Crusading Liberals in the Field of Biblical Studies

Dan Wallace justly notes that liberals can be pretty intolerant. David Ker notes that atheism is a religion for white boys, though it’s possible that a white girl’s club of atheists will see the light of day. Historically speaking of course, liberalism, not just atheism, has been dominated by white boys. In apparent response to Wallace’s piece, to which he links, James McGrath seems to think that liberalism has truth on its side, and God’s angels, too, if he could bring himself to believe in angels. Independently, Ken Schenck takes a shot at John Piper, a favorite punching bag of liberals and everyone else almost who is not "neo-Reformed." It is all very predictable. I see McGrath and Schenck as intelligent caped crusaders for the liberal cause. All things considered, the situation is reassuring.

Still, Schenck’s examples illustrate the problem. He seems to consider it obvious that the chief contribution of scholars like Stendahl and Sanders has been to call the classical understandings of Jesus and Paul into question. That is a very reductive notion. Rather, the re-contextualization of Jesus and Paul within the Judaisms of their day represents a frontal challenge to classical and standard modern notions of Jesus and Paul. In point of fact, it is not difficult to see how classical understandings of Jesus and Paul might be enriched and refined in consequence of said re-contextualization. Schenck admits as much. The standard liberal model of Jesus, on the other hand, is dead in the water once the criterion of dissimilarity is seen to be the perverse assumption it is, anti-Semitic or at least anti-Judaic on the one hand, and anti-orthodox or at least anti-Catholic and Orthodox on the other.

Schenck’s other example has to do with the use of the Old Testament in the New. Jim West rightly calls him on that one. Jim notes his own work, but it is Richard Hays who has shown very cogently that the echoes of Scripture in the New Testament are rich and complex rather than superficial.

Honesty is a lonely word, but the truth runs more like this. There is an enormous mass of shallow partisan scholarship on the market today, of every imaginable ideological persuasion. There is a narrow stream of excellent scholarship on the market, of every imaginable ideological persuasion.

In a famous essay some people have never read (link provided below), Jon Levenson notes that candid scholars have been known to remark along the following lines, that the discipline of biblical studies, as taught in non-religious institutions (and in liberal-leaning religious institutions), is “on the whole calculated to turn a fundamentalist into a liberal.”¹ Levenson’s response, with which I agree, is to note the debilitating and self-contradictory nature of the Enlightenment project of historical criticism, and the need to create a truly pluralistic conversation based on the recognition that no tradition of interpretation, including that tradition based on “the positivistic notion of critical autonomy,” can or should require those who do not accept its normative pretensions in all particulars to accommodate its totalistic claims (123):

Room must be made for other senses of the text, developed by other traditions, and historical criticism must learn to interact more creatively with those other traditions, neither surrendering to them nor demanding that they surrender to historical criticism.

Levenson is an advocate of the “dignity both of traditional interpretation and of modern criticism.”² Is it likely that the field of biblical studies will ever make progress in the direction he points?

No and yes.

No, because many biblical scholars consider it their duty to nudge their students in the direction of thinking and acting like nice, secular, liberal people, the de facto religion of the religiously uncommitted academic world. If their students are already nice, secularized, uncommitted people, a fundamentalist “other” is constructed as a punching bag, in the interests of producing lean, mean, fighting machines. Traditional interpretation of the Bible, except insofar as it can be construed to dovetail with the Enlightenment project, or tarred as irrational, is not useful in this regimen. It is neglected or simply ignored.

Scholars of this stripe, and they are legion, tend to regard “double-trouble” evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and Jews – the kind of people behind magazines like Books & Culture, First Things and Commentary: just examples! - with a certain fear and loathing, as opponents of their sacred causes. Perhaps they are. One might expect that sort of thing in a pluralistic world. They are “double-trouble,” of course, because said people are the intellectual equals of caped crusading liberals, but nonetheless follow the beat of a different drummer.

It is of course also true that several categories of traditional Jews and Christians regard the historical study of the Bible and the commitment to recover the sense of the biblical text apart from their particular appropriation of it with suspicion and hostility.

But there are others who, regardless of their point of arrival in terms of cultural loyalties, see the existence of religious communities and traditions of interpretation of the Bible which have not simply caved in to modernity as a great positive in a world in which men read Maxim and women read Vogue.

On this understanding of the discipline of biblical studies, the goal is to point the way for non-believers, believers, and everyone in between to interact creatively with traditions of interpretation other than their own, neither surrendering to them nor demanding that they surrender to their tradition of interpretation.

¹ Jon D. Levenson, “Historical Criticism and the Fate of the Enlightenment Project,” inThe Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 106-126; 106. A version of the same essay with essentially the same content is available online here.

² Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) xv.

Comments

[terri]

"Historically speaking of course, liberalism, not just atheism, has been dominated by white boys."

Historically speaking most western thought, conservative, liberal, or atheistic, has been dominated by white boys.

[JohnFH]

Very true, Terri.

Non-whites and non-boys have already brought a lot to the table in biblical studies.

However, I think it is fair to say that the quality of the contributions has nothing to do with whether the non-whites and non-boys are conservative or liberal, theist or atheist.

[Ken Schenck]

I don't think of myself as a liberal or a liberal crusader, just as you do probably do not see yourself as a conservative crusader. So many of us see ourselves as trying to follow the evidence to its logical conclusion in as objective a manner as possible, trying not to modify our presuppositions any more than necessary. I do think, however, that traditionalists, or whatever we want to call them, have more presuppositions to steer around and, thus, that there is at least more potentially in the way to stand in the way of objectivity.

By the way, I would also agree with you that Sanders and Stendahl brought way more modification to mainstream modern biblical reconstructions of Paul than they did to me as a conservative Methodist. None of my jabs were liberal for someone in the Methodist tradition.

[JohnFH]

Hi Ken,

I wouldn't mind being labelled as a conservative crusader. Especially of the "caped" variety.

My only problem with being labelled a "conservative" is that many people so labelled today, like Rush Limbaugh, are not conservative at all in my book, just confused.

I didn't realize you self-identify as a conservative Methodist. My bad. I try to make a point of labeling people in ways they feel comfortable with.

I'm pretty sure that James McGrath has self-identified as a liberal.

I agree that traditionalists - I consider myself a reconstructed traditionalist - have a lot of presuppositions: a sign of seriousness.

I don't try to steer around mine so much as put them in play, refine, and reformulate them.

[Angela Erisman]

I'm a big fan of that book by Levenson. I think it should be required reading for budding biblical scholars.

I'm in agreement, but only so far. I think there is definitely a place at the table for various types of biblical interpretation and much to be gained by putting them in conversation with one another. But I don't think they all have an equal seat, depending on the question being asked.

[JohnFH]

That's an insightful point, Angela. I hope you can expand on that some time.

[David Ker]

Two days ago I got to see my first YouTube of John Piper. He's scarily articulate. (And would be fun to parody)

Publishers are more influential than we give them credit. They are the ones that ultimately choose, based on their perception of the consumer's wants, what will make it into the market, and the market of ideas.

[Gary Simmons]

This reminds me somewhat of an episode of South Park where the boys are sent to a concentration tolerance camp, and a guy with a certain type of mustache trained them to be tolerant, saying "intolerance will not be tolerated!"

The parody may be a bit too extreme to apply here, or maybe it's spot on.

[JohnFH]

What makes South Park special is its spoofing of sanctimonious behavior and hypocrisy of the liberal variety. It rings true, which plays into one of my points: traditionalists do not have a monopoly on bad manners, confirmation bias, or any other sins, intellectual or moral, that plague the human race.

[Hebrew Scholar]

Biblical "scholarship" is indeed strange. With ancient Greek or Aramaic or Latin or Hebrew texts of ancient writers such as Josephus, Tacitus, Caesar, etc., scholars in those fields are happy to understand those texts as what they appear to be, with occasional warts, but basically historically accurate. But in the case of the Hebrew Bible, "scholars" in the academic world will do anything and everything to discredit the Bible texts, to say they are written by anyone other than who they claim to be, they will micro-analyse every statement for any way to discredit it, and refuse to accept it as a historical text. It is in contrast to everything else in the academic world. If aliens were looking at this from afar, they would have to conclude that those academic scholars are trying to distract people from what those texts actually say, to discredi them and stop people reading them, rather than wanting to understand those texts and what their importance is.