How does one reconcile the one and the many, being and becoming, freedom and determinism, autonomy and dependence? These questions have preoccupied philosophers since the era of the pre-Socratics. Watkin’s approach is to begin with God, in whom things dwell in perfect harmony—even though we sometimes place them in opposition to each other (his love and his justice, for example). Watkin then demonstrates how modern culture demands we either affirm one or the other or adopt a synthesis of the two that produces an unsatisfying compromise—a tertium quid, or “third thing,” to use the technical theological term (“neither fish nor fowl,” to use the untechnical, nontheological expression). Finally, he moves to showing how the truths that exist harmoniously in God are manifested in the gospel, albeit in an unexpected way.

The summer of 2020 is memorable for many reasons, none of them positive: COVID-19; the death of George Floyd; and social turmoil across many Western countries, focused particularly on the colonial past of Europe and the United States. Amid all the chaos, the term “critical theory” (CT)—specifically in the form of “critical race theory”—entered common parlance.

While CT was once a highly specialized phenomenon of little interest outside postgraduate seminars in the humanities, suddenly everyone—especially those with Twitter accounts and personal blogs—was an expert in the field. Most surprising of all was how many Christians seemed eager to be in on the action.

So CT moved into the mainstream, becoming a point of conflict at school boards; higher education institutions; and churches, both locally and at the denominational level. It became a shibboleth, a tribal marker, with the question “Are you for it or against it?” requiring a simple yes or no answer as a test of orthodoxy on both sides of the discussion.

Yet CT isn’t a unified phenomenon, nor is its literature easy to understand. With one stream of CT finding its roots in Hegel and the other in French post-structuralism, the field is rife with rebarbative prose, opaque arguments, and slippery conclusions.

The highly politicized role CT has come to play in current cultural discussions makes it hard to find a reliable guide to the issue or, more importantly, a sound proposal for a Christian response and alternative. Christopher Watkin seeks to address this lacuna in his major book Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.

Guided by Augustine

CT has two basic goals. It strives to expose the contingent nature of the reality we as human subjects experience and in which we participate, and it aims by so doing to alter the way we think and relate to the world around us.

Further, at the core of CT, whether of the Marxist variety associated with the Frankfurt School or the post-structuralist variety connected to Michel Foucault, is the notion that power and manipulation lay behind the apparently natural but in reality socially constructed world we inhabit. So understood, CT has clear affinities with Christianity. Christianity claims the world and our perception of it are distorted by sin, that we live according to lies, and that all human relationships are marked to some degree by selfishness. What Watkin does is build on these and other affinities to move beyond knee-jerk and simplistic “Boo!” or “Hooray!” alternatives and to mark a path forward.

The guiding light of Watkin’s project is Augustine, whose City of God is arguably the first and greatest example of what a Christian CT might look like. In the course of that work, Augustine debunks the myths Rome told about itself, often by way of what later critical theorists would dub “immanent critique,” exposing the contradictions of Rome’s own narrative as a means of clearing the ground.

Augustine uses the biblical plotline to provide a grand explanatory scheme for his relativization of Rome and his assertion of the superiority of the gospel, something the contemporary theologian John Milbank refers to as “out-narrating.”

Watkin deploys all these elements in his development of a biblical CT. Using the overarching biblical metanarrative to frame his analysis, he moves deftly from Christian doctrine to critiquing the most pressing issues of our day. Much of what the book contains will be familiar to TGC readers as it’s solid biblical theology. The discussions of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation follow familiar lines, along with discussions of key biblical genres, such as prophecy and wisdom.

Indeed, it’s in his discussion of the prophets—the great exemplars of biblical CT—that Watkin excels. If, as Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach state, the point isn’t to describe the world but to change it, then the prophetic imagination is surely critical.

Key Framework: Diagonalization

So what is it about Watkin’s work that makes it “critical” and not simply a re-presentation of standard biblical theology? The answer lies above all in his deployment of what he calls “diagonalization.”

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