Alright, hopefully this is the last thing I write on this Brian Zahnd review. After the review went up, Luke Norsworthy at the “Newsworthy with Norsworthy” podcast asked me if I wanted to come on and chat about it as he was going to talk to Zahnd as well. I heard he was a good dude, so I did. And it turns out, he was good dude. I had a great time with him, which you can listen to here.

He also had Zahnd on, who responded to my review on this episode. Now, with that out, I just wanted to write up two or three clarifying explanations both to some general criticism I have received as well as in response to a couple points on podcast response.

Length and “Pop” theology.

First, on the length of my review. Yes, it was long. Probably a quarter of Zahnd’s book. Some (not Zahnd, but some) have suggested that the response was all out of proportion to a popular level book.

I have to say, first, the subject of Zahnd’s book is related to my research here at school and it’s about things I have already written about at length on this very blog. So, it’s not like I took a week obsessively writing this thing from scratch or something. This really wasn’t a personal animosity thing. Listening to him, I think I’d like to grab a beer and chat music and theology. What’s more, there are people I do actually dislike whom I wouldn’t respond to at length like this. It was really a function of the importance of the issues as well as my personal interest in them.

Second, I don’t think that just because a book is pop-level it doesn’t deserve careful attention or scrutiny. Zahnd may not be an academic theologian writing for an academic audience, but he is a pastor-theologian who has clearly thought about these issues at length and is writing for the Church—for people in both his pews and those of others—which is a role I take seriously. In which case, in many senses it matters not less, but more since it is a work of theology people will actually read.

I think there is often a dismissiveness with which some academics (or academicish bloggers) write off pop-level works as beneath their time or attention, which is not simply arrogant but short-sighted. As Zahnd said, he wrote a book for truck drivers, which is exactly what pastors should be doing. Maybe it’s because I still think of myself as a college pastor who snuck into grad school, but I don’t think that same audience is beneath my attention, and neither is the sort of book that they’ll be reading.

I don’t say that all grad students or professors should be reading and reviewing popular books. Some really do serve the kingdom best by focusing on academic-level works. I do think that more should consider wading into popular debates. We probably need more who consider themselves doctors of the church, not simply professors. Indeed, if some did that more often, I think we might see less of a disconnect between the “theology of the pews” and the “theology of the academy”, which sets up the sort of bad preaching in Evangelical circles which Zahnd’s book is reacting against.  Incidentally, that means we’ll have to be willing to critique our own tribe more in this regard as well.

Finally, I do think it’s important to engage the “best” versions of a certain kind of theology and not just pop-level versions (assuming academic works are able to handle things with greater precision and sensitivity). So the people popular authors quote, not just popular authors. That said, I don’t think the one activity rules out the other. For instance, reviewing Zahnd’s book doesn’t rule out later reviewing Gregory Boyd’s book, whose name has been brought up constantly as the real interlocutor (which I’m not sure is quite fair to Zahnd), nor vice versa. What I think is probably important is not reviewing Zahnd and then just wiping your hands and saying, “It’s basically the same thing, so dealing with popular, I have dealt with the academic.”

Jesus’ Parables, etc.

Turning to the podcast, Norsworthy brings up my point about Zahnd not addressing various of Jesus’ parables beyond the Prodigal Son, which assume or teach retributive justice. He mentions Matthew 25 and the sheep and the goats, which Zahnd points he deals with, and that’s why I didn’t fault him for ignoring that one in my review. That said, he dealt with it in his chapter on hell and so his treatment wasn’t pitched at the issue I was concerned with, but rather how he relates it to his view of the afterlife.

My point with the various other parables which didn’t get brought up is that there is a consistent teaching of retribution even in the parables of Jesus which fits with the OT portrait as well, not so much the view of the afterlife implied. It is that issue with which I was concerned, as I’m not particularly interested in using the parables as a Polaroid of the last judgment either. So, I guess I just wanted to clarify that.

Calvinism, etc.

As for the rest of his comments about the Reformed system, I’m happy to let the review sit as is. I don’t think it commits me to going everywhere Edwards does, nor to the “4-year-olds deserve torture” view of things. I’ll simply note, though, I mostly quoted non-Calvinists and focused my review on issues I would have had trouble with back when I was an Arminian who hissed at the name of Calvin. I’ve had several non-Calvinists say they agree on those things, with even an Eastern Orthodox chap or two among them. So, I probably fit the “polemical Calvinist” mold in writing the review, but I don’t think my concerns can simply be chalked up to being a polemical Calvinist.

“Neo-Marcionism” and the “Gospel”

Finally, Zahnd had two main complaints where he thought I was unfair or being overly harsh. First, he objected to the “Neo-Marcionism” label, as well as my one line about the “gospel and God” being at stake.

Now, I really didn’t want to be unfair. I hope I wasn’t. But I guess I’ll just reiterate that I am using the Neo-Marcionism with qualifiers to note a couple of important theological analogies with distinction. Mark Randall James engages that helpfully here in this article. That said, I’m not married to that term, so if there is a more neutral one available, I’m happy to use something less inflammatory. But I’ll just say that nearly every one I think of is going to probably be objected to as I am trying to flag something problematic about his hermeneutic.

As for the “gospel and God” being at stake, I’ll just repeat what I said on the podcast: Zahnd writes as if our understanding of God and the gospel is at issue. In that sense, I am just agreeing with him. I thought that in trying to correct bad, harmful portrayals of both God and the gospel he thinks distort both, he over-corrected and distorted both. I think that’s just a fundamental disagreement we’re going to have. Which is just life in the Church before Jesus comes back and corrects us both, I suppose.

Soli Deo Gloria