Would you classify abolitionists (in the context of slavery) as antis? If not, then why not? What about pro-lifers ("anti-abortion activists") or prohibitionists?
The article is about a mindset, not an idea or movement. You can oppose something because you support something better, but it becomes toxic when you're only against and never for anything. I'll use your example of abolitionism because it gives a great comparison:
Contrast William Lloyd Garrison with Frederick Douglass. Garrison was a through-and-through Anti. He had no positive vision, he was for nothing, he was simply against slavery, against America, against the Founding, against the Declaration. On the other hand, you have Frederick Douglass, whose anti-slavery activism was a product of a larger vision he had for the advancement of the freedmen. His work had an ultimate goal: a strong and vibrant community, and extending the promises of the Declaration to African-Americans. This is why Garrison hated Douglass so much. Douglass wanted to be more than an Anti, he wanted to do more than hate and tear down. He wanted to build something and slavery was in the way of that. Garrison's way led to Bloody Kansas and the Brown Raids. Douglass's way led to the 13th and 14th Amendments.
This pattern continues itself with W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. Contrast Up From Slavery to some of DuBois's works and you'll see that the latter is struggling with the problem of being merely-anti-segregation and not having a positive vision. It's sad because DuBois has a deep, thoughtful mind and comes so close to real insight, but ultimately can't make that leap to a positive vision. I feel in my readings that he really does want to leap out of negativity and offer some kind of positive vision, but can't quite make it. He's never quite satisfied, rightly so, with communism as a solution to the Race Problem, and ultimately gives up late in life because he's trapped by his attitude of perpetual negation, despite (imo) being the better thinker and writer of the two.
I agree we need to be "more than antis," but we also need to be careful about what we do support. A positive vision of the world is only as good as its alignment with God's vision of humans, history, etc.
For instance, churches through history have followed the world instead of standing for timeless principles, all the way down to basic theological beliefs: Before the Constantinian Synthesis, most churches were premillennial. After the Constantinian Synthesis, most churches were postmillennial. After the fall of Rome, most churches were amillennial. During the heavily progressive age from the 1850's through the end of WWII, most churches were postmillennial--to the point of holding eugenics would help bring about the kingdom of God on the Earth. After the collapse of progressivism in the 1940's, most churches were premillennial. After the invention of the computer in the 1960s, most churches are now postmillennial, all working to create the kingdom of God on Earth through a sort of "soft" or "Christianized" progressivism.
When you see theological swings like this that "just happen to be parallel with social movements," you should surely wonder if we're getting this right. In the modern world we should strongly question whether the Christianized progressivism/postmillennialism most churches are so deeply invested in is really the right thing to believe in.
If we are going to move away from the "anti trap," we need to determine what the Scriptures say and stick to that, rather than using the Scriptures as a "jumping off point" for what we really want to believe.
I think these quick comparison books tend to underplay the strength of each argument, though ... for a deeper look at the premil side specifically, I would suggest --
And always feel free to pm me here if you have questions... I probably don't know all the answers, but I have some good resources I can get into if it's useful.
This is a great point and one of the reasons why I didn't defend any of the people who Shenvi attacked in his essay. I went to grad school with Stephen, which would place me in the same "far-right movement" guilt by association, I suppose, but I got into it more than once with him over these topics.
It's like I said in the last essay that Aaron published - we need to start saying what words like justice, truth, right, freedom, etc. mean within an explicitly Christian context, and giving those words positive meaning for us, rather than trying to pander to the world by playing their word games and trying to convince them that we actually embody their beliefs. What hath Christ to do with Belial? What hath the believer to do with the unbeliever?
A decent enough article. I think Christians should not be reacting at all to erroneous trends in some branches of the faith but simply always trying to find and live authentic Christianity. That is, the objective isn't to be "anti" but to maintain one's center of gravity, not participate in error but not overreact and err in the opposite direction. This goes for politics as well.
And it does seem to be a universal human tendency to be "anti", that is to define oneself as whatever is not the ideology of the "other".
As a part of digging through this article I did some sampling of "The Boniface Option".
Sorry, it's sick and revolting. Christianity is not ugly. I tried hanging on for a while as I read the review of it to genuinely grok the ideas presented but it's just negative and offensive. I guess that proves the thesis here that you can't be just against something, you must be for something.
Please take the time to read Shenvi's article. It's a particularly bad argument and reflects some of the worst tendencies of elite seminarian discourse. He takes a handful of bad actors and admittedly fringe writers and tries to use it to justify a "don't rock the boat" establishmentarianism in the "Beautiful Loser" model of neoconservativism.
You can't claim that an idea is untrue because you don't like its consequences. The question of whether most people rationalize beliefs because those beliefs are personally beneficial to them is a question of fact. If that fact means that productive discourse between the right and left is mostly impossible, that doesn't invalidate the fact. It means that we have to take the fact into account when we plan our future actions.
"This can't be true because it would mean that the post-WWII social consensus is failing and bad times are ahead" has been all too commonly used by people who benefit from the status quo as a way of disqualifying evidence that goes against their interests. Shenvi explicitly states that his objection is not on the basis of truth but "what will this do to the [institutional] Church?" and "there is no ecclesiological solution" to the problems described by critical theory and "In practice, these assumptions make appeals to reason or logic or Scripture nearly impossible..." All of these objections are irrelevant. If the epistemological, political, and psychological claims of critical theory are true (and most of the things he highlights are), we have to deal with it, not bury our heads in the sand.
And as a good philosopher, I can't just stand by and let it go unspoken that a lot of people who make a living as SBC bureaucrats have a lot to lose if Christians begin envisioning an authentic identity for themselves and demanding that those on our payroll conform to the people of the Church instead of the upper-middle class secular culture.
I read the essay, do take a look at it, but I think I'm generally with you on this one. I'm pro-Shenvi. He's a careful thinker and a careful writer and an asset to the church. I don't think any of his public writing has been in bad faith. He's not an institutional man. Mabry's take here is way too negative, and I think he's interpreting Shenvi's comments in an unduly negative light by conflating him with far worse actors and thinkers out there (some of whom actually ARE seminarians, unlike Shenvi, who again seems to be getting conflated with them).
For example:
>Shenvi explicitly states that his objection is not on the basis of truth but "what will this do to the [institutional] Church?" and "there is no ecclesiological solution" to the problems described by critical theory and "In practice, these assumptions make appeals to reason or logic or Scripture nearly impossible..."
I think Shenvi very much addresses the truth value of these claims towards the bottom of this essay and in his previous reviews of Stephen Wolfe's and Iskar's books. Shenvi has never come across to me as a man who doesn't care about truth. I also don't know on what basis Mabry is inserting the word "institutional" there; when Shenvi says "church", I understand him to mean it in the broad sense.
To be clear, while Shenvi makes an OK defense of the phrase "woke right", I still think that terminology is annoying and a bad idea.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that he doesn't care if he's being truthful or not.
I'm saying that his model of truth is wrong. A thing having bad consequences doesn't make it untrue. His attitude is "the consequences of this idea are so bad that it must be untrue," which is a logical fallacy.
But because he addresses the truth value of the ideas he is criticizing, with appeals to both Scripture and observations about the world, I would say the argument he is making is "This is false, and also it's spiritually unhealthy." Actually, in his own words he says, "Woke ideas are false and corrosive to the Christian worldview." I feel like you're focusing on a handful of sentences and not the meat of the writing here.
I also think that when what we're really addressing is an entire worldview and not individual assertions about reality, the spiritual/psychological harmfulness of that worldview is very relevant as to how we should treat it. Any given person's worldview is going to contain a mix of truths, half-truths, and falsehoods. But a worldview can easily be more harmful than another even if it contains more truths and fewer falsehoods, and there's nothing wrong with calling out these harms.
Not immoral or wicked, but absurd and defending the privilege of a group of Evangelical leaders who have failed and are still failing the Church.
I think my point is that these types of essays are not, in fact, measured and thoughtful, but are knee-jerk anti-reform sentiments without any real positive content.
Great and insightful article Dr Mabry...but...I had to say this. "Hotty Toddy...Go Ole miss Rebels " !
Would you classify abolitionists (in the context of slavery) as antis? If not, then why not? What about pro-lifers ("anti-abortion activists") or prohibitionists?
The article is about a mindset, not an idea or movement. You can oppose something because you support something better, but it becomes toxic when you're only against and never for anything. I'll use your example of abolitionism because it gives a great comparison:
Contrast William Lloyd Garrison with Frederick Douglass. Garrison was a through-and-through Anti. He had no positive vision, he was for nothing, he was simply against slavery, against America, against the Founding, against the Declaration. On the other hand, you have Frederick Douglass, whose anti-slavery activism was a product of a larger vision he had for the advancement of the freedmen. His work had an ultimate goal: a strong and vibrant community, and extending the promises of the Declaration to African-Americans. This is why Garrison hated Douglass so much. Douglass wanted to be more than an Anti, he wanted to do more than hate and tear down. He wanted to build something and slavery was in the way of that. Garrison's way led to Bloody Kansas and the Brown Raids. Douglass's way led to the 13th and 14th Amendments.
This pattern continues itself with W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. Contrast Up From Slavery to some of DuBois's works and you'll see that the latter is struggling with the problem of being merely-anti-segregation and not having a positive vision. It's sad because DuBois has a deep, thoughtful mind and comes so close to real insight, but ultimately can't make that leap to a positive vision. I feel in my readings that he really does want to leap out of negativity and offer some kind of positive vision, but can't quite make it. He's never quite satisfied, rightly so, with communism as a solution to the Race Problem, and ultimately gives up late in life because he's trapped by his attitude of perpetual negation, despite (imo) being the better thinker and writer of the two.
I agree we need to be "more than antis," but we also need to be careful about what we do support. A positive vision of the world is only as good as its alignment with God's vision of humans, history, etc.
For instance, churches through history have followed the world instead of standing for timeless principles, all the way down to basic theological beliefs: Before the Constantinian Synthesis, most churches were premillennial. After the Constantinian Synthesis, most churches were postmillennial. After the fall of Rome, most churches were amillennial. During the heavily progressive age from the 1850's through the end of WWII, most churches were postmillennial--to the point of holding eugenics would help bring about the kingdom of God on the Earth. After the collapse of progressivism in the 1940's, most churches were premillennial. After the invention of the computer in the 1960s, most churches are now postmillennial, all working to create the kingdom of God on Earth through a sort of "soft" or "Christianized" progressivism.
When you see theological swings like this that "just happen to be parallel with social movements," you should surely wonder if we're getting this right. In the modern world we should strongly question whether the Christianized progressivism/postmillennialism most churches are so deeply invested in is really the right thing to believe in.
If we are going to move away from the "anti trap," we need to determine what the Scriptures say and stick to that, rather than using the Scriptures as a "jumping off point" for what we really want to believe.
Could you recommend a book that covers detailed information on "Millenialisms"...? Many thanks
Jim
For a short overview --
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/911205.Three_Views_on_the_Millennium_and_Beyond
I think these quick comparison books tend to underplay the strength of each argument, though ... for a deeper look at the premil side specifically, I would suggest --
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26099556-premillennialism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54222203-forsaking-israel
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34450406-he-will-reign-forever
I don't remember where McClain comes down (it's be a lot of years since I read this one), but he's well-respected in the "kingdom of God" space--
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/693766.The_Greatness_of_the_Kingdom
For a historical view of the Constantinian Synthesis --
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1731992.The_Reformers_and_Their_Stepchildren
And always feel free to pm me here if you have questions... I probably don't know all the answers, but I have some good resources I can get into if it's useful.
https://www.amazon.com/Covenantal-Dispensational-Theologies-Continuity-Scripture/dp/1514001128
just found this one ... I have it on order to see how good it is ... it's a lot more recent
This is a great point and one of the reasons why I didn't defend any of the people who Shenvi attacked in his essay. I went to grad school with Stephen, which would place me in the same "far-right movement" guilt by association, I suppose, but I got into it more than once with him over these topics.
It's like I said in the last essay that Aaron published - we need to start saying what words like justice, truth, right, freedom, etc. mean within an explicitly Christian context, and giving those words positive meaning for us, rather than trying to pander to the world by playing their word games and trying to convince them that we actually embody their beliefs. What hath Christ to do with Belial? What hath the believer to do with the unbeliever?
Following up the earlier comment I made, for a superb review of "Boniface Option" read Rod Dreher's piece. Might be paywalled.
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/reviewing-the-boniface-option?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
A decent enough article. I think Christians should not be reacting at all to erroneous trends in some branches of the faith but simply always trying to find and live authentic Christianity. That is, the objective isn't to be "anti" but to maintain one's center of gravity, not participate in error but not overreact and err in the opposite direction. This goes for politics as well.
And it does seem to be a universal human tendency to be "anti", that is to define oneself as whatever is not the ideology of the "other".
As a part of digging through this article I did some sampling of "The Boniface Option".
Sorry, it's sick and revolting. Christianity is not ugly. I tried hanging on for a while as I read the review of it to genuinely grok the ideas presented but it's just negative and offensive. I guess that proves the thesis here that you can't be just against something, you must be for something.
Please take the time to read Shenvi's article. It's a particularly bad argument and reflects some of the worst tendencies of elite seminarian discourse. He takes a handful of bad actors and admittedly fringe writers and tries to use it to justify a "don't rock the boat" establishmentarianism in the "Beautiful Loser" model of neoconservativism.
You can't claim that an idea is untrue because you don't like its consequences. The question of whether most people rationalize beliefs because those beliefs are personally beneficial to them is a question of fact. If that fact means that productive discourse between the right and left is mostly impossible, that doesn't invalidate the fact. It means that we have to take the fact into account when we plan our future actions.
"This can't be true because it would mean that the post-WWII social consensus is failing and bad times are ahead" has been all too commonly used by people who benefit from the status quo as a way of disqualifying evidence that goes against their interests. Shenvi explicitly states that his objection is not on the basis of truth but "what will this do to the [institutional] Church?" and "there is no ecclesiological solution" to the problems described by critical theory and "In practice, these assumptions make appeals to reason or logic or Scripture nearly impossible..." All of these objections are irrelevant. If the epistemological, political, and psychological claims of critical theory are true (and most of the things he highlights are), we have to deal with it, not bury our heads in the sand.
And as a good philosopher, I can't just stand by and let it go unspoken that a lot of people who make a living as SBC bureaucrats have a lot to lose if Christians begin envisioning an authentic identity for themselves and demanding that those on our payroll conform to the people of the Church instead of the upper-middle class secular culture.
I read the essay, do take a look at it, but I think I'm generally with you on this one. I'm pro-Shenvi. He's a careful thinker and a careful writer and an asset to the church. I don't think any of his public writing has been in bad faith. He's not an institutional man. Mabry's take here is way too negative, and I think he's interpreting Shenvi's comments in an unduly negative light by conflating him with far worse actors and thinkers out there (some of whom actually ARE seminarians, unlike Shenvi, who again seems to be getting conflated with them).
For example:
>Shenvi explicitly states that his objection is not on the basis of truth but "what will this do to the [institutional] Church?" and "there is no ecclesiological solution" to the problems described by critical theory and "In practice, these assumptions make appeals to reason or logic or Scripture nearly impossible..."
I think Shenvi very much addresses the truth value of these claims towards the bottom of this essay and in his previous reviews of Stephen Wolfe's and Iskar's books. Shenvi has never come across to me as a man who doesn't care about truth. I also don't know on what basis Mabry is inserting the word "institutional" there; when Shenvi says "church", I understand him to mean it in the broad sense.
To be clear, while Shenvi makes an OK defense of the phrase "woke right", I still think that terminology is annoying and a bad idea.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that he doesn't care if he's being truthful or not.
I'm saying that his model of truth is wrong. A thing having bad consequences doesn't make it untrue. His attitude is "the consequences of this idea are so bad that it must be untrue," which is a logical fallacy.
But because he addresses the truth value of the ideas he is criticizing, with appeals to both Scripture and observations about the world, I would say the argument he is making is "This is false, and also it's spiritually unhealthy." Actually, in his own words he says, "Woke ideas are false and corrosive to the Christian worldview." I feel like you're focusing on a handful of sentences and not the meat of the writing here.
I also think that when what we're really addressing is an entire worldview and not individual assertions about reality, the spiritual/psychological harmfulness of that worldview is very relevant as to how we should treat it. Any given person's worldview is going to contain a mix of truths, half-truths, and falsehoods. But a worldview can easily be more harmful than another even if it contains more truths and fewer falsehoods, and there's nothing wrong with calling out these harms.
Not immoral or wicked, but absurd and defending the privilege of a group of Evangelical leaders who have failed and are still failing the Church.
I think my point is that these types of essays are not, in fact, measured and thoughtful, but are knee-jerk anti-reform sentiments without any real positive content.