What the Natural Theologian Read in 2023
This year, I read two kinds of books: Books from Christians beyond the realm of theology that expand Christian discourse, and books from non-Christians that serve as unintentional natural theology.
For something a bit different this week, I thought I’d write about the books I read this year. I’ve become much more selective in my reading recently. My focus has been much more on writing, both on my Substack and for my dissertation prospectus (which, happily, was approved last Friday). As a result, you’ll notice that the topics of the books I read pretty closely map the topics about which I’ve written this year. (See the table of contents of my new book.)
In particular, I’m most interested in either books from Christians that are beyond the realm of theology but expand the Christian discourse or books from non-Christians that function as unintentional “natural theology,” empirical testing or confirmation of Christian belief. If you’re short a Christmas present, consider ordering one of these books for someone!
Sexual Morality
Still Time to Care: What We Can Learn from the Church’s Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality, Greg Johnson
This last Sunday, we visited Memorial Presbyterian Church, where I had the privilege of speaking with the author of this first book, Pastor Greg Johnson. For some reason, this book has not, I think, reached the audience it needed to - folks who do not know the story of the failure of the Ex-Gay movement. After reading it, it is impossible to think that the “key” is to just make sure that gay Christians don’t use the word “gay” of themselves. After all, as it turns out, that was about the most the Ex-Gay movement was ever able to accomplish, a change in self-conception. Nevertheless, this prosperity gospel of orientation-change persists in the idea that sexual orientation is like gender identity in being something we can self-I.D. into or out of. Instead, as Johnson argues, it’s time to teach gay Christians to accept their sexual orientation and learn to live faithfully in light of the unique cross God has given them to bear.
The Genesis of Gender, Abigail Favale
I wrote about this one at length, but Abigail Favale’s book combined the specifically Christian perspective with philosophy and empirical knowledge in the way I would like to emulate and have tried to do at this Substack and in my recent book.
The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry
This year, Louise Perry has been my secular-sympathizer-with-Christianity to watch, joining my list which has included Roger Scruton, Alain de Botton, and Jordan Peterson. Her case is making inroads into otherwise secular and liberal quarters, especially in light of the way she highlights the sexual revolution’s harm to women, though Perry is also concerned about the plight of men in the post-sexual revolution world. After all, the real beneficiaries of sexual freedom are a small group of high-status but narcissistic men, high in socio-sexuality.
I found sections of the book impossible to read as Perry details the apparently widespread sexual practices of our countrymen. The combinations of violence and sexuality apparently happening in bedrooms across our country are only further evidence that, even be liberal moral standards alone, sexual amorality is deeply mistaken.
The Returns of Love: Letters of a Christian Homosexual, Alex Davidson
While Bethel McGrew and I dispute with each other whether this book anticipates “Side B” discourse, this book provides a perspective from 1970 of a homosexual Christian, seeking to live faithfully while confessing the depth and reality of his condition. It is beautifully written and provides a perspective from outside of the bounds of the contemporary debate.
Detrans, Dr. Az Hakeem
Dr. Az Hakeem is one of several psychologists and sexologists who provide a secular scientific perspective of the recent craze around “gender identity.” When studying plastic surgery, Dr. Hakeem observed sex-reassignment surgeries and took an interest in the psychology of transsexuals, more than two decades ago. He discovered that, even then, there was little interest in providing psychotherapy for aspiring transsexuals. (He became a psychotherapist, finding that most aspiring transsexuals desisted if they had opportunity to work through their underlying psychological issues.) In Detrans, he provides helpful scientific perspective and a number of heart-wrenching anecdotes from detrans and desisting individuals, as well as from parents. This is essential reading for a natural-theological perspective on the “trans issue,” rather than a knee-jerk and insular Christian and/or conservative perspective.
Politics and Evangelicals:
The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism, Matthew Continetti
Continetti writes as a confirmed National Review/Weekly Standard guy and never-Trumper. His book persuaded me of two things: The radical right must be avoided at all costs, and movement conservatism is no longer compelling. This is ironic, as Continetti’s purpose was essentially to push conservatives away from the “new right” that has imbibed Trump’s influence and back toward the three-legged stool of libertarian-ish movement conservatism. The history proved to me that anti-semitism is indeed a perpetual temptation of the right, especially of those who reject mainstream movement conservatism for either a more religious kind of conservatism or a neo-pagan reactionary conservatism.
At the same time, I realized how central economic liberalism was for William F. Buckley and the conservative movement. As a result, it feels like movement conservatism is a Cold War phenomenon, deserving of contemporary critique. Now, we need a political conservatism that is more informed by the social and religious morality of Christianity and the Western tradition, but many of those who have offered this critique have, well, gone off the anti-semitic deep end.
Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, Max Blumenthal
This book was incredibly interesting. From a decade and a half ago, it tells the story of the merger of evangelical Christianity and the Republican party that every Christian conservative needs to know. This is what people are reacting against - and it is not a merger that can be defended in most of its details.
I found the initial chapters interesting for the story of the “gospel patron” behind much of the religious right, the one man who funded the campaign against gay marriage, the Intelligent Design movement, Marvin Olasky’s career, and, single-handedly, Rod Dreher’s salary at The American Conservative. Who? Howard Ahmanson, Jr.
But the rest of the book told the story of the really icky merger of religion and politics that developed during and since the 1980s. Anyone who is a Christian and a conservative needs to consider this history; otherwise, we are doomed to repeat it.
A World after Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right, Matthew Rose
For a long time, I primarily heard critiques of conservatism that were economic in nature, criticizing laissez-faire economics as heartless. Well, what happens when conservatives don’t feature the free market as the central plank in their ideology? Often, bad things.
The radical right is a serious intellectual tradition. The one thinker Rose highlights whom I had read was Oswald Spengler. The Decline of the West offers a Hegelian telling of history which offers an explanation of why nihilistic socialism seems to be the final conclusion of contemporary society. It argues that each civilization has a life-cycle and that Western society had moved into decline in the 20th century. While I don’t know if socio-biological evidence can be mustered on a civilizational scale to prove this, it seems all too plausible. The height of Western cultural output is certainly behind us.
Nevertheless, this was another book that, together with The Right, persuaded me that anti-semitism is a perpetual danger for the right. Before, I had thought that there wasn’t a linear relation on the political right where going “further right” leads to anti-semitism. I’m still not totally persuaded that that is how the right is structured, but I am persuaded that it is a perennial danger or temptation for right-wing thinkers. The radical right is actually secular and neo-pagan, so Christianity serves as some protection against anti-semitism. However, The Right persuaded me that Christian critiques of classical liberalism still tend to put people in a place to accept anti-semitism.
Tyranny Inc., Sohrab Ahmari
In Tyranny, Inc., Sohrab Ahmari explicitly makes the case that classical economic liberalism should not be the core tenet of American conservatism, which is one of the reasons why Matthew Continetti failed to persuade me that it was the only way out of anti-semitism and the radical right. Ahmari argues that free-market absolutism, of the kind that has been very influential since the time of Reagan, has allowed for a great number of injustices to occur. The problem is actually that the contemporary market does not function the way Adam Smith described due to the monopolization of power by a small number of corporations in most sectors, and the employer-employee relationship. The patterns Adam Smith described, where prices are automatically fixed at a just rate by the invisible hand, depends on a kind of equality of bargaining power. In most employer-employee situations, there is a significant inequality that only increases as corporations grow larger. As a result, many American workers are signing their life away, metaphorically, in the job contracts they sign.
In the end, Ahmari argues that something like FDR’s New Deal was just and provided the economic foundation for the socially conservative decade of the 1950s that so many conservatives view positively. This calls for a major rethink of American conservatism, a rethink that is only just beginning.
The Theology of Liberalism, Eric Nelson
This book is more on the academic side but is a unique work of both political philosophy and theology. The book begins with the author’s own discovery of political philosopher John Rawls’ - the greatest proponent of modern political and economic redistributionist liberalism (not libertarianism) - of his bachelor’s thesis at Princeton on the theology of Karl Barth. At the time, Rawls was a Barthian Christian, though he later left his faith behind, becoming the predominant advocate for keeping faith out of the public square. But central to Rawls’ Barthianism was his embrace of a Calvinist soteriology and a critique of merit having any place in salvation. While Rawls left his faith behind, he retained his critique of merit.
In doing so, Rawls departed from the predominant strand of liberal political philosophy (e.g., John Locke) which was theologically Pelagian (or Arminian) as Nelson describes. Contemporary libertarian conservatism, of the kind that critiques people for being on welfare, is deeply Pelagian in its meritocratic certainty that people should only have the resources that they merit by work in the capitalist economy.
Nelson, an ethnic if not a religious Jew (I think he might be), actually argues for the Pelagian foundation for liberalism, which he finds chiefly in John Locke. But I found myself agreeing deeply with Rawls’ critique of merit (which I found also in Michael Sandel and Alain de Botton, as I described in “Conservatives Against Capitalism”). It influenced my take on the same-sex attraction debate, as I see the harsh views of homosexuality channeling the Pelagian meritocratic mentality: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born this way?” (John 9:2)
Evangelical Leadership:
Francis Schaeffer Biographies
While Schaeffer was never a major influence on me specifically, I have come to view him as the model of a kind of independent, comprehensive Christian philosopher-theologian that the church and the world need. The main critique of Schaeffer on that front is that he didn’t do his homework and got a lot of details wrong; I’m trying to get a few more of the details correct.
However, Schaeffer was incredibly effective, especially in the early decades of L’Abri, in creating a Christian vibe that was compelling and welcoming to non-Christians. It is the kind of intellectually open Christianity that I want to emulate. At the same time, I observe the way that Francis Schaeffer’s legacy was colored by his movement toward Republican politics in the last decade of his life. He was instrumental in getting evangelicals concerned about abortion - a huge positive. However, without intending it, his legacy ended up being, in a certain way, that of the religious right (as Republican Gomorrah details). I see a similar pattern in the way that Jordan Peterson, for the first four years of his public ministry - ahem, I mean, “career” - had a politically non-partisan appeal, but his merger with the conservative movement has narrowed his appeal.
Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation, Collin Hansen
Tim Keller has been a lightning-rod for people’s opinions about the Christian approach to culture. I started out the year more on board with the anti-Keller position. I’ve finished the year more on board with Keller’s position. It is striking to read about the extensive background Keller had before launching Redeemer in New York and the way that Westminster Seminary was a hub for urban ministry in the 1980s (which it was not when I attended). Collin Hansen wrote the book as largely about Keller’s spiritual and intellectual formation, and as I am still in that phase of life, I found it very instructive. At the same time, I could see what I thought were wrong turns Keller took. Nevertheless, he emerges as a model. We do not need to ape Keller. Instead, we need to do the same kind of digging and thinking that Keller did for a different decade and time in American culture.
Biological Origins
Darwin Devolves, Michael Behe
I have tried to show in my writing that the “natural theology” I advocate is not narrowly the intellectual arguments for God’s existence that Christian apologists tend to advocate. However, I do agree with many of the intellectual arguments for God’s existence, chiefly, the teleological argument, or the argument from (biological) design. You can read a series of six essays I wrote over the summer arguing (and a seventh in my new book) for what I consider to be the “third-way” view of Old Earth Creationism. (There’s one difference with Keller. Keller was intellectually formed before the Intelligent Design movement. The only middle-way available to him was theistic evolution; for my part, I’m glad Keller wasn’t a six-day creationist. If he had been, we wouldn’t be talking about him.)
Michael Behe’s Darwin Devolves is his latest in his intellectual corpus. Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box was monumental for its biochemical case against the possibility of macro-evolution; it was the lack of biochemical science in Darwin’s time that made Darwinism thinkable. Darwin Devolves was helpful for its acknowledgement of a certain amount of Neo-Darwinian evolution; polar bears evolved from brown bears, for example, for real. But Behe finds the line beyond which Neo-Darwinian evolution cannot go (the biological taxon of the “family”). This is because Neo-Darwinian evolution works by the destruction of genetic information, which is accidentally beneficial in a new environment. You cannot build new biological kinds in this way, only diversify existing ones, within a limited range.
It is because of scientific arguments like Behe’s that I find Christian intellectuals adopting theistic evolution to be highly uncompelling.
In Quest of the Historical Adam, William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig’s book was an interesting one. I drafted a Substack essay about it, but never saw fit to edit and post it. The book is a case study in “natural theology” in my sense, Christian theology that is open to empirical data and information. Craig uses a combination of biblical interpretation and scientific evidence to conclude that there must have been an historical Adam and Eve but that they would have been Homo Heidelbergensis, from 750,000 years ago to 1 million years ago.
There is such erudition in Craig’s argument - and yet, such complete absurdity in his conclusion. I am deeply interested in the project of combining biblical teaching with scientific knowledge and research. However, Craig gets off on the wrong foot by conceding to evangelicals that he should complete his biblical interpretation completely prior to and separate from his scientific study. So, in the first half of the book, he concludes that the Christian is morally/textually obligated to hold that an historical Adam and Eve existed. Strangely, he holds this absolute obligation on the basis of a very slim biblical basis (just Paul’s words), being willing to treat much of the book of Genesis as “mytho-history” (and making the most compelling argument for doing so - six-day creationists, beware).
But in the second half of the book, he concludes that the Adam and Eve we are biblically compelled to believe in were members of the species homo heidelbergensis 750,000 - 1 million years ago. Let me say, whatever Moses meant to be communicating in Genesis 1-3 (or Paul in Romans 5), I can assure you that it was not that.
Christian Life
Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion, Abigail Favale
Favale’s The Genesis of Gender arose out of her experience of being led by her intellectual interests away from the Christian faith but then returning to it as a Catholic. Into the Deep is her compelling conversion story. I found that it really illuminated the relationship between Christian belief and postmodernist and feminist philosophy and critical theory. What began as an attempt to synthesize these perspectives finished as pure feminist postmodernism without a Christian framework. Yet, Favale’s conscience was then pricked to return to her Christian faith in a renewed way as a Catholic and to allow her deeply held moral convictions to be challenged and reshaped.
How to Stay Married, Harrison Scott Key
Harrison Scott Key is a Christian professor at an arts university whose wife had an affair. Today, they’re still happily married. The book is a roller-coaster ride of sexual drama and critique of the American evangelical subculture. It was fun and also challenging to read, for the warning it offers to a Christian husband. (The affair cannot be blamed on the wife alone, by any means.)
Becoming Free Indeed, Jinger Duggar Vuolo
I’ve heard many young evangelicals critique a quasi-fundamentalist upbringing, citing the negative influence of Doug Phillips or Bill Gothard. But I had never actually heard what Bill Gothard said and did. This story, from one of the Duggar girls, really showed me what can go wrong when conservative Christianity is taken to a legalistic extreme. Even apart from Gothard’s many sins, his attempt to provide the correct answer to every life question has helped me not to think that the antidote to antinomian Reformed theology is a hardcore, legalistic Christian philosophy of everything.
Elon Musk
(Elon Musk is a category unto himself.)
Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson
On a totally different note, Isaacson’s bio of Elon Musk showed me how a completely different kind of mind works. While Musk’s recent thoughts have turned political and philosophical, Musk primarily thinks big about taking action in the world. This prompted some of my thoughts in “Three Reasons Evangelicals Are Ineffective.”
Happy reading, and Merry Christmas!
What's that quip about fascism always falling in the United States but landing in Europe? Virtually all actual anti-Semitism in the US today is on the left. Pretty much all the attacks against Jews in NYC are committed by blacks, for example. And the campus left is hardly getting their ideas from Oswald Spengler.
A more interesting point to think about is why evangelicals are overwhelmingly positive towards Jews, but Jews so overwhelmingly negative towards evangelicals (cf: Max Blumenthal).
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/15/americans-feel-more-positive-than-negative-about-jews-mainline-protestants-catholics/