Two Reasons We Evangelicals Dislike Historical Criticism
Let’s talk about why the modern study of Scripture makes us evangelicals twitchy. Modern study of Scripture (particularly, historical criticism of the Bible) makes us anxious because it treads dangerously near the toes of:
- Our doctrine of Scripture
- The doctrines we derive from Scripture
Issue #1 has gotten the most air time in the debate, for obvious reasons. But I rather suspect that we wouldn’t be nearly so uncomfortable about issue #1 were it not for issue #2; that is to say, I’d wager that we wouldn’t be so divided over the way the historical criticism requires us to nuance our description of the truthfulness of Scripture if we didn’t also derive the rest of our doctrines from Scripture.
We sense that tweaking the way we understand the truthfulness of Scripture might jumble our construals of the doctrines rooted in Scripture. Perhaps more pointedly, we’re afraid that historical criticism will tell us that the Bible is untrue and that, as a consequence, we’ll have to conclude that our theology is false too. We worry that the floor could fall out from under our belief and that makes our stomachs turn. All this anxiety is totally understandable and it’s rooted in an earnest and pious fidelity to teachings of the Church and the revelation of God.
The thing is, however, I’m not sure that doctrine “on the other side of” historical criticism will be much different than it has been for centuries. Of course, it’s hard to say for sure, since we evangelicals haven’t queried the theological ramifications of historical criticism very incisively. We know that some historical-critical scholars have made suggestions would gum up non-negotiable doctrines, but we’re genereally not sufficiently well-versed in historical criticism to respond to those scholars on historical-critical grounds. Consequently, we’ve tried to do an end-run around historical-critical modes of debate by saying that the historical-critical discipline is incompatible with our doctrine of Scripture (issue #1, above) and that it leads to all manner of heresies (issue #2).
So let’s talk about these issues.
First, the truthfulness of Scripture: in popular discourse, we tend to describe Scripture as authoritative, true, and without error. In broad-strokes, I’m happy with that. But we all know that there’s a fair bit involved in figuring out what Scripture is saying in order to affirm that message as true.
At a basic level, we’re accustomed to this process. We know that you have to read the biblical texts in their literary contexts, to define words based on their ancient meanings, to understand biblical utterances in their cultural milieux, to define the intention of a text in accordance with its ancient genre, etc. In short, as a rule we let ancient culture and literature modify our expectations of what the Bible is and how God uses it to reveal himself.
The problems arise for us when some biblical texts appear to do things that are both typical of ancient literature and potentially problematic for our doctrine. We don’t mind seeing things like vaticinium ex eventu (“prophecy after the fact”), non-scientific depictions of primeval history, and pseudepigraphic authorship in lots of pieces of ancient literature, as long as those things don’t appear in our ancient literature.
It’s understandable that we would balk when certain features of ancient literature run up against some of our presuppositions of what the Bible is. Nobody likes adjusting their presuppositions, even if an inductive study of Scripture suggests that we should do so. But I wonder if we’d be relatively more amenable to adjusting our presuppositions about the nature of the Bible if we didn’t also have to worry about the impact such adjustment would have on the rest of our theology.
This brings us to issue #2: the impact of historical criticism on other doctrines, which we derive from Scripture. Now, as an evangelical I am committed to the belief that Scripture is the foundation of our theology. Still, we also need to bear in mind (what will be obvious to most evangelical theologians) that that there is more involved in deriving our doctrine from Scripture than simply highlighting a biblical text/theme and then applying a fancy Greek or Latin title to it. Systematic theology is rather more complicated than that.
Consider the doctrine of the Trinity: you won’t find the language of God being “one divine essence in three hypostases” in the New Testament; it took the Church a lot of reasoning and synthesis and exegetical debate to get there, and I think that we’re better off for it. Similarly, over the centuries Christians have developed sacramental theologies; we’re big on, e.g., baptism and communion. But we don’t do baptism for the dead, even though Paul mentions it (1 Cor 15.29). Why not? Because the mere presence of an idea in Scripture doesn’t constitute sufficient grounds for including that idea in a contemporary doctrine. The formation of Christian theology entails lots of considerations, especially the applications of Christian tradition, human reason, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
This should be old-hat to any evangelical theologian. Still, this general awareness notwithstanding, evangelicals have offered very few trenchant evaluations of how historical-critical views impact our doctrines. I worry that we tend to be more arm-waving than adroit in our analysis. It seems like we’re afraid that, if historical criticism pokes at our favorite doctrinal proof-text, then our whole theological system will come tumbling down. And to my mind, this indicates that we evangelicals are performing well-below our potential.
I’m not saying that we should do historical criticism just so that the cool kids at SBL will let us sit at their tables. (They already do!) I am saying that historical criticism raises questions that demand more attention than we’ve hitherto given. It may be that historical criticism will prove a bull in our dogmatic china-shop, that we’ve got to lock it out because it cannot but shatter our theology. But we don’t know that to be the case yet, because our best and brightest have not engaged historical criticism with the same vigor that they’ve applied to exegesis, linguistics, and doctrine.
In short, historical criticism does impact our view of Scripture (issue #1), but not in ways for which we lack analogies. I think most of us would be happy to tweak our doctrine of Scripture to accommodate historical criticism if only we were certain that historical criticism wouldn’t eviscerate the other doctrines we derive from Scripture (issue #2). (In the spirit of making this case, I got together with a bunch of my buddies and wrote a new book called Evangelical Faith and the Challenge of Historical Criticism).
This is not to imply that historical criticism is toothless. Historical criticism does impinge upon our understandings of biblical texts that are important for our theology. That means we should explore the issue soberly, asking how exactly historical criticism might influence our doctrines and evaluating whether historical criticism proves disastrous for the faith. By and large, we evangelicals haven’t done that. We’ve tended to be stand-off-ish and sometimes bellicose. I think that we can do a lot better than this. I think we’re braver and more prudent and more patient than our public image sometimes reflects. And even if we’re not, I believe the Holy Spirit can make us so.
Chris:
Gustavo here in Colombia. May I humbly disagree (though I am not someone who runs away from historical criticism).
I think the reason for the fear has much more to do with #1 and the issues tied to the inspiration of Scripture.
Inspiration takes us back to God himself (the true theo-logos) and the way WE expect an immutable and omniscient God to have written when he set down his laws.
This is the part that really strikes fear in people's hearts (even more so at the popular level). A God who would use the genres of ancient myth or propaganda to communicate or who would allow Paul to use an exegesis of the Old Testament that doesn't quite square with the historical-critical method, doesn't fit with our doctrine of God.
Enns, as you know, deals with this issue in both his books, Inspiration of Scripture and The Evolution of Adam using the analogy of the incarnation.
Scripture, much to our dismay, displays an appallingly human quality or if you are more positive, a gloriously incarnational quality. Either way, it makes you very uncomfortable or it makes you drastically change your hermeneutical approach to the Bible.
It is the doctrine of inspiration, I think, much more than sacrosanct doctrines which evangelicals defend against historical-criticism.
Chris:
Gustavo here in Colombia. May I humbly disagree (though I am not someone who runs away from historical criticism).
I think the reason for the fear has much more to do with #1 and the issues tied to the inspiration of Scripture.
Inspiration takes us back to God himself (the true theo-logos) and the way WE expect an immutable and omniscient God to have written when he set down his laws.
This is the part that really strikes fear in people's hearts (even more so at the popular level). A God who would use the genres of ancient myth or propaganda to communicate or who would allow Paul to use an exegesis of the Old Testament that doesn't quite square with the historical-critical method, doesn't fit with our doctrine of God.
Enns, as you know, deals with this issue in both his books, Inspiration of Scripture and The Evolution of Adam using the analogy of the incarnation.
Scripture, much to our dismay, displays an appallingly human quality or if you are more positive, a gloriously incarnational quality. Either way, it makes you very uncomfortable or it makes you drastically change your hermeneutical approach to the Bible.
It is the doctrine of inspiration, I think, much more than sacrosanct doctrines which evangelicals defend against historical-criticism.
Chris:
Gustavo here in Colombia. May I humbly disagree (though I am not someone who runs away from historical criticism).
I think the reason for the fear has much more to do with #1 and the issues tied to the inspiration of Scripture.
Inspiration takes us back to God himself (the true theo-logos) and the way WE expect an immutable and omniscient God to have written when he set down his laws.
This is the part that really strikes fear in people's hearts (even more so at the popular level). A God who would use the genres of ancient myth or propaganda to communicate or who would allow Paul to use an exegesis of the Old Testament that doesn't quite square with the historical-critical method, doesn't fit with our doctrine of God.
Enns, as you know, deals with this issue in both his books, Inspiration of Scripture and The Evolution of Adam using the analogy of the incarnation.
Scripture, much to our dismay, displays an appallingly human quality or if you are more positive, a gloriously incarnational quality. Either way, it makes you very uncomfortable or it makes you drastically change your hermeneutical approach to the Bible.
It is the doctrine of inspiration, I think, much more than sacrosanct doctrines which evangelicals defend against historical-criticism.
Hey, Gustavo! Great to hear from you. I love the elegance of this response. Thanks!
I'm totally in agreement with you that the nature of inspiration raises serious theological challenges, especially insofar as it presses at our conception of God; you're definitely right about that. I guess this post reflects my thoughts about the way the debate has SHIFTED since Enns and Sparks have become well-known. As their comments on the realia of Scripture have worked their way into the broader public consciousness, I think we increasingly see bloggers and preachers resorting to "slippery slope" argumentation, e.g.: "if we start messing with the nature of inspiration in minor ways, you'll end up denying the resurrection." So this post is trying to respond to that new wave of concerns. (It's not entirely new of course…these things have been rattling around in academic writings for decades; they are just pouring into the blogosphere now.)
Obviously, BOTH sets of concerns have to be addressed (with tact and detail, at that!). But I think that we've got a lot of writing out there (beyond Sparks and Enns, there's McGowan, and the older voices like Dunn and Barr) helping us work through that. I think that the doctrinal questions haven't been sorted through as much…so I'm pumped to help tackle that part of the problem.
I'm hoping to have lots of more these conversations, Gustavo. 🙂
Christopher
Hey, Gustavo! Great to hear from you. I love the elegance of this response. Thanks!
I'm totally in agreement with you that the nature of inspiration raises serious theological challenges, especially insofar as it presses at our conception of God; you're definitely right about that. I guess this post reflects my thoughts about the way the debate has SHIFTED since Enns and Sparks have become well-known. As their comments on the realia of Scripture have worked their way into the broader public consciousness, I think we increasingly see bloggers and preachers resorting to "slippery slope" argumentation, e.g.: "if we start messing with the nature of inspiration in minor ways, you'll end up denying the resurrection." So this post is trying to respond to that new wave of concerns. (It's not entirely new of course…these things have been rattling around in academic writings for decades; they are just pouring into the blogosphere now.)
Obviously, BOTH sets of concerns have to be addressed (with tact and detail, at that!). But I think that we've got a lot of writing out there (beyond Sparks and Enns, there's McGowan, and the older voices like Dunn and Barr) helping us work through that. I think that the doctrinal questions haven't been sorted through as much…so I'm pumped to help tackle that part of the problem.
I'm hoping to have lots of more these conversations, Gustavo. 🙂
Christopher
Hey, Gustavo! Great to hear from you. I love the elegance of this response. Thanks!
I'm totally in agreement with you that the nature of inspiration raises serious theological challenges, especially insofar as it presses at our conception of God; you're definitely right about that. I guess this post reflects my thoughts about the way the debate has SHIFTED since Enns and Sparks have become well-known. As their comments on the realia of Scripture have worked their way into the broader public consciousness, I think we increasingly see bloggers and preachers resorting to "slippery slope" argumentation, e.g.: "if we start messing with the nature of inspiration in minor ways, you'll end up denying the resurrection." So this post is trying to respond to that new wave of concerns. (It's not entirely new of course…these things have been rattling around in academic writings for decades; they are just pouring into the blogosphere now.)
Obviously, BOTH sets of concerns have to be addressed (with tact and detail, at that!). But I think that we've got a lot of writing out there (beyond Sparks and Enns, there's McGowan, and the older voices like Dunn and Barr) helping us work through that. I think that the doctrinal questions haven't been sorted through as much…so I'm pumped to help tackle that part of the problem.
I'm hoping to have lots of more these conversations, Gustavo. 🙂
Christopher