What do you think?
Rate this book
Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture
*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 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.
672 pages, Hardcover
First published November 8, 2022
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 308 reviews
February 7, 2023
One of the most important books I’ve ever read—and likely will ever read. It didn’t just enrich my cultural awareness; it deepened my love for God and the breathtaking beauty of his Word.
October 15, 2022
One of the best books I’ve ever read.
December 13, 2022
This work requires a longer review than I have the time to give here. Yet, I shall proceed briefly by stating that this is a necessary work for those seeking to engage the culture with the gospel. This work beautifully illustrates how Christians are able to walk in obedience to the Scriptures in a world antagonistic to the teachings of Christ. Pulling from an array of thinkers from Nietzsche to C. S. Lewis, Watkin beautiful illustrates that Christ is for all ages, and he tears down all banal ways of thinking.
May 25, 2023
4.75, kind of feels like I spent the last four months having Christopher Watkin read me a bedtime story. Only this bedtime story was on Christian social & culture theory.
It is surreal finishing this as Tim Keller has recently passed. TK wrote the forward for this book, and it is certainly a TK-esque project if there ever was one. The title could well have been something like “A Third Way: Making Sense of Culture.” This is no knock on the book, I find the “third way” framing as Keller championed or “diagonalizing” as Watkin presents it quite compelling in most instances for cultural engagement and evangelism. In many cases I find this method also intuitive with the both/and nature of certain biblical realities (ie love & justice, God & Man, 3 & 1, etc.). That said I think some areas of the book I was less compelled by the application of the method to certain areas of culture (I think he oversimplifies).
The book is organized as a biblical theology of culture, progressing through in order of the canon of scripture. Watkin pulls from individuals throughout history from the church fathers, to the reformers, to present day commentators, to philosophers and other influential historical figures, with the scriptures leading the way. Even though the bibliography is thick, I appreciate Watkin’s acknowledgment that this volume is by no means comprehensive. He acknowledges gaps in the current volume and need for some continual development, which is a refreshing posture in the cultural commentating category.
In the conclusion of the book Watkin brings to the forefront two important reminders for Christian cultural engagement and theology. (1) Christians theology ought lead to doxology and the worship of God and the two are not at odds (another both/and reality if you ask me) (2) “People do not differ according to whether they are guided by a cultural and social theory but by whether they realize it or not.”
Both points I’d use to suggest reading this book. Whether you agree with the all the arguments or not, the manner in which Watkin brings the Bible to bear on culture analysis is helpful for all to think more deeply on the intersection of Bible and culture that all Christians find themselves interacting with.
If a 600 page junior/senior undergraduate level read on Christian culture theory seems a little daunting or you are not convinced by the necessity of it, I think a nice shorter stop would be with James KA Smith’s “You Are What You Love.” Smith’s book I find to be helpful primer on Christian formation and the cultures formative power for all.
Anyways, that’s long. I write these really as a sort of diary of what I was thinking at the time I finished a book. If someone read this, power to you. I say to you, you probably have time to read a 600 page book on Christian culture theory.
Lastly, shoutout Tim Keller. I’ve been formed quite a bit from his writings and ministry and see his fingerprints over this project. He helped me understanding suffering as a high school kid with no dad, and he made books cool to me as a college kid that mostly spark noted his way through school. Thanks TK.
It is surreal finishing this as Tim Keller has recently passed. TK wrote the forward for this book, and it is certainly a TK-esque project if there ever was one. The title could well have been something like “A Third Way: Making Sense of Culture.” This is no knock on the book, I find the “third way” framing as Keller championed or “diagonalizing” as Watkin presents it quite compelling in most instances for cultural engagement and evangelism. In many cases I find this method also intuitive with the both/and nature of certain biblical realities (ie love & justice, God & Man, 3 & 1, etc.). That said I think some areas of the book I was less compelled by the application of the method to certain areas of culture (I think he oversimplifies).
The book is organized as a biblical theology of culture, progressing through in order of the canon of scripture. Watkin pulls from individuals throughout history from the church fathers, to the reformers, to present day commentators, to philosophers and other influential historical figures, with the scriptures leading the way. Even though the bibliography is thick, I appreciate Watkin’s acknowledgment that this volume is by no means comprehensive. He acknowledges gaps in the current volume and need for some continual development, which is a refreshing posture in the cultural commentating category.
In the conclusion of the book Watkin brings to the forefront two important reminders for Christian cultural engagement and theology. (1) Christians theology ought lead to doxology and the worship of God and the two are not at odds (another both/and reality if you ask me) (2) “People do not differ according to whether they are guided by a cultural and social theory but by whether they realize it or not.”
Both points I’d use to suggest reading this book. Whether you agree with the all the arguments or not, the manner in which Watkin brings the Bible to bear on culture analysis is helpful for all to think more deeply on the intersection of Bible and culture that all Christians find themselves interacting with.
If a 600 page junior/senior undergraduate level read on Christian culture theory seems a little daunting or you are not convinced by the necessity of it, I think a nice shorter stop would be with James KA Smith’s “You Are What You Love.” Smith’s book I find to be helpful primer on Christian formation and the cultures formative power for all.
Anyways, that’s long. I write these really as a sort of diary of what I was thinking at the time I finished a book. If someone read this, power to you. I say to you, you probably have time to read a 600 page book on Christian culture theory.
Lastly, shoutout Tim Keller. I’ve been formed quite a bit from his writings and ministry and see his fingerprints over this project. He helped me understanding suffering as a high school kid with no dad, and he made books cool to me as a college kid that mostly spark noted his way through school. Thanks TK.
March 22, 2026
While attending a funeral last year, an individual asked if I had read this book. I had heard about it, I informed them, but was not really interested in reading it. I had a pretty good idea of what Watkin was trying to do. Besides, it clocks in at just under 700 pages and free time put toward reading has become increasingly limited. But upon further prodding, I told them I’d take the plunge.
A year later, I’ve finally finished it.
I want to make just a few comments on why I think Watkin fails and does so on several fronts. But before doing that, it’s important to recognize the central strength of this study. Watkin is an astute interpreter of French and German social theory. Leagues superior, in fact, to Carl Trueman. Watkin *knows* what they’re saying and renders it accessible for the uninitiated. This is where young evangelicals and evangelical pastors will benefit from reading Watkin’s study. You need helpful cartographers to map out Deleuze, Foucault, Latour, and Ricœur, among a whole host of others. Watkin meets this need from a Christian perspective. His so-called biblical critical theory, on the other hand, remains empty and, from a practical standpoint, useless.
First, Watkin’s biblical critical analysis never employs critical analysis. At no point does Watkin unmask the institutional, technological, or social practices generated within (post)modernity. He names a lot of happenings, but without fail retreats into abstractions.
This is the second major problem of Watkin’s study. It just showcases a contest of ideals. On one side, we have the biblical ideal, and on the other, we have the Western ideal. Who do you think wins that fight? Its constant default to abstract propositions ironically reflects the lack of materialism at heart throughout Watkin’s analysis–a considerable omission considering this is an attempt at social theory. Such a project falls in line with, once again, another evangelical apologetic’s program. And “diagonalization” ensures victory after victory after victory after victory for the biblical ideal.
Watkin’s display of an array of false binaries introduces a third problem. The careful reader will recognize the failure of Watkin to attend to the complexities of the countless cultural ideal types he pits against one another. Polarization is a popular concept that Third-Wayers like to use, but such analyses are so clumsy that they hide behind caricatures. Seldom does Watkin’s diagonalizing between two polarizing sides actually account for the whole range of complex practices at play from any and all sides. Again, as a program for social theory, this is quite a shortcoming. Watkin’s supposed diagonalizing, moreover, which continually hovers in the air of abstractions, never actually provides an on-the-ground ethic. No reader gains anything close to guidance, or direction, or how to take practical action in the face of cultural fragmentation. The reader is simply left with thoroughly diagonalized biblical ideals as the obvious right choice.
Perhaps the major problem with Watkin’s analysis is the “biblical” qualifier he employs for critical theory. The Bible, as it is by itself, standing on its own in abstraction, independently, somehow diagonalizes false binaries. The Bible does no such thing in Watkin’s book, however. It’s Watkin’s own analysis, based on many years of a well-informed education, that repeatedly resolves tension after tension. I want to make a sharp and potentially provocative point here that cuts at the very center of Watkin’s analysis: the Bible cannot do everything. In fact, the Bible cannot be everything for the Christian. If there is to be a critical theory that is Christian, it cannot hinge on the Bible because that’s a burden the Bible cannot bear. It’s what the Bible gives us that is everything for the Christian; namely, the gospel of Christ. This latter is mediated to the Christian in and through an ecclesial and sacramental community called the Church. Oddly enough, this omission would find Augustine–who Watkin is purportedly following–greatly confused by Watkin’s project of “out-narration.” A critical theory that is Christian must rely on the whole counsel of God–all of it!–a feat on display in Augustine’s CoG.
For the curious reader who recognizes that what Watkin presents is too easy, there are alternatives (MacIntyre, Taylor, Milbank, Jennings, DBH). Christian philosophers and theologians have offered compelling accounts that follow closely something like Augustine’s out-narration of Rome. To be sure, they’re also not without their own faults, but they do provide a Christian social theory that is at once critical and theological, and they manage to do so without falling into biblicist apologetics.
A year later, I’ve finally finished it.
I want to make just a few comments on why I think Watkin fails and does so on several fronts. But before doing that, it’s important to recognize the central strength of this study. Watkin is an astute interpreter of French and German social theory. Leagues superior, in fact, to Carl Trueman. Watkin *knows* what they’re saying and renders it accessible for the uninitiated. This is where young evangelicals and evangelical pastors will benefit from reading Watkin’s study. You need helpful cartographers to map out Deleuze, Foucault, Latour, and Ricœur, among a whole host of others. Watkin meets this need from a Christian perspective. His so-called biblical critical theory, on the other hand, remains empty and, from a practical standpoint, useless.
First, Watkin’s biblical critical analysis never employs critical analysis. At no point does Watkin unmask the institutional, technological, or social practices generated within (post)modernity. He names a lot of happenings, but without fail retreats into abstractions.
This is the second major problem of Watkin’s study. It just showcases a contest of ideals. On one side, we have the biblical ideal, and on the other, we have the Western ideal. Who do you think wins that fight? Its constant default to abstract propositions ironically reflects the lack of materialism at heart throughout Watkin’s analysis–a considerable omission considering this is an attempt at social theory. Such a project falls in line with, once again, another evangelical apologetic’s program. And “diagonalization” ensures victory after victory after victory after victory for the biblical ideal.
Watkin’s display of an array of false binaries introduces a third problem. The careful reader will recognize the failure of Watkin to attend to the complexities of the countless cultural ideal types he pits against one another. Polarization is a popular concept that Third-Wayers like to use, but such analyses are so clumsy that they hide behind caricatures. Seldom does Watkin’s diagonalizing between two polarizing sides actually account for the whole range of complex practices at play from any and all sides. Again, as a program for social theory, this is quite a shortcoming. Watkin’s supposed diagonalizing, moreover, which continually hovers in the air of abstractions, never actually provides an on-the-ground ethic. No reader gains anything close to guidance, or direction, or how to take practical action in the face of cultural fragmentation. The reader is simply left with thoroughly diagonalized biblical ideals as the obvious right choice.
Perhaps the major problem with Watkin’s analysis is the “biblical” qualifier he employs for critical theory. The Bible, as it is by itself, standing on its own in abstraction, independently, somehow diagonalizes false binaries. The Bible does no such thing in Watkin’s book, however. It’s Watkin’s own analysis, based on many years of a well-informed education, that repeatedly resolves tension after tension. I want to make a sharp and potentially provocative point here that cuts at the very center of Watkin’s analysis: the Bible cannot do everything. In fact, the Bible cannot be everything for the Christian. If there is to be a critical theory that is Christian, it cannot hinge on the Bible because that’s a burden the Bible cannot bear. It’s what the Bible gives us that is everything for the Christian; namely, the gospel of Christ. This latter is mediated to the Christian in and through an ecclesial and sacramental community called the Church. Oddly enough, this omission would find Augustine–who Watkin is purportedly following–greatly confused by Watkin’s project of “out-narration.” A critical theory that is Christian must rely on the whole counsel of God–all of it!–a feat on display in Augustine’s CoG.
For the curious reader who recognizes that what Watkin presents is too easy, there are alternatives (MacIntyre, Taylor, Milbank, Jennings, DBH). Christian philosophers and theologians have offered compelling accounts that follow closely something like Augustine’s out-narration of Rome. To be sure, they’re also not without their own faults, but they do provide a Christian social theory that is at once critical and theological, and they manage to do so without falling into biblicist apologetics.
June 26, 2025
Won’t do a full review but 100% recommend, even if it’s read chapter by chapter (they can stand alone as essays but fit nicely into the overarching thesis). Very helpful primer on theory and criticism from a biblical perspective. Huge fan of this guy and, to his credit, left each chapter with the urge to praise God (and to write poetry). And I learned a lot. I love the Bible more for the hope it brings of our SURE redemption. Mission accomplished?
December 30, 2022
You should read this book! It’s a little long, but I think the accessibility to richness ratio might be some of the best I’ve read. Which is impressive considering the breadth of topics the book covers: creation, sin, autonomy, covenant, exodus, prophecy, incarnation, the cross, eschatology. A true biblical theology, and written with the whit and charm of a professor who seems to spend a lot of time interacting with students!
In addition to making complex issues both accessible and rich, the way it connects Christian cultural critique to Scripture and biblical theology is akin to Augustine’s City of God, even if it inevitably can’t overcome the original. Beyond that it is a wonderful bibliography of Christian cultural critique throughout the ages, and in the pages I found at least 10 other books I would like to read. This is a really great one.
One complaint, the wisdom literature chapter is not well done, and I know that I say that as someone particularly likely to make a critical comment like that, but the chapter seems unaware generally of the various biblical issues going on and even uses the paradigm of diagonalization to put Job across Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. I understand the idea, but it’s a problematic thing to pit scripture against scripture that way, and it also misses the canonical awareness and complexity within Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
In addition to making complex issues both accessible and rich, the way it connects Christian cultural critique to Scripture and biblical theology is akin to Augustine’s City of God, even if it inevitably can’t overcome the original. Beyond that it is a wonderful bibliography of Christian cultural critique throughout the ages, and in the pages I found at least 10 other books I would like to read. This is a really great one.
One complaint, the wisdom literature chapter is not well done, and I know that I say that as someone particularly likely to make a critical comment like that, but the chapter seems unaware generally of the various biblical issues going on and even uses the paradigm of diagonalization to put Job across Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. I understand the idea, but it’s a problematic thing to pit scripture against scripture that way, and it also misses the canonical awareness and complexity within Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
August 15, 2023
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover.
But with its eye catching front and 17 commendations from leading theologians and philosophers, how could I not?
To Watkin’s credit, even he says in his conclusion that this book is woefully lacking. I want to honour that admission with an honest review. This book tries to do too much with too few pages. The ideas in the book are either too lofty, or too obvious. The book tries to answer the ‘so what’ of the bible, but honestly I’m still asking ‘so what’ at the end of reading this.
I loved Truman’s Rise and Triumph. If reading that was like watching a Christopher Nolan film, this book felt like watching three hours worth of movie trailers.
I do believe this book is groundbreaking. But like any new technology or genre, the first of its kind is often in much need of refinement. It’s worth having on the bookshelf- but only as a reference. I wouldn’t recommend reading this cover to cover.
But with its eye catching front and 17 commendations from leading theologians and philosophers, how could I not?
To Watkin’s credit, even he says in his conclusion that this book is woefully lacking. I want to honour that admission with an honest review. This book tries to do too much with too few pages. The ideas in the book are either too lofty, or too obvious. The book tries to answer the ‘so what’ of the bible, but honestly I’m still asking ‘so what’ at the end of reading this.
I loved Truman’s Rise and Triumph. If reading that was like watching a Christopher Nolan film, this book felt like watching three hours worth of movie trailers.
I do believe this book is groundbreaking. But like any new technology or genre, the first of its kind is often in much need of refinement. It’s worth having on the bookshelf- but only as a reference. I wouldn’t recommend reading this cover to cover.
June 29, 2023
A great resource that moves through the story of the Bible and engages Western cultural ideas, identifying not only the key theologies that address them, but showing why the theologies are superior and more desirable. The opening chapter on Trinity, for example, far from being a meandering doctrinal exercise was uplifting: the "absolute personality theism" of the triune and relational Godhead, who is eternally covenantly faithful yet deeply relationally intimate, bridges and surpasses the cultural teleologies of science (rigid impersonal constancy) and arts (experience and expression). A dense but rewarding read dipping into a wealth of ideas; although some chapters or explanations weren't quite as fresh, I was always intrigued and often surprised by the cutting insights and connections arising from the Biblical narratives. It was always fun to identify a pop reference too haha
November 11, 2023
Truly excellent. Insightful over and over. The rare book I think I simply must reread.
December 5, 2022
A massively-ambitious book. Too many thoughts to write down, so I'm working on a video review, which I will post here soon....
February 14, 2026
I’m happy to contribute to the praise of this book, because it is well deserved.
It is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and likely one of the most important works written in recent years. I can’t wait to see the many ways God uses it to help the church carry out and develop distinctly Biblical social theories in the coming years.
It is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and likely one of the most important works written in recent years. I can’t wait to see the many ways God uses it to help the church carry out and develop distinctly Biblical social theories in the coming years.
June 12, 2023
Lives up to the hype!
June 11, 2024
One of the most important books I've read. Watkin's does a magnificent job ad defining and defending what he calls "diagonalization". In an attempt to modernize Augustine's "City of God", Watkins shows us how the Bible gives Christian the tools for cultural critique. This books helped me understand why I love TIm Keller's "third-wayism" of engaging culture. Christianity is never at the end of two extremes but finds a way to transcend them both.
Take up and read.
Take up and read.
March 17, 2025
This is an excellent treatment of Christian cultural engagement. Consciously standing in the tradition of Augustine, Tim Keller, and many in between, Christopher Watkin uses the Bible to critique many of the prevailing Western ideologies - democracy, capitalism, socialism, rationalism, negative freedom, expressive and possessive individualism, and so much more - while constructively building a Christian social theory.
Similar to Biblical Theology, the book begins with Genesis and ends in Revelation, tracing the storyline of scripture at a high level. Unlike Biblical Theology, the purpose is not primarily to exposit each stop in the Biblical narrative but rather to apply them to 21st century Western society. Because of this, I recommend readers posses a working understanding of scripture’s metanarrative before starting. Otherwise, I loved this approach!
The book’s main method of cultural critique is third wayism, what Watkin calls “diagonalization”. He avoids some of the major pitfalls of this approach - such as finding some middle ground between competing alternatives or discarding both positions altogether - and instead aims to find the biblical truth captured in each alternative, expose them as sub-biblical and reductionistic, and show how the Bible offers the best of both. This approach is not only an effective critique of late modernity but also an instructive method for Christian’s on how to analyze any cultural moment. However, I fear his constant use of diagonalization gives the impression that biblical truth always operates this way when presented with competing possibilities. Sometimes a culture happens to align with God on a specific topic, such as protecting the unborn or caring for the poor. In cases such as these, there is no third way.
Personally, this was an eye-opening exposure to late modernity. I was particularly struck by how markets act as totalizing forces, brands seek to sell an identity and not primarily products, and the modern view of technology buttresses plausibility structures that make belief in the divine seem less reasonable. Furthermore, as stated above, the book seeks to not just critique but also positively craft a biblically informed cultural theory. The asymmetrical nature of God’s love as seen in the death of Jesus for undeserving sinners like myself - in contrast to the logic of equivalence - was especially encouraging to me.
I leave the reader with my favorite quote because of its creativity, wit, and accuracy: “With our historical mirror in place, an Areopagus-inspired genealogy of contemporary society might start something like this: ‘People of modernity! I see that in every way you think yourselves very irreligious, but your irreligion is very Christian.’” (509)
Similar to Biblical Theology, the book begins with Genesis and ends in Revelation, tracing the storyline of scripture at a high level. Unlike Biblical Theology, the purpose is not primarily to exposit each stop in the Biblical narrative but rather to apply them to 21st century Western society. Because of this, I recommend readers posses a working understanding of scripture’s metanarrative before starting. Otherwise, I loved this approach!
The book’s main method of cultural critique is third wayism, what Watkin calls “diagonalization”. He avoids some of the major pitfalls of this approach - such as finding some middle ground between competing alternatives or discarding both positions altogether - and instead aims to find the biblical truth captured in each alternative, expose them as sub-biblical and reductionistic, and show how the Bible offers the best of both. This approach is not only an effective critique of late modernity but also an instructive method for Christian’s on how to analyze any cultural moment. However, I fear his constant use of diagonalization gives the impression that biblical truth always operates this way when presented with competing possibilities. Sometimes a culture happens to align with God on a specific topic, such as protecting the unborn or caring for the poor. In cases such as these, there is no third way.
Personally, this was an eye-opening exposure to late modernity. I was particularly struck by how markets act as totalizing forces, brands seek to sell an identity and not primarily products, and the modern view of technology buttresses plausibility structures that make belief in the divine seem less reasonable. Furthermore, as stated above, the book seeks to not just critique but also positively craft a biblically informed cultural theory. The asymmetrical nature of God’s love as seen in the death of Jesus for undeserving sinners like myself - in contrast to the logic of equivalence - was especially encouraging to me.
I leave the reader with my favorite quote because of its creativity, wit, and accuracy: “With our historical mirror in place, an Areopagus-inspired genealogy of contemporary society might start something like this: ‘People of modernity! I see that in every way you think yourselves very irreligious, but your irreligion is very Christian.’” (509)
February 15, 2025
4.9 Stars
"Biblical Critical Theory" by Christopher Watkin is a remarkable work of theological and Biblical critique of late modern culture. Its genre defies easy categorization, much like Augustine's "City of God." Watkin argues that Christianity offers our modern culture a superior narrative that balances our bifurcated view of reality. He does this by exploring the entire Biblical narrative, from Genesis to Revelation, highlighting how it critiques modern secular culture while offering a richer way of worship and submission to God.
Watkin's deductions and applications frequently left me in awe and deepened my worship of God. The book is filled with profound critiques and truths, addressing topics such as modern commercialism, democracy, and expressive individualism. Over 600 expansive pages, Watkin dismantles the gods of our age one by one. The main takeaway for me was that God's created order and truth are far superior and more glorious than the disordered world of modern secularism.
This is not an easy read for the layman, as it contains numerous references to Christian and secular thinkers and theories that can be challenging to track. However, it is a delight for Bible students or pastors with an interest in worldview and culture. Its greatest value may be as a reference book for pastors or Bible teachers when preaching through Scripture, providing numerous modern applications for their teachings. I highly recommend this book to anyone willing to dive in and explore its depths.
"Biblical Critical Theory" by Christopher Watkin is a remarkable work of theological and Biblical critique of late modern culture. Its genre defies easy categorization, much like Augustine's "City of God." Watkin argues that Christianity offers our modern culture a superior narrative that balances our bifurcated view of reality. He does this by exploring the entire Biblical narrative, from Genesis to Revelation, highlighting how it critiques modern secular culture while offering a richer way of worship and submission to God.
Watkin's deductions and applications frequently left me in awe and deepened my worship of God. The book is filled with profound critiques and truths, addressing topics such as modern commercialism, democracy, and expressive individualism. Over 600 expansive pages, Watkin dismantles the gods of our age one by one. The main takeaway for me was that God's created order and truth are far superior and more glorious than the disordered world of modern secularism.
This is not an easy read for the layman, as it contains numerous references to Christian and secular thinkers and theories that can be challenging to track. However, it is a delight for Bible students or pastors with an interest in worldview and culture. Its greatest value may be as a reference book for pastors or Bible teachers when preaching through Scripture, providing numerous modern applications for their teachings. I highly recommend this book to anyone willing to dive in and explore its depths.
November 27, 2024
This is a book for a certain audience. At over 650 pages of engagement with culture, theology, biblical texts, and philosophy, this is a serious read. Using Augustine’s City of God as a model, Watkin offers a framework for Christians to navigate the tensions we face in being part of the City of God in the presence of the City of Man. Watkin uses a model that he calls ‘diagonalization’ where the Bible offers a way out of the various binary traps given. For example, do the people of God Assimilate to Culture or Isolate from Culture? Watkin shows that by embracing the biblical identity of Exile we can live in but not of the world.
Throughout the 28 chapters, he offers 2-4 different diagonalization on topics like justice, love, progress, and history.
He draws from many who have wrestled with cultural engagement for the faithful Christian. Many footnotes come from Augustine, G.K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Bonhoeffer, and Tim Keller. As well several 20th and 21st-century theologians (Van Til, James K. A. Smith, and Richard Bauckham) and Christian philosophers (Charles Taylor, Jacques Ellul, and Paul Ricoeur) surface in several sections. If these authors interest you, Watkin’s book will benefit your journey.
One critique which is commonplace among evangelical theology is that Watkin largely jumps from Augustine to the Protestant Reformers in his analysis. The book draws significantly from Augustine, especially City of God and On Christine Doctrine. However, Christians throughout the Medieval world wrestled with the challenge of living as the people of God in the present world, e.g John of Damascus. I remember only a few references to Aquinas.
Throughout the 28 chapters, he offers 2-4 different diagonalization on topics like justice, love, progress, and history.
He draws from many who have wrestled with cultural engagement for the faithful Christian. Many footnotes come from Augustine, G.K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Bonhoeffer, and Tim Keller. As well several 20th and 21st-century theologians (Van Til, James K. A. Smith, and Richard Bauckham) and Christian philosophers (Charles Taylor, Jacques Ellul, and Paul Ricoeur) surface in several sections. If these authors interest you, Watkin’s book will benefit your journey.
One critique which is commonplace among evangelical theology is that Watkin largely jumps from Augustine to the Protestant Reformers in his analysis. The book draws significantly from Augustine, especially City of God and On Christine Doctrine. However, Christians throughout the Medieval world wrestled with the challenge of living as the people of God in the present world, e.g John of Damascus. I remember only a few references to Aquinas.
October 28, 2025
Wow! It really does sadden me to mark this book as read. I began this book in the summer of 2024. Thinking that I would complete it by the start of the fall semester, I made a study guide and everything; I quickly realized that I had bit off more than I could chew. My new goal was to read the first half of the volume that summer and the next half over the summer of 2025, which I mostly accomplished (yes, I know it is now October). Despite my long break between reads, this book was truly wonderful.
Maybe I will write a longer review/summary of my thoughts that dives deeper into the larger narrative of the book and some more specific takeaways on a later date, but for now here are a few thoughts that are presently on my mind as I have just finished the book.
While most all critical theorists are merely revolutionary, seeking to tear down, and, for lack of a better word, “critique” society, Christopher Watkin critiques while also providing a positive narrative to adopt. His method for what he calls biblical critical theory (to my limited knowledge) is to thoroughly engage with the visions of reality that have permeated late modern culture in order to ultimately show how they fall short of capturing/making sense of all of our human experience and reality. His method is to use what he calls biblical “figures” to (borrowing a term from John Milbank) “out-narrate” the reductive heresies of more complex biblical realities. Quite often, this was achieved through his use of diagonalization. I have heard several people critique this book suggesting that Christopher Watkin is a sort of one-trick pony; he simply forms a dichotomy between two narrow views of the world and draws a diagonal line between the two showcasing how a Biblical worldview out-narrates the two. However, I found this to be continuously applicable and good, though my long reading hiatus over the schoolyear may have helped.
Apparently, the book essentially tackles what Augustine did in the fifth century in his work The City of God, but with two main differences. (1.) Watkin obviously writes on issues concerning late modernity and not the Roman Empire and (2.), while Augustine dedicates the first half of his work to subverting Rome’s story and the second half to showing how its deepest aspirations are fulfilled in the gospel, Watkin follows the biblical storyline doing this very same thing all along the way.
The book is quite strong in the subjects surrounding creation and eschatology. If you glance at the table of contents, you quickly see that over 50% of the book makes up discussion on the first three chapters of Genesis and the last days.
He really does touch such a wide range of social/political theorists and philosophers, such as Marx, Descartes, Locke, Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Heidegger, Hobbes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato, Ricoeur, Rousseau, Charles Taylor, etc. (as well as a bunch of French guys I have never heard of). He also makes great use of Christian apologists and theologians across the centuries such as Jacques Ellul, Chesterton, David Bentley Hart, Bavinck, Keller, Lewis, John Milbank, William Cavanaugh, Lesslie Newbigin, Richard Bauckham, Bonhoeffer, Holland, Oliver O’Donovan, etc., and of course, Augustine. The research behind this book is incredible; Watkin knows his modern literature. If you do not wish to read such a long volume, simply reading the bibliography would likely do anyone some good.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that this book’s value came mostly from the content that it covered. I wish I could retain the wide breadth of knowledge that this author brushed over. However, I don’t think it is really meant to do that necessarily. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is much benefit in studying the content of this book and I will certainly use it as a launching pad and guide to further reading, but I do think the real value of this book is found in the methods that he uses and the approach that he takes with engaging the world. This, I believe, is of even greater value than simply understanding a series of arguments for specific competing worldviews (or maybe I just say that to make me feel better about my bad memory).
In his summary Watkin discusses how Christian cultural theory has a doxological center of gravity, which he says is his hope in writing this book; I believe that he accomplished his goal. This book has certainly produced in me a heart of worship to a God that has painted reality with truth, goodness, and beauty and invites us to forsake the broken cisterns of our immature “worldvisions” (as J. H. Bavinck would put it) and to embrace the reality of a triune God.
Maybe I will write a longer review/summary of my thoughts that dives deeper into the larger narrative of the book and some more specific takeaways on a later date, but for now here are a few thoughts that are presently on my mind as I have just finished the book.
While most all critical theorists are merely revolutionary, seeking to tear down, and, for lack of a better word, “critique” society, Christopher Watkin critiques while also providing a positive narrative to adopt. His method for what he calls biblical critical theory (to my limited knowledge) is to thoroughly engage with the visions of reality that have permeated late modern culture in order to ultimately show how they fall short of capturing/making sense of all of our human experience and reality. His method is to use what he calls biblical “figures” to (borrowing a term from John Milbank) “out-narrate” the reductive heresies of more complex biblical realities. Quite often, this was achieved through his use of diagonalization. I have heard several people critique this book suggesting that Christopher Watkin is a sort of one-trick pony; he simply forms a dichotomy between two narrow views of the world and draws a diagonal line between the two showcasing how a Biblical worldview out-narrates the two. However, I found this to be continuously applicable and good, though my long reading hiatus over the schoolyear may have helped.
Apparently, the book essentially tackles what Augustine did in the fifth century in his work The City of God, but with two main differences. (1.) Watkin obviously writes on issues concerning late modernity and not the Roman Empire and (2.), while Augustine dedicates the first half of his work to subverting Rome’s story and the second half to showing how its deepest aspirations are fulfilled in the gospel, Watkin follows the biblical storyline doing this very same thing all along the way.
The book is quite strong in the subjects surrounding creation and eschatology. If you glance at the table of contents, you quickly see that over 50% of the book makes up discussion on the first three chapters of Genesis and the last days.
He really does touch such a wide range of social/political theorists and philosophers, such as Marx, Descartes, Locke, Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Heidegger, Hobbes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato, Ricoeur, Rousseau, Charles Taylor, etc. (as well as a bunch of French guys I have never heard of). He also makes great use of Christian apologists and theologians across the centuries such as Jacques Ellul, Chesterton, David Bentley Hart, Bavinck, Keller, Lewis, John Milbank, William Cavanaugh, Lesslie Newbigin, Richard Bauckham, Bonhoeffer, Holland, Oliver O’Donovan, etc., and of course, Augustine. The research behind this book is incredible; Watkin knows his modern literature. If you do not wish to read such a long volume, simply reading the bibliography would likely do anyone some good.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that this book’s value came mostly from the content that it covered. I wish I could retain the wide breadth of knowledge that this author brushed over. However, I don’t think it is really meant to do that necessarily. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is much benefit in studying the content of this book and I will certainly use it as a launching pad and guide to further reading, but I do think the real value of this book is found in the methods that he uses and the approach that he takes with engaging the world. This, I believe, is of even greater value than simply understanding a series of arguments for specific competing worldviews (or maybe I just say that to make me feel better about my bad memory).
In his summary Watkin discusses how Christian cultural theory has a doxological center of gravity, which he says is his hope in writing this book; I believe that he accomplished his goal. This book has certainly produced in me a heart of worship to a God that has painted reality with truth, goodness, and beauty and invites us to forsake the broken cisterns of our immature “worldvisions” (as J. H. Bavinck would put it) and to embrace the reality of a triune God.
December 21, 2024
Given all of the effusive advance praise for this book, one would think it is the best treatment of Christian cultural engagement since Augustine's "City of God." The book doesn't quite meet that standard, but it is definitely worth the extended time necessary to read it if you are interested in how Christianity provides an alternative and superior way of looking at the world as compared to competing secular approaches to reality.
The book begins with Genesis and continues through Revelation, following the course of biblical redemptive history (creation > sin > Babel > Abraham > Moses > wisdom > incarnation > cross > resurrection > last days ) to draw out implications for how the Bible shapes our view of reality. "One way of evaluating a view of the world is to examine whether it can integrate multiple realities effectively or whether it has one umbilical mold into which it attempts to pour all other perspectives." (328).
For instance, the fact that God has created the world means the universe is personal, which makes sense of human dignity; if we are not made in the image of God, then we are made in the image of something less than God, which will necessarily be dehumanizing; the doctrine of sin means no one is inherently superior to any other, because we all stand before God guilty, whether a beggar or a king; since the fall comes after creation, this means evil is not essential or intrinsic to the universe; the Christian view of linear time gives meaning to the flow of world history; Christianity is not tied to any one culture but is truly multicultural, while also refusing to affirm every culture as equally good.
There are places where this book is not an easy read. Watkin interacts with many ancient and contemporary thinkers and philosophers, so some paragraphs will require repeated readings. But Watkin brings a humble posture to the material, never sounding condescending or pretentious. He obviously possesses a brilliant intellect, but seems like a guy you'd be comfortable having lunch with.
However challenging the book might be in places, there is no doubt that it is of essential importance for Christians to examine the world through the lens of a biblical critical theory, which of course presumes thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. As Watkin puts it: "People do not differ according to whether they are guided by a cultural and social theory but by whether they realize it or not, and to go through life not realizing the theoretical assumptions and commitments that are shaping you is like letting a stranger decorate your house, choose your clothes, select your children's school, and drive your car without having to ask your permission."
The book begins with Genesis and continues through Revelation, following the course of biblical redemptive history (creation > sin > Babel > Abraham > Moses > wisdom > incarnation > cross > resurrection > last days ) to draw out implications for how the Bible shapes our view of reality. "One way of evaluating a view of the world is to examine whether it can integrate multiple realities effectively or whether it has one umbilical mold into which it attempts to pour all other perspectives." (328).
For instance, the fact that God has created the world means the universe is personal, which makes sense of human dignity; if we are not made in the image of God, then we are made in the image of something less than God, which will necessarily be dehumanizing; the doctrine of sin means no one is inherently superior to any other, because we all stand before God guilty, whether a beggar or a king; since the fall comes after creation, this means evil is not essential or intrinsic to the universe; the Christian view of linear time gives meaning to the flow of world history; Christianity is not tied to any one culture but is truly multicultural, while also refusing to affirm every culture as equally good.
There are places where this book is not an easy read. Watkin interacts with many ancient and contemporary thinkers and philosophers, so some paragraphs will require repeated readings. But Watkin brings a humble posture to the material, never sounding condescending or pretentious. He obviously possesses a brilliant intellect, but seems like a guy you'd be comfortable having lunch with.
However challenging the book might be in places, there is no doubt that it is of essential importance for Christians to examine the world through the lens of a biblical critical theory, which of course presumes thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. As Watkin puts it: "People do not differ according to whether they are guided by a cultural and social theory but by whether they realize it or not, and to go through life not realizing the theoretical assumptions and commitments that are shaping you is like letting a stranger decorate your house, choose your clothes, select your children's school, and drive your car without having to ask your permission."
March 24, 2025
YALL. What a journey. It took me 15 months to get through this beast, but of course I’m so glad I did!
Watkin frames a lot of this book through Augustine’s The City of God, and he says this about his first experience reading it—
“I readily confess that many of the references and names went straight over my head, but running right through this long book with its litany of characters was an unmistakable, glittering, compelling architecture”
And that is basically how I felt reading Watkin.
Summing up my thoughts is proving really difficult, but my prayer is that by reading this book I will have grown into a more “deep and sympathetic, but also sharp and clear-minded engagement” with the world around me.
BCT challenged me in more ways than one, but I am finishing it with a grander view of God and His world, which is really all I could hope for!
“Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” Rev. 22:20
Watkin frames a lot of this book through Augustine’s The City of God, and he says this about his first experience reading it—
“I readily confess that many of the references and names went straight over my head, but running right through this long book with its litany of characters was an unmistakable, glittering, compelling architecture”
And that is basically how I felt reading Watkin.
Summing up my thoughts is proving really difficult, but my prayer is that by reading this book I will have grown into a more “deep and sympathetic, but also sharp and clear-minded engagement” with the world around me.
BCT challenged me in more ways than one, but I am finishing it with a grander view of God and His world, which is really all I could hope for!
“Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” Rev. 22:20
October 18, 2024
A tall rich draft of subversive fulfillment.
October 5, 2023
This book was magnificent. Best book I’ve read all year.
October 14, 2024
This is a book worth reading.
It is long, but it is extremely helpful. It was much more anthropological than I was expecting and has a lot to say about humanity.
It is a dense theological book, but well worth going on Watkin's journey. I was not disappointed!
It is long, but it is extremely helpful. It was much more anthropological than I was expecting and has a lot to say about humanity.
It is a dense theological book, but well worth going on Watkin's journey. I was not disappointed!
July 15, 2025
Doxological disposession dub, but if I read a variation of the word diagonal one more time I’ll lose it
February 21, 2023
Is it as good as it's been made out to be? Yes, absolutely.
June 11, 2026
This is undoubtedly one of the best books I have ever read, and as a contribution to Christian thought on culture, it is an absolute tour de force. Chris Watkin begins this by commenting that “For all my adult life I have been searching for a book that marries two of my deepest passions: exploring the subtle richness of the Bible's storyline and making sense of how different people understand the world.” Having failed to find such a book, he has written it!
While many thinkers and writers have brought theology into conversation with cultural concerns, what Watkin sought was a Christian cultural theory: “the more I studied this broad range of theoreticians and theories, the more I saw that all these isms had certain important traits in common. They all began as something you looked at, reading and understanding (slowly, oh so slowly!) their main texts and theorists, but they gradually became something you looked through to bring the world into focus, to draw some aspects of the world into the foreground, and to leave others in the background or make them altogether unnoticed…They each considered some attitudes and actions important, and others unimportant…Some ideas or behaviors were praised, others condemned. In short, they each made certain things visible and certain things valuable…each movement and gesture in these theories congealed into a way of thinking and living that encompassed politics, art, relationships, society, and the whole of life.”
The title may be provocative, but he contends that the Bible itself contains such a kind of critical theory: in other words, it provides us with the means to understand and critique our culture. By critical theory, what Watkins means is “to not just accept what a culture says about itself, but also to see what is really going on beneath the surface. Every culture deploys multiple patterns - narratives, pictures and images, vocabulary to create a ‘world’ (or ‘worldview’ or ‘social imaginary’). But the Bible has its own narratives, images, and patterns that enable us to analyze any culture at the deepest level and to both critique and appreciate it, while at the same time preventing us from being captured and co-opted by it…A biblical critical theory, therefore, can and should be developed and used by Christians living and ministering anywhere in the world. It must first expose the main flaws in the dominant culture's narratives, showing how they fit neither profound intuitions about life - let alone the culture's moral ideals and aspirations…Then Christian theory must point to the beauty and truth of the gospel.”
The reason that Watkin sees this as important is that something is missing from the two main emphases of the Christian engagement with culture as it has traditionally been conceived and articulated. While we have been relatively strong on understanding what the Bible teaches and ensuring that we can justify and defend those teachings (in other words, doctrine and apologetics), what “was not adequately emphasized, however, were the implications of these teachings for the rest of life. As a consequence, we were strong on knowing what a doctrine is and why it is well grounded, but less strong on knowing where it takes us.” What Watkin has written is a book about the ‘so what?’ of Christian belief: “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 storyline. It does not try to explain and defend the Bible to the culture; it see to analyze and critique the culture through the Bible.”
In turning to consider culture itself, Watkin points out that “Some approaches to culture stress its cognitive aspect: ideas, concepts, and worldviews. Others focus on narratives and symbols. Still others stress its behavioral, bodily, habitual dimension or foreground a culture's objects and artefacts. Each emphasis has merit, and it is sad and unnecessary when they are pitted against each other. The question is not ‘Which one is best?’ but ‘How do these different facets of culture relate to each other?’ If we are to take account of all of them, we must find a way of understanding them together. With this end in view I propose to call these different elements of culture ‘figures.’”
This is an important concept for the rest of the book, and Watkin explains that he will use it in two related and complementary senses. The first has to do with figures of speech: “If figures of speech are patterns and rhythms of language, then figures in the broader sense are patterns and rhythms in creation, whether of matter, language, ideas, systems, or behavior.” The second sense of figure “comes from the distinction between figure and ground originally developed in Gestalt psychology. Whenever we look at something (the figure), what we see is surrounded by lots of other things to which we are not paying attention (the ground or background)...In the same way that I am enlarging the idea of figures of speech to embrace all the patterns and rhythms that shape our lives, I also propose to broaden the figure-ground distinction from a way to describe perception into a theory of knowledge and ethics and a way of understanding how we live in the world.”
This leads to some other important preliminary concepts for cultural analysis. The first “is what is called the "as-structure" of experience, or the meaning we give to objects and events that makes us experience them in particular ways. As an example, he points out that it is impossible to experience the objects we call ‘mugs’ separate from our understanding that such objects are used to consume hot drinks. In other words, “my sense that the mug is to be drunk out of is inseparable from my experience of it.” So, much of what we describe in contemporary discourse as the culture wars can be understood as competing or differing meanings that we attach to things, events, and actions. A second concept is that “figures help us get a handle on the fact that each cultural moment has certain broad commitments and assumptions that shape what people can meaningfully think, say, and do.” The six broad categories of these that Watkin identifies are language, ideas and stories; time and space; the structure of reality; behaviour; relationships; and objects. “Figures in each category shape our sense of ourselves and the world around us, express that sense, and transform over time as societies change.” Further, he points out the fact that we can’t take off or shed these cultural figures at will, as they are already inside us, reflecting the power culture has in shaping and forming us. Nor can we take one category of figures and make it dominant: “No single category of figures controls all the others. To assume that it does, as we shall see later, is a particularly modern pathology. Each category of figures can say something about everything, but none of them can say everything about anything. As I have written elsewhere, each of them is ‘extensive’, but none of them is ‘exhaustive’.”
The cluster of figures that characterises a particular cultural moment is what we often refer to as ‘worldview’ or ‘social imaginary’. Watkins preferred term is simply ‘world,’ with world in this sense referring to an ensemble of figures: “The language of worlds, then, helps us to move between texts, behavior, ideas, metaphysics, objects, and institutions without any of these exerting a controlling influence over all the others. A world is composed of many different types of figures and is reducible to none. It is a mix of artifacts, ideas, styles, institutions and attitudes; it bridges narratives, behaviors, laws, and relationships, Worlds are in part a function of our biology: my world is shaped by the fact that I can see certain wavelengths of light and not others, hear certain pitches of sound and not others, have a relatively poor sense of smell compared to other animals, two arms and two legs, and hands with opposable thumbs, am diurnal, and have the most developed brain of any species on earth.”
Next, Watkin distinguishes the ‘world of the text’ and the ‘world of the reader’. The interaction of the two involves the threefold process of prefiguration (the world that the reader brings to the text), configuration (the way in which the text, with its own figures, tinkers with my prefigured expectations and assumptions), and refiguration (the integration of the textual world into the reader's world). Thus, “When I leave my encounter with the text, I am living in a different world to the one I inhabited before I engaged with it, sometimes only slightly different but on occasion radically transformed.” And as Watkin comments, what is true of our interaction with a text is also true of our interaction with life in general, as “reality and our experiences continually refigure or shape us to some greater or lesser degree.”
Finally, and in considering the interaction of Christians with the culture, Watkin encourages abandonment of the concept of ‘engagement’ and the adoption of the concept of ‘diagonalisation’. In unpacking what this means, Watkin points out that, “Given a choice between two camps or positions in our culture, the Bible frequently settles for neither and presents us with something richer than both, a subtler solution that neither position has the resources to imagine. Time and again we see that the Bible's figures cut across the range of options presented to us, only to find on further inspection that those options were themselves distorted and dismembered versions of biblical ideas…This move of cutting across and rearranging false cultural dichotomies will return throughout these chapters, and I will call it diagonalization.” Helpfully, Watkin clarifies that diagonalisation is neither the pursuit of a centrist-Dad, middle of the road compromise between two bold options. Quoting Chesterton, he insists that “We want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning.... I need not remind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God.” This idea of both things at once and both things thoroughly will recur frequently throughout the book. Again, “diagonalization is not a safe compromise option but ‘a positive and viable third way’ and most often a radical intervention, subverting accepted commonplaces and challenging us to reconsider our assumptions leaving the initial dichotomized options appearing distinctly bland and unappetizing by comparison…The move of diagonalization is part of what John Milbank and others have called the Bible ‘out-narrating’ its cultural rivals - theology positioning, qualifying and criticizing other discourses before they position it. Or in Esther Meck's vivid image, "Regarding biblical studies as 'content' is the ultimate castrating irony" because "the inherently transformative message of the Christian gospel... should be apprehended as centrally epistemic, the paradigmatic example of knowing." Out-narrating is not about telling the better story in the sense of being the most gripping or necessarily satisfying; it is about telling the bigger story, the story within which all other stories find their place…The rhetoric of of out-narrating is helpful in clarifying one important point: the aim of this book is not to offer piecemeal arguments on this or that burning issue but to unfold a connected story that diagonalizes dominant contemporary cultural alternatives. In other words, rather than either brushing away modem cultural figures or falling into lockstep with them, the task of out-narrating is a way of allowing the Bible to diagnose and heal them, fulfilling all that is good in them and everything that makes for flourishing.”
In advocating such an approach to culture, Watkin encourages Christians to pursue healing and transformation rather than denouncement or humiliation on the one hand or unthoughtful affirmation on the other. Positively, “the Bible can inform and shape a Christian social and cultural theory. A social theory, broadly conceived, is a ‘large and diverse body of ideas concerned with what society is and how it works,’ which usually acknowledges ‘the complex determinations between power, ideology, and economic forces in constituting social life.’ Theories, like religions, make a complex world somewhat comprehensible.” Watkin identified several features that social theories hold in common: seeking to explain everything in their own terms; bringing some objects, events, and values into focus and relegating others; bringing with them a particular set of questions and concerns, in terms of which they seek to understand, explain, and transform society; and the fact that they are not just theoretical or philosophical, but span both high and low culture, often fuelling activism and lobbying for social change. Most importantly, “Theories mediate the world to us, but in a sense they also create the world for us because their patterns and rhythms precede the different elements of perception that they integrate…This is why these theories are so potent: once we have begun to look not simply at but through them, we start seeing their patterns and rhythms everywhere because the theory conditions us to find them everywhere. What I "see" is always shaped by my commitments. These same features of making visible and making valuable also characterize a biblical view of the world. They are present on every page of the Scriptures, in terms of the sorts of things the Bible writers habitually draw attention to and the sorts of things they usually ignore, what they tend to praise and what they customarily condemn.”
Watkin maintains that developing a biblical social and cultural theory is important “if we are to refresh the agenda for Christian cultural engagement in our generation, as we must in every generation. But there is also a sense in which a biblical social theory should be radically different from other social theories. It is not just like critical theory or feminist theory with different labels. Reflecting the patterns and rhythms of the Bible itself, a biblical social theory should be distinct not simply in its content but in its manner and mode of engagement…First, it should present a positive agenda, not just a tool of critique. It will not just analyze contemporary society but provide a vision for its future flourishing and renewal. Second, it will present a challenge to customary and fashionable ways of thinking. It will not merely take whatever happens to be the current flavor of the month in intellectual circles and dress it up in ill-fitting Christian clothing…Third, a Christian social theory should be nonpartisan. It will not be a tool to promote the interests of a single political party or interest group in society.”
From here, the book truly soars as Watkin takes the reader on a biblical-theology survey from creation to new-creation to examine, understand, critiqe and redeem late-modern society through the lens of the biblical narrative. This is a powerful reminder of both the depth and richness of scripture itself, and also of how much of Western thought, presupposition and culture rests on a biblical, Christian foundation. The scale of the task Watkin has undertaken here is immense, and if anything, this is the book's weakness: most of these chapters, focusing on a particular moment or period in the history of revelation, deserve a book-length treatment in their own right. Indeed, Watkin addresses this at the end of the book when he comments that “I have cobbled together a tasting menu; it is now for others to prepare the banquet, sit down, and feast. The list of ingredients, however, remains constant. The Scriptures alone are the ultimate source of any merit or usefulness that the present volume may yield. Like the wise person in the first Psalm, Christian cultural theory must be planted by the river of Scripture that is immeasurably deeper and sweeter tasting than any secondary distillation of its quenching nectar, immeasurably more diverse and textured than any derivative commentary, and immeasurably more complex and nuanced in its engagement with God and his world than any subordinate reflections upon it. Christian theorists, ‘to the law and to the testimony!’ (Isa 8:20 ESV).”
I will not even attempt to summarise the main bulk of the book in this review, but will briefly comment on a few highlights. One powerful reminder was the importance of understanding both the beginning and the end of the Biblical story, particularly Genesis 1-15 and the book of Revelation. His insights and comments on creation, sin, the Trinity, covenant, the last days, eschatology, and how each of these doctrines relates to our understanding of culture are invaluable. One of the main analytical tools that he leverages is how scripture enables us to diagonalise a cultural dichotomy, and while repeated, it does not feel forced or gimmicky. Consistently, the impression left with the reader is that the story the Bible offers is simply better than what is held forth by the culture. Some other highlights include the distinctions between love, power and violence; the importance of the creator-creature distinction; the essential gratuity and superabundance of creation and God’s interaciton with it; humanity as image bearers; autonomy; asymmetry; the n-shaped dynamic of religion vs the u-shaped dynamic of grace; the importance of recognising the difference between how terms like faith and religion are used in the Bible vs how they are understood in contemporary culture; the cultural dichotomy between facts and values; the importance of civil society as a separate category to the state and the market; the individual and the universal; contemporary commodificaiton of identity; the importance of thinking through how we understand time…and the list goes on!
This book contains enough insight and analysis to fuel a lifetime of cultural engagement, and I cannot recommend it highly enough, whether you are a church leader or layperson. Buy this book, read and digest it, and talk about it with others - you will not regret it!
While many thinkers and writers have brought theology into conversation with cultural concerns, what Watkin sought was a Christian cultural theory: “the more I studied this broad range of theoreticians and theories, the more I saw that all these isms had certain important traits in common. They all began as something you looked at, reading and understanding (slowly, oh so slowly!) their main texts and theorists, but they gradually became something you looked through to bring the world into focus, to draw some aspects of the world into the foreground, and to leave others in the background or make them altogether unnoticed…They each considered some attitudes and actions important, and others unimportant…Some ideas or behaviors were praised, others condemned. In short, they each made certain things visible and certain things valuable…each movement and gesture in these theories congealed into a way of thinking and living that encompassed politics, art, relationships, society, and the whole of life.”
The title may be provocative, but he contends that the Bible itself contains such a kind of critical theory: in other words, it provides us with the means to understand and critique our culture. By critical theory, what Watkins means is “to not just accept what a culture says about itself, but also to see what is really going on beneath the surface. Every culture deploys multiple patterns - narratives, pictures and images, vocabulary to create a ‘world’ (or ‘worldview’ or ‘social imaginary’). But the Bible has its own narratives, images, and patterns that enable us to analyze any culture at the deepest level and to both critique and appreciate it, while at the same time preventing us from being captured and co-opted by it…A biblical critical theory, therefore, can and should be developed and used by Christians living and ministering anywhere in the world. It must first expose the main flaws in the dominant culture's narratives, showing how they fit neither profound intuitions about life - let alone the culture's moral ideals and aspirations…Then Christian theory must point to the beauty and truth of the gospel.”
The reason that Watkin sees this as important is that something is missing from the two main emphases of the Christian engagement with culture as it has traditionally been conceived and articulated. While we have been relatively strong on understanding what the Bible teaches and ensuring that we can justify and defend those teachings (in other words, doctrine and apologetics), what “was not adequately emphasized, however, were the implications of these teachings for the rest of life. As a consequence, we were strong on knowing what a doctrine is and why it is well grounded, but less strong on knowing where it takes us.” What Watkin has written is a book about the ‘so what?’ of Christian belief: “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 storyline. It does not try to explain and defend the Bible to the culture; it see to analyze and critique the culture through the Bible.”
In turning to consider culture itself, Watkin points out that “Some approaches to culture stress its cognitive aspect: ideas, concepts, and worldviews. Others focus on narratives and symbols. Still others stress its behavioral, bodily, habitual dimension or foreground a culture's objects and artefacts. Each emphasis has merit, and it is sad and unnecessary when they are pitted against each other. The question is not ‘Which one is best?’ but ‘How do these different facets of culture relate to each other?’ If we are to take account of all of them, we must find a way of understanding them together. With this end in view I propose to call these different elements of culture ‘figures.’”
This is an important concept for the rest of the book, and Watkin explains that he will use it in two related and complementary senses. The first has to do with figures of speech: “If figures of speech are patterns and rhythms of language, then figures in the broader sense are patterns and rhythms in creation, whether of matter, language, ideas, systems, or behavior.” The second sense of figure “comes from the distinction between figure and ground originally developed in Gestalt psychology. Whenever we look at something (the figure), what we see is surrounded by lots of other things to which we are not paying attention (the ground or background)...In the same way that I am enlarging the idea of figures of speech to embrace all the patterns and rhythms that shape our lives, I also propose to broaden the figure-ground distinction from a way to describe perception into a theory of knowledge and ethics and a way of understanding how we live in the world.”
This leads to some other important preliminary concepts for cultural analysis. The first “is what is called the "as-structure" of experience, or the meaning we give to objects and events that makes us experience them in particular ways. As an example, he points out that it is impossible to experience the objects we call ‘mugs’ separate from our understanding that such objects are used to consume hot drinks. In other words, “my sense that the mug is to be drunk out of is inseparable from my experience of it.” So, much of what we describe in contemporary discourse as the culture wars can be understood as competing or differing meanings that we attach to things, events, and actions. A second concept is that “figures help us get a handle on the fact that each cultural moment has certain broad commitments and assumptions that shape what people can meaningfully think, say, and do.” The six broad categories of these that Watkin identifies are language, ideas and stories; time and space; the structure of reality; behaviour; relationships; and objects. “Figures in each category shape our sense of ourselves and the world around us, express that sense, and transform over time as societies change.” Further, he points out the fact that we can’t take off or shed these cultural figures at will, as they are already inside us, reflecting the power culture has in shaping and forming us. Nor can we take one category of figures and make it dominant: “No single category of figures controls all the others. To assume that it does, as we shall see later, is a particularly modern pathology. Each category of figures can say something about everything, but none of them can say everything about anything. As I have written elsewhere, each of them is ‘extensive’, but none of them is ‘exhaustive’.”
The cluster of figures that characterises a particular cultural moment is what we often refer to as ‘worldview’ or ‘social imaginary’. Watkins preferred term is simply ‘world,’ with world in this sense referring to an ensemble of figures: “The language of worlds, then, helps us to move between texts, behavior, ideas, metaphysics, objects, and institutions without any of these exerting a controlling influence over all the others. A world is composed of many different types of figures and is reducible to none. It is a mix of artifacts, ideas, styles, institutions and attitudes; it bridges narratives, behaviors, laws, and relationships, Worlds are in part a function of our biology: my world is shaped by the fact that I can see certain wavelengths of light and not others, hear certain pitches of sound and not others, have a relatively poor sense of smell compared to other animals, two arms and two legs, and hands with opposable thumbs, am diurnal, and have the most developed brain of any species on earth.”
Next, Watkin distinguishes the ‘world of the text’ and the ‘world of the reader’. The interaction of the two involves the threefold process of prefiguration (the world that the reader brings to the text), configuration (the way in which the text, with its own figures, tinkers with my prefigured expectations and assumptions), and refiguration (the integration of the textual world into the reader's world). Thus, “When I leave my encounter with the text, I am living in a different world to the one I inhabited before I engaged with it, sometimes only slightly different but on occasion radically transformed.” And as Watkin comments, what is true of our interaction with a text is also true of our interaction with life in general, as “reality and our experiences continually refigure or shape us to some greater or lesser degree.”
Finally, and in considering the interaction of Christians with the culture, Watkin encourages abandonment of the concept of ‘engagement’ and the adoption of the concept of ‘diagonalisation’. In unpacking what this means, Watkin points out that, “Given a choice between two camps or positions in our culture, the Bible frequently settles for neither and presents us with something richer than both, a subtler solution that neither position has the resources to imagine. Time and again we see that the Bible's figures cut across the range of options presented to us, only to find on further inspection that those options were themselves distorted and dismembered versions of biblical ideas…This move of cutting across and rearranging false cultural dichotomies will return throughout these chapters, and I will call it diagonalization.” Helpfully, Watkin clarifies that diagonalisation is neither the pursuit of a centrist-Dad, middle of the road compromise between two bold options. Quoting Chesterton, he insists that “We want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning.... I need not remind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God.” This idea of both things at once and both things thoroughly will recur frequently throughout the book. Again, “diagonalization is not a safe compromise option but ‘a positive and viable third way’ and most often a radical intervention, subverting accepted commonplaces and challenging us to reconsider our assumptions leaving the initial dichotomized options appearing distinctly bland and unappetizing by comparison…The move of diagonalization is part of what John Milbank and others have called the Bible ‘out-narrating’ its cultural rivals - theology positioning, qualifying and criticizing other discourses before they position it. Or in Esther Meck's vivid image, "Regarding biblical studies as 'content' is the ultimate castrating irony" because "the inherently transformative message of the Christian gospel... should be apprehended as centrally epistemic, the paradigmatic example of knowing." Out-narrating is not about telling the better story in the sense of being the most gripping or necessarily satisfying; it is about telling the bigger story, the story within which all other stories find their place…The rhetoric of of out-narrating is helpful in clarifying one important point: the aim of this book is not to offer piecemeal arguments on this or that burning issue but to unfold a connected story that diagonalizes dominant contemporary cultural alternatives. In other words, rather than either brushing away modem cultural figures or falling into lockstep with them, the task of out-narrating is a way of allowing the Bible to diagnose and heal them, fulfilling all that is good in them and everything that makes for flourishing.”
In advocating such an approach to culture, Watkin encourages Christians to pursue healing and transformation rather than denouncement or humiliation on the one hand or unthoughtful affirmation on the other. Positively, “the Bible can inform and shape a Christian social and cultural theory. A social theory, broadly conceived, is a ‘large and diverse body of ideas concerned with what society is and how it works,’ which usually acknowledges ‘the complex determinations between power, ideology, and economic forces in constituting social life.’ Theories, like religions, make a complex world somewhat comprehensible.” Watkin identified several features that social theories hold in common: seeking to explain everything in their own terms; bringing some objects, events, and values into focus and relegating others; bringing with them a particular set of questions and concerns, in terms of which they seek to understand, explain, and transform society; and the fact that they are not just theoretical or philosophical, but span both high and low culture, often fuelling activism and lobbying for social change. Most importantly, “Theories mediate the world to us, but in a sense they also create the world for us because their patterns and rhythms precede the different elements of perception that they integrate…This is why these theories are so potent: once we have begun to look not simply at but through them, we start seeing their patterns and rhythms everywhere because the theory conditions us to find them everywhere. What I "see" is always shaped by my commitments. These same features of making visible and making valuable also characterize a biblical view of the world. They are present on every page of the Scriptures, in terms of the sorts of things the Bible writers habitually draw attention to and the sorts of things they usually ignore, what they tend to praise and what they customarily condemn.”
Watkin maintains that developing a biblical social and cultural theory is important “if we are to refresh the agenda for Christian cultural engagement in our generation, as we must in every generation. But there is also a sense in which a biblical social theory should be radically different from other social theories. It is not just like critical theory or feminist theory with different labels. Reflecting the patterns and rhythms of the Bible itself, a biblical social theory should be distinct not simply in its content but in its manner and mode of engagement…First, it should present a positive agenda, not just a tool of critique. It will not just analyze contemporary society but provide a vision for its future flourishing and renewal. Second, it will present a challenge to customary and fashionable ways of thinking. It will not merely take whatever happens to be the current flavor of the month in intellectual circles and dress it up in ill-fitting Christian clothing…Third, a Christian social theory should be nonpartisan. It will not be a tool to promote the interests of a single political party or interest group in society.”
From here, the book truly soars as Watkin takes the reader on a biblical-theology survey from creation to new-creation to examine, understand, critiqe and redeem late-modern society through the lens of the biblical narrative. This is a powerful reminder of both the depth and richness of scripture itself, and also of how much of Western thought, presupposition and culture rests on a biblical, Christian foundation. The scale of the task Watkin has undertaken here is immense, and if anything, this is the book's weakness: most of these chapters, focusing on a particular moment or period in the history of revelation, deserve a book-length treatment in their own right. Indeed, Watkin addresses this at the end of the book when he comments that “I have cobbled together a tasting menu; it is now for others to prepare the banquet, sit down, and feast. The list of ingredients, however, remains constant. The Scriptures alone are the ultimate source of any merit or usefulness that the present volume may yield. Like the wise person in the first Psalm, Christian cultural theory must be planted by the river of Scripture that is immeasurably deeper and sweeter tasting than any secondary distillation of its quenching nectar, immeasurably more diverse and textured than any derivative commentary, and immeasurably more complex and nuanced in its engagement with God and his world than any subordinate reflections upon it. Christian theorists, ‘to the law and to the testimony!’ (Isa 8:20 ESV).”
I will not even attempt to summarise the main bulk of the book in this review, but will briefly comment on a few highlights. One powerful reminder was the importance of understanding both the beginning and the end of the Biblical story, particularly Genesis 1-15 and the book of Revelation. His insights and comments on creation, sin, the Trinity, covenant, the last days, eschatology, and how each of these doctrines relates to our understanding of culture are invaluable. One of the main analytical tools that he leverages is how scripture enables us to diagonalise a cultural dichotomy, and while repeated, it does not feel forced or gimmicky. Consistently, the impression left with the reader is that the story the Bible offers is simply better than what is held forth by the culture. Some other highlights include the distinctions between love, power and violence; the importance of the creator-creature distinction; the essential gratuity and superabundance of creation and God’s interaciton with it; humanity as image bearers; autonomy; asymmetry; the n-shaped dynamic of religion vs the u-shaped dynamic of grace; the importance of recognising the difference between how terms like faith and religion are used in the Bible vs how they are understood in contemporary culture; the cultural dichotomy between facts and values; the importance of civil society as a separate category to the state and the market; the individual and the universal; contemporary commodificaiton of identity; the importance of thinking through how we understand time…and the list goes on!
This book contains enough insight and analysis to fuel a lifetime of cultural engagement, and I cannot recommend it highly enough, whether you are a church leader or layperson. Buy this book, read and digest it, and talk about it with others - you will not regret it!
March 24, 2025
I’ve heard a surprising number of people (more qualified and better read than me) say, “That book is a bit heavy going…” I was mid-stream on another read so I decided to listen to the audiobook (despite having purchased a physical copy of “Biblical Critical Theory”.) So perhaps that format coloured how I encountered this book.
But let me say how much I enjoyed and appreciated Watkin’s work. This book speaks to the moment in Western culture with insight, academic rigour, philosophical integrity, historical thoroughness and, most wonderfully, an immersive biblical faithfulness.
That doesn’t solve the problem of being heavy going. Except I don’t think it was particularly heavy going. Watkin is a gifted author and communicator. His grasp of contenting worldviews is respectful and vital. His thesis is that biblical truth “diagonalises” the generally dichotomous, polemcial disharmony of rival worldviews. Watkins doesn’t try to “balance the books” by resolving the bible with contrary positions. Rather, he cleverly uses the rivals to amplify and construct a truly biblical framework that can robustly stand in the marketplace of ideas.
And he’s clearly having fun. He loves ideas and their interplay and their origins and the characters who play in their creation. He is a formidable bible scholar. The breadth of his reading and research is remarkable. And he wants us all to join him on his quest to travel through the bible and let God’s word speak into the wide world of alternative views.
If you could describe a book of ideas as a romp, I think “Biblical Critical Theory” would come close. Don’t get me wrong, you gotta put in some work. But there’s lots of payoff along the way. And in the end Watkins isn’t about building an edifice. He lands it all on the personal nature of the God who speaks. Personality lies at the heart of the quest for truth. SomeOne. I love that.
If I’d read it, I’d say it was a cracking read. As an audiobook, sure I must have missed a bit, but I loved it. Sometimes I needed a rest to let my brain get back to its normal size, but along the way Watkins (a Yorkshireman!) is playful, whimsical and - something I love in any book - he is a true lover language. It all makes for an infectiously enjoyable read.
If you find it hard going, try the audiobook. Jump on your bike or take a few long drives, like I did. It really is a remarkable book. And one I think says important things for our moment in history in the west. I’d love some of my unbelieving chums to read it. And I’d love to hear more of Watkin’s insights find their way into the minds and hearts and sermons of our Christian leaders.
But I’m just a hacker in the peanut gallery, so you can take all this with a grain of salt.
But to Watkin I say, “Good on you, Prof! More please!”
PS
But…Oh no! I need to add a missing addendum to my review - that the book so helpfully (and deliciously!) throws the light of the truth of scripture onto so many ideas and worldviews and philosophies which, thus illuminated, reveal themselves to contain so many biblical figures. That’s a really helpful, practical and broadly applicable part of what I found so beneficial in the book. I should have said that in my extensive and barely-to-be-read Goodreads review.
But I guess now it’s too late….
But let me say how much I enjoyed and appreciated Watkin’s work. This book speaks to the moment in Western culture with insight, academic rigour, philosophical integrity, historical thoroughness and, most wonderfully, an immersive biblical faithfulness.
That doesn’t solve the problem of being heavy going. Except I don’t think it was particularly heavy going. Watkin is a gifted author and communicator. His grasp of contenting worldviews is respectful and vital. His thesis is that biblical truth “diagonalises” the generally dichotomous, polemcial disharmony of rival worldviews. Watkins doesn’t try to “balance the books” by resolving the bible with contrary positions. Rather, he cleverly uses the rivals to amplify and construct a truly biblical framework that can robustly stand in the marketplace of ideas.
And he’s clearly having fun. He loves ideas and their interplay and their origins and the characters who play in their creation. He is a formidable bible scholar. The breadth of his reading and research is remarkable. And he wants us all to join him on his quest to travel through the bible and let God’s word speak into the wide world of alternative views.
If you could describe a book of ideas as a romp, I think “Biblical Critical Theory” would come close. Don’t get me wrong, you gotta put in some work. But there’s lots of payoff along the way. And in the end Watkins isn’t about building an edifice. He lands it all on the personal nature of the God who speaks. Personality lies at the heart of the quest for truth. SomeOne. I love that.
If I’d read it, I’d say it was a cracking read. As an audiobook, sure I must have missed a bit, but I loved it. Sometimes I needed a rest to let my brain get back to its normal size, but along the way Watkins (a Yorkshireman!) is playful, whimsical and - something I love in any book - he is a true lover language. It all makes for an infectiously enjoyable read.
If you find it hard going, try the audiobook. Jump on your bike or take a few long drives, like I did. It really is a remarkable book. And one I think says important things for our moment in history in the west. I’d love some of my unbelieving chums to read it. And I’d love to hear more of Watkin’s insights find their way into the minds and hearts and sermons of our Christian leaders.
But I’m just a hacker in the peanut gallery, so you can take all this with a grain of salt.
But to Watkin I say, “Good on you, Prof! More please!”
PS
But…Oh no! I need to add a missing addendum to my review - that the book so helpfully (and deliciously!) throws the light of the truth of scripture onto so many ideas and worldviews and philosophies which, thus illuminated, reveal themselves to contain so many biblical figures. That’s a really helpful, practical and broadly applicable part of what I found so beneficial in the book. I should have said that in my extensive and barely-to-be-read Goodreads review.
But I guess now it’s too late….
March 31, 2024
Wow, what a feast!
I think this book jumps by default to my "top X books I ever read", and for no small reason. Watkin combines biblical theology with cultural analysis in a way that made Keller proud.
For me, it was the philosophical part that shone best: he moved at ease through the modern period up until what he calls "the late modernity" (the postmodern thinkers and their forefathers) and let the reader see their are not the Devil himself, but rather folks that tried to understand and change the world, for good or for ill. After reading this book, you've already read an introduction to their thought and why our world looks as it does. When he shows how the Christian Gospel "diagonalizes" (his word) their/our tendency to binaries, Watkin enables a charitable reading of culture that is not at all accomodationist - it only highlights common grace.
On the other hand, I would've liked to see Watkin a bit more diligent in doing his theological homework. You can see easily he's a philosopher and not a theologian when he jumps quickly to conclusions, sometimes unwarranted. But the book is anyways long enough. Also, he quotes a lot, man. Too much. Sometimes he just copy-pastes 3 blockquotes on the page and the poor reader that I am has to make the best out of them. That's not the easy task outsiders think it to be.
But such trivial matters are too unimportant to steal any star. It's a full 5.
I think this book jumps by default to my "top X books I ever read", and for no small reason. Watkin combines biblical theology with cultural analysis in a way that made Keller proud.
For me, it was the philosophical part that shone best: he moved at ease through the modern period up until what he calls "the late modernity" (the postmodern thinkers and their forefathers) and let the reader see their are not the Devil himself, but rather folks that tried to understand and change the world, for good or for ill. After reading this book, you've already read an introduction to their thought and why our world looks as it does. When he shows how the Christian Gospel "diagonalizes" (his word) their/our tendency to binaries, Watkin enables a charitable reading of culture that is not at all accomodationist - it only highlights common grace.
On the other hand, I would've liked to see Watkin a bit more diligent in doing his theological homework. You can see easily he's a philosopher and not a theologian when he jumps quickly to conclusions, sometimes unwarranted. But the book is anyways long enough. Also, he quotes a lot, man. Too much. Sometimes he just copy-pastes 3 blockquotes on the page and the poor reader that I am has to make the best out of them. That's not the easy task outsiders think it to be.
But such trivial matters are too unimportant to steal any star. It's a full 5.
October 4, 2025
This was excellent! Watkin has created a new genre of theology with this book. It’s built somewhat like a biblical theology, exploring more of revealed truth as it was given through Scripture historically - but it’s not a theology per se. It’s more of a philosophy. So Watkin here, I believe, has created a new genre of ‘Biblical Philosophy.’
And what a philosophy he has given here! This book has such a wealth of ideas and thinkers (both historic, and iconic)! - More than I have ever encountered in a single book! He interacts with ideas both ancient and modern, both medieval and culturally in vogue.
A fantastic read!
And what a philosophy he has given here! This book has such a wealth of ideas and thinkers (both historic, and iconic)! - More than I have ever encountered in a single book! He interacts with ideas both ancient and modern, both medieval and culturally in vogue.
A fantastic read!
September 25, 2025
Impressive and lucid.
I could say a lot about this book but I’ll just say this is a must-read if you like to think about the way the gospel encounters and critiques culture.
I could say a lot about this book but I’ll just say this is a must-read if you like to think about the way the gospel encounters and critiques culture.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 308 reviews