Biblical Scholarship: Bane or Blessing?

Since I was a college debater at Freed-Hardeman and Abilene Christian, I will frame my argument as a debate proposition: Resolved: Biblical scholarship is essential to the life of faith.

“Essential” is a key term—it is essential in the sense that it is inherent (i.e., that it directly relates to the essence of faith), but also in the sense that it is of the utmost importance—basic, indispensable, necessary.

Even if “faith” is understood as “trust” and is seen as an act of the will, or of the heart—an emotion—it is also inevitably and inescapably an act of the intellect. Faith may arise in a moment of conversional ecstasy, when the “I” encounters the “Thou,” or it may form over time through experiences of singing and praying in fellowship with other like-minded believers. But even if faith is not a cognitive act initially, it eventually seeks knowledge. At some point in their journey of faith, believers want to know, to understand, and when this happens we experience “faith seeking understanding”—or, in the words of Anselm, fides quarens intellectum. For the believer, the desire to know is irrepressible.

Especially is this true of Bible-based faith. Regardless of how the Bible figures in the life of a believer, whether it is the central, defining narrative within which we construct—and live—our own story, or functions in a more indirect, peripheral sense, as an incidental rather than a necessary point of reference, it remains foundational and formative. It answers our questions but also poses new questions.

We see indications of this “scholastic” or “bookish” dimension of faith in the Bible itself—schools of the prophets; dream visions that require a skilled interpreter; scribes trained for the kingdom of God; Paul’s instructions to “bring the books and parchments”; teachers, listed along with apostles and prophets, as discrete forms of ministerial leadership; Jesus’s instructions to “Learn of me” and to “teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.” All these images and allusions, scattered though they are, suggest the presence of those who are set apart “to be teachers” and “interpreters” for the community of faith.

These scholastic, intellectual impulses, although inchoate, random and undeveloped in the Bible, take concrete form in the emergence and formation of schools within early Christianity—most notably in Alexandria, Syrian Antioch, Caesarea Maritima, and in other places across the Mediterranean—Ephesus, Rome, North Africa. A scholarly tradition within Christianity develops early, with persons of extraordinary intellectual capacities emerging as influential leaders and thinkers—Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, the Cappadocian Fathers, John Chrysostom, Augustine, along with many others. And if Frances Young is right—and I think she is—biblical exegesis as practiced by these various scholars, within three or four centuries, had helped form a distinctive Christian culture, which was embraced by Constantine and endured as a major cultural force throughout the Mediterranean and Europe for centuries—and still does, even today.

Typically these early Christian leaders were trained rhetorically in the most renowned academic centers, and their preaching, writing, and pastoral leadership were of a high caliber intellectually. They engaged a wide range of complex, technical issues related to Bible interpretation. Origen’s massive work on textual criticism is just one example, among many.

Pick any period of Christian history—ancient, medieval, or modern—and you will find traditions of scholarship emerging, developing, shaping and being shaped by the church’s questions and controversies. This unassailable historical fact proves my point: Biblical scholarship is essential to the life of faith.

The landscape of modern biblical scholarship was shaped by two distinct, but interrelated, intellectual revolutions: (1) the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and (2) the emergence of historical consciousness that resulted in the rise and dominance of modern historical method.

These changes had two implications for Bible readers—Jewish, Christian, and secular. First, Bible readers could not ignore the natural sciences and scientific research more broadly. How people thought about the age of the earth and the universe generally, along with human origins, changed dramatically. Equally significant was how historical investigation reshaped our understanding of the Bible and biblical revelation. These changes had profound effects on some basic theological questions: how God, the Bible, and the Word of God relate to each other; how the authorship of biblical writing is viewed; how different parts of the Bible relate to each other; and how problematic passages are explained.

Just as the explosion of scientific knowledge in the natural sciences and related fields has demanded the attention of the scientific community worldwide, so have archaeological discoveries related to the Bible and the Ancient Near East—Egyptian papyri, the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, the Gnostic Library at Nag Hammadi, to name the most well-known examples. These textual riches, along with the further study of ancient languages they have prompted, have created their own fields of specialization. Internationally coordinated scholarly efforts have now produced critical editions and translations of these texts, all of which have demanded the attention of the international scholarly community, both biblical scholars and theologians more broadly. Similar advances were made in the study of the extensive network of Bible-related writings, the so-called apocrypha and pseudepigrapha of the Old and New Testaments. The same goes for Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus. These discoveries and the scientific scholarship that has arisen in response to them substantially affected our understanding of Israelite history, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity.

So, a veritable explosion of knowledge in biblical studies and related fields has occurred over the last two centuries, and this knowledge is widely distributed in churches, synagogues, and schools at all levels; it is also located within the public domain. The church cannot easily ignore it; nor do most serious readers of the Bible want to ignore it. Many of them work in fields in which specialized knowledge informs professional practice, and they know the importance, indeed the necessity, of experienced interpreters of technical information who can bridge the gap between the lab and the physician’s office.

Now, more than ever, critically informed, scientifically based biblical scholarship is needed. With the rise of computer technology, the World Wide Web/Internet, and social media, and the changes in the way information is disseminated, quality control within biblical studies is even more urgent. These electronic changes have enabled biblical scholars to sit at their computers and turn out articles and books that are based on secondary rather than primary research; that lack rigorous peer review; that flood the market with half-baked, ill-digested ideas. In this sea of confusion, we need well-trained, technically competent biblical scholars who see ourselves as teachers of the church, and who engage in our scholarship as a form of ministry in the service of the church. What we need is more, not fewer, “scribes trained in the kingdom of God” who can serve as a community of experienced readers to whom people of faith can turn for answers and advice.

I repeat, biblical scholarship is essential to the life of faith. This has been true historically, but it is also true experientially, theologically, and practically.