Whenever you write a book during the rollout you start to hit upon better and better ways to describe some of its central and animating ideas. Conversation and questions hone the argument.

One of the questions I've been asked to address since the publication of The Book of Love is how progressive readers of Scripture tend to "pick and choose" their way around the more difficult passages in the Bible. This criticism comes from both conservative readers of Scripture and outside critics of Christianity.

Conservative critics of progressive readings like to point out how progressives ignore, or pick around, references to God's wrath and Jesus' death saving us from that wrath. Along with a progressive reluctance to talk about how much Jesus speaks of hell and that place of "outer darkness" where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Skeptics of Christianity like to point out how progressives pick around what they deem to be the more regressive parts of the Bible, from gender roles to slavery to the genocidal texts of the Old Testament.

Given these criticisms, how to respond?

The approach I take in The Book of Love is to point to how the Bible criticizes and deconstructs itself. The questions and concerns we have about the Bible? The Bible is aware. The Bible always beats us to the punch.

The trouble here is how progressive readers of Scripture really do "pick and choose" their way around the Bible. This is a legitimate criticism. I think a "better way to read the Bible," the subtitle of my book, is to stop doing this and to let the story breathe.

Here's how I've started describing all this since the publication of The Book of Love.

Consider how we, early in our school years, first hear the stories of America. Think of how we are taught about the first Thanksgiving, the pilgrims and Indians coming together in harmony and peace. Or how we think of the Western pioneers. The stories tell a very simple and black and white story, a story where we are the Good Guys. But as the story develops, those early narratives become troubled. We learn about the slave trade. We learn about the Trail of Tears. We learn that the Southern states seceded and fought a civil war to defend the institution of slavery. We learn about Wounded Knee. We learn that women couldn't vote until 1920. We learn about Vietnam. The story grows morally grey. Worse, we come to see that our nation was the Bad Guy in many instances. As the story of America is allowed to breathe, things grow complicated and more complex.

The same goes for the Bible. We read the book of Joshua and think, "This is the whole story of God." No it isn't! That's like saying that the elementary story of the first Thanksgiving is the whole story of colonial and indigenous relations in North America. We're failing to let the story grow and breathe. For example, I show in The Book of Love how the story of Jonah has a lot to say about how God viewed the nations, and the enemies of Israel especially. The Bible itself criticizes the book of Joshua. The same way Job criticizes the Torah. And as I point out in The Book of Love, the criticisms the Bible makes of itself radically challenges the moral vision and capacities of Scripture's fiercest critics. When it comes to an audacious vision of love, you cannot get more extreme than the Bible. You just have to let the story breathe.

The American story provides another analogy of this. At the founding of the nation we confessed in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." As we know, that moral ideal was not a reality at the founding. But the implications of the moral aspiration expressed at the founding was a profound irritant and catalyst for change, nudging the nation forward. Did "all men are created equal" mean enslaved Black men? Did "all men were created equal" mean women? As the story unfolded, an unrealized moral ideal leavened the moral consciousness of the nation and unleashed emancipatory capacities.

The same thing happens in the Bible. In the Torah God is described as "merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." As we see in the stories that follow, it's an unrealized ideal. But the confession does its slow work. It shows up in the book of Jonah as he looks upon an illicit and scandalous grace. God forgives the enemies of Israel because God is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The implications of Israel's confession work their way toward the inexorable, audacious outcome. Which culminates in the vision we behold in Jesus of Nazareth. As it says at the start of the book of Hebrews: "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being."

You don't need to pick and choose your way around the Bible.

Just let the story breathe.

I recently read Gavin Ortlund’s book What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church.

If you are “very online,” you likely know that Protestantism tends to be a punching bag for Catholic and Orthodox apologists, many of whom are recent (and toxic) converts. Much of the theological discourse surrounding Protestantism has laid the blame for all sorts of modern ailments at the feet of the Reformation, from secularism to liberalism to relativism. I’ve participated in this discourse. For example, following the work of Charles Taylor, in Hunting Magic Eels I describe how Protestantism is implicated in our cultural turn toward disenchantment.

As Gavin describes in his book, his online work has slowly evolved into his becoming an online apologist for the Protestant tradition. You can follow his work at Truth Unites. I highly recommend Gavin’s channel for thoughtful and rich Protestant content and perspectives.

Gavin’s book What It Means to Be Protestant is an apology for Protestantism. And here was my biggest takeaway from his book.

What does it mean to be Protestant? Gavin puts a lot of weight on the Reformation call semper reformanda, which means “always reforming.” Crucial to this view is an embrace of human fallibility, that both church and tradition can wander off from the heart of the gospel. This is less about heresy than what Gavin calls gospel “accretions,” doctrinal barnacles that, over time, come to cling to the hull of faith. The two case studies Gavin provides are the assumption of Mary into heaven and the veneration of icons, the former aimed at Catholicism and the latter aimed at Orthodoxy.

Setting aside the debates around these two case studies, Gavin’s strongest point, in my view, is directed toward claims of magisterial “infallibility.” Infallible judgments cannot be fallible, by definition, which limits the ability of the church to recognize error and course-correct. Traditions committed to infallibility must hobble on, unchanging, through time, even after a wrong turn. Which is why Gavin’s use of “accretion” is apt. Errors adhere, and they can’t be shed.

Protestantism, by contrast, has the ability to recognize error and course-correct. True, Protestantism faces enormous challenges in light of its radical malleability. The fallibility of Protestantism is both a feature and a bug, its superpower and its kryptonite. Still, this capacity for correction within Protestantism, its call of semper reformanda, is the source of its great appeal for many as the hope of the church and witness to the gospel. 

Catholic and Orthodox apologists, of course, will disagree and have their own, very strong and very good, counter-arguments. Still, I find Gavin's observation that Protestantism is (1) able to admit error and (2) change in response to that error—a vision of a fallible church—something very much worth pondering. I've never really put it this way before, but one of the main reasons I've remained Protestant is that, when I look at church history, I see errors galore, both doctrinal and ethical. The church, as a human institution, is radically prone to error. And while it is true that a magisterial tradition can help prevent future error, it forecloses any consideration of past error. And that asymmetry, the inability to reform, creates congenital vulnerabilities and incapacities. 

As many people know, for the first thousand years of church history the dominant soteriological framework was Christus Victor. To be sure, forensic and substitutionary perspectives regarding atonement were always present, so the shift was one of emphasis. Still, what caused this shift?

Gustaf Aulén, in his seminal work, argued that Christus Victor depended upon a metaphysical imagination that modern Western theology increasingly rejected. That metaphysical worldview presupposed a world populated by real spiritual powers and a dramatic cosmic conflict in which the devil plays an active role in salvation history. Aulén describes how this was received in modern theology:

[Modern theologians] inclined to be critical of the forms in which the patristic teaching had usually expressed itself. They disliked intensely the ‘mythological’ language of the early church about Christ’s redemptive work, and the realistic, often undeniably grotesque imagery, in which the victory of Christ over the devil, or the deception of the devil, was depicted in lurid colours. Thus the whole dramatic view was branded as ‘mythological.’ The matter was settled. The patristic teaching was of inferior value, and could be summarily relegated to the nursery or the lumber-room of theology.

What is being described here is a loss of a metaphysical imagination. The Christus Victor vision is dismissed as “mythological” because the enchanted world it assumed was no longer tenable. And so, we pivoted to atonement after enchantment.

Atonement after enchantment would need to be less metaphysically freighted. Especially in response to the Protestant Reformation. Western theology gravitated toward accounts of salvation that could be framed without an enchanted cosmology. Salvation began to be described in the categories that remained viable: legal, forensic, and consequential frameworks. Penal substitutionary atonement became the most well-known and infamous expression of this broader shift away from the enchanted world of Christus Victor 

In short, the movement from Christus Victor to forensic visions of atonement was less a theological evolution than a symptom of a metaphysical loss. Forensic views of the atonement proclaimed a gospel for a disenchanted world. 

Atonement after enchantment.

"Herewith is the fend overcome."

In Chapter 13 of Julian's Revelations we reach her fifth showing, Satan overcome by the blood of Christ. 

Julian calls Satan "the Fiend," and due to the blood of Christ she hears God declare: "Herewith is the fend overcome." Herewith, the Fiend is overcome. 

And while the Fiend continues to show malice toward God and His works, God is unmoved and scornful toward Satan, a scorn we should imitate. As Julian says "Also I saw our Lord scorne his malice and nowten his onmigte, and He wil that we doe so." Translation: "Also, I saw our Lord scorn [the Fiend's] malice and set at nought his powerlessness. Which He wills that we also should do."

Witnessing the Lord's scorn and the Fiend's powerlessness, Julian begins to laugh, which causes those around her to laugh: "For this sigte I lauhyd migtily, and that made hem to lauhyn that were about me..." Translation: "For at this sight I laughed mightily, and made those around me laugh..." 

This is a joy prompted by seeing the Devil defeated: "we may lauhyn in comforting of ourselfe and joying in God, for the devil is overcome." Translation: "We may laugh to comfort ourselves and rejoice in God, for the devil is overcome."

Thus, the showing concludes with three emotions: Seriousness over Christ's passion, scorn for the Fiend, and laughter at the Fiend's defeat. As Julian writes:

"I se three things, game, scorne, and ameste; I se game that the fend is overcome. I se scome that God scomith him and he shal be scomyd. And I se ameste that he is overcome be the blissfull passion and deth of our Lord Jesus Criste; that was done in ful amest and with sad travelle." 

Translation:

"I saw three things: Joy, scorn, and seriousness. I saw joy that the Fiend is overcome. I saw scorn in that God scorns him and that he shall be scorned. And I saw seriousness in that he is overcome by the blissful passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was done in full earnestness and with sad travail."

What I'd like to draw attention to in this the fifth showing—the Fiend is overcome—is something which connects with the fourth showing: the Christus Victor themes. Recall in the prior chapter how Julian describes the blood of Christ descending into hell and bursting the bonds of the captives. This vision is a bit different from the traditional depiction of the Harrowing of Hell, Christ's bodily decent into hell. Julian, rather, sees the blood drip into hell, which breaks the chains of the captives. And here in Chapter 13 Julian describes how, through the passion, the Fiend is overcome. 

Simply put, we tend to view the blood and passion of Jesus, almost exclusively, through a penal and forensic framing. But that need not be the exclusive lens. The blood and the passion of Jesus can be viewed in terms of Christus Victor, as the defeat of enslaving spiritual powers.

For, as Julian says, it is through the dearworthy blood of Jesus that the Fiend is overcome.

I was visiting with one of our majors yesterday, and the conversation turned toward Christology and Jesus' agony in the garden. How are we to make sense of what is happening in that moment when Jesus prays to the Father, "Not my will, but yours"? If Jesus was fully God, was the will of the Son, as the Second Person of the Trinity, opposed to or in conflict with the will of the Father? According to creedal orthodoxy, such a conflict would be impossible.

And if this seems to be an esoteric conversation, it isn't. If the will of the Son and the Father are separated and in conflict, then the Father is inflicting something upon the unwilling Son. Given the problems with such a view, a properly Trinitarian perspective upon the crucifixion of Jesus is that there is no division between the Son and the Father. They are One.

Still, how do we resolve the narrative of Gethsemane, where we read of Jesus experiencing an agony of soul and a struggle of the will, with Trinitarian dogma? What is going on with Jesus' dual identity as both human and God?

The Trinitarian and Christological formulations that came to define "orthodoxy" were worked out across various church councils. Two of the most significant were Nicaea (325 AD) and Chalcedon (451 AD), where foundational Trinitarian and Christological dogmas were settled upon. What is interesting about these formulations is how the dogmatic consensus resisted simplification. At the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity sits a paradox: How can One be Three? And at the heart of Christology sits another paradox: How can Christ be both fully human and fully divine?

Christian dogma sets a fence around these twin mysteries and says to human reason, "You shall not pass!" Human reason, however, is not so easily deflected. Inquiring minds are going to press. And what the mind tends to press for is simplicity, to collapse the paradox and dispel the mystery. Consequently, heresy tends toward a brute literalism and crude simplicity. The mind finds these "answers" to be comforting. Thus, heresy, as the refusal of mystery, has a perennial attractiveness to black-and-white, concrete theological minds. Here's the way Rowan Williams has put it: the goal of the creeds was to make "it harder to talk about God." Heresy was, and has been, a way to make God available to the human mind. To make talking about God easier. But wherever we see this thirst for literalism shove aside mystery, theological reflection is soon to go off the rails.

The epigraph of my book The Authenticity of Faith, from which the title of the book comes, is a quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel: 

It has long been known that need and desire play a part in the shaping of beliefs. But is it true, as modern psychology often claims, that our religious beliefs are nothing but attempts to satisfy subconscious wishes? That the conception of God is merely a projection of self-seeking emotions, an objectification of subjective needs, the self in disguise? Indeed, the tendency to question the genuineness of man’s concerns about God is a challenge no less serious than the tendency to question the existence of God. We are in greater need of a proof for the authenticity of faith than of a proof for the existence of God.

I use Heschel's quote to describe what I call in the book a "new apologetic," what could be described as "the Freudian turn" in modern apologetics. 

What do I mean by "the Freudian turn," and how does this turn change the shape of Christian apologetics?

In Freud's account of religious belief in The Future of an Illusion faith is described as an existential defense mechanism. As Freud put it, "the effect of religious consolations may be likened to that of a narcotic," a pain-numbing and pleasure-giving drug. 

As Heschel points out, this changes the conversation. If religious beliefs "are nothing but attempts to satisfy subconscious wishes," then we need a different sort of apologetical argument. Where traditional apologetics focused upon "proof for the existence of God," today we need, as Heschel puts it, "proof for the authenticity of faith." Such a proof would speak to the motivations of belief itself, with specific attention to unconscious and neurotic motivations.

Here's how I describe the Freudian turn to my students. Where traditional apologetics focuses upon the reasonableness of Christianity Freud turned to question the reasonableness of Christians.  

The point being, maybe there are good arguments for the existence of God, and maybe there are not. But this wouldn't matter to Christians. For Christians are going to be believe no matter what. Facing the evidences for God's existence, or lack thereof, Christians go in with a ton of motivated reasoning (reasoning from a conviction rather than toward a conviction) and confirmation bias. More simply stated, traditional apologetics exists for the already converted.

Now, a common retort here is, true, I might believe in God for defensive, neurotic reasons. Belief may be protecting me from existential dread. But even if that is true, it does not follow that the belief is false. The psychological origin of a belief is distinct from its truth or justification. Still, the Freudian turn does raise a serious question about if you, as a believing Christian, can be trusted to evaluate evidence and argument in an unbiased way. And in the face of those concerns, you're effectively barred from giving evidence in your own defense. The upshot is that the believer is treated as epistemically compromised in a way that makes their own testimony, especially about their underlying motivations, inadmissible as evidence.

Which lands us back with Heschel's ask: We are in greater need of a proof for the authenticity of faith than of a proof for the existence of God.

Now, when I wrote The Authenticity of Faith in 2012 we were coming out of peak New Atheism. So the question posed by Heschel was timely. But today, I think the question has morphed.

Specifically, while it seems that the New Atheism moment has passed, I do think we're witnessing a lot of anxiety and defensiveness among many Christians. Religion is less culturally stigmatized, but the faith of many Christians is marked by a great deal of out-group hostility. A classic sign of neurotic defensiveness. Consequently, Heschel's ask remains pressing. Here a proof for the authenticity of faith would show up in a faith that displayed non-anxiousness, humility, fallibility, kindness, hospitality, joy, and generosity. These fruits and virtues are largely missing in culture-war Christianity, and it suggests to me that Freud's diagnosis continues to hit a target.

The issue today, therefore, is no longer simply whether Christians believe for defensive reasons, but how that defensiveness is expressed in the posture of belief itself. A faith driven by existential and neurotic anxiety is brittle and oppositional. It is a Christianity that requires enemies. It is a faith that polices boundaries. It is a mode of belief that cannot risk doubt. Consequently, the question of authenticity moves from unconscious motivations to visible social fruits. The test is less about belief itself than the sort of person being produced by those beliefs. For when belief manifests less as peace and more as hostility, less as hospitality and more as fear, then Freud's suspicion returns and demands to be taken seriously.

I've started reading Jordan Hillebert book Henri de Lubac and the Drama of Human Existence. As I've written about before, de Lubac's work on the relationship between nature and grace has been important for many of my reflections, specifically his contention that humans have a natural desire for a supernatural end.

What struck me in Hillebert's introduction to the book was how similar de Lubac's project was to mine in The Shape of Joy.

As Augustine famously put it, our hearts are restless until they rest in God. According to de Lubac, this restlessness is due to our natural longing for a supernatural end. Nature itself cannot fulfill this desire. Consequently, at the heart of human existence is a chronic thirst and hunger, a persistent dissatisfaction that nothing in this world can satisfy. 

This is, incidentally, C.S. Lewis' famous argument from desire. All natural desires—think of hunger, thirst or sex—point toward toward their natural satisfactions. And yet, there is a desire that cannot be fulfilled by anything in this world. Thus, there is an unfulfilled desire—Lewis called it "Joy"—that points beyond nature and toward supernature.

Noting this in de Lubac's work, Hillebert argues that there is a organic connection between theology and apologetics. This is where the connection with The Shape of Joy shows up. Specifically, theology points to and explains the origins of our inner restlessness. And our experience of this restlessness, acutely and chronically, corroborates the theological account. Faith aligns with felt human experience. Theology is its own apologetics.

Here is Hillebert:

Human being is teleologically ordered to an end that infinitely surpasses the powers of nature to attain. Humanity’s essential restlessness is the ontological sign of this disproportion between human nature and humanity’s vocation. As I will argue throughout, this insufficiency of human nature and the inquietude it engenders leads de Lubac to insist on the necessary compenetration of theology and apologetics—on, that is, the immanently compelling character of the church’s dogma. The “proof ” of Christian revelation is not something external to it. Revelation’s truthfulness is guaranteed by its own content, by what Erich Przywara describes as “the internal coherence of the vision of the world proposed by faith.” A hermeneutics of human existence operating under the impulse of this compenetration of theology and apologetics will thus seek to demonstrate the extent to which human existence is ultimately unintelligible in abstraction from the revelation of humanity’s supernatural vocation. The efforts of “pure reason” to secure the meaning of human existence terminate at the acknowledgment of reason’s own insufficiency. Only the revelation of God reveals us to ourselves.

This is how The Shape of Joy functions as Christian apologetics. The Shape of Joy uses the research of positive psychology to show how human flourishing is experienced through a relation with transcendence. As de Lubac would put it, positive psychology empirically documents our natural desire for a supernatural end. Or, as C.S. Lewis would put it, the psychological research describes how our joy comes from something found beyond (transcendence literally means "to go beyond") the natural world. 

Longtime readers will know that I have a particular devotion to Thérèse of Lisieux. Encountering Thérèse's Little Way was a decisive moment in my spiritual journey. 

Many describe the Little Way as a practice of humility, but I disagree. In Stranger God I illustrate how the Little Way is a practice of love. 

A key reason why I describe the Little Way as a practice of love comes from the mystical experience and insight that Thérèse describes in her memoir Story of a Soul. This experience is the origin story of the Little Way.

Thérèse's experience was prompted by a crisis of vocation. Thérèse had felt called to something heroic. She wanted, and had expected, to do great things for God. As she shared with Jesus: 

I feel within me other vocations. I feel the vocation of the WARRIOR, THE PRIEST, THE APOSTLE, THE DOCTOR, THE MARTYR. Finally, I feel the need and the desire of carrying out the most heroic deeds for You.

Thérèse wanted, "in spite of my littleness," to "enlighten souls as did the Prophets and the Doctors." To, like the apostles, "travel the whole earth to preach Your name," to "preach the Gospel on all the five continents simultaneously and even to the remote isles." She says, "I will be a missionary, not for a few years only, but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages." She wants to be a martyr, to give everything to Jesus: "I would shed my blood for You even to the very last drop." She dreams of being like her fellow countrywoman Joan of Arc.

And yet, there she was, a twenty-three year-old cloistered nun, and by her own account someone of limited talents and abilities. Many of us, I expect, can identify with Thérèse's struggle. We have (or once had) heroic dreams for our spiritual lives. But most of us live quiet lives among friends, family, and co-workers. We have a mortgage. And the smallness and mundane nature of our lives can make us wonder, as Thérèse wondered, is "God not asking something more of me than my poor little action and desires. Is He content with me?" She cries out again in despair:

O my Jesus! what is your answer to all my follies? Is there a soul more little, more powerless than mine?

Thérèse receives her answer while reading 1 Corinthians 12, Paul's famous description of the Body of Christ and the various gifts of each part:

I read there, in the first of these chapters, that all cannot be apostles, prophets, doctors, etc., that the Church is composed of different members, and that the eye cannot be the hand at one and the same time. The answer was clear, but it did not fulfill my desires and gave me no peace.

Why? Because she still didn't know what her vocation was. Was she an eye, a hand, an ear, a foot? What part of the body was she?

She read on into Chapter 13:

Without becoming discouraged, I continued my reading, and this sentence consoled me: "Yet strive after THE BETTER GIFTS, and I point out to you a yet more excellent way." And the Apostle explains how all the most PERFECT gifts are nothing without LOVE. That Charity is the EXCELLENT WAY that leads most surely to God.

At last, she had found her vocation. The key to the Little Way. What part of the body would she be? She would be the heart. This is the mystical vision that animates the practice of the Little Way. Becoming love. Thérèse describing her breakthrough:

I finally had rest...Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it, and so I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart is BURNING WITH LOVE. I understood that it was Love alone that made the Church's members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS, THAT LOVE WAS EVERYTHING, THAT IT EMBRACED ALL TIMES AND PLACES....IN A WORD, THAT IT WAS ETERNAL!

Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love...my vocation, at last I have found it....MY VOCATION IS LOVE!

Yes, I found my place in the Church...I shall be Love. Thus I shall be everything...

For my money, this passage is the crown jewel of the Christian contemplative tradition. I find it more powerful and profound than anything I've read, from St. John of the Cross to St. Francis of Assisi to Julian or Norwich. And this conclusion — "I shall be love" — is why the Little Way as a practice of love. As I describe in Stranger God, the Little Way is becoming love in our day to day existence with others, in all its smallness and routine. 

That is the mystical heart of the Little Way.

I shall be love, and in becoming love I shall be everything.

"His dearworthy blood descended down into Hell and broke the bonds"

Through eleven chapters Julian has shared three of her showings: The crown of thorns (Chapters 4-9), the discolored face of Jesus (Chapter 10), and God existing in all things (Chapter 11). 

In Chapter 12 Julian reflects upon her fourth showing, the blood from Christ's scourging: 

"And after this I saw, beholding the body plentiously bleding in seming of the scorgyng, as thus: The faire skynne was brokyn ful depe into the tender flesh with sharpe smyting al about the sweete body. So plenteously the hate blade ran oute that there was neither sene skynne ne wound, but as it were al blade." 

My translation: 

"And after this I saw, beholding the body, plenteous bleeding in the furrows of the scourging. The fair skin was broken very deeply into the tender flesh by sharp blows all about the sweet body. So plenteously the hot blood ran out that neither skin nor wound could be seen, but it was as though all were blood."

One of Julian's reflections about the blood from Christ's scourging jumps out at me:

"The pretious plenty of His dereworthy blade desendith downe into Helle and braste her bands and deliveryd al that were there which longyd to the curte of Hevyn." 

My translation: 

"The precious quantity of His dearworthy blood descended down into Hell and broke the bonds and delivered everyone there who belonged to the Court of Heaven."

In some iconographic traditions, the blood of Christ dripping from the cross is depicted as flowing through a crack in the earth into hell. For example, note the dark hole at the foot of the cross with the skull and bones: 

It's an image Julian beholds in her showings: the blood of Christ flowing down into hell, breaking the bonds of the captives and setting them free.

"Judas, Peter" by Lucy Shaw

Because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver, and eating
body and blood, and asking
(guilty) is it I, and hearing
him say yes,
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves.

But if we find grace
to cry and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break out hearts,
he will be there
to ask us each, again,
do you love me?

from A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation

In The Book of Love I describe how the cross is a theophany, marking no change in the life of God but a revelation of how God has always and eternally felt about us. At the heart of this revelation is a bivalent simultaneity, the cross as judgment upon sin and expression of divine embrace. 

Let me express it this way: The cross is both a Stop and a Go at the same time.

The Stop

In the Infancy Narratives, Jesus is described as a contradiction, “destined…to be a sign that will be opposed” (Luke 2:34). That contradiction comes fully into view on the cross. At the cross, human sin is exposed in all its dismaying grievousness.

The cross stands within history and shouts a cosmic “Stop!” The cross stands as a sign of judgment.

This judgment is not an emotional agitation within the heart of God, nor a divine mood swing. This judgment is a revelation, an apocalypse. As the Gospel of John puts it, “this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light” (John 3:19). Peter, in the book of Acts, describes it plainly: “this Jesus…you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). The cross exposes human depravity and wickedness.

As God’s decisive “Stop,” the cross interrupts our attempts to justify ourselves. As Paul writes, “every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world held accountable to God” (Romans 3:19).

As the crisis of humanity, the cross demands metanoia. “Repent therefore, and turn back,” Peter proclaims, “that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19). Without this turning, you cannot pass. The rebellious and recalcitrant will remain frozen, in judgment, at the foot of the cross.

The Go

And yet, at the very same moment, the cross speaks another word.

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Even more starkly, “while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10).

At the cross we are named and exposed as God’s enemy. And at the very same time, declared as reconciled with God. The simultaneity here is crucial. The cross does not mark the moment God becomes reconciled to us. The cross reveals that God has already made peace.

The “Go” of the cross, our welcome to draw near, is the unveiling of God’s eternal posture of love toward us: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). The “Go” of the cross is the news that God has made peace. Stated ever more strongly: “He himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14).

Facing this peace, we again arrive at metanoia. Any remaining movement is ours, to be reconciled to the God who is already reconciled to us: “we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

The Imbalance

Distortions happen when the Stop and Go are separated.

Stop without Go creates an experience haunted by judgment. The cross becomes a symbol of condemnation, and the Christian life collapses into anxiety, guilt, and fear. The gospel message becomes a “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon. Judgment overshadows grace.

Go without Stop is also problematic. When the cross is severed from judgment, grace becomes sentimental, therapeutic, and affirmational. Sin is minimized, repentance rendered unnecessary, and transformation considered optional. Grace becomes a permission slip for transgression. What remains is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace: “grace without discipleship…grace without the cross.”

Again, what is critical here is the simultaneity of the Stop and the Go of the cross. The cross is a Stop and a Go at the same time. As a theophany, the cross reveals a single unified reality: the God who opposes sin is the same God who has already forgiven us. We do not move from one to the other. We encounter both at once.

In the cross, we are not merely provided a moral lesson about love (the progressive take) or a mechanism of salvation (the conservative take). What we witness a disclosure of God’s very being. The simultaneity of Stop and Go is a revelation of who God eternally is. What we experience as judgment and mercy are, in God, a single, unified life.

The cross, then, is the impingement of that divine life upon human consciousness.

This impingement comes to us as both crisis and embrace. As both dismay and relief. The cross is the exposure of our sin, and the simultaneous announcement of our pardon.

And to repeat the point, what this means is that we witness no change in the heart of God at the cross. We tend to imagine that the Stop turns to Go at the cross, that something changes in God. That wrath is satisfied and judgment completed. But the Stop and Go are not related to each other in a temporal sequence. The cross does not mark a moment where judgment gives way to mercy. The cross does not mark a transition in the life of God. The cross unveils the eternal simultaneity of God’s holiness and love.

And so, the cross stands within history as both judgment and grace. Stop. Go. Not one after the other, but both at once. The cross is the theophany of how we stand in relation to the life of God. And to encounter the cross is to face the truth of that relation. To stand, simultaneously, both condemned and forgiven.

And Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in the superiority of their tradition and regarded other Christians with contempt:

"Two men went up to pray. One was a tradition-maxxer, the other a non-denominational Protestant.

The tradition-maxxer, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other Christians—non-denominational, seeker-sensitive, historically untethered, content with praise bands and sermon series, and beholden to moralistic therapeutic deism. I belong to the ancient Church. I keep the fasts. I venerate the saints. I read the Fathers. I attend the long liturgies. I submit to holy tradition. I have escaped the shallowness of modern Christianity.'

But the non-denominational Protestant, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."

On Substack Notes I coined a term: tradition-maxxing.

I came up with the term after reading the viral essay I've Been Orthodox for Over Five Years. How Am I Feeling Now?, in which the author, Edwin Robinson, shares some of the desolation following his conversion to Orthodoxy. Many of us have been tracking the broader discourse about young men gravitating toward Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. And for my own part, I've written about some of the toxicity displayed by many of these converts. A good deal of this—the conversions, the online vituperativeness, and the desolations described by Robinson—is due to tradition-maxxing: the neurotic search for the oldest, thickest, most authoritative, and most demanding Christian tradition available.

If you spend much time online, you've probably encountered the suffix “-maxxing.” “Maxxing” emerged from internet culture to describe the relentless optimization of some aspect of your life. There is gym-maxxing, looks-maxxing, productivity-maxxing, finance-maxxing—all expressing the conviction that with enough effort, discipline, and the right strategy, you can maximize your performance in a particular domain.

And when it comes to Christianity, tradition becomes another thing to maxx. There is always another Church Father to read, another saint to venerate, another fasting rule to adopt, or another vigil to observe. The theology can always be deepened, the ascetical practices made more rigorous and severe, and the apologetical posture sharpened and made more combative. And most importantly, there is a more “authentic” and authoritative tradition to convert to and join. Everything in the tradition—theology, authority, asceticism—can be maxxed.

And yet, as I read Robinson’s essay, and after years of witnessing tradition-maxxing, we are starting to see some of its fruits. To be clear, there are many Protestants who have converted to Orthodoxy and Catholicism who have been richly blessed and find themselves joyful and at rest. Such converts are not tradition-maxxers.

The tradition-maxxers are those for whom religious striving is neurotic and egoistic. The tradition-maxxer experiences the tradition as a mountain to climb. The tradition becomes an arena for distinction, similar in function to educational credentials, fitness, wealth, or cultural sophistication. The tradition becomes an accomplishment that differentiates me from the masses. The religious quest is no longer about formation but status: What does this say about me compared to others?

But such a pursuit will eventually bear its darker fruit. Egoistic superiority. Scornful apologetics. Out-group hostility. Burnout. Or, as Robinson describes, post-conversion desolation. 

But let me also mention a more benign personality trait that can fuel tradition-maxxing, one less about pride than a certain kind of nerdiness or romanticism. This is where I, myself, can be prone to tradition-maxxing. It’s a tendency that explains why so many Tolkien nerds are tempted by tradition-maxxing.

Specifically, some people simply love disappearing into a world, delving into obscure subjects, collecting arcane knowledge, and inhabiting richly textured universes. There is a romantic longing that gets satisfied by esoteric passions. Orthodoxy and Catholicism appeal to this longing, given their rich symbolism, historical depth, intellectual sophistication, and high beauty. Here is a world of saints, councils, liturgies, icons, monastic rules, ancient languages, theological distinctions, feast days, and centuries of accumulated wisdom. It is a world that is endlessly fascinating.

And it's a fascination that powerfully appeals to romantic and fantasy-prone imaginations. Instead of simply going to church you imagine yourself praying the Hours in a monastery, reading the Fathers by candlelight, making pilgrimages, keeping rigorous fasts, and escaping the thinness and superficiality of modern life and low-brow evangelical culture. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with these longings. The desire for God is holy. But the danger with this sort of tradition-maxxing is that the fantasy, a sort of monastic cosplay, becomes more compelling than the reality. The imagined world becomes more captivating than the ordinary church filled with ordinary people. 

After the initial excitement of a conversion fades, or when the fantasy meets reality, one discovers that the “long obedience in the same direction” is stubbornly mundane.  No amount of tradition-maxxing can escape the boring and ordinary nature of Christian faithfulness, the quiet, undramatic work of becoming like Christ alongside a group of broken people. Day after day and year after year. And yet, it's precisely there, in the midst of the ordinary, if we have the eyes to see it, where God encounters us with gifts of peace and joy.

"Se I am God; se I am in al thing"

In Chapter 11 we begin to enter into some of the thornier aspects of Julian's thought. Again, one of the reasons I'm doing this series is because we tend to dip into Julian to grab the parts of her Revelations that suit us. This is especially true among progressive Christians and spiritual-but-not-religious types. I've already pointed out one place where Julian doesn't sit well with many of her contemporary readers: her fixation upon, and absorption with, the gruesome and bloody aspects of Jesus' crucifixion. Here in Chapter 11 of the Revelations we encounter another aspect of Julian's theology that might chafe a bit.

This concerns Julian's view of God's providential ordering and stewarding of the world.

As Julian says right at the start of Chapter 11: "I saw that He is in al things." This is her third showing, after the crown of thorns (Chapters 4-9) and the discolored face of Jesus (Chapter 10). A bit further on she elaborates upon the showing: "For I saw treuly that God doth al thing be it never so litil. And I saw truly that nothing is done be happe, ne be aventure, but al thing be the foreseing wisedome of God." My translation: "For I saw truly that God does all things, be it ever so little. And I saw truly that nothing is done by chance or accident, but all things are by the foreseeing wisdom of God."

You can see, I expect, some Calvinistic clouds rumbling on the horizon. 

Julian sees that God is in all things. More than that, nothing in this world happens by chance or accident. Everything that exists and happens is due to the wisdom and foreknowledge of God. This insight, as we'll come to see, is deeply consoling to Julian. It is the theological foundation of her "al shall be wele" optimism. And yet, as I'm sure you're aware, such a view of providence has a few problems.

For Julian, the most acute problem is the question she raises at the start of Chapter 11, and it is the issue she will wrestle with throughout the rest of her showings. Specifically, right after she confesses that God is in all things, Julian asks: "What is synne?"

If God is in all things, and all things come about through God's providence, then where does sin come from? What is sin? Much of Julian's Revelations will be taken up with trying to answer that question. It's very similar to the struggle Augustine described in his Confessions regarding the origin of evil if God created everything good.

I bring all this up because many of Julian's supposed fans, when it comes to how she approaches the problem of sin and evil in the chapters to come, will balk at her high view of God's providence. As God says to Julian at the end of Chapter 11: 

"Se I am God; se I am in al thing; se I doe al thyng; se I left never myne hands of myn werks, ne never shall withoute ende; se I lede al thing to the end I ordeynd it to fro withoute beginnyng be the same might, wisdam, and love that I made it. How should anything be amysse?" 

My translation: 

"See, I am God. See, I am in all things. See, I do all things. See, I never lift my hand from my works, and never shall without end. See, I lead all things to the end I ordained it from without beginning by the same might, wisdom, and love that I made it. How can anything be amiss?"