I want to use these series to tease out what I think about a recent debate concerning how postliberal theology may or may not have contributed to postliberal political theory. As I've pondered this debate I find myself, as is often the case, "in between" the positions. So I'm going to use this series to nail down exactly where I am. 

But to bring everyone along with me on this journey I'll need to catch many readers up.

The stimulus for this particular debate was an article published by David Congdon in The Journal of Religion entitled “What Has New Haven to Do with Hungary? On Theological and Political Postliberalism." The thesis of Congdon's essay can be simply stated: Postliberal theology laid the groundwork for postliberal politics. Provocatively stated, Stanley Hauerwas brought us Donald Trump.

If none of that makes any sense to you, let me back up and explain. 

Postliberal theology was a reaction toward what is called "liberal theology." Liberal here doesn't mean "Woke" or "Democrat." Liberal theology was an attempt to reinterpret Christianity in light of modernity. Beginning with figures like Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), it grounded faith in human experience rather than in supernatural revelation or metaphysical claims. Doctrine was understood less as a set of objective truths about God and more as symbolic, moral, or existential expressions of religious consciousness. Later theologians such as Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), and Paul Tillich (1886–1965) continued this trajectory in different ways, interpreting Christian claims in categories intelligible to modern culture.

Postliberal theology emerged as a critique of liberal theology’s reduction of doctrine to expressions of universal religious experience. But postliberal theology was not antiliberal in the political sense. It assumed the pluralistic conditions of modern society and did not seek a return to cultural dominance. Rather than translating Christianity into the categories of human experience, they emphasized learning to inhabit the Christian narrative and practices as a way of life within a pluralistic world. By doing so the postliberals sought to recover the particularity and authority of Christian doctrine, carving out space for a thick Christian community within the pluralistic order. By treating doctrine as the grammar of a distinctive way of life, the postliberals aimed to sustain Christian distinctiveness without retreating from modernity or translating the faith into its prevailing categories.

A key influence here was the work of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). Wittgenstein argued that language gets its meaning from how it is used by a community sharing a common life. Words function within “language games,” patterns of speech and practice governed by rules that communities learn over time. Postliberal theologians, like George Lindbeck, applied this insight to Christian doctrine. Christianity, Lindbeck argued, is a distinct cultural-linguistic community that has its own grammar, habits, and practices which shape how believers speak about God and how they inhabit the biblical story. To be a Christian is to join this particular community, learning its language, its patterns of worship, and its way of life. Truth, on this account, is not detached from this communal grammar but is learned and embodied within it.

Stanley Hauerwas is a theologian who fused postliberal theology with virtue ethics. Drawing on the cultural diagnosis of Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue, and connecting it with the Anabaptist ecclesiology of John Howard Yoder, Hauerwas articulated a powerful vision of Christian life and spiritual formation. From MacIntyre he took the claim that virtues only make sense in light of a telos, a shared account of the good. From Yoder he identified the life of Jesus, especially his nonviolence, as the telos which defines that good. And drawing on George Lindbeck, Hauerwas argued that these cruciform virtues are formed from within the practices and language of the Christian community. The church becomes the school in which believers learn the grammar of the faith until its story and practices are embodied as habits of character.

Okay, that review should catch everyone up on the postliberal theology side of the debate. Let's now turn to what has been called "postliberal politics."

While postliberal politics has deeper historical roots, it rose to contemporary prominence through Patrick Deneen and his bestselling book Why Liberalism Failed, which Deneen followed up with Regime Change. Deneen, along with other postliberal political theorists, argues that liberalism has "failed" because it cannot articulate a thick account of the common good. On this point he echoes Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue: without a shared telos, a society cannot cultivate the virtues necessary for its own survival. Absent such formation, liberal democracies slide into fragmentation, moral incoherence, and cultural decay.

But here is the tension. Liberal democracies are explicitly premised upon liberty. Within broad constitutional guardrails, citizens are free to pursue diverse visions of the good. Liberalism does not arbitrate between those choices. Liberalism protects, rather, the space in which these competing goods coexist. Pluralism is the expected outcome. A feature, not a bug.

And yet, for Deneen and his postliberal allies, pluralism is the disease. Toleration tends toward decadence. Freedom leads to fragmentation. The refusal of the state to privilege one comprehensive moral vision over others inexorably brings about national, cultural, and civilizational collapse.

If so, what follows?

The answer, stated plainly, is that the state must decide. Where liberty had once been the organizing principle of America it has to be, going forward, subordinated to a thicker, state-enforced account of human flourishing. The state must privilege certain goods over others, even against the dissent of its citizens. The state must discipline the culture. In short, the state must become illiberal and authoritarian in order to secure and save the good.

Okay, do you have those two visions in mind, postliberal theology versus postliberal politics?

The key point both agree upon is the view that liberalism cannot form virtue. Which is why both groups use Alasdair MacIntyre in their arguments. 

The contrast between the views might be put this way. Given liberalism's inability to form virtue, postliberal theology, like that of Stanley Hauerwas, argues for the particularity of the Christian community. The church is the place where virtue is formed. Formed from within a community carved out from within a pluralistic culture. 

Postliberal politics, by contrast, wants to turn the entire nation into the church. Basically, Christian nationalism (or Catholic integralism). Instead of "carving out" spaces within the culture, the culture itself needs to be comprehensively disciplined toward the "Christian" conception of the good. (I put "Christian" in scare quotes for a reason, because it is an open question, for me at least, whether the postliberal politics of "the ends justify the means" approach toward the good is a Christian vision.) Schematically we have:

Postliberal theology = Be the church from within the pluralistic world

Postliberal politics = Turn the pluralistic world into the church

Given this contrast, we can return to Congdon's article. Postliberal theology and postliberal politics seem to be quite different. Postliberal theology focuses upon the church. Postliberal politics focuses upon the nation. Postliberal theology views pluralism as a mission field. Postliberal politics views pluralism as a tumor that must be removed. But if this is true, how can Congdon claim that postliberal theology created the conditions for a postliberal politics? How could the theology of Stanley Hauerwas bring us Donald Trump? 

We'll turn to that contested and controversial question in the next post. 

Fun fact: Paul never mentions hell.

Jesus, by contrast, talked a lot about hell.

As I point out in The Book of Love, this contrast surprises us. In our popular imagination, Paul comes off as the rigid fundamentalist, whereas Jesus is full of love, tolerance, and sunshine. But Jesus spoke of hell a great deal, and it was part of his evangelistic urgency.

That said, Jesus’ hell was different from how we tend to imagine it. Our vision of hell tends to be medieval. Hell is a space reserved in eternity where the damned suffer eternal and perpetual torment. Many of Jesus’ references to hell, by contrast, pointed toward a geographical location outside the walls of Jerusalem. This was the Valley of Hinnom, called “Gehenna,” and it was associated in the history of Israel with child sacrifices to Moloch. Gehenna came to symbolize God’s coming apocalyptic judgment upon the forces of darkness. To be sure, there are references to hell being “eternal” in the Gospels (Matt. 25:46) and that the fires of Gehenna are “never quenched” (Mark 9:43–48), but Jesus’ references to Gehenna concern judgment more than torment. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom was eschatologically pressured. The Day of the Lord was approaching, when humanity would face the Great Sorting. Jesus was not engaged in speculating about the ultimate fate of the damned but was, rather, bringing God’s judgment to bear upon today in order to prompt a change of heart. Jesus wanted to bring his audience into a state of crisis.

For my part, this is how hell should function in evangelism. God’s judgment impinges upon life and brings it into crisis. The goal is not to abstractly speculate about the ultimate fate of humanity but to prompt repentance. As Paul puts it, today is the day of salvation.

It’s also important to notice how Jesus used hell to evangelize for social justice. The classic examples here are the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19–31) and the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt. 25:31–46). These two parables are noteworthy for two things. First, they are the two parables with the richest images of judgment and hell. Second, both parables are evangelistic in demanding concern for the poor and oppressed. 

Recall our reflections over the last few posts about hell being more about hamartiology than eschatology. Jesus’ references to hell press that claim. Jesus' parables are not speculations about the afterlife. They are confrontations. They name the kinds of people who stand under judgment. And they bring these people into crisis. They begin to feel, in John the Baptist’s image, the ax already laid at the root. The Rich Man is is a warning. The Goats are mirrors. Hell, in Jesus’ preaching, exposes sin and makes God’s judgment immediate and personal. And the aim is evangelistic, summoning repentance and calling hearers to believe the Good News.

Some readers of The Book of Love might be disappointed with how I handle the issue of eschatology. Throughout the book, it’s clear I’m on the more hopeful side of the debate. But in my chapter on Judgment Day I ultimately land on mystery. And such an ending, even an equivocation, might strike long-term readers as too equivocal, even disingenuous.

A couple of reflections about all this.

First, as I state in Part 1 of the book, I didn’t want to write for an echo chamber. My book isn’t polemical. I didn’t want to write a book for the already converted. I don’t like preaching to the choir. So I tried to avoid connecting all the dots. I tried, rather, to point toward a horizon of possibility and gently invite readers to take a stroll in that direction. My hope is that, as people make this journey, they will start to ask questions, explore, and begin connecting some dots. And there are a lot of books already on the market that can help with that task.

Phrased differently, I was actually interested in trying to change people’s minds. I know! Most books aren’t interested in this project at all. Rather, books about the Bible tend to show you how to read the Bible in light of your current moral, religious, and political convictions. But if you want to change people’s minds, you’ve got to back up a bit and till the soil. You have to work with background assumptions and hidden worldviews. You’ve got to break the ice up a bit. And a book that does this sort of work looks different from your run-of-the-mill “This Is How Progressives Read the Bible as Progressives” and “This Is How Evangelicals Read the Bible as Evangelicals” type of book.

So, when I approached eschatology as a mystery in the book, a lot of that was due to the agenda of the book and its overall goals and strategy. Admitting mystery is a hospitable, open, and humble way to invite people into a conversation.

But beyond this consider-your-audience pragmatism, what about my eschatological convictions?

In the debates about so-called “universalism,” a contrast is often made between “hopeful universalism” and “dogmatic universalism.” Dogmatic universalism makes a strong doctrinal claim: that all persons will in fact be saved, treating this as a settled theological conclusion. Hopeful universalism, by contrast, stops short of that assertion. Hopeful universalism refuses to claim knowledge of the final outcome, yet maintains that Christians may rightly hope and pray that God’s saving will, revealed in Christ, might finally encompass all. Figures such as Hans Urs von Balthasar are often associated with hopeful universalism due to his book Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?, which argues for eschatological hope grounded in the mercy of God. Many also consider Karl Barth to be a hopeful universalist.

I have many friends who would describe their beliefs this way:

1. Biblically, I am committed to the view that hell exists and that people are going to hell.
2. And yet, I hope many of these people, perhaps even most or all of them, will eventually be saved.

To which I say, that’s good enough for me. I don’t debate the point much past this. And it’s here that I would like to talk about the varieties of dogmatic universalism.

One type of dogmatism would be dismayed at my charity toward my friends who express a weak hope. These dogmatists are more evangelistic than I am, feeling compelled to debate and argue people into changing their views. I am not dogmatic in this way. I have lived with minority views for most of my adult life within my denomination. I tolerate differences of opinion. I’m good to agree to disagree.

Concerning the coherence of the Christian faith as it relates to eschatology, I’m more dogmatic. I am argumentative on this point, and any dogmatism I’ve displayed in debate, personally and online, concerns this issue. I just don’t think Christianity is theologically and morally coherent unless all of creation, humanity included, is restored and reconciled to God. I think Colossians 1:19 is the lynchpin to the entire worldview:

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

“To reconcile to himself all things.” Creation theology. Soteriology. Eschatology. Theodicy. Ontology. Morality. Logically, the theological edifice is held together by this crucial commitment. Pull that pin and the whole falls into fractured incoherence. This is why Karl Barth, our most systematic modern theologian, ended up with a hopeful eschatology. Barth saw the whole better than anyone and knew how it is held together. Piecemeal theologians never glimpse the gestalt Barth viewed.

Now, does all that sound a wee bit dogmatic? Yep. If you want to argue about the coherence of Christianity, I am absolutely dogmatic on this point.

And yet, there is a third type of dogmatism. Which brings me back to The Book of Love. Does my dogmatism about theological coherence mean that I’m right? Well, no. I'm not dogmatic about ultimately being right. You can hold your views with conviction and still espouse epistemic humility. Lord knows I think I’m right. And I’ll argue with anyone who thinks otherwise. But I’m humble enough to admit that we’re arguing about mysteries. We are children playing on the shore of a vast apophatic mystery. Here’s an analogy from Albert Einstein regarding science’s attempt to explore the cosmos:

In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison.

If this is true of physics, how much more true of theology? Like the scientist positing an explanation for the closed watch, I think a hopeful eschatology is the best explanation for the “mechanism” of the Christian faith. Others disagree. And so we’ll argue about those rival visions, just like the scientists argue. But at the end of the day, we’re unable to open the watch to see who is right. I think belief in eternal conscious torment is wrong. A horrible explanation for the watch. For their part, believers in eternal conscious torment think I’ve got it wrong. And both of us are pretty darn dogmatic in our opinions. And yet, at the end of the day, we're unable to resolve the question. We’ll both have to wait until the watch gets opened.

Like I said, it's a mystery.

"for treuly our lover desireth that our soule cleve to Hym"

In Chapter 6 of The Revelations Julian ponders how prayer, at her time, invoked many intermediaries, from the Holy Cross to Mary to the saints. But what Julian perceives in each and every intermediary is the goodness of God. As she writes: "Wherefore it pleaseth [pleases] Him that we seke [seek] Him and worship be [by] menys [means or helps], understondyng [understanding] and knoweing that He is the goodness of all." 

And it is this seeking after His goodness, continues Julian, that God most desires. As she says: "for treuly [truly] our lover desireth [desires] that our soule cleve [cleave] to Hym [Him] with all the might and that we be evermore clevand [cleaved] to His godenes [goodness]."

This is the first time Julian calls God our "Lover" in The Revelations. It will become a common description going forward, and it highlights the romantic aspect of Julian's spirituality. By using erotic imagery—God as our lover—Julian stands solidly within the contemplative tradition. For example, the most famous treatise of the Christian mystical tradition, St. John of the Cross' The Dark Night of the Soul, is a commentary upon an erotic love poem entitled "Stanzas of the Soul." I shared this during my series on the Psalms, David Lewis's translation of St. John's poem:

I.
In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.

II.
In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.

III.
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.

IV.
That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none appeared.

V.
O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.

VI.
On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
There He reposed and slept;
And I cherished Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.

VII.
As His hair floated in the breeze
That from the turret blew,
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.

VIII.
I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
Lost to all things and myself,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away.

The lover goes out into the night for a moonlight tryst with the Beloved. St. John of the Cross uses the romantic rendezvous to expound upon "the way and manner which the soul follows upon the road of the union of love with God." 

Julian echos the same romantic longing when she writes, "For truly our Lover desires that our soul cleave to Him."

In The Book of Love I have a chapter reflecting upon Judgment Day. I start the chapter with Johnny Cash's last great song "The Man Comes Around", along with "God's Gonna Cut You Down," a song Cash recorded late in his life with Rick Rubin. 

Here are some of the lyrics of "The Man Comes Around":

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
And he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin'.
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin', voices cryin'.
Some are born and some are dyin'.
It's Alpha and Omega's Kingdom come.

And here's some of the lyrics from "God's Gonna Cut You Down": 

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down

Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down

The point I make in The Book of Love about these songs is how popular they were (and are), especially with the younger generations who were tuning into Cash during the American Recordings years with Rubin. Here's the question I ask: Why are songs about hell, Judgment Day, and damnation so appealing?

Psychologists have described what are called "just world beliefs." Just world beliefs refer to our cognitive tendency to believe that the world is morally ordered, that people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Just world beliefs assume that good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, and that life outcomes reflect moral worth or effort. Overall, these beliefs provide a sense that the world is stable, predictable, and fair.

As the popularly of Cash's Judgment Day songs and the research on just world beliefs illustrate, everyone believes in hell. Maybe not as Scripture imagines it. But we believe in things like karma, fate, and "what comes around, goes around." We long for a morally coherent world, and this longing draws us toward the lyrics of Cash's music. 

To be sure, as I pointed out over the last few posts, conservatives and progressives disagree about who, exactly, God is going to cut down. To say it again, the issue here is hamartiological rather than eschatological. Eschatologically speaking, the man is coming around, deciding who to free and who to blame. Eschatologically speaking, God's going to cut somebody down. But there is sharp debate about who these people might be.

But here's the point I want to make in this post. I get why ex-evangelicals and progressive Christians worry about speaking about hell and Judgment Day. As I've described so many times, there are worries here, often Oedipal in origin, about inducing guilt and shame. To these worries I'd just say, look at how younger audiences were drawn to Cash's songs. True, we want to be clear about our vision of sin, but there is a longing for moral seriousness among young people, even moral severity. It's a longing for a just and morally coherent world. A belief that goodness makes some eternal difference and that evil will, one day, face the music. That the moral arch of the universe is long, but bends toward justice. 

Simply put, we long for Judgment Day because Judgment Day is good news. 

Preach it.

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

A Sermon Preached at Enfield, July 8th, 1741. 

By Jonathan Edwards.

Pastor of the Church of Christ in Northhampton.

...The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the Fire; he is of purer Eyes than to bear to have you in his Sight; you are ten thousand Times so abominable in his Eyes as the most hateful venomous Serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn Rebel did his Prince: and yet ‘tis nothing but his Hand that holds you from falling into the Fire every Moment: 'Tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to Hell the last Night; that you was suffer’d to awake again in this World, after you closed your Eyes to sleep: and there is no other Reason to be given why you have not dropped into Hell since you arose in the Morning, but that God’s Hand has held you up: There is no other reason to be given why you han’t gone to Hell since you have sat here in the House of God, provoking his pure Eyes by your sinful wicked Manner of attending his solemn Worship: Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a Reason why you don’t this very Moment drop down into Hell. 

O Sinner! Consider the fearful Danger you are in: 'Tis a great Furnace of Wrath, a wide and bottomless Pit, full of the Fire of Wrath, that you are held over in the Hand of that God, whose Wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the Damned in Hell: You hang by a slender Thread, with the Flames of divine Wrath flashing about it, and ready every Moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no Interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the Flames of Wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one Moment...

///

It's sad that Jonathan Edwards is only known by the general population for this famous, and infamous, sermon, assigned as it in schools as a specimen of early American oratory. You might not know this, but many scholars consider Jonathan Edwards to be America's greatest theologian. For those unfamiliar with Edwards, reading his Treatise on Religious Affections is a good place to start.

But, let's get back to the sermon. 

How could Edwards get away with it? Well, he was preaching to Puritans. And if you're a Puritan that sermon slots right in. It fits the worldview. Hits all the right buttons. Pulls the motivational levers. It was also catching a cultural wave, preached during the Great Awakening.

I hope I'm getting this attribution correct, but Tim Keller described what he called "revival evangelism." Revival evangelism assumes a cultural Christian backdrop. There is enough residual Christianity in the culture where you make a frontal eschatological attack culminating in an altar call. When I was growing up you could ask people, "If you were to die today do you know where you'll spend eternity?" That question sounds quaint by today's standards. But a few decades ago there was still enough Christianity in the air that the question could catch someone's attention and give them pause. The eschatological query could prompt a sudden moment of introspection and self-assessment. 

But today? As our culture slides deeper into post-Christianity, this sort of revival approach—hitting people with Judgment Day—would be confounding and off-putting. Nowadays, sinners in the hands of an angry God just isn't an effective way to start a conversation about God.

Now, does that mean that hell doesn't exist? Or that we no longer believe people are going to hell?

The point I'm trying to make is that, if we've noticed that talking about hell from the pulpit, or in evangelistic conversations, has waned, this has less to do with our eschatological beliefs than with our missiological intelligence. I have no doubt hellfire and brimstone preachers continue to prowl their stages. But notice to whom they are preaching to. Just like Jonathan Edwards preaching to the Puritans, the hell-forward preachers are preaching in front of a room full of committed and converted Christians. In the greatest of ironies, hell is being preached to the insiders! Consequently, speaking of hell to the already converted is no great demonstration of evangelistic courage or urgency. It's performative evangelism.

And I think it's worse that that. Why do the saved love sinners in the hands of an angry God sermons? Because the sermon isn't really about them, it's about the people who aren't in the room. Hell is for the sinners not in attendance. Hell is for the culture wars, the church growth strategy of evangelicalism. Hell is how you grow big sick churches. For there is nothing more consoling or comforting than contemplating the fate of the lost when you're convinced you're not among them. Hell is always for other people. 

And far too many churches delight in warming themselves by that crackling fire. 

Let me underline a couple of points from the last few posts.

First, many hopeful eschatologies believe in hell. So to claim otherwise is to traffic in bad faith arguments or outright lies. Going forward, I'm focusing on hopeful eschatologies that believe in hell. 

Second, these beliefs in hell are often grievous visions. Sparing people this suffering is compassionate, the very same compassion that motivates all evangelistic urgency.

Third, the fact that the sufferings and harms are finite does not undermine our compassionate urgency to intervene. The examples abound here. Consider the passion of a climate change activist or a social justice warrior. Given how these perceive the grievousness of these harms, to the environment or to oppressed persons, they are filled with an evangelistic fervor. The same goes for when we witness self-destructive behaviors in our loved ones. If we see a friend slowly destroying their marriage and family, we act to intervene. If we see a drinking problem develop, we don’t sit on our hands until they kill someone in a drunk driving accident. If we see a bad habit developing in our child, we head that off at the pass. This is natural and compassionate human behavior.

As I shared in the last post, the pressing issue here concerns hamartiology rather than eschatology. Conservatives often say that progressive Christians “don’t believe in sin” or are “soft on sin.” Really? Progressive Christians don’t believe in sin? Being a progressive, Christian or not, means being obsessed with sin. As everyone knows, progressivism and Wokeism are very moralized worldviews. And because of this, as I pointed out above, progressivism and Wokeism are driven by an evangelistic passion. The contrast here with conservatives and evangelicals concerns the nature of sin. As I said, the issue is hamartiological. With different visions of sin, we have different evangelistic expressions. So the simplistic “no sin, no evangelism” frame just doesn’t apply. Both groups—conservative and progressive—believe in sin, and both groups are characterized by evangelistic urgency. Their disagreement isn’t fundamentally about eschatology, about whether there is a hell. They disagree about who is going to hell. 

So what’s all this noise that conservatives make about progressive Christians not believing in hell?

When conservatives lament progressives not believing in hell what they are really going on about is the progressive Christian vision of sin. There are folks conservatives want progressives to say are going to hell. Progressive Christians, for their part, think different sorts of people are going to hell. Once again, the debate isn’t about hell but about a theology of sin.

My point here isn’t to adjudicate between these groups. To do so would wade into the culture wars. My goal here is to simply draw attention to how, in these debates, the issue isn’t really about hell at all but about competing visions of sin and God’s judgment. The claim that progressives think that “no one is going to hell” isn’t true. Just ask them. They have a list.

Let me start with a programming note, so people can be clear about what this series is about and what it is not about.

This series isn't about the gospel and evangelism. It's not a series about the mission of God and evangelism. It's not a series about the kingdom of God and evangelism. And more broadly put, it's not about evangelism generally considered, about its primary motives, defining content, and desired goals. This series is, rather, about a very narrow and particular subject, the relation of hell to evangelism. So just to clarify here, you're not going to get in this series a big, lovely, and proper view about what I think evangelism should and must be about. What I'm pondering in this series is how hell, or a proclamation of God's judgement, is related—properly or improperly—to evangelistic urgency. That's it, that's the only thing I'm focusing upon. So if you ask me, "Do you think evangelism is primarily warning people about hell?" My response is: Of course not! That's not what this series is about. This series is about how, if you lack a belief in hell or embrace a hopeful eschatology, how that might that affect—for good, ill, or not at all—your passion for evangelism.

Relatedly, this isn't a series about what I think about the traditional view of hell, eternal conscious torment. For what it's worth, I find that view abhorrent. But as a psychologist, I recognize how such a view creates evangelistic urgency. And, consequently, how a rejection of that view might dampen such urgency. So, again, this series isn't about throwing stones at the traditional view of hell but thinking through its motivational impact and the potential loss thereof. 

All of this, I know, can be confusing to new readers. The grooves of online debates surrounding these topics are deep and worn and tired. But my thinking rarely travels down those ruts. My interests are more idiosyncratic and odd. Consequently, what people think I am talking about is often not what I'm talking about. Readers tend connect the dots they've always connected in these debates and thereby miss my point.  

 

Clarifications made, now back to the series. 

Why does the prospect of hell create so much evangelistic urgency and passion?

The answer is pretty obvious: Compassion.

If we behold a person moving toward a future filled with pain and suffering, we’d try, as we are able, to save that person from that dark eventuality.

If a loved one of yours was in the grip of a destructive habit, you’d act to intervene.

If a child of yours was behaving in ways that would create durable defects of character, you’d act to intervene.

If a friend of yours was making poor choices, you’d act to intervene, if only with a gentle conversation expressing concern and worry.

If your place of work was failing or making bad ethical decisions, you’d act to intervene.

If your nation was falling apart, you’d act, at least with your one vote and voice, to intervene.

If the culture around you was sliding into sickness and depravity, you’d act to intervene.

If you see people harming others, you’d act to intervene.

And if you see people being wounded by sin and destined for hell, you’d act to intervene.

All this and more. It is the compassionate thing to do.

In the last post I described the varieties of hopeful eschatology. Throwing around the word “universalism” isn’t very helpful in these discussions. And one of the biggest misunderstandings concerns belief in hell. The accusation that “universalists don’t believe in hell” is a falsehood. And brothers and sisters in Christ shouldn’t traffic in falsehoods. To be sure, tempers flare in theological debates. But it's an ethical duty to get your facts straight. As I described in the last post, there are varieties of hopeful eschatologies that (1) make exclusive claims about Jesus and (2) believe in hell (as a purgative consequence of sin).

That said, as I mentioned in the first post, there does seem to be a lack of evangelistic urgency among progressive, liberal Christians. Is this because, unlike what I shared above, they don’t believe in hell?

They might not. But a lot of liberal mainline churches do believe in hell. At least in their confessional statements and catechisms. For example, from the Anglican tradition, not known for Trumpy evangelicalism, this is from The Book of Common Prayer:

Q. What do we mean by heaven and hell?

A. By heaven, we mean eternal life in our enjoyment of God; by hell, we mean eternal death in our rejection of God.

So a belief in hell is there. But, of course, an endorsement of that belief, among both the clergy and the laity, is a wholly different thing and likely varies widely from person to person and parish to parish.

And yet, I think all this is missing the crucial point. The issue isn’t really about who believes in hell or not at the creedal, dogmatic, doctrinal, and catechetical level. People might “believe in hell” but lack evangelistic fervor. Importantly for this series, this also doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not hell is infinite or finite. Hell can be both finite and grievous.

So what is the critical issue for evangelism? If it’s not belief in hell or about the duration of hell, then where is the urgency coming from?

My answer is this: The issue concerns the severity of sin. If sin is grievous, a location of suffering, pain, and harm to self and others, then it demands urgent remedy.

Go back to my examples above. In every case, except the debatability of the last one, the pain and suffering is finite. And yet, we’d intervene. Because it is compassionate to alleviate suffering, pain, and harm.

Given this reframe, that the issue is less about “believing in hell” than alarm about the grievousness of sin, let’s revisit the role of hell in motivating evangelistic urgency. Simply stated, I think evangelistic passion is more about hamartiology than eschatology, more about what we believe about sin than about the ultimate, mysterious destiny of human persons. Is sin a big deal or not? That, to my eyes, is the key question. Set eschatology aside, I think that’s the root problem with regard to evangelism in progressive, liberal spaces. Whether or not hell is real and infinite really isn’t the main issue. These are, truly, abstract metaphysical questions akin to counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a needle. The pressing pastoral issue is whether you think sin is a grievous location of pain, suffering, and harm. Our beliefs about hell (our eschatology) sit downstream of this hamartiological assessment. If sin is no big deal, then evangelistic urgency wanes. But if sin is a five-alarm fire, then a compassionate desire to rescue and help wells up in your soul.

When it comes to evangelism, hamartiology, rather than eschatology, is primary.

Now, could not a fire-and-brimstone evangelist throw a little eschatological wood on the fire? That is, in addition to drawing attention to the grievousness of sin—its effects upon our lives, the lives of those we love, and upon the wider world—could we not also mention that an eternity of torment awaits you upon your death?

You could, but I think fire-and-brimstone gospel proclamations face some issues in an increasingly post-Christian culture. I’ll turn to some of those issues in the coming posts.

"He shewed a littil thing the quantitye of an hesil nutt"

 

In Chapter 5, Julian continues to meditate upon her first showing, Christ wearing the crown of thorns. But within this showing there is nested another vision, the most famous showing of The Revelations: 

Also in this He shewed a littil thing the quantitye of an hesil nutt [the quantity of a hazel nut] in the palme of my hand, and it was as round as a balle. I lokid there upon with eye of my understondyng and thowte [thought], What may this be? And it was generally answered thus: It is all that is made. I mervellid [marveled] how it might lesten [last], for methowte it might suddenly have fallen to nowte [naught] for littil [littleness] . And I was answered in my understondyng [understanding], It lesteth [lasts] and ever shall, for God loveth it; and so all thing hath the being be the love of God. 

In this littil thing I saw three properties: the first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God kepith it.

Over the last few chapters I've pointed out how Julian's spirituality is connected to Christ's "dearworthy" Passion. And how this can be off putting to contemporary and progressive readers. But here in Chapter 5 we encounter one of those visions that has made Julian so famous and beloved. 

In popular iconography of the vision, a literal hazel nut is depicted. But what Julian sees is something that is "the quantity of a hazel nut." This was a unit of measure at the time. So the object Julian sees is a bit unclear. One could imagine the earth shrunk down to the size of a hazel nut, like a blue-white marble, sitting in the palm of your hand. But the voice in the vision says, "It is all that is made." The entire cosmos. So perhaps we should imagine a black marble flecked with pinpricks of light from all the galaxies floating within it. 

What strikes Julian is the littleness of the thing. A littleness that creates a sense of ontological precarity and existential panic. "Methought," Julian says, "it might suddenly have fallen into nothingness because of its littleness." How can such a little thing exist and continue in being? It's so small it teeters on the edge of nothingness.

The answer comes: "It lasts, and ever shall, for God loves it." 

Before pushing on, let's define what I mean by "hopeful eschatology."

Many people just talk here about "universalism." And by "universalism" we mean that, in the end, all of humanity comes into full union with God. What might be called "universal reconciliation." That is to say, "universal" means 100% of humanity.

That's okay as far as it goes, "universal" as an arithmetic statement, but it also misses a whole lot, which creates a lot of confusion. Confusions that are relevant to the goals of this series.

For example, a lot of "universalists" believe in hell! This is such a rudimentary point but, goodness, it's so often missed. It's taken as almost axiomatic that, if you believe that "all shall be saved," to borrow from the title of David Bentley Hart's book, that you "don't believe in hell." But this is a confusion.

So, let me try to sketch out here a taxonomy of "hopeful eschatologies."

First, there is a contrast between pluralistic versus Christocentric (exclusivist) eschatologies. Pluralistic eschatologies are those that preach that all world religions are "different paths up the same mountain." In a pluralistic universalistic eschatology, no exclusive claim is made about Jesus Christ as the sole and only path toward salvation. Christocentric (exclusivist) eschatologies, by contrast, believe that Jesus is the only path for salvation. Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, etc., will, one day, confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Son of God. The biblical texts for the exclusivist view are numerous. For example:

John 14:6

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Acts 4:12

“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

1 Timothy 2:5

“There is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humanity, Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 2:9–11

“Every knee will bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

John 3:18

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already.”

And so on.

This contrast between pluralistic versus Christocentric visions of universalism is important for our reflections about evangelism. For example, I mentioned in the last post the lack of evangelistic urgency in progressive, liberal Christian spaces. A lot of this is due to many progressive, liberal spaces working with a pluralistic eschatology, that all spiritual roads get to the same place. It's a radically inclusive and postmodern posture that refuses to make exclusivist claims about Jesus. This pluralism would protect against any and all colonialist temptations, and would, of course, radically dampen any evangelistic and missionary urgency.

A Christocentric universalism, by contrast, wouldn't be shy about proclaiming Jesus as the sole and only savior of the world. Consequently, the Christocentric universalist, in their proclamations of the gospel, would look a little "judgey" and "colonialist" in pluralistic Christian spaces.

Next, there is the scope of reconciliation. The church fathers didn't talk about "universalism." They talked about apokatastasis, the restoration of "all things." The view here is cosmological rather than anthropological, restoration of the whole of creation rather than the forensic salvation of human beings. The contrast is important for a few different reasons. First, the salvation of creation creates a more holistic soteriological vision that supports and informs theological warrants for creation care. If trees and dogs are going to be saved, then we have "new creation" moral obligations toward trees and dogs. If, by contrast, only humans are being saved, through a penal/forensic view of salvation, then we might not have any moral duties in regard to creation (since it's all going to burn anyway).

Beyond creation care, a more esoteric issue implied by apokatastasis concerns the salvation of fallen angels. Since angels are creatures, and apokatastasis concerns the restoration of the whole of creation, that would necessarily involve the salvation of fallen angels, Lucifer among them. This conundrum is avoided, however, if salvation is restricted to human beings and not the whole of creation.

A third issue concerns the temporal shape of "universal" salvation. By "universal" salvation, do we mean that people are, upon their death, immediately or quickly ushered into heaven? Call this "immediate universalism." Purgative universalism, by contrast, contends that lost souls are cast into the outer darkness upon their death, where there is, to use Jesus' words, "weeping and gnashing of teeth." Purgative universalism believes in hell. The contrast between purgative universalism and traditional views of hell, often described as a belief in "eternal conscious torment," concerns not the reality of hell but its function and duration. According to eternal conscious torment, hell is everlasting and retributive. Purgative views of hell, by contrast, describe hell's duration as finite (though perhaps lasting beyond the calculative powers of human imagination, like a googolplex of lifetimes) and restorative. The point for the purposes of evangelism is that, according to purgative universalism, hell can be very, very bad. Bad beyond imagination. So bad, in fact, that there is a great deal of moral urgency to spare people from this fate.

A fourth issue concerns the degree of certainty with which the hopeful eschatology is espoused. A contrast is often made between a "dogmatic" versus a "hopeful" universalism. Dogmatic universalists are 100% certain that "all shall be saved." By contrast, hopeful universalists are not sure that all will be saved, due to their biblicist scruples, but they are hopeful, perhaps even optimistic, that all shall be saved. The agnosticism here has an impact upon the urgency of conversion. Belief affects behavior. Consequently, if you're told "all will be saved," you might take that as an excuse to prolong and indulge your sinful ways. There is a worry here that preaching a dogmatic universalism would have deleterious moral consequences. Since humans are wired to privilege short-term pleasures over long-term consequences, proclaiming a dogmatic universalism, even if true, tempts people into prolonging their suffering and harming of others. And ethically speaking, we should act in such a way as to reduce suffering and harm. Thus, on purely pragmatic grounds, it might be argued, we should practice an eschatological quietism, shifting from a dogmatic to a hopeful register when it comes to the ultimate salvation of all of humanity.

A parallel here would be how we treat theodicy. There are many theologians who would argue that specifying a precise theodicy is illegitimate. Evil should never be analytically "reconciled" with God. Evil must remain a mystery. The win here is our moral posture toward evil. We don't explain evil, we resist it. (This is an argument I make in The Book of Love.) In a similar way, we should never precisely specify our eschatology. The ultimate fate of humanity needs to be a mystery. The reason for this, like with theodicy, is moral in nature. Humans could treat the doctrine of universal reconciliation as a "get out of jail free" excuse to prolong suffering and harm. By keeping eschatology a mystery, similar to theodicy, we create a more healthy moral atmosphere. And evangelism within this context, calling people away from suffering and harm, would be an urgent and pressing intervention. (Embracing eschatological mystery on behalf of love is another argument I make in The Book of Love.)

More could be said about all this. But I hope this summary of the "varieties of hopeful eschatology" helps critics of so-called "universalism" see a bigger and more complex picture. As I said in my last post, I don't want to traffic in caricatures of those who espouse eternal conscious torment. I hope they would be charitable enough to extend to those who disagree the same respect. 

To conclude, the varieties of hopeful eschatologies: 

1. Pluralistic (Inclusivist) vs. Christocentric (Exclusivist)
2. Anthropological vs. Cosmological (Apokatastasis)
3. Immediate vs. Purgative Reconciliation
4. Retributive vs. Restorative Judgment
5. Dogmatic vs. Hopeful/Apophatic 

In The Book of Love I tell the story of my very first sermon. 

Here's that bit from the book:

When I was in middle school, I was invited, for the first time in my life, to preach a sermon for my small church. Growing up, we went to church twice on Sundays...These Sunday evenings, given the smaller audience, were a training ground for the younger generation...

The week prior I had encountered a tract in the church lobby...The pamphlet I had picked up was ominously titled “What Hell Is Like.”

The tract shared a transcript of a famous fire and brimstone sermon preached far and wide within our denomination and was similar to Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The “What Hell Is Like” tract was like walking through Dante’s Inferno. Vivid descriptions of hell were piled on top of each other—darkness, weeping, fire, and torment. I was stricken and terrified. “People need to be warned!” I thought to myself.

I’m embarrassed looking back at this memory. I have no idea why I thought people who came to church twice on Sundays needed a warning about hell. My audience were the devoted and committed. They weren't backsliding or lost. Still, I felt compelled to sound the alarm. The emotional shock of the “What Hell Is Like” tract had simply overwhelmed me.

I plagiarized the entire sermon. Point for point, I followed the outline of the tract. I’d announce some horrible description of hell—“Hell is filled with weeping and the gnashing of teeth” or “Hell is a place of eternal torment”—and read a passage from the Bible proof-texting the declaration. On and on it went.

But then, in the middle of the sermon, something inside of me cracked. Some deep sadness welled up. Halfway through the sermon I began to weep. I sobbed all the way to the end.

What brought me to tears that night was the incalculable sadness and pain I was describing. The weight of sorrow I was sharing was simply too much for my sensitive little soul to carry. The vision of torment was unbearable. My heart broke underneath my words.

I go on to share how weeping through my first sermon sent me on a spiritual journey, a journey that culminated in a more hopeful eschatology. To be sure, the Biblical passages concerning God’s judgment and wrath, along with Jesus’ many descriptions of hell, demand our attention. In a nod to my affection for Johnny Cash and his last great song, I have a chapter in The Book of Love entitled “When the Man Comes Around” where I share how to reconcile the Biblical vision of hell with the confession “God is love.” I’m not overly dogmatic in the book, and I try to create space for a diversity of viewpoints, even the traditional. In this series I want to tackle a related issue, the role of hell in evangelism.

By far the most common question you face when you share that you espouse a hopeful eschatology is the question of evangelism. The point is easily made. If everyone is getting into heaven in the end, then what’s the point of evangelism?

Now, the knee-jerk response here sounds like this: “Really? Evangelism means warning people that they are going to hell? Evangelists are selling fire insurance?”

I think this is a legitimate comeback. Evangelism isn’t selling fire insurance. And truth be told, there’s a lot of fire insurance being sold. But I do want to steel-man this argument in this series. I don’t want to traffic in caricatures. I don’t want to preach into my hopeful eschatology echo chamber. Because I have faced true curiosity about this question. It sure seems like the urgency of evangelism abates if hell is taken off the table. And it’s also true that progressive churches, who are pretty indifferent to evangelism, are squishy when it comes to sin, judgment, and hell. That connection isn’t a coincidence.

My point is this, while I will, to my dying day, resist reducing the gospel to fire insurance, I am legitimately concerned about the lack of passion and urgency I find in progressive and liberal Christian spaces when it comes to evangelism. There’s a real problem here, and it’s one of the reasons I describe myself as “post-progressive.”

In short, the issue, to my eye, concerns our experience of eschatological urgency and pressure. That urgency and pressure does seem to be lacking in progressive, liberal spaces. And it is a sharp disjoint with Scripture, both with Jesus and Paul. 

Consequently, I think there’s something here we need to explore.

Today is the publication day for The Book of Love: A Better Way to Read the Bible.

As you can tell from the title, the book is my attempt to show how we can read the Bible—Genesis to Revelation—as a "book of love."

In the Introduction—entitled "The Sermon"—I tell the story of a sermon I preached in college that, in many ways, was the start of my spiritual wanderings. The opening lines of the book:

Some days change your life. One of those days, in my life, was the day I faced a long line of very angry people.

I was at church and had preached the sermon that Sunday morning. Immediately, at the conclusion of the service, people jumped out of the pews to meet me as I came off the stage. Open Bibles in hand, each person had book, chapter, and verse ready to rebuke and correct me. I was a college student, after all. Young and impressionable. This was an opportunity to correct my errors before I became a heretic.

After the Introduction I have thee chapters in a section entitled "Daring to Trust." Before we can get to reading the Bible as a book of love, we have to deal with some preliminary issues. First, you have to recognize your hermeneutical (interpretive) commitments and assumptions. Readers of Scripture often like to imagine they are seeing "literal," "plain," and "clear" readings of the Bible. But as I point out, there is no single literal reading of the Bible. There are, in truth, many literal readings of the Bible—Biblical literalisms—and they don't agree with each other. And if that's so, you have to face the fact that literal readings of the Bible are, at root, interpretive. You can't avoid hermeneutics. I cover all this in the chapter "Don't Be An Ostrich."

After hermeneutics, I turn to attachment theory in the chapter "You Can't Read the Bible Scared." In my estimation, this issue—our attachment to God—is the real issue rumbling underneath our debates about Scripture. People cannot explore Scripture with an open heart and mind if they are fearful that God is going to damn them should they make a mistake.

The final preliminary chapter is "God Is Better." Simply put, your view of God determines your view of the Bible. So I push us to imagine God's love as being infinitely better than we can imagine and insist upon reading the whole of Scripture in light of that vision, and to never let a reading of the Bible fall short of that beauty and grace.

After the introductory chapters, we move into the Bible. The first section covers the Hebrew Scriptures. I then turn toward the Gospels. And we end with Acts–Revelation.

What should you expect in these chapters? Nothing predictable! This isn't a book that will fit comfortably in our culture wars. Here's what I say in the Introduction:

Our problem is that we read the Bible from within our echo chambers. We are no longer surprised by Scripture. And books about how to read the Bible preach to their choir, sermons for the already converted. We go along with this. Since we already know what we believe, we read authors who confirm what we believe. The Bible becomes tribal, always voting on my side of the culture wars.

What most of us want when we pick up a book about how to read the Bible is cozy confirmation. We’re not interested in critical confrontation. We want authors on our shelves and podcasters in our ears who confirm our settled worldviews, political opinions, beliefs, and values. But when the Bible is always filtered through our beliefs and politics, it loses its holy capacity to surprise and startle us.

So, fair warning. The Bible you and I are going to talk about will unsettle and challenge you. Love refuses to be shoehorned into the box of our preferred politics. Neither progressive nor conservative Christians read the Bible very well. You and I will do something different.

There are chapters in The Book of Love that will unsettle conservative readers of the Bible. And there are chapters that will unsettle progressive readers of the Bible. This is not a good strategy for writing a bestseller! I expect every Goodreads and Amazon review will take a few stars off for the chapters they didn't like. But I am congenitally unable to write in an echo chamber or preach to a choir. So all I can say is that I do hope you find something in the book that will surprise and startle you.

Here are some of the things I talk about in the book: how the debates about Genesis and science are missing the point; how the Bible tells the best story about the problem of evil; how to read the violent stories in the Old Testament; how not to pit the God of the Old Testament against Jesus; how to take the death of Jesus on the cross seriously without that becoming moralistic (the progressive error) or forensic/penal (the conservative error); how best to read the apostle Paul; how to think about Judgment Day and hell; and, lastly, what to do with the book of Revelation.

I don't draw clear lines between readings of the Bible and doctrinal or political positions. I try, rather, to attack some of the knots within the Bible that prevent us from reading it, cover to cover, as a book of love. I try to open up the story of Scripture to let the story breathe. And my hope is that, in the generous spaces the book opens up, bright things might grow. One way to think about the book is that it's not a book about arrivals. It's a book about first steps. A book of beginnings rather than endings.

The book is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop. It's also available as an audiobook.

And here's my ask for you today.

As you know, I don't charge or monetize my online writing. To be clear, I cast no judgment upon those who need such income streams. We got to do what we got to do to pay the electricity bill. But there is a cost to myself and my family, financially, to renounce so aggressively branding, self-promotion, monetization, paywalls, growth, social media presence, celebrity, and reach. Over on Substack I leave tens of thousands of dollars a year on the table. So, if you've ever wanted to support a Christian writer who takes such stands, today is a day where you can express that support. 

And let me be clear about what I want by way of book sales. I don't care to make bestseller lists. But I do want to sell enough books so that when I pitch my next idea to my publisher, they continue to say yes. Simply put: I want to sell enough so that I can keep writing.

And so, it would be much appreciated, to either say "thank you" for my free online writing or to support my future book writing, if you could do a few things for me today, and in the weeks ahead, as The Book of Love makes its way out into the world.

First, you can buy a copy of the book. I hope you love it!

Second, give the book some social media love today. Share on your social media accounts that The Book of Love is now out.

Third, if there is someone in your life who is struggling with the Bible, put this book in their hands. I think it might help.

Fourth, if you like the book, give it a positive review on Goodreads and Amazon.

Fifth, recommend the book to your church, pastor, Bible class, or book club to read.

Sixth, invite me to come speak about the book at your church, university, or organization. 

Anything you can do for The Book of Love today, and in the weeks ahead, would be much appreciated. And while sales are a metric of success for a book, I have my own way of judging success. As you know, there is a spiritual alchemy about books. A particular book finds you at a particular season in your life and magic happens. The words reach out over the waves and you cling to them like a lifeline. And the encounter functions to change your life. 

People share stories like this about the books I have written—how something I wrote changed their life for the better, sometimes years after the book had been published. You write something and throw it into the sea, a message in a bottle. And the words wash up on the shore of a heart, offering companionship, guidance, and hope.

Today I throw another message in a bottle into the sea. 

May it find those who need it.

Godspeed, little book, godspeed.

The reception of my book The Shape of Joy among some theologians is an illustration of why I think Barth and Schleiermacher need to kiss.

First, a confession. The Shape of Joy is an experiment in crypto-evangelism. On the surface, the book looks like just another offering of the self-help, pop psychology variety. Just look at the subtitle: “The Transformative Power of Moving Beyond Yourself.” Goodness.

And almost all of The Shape of Joy is concerned with sharing insights from empirical research in positive psychology in light of our current mental health crisis. But as that research is presented, I start pulling together its major conclusion: We flourish when we live in relation to transcendence. And it’s here, at this point, where the book begins to pivot from psychology to metaphysics.

The point is easily made: Is transcendence real? That is to say, when I encounter a reality larger than and other than my own, is that reality a fiction or a fantasy? Am I still just talking to myself? Is transcendence a mental game I’m playing on myself? If nothing is really “out there” from a materialistic, atheistic perspective, then is “transcendence” just a mind hack and a form of cosmic pretending?

The Shape of Joy follows the arrows of positive psychology to this question about transcendence. And there, on that threshold, it raises the issue of belief. Something “out there” beyond yourself is good for you. Is that “something” real? The Shape of Joy isn’t dogmatic on this point, but it nudges the reader to say yes, that "something" is real, and I will flourish when I live in trusting relation with that "something." This is the shape of joy.

Like I said, an experiment in crypto-evangelism. Start with our mental health crisis to raise a question about the nature of reality. Start with human experience to ask about a reality wholly other than our own. Start with Schleiermacher, end with Barth.

This pathway of reflection makes sense to me. But many theologians of a Barthian mind pit Scripture and Tradition over against human experience. Consequently, when they see a book like The Shape of Joy that begins with human experience, they fear a Trojan horse. Something humanistic this way comes! And Lord knows we wouldn’t want that. God forbid anything human creep into our conversation about God. The horror!

This horror often focuses on messages Barthian theologians perceive as being “therapeutic.” If a sermon or a worship song smacks of being therapeutic, that’s a death knell. Any therapeutic message is deemed far too accommodating, even coddling, of human experience. What human experience needs, rather, is some positivistic, take-your-medicine harshness. Not therapeutic affirmation but disciplinary ultimatums.

As regular readers know, I think this whole debate is confused. I’ve written many words defending the term “therapeutic.” Therapy concerns healing. And God is the Great Physician. What the Barthians are objecting to is affirmation. They think “therapeutic” means affirming the pathological, which would come as a great surprise to medical doctors and psychotherapists alike. All those doctors affirming cancer and psychotherapists affirming suicidal ideation! When we come to rightly understand the therapeutic, then of course God meets and heals our deepest diseases. This is exactly what Augustine was describing when he prayed, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

And if this is so, why wouldn’t a conversation about God begin with the restlessness we find within human experience? Why wouldn’t a conversation about God start with our mental health crisis? Why wouldn't we ask if there is a balm in Gilead? 

Starting a conversation about God with psychology isn’t a Trojan horse. Healing concerns ontology. The Schleiermacherian move is a deeply Augustinian move.

To be sure, we have to push through human experience to get to the question of God. Joy, again, has a shape. Our flourishing points toward a question about metaphysics, a reality wholly other than our own. And that’s why it traces the shape of joy.

"where Jesus appereith the blissid Trinite is understand"

In Chapters 4-9 Julian begins to describe the first of her showings. As she shared in Chapter 1, this first showing was "of His pretious [precious] coroning [crowning] with thornys [thorns]; and therewith was comprehended and specifyed the Trinite [Trinity] with the incarnation..."

Julian begins to unpack this first showing in Chapter 4. She starts with the blood that flowed from the crown of thorns: 

In this sodenly [suddenly] I saw the rede blade trekelyn downe [the red blood trickling down] fro under the garlande hate [hot] and freisly [freshly] and ryth plenteously [right plenteously], as it were in the time of His passion that the garlande of thornys [garland of thorns] was pressid on His blissid hede [pressed on his blessed head].

From there Julian goes on to describe how, in this showing, she beheld the whole of the Trinity in Christ's sufferings:

And in the same sheweing [showing] sodenly [suddenly] the Trinite [Trinity] fullfilled [filled] the herte [heart] most of joy; and so, I understood, it shall be in Hevyn [Heaven] withoute end to all that shall come there. For the Trinite is God, God is the Trinite. The Trinite is our maker and keeper, the Trinite is our everlasting lover, everlasting joy and blisse, be our Lord Jesus Christ; and this was shewed in the first and in all, for where Jesus appereith [appears] the blissid Trinite is understand [understood], as to my sight.

Julian's reflections in the Revelations are very Trinitarian. She will mention the Trinity close to fifty times. Here in Chapter 4 the Trinity is described as our maker, our keeper, our lover, and our everlasting joy and bliss. 

Importantly, Julian keeps the Passion tightly connected to the Trinity. As she puts it, "where Jesus appears the blessed Trinity is understood." Thus, Julian's vision of the Passion resists any division between the Father and the Son. In Christ's sufferings and death there was no divine rupture or intra-Trinitarian conflict. For Julian, the sufferings of Christ reveals the unity of divine love. The Passion is not the Son suffering the wrath of the Father. Rather, the self-giving love of the whole Trinity is made visible in Christ. In the Passion of Jesus, Julian beholds the love of the Trinity drawing near to us. The cross discloses the heart of God as our maker, keeper, and everlasting lover.