Earlier this week, Bryce Walker provocatively suggested that Biblical Studies shouldn’t exist as a discipline. I wanted to join the conversation, but I fear I dallied too long. He now has three posts, in large part engaged in a back-and-forth with Brian LePort at Near Emmaus.
Take this as a general apologia for Biblical Studies, inspired by the conversation but not directly tackling the challenges, rejoinders, and surrejoinders. However, the two basic complaints were that biblical studies masquerades as science and that its methodology is flawed. The hope for the future was articulated at one point was moving toward something akin to theological interpretation.
Here are a few thoughts in reply:
First, the idea that biblical studies or theology might be a science has a historical rooting. After the Enlightenment, when the Bible is no longer the norm for interpreting the world, why should a theology faculty continue to be a part of a university? That was a very real question, and part of the reply was to speak of it as a science.
However, anyone who still speaks or acts in this way has simply not caught up to the past 40-70 years of biblical studies. If the impression someone has of biblical studies is that it is a science, I can only say that one’s instructors have not been continuing to read since the time they were in seminary. And, of course, that one is not up to speed on the discipline that is being critiqued.
Thinking with Bryce
The pistis christou debate was mentioned. This is not, in fact, an area where most proponents act as though they are scientists with the answer. Richard Hays would say (while I was at Duke) that he was convinced about the subjective genitive. Four or five days a week.
Historical claims are always reconstructions, and though we argue vociferously, the idea of theology as a “science” is outdated and, in most quarters I’d say, dead.
The existence of biblical studies as a unique discipline also has a historical root. Critical study of the Bible arose at the same time people were claiming that theology is a science. Why? Because it was becoming increasingly clear that dogmatic commitments were hindering our ability to interpret the Bible.
Now, a good deal of that had to do with wanting to take the Bible apart into a million different historical pieces. And, much of this has been less than helpful in making sense of the Bible.
But the reason that Biblical studies has to exist as a separate discipline is, if nothing else, to keep reminding the church that the Bible is not a systematic theology, that the Bible is not a philosophy text, that the Bible is not ultimately a book of historical antiquarian interest, either.
Biblical studies at its best is simultaneously doing two things:
(1) Positively, it is continuing to keep the Bible as a book to God’s people located in particular times and places in front of the church. This means both: reading it as a book written for the people of God (there is a theological dimension and it calls forth certain praxis) and that it was written in the past to people in different situations.
(2) Negatively, it serves as a gadfly, showing the church where due to cultural, philosophical, and theological blinders, it has misconstrued the words in which it thinks it finds its validation.
Of course, in a healthy theological environment this is not an autocracy or dictatorship! At both points 1 and 2 the theologians and historians and ethicists and preachers and pastors will provide push-back, reinterpretation, and further reflections.
But the history of the church has shown that where Biblical Studies either does not exist as a separate entity or where it exists in a context where theology controls everything (such as a conservative confessional seminary) that the hearing of the Bible, and the hearing of the Bible as the word of God, suffers.
There is no methodological flaw in understanding the texts better as they were deeply contextualized in certain social settings, as they were written by authors whose tendencies we can sometimes discover, and as they were written as part of a larger narrative in which God reveals Himself as the one who saves in Jesus Christ.
Well, I started to respond to you, but I’m too involved in the argument about what’s a science to do it briefly. (I’ve been working for and with religion-and-science people too long.) It was too much my own piece to be said from anywhere but my own soapbox.
But, to put it briefly, I’m not sure I see why you follow the problem by disclaiming science as a pretense, and an inapt one—beyond the fact of popular misunderstanding of what a science is, so thoroughly demonstrated in the conversation you’re responding to. Why is Biblical Studies not a science (or not also a science), if it can be one by its own methodologies, for its own objects, as must be allowed to every science? And if it is not simply a science, what else is it?
Matt,
I’ll post part of a comment I made over at Near Emmaus about biblical studies, history, and science. Curious what you, and Daniel for that matter, think.
I take biblical studies to be, properly, a subset of the broader discipline of historical studies, a field generally classified as part of the humanities. One can discuss the liberal arts/humanities as in line with the “sciences” without being an old-school overconfident objectivist.
While doing history isn’t science in the sense of being able to recreate results and so on, it is a communal specialized form of critical empirical inquiry that trades in evidence, falsifiable arguments about evidence, and so on. Historians do not get to make arguments from authority, selectively choose to privilege some sources over others for whatever religious, political, or ethical reason without giving an argument that can be criticized.
Also, precisely because biblical studies is a form of empirical (or “scientific”) historical inquiry, it isn’t about making absolute certainty kinds of claims. Communal critical empirical study means that all conclusions remain up for criticism in light of new arguments about old and new evidence. It also means that analysis of the social locations, interests, inherited practices, and so on, of practitioners of historical inquiry is relevant to the discussion. The practice of communal specialized empirical inquiry is itself a socially located practice performed by people in specific social contexts, and so on.
My point is that claims about biblical studies being a form of empirical inquiry that can, in principle, lead to ever more accurate understandings of the Bible, its early producers and consumers, etc., aren’t also necessarily old-school over confident assured objectivist claims about Biblical Studies that also assert the irrelevance of the social locations, interests, and so on of the interpreters.
Stephen: In one of my comment threads I had to clarify that my argument is not intending to state that the sciences are still purporting to make objective claims (some within them do, but most seem to realize the subjective nature of interpreting that which is observed). Rather, my first critique of bib stud is interacting more with what the common imagination thinks a science is. This may have been a bad move in retrospect, since it has caused a lot of dialogue clarifying that science is not purely objective. Your explanation is pointing to a tension that has existed in the field of history for quite some time – whether or not it is a science or a liberal art. You point out well that there are some weird hybrid characteristics that seem to make it sit between both camps. Perhaps we need a new category for history.
I think Stephen does provide valuable clarification on this matter as to how we can use the word “science” to explain biblical studies, and he is right that this is often denounced in respect the older view that we are aiming at some sort of mythological objectivity. I do wonder though if this use of “science” is so embedded in people’s heads if it is better to avoid using the word?
I hope read Matt’s post soon.
Matt and Stephen, thanks for your questions. Stephen, I agree with what you’ve produced, for the most part, and that what you’ve said can be labelled a “science.” For most folks, I think there is a distinction that makes sense between science and humanities that makes me wary of using the “science” label too freely.
Also, many people would see the historical description that you’ve given as one possible way to approach NT studies. There might be literary or theological approaches with different accent. But even there, I think you’d be dealing with a historical discipline–though it might be differently conceived.
I forgot to put this down a few days ago, but here is the link to my response…http://wp.me/p2yzxE-3C