My position may be a bit out of place in my own tradition.

To be an evangelical who is highly critical of the field of Biblical Studies is like being an evangelical who does not think Tim Tebow will succeed in the NFL, a Protestant who is concerned with liturgy, a liberal arts grad student who does not have a Bon Iver channel on Pandora, a Roman Catholic theologian who significantly disagrees with Thomas Aquinas, a virgin on the Bachelorette, an Eastern Orthodox priest who prefers Augustine to Gregory of Nazianzus, or a Baptist church without a basketball league (feel free to expand this list in the comments…it’s surprisingly fun).[1] There are a few of us, but not many. Indeed, at evangelical seminaries across the world, it is the field of Biblical Studies that usually sits in the place of prominence.

This prominence seems be a result of the laws of supply and demand. The ratio of students who would like to read a commentary on Matthew to those who would like to read a section of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics is surprisingly lopsided. My seminary experience would have put that ratio for first-year students at, very conservatively, 10:1. I find this lopsided interest unfortunate because I think that the field of biblical studies has some problems that are often not discussed because of the overwhelming fervor for the field. Here are my two major critiques:

It is my opinion that the field of biblical studies: 1) often masquerades as a science; and 2) has a significantly flawed methodology. I will engage them in this order.

Leopold von Ranke
(1785-1886)

First, the field of biblical studies seems to view itself as more of a science than an art. This mimics Leopold von Ranke’s approach to the field of history. In this type of a paradigm, the methodology is overvalued. One is taught that a properly employed methodology will lead to a sort of scientific result: begin with some source criticism, add some narrative criticism, a few other checkpoints, some historical background, and voila! Empirical evidence! The problem is that, really, the scholar has produced nothing of the sort. The field of history and the field of biblical studies both violate one major aspect of the scientific method – they cannot produce repeatable results as it relates to their theses. One cannot reproduce Jesus dying in 29 AD (if he did) any more than one can reproduce the author of Galatians intending a subjective genitive. Moreover, one cannot ‘do’ history or biblical studies in a controlled environment. So, while the field often seems to emanate an air of objectivity, this is a façade. Biblical studies, as is history, is in its very nature an art. Every claim must be treated with at least a moderate level of doubt. (NB: the objectivity of science has also been under incredible scrutiny ever since David Hume demonstrated the contingent nature of knowledge and the limitations of observation – the very basis of scientific inquiry. Thomas Kuhn’s more recent The Structure of Scientific Revolutions also speaks to the limitations of science from a different angle).

I would like to explore this second byproduct – an overconfidence in results gained by using biblical studies’ methodology– a bit more. Since we are a materialistic (philosophically) culture, we tend to apply scientific paradigms to everything. We approach biblical exegesis in the same manner that we approach the study of a human genome – empirical deductions are given the label “true.” In the same way scientists can observe a gene determining our hair color, after applying the tools of exegesis to the Scripture we feel as if we have emerged with a similar type of finding. Without using any other methodologies or tools, a student or scholar often feels that they know that: 1) Eph. 1 definitely speaks of the predestination of an elect group; 2) Eph. 1 definitely speaks of the predestination of the entire world; 3) Eph. 1 definitely speaks of the predestination of all who choose God to good works; 4) The phrase pistos Christou in Galatians is definitely a subjective genitive; 5) the phrase pistos Christou in Galatians is definitely an objective genitive; or 6) the Scriptures are definitely not what one previously taught, so he/she can no longer, with intellectual integrity, have faith in Christ or the Triune God. The point of this myriad of differing claims is not to show how many varying claims can be logically shown within the field, but to highlight how the overvaluing of the tools and methodology in biblical studies leads to a premature calcifying of positions.

My second argument is that, building upon this first point, the field of biblical studies has a significantly flawed methodology. This is most readily seen in both its excessively narrow focus and the priority that is placed upon the viewpoint of the contemporary student over the ancient student. When contemplating the field itself, a word that often comes to my mind is gaunt. The methodology, which is beholden to 19^th and early 20^th century German higher criticism, lacks many important angles. First, it does not readily engage philosophical and theological traditions outside of Judaism. Certainly, Judaism is important and has too often been ignored over the years. Yet, Jews in the era of Christ did not exist in an intellectual vacuum. Philo of Alexandria stands out as a helpful example of a Jew that was highly influenced by Hellenism. Similar to our era – to every era for that matter – the streams of intellectual thought during the time of Christ were incredibly mixed and difficult to parse out into clean, self-contained blocks. One cannot bring Jesus or his followers out as only Jews. They were Jews and. Please read me clearly on this – Judaism is crucially important, but good scholarship cannot exclude other crucially important intellectual streams of the time as well – if we do, how will we understand the logos of John 1? (One interesting point here…the overemphasis on Judaism seems to have extended beyond the first century. For instance, Princeton University’s Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity program, housed within its Religion Department, would be better titled Judaism in Late Antiquity since four of its five faculty members are specialists in Judaism in that era).

This methodological tendency to hold an overly narrow emphasis also exists chronologically – the field is nearly blind to history past the 1^st century. The common retort is that one is only interested in background influences on the text, but that does not properly recognize the complex interweaving of relationships surrounding those who created the texts. Those who wrote the texts continued to live after the texts’ were created, passing on their own understanding of their writings to those who would listen. Consider for a moment the tradition that emerged in Smyrna, a church body mentioned in John’s Revelation. Tradition holds that the Apostle John mentored Ignatius, an early bishop in Smyrna. Ignatius in turn mentored Polycarp, who himself became bishop of Smyrna. Both ended their lives as martyrs. However, before Polycarp was killed, a teenager almost certainly learned at his feet before being sent to be the bishop in Lyon, France – Irenaeus. Irenaeus died circa 203 AD. This line is extremely important to our discussion because, if the line actually existed (it cannot be empirically established either way), then the thought of each of these men has an elevated gravity since they represent a direct line to the verbal teaching of John. It is speculation, but speculation that I think has a high level of probability, that other such lines existed following the death of Christ. People do not exist in a vacuum, but in the real, messy, daily confusion of life. The three-dimensional reality of human life requires that we consider, rather than ignore, the foreground of the biblical texts. Such events as John speaking about his experiences and writings with someone who passed them onto someone else are difficult to quantify and to study, but they did exist. And we must recognize them.

Moreover, the field’s methodology is flawed in that, at least in practice, it often values the perspective of the contemporary student over that of the ancient student (I do recognize that this problem does not belong to biblical studies alone). A personal experience is apropos. When I was in my ThM program, I took an advanced course exploring problems arising within the Greek New Testament text with a well-known evangelical New Testament scholar. While discussing a certain interpretive question that dealt specifically with a genitive phrase construction that exists throughout Paul’s letters, this scholar quickly stated that there was no author in the early Church who agreed with the interpretation that he and a great number of biblical scholars had made. He quickly said this and continued to a different point. A bit puzzled, I raised my hand and asked him why he did not find this fact worth addressing. His response was simple: “Well, they [early Christians] were influenced by Greco Roman philosophy, so…[shoulder shrug].” The implication of his shoulder shrug was made explicit during a class break – since the early Church was influenced by different streams of Greek philosophy (I find no evidence that there really is a unique Roman stream of philosophy), their interpretations are severely compromised. This type of attitude, which grows out of an outdated interpretation of this era espoused, as far as I can tell, by Adolf von Harnack, is incredibly troublesome for three reasons. First, the early Church spoke the Greek that was employed by the New Testament authors. To put this more simply, they understood Greek idioms better than the LSJ. Second, many of them knew the people who wrote the texts, or knew others who knew them. Thus, they were the beneficiaries of inquiries and clarifications to which we are not privy. Third, Greek philosophy was not one stream. It included Neoplatonism, Stoicism, Scepticism, Epicureanism, and many other streams. Fourth – and this may be the most important of the four – we are all affected by the philosophy of our era. We are all in a fishtank, so to speak. This is not necessarily bad, it is just a reality of human existence. Especially in light of these first two points, is it not time that we give greater weight to those that had these advantages than to the 21^st century biblical student whose one advantage is often only the number of documents to which he/she has access?

And so, my critique has now been presented and we arrive at the question: ‘So what should we do?’ My answer is simple. The restrictive methodology in biblical studies produces overly restricted results. Not only that, but those results are left haphazard and disjointed without any attempt to place them within a paradigm. Today, many scholars in the field seem to recognize this and are exploring biblical theology as a course corrective. But this specific attempt to provide a paradigm is only a weak move in the right direction. Indeed, it is an exercise in futility because it is an exercise in repetitiveness. The field is unnecessarily attempting to reinvent the wheel. Rather than waste its time in a continued separation from its natural partner in the interpretive process, I believe that it is time for biblical studies to return to the example given to us by such scholars as Karl Barth and reconnect itself with the field of theology. From an evangelical perspective, theology and biblical studies are symbiotic. One cannot exist without the other. Theology without proper grounding in God’s revelation of himself to humanity simply engages in speculation. Biblical studies, when separated from theology, resembles the pieces of a clock strewn throughout an artisan’s workshop – beautiful, valuable, but in need of form to fulfill its purpose. But together, biblical studies takes its rightful place as the textual step in the interpretive process, and its gaunt methodology produces more robust results by engaging the broader views and paradigms of theology and philosophy (including the historical aspects of each).

NOTE: Brian LePort’s response is now up on his blog, Near Emmaus. You can link to it by clicking here.