Wednesday 18 February 2015

Scholarship and Apologetics

James McGrath asks whether you can be both an apologist and a scholar. As usual any discussion of this sort must contend with the slippery nature of words, and in this case the floor is littered with banana skins, so please forgive the over-simplifications in what follows.

For me the notion of scholarship is tied up with the conviction that you follow the evidence. If the evidence (let's say for the authorship of 2 Peter, or the effectiveness of homoeopathy) points in a particular direction - and it does - you acknowledge that. If the evidence runs contrary to your own views, you acknowledge that too. You don't fudge the issues.

Raymond E. Brown
Can that be done by a scholar with a strong existing faith commitment? Sure. Case in point, Raymond Brown. Brown was a leading Catholic scholar of his generation (died 1998). Many of us were slapped around the chops by his brilliant treatment of the birth narratives in the New Testament. For a younger version of myself reading The Birth of the Messiah was a jaw-dropping experience. Brown laid out the case, left his readers to reach their own conclusions, but nonetheless maintained his personal allegiance to the church's teaching.

It bears restating. Fr. Brown remained loyal to his church's dogma, yet he didn't let that affect his commitment to laying out the clear evidence which led in a different direction.

Was he a scholar? Absolutely. Was he an apologist? Not in my book.

An apologist selects, shapes and massages the evidence to support an existing view. Like Calvinists who read the Bible backwards (the Old Testament in the light of the New) they begin with a conviction then engage in a cherry-picking exercise to lend it credibility. An apologist can certainly use scholarly tools, but are they truly free to follow where the evidence leads? How can they when they've already reached the conclusion in advance?

Then cometh the chorus: but we've all got a bias. No argument. But the point is largely irrelevant. Most of us can distinguish between what we'd like to believe and the uncomfortable facts. When the two clash we either draw the wagons into a circle or we are forced to grow a little by accommodating the new information.

The apologist does the former, the scholar the latter.

7 comments:

  1. I have read some material by Raymond Brown but not the book you cite. I am used to encountering on this blog arguments that might all be summarize in the following little syllogism:

    A wonderful researcher did some marvelous and unchallengeable research.
    The research incontrovertibly demonstrated that the Bible is untrue.
    Hence, you are stupid if you believe in God. QED

    These few paragraphs about Raymond Brown and apologetics/scholarship seem to fit that mold. It makes it sound like Raymond discovered the truth, wrote it up and then quickly hurried on his way back to his erroneous beliefs. When I read the reviews of The Birth of the Messiah on Amazon, I did not get that impression at all. Unfortunately, I do not have the book to verify my view.

    I reject the notion that scholars are objective, educated, noble and don't believe in God and apologists are subjective, uneducated and ignoble and do believe in God. Somehow that smacks of a little bias. Apologists in many cases are simply convinced scholars.

    -- Neotherm

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  2. "For me the notion of scholarship is tied up with the conviction that you follow the evidence."

    That's great! It sounds a lot like science!

    That said, the question is where is the evidence concerning scholarship of the Bible is going to take us? Let's see now. II Peter was a forgery. It seems like II Timothy was too and that's a shame because I think that II Timothy 3 is the most accurate prophecy ever given. James? Jude? The four gospels? Mark should have ended at Mark 16:8 and 9-20 were added by an unknown forger? What does that mean if Mark itself is a forgery? And Revelation? There goes a full 100% of all prophecy for our times. The first five books of the Bible weren't written by Moses? Ephesians? II Thessalonians? Unknown authorship for Hebrews, 1, 2 & 3rd John?

    So let's say that God exists and the Bible is His inspired Word. God very well have inspired men to write the various scrolls and letters therein... perhaps. But it wasn't like He was dictating it. He inspired it -- which means that there would be an epiphany colored and shaped by the person recording it. Maybe the transcription of the inspiration is somewhat inaccurate. Zechariah was just sure that someone would come and force the world to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. It was inspiration embedded in a very strong hope.

    So it logically follows that if this were the case, the best we could do is sort of sift through it all and pick and choose what might be relevant. The Bible as the inspired Word of God would certainly be subjected to subjective perspective.

    Of course, with such a view, it would be hard for the independent observer to have much faith in the Scriptures. After all, what could anyone rely upon?

    These days, we have science based on objective observations as self-correcting and then we have everything else. This certainly seems to be in the 'everything else' category. I should add that there are also a number of failed prophecies in the Bible which not only didn't happen as advertised, they never will happen.

    Where does that leave us?

    One place it does NOT leave us is an authority upon which narcissistic abusive men can found an authoritative cult. There's no particularly good reason to ever believe that David Pack is Elijah, Gerald Flurry is Jesus Christ in the flesh as 'that prophet' or that Ronald Weinland is a prophet of God. In fact, using the Scriptures themselves, we can conclude that they are imposters. We can even use Scriptures to prove that the United States and British Commonwealth are not the lost tribes of Israel (partly because there aren't any), without having to even use DNA.

    So when science meets apologetics, it seems that apologetics will always lose if we are measuring what passes for truth.

    And just because it makes you feel good to think something is true, doesn't mean that it is even within the realm of possibility.

    That just leaves the original question of where the scholarship is taking us.

    The real answer seems to be that it is taking us where we do not want to go.

    Or at the very least, it will take us to conclude that apologetics is an exercise in fantasy.

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  3. "So when science meets apologetics, it seems that apologetics will always lose if we are measuring what passes for truth." That view is becoming rapidly a passé notion. You might have a look at the Biologos website regarding the reconciliation of science and the Bible. Regarding the Bible and its purpose, Peter Enns book entitled "The Bible Tells Me So" presents a useful revision of how the Bible should be viewed. I expect in the future that Christianity will move in this direction and away from the evangelical stance. My guess is that one day that evangelicalism will be kept alive only by those detractors of Christianity who must have an easy target.

    -- Neotherm

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  4. Hi Gavin,

    Your point is well made. This is not about some elusive objectivity (a red herring frequently raised by Sunday-morning Post-modernists) but honesty. It is one thing willy nilly to have a bias and to defend one. Further, it is not about agreeing or disagreeing with a person's conclusions--scholars do that all the time!--but about trusting that he or she has arrived at them honestly.

    Cheers, ph

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  5. The consideration of what are canonical texts is also historical analysis that includes criteria of objectivity.
    And the study of commitment also requires discernment.
    The methods of historical inquiry and the methods of scientific inquiry are not adequately differentiated
    nor adequately related.

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  6. The consideration of what are canonical texts is also historical analysis that includes criteria of objectivity.
    And the study of commitment also requires discernment.
    The methods of historical inquiry and the methods of scientific inquiry are not adequately differentiated
    nor adequately related.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Objectivity is a project of the subject.

    ReplyDelete