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Conversation With Jamie Smith: Part 2

This is Part 2 of my conversation with James K.A. Smith (Part 1 is here).  The occasion for this conversation is the introductory essay to Jamie’s book The Devil Reads Derrida, “The Church, Christian Scholars, and Little Miss Sunshine.”  Thanks very much to Jamie for doing this!

Dave: It’s interesting that you mention finding your way into the Reformed tradition starting with “Old Princeton.” So where did you go from there? The Evangelical mainstream — if there is such a thing — as well as the intellectual leaders of the Evangelical mainstream, remain rooted in Old Princeton, at least concerning epistemology and scripture. This can be a significant tension, which I think is commonly experienced. A big part of the community holds pretty strongly to the belief that common sense realism, combined with B.B. Warfield’s concept of Biblical inerrancy, are vital and sufficient for Christian intellectual engagement. Often this is coupled with a very strong sense of cultural antithesis, so that opposition to these ideas is viewed as opposition to the Kingdom of God. But for many people, myself included, the more you poke at it, the more Old Princeton starts to look moldy and crumbly. It may have been an important for its time in the Nineteenth Century, but the paradigms it offers don’t hold up very well against many advances in learning from other fields of inquiry. What alternative paradigms exist for Christian scholars who hope to remain within the historic stream of Christian thought and belief?

Jamie: When I started my graduate studies, I landed at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. I knew this was a philosophical graduate school “in the Reformed tradition,” which is why I was attracted to it. But given my formation to that point, “Reformed” for me just meant Edwards, Warfield, Hodge and gang. Little did I realize that ICS was rooted in the Dutch philosophical tradition of Kuyper and Dooyeweerd–and that they’re philosophical framework constituted a trenchant critique of the “common sense realism” of Old Princeton! In fact, when I was at ICS we started with a week-long “boot camp” that was basically a baptism into Dooyeweerd. And already in that week I saw the prim, tidy edifice I had erected crumbling around me.

Perhaps one could just say that the Old Princeton paradigm does not stand up to the critique of rationalism that was articulated in the 20th century, whereas Kuyper and Dooyeweerd were articulating a critique of the idols of reason well-before Heidegger, Derrida, et. al.

So “where did I go,” you ask, after Old Princeton? Amsterdam! Now, I didn’t exactly settle down there, but the Dutch side of the Reformed tradition offered a model of the Christian scholarly project that seemed much more nimble and attuned to contemporary challenges. It’s this tradition that would later produce folks like Nicholas Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga and George Marsden. And if I recall correctly, Kuyper makes a significant cameo in Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Indeed, Andy Crouch’s new book, Culture Making is kind of “Kuyper for Evangelicals” (and much preferred to Colson’s rendition of the same in How Now Shall We Live?).

If anyone wanted to follow up on this, I would still recommend Kuyper’s Stone Lectures at Princeton, published simply as Calvinism. But I might also recommend a little-known book that looks at classic figures in Christian thought (from Clement up to Gutierrez) from within this paradigm: Bringing into Captivity Every Thought: Capita Selecta in the History of Christian Evaluations of Non-Christian Philosophy (University Press of America).

Dave: I really appreciated “The Secret Lives of Saints: Reflections on Doubt,” which is included in The Devil Reads Derrida. But I’ve had trouble distinguishing “doubt” from “unbelief” from “scholarly skepticism,” and I wonder if you could comment about that. Academe is all about asking questions. Some think this results from relativism in the universities, a belief that there is no ultimate truth, but that hasn’t been my experience at all. Most of my academic colleagues, at heart, are passionate truth-seekers, though they might believe that ultimate knowledge of the truth is humanly unobtainable — or that Christianity simply isn’t true. Offer them a pile of steaming apologetic skubala and they’ll throw it right back at you. I’ve been covered in it more times than I want to admit. So this mindset forces us to ask questions: “who says,” “why,” “why not,” “where’s the evidence,” “what about this,” and so on. I might even say that this is our job as scholars. Yet an important part of our faith as Christians is confession — “I believe….” How can a Christian scholar start to integrate these apparently competing postures of “question” and “confession”?

Jamie: Well, this probably won’t make you happy, but I’m going to deflect this question a bit. While I don’t at all want to denigrate truth-seeking (!), I sometimes think the questions of skeptics are a cover for deeper, more affective issues they not articulating. I think there’s a place for evidence and demonstration and argument, but I also think there can be times (quite often) where this amounts to casting pearls before swine–not that our interlocutors are swine, but that they’re not really in a place to receive the arguments because, ultimately, it’s not the evidence that’s at issue. It’s love. I still think Christian scholars are doing their apologetic best when they model love–not by defending their beliefs but by living a peculiar life of love that is winsome, attractive, alluring. The fact of the matter is, despite all my philosophical proclivities, I was loved into the kingdom of God. And while skeptical interlocutors amongst are academic colleagues might be (sincerely) articulating questions and concerns in our debates with them, it might just be the case that what’s at issue is not really “intellectual.”

In this respect, I’m reminded of Augustine’s conversion in Book VIII of the Confessions. By that point, it’s not at all a matter of knowledge or conviction. Augustine knows what’s right; you might even say he believed it. What was holding him back was the will–he wasn’t willing to pursue a way of life. Christianity is not an intellectual system; it’s a way of life.

Dave: If you had to identify three books that Christian thinkers should read this year (besides the Bible or your own books), what would they be?

Wow. Tough question. By “this year,” do you mean new books that have just come out? That’d be tough to say. Let me stall by suggesting three classics that I think every Christian, not to mention Christian “thinkers,” should read at some point: Augustine’s Confessions, Augustine’s De doctrina christiana (“On Christian Teaching”), and Augustine’s City of God. Yeah, I think Augustine’s pretty important. Whether you could read those “this year”–well, that’s another question.

If you meant new books out this year, I’d recommend Graham Ward’s forthcoming book, The Politics of Discipleship (Baker Academic), D. Stephen Long’s new book, Speaking of God: Theology, Language, and Truth (Eerdmans), and Eric Gregory’s Politics and the Order of Love (U of Chicago).

Dave: Can I just ask one follow up on the question you deflected?! So I understand and agree for the most part with what you’re saying about responding to external non-Christian critics — though I might cite something like Merold Westphal’s “Suspicion and Faith” for the notion that we need to learn from our critics. What I meant to get at a little more is the “internal” check. As you describe your experience at ICS, you met with skepticism about the Old Princeton paradigm, for example. As Christian Scholars, these teachers of yours were asking skeptical questions of competing Christian paradigms in order to encourage you to develop what you’ve come to believe are richer Christian paradigms. This is part of the discipleship of the mind, as I see it — asking hard questions, and taking hard questions seriously, in ways that help refine our thinking in the process of (or as part of the process of) every thought being taken captive by Christ. But this can result in the tension between question and confession. Your confession of some Reformed distinctives won’t mean exactly the same as the confession of someone within the Old Princeton paradigm, for example, because of the questions you’ve asked. Some people who disagree with how you think of some issue of theology or Bible interpretation will suggest you fail to believe the Bible or God against those questions. Maybe my (long winded) question is this: how do you, as someone who is a bridge between the questioning world of Christian scholarship and the confessing world of the Christian Church, distinguish between “faithful” questions and questions that represent affective problems of the will?

Jamie: Oh, OK: I better appreciate what you’re asking now. I guess I would be hesitant to set up these two different worlds–the “questioning” world of Christian scholarship and the “confessing” world of the church. I think there’s inseparable intermingling here. Or let me put it this way: every question is its own kind of confession. Even our questions are articulated from somewhere, on the basis of something–however tenuous. And some of our best confessions are questions: Why, O Lord? How long, O Lord? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As I think about it, the confessions are not boundaries that mark the limits of questioning; rather, the creeds and confessions are the guardrails that enable us to lean out and over the precipice, asking the hard questions.

I sometimes suggest that the Reformed tradition is like a Weeble. Do you remember those toys? “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!” These were egg-shaped toys with a heavily weighted bottom. You could press the toys in any direction and they could lean out, but then return to center. I think of the church’s creeds and confessions as the weighted bottom of my theoretical questioning: they provide a center of gravity that enables me to lean out into the hard questions. Granted, our churches often are not comfortable with fostering an ethos of curiosity and questioning, even though God is not at all frightened by such things. Again, I think it’s important for Christian scholars to model what faithful questioning looks like.

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Academic Interviews James K.A. Smith Spirituality

Conversation with James K.A. Smith on Christian Scholarship

Here’s the first part of our conversation with James K.A. Smith about Christian scholarship.

Dave: As I’ve read some of your work, I see some similarities in our backgrounds: Plymouth Brethren upbringing, small Christian college, efforts to develop a more generous and rigorous perspective while retaining the core vitality of that simple faith. I’ve seen a similar pattern in some other Christian scholars, thinkers and provocateurs whose work I appreciate. I wonder if you could describe a bit of how you became “called” to the vocation of Christian scholarship?

Jamie: It’s a bit of a convoluted path, but I think there’s an underlying thread of continuity. I should say that I was not raised in the church. I was converted to the Christian faith when I was 18, through my then girlfriend’s (now wife’s) family who were Plymouth Brethren. So my welcome into the church was through one of its most sectarian portals. As you know, a Plymouth Brethren assembly can be a pretty intense immersion in Scripture, and I was quite intentionally discipled by Deanna’s uncle and father. Within a year, I had abandoned my longstanding plans to be an architect and was on my way to Emmaus Bible College, a Plymouth Brethren school in Iowa.

My sense was that I was called to be a “teacher”–but when I left for Iowa, I could only imagine that as a “pastor-teacher.” In short, I thought I was called to be a preacher (my wife thinks I still am!). But in the course of my studies, I discovered systematic theology. More specifically, I discovered the Reformed tradition–though at that point, this was the tradition of “Old Princeton.” I read W.G.T. Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology with hungry awe. And I started to get an inkling that maybe my vocation of “teaching” could look different, along an “academic” track. (I should note that I also started preaching when I was 19, and those opportunities as a ‘circuit rider’ in southern Ontario provided lots of feedback which seemed to confirm that I might have gifts in this direction.)

I suppose the turning point came when I finished my degree in pastoral theology. At that point, I received a call from an assembly to join them as associate pastor (well, they were Brethren, so they didn’t use that term!). But at the same time, I was contemplating graduate school. I went through a couple of weeks of internal struggle about that decision. But eventually I felt God had confirmed my calling to a more academic vocation, and I felt peace about that decision. But I suppose I still think of being scholar as basically a way of being a “teacher.”

Dave: In your “Little Miss Sunshine” essay, you address what I’d call the “relational” aspects of Christian scholars vis-a-vis the local church. In my experience, those relational issues can present some difficult emotional tensions — times of feeling isolated, worries that you’ve “gone too far,” confusion and even anger from the people you hope your perspectives will serve, and direct opposition from popular leaders and teachers who don’t undersand you or your work. I’m curious how you navigate those tensions, and what advice you’d have for other Christian scholars and thinkers about this aspect of the scholar-church relationship?

Jamie: Great question. It has not always been rosy. Indeed, in the Plymouth Brethren, young people were encouraged to pursue all sorts of education except theological education, which was seen as inherently corrupting. (I can still remember a “prophecy” teacher who used to make the rounds. His self-published book proudly displayed “Ph.D.” after his name on the cover, despite the fact that his doctorate was in chemical engineering!) When I began my graduate studies, I continued preaching in a number of Brethren assemblies. One by one, I was called before boards of elders who were concerned about my orthodoxy. I can still remember a gang of them showing up at our house, and my wife having to endure seeing me subject to their inquisition–after which I was banned from preaching there. Eventually, this sort of exclusion became a reality at my “home” assembly. (The tipping point was a sermon I preached entitled “Trivial Pursuits: Or, Things That Bother Us that Don’t Bother Jesus.” I basically suggested that maybe the pre-trib rapture and women’s headcoverings were not the most important aspects of Christian faith. That was enough, I guess.)

I also have some letters in my files from my former Bible college professors in which they describe me as a “student of Judas Iscariot.” Every once in a while when I need a reality check, I pull those out. (I could be a lot more bitter than I am, don’t you think? 🙂

Of course, the tension here is not all “their” fault. It was undoubtedly the case that in my mid to late twenties, I was an arrogant prick at times (if you’ll excuse my French). The Apostle Paul, that insightful psychologist, was acquainted firsthand, I think, with the ways that “knowledge puffs up.” In some ways, I just had to grow up.

But I would encourage emerging scholars in the church to keep a couple of things in mind: First, if you are called to be a Christian scholar, then you are in some way called to serve these brothers and sisters. Not everyone has the opportunity to develop the expertise that you’re developing, and so you can’t possibly expect them to know what you know. But you’ve been gifted with the opportunity which means that you need to be a steward of that opportunity. Second, being a scholar means developing expertise in a particular field. But that certainly doesn’t mean that we know everything (we just act like that!). The fact is, there is wisdom in our congregations which we might never possess. Let me give you just one example: While I might have arcane knowledge of French philosophy, that certainly doesn’t make me an expert father. In fact, in my congregation will be assembly line workers who’ve never attended college but in fact have deep wells of wisdom about parenting. If I want to make myself available to teach my brothers and sisters, I also have to be teachable. I need to sincerely trust and believe that the Spirit has distributed gifts throughout the body and that I’ll be a student more often than I’m a teacher.

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Academic Interviews James K.A. Smith Spirituality

Conversation with James K.A. Smith: Intro

This post is an introduction to a bit of conversation we’ll be having with James K.A. Smith.  Jamie’s work has had a substantial impact on my thinking.  I appreciate how he finds consilience between aspects of postmodern thought and Christian theology, and his two books on Reformed theology and Radical Orthodoxy (here and here) are very helpful.  I’ve also enjoyed many of his commentaries and thought pieces in popular publications such as Christianity Today.

The occasion for this conversation is the introductory essay to Jamie’s book The Devil Reads Derrida, “The Church, Christian Scholars, and Little Miss Sunshine.”  It’s a wonderful discussion of the tensions inherent in being a Christian scholar, particularly for those of us in the evangelical tradition.  His vehicle for exploring those tensions is Frank Ginsberg, a character played by Steve Carrell in the movie Little Miss Sunshine.  Frank is the self-described “preeminent Proust scholar in the United States,” yet he becomes embedded in the shenanigans of his sister’s low-brow family on their way to a tacky child beauty pageant.  Along the way, Frank learns to take himself a little less seriously, and even to love his sister’s family, without losing — in fact, while enhancing — the fullness of his life as a scholar, family member, and human being.

So often, those of us who attempt to labor at serious scholarship, and who feel called to this work as our Christian vocation, feel like Frank at the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine.  As Smith notes in the essay, “I’ll be the first to admit that I am often exasperated, frustrated, and embarrassed by my own faith community — that there are days when I can’t stomach being described as an ‘evangelical’ because of the guilt by association.”  Yet, he goes on to say

if [the evangelical community has] bought the paradigms sold to them by voices on Christian radio that I think are problematic, then the burden is on me to show them otherwise.  My responsibility is not to condescendingly look down upon them from my cushy ivory tower, but to take time to get out of the tower and speak to them — and, please note, learn from them.  Christian scholars would do well to be slow to speak and quick to listen.

There are so many things like this that I find helpful about this essay.  If you’re interested in the vocation of Christian scholarship, or if you’re a pastor or church leader trying to figure out where a scholarly-minded congregant is coming from, I’d urge you to chew it over.

In our next couple of posts in this series, well talk with a bit with Jamie Smith about the vocation of Christian scholarship and the roles of Christian scholars in the Church.