MLA: Amazon is selling the Kindle edition of Called into Questions for $3.99 right now. Start your year right and grab a copy.
I am not sure whether this was my most productive year ever in terms of the volume of words I worked on, but it has to be close. I realized in April, I think it was, that I had either drafted or revised some 200,000 words—an unsustainable pace, to be sure, but an invigorating and exhilarating pace all the same. While many of you have been around all year, I thought I would ‘recap’ some of the highlights in case you missed them.
THE BOOKS
Called into Questions. I looked through this again for a talk I am giving at a classical Christian high school next week and can confirm that it is my best book yet. (Keep those jokes to yourself!) The conversation with Brad East is still the most substantive interaction I have had about the book (alas). (You can also listen to us go at it on Mere Fidelity.)
Confidence in Life: A Barthian Account of Procreation. This comes out in January of next year for an entirely unreasonable price. It is a revision of my dissertation and will, I think, be of most interest to Barth scholars. Still, I am happy with it—which is as much as I can say!
THE PAPERS AND ESSAYS
“Anti-abortionist Action Theory and the Asymmetry between Spontaneous and Induced Abortions.” Technically, I think I wrote this earlier, but it finally came out this year. If you are interested in technical debates about role the killing/letting-die distinction plays in the morality of abortion, this is the paper for you. I hope to write a popular version of this essay sometime in the next year. (A copy of this is available on my website for anyone interested.)
“Bringing Body and Soul Together (Again): Robert P. George, Oliver O’Donovan, and the Resurrection of the Body in Ethics.” This was a chapter in a volume devoted to evangelical engagements with Robert George. I think it does more to clarify the value and limits of ‘natural law’ reasoning than anything else I have written. (Copies available on request!)
“The Limits of Sex as an Icon for God.” Remember the Josh Butler fiasco? A few of you might have become subscribers to the newsletter as a result of my intervention in it.
“Retrieving the Christian Household.” What place does “family” as a concept have in a theology of marriage and household? I have more to say about this line of thought, but this was a solid start.
“The Right to Have Children.” This was a 2022 essay, but I am putting it here because it came out in December and because I can.
“The Evangelical Imagination.” I reviewed Karen Swallow Prior’s book on the Victorian roots of evangelicalism’s imagination. I wanted to like the book more than I did.
“Apocalyptic (Circumstantial) Singleness and the Vision of God.” I put Dani Treweek’s account of singleness in her new book on the subject in dialogue with John Paul II’s approach. Sparks fly.
“Drunk Tears on a Barren Sea: Augustinian Reflections on Desire.” This one got absolutely no “play,” as people say, which is a shame: I think it one of the better essays I have written in a long time. It involves TikTok, sea shanties, and a close reading of Augustine’s tears in his Confessions.
ADDITIONAL BITS AND BOBS
There’s no reason to put every issue of the newsletter in here. But if you’re not a member, you missed out on: reflections on C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, close readings of 2 Thessalonians and 1 and 2 Timothy, on Augustine and religious liberty, womb transplants, the negative world, suspicion, gossip and fraternal correction, scandal, surrogacy, and more. It’s been a solid year.
I also went on Preston Sprinkle’s podcast and said one or two controversial things. (I got more email about this than anything else this year.)
And Mere Fidelity had another solid year, which included:
Abigail Favale on ‘The Genesis of Gender’
A discussion of analogies for God (which is related to Butler’s book)
Next Year
I am excited about next year, even though I do not have any books releasing.
I have not quite committed to making 2024 the year for a “theology of the body,” but I am seriously considering it. At a minimum, I plan to expedite my interactions with John Paul II’s work here at the newsletter. If you want to grapple with the meaning of sex, this would be a good time to become a member.
I also plan to write a lot about reputation again, as so many of our contemporary disputes are implicated in it in some way. And I hope to take up more fundamental issues in Christian ethics again, by interacting with Luke Bretherton’s new “primer” in the field.
In all, 2023 was a solid year of writing (and other activities). I am grateful for all the time you have spent interacting with me here and elsewhere and look forward to learning together again next year.
Your review of Prior's book is quite interesting. I wonder to what extent elite (for lack of a better word) Evangelical alienation from core Evangelical institutions is an inevitable result of a movement largely driven by populist sentiment and whose ideological concerns seem to be unduly shaped by market forces. From the outside, it seems like there is little institutional stability, so even people who dedicate their lives to the movement might find themselves out of favor if circumstances shift enough. (A similar dynamic probably holds even in strict or hierarchical institutions, but I am wondering aloud if American Evangelicalism is uniquely susceptible to it.)
Got my copy! Excited to dig into and for your writing in 2024! I look at your writing as a guide to my writing :)
Johnny