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Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's…
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Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (édition 2022)

par Christopher Watkin (Auteur), Timothy Keller (Avant-propos)

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*With a foreword from Tim Keller* A bold vision for Christians who want to engage the world in a way that is biblically faithful and culturally sensitive. In Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin shows how the Bible and its unfolding story help us make sense of modern life and culture. Critical theories exist to critique what we think we know about reality and the social, political, and cultural structures in which we live. In doing so, they make visible the values and beliefs of a culture in order to scrutinize and change them. Biblical Critical Theory exposes and evaluates the often-hidden assumptions and concepts that shape late-modern society, examining them through the lens of the biblical story running from Genesis to Revelation, and asking urgent questions like: - How does the Bible's storyline help us understand our society, our culture, and ourselves? - How do specific doctrines help us engage thoughtfully in the philosophical, political, and social questions of our day? - How can we analyze and critique culture and its alternative critical theories through Scripture? 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. 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. If Christians want to speak with a fresh, engaging, and dynamic voice in the marketplace of ideas today, we need to mine the unique treasures of the distinctive biblical storyline.… (plus d'informations)
Membre:JMigotsky
Titre:Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture
Auteurs:Christopher Watkin (Auteur)
Autres auteurs:Timothy Keller (Avant-propos)
Info:Zondervan Academic (2022), 672 pages
Collections:En cours de lecture, À lire, Lus mais non possédés
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Mots-clés:to-read, goodreads

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

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This is an extraordinary book. It is fairly academic in its language use. I consider myself a mature lay Christian, but it did requir me to google the meaning of some of the terminology. However, that does not take away from its overall presentation and the wealth of Christian information provided. The book is quite dense, and required very careful reading, and sometimes, re-reading, some paragraphs or passages a second or third time to fully digest them. At times with this work, I had to stop after reading only 5-10 pages, as some of the material was complex and just time consuming. Because of the book’s length and complexity (at least for a lay person), it took me slightly over 3 months to get through, and that was with reading its pages almost every day. Its nature reminded me of some of the (secular) textbooks I had to read through in college. Since one of my men’s faith groups Christian had some discussion about different bible translations at one of our meetings, and I had just come across a passage in this book on translations, I scanned and sent one paragraph from the book to the other members for their thoughts. The paragraph was only about 6-8 sentences long, but most of the members were wondering where I had discovered this book and were fairly amazed at the depth and content in such a relatively brief paragraph.

I do highly recommend the book. I learned a wealth of new information and it helped me expand my biblical knowledge and strengthen my faith. Although I was able to find the book through my local library, I had not purchased it. Having returned it after finishing it about a month ago, I am strongly considering purchasing a copy for my permanent book library because of its coverage of Christian critical theory. ( )
  highlander6022 | Feb 1, 2024 |
Brilliant, insightful, deep, creative, culturally engaged

A Biblical Critical Theory contains Christopher Watkin’s thesis that the Bible offer a better lens for understanding and critiquing the language, stories and ideas of our world than do the cortical theories of our day.

Watkin is a gifted polymath, who shows skill as a philosopher, biblical exegete, theologian and cultural observer. In one chapter he weaves together ideas from Hobbes, Rousseau, Kierkegaard with illustrations from Avengers Endgame, as he unpacks God’s covenant to Abraham in Genesis 15 and 22. He rounds out the chapter with a warm hearted connection to God‘s sacrifice of his own Son.

The book functions somewhat as a dictionary of Biblical critical theories — with each chapter offering a different lens to understand and critique culture. Only, the themes of Watkin’s dictionary are not organised by letter but by the chronology of the Bible and the epochs of salvation history.

For this reason, the book can feel tedious to read (like reading a dictionary) as there is no emerging theme being developed chapter by chapter. Nevertheless, each chapter builds on the numerous ways the Bible diagonalizes the reductive heresies of our culture and out-narrates them.

I am looking forward to re-reading specific chapters when I come to preaching the themes and Bible passages that Watkin addresses. His insights will provide plentiful fodder for engaging unbelievers and strengthening believers in the gospel. ( )
  toby.neal | Dec 24, 2023 |
Summary: An attempt along the lines of Augustine’s City of God to offer a comprehensive overview of how the biblical account from Genesis to Revelation to engage in a critique of late modern culture and the critical theories that have also attempted to analyze the culture.

Critical theory, and particularly critical race theory has become much discussed on the US political and cultural scene even though many participants in such discussions have little more than soundbite understandings of these terms. I suspect that it is this discussion that has created a certain “buzz” in Christian publishing circles over Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory. While Watkin engages various critical theorists from Marx to Derrida to Foucault, coming from an academic background in French studies, he seeks to do far more.

His intent is to show how the Bible, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 provides the basis for a critique of late modern culture in the various facets of its life, while engaging other theorists who attempt to do so. He draws his imspiration for this project spanning more than 600 pages from Augustine’s City of God, which he sees as engaged in a similar project in critiquing the City of Man, exemplified in the late, declining Roman empire, in the light of the City of God, God’s rule in the world.

The Introduction to this work is vital to understanding the framework that will inform all that follows. First is Watkin’s understanding of culture, which he articulates in terms of figure, referring both to the idea of “figures of speech” that reflect the patterns and rhythms that shape our lives and the “figure-ground” distinction of Gestalt psychology that he broadens from perception into a “way of understanding how we live in the world.” Figures include 1) Language, ideas, and stories, 2) Time and space, 3) The structure of reality, 4) Behavior, 5) Relationships, and 6) Objects. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s idea of social imaginaries, he suggests a slightly more flexible term, “worlds,” to describe the ensembles of figures that make up a culture. In turn, critical theories are “theoretical approaches to the whole of life that make certain things viable, visible, and valuable.

The problem Watkin sees in theories of culture are two-fold. One is that they tend to create either-or binaries around which theories (and camps) are polarized, and as human systems are admixtures of truth to be affirmed and error to be avoided. One the one hand, there is much of worth to be learned from these theories, yet the Christian will find these inadequate. What is the way forward, then? Watkin proposes the idea of diagonalization, in which inter-related biblical truths offer novel approaches connecting what is true and good in each approach in ways neither envisions, avoiding both dichotomizing and compromise. His intent is to show how the Bible “out-narrates” the cultural critics, but to do so in a way that interweaves cultural engagement (the City of Man) with biblical critique (the City of God).

Watkin does not simply offer a theoretical approach but implements it in twenty-eight succeeding chapter covering the biblical material from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. Before beginning with Genesis 1, Watkin focuses on the Triune creator of all and the realty that the Trinity reveals that all reality is personal, absolute and relational, truth that diagonalizes dichotomies of absolute and personal, science and art, and communal societies that crush individuality versus modern societies that exalt the individual at the expense of the communal. He then turns to Genesis 1 showing how God addresses dichotomies of chaos and order as he speaks creation into being and how God’s speaking into what was formless and void diagonalizes the dichotomy of language creating the distinctions of reality versus reality being transparent to reality. He also introduces the idea of gratuity, that God makes a good world not out of necessity nor in response to others, but freely, for God’s own pleasure. He will recur to this idea at various points contrasting human systems of acting in certain ways to produce a result versus God’s acting in ways apart from what humans earn or deserve, what he refers to as n-shaped versus u-shaped figures.

It is not possible to cover the breadth of what Watkin does over the succeeding chapters in the space of a review. Every chapter sparkles with insights relating scripture to matters of culture. The promise to Abraham addresses our dichotomizing of faith and reason. The incarnation addresses our dichotomies of particular and universal. The gospel of the kingdom addresses competing narratives of the rich being blessed as rich, and the poor in their poverty. The poor are blessed for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. He offers a striking discussion of the church as vital in resisting the subsuming of civil society into the market state. His discussion of the idea of being exiles and strangers challenges dichotomies of cultural assimilation versus isolation.

There are two possible critiques I think that may be offered. At times, diagonalization felt forced or an over-simplification. As a dominant method used over and over again, I felt we were being offered a toolkit of cultural engagement that basically had one tool. While it is a powerful one and I have often argued along similar lines that Christians turn neither to left nor right but offer a third way, a unique perspective to our society, I wonder if this is our only way to engage. What about instances when there isn’t a dichotomy.

The other critique is one Watkin acknowledges in his conclusion. This is a Euro-American-Australian work that does not engage South American, African or Asian perspectives. Theological resources cited are Western ones, other than Augustine, who was African. I recognize that given a project of this size, and the breadth of material Watkin addresses, both biblical and critical, that this may have been beyond the scope of this work. A few chapters that did this as examples may have been helpful. Watkin invites and welcomes others to add to what he has done, acknowledging its limits.

That said, Watkin has given us a singular work, one that goes beyond mere criticism to point to how Christians may use the Bible in cultural critique and how we might out-narrate rather than simply criticize, to do so in thoughtful conversation and engagement. He offers foundational insights just waiting to be expanded as well as a compelling overview of the narrative arc of scripture and its relevance to our cultural life.

________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. ( )
  BobonBooks | Jul 16, 2023 |
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*With a foreword from Tim Keller* A bold vision for Christians who want to engage the world in a way that is biblically faithful and culturally sensitive. In Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin shows how the Bible and its unfolding story help us make sense of modern life and culture. Critical theories exist to critique what we think we know about reality and the social, political, and cultural structures in which we live. In doing so, they make visible the values and beliefs of a culture in order to scrutinize and change them. Biblical Critical Theory exposes and evaluates the often-hidden assumptions and concepts that shape late-modern society, examining them through the lens of the biblical story running from Genesis to Revelation, and asking urgent questions like: - How does the Bible's storyline help us understand our society, our culture, and ourselves? - How do specific doctrines help us engage thoughtfully in the philosophical, political, and social questions of our day? - How can we analyze and critique culture and its alternative critical theories through Scripture? 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. 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. If Christians want to speak with a fresh, engaging, and dynamic voice in the marketplace of ideas today, we need to mine the unique treasures of the distinctive biblical storyline.

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