Perhaps I’m just addicted to indignation, but I can’t help myself.
Today’s entry is a rather smug piece by Jacques Berlinerblau, who thinks that purely rational (and rationalist) standards are the only ones that can be considered truly and professionally academic. A taste of his reflections on a panel at the Society of Biblical Literature:
[N]one of that astonished me as much as the way that the presenters reasoned through their subject matter. Their stated remarks were devoid of nearly any reference to biblical scholarship. The speakers each built their arguments almost exclusively by citing scriptural passages in an effort to figure out what the Bible was trying to say.
This is highly unusual—the typical exegete’s research leans heavily on the findings of modern biblical scholarship and those findings are prominently integrated into the substance of the analysis.
Making this more unusual was the fact that all of the presenters had considerable training as biblical scholars. All had professional familiarity with ancient Greek and probably biblical Hebrew. A glance at their footnotes (two of the presenters handed out copies) indicates that they were, in fact, acquainted with secondary scholarly literature, especially biblical commentaries.
But that secondary literature was relegated to the backmatter. It could not, for some reason, intrude upon the presenter’s interpretation of scriptural verses. These verses were assumed to link together into a larger pattern of meaning; a meaning which constituted the truth of the Scripture and the labor of the scholar.
This was, then, an approach predicated on not asking the types of troubling questions that exegetes have been asking for centuries if not millennia: Was the text I am studying written by the person who claims to have written it? Did the events recounted in the text actually happen? Can I trust that the text’s author (or authors) depicts events accurately? To what degree can we assume that the supernatural occurrences in these texts actually occurred?
Everything has to be hauled before the bar of (Berlinerblau’s pretty crabbed version of) reason. Now, I’m a pretty big fan of reason, but I recognize that there are some questions it can’t answer on its own. And I know enough about the history of early modern philosophy to recognize the problematical (not to say ideological) character of regarding reason as our “only star and compass” (John Locke’s words, if memory serves).
Berlinerblau’s conception of reason and of the university and scholarly professions that are its home would leave no room for the thoughtful development of genuine faith. It would be “presuppositionally” excluded.
Now, if that isn’t enough (along with your first six cups of coffee) to get your juices flowing, you might also read Scott McLemee’s review of a new book by two evangelical scholars. There we learn that that there’s a distinction between evangelicals (some of whom are good) and fundamentalists (all of whom seem to be pretty doggone stupid).
It might be a good moment to clarify the distinction between evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity, which are not the same thing even though the labels are often taken as synonymous. The evangelical Christian has had a transformative inner experience (Collins writes about how he “knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ”) and then communicates the message of the gospels to others. The fundamentalist regards the scriptures as literally and timelessly true. The Bible was dictated by God in plain terms requiring no interpretation at all, except in a very few places where He has laid the symbolism on so thick (beasts, crowns, horsemen with names like War and Famine, etc.) that nobody can miss it.
Someone can be both evangelical and fundamentalist, of course. Each perspective plunges a believer right into the absolute. But they are ultimately distinct. To put it one way, the evangelical stance is ethical (it defines a way of living) while the fundamentalist claim is not just about interpretation but about access to knowledge (which is certain, unchanging, and immediately available).
Evangelicalism is a (merely) ethical stance, and one based upon a (likely subjective) ”transformative inner experience”? That would be news to most of the evangelicals I know. Here the attachment to a very modernist conception of rationality gets in the way of understanding the phenomenon. Taken this way, reason is unreasonable.
Joseph Knippenberg is Professor of Politics at Oglethorpe University.
November 25th, 2011 | 11:30 am
Two quick thoughts:
(1) A better distinction between evangelicalism and fundamentalism involves one’s stance towards the wider culture. The former movement engages and embraces it, the latter generally withdraws from it.
(2) I think a better distinction than the one Berlinerblau makes between rational and irrational approaches to the Bible (which equates rationality with positivism) would be between disciplined and undisciplined readings. The scholars he discusses in your excerpt are (I would suppose) attempting to read in serious, disciplined ways, but they’ve got different reasoned convictions about the nature of reality. They operate with different rules of the game, and it’s at that level fruitful discussion can be had. What is history? What is a text? What is the nature of the task of biblical studies? Many biblical scholars assume those questions have been answered for all time, but scholars both radical (say, those into varieties of “theory”) and radically orthodox (many evangelical and younger Catholic scholars) find the positivist account of biblical studies insufficient and not compelling.
November 25th, 2011 | 11:37 am
I was aiming for the indignation, but didn’t quite manage to work it up. Or perhaps I missed the point.
If all Berlinerblau is saying is that biblical scholars cannot prove their points by weaving together “proof texts,” isn’t he basically correct?
November 25th, 2011 | 12:21 pm
Berlinerblau makes some interesting observations in his piece What’s Wrong With the Society of Biblical Literature?:
There are a few authentic Biblical scholars who write popular books—N. T. Wright being the most distinguished that I can think of—but it is difficult to imagine any of them (or any other Biblical scholar) writing a book that becomes a “must read” for the educated lay person. With all due respect, it’s virtually impossible to imagine a book about the Bible written by a fundamentalist that would be widely read by “serious,” well educated people who might be perfectly willing to read something intellectually stimulating even if they knew they weren’t going to agree with it.
It seems to me there is no good reason why solid works by Biblical scholars should not be as popular as books for the nonscientist written by top scientists by Stephen Hawking. I think Jacques Berlinerblau is correct that there is something wrong.
November 25th, 2011 | 4:03 pm
That is precisely the problem with modern Scripture scholarship. If the purely rational was all that was needed to obtain the truth there would be no need for divine revelation in the first place. The Scriptures are just that — divine revelation. A purely scientific, rational approach to its interpretation is doomed to failure before it starts because it has ruled out the existence of one of its essential components – the component that makes it Sacred Scripture and not just another literary work – the genuinely supernatural.
The Scriptures are ultimately authored by the Holy Spirit, and contain an account of the interaction between a supernatural being — God — and natural beings — us. Modern Scripture scholarship wants to explain away its record of supernatural, divine intervention in human history, in biblical books that have been traditionally considered historical, as “myths” and “legends” if a rational and naturalistic explanation cannot be found for the recorded events. That just doesn’t work. The historical books of the Bible are a record of the interaction between God and natural beings. God’s part will be supernatural. It is silly and misses the point completely to undertake an interpretation of this record after having first ruled out the possibility of anything truly supernatural actually having taken place. If it is wrong of the fundamentalists to assume the entire Bible is to be taken literally and as an historical record, it is far more wrongheaded to deny one of its fundamental components, the one that makes it Sacred Scripture and not just another human-authored literary work: the supernatural.
It terms of the books of Scripture that have been traditionally considered to be historical those questions have been given a high priority — almost to the exclusion of everything else it seems — by Scripture scholars for about a hundred and fifty years, and are considered of high importance by scholars, it seems, who do not believe Christ kept His promises to the Church that it would forever have the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The fulfillment of that promise can be found where the Church Fathers were unanimous in their interpretation of Scripture. Consider the following excerpt from Augustine’s Commentary on the Book of Genesis for a striking example of where there was not consensus among the Fathers:
There was no consensus among the Church Fathers on the interpretation of the creation accounts in Genesis in terms of their being a scientific or a historical record of creation, at least not history as modern man thinks of it. The general resurrection of the dead is actually much more far-fetched than the creation accounts of Genesis (the discoveries of modern science indicate that the belief that the Universe and the life we find in it is all a mindless accident is much more far-fetched than the resurrection and the creation accounts), yet belief in the resurrection is so fundamental to Christianity, according to Augustine, that to make that belief credible is why we must present the Scriptures credibly to non-believers. This is why Augustine, even though he said what he did in his Commentary on Genesis, vehemently defended the historicity of the Book of Jonas – Jonas, whose return from where no man ever returns was a type of the resurrection of Christ.
For a modern defense of the historicity of the book of Jonas and a summary of the Patristic witness to its historicity, see On the Prophet Jonah here:
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt101.html
See also:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08497b.htm
Which is from the Catholic Encyclopedia and was written in 1910, before the modern corruption of Scripture scholarship was as wide spread as it is now. Here is an excerpt:
God, by His perfect providence, authors history itself. He used humans as instruments to record that history in what we refer to as salvation history, or the historical books of the Bible. He also called the Universe into existence out of nothing. He became a man – one of us – Who died and rose from the dead. We must believe these things to be Christian at all. And if we do believe those things, it should be easy to believe that God parted the Red Sea for Moses and kept somebody alive in a big fish for a few days. As St. Jerome put it:
Or as St. Augustine put it in his defense of the historicity of the book of Jonas:
God authors history itself – His omnipotence has no need of “inspiring” human authors to make up myths and legends for Him. What He wills happens. As He authors that history He is not limited to only bringing about events which appear natural to us. In fact, He does not limit Himself to that precisely to make the point that it was indeed Him – the One True God – and not a false god, Who brought supernatural events about:
That same God became a man, and unsurprisingly displayed the truth of His divinity and His message in the same way:
Modern Scripture scholarship has made a false god of the abilities of human reason, and has forgotten the remark of St. Augustine:
And eventually we won’t believe in Christ Himself and that He rose on the third day if we don’t return to what was unanimously believed by the Church Fathers, which was the result of the promised work of the Holy Spirit, and leaves us free to not insist upon the historicity of the Scriptures where the Fathers didn’t do so unanimously, and to proclaim its historicity where they did with the humility of Jerome and Augustine, having no fear of the laughter of contemporary pagans who have made a false and rather silly god of limited, faithless human reason.
November 25th, 2011 | 5:36 pm
[...] Joseph Knippenberg’s piece at First Thoughts brought back memories for me. The “Battle for the Bible” that occurred in Missouri in the 60′s and 70′s, well summed up by Kurt Marquart in his Anatomy of and Explosion, was centered primarily around the attitude and approach of Jacques Berlinerblau and SBL. Read not only Knippenberg’s quote, but also the whole Berlinerblau link he posts as well. [...]
November 28th, 2011 | 4:34 am
As Mgr Ronald Knox observed of the contrast between Classical and Biblical studies, “The lecturer who combats Kirchhoff, or exposes Ferrcro, can do so without any imputation of narrow- mindedness. He has, in this instance, clearly no axe to grind. But if he be a Christian, and a fortiori if he be a clergyman, he is afraid of the imputation of narrow-mindedness if he takes up the same attitude towards Harnack or Spitta.
When Mr. Cornford writes about Thucydides, Oxford historians cheerfully dispose of him in half a lecture, but when he writes about Christianity, Oxford theologians see cause for much searching of hearts and wagging of heads. But is there any reason for this difference, except that we are all in such craven fear of being thought illiberal?”
November 28th, 2011 | 9:08 am
harry –
And as soon as I get a divine revelation confirming that, I’ll believe it. ;)
November 28th, 2011 | 11:33 am
Hi, Ray,
Let me know when that happens. ;o)
If there is a God Who is truly interested in humanity, and if there are limits to what human reason all by itself can discover of the truth, then it shouldn’t surprise us that there has been divine revelation.
That there is some intelligence that is responsible for the Universe and the life we find within it is certainly, to say the least, a reasonable conclusion to reach, especially considering the discoveries of modern science: The Universe did indeed have a beginning; it is amazingly fine-tuned in such a way as to make life possible; upon the close inspection modern science has made possible, life is found to be nanotechnology vastly beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. None of that proves in a scientific way that God is there, but it does demonstrate that it is very reasonable to conclude He is there, and does so to an extent that one has to wonder if it is reasonable at all to insist He isn’t there as though one could be certain about that.
If God is there and is interested in humanity then it is not at all unreasonable to conclude that there has been divine revelation due to His wanting us to know the Truth and His taking into consideration the limits of human reason.
November 28th, 2011 | 12:56 pm
Ray Inglis
I believe the Church to be infallible because God revealed this; and I believe God revealed it because it is affirmed by the Church.
Obviously, in the second proposition “because” is not to be taken in the same sense as in the first, for it does not signify the formal motive of faith, but only the indispensable condition of faith, that is, the infallible proposition of the object of faith.
November 29th, 2011 | 3:11 am
Reading the comments, I am reminded of the old joke we collared types used to tell about our discussions . . .
God, looking down upon the theologians in discussion, was somewhat perplexed. He asked Mike and Gabe, his two most dependable arch-angels: “Guys, what are they talking about?”
The arch-angels, clueless, answered as did St. John in Revelations: “You know.”
Except, the Lord did not know.
Folks, it is far easier (a point Luther understood well), to understand Scripture, than it is to understand the Church’s commentary about Scripture, which is often convoluted, if not contradictory.
Sunday next (Advent II, Series B), the text is Isaiah 40:1-11. Verses 5-8 are the heart of matters. No Christian needs the opinion of the whole Church to understand the text, he just needs the faith to take the words at face value and believe.
The tautological reasoning of “The Church believes what I believe, hence I believe what the Church believes” invites zero introspection into matters of the faith. It merely invites the faithful to be faithfully ignorant, which virtually every Church body advocates.
I am a Shepherd of a flock. My ordination does not permit me such latitude. Be it milk or meat, I am to feed the flock and be a Shepherd, not a lackey jerking around with a bunch of personal opinions dictating what I should or shouldn’t say.
One either accepts, as a matter of faith, Isaiah 40:8, or not:
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God will stand forever.”
There are no caveats. Tradition and Churchly decrees do not supersede Scripture. Such thinking is ridiculous.
Scripture is the source. Period.
November 29th, 2011 | 3:59 am
jb is right to object to the tautology, “The true church is that which teaches the true faith” and “The true faith is what the true church teaches.”
Now, it is perfectly possible to avoid the question-begging assumption of defining Christians by examining their tenets, or the Church by its teaching. After all, the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, known as “Cunctos Populos,” which stands in pride of place at the beginning of the Codex of Justinian, did so very neatly, by referring to “that religion which from then to now declares itself to have been delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness.”
Not only does it avoid the vice of circularity, but, suitably updated to refer to living authorities, it is remarkably easy of application; just what one would expect of the criterion of a divine message, intended for all, regardless of learning, capacity or circumstances.
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