This past week I posted here with
a link to an interview by Michael Horton of James K.A. Smith touching on
Smith's latest book, "Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology."
That post also contained links to some of my earlier posts about Smith's work.
(Read a helpful and short review of AtK here.)
I bought a copy
of AtK last week and have read partway through the second chapter. I plan to
blog about it along the way so I can keep track of what strikes me as
important/useful for a current project.
I am more interested in AtK
than Smith's first two books in his "Cultural Liturgies" series
because it promises to touch on the "political" implications of
Smith's mashup of virtue ethics, neo-Kuyperian-one-Kingdom theology, and
neo-Anabaptist ecclesiocentrism. (In other words, Alasdair MacIntyre meets
Abraham Kuyper meets Stanley Hauerwas.) And all three channelled through
Smith's reading of Augustine's City of God. Being in the law
business makes AtK of special interest because law is, after all,
"political." (Putting "political" in scare quotes is
appropriate to account for Smith's use of the term, although I don't plan to keep
it up.)
I was pleased
to see that Smith plans to draw extensively on the work of Oliver O'Donovan.
(You can read a three-parter dealing with a limited critique of O'Donovan here, here,
and here.).
After all, O'Donovan's dense prose could do with a popularizer. And I am
certainly pleased to see restoration of the Church to its
rightful place in any theology. (After all, the Church is the body of Christ,
not each and every individual Christian.) But the proof is in the pudding so following are a few observations on Chapter 1: "Rites Talk: The Worship of Democracy."
No Stackable Silos
The commonplace
distinctions world/kingdom, world/church, state/church, penultimate/ultimate, worldly/heavenly, political/eschatological are unhelpful: they do not reflect a "happy
distinction of labor we imagine, mostly because the political is not content to
remain penultimate." To whatever these distinctions refer in the
experience of market-driven, late-modern human life, they are neither airtight
jurisdictional silos nor temporal sequences. Instead, these dualities
constantly interact with each other because "our biblical eschatological
vision is not just a prescription for a distant eternity; it is also the norm
for what good culture-making looks like now ..." And more to the
contemporary point (where a biblical eschatological vision is largely absent
from the rational-technical form of contemporary life), the form of democratic
self-government and the market effectively--modern liberalism (here and here)--inculcate
virtues that are inconsistent with a biblical eschatological vision.
Flight or Fight
or ?
If Smith is
right about pernicious effects of liberalism, what is a Christian to do? Smith
moves on to consider two wrong answers. First, and more surprising to me, was
Smith considered rejection of neo-Kuyperian associational pluralism articulated
by Richard Mouw and Sander Griffioen. In Smith's words, their articulation of
directional, associational, and contextual pluralism ends up as "a kind of
macroliberalism" in which the virtues of modern liberalism will eventually
wear down associational distinctives. On the other hand, and of no surprise,
Smith also rejects David
VanDrunen's jurisdictional approach in which liberalism is free to
rule the city of man and Christ the city of God. As if that isn't a recipe for
disaster.
Then What?
If neither of
the leading contemporary approaches identified with the Reformed tradition
grasp the nettle of the deforming effects of political and economic liberalism,
then what is Smith's solution? Well, that's why AtK has five more chapters plus
a conclusion.
Some Recurring
One-Time Complaints
Rather than
repeatedly remarking on some of my irritations with Smith's writing I'll
observe them here and then not again. First are Smith's constant pop cultural
asides. Why do we need a disquisition on the Kevin Costner film The
Postman? Or Adam Gopnik's book The Table Comes First? And why,
oh why the multi-page interaction with a David Foster Wallace novel? Maybe one self-indulgence but not three.
Second, Smith
blow-by-blow account of the contested readings of Augustine by
MacIntyre/Milbank/Hauerwas, on the one hand, and Jeffrey Stout on the
other, belongs in a journal article, not this book.
Enough for
now. More to follow in due course.
"one self-indulgence but not three" -- That's precisely the response I emoted the last time I read a chapter of Smith. Eager to read the rest of this series.
ReplyDeleteScott, Thanks for this. I'm eager to read the rest of your good work. Appreciate the time and effort your putting into this. One little comment, though: as a teacher, I'd suppose you know the value of a good illustration, and how younger learners, especially, need some pop culture touchstones to enhance their understanding of the material. I thought that the comments about "The Postman" were a bit much, I don't think it's quite fair to call it self-indulgence, as I'm sure he's trying to be teacherly. And, as a matter of fact, some readers have commented to me that it is these references and case studies that helped the book come alive, and helped them stay interested.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree, Byron, that judicious use of illustrations or applications makes teaching (and writing) come alive. I believe that Smith goes beyond judicious use and is showing off his skills of film and literary critique. Ultimately, however, this is a matter of degree (and taste).
ReplyDelete