James K. A. Smith's new book, The Devil Reads Derrida, grabs you immediately—not only is it shod in a can't-turn-your-eyes-away red, but it bears a provocative title that compels you to drop whatever you're doing, pick it up, and scan the table of contents.
That is just how I reacted when I walked into the
RTS Bookstore some time ago and saw it on the shelf of new featured items. At this point, I've only read the introduction and the first chapter, but it looks as if there will be lots of great material in this little volume; certainly some good material on which to blog.
Smith makes his overarching theme known within the first few pages of the introduction. Christian scholarship, he contends, is something done in
public—that is, it is ultimately done in service to the Church, for the purposes of discipleship. When academics withdraw into the scholarly world, and the roads they travel never intersect with the laity, the latter will begin to look for wisdom and guidance wherever they can find it.
His intention, following the lead of Richard Mouw, is to work out of a hermeneutic of charity. He admittedly finds himself frustrated from time to time with "his people," the evangelical world, yet realizes that this is precisely the reason he can't withdraw from those circles even when he wants to. In his own words:
No matter how much I might disagree and be frustrated by their positions and interpretations, I know that above all my brothers and sisters want to be faithful disciples of Jesus. Even if I think they've bought into all sorts of questionable assumptions and causes; even if I think they've been co-opted by cynical political machines; even though I might think they've assimilated the worst sorts of cultural prejudices; even if I think God wants to invite them to 'higher' cultural passions—there is a sense in which I think they're just trying to make their way in the world the best they can. And if they've bought the paradigms sold to them by the 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.This hermeneutic of charity is not just romantic or utopian; in my experience, the wisdom of this stance has been confirmed. When I take the time to teach an adult Sunday School class, I find Christians who are hungry for wisdom. And though ultimately I might be trying to induce a paradigm shift in their thinking, hoping to basically de-program the way Christian radio has got them thinking about gender or justice, I find that so long as I begin from the assumption that we want to bring all of our thinking and doing under the Lordship of Christ and the light of the biblical narrative, my brothers and sisters are quite happy to hear a different take on their settled convictions—as long as it is offered in charity and humility, not with scolding and condescension (xv-xvi).
Reading this last night was refreshing; it was as if Smith was taking my own thoughts and neatly putting them in paragraph form. Next to glorifying God, the deepest desire I have is to take my abilities as an academic (well, that's rather audacious—perhaps an aspiring academic, or maybe a pseudo-academic) and use them in service to His people in order that they might come to know and serve Him better, and to love Him more. That is one of the reasons I love teaching the adult Sunday School at our local church, and why I see myself being involved in the educational ministry of the church for years to come.
Smith rightly points out that in the family of faith, there is no "us" and "them." It's only "us," bound together by the name of Jesus Christ. If those whom God has gifted with intellectual and academic abilities make primary use of their gifts outside of the Church, we can only expect churches full of people who lack wisdom and discernment.
The pastor of our church is retiring in April, and after going through his collection and taking home the books he wanted to keep, he graciously allowed three of us who are seminary students to pillage the rest of his library. We went to the office a few nights ago and began to mark out our territory. About half of Martyn Lloyd-Jones' series on Romans was there as well as Philip Schaff's 8-volume History of the Christian Church, which were the two sets I wanted most from all the books on the shelf. The other two guys did not mind, so I happily put them in my box. While I know Schaff's work is available online, I wanted it on my shelf, especially since my area of interest is church history and historical theology and Schaff's history is still an important one in the field. I was able to grab a few more worthwhile items as well, which you see in the photo to the left.
Comments [1]