On David Zahl’s “Low Anthropology.”

The stunning hope of knowing and accepting your deficiencies.

Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself), Brazos Press

If one is keen for a penetrating yet accessible engagement with our current cultural moment, look no further than David Zahl’s consortium of grace-addicted writers, thinkers, and speakers, collectively known as Mockingbird. For the better part of fifteen years, Zahl and company have endeavored to interact with contemporary society in order to reveal the sundry and surprising ways in which Christian hope and theology is exhibited both by the orthodox churchman and the nonreligious pundit. Wresting specimens of grace, and its absence, from a kaleidoscope of avenues is more widespread than you might imagine. The world, it would seem, is rife with desperation, which, as it happens, makes it the prime candidate for what its Maker is chomping at the bit to dispense (namely, grace). Zahl’s previous critically acclaimed writing project, Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do About It, demonstrates this reality in a number of insightful and incisive ways. In his newest effort, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself), Zahl continues to build on his cardinal understanding that grace — which is what humankind most truly needs — is chiefly grasped by those who are broken.

With Low Anthropology, Zahl seeks to unravel the seeming highbrow concept of anthropological discernment in order to demonstrate both its pervasiveness in and its usefulness to everyday life. Though you might shudder at the prospect of reading page after page of pedantic vocabulary, Zahl is more than adept at opening up lofty ideas onto reachable planes of conversation and conviction. Whether you’re aware of it or not, we all operate within a framework of anthropology. In short, your anthropology is your functional theory concerning human nature and its potential for good, with Zahl helpfully categorizing these theories as either high or low. A high anthropology, then, is imbued with an imperiled trust in mankind’s propensity to do good and enact change. A low anthropology, by way of contrast, “assumes a through line of heartache and self-doubt, that the bulk of our mental energy is focused on subjects that would be embarrassing or even shameful if broadcast, and that our ability to do the right thing in any given situation is hampered by all sorts of unseen factors” (17). In less capable hands, the ambition to efficiently discuss such things would be quickly fumbled. But after ten undemanding chapters, Zahl proves he is more than up to the task of grappling with the paradoxical hope that it is precisely a low anthropology which opens us up to love, compassion, and grace.

After a brief but necessary introduction, Zahl plunges into his topic by describing the treachery of its rival. High anthropology is, perhaps, more commonly known by its colloquial cousin, perfectionism. The notion that human beings are capable of realizing flawless lives betrays a swollen conception of human aptitude. A brief perusal of any high-school world history textbook reveals a spectacle of reasons why this isn’t the case. A high anthropologist lives with “an inflated estimation of human nature,” which, Zahl says, “capsizes love for one’s neighbor” (32). Rather than lay the groundwork for some idealized utopia, a high anthropology pushes that hope further and further away, seeing as it leaves little room for those who are not living up to its lofty creed. The only result of such a high view of human potentiality is burnout. Contrary to what we might naturally expect, the strongest uniting force between human beings is the shared understanding of our own foibles and frailties. “A low anthropology,” Zahl writes, “forges sympathy, clarity, and reconciliation out of the bonds of finitude and limitation” (38).

This segues nicely into three-part discussion on the pillars of low anthropology, those being limitation, doubleness, and self-centeredness. Theologically speaking, the tenets of low anthropology are found in St. Paul’s assertion in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The effects of sin as a result of the Fall permeate the fabric of who we are. Rather than avoiding these paradigms, as if they don’t define us, the low anthropologist realizes their inherent presence to who we are as human beings. We are limited creatures; there are undeniable and unavoidable restrictions on us that no matter how hard we try will always exist. Accepting those limitations, Zahl asserts, “works a strange alchemy: it frees us to have compassion on ourselves and others and to see how much we all need each other” (46). A low anthropologist, then, is one who has come to face with and even embraced those limits for what they are, that is, the uncanny gateway to freedom. The high anthropologist, however much he keeps hitting the same brick wall, insists that such limits don’t exist.

Those somewhat familiar with Reformational theology will identify Zahl’s discussion on humanity’s doubleness as the Lutheran paradigm of simul iustus et peccator, or “simultaneously justified and sinful at the same time.” Scripturally speaking, doubleness is what Paul articulates in the book of Romans, when he confesses his inner turmoil over continuing to do the thing he doesn’t want to do and his inability to do the things he actually wants to do (Rom. 7:16–19). Along with this compulsion to seemingly always undercutting our own aspirations and objectives comes the innate posture of of self-involvement and self-absorption. We often can’t get out of our own way because we are too often focused on ourselves. This intuitive self-interest forms a barricade to sympathy and compassion. The point being, from a the low anthropological perspective, the remedy for humanity’s shortcomings can never be found from within, it has to come from the outside.

Such is what grates on us as human beings. “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls,” notes Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (116). We avoid low anthropology like the plague because we are intrinsically resistant and reticent to admitting even the slight deficiencies. The anthropological irony, though, is that the lower it is, the more elbow-room there is for compassion, grace, and understanding. Rather than saddle our dreams on the high hopes of achievement, low anthropology recognizes that weakness is the breeding ground for hope. Denying our inadequacies through our shaky systems of high anthropology doesn’t do a lick to make us more lovable, especially in the eyes of God. Actually, it maneuvers us out of the incandescent love he beams upon those who are lost and sick. “A low anthropology,” Zahl says, “keeps us open to the wonder of life without turning a blind eye toward our limitations. It keeps a person small, and as anyone who’s spied the aurora borealis will tell you, smallness is the precursor to wonder” (135). I might add, it’s the precursor to worship, too. Low anthropology brings us back into a place of honesty about who we are and about who God is, and what we can and cannot accomplish and change, and what he can.

Zahl ends his book in similar fashion to his previous work, with a veritable jab-hook-uppercut of quick-hitting chapters on how low anthropology can be seen in our relationships, in our politics, and in our religion. This trilogy of discussions covers a bevy of ground in a scant measure of pages. The facades of perfectionism we dance behind all too quickly make their way into our homes and into our closest relationships, being the brick-and-mortar of the walls we erect that facilitate our disconnectedness and dissatisfaction. So long as we keep those walls up and refuse to recognize who we really are — faults and warts and all — we will be detached from love in any sphere of life. In the political realm, low anthropology sees such governmental and legislative systems as good and right and important, but not ultimate, and refuses to ascribe messianic worth into a manly institution. “A politics of low anthropology,” Zahl says, “is therefore highly aware of the limits of political action — what it can and cannot accomplish” (181).

This leads into a timely discussion on low anthropology and the church. If you’ve spent any amount of time in church, you are likely familiar with the unsettling and unfulfilling atmosphere created by a high anthropological understanding of faith. “A religion of high anthropology pits a person against themselves in a battle they cannot win,” Zahl affirms (191). This battle is often predicated in terms of a Christian’s sanctification and effort in discipleship, both of which are often viewed as the achievement-based territory of religion. A high anthropology religion advances the importance sanctification in terms that “feel more like losing than accruing, of getting smaller rather than larger” (191). Churches inundated with high anthropology will feel more like pressure cookers as opposed to haves of rest for the lost and the broken. Missing will be Jesus’s invitation, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Zahl writes:

A church with a low anthropology is a place we can bring our failures and our shame. It is a place to lay those things down, to hear about second chances and third chances and fourth chances. It is a place to go and not be turned away no matter how overwhelming our limitations are, by what forms our self-centeredness has expressed itself, or how much damage our doubleness has done. Even more than a place to come together, it is a place to fall apart. And there is always room for a few more faces. (197)

David Zahl’s writing is perennially captivating, bringing the right amount of wit and analysis to the table. This is, perhaps, nowhere better exampled than in Low Anthropology, the pages of which are affecting and inviting, as they usher the reader into the realization that, unbeknownst to them, they might have been formulating and/or functioning via an innate or learned detrimental anthropology, even if such terminology remains on the outskirts of their regular vocabulary. What unites us human beings is our brokenness, our weakness, and our lowliness. Resisting such realities only breeds contempt, resentment, and division. What’s needed, then, is the surprising news of God’s grace, which says that when we are weak, then we are strong (2 Cor. 12:9–10). The more we apprehend and accept our shared propensity to make a mess of things, the more we open ourselves up to the love of One who’s been there from before the foundation of the world.

Works cited:

David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself) (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2022).