Interview with Goodwin Prize winner, Jimmy Myers
Congrats to Jimmy Myers (Duke Divinity School) for his essay, "Give Gifts to the Evildoer: A Rereading of Matthew 5:38-42."
Abstract: What does Jesus teach his followers to practice in Matthew 5:38–42? That is the question that this paper answers, seeking to provide the church a more faithful way of reading, living, and imagining Jesus’s command than has been done in the past. I contend that our collective imaginations as a Christian tradition have been constrained by readings of this passage that have failed to discern its unity and positive character, a character which gives birth to a repeated pattern of gift-giving in response to evildoing that the church––who lives in the “present evil age” (Gal. 1:4) yet follows a God who gives grace to evildoers (us)––has the opportunity to embody in order to bring about something positive, active, and beautiful into God’s creation––loving it, with God, into a new creation.
What inspired you to pursue an advanced degree in theology?
The inspirations for my pursuit of an advanced degree in theology were many, but they all revolve around one particular kind of inspiration: people. I suppose my parents are first of all to blame. Early on they formed my imagination through scripture, song, prayer, and dance while living in a missional context in Yaounde, Cameroon where my parents served with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Hearing from God, singing to and about God, praying to God, and enjoying God's good, bodily gifts––and all this in a vibrant cultural and ecclesial setting––saturated my existence and co-opted my imagination in an inexpungible way. Perhaps it was only inevitable that later I discovered a longing to explore these dimensions through rigorous intellectual investigation. A second, later group that inspired me were theological guides who had already trudged the path that led to doctoral work in theology, guides like my brother-in-law Wes vander Lugt, who at a particularly formative time in my life pursued a degree in theology and the arts at St. Andrews which gave me a glimpse at the joy––even if laborious joy––involved in advanced study; guides like Kelly Kapic, who I met and studied with at my undergraduate institution and who first trained me into a mode of theological thinking; and guides like Stanley Hauerwas and––though dead––Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who matured and fine-tuned the training I had already received, putting pressure on me to think in a more ecclesiocentric and christological way. It wasn't until I came to Duke for an MTS to study with the many excellent professors here, however, that I discovered the theological trajectory I needed to take was the one that led me to prolonged engagement with scripture. So I'm very glad to be back at Duke doing a doctorate in the New Testament, and I'm especially glad to be doing it in the ThD program, which has a distinctive ecclesial, christological, and intellectually interdisciplinary focus, a focus which is well-fitted both with my past formation from the people I've mentioned (as well as ones I didn't) and my future hope to serve the academy and the church as a scholar of the New Testament.
What do you hope to do with your degree?
I hope to teach and write as a professional New Testament scholar in an academic (collegiate, university, or seminary) setting. It has become a cliche today to say that the job market in biblical studies/theology is horrid, but it is a cliche that nonetheless seems to be true. This truth can sometimes cause great anxiety among graduate students, for understandable reasons. Of course, the contingencies of the present are always subject to change in the future; we don't know what will happen and so we must not resign ourselves to despair. But in any case, the desire I have to read, write on, and form people's imaginations with the grain of scripture is not motivated by the prospect of a job. Whether there is a professional position at the end of the process or not does not decide for me whether to pursue what I take to be a vocational calling. The pursuit of the vocation is out of my control, and I can only make sense of it by saying, it is what God made me to do. I'm a student of scripture and theology and will be until I die: hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. The wonderful thing is that that vocational calling to read, write on, and form people's imaginations with the grain of scripture is pertinent to more than just an academic setting. It can gladly find a home in publishing, secondary education, and ecclesial settings. In fact, in the future (as in the present) I plan to help lead the church in whatever way I can, whether formally or informally, and I'm currently en route to ordination in the Presbyterian denomination ECO. Which is all just to say: I hope to put my degree to use to serve the people of God and I'm sure I will irrespective of whatever future field I'm planted in.
Where do you see connections between your personal faith, your intellectual work and the other aspects of your life?
The way I see it, to be a Christian is to be initiated into a comprehensive way of speaking and living in the world, to embark on a total life-practice patterned on the pattern of Jesus's life, death and resurrection. Critical biblical scholarship and theological investigation of the sort I'm involved in are thus generated by that life and positioned to serve that life to be shaped more truthfully into the shape of Jesus's life. Faith, study, and life are united for me. I cannot think outside of the tradition of life that Christianity is any more than I can participate in the Christian tradition of life without thinking. To put it differently, I take Wittgenstein's aphorism, "Words are deeds," to be right on the money and reversible: the life of a Christian is an embodied word and the words of a Christian are the life encoded into language. That highly integrated vision of thought and life obviously imagines a mutually edifying relation between faith and intellectual work: I think in order to help the church live more faithfully, and I live among the church in order to think more truthfully. To put it less epigrammatically, I see my work as a scholar to help the church to continuously reform its teaching and practice into conformity with the polyphonous scriptural witness about Jesus. The church can all too easily and lazily assume that it already knows what scripture says because it has in hand a comprehensive theology and polity that synthesizes all of its parts and smooths out all of its difficulties. And to be clear I think theology is absolutely critical in the life of the church. But it is a theology relentlessly anchoring itself in scripture and what harmonizes with the total grain of scripture that is needed. The task I see before me is to begin at the beginning each new day in order for the church to encounter the scriptural mercies of God every morning. This, I trust, will lead the church not farther away from its richly textured, traditioned orthodoxy, but further up and farther into it.
How would you summarize your paper for someone without a theological background?
In this way: Jesus calls his disciples to give gifts to evildoers in Matthew 5:38-42. He doesn't call them to respond to evildoing with passive inaction. He doesn't call them to respond to evildoing with aggressive counteraction. Jesus calls them to give gifts: when slapped, to offer another cheek; when stripped, to release another piece of clothing; when compelled one mile, to go a second mile; when asked, to give abundant gifts. Thus Jesus wants his followers to become a people who overcome evildoing with gooddoing, just as Jesus himself overcomes evil action with the hospitable gift of his life on the cross.
How might this award make a difference in your life?
It is, of course, quite a gift to receive a cash prize as part of the award. My wife and I are expecting our second child in February, so we are grateful for any extra boost that will make birth more manageable. But the significance of this award for my life and vocation goes far beyond the cash prize. Receiving first place in this competition is important corroboration that the practice I'm engaged in is the right one to continue pursuing. Many of us graduate students travel a tortuous path that is full of despair-filled wanderings – am I really qualified for this? Am I a goat in sheep's clothing? Will people "discover" what I know about myself, my deep incompetencies and weaknesses, and kick me out of the vocation as a result? Those are obviously rather melodramatic musings, but they are real for many people, and when you couple all that with the lack of job prospects at the end of it all, the graduate pilgrimage can seem a rather hopeless affair. The Goodwin Prize serves as a gift from God that offers encouragement to carry on and endure in this situation, trusting that this is only the beginning of a longer pilgrimage, that maturation takes time. There is, of course, a danger in participating in competitions like the Goodwin Prize: if one is not careful, one can easily be distracted by the external goods of awards and prizes and honors and thus lose sight of the internal goods of the practice of theology. But the Goodwin Prize is a helpful corrective to this posture, for it values goods that are internal to the practice and awards the excellent pursuit of those goods: goods like creative theological thinking, excellence in scholarship, engagement with the Christian tradition, and commitment to the well-being of the church. It is too bad that there aren't more competitions out there like the Goodwin Prize, because I know that there were many fine essays that weren't awarded prizes that nevertheless pursued those internal goods with excellence and passion. I applaud Theological Horizons for creating and maintaining this opportunity, and for awarding a large number of prizes, and I hope that more Christian organizations invest in encouraging Christian scholars toward the excellent pursuit of the goods internal to the practice of theology. In a word, then, I'm surprised and honored to have received this award, and grateful for the encouragement it signifies to carry on in the theological vocation and pursue its goods.
How do you spend your time when you are not studying?
When I'm not studying I'm enjoying the gift of life with my wife Mary Lynn and daughter Lila, with friends and church, and neighbors. That means a whole host of activities: gardening in our front yard boxes, kindling fires in our backyard pit in the cool of the evening, going on hikes and runs at the Eno River State Park which is just adjacent to us, singing and playing guitar in our home, arguing about literature and theology and philosophy and scripture long into the night over beer and spirits, worshipping and sharing childcare with our church community, playing basketball with our neighbors, and sharing breakfast with homeless friends in the church neighborhood. I take great joy in my studies, but it is only one part of a much larger life that God has given us to enjoy in the wonderful place that Durham, North Carolina is.
Any other comments?
The only other comment I have is one of thanks: thanks to the Board of Theological Horizons, to the Executive Director Karen Marsh, to the blind judges who read the papers, to the Associate Director Christen Yates, and all the rest at Theological Horizons who make the Goodwin competition possible. I hope this opportunity continues and develops in the years to come.
To learn more about the Goodwin Prize in Theological Writing, click here.