Watkin has written a fascinating tome. He has honored Keller’s request for a “Christian High Theory,” and it is a gift that Keller saw its fruition before departing into glory. Though I do not believe this book will see a legacy similar to that of The City of God, no work should be burdened with this pressure. It speaks in profound ways to our moment. It would be great for the types of classrooms mentioned above, and will be helpful on the shelves of many pastors, providing signals for further research. I am grateful Watkin pushed me to read my Bible more closely and appreciate its comprehensive relevance for late-modern life in fresh ways. That is success.

What would Augustine write to the late-modern West? Christopher Watkin, in his widely lauded Biblical Critical Theory, seeks to answer that question by performing a similar type of social analysis for a very different context.
This is a unique work. I am not sure I have ever read a book that so thoroughly weaves biblical theology, systematic theology, and apologetics, all the while engaging prominent philosophers, whether Christian or non-Christian. But in some ways it is inspired by the author of the foreword. If you have listened to or read much of Tim Keller’s writings over the years, much of this will feel familiar in both style and content. Watkin invokes Keller’s own insights throughout the volume and engages many of the same figures who were commonly invoked in Keller’s writings and sermons, such as Charles Taylor, N.T. Wright, and of course J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. This is not a criticism of Watkin, who admits that he is not seeking to provide anything new. Rather, he wants to package many of these insights into a single compelling narrative. That he has accomplished.
Watkin’s is a quintessentially modern Reformed work, reflecting many of the emphases of second and third generation Neo-Calvinists. Other than Keller, Watkin refers to Francis Schaeffer, Herman Dooyeweerd, Cornelius Van Til, and Alvin Plantinga as key inspirations. The perspective here also bridges Neo-Calvinist and Radical Orthodox thought, as John Milbank is a regular figure who pops up, along with his friend David Bentley Hart, who is not technically part of Radical Orthodoxy, but travels alongside those figures. And, as such, James K.A. Smith makes frequent appearances. If you have trafficked in Neo-Calvinist circles for the past couple of decades, much of this material will feel familiar.
Something unique, however, is the textbook nature of this work. At the end of each of the twenty-eight chapters, Watkin provides a set of “Study Questions” to help the reader probe further. This lends a certain practicality to the work, making it accessible for small group discussions or even Bible college and MDiv classrooms.
The book is written as a “so what?” work. Watkin explains that the title of the book could have easily been The Bible: So What? and says that his aim 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.” Therefore, it is not fitting, as some might be prone to do, to criticize the book for its lack of scholastic rigor or systematic depth.
As mentioned above, across the twenty eight chapters, Watkin weaves biblical theology, systematic reflection, and apologetic considerations. The book is largely structured around the biblical story, but also around systematic loci with constant asides on modern and postmodern philosophers. Watkin explains that, though inspired by The City of God, the structure of his work is markedly different. Whereas Augustine spends the first half in that great text critiquing Roman religion and philosophy, and then traces the story of Scripture, Watkin constantly weaves examination of contemporary culture within the larger scriptural story. Yet it is worth considering which parts of the biblical story he attends to. After spending almost half of his book getting through Genesis 1-22, Watkin discusses the liberation narrative of Exodus, and then quickly jumps to the prophets. He explains that the people of God are freed to worship, but then spends almost no time talking about worship.
Very little is said about Leviticus and Numbers, and the cultic life of God’s people is severely under-examined. Similarly, there is insufficient attention to the law in general and its role in the story of God’s people. Thus, Deuteronomy is barely engaged, as are the more historical books such as 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, and 1-2 Chronicles, which display how the law is applied and often misapplied or ignored, and what the consequences of that can be. So, we have a fascinating discussion of liberation and the prophets (and also very insightful material on the Wisdom literature), but what about priests and the law? and how these relate to civil power?
There are two primary devices that frame the material in the work: figures and diagonalization. Figures are patterns and rhythms that shape our sense of ourselves and the world around us. He provides six broad categories of figures: 1) language, ideas, and stories; 2) time and space; 3) the structure of reality; 4) behavior; 5) relationships; 6) objects. The dominant ensemble of figures in a particular cultural moment form a “world” in which we live and move. The “world” of the late-modern West is deeply imprinted by the Christian heritage that it increasingly rejects. This means that the Christianity retained by our culture is profoundly fragmented and distorted, and the principles that are harmonized in the Bible are set in opposition.
To address this problem, Watkin turns to his second device of “diagonalization,” which refers to the way that the “figures” of the Bible cut across and rearrange the false dichotomies presented to us in our culture. Diagonalization shows how a cultural dichotomy splinters the rich biblical reality, resulting in fragmented options and unsatisfying compromises. It answers these with the biblical picture which reveals how the best aspirations of the options are fulfilled in a way none of the contemporary options could have envisioned. This is a type of “third-way” logic, something I have publicly critiqued, but Watkin’s use of this device is often satisfying for how it gives concrete content rather than just a default posture. It is tethered to the biblical figures, and through them, Watkin seeks to “out-narrate” the Bible’s cultural rivals, resolving late-modern tensions through diagonalized narration. At times, however, this diagonalization can appear forced, or a bit sloppy, and thus can fall into some of the standard pitfalls of third-wayism more generally.
The book has many profound strengths, starting first with the style and structure. This is a great sourcebook of quotations from some of the best Christian commentators on late-modern culture. One could simply pool these quotes for one’s own use, or follow these breadcrumbs to some of the most penetrating writings by Christian thinkers on Western culture over the past two centuries. Furthermore, the structure, in the ways it differs from The City of God, is, in some senses, rhetorically effective. For instance, today, very few actually read the first half of Augustine’s tome, which focuses on an immanent critique of his contemporary culture, but rather jump into the second half in which Augustine traces the history of the two cities through the biblical narrative. Watkin’s more integrated approach might serve to expose a greater amount of readers to the critiques of contemporary culture than a neat division would. And within this integrated approach, Watkin lets his “figures” wash over the reader. At times the reader can get overwhelmed with the sheer abundance of material, yet, the net effect at the end is that Watkin’s way of seeing the world becomes almost second-nature.
Besides the strengths of the style and structure, Watkin is actually quite impressive on particular issues. Some reviewers will draw attention to the confusing title of the book, which might make the reader assume that Watkin is either going to directly discuss “Critical Theory” and how Christians should view it through the Bible, or that Watkin will employ the tools of “Critical Theory” in some way. Watkin does neither, and this might frustrate some.
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Written by C. Jay Engel |
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
The Church can certainly become a political entity—which is what Luther criticized Rome as doing against the Turks—but it does not undermine the Schmittian framework if the Protestant Christian denies to the Church this civil function.

Among the growing number of self-consciously right-wing Christians, many are turning away from the core assumptions of what has been termed the Postwar Liberal Consensus. Included in these is this idea that the American political order can be explained with reference to eternal, abstract values that transcend the biased interests of the people and groups that make it up. As I wrote in a recent contribution to a Paleoconservative anthology,
Liberalism operates from the false premise that… political strife can be eliminated by a kind of “neutral” state. […] It attempts to supersede so-called outdated levels of intense political hostility by relegating such tensions to private economic competition, the “marketplace of ideas,” or competing ideological sects. Thus, conflict over once existential “ways of life” can be pacified and consigned to personal preference.
This attempt to remove human antagonism from the realm of politics and in its place implement mechanisms of procedure, legal norms, and value-free conventions is the essential story of liberalism’s trajectory in the twentieth century. It is the story of what might be described as managerial liberalism, the reign of expertise, or “public policy” as a function of public administration and organizational management.
One of the figures in the twentieth century who was most adamant about the failures of the procedural approach to matters of state was the German jurist, Carl Schmitt. For many, Schmitt’s critiques of the liberal tendency in the West offer a compelling challenge to the foundations of the now faltering liberal order—especially since it was Schmitt’s position that a committed drive toward liberalism would wind up laying the preconditions for what he called the Total State. If the state itself was denied the task of distinguishing between friends and enemies and absorbing the drama of man’s antagonistic nature, such elements of man’s natural being would not simply disappear. As Dr. Paul Gottfried explains in his study of Schmitt, for Schmitt, “liberals [are not merely] destroyers of our political nature, but [are] dangerously neglectful and even contemptuous of it.”
Schmitt represents a tradition of Western political theory that can best be described as realist; it is realist in the sense that Schmitt was famously disinterested in upholding the myths and ideals that animated Western liberal theorists. Laws and norms can never be the pinnacle of political action, because the political is animated by constant human judgement and determinations about Friends and Enemies.
For Schmitt, there is always a human actor, or human-controlled institutions, even if we don’t admit it, behind the veil sanctioning the legal order, interpreting it, applying it, determining its meaning, and its exceptions. This what Schmitt meant when he elaborates on the “challenge of the exception.” No matter how brilliantly exposited or constructed, the legal order cannot account for all situations and there is always a human element upholding the order based on judgement, interests, calculations, and a complex network of myriad factors. The legal order is not a machine that works itself out automatically. One can see glimpses of the reality of the political, beneath all the myths, in recent decades and especially during moments like Trump’s trials.
It is important to emphasize here that Schmitt is not calling on his readers to inject an element of antagonism into their political practices, but rather to step back and recognize that antagonism is the very cause of the political in the first place. The political is an aspect of the human experience which precedes the existence of the state. What then, is the essence of the political?
For Schmitt, whenever a collectivity of people contains any element that it considers a non-negotiable and intricate component of its own existence, and this collectivity comes into conflict with another collectivity which threatens that non-negotiable, there the political arises. Life is full of many types of disagreements between groups, but such disagreements transform into political phenomena when one group determines the threat against the non-negotiable is such that there is a need to distinguish between friends and enemies. Any cultural, ethnic, “religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis [can] transform into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy.”
Schmitt attempts to make us aware of the danger in ignoring the reality behind everyday politics. Often this is done in an attempt to place a veil over the political with procedure, legislation, rules, and even Constitutions. Such things can be helpful—and a healthy society incorporates them to function well— but they must not be treated as effecting the elimination of the core of the political as the clash of friends and enemies. In the twentieth century there was strong danger, Schmitt declared, to treat legislation and procedures as themselves the final arbiter of political dispute. This significantly ignores the underlying essence of political conflict. As Auron Macintyre explains, “Schmitt sees the friend/enemy distinction as the fundamental organizing principle of politics and says all other distinctions that exist while forming political coalitions are subordinate.”
This doesn’t mean that there must constantly be an obvious enemy, that political actors must be always in conflict with others. If there were a situation where there was no clash between friend and enemy, the political itself would not be a component of that society. But, Schmitt warns, modern man deludes himself if he refuses to recognize that the political is always possible, lurking beneath the scene. The failure of liberalism was that it pretended that it could do away with this reality of human relations. In doing so, it was unable to see clearly the coming return of the political as the veil of neutrality has completely been torn down. Those who deny the existence of the political will always lose to those who embrace it—which is why Schmitt has for many decades been so popular among the Far Left, especially in Europe.
Macintyre explains this well:
Even when those in power were more disciplined, this was always an illusion. Schmitt says such carefully choreographed negotiations have always been window-dressing meant to obfuscate the continuing battle for control between friend and enemy that rages behind the scenes. Despite the comforting fiction of the marketplace of ideas where only the best policies were supposed to emerge victorious, it is increasingly clear that policies advantageous to the ruling groups and their interests win no matter what.
Liberalism, with its promise to eliminate existential political conflict and replace it with objectively beneficial governance, serves as the perfect narrative justification for the expansion of the total state. But the total state does not eliminate the friend/enemy distinction because that is impossible. Instead, it seeks to become the only entity with the authority to define the terms of the friend/enemy distinction for an ever-expanding ideological empire. Those who serve to strengthen the power of the state are friends, while those who seek to compete with or restrain it are the enemy.
With this as a backdrop, we can now turn to an essay published in Ad Fontes, which motivated the present article. There, John Ehrett struggles to understand Schmitt and in some places construes him quite poorly. His purpose is to confront the rising interest in Carl Schmitt among Christians. He does not grapple deeply with Schmitt’s critique of liberalism or his description of the political as built on antagonism, but instead spends most of his time on Christ’s call to love our enemies. If for Schmitt politics is animated by the distinction between Friends and Enemies, Ehrett wants Christians to consider that such an approach to human relations is undermined by Christian virtue.
It should be remarked, however, that it is not Schmitt’s purpose in his exposition of the political to advise Christians on how to act. Nor is he interested in urging increased agitation within the social order. Rather, Schmitt seeks to offer a realist framework for properly understanding the foundations of political phenomena, which then informs the political thinker as to the limits, possibilities, and necessities of political activity and statecraft. At least, Schmitt might say, we can proceed without all the liberal myths and delusions that taint our understanding of political reality.
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Sin is a serious matter. To break the commandments of Jehovah means His wrath will come down upon you. Here we see why it is when we are discussing this question of paganism and how the church is to respond that we take seriously what it is we are doing. This isn’t a philosophical competition between different ideas on what works. We are telling the pagans to give up their false gods, to destroy their ancient landmarks, and come to the place of safety and rest. For if they don’t? Then they will face the same end as the cows of Bashan.

Paganism as a word comes from a Latin term which roughly translates to redneck. It was a way for the city folk to sound superior to the great unwashed out in the country. The history of how it became known as a way to describe those men and women who believe not in the God of the Bible is a little convoluted. However, it will be worth our time to learn a bit of it as it teaches us much about the worth of continuing to use it for our purposes today.
Early Christianity was a faith which began to spread first in the cities of the Mediterranean, as told to us in the Book of Acts. The main reason was because that is where the synagogues were. As Paul notes the gospel was for the Jews first, and then the Greeks. As the community of faith grew it was largely confined in the population centers as the folks out in the hollers surrounding Ephesus held on to the old ways. Partly that came from the fact for many there was such a tight connection between Jupiter and Mars and their identity as Romans. To attack the strong gods was to delegitimize the patriotic spirit of the nation. The cult was the culture. Ties to the past matter, at least they should matter. In our talk on the eighth commandment last Thursday there was commentary on the warning given in Proverbs 22:28 about the removing of ancient landmarks. Our fathers placed monuments to help their grandchildren to remember the hard-fought victories of the past and to honor the sacrifices of those who came before.
For a “new” religion to come and try and overthrow what these people had received as an inheritance was no small ask. It is central to why care and consideration, to listen, to what the unbeliever has to say is important in the work of evangelism. To make pagans into Christians is desiring not just that a person would go from one belief system to another, but to move them to abandon everything which made them who they were before. Those of us born into the faith can sometimes underestimate the totality of what Jesus asks in Luke 9:62. Even for the Jews of the first century that meant giving up the ceremonies of which they had grown accustomed, yet they had an advantage on the pagans in that they were keeping the same God. The first commandment is complete in its ask. The reason why this is important to understanding the word pagan is that when we use it, we are not attempting to belittle or be rude in any way. It is a helpful way to honor that as those who rest in body and soul we are bringing to bare not a competing way of thinking, but an entirely different world and life view.
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