but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.” Further along in this chapter, we see verses 19–20 describing the reality of the new creation that is beginning with Israel’s return: “The sun shall be no more be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.” The old cosmic order has collapsed and is now old creation. The new creation order is present already in the return from exile, where God has replaced the cosmic forces. He is now the sun and moon and light by day. God is now the governor of the new creation in the formation of a city and a people. And we see this climax in the Christian gospel, definitively establishing the New Creation in Jesus Christ. The old creation has passed away. The new creation has come. So instead of new creation referring to the consummated state, it refers to the new cosmic realities and governance in Jesus Christ. This will have an ultimate fulfillment in the full consummation in the resurrection. But it is crucial to grasp that it is fully functional now and has been since the first century. The city of God, the new creation, was established by Jesus Christ and is growing to a mustard tree which fills all things and in which the nations dwell.
Conclusion
This is a heaven-to-earth view which must inform a biblical critical theory if it is to be truly biblical in its expression of cosmic realities and their impact for cultural engagement. This heaven-to-earth perspective is difficult. But I hope this review will help us see that Augustine was correct when he points the finger. In order to be a faithful and effective teacher of Christian doctrine, we must learn to see that to which his finger points. And in the opening discourse about finger pointing, he points to the moon, he points to heaven, and he points to the cosmos. Let us begin there. Let us consider heaven first.
[1] James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 1.
Matthew Albanese
Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies | Union University