Interview between Joseph Gorra and Matthew Lee Anderson
December 2009
How did Mere-O come about for you?
The spring of my freshman year, John Mark Reynolds mentioned starting a blog to me and some friends of mine. We talked it over a little, and decided we should try it. We were going to "own the web" (oh how little we knew). We talked about what kind of place we wanted it to be, and we decided we wanted it to be a place where thoughtful conversation happened on all aspects of faith and culture--like C.S. Lewis, or G.K. Chesterton. I remember sitting one day thinking through that and trying to come up with a name before I landed on Mere Orthodoxy. It was perfect for us.
Give us a rundown of how your current interests emerged, at least in part (if at all), from your time at Biola?
Phew, how long do you have? For one, Torrey reinforced the importance of history to our evangelical faith. So that was a big deal. Second, it was at Biola that I realized just how central the body is to human experience, which is an ongoing thought project for me. My senior thesis (with Moyer Hubbard) was on the anthropology of Romans 4, and most of my academic papers (for Fred Sanders) were on similar issues.
What have you been up to since graduating from Biola?
What haven't I done? I taught for Torrey Academy for a couple years, did some editing work, worked in financial planning through the biggest financial storm we've had in 50 years, and now am working at Thomson Reuters while focusing on grad school applications. But through all that, I've tried to keep writing a little. I went through a pretty serious vocational shift in July and decided that I needed to pursue writing full time...that's why I left financial planning. I really thought the Lord was calling me in a different direction.
As you are experiencing, calling is huge! Let’s talk about that further Epistemically and morally/spiritually, how important is calling? How crucial is it for a fruitful life of discipleship to Jesus? As a knowledge institution, what can a place like Biola contribute to a student’s development regarding their calling?
You're right that the problem of calling is extremely important, and from what I can tell, it's even more important for younger evangelicals--especially those who go to college. The fragmentation of the natural family and our increased mobility creates a lot of instability for us, and so we don't ever feel very settled into what we're doing. As a result, we often get co-opted by working menial jobs or pursuing careers, since those are the environments where we inevitably end up. The whole concept of vocation is supposed to order and structure both our personal and our work lives, and provide a sense of direction and (ultimately) stability. It's not the most important thing, as we are called first and foremost to holiness--which we can have and pursue in any job. But it is an essential element of a robust spiritual life, and discovering it seems to be the fruit of a life lived in pursuit of the Kingdom.
As a university, there are lots of things that Biola can be doing to help Biola students discern their vocation. For one, I think it's really important that we introduce students to people who have walked that road and are living out their callings. Chapels are good for that, though I think there are other venues for that as well. The University--any university--tends to be a pretty self-enclosed arena, where students really only have professors to interact with and model themselves after for a long period of time. Biola professors (in my experience) do a good job of bringing outside people in, but I think there could be more of that.
One thing Biola does not have, and that it needs, is a culture of internships. There are lots of reasons why college students take menial jobs over the summer, not least of which are financial reasons. But many of the high-end universities have cultures that push students to explore various internships during their summer breaks. While this is almost always "career driven," it is the sort of thing that Biola could implement well from a vocational standpoint.
How has Biola’s emphasis on the “integration of faith and learning” influenced you?
Well, it's made me realize that learning is best done not just in community, but in a worshipping community. My best days of class were the ones where I went to chapel (which I actually did regularly). I think that truth needs to be oriented around the revelation of Jesus, and so no "university" can claim to be such without a theology faculty--and without the interaction of that faculty with the rest of the university. I remain firmly convinced that no university actually implements this better than Biola.
Your emphasis on the importance of not just a community but on a worshipping community as being the best sort of relationships with whom we can do fruitful learning reminded me of a discussion that we sometimes hear today, which tends to center around this question: Is the point of Christian education to produce competent knowers or to produce knowers that are also lovers after what is good? Can you weigh in on this discussion in light of the importance of integration?
Yes, that's a tough question. I tend to fall on the side that says the goal of the university is to form students to be knowers who are also lovers of the good. It strikes me that if theology is a knowledge discipline--that is, if we can have real knowledge of God and his interactions with the world--then that ought at least form the backdrop for our intellectual pursuits elsewhere. The university is a multi-faceted place. It allows for many different methods of inquiry, and many different perspectives. But ultimately, reality is unified and hence our knowledge of it needs to be similarly informed by a number of different disciplines--with theology at the center. So I am a big fan of integration.
But I would also argue that the fruit of theological knowledge is worship, and the path to theological knowledge includes love. Paul's theologizing is inextricable from his doxological expressions. If we as a Christian university really know the God who is at the center of the universe, then we must inevitably join in worship of him together. And if we're not teaching our students that, then I wonder if we are teaching our students to really know Jesus. After all, he is God, but he is God for us and if we do not know him as that, then I suspect we do not really know him at all. Jamie Smith’s new book, Desiring the Kingdom, makes many of the same points, even though I disagree with him about the shape worship has to take and the relationship between the university and the Church.
How did your article, “The New Evangelical Scandal,” come about, including how would you summarize its thesis?
The answer to the first question isn't very exciting. I got an email from Ben Domenech, the editor of The City saying that he thought I should write the "definitive article on young evangelicals." I failed him, but I realized that I had a unique perspective.
My thesis is that however valid the criticisms that younger evangelicals are making, their solutions haven't actually escaped the domains of what they're criticizing. In short, "plank in our eye." I think that on the whole, younger evangelicals would be best served by focusing on our own problems rather than those of our elders, as the latter tends to reduce (again!) evangelicalism (or post-evangelicalism or emergent or emerging or whatever we call it) to a protest movement.
Can you say a little more by way of what you are claiming, positively? For example, what are the problems that young evangelicals have, which they need to address with the help of others? Crystallize for us what exactly is the “New Evangelical Scandal”?
Well, younger evangelicals tend to decry the political captivity of evangelical Christianity. Traditional evangelicals, the argument goes, have subordinated the gospel to politics. There is some merit to that critique, but making that the starting point obscures many younger evangelicals to the fact that we have often subordinated the gospel to our pursuit of culture. So "engagement" with culture often means in practice an excuse to simply consume culture--and usually that means whatever culture our secular friends are consuming, regardless of its merits.
Additionally, we decry the western individualism and again impute it to our parents generation. But more often than not, the arguments we make to leave evangelicalism or call ourselves "post-evangelical" depend upon and reinforce that very individualism.
My basic positive point was that when younger evangelicals take their identity as a protest movement to traditional evangelicalism, they unwittingly keep the problems they are rejecting, albeit without realizing it. There is a difficult problem about self-deception here that is particularly relevant, but I'll leave those thoughts to a friend of both of ours.
As knowledge institutions, what should the local church, the Christian university and the seminary be doing to address the “New Evangelical Scandal”?
This is a great question that no one has asked me. Which is sad. Ask more questions like this one!
I have a tendency to want to point to things like a better sense of history, more robust educational emphasis, the adoption of the classical spiritual disciplines (in both individual and corporate expressions), an emphasis on the life of the mind, etc. But a post that Fred Sanders wrote has really chastened me on this: he quoted JI Packer as saying that the central solution to our problems is to know Jesus. And I think that's really true. One of the many reasons I love Biola is the Institute for Spiritual Formation, which is really trying to make the knowledge of Jesus the center of our lives again. And that's what I would love to see happen. Everything else is simply the means.
What does the “New Evangelical Scandal” reveal about Jesus’ epistemic standing among young evangelicals? Is he known and loved as though he had authority to guide and direct lives in the way that they were meant to be lived?
Well, this is a hard question to answer. I think that most young evangelicals really love and know Jesus. I think that they view him as an authority (sometimes, problematically, as the only authority). I think that the Spirit is really moving in many parts of this movement. My goal wasn't to stand outside of it, but to stand within it and critique it for not being very generous to our parents and not focusing enough on our own problems. There are different sides of the movement, of course, and some of the wings are not at all orthodox. But the more conservative elements of it I have great hope for.
Who are some “classic” and “contemporary” authors that have influenced you most?
Classically, I'd say St. Paul. We don't usually think of Biblical authors as being among the "greats," but I'm convinced that Paul is a world-class intellect and writer. He's probably my most formative influence (though John comes in a close second). I have learned a lot from Plato, especially which questions to ask. Few thinkers ask better questions, even if he got the answers wrong. Theologically, I love Calvin and Augustine for very different reasons, but they have both played a pretty significant role in my life. More recently, I read G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (among other works) at a very critical juncture in my life. Dallas Willard's Spirit of the Disciplines launched me on my path of thinking about the body, so I have him to thank for that.
In addition to the above authors, who would you consider to be influencers that have helped to lead/mentor your life so far?
This is another great question. Really, I am just a product of what other people have given me, so even if this never gets published, I am really glad that you asked the question.
Leaving aside my parents, whose influence is tremendous, it was probably John Mark that had the single biggest influence on me. He taught me to read texts (and the world!) closely and that faith, reason, and passionate love could actually coexist. But I can't understate how important the other Torrey and Biola faculty were, too. I would love to be a thinker as creative and interesting as Fred Sanders someday, and a scholar as careful as Moyer Hubbard. They both taught me a lot about how great academics live.
Outside of them, there are two other people that have had an enormous influence on me, both "unsung heroes" of the faith whose rewards will far exceed their earthly renown. One is Dustin Wilson, the owner of a painting company in Olympia, Washington. I worked for him during the summers, and saw him run his business as a Christian up close. He spent some time with me over my final summer there and we have maintained a friendship ever since. I am constantly amazed at the depth of his wisdom.
The other is Bud Louck, the husband of a Biola employee. There is no one--no one--on earth who is more like Aslan than him. He is the most content and peaceful man I have ever met, and he has shown me the depth that truly good men can have.
For self-identified Christian thinkers, writers and other “knowledge workers,” how important is being pastorally-minded or having pastoral care if such a person is to be effectual and fruitful in their work?
I think it's very important. I am sure most professors realize this, but it's worth saying: now that I am 5 years out of school, my strongest memories are not of what I learned in class. They are of having breakfast with Dr. Hubbard at the cafeteria, and of being invited over to Dr. Sanders' house. They are of sitting in Dr. Reynold's office talking about how to find wisdom, and about the many relationships that I formed. I gained information from my professors, but let's face it: if information transmission was the point of an education, I shouldn't have paid a lot of money for it. And this is going to be increasingly true as more and more universities put courses up on iTunesU and elsewhere. What I got that I couldn't get elsewhere was an up-close look at a particular way of life, and even a particular way of doing scholarship. I couldn't have learned that on my own, through iTunesU.
So being knowledge workers is increasingly going to be about being humans, not conduits of good information. It's the new world, and we have to learn to adapt.
What’s next for Matthew Lee Anderson?
Grad school, hopefully. For as much as the Lord has blessed me the past few years, I realized recently that to truly honor him with my gifts, I needed to pursue them and make them my vocation. So I need more training. The Church (and America) face enormous social challenges, and careful, thoughtful leadership is going to be needed. I don't know whether the Lord will call me to that, but I do know that I need to put myself in a position to be able to answer that call if it comes. So, off to graduate school I go to resharpen my intellectual skills.