Beeson Podcast, Episode #743 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcase. I’m your host, Doug Sweeney and I'm joined today by our own Josh Chitrow and his friend Christopher Watkin, who teaches at Monash University in Australia, and is the award-winning author of several different books, including most famously, Biblical Critical Theory, which some of our listeners will have read. Both Josh and Christopher have contributed to the new book called The Gospel After Christendom, co-edited by our own Colin Hanson, I should say. We just heard from all three of these men at a marvelous event here at Beeson, and we're looking forward to talking about these things and more with both Watkin and Chitro on the podcast today. So, thank you, gentlemen, for being with us. >>Watkin: Lovely to be here. >>Doug Sweeney: Chris, may we begin by introducing you to our podcast listeners, some of whom will have read you, but probably very few of whom have met you, maybe even heard your voice. I like to begin sometimes with new people in our community by asking them how they came to faith in Jesus. May I ask you, how did you come to Christ? >>Watkin: Well, I wasn't brought up in a family that went to church or that talked about Jesus at all, really. I was a happy atheist as a child. No God-shaped hole, no sense that God might be remotely relevant in any way to my very happy life. And it was only when I went on a trip to the battlefields of the First World War, I would have been about 14, and saw, as anyone who's gone there will know, the fields full of little white crosses, thousands of white crosses where soldiers are buried, that I just began thinking about death. Not in a dramatic way, but you know, wow, that's a lot of people in these fields. Wonder if their death had any meaning or whether it's just more stuff happening in the universe. And a friend of mine who was also on the trip, who was a Christian, invited me to go along to church with her. And I was young, she was a good friend, so fine, yeah, happy to go along to church. And over time, I think I got to the point where I wouldn't have called myself a Christian yet, and I wasn't a Christian yet, but I couldn't walk away from what I'd found at church. And there were two things that really struck me. And the most immediate one was just the way Christians loved each other and loved me, you know. And how that didn't depend on having things in common. It was a really diverse church, all different sorts of people. But there was a warmth, a genuine care and love in those relationships that I'd never seen outside an intimate family, and it was wonderful. I so enjoyed going every week because of the strength of those relationships. And the second thing was that over time, as I began to learn about Jesus from the Scriptures, as the Bible was opened every week and passages were preached, he's just, he's odd, isn't he? Jesus, he's a peculiar character in the sense that on one page, he's just being very, very wise and mature and sort of talking about principles for living that are incredibly rich and deep and nourishing. And then, you know, on the next page, people are calling him God and he's not correcting them. And it's like, you have wise people who teach wise things, and you have people who think they're God, but they're not the same people. Like if you're wise enough to teach good things, you're wise enough to know that you're not God. So, this is character. And over time, I yielded, I suppose, to the fact that by far the most convincing way out of that conundrum is to say that Jesus is in fact who he said he was, and he is God. Strange though that seemed to my atheistic mind. And yeah, by God's grace I've remained a Christian since, despite my best efforts and my best sins to sort of mute God's voice in my life, his grace has always shouted louder and always won. >>Doug Sweeney: Were you the only member of your family who became a follower of Jesus or were there others eventually who converted as well? >>Watkin: My mum would always have said she was a Christian, I think always was a person of faith. And during her college years, she was very active. And for one reason or another, not so much when I was little probably largely down to me taking up so much of her time that there wasn't much left for church. But wonderfully, by God's grace, when I started attending a church, she came along. And then my dad also came along a little while later. So, all of us for a little period were worshipping together at the same parish church in Yorkshire, which is just an absolute delight. Not down to me, you know, being a wonderful evangelist or anything, just literally down to me going there, and then my mum joining me, and then my dad coming along as well. It was wonderful. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, that is marvelous. So many of the people who listen to our podcast are involved in ministry in one way or another. A lot of them love seminary life. Some of them are young adults wondering about what God might have for them in the future, asking questions about, should I go to seminary? Some of them are sure the Lord is leading them into pastoral ministry. Others are not so sure. They love theology. They love books and learning and so on, they think maybe teaching. So let me ask you just a little bit more about your own story. How did you get from being somebody whose life was being transformed by the gospel to being somebody who's pursuing the Lord as an intellectual, as a writer, as an apologist? What was the decision-making process like for you? How did you discern the kind of life that the Lord had for you? >>Watkin: Little by little, I think, is the short answer. So, I've always loved big questions. I've always been fascinated by philosophy. And as an undergraduate, I did a degree in modern and medieval languages, French and German, which basically meant lots of French literature and German literature and French and German philosophy, which is absolutely wonderful. You're given a pile of books every week. Here's some Nietzsche, go and make sense of that. Or, you know, here's some Baudelaire, go and make sense of that. That's fantastic. But as a Christian, I was also reading these books thinking, I've got to try and come to terms with these as a Christian. Like, what is the Christian way of understanding the way that these people see the world? You know, so here's Nietzsche, and he's very clear about how he sees the world. How do I respond to that as a Christian? And there were some books that were somewhat helpful in doing that, but I didn't feel there was anything out there that really nailed it for me. And so, as a sort of mode of self-preservation, really, I started reading around, you know, what are the Christians that have engaged with this thinking? Because I was thinking, if I just, if I only ever read Nietzsche and Foucault and never try to bring them into conversation with the Bible, I'm going to end up with these huge, hulking philosophical biceps and tiny, skinny Sunday school Bible legs, and I'm going to topple over. You know, that is not going to end well for my faith. So just, in order to keep going as a Christian, I need to make sure that the level at which I'm understanding God's word is keeping pace with the level with which I'm understanding French and German philosophy. And I guess that just set me off thinking, reading, talking to people, listening, and little by little, cobbling together a sort of personal library of thinkers who had really helped me and then eventually that leading to me beginning to write as a Christian. But that only happened years and years later, so there are lots of years where I was just learning the craft, like how do you read Baudelaire well and write about him well, before I had a clue what to say about him as a Christian. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, okay, just one more question about your story that I think will help some of our listeners who are discerning what God is doing in their lives. So, you teach in a secular university. You're well known in America for your Christian apologetic work, so it's clear you both have the kind of academic chops necessary to do the kind of work you do at Monash University and at the same time, you're a follower of Jesus who's working on gospel witness and apologetics. How does that go for you? How do you live an integrated life when those two things are both so true of your life? >>Watkin: I know that for some people, there's a real tension there. I think particularly of one dear friend who walked away from the faith as a PhD student because she was reading lots of French philosophy and couldn't make sense of it as a Christian. So, I know that that's a real heartache for many people. Personally, it's never been an issue. I find, even though Christians and secular philosophers reach very, very different conclusions about things, I've always found a kindred spirit on the level of asking questions. So, we live in a society where not many people ask big questions anymore. There's a sort of, you know, what's in front of me? How am I going to earn my crust today? How do I take care of my family? And like all the what is the meaning of life questions are sort of off the table. And here are these two groups in society that are still asking the big questions. You've got your Christians, you know, who is God? Who am I? Who am I before him? How should I be saved? Massive questions. And the philosophers over here, you know, what is the good life? What does it mean to be? And so, I've always felt that there's, at least on the level of the type of questions you're willing to ask, there's a commonality there between Christians and philosophers, even though the response is very different. And I found that in my own reading. So, I don't agree, you know, with the philosophy I read, but I find it helpful in just walking through how someone else sees the world and what does it look like to walk a mile in, I don't know, Nietzsche's shoes or Simone de Beauvoir's shoes? Why do they write what they write and why do they think it's good? And that's a really helpful exercise for anyone. Like you say, if you're not a Christian, read Christians, you know. See how other people see the world and that'll help you to understand people and the world just a little bit better. >>Doug Sweeney: So, at Monash University, do people know about this significant part of your life that has to do with Christian apologetics, gospel ministry and so on? And if so, how does that go? Do they give you trouble? Are they trying to pick fights with you a lot? Do they think it's great? >>Watkin: No, no one's ever tried to pick a fight with me. That would be amusing. Brawling it out in the corridors. No, my book’s up there in the little bookcase of all the books different people have published and I think people know that I'm a Christian. I've never had an issue with it. I know there's this sort of sense of how academia is and I'm sure that in some places it's really difficult for Christians, but I've just never found that. My colleagues are lovely. You know, we talk a bit about what I do, a bit about what they do, our lives, and I've never felt unwelcome or sort of alienated. Most people there don't believe what I believe, but you know, that's the same in the whole of society. That's nothing special about my workplace in that respect. >>Doug Sweeney: All right, let's talk just a little bit about the book that's best known to our listeners that you have written, Biblical Critical Theory. Can you tell us just a little bit about how that book came to be, what you have tried to do in it, and maybe if you remember to answer this third part of the question, what its reception has been, what it's been like as the author of this book, just in terms of opportunities to be an influence and to do ministry? >>Watkin: Thank you, Doug. It's the fruit of the self-preservation exercise, I guess. So, you know, there I am as an undergrad reading Baudelaire, all the others, thinking, what do I think of this as a Christian? Not that I can write that in my undergraduate essays, but like just for myself, like, what does the Bible say about this stuff? And also, with this nagging feeling, all these questions that these poets and philosophers are asking, they're the questions the Bible is asking. Like, why isn't the Bible part of this conversation? Why do we not study, you know, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and then Paul or James the next week? There's a strangeness there. And so, there was a desire to think, what would a biblical version of this look like? And that was the sort of genesis of biblical critical theory. And it sat for a long time on my computer in a folder called Bible Overview. So, it was originally intended as a Bible overview of Genesis to Revelation with little cultural nuggets hung off different parts of the Bible story. And there was the point at which I think it became clear to me what I wanted to aspire to, in a very small way, was when I first read Augustine's City of God. And it was like, this is it. This is a much better version of what I've been grasping, fumbling towards. And it's just, it's astonishing what he did, and the point of church history at which he did it. So, he takes the whole of late Roman culture, and the whole of the Bible, and he reads the former through the latter. And he touches on everything. He leaves no stone unturned in Roman culture. And he goes all the way from Genesis to Revelation. And it was like, wow, okay, that's what it looks like then. That's what the biblical version of what these philosophers are doing can be. So that was the pattern that I took and tried to sort of follow the second half of the City of God, folding little bits of the first half into it as the outline of biblical critical theory. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, and that's, among most people I've spoken with, that's the reputation your book has, being sort of a 21st century version of the city of God. >>Watkin: Look, I don't think it's that. In the 2,000-year history of the church, there are few thinkers that have risen to Augustine's level. But it's a shining sort of star to which we can try and hold a candle. But I think as well just on that, it takes more than one person to do the city of God for the 21st century because none of us have Augustine’s, and I'm sure Josh would agree with it, none of us have his breadth. Like, he was astonishingly broad in his capabilities. So, I can do the French philosophy- >>Doug Sweeney: Is that all it is though? I mean, I could imagine somebody who's as intelligent as Augustine being around today and intellectually capable of that kind of project. Is that, you're just, you're feeling humble, I'm no Augustine and that's why you want to put it that way? Or is there another reason or more than one reason why you feel that way? >>Watkin: No, I think it's more than that. I think it's that I'm not a nurse and I'm not an office cleaner. And life looks different from those positions. So, I'm, you know, an academic. I did my undergraduate, PhD, postdoc, academia. It's a very narrow lane. Now, I can run in that lane, and I can read Augustine and a bunch of apologists, and I can write what a cultural critique looks like from that point of view but put me on a building site and I don't know what to do. Do you know what I mean? And so, it needs- >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Noted Augustine now. >>Watkin: Well, setting aside that, I think what we need in the 21st century is a wall of multiple bricks that creates collaboratively a cultural critique for our day. So, we need what nursing looks like from a Christian point of view. I can't write that. You know, what manual labor looks like from a Christian point of view. And that's why I think this is a church project. So cultural apologetics is something that we need to do. Now I've laid a brick. It's quite a narrow brick, it's a French philosophy brick, but it's part of a bigger wall that we need to build together. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, that's a great segue, Josh, into the part of the conversation where we want to talk just a little bit again about the Keller Center, what you folks at the Keller Center are trying to do, and maybe even specifically about this book, The Gospel After Christendom, the latest fruit of the Keller Center. Should we say that the folks at the Keller Center are trying to do the kinds of things that Chris has just commended collectively, since no one person is in Augustine anymore and our society and culture today are so variegated and complex, it takes a big group of people working together on this? Or what should we say about what you're trying to do at the Keller Center? And what's being done in the Gospel after Christendom book? >>Chitrow: Yeah, as Chris was describing that, I would say that the Keller Center is, we're not monolithic even in how we always think about issues or how, so when we get together, there's a good bit of give and take on things, which is really healthy. And one of the things that I think we say is we don't have this all figured out. And I look at things I said at different times, I wish I would have said that different. But I think there is a kind of, there is something there and I think at least for me and Chris, we've, through our works and thinking, we've drawn a lot of inspiration from Augustine. Maybe to answer your historical question, yeah, I do wonder if there's something a bit different. Now, I think that Augustine's context was actually rather complex, right? And he was before Christendom, and then we're writing after Christendom. And so, we're taking inspiration from Augustine, but we also know, as I think Augustine would tell us if he was here, is this is a different time. And in some ways, I don't know, I think it's more complex with the kind of social acceleration as Hartmut Rosa talks about. We've just never had, with the technology, everything is so fast right now and changes so fast. Digital media is, it's a new technology because you had the printing press that changed the world, but digital media is what we do everything on, from booking vacations to traveling home, making sure I don't get caught in traffic. It's what we do everything on. Then now we've just, and Chris has done a lot of thinking and writing on this AI, and so we're dealing with a kind of pluralism, but now we're also dealing with the kind of technological advances. And so, there's, I'm hesitant, you can probably tell if you're listening to this, I'm a little hesitant, but I think it's actually a little bit more complicated than Augustine, although I think Augustine's a better inspiration than maybe people doing apologetics within Christendom because it was maybe a little bit more simple then. And so, I do think that's one of the reasons, not only because we're not Augustine’s, but because our culture is even more complex. And to Chris's point, some of us are in our studies all day, and there's an important place for that. But there's also people who are spending more of their time kind of engaging online or just talking to college students. And I think we need each other in this, because Chris and I don't have all the answers, and the Keller Center doesn't have all the answers. But I think it's one attempt to try to do this sort of thing and to work together. And at the end of the day, it's not about, it's not us about being us being right in how we're doing apologetics. It's about how do we bear witness to the gospel and how can Christ be glorified. And sometimes, you know, I've really messed things up. I felt like I didn't do things well and the Lord uses that. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, it's amazing. >>Chitrow: You know, it's not about me and it's about God's wanting to get the glory. So that would be another part of that is that I think we want to work together and have strategy and think well together and that's what we're trying to do at the center in this book, but we also know the Spirit has to work and draw people to the Lord. >>Doug Sweeney: So, for those listening now, Josh, who haven't listened to my earlier interviews with you about cultural apologetics, the Keller Center, etc., and while we have Chris with us, can we revisit briefly this notion of cultural apologetics, where you guys think we are as a culture today, and the proper relationship, maybe is the best way to put it, or correct me if there's a better way to put it, between the kinds of intellectual arguments that apologists have been best known for through the years, and the kind of digging into the cultural substratum that a lot of you guys are doing today, not at the expense of intellectual arguments, but as a way of sort of getting sort of beneath the cognitive level in people's lives to sort of heart concerns and instincts and so on? What is cultural apologetics? Where do you think we are today? And why are you trying to do this thing that we're calling cultural apologetics? >>Chitrow: Yeah. On a minimal level, you might say cultural apologetics is kind of a collective of people who say there's something really important about culture to how people think and how they decide to live and whether they're going to embrace the gospel or not. And so, on a very broad level, you could say cultural apologetics is saying we better study that and we better know these kinds of this air that we're all breathing in and the assumptions of that so we might better point to Christ and persuade that this is really true and it's good and it's beautiful. I would say as far as, you know, how is this different maybe than, I wouldn't want to frame it as this is any less intellectual. I would want to say that actually it's trying to wrestle more with who we are as humans and how we think and process. So, it's a deeper understanding of our rationality. It's a more capacious understanding of rationality. And so, where that takes us is not just, I was, maybe this will help. I was recently, as you both know, I had to, for six months, I was wrestling with shoulder issues. And you know, my way is this is what happens when you're 40 something and you try to play soccer on campus with 20 somethings. So, it was just ice it. You just, I'm just going to get, I'm going to put ice, I'll try to rotate my shoulder. And then my wife, after months of this, said you're just treating the symptoms. You need to go see a doctor. You know, it takes your wife to tell you that. And so, go see the doctor, He said let's have an MRI and he said there’s a deeper issue here. You’ve torn something and you need to have surgery. And I think sometimes with our apologetics, we can just treat kind of symptoms. We can ice it, and we can ice it, and we can ice it and maybe that works sometimes. And dear mercy, you know, if you can come in and say, here are five reasons for the resurrection and somebody says, I believe, do that. Do that. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Chitrow: Yeah, I mean, if you can, you know, give out arguments for God's existence and then [inaudible 00:24:56], please do that if that's working. But we’ve found that many times that's not working. And so, we said, let's go deeper. Let's do an MRI of what's going on with rationality and see if maybe the cure needs, maybe we need surgery rather than just icing this. And what does surgery look like? Well, that means going into kind of the deeper ways people are thinking and living. And I think that's what biblical critical theory did and why it struck such a nerve. And I think that's how I would get at what cultural apologetics is. It's not saying icing is bad. Sometimes icing is the first thing you should do. But if you have a limb hanging off, I think the first thing we do is go to the ER sometimes, you know. So, it's just different kind of approaches as a good doctor would have to treating an ailment. >>Doug Sweeney: When you say it's not a novelty, I mean, Augustine did a lot of this in his own day, so. >>Chitrow: And that's one of my big hobby horses is the reason I'm a little sensitive or hesitant about that term is that for some people that denotes something new. And I understand that because the term, I understand why they would think that, because the terminology is new and also because we're in this particular unique time in Christian history. And so, we're both making the case that this is actually this kind of posture, this kind of way, is something deep within the tradition. And simultaneously, making the argument that part of the way means responding in unique ways to this moment. And that's grounded in the past, but yeah, that will at times look different because now we're having to think through AI. We're having to think through the kind of, you know, part of the Enlightenment is about being in control, about extending our reach. Okay, well, how does that actually impact how people think about what Christianity is, or how does that maybe at times make Christianity less plausible? And yeah, so. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Chris, maybe we can invite you in at this point. How do you process this conversation? To what degree is what Josh just described the kind of work that you feel like the Lord wants you to do? >>Watkin: Just to pick up on language that Josh was using that I think was just incredibly helpful there, what is deep in the tradition is responding uniquely to each moment. That is our tradition. So, you take Paul in Lystra and Paul in Athens. Same preacher, same gospel, radically different presentation. Why? Because the people he's speaking to are from a different culture. In Lystra and Derbe, it's all about the rain and the crops because that's their world. And then in Athens, it's all about the poets and, you know, one of your own poets, because that's their world. And so, it's the same unchanging gospel. What we're not saying is you need to shape your gospel so that it's acceptable. You know, remember how they treat him in Athens. He gets to the resurrection; they laugh at him. You know, he's not compromising on the gospel, but he's helping people to see from within their own experience of the world how this one unchanging gospel affects them. And so, in Lystra, that's going to look radically different to how it looks in Athens. And that's the cultural aspect of it. And you can go all through the Bible. So, tracing how the same unchanging truth of God looks really, really different to a nation that's under God's law, in its own land, in exile, sort of nomadic people at the time of Abraham or under occupation in Jesus, it's changing the way that it's presented all the time. But the gospel itself never changes. And it's changing the way that it's presented all the time, but the gospel itself never changes, and it's having, being able to conjure with both of those. So how do we preach the same gospel, you know, the gospel of which Paul in Galatians says, if I ever preach another gospel or an angel does, may I be eternally condemned, to be able to say that full-throatily and also to be Paul in Lystra and Paul in Athens. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. Well, thank you very much for this good work. Let's bring things all the way up to the present moment by asking Chris, so I heard at a dinner last night where we were all present, Colin explained to the crowd your itinerary this week and it made me tired just listening to it. What do we have you doing in Birmingham, Alabama this week? And thank you, by the way, for putting Beeson Divinity School on the itinerary. Could you also let our listeners know what you preached about in chapel today, because on the program notes we'll put a link there so people can listen to your sermon? >>Watkin: I had the privilege of preaching a remarkable passage, where, Judges chapter 7, where Gideon is commanded by God to go into battle against what we think is probably 135,000 Midianites with 300 people. Astonishing passage and very, very conferencing, I think, for us. For the rest of the week, I am giving a series of events, some church-based, some university-based as here. But I think the common thread running through all of them is this idea of cultural apologetics that Josh and I have been talking about. How do we commend the one unchanging gospel, the only gospel by which people can be saved, in a way that people in our particular cultural moment today can hear and see as being immediately relevant to their concerns, and also in a way that overturns their concerns? It's this idea that Dan Strange has written so powerfully about subversive fulfillment, that the gospel is both the utter overturning and repudiation of everything that we desire and at the same time, the fulfillment of everything that we desire. And that's a 1 Corinthians 1 shape of doing apologetics, I think, so that's what I want to be talking about at various different places during this week. >>Doug Sweeney: Fantastic, and tonight it's Redeemer Community Church. >>Watkin: It is indeed. >>Doug Sweeney: Pastored by these alumni. >>Watkin: That's right, college talkback, looking forward to it. >>Doug Sweeney: Very nice. Last question for each of you. What are you working on these days and how can our listeners who are prayers be praying for you as you continue to serve the Lord, maybe especially in your writing? Josh, let's start with you so we can end with Dr. Watkins. >>Chitrow: Okay, yeah. So, I have two projects that I've, well, I'll just say this, because this will be closer to this being released, is we've done a second edition of a book called, Apologetics at the Cross. We're really excited about that. We haven't gone back against anything fundamentally, but we have learned more in the last 10 years since we started writing that, Mark Allen and I. And so, we're just really excited. When we first did that book, it was, yeah, we just didn't know how it was going to be received. And yeah, we keep hearing people using it for intro text at seminaries and colleges, so we're really excited about having the opportunity to update it. The other two, real quick, are I'm going to do, I'm working on a kind of filled notes to Augustine's Confessions. So, it'll be a little volume that will have Marie Boulding's translation, and I'll have notes. And really, I've talked to a lot of people who use Augustine to, Confessions, to kind to do discipleship, and this is really kind of an intro book with notes that you could take somebody through who's reading it for the first time. >>Doug Sweeney: So, they're explanatory notes, mostly? >>Chitrow: That's right. Intros to each chapter, and then, yeah, kind of minimum notes as you go, but I'm trying to set it up for the first time reader. And what changed when I read Confessions, where it kind of, where the light switch went on when I was teaching it in a fellows program with 20s and 30-year-olds. And the first hour we would spend talking about roses and thorns, what's going on in our life, where have we failed, accountability, sin, all these things, you know, mixed group. And then the second hour, we would turn to Confessions, and we would, and this was about midway through the program, and it just dawned on me, like, kind of looking at our lives and looking at the gospel and then seeing Augustine do the same thing in his own story. And I thought, I think this is close to what Augustine had in mind for his readers. I think you can pick it apart and find out stuff about, you know, Neoplatonism and the Manichaeism and what's going on theologically in the tradition and I think all those things are fair, but I think this is closer to what Augustine had in mind. And I'm trying to write notes that'll kind of match that experience. >>Doug Sweeney: And then it's aimed at university students? Can church groups use it? >>Chitrow: Just anybody. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay. >>Chitrow: Anybody who wants to read Confessions for the first time. >>Doug Sweeney: Nice. >>Chitrow: Or maybe returning to it. And so, they're not going to be overly technical. I'm trying to give an introduction to what's going on, who Augustine is. Augustine's a weird guy in many ways, and I think that's what makes him so incredible when you see what he's doing. And he's so different than us, but he is also like us in so many ways. And so, I've just been intrigued and kind of want to share my love of that book with other people. And then I'm working, mostly right now, I'm really focused on another book that's kind of a sequel to Telling a Better Story, which is focused on ways of life, ways that someone might not have a narrative. Oftentimes when I'm getting in conversation, someone might not have a worked-out narrative, although I think they live out certain narratives, but they do have ways of life. They're seeking control. They're seeking to achieve a kind of significance and identity. They're trying to consume their way to the good life. And these are just ways that we kind of are born into Western society, and these are the rules of the game we play. And I think in many ways, because we don't have a bigger story, we don't have a different practice, we own different practice, we don't have another way, they just kind of create this deep malaise and oppression in the midst of abundance. And so, I'm wanting to explore those and see how Jesus might make it, well I believe Jesus makes a difference within that, how he transforms our experience in late modernity. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, great. When could our listeners expect those latter two projects to be available to them, the Confessions Project and then the new issuing of Telling a Better Story? >>Chitrow: Yeah, and we're still working on a title on that. The Better Way or the one that's really looking at ways of life is due end of this summer. So, it'll be out, what is that, 2027? And then six months later, the Confessions project will be out. >>Doug Sweeney: Great. >>Chitrow: So, 2027, 2028. >>Doug Sweeney: All right. Maybe we'll have you back on later. Keep it fresh in the minds of our listeners. Okay, Dr. Watkin, how about you? What are you working on in your writing ministry these days? >>Watkin: Yeah, well, in addition to my husbanding and fathering and child of God-ing, with the time that I've got left over, I've got a book coming out at the end of this year, December, an academic book on the idea of the state of nature. So, what do modern philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau think life was like before society? And what do those visions tell us about ourselves? Because the way that we imagine the past is often a very convenient way to justify what we think the pheasants ought to be like, which I think it is in that case. So, that's coming out soon. And I'm working at the moment on two parallel projects, I guess. One is another academic book on the idea of the common good, particularly in the context of contemporary polarization. And the other is a Christian book dealing with somewhat similar themes. So, it's looking at the culture wars, and the other is a Christian book dealing with somewhat similar themes so it's looking at the culture wars and the meaning crisis and trying to show that those are actually two sides of the same coin. They're two symptoms of the same problem. And that the Bible, surprise, surprise, has a wonderful, both diagnosis of that problem, but a wonderful prognosis as well for how to come out the other side of the cultural wars and the meaning crisis. >>Doug Sweeney: So, it sounds like the common good book is being written in an explicitly Christian way for Christian readers? >>Watkin: The common good book is the secular one, so lots of philosophy in there. And then the meaning crisis in the culture wars book is the overtly Christian one. >>Doug Sweeney: Got it. Well, may the Lord bless you and keep you as you continue to serve him in these ways. Listeners, this has been Dr. Christopher Watkin, who's in Birmingham this week doing all kinds of work, not least here at Beeson Divinity School, where he just preached a wonderful chapel sermon that we'll link you to when we drop this podcast episode. And you've also been listening to Beeson's own Josh Chitrow. Both of them are active in the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Both of them are busy serving the Lord in lots of ways including as writers. Please keep them and their families and their writing ministries in your prayers. We are praying for you, listeners. We love you and we say goodbye for now. >>Mark Gignilliat: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. 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