#8. The church and Christian Academia need to stop viewing each other as mortal enemies. The Christian academy needs to stop bashing the church as a bunch of caveman fundamentalists who know nothing about the Bible and assume their rightful place in assisting the church in its function of fulfilling the Great Commission. The church of Jesus needs to stop viewing the Evangelical academy as a bunch of flaming liberal heretics who don’t “believe the Bible” and may not even be truly “saved” and instead use the academy as a valuable resource which supports the mission of the kingdom of God.
I’m a big believer in the autonomy and authority of the local church. I’m practically an honorary Baptist when it comes to Eccelesiology and church governance. It is my firm belief that the local church is the institution that God has chosen to use on earth to bring about the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Christian Academia does not exist as an independent entity for its own purpose, for the pursuit of knowledge in and of itself, nor to spout it’s wisdom from the heights of the ivory tower of the academy unstained from the messiness of the real world that the church must live in day to day. In my mind, the evangelical academy exists solely to serve the church (and aide/assist in its mission). If not, then it has no role in the Great Commission, and thus ceases to be a Christian Institution.
On the other hand, the church has this awesome resource at its disposal which it largely chooses to ignore. Exegesis and spirituality are seen as constantly at war. The church is often highly suspicious of the scholar or the seminary trained pastor. We are warned that if we go off to seminary we will emerge as godless, unbelieving heathens! ‘The academy, with its historical criticism, has an anti-supernatural bias.’ And yet how many of us regularly use the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible (a translation produced by, yes, those “liberal” Bible scholars because, well, the church isn’t very good a koine greek)! The result is a bifurcation between the church and the academy with suspicion on both sides: sloppy exegesis in the church and un-spiritual professors in our “christian” universities. [Note: much of the above paragraph is borrowed and paraphrased from Gordon D. Fee’s excellent article Exegesis and Spirituality: Completing the Circle.
And so we end up with an (artificial) dualism between “devotional” reading of scripture and rigorous (academic) study of the Bible – as if they are mutually exclusive activities! Why is it that, when I stop in the middle of my “devotions” to look up a word in the Greek Lexicon (in order to better understand what God is saying) that I have this underlying feeling that somehow what I am doing is inherently “un-spiritual.” Didn’t Jesus add that we are to love God with our mind (Mark 12:30) as well as the Old Testament formula with our heart, soul and strength (Deut. 6:5)? Why is it that when I sit down to translate the book of Isaiah I somehow feel that it is unnecessary to pray before tackling such a task. Why do I view exegesis as a purely intellectual activity for which no Holy Spirit is required? (Don’t worry, we’ll tackle re-capturing the role of the Holy Spirit in exegesis during week 10!)
In the meantime, what do you think? How can we help bridge the gap between Christian scholarship and the church? Have you experienced snootiness toward the believing church in the academy? Have you experienced anti-intellectualism in the local church? Is there a more integrated way to read scripture with both our mind and spirit? Could there be a radical middle here?
Until next time my friends when we will discuss Christological interpretation of scripture!
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The radical middle you are looking for Brad, is something both the church and academia here in the US struggle with; and that is application. We can study it until we are blue in the face, learn to translate it from Hebrew, Aramaic and the Greek, have small group discussion about what Jesus meant, but how many of us are actual shrugging off the fear of man and trembling with fear of God and going as He commands us to. I was slapped in the face yesterday with Luke 6:46…I was utterly embarrassed to call myself a Christian…I am failing my Savior! What gives me the audacity to call Him my Lord, if I ignore His commands? I believe we focus too much on the “mind and spirit” of reading Scripture and our downfall is the lack of physical surrender to His will and commands. We are playing it safe and I feel that He does NOT want us to hide in our safety studying Scripture to the day we die having never produced fruit for His kingdom.
Another gem of a post, Brad! I’ve heard some crazy stuff from both camps, but my favourite (so far) was when a fellow pastor (we were both associates at the same Vineyard) asked me, with great pastoral concern, “Robby, have you ever repented of going to seminary and getting filled up with man’s wisdom?” 🙂
One thing I’ve seen from the academia side that bothers me is when some church leader asks whether or not they take the Bible “literally”. The academics have a great deal of semantic fun with this one, talking genre and form and how the questioner is clearly an uneducated dolt, and generally have a great snort-n-chortle amongst themselves.
But the questioner wasn’t asking for a dissertation on genre; they were just wondering if the academics consider the Bible authoritative in our lives today. And I suspect the academics knew that (they are supposed to be the smart ones, after all). They could have just answered the query that the questioner was actually asking. 🙂
It can actually be pretty hard for an academic to answer such a question well, Robby. I’ve been asked before whether I “take the Bible literally,” and it quite often isn’t just a matter of whether I consider the Bible authoritative that they want to know. That usually is the heart of their concern, but very often the other person’s is working with assumptions about the nature of truth, of revelation, of language, and of meaning that they think everyone must agree to in order to consider the the Scriptures to be authoritative. Often the use of the term “literally” is connected to some specific issue that the person considers to be a litmus test.
Im my responses, I am certainly not laughing up my sleeve. I do my best to find a way to answer that will be at once truthful, trust-building, and edifying to the other person’s faith and discipleship. When possible, I like to engage in conversation for a while, asking them questions in order to get a better understanding of where they are coming from. This enables me to figure out the best and most helpful answers to give them. Ideally, the conversation stops being a matter of questions and answer and becomes a matter of “Hey cool. We’re having fun thinking and learning together.”
But this is not always possible, and it is rarely easy. It is especially hard if the question whether I “take the Bible literally” is coming out of the blue from someone I don’t know well or at all. In such a situation, the question is often originating from a stance of distrust, which means I have only a few sentences in which to establish both (a) that we are on the same team, and (b) that we have alternative understandings on how Jesus intended certain aspects of the game to be played. I can’t simply say “Yes” or “No” without being disingenuous in either case, since the real answer is more complicated. But there is also a human tendency to hear “It’s complicated” as “No” in situations of distrust, so that isn’t a good one-liner, either.
Moreover, giving a one line answer would amount to a missed opportunity to help someone grow deeper and stronger in their faith and understanding. Giving a simple, probably disingenuous, short answer might be tempting if I’m feeling too tired or lazy to help someone grow in Christ, but if I want to take seriously my calling to be a theologian for the sake of the church, then I need to give answers that will be at once encouraging and challenging, and that will ideally lead to richer conversations, deepening insight, and long-term growth. If I just answered the query the questioner (thought that they) asked, I wouldn’t actually be helping them much at all.
Great discussion guys! Thanks.