1. You say, “Very few, if any, are accepted any more into prominent Ph.D. programs in any subdivision of religious studies, theology or otherwise.” Possibly your interpretation of “prominent” differs from mine, but I have had friends who have recently graduated (within the past 10 years) from Trinity, SBTS and Gordon-Conwell to pursue their doctoral work at what I would consider prominent theological schools (Princeton, Duke, Brown and Aberdeen). From what friends have told me, they did not struggle in the transition from evangelical to non-evangelical training as their evangelical training taught them a broad range of interpretive methods even though the schools themselves did not affirm those methods. Furthermore, the quality of work at their evangelical seminaries was consistent with the quality expected by the non-evangelical seminaries. They also have said that their evangelical perspective was respected at the non-evangelical schools as long as the quality of their work and research was strong.

2. I would hope that you do not have this opinion, but your comments here seem to imply that you are of the opinion that evangelical and scholar are mutually exclusive. From my understanding of the term, N.T. Wright very clearly falls under the category “evangelical,” and he has consistently used this category to define himself in the past. Furthermore, there are still wonderful scholars within the evangelical camp who are regular members of SBL-AAR meetings and are well respected for their work by those outside of evangelicalism.

3. Furthermore, you seem to imply that the historical-critical method and biblicism are mutually exclusive. Personally, I think the term inerrancy is unhelpful and carries much baggage with which I am not comfortable. I would rather take the view that Wright takes concerning Scripture which is “I’m not necessarily going to give a one-word theory, or even a five-word theory, but I am going to tell you that I am on my knees in front of this book day after day after day…I really think that if it’s in this book, I need to be doing serious business with it. If I say that I believe X but that the Bible says Y which is different, then chances are I’m making a mistake somewhere, but that doesn’t prejudge all issues of interpretation, you know.” I think that many of my mainline friends would consider having that type of perspective towards the Bible as biblicism, yet that view is clearly compatible with using the historical-critical method in interpretation. Furthermore, from my perspective, mainline scholarship has trended away from simply relying on the old standard of the historical-critical method. There has been an acceptance within scholarship that pure objectivity with regards to the text is impossible, if not often unhelpful. I think particularly of recent trends at Princeton and Duke, but I think I can more broadly say that scholarship has a renewed respect for subjective methods of interpreting the text particularly in regards to reader response.

Thanks again for your insightful comments, I think they are very helpful to many who will read this board. Please don’t take my responses as overly negative, because they were not intended to be so. I believe from what you have said that if you and I were to sit down and talk things through, we would find agreement on the majority of issues, even though I still use the term evangelical in regards to myself, whereas you do not.

Have a great day, and a merry Christmas.

You have inappropriately blown this up into an issue that you apparently have some interest in fostering. Well enough, but don’t pretend to get it out of that letter. If the Piper patrol you denounce is so prolific why not just cite actual examples instead of finding imaginary slights in the comments of those who are not even among his supporters?

I’m off to visions sugar plumbs dancing in my head.

Merry Christmas

For the record, I’m a historian of Modern European political History. I teach at a public college, and all my degrees, including my Ph.D. are from public schools. None of my research deals with religion or the Bible, so I’m not a “biblicist.” I am, however, fairly conservative politically and religiously.
If the historical-critical method (a term not used at all in my field BTW) is what you say it is with respect to putting the Bible in its historical context, then I don’t have any problem with it. And I apologize if I have misunderstood this term or have somehow misconstrued your ideas as presented here. My impression, however, was that in theology the historical-critical method mainly consisted of works that cast Jesus as a proto-Marxian revolutionary leader or Paul as a woman-hater. Perhaps I’m wrong on that or have lumped people together wrongly, and I’m certainly not an expert in the field, but that is the impression I get. It wouldn’t be remarkably different from my field though; a student where I received my dissertation wrote her dissertation on the question of what gender the Russian revolution was.
While I could be wrong about the historical-critical method, I continue to be suspicious of fadish ideas that become popular in academia from time to time, especially those driven more by leftist ideological agendas instead of evidence. And again, why put so much stock in the “mainstream?” In science, eugenics was all the rage and defined the “mainstream” in the 1920s and 1930s. The fact remains that the “mainstream” can be badly wrong.
I’ll let this be my last post on this. Merry Christmas to all.

rr

The text is prime.

I have read too many pieces outlining the “intent” of a text as illumined by the historical-critical method that directly contradict the text a few paragraphs down.

It is only useful as far as it helps us understand the text, it is “ridiculous” to chop the text up with this method and make it fit one viewpoint, so as to make the book or paragraph lack inner cohesion. This is often times the result.

In most scholarship, research is prime. Source documents are prime. Assumptions are prime, and the text takes second chair to the scholar. How that can pass as biblical scholarship is amazing.

I’d hardly consider the historical-critical method “nonsense.” It has helped us learn immense amounts about the social context of first century Palestine, the editorial perspectives of the various authors of the biblical text, and much more. Because of the historical-critical method, we have a clearer understanding of what the authors of the text both intended and did not intend to say with what they wrote. But most importantly, we have a more accurate understanding of the places in the biblical text where ambiguity persists, where we cannot accurately figure out what the authors were trying to say.

Compared to biblicism, which too often raises the mantle of blind dedication to the words of the text themselves and the meaning they evoke for us only in the present context, the historical-critical method is in my opinion quite comforting, and much more spiritually encouraging and authentic. Biblicism, and its offshoots inerrancy and infallibility, hold the Bible’s authority over and against that of science, for example, at times when science clearly contradicts the biblical text. That’s not very logical or comforting to the intellect, which I believe God said we were created with to use to God’s glory because we were created “in God’s image.”

I submit that you likely don’t find philosophies like Marxism and postmodernism, among other “ideologies,” useful for understanding “the human condition or the human past” because you’ve already given over that part of your intellect to the “ideology” of biblicism. And biblicism, along with inerrancy and infallibility, is indeed an ideology, because it is a human-made philosophy imposed upon the biblical text that simply isn’t there.

(And just to presuppose a possible reply: let’s please not quote Paul saying “all scripture is God-breathed,” etc., etc., because “scripture” as we know it in its final form wasn’t finished until three hundred years after Paul’s death. There is absolutely nowhere where scripture, as in the complete Bible as we have it today, claims its own authority. To do so is to impose human, and philosophically modern, standards on the words of the text itself.)

Respectable historians in academia use the historical-critical method on the texts they have available. That methodology isn’t limited to religious scholars. It is used throughout the various fields of academia. If you, rr, are a historian within academia (which, if I remember right, you are), using the historical-critical method and other empirically sound methodology should be a central element of your work.

If you don’t use such methodology, like you seem to say you don’t (since you equate it with other “ideologies” as “fadish”), then it would seem that you likely betray your place of employment as a religiously conservative institution, whose work in religious studies (or in many other disciplines) would already not be considered very worthwhile to behold by the mainstream. That may sound harsh. But that’s just the way it is in academia. If I’m wrong about you, which I very well could be, then please clarify that for all of us.

To Aaron:

You are right in many ways, in my opinion. Piper’s work is really just not worth the time of day for mainstream religious scholars, because his forays into academic writing (as with his book on justification) just don’t provide anything that would be considered well-written and scholarly persuasive arguments because of the staunch biblicism that lies underneath them.

He is very popular, however, and likely does deserve well-written, scholarly arguments outlining how ill-conceived and ill-informed his positions really are. But that kind of response could very well be aimed at the Reformed (and, as some say, neo-Reformed) theological program in general, of whom Piper is one of its most known representatives.

Personally, I do think it should be responded to, because when stripped bare, it really is the theological fundamentalism of the mid-1920s re-conceived for a new generation of evangelicals, mixed in with a heavy dose of Puritan pietism, read through the voice of Johnathan Edwards and John Owen here and there, to make it go down easier. The reason we should be aware of it and respond to it swiftly, even more so, is because it is becoming more militant (another comparison with early 1920s fundamentalism) in its attacks on those who try and critique it for its shortcomings.

To Monk’s fine question, I think it is important that there be a voice that directly addresses the work of Piper because of his popularity. Popularity implies credibility to many and that is dangerous. Unchecked popularity is even more dangerous. Piper seems to propogate the type of thinking that provides shelter for intolerance and disrespect for anything outside of popular fundamentalist language.

If I have overstepped my proper bounds I apologize; I know less of Piper than many, but I know the thinking of those who are fans of Piper and I have seen some of his work so I stand by the belief that it would be helpful for someone (an academic scholar or an independent one) to directly address his work.

Peace,
Aaron

A great Christmas to all

Missionary Roger